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My Profile
Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
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1:13 p.m. - 2011-07-09
My nephew is leaving in October to go to Peru. It's a language immersion program that pairs him with a suitable family and he lives with them for a month. Peru seems kind of a haul just to learn Spanish. If he wants to learn Spanish from native speakers all he has to do is get a job at any local diner or sign on with a landscaping crew. I'm sure his co-workers would be glad to help the nice gringo kid with his Spanish. But then again, staying local wouldn't help with Jon's other ambition- seeing Machu Picchu. We're a little short on pre-Columbian Incan cities here in the Hudson Valley. While I'm on the topic of language, some folks would think referring to Jon as 'my' nephew was inaccurate. Technically he's Mick's nephew. I'm just an aunt-in-law or something. But I've never been overly picky about distinctions like that. Not when you've had as many familial personnel changes as I've had. The burden of putting the 'proper' qualifiers, all the 'step-', 'half-', 'adopted-', 'common-law-' and 'ex-' whatevers, would be ridiculous. Also, we're family, you know? Seems cold to me to keep harping on how someone isn't really my real honest to Godfrey blood kin, they're only step-siblings or cousins-by-marriage, etc, etc. I figure if I'd bail them out of jail, feed them Christmas dinner, and dance at their weddings then they're family and that's that. All the labyrinthine explanations of who and how and why they're family are moot. So to that end, Jon is my nephew and I'm delighted for him that he's going on such a cool adventure. Mick and I saw Owen Wilson's Parisian adventure last night. And again with the language, I was pleased to know I'm not as tone deaf to French as I thought. Of course the short bursts of French were easy to get the gist of in context. Plus, understanding another language is always far easier than speaking it. As I used to warn my exchange students, my spoken German is a laughable slurry of German/Yiddish/Rom/American and I always get the gender suffixes and articles confused (what makes a pencil or a dishtowel masculine or feminine anyhow?), but I understood nearly everything they said, so no thinking they could get over on their dopey host mother by speaking in their native tongue. Ich verstehe Deutsch gut. Even if I sound like a moron when I speak it. What did I think of 'Midnight in Paris'? It was okay. Boy howdy, ol' Woody was kissing serious audience butt with this one. The man knows his demographic all right. All that soapy flattery about how cool and smart and politically compassionate we all are. The film's antagonists- a nasty crew of the worst kind of lumbering, anti-intellectual, wealth = moral superiority, ugly American right-wingers ever seen outside of a GOP fundraiser. The scattershot nods to how culturally astute we are. Of course we recognize Alice B Toklas and know why it's funny that Prufrock is Owen's mantra. The guy lathered us with so much 'cool kids are in the know' lardy bullshit the armrests were greasy. Still, Woody Allen's Paris is gorgeous. Except for the sight gag with the laundromat there's no evidence of workaday Paris at all, only the dreamy absurdly cinematic Paris of fantasy. That's the point, I know, duh. But it was lovely. Made listening to Owen's uncannily accurate surfer dude version of Woody Allen almost bearable. My goodness that guy can talk! Runs his mouth even more than I do�and that takes some doing, I tell you what. Right now I need to point my excessive verbiage at the current WIP. Mick's upstairs laid out with a sore back and Wolf's off with his father, no excuses for my lollygagging around with blog entries and FB posts.
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