It's Friday
Thank you to everyone who has commented on my blog this week; your thoughtfulness has encouraged me to blog even more often!

Ha ha. I know only like 3 people read this and Billy is the only one who comments. I'll have to think of some more blatant Billy-bait (that Company thing worked pretty well).

First: Employment News Flashes
I'm at the end of my 2nd week of this 4-week deployment. Actually the people and the work atmosphere here are very nice. In contrast to most other offices I've worked in, the people here seem to be awake and competent and engaged in what they're doing. They think for themselves and encourage others to do so as well. What a concept. I wonder how it's done, because this is a very big company and what this department does is pretty boring.

Yesterday my supervisor was out sick, but I had enough tasks to do until about 4pm. I even finished labeling all our files. He's back today, but still getting things organized to the point where he can delegate something to me. That's the first sign of anything remotely troubling I've seen in 2 weeks.

In other employment news, I was turned down for one of the part-time jobs I applied for (they found an applicant who knew QuickBooks) and haven't heard back from the other one I applied to at the same time. Since then I have applied to 2 or 3 more, and I have 2 more I want to get out today. One of the applications is a little involved. The counselor I talked to at the UCB Career Center said it's not unusual to send out 15-20 cover letters before getting a bite. Ugh.

Ok, now for more interesting stuff.
Personal Media Consumption News Flashes:

Saw two movies last weekend (hint, neither one was Yentl). One was 1936's Follow the Fleet with Fred and Ginger, and the other was 2004's Bride and Predjudice from everybody's favorite British Indian woman director, Gurinder Chadha.

• About the former, I have to say the following: Fred & Ginger dancing, horny sailors, monkey in a sailor suit--what's not to like? The songs were not very memorable, and Ginger is clearly a much better actor, but it was still hella fun.

• Regarding the latter, I have to say the following: It definitively anwers the question: "What would a Bollywood-style version of Pride and Predjudice be like," though I'm not sure it points to why the question would be asked in the first place. I have to say I'm consistently impressed with Gurinder Chadha's ambition and her...um...persistence in bringing her personal viewpoint to the screen without compromising. It can't be easy for a British Indian woman filmmaker to get a movie made in the first place, but she never seems to stoop to dumbing-down or homogenizing. For example, she could have set the movie in Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay or somewhere people know of, but she set it in Amritsar; and on that note, she could have made the characters generically Indian but she made them Punjabi Sikhs, true to her roots; she could have made a fluffy romantic comedy (in a lot of ways she succeeded in that) but she did also address issues of globalization and cutural colonialism (at least in one scene). And finally, she could have left the traditionalists in the audience only mildly uncomfortable with the interracial relationship (btw, how was that such a non-issue?), but no, she had to go and have old lady make the "I heard in America the girls are so untraditional some of them even become lesssbeeeeaaans!" First of all, does anyone actually think/say that? The incident reminded me of the whole unnecessary gay friend subplot (not to mention the mistaken lesbian identity complication) in Bend It. In both cases, of course, I am really glad she did. She didn't have to, but she risked the audience's discomfort to increase LGBT visibility. (Mel Brooks, if you notice, does this in many of his films too, but it's kind of a mixed bag. Yes, gay people exist and are not evil or weird! But they certainly are funny and strange.) And finally she could have made the musical numbers more accessible, but except for being in English, I found them pretty much like songs in a Bollywood movie--complete with implausible dancing, inane/melodramatic lyrics. Like Follow the Fleet, the tunes were mediocre at best, but I guess not everyone's an A.R. Rahman or R.D. Burman. I also liked how (in some scenes, anyway) it really looked like India--the first movie I remember seeing like that was Fire, and I've only seen a few others since. (There's more about that--e.g. bovine visibility in this interview). Finally, I have to say the barat band playing the marching arrangement of "Laung Gawacha" at the end was a nice touch. I'm really interested to see what she does next--Dallas??? wtf?

• I read the New Yorker's review of Phillip Roth's new book. Looks like one I'd like to read. I stumbled across Sabbath's Theatre a few years ago and was really blown away by it, and last December I read Portnoy's Complaint and understood why it has the place in this history of American Lit that it does (though I enjoyed Sabbath better). I haven't read The Plot Against America, but the new one actually sounds more interesting to me. I have actually been sort of looking for some sort of exploration of how we relate to our bodies and their functional shortcomings, and I think Roth's treatment will be thorough.

- posted by k @ 9:47 AM