It appears that I'll be moving out of the Midwest in just over six months, and while there are a number of people, places and things I'll miss, today I'd like to give a shout-out to one of those places.
When I was in my junior year of college, I studied for a semester in Quito, Ecuador, on a program sponsored by the University of Illinois. And there, in the heart of the Andes, in a magical colonial city crowned with fog, surrounded by steppe-farmed mountainsides, country markets, and milennial cultures, one day I suddenly suffered an acute pang of nostalgia. Know what I miss? I asked one of the Illinois girls I was travelling with at the time. Meijer's. I know, she replied, I was just thinking that the other day. There, on the far side of the ecuatorial line, steeped in beauty and wonder, we sat pining for the Midwest's premiere twenty-four-hour discount general store.
My father, who has lived in Florida on and off for the last couple of decades, sent me a Meijer gift card for Christmas last year, such is the place's hold on his heart and imagination. I immediately understood the subtext of the gift, which was to urge me to appreciate my fortune in being a resident of a state graced by the Thrifty Acres.
Sam Walton can open a Super-Walmart across the street from me and provide teleporting inside it, and Target can hand out complementary, green-tea-flavored truffles with artful chinese characters stenciled into the chocolate with every purchase, but they will never fill the niche in my heart destined forever to be occupied by Meijer. Where else -- tell me, where? -- can you go when you urgently need a bikini, a socket wrench, a fifth of bourbon and a box of dog biscuits at three o'clock in the morning? That's right: nowhere. Meijer is open every. Single. Day. Of. The. Year. All day and all night. What did you say you needed? Yeah, Meijer has that. Maybe not the best quality, but serviceable and at a reasonable price.
These reasons would be enough to make Meijer a great store, but it's more than that. The store's so big and random you can disappear in it. When we couldn't sleep sometimes in college we'd go out to Meijer and have scavenger hunts, each trying to bring back the weirdest products on the market in given categories. Getting kicked out of Meijer, far from constituting a deterrent, was a point of ironic pride, and anyway the banishments never seemed to stick. We could kill hours of insomnia in the Meijer Time Warp, people-watching and without spending a dime, then another 45 minutes trying to remember where we'd parked.
I grew up with Meijer's Thrifty Acres, and recently, I've got to hand it to them, it appears Meijer has done some growing up of its own. I don't know if there's a new CEO or a new market research team or what, but the place just keeps getting better and better. Meijer-brand products have a new look to them that makes it easier, in many cases, to identify the pricier products they are knocking off, a subtle communicative trick that makes shopping easier. They have introduced a "Gold" line of products, including the black bean/corn salsa they used to sell in their deli case, and new funky ones like the equally addictive habanero/lime salsa, mango/chipotle salad dressing and so on. They have divided their international section by region and have a remarkable selection of ethnic foods, ingredients and even toiletries. Check-out has been greatly streamlined, and they offer reusable bags for purchase as well as a slight discount for using them. They have alleviated somewhat the Meijer Warp Effect by offering run-in-run-out grocery items like milk and eggs immediately adjacent to the checkout lanes.
Best of all, they have made organic products available at prices that I can't even understand. I have no idea how they're doing this. All I know is that I can buy organic refried beans with roasted green chiles, organic marinara sauce, and organic whole-bean Colombian coffee cheaper than I can buy the non-organic, name-brand version. It's almost too good to be true (and if you have some kind of inside information that it isn't, please wait until I move to burst my bubble). I think Meijer has the right idea in using their corporate chutzpah and deep pockets to mainstream organic products and offer them at a price that's accessible to your average starving graduate student, so they now get the lion's share of my grocery budget.
I'm sure Rozee and others will cringe if they read this, and I'd like to say that I still won't buy peanut butter anywhere except at People's Food Co-op. I'd probably shop more at the Co-op if I didn't consistently wait until 9:30 on Sunday night to remember I'm out of food. Also if they sold socket wrenches and bikinis. But until they do, and until I move, there's Meijer, a place I already know I will sorely miss.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Sunday, February 10, 2008
el cantante
So, the neighbs gives me no end of grief for my love of an unlikely Hollywood icon, Marc Anthony, an almost embarassing enthusiasm that I doggedly cling to based largely on his performance in Big Night. Oh, totally, argues the neighbs. He was soooo good at being on screen for two hours and not...even...talking.
I see it differently. Marc Anthony's quiet presence in that movie can't have been easy to pull off. He manages to be a character, practically without speaking, yet never makes a grab for the spotlight. The whole film is an exercise in subtlety, in which the actors do more with their silences and pauses than with their lines. No small feat.
But that's not the movie I want to talk about. I want to talk about El Cantante, a biography of Hector Lavoe starring Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez. For anyone who doesn't know, Hector Lavoe was a Puerto Rican singer who innovated salsa music on the Nuyorican Fania label in the sixties and seventies. The film describes his rise as a musician and his descent as a human being into drugs and alcohol among other vices, as described by his estranged wife, Puchi in a series of 2002 interviews.
J. Lo produced El Cantante and gave a remarkable performance as the indomitable Puchi. This role was a huge step out from the simpering, dejected characters I've seen her play in the past (not that that's all she's done, just that that's all I'd seen of her until now). Puchi spends over twenty years with Hector, enabling him, escorting him in his addictions, at the same time bolstering him in his career and loving him unconditionally in perhaps the best way she knows how. Marc Anthony delivers another nuanced, mature performance interpreting the unconventional and troubled salsero.
Several famous salsa artists who performed with Lavoe back in the day paid tribute to him by appearing in the film, and the music is nothing short of sensational. Hector's scenes on stage are accompanied by translated lyrics to the songs he's singing, always chosen sagely from the artist's repertoire to reflect what's going on in his life. The lyrics don't appear as subtitles, instead they are superimposed elegantly on the scene, and the words often appear with Spanish syntax (the noun arrives first, then the adjective materializes ahead of it). The song written for and about Lavoe by Rubén Blades, "El Cantante", appears in a central moment in the film and aptly sums up the unspoken pain and loss suffered by the artist, ever compelled to be the entertainer while those who profess to love him allow him to flounder and, ultimately, to go under.
In general I enjoyed this movie, otherwise I wouldn't be bothering to write about it. I loved the music and was impressed by the performances delivered by actors it's easy to underestimate due to their obscene fame. In my book, in this movie they proved themselves to be worthy of that fame, although for much different reasons than the ones that originally vaulted their careers into outer space. I did feel that El Cantante centered too heavily on the relationship between Hector and Puchi and particularly the good times they shared. Puchi was detested by many of Hector's friends and family members and contributed heavily to his weaknesses; in general, they were terrible to and for each other by all accounts except hers. This viewer, for one, empathized too much with Lopez's Puchi to account for the other character's hatred of her or for Hector's assertion that their differences were irreconcilable. I think the film could also have gone further in exploring other sources of Lavoe's pain: his self-exile from Puerto Rico, the loss of his older brother at a young age, being disowned by his father, the death of his son, and the co-dependent, mutually hurtful dimension of his relationship with his wife.
Having said that, I think J. Lo achieved her stated goal of producing a Puerto Rican film with universal appeal. The film has a distinct flavor that makes it credibly Nuyorican, but you don't have to be bilingual or bicultural to enjoy it and identify with it. Diagnosis: rentable. Check it out.
I see it differently. Marc Anthony's quiet presence in that movie can't have been easy to pull off. He manages to be a character, practically without speaking, yet never makes a grab for the spotlight. The whole film is an exercise in subtlety, in which the actors do more with their silences and pauses than with their lines. No small feat.
But that's not the movie I want to talk about. I want to talk about El Cantante, a biography of Hector Lavoe starring Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez. For anyone who doesn't know, Hector Lavoe was a Puerto Rican singer who innovated salsa music on the Nuyorican Fania label in the sixties and seventies. The film describes his rise as a musician and his descent as a human being into drugs and alcohol among other vices, as described by his estranged wife, Puchi in a series of 2002 interviews.
J. Lo produced El Cantante and gave a remarkable performance as the indomitable Puchi. This role was a huge step out from the simpering, dejected characters I've seen her play in the past (not that that's all she's done, just that that's all I'd seen of her until now). Puchi spends over twenty years with Hector, enabling him, escorting him in his addictions, at the same time bolstering him in his career and loving him unconditionally in perhaps the best way she knows how. Marc Anthony delivers another nuanced, mature performance interpreting the unconventional and troubled salsero.
Several famous salsa artists who performed with Lavoe back in the day paid tribute to him by appearing in the film, and the music is nothing short of sensational. Hector's scenes on stage are accompanied by translated lyrics to the songs he's singing, always chosen sagely from the artist's repertoire to reflect what's going on in his life. The lyrics don't appear as subtitles, instead they are superimposed elegantly on the scene, and the words often appear with Spanish syntax (the noun arrives first, then the adjective materializes ahead of it). The song written for and about Lavoe by Rubén Blades, "El Cantante", appears in a central moment in the film and aptly sums up the unspoken pain and loss suffered by the artist, ever compelled to be the entertainer while those who profess to love him allow him to flounder and, ultimately, to go under.
In general I enjoyed this movie, otherwise I wouldn't be bothering to write about it. I loved the music and was impressed by the performances delivered by actors it's easy to underestimate due to their obscene fame. In my book, in this movie they proved themselves to be worthy of that fame, although for much different reasons than the ones that originally vaulted their careers into outer space. I did feel that El Cantante centered too heavily on the relationship between Hector and Puchi and particularly the good times they shared. Puchi was detested by many of Hector's friends and family members and contributed heavily to his weaknesses; in general, they were terrible to and for each other by all accounts except hers. This viewer, for one, empathized too much with Lopez's Puchi to account for the other character's hatred of her or for Hector's assertion that their differences were irreconcilable. I think the film could also have gone further in exploring other sources of Lavoe's pain: his self-exile from Puerto Rico, the loss of his older brother at a young age, being disowned by his father, the death of his son, and the co-dependent, mutually hurtful dimension of his relationship with his wife.
Having said that, I think J. Lo achieved her stated goal of producing a Puerto Rican film with universal appeal. The film has a distinct flavor that makes it credibly Nuyorican, but you don't have to be bilingual or bicultural to enjoy it and identify with it. Diagnosis: rentable. Check it out.
Monday, February 4, 2008
project-y
Lately the neighbs has been really great about helping me come up with activities to do in my class. Case in point: my students were learning about reciprocal actions a couple of weeks ago (we kiss each other, they fight with each other, y'all scratch each other's backs, etc.) and he had the stroke of genius to have them make sock puppets and act out the vocabulary. Which went brilliantly, in case you were wondering.
Well, last week they had to study superlatives (the biggest/best/nicest/etc. in the world/room/family/etc.) and I had the idea that I'd make some awards and they could bestow them upon one another. So I enlisted the neighbs's assistance in choosing some household objects that seemed to suggest laudable personal traits and turning them into badges, medals, trophies, plaques and other commemorative trinkets.
After much cajoling, he reluctantly agreed to help me. All in all he was, again, a veritable fount of creativity, although we didn't see eye to eye on the aesthetic improvements I tried to make on the chosen household objects. He seemed to think the red pipe cleaners and aluminum foil I brought to bear on the matter didn't make the household objects any more award-y. I disagreed. There is nothing in this world so fine, I argued, that it can't be improved by red pipe cleaners and aluminum foil. I hope you will agree when you see the results of our efforts:
Despite this lack of vision on the neighbs's part, I decided that his patience with my off-the-wall, last-minute teaching inspirations deserved a reward of its own, so I came up with this one, for Most Supportive Boyfriend (please note the marked enhancements achieved by the addition of an aluminum-foil star and a red pipe-cleaner bow):
Yeah, I know. Not the most flattering picture. There is another one that better shows off his luscious ta-tas but I can't find it right now. Mysteriously he gave me permission to post this photo, though.
Now, I'd like to draw your attention to one more thing about the above photo: the light fixture above the sink. This is one of those eight-dollar craptacular light fixtures that go in the half-bathroom in the basement next to the water heater. Only it's in my kitchen, lucky me, so I duct-taped decorative paper umbrellas on bamboo skewers to the top of the fixture. Which worked great, until the bulbs burned through the bamboo skewers and/or the tape got too dusty and/or the umbrella heads fell off into the dirty dishwater. Which is why there are only two of them left in the picture.
Well, no longer. Because Red called me up the other day and said, I think I solved your light fixture problem, and she came over with some tools and other materials and we built this:
Which technically you can still see the craptacular original fixture underneath, but it's hidden by two layers of cool fabric from Ikea and now when you do the dishes you feel like you're bathed in a gentle canopy of green glowy light instead of about to get konked on the head by a flaming cocktail umbrella.
In short, life is good.
Well, last week they had to study superlatives (the biggest/best/nicest/etc. in the world/room/family/etc.) and I had the idea that I'd make some awards and they could bestow them upon one another. So I enlisted the neighbs's assistance in choosing some household objects that seemed to suggest laudable personal traits and turning them into badges, medals, trophies, plaques and other commemorative trinkets.
After much cajoling, he reluctantly agreed to help me. All in all he was, again, a veritable fount of creativity, although we didn't see eye to eye on the aesthetic improvements I tried to make on the chosen household objects. He seemed to think the red pipe cleaners and aluminum foil I brought to bear on the matter didn't make the household objects any more award-y. I disagreed. There is nothing in this world so fine, I argued, that it can't be improved by red pipe cleaners and aluminum foil. I hope you will agree when you see the results of our efforts:
Despite this lack of vision on the neighbs's part, I decided that his patience with my off-the-wall, last-minute teaching inspirations deserved a reward of its own, so I came up with this one, for Most Supportive Boyfriend (please note the marked enhancements achieved by the addition of an aluminum-foil star and a red pipe-cleaner bow):
Yeah, I know. Not the most flattering picture. There is another one that better shows off his luscious ta-tas but I can't find it right now. Mysteriously he gave me permission to post this photo, though.
Now, I'd like to draw your attention to one more thing about the above photo: the light fixture above the sink. This is one of those eight-dollar craptacular light fixtures that go in the half-bathroom in the basement next to the water heater. Only it's in my kitchen, lucky me, so I duct-taped decorative paper umbrellas on bamboo skewers to the top of the fixture. Which worked great, until the bulbs burned through the bamboo skewers and/or the tape got too dusty and/or the umbrella heads fell off into the dirty dishwater. Which is why there are only two of them left in the picture.
Well, no longer. Because Red called me up the other day and said, I think I solved your light fixture problem, and she came over with some tools and other materials and we built this:
Which technically you can still see the craptacular original fixture underneath, but it's hidden by two layers of cool fabric from Ikea and now when you do the dishes you feel like you're bathed in a gentle canopy of green glowy light instead of about to get konked on the head by a flaming cocktail umbrella.
In short, life is good.
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