A Fresh Start, Of Sorts

     I rented Julie and Julia the other night, and can I say this? Meryl Streep, who plays Julia Child, has to be the single reason for the invention of the DVD remote rewind button. Few are those hardy (and, frankly, dimwitted) souls who can get through a single scene of any one of her movies - even the godawful ones - without reviewing it three or four times to see just how she did that. In a chaotic and oft-frightening world, it's a relief to know that some things never change: the sun shines in the sky, Heidi Montag pursues publicity in increasingly baroque (and face-freezing) ways, and - you should pardon the French - Meryl Streep acts the shit out of any movie she's in. 

     In Julie and Julia, Amy Adams plays a modern woman named Julie Powell. Ms. Powell is so cloyingly annoying that she causes otherwise decent writers to resort to rhyming adverb-adjective descriptives. Her exasperating presence forces the sensible moviegoer eventually to reach, reluctantly but determinedly, for the knitting needles to stab into his own eyes. 

     Ms. Powell writes a food blog, and this gave me an idea: stab the knitting needles into her eyes. Alas, she turned out to be nothing more than a collection of dots on my screen, which nearly shattered when I jabbed the needles into it. Plus, Mrs.Powell kept moving around. One time I nearly sank the needles into her right shoulder, but she skittered sideways at the last moment and I wound up nailing her husband, Eric, played by the not unlikable Chris Messina (who had an excellent walk-on in Away We Go). Eric Powell is a good-natured sort; he'd have to be, to put up with his wife's incessant whining, cooking and blogging, not to mention with Amy Adams' questionable acting chops. 

    Which brings me to my point, if there is one. Watching Adams/Powell write her blog, I thought, I can do that, and I don't have to write about food! I'll just write about everything else under the sun, except perhaps for the continuing, and baffling, pop-culture presence of reality TV stars whose IQs match their waist sizes. 

     Not that there's anything wrong with a non-Mensa IQ - it's genetic, after all - but let me say this: I await the day when we'll see Real Housewives of the WASP Enclaves, in which contestants vie for prizes in such categories as Dinner Party Speed Seating, Getting Your Daughter into Princeton After the Family Money Has Dried Up, and Extreme Jaw-Clenching.

     Anyway, to you, dear reader, welcome. We will try to cover, if not the waterfront, at least a few piers, and we hope to do it peerlessly. You are encouraged to leave comments, with this proviso: courtesy trumps all, and good grammar and spelling are forever.