Notes from the Weekend

With New York, New Jersey and Connecticut still suffering from the aftermath of Sandy, this video below of Casey Neistat’s trip through Staten Island is worth a watch. If you are able to donate, please do so. The latest from friends in the area is that Staten Island is inundated with physical donations, the best thing to do now is to either volunteer your time and/or donate money or blood. Great places to donate: Food Bank NYC, Red Cross, and the Mayor’s Fund to Advance NY.

In other less important news from the weekend, I’m always in the mood for a good C.I.A. movie or show.  One of my all time favorites is Three Days of the Condor and I am totally obsessed , like the rest of the country, with Homeland. I used to think I wanted to be in the C.I.A. and had visions of meeting with men in trench coats on benches along the National Mall, speaking to each other with our heads facing front. But me in an interrogation room would not exactly be useful to the intelligence community.

In any case, I was psyched to go see Argo. It was our 1st official date night with a babysitter and with a pit stop at our favorite local restaurant, Hank’s Oyster Bar, this little outing was definitely worth the babysitting fee. I have to give it to Ben Affleck- he has slowly but steadily resurrected himself from a borderline cheesy actor (post Good Will Hunting, of course) to a really good, solid and thoughtful director. I have to say, his movies in the last couple of years have been some of my favorites and I rather dig his new subtle style of acting too.

Argo is a great, what I like to call “adult movie”. I feel this way about Alexander Payne’s movies- especially Sideways. Hard to put into words- just really good adult movies. The story is unbelievable and it being true just makes it all the more compelling.  I’m not sure if the drama really unfolded to the minute the way it is harrowingly portrayed (it is a dramatization after all) but nevertheless, it is seriously unreal. I don’t want to spoil it by giving away details but the concept that Tony Mendez came up with to rescue 6 Americans from Iran during the hostage crisis is hair-brained and inspired all at once.  It’s pretty fantastic to watch it unfold. Ben Affleck manages to infuse the right amount of comic relief (anything with Alan Arkin AND John Goodman and I’m in!) into the suspense and does a good job of fleshing out the characters, a tribute to the screenwriter Chris Terrio as well. I dug it.

We also watched Happy, the documentary, on netflix. Really nice to ruminate on what’s really important especially during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. The documentary takes a look at people from all walks of life: an Indian rickshaw driver, a fishing family on the Bayou, working men in Japan and centenarians from Okinawa (with the world’s largest population of people ages 100+ per capita). Happiness it seems basically boils down to, surprise- the usual suspects: family, community, nature, giving back- it’s a recipe for happiness no matter what your situation. The idea that the difference between making $5,000 and $50,000 a year is a huge disparity, while making $50,000 or $50,000,000 is not- is really interesting.  If you’re not poverty stricken and homeless, you’re really just talking about more stuff. A good reminder. There are some tear jerker stories in this one that really warmed my heart.

We have started feeding our little ones solid foods and my little T-Man had a terrible diaper rash- the very first one, so I was up to my eyeballs in rash cream. I love Mayron’s diaper cream but we also had to go in for the heavy stuff and use Boudreaux’s Maximum Butt Paste. It did the trick.

And lastly, Michigan managed to hang on to the Little Brown Jug this weekend in its yearly matchup against Minnestota. Go Blue!

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