Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

weekend in review

A brief recap of this past weekend:

• Friday night, Rob and I saw Wordplay, a documentary about crossword puzzles and people who are really good at solving them. It’s fun and charming; I’d definitely recommend it.
• At the risk of sounding whiny, it’s hard to stomach paying so much in rent when little things seem to keep going wrong. On Saturday, the elevators in our high-rise went bust and management didn’t seem particularly apologetic. Meanwhile, as we waited an eternity for what seemed like the one working elevator, the hallways felt increasingly warm and humid as the air conditioner’s efforts seemed less and less effective at cooling the building.
• Saturday night, after cooking a yummy dinner of shrimp fried rice and tofu/seaweed soup, we saw The Squid and the Whale, which I’ve had from Netflix for a while now. The movie, about the effects of divorce on a family in mid-1980s Brooklyn, was raw and at times difficult to watch, but well-done and very well-acted. There was an odd moment, near the very end of the film, where Rob and I turned to each other and remarked that the movie had suddenly turned into The Royal Tenenbaums. (Perhaps not too surprising, since writer/director Noah Baumbach is a longtime collaborator with Wes Anderson.)
• Today brought a morning dim sum outing with some of Rob’s coworkers and a friend in town for the summer, followed by a party at the new home of Rosie and Eoin, who got married last month in a small, private ceremony.
• All the painful humidity of this weekend has meant that I’m looking forward even more to heading out to Tucson at the end of July. Sure, it’ll be 110 degrees, but, as they say, it’s a dry heat. And it’s a whole lot easier to cope with that than a day so humid that the papers in your apartment are curling.
• Season two of The Venture Brothers premiered tonight on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. They had a lot to live up to after the brilliant season finale, and I was not disappointed.