The Thinking Gal's "Sin City"

Last weekend, Herr Guitar and I decided to lock up the dog and embark upon an all-day movie fest. We started with a Harold Lloyd double-feature at the Film Forum: "Get Out and Get Under" and "Safety Last." Lloyd is considered one of the three great silent film comedians, next to Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. I had never seen any of his movies, but knew of the famous hanging-from-the-clock-tower scene from "Safety Last."

"Get Out and Get Under" was the first showing, and it was great. Lloyd did all of his own stunts - in the 20s - which amounted to lots of stepping out of moving cars, then chasing them down and jumping back in the driver's seat. The first time he did this, HG let out a "holy shit," because it was probably the most authentic stunt we modern moviegoers have ever seen. Can you imagine an actor today doing that, without the benefit of Avid editing or CGI?

There was a family sitting nearby and the kids were being pretty vocal from the very beginning of the movie. It was annoying at first, but as the films went on, the entire audience began to participate vocally. Not talking to the screen or anything, but yelping and gasping and really laughing. I think the silent-film aspect allows people to participate more. It was a unique experience.

But it was during "Safety Last" when the experience began to affect us physically. The actual clock tower scene is absolutely grueling to watch, in the most entertaining way imaginable. There were no special effects involved in these movies (other than little camera tricks, like when he combs his hair while looking at his reflection in a coworker's bald head), so he actually climbs this very tall building in Los Angeles, and actually hangs off the clock face (and a flag pole, and a few window sills). With each flight, watching it becomes more and more unbearable, you are totally engrossed but just hoping it will end. HG was sweating, I was cringing in a movie-chair fetal position. Just writing about it is making my heart race and my palms sweat. Since then, I can no longer look up when walking by a tall building without thinking about it, and getting a major case of nausea/vertigo. This may sound strange, but I can't imagine a more entertaining piece of film.

Especially considering that our next stop was seeing "Sin City" at the gynormous megaplex. I coaxed HG into seeing this movie because I was fooled by those wily critics who gushed over what a masterpiece it is. I guess critics are a bunch of horny, sociopathic boys (who am I kidding, I know that's who critics are), because for me this movie lost its charm quickly and, after that, turned extremely dull. And why does no one mention the extreme violence? Maybe I'm "nesting" but I wanted to shield all of my senses from this movie so that my little friend in utero wouldn't have to be exposed to such ugliness. And speaking of ugliness, why is this city populated by the world's foulest looking men and like a bazillion fembots? And why are all the women naked except for Jessica Alba, who is supposed to be an exotic dancer but just stands there in a leather bra and chaps, twirling a lasso? Is this city so perverse that only lassoing holds any sexual novelty? I can't answer these questions, and I don't recommend you try. I thought the acting was pretty good, though. I especially liked Mickey Rourke, who was in the first third of the movie - the most entertaining segment. My review upon walking out was: That movie is very boy. HG concurred that its way boy - like this is all that boys think about all day. Poor creatures.

But when you see a masterpiece like "Safety Last," you realize that "Sin City" is the polar opposite of a masterpiece. It may be great looking and stylish, but all generated through a computer so who really cares? It's all empty calories, and they don't go down too easy. Thinking about it will never make my heart race or palms sweat, in fact I'll probably never think about it again after this (I know, I'm not the right audience - I realize you boys may be all sweaty and tumescent and palmy and thinking about it right now, but I don't want to think about that again after this either). It seems extremely unnecessary.

Anyway, there's still a chance to catch more Harold Lloyd at the Film Forum in New York through May 17. Ignore the goofy pictures and go. I highly recommend it.

Fun with Google

If you have a couple of minutes to kill (and I know you do or why else would you be reading this now), take a look at this Google game. You may be surprised, as I was, by the images brought up by a search of the word "hate." I didn't have much time to analyze them - had to beat the clock and move on - but it seemed that several were doodles of bunny rabbits. Hateful indeed.

I Know Why the Caged Fat Lady Sings

All my life, I dreamed of the day I would become pregnant - for no other reason than it would give me an excuse to lay around eating whole pies. Even before I was aware of what a calorie was or what it does to you, I fantasized about this magical time in a woman's life when she is allowed to be unabashedly fat and lazy. Sure, maybe I would have to learn knitting between the bon bon eating and soap opera watching. But I'd only have to go so far as making half a bootie, women in the movies never finished a complete pair.

It turns out that this is a vicious lie, and I am finding out far too late. When I first learned I was pregnant, we were about to fly to London for a long weekend. While there I indulged in big English breakfasts, bisquits and cakes and toffees, weird meat and beer pies, fish and chips and mushy peas and etc. I was utterly free: on vacation and with child. That's like a ticket to a dreamy all-you-can-eat buffett. It was bliss - well, near bliss, considering it was British food.

We arrived home to a package from my mom. In it were books on babies, including "What to Expect When You're Expecting." Has anyone read this evil thing? The first page of this book should read: "If you were expecting to get fat and lazy, you were sorely mistaken."

This book assumes you are either a.) a freaky health nut who just needs to step it up by 300 calories a day or b.) someone who can suddenly become a freaky health nut, incorporating like 7 servings of grains, 5 servings of milk, 6-8 fruits and vegetables and tons of proteins into your diet while still limiting your intake to what your average health nut would eat, plus a measly 300 calories a day. In other words, no craving pickle and pudding sandwiches. The book actually points out that 300 calories a day amounts to "an apple, a banana and a cup of whole milk." How depressing is that? Have we all become these weight-obsessed, "perfect little bump" weirdos who diet while pregnant?

And there are so many restrictions. I'm fine with cutting out booze and coffee, even though I miss them once in awhile. But on top of that, you can't have cold cuts, or cured meats or fish, or sushi, or blue/goat/feta cheese, or cookie dough, and you really shouldn't have fish, or aspertame, or SUGAR.

I don't want McDonalds or Pizza Hut or whole banana cream pies but, please, sir, may I have a chocolate chip cookie now and then? Can I eat healthy but fattening Soy Delicious Peanut Butter Zigzag once in awhile with impunity? "No!" says WTEWYE. I'm sorry, but I consider that strict dieting. I prefer my doctor's advice: You only live once, so if it's macaroni and cheese that does it for you, go for it.

I'm sort of sticking between the two extremes. I try to eat as well as I can, but also indulge in snacks and cravings. Mostly I crave protein: I'm eating lots of beef, which I never really ate before, and always have a taste for sauteed spinach and raisin bran with milk. I was daydreaming of Girl Scout cookies, but when Herr Guitar brought some home for me, they were too sugary. I actually did the unthinkable: threw away nearly full boxes of Thin Mints, Samoas and Tagalongs.

Still, I can quickly demolish a stack of pancakes from the Brownstone Diner in Jersey City, or a giant M&M cookie from Starbucks on Christopher Street, or a chocolate peanut butter cookie mound from Levain Bakery on West 74th. Maybe that's why I'm only three months along and already showing? (Note to the reed-thin, no-belly girl at Roosevelt Hospital with the same due date: Fuck you.)

Oh well, what am I going to do? I can't diet, can hardly move to exercise. And it's only going to get worse. There will be hell to pay after the birth, and I'll worry about it then. My mom has never taken off the weight she had after giving birth to my brother, in fact she's added to it quite a bit. But she was 24, I'm almost 10 years older than that. I think the body shape I have, which is politely described as far from Nicole Kidman-esque, will be easily revived. Until then, I'll say it once, and say it loud: I'm fat... ahem, pregnant... and I'm proud.

Becoming Babymama

Even though I'm a career gal, I am proud to say I know my way around a baby. I was the first born child in my family, including extended family, which means that I've diapered many a brother and cousin. I have also served time in the babysitter's club (I like to think of myself as the one in the red beret). These are pretty typical experiences for a girl - although, surprisingly, some of my female friends have no baby background. But, for someone who has not yet given birth, I have a disproportionate amount of experience being a single mom. I've lived with three (if you include my own - and I do, because I think I raised her more often than she raised me).

When I first went away to college, I avoided dorm life in favor of off-campus housing. I used a roommate referral service and found Tiffani, a "hard working" "student" and teenage single mom who had an awesome bungalow house two blocks from the beach in Santa Barbara. She had just broken with her boyfriend but wanted to stay in the house. She wanted a responsible roommate and a quiet environment because she had a child to raise. Tiffani seemed nice, but her biggest asset aside from the house was her son, Shad. At age 1, he was nearly the smartest guy I'd ever met - and by far the best looking. He had Tiffani's dark Puerto Rican skin and full lips, and his anglo father's white blond hair and royal blue eyes. People would stop to gawk on the street - and this was not just general baby gawking, it was more like a mixture of envy and lust and hunger to just eat him up so his beauty and wonder could be all yours. Seeing Shad was like being touched by an angel or Brad Pitt or something. Plus, he could air guitar, instantly locate your picture in a yearbook, and open a car door with a key and mock drive. In fact, he could actually drive, if you let him sit on your lap and steer, which my typically very careful and conscientious mother did. That's just the kind of trust Shad instilled in you. He was a wunderkind.

As soon as I moved in, I learned the truth about Tiffani. Unlike me, she was not a college student, she was a cosmatology student. She was not serious and hard-working, she was a lazy, scatterbrained, sometime coke whore (and a sometime meal whore, which is far lower on the whore scale). She was not a dedicated mother, she was a party girl with a gorgeous-but-bothersome living accessory. My first weekend in the house was during Fiesta - an annual weeklong drunken town party. Tiffani showed me the sights. Long story short, I ended up stranded with her as she partied at the apartment of two rich and debauched brothers. There we met Bridget, who was the first girl I'd ever seen in real life who walked around naked in front of strangers. I was 17 and cowering in a corner, but I remember thinking that was the moment I had officially lost my innocence. My second weekend there, I woke up to Shad's crying at dawn, only to find that Tiffani's bed hadn't been slept in. She stayed across the street with our bartender neighbor, and later claimed she thought she would have heard Shad if he cried 50 feet and several closed doors away.

I won't go into how Bridget eventually moved in and punched me at a party in my own house. Or how I begged one of Tiffani's friends (who also happened to be Gene Hackman's nephew - seriously, a young, hesher dead-ringer) for a ride back home to LA at 3 am, causing him to subsequently fall in love with me and send me flowers on a regular basis. There are a lot of Tiffani-related stories that I won't go into, I'll just say they should have no part in a young girl's freshman-year nostalgia.

It was during those early months that I got a part-time job at a hip maternity clothes store. Not coincidentally, my biological clock started ticking overtime. It was kind of like a G-rated version of that movie Angel (one of my very favorites). By day, I was a shy scholar. By night, I was undercover mommy. I would imagine myself catwalking through trimesters in all sorts of different outfits, each tailored to my own indivdiual style. I searched every stroller that rolled through the place, looking for something to goo and gaa at. While I pretended to be straightening the racks, I thought up perfect baby-name combinations. And when I was not working or learning, I walked around town with Shad, not correcting people when they told me what a beautiful son I had and how he looked just like me. I considered myself a sort of second (and far superior) mother to Shad, and he played along brilliantly. I moved out before his second birthday and haven't seen him since. It's scary to think about but today he is 17 and probably long past losing his innocence.

When I graduated college and moved to New York, I found another "sweet" "serious" and "hardworking" single-mother roommate who had a dream apartment in the East Village. She turned out to be a lot like Tiffani, only 10 years older, graduate-school educated and "artsy". In other words, a total nightmare. Her 3-year-old son, who I will call Anti-Shad (his actual name sort of rhymed with Damien - as in, "It's all for you, Damien.")did not exude beauty, sensitivity and light despite the difficult circumstances of his upbringing. His mom fought with and ignored him as if he were an adult, and he fought back in pretty much the same way. Sure, he was cute, if you consider Malcolm MacDowell's character in Clockwork Orange cute (seriously, he's that guy's doppleganger). He was also smart, but not in a "Hey let me give you the keys to my car you little genius" way. He was smart like those assholes guys that you meet in bars in San Francisco, who act superior but still try to get inside your head to find something they can eventually use against you. Once, when I was having a homesick and self-indulgent pity party, Anti-Shad crept into my room, looked up at me with his big blue eyes and asked, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I answered. "I'm just feeling sad."

"Why?," he queried. "Is it because no one likes you." (And they say modern-day New Yorkers aren't all that brutal.)

"I guess so," I said, after recovering from the emotional sucker-punch.

Cute little Anti-Shad then padded out of the room and closed the door behind him. Then opened it just a crack and whispered - in the most evil Damien or Carol Ann voice imaginable - "They're right."

I think that's the exact moment my biological clock stopped ticking.

It's been a few years, so I've been able to coax the scared little thing back. Not to full-60 Minutes stop watch speed, not immediately. For awhile it was like a clock in a Harold Pinter play - tick (beat, beat, beat, beat, pause, wait a sec...) tick. That was during my late twenties. But recently it was running normally enough to make me want to attempt conception.

So here I am, entering the second trimester. Still trying to squeeze into my nonmaterity clothes while I can. No runway mommy outfits in sight. And while I'm not afraid of holding or feeding a baby, or cleaning baby poop (I actually think it's cute), or playing horsey, horsey go to town and peek-a-boo, I do kind of fear my baby's personality. That sounds bad. Let me rephrase: I fear the bad baby. Because, contrary to what they say in Hallmark Stores and Republican Conventions, not all babies are good. Like adults, they are a mixed bag - some are angels, others droogs. I won't argue nature vs. nurture, because I have no idea when or how babies decide to go one way and not another, I just know it happens.

So let's all hope junior gets daddy's looks and mommy's charming personality. (Cue Anti-Shad: "Yeah right!")