The first two months of the year went by really fast.  Not that anyone is mourning the passing of January and February. 

Afterall they are also the coldest month of the year.  I am sure in the East the feeling is that January and February should have flown by even more quickly.  Just look at folks in New York!

A divorced couple finds new interest in each other when they come together for the graduation of their son the youngest of three children.  This after ten years apart.  Jake (Alec Baldwin) is already remarried so ironically he is having an affair with his ex-wife.   We also learn that infidelity on both sides was a reason for their initial split.  Together they re-explore some of the good things from their past including marijuana, a few parties, and family dinners.  It`s complicated because they try to do this without the knowledge of their three children or Jake`s wife Agnes, or Jane`s promising new romantic interest, Adam (Steve Martin).

There are some especially funny moments but it is not a laugh fest by any means.  Funniest and most memorable must be the night when Jake sleeps over with the entire family and enters his ex-wife`s room in the nude hoping to entice her.  I won`t give any spoilers but the stunt goes horribly wrong.

I found some of the symbolism used in the movie too cliché.   For example Jane is finally remodeling her kitchen (changing her life at last) and falls for the architect, Adam.  But this is art.  To produce it some tools just get used.  Like the primary colours in painting.  The use of the sprinklers coming on in the morning at the climax of the romantic encounter between Jane and Jake was one of the better touches I thought.

I think the movie seriously lacks detailed conversation about the past and the specific issues or discrete events that caused the couple to divorce.  Knowing that divorces are usually very unpleasant, a theme reinforced by Jane in her conversations with Adam, one cannot help wanting to hear more about the heavy duty events and issues of the past and what transformation they have undergone in the present light that makes the prospect of a second chance seem so viable especially to Jake.  Even after ten years divorced couples in discussing their differences might show some animosity.  There was none of that here, which made it seemed at times artificial.  It certainly subtracted from the credibility of the new union.  In the end, one is not quite sure how Jane feels about Jake as a person, as she protests their relationship.

Despite those shortcomings Streep`s performance is so exact for each moment that she deserves an Academy Award.  I would say far more than Sandra Bullock in “The Blind Side.”

The music tracks also added much to the entertainment value of this flick, keeping the mood balanced between today and thirty years ago.  Memorable hits from the past that were used include Leo Sayer`s “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing” and I was glad to hear the Beach Boys “Wouldn`t It Be Nice”.

Rating 7/10 or **1/2

Today, walking to his room, for the umpteenth time in the last couple months, I am prepared for the worst.  The nurse has just detailed me with tales of his strange behavior based on strange dolls since this readmission to hospital.  Psychiatric disturbances would just be too much right now.

I knock on the door.  One of the bodies in his bed rises in the dim light and smiles to reveals his familiar gold capped row of front teeth.   I recognize his companion, flashing a brief smile too with a matching set of gold.  It is obvious they are both glad I have returned from leave.  I am glad to see them too, looking well.  I notice the room is decorated.  I am barely able to pull my eyes away from the new fixtures and back to the bed.

“We doin’ alright”, he responds to my salutation.

I have had three years practice looking past the tattooed tears on his cheek, and beneath I see hopelessness and worry.  Not what I was expecting.  His eyes meet mine squarely.  “You sure ain`t nothin` you can do?  I mean it been three months and I just been in here all the time, man.”

“It is still the same.  No dialysis center wants to take you because of your history.”

“My history, my history!  Ain`t none o` dem even talk to me; like they know me!”

“Well, the drugs, prison, not taking your pills.  It`s all in your record and I can`t force them.  I am still trying.”  He sinks back into the bed, absorbing the familiar lines.

“How was the New Year?” I feel compelled to break the silence of my own hopelessness in this case.  “I know you left hospital and I see you have some new decorations.”

The second voice comes forth from the bed like an eager kid in class bursting to answer the easy question.

“That was me.  You know it was his birthday,” his wife half-says, but with a quizzical look.

“He knows that already,” he answers her question to me with an air of satisfaction.

I was already nodding to the question anyway, and grateful for his conviction that I care enough to know everything about him all the time.

“He loves these things,” she continues as she waves to the new tenants of his room.  He used to have the whole series, including the ones that could talk, but he lost `em when he went to prison.  I tried to get them back knowing they would cheer him up.  But man I had to go really far!  They real hard to get these days! Especially ones that could talk.  She doesn`t talk but the other two do.”

She was pointing to the Bride of Chucky dressed in white veil and black leather.  Chuck himself and his son looked on from different corners of the room.

I smiled.  It made such perfect sense that these figures would give him comfort inside while snarling at a world that refused to attribute any more detail to him than his hideous appearance and previous crimes;  a world that interpreted all his actions outside of the realm of an ordinary human;  a world that refused him a proper home as a child and put him in another state of limbo now even with failed health.  I smiled that I could not properly detangle my complicity nor his culpability in it all even after three years.  At least there was Chucky to explain what we all felt.

Decide what you want to know about daily.  Then find a good newsreader like Feed Demon or Google Reader.  The reader will be configured by you to monitor specific broadcast or print media websites, portals or blogs that meet your interests.  Automatically it will aggregate new information from each of these sources every day, as the information is uploaded.  All your new news and opinion columns will be present when you open your reader.  It saves the time of having to navigate to each site individually or having multiple confusing bookmarks in different browsers.  If there are several areas you wish to follow, say entertainment, current affairs and technology, you may devote different days of the week to catching up on the developments in each specific area.

This list is not exhaustive.  News is everywhere.  For example there are portals set up by internet service providers (yahoo.com, aol.com, msn.com, Verizon.net, etc.) also purporting to give you all your news in one place.  There are social media sites like facebook where friends share interesting news articles.  Microblogging sites such as twitter, tumblr also allow friends to share news and discussions in real time.   Blog communities for traditional blogs may be used if you find yourself looking at a large number of blogs.  And the list goes on.  None of these are as good as the above methods but keep an eye on them because these social media platforms are in rapid development.

Think of the internet like a forest with many different types of trees in different geographic areas.  Such a grouping will allow you to proceed more orderly in your knowledge gathering.

Content-driven news aggregating sites which include traditional media content and also user-generated content: Huffington Post, Newsvine, the Root, Slate.  The main advantage of this type of site is that important content is partly decided by readers by “voting up” a particular story, that may have been introduced from the reader base.  Although official news networks now present stories ranked by popularity with readers, the story list has already been set by the news network. In the old days of radio this is the difference between being able to rank a song on the charts versus being able to also introduce songs that you the user feels should have been included in the charts.  This is “crowd-sourced content” and is the major mode of operation of a few sites such as dig, and reddit.  As a result you will be introduced to more stories of potential importance to you that are not in the regular press.  Users will often pull links from their favorite news sources helping you to discover other sources for yourself.  The comment sections on these sites are also very spirited and seem to come from a more informed user base, developing into virtual debates at times.  Another huge benefit is that these sites are operated like blogs with very regularly updated content and comments putting you on the cutting edge of the information stream.  All content is categorized.

Online broadcast news networks: bbc.com, abc.com, cnn.com, cbs.com, msnbc.com.  Broadcast news networks dictate the scale of the news, and are good with big stories such as elections, natural disasters, etc.  You will get a quick feel for the most popular news of the day.  They are also video-rich filled with small clips of material already broadcast on TV.  Use these to approximate a more useful TV experience without the long stretches of ads and also with the power to choose which stories you want to hear.    Most networks seem to carry a political bias however.  One will need to select other sources with wider input for balance.  Always browse the comments on the article or video.  Mostly they are puerile, but you will be alerted to alternative viewpoints on an issue which may then expose the unfair bias in the piece.  Without these techniques most users of information are not discerning enough to determine when on the spot verification of news is necessary.  The other major use of these sites is in their topic collections on big subjects like Middle East, Abortion, etc where the historical developments in an area can be researched fairly reliably.

Online versions of the print media: From your local city-paper to national rags (USA Today, Miami Herald, New York Times, New Yorker, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Times Online, The Independent, The Guardian).  In fact worldwide nearly every country has at least one newspaper with an online presence.  These very traditional sources bear one advantage over the first two groups of outlets: the informed opinion.    Op-ed columnists are better writers whose pieces (though necessarily biased) add good literary flavor to an issue and sometimes by breaking little known information that has been muted in the broadcast media.  Use these sites as further reading on specific issues, and to uncover important stories that have been ignored in the wider press.

Blogs are the pulse of the internet.  A good blog is like an ongoing op-ed piece on developments in your area of interest.  Necessarily bloggers do some research which you benefit from.  They also highlight things they have just learned, keeping you on the cutting edge.  Most importantly however a good news blog moves at a daily pace regularly exploring developments as they occur.

Youtube.com is a video aggregation site which you can use to flesh out your news gathering with more video where you feel the need.  It is home to videos you may not find on the major broadcast news, and user-authored news videos.  It is best for entertainment news that you may have missed.  Reading the comments brings more entertainment, but not useful information.

But I do take photos

However, I have a blog.

Sharpen the saw as Covey says.  Sharpen the saw, and live another week to fell even more trees.