2020 Vision...

another New Year...another decade...another stab at New Year's resolutions...and I know I will break them...but it is the thought...or intent...right?...like I will resolve to write more, edit more, read more...and then I'll grab the tv remote...and find "Working Girl" or "Devil Wears Prada"...recite the lines till the closing credits...and after my butt has become attached to the couch cushion think...oh, yeah, I was going to write...or I will resolve to eat fewer cookies and chocolate...and be drawn like a moth to the flame to the box of snowcaps at the movies...vowing to only eat a few...and then reach for an empty box halfway through...the previews...or resolve to curse less...although there have been reports about cursing and intelligence...but they are probably posts by Russian bots I saw when aimlessly scrolling through Facebook...and I will try...but I know I will find myself at a left-turn light...on Old Country Road...which allows about 2.5 cars per light...and the light will change to green and some idiot at the front of the line will be looking at their phone or kid in the back or whatever and just sit there...and none of us will move...except for the person behind me...antsy and inching closer to my trunk and I will shout loudly at the car up front..."move you stupid fucking moron"...well, and there will go that resolution...and I will resolve to not let the political climate get me riled up and negate my blood pressure medicine...but for that I would have to move to Papua New Guinea...and even there I would have WiFi...maybe a tan and wild hair too...but I would not escape the curse of internet immediacy...so maybe I will just resolve to give a little more...expect a little less...and find happiness in that sweet spot in the middle...to all my family and friends...I wish you peace this new decade...this 2020...peace in our world, your immediate world...mostly peace with yourself...me...I'm looking for the snowcaps...

Big Little Women...

2019 movies...there was QuentinTarantino's love poem to Sharon Tate...Martin Scorsese's atonement for films knee-deep in gore without redemption...Bong Joon-ho's insidious tale of class warfare...Lulu Wang's tender look at what we gain and lose in assimilation...Noah Baumbach's (un)biased look at the denouement of marriage, maybe his own...Todd Phillips polarizing view of karma in our increasingly uncaring society...but Greta Gerwig…your latest take on Little Women destroyed me in the best sense of the word...in this century as women claim to be a Carrie Bradshaw or one of  her posse...just color me a March girl...I am Meg...and I want to be an actress...but realism sits me down...I am Beth...the piano calls my name...but my concert is for no one but me...I am Amy...the world is wide...and French...and the easel beckons...but there is a clarity too...and the paint brush is packed away...I am older...I am Marmee...angry at the world every day...because of how it should be and how it is...for everyone...for women...and I vow to be better...and now I am approaching Aunt March's age...as a man the outspokenness would be bold...as a women...in Alcott's time...and even now...crochety and rigid...but most of all I am Jo...the writer...creating a world with a pen...or a keyboard...brimming with equal portions assuredness and self-doubt...Greta Gerwig is Jo too...and the writer in me ached for her...the previews for her exquisite film consisted of Sponge Bob, Dolittle and other fodder aimed at children...what the hell was Regal trying to say?...that Little Women is a children's movie?...would they pull this shit with Tarantino?...will the DGA or Oscar invite Greta to the big boys table?...or sit her in the parlor on a velvet settee?...well maybe if her name was G. Gerwig...you know like J.K. Rowling...or J. March...

frankincense and myrrh and schmaltz...

'tis the season...but this year I find myself doing a double-take...when Thanksgiving swept in on sweet potato pies I thought...wait isn't it Halloween?...such has been the race of time this year...2020...a new decade...it is right around the bend...and next week Christmas and Chanukah begin...cookies and egg nog...and latkes and donuts...and heartburn and another inch on my tuchas...and all I want in my stocking is my old 21-year-old svelte leg...sorry, digressing...all I want at this time of year is to avoid the television...news, in particular...unless I'm binging some streaming series that will amuse but ultimately disappoint...this world is leaving me numb, and hard to entertain...floating into awards season...used to be such a guilty pleasure...and now this season is earlier...which I hate to inform the old networks and cable stations on life support...will not increase your ratings...now I shrug at the predictability of it all...the holiday miracle?...535 pink slips in DC?...I have no answers...maybe time to think and feel like a child again...the unbridled joy in the shadows of a Menorah...or in footed pjs under a tree on Christmas morning...the masses are joyless...searching for hope before sunrise wakens us to a new decade...Happy Holidays and hoping we all find that joy again in 2020!...