Joyeux Octobre!

Hi guys,

There is a small but nevertheless present possibility that I am finally acclimating to my insane schedule, which is really great. 

It's been a bit of a challenge, in part because of the whole getting-up-early-doesn't-really-work-for-me thing, and also the getting-home-late-every-night-when-I-have-to-get-up-early-the-next-day-which-did-I-mention-really-doesn't-work-for-me? thing. 

HOWEVER.  With the occasional carry-out meal, learning to force myself to be in bed by midnight (ugh so early, what am I, a child??), and napping on my epic-length subway commute, I have (kind of) managed to get into a routine that still includes a daily dose of Don Draper (alliteration!).

Crucial.

I *also* somehow, I don't even really know how, managed to watch some more movies last month.  I'm kind of amazed, frankly.  But here they are!

46. The Debt (3.5)
47. The Help (3)
48. Drive (??)
49. Last Days (4)

...You may notice my atypical notation for entry #48.  That is because I seriously don't even fucking know what I thought of "Drive" (2011).  BUT!  This presents an opportunity to write a post about it, in which I will decide how much I hated but maybe also loved it.

Are we perhaps noticing a trend?

Anyway.  One hobby that definitely suffers when you have too much real work to do is that you don't get enough dick-around-on-the-internet time.  I know that probably doesn't sound overly important to mental health, but apparently it kind of is. 

Why, you might ask? 

Because: I feel like almost every other moment of my life right now is overly purpose-driven.  I am working, trying to attend to critical needs (e.g., eating, sleeping, Mad Men) as efficiently as possible, trying to keep my apartment from becoming an abyss of uncompleted housework, or criminally neglecting my communication with the outside world, all the time.  Sometimes, a little aimlessness is really what you need to wind down.

So.... The post on "Drive" will have to wait, because right now, even just writing a blog post is a little too accomplishmenty for me.

'Til then.

<3

Reflections on Murakami and, You Guessed It, Grad School

Darlings,

I mentioned a while ago that there are many activities that draw me away from my responsibilities as a graduate student.  While I've occasionally managed to resist some (apparently, since I now have 309 unlistened-to podcasts), I've made some inroads with other (hopefully constructive?) distractions.  Specifically: given my epic-length commute to externship, I have finally commenced reading Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle".

Obviously this blog is primarily devoted to grad school and movies, but I recently read a passage in this book that struck me with particular force.  While it may not initially seem related to the primary topics considered here, in a somewhat circuitous way, I believe it is.  And so, I want to share it. 

In this passage, the main character describes his aspirations for his marriage when it began.  While the book isn't exactly an uplifting story of relationship success, the narrator's ambitions for his marriage are nevertheless boldly romantic:

In that new world of ours, we were trying to get hold of new selves that were better suited to who we were deep down.  We believed we could live in a way that was more perfectly suited to who we were.

As you perhaps noticed, the start of the school year has been a little rough for me.  My head sometimes spins in the midst of uncertainty, and late-August/early-September is really good for that when you're in grad school (apparently).  Lots of big elements in my professional/academic life took their time settling into place, and now that they have, my life is much (much) more full than it used to be.  It's a little scary, even though it's also exciting.

To be succinct, I was a bit of a basket case for a few weeks there.

In so many ways, Boyfriend was the glue holding me together.

But to leave it at that would make it sound more simple than it is.  It's not just that I would lose my mind with anxiety, and then he would patch me up (though that definitely happened a few times).  It's also that, while holding my hand through this tempest that is my life now, he is also a beacon, leading me toward the human I want to be. 

It's so easy to lose track of longer-term life goals when you're staring down the twin barrels of thesis and dissertation.  With all the deadlines and hurdles looming in the future, it's easy to get such stress-induced myopia that looking even six months ahead is incomprehensible.  But Boyfriend helps me see the distant but nevertheless shining light at the end of the grad school tunnel, and helps me remember that my own growth as a person can't be put on hold for five years just because I want to get my PhD.

How does he do that, you may ask?  One of the (many) things I liked about Boyfriend right away is that he is immensely kind, gracious, and patient with others.  Even in times of stress, he just doesn't let that pollute how he treats people.  Even when school turns me into a shrieking banshee, he is calm, loving, and helpful.  It's very striking, and it's something I deeply admire... largely because I just can't really do that sometimes.  When I'm any combination of tired, hungry, stressed, and anxious, which I have been a lot more than usual lately, I get--to use a polite term--snippy.  I am not fun to be around.  I carry my little furious stress cloud everywhere with me, including home.  And sometimes--I promise not all the time, but sometimes--I let it take over my otherwise at least moderately humane temperament.

This is where the Boyfriend-as-beacon thing comes in, and the Murakami quote.  Being in our home and in our relationship helps me every day to work toward being a calmer, kinder, more patient human regardless of whatever else is happening in my life at the time, just by being around the good example Boyfriend sets.  Because even if everything else feels like chaos, I still have the home I want and the relationship I want, and they make a good and happy life an attainable reality and not just some pipe dream.

Only half true!

And this, finally, gets to what I've learned that love, in its best form, is: it's a constant, gentle gravitational force, slowly pulling you toward being your best possible self.  Not just because your partner reminds you, in the kindest way possible, just by being a good person, of the ways in which you could be better, but also because loving that person makes you want to create a better world for them.  It's the most powerful and lasting motivation I've ever had to do anything, which is good, because shaping yourself into something better apparently takes some time.

I definitely still have work to do on staying in my better self when I'm feeling overwhelmed... but I think I'm a little better at that than I was before Boyfriend came along.  He's the best possible reminder that grad school is a distraction from real life, not the other way around.

'Til next time.

<333

How Am I Already This Tired.

Me

 That's right, I don't even have the energy to punctuate the title of this post correctly.  Or open it with a proper greeting.  I am that exhausted.  (Notice how I also didn't add italics to "that" for emphasis?  More of the same.)

To give you an idea of the etiology of my mental and physical fatigue, I present to you: An overview of the next year of graduate school.

Fall Semester: You know all that stuff you were doing last year?  Research, therapy, coursework?  Keep doing that, but now add 20+ hours of clinical work somewhere 90+ minutes from your apartment/school.  Only contemplate finishing your thesis and continuing work on your dissertation, because really, who has time? 

Spring Semester:  More of the stuff you were doing during the fall, except now also
--Apply to externship again
--Finish your thesis
--Prepare for and complete comprehensive exams so you can finally actually have a Master's degree 

Summer: Consider not even calling it that (alternate suggestions: Hot Semester During Which *Other* People Have Fun, But Most Certainly Not You (aka HSDW*O*PHFBMCNY)), because holy shit you need to
--Finish and defend your dissertation proposal, then
--Prepare to apply for internship during Fall 2012

It makes me sad thinking about it.  Also tired.  Very tired.  Sad because I anticipate missing my life and having fun, and tired because, well.... Let's be honest: my body is completely resistant to adopting a normal sleep schedule, which makes being properly rested in order to accomplish everything expected of me more difficult than it already is.  Lamesauce if you ask me.

...In lighter news, movie progress has been made!

In August, the following films were viewed:
42. Tangled (3)
43. Salt (2)
44. Gothika (3)
45. Atonement (4)

Totally within striking distance of my 52 movies goal!!  Less than 10 movies to go!!!!!

Here's hoping this is at least one hurdle I can somehow, just barely, clamber over.

Wish me luck.

<3

Super 8: Super or Super Sucky? Also: Now With Hyphens!!

Hihi,

Since my current status is trapped-inside-until-a-certain-major-weather-entity-has-the-decency-to-go-away, I figured the most productive use of my time would OBVIOUSLY be to write a new post.

Because really, who can concentrate on the fifth (yes, fifth) draft of their thesis proposal when a hurricane looms in the distance?  Who, really?

So last month a beloved reader took issue with my rating for "Super 8" (2011), which I saw in June.  I promised to respond to her comments, and now I'm finally making good on that.

For the purposes of making this seem like a flashy dialogue/clash of movie-loving titans, the reader's comments will be in italics and I will respond to each of her arguments in normal text.

Here we go! 

we must fight over super 8. It'll be fun. annnnnnd go! 

Woooooooo battle!!

So ya, I liked super 8 i'd give it a 4. for several reasons. 

My rating: 2.

omg an alien movie?! ya well: kids. 

I know I'm cutting you off just as you're starting to make your argument, but: one of my biggest complaints about this movie seems to be one of the things you liked a lot about it.  In other words, "Super 8" was both a coming-of-age or look-at-the-adorable-kids-making-a-movie-they-think-they're-people movie AND a science fiction alien-invadery movie.  It felt like two completely unrelated movies mashed together.  Different commentators said they really loved one plot line and were bored with the other, but I just wasn't into either.  For me, combining them only made the movie that much more annoying because it felt disjointed.

The sad thing is, apparently J. J. Abrams wrote the original kids-related screenplay (no alien) before partnering up with Steven Spielberg to actually make the movie.  The way I understand it, it was not going to be an alien/monster movie until Spielberg had his say.  The pre-Spielberg project would at least have been focused, instead of getting dragged in multiple directions the way the finished product is.

What makes this even sadder is that the kids plot was apparently semi-autobiographical for Abrams, who actually worked for Spielberg as a young aspiring filmmaker.  I would like to have seen this mentor-mentee partnership produce cooler material, but it just didn't deliver for me.  It's a shame.

Douchey dads: unite!

 
and you know, I don't like kids, but yet the thing that i enjoyed the most about this movie was: kids. The group of them weren't your average, I'm the fat one I must be a big dummy I'm the wild one I must be the ladies man. No. The fat one was a movie director trying to win a competition for making zombie movies A, yes. love it, B really gave him dimension while he was a side character. The wild one was good lord he was wild, made an excellent zombie and was a chicken despite his lust for exploding things. 

See.... I definitely agree that for the most part, the kids were the best part of the movie.  The child parts were mostly very well-acted--Elle Fanning was delightful as a zombie in the movie within a movie.  And also, you know I'm a complete sucker for anything zombie-related.  In any event, the kids were sure as hell less wooden and boring than the adult characters.

Adorbs.

However, while the kids had more depth than the average trite movie-with-kids-in-it, I still felt like they were pretty two-dimensional--more twists on expected stereotypes than truly real-feeling, complex characters.  This is probably not all that revelatory (being a psychologist in training), but generally I find characters way more interesting than plot.  Which is part of the reason I get hostile when characters suck.

To explain my stance, I have to back up a little bit: honestly, I'm just pretty over Steven Spielberg.  He seems like more of a plot guy than a character guy, so maybe we just weren't destined to get along.  And I know he was the producer and not the director or writer of the film, but I thought his influence was very apparent throughout the movie, from the flatness of the characters to the overly epic, sweeping and showy camera work.

I don't mean to belittle his earlier movies.  As happens to many artists, I feel like Spielberg has lost the hunger and freshness that made him such a remarkable filmmaker in his early career.  Now, the same crowd-pleasing heartstring-tugging tricks he used before seem tired, over-used and cliche--and his characters lack dimension.  Frankly, I feel like he kind of insults the intelligence of his audience sometimes, expecting them to get so distracted by his flashy gimmicks that they don't notice the characters aren't believable and there are holes in the plot.

Obvi counterexample to my beef with Spielberg.

It's been a while since I saw "Super 8", but the best example I can think of for what I'm talking about involves the explosives-addled kid you mentioned.  As soon it was revealed that he was really into blowing things up, I thought to myself, "Well that's going to be a major plot device in the last quarter of the film."  And an hour or so later, there it was: when a diversion is desperately needed to liberate some human hostages from the big scary alien, guess who has fireworks in his backpack??

I hate that kind of predictability.  A lot.  I don't want to be able to spot these things from a mile away.  I want filmmakers to try to outsmart me.  I just feel like Abrams and Spielberg weren't trying that hard, or maybe they just thought their audience wouldn't be paying attention.  Either way: annoying.

And seriously: characters are supposed to be people, not plot devices.

Also wtf you *so* do not like kids!  I mean really.

 The fact that the main character in the opening scenes loses his mother to the most normal thing's you can fathom in a alien movie, good job. 

I definitely take your point that they went to an interesting emotional place by opening the film with the kid's mom's funeral.  That was a cool choice.

But... she died because something fell on her in an industrial accident? She worked in a factory??  In the seventies???  That just didn't hold up for me.  I'm definitely being nit-picky at this point, but I found that particular detail of the plot really distracting.  If they really needed the drunk dude to kill off that kid's mom, wouldn't it have seemed way more plausible that he killed her by getting in an accident with her while driving drunk or something?

I loved the heck out of it, some people complained about length, I had no issues. There was one scene where i was like mm, bad which was the them being attacked on a bus scream scream escape and oh... hey look we are back at this bus for this locket and ya giant angry monster isn't here anymore? bad call. I dunno the alien to me was secondary, the movie was about he kids who were filming during some crazy nonsense in a perfectly logical way cause we'll we'd have to pay bajillions for a train crash and LOOK, here it is. Also, I love the train crash scene I dunno, maybe people focus on what the movie was about ie: monsters rrrrrr, but I really just could not get over what a good plot they had going with the variety of run of the mill children. It was a plot within a plot within a larger plot. Dimension /faint.

I will definitely not argue with you about the train crash sequence.  That was totally baller.  It was by far my favorite part of the movie, and it was Spielberg/Abrams doing what they do best: balls-out spectacle.  It was totally transfixing and AMAZING cinema.  It also made it worth seeing the movie in a theater.

However, this is another reason I'm pissed at the movie.  The set-up was so cool!  Some kids set up their little camera to make a movie and capture a mysterious and catastrophic crash and discover something completely unexpected in their footage... what could it BE??

Oh, a really steroided-up version of E.T. who seems all scary and grouchy but really just wants to go home?

Okay well that's lame.

but anyway
<3 you

<3 you too, like crazy.

Stay away from hurricanes, everyone!

<3

I'm So Productive!!... In a Very Circumscribed Fashion

Bienvenido,

So: My Neuropsych summer class is over as of Wednesday (two days ago), when we had our final.  Between final-studying, aggressive touristing secondary to a week-long family visit, and a mini-vacation over last weekend, I'm somewhat exhausted.

Which is why, in spite of my stated goals to finally resume work on thesis and dissertation yesterday, I instead read in a large and beautiful park, napped in the sun, bought a smoothie, cleaned my kitchen, and watched three episodes of Battlestar Galactica with Boyfriend and a visiting friend over pizza.  In other words, I had a day of almost pure self-indulgence and avoidance.

Mmmm.... Painfully nerdy avoidance.

And now, still, with an empty apartment for the next few hours and therefore ample prime research-worky time, I am writing a blog post (rationalized by the fact that August is almost half over already) and staving off a desperate craving for Mad Men.  (OMG it's on Netflix--I can watch AS MUCH AS I WANT!!!)

So, in the interest of clinging to my work-related aspirations, I will keep this brief.

Here are the movies I watched in July, and there are SO MANY OF THEM:

32. Persona (5)
33. Waste Land (5!)
34. Green Lantern (2)35. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (5)
36. The Girl Who Played With Fire (4)
37. The Trip (4)
38. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (3.5)
39. Tabloid (5!)
40. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (5)
41. Cowboys & Aliens (3.5)

THAT'S RIGHT.  To adhere to my annual resolution, I only need to watch 11 more movies over the next 4.5 months.

So absurdly achievable!!

On that note, I will leave you so I can finally update draft four of my thesis proposal (sigh) and finish extracting fidelity data (because really, why *shouldn't* I tack on one more analysis????).  And also maybe finalizing dissertation hypotheses.  Finally.

Talk to you soon.

<3

Note: I have not forgotten my commitment to write a review of "Super 8" in response to a beloved reader's comment.  I swear that's coming.  I just need to quell my guilt over my neglected work for a little bit, and then I'll get to it.