Who'll play with me on saturday afternoon

April 1

It hardly seems worth posting my only March entry on March 31st, doesn't it? That's why I'm dating this April 1 instead. I had to give March a pass, because Work Ate My Life. Ugh. We didn't get our new person in till this week, and she'll take a little time to get up to speed. Meanwhile, we're all paddling around trying to handle more projects than humanly possible--and every frikkin' one of our series has some Major Issue this season. The editor's in another state, the author's in another country. The editor has some imminent personal crisis that requires them to leave for weeks at a time. One copyeditor is out with her baby, another is nine months' pregnant and about to be out with her baby, and did I mention the VP just had a baby? Something in the water cooler methinks.

Meanwhile, one of the editors in my dept is working on her Master's and understandably distracted. Meanwhile, I'm working every other Saturday. Meanwhile, I have a book I'm supposed to have written already that I will be doing most of the work on this weekend. Meanwhile, I hate everyone.

So yeah, so much for March. Get it out of here already! Sheesh.

Other changes loom on the horizon. We're looking at doing the roommate thing again when our friend Deanpence moves up here in August, by moving out to Brooklyn and getting a three bedroom place. Thus giving him a place to start out and us a break on the rent and utilities, plus more room. The details are still tentative, though the move itself is certain--Matt is showing signs of stir craziness, and I won't complain about a bit more space, even if it means a longer commute.

Spring is creeping slowly into the city, giving us a scattering of sunny days here and there amidst the scheduled rain and cold winds. The tiny dogs don't always wear their little coats now when they go out to poop. The scary thug-kids who swarm the block around the high school no longer wear their hoods and knitted caps, but leave their gangsta braids uncovered to the breeze. The Sex and the City wannabees are showing the occasional brave open-toe shoe here and there beneath their drawstring cropped pants. Pedicure futures are up, knitted scarf futures are down.

Went to see Triplets of Belleville last week. (mild spoiler alerts ahead). I don't think it will become more than a niche film, something that every animation buff needs to see, but not something that will be dear to the hearts of the general public. There was a lot of technical brilliance on display, but a bit too much self-conscious quirkiness for my taste. Too much of the film seemed to exist just for the sake of the quirkiness, not for the sake of the story, which is a fatal flaw. The characters of the grandmere and especially Bruno the dog were well-realized; together, they would make a fine short film, just the two of them. The Tour de France-obsessed grandson was either boring or repellent, a character with nothing but his monomania for cycling to delineate him. And the plot with the French gangsters--eh. Stretched pretty thin. The chase sequences are actually what made this film seem more French than anything else, because they were excruciatingly slow, as if the director had heard of chase sequences, but never actually seen one. The pacing was just off, more contemplative than exciting.

About the triplet characters themselves I feel a bit divided. The opening sequence, a surreal and somewhat disturbing parody of a 1930s Warner Bros-type cartoon with celebrity cameos (Fred Astaire, who gets eaten by his own tap shoes! Josephine Baker, wearing a banana skirt and nothing else!), features the triplets as young women. They later appear in the story as three old witchlike women who live on the edge of a swamp and eat nothing but frogs. Frogs that are caught by throwing explosives in the water, a process which leaves lots of blinded and maimed frogs crawling around. Frogs that are thrown into the stewpot not quite dead and eaten still twitching. Nightmare stuff, so you know, don't take the kiddies. You think of the witches in Macbeth or the Furies, and expect to learn more of their sinister ways, expect them to have some dark significance. But other than eating frogs and getting music out of a vacuum cleaner, the triplets don't really do anything else interesting.

It's one of those movies I think critics feel obligated to defend, to stave off the onslaught of Disney on every animated front. I understand that, but this isn''t a movie that has enough to give. A good episode of The Simpsons is much shorter, but it's definitely more satisfying.

Off I go. More updates to come this month than the last, or I owe you all a Coke.