If ever there was a movie to see before you die, this isn't it.

I don't even know where to begin this ridiculous story it's so unbelievably absurd. Prepare yourself for a terrible tale so long it should really be in chapters of a journey so arduous and painful we really are lucky there weren't any casualties.

In 3D tuesday morning (with my new teacher, NOT with karen) we were instructed for homework to write down on adding machine paper (those white rolls) a list of every single ID item (in other words, ANY item EVER) we come into contact with, including repeat instances, for an entire 24 hours. This is our homework. That, or see a movie they haven't shown in NY since the 1980's (I now know there's a reason for that) and write down every item the main character touches. Three and a half hours of her life, or 24 of my own. We thought the movie was going to be a better idea, even though with cab fare and ridiculous overpriced manhattan movie fare it came to about twenty bucks. Let me just say that again... three and a half hours. The plot of the movie, which is in french (the dialogue would fit on a single sheet of paper. Double spaced. It includes such lines as "I let the potatoes cook too long. I had to throw them out. I could have made mashed potatoes but we're having that tomorrow.") and the full title of which is "Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles"), is as follows: she makes coffee. she peels potatoes. her son comes home. they eat soup. her life is dull. she flips light switches and opens and shuts doors when she enters or exits any room in her flat ever. until she starts "going crazy" which is in quotes because basically it means she forgets to shut a door or check her mail or boils the potatoes too long or any other number of completely horrendous abnormalities of which no other human is capable as long as they are sound of mind. [Sarcasm.]

Here's the official plot from the theater:

(1975) A simply dressed Delphine Seyrig (Last Year at Marienbad, Stolen Kisses) puts something on the stove in her modest apartment, then answers the doorbell to admit an older man. Wordlessly taking his hat and coat, they go to the bedroom; after a time shift represented by a light change, they reemerge, she gives him his hat and coat, he gives her money and leaves. Then she checks what’s cooking on the stove, airs out the bedroom, takes a bath, puts on her clothes, wipes out the tub. The next day, shopping, lunching out, and caring for a baby are added to the routines, plus the afternoon visitor. But on the third day, the routines are interrupted, things go slightly awry, and the shell of habit starts to crack; and when the ultimate change occurs, mortal consequences ensue. Akerman’s breakthrough feature (made when she was 25, in five weeks, for $125,000) achieves a microscopic examination of one woman’s life, and by its intensity, with mostly head-on, long take, real time visuals, and music-less and mostly dialogue-less track, forces us to see those little things in life, in a totally new way. “A Forties story shot by a Seventies camera.” – cinematographer Babette Mangolte. Color; Approx. 201 minutes
1:00, 4:40, 8:20
Did you get through all that?

Did you notice the 201 minutes???

On the movie poster it even says it's a "little noted" film. There's a reason for that. As Cody pointed out, generally you only mention how noted a movie is when the adjective in front of it is 'widely' or the like. "Little noted" is not exactly the most alluring description of a movie, especially one that's three hours long and has exactly 45 seconds of plot. Even the praise on the Film Forum (independent movie house where it's showing) is boring: "A slow-motion thriller!" "Unlike any other film you've seen!" (true, i'll give them that.) "What might have been a film as tedious as the life it depicts is a tight, engrossing and exhilarating experiment" (true, minus those last 3 adjectives... not all experiments end well) "An account of domestic habitats and the people and objects that routinely move through them" "PUTS TIME ON SCREEN AS IT NEVER WAS BEFORE!" That last one is certainly true indeed. They managed to cram what felt like three lifetimes into under four hours. Let me remind you, this film is unbearably more tedious than it even may seem just watching it as a regular movie-goer (do regular movie-goers go to movies like this??) when you have to write down every single item that she comes in contact with.

Our teacher had mentioned that there was one point of real action approximately 7 minutes from the end, for which we all waited eagerly (if 'eagerly' here has the meaning of 'with our eyes barely able to stay open'). I guessed about 10 minutes into this thing what that would be. If you want to know what it is you'll have to go see it yourself. Oh wait, that's right, it's going away forever as of today, and its probably not on DVD since no one watched it since the 60's when they made it except for a couple times in the 80's. I guess humans only have a 20-year memory span of movies that made their heads pop with boredom. Sounds about right for fashion trends too, but that's another story.

So, back to the notes. I had divided up both sides of one page in a sketchbook with boxes in which to write all the items she touches. "How many can there be," I thought, "when there's no plot?" Ohhhh was I mistaken. The 99 boxes on each page (you can't imagine how much this bugged my OCD, that i accidentally made 3 columns of 33 rows..... 198 all together with both pages. Or maybe you can [I'm looking at you, Mom].) were not even close to enough. I took six pages of "notes" (if you can call them that) which got progressively both messier and more general. "light switch" very soon turned into "L.S." and "doorknob. door. doorknob." quickly mutated into just simply "door" for obvious reasons. When you have to look down every other second to scribble down 5 objects this lady just touched, and at the same time this bitch keeps turning her lights on and off compulsively making it very hard to see what you're writing about her, it makes for a HORRIBLE way to watch a HORRIBLE movie. Here's a picture of my notes, (sorry it's dark- it's a phone photo) just for laughs (your laughs, not mine):



If you'll follow me over to the right page, in the second column from the right, about half way down it says BABY WTF. That's to represent the 10 minutes during which Jeanne struggles with lifting a giant, gurgling, cat-noise-making baby of her neighbor's who has been dropped off in what looks like a suitcase for a few minutes for an inexplicable reason. Perhaps so the mother can rest her weary arms and ears. It struck me as so hysterical and genuinely ironic that here we were, having paid for a movie of someone else dealing with issues which, under any other circumstances, are reason to send the stink-eye in the care-taker's direction (for example, oh, I don't know... in a movie theater??? If there were crying babies in any movie you went to, you'd wish horrible things on them.) Alas, the irony was so strong I actually laughed so hard I was crying. Perhaps I was merely crying. After 2 hours of solid thick-as-butter boredom, ANYTHING is funny, and you really do just want to cry.

Did I mention the whole thing is shown in real time, shot with cameras on tripods?? In other words, zero action. Half the movie is us watching her think. Pity me, for I have witnessed a heretofore unknown circle of hell. We left at 8 pm and got back around 12, and then I had design homework to finish (which luckily took me less time than I thought it would, when does that ever happen?). The guy in the deli at which Alex and I stopped afterwards to get dinner (all that food she makes in the movie, meat and potatoes and soup and stuff) thought it was hysterical, how worked up Alex was about going to see this movie and take notes (he gave up about an hour into it). Alex is very easy to piss off, which he is convinced was the sole purpose of having been assigned to do any of this in the first place. (Alex and I have similar personalities.) Oh, and the icing on the cake is that several times throughout the movie there very loud mouse noises coming from behind the piano (why? a piano? really??) we were sitting right next to down in the front rows.

Here is a picture of the ground beef she kneaded for meatloaf for maybe like, i duno, 15 minutes? Basically until Sarah, who is vegetarian, was about to puke:



Moral of the story is, even if someone pays you to go see Jeanne Whateverboringface, don't.

Now, as this is the longest blog, like, ever, and I really need to not talk about this movie anymore (you should have seen us ranting and raving the whole way home and this morning in production methods) for fear of losing what little brain matter didn't melt out my ears last night before I go as crazy as Jeanne. Good times. Jeanne Dielman, you owe me 3.5 hours of my life back.

P.S. I know, mom & dad, you think my blog is just for complaining, more than informing. But really, there's no other way to convey what happened (or rather, what didn't) last night than to include our irrationally brought about and undeserved anger and, probably, post traumatic stress disorder. And Dad, this only took me about 30 minutes to type. I know you were curious.

Today, plus the last first day of class.

WHOA what a long day. First off, I was out of my room from 11:00 am until about an hour ago, running about with meetings and classes and whatnot. I had a CSDS meeting before my design class at 2, and we got a lot done on the second phase of the health handbook whatever its called project. We have a final meeting on sunday to work out kinks such as what side of the page hole punches will go on, etc. Deb, my boss, bought us lunch (which was extremely nice of her-- falafel from zaytoons!) and pretty much sat there the whole time in case we needed an executive decision made, and let us work iron out the wrinkles of the projects, like heading icons and the like, which is a HUGE change from our first deadline for this, which saw us scrambling to get illustrations in and pages in order, whereas now we're pretty much done a week ahead of time (due feb. 1st at the printers).

Design was good, we went over each person's drawings from the MET (I had more than a lot of people in my class, though they're not great since i'm not a fan of sketching and ovals are my nemesis when it comes to drawing) and didn't comment on the q uality of anyone's, only the amount they had if it was insufficient, and what we learned. We all finalized our country to base our "restaurant" on, meaning what we're going to research to use the culture to direct our tabletop designs. I chose Greece, because i like the flowery patterns and shapes of the ancient pottery and the nature motif, and the colors of the cities by the sea how everything there is white and bright turquoise and terra cotta (like in mamma mia!) I think I'm happy with my choice, I wasn't really passionate about any countries in particular, and Greece had been in my head since the beginning.

Astronomy-- Ok, so this class could have gone one of two ways: either super boring and mathy, or super interesting with lots of pictures. My teacher, who is hungarian (shout out to heather! -there's more for you later too- ) but is from Transylvania ("which is a legit place" according to her, lol) decided to take the latter route. Phew! But she is foreign, so she has kind of a heavy accent, but she's really knowledgeable and works at the particle collider out on long island when she's not teaching. She loves showing us pictures, and we watched the universe song from Monty Python too-- did i mention she's got a sense of humor? She also teaches like Chaky did last semester, with a quiz on the reading each class (but its only once a week) but with not much real homework, which is good. I don't really know anyone else in my class today, so i sat in the back next to this nice looking irish girl, and when we had to partner up and find out basic info to present to the class about the other person, we were paired. Turns out her name is Heather too (!) and she knew how to spell my name because she works in the gym with - get this- the one other Allegra at pratt (and probably in all of brooklyn). How weird is that! Heather, this full circle business is getting kind of ridiculous! But she is nice and i'm just glad to have someone to sit next too, and to seem cool because now i know someone who works at the gym when i go there (which reminds me.... i should start going back to the gym.)

After that I headed to my studio to finish up my 3d homework, which i had started before my meeting this morning, again making more gosh darn rectangles out of that god forsaken plasteline, which I HATE. It turns my rings black, smells horrible, gets everywhere, turns mushy when you overwork it, is rock hard if you don't work it enough, is oil based so is impossible to wash off all the way from your hands on the first try-- did i mention how much i HATE this stuff? Anyway, around the end of my astronomy class i heard from Benjamin, yes, the very same from home, and it turns out he was in town today (i remembered him telling me it was thursday) for an interview at the New School, to which he's applying (as a freshman). He said it went really really well, and he's pretty confident he'll get in. He's planning on only staying there a year to take art classes, so he'll have something for a portfolio to apply to transfer to parsons, which he loved. Needless to say, having Ben in the city (and at art school!) would be pretty awesome next year. He stopped by for about an hour (it took him 2 hours to get here-- one hour on the train, one walking from there to Pratt, in the wrong direction mostly) and we caught up and shared a few laughs from way back when (we still have the same sense of humor- it's great) and he's doing pretty well and is (finally) making something of himself. I was just glad to see him so happy.

So that was my day, and now I'm exhausted, but no rest for the weary, as I have tons of design homework for thursday, so i need to clear out the rest of my work and homework due before then. And tomorrow morning I have my new 3D class (which meets in the cafeteria 'because it's a nicer atmosphere'... uh, ok?) so i'll probably update about that too tomorrow. Ta!

Studio space!

Jenny and I set up our little desk island in the middle of the studio, with our shelf space and extra use desk (if other people get two or three, Jenny and I can share one).

This is the view from the door of our studio as you enter: (you can see my desk in the middle)



In other news, I went to the Met with Jenny on friday for 4 hours taking pictures of 3 cultures for design, from which i now have to do approximately 5 million sketches. I chose Greece, India and Japan, and they're all very different, so it's easy to draw comparisons. I also have indesign work for CSDS due tomorrow, so it's a busy night. Too bad I got nothing else done earlier this weekend.

First Day of Classes (part IIIb)

I had production methods this morning, we went over our final from last semester (what??? I know. It's weird. there are many new people in the class. whatever.) Enough about that.

Design. It's in the studio, like last semester, only I'm in a different studio in a different building (our old one is now junior furniture-- so there are some repeats but not too many, and the rest of us are generally sad not to be in that room anymore). The room was a total disaster-- old projects and paper and stuff left over from ID view all over the place, nowhere obvious to claim any desks-- but I'll get to that later. My teacher, Lucia, seems very serious about work (and boy do we have lots of it, for the first day of class!) My general feeling is that while I'm going to have tons of work (infinitely more than studio last semester, in which we had virtually none more than one time, not to mention class was only twice a week) in the end it's going to be great both for my work ethic/concentration as well as my porfolio, which, at this point, needs all the help it can get so I can apply for an internship somewhere. Our project for the whole semester is, in a verbose nutshell, to pick a culture of food different from the one we grew up in (does that mean I can't pick Italian? I don't live in Italy??) and design six well-researched pieces (of tableware) for a theoretical restaurant on a hypothetical street corner in manhattan. We're going to be doing a ton of research into their culture and customs surrounding food, looking at culinary norms and folkways (is that the right word?) and designing flatware and silverware based on that. This is so different from any other design project, and it's so open to exploration (and we have no real deadlines other than the end of the semester) I'm very excited (but intimidated). Our homework, as I said, is a lot: we have to go to the met and look at several cultures or empires and their eating utensils, if they have it, and "fill up most of a sketch pad with beautiful drawings that portray the culture, and which you can use in class in explaining the connections you draw between the culture's aesthetic and their utensils". Whoa. A whole sketch pad?? I can only imagine how good I will be at quick ID sketching by May based on how much my teacher emphasized it in what we'll be doing throughout the semester. It seemed to be the only thing she was sure of, that we'd be doing a lot.

The highlight (and majority) of the class was when her son in law came in, who has degrees in both art and food (what's the noun form of the word 'culinary'?) and who has been on TV and radio and is "famous" (according to Lucia) and who has written books (hint hint) on the cultural history of food in different cultures around the world, Michael Krondl. This is mostly of what he talked, about chopsticks, the differences between them from culture to culture, cultures that only eat with their hands, how those people set their tables, the evolution of table settings and courses of food, the time we spend eating here vs. everywhere else, the reasons we eat (which, interestingly, he said are almost never with nutrition/consumption at the top of the hierarchy) the reasons we eat at home vs. in a restaurant, the cultural differences between both options, etc. He was funny and a very good speaker, and very interesting to listen to (except the girl behind me was kicking my stool and shaking her feet on it the entire time he was talking, including right after I asked her to stop, and it was very distracting). But I did take a page and a half of notes on what he was saying! He's the kind of person who if he taught a seminar, I'd sign up for it. All in all, I'm very excited about the work I'll have after this design class is over, it's like a giant design-based research project, only I don't have to write facts on notecards and arrange them into paragraphs and pretend like I didn't write them all the night before the paper was due.

But I digress. The desks. I went in the studio yesterday after finding out the doorcode from my friend Eddie, and since every desk was covered in projects and paper and junk and stuff I just claimed two (one for me, one for my long-time studio buddy Jenny). I came in today and this Korean girl promptly informed me that she had been using the desk all of last semester, and all her junk and stuff was on it, so my territorial notes were null. This forced Jenny and I, after class, as well as like 5 other kids to sort out the desks and remaining furniture for ourselves. One guy never moved his stuff out and had like 6 broken desks in the corner COMPLETELY covered with his stuff*. And these korean girls each had two desks, two sets of metal shelves, and even one extra desk all between the two of them. But Jenny and I found three extra desks, pushed ours face to face, with the extra one alongside both, and with a set of shelves which we cleaned off and claimed for ourselves (from elsewhere in the room) and even put up a piece of homasote along the side of the shelves facing us to make a pseudo-wall on which to pin stuff. It worked out pretty well, and we're even right next to the pole, which has like 8 electrical outlets on it, which is SUCH a change from last semester, because the room had exactly one outlet (with four plugs) for a total of 14 people in a rather large room. We're very excited about it.


*note: i would use a yiddish word for giant mess, but unfortunately I never learned one.

First day of classes (part IIb)

Solidworks: in short, i LOVE my new teacher (as my friends who had him last semester did, and knew i would too) he's young, but he is very driven to help each student make work they can put in their portfolio, and projects that relate to our design classes this semester. And he's funny, and very helpful. I look forward to filling in the gaps my teacher first semester left in my solidworks knowledge (and they are many).

Ceramics: Well, my teacher is a lady approximately 85 years old, who is hard of hearing and didn't understand the 3 times i tried to tell her i'm taking a tabletop design class. She seems good though, she basically will let you do whatever you want, as long as you know what you're doing, and you do good work. She did ask everyone when easter break was, and as I was sitting the closest she looked at me in particular. I said i didn't know, and she said "oh.... you're not catholic?" "....no...." and she just blinked at me, so i said "I'm jewish..." and she just laughed.... I didn't really see the comedy in it. But whatever, I think I'll be able to make stuff for my tabletop class in ceramics, so it's all good.

Speaking of design, I have it tomorrow at 2, and I'm really excited! I claimed a desk today for myself and for Jenny, but there was still stuff all over almost every single desk in there from ID View last semester. I am hoping 1. that we don't have to clean out their junk and 2. they won't be in that studio (in a different class; there are 2 classes in one studio in this one, not like last semester's studio, which I will miss greatly indeed) and want their desks back, even though I put mine and jenny's name them. We'll see tomorrow, I guess.

P.S. I am enjoying all this free time at the end of the day, as my classes are all once a week, except for design on mondays and thursdays (which is weird, by the way, since it's my last class of the week on thursday afternoons, and first class of the week mondays at 2, meaning i have all weekend to do design hw, and then homework again. No other classes in between. It's also weird because i only had it once a week last semester, which I will also wish I could have again.

Anyway, I'll update tomorrow after design, but for now I'm going to do some CSDS work and enjoy my time off... the Simpsons Movie on HBO is calling my name.

First day of classes (part Ib)

Spring semester starts today, along with Barack's presidency. One is a significant, important, and exciting new beginning, the other is about as exhilarating as celery. I'll leave you to decide which is which.

In any case, I had two classes today, neither one longer than about 15 minutes, but it's not like I was counting the minutes or anything. The first was 3D, which was supposed to be with Kathryn Filla, who is filling in for Lenny Basich (sp?) who is teaching at the Bauhaus this semester. In any case, we all traipsed downstairs to see why there was a 'meet in the cafeteria' note on the board, and we were informed by our omniscient department head that no, our teacher was not Lenny. Duh. And that Filla was never slated to teach the class, because they were asked to cut down by one class, so Lenny cancelled his class since, y'know, he's in Germany. Except that it said on WebAdvisor that Filla was teaching, but no, she's not, because Lenny cancelled this class. So we all have Karen Stone, the other class which met during the same time, which I chose NOT to sign up for since I've had Karen for the past 3 semesters, and that's quite enough. Not that any of the above is important to anyone, including whoever updates webavisor, because why would we need to know what's going on? So, in any case, we went over the syllabus, which is the same as last semester except for a visit to the Knoll factory which I think is in PA, but which I am still invited to even if i switch out of her class because we didn't go last semester like Karen wanted to. All she could think about was Obama, so after about 15 minutes of trying to figure out what happened to the schedule, and handing out syllabi to her students, all but 3 of whom had had Karen already, she went to go watch the parade on the tv projection in Memorial Hall, and I went to go check my mail.

The one thing that did come out of all of this is that I switched my 3D class to one that meets tuesday mornings, taught by the same teacher as History of Design last semester. I've seen their stuff from last semester, and it was mostly found objects; cut up cleaning supplies and plastic containers, etc. but Sarah said this semester he wants to concentrate on the connection between product design and 3D, which is exactly what Karen says, so it sounds better. But lo, what is their homework this first week?? Yep, rectilinear shapes out of plasticine. Woot. And apparently they spent the class in the parking lot criticizing car tail lights. Hmm....

Sociology was another 10 minutes, again getting a syllabus and info about what we'll be learning, introducing ourselves to the other 4930213995734.08237 students in our fluorescently-lit classroom, and the other first-day-of-class requirements. Basically I learned (from Angeloh, who took it first semester) that this class is nearly no work except for two papers, one of which is 2 pages, and some reading, and our teacher is really skinny and talks very quietly. Maybe it'll be interesting, or maybe I'll stop doing the readings 3 weeks into the course.

Only time will tell.