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A Wolf in Lady Critic’s Clothing

Although I am just blind enough to prevent me from legally operating a moving vehicle without corrective lenses, I almost never wear glasses. The reason is simple. I find it relaxing to glide through NYC unfettered by too much visual stimuli. (The better to see you with a third eye, my pretties.) So if you think I’m looking at you funny, chances are good I can’t see you at all. Only once in a blue moon do I actually think you’re shit on my shoe.

‘If I Stay,’ Indeed

These days, I thank my lucky stars – no matter how faulty – for Young Adult film adaptations. They are the last bastion of the big Hollywood weepie, a film genre that is sorely needed, if only so the average American can permit him- or herself to cry from time to time. Of course, the best weepies are so high-quality that we don’t feel embarrassed after we’ve dried our tears – think It’s a Wonderful Life, Gone with the Wind, and Terms of Endearment. Even E.T. is a well-crafted weepie in its own way.

If I Stay, the adaptation of Gayle Forman’s 2009 best-selling YA novel, is not. For long stretches, it seems like a TV pilot for a WB show that, rightfully, did not get picked up. Nonetheless, it evokes a cacophony of strong emotions – even at the critics’ screening I attended, much sniffing and nose-blowing could be heard – and for that reason cannot be dismissed out of hand. At least, not in this decidedly ungolden era of tough-guy cinema, in which action pics rule the multiplex and emotionality has been utterly ghettoized to Indiewood. Continue Reading →

Gracie and the Good Grandpa Ghost

Used to be, when I came home, my permakitten Grace would come sauntering to the door. It wasn’t like she catapulted into my arms as my dearly departed calico Maxiemillion Rosmoon always did. She’d greet me more like–Oh! You’re home? I just happened to be walking down the hall and here you are. Still, as I put down my things, she’d bump me—casually, super-casually—until I lay down on the floor and scratched behind her ears. It was a perfect ritual for shedding the mishegos of the outside world, and I appreciated it all the more for the effort it required of my normally reserved cat.

Nowadays, I don’t hear word one from Little Miss when I come home. Frankly, I blame it on the Magic Chair. Ever since I dragged it home from the Hamptons earlier this summer, Gracie has spent all her time lolling in its wooden splendor. She doesn’t sleep with me anymore, she doesn’t perch on my legs as I write, she doesn’t even trot around the apartment, prowling for evil, evil dust mice. She just snuggles in that blasted rocking chair, communing with the Good Grandpa Ghost who came with it. I get the sense that he caresses her all day long, rubbing her striped belly and purring softly like the mommy from which she was mysteriously separated when she was but a month old. (We found her as a still-bleating baby, mawing Doritos and malt liquor from trash cans like all the other toughies on the block.) The other day, when I was very stuck on a review, I displaced her briefly so I could soak up The Chair’s good writing energy–this grandfather liked authors, methinks–and she glowered until I ceded what she apparently now regards as her rightful throne. Twas no joke, I assure you.

I’m torn: I miss my tiny friend’s companionship but am glad she has found a way to quell the anxiety that has plagued her since she was small. To that end, I leave a small glass of water every night on my ancestors’ altar for this grandpa of another man–I know his spirit boasts an uncomplicated kindness that only can be good for us both—and I have placed a striped cushion on the chair to make my sweet friend even cozier. Even witch’s familiars need familiars, and it is my duty to respect that.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy