Not Yet Paradise

I just finished watching Paradise Now, a 2005 film that won the Golden Globe and was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film as a submission from Palestine. I remember hearing about it when I was in college, putting up a postcard of it on my wall (along with other movie postcards) to remind myself to watch it. (I didn't, obviously, until now.)

At 90 minutes, the movie is tightly crafted and does an amazing job of pushing forward the tense plot. (Wow, that was a lot of adjectives and adverbs.) I think what struck me most was its presentation of the suicide bombing operations as...mundane, like any other project that has to be planned and carried out in order to achieve a practical goal.

And I think, despite the political weight of the issues addressed by the film, what made the film for me was the two actors playing the protagonists: Kais Nashef and Ali Suliman in the roles of Said and Khaled, respectively. To me they were pitch-perfect in portraying the anxieties and also the ordinariness of the two characters. Um...yeah, I'm making it more difficult than it is...

Anyway, I love watching movies in the summer—this is my 11th annual summer film festival, and I intend to keep up the tradition.

A Good Restaurant at the End of the Rainbow

We went out to dinner the other day, and I had to accept a painful truth that had been fairly clear since some time ago:

There are very few good restaurants in the region where I live. (Yes, that is a Popeye's in the photo. No, we were not going there.)

How, in a country with cities full of good food, can there be entire regions with few restaurants that offer food, service, and atmosphere that are worth paying money for? And why must I live in such a region?

I wonder what it takes to have a good restaurant. It doesn't have to be super expensive ingredients, just honest food, thoughtfully prepared...

No Time to Lose

I realize that the month of August is already half gone, which is...bad. I mean, really, really bad. Never mind the crap ton of shenanigans that I'm supposed to execute in the next several days, I'm also supposed to be...booting myself out of the city of Riverside.

It's funny how I can't stand other people saying bad things about Riverside, but I don't mind putting it down myself whenever I get a chance. It's like in those old mangas, when the girl only realizes she likes some dude when her friends point out the fact that she gets upset whenever...

Never mind. That got too complicated.

The skies of Riverside are as smoggy as ever, but occasionally we get a nice cloud or two. I'll dream of you, California...

What's a Baby Shower for?

On Saturday I attended a baby shower for a family friend (actually the son of my parents' friends...he and his brother used to teach me and my sister tennis when we were kids. And now he's having a baby! Good lord!). This was my first baby shower (the only thing close was the small bridal shower brunch I went to for my college drawmate), and I think it set the bar pretty high for the rest of my baby shower attending career. 

We had wonderful food (with fresh fish! smoked and grilled!) and cake from Diamond Bakery. Everyone was friendly and felt like family, and we all played silly games...and we had lots of presents, which made it feel like Christmas for the happy couple.

But may I ask: What's a baby shower for? Or a bridal shower? There must be a historical significance that has been lost over the years, and now it seems a little bit like a consumerist gift-giving occasion. (This one on Saturday wasn't really, but still.) What confuses me even more is a bachelorette/bachelor party. If you have to have a hyper sexualized weekend in order to prepare yourself for your ball and chain, why get married at all? Confused...

[I need to brush up on my gift wrapping skills...]