The One I Love

The weekend before last, my husband and I found ourselves in the rare position of having an evening to ourselves (the kiddo was asleep early) and enough time to watch an entire movie in one sitting.  Hot Damn!  

Some quick googling of "best date movies" led us to The One I Love staring Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass plus Ted Danson in a small supporting role.  It's currently streaming on Netflix which describes the movie this way:

Confronted with the potential end of their marriage, Ethan and Sophie take off for a weekend together, hoping to negotiate their future. When they reach their idyllic destination, however, the couple strolls into a bizarre new brand of trouble.

We really enjoyed it.  I wrote before about another Mark Duplass movie, Safety Not Guaranteed, and what both of these movies have is a kind of eerie magical realism that works really beautifully. 

Also, as a recent producer of video content (aka Gemma & The Bear) it was hard not to be impressed with how the movie really only has two actors in it - such a smart way to have room to focus on excellent acting (which The One I Love has in abundance) and great production values. 

If you watch it - or if you've seen it - leave a comment and let me know what you thought!

Trailer!

We released a new trailer for Gemma & The Bear this week! Look!

We'll have a new trailer next Monday!  Episode One comes out June 15th!

Exciting, right?!

Mother's Day at Storm King

We had the most beautiful Mother's Day!   

Have you been to Storm King?  It's an open-air museum full of mostly-but-not-only large-scale modern sculptures, situated beautifully on a large campus about an hour outside of NYC.  You can bring a picninc.  You can rent bikes to toodle around.  It's gorgeous AND it's a great place to go with young kids who can run and make noise and explore and enjoy nature as well as taking in the art.  Here are some photos to give you a sense:

The open space, the woods at the borders, the sun, the smell of the air all combined to evoke so many happy memories of my back yard, summer camp at Cornell, time in England, time at Vassar, biking in France with my husband.  The biggest gift was how it all combined to make me (allow me?) to feel more expansive, happy and optimistic than I have in a really long time.

I don't imagine that Storm King will provide such a profoundly joyful experience for everyone as it does for me, but I do encourage you to go for a visit if you have the chance. 

Calico Easter Eggs

For Christmas, Santa brought my son a doll house.  It was the only thing he wanted. 

The doll house was very popular right around Christmas, then it had a long-ish break with intermitent play, but lately it's been getting a lot more attention again.  These days, though, my son is NOT into having the doll house in any kind of order.  In fact, he used the word "ransacked" to describe how it looked which was accurate.  Why he wants his poor Koala family to live like that is beyond me, but it prompted me go get a little bin to put the tiny accessories in so they don't get vaccummed up during this disarray phase.  And looking at all of the delightful little doll house things, reminded me of this amazing Easter Egg the makers hid in the newspapers that came with the living room furniture.

There are two newspapers.  Sunday, April 1 and Monday, April 2.  Here they are:

View fullsize

View fullsize

I mean, come on.  He discovered a treasure!  But then: he was so disappointed because "Treasure was just a broken box!"  I find this endlessly hilarious.  And I want to thank whoever behind the scenes at Epoch or Tomy designed these amazing tiny newspapers. 

Someone Open This Bar! Seriously!

Okay.  Here's my NEW BUSINESS IDEA:

A Bar.  With Snacks.  

The Bar is called "Good Grief."

You go there to sit and drink alone and maybe cry.  All the tables are for one.  It's okay to talk to other solo bar patrons if you both feel good about that (like if you're commiserating) but if they just want to drink and cry alone, you've gotta respect that.  Also, while there are no rules to specifically prohibit it, it would be really uncool to go there to pick someone up.

There are rules to keep people safe.  The bartender will only let you have, say, two or three drinks per hour to keep you from drinking too fast, leaving and getting hurt.  There's probably an overall max number of drinks you can have too.  (We'll have to look into the science of alcohol's effects and make some educated decisions around patron safety/our liability.)  The bar would also have taxis and/or cars for hire always on call so that sad, drunk patrons could get home safely.  And maybe you authorize your credit card up front so that you don't have to worry about loosing it or tipping - you can just leave when you're ready.  

The drinks are straightforward but EXCELLENT.  Always fresh lemon and lime juice, simple syrup, etc. - no margarita mix or sour mix or any of that mess.  The wine won't give you a headache.  

The snacks are similarly familiar but upscale.  A cheese plate. A good salad.  A couple of sandwiches.  Maybe one "real" entree on a rotating basis.  The food is tasty and doesn't make you feel like you did something bad to your body by eating it, and it keeps you from feeling too hungry or drinking on an empty stomach.

The decor is dark.  Everything is black.  There is some attractive lighting - perhaps some of those now-ubiquitous Edison lightbulbs? Maybe some great wallpaper behind the bar.  The tone is hushed.  The music is always very sad.  Kleenex everywhere (but maybe in custom-made holders so they blend in and look kinda cool.) 

The world needs this.  Or, at least, New York City needs this.  Sometimes you need a place to drink and be sad and be by yourself.  And maybe (probably?) you're less likely to overdo it and get sick if you're at a bar where drinking alone and crying are the norm.

Are you a restauranteur looking for new business opportunities?  Let's do this together!! (You probably think I'm kidding, but I'm not!)

Back in the Saddle

I blame the naps.  The lack of naps. 

My son, who turns three in March, stopped napping (precipitously) over the holiday break.  (This photo is of the last nap I can remember him taking.  It was in January but it was inadvertent - hence his sleeping on the floor next to a box of wipes . . .)

Over the holidays, it was fine.  I was on a self-imposed break from blogging.  The agenda was to spend time with my family - great!  But when the non-napping continued into and through January, things got rough.  Last week, with the non-blizzard shutting down the subways - and preventing our Monday/Tuesday afternoon babysitter from coming - was the low point: a week of total non-productivity and an ultimate inability to gather my thoughts on any subject beyond what to feed the child for breakfast-snack-lunch-snack-or-dinner and is-it-bedtime-yet?!?!  But they say sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you can turn things around. 

This week, with the return of babysitting and school, has seen a marked improvement and as we continue to adjust the overall schedule (earlier dinner and bedtime, a few more babysitting hours to make up for loosing the 10-12 work hours a week I used to have during naps - oof) I can already see things normalizing, productivity returning, my brain functioning once-again as the panic that had seized me around the lack of sleep/work-time begins to subside. 

It seems like such a lame excuse; like this sort of disruption should be more easily surmounted.  Oh well.  It is what it is.  What I wonder is how things might've been different if I hadn't stopped blogging (and newsletter-ing).  It has been surprisingly hard to jump back in and regain my momentum, and the naps are a big part of the problem but what if I hadn't broken my own stride?  Gretchen Rubin talks about this in a bunch of different ways - about how sometimes moderation is harder than just being absolute. 

Anyway, the metaphorical train is chug-chug-chugging down the tracks, picking up speed.  It feels good to be writing this - even this silly bit of explaining - and I look forward to more.

How about you?  Did your New Year start with a bang or a whimper?  What are your strategies for building momentum and getting things done?  I'd love to hear in the comments.