Prisoner of Azkaban

So since I wasn't feeling great this weekend, my hot Halloween date last night was my little brother's "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" DVD. I haven't seen that movie all the way through since I saw it in the theatres last summer and now I sort of remember why.

In case you haven't already figure it out, I am a hug fan of the Harry Potter books. I make the distinction because I have this sort of love/hate relationship with the movies...ie, I get psyched for the movies to come out, then annoyed because there are elements in the movies that get left out and things aren't as I pictured them...you know, the usual. But "Prisoner" is my favorite book of the series (though I love all of them)and the way the movie is, irritates me more because a huge chunk of plot was left out in favor of....well, I'm not sure what. Pretty shots: leaves changing, longer-than-necessary scenes with special effects...oy.

But...no Quidditch cup, no explanation of the just who Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs were...and Harry doing some things that are blatantly out of character. There was a scene where he was wandering around the corridors of the school at night, which he definitely does in the books, but he did NOT have his Invisibility Cloak. There is no way Harry, as written, would not wear that when he was wandering around...he has been threatened with expulsion so many times that that is something he just...wouldn't do. The other thing was he started crying while they were in Hogsmeade...and it specifically says in the books that he wouldn't cry in fron of people, not even Ron or Hermione. Grr.

And of course, continuity over three movies is difficult to maintain, but when a character has a specific identifying mark, like say...a scar, it should well, always be in the same place. I watched the special features on the DVD and in the first two trailers, Harry's scar was on the left side of his head....and in the third, it was on the right. Seriously. Let's look at the little things, here.

Old Friends, New Friends...and Somewhere in the Middle

Wheneve my good friend Dan and I discuss our friends, I usually chide him for 'compartmentalizing'...you know, keep people in different compartments of your life and never letting them mix. He usually allows that I'm right and we move on.

But then I realized that I do it, too. Last night, my friend Melissa from high school imed me breaking a silence that has lasted almost five years. It's was so weird to me that here she was (well not quite here, but you know what I mean)...after all this time. What do you say when someone you've sort of written off comes back?

It's not like I wrote her off, like on purpose. It juist sort of happened over time. Especially since we both moved away from West Islip, where we grew up. But in middle school and I high school, I talked to her almost everyday on the phone, I slept over her house, I swam in her pool...it's so weird that a relationship like that was just...gone. But it's not just the relationship. It's that whole life. The growing-up teenage life in WI is gone for me. And that's ok; I've made my peace with it. I know who my friends are. They are the people whom you can talk to for hours after not having spoken in a year. They are the people who ask after your family even though they only know them through your description. They are the people who will drop everything and talk to you if you need them. And you do the same for them.

I don't have any delusions of re-creating a friendship that I used to have, but I would like Melissa in my life. My group of friends in high school was about twenty-five people. I now speak to about three of them. found out long ago which ones I had things in common with still, and sadly let go of the ones I did not. In the effort to hang on to my friends from SU and make new friends, I haven'tmaybe given enough attention to where things began. In West Islip.

Dancer

You are a Ballerina. You are the classic princess
between all, you have an opinion about almost
everything, your friends respect you and see
you as a role model cuz you are always in your
way up. Your ideal man is someone who respects
the successful and intelligent woman you are.


What kind of dancers are you? (Girls only)
brought to you by Quizilla

The Opposite of a Girl Crush

So there are the women that we admire for being smarter, prettier, more confident and more put-together than we are. Then there are the women who we just...sort of...feel sorry for. And this doesn't mean we feel sorry for women who are bigger than us or less stylish. It's a way that a woman carries herself that makes the difference.

I was at the gym today and there was this woman in the locker room who I couldn't help staring at. For starters, her expression was sad but she stood hunched over like she didn't have the energy to right herself. She wore her home-dyed hair in a half ponytail bound with a scrunchie; a look that Sharon Cherski wore with so much more attitude...in 1994. Her outfit wasn't too bad, as much as it was bland...a pair of gray dress pants and a tan top...though then she added the huge blue granny sweater. Oy. I felt bad that I kept looking at her, but she seemed so sad and a small, shallow part of me wondered if she would have been more excited about getting dressed if she had a better outfit. It was one of those times that I wanted to take her to the Gap across the street and get her a new outfit.

She seemed like one those people who only spoke or even smiled if they really had to and then it took considerable effort. And for someone who just worked out, she didn't seem to have the end-of-the-workout high that many of get so that we can bear to go and sit at our desks again. I don't know. I could be totally wrong and she could be the happiest person, like, ever...but if body language was any indicator, that isn't the case.

The Best of 2005... Sara Style

Ok so this week the Village Voice came out with their best of 2005 issue (view it here: www.villiage voice.com)and I got to thinking about what I would put in if I were writing so here are a few (bear in mind that I live in Park Slope and I work in Midtown so these are colored by those facts):

Best Place to Get Trampled By Tourists: Times Square. No explanation needed.

Best Theatre to do Unpaid Theatre Work: Here I give a shoutout to Gallery Players (14th and 4th in Park Slope) a theatre where I have worked as an Assistant Stage Manager for five plays in a row, including The Full Monty and The Laramie Project. Come check it out!

Best Place to Watch Baseball: Yankee Stadium (161st Street..on the B/D line) Say what you will about the recent post-season collapses of this team...they still have the best place in town to catch a game at a place steeped in history. Get there early enough to get into Monument Park and take in the history.

Best Place to Watch Hockey: Madison Square Garden (34th and 7th above Penn Station). "The World's Most Famous Arena," indeed. After hockey's season long absence, it'll be great to get back to MSG and catch the Rangers. Don't forget to wave at Mike Richter's number 35 above the ice.

Best Place to Eat Before Going to MSG: Keen's (36th and B'way). Good burgers. Good club sandwiches. Good beer.

Best Place to Buy Books: Coliseum Books (11 W. 42nd St)Sure, the books aren't any cheaper than BN, but they sponsor the reading lounge in Bryant Park and host authors such as Tony Kushner and Gregory Macguire.

Best Show Not Starring a TV/Movie Star: Altar Boyz (Dodger Stages, 50th St bewteen 7th and 8th). I expected this show about a Christian Boy Band to be idiotice but it was in fact, delighfully cheesy fun. But go see it for yourself.

Best Place to Eat Lunch and Not Look at Your Office Building: My favorite is this place on 50th Street next to Strawberry's with a fountain and a waterfall encases in a wall. There are tables and chairs. Just don't sit near someone who's smoking or on their cellphone.

Best Thai: Yum's (Across from Virgil's on 46th St). A small hole-in-the-wall that everyone seems to know about if you fancy Pad Thai for lunch.

Best Margarita: Mexcal's (7th and 5th in Park Slope). The service might not be the best but those flavored maragaritas (raspberry and strawberry are the best) in cactus-handles glasses more than make up for it.

Best Bar to Go With a Big Group: Fiddlesticks (Greenwich...get off the train at W. 4th). No cover and good atmosphere...and good chicken fingers.

Best Movie Theatre: Loew's Lincoln Square (1998 Broadway) Price of an Imax movie ticket: $15. Price of Christian Bale's face filling up your entire field of vision: priceless.

Best Show on Broadway: Rent (41st and 7th). Now with a movie coming out and a tenth anniversery looming, Rent will do big businees. But it's still the show about dreaming big, rock music and love. No day but today.

That's it for now. More soon.

Birthdate

Your Birthdate: March 4

Being born on the 4th day of the month should help make you a better manager and organizer. You may be more responsible and self-disciplined than you realize. Sincere and honest, you are a serious and hard working individual. Your feelings are likely to seem somewhat repressed at times. The number 4 has something of an inhibiting effect on your ability to show and express affections, as feeling are very closely regulated and controlled. You are apt to be much more practical, rational, and conscious of details. There is a good deal of rigidity and stubbornness associated with the number 4.

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

Morning Commute

So this morning I'm on the subway, going to work and this woman and her little girl get on the train. I say 'her little girl' loosely, of course, I don't know if she's her own child or not. But along the way, the child begins crying nd it turns out that she's crying because she wants to sit on the woman's lap. At least that is what she's saying while crying. And the woman sits there, apparently reading her book as the child tries to climb on her.

This made me irrationally angry. Of course, it's none of my business. But once the child is crying in the subway, it sort of becomes everyone's business. The whole car was sort of looking at this woman and wondering why she wasn't doing anything to quell the crying of this little girl. I know sometimes kids have tantrums in public places and people look at the mother like she's a horrible person...but I don't know that htis was the case. The woman sat in her seat on the subway and tries to ignore the little girl, who stood in front of her. I wanted to go over and give the girl a hug and tell her she could sit with me.

Some people should just not be around kids, or have kids or whatever. If it's such a chore to have the kid around, that you make them cry and don't try to make them feel better, then what are you doing with a child? Seriously.

A New Year

Don't adjust your calendars...it's not January yet. Thank Gd. But it is the beginning of the Jewish year, 5766. Wow. Think about that. It's 2005 by the more common calendar,or the Christian calendar as some would say, but the Jewish calendar has been around more than 3000 years longer. That's a long time. Just thinking about the difference in the numbers sort of puts things into perspective.

But what the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, puts in perspective more so than New's Year's does is that it is a new beginning. New Year's is about drinking, and eating and cheering as the ball in Time's Square comes down and it becomes January 1st again. Rosh Hashanah offers something different: time to sit and reflct on the things you've done in the past year and what you hope to do differently in the coming year. New Years' resolutions always seem a bit empty, or at least they do from my point of view, because it seems then, that the world becomes even more obsessed with weight loss and exercise instead of focusing on what will make them a fundamentally better person.

Rosh Hashanah begins the year and the Days of Awe which culminate in the ultimate out-pouring of repentance and redemption, Yom Kippur. Through these days, we make amends with people with whom we may have quarrelled or examine oursleves to figure out how to become better Jews and better people. On Yom Kippur, our fates for the coming year are sealed and they play out over the year. Through this time, we repent for things like ambition and rudeness and materialism, things that we wouldn't think twice about if it wasn't spelled out in front of us. We empty our pockets of bread, symbolically throwing our sins away and discuss the goat of Azazel that was set free in the wilderness bearing everyone's sins.

Jews have no ritual of "confession" as the Catholics do, but we carry sins with us until we can identify them and set them free and begin the new year with a clean slate. May all of you who are celebrating this week and next have a happy and healthy new year.

L'Shana Tova