(no subject)

[rm]

My only quasi-coherent review of The Good Shepherd:
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976860711



Now, who can I lure to Thursday's Barn Dance?
http://www.nycbarndance.com/

Comments

[melebeth]

Assuming I'm correct in interpreting the e-mail from my murder mystery director (i.e. that I don't need to be up at an ungodly hour on Friday, after all) I would TOTALLY go to this. How fun!

[rm.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm totally going with or without people, as I have to review it for Gather, but I'm really psyched about it, so totally come!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha! That reminds me of when I was little at 4-H (it's sort of like a farming Girl and Boy Scouts) camp and they made us do square dances.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yes, more or less, i think. Most of this sort of dancing is descended from Regency and mid-1800s dance stuff, which interests me, so I'm going to see if the relation is close enough for me to care, now that I am seemingly addicted to destroying my knees by any means possible.

[rm.livejournal.com]

oh, btw, I know what 4H is, but does that mean you showed cows at fairs and things? I'm such a city girl, I'm always fascinated.

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

Oh, good, the movie doesn't totally suck. Since I kind of have to see it...

[rm.livejournal.com]

It's very, very well-made. it really only doesn't work because it tantilizes yu with tings it doesn't deliver on. It also forces women into a story that isn't about women, and therefore you're like "right and now Angelina Jolie cries, moving along."

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

No, I'm a city girl too. But my group was led by my grandfather's best friend, so once a week my brother and I had to be driven an hour out of the city so we could stare in confusion at the people who showed cows while we confused them by using such obscure ebonics terms such as "hood". I took creative writing five years in a row, because I certainly was not about to raise any farm animals in our house.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm relieved. I have friends who raised animals that won awards and then ate them, and yay, teaching children where groceries really come from, but yikes!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Man, I knew people who did that too, and I just can't imagine. I wouldn't be able to eat any of my pets.

It was certainly interesting for meeting insane people though! My favorite was the fundamentalist Christian who told me tank tops were appropriate and tried to force me into wearing my (6'4, 200 pounds) brother's clothes instead.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Uh, that should say inappropriate.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yow. relgious folks, like really, really religious not quite of our modern world folks, always fascinate me, although far better when it's not directed at me!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

They have certainly provided me with fascinating stories to tell other people.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Upon learning my mother is Jewish, someone once felt my head for horn removal scars and since I didn't have any, decided I was a convert.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha! I've heard stories about people actually expecting horns before, and I'm always so shocked that anyone could be quite so stupid.

My best friend is Jewish; one year we shared an apartment with two other girls we didn't know. The first time we met them, it was Yom Kippur, and one of them offered Jill something to eat. She said she couldn't because she was fasting, and they asked why, and so she explained. "Yom Kippur?" the girl said. "What is that, like, one of those Hong Kong movies?" and made a pretend karate chop.

"No, it's a Jewish holiday," Jill said.

"Oh. You're Jewish? So, who do you pray to?"

When I stopped laughing, I replied for Jill, "God."

"Well, you know," the girl said. "Some people pray to, like... Buddha."

"Not Jewish people."

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

Well, I figured they didn't manage to fit Julia Child in anywhere. And I expect there's more emotional drama and less spy history than I'd really prefer. But I'm sort of compelled to see anything spy-history at some point. Even if the only damn women it mentions are all "wives" and are only there to whine.

ALso, could care less about Bay of Pigs, very tired of that part already, did they just ignore all the amazing work done in WWII? Oh, right, this is about moral conflict. Bah. It'd be nice if they occasionally bothered to remind anybody that there's good deeds done with that moral conflict stuff and not all horrors.

I'm still hoping that Wolves At The Door will get made into a (good)movie, because Virginia Hall has been a personal hero for a very long time, and it'd be a hell of a movie and a hell of a role.

[rm.livejournal.com]

That's amazing. I've also been told "I didn't know Jews looked like other white people" I wonder what they would have said to an Ethiopian Jew.

[rm.livejournal.com]

The WWII stuff is very non-specific, although there's some of that. The early stuff, at yale, as I said, is amazing. The Bay of Pigs stuff is pretty blah. Consistently, the film has moments that are great, but it relies on editing for drama rather than drama in too many places.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I don't get anti-semitism at all. How could anyone manage to get through life without meeting one Jewish person? Maybe I am biased, because I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood and worked at a JCC, but seriously. Not one?

[rm.livejournal.com]

It's actually really common. I've had plenty of people very politely tell me about how they'd never met Jews or knew anythign about Judaism until they moved in NYC. In Australia, it was also very interesting to people -- as Sydney has a very old synogogue and most people know Jews, but there isn't really secular/cultural Judaism there as there is here -- Jews are religious (usually Conservative or Orthodox) and spiritual. Even the Jews there were confused by my experience of Jewishness. All of this I discovered because one of the acting courses did Angels in America and I was shocked to see a girl doing the Hebrew parts so well, so I asked her about it.

[rufus.livejournal.com]

it, ah, isn't *that* hard, actually. I grew up in the reasonably cosmopolitan VA suburbs of DC and I knew approximately four Jewish people. I never met any Puerto Ricans until I moved to NYC, either.

Since then I've lived in an Orthodox neighborhood in Pittsburgh and I now work for a beneficiary agency of a northern NJ Federation, so obviously my horizons have been expanded in that department. :)

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

It does seem to be fairly common, but I can't wrap my mind around it. It feels like meeting someone from the wrong century or something- I always want to say, "Really? Really? Maybe you met one and just didn't know they were Jewish!"

[rm.livejournal.com]

I think that is surely true, but then I also think that Jewishness is perhaps still a secret that's kept some places, even in this country.

[miep.livejournal.com]

waah! I would love to go to a barn dance. I even have my sparkly orange and pink cowgirl shirt. have fun.