Bill Murray And Me
The first time I met Bill Murray, I was 18 years old and wearing a miserable brown ensemble.
The garments belonged to my mother, and for unknown reasons I had filched them to add to my own wardrobe in New York: a chocolate, polyester blouse, light-washed jeans, and mahogany, backless loafers in the style of re-imagined Mary Janes. I had just moved to the city for college and the independent film I interned for consisted of a tidy editorial crew (Editor, Assistant Editor, and me.) Rather than cool clothes, I outfitted myself with that spirited, blind alacrity only youth affords. I was thrilled to work on a real film—in the Big Apple!—and anytime a celebrity popped by to visit our director, I feigned (poorly, I’m sure) aloofness. These icons largely ignored my existence, which I considered a common gesture in the feudal world of filmmaking: they noblemen, maintaining an understood distance, to my serfdom.
We all had crushes on our lead actor, Bill Murray (who we called by first name, naturally). “Bill might stop by today,” was a regularly quoted possibility that for months never materialized. Then one afternoon he appeared in our cutting room—very tall, sharply be-suited, his silver hair neatly combed to frame his genial face. I stood statue-still as he approached me, his arm extended.
“Hi, I’m Bill,” he said.
“I’m Jen,” I squeaked. “It’s… such a pleasure to meet you.” It was a phrase I had practiced often—one that, in our Korean family, I never grew up utilizing, but had fancied a polite, white-people-expression I ought to use more often. We shook hands for a good while.
Someone decided I should go on a fresh juice run. “Jen, do they have blood oranges?” Bill joked. “Nah, they’re probably not in season.”
I returned, giddy, and distributed the ginger/citrus/wheatgrass concoctions. Bill asked me where I was from, and wanted to know the particulars (“OK, but where exactly in southern California?”) and I was pleased he did not probe the way some strangers do (Where are you from originally, in Asia? North Korea or South?)
“I could tell you were new in town,” he said. “I noticed the Band-Aids on your feet. Are those new shoes?”
I looked down in horror. I had forgotten about the Band-Aids. My mother’s feet were smaller than mine, and with all the city-walking, the ill fit produced several unsightly blisters. They weren’t new, per se, but I said, “I guess,” and mentally crawled into a shame-cave with my mother’s ugly brown shoes.
“New to New York. New shoes. There’s a connection there,” he said. He sipped the dregs of his juice and smiled. I thought it'd be the last time I ever saw him. READ MORE
You kind of hope that Mayor de Blasio is making his public gesture of contrition on the issue of charter schools because he realizes that he has so many things on his plate that a drawn-out battle with well-funded opponents who have the benefit of compliant allies in the press willing to discredit progressive politics by any means necessary would be a massive distraction from his goals at this very crucial stage of his term and that he is actually saying conciliatory things right now to take the issue off the table so that later, when the public attention span inevitably shifts to other, more important issues, he can swiftly eviscerate these cancers under the cover of darkness, but some days that feels like a lot to wish for.
Cats One Step Closer To Killing Us All
Hmm: "Cats have passed TB to humans for the first time in an outbreak feared to have been caused by badgers. Two people from the same household are being treated for bovine tuberculosis after they caught the disease from their kitten. Two other cat owners have been infected with a dormant form of TB."
Oh, and recently: "Using deliberately conservative assumptions, federal researchers recently estimated that free-ranging cats killed about 2.4 billion birds annually in the Lower 48 states, a substantial bite out of the total bird population. Outdoor cats also kill about 12.3 billion small mammals a year — not just the proverbial rats and mice but also chipmunks, rabbits and squirrels — and about 650 million reptiles and amphibians. In some cases, they are pushing endangered species toward extinction."
Now, I am not saying that we need to permanently quarantine both cats and the people who take them into their homes as a preventative measure to keep them from spreading their disease and murder to the rest of us, so I am not sure why that idea is even in your head. I don't think anyone is suggesting that we keep cats and cat owners on lockdown inside their shitbox-intensive domiciles for the benefit of the birds and also all of the human beings who have chosen not to harbor vectors for tuberculosis and worse, so it seems weird that you would even bring it up. I am simply sharing a couple of things that have been in the news lately, and if the conclusion you take away from it is that we need to keep cats and cat people away from the general population immediately, like before we get to the weekend even, that is surely something you have come up with on your own and I don't know that I can fully endorse it. Although it is a pretty intriguing idea, the one you have about home confinement for cats and cat owners. Tell me more!
Why Won't Anybody Say That "Noah" Is Terrible?
Noah is getting the strangest good reviews. "I’m not sure who exactly this often grimly rapturous movie was made for, but I find myself surprisingly glad that it was made," wrote Richard Lawson in Vanity Fair. A.O. Scott went with: "Mr. Aronofsky’s earnest, uneven, intermittently powerful film, is both a psychological case study and a parable of hubris and humility. At its best, it shares some its namesake’s ferocious conviction, and not a little of his madness."
These are all incredibly charitable. This is not a good movie. I wanted to bite off my fingers. From the opening sequence, which explains the silly state of the world and some fallen angels by means of text that looks suspiciously like the unholy Papyrus font, to the senseless howling and weeping and gnashing of teeth and stomping around that proceeds over the next two hours, Noah looks all around like a film gone seriously wrong. In terms of emotional pitch, it makes Black Swan look like Breakfast at Tiffany's. It's tiresome, exhausting, bizarre and self-serious. Aronofsky is pretty close to being a great director who's never actually made a great film.
In anyone else's hands, the story of grim old stick-in-the-mud Russell Crowe saving the beasts of the world from the evils of men would be extremely camp. And there are times that the movie looks like claymation or the performances turn just a bit too histrionic. But there's never anything laughable, really—ever—in even Aronofsky's most ridiculous situations. That's what makes Noah so tiring. And yet… visually captivating? I guess the upside is, it's refreshing to see a movie where you literally cannot imagine what will happen, even though you assume there's going to be, like, a big flood, and an eventual yacht collision with Mount Ararat.
I always start to suspect that it all goes wrong with his collaborators. Noah has the wonderful Clint Mansell's worst score to date (and I say this as a huge, huge Mansell fan), and Aronofsky's stuck by his production designer and editor from Black Swan and his costume designer back to The Wrestler. But that's not it: they all do great work over and over. Thérèse DePrez also did the impeccable production designs for Stoker and I Shot Andy Warhol and Happiness, and Amy Westcott did costumes for The Squid and the Whale and "Entourage" and the delightful What's Your Number? (She has the craziest job of all here: "pretend there was actually a first iron age before the one we know about and also there were magical animals and angels and stuff and they'd discovered indigo dye and invented really sophisticated looms but nothing else." You end up with a kind of Bottega Veneta as reimagined by al Qaeda members.) Likewise Noah's editor did Moonrise Kingdom, The East and Fantastic Mr. Fox. So everything wrong with this movie is Aronofsky's fault.
From the east coast, this looks like the insanely expensive end of Darren Aronofsky, with the production budget plus the marketing budget teetering quickly towards $200 million. But the studio, after some early wrestling for control of the film, gave it up and gave in, and are now 100% on-board. Probably their testing shows something we can't see for the vast multiplexes of America. A Dances with Wolves for the last of the Billy Graham set? God, it could be just the beginning.
Band or After-Life: Your Choice
Yes, we are also sick of people stupidly putting things into brackets just because it's March.
Michael Bertin is a writer rarely in New York.
New York City, March 26, 2014
★ The overstaying winter had switched again from cloudy and too cold to bright and too cold, as if that would make it appealing. Steam blew from the street chimney and people moved about in heavy coats under the high-angled sun, like a movie scene being staged out of season. Wind clawed at a man's lightweight dress trousers as he walked down Lafayette, his hands jammed so forcefully into his jacket pockets that the quilted fabric bunched up across the small of his back. The wind was numbing, shoving walkers around like a tired mime routine, made no less tired by being real.
Talking With Fred Armisen
Whenever it seems like Fred Armisen has more than enough projects on his plate, he goes ahead and becomes the new Late Night band curator, or he lands another show on IFC, or he decides to release his fake band songs from SNL through a string of 7" singles. But that advanced level of multitasking is really the secret to Armisen's success, as his spontaneous zen-like approach to his work has led to some of his finest comedic creations, from making web videos with Carrie Brownstein under the moniker ThunderAnt to his commitment to even the most inconsequential gigs, such as dressing up as Penny Marshall to star in the real-life Marshall's book trailer or showing Conan O'Brien his flawless impression of a decomposing time-lapse photography fox. Now that Portlandia's fourth season is in full swing, I recently got the chance to talk with Armisen about how the show has evolved, his next IFC show American Documentary, a possible future Fred Armisen/Rob Zombie collaboration, and whether he's a Bert or an Ernie. READ MORE
"As much as you strategize or you think that you're going to define yourself, ultimately you get defined, whether it's by the press or by the… public. And a lot of your calculation is meaningless. You become what you become."
Bluffing, "Sheltered"
"We were largely inspired to write shorter songs by the work of San Francisco songwriter Tony Molina (as well as his old group Ovens), plus countless others ranging from the Beach Boys to the Minutemen to Heavy Vegetable. Pop and punk have always had brevity and catchiness as a common thread and so we see their self-imposed 'less than two-minute rule' as a challenge to write the most addictive songs possible; to try and express more with less," says one of the members of this band I've never heard of about their new video in the promotional copy that came with the link. You know what? Good for them! Nobody needs more than two minutes for anything involving expression and the fact that these kids don't have to spend the next 20 years babbling on until they finally realize just how useless all their words have been is to their credit. This video features what I guess we'll call "[young] adult situations," so figure out what you can get away with at work before you click play.
Four Months Alone on the Pacific Crest Trail
Myla Fay is a 25-year-old woman who recently hiked 2100 miles alone. This summer, she plans to hike the Continental Divide Trail, all the way from Mexico to Canada.
How did you get into long-distance hiking?
I grew up in Maine and spent a lot of time outside, and when I was a kid, we went up to Blue Hill every summer to hike and swim, camping in Baxter State Park and backpacking in the White Mountains. And in high school I did some incredible trips with the Chewonki Foundation: one was a 400-mile white-water canoe trip that ended in the tiny Inuit village of Kangiqsualujjuaq in northern Quebec. I always liked the outdoors, and backpacking felt like a good fit.
I was also always interested in long-distance hiking as a more structured way of traveling. I spent a summer alone in India once and felt overwhelmed by all the decisions and planning involved in traveling. With hiking, your trip is organized around managing food and water and covering distance, and there's less of an expectation for fun and relaxation. I like the part of backpacking that's monotonous and challenging.
How long had you been thinking about hiking the PCT before doing it?
I heard about the PCT my senior year in college, but during and after college I was focusing on school and work: I worked as a designer in Minneapolis and New York, which I liked. Then I wanted to work on my own projects, so I moved back to Maine and set up a printmaking studio in the basement of a rural Zen Center. But it’s difficult to make any money from printmaking and it’s also difficult to live and work in isolation.
I felt unsure about what I wanted to do, so I made a list of things I never regret doing. I realized that I never regret spending time outside, traveling, and challenging myself, so I decided to hike. I don’t think any 90-year-old would look back on life and regret hiking the PCT.
Did you know you wanted to go alone?
I might have considered it if I had known someone willing to drop everything and go hiking for four months. But I liked the idea of hiking alone anyway. Being alone is wonderful because you never have to compromise. If I felt like swimming all day, that's what I did. READ MORE
I have to say, we make fun of the Times a lot, sometimes with good reason and sometimes just because it's easy and mostly because it still is The Paper To Read, but we should also acknowledge when they do something that elicits a smile, like this headline here. So consider this an acknowledgment. I smiled at least.
Slow Ride Around Yangon
The man was sick, or had been for hours. When he rose, finally, it was bright out and hot, and he determined that he would not be making it to the conference that day, and instead he would ride the train that went around the city. The way he figured it was, to sit upright, indoors, and work at looking interested was more likely to bring back last night’s nausea than the train. Getting sick in front of people he knew would be embarrassing. This way, if he did puke, it’d be with strangers he would never see again. And trains calmed him.
He packed a big bottle of water and not much else before he marched, weak-kneed and slow, towards the elevator, down to the lobby, and out into the air. Outside he stopped to steady himself a moment, closed his eyes against the light and the heat. The station was close, he’d run past it just the other morning. If he could get on that train, slump down in the hard seat, stare out the window, sip on his water, he’d be fine, was what he thought. Then the man started walking again, faster this time, though his legs were still all wobbly.
At the station, trains were rusted and decaying in unused yards, on overgrown tracks that led to another station, off in the distance, this one red brick and grand once, now abandoned and collapsing in on itself. He had to ask several different officers at the current station for the commuter train ticket. Each time he did so he raised his hand, pointed his finger, and traced a circle in the air. Each time, each station officer responded “Ah,” and pointed to another booth, until one stood up and left his post, escorting the man to the office that sold tickets to the train that circumnavigated the city.
The office was small, more a concrete stand on the platform between tracks, but it had at least three fans, maybe more. It was full of breezes. A cool and pleasant enough space that two of the three men inside it were napping on cramped cots. The third stood motionless beside a stack of papers as he listened to his colleague, then looked at the man, who smiled and traced a circle in the air. Eventually a ticket was produced, signed, and paid for. During this process the man found a very small plastic chair to sit in, and he would have liked to stay this way, low to the floor in the breezy office, for as long as possible. But far too soon the third man, still standing, gestured for him to leave and wait for his train outside. Then, in nearly perfect English, he said, unprompted, “It will come in the next five minutes. It will take three hours, all the way around.”
Four minutes later the train arrived. It looked more new and clean inside than the man expected, though certainly old—no doors or windowpanes to speak of, just long hard plastic benches, the same light blue, he noticed, as the subway back home. The car wasn’t crowded. He had a section between handrails to himself. Once the train started up, he saw that all of the passengers had taken off their shoes, which were all sandals, and most had put their bare feet up on the bench. It looked very comfortable, so he did the same, though he kept his socks on, because he had socks on. READ MORE
How Can We Pretend We're Paying Attention Faster?
"[S]kimmers and speed-readers did much worse at answering comprehension questions afterward, especially ones about specifics or technical material," but nobody has anything super-valuable to say anymore anyway so it doesn't really make a difference how much of it you retain; why not get yourself an app that will help you "read" more quickly? The odds are that anything flashing by you on a screen will be for the most part ignored and even more importantly ignorable so whatever helps you breeze through the barrage of verbiage at this point is probably worth it. If you can just hold out for a little while longer we are not all that far away from the time when we communicate solely in GIF form and then all our problems will be solved. Until then keep not paying attention because I've lost you at this point anyway, right? If you're at all good at the way we read now you watched a couple of seconds of the video and moved on to the next thing a while ago. These apps will definitely usher in a very important change in our society.
"Across mobile, and especially in iOS, people use emojis to express deep and complicated emotions. But the lack of diversity in the human-related emojis makes it hard to accurately represent life through these pictograms."
Sex Work Is A Labor Issue
Melissa Gira Grant is a writer and freelance journalist covering sex, politics, and the internet. In past lives she has worked at a feminist foundation, been a member of the Exotic Dancers’ Union, and co-edited a book with me back in 2010. Her latest book, Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work, is not a juicy memoir, and it is not a debate about whether sex work should or shouldn't exist. Instead it challenges the myths we perpetuate about sex work, and examines how our 'feelings talk' and theoretical debate can be a distraction from the more immediate labor and human rights issues that sex workers are actually dealing with, and dying from, all the time.
I read this book very quickly, and then spent days afterwards turning it over in my head. It made me feel like I was back in school and having my mind blown apart — in a good way. I was nervous to interview Melissa because well, the book is about how badly the media botches sex worker coverage, plus having 'feelings talk' be off the table is always tough, but we ended up talking for hours on a park bench in the East Village, on the first nice day of the year. My mind: still blown, my feelings: acknowledged, but not overindulged.
You talked a lot in the book about consent, and that was really interesting to me, all of the boundaries you draw in sex work, way more explicitly than in regular sex-sex, and often more explicitly than in straight jobs.
Right, there’s a time boundary, first of all. And then maybe once a client has an orgasm "things are done" boundary. Those are the most basic. “Our time is up and if you want me to stay, well, you can pay me more,” sort of thing.
It is interesting the amount of power and control and coercion that people want to ascribe to customers, but in many peoples’ experience they’re coming in with a lot of boundaries that the customers have to adhere to, and the biggest coercive factor is just money. For instance will you put up with a more annoying or less respectful customer just because you also need to be paid, which is something everyone faces.
And that’s your decision. READ MORE
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