I saw “Hidden Figures”

Here is a picture of my dogs sleeping.

What I saw: “Hidden Figures,” a movie, at a local theater in Mt. K.

What I did beforehand: riding lesson. Bacon and eggs. Dog walk. Watched my husband polish his shoes. Kissed the Bacon Provider goodbye (again). Sewing. Bought a ticket online so I wouldn’t be too lazy to go.

What I wore: very dirty jeans. Snow boots. Two coats. Mittens and scarf.

Who went with me: about 50 white people and 2 African Americans.

How I got tickets: online, a few hours before.

Why I saw this show: because my friend H. said to.

Where I sat: towards the front, right behind the only people of color.

Things that were sad: I sometimes remember not to be a completely disagreeable person. But generally speaking if you want me to stay away from a movie, tell me it’s inspiring. I believe this is not a movie about exemplary women doing exceptional things. I believe this is a movie about black women saving everyone's asses and never getting credit.

Things that were not funny: did the women whose careers at NASA were dramatized in this film start a new, great tradition of American female engineers and mathematicians? No. No, through no fault of their own, they did not. Women were still underrepresented in the sciences when I tried to get a PhD in math in the mid 1980s, when I couldn't get a female professor as a mentor because there weren't any. Yes, we have female astronauts now (since about 1978), and people of color do become engineers, but it didn't stop one of my master's examination board from (successfully) getting me to crack  during my orals, and it didn't dissaude the President of Harvard from saying publicly that under-representation of female scientists at elite universities may stem in part from “innate" differences between men and women (and not only did he never have to take it back, his career continued to flourish). Things are better, but they aren't good.

Things that were funny: straight talk about Jim Crow laws.

Something I ate: popcorn.

What it is: a likable story about NASA in the 1960s, racism, the failures of white feminists, misogyny, and how technology destroys middle class jobs.

Who should see it: people who need to forget about a real or imagined episode involving urine, Russian women, the president-elect, and a hotel room; space buffs, math nerds, engineering enthusiasts, middle school social studies teachers, chalkboard fanciers, arithmetic fanatics, movie fiends, car-stuck girl junkies, NASA nuts, aficionados of scenes of women running in high heels. 

What I saw on the way home: I stopped for pho and bubble tea to take home to 19. There was a football game on the TV. A guy was sitting with his dad, their table crowded with plates, introducing him to Vietnamese food. He asked the waiter for the yellow sauce. It took the guy behind the counter a couple of tries before he found the yellow sauce the guy wanted. “What’s it called?” he asked. “So I know next time.”

“Fish sauce,” was the answer.

I saw “Don’t Think Twice”

What I saw: Mike Birbiglia’s new movie, “Don’t Think Twice” at the Landmark Sunshine Theater, at 143 East Houston Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenues, which is technically in SoHo. Also, you should know that in NYC, “Houston” is pronounced differently from the city in Texas (like “HOW-stun,” not “HEW-stun”).

What I wore: black Puma sneakers, gray jeans; black v-neck t-shirt that I bought at Barney’s in Seattle, because the one in NYC is too terrifying to even attempt to go in, much less shop at; silver earrings that the Bacon Provider gave me; favorite gray rag & bone scarf; old Coach bag that I’m beginning to think is sad and not retro-cool.

What I did beforehand: had lunch with my friend W. and my other friend B., to whom  I either gave incomplete directions or maybe no directions at all, so he arrived sweaty and flustered because it was like a bajillion and a half degrees. Fortunately, we declared beer o’clock, and had lunch. Also, B. is a good sport and told stories of the dentist and moving back to New York.

Declaring beer o'clock with @nanouk09 pic.twitter.com/SXl4PCfbSB

— Hamsteria d'Relish (@hamsterRelish) July 22, 2016

Who went with me: just W., and some other serious people in ironic glasses.

How I got tickets: after seeing Mike Birbiglia’s most recent show, followed by his appearance in White Rabbit, Red Rabbit the next week, I was prompted by my email to buy tickets to this. And I thought I did, and I put it on my calendar where it sat for a number of weeks. But when W. and I sat down in the lobby of my apartment building as I said “Hey, lemme check to make sure I have my email receipt I had none, so I bought the tickets for what seemed the second time.

Why I saw this show: Mike Birbiglia is great.

Where I sat: kind of in the middle.

Things that were sad: people behaving selfishly, people panicking and screwing up their own lives, people behaving selflessly, people getting their shit together.

Things that were funny: solid improv, what comedians wear, people who mature slowly.

Things that were not funny: the theater should have been full, and I should not have felt so conspicuous laughing.

What it is: more of a dramatic comedy than a comedic drama, this ensemble piece had a lot of deep, beautiful truth in it.

Who should see it: fans of Mike Birbiglia, improv enthusiasts, devotees of examining the human condition, people who like to say yes, groupies of the group dynamic, you.

What I saw on the way home: a cab on the West Side Highway with a funny ad on top with another, more-famous-but-less-funny comedian eating cotton candy and the cab driver inside the cab thought we were admiring him.

I saw the new “Ghostbusters”

What I saw: the new “Ghostbusters” at the Bow-Tie Cinema on Main Street in the village of Mount K., in Westchester County, where New Yorkers go live when they want to be surrounded by other white people, or they want a yard.

What I wore: baggy boyfriend khakis with the ankles rolled up, hot pink TomboyX undies, TomboyX “Divided We Stall” t-shirt, hair crammed into elastic, black suede Puma sneakers with striped socks, Danner belt, no makeup, glasses.

What I did beforehand: Pilates, riding lesson, tried to upload the new Flash player to my computer, watched the latest Carpool Karaoke with Michelle Obama on my iPad because I couldn't  update the Flash player on my computer.

Who went with me: the Bacon Provider and some families.

How I got tickets: online, using Fandango

Why I saw this show: because American misogynists try to ruin everything

Where I sat: fourth row, on the end

Always popcorn

Things that were sad: I laughed loudest and longest.

Things that were funny: soup jokes, hearse jokes, aquarium jokes, jokes about academia, and everything that Kate McKinnon does onscreen. 

Things that were not funny: the woman of color in this movie is the non-scientist-Ghostbuster, and assholes on Twitter treated her like shit, too. 

What it is: funnier, scarier, and better than the 80s original, this movie features excellent and silly special effects, costumes that will be really fun for cos-players and trick-or-treaters, and female scientists who kick supernatural butt. 

Who should see it: everyone. 

I think I found my career path at last. I am going to be a ghostbuster.

— Hamsteria d'Relish (@hamsterRelish) July 22, 2016

What I thought about on the way home: my middle child loved Mr. Bean, and years ago we took the kids to see the Mr. Bean movie (1997). There is a scene in that movie (as in this one) about giving someone "the finger," and my middle child, then no more than 5 years old, had a lot of questions about "the finger." I explained that it means, "I hate you. So punch me in the face." 

I won't look at some of the other reviews of this "Ghostbusters" movie, since so many reviews have been written by woman-hating man-babies who can't envision a world where women are funny, important, powerful, and central to a story. Instead, I'd like to offer them "the finger."

I saw "The Big Sleep"

What I saw: “The Big Sleep,” at home, on our big screen

What I wore: jeans and a cardigan

What I did beforehand: ate pizza that was delivered

The original of this image is in the public domain

Who went with me: the Bacon Provider, my youngest child, both dogs and the cat, Schwartz (he is a big fan of film noir)

How I got tickets: the Bacon Provider streamed it using Vudu on his laptop and airplaying it to our projector; this movie is not available for streaming on Netflix or Hulu, can be rented from Amazon streaming but the website required a Microsoft Silverlight Plug-in and we weren’t sure Airplay would work.

Why I saw this show: my youngest child and I just finished the audiobook, which we enjoyed for its crackling dialog, steady action, and crafty (if not consistently tidy) plotting.

Where I sat: on the couch with Captain and Schwartz and my youngest

Things that were sad: the amount of time it took to figure out how to watch the movie

Things that were funny: seeing for ourselves how well Bogart portrayed Raymond Chandler’s detective Philip Marlowe, watching some of our favorite lines uttered on screen

Things that were not funny: Because this movie was made after Bogart and Bacall had thrilled audiences in “To Have and To Have Not,” Lauren Bacall’s character was expanded and added to a number of extra scenes, to nonsensical effect.

What it is: a classic movie

Who should see it: fans of Raymond Chandler, or Humphrey Bogart, or Lauren Bacall, or mysteries with unexplained loose ends, or old movies

What I saw on the way home: When we turned on the lights, I discovered a huge, engorged tick on Captain’s belly. It is mid-February, and while it may be 2° F outside, it hasn’t stopped the ticks.

Budapest #3: The Synagogue, The Elgin Marbles, and the China Syndrome

Let me tell you straight off, we did not make it into the synagogue in Budapest. Yes, it was on the short list of things we were told we had to do. Yes, we went and found it twice. But on the day we found it and had actually set aside the morning to see the inside of it, we arrived after several hundred other people had the idea to see the inside of it, and got there before us, and stood, in a great scrum, with their shit together a bit more ours.

Crowd outside the synagogue, Budapest

When I was in high school a friend and I went to London to visit another friend whose family had moved there. We dutifully tried to do every touristy thing imaginable, as if filling out a Bingo card, including two whole days at the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at spoons and armor, and getting on the wrong train to what ended up being my favorite museum in London (the Imperial War Museum) and being heckled by a crusty old guy who cackled about us being from Shepherd’s Bush. But try as we might we never made it to see the Elgin Marbles, and it became the thing we giggled about the most. Nothing’s more hilarious to teenaged girls than an inside joke.

I also never saw The China Syndrome. The China Syndrome came out in 1979, starring Jane Fonda, who I thought was generally ok in movies, and Jack Lemmon, who I thought was pretty awesome, and I think it was playing at the Esquire Theater, or maybe the Shady Oak, and though I made a big show of saying that I was going to see it, reasoning that it was a movie I might have actually wanted to see, checking the movie times and everything, I used the excuse to go get stoned with someone. I no longer remember who it was. Back then, I did not make up weird specific lies about what I was up to, usually, because I had very good grades and reasonably nice friends and my mother’s attitude was we could do what we wanted as long as we stayed out of trouble, which really meant, fundamentally, that we didn’t get caught. Probably, there was a family thing that I was avoiding going to by inventing the seeing of a movie I never intended to see.

The time I didn’t see The China Syndrome was not the only time I smoked pot in high school, but I have no memory of how I obtained it on any occasion. It seems unlikely I would have known who to get it from. Also, no way would I have spent money on it when there were sweaters to buy. Anyway, The China Syndrome came to stand for lying to your parents so you could go do dumb stuff.

To this day I have not seen The China Syndrome. I did not even know what it was about until I looked it up.

When we meant to go to the big synagogue in Budapest, but didn't, it was not an Elgin Marbles thing (just not getting around to it), or a China Syndrome thing (saying we would when we never intended to). We had a morning plan and it was seeing the synagogue. We also had an afternoon plan, so the collapse of the morning plan meant immediate implementation of the afternoon plan.

On the tram

Our consolation for missing the synagogue was taking the tram up to the yellow bridge, known as Margit Híd. The people who put streetcars in cities back in the day knew what they were doing; the people of Budapest who have fought to keep their clunky old electric trams know what they are doing.  The afternoon plan, now the primary plan was to walk back over to the Buda side of Budapest to find the Tomb of Gül Baba, an Ottoman dervish and Islamic poet who died in 1541. It is said to be the northernmost Muslim holy place and the oldest historic landmark in all of Budapest. Hungary has been overrun many times in its history, and the Turks had their turn under Suleiman I back in the 1500s.

It is marked not by a fading sign in Hungarian but with one of those man-sized bronze statues they have of all the great men of Hungary, all over the city. There he is: Gül Baba standing at the entrance, on a smallish plinth, and there, just around the bend, the backdrop: a closed and padlocked gate, flanked with an old Budweiser sign and a smaller one for the now-closed café. 

I heard the crow before I saw him

This quiet hilltop was guarded by a single crow, solemnly serving in his uniform of a dark gray jacket and black, black wings, and he cawed and bobbed in genuinely surprise at our arrival.

The tomb is an octagonal little stone building with one door and one window and a domed roof. We were alone there, walking slowly over broken pavement and weeds. Two dogs were having at it, loudly, in a hidden yard, below, their barks piercing the quiet sunshine. A car struggling to get up the narrow, rutted street, bottomed out, scraping violently on the cobblestones. Having been alerted to its presence, we took this to be the right way back down the hill.