In A.O. Scott’s review of There Will Be Blood, he mentions, parenthetically, “Like most of the finest American directors working now, Mr. Anderson makes little on-screen time for women.” I love P.T. Anderson. I love the Coen brothers. Most of the directors, in fact, that Tony’s talking about are men I hold near and dear to my heart. But it’s indisputable that they forget Abigail Adams’s famous injunction: “…remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.”

It’s possible only the beginning of the quote applies to this particular cinematic situation.

Still, it bothers me. Last night, Mr. Ben and I watched Waitress, which meant that I have now completed 2007’s Fertility Trifecta (the other two being, of course, Knocked Up and Juno). The movie had some entertaining moments and some good lines. Mostly, though, it felt like it was trying too hard to yank on the Steel Magnolias chain, and it lacked the credibility: there’s something odd about watching Felicity and Jeremy Sisto, the creepy brother from Six Feet Under, affect Southern accents. At the end, the quirky-sweetness falls away from the movie’s tone and it becomes a kind of Herstory uptopia, a You Go Girl!, Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle pastel fantasy.

Despite the movie’s flaws, it’s one of the few 2007 films that pass the Ms. test. Juno and the the Savages also do, bless their indie little hearts, and I’m sure Persepolis will. But I’m sure it’s not a coincidence that all of those films come from source material written by women — and, in the case of the Savages, a female director too. Why are women fundamentally uninteresting to otherwise edgy, intelligent, creative, broad-minded men?

Whatever the reason for the blind spot, I do think it’s funny that directors will make exceptions for their wives: Frances McDormand is a Mrs. Coen and has played their most memorably vivid and interesting female character; Helena Bonham Carter, Burton’s girlfriend and baby momma, serves the same function. Expand, fellas! Does Patricia Clarkson need to hook up with someone to get a real role?

One of the perks of having a father-in-law who lives locally? Sometimes you can get taken to dinner ‘n’ a movie. This is exciting under normal circumstances, but when “movie” = “SWEENEY TODD,” something you’re totally desperate to see, it’s beyond thrilling.

I didn’t realize at first that he agreed to take Mr. Ben and me to the movie the same way he agreed to take us to — I shudder to think of this now — The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a far less successful adaptation of a classic text. Luckily, he loved it. Does it even need be said that Mr. Ben and I did too? This was Tim Burton at his most grotesque, let loose on fantastic material. At times (the “By the Sea” dream sequence, where Mrs. Lovett fantasizes about how she & her homicidal lover could have a bourgeois life together, for example) Burton’s macabre vision actually improves on the original.

Helena Bonham Carter has a range of about five notes, but she manages to put her own spin on a role I’ve now seen inhabited by extremely different actresses (Angela Lansbury, Christine Baranski, and Patti LuPone — what could you imagine they would have in common?). ** SPOILER ALERT ** She makes the foolhardy love that Mrs. Lovett has for Sweeney moving rather than merely pathetic, and I loved her duet with Toby, “Not While I’m Around.” I mean, talk about layered subtext. Little Toby is singing, thinking, “I finally have a home! This woman rescued me and I can’t wait til I can rescue her in turn to communicate the depth of my affections!” and the mother figure is singing, thinking, “Oh, shit, I now have to kill this boy.”

Part of the twisted charm of this show is that Sondheim wrote strikingly beautiful love songs for it and then put them in the most upsetting possible context. How would you like to sing an ode to “Pretty Women” with the man who had you jailed so he could rape your wife?

HBC and Johnny Depp as Sweeney are both made up to look like zombies (sexy zombies) only partially inhabiting the colorless world of Victorian London. In that respect, they match, and they feel right as a couple. Depp also has a surprisingly good voice, or good for the role anyway. This is true of the other cast members too. They make it work.

Mr. Ben and I realized that the cast is peopled with Slytherins: HBC, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spell (the man who plays the Beadle here and Peter Pettigrew there). This inevitably made me wonder how the Harry Potter movies would be as interpreted by Tim Burton. Oh, the things of which we can only dream … But in fairness, Burton is a post-modernist; Sweeney is a pomo classic; HP is not. Burton doesn’t seem to be at his best dealing with non-pomo material, as evidenced by virtually everything he’s done since Nightmare Before Christmas.

Anyway. Sweeney left me weak in the knees, as the kids say, and I feel prepared to take on the movie that is both supposed to be excellent in its own right AND an excellent summation of the films of 2007: There Will Be Blood.

Jonah Goldberg secretly loves me. He knows he does.

Happy Hannukah, everyone! You know, that harmless, minor Jewish holiday that exists in America as this country’s paltry companion piece to Christmas, like a kid playing a kazoo on the sidelines as a confetti strewn marching band in full regalia, with cheerleaders and baton twirlers and gymnasts and everything, spends a month slowly parading by.

Don’t think I bear Christmas any ill will. Sure, I used to; but we’re cool now, we’re cool. I’ve gotten to celebrate a secular version a couple times with Mr. Ben’s dad’s family. I’ve done it all, in fact: the evening service as St. Marks, a stocking filled with stuff hanging on the mantle for me, wrapped boxes glistening under the tree. I can understand how, if you grew up with that — or, that plus some heartfelt religious traditions — you’d long for it every year.

It’s just not my holiday. All the same, you’d never see me go on a tirade like this about Christmas, let alone about poor, miserable, homely Hannukah! What is Christopher Hitchens thinking?

His rant, which I’ve read now twice and concluded makes not a speck of sense, seems to be saying that Hannukah is bad because it celebrates the triumph (for about fifteen minutes, once) of the ancient Hebrews over the Greeks. And who were the Greeks, asks Hitch? A culture that

had weaned many people away from the sacrifices, the circumcisions, the belief in a special relationship with God, and the other reactionary manifestations of an ancient and cruel faith.

Some religious Jews were annoyed that their countrymen were assimilating, so they rebelled against the imperial powers of the day and WON — which, by the way, didn’t happen often in Jewish history, so I’m sure it came as quite a shock to Judah the Maccabee; like my mother when she was convinced I wouldn’t get into Swarthmore, Judah probably gave away his bottle of champagne.

And why does Hitch have a bee in his bonnet about this? Because to him it’s a turning point. If the Jews hadn’t won, we wouldn’t have those pesky spin-off religions, Christianity (centered around, in his elegant phrase, the “alleged birth of the supposed Jesus of Nazareth”) and Islam. No monotheistic religion would exist! Think of it! We’d all be wearing togas and drinking wine touched up with water and having sex with little boys, just like the pagan gods intended.

There is little more irritating to me than sloppy history, especially in combination with nostalgia for the imaginary utopias of earlier eras, “before the development of the whole of humanity was terribly retarded.” (Wow, right?) I mean, yes, when I was 12, I did want to inhabit the world of Mists of Avalon, but even then I understood that it was *fiction* and anyway I was 12! There’s no point in wishing ancient Greece back. No matter how much Hitch yearns for the homosocial, toga-wearing, gymasium-dwelling, slave-holding, vomitorium-scented days of a couple thousand years ago, that empire was sacked by the Romans. The ancient Hebrew did not kill Athens; and if Athens was able to fall, on any level, to a guerilla band of hammer-wielding mountain men, it certainly could not have been very stable to begin with. So lay off, would you, Hitch? Christ. You’re putting me off my latkes.

Mr. Ben had cause for celebration this weekend so we ran a lot of errands. This is the way things work around here. But they were fun errands! Thanks to them, I traded in a few books I wasn’t crazy about and got in return Best American Comics 2007 (f0r Mr. Ben) and Under the Banner of Heaven (for me). Barnes and Noble can be a regular lending library if you know how to game the system! And then, in a different store, I traded in a couple movies I wasn’t crazy about and got in return Season One of the Gilmore Girls, a Madeline Peyroux CD, and Bruce Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on video.

Especially when the various birthday parties and friends and sleepovers and Buster Keaton shorts and Korean dinner and magical sandwich brunch were factored in, it was the best weekend I’ve had in a while. Mr. Ben and I hadn’t gotten to spend that much uninterrupted time together since he started at the firm. Um, because clearly he’s been spending too much time golfing at the club? Whose life am I living?

I did realize recently that my draconian regimen of no alcohol and no food with more than 25g of sugar has turned me into a new person. It’s been months since my last anxiety attack, and that one was over the wedding weekend; and christ, if a person can’t go shaky before they get married, then I don’t know what. Anyway, it’s wonderful not to have to worry all the time that I’m going to turn into a fragile, eplileptic mess, crumpled on the bathroom floor like a junkie trying to inject relief in the form of a children’s book. (Before xanax, the Snicket series was worth its weight in gold.)

Even the time of year hasn’t been stressing me out. I’m changing jobs but voluntarily and wow! what a difference that makes. The holidays seem to be arranging themselves nicely. The Scrabulous ratings system was instituted after my unlucky streak and before my current lucky one, so my rating is a whopping 1511. It’s bound to go down and might never reach that pinnacle again — thus, even though I know not what the numbers mean, I feel like I must enshrine them. And to top it all off, my sainted mother went dancing this past week in my high school prom dress. She promises pictures.

Here I’ve been making pro / con lists, talking myself hoarse, giving myself wrinkles with all the thinking, and all this time I should have been consulting AstrologyZone.com:

Mars is still moving though Cancer, a sign that you are in the process of starting a brand new cycle. This is a process that will be ongoing for several months, ending on May 9 next year. During that time you’ll be very busy, so you might want to pace yourself – these types of cycles can be exhausting, but also very exciting!

Mars does not come by that often, so it may help to know that the next time you’ll have Mars in Cancer to give you an outstanding advantage, it will be August 2009. But next time you won’t have several months to institute the changes you want so dearly, instead only a matter of weeks (which is much more typical a visit of Mars). As you see, you truly are in the catbird’s seat.

The problem is that Mars is about to shut down when it goes retrograde from November 15 to January 30. During that phase you won’t be able to access all the best qualities of Mars, which are assertive career action, determination, energy, and drive – so it is imperative that you make your most important initiations this month from November 1 to 14, your golden period. After that, you’ll need to backtrack and course correct, and be ready to go at full throttle again in February.

Mars is the engine that runs your prestigious professional sector (tenth house), so this means that the coming two-and-a-half month period will not bring encouraging career developments. If you are not currently employed, or if you are anxious to leave your present position, you must be ready to begin your search in the first half of November, and to get as many interviews in at that time as you can. …

November 4 could bring you a good career tip or breakthrough. That’s a Sunday, but due to the fine angle of the Sun and Mars in Cancer, over this weekend you may see an interesting job listing on the Internet or in the paper, or get an email that brings an opportunity you will want to follow up on.

If you are in a creative field, you will be in top form. From November 9 onward, the date of the new moon, you will have an opportunity to put your stamp of individuality on a project that will become very dear to you. If an offer comes in that intrigues you at this time, take it seriously. …

Pluto is the ruler of your fifth house of creativity. This powerful planet is about to meet with financially beneficial, expansive Jupiter. These two planets only meet in conjunction every thirteen years, and the last time they did was in very late 1994. These two planets are about to meet next month, on December 11. This is headline news, and it’s been a conjunction I’ve been watching for several years – it is almost here!

Pluto conjunct Jupiter is a powerful indicator of success. Bill Gates has this conjunction in his natal chart, as does Warren Buffet. You will have this transiting conjunction in your chart next month, in your sixth house of work assignments. These two planets move very slowly but are already close enough to bring you benefits. Be alert to the kind of conversations and offers you are having now – something is in the wind and it could wind up being bigger than you ever assumed possible.

If 1994 or 1995 is important to you in some way because you began an endeavor or made a major decision, you will have the opportunity to advance that endeavor now or end it and start a completely new one. (Or, you can do both.) I point to those years, for that’s when we had that last Jupiter to Pluto conjunction. That event gave me the opportunity to start a then very tiny website that I called Astrology Zone. At the time I really didn’t realize that my life was changing forever. This type of experience could happen to you, for Jupiter and Pluto are meeting in the same part of the chart that it did for me, the sixth house. When opportunity knocks, it will be up to you to either run with it – or not. The future is always in your hands.

It’s funny how little time it takes a Monday morning to devour an aura of warm fuzz. Even though this weekend featured a hurricane, a long day’s worth of travel to and from Connecticut for In-Law Family Time, a bad cold that kept me from enjoying Friday night’s festivities at a fancy lawyer’s house in Larchmont (complete with lobster bisque!), and several Serious Conversations, it still left me feeling well-balanced and happy. You know, temporarily.

Still, it’s good to keep perspective. At least I’m not a sex worker who’s just been told by someone in a position of authority that gang rape at gunpoint = merely “theft of services.”

And at least exciting movies will be coming out soon. I haven’t seen anything I’ve been crazy about this year. Ratatouille, Michael Clayton, and Knocked Up were all entertaining in their various ways, but I want to be rocked like I was by Children of Men and Pan’s Labyrinth. Who will rock me? Johnny Depp as Sweeney Todd? The cast is promising; the trailer, less so. Philip Seymour Hoffman as brought to me by Tamara Jenkins? She was supposed to be my honors examiner, you know. Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter? One of the many Bob Dylanses? Or the animated Marjane Satrapi? After the recent NYT Mag interview with her wherein she declaimed, “I’m not a feminist; I’m a humanist,” and then went on to extoll the pleasures of smoking, I’m disappointed with the IRL version, but I can hold out hope for celluloid.

“First rule: Do not use semicolons. … All they do is show you’ve been to college. And I realize some of you may be having trouble deciding whether I am kidding or not. So from now on I will tell you when I’m kidding. For instance, join the National Guard or the Marines and teach democracy. I’m kidding. … If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding.”
— K. Vonnegut, from A Man Without a Country

***

Lillian Gish Goes to Hell
Richard Siken

But she has been there before, has a suite
in fact, where she can swan and collapse
on a series of fainting couches: velveteen,
plush, gem-colored. In 1913, during the
production of A Good Little Devil, Lillian
collapsed from anemia. She took delight in
suffering for art. Although not a religious
man, Sartre was fascinated by suffering
as well, said Hell is other people and meant it.
Some like to suffer and some try to eliminate
desire. Buddha, God bless him, had a great
idea: whatever is subject to change is subject to
suffering. But let’s face it, he was fat and sat
around in his underwear, while we delight
in changing our wardrobes. You, terrible
in your solitude. Me, ruined and desperate
in my cowboy shirt with the pearly buttons
and significant stitching. We can suffer with
the best of them, Lil, effortlessly working off
our karma as the drunken father breaks down
the wooden door, or we roam, dying, through
the streets of Montmartre. I am no stranger
to love and I am not waiting for you, because
I believe we will be reborn, because I believe
everything, and I believe that we will meet
again and suffer together again. The future
belongs to China and yet I want to learn
French. This, too, is another kind of suffering.
Once, at a truck stop, I ate an entire banana
cream pie and half a pound of bacon, which
is a kind of suffering for some, but I felt
fucking great. You know this, you must know
this. We are lovely and full of desire, we die
so many times and come back here, to cross
paths. I didn’t fall off the roof, I was pushed.
I want neither revenge nor relief. I crave no
rescue. What I want, Lillian, is to be gigantic
and perfectly lit, to be with you again, carnal
in our reincarnation. The future will find us
handsome taikonauts in a small ship spinning
out of control, flawed by love and plunging
realistically toward the heart of a hellish sun.
In the future we will suffer together in outer
space and eat crème brûlée out of a silver tube.
The novelty never wears off, Lil. It never does.

***

“You don’t gotta be a bitch to be competitive.” — Bianca, ANTM

Yesterday I was scheduled for the needle biopsy that’s been freaking me out for a month. First there was one doctor who said it’s probably nothing but get an ultrasound just in case.

Thirty days later, after the ultrasound, there was another doctor who said it’s probably nothing but get a biopsy just in case.

Thirty days after that, there was a nurse and then another nurse and then finally a surgeon who said, “It’s nothing!”

I said, thoroughly brainwashed by this point, “You don’t want to poke me just in case?”

“No,” she said. “There’s nothing there to poke.”

Here I am, alive and tumor-free (so far as I know), and yet after the giddiness evaporated the residual stress hit. Maybe I’d been repressing it. In any event, I’m taking it easy today. It’s the last 70 degree day, according to NY1, and I’m going to suspend thinking about my future, try not to worry that the highly-recommended and respected surgeon is somehow wrong, maybe watch something mindless.

ETA: And then I saw my horoscope!

When issues get too complicated, you tend to withdraw into yourself until you’ve decided what to do. This is one of those times when it may seem easier to just sink quietly to the bottom of your cave and let the world flow by. However, this isn’t in your best interest. Instead, select your most important feelings and share them with someone close to you.

The metaphors here aren’t helping my headache. Sink to the bottom of my cave and let the world flow by — I guess I’m in the sea then? Is this because I’m a Cancer? (Can’t escape that word …) Also I’m not sure I have Most Important Feelings. The phrase makes me a picture an Olympic winners platform. But what National Anthem would play when the gold medal for Most Important Feeling goes to Anxiety?

It has been a week and a half of learning and growing. First, visiting my family in DC, I learned that I can sail! — or at least be on a small sailboat for an entire afternoon without throwing up. This is remarkable, friends. I retain vivid memories of that time we went “whale watching” one stormy New Hampshire morning and I lasted about twenty minutes on the open seas before I found myself exiled to the boat’s inner sanctum. There, lying on my back on a narrow wooden bench, it was my responsibility to contemplate whether life was truly worth living as, over and over, sea water rose to fill the porthole and then recede. Fill, recede, fill, recede. Conclusion: Nyet.

Nothing transforms someone into a Medieval philosopher faster than nausea.

And see how far I’ve come? I got on the boat with little to no trepidation, even thinking of the delicious sandwiches my mother had prepared for our three-hour tour. It was only when, two hours from shore, we hit some sustained turbulence generated by tugboats, ferries, and mammoth freight carriers, that I realized I was no longer enjoying being me. At least the sun was shining.

Soon after I returned to New York, however, autumn burst out with all the subtlety and grace of Steve Carrell in the Office. Rain, wind; everything howled; degrees dripped away. That combined with a friend’s promotion made me all quarter-lifey. Where was I going? What was I doing? What did I aim for? Aspire to be? How happy was I supposed to be? What was my plan? Ye gods, was I supposed to have a plan, other than to make enough money to afford a Netflix subscription and a pair of shoes every once in a while?

The funk lasted off and on for a bit. Several things however have contributed to the return of my joie de vivre:

– an UWS walking tour that including one of my the city’s only gated communities, Paumander Walk, a one-block stretch of beautiful, tiny, Tudor houses complete with rose gardens and free roaming housecats
– Scrabulous
– the makeover episode of America’s Next Top Model
– a sleepover in Washington Heights
– learning that Myla Goldberg and Michael Cunningham are both teaching in the MFA fiction program at Brooklyn College
– Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton, a badly titled movie that’s nonetheless worth seeing, if you like dark, gritty, gripping sorts of things
– The prospect of Persepolis soon
– ETA: agreeing to look stupid on camera for the internets.