Z/Web

This is an odd film. It feels like it should be intellectual. There’s great drama and performances, some cool visceral action, and a fascinating romance. Yet that intellectualness feels forced like it was added on top of a mediocre script. Many times I was baffled as to what, exactly, what happening. The dialog would be ordinary and yet the characters were weighing every word as though it was profound. Maybe I am just dense, but I couldn’t see it. I don’t mind some ambiguity — it’s often awesome — but this had too much, too often.

There were a few times it worked. My favorite was the scene where the husband comes home from prison and finds his wife hanging out with our driver hero. Their chat is full of innuendo and mystery. The whole scene feels on edge. You’re half expecting one of them to do something violent at any moment. You don’t know if the ex-con knows something, suspects something, or if the whole thing is just ordinary innocent conversation. It’s terrific.

But in other scenes, like with the mobsters who are pulling all the strings, I just felt left out. Maybe it’s because I don’t understand mobster stuff (I’ve yet to see The Godfather, for instance), but I found following who was who and what was what difficult.

In the end, especially with the strange ending (which I didn’t like), the movie felt a touch flat to me. The odd thing is I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I was fascinated throughout, never bored, and there were a ton of absolutely terrific moments. But there were also moments that seemed great while they were happening but afterwards I felt let down, realizing that nothing profound had actually happened. Unusual.

There were also a couple of strange bits of plot that made no sense. For instance, there’s a key scene where our hero dons a head mask. He’s a stunt driver and borrows it from a movie set. I thought that was brilliant. He was obviously going to use it to hide his identity in a vital manner that would fool all the bad guys. But then… he does virtually nothing with it! I saw zero need for it. There was no point.

Ultimately, that’s the way the film felt for me. It’s an interesting ride, but we don’t go anywhere. Still a film worth seeing — the direction is fantastic and the acting excellent (Carey Mulligan as the love interest is breathtaking) — but it’s too much like real life in that there’s no clear resolution or understanding of why anything happened. And isn’t that what art is supposed to show us?

Topic: [/movie]

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I haven’t yet mentioned much about my garden. I’m not sure why: it’s been a major new part of my life this summer. I started it last spring. Keep in mind I know zero about gardening, have never liked gardening, and in fact had somewhat of a negative view of it. I think that’s both because I have a black thumb (every plant I’ve ever had has died) and because my grandfather, who was an avid gardener, made it seem like a huge amount of work (he’d spend so many hours working in the garden it depressed me).

But last spring I visited an uncle of mine in Tennessee. He has a small farm and a huge garden he was just in the process of planting when I was there. Since I now eat a ton of vegetables under my new diet, I suddenly became interested in the process. He made it look easy and when I got home, I started investigating the process.

It turns out it’s not quite so easy, but I had my yard work guy do most of the grunt work (tilling and planting). I spent some money, too, buying soil and plants, and hoping it all wasn’t a waste. The big question was sunlight. Unless I put the garden in my front yard, the only place was the back, which is shaded between the house and tall trees behind. But we figured it would get five or six hours of light which we hoped was enough. The thought was that in the worse case, I might have to adjust what I grow next year, but it couldn’t hurt to try a variety of plants this year.

I’m not sure it’s enough light: one of the first problems I ran into was rolly-polly bugs eating my zucchini plants. It turns out they love cool shady spots and the tender leaves of young squash plants (once the plants are more mature, they leave them alone). I had to rebuy and replant a few of those zucchini, but despite everyone warning me that I’d have an overabundance of squash with eight plants, so far I’ve only harvested one medium zucchini and a small yellow squash. There are more out there now, but they aren’t growing much. I think something’s not right: not enough sunlight, not enough water, or too much water. Who knows? Apparently gardening is all trial and error and voodoo and superstition.

(I did learn that one of my mistakes was not cutting off the small dead squashes. You need to pick the zucchini to encourage the plant to make more. I left it too long thinking it would get bigger.)

My lettuces were awesome for a while, but they were done by mid-summer. I didn’t realize that’s how they worked. I thought I’d keep having lettuce all summer, but they don’t last long. I guess you’re supposed to keep planting new ones and plant them at different times so fresh ones are coming up right as the old ones die out. The broccoli is similar. It grew up huge and I got several harvests and then it was gone. (But well worth it: very delicious.)

I thought my melons were completely dead, but we finally got some hot weather and recently I’ve seen a few small melons forming (one’s a little smaller than an ostrich egg, the others are the size of chicken eggs). I’m worried it’s too late in the season but if I could get at least a melon or two before winter that would be awesome.

Here’s a picture of what I think is a butternut squash and a baby watermelon:

Aren’t they cute? And yes, they are actually on the sidewalk. It’s the weirdest thing: the squash and melon trails are growing out all over the sidewalk behind my house. It’s like they’re trying to get away from the dirt of the garden! My theory is that maybe the cement walk holds heat from the sun and that attracts them.

My baby carrots and onions did fine, and the celery is looking good. I had one green pepper plant that was doing awesome with two fruits growing while the others were tiny and not doing anything. I finally decided they weren’t getting enough sun, so I relocated them to a different part of the garden. Within a couple of weeks they had fruits and now there are a bunch growing. The original “great” plant had its biggest pepper go bad (it got all rotten) and today I just noticed its second one is having a similar problem (a large black hole in the bottom and it’s turning from green to yellow). The plant is still very tall (twice as big as the relocated ones) and there are two small peppers up top, so the plant seems okay. I’m not sure if bugs or something else happened to the peppers. I sure hope I get at least a few before winter!

But the biggest success so far has been my tomato plants. I love tomatoes and I eat a lot of them, so I put in eight plants. I figured half would die and I’d be lucky to get a handful of tomatoes. Instead, they all have been thriving! But it’s been hard all summer to see the yellow blossoms, then the tiny green tomatoes, and not have them ripen. But they are hitting their stride now!

Here’s a picture of tomatoes I got over the past few days and have ripening in my kitchen:

This is what I picked just this evening!

A few of these aren’t quite ripe yet, but I read that they actually ripen better inside. Out on the vine they are subject to insects, weather, and other issues, so the moment they start to redden, if you bring them inside they’ll ripen perfectly (and be just as delicious). A couple of those at the top that are the most green had small bad spots I didn’t want to grow any bigger so I thought I ripen them inside rather than let them get worse out in the weather.

I must also put in an aside here about how good these home-grown tomatoes are. I had people telling me I’d never buy store-bought again and I thought that was nuts, but now I know the truth. Store-bought look red and pretty, but they have zero flavor. They aren’t bad tasting; they just have no taste. They’re all water. These tomatoes I have grown are incredible. They are so juicy and flavorful they just burst in your mouth with deliciousness. I can cut up a small cherry tomato into quarters and each tiny quarter has more flavor than a whole store-bought tomato. Seriously. I used to use a whole large tomato on my salads just because I like the moisture and tomatoes are low-calorie. But I realize now it was also because the things had no flavor — I needed a lot of tomato on my salad just to taste it! Now I can use one of my small ones and it’s just unbelievable how good they are.

My other success has been my cucumber plants. I have two and I’d forgotten I even had them until they started producing fruit. The one in the above picture is my fifth one, I think. Just like the tomatoes, these cukes are scrumptious. My mom doesn’t even like cucumbers and she was eating several slices of mine! This one is huge! It’s my biggest yet. (The previous one I measured at 12” from tip to tip and this one’s even bigger.) It was getting so fat I decided to pick it as I’ve heard they taste better when they are skinnier (they get seedy if they get too big). I’ve still got that 12” one in the fridge (I had some of it on my salad for dinner tonight) so it’ll be a little while before I even get to this big one and find out how it tastes. I hope I didn’t leave it too long. I’ve been watching it but tonight it suddenly seemed twice as big overnight!

I haven’t mentioned my strawberries. When I bought my house it had two long rectangular planter boxes next to the garage. For years I’ve thought of doing something with them, but I wasn’t sure what. But after my interest in gardening this summer, I felt inspired. I figured up the boxes (they needed some support beams put in) and bought plastic trays, soil, and strawberry plants. It’s a nice system because the whole thing is waist-high, so tending the plants is much easier than on the ground. They seem to be flourishing and I have been getting strawberries, though not really enough to be significant. (My 20’ worth of plants produces a handful of berries every day or two.) But the berries are incredibly sweet, far sweeter than the berries I buy at the store. They are really good by themselves or on ice cream or frozen yogurt.

So that brings you current with where I am in my gardening adventures!

There’s hopefully at least another month before cold weather sets in here, so I still hope to get some more things from the garden. I’ve learned a lot and I’m already thinking about what I’ll do differently next year. (Chief on the list is cutting down a tree in my backyard that’s blocking the sun, and rethinking where I plant what in my garden. For instance, I won’t put the lettuce in the area of bright sunlight or hide the peppers behind the tall tomato plants.)

I’m certainly not planning on becoming a farmer or anything like that. But there is something amazingly satisfying about growing your own food. Not only is it healthier and more economical, but it’s far tastier. And you burn calories working in the garden!

Topic: [/gardening]

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