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Peeling Your Onion

June 26, 2015 By admin Filed Under: Healthy Living Tagged With: lifestyle, spring cleaning, wellness

Deeper Levels of Spring Cleaning & Decluttering

red onion

This season I’m going to suggest you upgrade your spring cleaning regimen. I am not one to diminish the power of a de-cluttering session to create massive shifts in your well-being. Anyone who has ever dumped the entire contents of their closet on the floor and given garbage bags of clothes away knows this power intimately. But what I am going to suggest is that this spring you go one layer deeper. This season, while you spring clean, also focus on intentionally reorganizing your living space into a microenvironment that subtly shifts your behavior so you can achieve your health goals with ease and sustainability. Yes, I basically want your environment to trick you into being a healthy, happy person.

As a health coach, I am fascinated by human behavior and what facilitates lasting, behavior change. Almost every patient I’ve worked with has a genuine desire to be healthy and happy and also, seems to have about the same five health goals. They even know what they need to do to achieve those goals. Yet, only a fraction of them seem to be able to create the change they desire despite being motivated, intelligent people with lots of integrity. What gives?

No, I have not come to the conclusion that we are all just lazy and dishonest. As we learn more about human behavior, it appears we outsource a lot of our decision-making and behavior cues to external factors, rendering a large percentage of our decision making unconscious. Our brains seem to get decision fatigue rather quickly, so in order to save our brainpower for the really vital decisions, we form neural networks that ingrain daily decisions into habits that occur mostly on autopilot. Hence, willpower, while a nice idea, ends up being overrated and largely unreliable.

Habits are made up of a cue—routine and reward. Traditionally, we emphasize going straight to changing the routine with less emphasis on reworking the cue or replacing the reward. Without getting overly technical, a lot of exciting research is emerging that shows a lot of our behavior cues are housed in our external environment. It appears when we change our environment, we change our behavior with relative ease (For more information check out the recent NPR article on heroin addiction and Vietnam soldiers.) You can harness this phenomenon in your own home to achieve some of the most common and evasive health goals.

Here are my top three tips in order to make your home one big, health-inducing cue!

1. Create a designated meditation area in your home
The desire to sustain a regular meditation practice is one of the most common health goals people come to me with. In our fast paced world, it is increasingly vital to actively pursue relaxation and contemplation to cultivate healthy brains, nervous systems, and hearts (both physically and emotionally). In the health sphere, meditation continues to crop up as the latest panacea for our physical, mental, and esoteric ailments. How can our environments support building a sustainable meditation practice?
My number one tip is designating a location in your home as your meditation area (or corner or window). Start by pondering what kind of environment will seduce you into sitting down to practice. Don’t worry too much about size here. Placing a candle in a windowsill or the corner of a room counts. Put things that you love and that inspire you there. Keep it fresh and updated. Then meditate every day for about a month in that spot (even if just three minutes). By the end of this time period, you should have the start of a strong meditation habit with the help of this physical cue!

2. Hide your devices
These days, reducing screen time is something many of us strive to do. Despite acknowledging that our increase in screen time contributes to feelings of isolation and disconnection, many still feel powerless over our usage. While the rampant, nearly constant use of technology may feel inevitable and out of our control, we benefit enormously when we bring an element of conscious choice back to our tech habits. This allows us to make empowered decisions about how we’d like to engage with technology so it fosters intimacy and connection, rather than detracts from it.

To get a hold of your technological addictions, I recommend implementing a digital sunset at least one hour before you’d like to go to bed. To structure this ritual within your home environment, the concept of out of sight, out of mind is vital. Most of us don’t have that much control over our addiction to technology and need a physical barrier in order to not be lured back in. Designate a “hiding” spot for your devices. For phones, iPods and iPads, I suggest having a designated drawer or basket you put them in. For TVs and computers, cover them with a blanket. Next, pick a digital sunset time each day and stick to it.   To make this easier, I recommend linking this ritual to something you already do each day (this powerful technique is known as habit stacking). For example, shut down and hide your devices right after dinner or right before you brush your teeth. For extra credit, hide your devices when you eat as well.

Finally, focus on consciously replacing the “reward” you get from engaging with your beloved devices with something that feels like a worthy replacement. Perhaps this is your time to pursue something creative. Maybe it’s when you get to connect more deeply with your partner, read the stack of novels you’ve been meaning to get to, or a chance to get really into taking bubble baths. If nothing else, this habit will do wonders for your sleep as the light of screens impact our circadian rhythms by suppressing the release of the sleep promoting hormone melatonin.

3. Don’t bring unhealthy food into your home. If you do, hide it
This may seem a little extreme but if you are serious about changing your diet, this massively increases your odds of success. We encounter plenty of unhealthy food temptations in our daily lives operating in the birthplace of SAD, the notoriously awful and embarrassing Standard American Diet. If your home is a clean food zone, you will likely reach some semblance of balance. When healthy food is what’s most readily available and easily accessible, you’ll eat healthy foods. Seems like kind of a no-brainer but we often forget to harness this fact.  For example, when Google changed up their cafeteria so water and healthy beverages were at eye level and soda stored below—soda consumption dropped by 7 percent and water consumption increased by 47 percent. In other words, the default, easy choice is generally what we pick, so work this to your advantage!

Let’s come back to reward replacement.   If you have developed a habit of coming home and eating Ben and Jerry’s every night to activate your pleasure centers after a long day, make sure you are replacing it with a reasonable substitute that lights up the reward center at least a little bit. If I you try to go from eating Ben and Jerry’s every night to just drinking water, you better believe you’re going to find yourself at the nearest bodega buying more ice cream. Replacement of the reward is key as you build healthier habits because no one responds well to having something taken away without a decent replacement (including our brains!). You may be wondering, WTF could replace Ben and Jerry’s? Good question. Answer: Nothing! But you might try something like dark chocolate (70 percent or above for less sugar and more antioxidants), chocolate mousse made with bananas or tofu, coconut milk ice cream or fresh fruit.

Filed Under: Healthy Living Tagged With: lifestyle, spring cleaning, wellness

Park Slope’s New Businesses – Week of June 19th

June 19, 2015 By admin Filed Under: New Wave Tagged With: bakeries, giftshops, new business, popups

Every week we choose two new local businesses to highlight. Here are a couple of the sweetest new faces in Park Slope:

Chocolate Chip Cookies from Brittany's Biscuits
Chocolate Chip Cookies from Brittany’s Biscuits

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brittany’s Biscuits

www.brittanysbiscuits.com 

Upon her tragic failure to find a decent chocolate chip cookie in New York City, Brittany Gonzalez decided that she had no choice but make her own and share it with the world. Now people can order her cookies and much more from her website, where she bakes from her headquarters in Park Slope. In addition to her famous chocolate chip cookies, she is also well known for her red velvet goldmines, which are rich red velvet cookies with cream cheese filling. For a limited time, Gonzalez is selling David’s Sweethearts, a shortbread red velvet cookie dipped in white chocolate and shaped like a heart. Proceeds of this particular treat will go to the non-profit organization Help Is On the Way Today, a NYC-based organization that assists children and young adults living with HIV/AIDS. On August 11th, you can see Brittany at the Cabaret, Cookies, and Cocktails event at the Metropolitan Room in Manhattan as she helps raise money for HIOTWT.

 

Gameboy baby onesie and mario brothers mobile
Gameboy-themed baby swag at Planet Cute


Planet Cute

75A 5th Avenue (Between Prospect and St. Marks)

This pop-up shop opened its doors on June 4th with tons of artisan-made and geeky goods.  This eclectic boutique has onesies for the parent who has always dreamed of dressing up their newborn as Pikachu, Totoro, Link, or a 1980’s-era GameBoy, as well as handmade tutus for the child who wants to set trends. Looking for a Mario Brothers-themed mobile for your baby’s crib? They have it! Want a plush toy of a smiling hamburger? It’s available for sale! Yet there’s plenty in this store for adults, such as wallets with designs from Marvel comic books and flasks featuring references to popular video games. For those who are looking for gifts, Planet Cute has a huge array of greeting cards and original artwork to choose. Planet Cute is a shop that specializes in, well, cute things! But it’ll be gone if you wait – the shop closes on June 28th.  Get your cute kitsch before its gone!

Filed Under: New Wave Tagged With: bakeries, giftshops, new business, popups

Yoga, Children, & the Art of Play

June 15, 2015 By admin Filed Under: Yoga

I’m a yoga teacher. But my life at home isn’t exactly Zen, because I’m also a mother. Literally, as I am writing this, my husband and daughter are playing catch with her Lovey Bunny. Every couple of seconds a floppy stuffed animal goes whizzing by, three feet from my face. Soon, my infant son will need to nurse…

Once you have children everything is a little, well, tighter. Time, space, money, and my jeans are all tighter these days. My hold on my patience can be too, especially after climbing three flights of stairs with a temperamental, chatty toddler and a baby strapped to me. Man, by 3:30 p.m. most days, everybody around here needs an attitude adjustment.

For new parents in particular, stress-reducing physical activity is both necessary and seemingly impossible. What can you do when you’re tethered to the apartment?

One playful solution is to create a family yoga practice (try calling it “yoga play time”). Take the chance to have some exercise time together. Family yoga models self-care, teamwork, practicing new skills, and getting downright silly.

Create a Yoga Playspace
You don’t need a dedicated studio space, though there are great classes in the neighborhood, like the one I teach at Bend and Bloom. You can create a bit of yogic ambiance in any room with a few steps. Set yourself up for success and remember that nobody can compete with a toy box. Put things away. Lay a blanket on the floor to create a dedicated yoga area. Unplug! Put. The. iPhone. Down. While music may be a tempting way to set the scene for a mini-yoga class at home, I recommend holding off when you’re first getting started. For most kids music is something to do, not something to be ignored in the background. Music is a key component to a family yoga class, but think of it as a prop or a tool and use it judiciously and with purpose.

One thing I always tell parents when they come to my classes is to keep their expectations loose. This is especially true at home. It’s a huge accomplishment if you get to hold a pose or two and your child tries at least one yoga play activity. Managing our expectations is a big part of family yoga. (It’s also a big part of parenting). You’re not going to get a big work out in, folks. But, you are going to move your body with your child, learn from each other, and hopefully have fun!

Yoga Play for Infants, Toddlers, and Older Kids
Here are a few poses and activities to share with the yoginis in your life of varying ages.

Infants:
Babies are often the greatest teachers of being in the moment. They aren’t anticipating their next feeding or diaper change, though you might be. Allow them to inspire what it means to truly be. This meditative state may be something many of the clock-keepers in the family struggle with (like me!). Take a moment to check in with your infant. Ask them if they are ready to play! If they seem fussy or not up for it, try again another time.

Flying Babies!
This partner pose serves as abdominal work for the adult as well as tummy time for the infant. Start sitting on the floor with your knees bent, feet on the floor in front of you. Bring the baby to your shins, facing you. Hold the baby close to your shins draw your belly muscles in and slowly roll down onto your back. Try to keep your shins level and parallel to the floor. Hold on to your baby! Draw your knees close to your face and make a silly sound for your baby. Then extend your legs away from you a few inches, draw your knees in again. Repeat! Try to keep your head and neck relaxed while you engage your lower abdominal muscles. You can cue yourself by drawing your belly button down towards the floor. Your baby will delight in seeing you from above.
Note: keep a burp cloth handy! My son has spit up directly into my mouth while “flying.” If your baby just ate, I recommend waiting a bit.
Jess 6
Toddlers:
Toddlers are a notoriously irrational community. Their quirks are part of what makes them amusing to be around and, yet, they can be extremely trying. Parents, it’s ok to be a little selfish here. Check in with yourself. What’s tight on your own body? What do YOU need? I recommend starting by taking a deep breath.

Tissue Breathing
This kid friendly pranayama activity requires a box of tissues.
Everyone should have one tissue to start. Pinch the tissue at its corners with both hands. Hold the tissue up in front of your face, a couple of inches from your mouth. Take a deep breath in, then blow out through your lips and watch the tissue move. Don’t let go of the tissue yet! Try again, this time extend your arms a bit so your tissue is a little further away from your face. The idea is to see how far you can reach your tissue with your breath. When you have extended your arms as far as you can, it’s time to let the tissues fly. Take the deepest breath you can and let go of the tissue when you exhale so the tissue goes flying. Blow the tissue at your child. Let them blow a tissue at you. Have fun with it! Breathing is a big part of yoga and an excellent post-tantrum activity!

Poses from the Page
A great way to frame family yoga time is to use a beloved picture book. Because many of the traditional yoga postures are inspired by and resemble animals, books with animals will be your best bet. (Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell and pretty much anything by Sandra Boynton or Eric Carle are great choices). This literacy building activity is helpful for someone who has a basic familiarity with poses. If you are new to yoga, don’t fret. Yoga Journal’s website has a terrific search tool for beginner poses. (Yogajournal.com). Read the book to your child, and every time you see an animal or meet a new animal character, take that shape with your body. Let your animals talk! Bark in downward facing dog! Hiss in your cobra poses! Let your leaves blow in the breeze in tree pose!

5-10 yr olds
Older kids want to be challenged in a playful way. Yoga is inherently non-competitive. There are no points to tally, no winners or losers. But what do you do when siblings start to show their natural competitive spirit? When you hear your child start to say, “I’m doing it better!” Try to find ways to reframe their urge to win by competing against themselves. Offer to set a timer to see how long your child can hold a pose. Write it down in a journal or on the calendar and try again next week or tomorrow to see if they can hold it longer or shorter.

Crow Pose
This traditional yoga posture is fabulous for building focus, balance, and strength. This arm balance takes practice (I will conquer you one day, Crow! I vow it!). Start out in a squat position with your feet wider than your hips. Place your hands down in front of you about eight inches or so—enough so that when you bend your arms you make a little shelf with your elbows. Squeeze your arms with your legs. Start to tip forward. Pick up one foot and then the other.

Note: This pose is often harder for adults than it is for kids! It’s okay if their feet stay on the floor. If you try to correct too much, your child will feel discouraged and lose interest. Let them find their poses in their own time.

Turtle on a Rock
In this partner pose, the parent comes into child’s pose. The child will stand close to your body with their back towards you. The child will sit on your tush and slowly lie back on you. This should feel very nice for both of you!

Yoga Family Moments
Playing yoga together regularly allows a new language to develop, where our bodies can say what our words can’t. When my daughter wants my attention (usually when I’m nursing the baby) she’ll come into camel pose, a posture on your knees where you reach your arms back to touch your feet, allowing your head to lean back. She knows that this is the ultimate way to expose her “tickle spot,” under her chin. When I take her up her sweet invitation and she falls apart in giggles, I laugh, too. That might be our family yoga practice for the day, as close to Zen as we’re going to get. And as parents, we’ve got to take our Zen where and when we can.

Jessica teaches Postnatal/Baby Yoga classes to babies and toddlers on Fridays and Family Yoga to 2.5-6 year olds with grown-ups on Saturdays at Bend and Bloom in Park Slope.

Filed Under: Yoga

The Splendid Case of Increasing Wes Anderson Collections: With Matt Zoller Seitz

June 1, 2015 By admin Filed Under: The Reader Interview

MZS portraits-10Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor-in-Chief of RogerEbert.com, the TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism, and the author of multiple books about the life and films of Wes Anderson. That last part is the most important for the purposes of this interview, for which he was kind enough to speak with Park Slope Reader. 2013 brought the first The Wes Anderson Collection, which celebrates and analyzes all seven of Wes’ films that were released up to that point. This February, The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel followed as a second volume focusing on only Anderson’s most recent film. Here, Seitz talks about the differences between the two books, the fun of elaborate footnotes, and the surprise expense of novelty trinkets.

The major difference between your first Wes Anderson book and this one is that the first volume had everything; all seven of his previous films and analyses of each of them uniquely. Did you prepare for this one differently because it was only based on one movie, or was the process pretty similar?

We had a few options. One was to put out a second edition of the first book that included The Grand Budapest Hotel but we didn’t want to do that because it didn’t seem right to ask people to buy the same book twice, so we decided on a second book. Once we knew that, we had the opportunity to take a slightly different approach, really concentrate on a single film in greater length and great detail, and also to bring in interviews with other people. It wasn’t just me and Wes—now it was me interviewing Ralph Fiennes and interviewing Milena Canonero or Adam Stockhausen, their production designer. Then on top of that, more critical essays by people who knew more about each particular deal, and that’s how we ended up with Ali Arikan on the writing of Stefan Zweig and how that might or might not have influenced Wes Anderson, and Olivia Collette writing about the score (she’s a classical musician.)

That almost mirrors the narrator-driven and detailed structure of the film, and you also incorporate what might be considered extraneous information, such as the various actor career arcs or the Stefan Zweig excerpts. Was there a specific reason you wanted to include those?

I just thought they were fun. [In] the first book I did a little bit of that as well. In fact, there’s really three different books happening in the original The Wes Anderson Collection. One of them is this interview book with me talking to Wes, the other one is this collection of critical essays by me, and then you have the third book in the footnotes. Footnotes are kind of the sneakiest of the three books. Those are very digressive and almost random most of the time. I’m a huge fan of David Foster Wallace who would have these footnotes that would go on forever and a lot of times the footnotes would be things that there was really no rational, defensible reason why something was in a footnote but he would put one in anyway. Or it was a way of including things that he would otherwise have had to cut (laughs).

So we did even more of that in this book. At one point Wes Anderson and I are talking about the narration of his movie, and we both realize that there’s a possibility that we’re both talking out of our butts on this particular subject and he says, “You know, maybe we can check this.” And I said, “OK I’ll talk to my expert,” and I emailed David Bordwell who I know. He wrote me a very long email about the history of voiceover narration in cinema. It’s not really even a footnote. It spans two pages. I would say not all of them are defensible, but on the other hand, I think part of why these books have been the best is [because] they’re not all meat and potatoes; there’s personality to them. You kind of get a sense of the personalities of people who make books. Me and Martin Venezky and Max Altman.

WesGrandBudapest15716J

There are the different aspect ratios and design aesthetics in this book, just as in the film. Did you have a hand in that or was that mostly your illustrator and your designer?

I told my editor I wanted this book to change aspect ratios like the movie did and I wasn’t sure how we were going to accomplish that. I had originally talked to my editor about having the page size change. At one point there were going to be three different sizes of paper stitched into the binding of this book and when you moved from one section to another the actual physical size of the page would change. We priced that and we realized it was entirely too expensive. Martin came up with another solution that was simpler and cheaper, which was to map the page. And if you notice, there’s three standard sizes for the book. When you’re in the interview sections it fills up the entire book. The critical essays are slightly smaller. And the interviews with Canonero, Fiennes, Desplat etc. are slightly smaller than that. So that’s our version of our change of aspect ratios.

You face a lot of those kinds of situations where you have your extravagant idea and then you have your realistic one. The original Wes Anderson Collection, very early on in the process we talked about selling it in a little box and the box would look like a little keepsake box like the ones you see at the beginning of To Kill A Mockingbird and you would open it up and the book would be inside and there would be seven little trinkets each related to his films. We realized that would cost $250 a piece to do so it was unrealistic so we just went with the book (laughs).

You’d have to come out with a Christmas ornament collection or something! (You can put that idea in your back pocket.)

We’ve discussed that. We’ve discussed putting the first and second book together, and you know if there’s a third book we’ll add that one as well.

You had a lot of fun with this one because you were only focusing on the one movie and you could have fun with the cover and the different aspects of it. Did you have ideas for different things that didn’t pan out design-wise or interview-wise that you’d like to share?

The big thing was the changing page size. I really wanted to do that because I’ve never seen that done before in a film book. If I had to do it over again, more interviews. But I say that understanding that if there were more interviews, there might be more pages, and then it might get more expensive and unrealistic again. I do believe that once a thing is done I like to leave it alone. I asked Wes about that in the first book. I said why is it that you don’t like the director’s cuts and he said that his feeling was once the movie is done then it’s “archival”. He said that means the thing is what it is, then I’m done with it. It’s a record of something in time and I don’t want to go back because I feel like I’m distorting history in a way. That’s his feeling. That’s why there’s never been director’s cuts of his movies. I don’t believe there’s been more than one or two deleted scenes. I don’t think he’s ever put a deleted scene on a DVD now that I think about it. I’m also in so many different things I can’t afford to obsess over what might have been. I don’t tend to make a practice of it.

At one point in the book you mention that the movie really feels like a culmination of his career. More melancholy moments, more overt comedic moments. Did you go into it wanting to talk about, say, Kumar Pallana even though he wasn’t in Grand Budapest because he had passed away, or was that something you decided to leave in because you felt like it was appropriate?

Talking to Kumar was…we were at the Algonquin hotel/bar and somehow we just got on the subject of Kumar who had died a few months earlier. We got on a level of discussion of a guy he worked very well with because he had been in a number of films and it was a classic digression. Kumar wasn’t related to The Grand Budapest Hotel. He wasn’t in it and there’s really no reason to include that section other than because it was about Kumar a lot and we thought it would be a nice gesture to his family.

There’s actually an entire other chapter of this book that we cut. It’s an entire other section where Wes called me up and said, “Hey, I would like to do a conversation where we don’t talk about The Grand Budapest Hotel—we just talk about movies.” And I said, “Okay!” So we talked for about two hours about all kind of things including train travel, Japanese animation, disaster films, and our childhoods in Texas. At the end it was fifteen to twenty pages of text, and it just seemed like too much so we cut it. So there’s digressions in the book, but it’s not nearly as digressive as it could’ve been.

Now you’re going to make people want a separate pamphlet of you and Wes Anderson talking about Japanese animation.

He actually knows a lot. It’s funny because he’d never seen any of that until his girlfriend Juman [Malouf] introduced him to it. So that influenced his work on Fantastic Mr Fox. He’s really into that stuff. We also talked about Steven Spielberg which is something we almost always talk about when we’re together just because we’re both major, major, major nerds for Spielberg.

For the first Wes Anderson Collection when you watched most of his movies you didn’t know you were going to write a book and analyze them on such a level. Is this the first movie where you watched it in advanced knowing in the back of your mind that you were maybe writing a book about it? Did it alter the way you went into it the first time in that screening room? Or did you just block that part out and watch it as you normally would a Wes Anderson film the first time?

Well the production process was different. In the first book you’re dealing with the conception and that I’ve seen [the films] when we were laying the book out and doing the chapter on each. I didn’t have any history with The Grand Budapest Hotel. I was experiencing it as a regular viewer, really. I mean, I got to see it slightly in advance of most critics. He showed me a nearly completed cut that had some color timing issues, maybe one or two audio issues, and incomplete special effects. That was in November of 2013, shortly after the book came out. I was able to see it just that time and then I did my first interview. I said to him before we even had a contract, “Hey, Wes, I have no idea yet if we’re going to be able to integrate this into a future volume of the book. If so, how about maybe we go ahead and do an interview just in case.” And he said, “Yeah, good idea—let’s do it.”

So before the movie was released I had seen it maybe three times and interviewed Wes at least two times. I did more interviews with Wes than I collected in the book. Breaking things into the three acts is a storyteller’s trick. Months of conversation at the Algonquin hotel happened. There are parts of the first conversation that I moved to the second chapter, and parts of the second that I moved to the third. It’s a case where you talk to somebody again and again and maybe the first time you talk about the costumes and the second time you go off on a tangent about the costumes again and it doesn’t make sense when you’re editing to be bringing up the costumes in all three acts. I always tell people that these books are documentaries in book form. That’s supposed to mean it’s not like you’re pointing the camera or tape recorder at somebody and this is exactly what happened. You’re arranging it, and you’re cutting things that are basically irrelevant or uninteresting. You make the experience as pleasurable as possible for the consumer.

As far as The Grand Budapest Hotel goes, my relationship with the movie kept getting deeper the more times I saw it. In that sense, I would say a major difference between the second book and the first is that my attitude towards everything was basically settled in the first book when the time came to make it. The only exception to that was Moonrise Kingdom. My experience with this movie is being formed as you read the book. You can see in the preface that I admit the first time I had only had one view of the movie—so my impressions are probably not going to be so deep, and they’re not. But then the second time, I had a chance to live with the film a bit more and my thoughts are a little more settled and a little more detail oriented. And then by the time you get to the third one, I’m thinking about the architecture of the story. So when I say it’s a documentary in book form, it’s not only a documentary about the movie in the form of a book, but it’s also secondarily a documentary about my making this book.

As you mentioned before, you talked to Anderson about the costuming, the set design, shot set up, and camera movement. What’s your personal favorite part of his movies—specifically this one?

I don’t know if I have a favorite part of work in his movies or [a favorite] thing that he does. It’s just too hard to say. It’s like saying what’s my favorite Monet painting. I don’t know. It probably depends on my mood. But I will say that the thing I keep coming back to again and again is his sense of loss that’s the driving force behind every one. That’s something that I connected to on a very deep level, even very early in his career. I think a lot of people did. His movies are not trivial concoctions because they’re about loss, they’re about death, they’re about mortality, they’re about things fading away and how you just have to make peace with that because you don’t have any control over it. That’s the reason why earlier in his career—before there was this consensus that he was an important or interesting filmmaker—people got quite defensive when Wes Anderson was dismissed or criticized or ridiculed, because they saw this seriousness in his films. Wes Anderson movies are a really great illustration of the idea that just because a movie’s fun doesn’t mean it’s not serious. He was always a serious filmmaker. Even going back to Bottle Rocket, which in many ways I still think is his lightest film overall. Maybe Moonrise Kingdom or maybe Fantasic Mr. Fox might be in a tie with it. But even Bottle Rocket deals with feelings of disappointment, youthful naiveté, emotional breakdown, mental illness, and criminality.

I actually just watched it this past weekend and it was really interesting. I haven’t watched it for maybe ten years. It is striking how present those aspects are so early in his career, and you don’t realize it the first time you see it or after you go away from it for a little while.

That last five minutes of Bottle Rocket feels like a preview of the rest of his career.

You can find bits of it in every one of his movies when you do go back through them, especially Owen Wilson’s performance.

Yeah, that moment when he’s walking away from Bob and Anthony to the prison and he’s all jocular and grinning and the hellraiser. And then it shifts in slow motion, and you see he looks back very subtly and you see that he’s terrified. I think Wes Anderson’s movies are contained in that one moment.

Last question. You have an Oliver Stone career book in the pipeline. Did you learn any lessons from your Wes Anderson books that you’re applying to that or are you approaching it completely differently?

I learned a lot about practical things—layout, materials, intellectual property, things like that. We’re definitely applying those. By the time we made the second book we knew what we were doing. And now with the Oliver Stone book we really knew what we were doing, so we’re able to mix it up. With this book, it’s not going to look anything like the Wes Anderson books. It’s going to be something completely new that people haven’t seen before. It takes its inspiration from Oliver Stone’s films, which are very different films to say the least. It’s much more of a biography. It’s practically a life story with critical analysis dispersed in there. This is a guy whose life and films are so strongly entwined that you really can’t separate the two. I think the trouble with this book is trying to figure out what is the best and most interesting way to reflect that visually. We’re still going back and forth on it.

It’s also a political book because Stone is a political filmmaker. I’m trying to reflect his worldview in this book and his worldview is a very disillusioned one. This is a guy who was a young Republican, the son of a stockbroker, a child of privilege. He has deconstructed all of the lies to become someone else and it’s been an ongoing process. He’s told me many times that he considers himself a work in progress and he’s seventy years old. So I would say if we do it right, this book is going to be a record of a person struggling to hopefully improve himself over the course of his life.

Right. I actually lied. I have one more question. I don’t know if you’ve thought about this at all or if you just take his movies as they come, but what do you hope Wes Anderson does next? What direction does he push or new thing do you think he approaches in his next film?

I wouldn’t presume to give Wes Anderson suggestions, but I personally would love to see him do a science fiction film—since I think he’s often heading that direction anyway. He made a casual comment in an interview one time where he said he had a fantasy of shooting a science fiction movie in space in actual zero gravity. I don’t think he was kidding.

Filed Under: The Reader Interview

Shallow in the Slope

May 19, 2015 By admin Filed Under: Hypocrite's Almanac

Dear Hypocrite,

I read your column without fail every issue.  Now, finally, I’ve got a problem worthy of your attention.  I’m a single male in my late thirties and I’m looking for a committed relationship.  I’m searching in all the usual places (Match, Chemistry, OKCupid, PlentyofFish) but I haven’t had any luck.  I really thought I’d be with someone by now.  I had a crazy time in my twenties and then I started a business in my early thirties.  Because I had to pour all of my energy into it, dating was impossible.  I didn’t have a lot of money or time, I didn’t sleep a lot, I didn’t take care of myself and looked like Hell as a result.  But I’ve gotten my act together since and I couldn’t be more ready to meet “the one.”

The problem:  I am picky as Hell when it comes to women.  Looks are very, very important to me.  I like a woman who wears makeup, paints her nails, tweezes her eyebrows, has straight white teeth, big breasts and a big booty.  She should wear high heels and have a nice hairstyle with no gray hair. And she should take care of herself.  Down there.  If she doesn’t do all of these things, I won’t ask her out for a second date. 

And me? I’m not “hot.”  I’m 5’6”, I have a large nose (although I’ve been told by some it’s my best quality), I’m losing my hair and have gained weight in the past few years.  To top it all off, I don’t really know how to dress.  But here’s what I do have to offer:  I’ve got a great sense of humor, I’m financially stable, and I can make a mean salami omelet.  That’s not so bad, right?

I don’t blame my friends who say they won’t set me up anymore because I am unrealistic and have outrageous expectations.  It’s true.  I know the gap between what I expect and what I can get is massive.  But that’s what I’m attracted to and there’s a part of me that believes I’ll get it while the other part of me is getting lonelier and lonelier and wants to lower my standards.  I just don’t know if my body will follow, if you get my drift.

Please don’t be too tough.  I can’t help being this way.

Pig on Prospect Place

Hyprocrite

Dear Pig,

What I find most disturbing here (beside the salami omelet, yeech!) is that you write of no other qualities that you’re looking for in a partner.  No mention of spirituality, politics, sense of humor, disposition.  Nada.  Weird, don’t you think?  You gotta know that looks are the only thing that don’t last.  I was a looker in my thirties but now, nearing fifty, my face has begun its descent down my skull.  You have/had a mother and a grandmother.  They were once on the market and someone was kind enough to overlook their physical imperfections and have sex with them to make you.  You need to get over this.  Now.  It’s standing in the way of your happiness.

Pig, even if you were a George Clooney look alike, I’m not sure the woman you’re waiting for exists.  She might for a couple dates but then I expect you’d find her ass a little flat or her skin a little rough.  You’ve been watching way too much porn.  Go online and see what Cindy and Beyoncé look like without airbrushing.   Women don’t look like the images you have in your head.  You have an illness, and frankly, I don’t have a lot of empathy for you.  Men like you who internalize all the crap out there that makes women feel really shitty about themselves.  But, I also hear that you understand how crazy you are and that you want to change so that makes you a smidgen likable.  So…here’s a story for you.

When I was in high school I dated a boarding student at the prep school up the street from my house. Spenser was handsome, rich, drove a Beamer, and was known to date beneath him.  That’s where I came in.  I was “a townie” which to him meant I knew the back roads and where to buy beer after the first six places carded.  On weekends Spenser and I would make out in his common room and later I would watch him play lacrosse.  One night someone had some pot, and we were in the woods sitting on logs around a small fire.  Spenser and I were making out as usual and suddenly I had the sensation that I was macking a giant golden retriever.  He wasn’t the best kisser to begin with, but he was profoundly horrendous after a little weed.  After that night, and I’m not proud of this, I couldn’t bring myself to see him anymore.  I made excuses the following three weekends which was enough time for him to find someone else to slobber on.  “The Spenser Effect” trailed me for half a dozen years after that night.  It would happen without warning (with or without pot) and ruin whatever fledgling relationship I was embarking on.  All of sudden his butt looked like an eggplant or his laugh sounded fake or his ugly shoes made fart sounds.  I would find one thing to distort and obsess on which would dash the tenderest of potential love upon the rocks.

I finally shook “The Spenser Effect” in my mid twenties and settled down all cozy with a complete psychopath for a few years, just when “The Spenser Effect” actually would’ve done me some good.  Today, I’ve been with the same guy for over fifteen years and he’s got a toe that looks like a smashed jellybean and it doesn’t bother me at all!

So that story is one to let you know, I kind of hear you.  I never needed my man to be ripped or wax his chest but I did need him not to kiss like a dog.  How did I get over it? I wanted love in my life.  I learned to acknowledge the effect and move through it toward the light—the light within the person.  Yes, his nose breath smells like vinegar but so do Easter eggs.  I like Easter eggs and I like the way he listens to me even when I have no idea what I’m saying.  It’s not “settling.”  It’s stepping out of the fantasy world where all girls bleach their anuses and into the world where a deep connection with someone is possible.

Here’s the practical advice.

Find someone you like.  Silently acknowledge your pig voice when it tells you about her crooked teeth with a “thank you for noticing, inner pig.”  Then, if your date is kind and interesting and somewhat appealing to you, go out with her a second time.  And then a third.  Delay the physical contact for as long as you can.  When you think you can wait no longer, wait one more date.  Then, go to bed.  Now, by this time you’ll be so comfortable with each other, she might just let you tweeze her eyebrows as foreplay.  This might not be love, but it will be a step toward something real.

I hope you soon learn that girls who don’t paint their nails can be goddamn sexy.  Just as I hope they learn that short balding guys with big noses can be sizzling hot.  I have moderately-sized hopes for you, Pig.  Keep in touch.

See you next time.

Filed Under: Hypocrite's Almanac

Vision Zero: A New Kind of Street Smart

May 4, 2015 By admin Filed Under: Part of the Solution

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In the wake of the three tragic pedestrian deaths of local M.S. 51 students this past year, fellow student and advocate for pedestrian safety awareness, Alison Collard de Beaufort, decided it was time for action. Beaufort personally knew the three victims Mohammad Naiem Uddin, Sammy Cohen Eckstein, and Joie Sellers and recalls what it was like to suffer the loss of her friends and classmates. Both Sellers, twelve, and Uddin, fourteen, were killed by hit-and-run drivers in the Park Slope neighborhood, while Eckstein was killed near Prospect Park when fetching his soccer ball which had rolled into the street.

“The first time it happened it’s a big shock, you don’t expect it. Then having to go through it a second time and then a third time all within fourteen months was completely surreal. It is a pain that no one should have to experience.”
-Alison Collard de Beaufort

Reaching out to heavy-weight champion for pedestrian rights, Councilman Brad Lander, in hopes of finding a solution to the seemingly growing hazard of street safety in Brooklyn, the ambitious sophomore of Brooklyn Technical High School aimed to start a social action group specifically targeted for students. “Since most groups are for adults and parents, Councilman Lander and I had a meeting [about] how to get students involved with the matter—which is how Vision Zero Youth Council was created,” Beaufort elaborates.

Vision Zero, a series of traffic legislations originally implemented in Sweden to eradicate serious crashes, made its way to New York City this past year when Mayor Bill de Blasio placed the act at the top of his transportation priority, with policies of lowering driving speeds and expanding automated enforcement.  Following in the footsteps of the Swedish model and mantra of having an anticipated zero deaths or serious pedestrian injuries by 2020, New York City is embarking upon both technological and legislative changes to help facilitate the much-needed social revolution of pedestrian safety. A few items in the works include the planned additions of 120 speed-tracking cameras near schools, following the impressive example by Sweden who has installed more than 1,100 cameras, along with the goal of reducing the citywide speed limit from 30 miles per hour to 25.

New York City’s Transportation Department is keen on blending both Swedish-style design principles along with engaging public awareness campaigns. The reasoning lies simply with the notion that despite changing speed limits and traffic design, the ultimate preventative measure in pedestrian accidents lies in properly educating both drivers and pedestrians. We are admittedly in the age where there are a plethora of technological distractions—whether it is a driver on the phone or a pedestrian with headphones in—and in order for change to occur both parties must do their part in adopting safe practices.   

But all this legislative banter clearly isn’t reserved for adults. The Vision Zero Youth Council is a means for students in the New York City area, grades four to twelve, to join the call to social action, come up first hand with solutions to on-going problems, offer input for pedestrian safety around schools, and liaise directly with school faculty members. Of course parents are welcome to join the meetings, but they should be prepared to take the back seat to these vocal and opinionated young people. Of the two meetings the council has hosted to-date Beaufort notes, “Though we have only had two meetings so far, one held each month, there has been great discussion and brainstorming among local students and faculty members, and the future membership for the group looks very promising.” Faculty members of local schools are doing their part in spreading the word of the council, encouraging students to get involved and attend the meetings.

After just coming to creation in January of this year, the Vision Zero Youth Council has had a notable attendance of approximately thirty members to each meeting as well as mustering hundreds of likes and followers on its social media pages, which are all personally manned by Beaufort when she is not figure skating or spending time with her school’s engineering club. The Vision Zero meetings, held once a month at local M.S. 51, have an open forum style where students are welcome to voice their concerns and work together to find solutions. Though the council does not have an official board yet, the strategic fourteen-year-old has picked her allies with care, as councilman Lander and the Department of Transportation have played prominent roles in laying the foundation for the council.

Councilman Lander has shown time and time again that pedestrian safety in the city is of upmost importance with his newest call to action, the Driver Accountability Task Force—just passed early March in partnership with Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson and Street Safety Advocates. The avant-garde approach of the Driver Accountability Task Force aims to increase prosecution of reckless driving and eliminate loopholes in legislation, which allow drivers who cause injury or death to pedestrians to escape punishment.

The force—formed in response to the third tragic hit-and-run fatality of 14-year-old Mohammed Naiem Uddin who was hit in a cross-walk when a driver failed to yield—will comprise stakeholders from the NYPD, advocacy groups, local and state governments, and criminal justice experts. While advocacy groups like the Zero Vision Youth Council serve to take preventative measures for pedestrian accidents, the Driver Accountability Task Force will ensure that justice is met when unfortunate accidents occur.  The hope is to foster a cultural shift in the ethical implications of driving responsibly and to further force drivers to face the repercussions of reckless driving.

In the wake of the local tragedies, support and advocacy groups consisting of victims of traffic violence and families who have suffered loss from reckless driving have sprung up. Families for Safe Streets, formed in early 2014, has played a crucial role in lobbying for changes in legislation such as lowering city speed limits. The group wants to make a conscious effort to turn their grief into action and create a city in which pedestrians, cyclists, and vehicles safely coexist. Going with the notion of strength in numbers, the Vision Zero Youth Council plans to partner with Families for Safe Streets and other social action groups in order to tag-team legislative changes through rallies, events, and social media campaigns to engage public discussion.

Other groups such as Transportation Alternatives are more on the extreme end of the pedestrian activist spectrum, suggesting vehicles be eliminated altogether, promoting bicycling, walking, and public transit as a means to get around. While it might not seem totally realistic to banish the car completely here in Brooklyn, the big brother group, founded in 1973, has managed some notable accomplishments such as Citi Bike, parking-protected bike lanes, Select Bus Service, and automated speed enforcement cameras just to name a few. Possible future projects could include ways to reduce cyclist fatality rates, as Swedish authorities are channelling efforts to find an energy-absorbing pavement to alleviate the severity of a fall.  Like that of Families for Safe Streets, their ultimate goal is to see change and eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries in the city’s streets.

New York City might be similar to Stockholm in the essence that it is the national epicenter for the Vision Zero initiative, and leading by example might encourage other metropolitan cities in the country to jump on the pedestrian safety bandwagon and take the necessary steps to propagate change. San Francisco adopted the Vision Zero plan at the same time as New York City in January of 2014, with Boston shortly after in March 2014, and most recently Portland as of February 2015.  Car companies like Volvo are also taking matters into their own hands and have initiated projects for automatic braking and steering, pedestrian and cyclist detection systems, and even a bit of a robotic-esque sensor that can read road signs. On the topic of drinking and driving, Sweden ensures sober driving by installing breathalyzers in nearly all school buses and government vehicles as well as one-third of taxis—all of which New York City might think about incorporating in the future.

With a full plate of agendas and a seemingly endless list of pedestrian safety topics, what really is the Vision Zero Youth Council’s main goal? Beaufort emphasizes, “We really want to put an end to pedestrian deaths and make zero fatalities and injuries a reality by 2020.” And of course, spreading awareness of the issue: “I want students to know that this isn’t just an annoying topic that teachers pester us about. This is a real problem that has directly affected us and change needs to happen.” With the progress made by the group already in its short time of existence, there is no limit to what these driven students can accomplish within the next five years.

For more information on the Vision Zero Youth Council and for meeting dates and times visit their website: http://visionzeroyc.wix.com/vzyc2015

Filed Under: Part of the Solution

To Get a Dog or Not to Get a Dog…

April 27, 2015 By admin Leave a Comment Filed Under: Park Slope Life

That is the question!

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I happen to think that off-leash hour at Prospect Park, especially on weekends, is one of the greatest things about Park Slope.  Many a weekend morning, when we can manage to get out of the house on time, my partner and I take our six-year-old up to the park and wander around, meeting the big dogs and the little dogs, the friendly dogs and the aloof dogs, the clean dogs and the muddy dogs.  It’s like a Dr. Seuss book.

It’s so much fun it’s even worth enduring the stares of the dog owners, who look at us suspiciously since we don’t have a leash in our hands.  It’s as though we’re sexual predators prowling a playground.  Which is only another reason to want a dog of our own.

But urban dog ownership is, to say the least, a huge commitment.  First, there’s the poop.  When I see my distinguished looking neighbors, in their nice work clothes or Sunday best, stooping with little baggies, I always think of the Jerry Seinfeld joke about how if aliens suddenly landed on Earth, they would think dogs are in charge.  “If you see two life forms, one of them’s making a poop, the other one’s carrying it for him, who would you assume is in charge?”

And that’s really just the beginning of it.  My friends who live in the country, their dogs are more subservient.  They have yards they get confined to, or even giant fields in which their poop is merely useful fertilizer, and some of the dogs even work herding sheep or something farmish.  But my city friends are subservient to their dogs.  They get up in time to walk the dog and home in time to walk the dog and in the middle of the day they pay someone else to walk the dog.   Some of them actually take their dogs to daycare.  Those exist.  I’m told that some of them have live feed video streams so you can watch your dog while you’re at work.  Like nanny-cams for dogs.  I haven’t checked but I’m pretty sure that one month at a doggy daycare in New York costs more than a four-bedroom, three-bath in Kansas.  Just saying.

But consistently, for the last three Christmases, plus Hannukah, her birthday, Memorial Day, any holiday she can think of, my daughter Willa has been asking for a dog.  Increasingly begging.  And I know that in theory a dog would be great for our family.  An ever-present furry friend for my only-child daughter, one who can cuddle up to her at night and help teach her some bigger-kid responsibilities.  Plus, who doesn’t want someone waiting for you every evening when you open the door, excited to see you no matter what, even if that excitement is only because of a transactional kibble-based relationship?  Still it’s something.

Then I think about picking up poop.  And paying for a dog walker.  And feeling guilty about leaving the dog home when we go out to do something on some Saturday.  Or worse, taking the dog with us and leaving it tied up outside a restaurant or wherever, sitting there with its sad face shooting guilt rays through the window, probably whimpering, eliciting pity from all who pass.  I’m quite comfortable with my current role judging other people for leaving their super-sad looking pups tied up outside the Food Coop or a restaurant.  I don’t want to be the one being judged.  And I have plenty of guilt already, thankyouverymuch.

People who have dogs in the city tell me that once you have one, your life is immeasurably changed and enriched for the better.  People once told me the same thing about having a kid.  Which was, thankfully, quite true, but in both cases it’s not like you get a try out period.  You have to make the decision before you actually know how you’re going to feel about it.  I mean, yeah, you could always give the dog back or find it another home.  I suppose you could, technically, do the same with a kid.  But like I said, I already have enough guilt.  Plus, eventually, kids learn to deal with their own poop.

Getting a dog in New York is a commitment.  If we’re going to get a dog, I want to be committed first.  So dear Park Slope dog owners, if you see me wandering around, leashlessly prowling the park scoping out the various models of dogs or judgmentally pitying your dog tied to a signpost outside Union Market, know that I’m just trying to figure out if I have what it takes to be you.  To dog or not to dog?  I remain firmly undecided.


Want more Sally?  Check out her website to see her latest published articles, essays, appearances, and TED talks!

Filed Under: Park Slope Life

The Soundtrack of Brooklyn

January 16, 2015 By admin Filed Under: Brooklyn Mixtape

The-Soundtrack-of-BrooklynThink about your favorite movies; now think about the music in them.  In some cases, it’s almost impossible to separate the movie from the soundtrack; it’s so intertwined with the plot.  Not only do they provide mood and context, they ensure that the film appeals to an additional sense.  Music can make a memorable scene iconic.

Over the past decade, I’ve spent a fair amount of time roaming the streets of Brooklyn wearing headphones.  I feel connected to the neighborhoods and the music provides a soundtrack, like I’m in my own little movie.  With the winter months upon us, it’s simply too cold to explore the streets outside; so what better excuse to curl up with a warm drink and a movie.  A number of filmmakers have already done the legwork.  Their stories and sounds they hear are much different from my own, which makes them even more compelling. Their work ranges from the inspirational, informational, thought-provoking to just plain entertaining.  They also delve into areas (geographically, culturally, and intellectually) that I have yet to explore myself.  These soundtracks open new worlds. Here’s a list of my favorite music-based movies filmed in Brooklyn.

Goodfellas (1990)
Martin Scorcese put a lot of care into the songs that made the soundtrack of Goodfellas.  Looking at the main characters and the times, he only chose tracks that fit the mood and were consistent with the era during which the story takes place.  In this way, the soundtrack is intrinsic to the story of Henry Hill’s life.  The results are quite amazing.  Starting in the 1960s with Tony Bennett’s “Rags to Riches” during the opening credits, we follow Henry (played by Ray Liotta) through the twists and turns as the music sweeps along taking us year by year, decade by decade. In a cinematically iconic sequence, Henry takes Karen (Lorraine Bracco) on their first date to the Copacabana.  The Crystals’ “Then He Kissed Me” plays as we follow them from a back entrance, through the kitchen and to their table.  Alternatively, later in the film when the mistresses are taken to the club, “Pretend You Don’t See Her” by Jerry Vale can be heard in the background. The innocence of doo-wop and girl groups slowly gives way to the Rolling Stones after Henry emerges from prison.  The soundtrack becomes more frantic and emotional as Henry’s life spins out of control.

Saturday Night Fever (1977)
I was a kid when this movie came out, and I remember how it consumed the country:  the posters, the white suit, the dancing, the Bee Gees, and the subsequent “disco sucks” backlash. To be honest, I wrote it off until recently, when I caught it on cable one night.  Don’t make the same mistake I did.  This is a great movie, generation defining. There is a reason why it was a monster hit.  From the beginning scene with Tony Manero (John Travolta) strutting along the sidewalk to the Beeg Gee’s “Stayin’ Alive,” we understand our main character is a player.  The backdrop is Brooklyn in the 1970s, and it is a moment captured in time. Tony and his friends cruise across the Verrazano Bridge, stop at White Castle and frolic/loiter/live in a still-recognizable Bay Ridge.  Gone now are the night clubs that play a pivotal roll the characters’ social life.  The dance scenes in this movie are nothing short of amazing—not only the carefully choreographed ones between Tony and Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney).  Maybe it’s the light-up disco floor, but “The Hustle” has never looked so cool.  That iconic soundtrack has somehow managed to pass the test of time.  Put it on, in the background during your next party and see how your guests react.  There is sure to be dancing.

Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Focusing on a different side of Brookyn, geographically and socially, Requiem for a Dream is an intense film with an equally intense soundtrack.  Set in Brighton Beach and Coney Island during the 1980s, Darren Aronofsky’s adaptation of the Hubert Selby, Jr novel is both thrilling and tragic. Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn) and her son, Harry (Jared Leto), strive for their own twisted versions of the American Dream.  They each find potentially fatal ways to escape from reality. Composed by Clint Mansell and performed by the Kronos Quartet, the soundtrack tells a story on its own.  It creates moods and waves of tension and release and is in itself a harrowing and beautiful album. Paired with the story and imagery, it created a gut-wrenching effect as the music helps the characters and viewers transition between reality and the dream-like, drug state.  Tyrone (Damon Wayans) dances with elation to a heavy beat in celebration of a score.  Later, strings sweep us across the emptiness and isolation of the Brighton Beach boardwalk in winter.  Throughout the movie, silence is broken by strings that play softly with the dialogue, building in intensity and finally breaking into rage.

Do the Right Thing (1989)
In one of the most memorable opening sequences to a movie, Rosie Perez dances to Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”—the entire song.  She heralds the coming of the Fly Girls; and she is awesome. As Chuck D announces, it’s “1989 the number, another summer,” and we’re in Bed-Stuy. On this sweltering summer day, nearly every character is introduced through his connection to music.  Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) carries his boom box (which almost becomes a character on its own), Mister Senor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson) broadcasts over the radio while watching the streets.  As tensions escalate¸ so does the music.  Steel Pulse’s “Can’t Stand It” plays as events for the day are set in place, and the music shifts in tone, with the help of Jazz musician (and Spike’s father) Bill Lee’s score.  As the confrontation builds at Sal’s Famous, “Fight the Power” proves to the theme of the movie.

Notorious (2009)
This biopic about the late Christopher Wallace (aka Notorious B.I.G.) captures an era in which music from Bed-Stuy Brooklyn became culturally important.  Young Wallace, played by Jamal Woolard, grows up on the streets of Brooklyn, hustling and selling drugs until he finds himself in prison.  Once out, he embarks on his music career. From there, the pieces and people fall into place; Sean “Puffy” Combes, Li’l Kim, Tupac Shakur, and Faith Evans, all as Biggie experiences an almost meteoric rise.  Notorious is full of performances, showcasing Biggie’s enormous talent.  The movie itself is flawed and a bit clumsy at times, but it is worth checking out for the man and the times it documents.  As it recreates early performances and videos, it’s easy to get caught up in the nostalgia.

Dave Chappelle’s Block Party (2005)
Dave Chappelle loves Brooklyn and knows how to have a good time.  Everybody’s invited when he throws a party.  Set in Clinton Hill, the day unfolds as he interviews locals, provides history about the landmark Broken Angel House, and his block party gets underway. He manages to capture the spirit of the streets of Brooklyn during the summer, and create something that feels like an actual block party—despite the celebrity and cameras.  The film itself is informative, irreverent, and filled with music—as you would expect from Chappelle.  Performers include Mos Def, Erykah Badu, the Roots, and Big Daddy Kane, along with others taking the stage together and on their own.  The highlight of the day has to be watching a slightly miffed Kanye West lead the Central State University Marching Band along Downing Street.  All in all, it’s just plain fun.

Mistaken for Strangers (2013)
The Brooklyn band The National is made up of two sets of brothers, and singer Matt Berninger.  So it only seemed fitting that Berninger would enlist his brother Tom as a roadie while Tom makes his documentary about the band touring for their album, High Violet.  This does not go as well as planned.  Reminiscent of Ray Gange in The Clash’s film, Rude Boy, Tom gets caught up in the rock-n-roll lifestyle and proves to be inept on the road.  Through this, the film audience not only gets a front row seat for the band’s performances, but also a backstage look at the complexities of creating a large-scale tour. But Mistaken for Strangers is more than a tour film.   It delves into the delicate relationship of brothers.  When the tour ends and the band returns to Brooklyn to record their next album and complete the film, it turns out to be quite different from its original scope, and more touching than the film they set out to make. ◆

Filed Under: Brooklyn Mixtape

Fear Not The Shot

January 16, 2015 By admin Filed Under: Park Slope Life

Fear-Not-The-ShotFlu season is upon us once again. At the high school where I teach, my principal has been spraying the doorknobs with Lysol and reminding all of us to cough and sneeze into our elbows and frequently wash our hands. But my students and colleagues are still missing days, and all across the city New Yorkers are falling ill.

Communicable diseases have received a lot of attention this year because of the Ebola outbreak. With it, we experienced what our not-too-distant relatives and community members did when diseases like Haemophilus influenza, measles, polio, rubella, and pertussis (whooping cough) killed thousands of infants, children, and adults every year. But that was before vaccines against them were developed and widely administered. And unlike Ebola, the aforementioned diseases spread easily in the U.S., many through indirect contact.

Relatively few of us witnessed infants and children suffering the effects of, or dying from, polio, measles, and other now rarely spoken of diseases. And even fewer, if any, witnessed the devastation of the 1918-1919 Spanish Influenza pandemic that killed as many as fifty million people globally (hence “pandemic”). We now think of many of these as diseases of the past, as if we have destroyed the diseases themselves. In fact, they are alive and well, some are reemerging, and new ones are appearing. What has kept most of these diseases at bay is the success of our country’s vaccination campaigns. But that is, and has been, changing.  Influenza— though thought of as an uncomfortable inconvenience by many—is the third leading cause of death in New York City because of our low vaccination rates against it, according to a January 2014 New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (NYCDOHMH) Epi Data Brief.

As a healthy thrity-five-year-old woman, I am at little risk of dying from the flu, but on Election Day last month I performed another civic duty in addition to voting: I got a flu shot. I did it to protect my friends’ infants and my students who may not have gotten the shot and cannot afford to miss school (and, honestly, because I’d rather not miss too many days of work).

A vaccine protects each individual who receives it, reducing or eliminating that person’s risk of contracting a disease; it can also protect those around them who have not received vaccines. An unvaccinated individual receives herd protection when a large enough percentage of individuals around her have been vaccinated because she is less likely to come into contact with an infected person.  Vaccinating ourselves and our children not only protects us, it protect the newborns, elderly, immunocompromised people, and others who are at greatest risk for suffering or death from infections and have not been able to get vaccines themselves. As Dr. Jay Varma, Deputy Commissioner, Disease Control, at the NYCDOHMH recently explained at an EcoHealth Alliance panel discussion, “the decisions you make about infectious diseases actually impact those around you.”

So why are so many people choosing not to vaccinate themselves and their children? According to Jeffrey P. Baker, MD, PhD in a report in the American Journal of Public Health, “fading memory of vaccine-preventable diseases, adverse media coverage, misinformation on the Internet, and litigation” have all contributed to parents’ fears that childhood vaccines may harm their children. This all leaves us with an abundance of confusing, and often inaccurate, information about vaccines and has led to the outbreak of many diseases we haven’t had to treat in the U.S. in many years.

Vaccines and the Autism Myth

One of the most popular pieces of misinformation being disseminated in the media and on the Internet is that of the connection between autism and childhood vaccinations. One of our most dangerous fallacies is believing that they do.

Autism was first labled as such by a psychoanalyst, Leo Kanner, in 1948. Early on, people believed that poor parenting caused autism. By the 1960s, a psychologist and father of a child with autism, Bernard Rimland, proposed that instead, it was biological. By the 1970s, investigators expanded the criteria for the diagnosis of autism and began to view it as a spectrum of disorders. In 1991 there was a significant increase in the diagnoses and early treatment of autism disorders because it was added to the “list of covered disabilities in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act,” so researchers expected a rise, but not because there was a dramatic increase in cases. (This is one of the reasons people falsely believed that there was an autism epidemic in the 1990s.)

Then, in 1998, a British gastroenterologist, Andrew Wakefield, hypothesized that gastrointestinal issues were associated with autism and these were all caused by the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine. Despite the fact that his hypothesis was based on a small number of patients, and despite the fact that no large-scale scientific study ever confirmed it, his “study” created the perfect storm for a wind of hysteria that would later have serious public health implications. By 2010 Britain’s General Medical Council determined that Wakefield had acted unethically in his study: He had carefully selected the twelve children, had performed invasive tests on them, and some of his research had been funded by lawyers who were acting on behalf of parents of children with autism who were suing vaccine manufacturers at that time. Despite this finding and a plethora of valid, reliable scientific studies that find no correlation between the MMR vaccine and autism, personal injury lawyers, concerned and well-intentioned parents, celebrities, et al. found “answers” they desperately wanted and helped popularize this dangerous myth.

Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) Vaccine

A different kind of fear has prevented many parents from vaccinating their tweens and teens when it comes to the Human Papilloma Virus, or HPV. There are more than forty types of HPV that are sexually transmitted, and two are high-risk types that are associated with 70 percent of cervical cancers. As of 2010, researchers concluded that up to 45 percent of women in their early twenties had already been infected with HPV. It’s so common, in fact, that by early adulthood many women and men have already been infected.

Due to its high prevalence and the risk HPV poses, particularly for females, the CDC has recommended that girls ages nine to twenty-six, particularly eleven to twelve-year-olds, receive an HPV vaccine. And in some states, it is one of the vaccines required for entry into public school. Many studies show that parents are in general very interested in vaccinating their daughters against HPV; however, vaccination rates have been relatively low in the U.S. So why the hesitation?

A concern expressed by some parents is a familiar one that arises regarding abstinence-only versus comprehensive sexual education in schools: the effects on their children’s behavior. Will our kids seek out sex because they are being confronted with issues regarding their sexuality, or will they behave recklessly because they falsely believe they are altogether protected?  This is absolutely something we can address both at home and in schools.

In New York City, we require our public middle and high schools to offer students specific sexual health education lessons during health courses. Having worked with teenagers for more than ten years, I understand the concern that  a vaccine protecting against an STI may give young adults a false sense of security. But I also know that as impulsive and reckless teens sometimes are, they are also concerned about themselves, their peers, their reputations, and their physical and emotional well-being.  Over the years I have had many students come to me in crisis after finding out they had contracted HPV. It’s understandably devastating for a teenager to find out she has an STI, but as STIs go, this one is so rampant it feels almost as common as a cold. The problem, of course, is that HPV can cause cervical cancer in addition to cancers of the vulva, vagina, penis, anus, and in the back of the throat.

According to the American Journal of Law and Medicine, we could “significantly reduce the enormous financial and human costs associated with cervical and other cancers” if the HPV vaccine were more “broadly accepted.” And once again, allaying our fears and turning to the facts could help achieve this.

Flu Vaccine Misconceptions

Over the past few years my highly educated, well-read, media savvy (and weary) friends in numerous professions (including education and health care) have given me various reasons that they didn’t get the flu shot: “I’m scared of the flu shot;” “I don’t want to get the flu, and I heard the vaccine can cause it;” “I’m afraid I’ll have a really bad reaction;” “Why would I get the flu shot? I can still get the flu even after getting the shot!” “I’m healthy, so I don’t need it.”

There are anecdotes and rumors…and then there is science.

The flu shot does not, in fact it cannot, cause the flu. Flu vaccines administered via needle are made with either an inactivated virus—meaning virus particles that have been killed and are non-infectious—or without flu viruses at all (in the case of the recombinant flu vaccines that were approved for the U.S. market in 2013). The nasal spray flu vaccine cannot cause the flu either. The nasal spray contains weakened flu viruses that are not able to infect warm areas of the body (like the lungs).

Why do some people still get the flu even after they’ve received the vaccine? People often self-diagnose with the flu, so they get it wrong. Rhinoviruses and other respiratory viruses are often going around during the flu season, and people believe they have the flu when they actually have something else. Alternatively,if you are exposed to influenza viruses right before you get vaccinated or within a couple weeks after, you are still vulnerable (it takes two weeks for your body to develop immune protection after receiving the vaccine). There are also many different flu viruses and you may be exposed to one that the vaccine does not protect against. In some situations, the flu vaccine does not always provide adequate protection; however, this is more  the case for people who are sixty-five and older or have weakened immune systems. If you are unfortunate enough to get the flu after receiving the flu vaccine, you are likely to have a milder illness than if you hadn’t been vaccinated.

Side effects from the flu shot and nasal spray vaccine are mild compared to the flu itself, and if you experience side effects they are likely to go away within a day or two.

Still, you’re thinking, you’re a healthy adult in a low-risk group, so why vaccinate? Remember, the decisions you make affect the people around you. Besides keeping yourself off the couch and burning through sick days, get the flu shot to protect pregnant women, infants, elderly, and people with chronic diseases and weakened immune systems from serious illness, hospitalizations, and death. And vaccinate your children who are six months old and older to keep them in school and out of the hospital. As many as 3,000 New Yorkers will die from the flu this year. And as few as 47 percent of adults in NYC will have received the flu vaccine. The flu is not something we need to resign ourselves to suffering from each year, and we certainly don’t want anyone literally dying from it.

For now, the greatest risks we face may be from the pandemics of panic and misinformation. Instead of being afraid that a vaccine will cause a disease or determine our children’s behavior, we should be embracing the fact that we have the vaccines available to protect us from what is actually threatening our health and well-being. We all play a part in preventing the reemergence and spread of communicable diseases. We can propagate fear and increase our risks for disease or we can side with science, which clearly shows us that vaccinating is the way to go. ◆

Filed Under: Park Slope Life

Redefining the Core

January 16, 2015 By admin Filed Under: Yoga

Bending-Toward-BrooklynA student came to me for an Alexander Technique lesson, referred by a yoga colleague, hoping to relieve her agonizing neck and shoulder pain.  I began by explaining Alexander’s central concept: Release your neck to free the spine and relieve the shoulders.  Then I stepped back to consider her overall stance.  Though she had what might be considered “good” posture, I noticed a strange contraction in the front of her torso.

“What are you doing with your abdominals?” I asked.

“Holding them,” she replied.

“Well,” I suggested, “let them go.”

She did.  Her torso did not collapse without that alleged “support.”  After her first and, as it turned out, only lesson, her acute shoulder pain disappeared.  What does this show?  1) That a symptom may be far from its cause and, 2) A flawed concept of abdominal support can be damaging.

Such a quick resolution is rare.  Usually, in a private Alexander session or yoga class, we are on a quest to change neuromuscular habits bit by bit, week by week, in an ongoing process of refining awareness, unraveling tension and marshaling the body’s true postural support.  Many students pat themselves just above the navel and say, “I’ve got to strengthen my core.”  There are legions in the fields of physical conditioning and performance who will tell you that maintaining a conscious contraction in the superficial abdominals—those we can see and feel—will resolve back pain, foster better balance and improve posture.  But misusing abdominal muscles can actually compress the spine and increase back pain, send you off balance, restrict your breath, and compress your posture.

Let’s correct some prevalent misconceptions and expand our idea of what core support really is.

Don’t Hold Anything

You wouldn’t strengthen your biceps by holding them in contraction all the time, so why do that with your abs?  No muscle group should be held.

Muscles work reciprocally, and abdominal muscles work in relation to the head, neck, back and legs.  As you walk, your abdominals, which connect from the pelvis up to the skull, work automatically.  You don’t have to think about it.  It may take some enlightened instruction to get there, but when you let your abdominals release and allow ease and length in your spine, they operate as they should.

The body is a marvelously complex creation—easy to move, hard to understand.  Trust me: you can’t wrap your brain around it.  Our body’s real function is a dazzling interplay of forces.  As we try to sort out how it works, we over-simplify.  People try to stabilize one area rather than coordinate the entire body in motion.  But a little anatomical understanding and some guiding principles can help you access your torso’s genuine support and truly enliven your core.

Abdominal Muscles

There are four layers of abdominals:

Rectus abdominis are straight up and down, easily felt on the front surface of the torso.  The goal of crunches is to develop these into “washboard abs.”  Washboards—not much in use these days—are made of metal, a hard substance unlike human tissue.  I’m all for strong abdominals, but they can be strong without being hard.

Oblique abdominals are slanted and come in two layers—internal and external.  They work when you do a yoga twist, when you breathe and as you walk.  They wrap around your torso and go almost all the way back to the spine.

Transversus abdomin is is the deepest of the four layers.  Roughly horizontal, transversus helps contain the internal organs and participate in upright posture.

Core is So Much More

Let’s keep going, to the under layers you can’t consciously feel or directly engage, deeper within the body.

Diaphragm – This mushroom-shaped structure at the bottom of the rib cage is the primary muscle of respiration.  It coordinates with other torso muscles to expel CO2—the waste product of breath —and inhale O2, the oxygen we need for survival.  You can’t get more “core” than this.  The entire rib cage expands as we inhale and contracts as we exhale.  Allowing your breath to work fully and easily supports upright posture, calms the mind and conditions torso muscles—subtly and without effort.

Psoas – You’ll hear this word thrown around a lot in yoga classes and nailed as a problem area.  The full name is iliopsoas.  At the top, it connects to the diaphragm, relates to each breath we take and helps support upright posture.  The “ilio” part coats the inside of the pelvis.  The “psoas” part loops under the thigh bone and, when it contracts, bends the hip joint.  Sometimes called “the muscle of the soul,” it is so central, so deep, that it reflects our internal emotional state and level of stress.

Multifidus – Some back muscles—the ones you use when you arch your back in yoga—are more superficial and extend the whole length of the spine.  Beneath those big surface muscle are these little ones: multifidus, linking one vertebrae to another.  They support us to stand, sit well and initiate larger movements.  Studies have shown that, to protect the spine from injury, the multifidus muscles activate before any motion.

The Body Works as a Whole

When you bend your elbow, your biceps work, and your triceps release.  When you straighten it, your triceps engage.  If both are working, your shoulder and elbow joints will compress.  For muscular work to be efficient, one muscle group needs to be active, and the opposing group should release.  That release is a neuromuscular function called inhibition.  We can make that function conscious by pausing before we do a yoga posture, envision the posture as a whole, and move into it with ease.

When you learn how to throw a ball or swing a racket, you don’t analyze a sequence of muscles engaging.  You look where you wanted the ball to go and imitate your teacher, an athlete, or an adept older kid.  You get a whole picture.  Your eyes deliver that picture to your brain and nervous system in a flash, and you do your best to fulfill your image.  Over time, you practice and get better at it, not from analysis, but from keeping your eye on the ball and repeating a whole body experience.  When we see the objective of an action in the mind’s eye, we are better able to engage the body’s complex, integrated response.

Many people think that surface muscles—the back and superficial abdominals—support upright posture.  But here’s the big news:  If the outside shell of muscle is tense, the inner muscles fail to engage.  Rather than working, the core muscles actually inhibit, making the spine less spacious and more vulnerable.  Before we do something, the spine can enliven and lengthen to prepare for our next move.  When you understand this, it can bring more ease and balance to your daily tasks and to the practice of yoga.

We’re not like an ice cream sandwich, with a slab of muscle on the front facing another slab on the back.  We are round and multi-layered, with large muscles on the outside and the smallest deep within.  Isolating and overworking one surface muscle group is misguided.  It’s not how movement and function work.  In fact, one part of engaging the core is breathing fully and easily.  And you can think of your core as beginning from the long arch in your feet and ending at the top of your head.

Ways to Build the Core

Here are some ways in everyday movement to build a truly strong core:

Standing – Whether waiting for the subway or standing in tadasana, Mountain Pose, notice whether your weight is more toward the front of your feet or the heel.  If you’re not centered, envision the top of your head guiding you right over your feet.  If it feels totally weird, you’ll know that you habitually stand back on your heels.  Once you’re in balance, upright poise can become effortless.

Sitting – To sit well, envision space and ease where the spine joins the head—a point between the ears.   Balance your weight on your sitbones, breathe easily, and envision those little muscles along the spine supporting you from within.  If in yoga class you find it a strain to sit with legs crossed, sit on a folded blanket or bolster to make upright posture easier.  Let your rib cage be buoyant with breath.

Breathing – Believe it or not, a full easy breath is one of the most accessible ways to improve your posture.  Your lungs go from your shoulders to near the bottom of the rib cage.  Allow your breath to fill the whole torso, including the back where you have more lung tissue.

Many yoga poses demand and can inspire core support.  Here are just a few:

Seated Spinal Twist – Allow your breath to support the easy movement of your rib cage and shoulders as you wring out the waist.

Plank – When you do this pose in yoga class or at the gym, allow your head to rotate slightly at the top of your spine.  That will allow the spine to lengthen and give this strong pose a foundation of ease.

Side Plank – In vasistasana, allow that slight rotation as you send the crown of the head away from the heels of your flexed feet.  Practicing plank as you hold a block between your legs can spark deep, genuine core support. ◆

Filed Under: Yoga

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