The Bee's Knees

If I could be any species of bee I would choose bumblebee. Bumblebees are excellent pollinators but useless as honey producers and therefore rarely kept.


This particular bumblebee lived in my backyard. He is missing, presumed dead or hibernating.

Pocket Poem: For Lauren Bacall

"Movies that I DIDN'T see"

Thoughts and opinions on the movies that I DIDN'T see this summer, based on assumptions I made while watching the trailers and (occasionally) reading actual reviews.

Speed Racer: I never liked/watched this cartoon growing up and my interest in the movie never really extended beyond vague plans to cash in on a free Cheerios Speed Racer cereal bowl offer; at some point I switched from Cheerios to Life and never got the box tops together. Too many bright colors, quick cuts, and closeups of Matthew Fox wearing a costume that made him look like Mega-Man. Emile Hirsch's post-Girl Next Door career has been a disappointment and Fox's hands-on-hips-taking-a-deep-breath-while-I-squint schtick really only works on Lost.

Sex and the City: Based on her stellar work in Hocus Pocus, I've always been a Sarah Jessica Parker apologist; however, this movie was garbage. Like any good television show turned movie, they would have been better off just showing the three best episodes back to back on the big screen. The only three Sex and the City episodes I've seen (long story) involved the pretty-brunette-woman-whose-name-I-can-never-remember divorcing her husband and having sex with her bald, paunchy, very hairy divorce lawyer.

Kung Fu Panda: Jack Black is an ass. Only real pandas are entertaining.

You Don't Mess with the Zohan: I wish Adam Sandler would just recycle jokes and plots from his old movies instead of trying to come up with new ideas. I would gladly fork over $8 for Happy Gilmore II. Also, goatees are neither fashionable nor funny. Ever.

The Happening: I got off the M. Night Shyamalan ride years ago when a friend told me how the Sixth Sense ended before I saw it. Since then, I've never seen any of his movies but strongly believe that all of them have been complete and utter crap.

The Incredible Hulk: I finally saw the Ang Lee version this summer on cable when the beautiful and talented Jennifer Connelly (The Rocketeer!) stopped me cold mid-channel surf. I don't imagine that I'll ever actually see this new one; Edward Norton is only half-alright part of the time and Liv Tyler isn't nearly pretty enough (maybe in Empire Records?) to slow me down when I'm power surfing through the USA/TBS/TNT/FX block of channels.

Get Smart: I have nothing against this movie. Maybe I'll see it on a plane one day.

Hancock: Oh, Will Smith, you made Independence Day and I could never hate you, but this movie was tedious, uninspired, and probably neutered by the MPAA.

Step Brothers: On the one hand, a grown man getting crushed by a poorly constructed bunk bed is hilarious, on the other hand, neither Will Ferrell nor John C. Reilly are very funny anymore. Jury's still out on this one, but I strongly suspect that it's mediocre. If we were ever at the video store together and you said "hey, let's rent this one," I wouldn't say no but I certainly wouldn't split the rental fee with you.

The X Files: I feel the same way about this as I do Sex and the City minus the weird, pre-pubescent crush on SJP (sorry David Duchovny). The only X Files episode I remember seeing involved a family of incestuous mutants living in an isolated farmhouse and I have to believe that the movie fails to deliver on that episode's creepy promise.

Pineapple Express: I have no plans to ever see this movie. If I find out that Jonah Hill was in it then I have definite plans NOT to see it. In another year or so this whole Apatow/Rogen thing will have run its course and only James Franco (maybe) and that guy who plays Darryl on The Office will have careers.

The Mummy 3/The Rocker/Mamma Mia!: I will neither remember nor regret.

Tropic Thunder: Part of me wanted to see this but an even bigger part of me thought that there was a reason that they waited until the end of August when no other decent movies were playing to release it. That said, I can only assume that Robert Downey Jr. was nothing short of wonderful.

fare thee well, Inez

I only spend about three minutes of my lunch break actually eating (peanut butter sandwich and a baggie of cheeze-its) and the remaining twenty seven I dedicate to day dreaming and staring absentmindedly into the trees beside the parking lot. Every now and then I have a good idea and I jot down notes on little scraps of paper, the idea being that later I'll find the note and remember to do something I thought was important.

The system rarely works, at least not in a timely fashion. Today I found a note from last week on a yellow post-it neatly folded in half: ISABELLA/HELENA(?) disappears into the woods ... Aguirre WATCH.

I followed the note's instructions and tracked down the clip in question:



I don't remember what made me think of this during that particular lunch break. Maybe I imagined myself silently slipping into the woods (taking a permanent half-day) whilst my malnourished, half mad coworkers licked the ground for salt ... but there were no native arrows raining down and no one else eats lunch outside, much less licks the parking lot for essential minerals.

Inez (Helena Rojo) disappears from the film's narrative after this and I can only assume she perishes somewhere in the jungle, perhaps on her own terms, perhaps on the jungle's.

fare thee well, Inez

love joshua

nonsense made sense

excerpt from a rough draft of a letter to a friend, 7/29/08
(unsent but suddenly afforded new relevance):

... i thought i'd vote obama,
because he's skinny and left handed,
but it doesn't mean that much to me
and given leave i'd
rather vote for pretty girls in glasses.

What the end could look like -

Smoothies and Jeremy Davies

Being both a finicky and a reluctant eater, most of my diet choices are based on either convenience or caprice. My recent relocation has taken me out of walking distance from my preferred burrito and pizza establishments and I've had to adjust accordingly. A winter infatuation with fruit cups paved the way for the reintroduction of fresh and frozen fruit into my life and combined with sudden access to a blender and the urge to eat as many bananas as I can before the bananapocalypse I now take at least one meal a day in smoothie form.

Semi-logical jump: I just wrapped up the fourth season of Lost, which is set on a tropical fruit filled island and guest stars oft gaunt actor Jeremy Davies as physicist Daniel Faraday (left, in Rescue Dawn). I have mixed feelings about Lost after the stellar first two seasons were followed by a flaccid third but Davies was a welcome addition to the cast and brought some much needed energy to season four.

Does Davies have the magic touch? A quick glance at his recent filmography - littered with choice roles in films such as Rescue Dawn, Dogville, and Secretary - seems to suggest that he does. Upon closer scrutiny, even Davies' roles in clunkers like Saving Private Ryan and Million Dollar Hotel provided watchable moments in otherwise iffy films.

"This Davies kid is money. I'm telling you. The numbers don't lie!"

Davies never garners any awards attention or makes any publications' lists of best/sexiest/banged most B-list starlets but is it possible that his presence on screen elevates whatever project he's currently involved with? I wish someone would come up with a way to gauge actor efficiency in much the same way that Hollinger's PER system offers statistical insight into a basketball player's actual value to their team.

Casting directors seem to be a subjective bunch who rely heavily on chance and instinct but I like to imagine them sitting around like GMs in the war room, pounding coffee by the gallon, scrawling on marker boards and pointing to the irrefutable statistical evidence that Jeremy Davies' arsenal of brooding glances and physical tics guarantees big time results no matter the size of the screen.

The Aesthetics of Smoking, or Egomania

For many reasons, I grew up an anti-drug.

My parents divorced when I was very young. Me, my sister (the oldest), and my brother (the middle child) stayed with my father in our house on Osgood Road. My mother moved around a lot, but never too far away, always being sure to remain in touch enough to take us (sometimes) on the weekends or pick us up (sometimes) from school. She eventually remarried (not her last time) and re-reproduced (her last time). My father, on the other hand, invited a woman to live with me and my siblings when I was in Kindergarten. She was nice and had two children; one older than my sister and one younger than me. This mathematically made me the middle child in the middle of a post-broken home amelioration attempt. On cue, it blew up in its makers' faces and violence ensued. My elder blood siblings resorted to drugs, music, rebellion, everything people our age tend to remember the '90s for (good times and nowhere to go), while I, by default, became the counterpoint. The constant tension and strife between my father, my stepmother, and my siblings, was more than I could bear to consider partaking in. So I did what made sense; I did not do what my siblings did. This included steering clear of drugs and unsavory people that might lead me to become something my parents disapproved of. Not surprisingly, I became resentful of my good grades and anti-drug attitude, and was not proud when my parents said "good work" after looking over my report card. Though my self-reliant, self-righteous attitude effectively kept me out of social circles and off of drugs, it also made me a very lonely person.

My sister was a smoker from the age of 16 or thereabout. Every time I was around her when she lit up, I would lecture her about the harmful side effects of smoking, how it's killing her, and be generally dripping condescending incredulity. She would always say the same thing: "Gotta die somehow." A cliched smoker's response (she never said it without cackling afterwards), I always thought it was the worst defense. I found myself saying this recently when someone suggested I stop puffing on a Camel.

Like many people who are lucky enough to take the 4 year vacation known as college (and now have to PAY for it...), many things changed when I went to school. I began drinking and smoking pot. Not out of rebellion, but out of both curiosity and a sense of decorum. Nothing about shedding the straight-edge skin was painful. It was a blast. However, it made me reconsider certain values I held, the most glaring of which was tested two years into college. One day without much thought, I purchased a pack of cigarettes and started smoking. My friends alternately approved and disapproved.

So, why did I, and why do people in general, start smoking?

- From a sociological standpoint: The standard sociological argument is that it's a parroting effect - teen sees person she wants to be like or be near smoking so she herself starts smoking. Other factors are prevalent, such as smoking parents, but really, from that point of view, it boils down to the parrot effect.

- From a cultural standpoint: "Coolness" is (like, almost always?) the reason one starts smoking. Whether it's out of rebellion, the urge to do what is not allowed, or the desire to partake in what cool people partake in (most cool people smoke, or so it seems), smokers tend to trace their picking up of the butt to an image, idea, or person. Of course, smoking also is an act that has no justification outside of pure self-gratification, so in that sense, it represents an aspect of the American character - straight, undiluted, 200-proof self-gratification. This is often taken as the essence of cool; a sum of unexplained acts originating from a self that resists standard labels, explanations, and expectations. So if smoking could be considered cool, it would be naive to say that Miles Davis, Keith Richards, or Dont Look Back have nothing to do with it. People who start smoking for these reasons would probably never admit it or, at least, would disregard the attempt to explain the "why" of smoking when, duh, the lack thereof is part of the fun.

- From a phenomenological standpoint: Smoking is relaxing. It occupies your basic motor skills, helps you regulate your breathing, and helps you take time. It tastes great, especially when paired with coffee or red wine.

As far as I can tell, smoking was once as casual as drinking water. Now, there are signs in bodegas urging smokers to protest the proposed cigarette tax increase ($6/carton!) that New Yorkers are currently facing. Not only that, there are industries, profit and non-, built around helping people quit. Why has smoking become so bad? Depending on your sources, either one pack takes 7 minutes off your life or if you quit by the time your 26, there is virtually a 0% chance of developing lung cancer due to smoking. Clearly, evidence has indicated that smoking can and does kill all too often. Can cigarettes be enjoyed responsibly? And hasn't everyone "Gotta die somehow"?

Wes Anderson tends to make very pointed use of smoking in his films. Whether it's an issue of realism or not is beside the point; to me, smoking, if I may wax philosophic, is a token of the smoker's Dionysian acceptance of their own mortality. If that's too Romantic for you, the urge to smoke is antithetical to the urge to remain alive. It concerns quality over quantity, how one lives as opposed to how long. In a sense, every person that smokes a cigarette is performing their very own miniature crucifixion.

Every morning I scale 6 flights of stairs in a grimy building occupied mostly by hardworking immigrants. On the second floor, I always pass two older Eastern European men sitting on a bench, smoking and chatting in their native language. I at first tried smiling and nodding at them, but they would just scowl (understandably), and I would move on. Smoking, though it's often associated with rebellion, is also an expression of solidarity. Who huddles outside bars when it's 2 degrees outside? Smokers. Who's "Gotta die somehow"? Smokers. Am I a smoker?*

*OK, this piece has two endings. Here's your chance to fill in the blanks. You can choose the one you like the best:
1.) Doubtful, but I do enjoying smoking.
2.) Sure, aren't you?