Tag: Mia Farrow

The Beach

Tuesday!

Yesterday was not nearly as productive as it could have been. Generally, on mornings when I have to get up at six, will invariably have a cappuccino at home while I wake up, and then make another to take with me, which I sip at all morning. This gets me through the day pretty well, and through into my evening when I go home and write or edit or read or do chores. So, Constant Reader, you can only imagine my horror when I got to the office and my travel mug was not in its side holder on my back pack. (It turned out to be in the in the car–it fell out of its pocket when I got my backpack out of the car yesterday morning when I arrived at the office…) So yes, I ran out of steam yesterday afternoon, and was very tired by the time I got home from work. In other words, last night all I managed to do was a load of dishes, and quite frankly, this morning I’m not even sure what I watched last night, other than the final episode of It’s a Sin with Paul; turned out he did want to finish watching. Oh yes, now I remember; I watched this week’s episodes of Allen v. Farrow and John Oliver’s show. Allen V. Farrow continues to be a harrowing watch; this week’s episode was about the custody battle–which ended with Allen getting a massive bitchslap by both the court and the judge; in other words, the judge believed Mia to be a fit mother and Dylan a credible witness, and Allen didn’t prove himself to be a fit parent–in fact, his visitation rights with the two other children he shared with Farrow were limited by the court and had to be supervised. If the goal was to punish Farrow, it failed massively–other than making her miserable for a period of time. Interestingly enough, one of the main takeaways from the show is being blown away by how beautiful Mia still is, today. I never understood the desire to have so many children–not, of course, that my understanding was ever needed or necessary or required; my mentality was always “I don’t get the need for so many kids, but if it makes her happy, more power to her and she is adopting kids, which is terrific.” I don’t think Farrow has worked much since the break-up with Allen; her career was mostly starring in his movies after they became a couple…the real shame is I’d like to watch some of those films now (I’ve never seen many Allen films, not being a fan) but I’m not sure if I should. It’s another one of those Roman Polanski things–ironically, one of my favorite Polanski films also stars Farrow, Rosemary’s Baby–I think, but some of those Allen/Farrow films are considered classics.

In other welcome news, I discovered yesterday that I now weigh 203 pounds; the lowest since around 2011/2012, and just three pounds away from my goal weight. I managed to get down to around 212 last year or the year before, as a process, from the 225 I had ballooned up to about a decade or so ago; I set 200 as my goal weight for the year, but I’d be stuck at 212 for so long I didn’t think I was ever going to break through. A few weeks ago I was delighted to see I’d managed to break through that plateau and had dropped to 208; someone gave me a compliment yesterday which drove me to the scale in the (unused) nurse’s office and to my delight, I discovered that I had somehow dropped another five pounds–whether it’s the working out, the change in diet (which was neither extreme nor dramatic), or the walking to the gym and back and always using the stairs at the office, I am not sure–but it has happened, and it is most pleasing to our eyes. I also made some progress on my emails yesterday, which was a very pleasant development.

This weekend is the virtual Saints and Sinners Festival; I taped a panel about mystery and romance with four amazing writers (Carrie Smith, Carsen Taite, J. M. Redmann, and Cheryl Head), which I think is scheduled to air on Sunday, March 14th, at 3 pm CDT; I am not really sure where, so I will have to find out and post it later. I know that after its original air date it will be available for viewing on the Tennessee Williams Festival’s Youtube channel. I was woefully unprepared, but I also had a group of very smart, savvy, and talented women to give me great answers to simple questions and it was a lovely experience for me–I’m not so sure it was for them, but I didn’t see any eye-rolling on screen to my inane questions so they are also incredibly professional as well.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here either, but I also have an essay in the upcoming book from Mystery Writers of America Presents, How to Write a Mystery, edited by Lee Child and Laurie R. King. I know, right? I still have to pinch myself whenever I think about it. I got an ARC recently, and the book looks simply beautiful. And how awesome to be in a collection with some of the top writers in the field? I can now cross “be in an MWA anthology” off my bucket list–but “get selected for an MWA anthology through the blind read process” remains on the list. My essay is called “Writing the Talk” and is about dialogue, and it owes a heavy debt to editor Laurie R. King, who whipped it (and me) into publishable shape after a couple of rewrites and revisions.

And yes, there will be more about that later. 🙂

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. May your Tuesday be bright and fun and wonderful.

Chosen Time

Monday, Monday–can’t trust that day.

It was seventy one degrees yesterday morning when I started writing this post–I just deleted an entire paragraph about how lovely the weather has been lately; needless to say, the weather yesterday has turned on me; it wasn’t cold or anything, but rather chilly-damp and overcast, and the wind had a cold bite to it. The highs apparently for the next few days are in the low 60’s, dipping into the 40’s at night. Yay. But it will, I suppose, give us an opportunity to try out the new HVAC system’s heat. The air conditioning has dramatically improved quality of life in the Lost Apartment–the downstairs gets actually cold with the air on now–so we shall see how the heating works–if it becomes necessary. If it’s not going to drop other than when I am actually sleeping–who cares? I sleep better in the cold anyway. I certainly didn’t want to get out of my blanket cocoon this morning.

I’ve been watching Allen v. Farrow on HBO Max, and it’s harrowing. I didn’t really follow the case at the time–it was the early 90’s, and while we had 24/7 cable news channels already, our primary source of “going viral” was stories on those news channels and the tabloids in the supermarket checkout line. I knew one of Mia Farrow’s younger children had accused him of molestation; I also knew he had become involved with one of her adopted children who was in high school at the time the relationship started. I also knew that Woody Allen dismissed everything as “the rantings of a jealous and vindictive woman”, and continued to have a career in Hollywood. I was never a big fan of his in the first place–my favorite Allen film was Bullets over Broadway, which is one of the few films in which he himself didn’t appear–and so it wasn’t really a sacrifice to stop watching. But watching this documentary is…much more horrifying. This week’s episode, in which Farrow admits she didn’t have an agent during the period in which she starred in every movie he made, “I didn’t need an agent…I was working with Woody and he said, just use mine….I didn’t think I could get an agent, who’d want to represent me? I was in my thirties”–that was jarring. Ageism in Hollywood right there–and I also do remember that people did say things like “she’s only in his movies because she’s sleeping with him”–despite the fact she was actually a very gifted actress–she was convinced that because she was in her thirties, she’d have no career except for the opportunities Woody Allen was giving her…and he undermined her, gaslit her, to keep her under his control. The show is quite disturbing on every level–and we’re only two episodes in. (I also kept thinking, as I watched, “I bet every minute of this documentary has been viewed, scrutinized, and vetted by HBO’s lawyers.”)

Just chilling.

Although I have to admit in watching the clips from his films in the documentary, I started actually thinking, maybe I should watch some of these older films…and then backed away from that thought very quickly.

My education in American film project doesn’t need to include Woody Allen’s canon.

As I sit here looking out into the gray of the morning, I can see that it’s windy outside. The sky is concealed behind a layer of gray clouds, so I don’t think there will be any sun today; it’s going to be gloomy and unpleasant, methinks, for most of the day. I need to go to the gym this evening after work–getting back into the swing of the routine after the cold spell interrupted me for about a week–and I do enjoy going to the gym; I am hoping that as long as I keep up my thrice-weekly visits, I will eventually get to the point where I am doing a more intense workout focusing on body parts, which means, of course, a return of Leg Day, which isn’t something I am looking forward to doing again, frankly. I do find the gym therapeutic in some ways, and I also like the rush of the endorphins that comes afterwards, as I walk back home through the neighborhood. And yet I always have to make myself go–just like I always have to force myself to sit down and write. Why do I have to make myself do things I enjoy thoroughly? I may never know the answer to that, I fear.

I’ve become very contemplative lately, and I think it’s a combination of many things, not the least of which is turning sixty this year. My previous “landmark” birthdays were inevitably not a big deal; I never make a big deal of my birthday and reaching various ages–thirty, forty, fifty–weren’t traumatic or upsetting or anything like that for me; it was more like a “oh, well I’m thirty/forty/fifty now” and that was the end of it. But this sixty thing has taken root in my brain, and I’m not really certain why sixty seems like more of a landmark to me than the earlier ones. It isn’t that I am getting depressed or anything like that, or like I’m facing gym own mortality for the first time–that happened a long fucking time ago, thank you, HIV/AIDS pandemic–but this time is different. I’ve always–well, since I turned thirty-three–been of the mindset that nostalgia is pointless and wasted emotion, and regret is even more useless; you can’t change anything, after all, no matter how much you regret a choice or a behavior. But dissecting the past is an entirely different story; examining behaviors and decisions and actions. A long time ago I stopped trying to figure out why other people behave the way they do as a waste of time–I will never know why, so why waste my time trying to figure out motivations when I can simply take their behavior at face value? But my motivations–why I am the way I am–that is something I can deconstruct and decipher; and the assumption that my pre-33 past no longer has any impact on my life is short-sighted, to say the least.

Sigh. I don’t know.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I promise not to skip tomorrow.