It’s been a while since I did a movie round-up, and I’ve seen a bunch lately. Here are my picks and pans:

No Reservations: Catherine Zeta Jones hadn’t finished speaking her first line before my friend and I exchanged eye-rolling looks. It didn’t improve, though of course Aaron Eckhart is always nice to look at, and I’m a sucker for a beautiful kitchen. Still, skip this and watch the original, Mostly Martha.

P.S. : I can’t figure out why this movie is called P.S. Again, a great cast (Laura Linney, Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden, Topher Grace and Paul Rudd) in an inane story about a woman (Linney) who thinks her dead high school boyfriend has been reincarnated in an applicant (Grace) to the MFA program she directs. Her ex-husband (Byrne) is a skirt-chasing professor and her brother (Rudd) is a recovering addict; her best friend (Harden) wants the reincarnated dead boyfriend for herself. What are these smart actors doing in this ridiculous story?!

Once: This is the perfect date movie. It’s quiet, talky, lovely. The relationships are realistic and complicated, the songs are great, and the story doesn’t get all neatly wrapped up at the end.

Hairspray: Read my column on this one; it’s a totally fun way to spend a couple hours.

Ratatouille: I’m not sure who the audience for this movie is, exactly, but I’m afraid I was a little bored. The animation is amazing, and the kitchen scenes are kind of fun to watch but (heresy, I know) I kept finding myself checking my watch.

Ocean’s Thirteen: I love a good caper, and in this installment the filmmakers made the wise decision to replace the Julia Roberts love interest with Ellen Barkin. This is completely entertaining.

Paris, Je T’aime: I didn‘t, much.

Knocked Up: Made me glad I’m not in my twenties anymore. I didn’t really entirely buy the relationship between the one-night-stand couple, but the married couple (the wonderful Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann) have some real moments between them.

Away From Her: This is gorgeous, and real, and sad. Though if I look as good when I’m 70 as Julie Christie does now, then I’ll be very happy.

And this brings me up to Waitress, which was also the subject of a column.

Next on my list: Becoming Jane, Manufactured Landscapes, No End In Sight, The Simpsons Movie, and This Is England.

I read about Overwhelmed with Joy‘s book exchange idea on A Wrung Sponge and I think it’s so perfect and simple I have to do it, too:

Most all of us love to read and get “new-to-us” books, right? And if you’re anything like me, you love winning things (what a rush), not to mention getting fun stuff in the mail! So here’s what this book exchange is all about:

1) Once a month I’ll pick a book to give away to one lucky reader (you don’t have to have a blog to enter). It may be a book that I’ve purchased new or used, or it may be a book that someone has shared with me that I really like. It’ll probably be a paperback, just to make things easier, but no guarantees.

2) Details on how you can enter to win will be listed below.

3) If you’re the lucky winner of the book giveaway I ask that you, in turn, host a drawing to give that book away for free to one of your readers, after you’ve had a chance to read it (let’s say, within a month after you’ve received the book). If you mail the book out using the media/book rate that the post office offers it’s pretty inexpensive.

4) If you’re really motivated and want to host your own “Pay It Forward” giveaway at any time, feel free to grab the button above to use on your own blog. Just let her know so she can publish a post plugging your giveaway and directing readers your way!

So there you have it, the Pay It Forward Book Exchange, designed to encourage people to read, to share good books, to possibly get you out of your reading comfort zone, and to get fun stuff in the mail instead of just bills!”

So here’s how to enter: leave a comment saying, “I want to enter.” That’s it. No muss, no fuss. I’ll randomly choose one lucky commenter on August 12th and mail the book out; you agree to give the book away when you’re done with it, via your own Pay It Forward Book Exchange or, if you don’t blog, by donating it to a local library or shelter.

Oh, and this month’s book: Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics, a campy, complicated, self-referential murder mystery and love story. And now you could read it for free!

Christopher Walken is my new favorite movie dad.

The creepy actor best-known for playing villains and psychopaths nearly steals Hairspray (Adam Shankman, 2007) away from the radiant Nikki Blonski (playing his daughter Tracy) and John Travolta, sadly underutilized in a gender-bending role as his wife, Edna. It’s Walken’s Wilbur, the only character not swathed in a cotton candy haze of makeup, sequins, and hairspray, whose strong presence gives Tracy and Edna the foundation for their helium-balloon performances.

Hairspray opens up in the clouds, and with a long, swooping pan the camera sails down into Baltimore and through the window of Tracy Turnblad’s bedroom. As the soundtrack thumps a steady beat, we see a shape wiggling in the bed, two bright eyes pop open, then two tapping feet emerge and slide into bunny slippers. This is the only time the camera looks at Tracy so closely, feature by feature; then it pulls back, and for the rest of the film, stays back so we can really appreciate the whole fabulous singing and dancing shape of her. She’s an Energizer bunny of a girl who belts out her first song before breakfast. I wondered if the film could maintain its high-octane opening; its energy flags only when it pauses for dialogue, but happily Hairspray is an unapologetic musical, taking few breaks for conversation.

Click on over to Literary Mama to read the rest of this month’s column, and let me know what you think!

This month in Literary Reflections, Kim Todd’s gorgeous essay, “Under the Skin: Lessons in Transformation. ” Here’s a taste:

When I discovered I was pregnant, I was knee-deep in research for a book on an adventure-loving woman who, 300 years ago, at the age of 52, sailed to South America from Amsterdam to study insects. My desk lay buried under notes on Maria Sibylla Merian and her pioneering investigations of metamorphosis, the change of caterpillar to butterfly. Stacks of books detailed how she and her peers, at the dawn of science, explored questions of development and transformation. How does a creature gain new parts, either a human embryo growing lungs or a caterpillar sprouting wings? They wrangled with the enigma of self divided. Larva and moth. Mother and child: Were they one, or two?

Suddenly, the mysteries probed in these seventeenth-century treatises were unfolding under my skin. Within weeks, my hair developed a luster beyond the magic of the most expensive conditioners. Insomnia, a clean, hard light bulb of wakefulness, switched on reliably at 3 a.m. A three-mile run had been part of my routine for years, but now I was limping back, gasping, after a few blocks. A trip to the ob/gyn not long after revealed that I was breathing not just for two, but for three. Twins.

Head on over to Literary Mama to read the rest!

Image from Maria Merian’s Dissertatio de Generatione et Metamorphosibus Insectorum Surinamensium, The Hague, 1726 edition.

Last month’s Gourmet magazine reports that “one in five Americans live on a diet of ten foods or fewer. Among the most common choices? French fries, fried chicken, chocolate chip cookies, and Kraft macaroni and cheese.”

Hmm. I was a little surprised at first — ten foods or fewer! — but when it comes down to it, I don’t really have that many more in my weekly repertoire: pasta, almonds, broccoli, yogurt, milk, homemade granola, spinach/kale/chard (I’ll count that as one), fresh fruit, bread, chocolate. I definitely eat other things in a week — burritos, stir fried vegetables with tofu, cheese, tomatoes, white beans — but if I had to narrow it down to ten foods to subsist on, well, I think that’s my ten.

What’s your ten?

Eli (at 26 months) has used the potty three days in a row, and the Mama, PhD manuscript (at 363 pages) is in the mail to the publisher. These milestones seem all the more appropriately linked, to me, as Eli’s words for “pee,” “penis,” and “computer” are one and the same: “pee-pee.”

Dr. Freud would have a field day with this, I know.

I’m just happy we’re moving forward, and trust that by this time next year, Eli will be looking sharp in his big boy underwear and Mama, PhD will be looking beautiful in a hard cover.

3 am: Ben appears at my bedside, having dreamt that his Tinker Toys were attacking him. I scoot over and he climbs in. I tell him to imagine scoops of ice cream falling on the Tinker Toy monster’s head. We both drift back asleep.

3:30 am: Tony, squeezed to the edge of the bed, gets up and carries Ben back to his own room. I should sleep better now, but can’t relax, worrying about all the details involved in delivering my book to the publisher next week (next week!).

4 am: Earthquake. Tony flies out of bed and down the hall to check on Ben (sleeping). I stand in our doorway, next to Eli’s room, listening to his quiet breathing. After a few minutes’ waiting for aftershocks (from the earth or from the boys), we both go back to bed.

5 am: Eli wakes. Tony uncharacteristically sleeps through Eli’s calls, so I go into his room and tell him it’s still night time. “Mama awake,” he points out. True enough. I sit on the chair and put my head down on the arm rest: “Mama sleeping,” I say; “It’s still night time.” “Sit up, Mama,” he demands. “Lie down, Eli,” I counter. Remarkably, he does.

5:30 am: Eli is not quite asleep, but resting quietly, when Ben comes down the hall and into the room. I put my finger to my lips to ask him not to speak, then open my arms for him to climb into the armchair with me. We manage to wriggle into a halfway comfortable cuddle and he falls back asleep.

6 am: Ben’s bedroom feels like a mile away, so I carry him, sleeping, back into bed with me.

6:30 am: Ben wakes and crawls out of bed, then stands staring at me sleepily. “What’s up, buddy?” I ask, “Are you awake?” “No,” he says, and walks down the hall to his own bed.

7 am: Eli wakes. Tony gets up with him, leaving me to “sleep in” for another hour, the best hour of sleep all night.

The Children’s Playground in Golden Gate Park has finally reopened after a 2-year renovation, and today we walked over to check it out. Before it closed, it was really too big for Ben, besides being a nightmare of splintery climbing structures and broken swings. Now it’s got all the latest and greatest playground equipment, some of it shaded with huge canvas sails, all beautifully landscaped with flowering plants and grasses.

But the best part is the part that they didn’t change one bit, the 2-story concrete slide that Tony used to slide down when he was a kid, the slide that always has plenty of cardboard at the top for the kids to sit on as they slide down.

There’s a small concrete slide at Ben’s preschool, and another one at Mountain Lake Park, but this is the granddaddy of concrete slides, and today there were more than 2 dozen kids waiting their turn at the top. Even the littlest ones were patient enough to wait till the slider in front flew all the way down and then climbed clear of the bottom. And Ben was in the mix for an hour, sliding down, climbing back up, tugging his big scrap of cardboard up behind him, a huge smile on his face. Occasionally he’d turn and wave and shout “Keep your eyes on me, Mama! I’m gonna go super-fast this time!” and I’d wave back and call “I see you!” and watch with a grin plastered on my face, too, watching my cautious boy sail down that slide, over and over again.

First Libby and then Vicki tagged me for this meme, so I guess it’s about time I played!

First, I am to publish the rules:
1. Let others know who tagged you. (check)
2. Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
3. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
4. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.

Here goes:

a) I was born in Tokyo. My two best friends from graduate school were also born in Asia (Moscow and Calcutta). We all married California natives, and all gave birth to boys in California within 9 months of each other.

b) My name rhymes with Valentine. It bugs me when it’s (frequently) mispronounced, but I don’t correct people as often as I should.

c) I didn’t learn to ride a bicycle until my junior year abroad, at Oxford, when I was 20. When I was little and my family would go on post-dinner summer bike rides through a neighborhood we called The Ways (the streets were called North Way, Northeast Way, South Way, etc), I just rode on the seat in front of my dad; later, my friends and I just walked everywhere, since the town was small and hilly.

d) My favorite lip balm is Smith’s Rosebud Salve, which I keep on my nightstand and in all my bags. A friend — and fellow lip balm connoisseur — and I exchange new brands for our birthdays every year. This year she gave me Fresh Sugar lip balm, which I also highly recommend. Her birthday’s tomorrow, so I’m not telling what I got her!

e) I always thought I’d have a daughter named Charlotte or Josephine. I miss not using the pretty names, though I don’t really miss having a daughter. I was briefly unsettled last year when a teacher at Ben’s preschool told me I have a daughter “in me.” Someone in my writing group suggested that I can think of my book as my daughter, and that’s actually perfectly satisfying.

f) Like Vicki, at one point in my life I knew ancient Greek, Latin, and French. Also Japanese (in which I was briefly fluent), Spanish, and even picked up a bit of Hebrew when my dad was studying it. I used to help my college roommate with her Russian homework, and somehow I could figure it out despite never having been taught the alphabet. I’m down to restaurant French and Spanish now.

g) I hate being late, and rarely am.

h) I had LASIK three years ago (after wearing glasses, and then contacts, since 8th grade) and it worked beautifully, but I still sometimes reach for my glasses in the middle of the night. Old habits die hard.

i) extra bonus fact: I worked in a hardware store one summer when I was in high school, mostly selling bags of concrete mix to contractors and such. It was lonely and dull, but it didn’t dampen my pleasure in hardware stores. Renovating my house did that, a project we “completed” almost a year and a half ago, although there are still some unfinished details (missing door plates, etc). I still shiver with pleasure when I pass a hardware store because I don’t have to go in.

Now on to the tagging!
Feed Your Loves
Lovebug and RolleyPolley
Momifesto
Fertile Ground
Marmee’s Corner
A Wrung Sponge

The first day back from a trip back east is always a little slow, a little foggy (mentally and, in the summer, literally). Even when all the flights go well, the flight is looooong, and (because we like to have a bit of a visit still on the last day) we get home pretty late.

Still, we’ve been back just over 12 hours and I’ve unpacked the bags, done (though not yet folded or put away) the laundry, and called to get off the mailing list of most of the catalogues that came in our absence (Back in the Saddle? why, oh why??). Tony replenished the fridge, and the boys have built a new train track.

Meanwhile, our 6 days in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania (an unexpected trip over the MD/PA border for a wedding breakfast; Elrena and Violeta, we waved in your directions!) included most of the requisite summer fun: running in sprinklers, catching fireflies, splashing in the local pool, and visiting with many cousins (first, second, and once-removed), aunts, uncles, nephews, and nieces.

Life is good. And although I’m sad to pack away my sun dresses and the boys shortie pj’s, I’m already thinking about a late summer trip east so that we can use them again.