How I Read Myself Into Sleepless Nights

I have been reading scripts and writing script coverage for some extra money lately, which is fairly entertaining because I like to read.  However, as with all things, when you have to do something, it feels like a chore, so I like to “reward” myself for making it through a couple of scripts every day.  And for a reward for my reading, I usually use … reading.  “After I make it through this script coverage, I’ll let myself read a little of the book I just got from the library!”  I don’t know what that says about me, but I suspect that it hints that I might be a very dull person.

I’m on sort of a true crime kick with my “reward” books lately.  I finished Helter Skelter last week and it made me develop a bit of a literary crush on prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, who wrote this account of the Manson investigation and trial.  He’s so smart!  Helter Skelter is fascinating and horrifying, and has led me to some nights where I lay like a stick-straight board in my bed, convinced that I’m going to be creepy-crawled. I can only imagine what it must have felt like to live in Los Angeles in 1969 when these murders were occurring.  The idea gives me the chills.

 I then picked up Bugliosi’s book, Outrage: The Five Reasons Why OJ Simpson Got Away with Murder, and it’s an interesting account of the many, many mistakes that were made during that trial.  Here are a few that stood out to me:

• The trial should have taken place in Santa Monica because the murders occurred in Brentwood. This would have led to a “whiter” jury pool that undoubtedly would have not been as affected by the defense’s attempt to turn the case into a racial one (which also never should have happened).  The DA’s office never gave a viable reason why they chose downtown Los Angeles except that the media would be better accomodated.
• The prosecutors did not introduce a tape of OJ Simpson’s first round of questioning by the police into evidence – and in fact, tried to keep it out of evidence – even though he admitted that he bled all over his estate and he didn’t know how he got wounded.  He didn’t know how he got a huge, gaping flesh wound?!  This is also key because the defense later asserted that the blood evidence was planted by the police at OJ’s estate – but OJ had already admitted to bleeding everywhere!
• The defense argued that the DNA evidence presented by the prosecution, which proved that the blood at the estate and at the crime scene on Bundy was Simpson’s, was contaminated and thus must be thrown out.  However, any contamination of DNA evidence would make it more DIFFICULT to make a correct match, not create a false positive.  If the DNA evidence had been contaminated, it would have been harder to match it to Simpson’s.  But the defense basically said that DNA contamination CREATED the match. This is impossible.  As Bugliosi says, contamination and mishandling does not magically change one man’s blood into OJ Simpson’s.  The prosecution barely even tried to make the jury understand this.  Unbelievable!

The book contains many examples like these.  It’s infuriating to read about how a murderer was acquitted because of a completely bungled case against him.  At the end of the book, which was written in 1996, Bugliosi wonders if OJ Simpson will ever be accepted back into society and suspects that he might be, at least partially. Ironically, OJ is now in jail in Lovelock, Nevada for armed robbery.  I guess that if you are the type of person who would brutally stab your wife to death, then you are the type of person who may get caught doing something else illegal.  It’s ironic how these things work out.

10 Things About the Academy Awards

1. Jennifer Aniston seemed very nervous when she was presenting.  Conspiracy theory: I bet the producers had her present with Jack Black so they’d have an excuse to cut to Angelina and Brad while she was on stage. 

2. Sophia Loren has the glam bitchface down.  When she was talking about Meryl Streep during the Best Actress presentation, it actually sounded like she was being snide, even though of course she wasn’t and was saying very nice things.  It made me wish I had the presence to go through life as a glamourpuss so people would never really know if I was being nice or mean. 

3. Did anyone watch the Barbara Walters Special?  It was very odd.  The Jonas Brothers disturb me a little with their gigantic hair and their purity rings.  Also, Barbara forced Hugh Jackman to give her a lapdance.  And she was wearing a jacket made out of doilies.

4. Hugh Jackman is a great host.  He makes it feel very natural and effortless and he has a very old Hollywood class about him onstage.  I especially enjoyed his dance number about having not seen The Reader.  I thought the Baz Luhrman number was completely all over the place, which is no surprise since I usually find Baz Luhrman projects to be kind of all over the place.  It was like, wait, what? Hugh’s singing “Maria”?  And now Zac Efron and Lilly Kane are there?  And now “Singin’ in the Rain”?  And uuuuugh … Beyonce’s singing “At Last”!  OH SNAP ETTA JAMES! Can’t they just sing more than three words of one song? However, it looked like they were having fun with it.  When they cut to Penelope Cruz after the number ended, she looked confused.

5. On the other hand, I really enjoyed the Slumdog songs.  Jai ho!

6. Robert Pattinson looked like he was biting the insides of his cheeks to make sure he appeared as broody as possible on camera. 

7. I liked when Reese Witherspoon explained to ”those of us at home” what a director is.  Because really, in all of these years of Academy Award-watching, whenever they reached that Best Director award, I’d think to myself, “What IS a director anyway? I guess I’ll never know!”  So I’m really glad she cleared up that mystery. Gee, thanks, Reese! “He’s like the CEO, the head honcho!”  (Except he’s really not because he ultimately works for the producers.)    

8. I am surprised that the Academy included Cuba Gooding, Jr. in this affair, as I would think they’d like to treat his actually winning as a random drunken night of shame, like some guy you totally regret making out with in a club or something.  I mean, dude was in Radio.

9. Not a lot of (…or any) surprises with the winners, but I actually did enjoy most of the performances and films they honored, and it was fun to see the kids from Slumdog livin’ it up.  And of course, Kate. I thought Penelope Cruz was great in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, but I thought it was interesting that she thanked Pedro Almodovar in her acceptance speech more effusively than she thanked Woody Allen. (Did she even thank Woody Allen? I don’t remember.)  Either way, I am sure she is thankful that things did not work out with Tom Cruise and that she is winning acting awards rather than shuffling zombie-like around New York City with bad haircuts, pegged jeans,  and a fake daughter. 

10. Did anyone else get this dumb ABC commercial right after the show ended where they were like, “And now ABC takes you to the Oscar parties” but it was just an extended commercial for upcoming ABC shows with the actors standing around with martini glasses where they had to be in character as themselves which, incidentally, is a huge pet peeve of mine?  DO YOU THINK YOU CAN TRICK ME, ABC?

In Defense of He’s Just Not That Into You

He’s Just Not That Into You isn’t exactly a cinematic masterpiece or anything, but some of the reviews I’ve read have really rubbed me the wrong way. 

Rolling Stone:  “Are women desperate or just desperately stupid? This is the misogynist question at the core of He’s Just Not That Into You, a women-bashing tract disguised as a chick flick. I mean really, will women actually line up this weekend to see themselves treated as pawns in a man’s stupid game? I hope not.”

New York Times: “Mostly it does this by turning Gigi simultaneously into a joke (by playing her desperation for laughs) and a victim (by playing her desperation for tears). It’s a grotesque representation of female desire, one that the appealing Ms. Goodwin can’t save from caricature.”

So, here’s the thing: this is a movie about dating.  Sure, the women in the movie obsess over men (and the men in the movie obsess over women) and they don’t spend any time discussing the economic stimulus package or the Oscar nominations, but it’s a movie made up of dating vignettes.  That’s the whole point of it!

Here’s the other thing: sometimes women do neurotic things regarding men and dating. Ginnifer Goodwin’s character, Gigi, is embarassing to watch at times because she is an exaggerated portrayal of the over-analyzing and confusion regarding men and relationships in which many, many women have engaged.  I actually think most of the ladies in the audience were laughing with her (in an “Oh my God, can you believe I actually did something similar to that?” sort of way), rather than at her (in an “Oh my God, she’s so pathetic” sort of way).  The entire point of this character is that audiences will be able to see some aspects of themselves in her and laugh about it, not to be a “grotesque representation of female desire.”  Though there are legitimate criticisms that can be made about this movie, it is really just not  mean-spirited at all and I am actually surprised that anyone would read it that way.

I really resent the Rolling Stone reviewer (a guy, natch) basically declaring that this movie is so misogynistic that if women go see it and laugh at it, they are total idiots, a statement I find more offensive and misogynistic than anything in He’s Just Not That Into You.  The entire message of the movie is good and pro-woman:  basically, why make yourself crazy and neurotic by obsessing over some guy that YOU may not even like?  It’s not worth the time or energy. You will find someone who you like who also likes you.

There seems to be an undercurrent in some of this commentary that women who occasionally succumb to neurotic behavior over a man are extremely weak or bad feminists, which is just unfair.  It just makes them … human beings who are looking for a real connection with another person.  Isn’t it more liberating to poke fun at and laugh at this kind of behavior rather than be shamed by it?

This is Goop.

I missed out on this little gem until recently, but oh, I am so glad I discovered it. And you will be, too!

I am talking about Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle newsletter/website.  I actually receive a lot of email newsletters because I used to work on that sort of thing for work, but I never came across any email newsletter with as stupid a title as Goop.  Apparently, “Goop” is meant to be some sort of play on Gwyneth’s initials, but I really don’t think it has any pleasant or erudite connotations, which is funny because I would assume someone like Gwyneth would want her newsletter to sound classier than all other newsletters. Not like a word you use to describe badly applied mascara.

In her newsletter, Gwyneth gives all sorts of lifetips in different categories – cooking (MAKE), exercise (GO), fashion (GET), what to do in different cities (SEE), and of course, spirituality (BE).  My favorite things about Goop are the “From” lines and subject headings.  When I used to work in email marketing, we always took a lot of care to make out subject lines clickable, meaning some sort of punchy headline people would be compelled to open when they saw it in their inboxes.  Here is what Goop looked like in my inbox:

From:  Goop                                   This is Goop – SEE

Every subject line is, “This is Goop,” followed by her topic of the week.  “This is Goop – MAKE.”  Wow. Does she think that people are like, “Hmm … an email from Goop … I wonder what it is…”  And then proceed to look at the subject line and have it all clarified.  “Oh! ’This is Goop.’ Goop sent me Goop! Thank you Goop!” 

The advice offered in Goop is both very pretentious and utterly conventional.  The latest issue had instructions about how to make spaghetti and meatballs and garlic bread.  Garlic bread!  Gee, thanks Gwyn.   A previous issue included Gwyneth’s book recommendations where she highlights unknowns like Jane Eyre, and pontificates about “finding grace” and some other nonsense.

I perhaps scoffed the most at Gwyneth’s Los Angeles issue because I live here.  Sayeth Gwyneth:  “Los Angeles, where I was partially raised, will always hold a special place in my heart.  Not the LA of Hollywood, but the old school seventies beach vibe which lingers in the corner.” (What? Is she talking about drug dealers in Venice or something?)  She then proceeds to recommend such off-the-beaten-track establishments such as the Hotel Bel-Air, the Beverly Hills Hotel, La Scala, Nate’n'Al’s, and Chinois-on-Main. Here’s the thing – Angelenos already know about these places because they are very famous.  If Gwyneth is trying to appeal to people who may be visiting LA who are not rich, well … they might want to find places other than La Scala to eat dinner.

Gwyneth enlightened us all about the “little black dress” in one of her emails, which included pictures of herself modelling four dresses.  My LBD will look stylish paired with Christian Louboutin boots?  What easy and accessible fashion advice during a recession! 

I am sure Gwyneth means well, but this is a very silly vanity project.  I will give her this: her workout tips were good.  Her recipes might have potential (not the garlic bread ones).  But she really should quell this attempt to be Oprah.

Lessons Learned from Gossip Girl: Teaching

You are a 25-year-old teacher working your first semester at a prestigious private school on the Upper East Side. Here are some guidelines for things you should probably NOT do if you want to keep your job:

1. Complain about how entitled and annoying your students are to other students.

2. Let students call you by your first name.

3. Meet male students after hours at coffee shops and whatnot, flirting with them about how you have “no friends in the city.” Um, you have no friends because you are in your mid-twenties and flirt with teenagers. IT’S WEIRD.

4. After turning in a student to the headmistress for something totally legitimate, tell her best friend that you “hope that we can still be friends.” She’s seventeen and you’re her teacher! Make some friends your own age, lady!

5. After a potentially career-ruining rumor about your affair with a male student appears on the Internet, MEET WITH SAID STUDENT OFF-CAMPUS. AT NIGHT. AND SAY FLIRTATIOUS THINGS TO HIM LIKE “OH CALL ME IN FIVE YEARS.”

6. Sleep with teenagers.

Ms. Carr sucks.