In honor of this week’s Oscar nominations, I thought I would make a Top Ten (plus more).  I used to ravenously try to keep up with the year’s critical darlings, but I don’t have the time and I’d rather watch movies out of desire rather than obligation.  That said, YAY Melissa McCarthy!!!!  I’m also thrilled with the long overdue nod for Gary Oldman.  With Mr. Oldman in mind, I’d like to offer my

Top Ten Greatest Living Film Actors

These are actors who are able to totally transform themselves.  Some actors do what they do, and do it well, but these guys do basically everything. Note:  this is not my list of favorite actors, nor is it my list of Greatest of All Time. But I do believe that these are the greatest living film actors today.  Some are completely ignored by the Academy, others have rightly brought home an Oscar.  Rather than overload this post with video, I only include selections for my #1 and #2 choices (plus a select few).  However, I’ve included an “Essential Performance” that, for me, defines why I find these people to be so utterly brilliant, and whom I can learn from just by watching their work. Note: the “essential performance” is NOT necessarily their academy award winning film.

One final thing: I’ve never really understood why performance awards are set up along gender lines, so I said f*ck that and threw them all together.

10.  Kenneth Branagh.  Branagh gets it.  He’s a haughty classically trained Brit who can perform Shakespeare with the best of them.  He often does.  But his performance in Harry Potter tells us he’s also in on the joke.  That said, watching him do Shakespeare, nay…he nearly dances it, is a joy to behold.  Certainly, his Hamlet was a career topping acheivement.  I thought he was a little old for the role, myself, but still well done.  What really trips my Shakespearean trigger is his performance as Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing.  Very few comedies leave me laughing repeatedly like this film, and while all evidence is to the contrary, I am no film snob.  I love this movie very much BECAUSE it has a wonderful fart joke.  But Branaugh, alongside his then wife Emma Thompson, shines.  Yet there is something unsettling about Branaugh, and that undercurrent of darkness despite his shiny blonde hair, finds him cast as a high ranking member of the Gestapo more than once.  Branagh has a certain air of classic actor, but he is able to transcend that and ultimately comes off as not modern, but rather essential.

Academy Awards: 0
Essential Performance: Much Ado About Nothing

9.  Johnny Depp.  Remember that internet meme “Steal like an artist?” Depp does this.  He’ll tell you who inspired a certain performance.  But what he is becomes so much more than an imitation.  Depp gets tossed aside critically for relying on “weirdness” or for his longtime partnership with Tim Burton.  What is missed is his ability to take a risk and commit. His apparent need to hide behind these characters works for our benefit.  I believe very much that the idea of vulnerability in performance is abused and misused.  Using your life story isn’t vulnerable, working out personal issues onstage or onscreen isn’t vulnerable. Opening yourself up, being available and responding honestly to your fellow actors IS vulnerable.  Depp gets this.  Something he inherently understands is what he looks like on camera.  I don’t mean what he looks like esthetically.  He knows what angle will help him achieve a mood, an emotion, or even that characteristic weirdness.  Unlike a stage actor, Depp was built for film.  He knows that even the correctly timed milimeter of eye movement says something.  The small smile says something different than the big toothy one.  Depp is always working as hard as the camera.  And yet it looks effortless.

Academy Awards: 0
Essential Performance: Pirates of the Caribbean- The Curse of the Black Pearl OR Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

8.  Christopher Guest.  We all know his work in his own films, as Corky St. Clair, Nigel Tufnel, Alan Barrows and Harlan Pepper, but he’s also the Six-Fingered Man in The Princess Bride, a role where he nearly (and slyly) blends into the background.  That subtlety is exactly what gives you chills about his character.  He rightly let’s Chris Sarandon get the showy stuff.  It’s an unsung and wonderful performance.  It’s also an example of his ability to see his roles beyond the scope of himself.  Anne Bogart, one of my fave directors and theatrical thinkers, often asks “What is the most interesting/important thing happening right now and what can I do to add to it?”  Sometimes the answer is “Nothing…yet.”  And that seems to be where Christopher Guest works.  He creates characters who can stand alone with a film behind them.  There’s a reason we still occasionally catch Nigel Tufnel on a talk show, even though Spinal Tap was made in 1981.

Academy Awards: 0
Essential Performance – Waiting for Guffman

7. Frances McDormand. Occasionally, an Oscar goes to the right person.  Like most people, my first time noticing Frances McDormand was in Fargo.  Marge Gunderson is one of the greatest film characters ever created (another list I’d like to make). I love her performances in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Almost Famous, Raising Arizona, and Wonder Boys.  A lot of people talk about how “natural” or “believable” an actor is.  I don’t care.  Some of the most unnatural and bizzare performances are my favorites.  See Hank Azaria in The Birdcage.  What McDormand does is make the ridiculous honest.  When I watch her onscreen I think “THAT’S what I want to do when I grow up.”

Academy Awards: 1
Essential Performance: Fargo

6. Catherine O’Hara.  She’s brilliant, and it ain’t just her acting skills.  Thanks to her collaborations with Christopher Guest, she’s actually creating these roles from the ground up.  As a kid, she was of course, the Mom in Home Alone to me…but you know what?  She’s really good as the Mom in the Home Alone.  Her scene with John Candy is precious.  But it’s Christopher Guest’s films where she really got to show her stuff.  Each and every character is completely different and three dimensional.  She’s a slapstick as she is smart. She is also the hands down best stage drunk I’ve ever seen.

Academy Awards: 0
Essential Performance – Any Christopher Guest film in which she appears.

5. Gary Oldman.  I’ve posted about Oldman before.  He has been many things, and boring has never been one of them.  His intensity is often spoken about, but his tenderness is as profound.  I simply can’t think of anyone else who could play Sirius Black.  Or Sid Vicious.  Roles that may have been up for interpretation, once played by Oldman, are no longer anything but what he makes them.  His role in The Professional could have been easily botched by or more likely, rotely played by another actor.  It is, on the page, just a better-than-average action movie bad guy.  In Oldman’s hands, it’s evil incarnate.  Volatile, funny, and all the more terrifying because of it.  His Dracula is not a monster, but a wounded man.  A man corrupted by his own pain.

Academy Awards: 0 (Hopefully soon to change)
Essential Performance: Sid and Nancy OR The Professional

4. Ian McKellan. McKellan is a lesson for an actor to learn.  The lesson is this:  A strong sense of self is the key to survival in such a vicious business.  The man owns a tshirt that says, “I’m Gandalf AND Magneto, bitch.”  Oh, and also maybe the greatest King Lear.  His performance as James Whale in Gods and Monsters is smart and heartwrenching.  (As a side note, I think the Bride of Frankenstein is overshadowed by Frankenstein.  The Bride of Frankenstein is better, funnier, campier, and more self aware.  Check it out. Both pieces are James Whale, but The Bride has a sense of self it seems like he was almost afraid to let loose in the first film.) But back to Gandalf, he’s like a master class in acting in one character.  There are the most subtle and also the most huge theatrical moments and yet it all belongs, and never feels out of place in his portrayal of Gandalf.

Academy Awards: 0
Essential Performance: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy OR Gods and Monsters (Also google his King Lear…It’s phenomenal)

3.  Robert Downey, Jr. There are two categories of Robert Downey Jr films.  His entire career, and then Tropic Thunder.  Both are full to the brim with brilliance. In the first category we have Chaplin, Wonder Boys, Home for the Holidays, Iron Man…. and then there is Tropic Thunder.  One false move, and it could have been a disaster.  Certainly Stiller and the other creative minds behind the concept of Downey, Jr.’s character walked that line very effectively, but they needed someone to make it physical in form.  And they found the right guy for the job.  Robert Downey, Jr. has soulful eyes, but they absolutely radiate ego and mischeviousness in Tropic Thunder.  Certainly it’s well known that the guy has had some inner demons to fight, but it’s almost like Tropic Thunder gave him the venue he really needed.  People have misconstrued some of the charicatures in Tropic Thunder and read them as making fun of a particular race or a physical or mental disability.  What Tropic Thunder is really doing is ripping the ridiculousness of Hollywood and awards shows and the general self-congratulating that entertainment types like to do.  (I am not unaware I am an actor making a list of awesome actors, btw.)  Tropic Thunder succeeds because overwhelmingly, they trusted their audience to “get it” and we did.  Robert Downey, Jr is as comfortable in a drama as in a comedy, but one thing he always bring is a sense of fun and of the ridiculous.  He almost seems to step out of the screen and make us laugh at ourselves, including him.

Academy Awards: 0
Essential Performance: Tropic Thunder OR Chaplin

2. Emma Thompson.  She’s a phenomenon.  I’m sort of speechless about her talent and abilities.  She kind of sneaks into some movies and just tears into the role, no matter how small.  There is a moment in Love Actually when she finally realizes her husband is at the very least, contemplating an affair, and she’s just trying to get it together so her kids don’t see her lose it at Christmas.  We’ve all had this moment.  That “please stop crying” moment.  That in-your-bedroo0m-trying-to-get-your-shit-together moment.  I couldn’t find a good clip of it, but go to 1:26 of this video to at least see a hint. My favorite Emma Thompson performance is in Stranger Than Fiction.  Lest you think I only enjoy her when she’s being a bit bleak, check her out in the aforementioned Much Ado About Nothing throwing around some banter with her then husband Branagh

Academy Awards: 1
Essential Performance: Stranger Than Fiction

1.  Peter O’Toole.  I arrived late to the Peter O’Toole game.  Partially, that’s because I was born in 1981 and those missed years of film making couldn’t be helped.  Partially I was too busy watching his partners in crime like Richard Burton.  But better late than never.  He made a really bad movie in the 80′s that I adore called High Spirits.  Truly, it’s dreck.  But I love it, and not ironically.  And here’s the thing.  He knows it’s dreck, but he still performs as if it’s Shakespeare coming out of his mouth and better yet, he almost makes it sound like it is.  If Robert Downey Jr.’s performances are equivalent to a great backyard BBQ with your best friends and family, Peter O’Toole’s are the grandest most fun three day bender you’ve ever had.   I mean, of course, Beckett is great.  Lawrence of Arabia, a triumph.  Lion in Winter, astounding.  But I offer you my favorite O’Toole performance:  Man of La Mancha.  It’s flat out fantastic.  Unlike most movie musicals, La Mancha doesn’t give you much to look at (other than Sophia Loren, and I do, as wannabe bombshell, adore Sophia Loren).  The roads are dusty.  The costumes dirty.  The setting bleak.  It’s an actor’s musical.  That’s almost literally all there is.  O’Toole is perfection.  You want his Don Quixote to march his chivalrous way into your life and tell you to dream the Impossible Dream.  I daresay I wept in joy at this movie.  And it was all because of Peter O’Toole.  He is, in my mind, the greatest living actor.

Academy Awards: 1 (Honorary)
Essential Performance: Every single one.  He NEVER turns in a bad performance.  However, Lawrence of Arabia can’t be denied.

Runners Up:

Stephen Root – 0 Academy Awards.  He is the definition of a working actor.

Hank Azaria – 0 Academy Awards.  His vocal work alone speaks for itself.

Paul Gross – 0 Academy Awards.  This might be my favorite scene ever.  Watch him direct a bad actress on her performance as Ophelia:

Allison Janney – 0 Academy Awards. She pops up in weird places like Primary Colors, but she makes her mark.  Plus she’s from Ohio… She is big part of why I love Drop Dead Gorgeous so much. But truly where she gets to shine is on The West Wing.

Diane Weist – 2 Academy Awards.  Woody Allen gets a lot of shit sometimes, but his eye for Diane Weist is right on target.  I watch her performance in Bullets Over Broadway the night before I start rehearsal for a show.

Jeffery Wright – 0 Academy Awards. Basquiat.  Angels in America.  And then he plays Colin Powell.  An argument for the subtle.

Dustin Hoffman – 2 Academy Awards.  He should have won for Tootsie, but I won’t pick the fly shit out of the pepper.  Sure he was wound a little tight early in his career, but he relaxes as he ages, making his body of work always interesting to watch.

Hope Davis – 0 Academy Awards.  American Splendor.  About Schmidt.  And if you’re interested in the early careers of your acting heroes as I am, that’s her in Home Alone as the French airline associate.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman – 1 Academy Awards.  This guy has presence.  And a very unique one too.  Often the word “masculine” gets associated with Cary Grant types, but for me, Phillip Seymour Hoffman is the picture of a masculine presence on screen.  One of my favorite performances of his is actually in the movie Charlie Wilson’s War.  I could take or leave the flick, but this movie is actually the first time I really paid attention to him.

Angela Lansbury – 0 Academy Awards.  She can do anything.  She still fucking does.  I can’t handle it.  Oh, and she originated my absolute dream role: Mrs. Lovett.

Benicio Del Toro – 1 Academy Award.  I like weird with a purpose, and Benicio Del Toro is just that.  When you watch him, you are watching a story develop through someone’s eyes you don’t recognize and that is so very interesting.

David Morse – 0 Academy Awards.  I just know, I just know that George Washington must have sounded like that.

Cloris Leachman – 1 Academy Award.  She’s in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  She’s Frau Blucher in Young Frankenstein.  She’s still swingin’ and she doesn’t give a shit.  I love this woman.

Anyhoo, I know there’s no Streep or Dench on my list (no reflection on them.  I love them both.) Nor is there Anthony Hopkins or any other typical list toppers.  Tell where I’m wrong!  I love a good debate on a top ten list.  Still, I stand by this.  These are the folks whose brains I want to pick.  Who’s talent I want to learn from, and whose work I ALWAYS want to watch.

"Nobody gets out of the Bermuda Triangle, not even for a vacation. Everyone knows that. "

I was a morbid child.  Not morose, mind you.  Morbid.  I actually had a really positive attitude, and a great sense of humor.  Easy to take on road trips.  And not a picky eater.  I didn’t even realize I was a morbid child until a friend and I started listing our favorite childhood books.

“Wow,” said my friend.  “You were morbid!”

“What??”  I said, taken completely aback.  “No no.  You mean, curious and worldy.”

“Mmm.  I think I mean morbid.”

And this is the friend that used to include, “and please keep aliens out of my thoughts,” in her bedtime prayer.

Okay fine.  I had a passion for disease and disaster.  In fact, up until the very very end of high school, I was seriously headed in a medical school direction.  I have worked on human cadavers twice.  For fun.  It was awesome.

Unfortunately, Organic Chem scared me away from medical school.  I just don’t have an organic chem kind of brain.  And that’s too bad, because if you ever find you are dying of black pox, I will be the first person to hop into a Tyvek suit to visit you.  Your skin comes off in blackened sheets!  I have to see that.  Oh, and also…get well soon…  In retrospect, it’s probably better this way.  I don’t think doctors are supposed to shout “WHOA! EWWW!  CAN I POP IT?!” when they see a patient.  Will might say wives aren’t supposed to say that husbands either, but he knew what he was getting into.

I may have looked like this as a child:

First show tshirt. Tiger's hat. And bespoke edible accessory. Sure I'm not wearing pants, but I was 6. Give me a break.

But lurking underneath that overly giddy exterior was a Wednesday Addams of mass proportion. I used to read books on the Black Plague, smallpox, yellow fever, earthquakes, ghost ships, the Chicago Fire, the Johnstown Flood, true crime, tornadoes, tsunamis… There is nothing that kid above wants to tell you more than her Grandpa got his thumb chopped off in World War II.  “You can still see the bone poking out,” I would say.  “That’s not a bone.  That’s just a weird nail,” my Mom would say. “I don’t believe you,” I would say.  I think my German heritage was most apparent when I was playing doctor.  Rarely did my treatment plan NOT involve amputation.  If my Mom was watching Gone With the Wind, I would always make sure to stop by the living room to watch this scene:

One rainy day, during an indoor recess, I drew a picture of Marie Antoinette and gave it the caption, “The French Revolution was famous for all the beheadings.”  I got extra credit.  When my parents found out about the drawing at parent teacher conferences, I assume it went something like this:

Susan Firkins, Wednesday’s Teacher: Well, Wednesday brought in this picture: Calpurnia Addams.
Morticia: Wednesday’s great-aunt Calpurnia. She was burned as a witch in 1706. They said she danced naked in the town square and enslaved the minister.
Susan Firkins, Wednesday’s Teacher: Really?
Morticia: Oh, yes. But don’t worry. We’ve told Wednesday college first.

-The Addams Family (1991)

The apple doesn’t fall far from either tree, you should know.   One time I brought a book home about tsunamis, and my Mom said, “What is that?  A tsunami book?  Ugh.  You and your father…”  Turns out my Dad had gone through an infamous “tsunami phase” before I was born.  If Lake Erie had ever decided to up and take out Northwestern, Ohio, I know two people who would have been prepared.  SIDEBAR:  There IS such a thing as a Great Lake tidal wave.  It is called a “seiche” and one hit Chicago in 1954.

The difference between me and Wednesday Addams is that I was not malicious.  Just curious.  Morbidly curious.  And yet I was a huge wiener.  Sometimes my love of disease and disaster got so heightened it turned downright phobic. I was afraid of absolutely everything.  I knew too much!

For example, my Mom would say, “Hey, there’s a tornado watch for Fulton County.”  And I would say something along the lines of, “WHAT IS THE DEWPOINT!!??!  FOR THE LOVE OF GOD IS IT ABOVE 65?!?!”  You see, a tornado can only occur if the dewpoint is above 65.  If it’s above 70, don’t straighten your hair that day.  Major frizz factor.  FYI.  I watched the barometric pressure like an old fisherman by the sea.  Even though I was a gangly 10 year old watching the Weather Channel.   I spent fifth through seventh grade being petrified of tornadoes.  BUT before I was terrified, I was in love.  I LOVED storms.  Tornadoes thrilled me.  I longed to experience a hurricane.  I pined for a typhoon. There is nothing I could tell my childhood self that would impress her more than “In 2011, you will witness thundersnow.” One time,  we had a huge storm (DEAR GOD, MOM WHAT IS THE DEWPOINT?!) and my cousins were over.  The lights went out, and my Mom lit a whole bunch of candles.  When the lights came back on, the four of us went charging through the house on a mission to blow out as many candles in as little time as possible.  The final candle was a fat white pillar and I was in the lead.  She must have lit it first because the pool of wax was deep.  I shouted “I GOT IT!” and proceeded to blow as hard as my little asthmatic lungs could go.  I blew so hard that I splashed that deep pool of hot wax onto my face which immediately hardened into misshapen mask.  I shrieked.   In my kid head, there was no way I wasn’t gushing mass quantities of blood.  I mean, pain = blood, right?  A hush fell over my cousins.  They stared at my temporary facial deformity.  My Mom came running in and I said the most famous line of my childhood, “I’m alright.   (dramatic pause) I’m just scared.”  I have lived that theme ever since.  I am in a constant state of “alright” and “scared.”

Amputations and weather-related disasters weren’t my only cups of kool-aid.  Infectious diseases so thrilled me that in college I did a completely voluntary concentration in microbiology.  One of the first roles I played as a professional actor was named “Antiobiotica.”  As a kid, I had two books I particularly loved.  The first was the story of how they discovered certain diseases:  Lyme Disease, Legionaires.  There was also the story of an outbreak of some sort of mystery affliction.  Once, Will and I were watching House and I was snarkily pointing out all the inaccuracies.  Someone had come down with a mystery disease.  The House team thought it was botulism, but then, I shouted at the tv, “OH for Christ sake, the kid’s Mom bought some jeans off the back of a truck that was tainted with chemicals.  I got that book at the goddamn Scholastic book fair in 1989.”  Will looked at me like I was nuts.  I was also right.  Yes friends, your suspicions are correct:  Fox uses CHILDREN’S BOOKS for their plot lines.  Still, true story.  Because of that book I view every hotel air conditioning unit as a potential deadly weapon (Legionaire’s disease).  You should too.  Or not.  I’m worrying about it enough for the both of us.

The Loch Ness Monster

The other book was in the vein of Strange but True!  Fireballs, Ghost Ships, Alien Abductions, Nessie, Bigfoot, chupacabras, The Bermuda Triangle and my personal favorite, Spontaneous Human Combustion.  I would gravely relate these stories to my parents saying that anyone of us at anytime could spontaneously burst into flames.   Then my Dad would say, “Was the man in the story a smoker, by any chance?  Was he drinking grain alcohol?”  I would say something about how I hardly thought his personal habits were of anyone’s business.  My Mom, on the other hand, was more skeptical of the alien abductions. I would say, “MOM.  EYE WITNESS TESTIMONY.  These guys SAW someone being abducted by a REAL alien.”  Sure the story would start out like, “One evening in Bumbledoofus, Texas, a group of gentlemen merrily left their local pub…”  My Mom would say, “It’s a children’s book.  They can’t say a bunch of dumbasses drunkenly stumbled out of a bar.”  Parents just don’t understand.

My Mom was an LPN for years, and I used to spend HOURS pouring through her nursing textbooks.  My particular favorites were the full color gunshot wound chapters.  There were also some pretty gross (i.e. awesome) pictures of black widow and brown recluse spider bites.  I had REAL hypodermic needles for my doctor kit.  It was awesome.  Every once in awhile I would get told, “Remember, do not inject your cousins.”  And I never did.  I truly think I deserve some sort of commendation for that. My cousin Jackie might tell you I threatened her with injection, but I never actually did it.

I got a microscope one year (actually…multiple years) for Christmas.  After I had become bored with looking at hair and boogers, I asked my Mom what else I could look at?  She said, “give me a slide, and hang on a second.”  She dug around in her sewing basket for something and then walked up to my Dad and said, “Let me see your finger.”  Being a trusting man, he did.  She then jammed a pin in his fingertip.  He yelped in pain.  “Hand me the slide,” she said and dripped my poor Dad’s blood onto it.  “Now, gently put the cover on.  There you go!”  I merrily trotted off to look at the blood cells.  Then my Mom told my Dad, who was now icing his throbbing finger, that he needed to chill out because it couldn’t hurt that bad.  I actually suspect it probably did.  She was not gentle.  So let it be said Tim Kohart literally bled for his daughter’s education.    And I thank him.  He has really cool looking red blood cells.  Very hearty.

At this point you might be slightly horrified at what I’m telling you.  A penchant for amputations.  A supply of actual hypodermic needles.  (I used to ask for my empty allergy serum bottles from the nurse in the injection lab.) Almost all my dolls had stitches.  When my cousin chewed a foot off of one of my Barbie’s, I chopped off all her hair and called her Cancer Barbie.  True story.  Who else was Dr. Barbie going to work on?  Even Molly, my American Girl doll had had several delicate procedures.  I used to use mechanical pencils to draw scars on them.  Anytime I was playing with my cousins I insisted on being Sleeping Beauty.  Not because she was the pretty princess, rather I was more interested in the bloody spinning wheel and the coma.  Before my tonsillectomy, I told the surgeon I wanted to keep my tonsils.  When we left the hospital, my parents conveniently “forgot” them in the lab.  YEAH right.  The throat pain wasn’t the only reason I was disgruntled on the ride home. Still the fact that I had lovingly besmirched an $80 doll, and wanted amputated body parts (I forgot to mention the adenoids) as a souvenier is a testament to how non fussy my parents were.  The fact that I have turned out NOT to be a serial Killer is a testament to all three of us.

For some of us, the fragility and destructive force of nature is an unending source of fascination.  Far more fascinating than anything science fiction or fantasy.  I will never cease to be amazed by the fact that we are sitting on top of a gigantic ball of molten iron, hurtling through space at thousands of miles per hour.  As a kid, I knew where all the active and inactive fault lines were.  I chose to visit the world’s largest geothermal park (and subsequently largest active , yet sleeping, supervolcano on the face of the earth) for my honeymoon.

Still, while I may not be the world’s biggest Star Trek fan, the paranormal has always piqued my interest. I read “true” hauntings, stories about poltergeists, ghost ships. Pyschic phenomena.  ESP.  The Unexplained.  I can tell you that the best Saturday mornings involved Looney Tunes, a plate of nachos, followed by Unsolved Mysteries.  My Dad and I even made the pilgrimage to Resurrection Cemetary on the south side of Chicago following an episode of Unsolved Mysteries about Resurrection Mary, Chicagoland’s most famous ghost.

The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall

Sometimes, even now, when I’m home alone I look up pictures of alleged ghosts.  I then scare myself so much this happens:

Will: (Walking through the door) Why is it so dark in here?
Me: JESUS CHRIST YOU SCARED THE SHIT OUT OF ME
Will:  What are you doing?
Me:  Looking up ghost pictures.  By the way, I’m too scared to go in the basement.  Could you get the laundry out of the dryer?
Will:  I really wish you’d stop doing that.
Me:  I had the distinct sensation something was chasing me.
Will:  You were IN the basement, and you didn’t get the laundry??
Me: Time was of the essence.

I was fascinated by instruments of torture, the Inquisition, hangings, executions.  Gangland.  Pirates.  At sea disasters, for this Ohio kid, bordered on the exotic.  The Titanic was a particular favorite, and while I remembering enjoying the movie, I thought the love story was just distracting.  Hello!?  Can we talk about how the famously not so water tight water tight compartments worked?  You see, the bottom of the Titanic was filled with compartments not unlike (and not unironically like) an ice cube tray.  If you fill an ice cube tray on a slight angle, it will fill compartment by compartment.  The Titanic could have three compartments full, no prob.  Unfortunately that iceberg filled up four almost immediately. I still think of the Titanic when I fill up ice cube trays.  That said, living in the Great Lakes doesn’t mean you are far from seafaring disaster and general ewiness.  Do you know about the Kamloops shipwreck in Lake Superior?  Lake Superior is home to many a well-preserved shipwreck.  The consistently cold temperatures preserve them and you can even take glass bottomed boat tours to look at them (Don’t worry, already on my bucket list.)  But the Kamloops has a special surprise.  The Kamloops is so deep in the cold waters of Lake Superior, that the body of one of the crew, is still perfectly preserved in the engine room of the Kamloops, even though it sank in the ’20′s.  The cold water has slowly turned him into a soap-like substance.  He still wears his uniform.  They call him Whitey.

I was into Jonestown, Waco, “satanic” cults, stories of weird religions, esoterica, the mafia.  The women in Africa that put those rings around their neck, the lady with the fingernails so long they curled like spiral staircases.  Still, the Guinness Book of World records was sort of “light” reading to me.   After awhile, I tired of reading about the most people to fit into a phone booth, and wanted to read more about Black pox, the sub-genre of smallpox that basically turns you into a charred ball of goo.  Unlike Ebola that turns you into a bloody goo bomb. I loved sharks, moray eels, angler fish.  I went through a python phase.  Dinosaurs.  Huge predators.  I was also interested in places like the Mariana Trench.  Deep Space.  The unexplored.  This is mainly because of the potential horrifying creatures they do or could contain.  Big fan of deep sea creatures, in general.  But you have to understand that when I say I was a “fan” what I mean is the induced in me a delighted state of terror.  I don’t know if I stepped more than a toe in a lake during my lamprey and water snake phase.  During one particularly gangly summer of mine, we went to visit my Aunt Cathy and Uncle Rick in Raleigh, NC.  We went to Raleigh’s museum of natural history where I got to view (and also buy a tshirt of) George their infamous python.  I remember about a year later my Mom said “I heard George the python died.”  I nodded gravely.  I remember a silent moment of respect.  That was one big man-eatin’ snake.  I wore that tshirt until it was paper thin and so small that the shoulder seams were at my neck.

Angler Fish

About a year ago, I was an extra in the movie Contagion.  Trust me when I tell you that I don’t think anyone was more pumped to be a part of a story about a horrendous infectious disease.  When I signed up to be an extra in the movie , they said “Anyone who is clausterphobic or has an issue wearing the biohazard suits, please indicate that on the form.”  There was not a place to indicate, “Please please I really want to wear the suit.”

The fact that a little and fragile RNA structure can wipe out a population blows my mind.  Yellow fever.  Malaria.  Tropical viruses, in general, big fan.  Also those diseases that plagued the tenements of New York at the turn of the century: Cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis.  Sometimes, for nursing jobs, my Mom would have to get TB tested.  I would make her tell me exactly how the test was performed and then woe betide the Cabbage Patch doll who got in my way that day.  I had several different dolls hooked up to saline drips.  Standard diagnosis was usually pneumonia, but for a kid with pretty intense asthma, that was no casual condition.  My senior year I became really ill, and although it was miserable, there was a small part of me that rejoiced when I was diagnosed with actual  Scarlet Fever.  I mean, don’t get me wrong.  It was horrible.  But…I’d read about it. It was on The Oregon Trail.   It felt like a morbid kid badge of honor.

My favorite picture book was about a kid who broke her arm on the monkey bars and all the wonderful casting and hospital procedures thereafter.  I longed to break a major bone.  Femur, preferably.  And yet, I broke nothing more than a pinky toe in my entire childhood.  Not even a cavity until I was 15.  My friend Tanya had a pair of crutches in the loft of her barn, leftover from some Depression era injury most likely.  I borrowed them for fun.

I wasn’t a particularly healthy kid, aside from my skeletal system.  I had bad asthma, bad allergies, and was sick a lot.  My Mom has on several occasions told me that “If this were the pioneer era, you wouldn’t have pulled through.”  It’s true.  I wasn’t Mary from The Secret Garden.  I was Collin.  Tortured moans and rickety old enormous house included.

When I got a little older, I fell madly in love with books by Lurlene McDaniel.  Oh Lurlene.  In those books, a gorgeous 13-17 year old girl would be dying of something awful.  Not plague or anything (trust me, I was slightly disappointed) but still horrible and fatal.  Some titles include: Sometimes Love Isn’t Enough, Last Dance, Til Death Do Us Part or the less subtle Sixteen and Dying, or Why Did She Have to Die.   She even had a series called the One Last Wish Series.   The covers looked like a Kotex ad.  I couldn’t read them fast enough.  Stacy was my favorite Babysitter of the Babysitter’s Club for the diabetes and injections alone.  You can imagine how I felt about Shelby from Steel Magnolias.  Because of Barbra Hershey in Beaches, I wrote my seventh grade Science Fair paper on the three types of Cardiomyopathy (restrictive, dilated, and hypertrophic). Sixth grade was Lyme Disease.  Eighth was Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis.  Had I known about Marburg at the time…I would have creeped out a lot of teachers and students alike.

Lurlene McDaniel

Even as a high schooler, my morbid streak was still apparent.  When at theatre camp (shut up) the first thing I would grab in makeup class was the nose and scar wax.  When I got home, I would test out my new fake wounding skills on my sisters.  They were bruised, battered, scratched, scarred, malformed.  It was wonderful.  My high school best friend and I used to go to parties and say,  “Shit I bit my tongue” and then chomp down on a fake blood capsule and scare the hell out of everybody.  Mmph.  It was great.

I was into vampires, sure.  But not this romantic Twilight crap.  NO.  I was into Vlad Dracul himself.  Vlad the Impaler.  Hell, I married a man who’s family is from TRANSYLVANIA.  For real.  Elizabeth of Bathory.  Caligula.

I had a lot of contact with hospitals and disasters as a kid.  Some mine.  Some not mine.  But certainly more than your average bear.  Plus, my extended family is large and old (it was old before I was born) and thus I went to a lot of funerals, too.  My best friend’s grandfather was an undertaker.  We hung out at the funeral home ALL the TIME.   Like I said, major Wednesday Addams potential.  One day, while I was having a heated discussion with a teacher about hunting (I was and am adamantly AGAINST it) I shouted (in reference to taxidermy), “What kind of person has a bunch of dead bodies layin’ around their house?!”  From the back of the room, my friend said, “My Grandpa.”  The conversation fizzled afterthat.

I was once reminiscing about my favorite childhood books.  “I loved when brother bear got vaccinated in the Berenstein Bears Go to the Doctor.”

“Wow.  You were a weird kid.” said my Mom.

“Your kid.” I reminded her.

I want to tell you that I have finally grown out of my odd reading habits.  Unfortunately, this Wednesday has blossomed into a full-blown Morticia.   I have recently discovered the extinct (or so they will tell you) Carcaradon Megalodon, a species of shark that makes Jaws look like a goldfish.  I have also recently become interested in Biolevel 4 Hot Agents, in particular, Ebola and Marburg viruses.  My Dad keeps me up to date on UFO sightings (he’s a believer too).   I’m reading a book on Area 51 right now.  So you may scoff, but we will ride out whatever comes to pass with my gigantic “Shelter in Place” Red Cross advised survival kit.

I look forward to being an Aunt.  Because how else am I going to use this knowledge??  I can either write stuff like this or tell a little kid something weird.  We will be happily singing Ring Around the Rosie when I will tell the kid “You know, this was originally sung to ward off the Plague.  Who wants ice cream?!”   I can’t wait to say something like, “Let Aunt Betsy tell you the story of the Molly Maguires.”  Or “Hasn’t your Mom told you about the Burning Times?! “  “I heard you didn’t feel good.  But this is nothing compared to Hanta Virus.”  “Did you know a box jellyfish is so toxic one sting can kill a guy?” “I wouldn’t swim in the lake either.  Don’t you know about lampreys?”  (There are standing orders in my family to shoot me on sight if either I or they discover a lamprey or hagfish has attached itself to my body.)

So if you happen to walk past  my house, and a copy of, say, Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone comes flying through the window and you hear someone exclaim  “My god!  You literally melt into a pool of blood!!!”  Remember, “I’m alright.  I’m just scared.”

I am a hustler.  Like the aptly named Ginger in Casino, I want my end.   So when the Christmas season takes a full 21 days off my beloved Autumn, I look out for me.  No it isn’t really Fall yet, but I snagged 16 days from Summer.  Post-Labor day is Betsy Autumn.  I am sipping a pumpkin spice latte as I write this.  My year goes something like this: Autumn is Post Labor Day through November 30.  Christmas is December 1 through December 29 or 30.  Winter is December 31 through April 1.  Spring is April 1 through May 31.  Summer is June 1 through Labor Day.  I used to try to adhere to the actual seasons.  But tell Chicago it’s spring on March 21.  When I lived in Oxford, Ohio perched so very close to the American South, it was quite easy to respect the seasons and their dates.  I now reside near a giant inland sea that makes it’s own weather decisions.   So I had to start interpreting them for myself.  If Chicago had it’s way the seasons would look something like this: October 10 through  June 25 = Winter.  June 26-30 = Spring.  July through September = Summer.  October 1-10 = Fall.  I cannot abide this.

Autumn is my favorite time of year.  We live in America.  There are five seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Christmas.  I begrudge none of them, save for their respective pollen counts and shoveling requirements.  Each have their own delights.  Still root vegetables, squashes, spices, sweaters, beautiful leaves, crispy air, cider and myriad other seasonal delights are more than a few of my favorite things.

I let fall take right over in every area of my life.  I change my wardrobe, my cooking, my reading, my movies, and even the way I approach my career.  In lieu of Back to School, since I no longer attend one, I sort of make my own.  I buckle down to the basics (new monologues, songs).  I try to pick up a class.  It gives me a back to school feeling without actually pursuing another degree.

Here are the ways in which I celebrate Fall:

Household:

• I switch the bathroom and kitchen handsoaps to a fall scent.  This year, I picked up the Bath and Body works selections.  Last year, I grabbed a pretty one from Marshalls called “Autumn.”
• I grab the seasonal shower gels from either Ulta, Bath and Body or something similar.
• I pick up fall scented candles and pull out the fall decorations.  Usually I make a trip to Jo-Anns for more puttering.
• I put away my summer aprons, and hang up my autumn ones.
• I do a big seasonal scrub to clean up the sand and pollen of summer and make way for the coziness of the season.
• I make lots of teas, chais, hot ciders, toddies, and autumn-themed cocktails.
• I start out the season with a big batch of Three Sisters Soup and usually close it with my Fall Stew and/or some cassoulet.
• I pick up the October/November issues of Cooking Light, and sometimes Martha Stewart.
• I change the table linens to an autumn theme.
• I put autumny throw pillows on the couch.

Fashion

Cue Nancy Sinatra.

• See previous posts.  I put away my summer wardrobe and pull out the fall/winter wardrobe.
• I search through the September issues of fashion magazines and make a big shopping list for trends and classics.
• I wean myself off of flipflops.  But first I do a deeper colored pedicure.
• I get a haircut, and often deepen the color a bit.

Crafts

• Autumn is knitting season.  I usually pick out a pattern to trudge through.
• I like to sew this time of year.  This year I have three aprons to make for various people.

My Fall Face. Not attractive. But so enthusiastic.

Activities

• Having grown up in the country, picking apples just sounds like (and is) work to me.  Instead, I go to the library and pick up a bunch of cozy and spooky books.
• I like to stock up my pantry for those cold rainy nights.
• I try to go to Ohio because the leaves are so beautiful.
• I stop by Starbucks for a pumpkin latte.
• Usually I make my yearly pilgrimage to IKEA.  They have great candles and it’s this time of year I like to do a lot of home improvement.
• While I am not a fan of picking produce for “fun,” I do like to grab a pumpkin or two.
• I like to visit places in the area that are rumored to be haunted.
• Pumpkin ales and spicy brews are so much fun this time of year.
• I like to visit my favorite speak easy, The Violet Hour, for their seasonal selections.
• Shopping for new clothes, and maybe even a school supply or two for old time’s sake.
• I have a list of movies I watch every year.
• Halloween planning!
• I love a fall get together with warm appetizers and autumnal cocktails, and mulled cider.

I’m not big on missing my junior high and high school years.  And I CERTAINLY don’t miss church youth group.  But with youth group, you had a guaranteed hay ride every year.  Living in the third biggest metropolis in the United States, hayrides are few and far between.  Sure I live in the Prairie State, but I wouldn’t even know where to start.  At home, you have to narrow down the damn options.  I also wish someone would put Disney’s Halloween Treat on DVD so I didn’t have to pathetically huddle in front of  You Tube to watch it in 10 minute segments.  I absolutely still dress up for Halloween should the right party come along, but I miss that in-school-and-in-costume feeling.  I don’t work in a workplace that encourages any sort of holiday festivity.  And I’ve never been a dress up for an office job kind of person.  You see, my night job requires I dress in costume.  It just feels creepy in an office.  No, that elementary school costume joy is long past.  Something else I miss with a vengeance is the annual field trip to The Garden Patch.  The Garden Patch was a gardening center on State Route 66 in between Defiance and Archbold, Ohio.  Every year, my class would hop the school busses for a field trip.  We would pick pumpkins, go on hay rides, have apple cider and donuts, walk amidst gorgeous chrysanthemums and play in the leaves.  It was grand.  There was also the Apple Butter Festival at Sauder’s Village in Archbold.  You could watch them press cider, make apple butter, pet the Clydesdale horses, ride the miniature train, buy candy at the General Store and generally have a grand old time.  Nobody is stopping me from going to the Festival, per se, it’s just that “kid” feeling is a bit lost.  Still, that “kid” did not enjoy trips to places like Jo-Anns and Homegoods.  Now, she delights in it.  I try not to dwell on the past.  Especially since I turned 21.  Heh.  No childhood joy can beat the ability to legally buy liquor.

Pretty sure this is how I look from September to November.

So off I go into Autumn sprinkling cinnamon-scented fairy dust in my wake!

Do you want to know how I make style predictions? Bad luck and frustration. Every year since I was about 15, I have wanted an item and then found it impossible to find. The next year, when my interest has somewhat faded, it would be everywhere. I went through a raglan sleeve baseball tee phase. The next year it was huge. I went through a shrunken hoodie phase. The next year? Huge. Flares. Bobs. Glitter. So, assuming the same happens to me this year as it did the past couple (oxford shoes. Rompers.), these are the items I’m into this year that I assume I won’t be able to find and thusly will probably be big next year:

1. Fringe. I think hippie fringey leather bags are going to be big.

2. Bibs. These will be impossible to find this year. Next year when I’m over it (although I’m never really over it), they will be available everywhere.

3. Saddle shoes. I think they’ve been wanting to come back for awhile now. This 60′s trend is going to 50′s before it goes away, and the oxford shoe is becoming par for the course. So I say look out for saddle shoes next year.

4. Western wear. It’s sort of made an appearance this year. I think it’s going to be bigger next year.

5. Hippie stuff. Flares are back this year. It’s only a matter of time. Stick straight hair will be back too.

6. 70′s wood platforms/Marcia Bradyish outfits/clunky shoes.

7. Orange.

8. Purple.

9. Cheerleader style – Varsity jackets are big this year. It’s a natural transition.

10. John Lennon style sunglasses. Huge sunglasses have been so big for so long, the designers will revolt.

Let’s see if I’m right!

Angela Chase

Flannel shirt. Check. Ripped jeans. Check. And you guys, I totally married Jordan Catalano.

Or Dillon (90210). I don’t know for sure, but I bet he’d prefer Catalano.

I officially can’t wait for Fall.

Yesterday I posted my inspiration for Fall fashion this year. Never has it been more near and dear to my heart.

The key to a, shall we say….nostalgic look is to have the spirit of the era and yet not so authentic as to the point of costume. Part of the many reasons I count myself a Johnny Depp fan is that he embodies the spirit of the kind of fashion I like. Weird. Slouchy but not sloppy. Sexy. With a sense of humor. And a product of the 90′s. In the best way. He also knows how to rock an arm party (I will detail below). That’s the thing about the 90′s. So much of it isn’t gender specific which is not usually my style. But certain elements rise to the top. The white tshirt. Jeans. A leather jacket. Boots. These are human items of clothing. They are inherently cool. They are also a blank slate. Built for customization, and it is the accessories that define the person and the outfit.

The Spirit of the Season

I would wear this.

Yesterday, I established that Alicia Silverstone/Cher Horowitz is very much a fashion icon for me. As is Johnny Depp, as I said above. Other 90′s style icons include Eddie Vedder. Fairuza Balk. Linda Evangelista. Meg Ryan. Karen Elson. Kate Moss. Lisa Loeb. My So Called Life. Drew Barrymore. 90210.

Love Angela’s layering. Hipster’s dare to dream of Rayanne’s style.

I adore this top. I’m not usually into crochet, but the fit is great.

When I was 11, I thought Jennie Garth was the prettiest girl in the world with the best hair I had ever seen. I continually strived for and failed to achieve this style. The jacket, however, would totally work this year.

While I love Seinfeld, I never got into Elaine’s style. It was a bit too Amish for me. Jennifer Aniston’s look on Friends was a bit too “done,” however I always loved her way with a white tshirt, and her coffee shop outfit, with the black mini and the black tights was adorable. This is another of my fave’s:

This is summery, but I dig it.

The hip hop United Colors of Bennetton thing was also a bit too bright for my palette. It’s funny. While the clothing of the nineties was relaxed, often the hair and makeup was intense, if not severe. Dark lips. Pale matte skin. Thin but dark brows. Slicked back hair. It was the era of grunge. But it was also the era of high glam and the supermodel. Cindy Crawford had the big hair, the perfect makeup.

But let me also say that my 2011 Fall wishlist is not entirely circa 1993. What I am focusing on is iconic, quality items, with some cozy autumn in between. I stopped short of Birkenstocks. 1. More of a summer shoe. 2. I don’t know if I’m THAT nostalgic. Still, having graduated in 1999, you would assume (and would be correct) that a lot of my present wardrobe is already apropos for this fashion season. I did pick up a flannel last year. It was like coming home. My Dad is probably glad I bought this one rather than raiding one from his closet. I have something else I plan on raiding from his closet this year. I’ll let you know when I’ve secured it. Anyway, I have several pairs of ripped jeans, and dammit I love them. Lots of white tshirts, although it’s time for a new one. Such a classic item, but you have to refresh your supply. A denim jacket. Sweater vest. Button downs. Plaid school girl skirt. I am heavily editing my 90′s style for this year. Anything post ’96 feels not right. No ringer tees. No huge jeans (I was never into that in the first place). No baby hair clippies. Oversized is not going to be the fit I’m looking for. Rather, I want to mix proportions.

Aside from the 90′s, the runways were packed with 60′s style. I have cute little kitten heel slingbacks that will do the trick. Lots of shift-ish dresses, a plaid jumper. My black turtleneck. I picked up a pair of perfect black mary janes I can’t wait to wear with fun tights. I also have a pair of Marcia Bradyish plum t-straps. More of an early 70′s look, but it applies. One thing I adore about 60′s style is the fantastic, and highly linear tailoring. So flattering. So chic and dressed up and so very easy! If you throw on a cute a-line shift, and slingbacks, you’re done and you look polished. Being such a child of the 90′s, I very often could use a 60′s spit shine.

Plaid is big this year, with both a 60′s and a 90′s feel. I’m Scottish (and other things) by way of ancestry AND I love the early 90′s. Trust me. I dig some plaid.

The way I come up with my wishlist is a combination of items that really reflect the look I am going for, and also items that I could really use in my wardrobe. My lifestyle calls for lots of different types of outfits. I’m an actor, so I audition a lot. I feel like personal style is a major part of showing who I am. I also work 8-5 in an office in a business dress environment. I see a lot of theatre. I go to Ohio a lot. These are all situations that dictate what I wear. My list is much more unisex than past years. I expect next year it will be lots of feathers and bows and sky high heels. But this year…. without further ado – Here are my edited wishlist/shopping list items for Fall 2011!*

1. Leggings – black full length leggings. Perhaps a heather gray or a navy. Maybe even an olive green.

2. Slouchy sweaters/perhaps a tunic. I am not a tunic fan, in reference to myself, really. However, certain forms of the tunic appeal to me. One in particular is a collared version. It looks like a button down, except it isn’t. I love this shape because it does actually have a shape.  I’ve heard it called a Popover.  I like this. With leggings and maybe riding boots, I think this could be a comfy and cute Saturday outfit. Slouchy sweaters, on the other hand, are all about proportion. I’m looking for very thin knit, with slim arms, and probably and off-shoulder or boat neck neckline. No bulky knits, for the most part. I would even consider a cheery henley neckline. (Makes my boobs look fantastic. Not gonna lie.)

3. Black leather jacket – This was on my list last year. Will has one. I may just borrow. Although a super soft girly one would be awesome.

4. Varsity jacket – I never got one in high school. I will have you know I lettered twice, too. Cheerleading and choir. Guess who majored in theatre?! I didn’t buy one for many reasons, the main being I was too busy dressing like Angela Chase. Also I had recently moved from another school district and old alliances are hard to beat. Anyway. It only took me 16 years since my freshman year to finally give in. I want the Buffy look. Varsity jacket. Leggings. And a ponytail.

5. Doc Marten’s – I never actually owned a pair. My huz has a pair of really kick ass ones I bought for him one of our first Christmases as a couple. Nearly knee high. I can’t decide if I want the boot or the oxford. Probably the boot.

6. Hoops – Hoop earrings are kind of my signature. I get made fun of all the time. You should know they were also Brigitte Bardot’s signature jewelry. You just couldn’t see them under all that hair. They are on the list this year because I would like to shell out for a nicer pair than the Target multipacks I buy every year.

7. Cropped sweater/vest. Per yesterday’s post, I want to mess with proportions this season. Long shirts topped with cropped sweaters feels so dancery and cozy.

8. White shirt – This has been rotting on my list for years now. It’s no fun shopping for this staple. Particularly with my chest. Finding the right top can take forever, and you have to try it on. You can’t order this one. Still, once I secure the wardrobe holy grail, playing with it will make up for the drudgery of finding it. I want an oxford style, regular cuff, white shirt. Broadcloth, or something similar that is slightly thicker than the average blouse. I may peruse the menswear department and then have it tailored on the sides.

9. Straight leg jeans – versatile, cuffable. Ever so slightly slouchy. Dark but not indigo.

10. Ribbed tights – fall colors and jewel tones. Maybe a pair of cream. Only for my brown riding boots, though. I’m going for equestrian, not little girl.

11. Mod A-line dress – I’m picturing short or long sleeved. With tights. Probably solid color.

12. Red or grey low chuck taylors

13. Red Minnetonka moccasins – I have a pair of the classic that I use around the house. I need a pair to wear outside. They are too cute and comfy. Very bombshell in the woods.

14. Bibs – I miss them. I can’t help it. I think they look sexy, if done right. Fortunately for everyone groaning right now, outside the local Tractor Supply in Ohio, I think they are going to be hard to come by.

15. Madewell Plaid Coat – It’s not even available yet. I saw it in a magazine. To quote 90′s icon Wayne Campbell, “It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.”

16. Mad about plaid dress – Donna Ricco is a genius. She does one thing and she does it really well. That thing she does is dresses. And this is one from her line this year.

17. Jersey long sleeved maxi dress – Another item to wear with a cropped sweater. Such a dramatic sillhouette.

18. Maybe a slouchy harness boot or Frye Campus boots – Frye Campus boots in Banana have been on my radar for many a year. Will has harness boots. I’m not looking for a true harness, rather a slouchy piratey looking pair.

19. Arm party. I love tattoos. Just not on me. Rather, I dig an arm party. I have always been a fan of bracelets. Necklaces aren’t really my style, minus a couple special ones. An army party is the equivalent of one bracelet inviting all it’s friends over to play. The key is mix of textures, widths, and metals. I am looking for fun invitees to my fall arm party. I’m thinking hammered metals, bangles, and friendship bracelets. If you look at Rayanne in the above photo, she’s got a tape measure as part of her arm party. Creativity is key, and there are no rules. It’s a party!

20. Chambray shirt. – Fairly deep in color. I like the versions that are available right now. I’m picturing with leggings and also with my plaid kilty skirt.

21. Another flannel – I have one that is yellow and blue. I need one in the red/black/green area. I’m thinking with leggings.

22. Raglan sleeve grey crewneck sweatshirt

23. Brown High Heeled Boots

24. Black ballet flats

25. Day/Play dress(es) – Think Alicia Silverstone in the Amazin’ video. Not tooo hippy dippy. I already have the floral one. Could be worn with leggings?

* I won’t be purchasing all these items. This is just a list of items that would be welcome in my wardrobe.

* The total list has about 50 items on it.  That is true.

For past Fall Fashion posts:

Fashion 2010

Fashion 2009

Fashion is a huge ocean of which some waves I ride, and some I ride out.  The past couple years definitely had some trends I was into.  While I’m not a huge Mad Men viewer, I don’t mind the sweeping sixties vibe that followed in it’s wake, but with all the benefits of women’s lib already fought and somewhat won.  Still, while I love mid-twentieth century fashion all the way from the 20′s-70′s, the heart and soul of who I am (for better or worse) resides in the years 1991-1995.

I waited patiently for many years.  Sure, fashion hinted, or rather hiccuped in this general direction.  A ripped leg here, a doc marten there.  But now…now the 90′s that I know and love have returned to the fashion world.  Leggings, slouchy sweaters, tartans, doc martens, rugged mixed with classic.   Sure most of the mags are touting 40′s, 50′s, and 60′s fashion but if you look, that’s not exactly what you will see.  That combo, combined with the demands of 21st century lifestyle has ressurected the decade of my style influence, my artistic soul, the 1990′s.

If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll know that I am above most things, a movie fan.  This isn’t to imply that the 90′s were influenced by movie fashion.  90′s fashion was almost entirely influenced by the music scene.  What I love about 90′s movie fashion is that it is edited and it is usually not the point at all.  Lucky for me, that equals inherently wearable outfits.

Friends, do you know what I’m getting at here?  Do you know what I’m saying?  I’m saying Cher from Clueless represents everything about this season for me.   I’ve been waiting, dear God, 15 years for this.

Ignore the pouty face, this outfit is one of my favorites from the movie and the essence of what I'm looking for this season. Cropped sweater, button down, plaid skirt, and you can't see them, but she's wearing mary janes.

But let me not get ahead of myself.  Last year, while poodling around in my physical look book (a couple of very messy but inspired binders full of clippings) I sorted out the genres of fashion that I love and that work for me.

• Classic
• Dancewear and Dance inspired
• Bombshell
• Baroque
• Bohemian
• Romantic
• Glamour

The 1990′s have a solid representation when it comes to Classic, Dance, Baroque, and Bohemian.  I love the Bombshell look and I LOVE Glamour but this year, I’m going back to my roots.

The following are examples of 90′s movie fashion that are serving as my inspiration this season.

"I really think Musictown is torn on the revealing garment issue. "

There is not an uncropped sweater to be found on those ladies.  Worry not, for I am not a midriff barer.  But I AM a cropped layerer.  And thus I shall continue to be.

"Okay, so you're probably going, "Is this like a Noxzema commercial or what?" But seriously, I actually have a way normal life for a teenage girl. "

"I have direction." "Yeah, towards the mall."

I love schoolgirl chic: button downs with sweater vests, little shift and wiggle dresses, tartans,  mary janes and wide headbands.  If viewed through a nineties lens, you really have created the ideal space for my style to work.  Thus Cher is one of my fashion icons.

So is Buffy.  The original Buffy.  See this post for a full run down on Buffy style, particularly her prom ensemble.

"Get out of my facial."

"Great. My secret weapon is PMS."

I am IN LOVE with this outfit, varsity jacket included.

Even the cheerleading outfits kick ass!  I mean, I WAS a cheerleader.  These things appeal to me.

How funky is your chicken?

The following picture is important to me, for you are seeing my high school style sitting next to my adult style.

"I totally paused!"

But the boys have much to offer.  The following examples ARE early nineties, but by way of the 50′s and early 60′s.  No fashion era is without influence.  Take for example, the regency era.  Think Jane Austin.  Those fashions while being their own look, have a distinct Grecian feel to them.  Just an example.

Anyway, I give you the boys of Dead Poet’s Society and School Ties.  The clothing is 50′s prep school, but the slouch, the attitude is pure 1990′s.

"I sound my barbaric yawp."

"The honor code is a living thing. It cannot exist in a vacuum. "

Here is a pic from My Own Private Idaho.  This is unisex fashion that looks sexy on anyone.  Honestly!  Picture Alicia Silverstone in that leather jacket.  It would rock!

"I'm afraid if I shared your wine, I might catch this awful disease you appear to have. My jacket would grow little zippers all over it and my toes would have jingle bells on them like those there. "

In a bit of a different take on 90′s fashion, here is the character Carrie (Michelle Forbes) from the movie Kalifornia.

"Too graphic. Too overt. Not suitable for mass consumption."

Her style is simple, severe, and awesome.  It’s grey tshirts, black tshirts, that incredible haircut, and one of the best leather jackets in movie history.  The cigarette is nearly it’s own character.

In that same vein, we have the ladies of The Craft.

Their skirts were either very short, or very long.

"Hail to the powers of the Watchtowers of the East."

Let us not pretend the maxi dress is something new.

This is my fave: prep school style combined with early 90′s attitude.

We are the weirdos, Mister.

The trap (that I consistently fell into as an adolescent) of 90′s fashion, for women, is that it can quickly become so masculine, it’s shapeless and sloppy.   So what I hope to be at 30 is what I wanted to be at 13.

If you combine Alicia Silverstone’s fashion in Clueless with her looks in the Aerosmith Amazing, Cryin’ and Crazy videos, you have now seen my Fall Fashion Inspiration for 2011. Ditto for Liv Tyler in Empire records and the videos.

Say what you will about Aerosmith.  I have mixed feelings myself, and they are all ignoring the past 15 years.  Those are three of the greatest music videos ever made.  It doesn’t hurt that I had a huuuuuge crush on Jason (NOt, I repeat, NOT Jeremy) London.  Have you seen Man in the MOon??? (Not Man ON the Moon…that’s the Jim Carrey pic).   Okay fine.  Amazin’ is the least amazing of the three videos.  The whole virtual reality thing sort of dates it.  Okay, fine, I love the song Amazing.  I totally do.

But look at her dress!!!

That dress with Doc Martens is perfection.  She hitches a PLANE with it.  Not a car.  A PLANE.

Moving on, with a slightly more beachy vibe, we’ve got Lori Petty in Point Break.

Add a touch of the West for the ladies of Gas Food Lodging.

Let us not forget Singles.  The single most 90′s movie ever created.  I defy you to find one MORE 90′s.

I know that, if you are a fan of the early nineties, you would expect to see Reality Bites here.  Howev, while I love Betty Page, the Betty Page bang doesn’t work for me, nor does the waify hipster look of the movie.  I’m as preppy as the nineties get, which isn’t very.  But it is enough.  And it is what ultimately leaves me just a bit cold towards the movie.  I respect it!  It just isn’t “me.” In me there is a conflict of yuppie, hippie and grungey that basically rivals that of the plot of PCU.

I’m in my element, people.  I’ll come up with a wishlist tomorrow, but I think you can see where I’m headed.  We are shaped by the styles of our coming of age.  I will now attempt to improve upon them.

Spaz from Meatballs

I recently read a blog post that made me smile with delight:  6 Things I Learned From Sleepaway Camp.  My days at camp were some of the most uproariously wonderful times of my youth.

In retrospect, I’m not quite sure why I loved camp so much.  On paper it makes very little sense.   If given a choice between playing outside or in, in always won.  Unfortunately for me, my Mom rarely gave that choice.  I was told to go “blow the stink off” which is a Midwesterner’s charming way of saying “go play outside and quit bothering me.”  I had asthma.  I hated and was appropriately terrible at sports.  I only liked swimming if the water wasn’t too cold, and when you go to camp in northern Michigan, the water is ALWAYS too cold.   I was allergic to grass, pollen, trees, and ragweed.  The only things I really had going for me was my love of boys and my ability to tan.

Turns out, that’s all I needed.  That and the fact that I come from a long line of Camp People.  My Mother and Father actually look like this:

70% chance my Dad is wearing this right now

They were even Camp Counselors together and every picture looks like something from Wet Hot American Summer.  They even had a Camp Toilet Paper Monster named “The Viper.”  Camp People are a mockumentary waiting to happen.

I loved camp with an intensity only matched by my early adolescent lust for the male counselors.  Not that long ago, I looked at a few pics of said counselors wondering if in fact they were actually “hot.”  Answer:  they were.  And I married a guy that looks like a combo of two of them.  I haven’t tested Will’s abilities in Burp Tennis, but we’ve only been married five years in June.  We have to save SOMETHING for retirement.

I still subscribe to the American Camp Association Job Update and occasionally consider chucking it all and heading off into the North Woods to be Mr. and Mrs. Charming Camp Director.  Will would do it in a hot second.  I am held back by the availability of MAC makeup and schmancy cocktail bars.  I also don’t really like children.

I think what appealed to me the most about camp was the immediate and intense drama that occurs when 13 years olds live in close and filthy proximity.  The only thing I’ve found to match it is Non-Equity theatre backstages and lo and behold I’m an actor.  The only thing missing is a 19 year old boy with a guitar.  I long to harmonize the works of Ani DiFranco and the Indigo Girls with him, and still being innocent enough NOT to wonder why he knows those songs in the first place.   Unless, of course, he went to Goshen College in Indiana, which pretty much explains everything. (If you actually understand my Goshen college reference I either 1. Already know you. or 2.  Probably should.  And no, I didn’t go there.)

I don’t have anything left over from Arts and Crafts.  Mainly because, now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t think we did anything in there but marvel at the Art girl’s cool name, I believe it was Yaneken,  and her armpit hair.   I was ambivalent about Waterfront.  Waterfront always had the hottest counselors, but if I had my period, it was a total bust.  So that week of the summer was ALWAYS hit or miss in those respects.  I LOVED music and so did all my friends.  Honestly, the top three things for me at camp were 1. Hanging out with friends, 2. staring at boy counselors, and 3. harmonizing.  We were children of Folk Music-listening ex-hippy Baby Boomer parents.  Harmonizing songs was just what we did.  “You Are My Sunshine” was our biggest hit.

I remember that “getting dressed up” involved a shower, jean shorts that were not cutoffs, and a Hard Rock tshirt, with actual underwear on, not a swimsuit.  And shoes.  We must have looked like a bunch of gangly, pimply hillbillies most of the time.  I remember once during the week, we would walk to Lake Michigan in a big long line, roadside, kind of like when all the campers follow Sharon and Susan to the Isolation Cabin in the Parent Trap.  I remember the cook in the Mess Hall was humming “Something in the Way” by Nirvana and I thought he was the coolest most aloof and mysterious man I had ever met.

The Gang from Salute Your Shorts

On Sunday afternoon, when we finally arrived after a sweltering many hour trip from the church parking lot in Archbold, Ohio, everything felt so new and fresh.  By the time Monday lunch rolled around, it was old hat, everything was routine and I was having the absolute time of my life.

The only thing I never liked about camp and still to this day don’t quite understand is why you have to get up so damn early.  Summer Camp seems to have some sort of vague connection to the military in that you get up to Revelle, orders are shouted at you, and you occasionally have to pass “inspections.”  One year, knowing our Camp Director Gail spent her off season working at the Gap in Toledo, we spread every Gap item we owned onto our beds as some sort of tribute to her when she arrived for inspection.  Having now worked several horrid Joe jobs, I can imagine the gutteral sigh she must have uttered.  She did have a really cute navy blue polka dot bikini that I loved and have looked for for years.  I assume it was Gap.

I would usually get a couple letters from my Mom during the week, sometimes my Aunt Hope (who would draw very cute animals roasting marshmallows or something), and my Grandma.  In that I would usually get my first letter from my Mother on Monday, I’m surprised it didn’t say, “Dear Betsy, You are still at home.  I am watching you fumbling around with the washing machine.  Why didn’t you unload the dishwasher? Wash your hands.  Dinner is ready.”  Instead they usually said wonderful Mom things like, “We miss you so much.  The cats are lonely.  I cleaned your room and found a dead mouse.  Finster [cat] must have left it for you.  Maybe weeks ago.  Dad says we can order pizza when you get home.  Love, Mom”  I would write one very pathetic and dirt-covered letter to my Grandma Kohart which I would forget to mail.  My Mom would then mail it the following week.  My Grandma would keep it forever, and then 15 years later it would be returned to me when my Mom was going through my Grandmother’s things, which is weird and surreal.  If I had known I would ultimately be writing that letter to myself, I think I would have said, “Dear Future Betsy,  Will I marry Joel the hot counselor?  I really hope so.  From what I am reading in Kari’s YM, this is what I am led to believe.  Will I ever have long hair?  It’s shoulder length now.  I plan on never cutting it.  If I don’t marry Joel the hot counselor, do I marry Keanu?  Love,  Betsy.   I sort of wish I could write myself a letter at camp from now.  I would say, “Dear Little Betsy,  You don’t marry Joel.  Just know it.  Feel the pain.  I think he knocks someone up later, anyway.  BUT you totally marry someone hot, so don’t even worry.  Put sunscreen on at Lake Michigan this year.  I know you didn’t burn last year, but you do this year.  Also, don’t make that dirt angel.  Everyone thinks you’re gross.  A Snack Shop Special is a kiss, so quit bothering Kristy your counselor about it, and also feel free to tell your cabin mates that Kristy is well-stocked with Snack Shop Specials due to her supplier, the Grounds guy.  Just FYI.  Have a good summer!  Also, chill out, you are kind of a spaz.  Love, Betsy.

Actually, my first two kisses occurred at camp.  One was during an ill-advised round of Suck and Blow.  The other was from the aforementioned Greg the Grounds Guy.  Before you freak, let me explain.  I mentioned above the mythic “Snack Shop Special.”  The girls that week were absolutely falling over themselves trying to find out what it was.  We begged and pleaded with the counselors, PLEASE TELL US WHAT A SNACK SHOP SPECIAL IS!!!!!  I was bothering Kristy and Greg one evening.  When Greg got up to leave us for the evening, he walked over to me and smooched me on the cheek and said, “That’s a snack shop special.”  Probably the only time I’ve ever been rendered speechless.  Certainly when the card fell during the game of suck and blow, I informed the poor 13 year old boy who was responsible how oddly cold and slimy his lips were, but only after a very dramatic EW!!! and much sleeve wiping of my lips.  I bet that kid thought I was a real asshole.  I’m also just now realizing that a  Snack Shop Special is so obviously sex and that the counselors merely tamed it for the ears of children.  Very sly.  Very sly.  Well done.

Sharon and Susan contemplating the Snack Shop Special

I remember when I would return home the following Saturday, everything at my house  smelled clean and fresh, and it felt like I had been gone for potentially years.  Until the next day, when I wouldn’t unload the dishwasher, my sisters and I swatted each other, my Mom shrieked and everything was back to normal.  Seeing any non-Camp friends after that week, I would inevitably inform them how drastically my life had changed.  How I had matured into a graceful swan, and I was really sorry they weren’t able to experience such womanly transformation.  I would inform them that I had met the man I would probably marry.  His name was Joel.  He played guitar as phenomenally as Burp Tennis.  He had obviously tried pot at some point.  And really loved Pearl Jam, which had to have been a sign from God that we were meant to be together as, I too, loved Pearl Jam.   Then one of us would become distracted by an overwhelming craving for a Popsicle and all would return to normal.

I was just recently in a production of Kiss Me Kate, so my proximity to this material will be much closer than most of the musicals I cover in The Musical Project.

That's me looking like my head is growing out Christine's arm.

Kiss Me Kate is so very fun to sing.  I’ll get to the score and the actual meat of the musical itself momentarily, but first…y’all I got to bitch about the movie.

If the only experience you have with Kiss Me Kate is the 1950-whatever movie version, then brother, you don’t know Kiss Me Kate.  The movie is sanitized and just a jumble of pieces that at one time comprised the actual work that is the stage musical Kiss Me Kate.

I really enjoy Howard Keil in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.  His vocals soar and he is perfect the role.  Academically he’s also perfect for Petruchio/Fred but he bombs.  Bigtime.  I get the feeling the director was of the Frank Sinatra “that take was good enough” school of directing because everything feels thrown together.  I get that musicals written for the stage don’t transition well to film, but you know who’s problem that is?  Not mine.  Unfortunately, as a viewer I still have to deal with it if the producers didn’t.  Oy.

Meanwhile, the Code.  Oh, the Code.  The old Production Code basically took all the fun out of Kiss Me Kate.You see, Cole Porter is dirty, downright raunchy if you play it right.  So when Ann Miller sings “According to the latest report…” you have to know that the actual lyric is according to the KINSEY report and that Ann Miller, bless her, isn’t even supposed to be singing it in the first place, and not in that getup. (I found myself saying “What is she doing with her body??” several times.)  A man needs to sing “Too Darn Hot” because why else would it matter if the singer “ain’t up” to their baby tonight?  Huh?  Hmmm????  So already we have a reference to the most comprehensive survey ever performed in reference to human sexuality AND a dick joke.  And that’s just one song.

What I also find fascinating about the sanitizing of Kiss Me Kate is that it doesn’t extend to Shakespeare.  Baptista says, “…thoroughly woo her, wed her and bed her” and that is no problem.  My guess?  It didn’t even occur to the censors to look at the Shakespearean language.  Certainly not our loss, I just like to point out the inconsistencies and the patent ridiculousness that is censorship.

Everything in Kiss Me Kate is punctuated by a metaphorical wink. In fact, in order for the show to pass muster for me, Lilli HAS to actually physically wink after “I am ashamed…”  SHe HAS to.  Or she loses all credibility.  And I think we’re dealing with an actual domestic violence situation.

I’m not a fan of Taming of the Shrew.  I think it’s a chestnut.  I suppose it has academic merits.  I’ve seen a production that employed nearly gymnastic commedia del arte between Katherine and Petruchio.  But it’s not my cup of Shakespearean tea.  I do enjoy the Taylor/Burton/Zefferelli version but that is a big ol’ Art Imitating Marriage situation.

Hilarious.

Unique.  Lovely.  Done.

So why do a musical that does a Taming of the Shrew light with the added pre-women’s lib eye twitches of 1940′s sexual politics?

Cole Porter.  That’s why.

I think this is the face he made when he saw the movie.

This score soars.  It is brilliant and very influential.  There’s no opening whistle in West Side Story without the opening to “Too Darn Hot.”  Tevye can’t ask Golda “Do You Love Me?” if Lois doesn’t ask Bill why he can’t “…Behave.”  In fact, I often found myself backstage singing, “…with our daughter getting married and this trouble in the town, you’re upset…you’re worn out…go inside… go lie down!” while “Why Can’t You Behave” is trickling through the monitor.

Kiss Me Kate is the ultimate transition piece.  You can hear the future of musical theatre (as seen from the 40′s) and yet, there, right at the end of show placed ever so conveniently for costume change purposes, is a perfect vaudevillian number preserved for posterity in “Brush Up Your Shakespeare.”

And that’s the thing.  It’s a show of numbers.  Big, classic musical theatre numbers that any theatre aficionado should know.  I happen to think that “Always True to You in My Fashion” is one of the most clever belt numbers ever to grace the stage.  Full of winks and puns.  Check out Blossom Dearie’s rendition if you want to hear my favorite.  I use it as an audition piece.

However, even though it’s a show of numbers, it’s not exactly a revue.  The plot is certainly more developed than some musicals.  It’s a play within a play structure.  Yet, there are moments I feel this structure fails.  This musical comes from an era where the pop music of the day came from Broadway stages.  Audiences didn’t demand as much depth from plots.  They wanted to hear the latest hit.

For me, Kiss Me Kate is about what Cole Porter could do, and he could do a lot.  Many of the songs in Kiss Me Kate are major high water marks in musical theatre as well as being textbook influential entries.

“So in Love” is both a perfect ballad AND torch number.  It’s also an actress’ dream.  In the right hands, “So in Love” makes Lilli Vanessi/Kate a fully 3-D woman.  It’s a mistake to label the character of Lilli Vanessi and/or Kate just a bitch.  And the right actress won’t.

But analysis aside, let’s look at this show from a performer’s standpoint.  It has everything.  You like to dance?  Here ya go.  You want to belt?  How about “Always True to You in My Fashion?”  You want legit?  Here’s “So In Love.”  How about a waltz?  Here’s “Wunderbar.”  How about Jazz?  Here’s “Too Darn Hot.”  Operetta?  “Cantiamo”.  Comedy?  You got it.

Sure there’s a bit of a light hand if you look at it from a domestic violence point of view.  This is not a particularly enlightened show.

Interestingly, the 11 o’clock number is “From This Moment On.”  It’s a duet.  And it’s a lie.  Lilli is lying to herself rather than finding some sort of resolve.  Is that a flaw?  I don’t know.  I don’t know if adherence to structure dictates perfection.  It would be a little scary if it does.  I mean, Kiss Me Kate isn’t perfect.  “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” basically shouts by virtue of existing that there is a massive costume change going on backstage.  Still….everybody wants to see those gosh-darn Gangsters again.  I also think Cole Porter was probably of the “who gives a shit?” school of thought.

It’s an old show, so there are many places to experience at least a recording of the score, if not a production.  The recent London revival has some great renditions.  This musical hails from a time when pop music came from musical theatre.  So while in our minds watching Bono and The Edge write Spiderman or Duncan Sheik pen Spring Awakening feels kinda dirty and gross, well, there’s history there.  Sure I think Cole Porter is a better musician, but it would be wrong to pretend precedent hadn’t been set years ago.  Although, and correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t think anyone was brutally maimed and disfigured during the original run of Kiss Me Kate.

Kiss Me Kate, for a musical theatre performer, is like learning your family tree.  It’s your roots.  It’s where this whole thing came from.  I like knowing who was influenced by what.  Sondheim, for example,  thinks the best of the best is Porgy and Bess.  I like knowing that type of thing.  Hearing the influences of today’s writers is humanizing.  We often thrust composers into demigod status.  There is this web meme going around called Steal Like an Artist.  It’s nice to know that even the big guys do too.

To Review:  the movie is a stonker (although potentially worth watching solely for Fosse and his uncredited choreography.  You also get to see the dude dance.)  But the stage version is a classic.

Meanwhile, for just absolutely no reason at all in the world whatsoever, I have become recently interested in actors who hit their stride post-30.

Meet Ray Liotta.

Ray Liotta

He lobbied hard and got the role of Henry Hill in 1990′s Goodfellas at the age of 30.  There is nobody else like him in the pictures.  Imagine playing a role like Henry Hill, for all accounts a not good guy.  Not the WORST guy, of course.  That’s Tommy.  But a bad guy nonetheless, and you root for the dude.  Of course, this isn’t unprecendented.  Movies can make you do that. But with the wrong actor in that role, it would be pretty difficult.

There is a 95% chance that any interview or article you read with Ray Liotta as the subject is going to use the word “intense.”  Not inaccurate, but I think over-simplified.  He’s not just punching walls and looking sulky. He is intense without angst. I think that might be passion, but you really don’t see truly passionate work very often and think we find it disconcerting, particularly as an American movie goer. What is presented to us as passion is often just masturbatory emoting.  Not this guy. This guy is focused.  He listens. He’s confident without being cocky.

I’ll tell you something else I like about the guy.  Honesty.  He says he did Operation Dumbo Drop for the money.  Damn right he did, and you would too. It takes a hell of lot to stay afloat in show biz.  I would be lying my face right off if I said I wouldn’t do something like Operation Dumbo Drop.  The only thing I won’t do is kid shows and working at amusement parks.  God bless the people who do, but I prefer my desk job to that.  I wish I didn’t.  I wish I was a purer soul.  I also wish I had a hundred million dollars and a bucket of rubies and garnets.  And a chauffeur.  I’ve always wanted a chauffer.

I digress.

In the following scene, you see something that I think defines Ray Liotta.  Focus.  I mentioned how he listens.  Check out how…ugh…I hate to say it, but I can’t think of another phrase- how “in the moment” he is.  Look at his focus and his eye contact and his power in the scene with Morrie.  He is so specific.  (This clip also shows one of my fave De Niro/Scorcese moments of all time, but that’s just a bonus.)  Also, the video is called “My Favourite Scene From Goodfellas,” noting the British spelling,  obviously, I didn’t title the video.  And it’s not my favorite scene (although it’s a good one.)  It’s just very illustrative of my point.

Just for the record, THIS is my favorite scene from Goodfellas.  Of course, the best scene is THE shot.  You know…the steady cam…the Copa.  You know, I always admired that shot purely for the timing, not just by Scorcese by the umpteen gazillion actors and extras that breeze their way through it.  Recently, however, I just made the connection (because I’m a fool) that it’s about Karen. We feel like we are on Henry’s arm in Henry’s world.  It does something incredibly important.  It answers the question “Why would you stay with this man?” before you even think to ask it.

God, I love movies.

Anyway.

Have you seen Narc?  Interesting flick.  Liotta produced it alongside his then wife, if I remember correctly.  He stars alongside Jason Patric (an upcoming MHOTW).  It’s brutal.  It’s violent.  It’s harsh.  It’s good.  Really good.  Whereas you might root for Henry Hill, you don’t for Henry Oak.

Have you ever seen Corrina, Corrina?  It’s good.  And Liotta is really good in it.  I’m not sure how he does that wounded soldier thing without doing what all the other guys do.  He’s tortured by not tormented.  He’s hurt but he’ll survive.  He loves but he doesn’t gush.  This clip is long, but worth it.

Have you seen The Rat Pack?  Do.  If I’m nerdily blabbing about the difference between imitation and portrayal of real-life characters, I often bring up Liotta as Frank Sinatra.  He doesn’t look like the dude (minus those baby blues) and he doesn’t sound all that much like him, yet he nails it.  Ditto for all the performances in that movie (minus the woman who plays Marilyn).  I get why it wasn’t a big-screen movie, but I wish more people have seen it.  If I were to teach an acting class, I might use it.  It establishes fine lines and never dances over them, and Liotta is the leader of the group.  Not just because he plays Frank.  He establishes a presence that guides the movie.  Now.   That said.  When you do watch it, expect the Kennedy campaign song to the tune of “High Hopes” to run through your head for weeks….”K-E-DOUBLE N-E-D-Y…he’s our favorite kind of a guy…Everyone wants to BACK. JACK. JACK is on the right track…cuz he’s got HIGH HOPES…he’s got HIGH HOPES…”  See.  There I go.  Anyway, here is a clip:

I’m not a big Blow fan.  heh.  But they cast Liotta as Depp’s dad.  The dude is all of like, ten years older than my boy Johnny.  I guess it works because of the flashbacks.  But Liotta is really great.  Sweet, even.  I’ve never read if Depp and Liotta got along particularly well on set or not but there is a genuine fatherly affection there.   While playing age happens all the time on stage, it’s actually fairly rare in movies, at least to this extent.  I often wonder why casting worked out this way.  Still, a weird production decision works in Ray Liotta’s favor because he gets to show a really awesome side of his talent, he probably wouldn’t have otherwise.  Graceful age.  Not rickety wheezing and overuse of the word “whippersnapper.”  On a dorky movie nerd note, allegedly Johnny Depp’s character in BLOW was responsible for 85% of the coke trafficked in the US between the 70′s and 80′s.  Therefore, there is an 85% chance that that character provided Henry Hill, Ray Liotta’s character in Goodfellas, with his coke.  Small world, man. I guess that’s more of a dorky stoner note, now that I think about it.

Hey look!  Ray Liotta on Martha Stewart:

That’s funny to me.  It amuses me.  I also love a man in an apron.

I’m not a huge Field of Dreams fan, either.  I’ve been told that’s because I’m a girl.  I think it’s because the movie is cheesy and Amy Madigan (love her in Uncle Buck) is irritating and an odd pairing for Costner.  (Also, I would never tell someone they don’t get a movie because they are a man.  Sure, that seems like something I would say, but I wouldn’t.  Because movies are universal experiences.  I played catch with my Dad, too.   We have tickets for Wrigley in May.  They are in my desk right now.)  But that’s not the point.  An article I read recently in so many words says Liotta is more intense, and better than he has to be as Shoeless Joe Jackson.  The phrase “better than it has to be” is very depressing, but often apt.  The world of the American movie is world that embraces, if not encourages mediocrity.  In fact, that’s sort of what my Movie Heroes are about.  They COULD have just phoned it in.  They didn’t.  And I look to them for inspiration and encouragement through their work which is conveniently available via DVD.

In all his films, something simmers beneath Liotta’s exterior.  In Henry Hill, it finds its way out.  In many other characters he plays, like Shoeless Joe, it never does.  It’s a deep sense of humanity.  Even loss.  It’s profound.  And it’s beautiful.  I’m also a Pisces and am incredibly susceptible to this state of being.  I married an intense simmerer.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.  Aloofness is my kryptonite.  I want to hand it my phone number written on my panties.  I can’t help it.   Complicated emotion bubbling underneath a brooding exterior is the bucket of water to my Wicked Witch of the West.

What a worlllld.....what a worlllld...

Have you seen Observe and Report?  It’s, hmmm, I’ll say it’s disjointed.  But I love when dudes in movies wear those over the shoulder cop holster things.

I’ve always sort of thought of Cop Land as a nod toward the wish that you could see Goodfellas again for the first time.  You can’t.  Still, it’s decent cop movie.  Gritty.  Liotta and De Niro.  You could easily do worse on a Tuesday night.  Alright look, I’ll be honest.  I really don’t remember much about it.  I saw Copland when I was 16 and it was on the new release shelf and I was going through my De Niro phase.   Other than the fact that I am a straight woman, my movie-related coming of age was decidedly male adolescent.  If I had found a Scarface poster, it would have been on my wall.  Unfortunately (fortunately?) I lived on a farm in Northwestern Ohio and those posters weren’t easy to find.  I did manage to snag a Brad Pitt one from Legends of the Fall at the Kmart in Defiance, Ohio.  That and the Dirty Words one I got at the George Carlin concert I saw.  And the Wayne’s World one I got in my “Wayne’s World Extreme Closeup” book (I still own it.)  Jesus, I was weird.  This doesn’t include the glut of Eddie Vedder (see “intense simmering”)  pics I had collected, all pre-Internet mind you.  That took dedication.

Again, I digress.

Looking at his filmography, one thing is clear:  Liotta is a working actor and his work is refreshingly absent of ego.  Certainly I’ve never met the guy, but you get the distinct impression people like him.  They like to work with him.  Repeatedly.  That is something that benefits an acting career.  He also seems to have followed his nose and done what was right for him.  That is really really hard to do as an actor.  You often find yourself following other people’s paths, other people’s ambition.  There is so little guidance for artists (which is both a good and a bad thing) that you feel completely blind sometimes making the decision whether to do a project or not.  Which city should I move to?  Film or theatre?  Agent or no?  Union or no?  I’m too old.  I’m not old enough.  There is something confident, decisive and steady about Liotta’s resume and I admire that.  And what do you  know, he got to be in one of the greatest movies ever made along the way.  Plus, he’s really fun to watch.

*What is a movie hero? An un or under-sung member of the film making community who deserves more of the spotlight. And yet lack of such a spotlight often adds to their charm.

Bear

A bit of an old school style blog post, so here goes.

I’ve failed the 30 for 30 Challenge.  I actually made it a whole 6 days, but I forgot to take pictures.

What happened?  Well, the Blizzaster and the following Colder-Than-Hell temperatures did a number on my planning.  THEN a whole bunch of unexpected life type stuff happened resulting in events I wasn’t expecting and I also haven’t done laundry in any meaningful way AND we just found  a new apartment which doesn’t require a specific outfit, but did require my attention and time.  So I failed.

Am I just not a Remixer?  I don’t know.  I’d like to try again. So I will when Spring or Summer 30 for 30′s come around, I suppose.

Moving on, I have to tell you I had sort of planned on February being a “month of rest”.  The plan was more theoretical and as such, has also failed miserably.  I am going to Ohio this weekend to celebrate my birthday and hopefully sleep.  I have to leave town to sleep.  But I won’t sleep.  Because I will be wasting time that I could be spending with my family.  As such, I have designated an official Hibernation Weekend.  I came across the idea of the Hibernation Weekend years ago through one of my favorite blogs, Brocante Home.  I have penciled in Hibernation Weekends ever since and that has probably been a solid three years.  I have yet to accomplish one.

Meanwhile, on Monday I turn 30.  I had always sort of imagined my 30th birthday to be a bit of a grand affair.  It won’t be.  I will be traveling most of Sunday, and Monday I will probably poodle around in slippers or something.  Of course not grand doesn’t mean not good.  In fact, looking back over what I’ve written thus far, perhaps Not Grand will be Relaxing.  And that IS Grand.  Oh the irony.

Bear

So, my youth is officially over.  Thank God.  I’m an old soul and old souls have awkward puberties that seem to resonate for years afterward.

I’ve got big goals for the upcoming years.  I’m quietly ambitious.  That sounds like an oxymoron.  Maybe it is, but it’s true nonetheless.  The first thing I am going to do is become (mostly) vegetarian again.  I was a vegetarian from 1997-around 2001.  I stopped for various reasons (mostly anchored in laziness), but the guilt has never left me.  I just love animals (and the environment…and ethics…and what I know is right) too much to support the evils of factory farming and cruelty.  So coming up I will return to what was always the right thing to do.  (Both my Father and my Husband probably just sighed very audibly.  Don’t worry, my Men.  Hypocritical as it may be, the looks on your faces and the gratitude for my pecan fried chicken is enough to warrant making it for you a couple times a year.  We just have to at the very least buy the chicken from a non-cruel enterprise.  And my Mac and Cheese doesn’t have meat in it.   I’ll just switch to a sustainable cheese source.  Like this one, my little sis’s summer employer last year, and rock solid Paulding County, Ohio born and bred.  Try their stuff, it is wonderful!)  As before, I promise not to be insufferable.  I just can’t bear ignoring some things that I’ve been ignoring for…dear God…a decade.  Just too cruel.  It was never difficult for me to be a vegetarian, really.  Honestly, when I stopped eating meat when I was 16, it was just about the easiest thing I ever did.  The challenge now will be that I do not expect Will to join me in this.  So, there will probably be some nights where we eat two different things.  That said, he occasionally picks up a few hours at a vegan coffee shop, and loves the veggie burrito at Chipotle, so there is wiggle room.  Also we both hate kombucha.  This isn’t really relevant except that it is a food-related issue on which we have solidarity.  After drinking kombucha I experienced what I imagine it feels like to drink untreated water in Russia.

Happy Bear

So there’s what’s on my mind at the present moment.  Sort of.   Here’s to turning 30 and liking the idea of it!  I need to hurry up and finish this crap Steve Berry novel I’m reading so I can start out my next decade on a smarter note.