Inappropriate Jokes/Inappropriate Times

It took me dying two times in front of two different audiences to let me realize, I wasn’t naturally good at stand-up.

Not that I was supposed to be, or expected to be.

Still, it hurts when you stand up there in front of everyone, having received some praise and hear silence and smiles, followed by polite claps following you back to your seat.

Matt Chao and Dave Broad came with me to one of them, where I promised them a set full of untested material mostly referring to online dating and delivered just that, to no promise.

“Well, I still taped that if you wanted it.” Dave said, Canon 5D camera in hand.

I considered putting my dying on stage up here, but decided against it.

It’s good in a way, I know, just like with the sketch comedy. There needs to be pain for growth, struggle for learning.

“It’s like being a prize fighter.” My teacher Armando told me, while lifting beverage boxes in the break in our class, “You just have to go out there and get beat up a lot.”

I think it’s motivated me to do so, or at least try. For now, I’m bothering all my friends who do stand-up, trying to cajole them into mentoring me.

The second open-mic I went to was with a nice dude from my SNL writing class, where hubris and a small room led me to get up.

When I apologize to the M.C. afterwards, he told me to “come back with some punchlines”.

Another comedian, Dave Greek (a swell dude) told me about stand-up after I had died at the first open-mic, “What’s important is that you wake up tomorrow and keep doing this.”

“Don’t worry I’ll wake up tomorrow and still want to do stand-up.”

“Oh.” He replied. “I meant not killing yourself, but that’s good too.”

The next night at McDonalds, I went out with a consortium of friends (Ro-bearded Malone, Simon Robinson, Sean Dunn and Zach Weintraub–pictured above) after a showing of the documentary Strong Man at IFC.

“I know I’m not funny enough yet.” I told Zach. “But I’m glad at least I know a lot of people who are doing this sort of thing, or at least trying, you know, to do something with their lives.”

“Oh, sorry bro.” Zach said contritely. “I wasn’t listening, I was too busy putting pre-chopped peanuts onto my Mickey D Sundae.”

“Thanks.” I replied.

Zach was off soon to Argentina to go shoot his crowd-sourced movie, “The International Sign For Choking” and Simon, whose Japan-o-philia included frequently recommending a semi-pornographic Japanese version of the Powerpuff Girls called “Panty+Stocking” to me, was off to teach English in Nippon, where I only assumed he would meet/marry his Japanese wife.

Recently, I had been wondering too if I should take a break, head to Europe or Japan or somewhere and see what was out there for me.

Now, newly girlfriend-less, I felt less reason not to leave New York, at least for a little while, to see somewhere else. Love is like a magnet, or gravity, in that way; good at drawing you back to where you’re coming from.

Still, I felt good about being out in the city, using my time, taking classes and electives and free practices and open-mikes. I was proud I had died trying stand-up, proud I had put myself out there enough to know that I had to learn.

Even if there still weren’t commercials to audition for, my life felt like it was moving and writing, terrifying/gratifying, was happening more than ever for me, with my classes spurning me on with deadlines and timelines and high expectations for material.

I finally met one of those expectations in my sketch-comedy writing class, where I just last week reported that same experience of learning/dying in front a crowd of people I could only assume didn’t respect me.

On that non-hungover Saturday morning before my class, I watched half an episode of “Mr. Show with Bob and David”, analyzed what each sketch was about, its reality and its jokes, thought about something in my life I knew the reality of it and wrote it.

It was a sketch about someone going up at an open mike, saying too many awkward rage-filled things and alienating people.

When they called for notes in the class after reading it, someone raised their hand and said: “I loved it”.

And it was only one sketch.

But it was one sketch to feel good about.

***

I ran into Eli Rousso, the other day at the movie theater, taking tickets by the door.

Eli was my red-headed doppelganger from Poly Prep, a web designer and man on the hand of cool, who was a good video editor back when I was afraid to even touch the computer than Final Cut Pro was on.

When I saw him, we talked for a couple minutes, just about what he was seeing, who this new girlfriend was he was with and some comments about my blog. Eli’s the sorta guy who says he’s your friend but who doesn’t pick up his phone and who you don’t see for a long time. It’s a good way of preserving that image, that many of have, of people from their high school eternally cooler than themselves.

What Eli said to me once though, upon reading my blog was something to this effect:

“Nick. You talking about girls on your blog, that’s like the pussy. Everyone wants to get to it.”

So yeah, after a year or so of relative domestic happiness and then a couple months of awkward rebound attempts/self-immolation, here I go.

When I talked to Schuyler, my co-worker at the movie theater, about being single and out there, he’d mock my attempts to meet someone on the internet.

“Why don’t you just go out to the bar or the club?” He’d ask. “Plenty of ladies there.”

“Going out to one of those places I won’t meet people that I like.”

“How do you know?” He replied.

“Because I don’t go out to bars or clubs, I don’t enjoy over-priced drinks or rubbing butts on people, so why would I enjoy the people who enjoy those things?”

“Well, alright then, where?” He asked.

“I don’t know. Online, maybe. Or at a party with friends. Or maybe an improv class.” I said and mulled on that last one for a while.

Given that my last attempt to meet someone at an improv class ended with Rob calling me “kinda sad” and the girl telling me she was “busy till [next] November”, I should have been hesitant, but also given that my old Nick Feitel self-embarrassing instincts were beginning to regenerate, I felt darn invulnerable. Felt that way, at least.

“So, teach. That cute coach have a boyfriend?” I asked Armando in between classes. I had been attending an “Improv Coaching Workshop” on Saturdays that was free, where Armando would teach seasoned improvisers how to teach students improv. I/we were the guinea pigs and “the cute coach” had told me a few times I was “real funny”.

“Oh. Her.” Armando recognized after I whispered her name for clarification. “Yes. Yes she does.”

“Well, I mean you met him? Nice guy? Cool guy?” I asked.

“You’ve met him too.” Armando said. “He’s another coach in the class.”

Strike one.

“Oh.” I replied.

“Yeah, but there’s nothing wrong, you know, with having an affinity for someone.” Armando said, in an airy, comforting tone.

“Yeah, I feel ashamed. See you guys in 5 minutes. And went to get some Bubble Tea.

When I came back, the “volunteer” portion of the coaching class still hadn’t begun and so I sat down and played video games on my DSi. A curly-haired young lady, who’d also told me I was funny when I left class last week, in the sort of the way that someone empowers another, sat down next to me and tried to talk to me about video games.

Mmrow.

We talked a bit about them, though she was no afficianado, about her job and our college time.

“What did you major in?” I asked, after she told me a fun story about learning improv on a cruise.

“Psychology. But that was 20 years ago.” She said.

Not a deal-breaker.

“Well, uh, sorry if this is like weird.” I replied. “But you don’t look it at all?”

“No, not too weird.” She replied, but then we were ushered in.

I spent some of the class looking over at her, trying to catch a glance or two, noticing her sweater, or her jeans, looking for age or lack thereof, or if she was looking at me.

After class, I went up to her and asked “What’s your last name?” my iPhone out, ready to friend her instantaneously.

“My maiden or my married name?” She asked with a smile and if she was looking for something in my face, I thought I did a decent job of freezing it, before saying “Either one!” and adding her as a friend, just a friend, indeed.

Strike two.

Then there was the girl who came in the first week with leg-warmers, a skirt and a t-shirt that had an ironic description of caves written on it.

Love at first sight.

When she didn’t come back to the second class and someone mentioned he had come in her stead, I let loose one of my weird truthful-isms, saying to him: “Well that’s pretty lame, I was trying to get her number.”

When she came back this week, I wondered as she laughed at some of my creepy “hitting-on-crying-girl improv” scenes, whether word had gotten back.

When I tried talking to her after, waiting on line for the bathroom, she started talking to me about acting and classes and whether I was interested in that.

“Yes.” I told her, without much other context. “Then let me get your email.” she said, followed closely by. “Gotta go, bye.”

I still don’t know what it was for, but I guess if it’s some sort of recruitment for “The Landmark Forum”, I’ll feel bad later.

Strike three?

I left then and headed to Last Pictures’ TOMORROWLAND, a screening of my Feitel-Friend Chadd Harbold’s film BLOCK, as well as others by the good ol’ LP crew. When I stood at the bar by myself for a while, sneaking Whiskey-Ginger-Ales, I took the above blurry picture of Gavin McInnes trying to corrupt Chadd’s parents through conversation, which sounded the alarm with his crew of flunkies and caused me to flee, or retreat, at least.

“Where are you?” I texted Chadd, with the picture. “Your parents are going to grow moustaches and start experimenting with Mescaline.”

Of course, Chadd did some soon; it was his party. I hung out, mostly with Andy Roehm and Brennan McVicar and his lovely girlfriend Vanessa.

I got to see all my friend there, including Rob, shaking thighs like he’d never have to go home, and Zach again, who showed up with Michigonian girlfriend Jenny.

As for me, I found myself stuck at the bar again, with a young lady, a friend of a friend, who kept on talking to me, wanting to hear about improv classes and our respective lives. I snuck her a couple drinks from the open bar, as she wasn’t there to partake due to early morning work (with children no less!) and I even asked for her number at the end of it all and she gave it to me, even though I just kept expecting her to walk away.

“Oh yeah, she does that all the time. Very nice, friendly type.” Brennan told me later on, when we walked down the block to get tacos, but super-funny man Ron Phippen told me, when I admitted to him I had forgotten her name when I first saw her:

“Dude, if a girl knows your name and you don’t know hers, it means she wants to fuck you.”

And like being called funny, I don’t take it as the truth.

But it’s nice to feel that opinion sometimes, true or not.

Was that four strikes? No one’s watching baseball now anyway.

How about four downs, for football.

Or maybe a hit?

Or a concussion?

Or something else.

***

When I told Matt Chao that we were going to dinner at Grand Central, despite not having any real reason to do that other than a promise of home-made doughnuts, he kinda shrugged and said whatever.

“Better than going home to Jersey.” He replied.

Matt had been getting a lot of ribbing from me, for the fact that I had made fun of him for years for his corporate slavedom working un-paid for PBS a their longest running intern and now here he was, with his first feature-film assistant editing gig, credited as a “shooter” and a “PA” as well on set, getting paid, reportedly, 4 times as much as me and getting a short-short he made for them on the web.

But there he was still, after work, with nothing to do but go home to Jersey.

Which means, he’d call me up a lot.

It was Matt who went with me to the Diamond Lion show, where we laughed our asses off watching people improvise a musical about child abduction and Lord of the Rings copyright infringement. It was Matt who came with me to see Billy the Mime do a show that included a sketch called “The African-American Experience” and “Thomas and Sally: A Night in Monticello”. It was Matt who sat with me in Grand Central, before my Writing for SNL class and was down for getting the prix-fixe menu when all the doughnuts we’d gone all the way uptown for turned out to have sold out at 3pm.

The prix-fixe was at Caffe Pepe Rosso, an outpost of the Italian place by my house, but it was notable for both the portions (a huge soup or smaller salad and a main course) and the price (under 11 bucks) which was less than ordering even any of the entrees on their own, at the location by my house.

The Chicken Parmigiana was great, an unexpected surprise at the uptown locations, which mostly serves Paninis, with a good deal of Italian espresso.

I lapped it up with a salad, but Matt got the soup with some gnocchi for his main and the soup seemed bigger than my entree.

After finishing up, in between biting and Matt reading, I found the check already paid for in classy fashion.

“Don’t worry about it.” Matt said cooly.

“Fuck you, Matt, I didn’t ask for that.” I said full of spite.

“Fine, pay me, bitch.” He said staring down at his book.

“Yeah, whatever, thanks.” I mumbled. “Only cause you make four times more than me.”

Today my best friend Frank called me, after texting me all weekend dealing with his existential lady crisises. Frank lives in Brooklyn, but he’s too busy between the gym and mostly unemployment to ever come by the theater to say hi.

“That’s like, 2.50 there and 2.50 back, bro.” He said.

“2.25.” I commented.

“Anyway, I’m broke.” He said. “And almost to the gym.”

People have their lives, I guess. But it’s nice sometimes, when someone’s down like that Matt.

All, I’m saying.

***

CAFFE PEPE ROSSO

Chicken Parmigiana with Penne and Lemon/Garlic Arugala Salad- $10.95 (free w/Matt Chao)

Grand Central Terminal Dining Concourse (specials change daily)

4567S to Grand Central-42nd St

Periods of Frustration

What are you supposed to do when you no longer know why you’re at a place?

Me, I go try to find food.

I’ve been at this “internship” for quite a few months now, hooked up by my mom, as a bulwark I guess, to doing nothing.

My dad keeps on insisting it’s for the best, that these people are “connected” and that somehow, they’ll find some way to “hook you up”.

My experience has been though, that internships never “hook you up”, they use all they can out of you until they use no more, or failing that, hire you out of desperation for everyone else quitting.

One might call this cynical, but considering that a woman I worked a year for, for free, didn’t cast me as “Sleeping Roommate”, a part which would have gotten me signed to my agency, you’ll forgive me for having a dim view of internships.

At this current one, I don’t even know what I’m doing or why I’m there, failing even the pretense of “advancement in my industry” which appeals to so many people who seek these things out.

At some point, I just wanted to get away.

So I went to Buffalo Wild Wings.

It’s true, I didn’t mean to. I wanted to go to the Empanada cart, staged over by Atlantic Terminal, that gives good-fried-packets for just around 2 dollars, but they were gone, maybe driven away by whatever frost there was that day and so I tried the place I’d heard about, thinking that if they advertised Chicken, they might not be so objectionable.

I was pretty wrong.

The nuggets I brought back (“boneless wings”) to the office, were crispy, sickly-sweet and over-spiced. Frank, my best friend, a Brooklynite, had tried them before and mocked me for thinking they’d be anything else.

“McDonalds is better.” Frank tossed around harshly.

I told him I thought they were better than the McDonald Chicken Nuggets (which now contain no chicken), but not by much.

I was excited for some celery that came with it, which I dipped a little in the bleu cheese dressing.

I did some research that day at the internship.

But I don’t know what for.

***

When I went to Union Hall last night to meet Eva to see a comedy show, she sent me a text message that I got when I was two blocks away and I sent one back in reply.

Just checking in with each other, seeing where we were.

The comedy was good, some funny people. Eugene Mirman, A.D. Miles and Mike DeStefano, whose fame from his recent “WTF with Marc Maron” podcast seems to have given him a worthy boost in a career that seemed doomed to pigeon-holing, playing wise-guys.

I kept looking over at Eva though, checking to see that she found the same things funny as me, seeing that she liked her drink, or the atmosphere.

Wanting to know that she liked being with me.

“Sure, I saw my ex plenty of times after we broke up.” Andy told me, changing in the locker room. He had gotten off to a bad start that day, combating the hangover he seemed ever-locked in struggle with.

“It’s the same sort of thing every time. They dance around the decision they made. ‘Did I do the right thing? Was I right? Is this better?’ Until they realize: ‘Oh wait, I guess I did make the right decision. Cool then.”

“I’m worried.” I told Andy, “I’m worried I’m not ready for this.”

“Well, you already said you do it.” said Andy, straightening his shirt. “Just be aware of it. See if you’re getting in to the same routine. Realize she’s not that for you anymore. She’s just an acquaintance.”

I wanted to say when Andy said this that I couldn’t do that, but he was out, gone to fresh air, to feel better, away from work.

And of course I couldn’t feel like Eva was acquaintance, just another friend. How do you look at someone who you shared so much of your life with, taste and trust, someone who accepted you fully and you helped them– how do you look at that person and see them as anything else?

In the end I couldn’t. I made jokes and enjoyed the comedy and drank too much and bought her a few.

I told A.D. Miles “a toast to red-heads”, when Eva told me he was pretty sure his hair was blond, a testament to my color-blindness.

We talked and took the same train and played the same games as she kept trying to pay me for drinks and I kept trying to hide the money in her bag and down her dress.

Yeah, she wore a nice dress and looked very pretty.

We talked for a bit about the dating websites we were on and looking for other people and she told me her “headless body” had gotten a lot of messages, while I told her I hadn’t been too happy with what I’d found.

I gave her my stand-up set, I laughed at her jokes, I admonished her when she self-deprecated, or said people didn’t think she was pretty.

“Well, they’re going to see your face eventually.” I told her. And she agreed.

We sat together on the train and talked some more and right before her stop, I had already started crying, though I don’t think she noticed.

The whole night had gone through and there I was with her about to leave, still not loving me.

It’s hard to see someone’s face, their same face, their same expressions and know that their happiness is no longer for you.

I cried home, on the subway and in bed. To the public, I blame the whiskey.

In bed, Dan Pleck got on the phone with me, texting fast, telling me that trying to recapture first love is like “chasing the dragon”, a high that never comes again.

Mostly, I just felt like a junkie.

I woke up and watched the second-to-last episode of Deadwood and was fine.

***

When I introduced myself in my Writing for SNL class, I blew myself up a little bit.

“Well, I’ve interned for The Colbert Report, pitched some web videos and acted in one, have done some web comedy, was on Letterman, made a short film, that kind of stuff.”

I then followed that up with: “All of this might sound like I’m a pretty good sketch writer, which unfortunately is not the case.”

In fact, I’m a terrible sketch writer, much worse at it than I am even at improv, which I once also felt terrible at.

In my Writing for SNL class, people have started to come around to me, but in my arguably more important Sketch Level 2 class at The Magnet, where some of our sketches will end up in a show, I’ve written something new every week and brought it in, only for it to die.

In some ways, I’m grateful for this. I understand the necessity of learning a craft and, particularly, learning from failures, as early successes can bolster you towards levels of confidence unearned.

It also afforded me chances to run away from class during breaks, where I found a nice Italian deli for a low-cost Chicken Parm, some consolation.

When I went out this past week, with some co-workers after a long shift, I told a beautiful young lady I work with, still in college, not to be so hard on herself, as she told me of her depression and her art.

“What’s there to feel sorry about?” I asked her. “What you do now might not be what you do later, might not even be what you want. As you change, so do your desires, naturally. And there is no shame in that. So for now, take the gift that’s offered you and experiment and try and work hard, as you can and enjoy yourself. The stakes are low, or only as high as you set them, so live with the passion you have.”

Or at least what I hope I said. I had drunk a couple beers at that point.

Anyway, I was ok with dying in that class every week, though I felt like I let my teacher down, Armando, who said he saw in potential in me: “the funny midi-chlorians”, as he put it.

So I wrote him an email, which I got a reply to last night on my… I don’t want to call it a “not-date”, with Eva.

I had acknowledged that I had much to learn about writing sketches and that it was frustrating, given that I felt more confident about my other forms of writing. I told him I knew I had to learn, but that I was worried about the upcoming show and writing something that was good enough.

“Isn’t there anything I can do,” I asked him. “To learn this faster, to be better at this, in time?”

“Nicholas,” He replied. “There is a time in any learning process where there is a period of frustration. The key is to keep plugging away. Eventually comes the day when you wake up and it comes together. But all you can do is keep at it and have faith. There is no special step, just persistence.”

Not to make a metaphor out of a molehill, but I think you see what I mean.

***

SALUMERIA BIELESE

“Small” Chicken Parm- $6.50

SE Corner of 29th St and 8th Ave. (near The Magnet Theater)

ACE to 34th St- Penn Station. 1 to 28th St.

Stood Up

I posted this picture to my dating profile the other day.

I had only recently gotten back this sweater, one given back to me when Eva had come over for our talk a couple weeks back now.

I hadn’t had occasion to wear it, in the morning tussle that usually started with either writing or pulling myself together for work and ended, largely, with wearing the same clothes I did yesterday.

But it was a Sunday night and I felt like maybe going out and my green sweater smelled like beer anyway, which is the peril of going out in sweaters to bars in the wintertime.

I had always thought I looked good in this sweater though, a real cashmere affair that was given to me by either my mom or my grandma. Somehow, I felt skinnier in it, felt I looked cooler in it, somehow felt like it made me more attractive or more put together. I’d imagine that much of that is the belief as opposed to the wear, “the man not the clothes”, but whatever gives you confidence is probably worth taking some note of.

My online dating profile got this picture because I still had big hair on the picture I had there and I hadn’t heard back from the girl I’d gone on one good karaoke date with, so I figured, “on to the next one”, as it was and that I’d have to be looking my best to try to attract the ladies.

I wrote a bad sketch which I was proud of writing (since I wrote anything at all) for my Saturday sketch class and it died rightfully in the class, but the sketch in my Wednesday class went over well, which was almost harder to take. It was a fake commercial for a pill called “Ex-static” which “triggers off that unique blend of sadness and arousal” brought about by thinking of your ex to provide a shock to one’s testicles, as a sort of Pavlovian method for break-up redemption. The premise, which we are required to read at the end of all of our sketches, was that “guys who talk about their exes all the times bring everyone else down and should be treated like dogs or goats or something”. I believe that was it, verbatim.

I’d like to say I’m not sure where that leaves me, but I’m pretty sure I do know: in a puddle of barely disguised self-disgust.

“Shouldn’t I not be feeling this way, 2 months out?” I asked my therapist, in the increasingly interrogative tone of our sessions.

“A year out, I might say that’s a very extended bereavement period.” She replied. “For now, I’d just say, you really loved her. How you feel is how you should, for that.”

I find myself reaching every day towards Eva, her popping into my mind, in the blank moments of walking or waiting where I would reach for the comfort of her love, of my love for her, confirmed or returned. It’s when I shunt these thoughts away that I go online to try to find people, that I feel compelled to make a connection.

I need something to fill that gap, so I’m not just reaching for what’s not there.

I felt good wearing that sweater and good about the picture. My hair’s looking ok on a day-to-day basis.

I’m not smiling there, but I don’t know if that’s ok. It’s hard to put yourself out there like that, talking to people you don’t know, pitching you.

Why should I be smiling, for the thought of that?

***

I tried stand-up for the first time last night and I wish I’d had someone take a picture.

They put me on second and I think I did pretty well.

I’d been seeing stand-up shows for a while now, the free ones at the UCB and people had often told me I had the right personality for it, a thought only countervailed by the many “wannabe-stand-ups” I had seen in my time and at open mikes. It was a profession that seemed, if possible, more painful than “wannabe actor” a position I found myself somewhat in the role of, after mocking it for my whole film-school career.

I texted a few people to come out and support me, the opposite of few-times quasi-roommate John Beamer, who shied away from anyone but me coming, so as to not have that social pressure.

I, on the other hand, am a multi-dependent mess and I appreciated the company.

Zach Weintraub, Andy Roehm and a surprisingly supportive Jonny-Jon-Jon Fostar all came out to see me and sat through my 3-minute set and everyone else’s at the PIT’s Tuesday open mike.

Robert Malone and his beard were notably absent, later telling me they was too busy “watching Snake Eyes on the couch with roommates”.

It was nice to see Andy there, since I felt like the more I worked with him at the Angelika the less time I had to be friends with him and Zach, who one of my coworkers hit on the last time he came by my work, was notable for showing up after a series of “maybe-no”s to other plans I’d had for weeks.

Jonny-Jon-Jon though came early, talked through a bit of my set with me and kept giving me reassurance, even laughed at all my jokes from the back.

“Would it be better if I fake laughed or just tried to laugh anonymously along with other people?” He asked.

“Just do what’s in your heart.” I told him.

To which he replied: “Right, nothing!”

“Hello, everyone. I’m Nicholas Feitel, it’s nice to meet you.” I said up there on stage.

“I should just say, I’m not a stand-up. I’ve never done this before. My girlfriend was an aspiring stand-up. And, uh. Then she dumped me. So. Here I am then. Good for you guys, I think.”

That got a good laugh, which was nice because I thought it was funny, practicing it that morning in the movie theater box office, but I couldn’t really figure out why.

My set was only 3 minutes, but I had a fair amount of laughs and I beat my “1 solid laugh” expectation that I had been holding. By the end of the night, I was trying to not to be pissed I didn’t get nominated for the “best joke” award that came with a free beer, just trying to remind myself it was my first time.

“I was solidly depressed by it!” was Jonny-Jon-Jon’s review as we walked out of the PIT. But my friends all backed me up and said it was good.

We all ended up walking for a while as Jonny-Jon-Jon turned off first, to undisclosed locations, Andy talking about projecting at the movie theater, before hopping on to the L. I had the longest time with Zach, while we discussed his own girlfriend, a Michig-onian named Jenny, who was pretty cool, but was now in Kalamazoo for two more years, while Zach was bound to Argentina in three weeks.

“I’m a little hesitant to say this, given past accusations.” I said. “But did you guys discuss this?

“No.” He said, but in the sort of optimistic way I couldn’t help but admire while judging it for stupid.

In the end, the last stretch. I walked home alone, trudging in boots, video-game system in hand.

The decision to try stand-up hadn’t come with much pre-meditation, or long thought or a career choice.

It was more just feeling like I wanted more to happen in my life.

It’s nice to know when you feel that way, that they’ll be more people onboard.

***

I had lunch with J-Sam Bakken the other day, whose been dating on-and-off with more success than I have.

After all, he plays the guitar and teaches children.

He’s a regular Raffi or Mr. Rodgers or something.

We met at Torrisi Italian Specialties, a place I’d been before, but was suitable for an inexpensive lunch with sit-down elements and no tip required.

J-Sam was excited to try the place, but he also was grilling me for tips on an improv comedy mini-curriculum he was planning for his inner-city 6th grade class he was going to teach.

“It’s pretty simple.” I told him. “It’s just like conversation, agreeing with people and adding what you have to say. That’s what improv is, the same way.”

While I didn’t know if I was the best person to explain it to him, I at least went through some of the structure of the things I’d done in shows and classes before with him, while waiting fo our meals to come.

J-Sam got, at my recommendation, the house-roasted turkey, the shop’s specialty, which is probably the best turkey sandwich I’ve ever had, beating even Katz’s. I tried the Eggplant Parm, alone, no bun, since they only had it in the winter and I’d already had the Chicken Parm and the aforementioned turkey sandwich.

We both got a side of brussel sprouts.

The eggplant parm was surprisingly excellent. “Surprisingly, you say?” a reader might ask, but I don’t look to eggplant parms as a real solid meal, more like a delicious appetizer before a bowl of pasta, as I’d had it in Italy.

But this eggplant parm was made like lasagna, layered with delicious fried eggplant and mozz and sauce, and doled out in hefty slices, that gave it a textural interest, like a casserole.

J-Sam was jealous. “I’ll get more of that next time.” He said enviously, as we swapped small bites of our food as I’m oft liable to do with fellow eaters.

The brussels sprouts were good, with red onion and a parmesan-like cheese, but lacked the toasty warmth that would have made them excellent.

“It’s all about getting people to agree, to not be self-conscious.” I told J-Sam. “To just let loose and accept what they’re going to do, without self-criticism.”

“And look how well that’s worked for you.” J-Sam said, un-ironically.

“Yeah.” I replied and finished my food.

***

TORRISI ITALIAN SPECIALTIES

Eggplant Parm w/side of Brussels Sprouts- $14 (Winter months only)

Mulberry St. bet Prince and Spring Sts.

NR to Prince St. 6 to Spring St.

How I Got Addicted to Bubble Tea (and back again…)

It started with a gap in time between work and class.

I had gotten off another shift making popcorn and needed somewhere to go in the time between, so I wandered down St. Marks, aiming for “Cheep’s”, an inexpensive falafel/shawarma joint that had popped up overo n 2nd Ave and promised at least the homonym of it’s title, as well as some saucy satisfaction.

I ended up sucked in to Spot by a sign on the sidewalk, near my walk back to the subway, with an offer of Bubble Tea and a cupcake for 5 dollars.

I came for cupcake, but it was the Bubble Tea that took me.

Bubble Tea, for the uninitiated, is something like a milkshake or a “frappucino”: a milk-heavy beverage made with tea and other flavors, with small balls of tapioca floating around its base, lingering there to be sucked up and chewed upon while one drinks their tea.

When Asian nerd-friend Matt Chao (who else?) first introduced me to this product, I was unsure how to drink it an tentative about its uses. If I wanted a milkshake, wasn’t I better off getting one of those? Did those “bubbles” even taste good? How would I avoid not just swallowing them?

So I didn’t drink it for a long time, but then, on the off time I went to Spot, I became enchanted.

Spot, it turned out, was a venture undertaken by a former favorite of mine, a man named Pichet Ong, who used to own the gayest bakery in the West Village, a place called “Batch”, that my mom and I would go to sometimes for “stir-in” chocolate-spoon hot chocolates. It was an inventive place, part of the dessert bar craze that petered about a year ago and closed right when its sit-down attached restaurant “P*ong” closed with it. Thus, I was happy to find Spot, even though it didn’t have Mr. Ong and his charming mother there, who used to minister to me and mine.

I sat down for my special, a “Thai Iced Bubble Tea” and a lemon-yuzu vanilla cupcake and suddenly it clicked in me.

I already loved Thai Iced Teas, with their condensed milk sweetness, but Bubble Tea was the drink of the bored, the loungers, the in-betweens. It was not cloying sweet, but tastefully so. The bubbles were there for consideration; something to ruminate on, literally, during breaks in conversation, or while listening. It was something to do, a combination drink/activity. Something to take your mind off, with sweetness, to relax.

I left Spot happy that day and returned other days, with cravings.

I went to St. Alp’s Teahouse in the East Village and a place named Crazy Bananas in Koreatown. I frequented these places a few times, soliciting advice from the aforementioned Matt for the best places to get it, the best flavors, et cetera.

After an improv class, or a sketch class, before, as a reward, or an incentive.

I became an addict, for a couple days, I admitted to Matt.

And then I got a cold.

***

I haven’t talked here for a while, save for a top 10 list, which was understandably attacked by my friends, but at least a read a few times.

One girl even subscribed to my blog and it notified me. That made me feel good.

When I wrote my first episode of the web-series adaptation of this blog, the running theme was the cathartic experience of writing it; the idea that I was somehow redeemed by clicks or views, by having “peeps out on the internet”. I remember when my friend Chadd Harbold read that one, it was soundly criticized, not just for the idea of that character having that experience be unrealistic, but as a critique potentially of my own life. It’s hard to tell when you blur the line between yourself and your art-work so much.

I went in this past week to a show called “Watch What Happens: Live” with a fellow I’d never met named Andy Cohen, who I later found out had a NYTimes feature article written about him, who nonetheless knew me and introduced himself as though I was the part of the media empire he oversees, which of course, to some degree, I am. Regardless of whether the stuff I shot for one of his shows ends up on the air, there’s bound to more representations, more versions of me out there than I know how to handle.

At work today, I was threatened with firing for a customer complaint of rudeness to someone trying to exchange a ticket. I remember in that moment sympathizing with my boss, who was trying to handle it gracefully, not just firing me but continuing to tell me to “change”. But when I sit in that box office and greet those customers, it’s hard for me to tell which me to give, which me I am, which me they’re seeing. I try to be polite to people, but it weighs on me in a way that recalls my mother’s self -proclamation of “thin-skinnedness”, in describing her depression, without her indefatigable resilience or grace. As people are mean to me, or callous, or just wave their Prada bags or Lacoste items, it’s hard to judge them, or more accurately, feel like you’re being judged. It’s difficult to interact, to know what to give them. You could call it me being a method actor, or just not knowing how to fake it: there’s only a limited amount of “nice” I can be, without anything to play on. It’s scary though to see the disconnection between this realization and the ability to figure out how change it.

I went on a date, this past weekend, while I was getting my cold, with a girl I met online. It went pretty well, I thought just then, but I haven’t heard from her since. We sang karaoke songs at Planet Rose (she was pretty good) and got kinda drunk and walked to the train and ate tacos. My “game” as it is, online, (spoiler alert) isn’t much game at all, but  just trying to offer some questions and accept some and to see if I could “swap truths” with someone and see if I like what I get, or if they do mine. When we talked online, this online girl and I, there was a lot of talk of back-sliding, in this time after college, feeling like you weren’t making progress, feeling like you were going to become someone you didn’t want or someone you used to be. It’s the same thing I talked about, if they use it, on the TV show I shot.

I also talked to Eva, sometime and worked some things out, without closing things. I’m left feeling better, that some part of her is still interested in me, if not in the way I need, but it’s painful too to revisit what you tried to move on from.

I hung out with Dan Pleck last night, who gave me some good advice about my meeting with Eva and seems, scarily enough, in a better place than me nowadays, emotions-wise. Dan used to be a parable for what I might become in my post-break-up situation, a fellow off-the-rails, and our interactions would be fraught with fear on my part along with frustration, in a way I now know also echoes my lack of control over other downward spirals in my life (including my sister’s, who is once again on the lam). Yesterday he came out with me to School Night, one of the several free shows at UCB that no one goes too, but that anybody interested in a career in comedy should, since they’re free showcases of good performances testing their limits and trying new material. Last night, Louis C.K. materialized at the show I was at to do a set, like something out of his own T.V. show, trolling open-mics late night, to just do it.

Dan got to shake his hand after his set, though he was eviscerated by the comedian on stage (who later said he wish he could have snuck out on his own set to do the same) and was ecstatic, wanting to celebrate after the luck of our free discovery.

“The thing is, I just got into him recently.” Dan said. “The stuff he talks about, feeling old and divorced and needing to feel manly: well, that’s pretty much how I feel nowadays.”

I was happy too, happy more that I could make Dan happy, but the problem was is that the person who introduced me to Louis C.K., as well as many of the cool things in my life, was Eva Dougherty.

The way we left things, when we talked, well, it meant we could talk, I guess.

So I told her she wouldn’t believe who I saw and sent her the picture I took from the theater.

She thanked me for telling her, in a text with many exclamation points and told me she was jealous.

The text I didn’t send said “Wish you were there.”

***

I woke up this morning sicker than I’d been.

Since it was cold I just kept expecting to get better and it got worse, I made a doctor’s appointment to be safe.

I didn’t get bubble tea much, recently, though I’ve craved it on occasion.

Like video games, it’s a distraction and a comfort; a sweet place to be.

I took some Zyrtec-D and some Motrin I had in my over-sized wallet to deal with the headache that didn’t go away when my nose cleared up, from my sinuses.

I felt floaty, sitting their in the box-office, like everything going on with me was still there, but I was just shifted, three inches above it.

The email and the firing stuff came at the end of the day and unsettled me, as they would most people I guess.

When I went to go change, a coworker of mine sat in the changing room staring at his phone, getting ready to get out.

For all intents and purposes, I should be friends with this man, who owns the same gaming systems as me, enjoys the same nerdy humor, has the same blaze attitude and occasional self-seriousness that I have.

But as I stand there, changing my clothes, I say nothing to him and he says nothing back.

I heard sometime that I offended him, that he thought I was talking shit about him (which I wasn’t), that I did slight to him that I didn’t know how to undo.

I offered to lend him I game I had he’d be interested in, but by that point he was wary of greeks bearing gifts.

Standing their in the locker room, changing, I didn’t know how to be or who.

So I said nothing and he said “later” and I said, “good night”.

And we all went on awkwardly, a little floaty, but still there.

Now I’m at home here sitting, on the end of pills and comfort.

Not knowing how to be, or who.

***

SPOT

Lemon-Yuzu Vanilla Cupcake with Thai Iced Bubble Tea- $5 (available 11-6 only)

St. Mark’s Place between 3rd and 2nd Avenues.

NR to 8th St-NYU. 6 to Astor Pl.

Because I Had Nothing To Do On A Sunday Afternoon And Felt Guilty That It Was Already 2011…

Damnit.

Well, not only have most people’s lists already come out, but Jason Lee even has a lit of his top 10 favorite “things” of 2010.

At least Chadd and Rob, who both spent New Year’s tucked away in some rustic country home (different ones), are both woefully lagging behind in their top 10 lists.

Which makes me feel a little better.

I think Rob’s list also includes either the Russel Crowe “Robin Hood” and/or “Unstoppable” which, for those of you who don’t care to remember, was that train movie with Denzel and the new Captain Kirk.

So I probably already have a leg-up here.

(Cue Rob Malone hateful comments/complaints.)

Oh yeah and Chadd’s list probably has some despicably French movies or something he saw at NYFF with 3 people in the crowd.

And Sam Song probably skipped out on writing a list this year, to go to the Minetta Tavern and order some $26 dollar burgers, along with soem cocktails that involve strange flavors like “hickory” and the Japanese citrus fruit “yuzu”.

So there.

Now that I’ve shat all over the competition, I can get down to it.

***

2010 was, of course, the first year that I worked in a movie theater.

(Actually, it was the second, if you count the summer I worked at one when I was 16.)

But what it means is that it was the first year I was able to go see movies with impunity, for free, taking my time and going during the day.

Also, it was a lot easier to fulfill my requirement of getting someone else to go with me, when I can offer them free tickets.

But that’s neither here nor there. What it means, is that I saw even more movies than I normally would.

Thus this year’s list, which is derived from many good films, may not include those expected and does not include some favorites.

It is like me, spiteful and ornery, but also weird and sometimes unintentionally funny.

If you don’t see a movie you know should be on here, I would be happy to discuss it.

But, not knowing the Oscar field in a year that seems increasingly like a toss-up (which is probably good for many of the small movies that came out this year), means that this list is even more in flux than perhaps usual.

“Is it just going to be a bunch of shit I haven’t heard of?” occasional roommate John Beamer asked me when I announced I was writing the list this morning.

It was a valid concern. In my opinion, a top 10 list should not be a pure exercise in one’s favorite movies of the year, but something balancing both preference and accessibility, the reason why film festival-only films are often not included on published lists. It’s about balance and finding a common ground, some room for discussion, while also sharing some things that not everyone has seen.

In other words, just like the Oscars, its politicking.

For better, or for worse. But there it is.

Now the disclaimer package:

Movies I did not see this year that perhaps I should have (and thus are not included on this list):

Greenberg, Carlos (hoping to see soon/a bad oversight), Secret Sunshine, Let Me In, The Strange Case of Angelica, Lourdes, Summer Wars (no one will go with me…), Ne Change Rien, Rabbit Hole, Another Year, Certified Copy (sorry, NYFF)

And without further ado:

A FEITELIAN TOP 10 OF 2010 or “FUCK YOU ROB AND CHADD FOR NOT WRITING LISTS”

10. THE GHOST WRITER

Seen during the early months of the year, Roman Polanski’s lesser, but still valuable entry to 2010 was a welcome contrast to Scorsese’s supremely disappointing (and Oscar-aborted) Shutter Island. With crack performances from Ewan MacGregor, Pierce Brosnan (as far as I know, the best of his career) and a welcome return (and hopefully Academy recognized) by that hot british chick from Rushmore, The Ghost Writer was nothing more and nothing less than a beautifully-acted and shot political thriller about the ways in which history is written and considered, done with an actual “light” political touch *for once*. This is all courtesy, of course, of the director, a man of some experience (and significant controversy) whom, nevertheless, knows how to make a goddam movie and has not forgotten it. What we end up with is a satisfying head-game based film that works both viscerally as a thriller and metaphorically as a treaty on the place and power of the writer in history. For sure, a metaphor for moviemaking in there as well, and a far subtler one than Inception‘s.

9. EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP

One of two “fake” documentaries that came out this year along with I’m Still Here (three if you count parts of “A Film Unfinished”, I’ve heard), Exit Through The Gift Shop bears comparison to Joaquin Phoenix’s surly, overwrought film only by virtue of genre rather than quality. What Exit is and what it succeeds as, is as yet another Banksy conceptual mind-fuck, the equivalent of his bent telephone booth and, indeed as it is billed, a “Banksy film”. We are posited that our protagonist, one strangely facial-haired Thierry Guetta, is an appreciateur of street art and general LA euro-trash type at large. By luck and relation, Thierry manages to stumble into the motherload of the underground street-art scene, becoming friends with Shep Fairey (of the Obama/Hope poster) and the anonymous, hooded Banksy. I’ll say I believe all of this, as well as the impressive footage taken of the genesis of street-art is real, but I doubt the veracity of what happens next, as Thierry appears to go mad with power becoming an unknowing parody of both the street-art scene he has so loved and the foolish patrons who endorse his work. Whether or not this transformation is real (which I doubt) or whether it is merely a prank Banksy decided would be a lark in which he enlisted Thierry (which I think probable) is besides the point. What is the point is that Banksy has crafted a modern day “F For Fake”, a movie that itself reflects our perceptions of truth and value in both art and cinema. What’s more, he’s made it entertaining, given it a storyline, a quirky protagonist, a third-act twist. It’s refreshing enough that I’m looking forward to the next “Banksy film”, if there is one. Also, should mention that Rob thinks that Banksy is Rhys Ifans, since they sound alike, even when Banksy’s voice is altered.

8. I LOVE YOU PHILIP MORRIS

Not to get all Armond White-y on y’all with a “Better-Than List” but, let’s face it, I Love You Philip Morris is a better gay love story than The Kids Are All Right. Part of that is that The Kids Are All Right is one of those overly PC “Gay is O.K.” films that seems to appear “Will and Grace”-like to explain/reassure White liberals in America that, yes, there are gay people, they live lives, they do things. To be fair, The Kids Are All Right is an interesting movie in its own right, particularly when it explores the limits of a queer family especially in the face of a society of hetero-normative values and definitions of sexuality and parenthood in these fraught modern times. But what it lacks (apart from some great Mark Ruffalo scenes) is a sense of humor, mostly smothered by its own self-righteousness, an area that I Love You Philip Morris shows its superiority in. Written and directed by the team behind Bad Santa, the movie feature that films round-about view of sentimentality, an honest heart hiding behind a dick joke. Part-Catch Me If You Can-style con-man thriller, part dirty comedy and part sincere/queer smooch-fest, Philip Morris is my favorite type of movie, a mash-up of genres that transcends them and hits through absurdity at something close to the truth of life (see: Being John Malkovitch, for different take, same thing). As the opening credits mention, all of the stuff in the movie really happened: a Georgia cop embracing his homosexuality upon meeting his horrid birth mother, finding love in a minimum-security prison, even maintaining ties with a loving ex-wife and children while robbing, looting and generally “gaying it up” all around the Miami area. Jim Carrey, as mentioned by Slant Magazine, is one of the best actors of the last 20 years and if not for the stigma of “comedy” he ought to have won an Oscar several times over now. Ewan MacGregor plays a sweet dandy and even the little-liked Leslie Mann (in a rare non-Apatow role) gives a convincing marm-y performance as a perplexed but accepting southern wife and mother. What I Love You Philip Morris shows and its’ greatest strength is something that The Kids Are All Right could never have: acceptance for all its’ characters. For while The Kids tosses poor Mark Ruffalo out on his ass as just some macho-hipster jerk, Philip Morris believes ultimately that no matter what the crazy, true things that it characters do, they’re always looking for love and their true selves, gay or straight, criminal or no. Who knew a floating dick in the clouds could be such a poignant closing image to a film.

7. DADDY LONGLEGS

Beautiful. A great movie about New York, fatherhood, cinema and “growing up” in one way or more. The Safdie brothers’ tone poem succeeds wonderfully due to the presence and their embrace of Frownland director Ronnie Bronstein’s central performance. Playing a projectionist very loosely based off himself, he sees his children only on the weekends when he gets them from a reasonably hateful ex-wife, who really shouldn’t trust him for five minutes. This is because Bronstein’s character, who seems to spring as one of the adult children from a Roald Dahl book (Willy Wonka, The BFG) has his life in no way together, in a way that makes for both a terror and an adventure. His frantic sexual exploits get him into an impromptu trip to the Catskills, which somehow includes the boyfriend of a girl he just slept with along with his unsuspecting kids, and a job-threatening projection shift causes him to feed his kids an overdose of sleeping pills in a scene that is both hilarious and somewhat mortifying, if we didn’t know those characters were based on the very twins who made the movie. Shot lovingly in 16mm, Daddy Longlegs seems like a potential heir to the films of Jacques Tati or Charlie Chaplin, following the tale of an irredeemable scamp, through the eyes of those who love him: his children and the viewer seen captivated by his performance.

6. THE SOCIAL NETWORK

The most likely Oscar winner (and for good reason) is a film that I do have my problems with. The first scene in the bar with two people exchanging barbs while sitting at a table is pretty unforgivably stagy and is a sign of the limits of Aaron Sorkin’s script, which reflects Mr. Sorkin’s distinguished run as both a playwright and a TV show creator. Just like the opening of Juno, it’s fake and it’s fake in a way that is cloying, even though the movie moves past it. That aside, their is much to like, if not love about The Social Network. Firstly, just the idea that a year ago we were all laughing about how desperate Hollywood had gotten that they were making a “Facebook movie” when there was obviously no story there. Such is no longer the truth as the film is obviously compelling, even thrilling, even though no one ever fires a gun or even has graphic sex. What instead we get is an intellectual thrill-ride about the rise/fall of a young man disconnected from the world and thus creating/defining his own. In the past, this movie might have been called “Lord of the Rings” or “Harry Potter”, but here instead what we get is a literal story of digital creation. Mark Zuckerberg replaces the social arena he has failed in with a new one, where he sets the rules, eliminating human connections along the way. That nothing much “dramatic” happens is to the strength of the script and both Sorkin and Fincher are here in best form, not sacrificing detail for the sake of story. Fincher has been itching for an Oscar for some years and even though I was not a fan of Zodiac he has proven himself frequently a director of interesting character and mainstream appeal, unique in his filmmaking approach. The only weak link here is Andrew Garfield, whose weepy histrionics and mistaken-good-boy approach lead to some of the films weakest scenes, like when he stands in the rain staring in and telling Mark “you’ve lost your only friend”. Some rage, desire or lack of innocence would have served his character well, something anyone from Joseph Gordon-Levitt to even (yes, sigh) Emile Hirsh could have brought to the part. All Garfield knows how to do is heave and sigh and look doe-ish. Here’s rooting for an excellent Justin Timberlake for an Oscar nom, or even the newcomer (and Zephyr Benson friend) Armie Hammer. Eisenberg has never been better either, in the title role, not even in Adventureland and, contrary to popular opinion and unlike Juno, his character is not “Mark Zuckerberg”, he’s a regular neurotic Jew, not a ruthless semi-sociopath.

5. BLUE VALENTINE

Raw, emotionally honest, partially improvised, the creation of 12 years of intensive labor. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams give the performances of their careers, even though they seem like actors capable of doing that multiple times in a career. A love story told as tragedy, with two people who honestly love each other and honestly mean the best falling out of it due to their characters and their circumstances. Ultimately what is it that makes them fall out of love? Whose fault is it? Whose demands are unreasonable, whose impositions too much? These questions are unanswered, just as they would be at a real break-up, because Mr. Cianfrance has succeeded in crafting a movie that feels like a real relationship, a rare feat. He has done this through crazed directing, hundreds of takes, having actors keep secrets from each other and performing stunts to get real reactions (at one point Mr. Gosling almost falls off a bridge, for real, with no safety net). These are all, of course, totally nuts, but so is the rush of emotion and feeling that accompanies love, that most mysterious and powerful of things and Mr. Cianfrance has succeeded here in capturing even a little bit of that, in no small part by showing it decomposing under a microscope. Shot, intertwined between the couple’s meeting cute and their last-ditch attempt at reconciliation, Mr. Cianfrance also seems to recognize an emotional structure to his film that is compelling to the audience, using flashbacks as Mirch intended them with a twist, showing how one revisits the past as even they try to untangle the intricacies of the present. It’s an honest film and a lovely one, sad and true and heartbreaking.

4. INSIDE JOB

Remember when, after the incredible Bowling for Columbine, which combined South Park humor with Jackass-style jumps, we had to give Michael Moore a pass for all the crappy overwrought movies he did following because he was “tackling important subjects”? Well, at least in this case, we need not sacrifice form for content. Inside Job is a clear-headed, well-explained take on the financial crisis in an efficient 100 minute package. Many people with global political influence are there talking, their points weaved narratively and consistently through like a good essay, cited throughout the film’s indictment of America’s financial system and the speculation it caused. But all of that sounds so boring! What makes Inside Job so good is that it was done by Charles Ferguson, a one-time teacher and PhD at M.I.T. for Political Science. Later, he went on to be an internet entrepreneur, ending up at both Google and Apple at critical stages in their development, but his love of learning and learning well endures. So, like a really great lesson from that “cool” professor, Inside Job is full of humor, dramatic irony and real showmanship. Ferguson, a non-filmmaker, bears an estimable teacher’s gift of condensing something so complicated and making it both more compact, more interesting, and linear; the film’s ending voiceover that the leaders of the financial industry will tell you “what they do is too complicated for you to understand” is repudiated by the movie you just watched. You do understand it now and you’re pissed. But you also just had a really good movie-going experience. With this film, Ferguson’s second after the previously excellent and very similar treatise No End In Sight (which attempted to untangle our “strategy” in Iraq), I get the feeling that Ferguson should move on to narrative. After all, if he can make points so well and so dramatically with only economists and ministers on board, aided by the occasional Peter Gabriel song, imagine what he could do with lights and actors!

3. WINTER’S BONE

When I was sitting in the box office at the Angelika yesterday, worn out by customers and co-workers alike, I didn’t recognize Sam Song, much to his chagrin, and then, when I did (“I’m Sam Song.” he said.) I went on about his imaginary girlfriend, who turned out to be the girl standing right next to him. She seemed nice. I added her as a friend on Facebook. Anyway, when afterwards Sam and I had a text message conversation regarding SMS-flashing, re: his not-imaginary girlfriend, the conversation quickly got off topic to this list, then incomplete. When I mentioned that this film was “somewhere in 2-4″, Sam dismissed this as a “disqualifier” to any such top 10 list of the year. Indeed, some of my friends, while not disqualifying my list, have voiced similar opinions about the quality of the film (which I probably got them in to see for free as it played at the Angelika). All I can say to them is: did we watch the same movie? Winter’s Bone, done by second-time director Debra Granik, makes so many right/interesting decisions it was nice to see it vindicated with a long theatrical run and the A.V. Club’s no. 1 pick. A young woman of no more than 17 (Jennifer Lawrence) cares for her much younger brother and sister in a dilapidated shell of a house in the Missouri Ozarks. Her mother, still living, is dead to the world, shuttered in by abuse and her own psychological problems and her father, most recently, has jumped bail for meth-cooking charges, leaving the house for forfeit. Such starts Winter’s Bone and its protagonist Ree Dolly on her quest to find her father and get him to go to prison for many years for, what we learn, is the only subsistence of this community. In my improv class, my great teacher, Chelsea Clarke, would tell us “be specific to be broad”, meaning that giving details from one’s lives that are specific as possible ring true to an audience, they’re recognizable and thus universal. The same applies here and much as Winter’s Bone is a movie about the insular community that Ree and her family inhabit, it’s also a film about America, the kind of society we’ve become in light of economic “recession”, where Ree tries to enter the Army for escape and the money for her family and asking for help from neighbors is considered shameful. The dialogue was written in conjunction with some of the actors, many of them native to the area and the secondary characters feel specific and real too. But it’s the directorial decisions that impress here, such as Ms. Granik’s decision not to participate in the pornography of violence, eliding the threat and showing its aftermath and wakes, but never letting the audience get a “thrill” from it. Or when Ms. Granik holds a scene at the end of the film to include some banjo riffs by a child, after all dialogue has ended, because it’s a moment worth capturing. The whole film is consistent in tone and color, but it also looks like nothing else American right now. And none of this is even mentioning Jennifer Lawrence’s spectacular performance (hopeful Oscar nom) or John Hawkes (of Deadwood) who gives the best supporting actor performance of the year, no question. As Teardrop, Ree’s uncle, Hawkes embodies both the violence and the lost promise of the Ozarks, a walking contradiction at ease with his own body, he is both protector/antagonist to his charge Ree, in the animalistic ways that his culture permits him. Here’s hoping more people saw what I saw, too.

2. THE ILLUSIONIST

I should start out by saying that Sylvain Chomet’s first film (The Illusionist is his second) The Triplets of Belleville, is one of my favorite films ever. That film was a nearly wordless animated masterpiece evoking old-school Paris, New York, Looney Tunes cartoons, silent film and burlesque, with a crazed plot involving a small grandmother, her dog, illicit bootlegging and the Tour De France. It’s a masterpiece, family-friendly, something both Disney-esque (in an originalist Fantasia-type way) and uniquely its own. The Illusionist is a much less raucous movie, but also a more poignant one. Famously (and to much controversy) based off of an unfinished script by Jacques Tati (Playtime, Mon Oncle), the main character is an animation revival of the writer/actor as Tatischeff (his birth name), a parlor magician in the waning days of cabaret/burlesque/illusion acts. As we see him, Tatischeff does from playing grand halls, to being wiped off by swingy rock musicians, standing in a store window, hating himself. Along the way, he finds a young girl, who acts as the family connection he never had in his life, someone for whom he can make magic, an audience of one who believes in you, which is what a daughter sometimes is. In Edinburgh they live together in a hotel for out-of-work performers and for a time, life seems grand or at least livable as Tatischeff works hard to make money to make “magic” for his girl, and the girl explores the wonder of the city. But soon enough, the world has no place for Tatischeff’s illusions, as the girl grows too and discovers her own pleasures. Tati and Chomet equate adulthood with a farewell to illusion, as illustrated in the film’s ending, but also a belief and a love for those who practice them. The Illusionist is, at it’s best, a tragedy about what we leave behind when we “move on”, a treatise on lost love and grief, done with all the wit and humor and poignancy of a revived Jacques Tati. It’s a marriage, one would hope, that the actor/director/writer would have smiled upon, from the beyond.

AND FOR THOSE OF YOU WONDERING, IN TYPICAL SPITEFUL FASHION, HERE’S A MOVIE NOBODY SAW:

1. FISH TANK

For the past while, Chadd Harbold (mentioned above as the guy who would have something “despicably French” on his top 10 list) was bothering about the number 1 film would be on my list and I kept telling him that it was a film we saw together and a film we saw in the beginning of the year. “Those are pretty big hints.” Chadd said, but he still wasn’t able to guess. He didn’t even say a single movie. Which was interesting as I think we both had the same reaction coming out of the film: we were floored by how good it was. Newcomer director Andrea Arnold has succeeded in my eyes in creating something new, exciting and meritorious, just as Joachim Trier once did on this list previously with his 2008 film Reprise. A worthy successor both to the Dardenne brothers’ style of gritty modern-day neo-realism a la L’Enfant and (yes) the sentimental filmmaking of Francois Truffaut in The 400 Blows, Fish Tank is a movie unsurpassed in its rawness, honesty and kinetic energy this year. The story of Mia, played by unreal newcomer Kate Jarvis in easily the best performance of the year, a 15 year-old scrappy-as-fuck white chick living with her trashy/abhorrent mother and her feral little sister in a crappy British ghetto, is a dystopian story played real. While one might be put off at first by Mia’s fist-fighting hip-hop dancing ways, her fighting instinct is quickly realized as survival impulse, when you find out that her life is one where the closest thing to familial love is familial silence and there is no one in existence to watch her back. When “mum” brings home a boyfriend (Michael Fassbender, quickly becoming one of our finest actors), it’s all Mia can do to reject and then latch on to the little bit of common-sense affection he throws her way; it’s like nothing she’s ever experienced before in her conspicuously father-less home. What follows is an aria of children breaking bad, adults breaking worse and a story of a place without hope. The title seems to represent both Mia’s trapped existence and our complicity in it, as the people in her life fail to help her, one by one, we sit on the outside and watch. Like Lorna’s Silence or (again) The 400 Blows, the ending represents the degree to which we can move on in our lives, our ability to escape and the recognition that the most tragic moment is the one where you can run no further. A feminist masterpiece, a humanist masterpiece, if you were to see any movie off this list, see this.

***

So, that said, we still have some cleaning up to do.

First:

MOVIES STUCK BETWEEN THE CRACKS IN YEARS AND THUS NOT ON THIS LIST:

LIFE DURING WARTIME- My previous sorta-number 1 from last year came out this year. Still a great film. Still one of Todd Solodnz’s best, if not the best. It marks a welcome return to form and a stunning display/tragedy of emotional honesty.

UN PROPHET- Of course this movie was great! It was fucking fantastic. Credit goes to Dan Pleck for pointing out that, other than the obvious comparison to “The Godfather Part II”, this movie also functions as an adaptation/retelling of the story of Muhammed! Crazy good, the best Jacques Audiard movie. The reason it’s not on this list is because it was an Oscar nominee last year and as such does not seem eligible for this year consideration.

UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES- Whoo boy, are you all in for a treat in March or whenever Film Forum decides to release this. The most acceptable movie by guy whose name no one can spell/pronounce so we call him “Joe” and, from what I hear, the best. A meditation on reinvention and reincarnation both national and personal, both fantastical and sometimes naturalistic, incorporating non-actors and actors from Joe’s previous films. A splendid mash-up and an amazing picture, disqualified because it was only at NYFF in 2010, but here’s hoping for an Oscar win for Best Foreign! Kudos to Cannes on recognizing the talent.

***

OTHER MOVIES THAT I SAW THIS YEAR THAT WERE PRETTY GOOD ACTUALLY BUT DIDN’T MAKE THE CUT:

Black Swan, Mother, True Grit, The King’s Speech, Vincere, Everyone Else, Inception, Four Lions, The Kids Are All Right

SPECIAL HONORABLE MENTION:

RED, WHITE AND BLUE- A great horror/mumblecore/”mumble-gore” film with a super-cool kinetic storytelling style and a star turn by Noah Taylor, previously known for playing nerds, who here plays an eerily-convincing Iraq war vet. The sort of “neo B-movie” that is made with some a subversive bent, but enjoyable on many levels for either its blood, guts and boobies, or for its filmmaking appeal/writing.

***

AND NOW WHAT YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR:

NICK”S SOOPER-DOOPER-POOPER SPITEFUL TOP 5 OVERRATED MOVIES OF THE YEAR (SURE TO PISS OFF HIS FRIENDS)

5. DOGTOOTH

This shouldn’t even need to be on here. No one has seen this movie. It played at Cinema Village for like 2 days. But for some stupid reason, Film Comment and Slant both thought it was the goddam beez-kneez. I saw this with Chadd too and we both thought it was pretty cool and fucked up, but not like, “best movie of the year” fucked up. Art kids need to get the fuck over themselves and stop saying cool things only they see are worth mentioning (cough, hypocrisy, cough, cough).

4. SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD

Sorry guys. I love Edgar Wright and this film is not terrible, but it’s not very good either. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, the main love interest, sucks and is uninteresting in her role as Ramona and, let’s be honest here, the Asian chick is much cooler, a much better match for Scott emotionally/maturity-wise AND she’s a fucking Ninja. That being said, whatever, I understand the apologists who elevate this because of the need to highlight a movie that was unfairly maligned, but that doesn’t make this “Best Picture” material. It makes it an uneven, interesting American film made by Edgar Wright. Here’s to the next one.

3. 127 HOURS

Shitty, some good James Franco moments. Glad the Oscars I think will shun this one. Ending/opening is corny as Chipotle-burrito induced shit.

2. THE FIGHTER

Wow. Like The Town was a decently good, silly movie about Boston-area Masshole hicks and I’m pretty sure The Town, which featured Blake Lively acting like she was Blake Lively high on a speedball, was a better movie than this one, treading similar ground. Full of over-the-top scene-grabbing, throat-yelling performances, you know you’re in trouble when the emotional center of your film is Mark-fucking-Wahlberg. I don’t care what people say about that “the people were even crazier in real life than the actors were playing them” and that Christian Bale’s performance was a “tour-de-force”. What Christian Bale’s performance was in that movie was a greedy, slack-jawed grab at grabbing a movie by the balls and saying “look at me, cause the rest of this movie sucks”. David O. Russell doesn’t as much as make a comeback as give-up and let the actors yell at each other, not that Darren Aronofsky, the original director, would have done much better. A rehash of a Rocky plot with some stuff about family thrown in there. Mostly boring and hokey and annoying.

1. TOY STORY 3

I never saw Cars and I don’t remember A Bug’s Life too well. Maybe that one was worse than this. Toy Story 3 will probably be remembered in the future as the movie where Pixar jumped the shark, from making beautiful original products and occasional story-continuations, to three-quels and hokey junk. The film re-assembles all the great actors from the first two films (classics) and sticks them in a shitty Michael Arndt script with an unconvincing love story, some cheap ethnic humor and a total cop-out ending with some hipster-B.S. embodied by a googling Kristen Schaal dinosaur toy. Toy Story 2 felt like the perfect ending and a welcome return to characters we loved, where Woody had to accept a life without human contact, love or longing, or obsolescence and death with real emotions. He chooses the latter and such has the quality of myth. No such greatness accompanies this film, whose only message is toys can be mean to each other and they’ll always be someone to play with you. It’s reassuring bullshit that, for the first time in my watching Pixar, actually makes children dumber rather than smarter. Even the WALL-E fat people scenes were better this. Kudos though to a welcome Michael Keaton as a dandy Ken doll. Here’s hoping for a revival of your career buddy.

***

SOME TERRIBLE MOVIES:

The Other Guys, Shutter Island, Dinner For Schmucks.

SPECIAL TERRIBLE MOVIE:

SOMEWHERE-

I actually tried to convince people on New Year’s Eve not to see this movie. “Is this really how you want to spend your New Year’s?” I’d tell them at the door. “Go see Blue Valentine, if you gotta. Or just hug? Enjoy each other’s company? I mean I guess it’d be fine if you just sat in the back or just slept or made out, but really, don’t do this to yourself.” It was mostly in vain, though I saved a few people. An accurate description: nothing happens. Another accurate description: Sofia Coppola used to fuck Quentin Tarantino, which is the only reason why this won the Venice Film Festival, since he was the head juror. Gotta pay for the pussy, QT.

***

So, there we are. Another year gone, another list done. I’m sure there are grammatical errors. It’s way too long. I doubt anyone will even read this.

But one thing’s for sure.

I won’t recognize Sam Song the next time I see him.

Cause he’s Asian.

And I’m racist as fuck.

Love you, Sam.

-Nick