Graffiti 4

Walking home from Rick rehearsal again.

"The dice of Zeus always fall luckily." -Sophocles

The Oscars: Rights And Wrongs

Subtitle: The Big Five

Best Supporting Actor
Who Won: Christian Bale. His performance by far was the most moving of the year. Of course I'm biased as I've stated before because I'm such a huge Bale fan. But you can't argue with how powerful and deep his performance ran. When Bale commits you really believe on some level he's actually experiencing what the character is. Bale has said he's a method actor only because he never went to acting school.
Who Should Have Won: Christian Bale
Close Second: John Hawkes. For whatever reason Hawkes got no love this year for his dynamic performance. He beat the pants off Geoffery Rush playing Geoffery Rush. Not that I didn't like Geoffery Rush but I've seen it. No stretch, no risk. Hawkes as Teardrop was all risk, pedal to the metal, danger, unpredictability.

Best Supporting Actress

Who Won: Melissa Leo. Woof. How boring and predictable. Leo's performance was unaffected and boarder line unwatchable. Whenever she was on the screen I wanted her off. She went through no transformation. She did not change. She did not learn. She was merely a self absorbed, self deluded mother. Doing the same thing over the course of two hours doesn't deserve an award.

Who Should Have Won: Amy Adams. Her performance was layered and tough and powerful. She had palpable chemistry with all of the other characters in the movie. Most importantly she was effected by the action of the movie. She grew, changed, developed.

Close second: Hailee Steinfeld. But seriously she was the lead anyway.

Best Actress

Who Won: Natalie Portman. Her performance was a flat line. I honestly don't understand why people thought she was so good. Natalie Portman always plays Natalie Portman and in this she didn't even change. There was no switch. She was just anxious, anxious, anxious. If they gave it to Annette Benning at least I could understand, but Portman. Woof.

Who Should Have Won: Jennifer Lawrence. Hands down the most dynamic performance of the year. Multi-layered, driven, powerful, vulnerable. I can't say enough about Lawrence's performance other than it was woefully overlooked.

Best Actor

Who Won: Colin Firth. Good not great. This just seemed like an obvious choice for the Academy. Firth has been around, he deserves it, lets give it to him. Sure I liked the end. But it didn't strike me as a particularly hard part to play. This award felt very much like "Oh it's Colin Firth's 'time' to win."

Who Should Have Won: James Franco. How could he not get best actor. He carried an entire movie by himself and he couldn't move! Funny and heartbreaking, we lived this harrowing experience with Franco. So much more effecting than a period piece.

Best Picture

Who Won: The King's Speech. Obvious and safe. Good but not great. Lets reward and recognize a movie that could have been made at any point during the last thirty years.

Who Should Have Won: Winter's Bone. Interesting and fresh. Engaging and mysterious. All around the only movie of the year I could watch many, many times.

Overall Oscars, You Suck.

LM Restaurant: French Cusine

My mom and my sister are in town for the weekend. My mom took us out to LM Restaurant which is participating in Chicago Restaurant Week. It was a three course meal. I started with the Crab Bisque which was OK but bland. It needed salt. Or maybe it just needed something. It didn't taste like much of anything. For the second course I had the Pork Belly on a bed of cabbage with carrots.Again it was OK. There was flavor but it was overly sweet. The glaze was so overpowering it was the only thing I could taste. Surprisingly my favorite part of the dish was the cabbage. I don't think I've ever enjoyed cabbage before in my life. So at the very least that was worth the trip. The last course was dessert. I ordered the only chocolate option not really knowing what it was. I was thinking it was going to be some kind of cake but it was a mousse. Same song third verse. It was OK. Nothing inspiring, nothing surprising. It was a decent mousse with a decent short bread cookie. They could have dumbed down or modified the menu in preparation for Restaurant Week, I don't know. Overall I was kind of disappointed. Would I go again? No. But...

Always great to share a meal with Mom and Marta.

Dust And Snow

Many people have gone before us
Life is a wheel that turns
Within us our hearts burn

The secret highways extend on and on
Whose path do we walk upon
Our own, we hope, but do not know

There are many things that can be said for snow.

One Day At A Time

Subtitle: The Title Drop
In movies when a character has a line that states the title its called 'The Title Drop.' This is The Title Drop post.

I think it's common knowledge that 'One Day At A Time' is a phrase used in recovery programs like A.A. It's said because not drinking forever can seem impossible to someone with a problem. But not drinking today is something manageable, something that can be achieved. I started this blog a year ago and gave it this title. I did that because I have a problem with alcohol. I thought the title would make it obvious I had a problem. If not this is my attempt to clarify that. My intention initially was to give myself something to focus on, something daily I had to check in with that would constantly remind myself to take it one day at a time. To not drink today. Although I am proud of the content and the frequency of my blog I have been unable to stay clean.

Today The Album and Devin reached out a hand to me and I am taking it. I am making this post to make my problem known to anyone, those I know and those I don't, that I have a problem. If it is an open fact, I have no where to hide, no excuses to make. My intention is to make myself accountable.

My grandfather was an alcoholic. That is something I've known my whole life. Something my father always talked to me about. I started drinking, like many kids, during college. Even from the start I knew I could drink more than other people. I knew I didn't drink like other people. I always wanted to stay up longer and drink more when others were satisfied and wanted to go to bed. I didn't realize I had a problem until after I graduated and moved to Chicago the first time. I had to move back home because my life had become unmanageable. When I moved back to Chicago I got the most amount of time together I've had since college, 27 days, but I fell off. Since then things have been getting slowly worse. Now is the time to stop.

Be the change you desire to see in the world.

Day 1

Steve's Guide To Getting Sober

Subtitle: Notes On Recovery

1. Don't Drink. Just take it one day at a time and simply don't drink today. That's a goal you are capable of accomplishing.

2. Call. Pick up the phone and call someone. They can talk you out of whatever impulse you're thinking of following.

3. Find A Meeting. There are support groups for you. Find them. Talk to people who feel the way you feel.

4. Honesty. Be honest with yourself about what you're doing and whats going on. If a friend asks you, tell them the truth.

5. Ask For Help. If you need help, ask for it. No more excuses.

I realize that this list, in a way, outs myself. That's intentional. It is a list of things that are beneficial that I've found from experience and from research.

'The Hustler' A Review

Subtitle: Going back to the classicsI'll preface this post by saying that 'The Hustler' is my favorite movie. For a long time I always said 'Pulp Fiction' was my favorite movie. After the first time I saw 'The Hustler' that changed. The first time I saw it, it was my junior year of college. I Skipped class and just randomly turned on Bravo. It was 9am. I was totally entranced.

(Spoilers)

The Hustler opens with Fast Eddie Felson(played by my man Paul Newman) pulling a grift at a small town pool house. The point of the scene is to inform us that Eddie is a pool shark and obviously very good at pool. Eddie and his manager have been travelling around to save up enough money to get a game with legendary pool player Minnesota Fatts(Jackie Gleason). They meet up with him in some unnamed big city. I like to think it's Chicago.

The game goes well. Eddie starts to beat Fatts, multiple games. But in the game of pool like in anything it's not over till your opponent says uncle. So they continue to play, hours into the night. Around this time Eddie has some of my favorite lines...

Fast Eddie: I've been dreaming of this game Fat Man. I've been dreaming of this game every day I was on the road. This table is mine. I own it.

Eddie and Fatts order drinks. Eddie gets drunk and loses. Despair. Eddie isolates himself after his lose and meets up with Sarah Packard(Piper Laurie) and they hook up. This is where the movie really starts to cook. The movie uses pool as a metaphor and the focus of it is the relationship between Sarah and Eddie. They're co-dependent, they're alcoholics, they're both flawed and self destructive. That is a main part of their attraction but also a main part of their downfall.

Bert Gordon(George C. Scott) propositions Eddie to be one of his hired hands, he's a local shady professional gambler. Bert gets Eddie a gig out of town. Eddie tells Sarah and after she's upset he guiltily invites her on the trip. Bert is sick, manipulative, and twisted. He's trying to use Eddie. Eddie ends up choosing the game over Sarah and as a result Sarah commits suicide. After that Eddie gets iron in his bones. He's hard, he's world weary, he's strong. Losing the woman he loves makes him the best pool player that has ever lived. Another favorite line...

Fast Eddie: Here we go. Fast and Loose.

I always say fast and loose when talking about improv because I think of this scene. I like to improvise hot and fast and inspired. I like to play as if I'll never play again. So my conclusions. Sarah and Eddies relationship is the focus of the film, pool is just a filter, it could be anything. The movie is about love and obsession and addiction. The movie is about drive and skill and ability. I identify with it cause I believe I got skill, I got ability, and all I want to do is take my shot. I want to go up against the Minnesota Fatts equivalent and see what I'm made of. My grandfather Irv Nelson...

Played pool with the real Minnesota Fatts.Fast Eddie has a monologue halfway through the film which I love.

Fast Eddie: I just had to show those creeps and those punks what the game is like when its great, when it's really great. Anything can be great. If the guy knows. If he knows what he's doing and why and makes it come alive. When I'm going, when I'm really going, I feel like a jockey whose coming into the home stretch. He knows. He just knows. When to let it go and how much. He just feels. He's got everything working for him timing, touch...The pool cue's a part of me. You don't have to look you just know. You make shots that nobodies ever made before.

You play the game the way its meant to be played.

Religion At Nookies

Met Tim at Nookies for brunch, I got the Huevos Rancheros. We rapped for a while about Religion...

Me: I just don't really dig on the whole Christian thing, I mean I just don't buy into it.
Tim: That's fine. You don't have to.
Me: Ok
Tim: There's goodness and badness in the world. We can agree on that?
Me: Definitely.
Tim: Part of us wants to do good and part of us wants to self destruct.
Me: Sure.
Tim: You have to embrace that good part, the part that...the power that preserves.
Me: Yeah, that makes sense.
Tim: (to waitress) Could I get like, a lot of butter?

Me: (laughs)

'The King's Speech' A Review

I was reading a while ago an article in Entertainment Weekly by Stephen King. He was talking about the sweet seats in a movie theater. He said when he was growing up everyone wanted to sit in the front row and now everyone wants to sit towards the back. Ever since then I've tried to make myself sit closer. Sat in the second row for 'King's Speech' at the Davis Theater which have these old reclining chairs which made for a really interesting perspective during the movie.

(Spoilers)

The movie opens with Colin Firth as the soon to be King George VI attempting to give a speech at Wembley Stadium his stammer is overwhelming and makes the crowd obviously uneasy. He's unable to finish. This is a movie that I don't think needs a lot of plot description. Basically Firth's wife Elizabeth played by Helena Bonham Carter tracks down an unconventional speech therapist Lionel Logue, played by Geoffrey Rush, to help Firth with his stammer. The years pass.

The friendship between Firth and Rush develops and the movie plays with the interesting almost foreign(to Americans) social etiquette imposed upon British royalty. His stammer improves as well. Because of his stammer Firth is viewed as somewhat of an outcast and an embarrassment by his family. And you can tell he's embarrassed himself, he's ashamed, but he keeps trying, keeps going back to Rush for help even though every ounce of false pride instilled in him since birth rails against it.

The movie is kind of slow paced, it takes it's time, it doesn't give a whole lot of context in to the Second World War, or at least that's not the focus. The stammer and the friendship are the focus. There's a sub plot with Rush as a struggling actor that is kind of cute and gives some back story but only is satisfying when Firth finally meets his family towards the end of the movie.

To me the movie seemed like one slow paced elaborate set up. Everything was a slow build to the movies title. The title was never spoken. After a falling out with Rush, Firth finds himself the heir to the throne on the brink of war needing to give a speech. He calls on Rush and after being ashamed by his upper class advisers of him, he embraces him. What follows...


The speech scene was by far the most powerful. Not only because of the words which are repeated I believe verbatim but because Rush is in the room miming encouragement. Rush adds such an interesting layer to the scene because not only is Firth saying these words to lift up and support his nation, Firth himself needs to be lifted up and supported which is what Rush does. He mimes and he mouths words, he indicates and he smiles. Firth's struggle and Rush's heart jump off the screen. One of my favorite lines...

Carter: You're the bravest man I know.

If I had a criticism it would be the Carter was boring and one note, almost negligible and Timothy Spall as Churchill was terrible. Guy Pearce was also a disappointment. Him and Carter seemed more plot device than character. That said...

It's starts slow but it ends big.

Graffiti 3

A stencil on Clark walking back home from 'Rick' rehearsal.


Sometimes the universe speaks to you.

Curry: Chen's

Chen's is primarily a Chinese restaurant but I got the yellow Thai curry. They didn't have Panang. It was very good; chicken, red and green peppers, as well as onions, the sauce was thick, sweet, but not spicy. As usual the rice provided was slightly less then what was needed to actually consume the main dish. But all in all I was very pleased. The chicken especially was...succulent.

The ambiance was kind of overwhelming for me, it was very dimly lit and the music that was playing was a little too new agey hip for me. From the other patrons in the bar it seemed to me their extensive martini list was a main draw for the restaurant. It also seemed from what I overheard from other tables as well as talking with the waitress that the offer frequent specials and coupons.

Would I go back again? Maybe. I felt like all in all it was a little overpriced and a little to fancy and hip for my particular style. But for a big group of friends looking to spend some money and have a good time I would recommend it.

Heartbreak

(via phone, couple weeks ago)

Beanpole: I like this, lets keep this going. Give me an emotion or theme.

Me: 'Heartbreak.'

Beanpole: Nice. Movie?

Me: Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind.

Beanpole: Yeah, that gives me a lot.

Me: "I erased you."