Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

I love this book.

I love this book.

I love this book.

I just read this book

and I love this book.

I wish I wrote this book.

It is funny, sad, wise and unique.

It's one of the best poetry books I've ever read.

I love this book.

This book is Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy by Tao Lin. It is one long terrific poem that is funny, sad, wise and unique.

Beth Orton

I saw Beth Orton perform at Prospect Park's Celebrate Brooklyn last night. She was incredible. Incredible. The only album I have is nearly ten years old, Central Reservation, which is relatively polished and a little trip-hoppy. But apparently she has gone in more avante-folk directions since then. She performed with one accompanist, who alternately played piano, guitar, and violin. She sometimes played guitar and piano. Her voice was very raw, back and forth between deep and controlled and airy and fragile. She was a very sweet performer who kept apologizing to the audience. It was a lovely night for a concert in the park, too.

Tell No One

I saw this intense French thriller, Tell No One, the other night with my mom. It's very good, very tense and engaging and there is something just imminently watchable about the French. There seemed, however, to be a few holes in the plot; at least it was kind of confusing at the end and I'm not sure if I thoroughly understood it. It's about a man whose wife is killed and years later starts sending him emails and people are out to get him...

Heights

This movie was horrible and pretentious. It is one of those talking, trying to be "real", actor-y things that just make me want to cringe. Cringe! Like bad, bad Woody Allen. And without the humor. Everyone taking themselves so seriously. Oppressive bourgeois pseudo-suffering. Open a window for God's sake.

Glenn Close looked great with brown hair, although her face was very Botoxed-up, which depressed me. And she's had a distracting brow life.

The Plot Against America

Roth's The Plot Against America has such an abrupt, disappointing ending!

I don't know what to say. This is a marvelous, brilliantly written book. I got totally absorbed and could barely put it down for two days. His sense of history is rich and densely detailed, and his writing is marvelous.

But somehow, there was little heart to it. I feel like I should have been sobbing, that this should have been a cathartic read. Somehow, as much as I enjoyed it, I was left cold.

Part of it is that it's about a nine year old boy, but told from a historical point in the future, by an adult, and I never really felt the nine-year-old-ness. He described the vulnerability, fear and confusion, but it didn't hit me. I wasn't pulled in emotionally.

This book, by the way, is an alternate history, where Roosevelt loses his third term election to Lindbergh and the country signs a peace pact with the Nazis...

Threatened Children

Oh, I hate it when the only image I can find of a book has that "Search Inside" thing from Amazon!

Anyway, Joel Best's Threatened Children: Rhetoric and Concern about Child-Victims is an EXCELLENT and thorough analysis of the way issues around children are constructed. It covers missing children, child molestation, and urban legends such as Halloween sadists. It looks at how claims-makers operate and explores the way secondary claims-makers, such as network news and popular culture amplify and distort these claims. Importantly, he points to the fact that individual deviants are always identified as the problem, not larger social factors... Also, he addresses the fact that even when momentum dies down, many of these campaigns leave legacies and can become entrenched taken-for-granted ideas in the general public.

My only wish is that he had written this more recently! I have my work cut out, having to update his information!

Trekkies

I had mixed feelings about this "docu-comedy" exploring the fanatical Star Trek subculture.

On one hand it was just terrific. Trekkies showed so many aspects of the intense phenomenon and included great interviews with fans as well as stars. The picture here is of a real dentist's office that is all done up Star Trek style.

On the other hand, it was vacuously voyeuristic. It just exposed these people without much contextualization or interpretation. Called a "docu-comedy" or something like that, it is meant to get laughs. In that it succeeded, but was it just holding these people, these earnest, marginalized intense people, up to be mocked? Although there were attempts at showing the more positive side (?), it really seemed more to be saying, "wow, would you look at these freaks!".

I guess it's the sociologist of deviance in me that wanted more.