Month: July 2012

Three sentence movie reviews: The Amazing Spider-Man

I had low expectations going in (Matt had renamed it “The Underwelming Spider-Man” after his viewing) and that probably helped me like this movie.  I liked that Peter Parker’s first girlfriend was smart (and played by Emma Stone) and I enjoyed Parker’s evolution into a superhero.  Overall though, the visions of Toby Maguire’s Spider-man still loomed too large in my head, causing me to protest, “To soon!” to this version.

Essay: My healthcare journey.

When I was a freshman in college, the country was abuzz
about the potential Health Care Plan proposed by President and Hillary Clinton.  I was interested in the
plan and followed the story through various media sources.  I remember one news magazine reported that if
the plan passed, coverage would begin in 1997 and it even had a mock-up of what
the medical cards everyone would carry.

“That’s perfect timing.” I thought to myself.  “I will just be getting out of college and my
national health coverage will begin.” 
The moment when I had those thoughts came back to me again and again in
the nearly 20 years that have passed since then.
Growing up, I always had health insurance.  Both my parents were teachers and they made the same trade off so many teachers have over the years:  less pay, better insurance.  The first time I ever heard of someone paying
a $10.00 co-pay I was shocked.  All our
co-pays, for everything, were $5.00. 
Overall, I was pretty healthy growing up, and my health care “needs”
only really began as a teenager, when I started to take medication for acne.  While acne is not a life-threatening health
care need, in our society, a teenager with acne is treated differently than a
teenager without acne.  Both my parents
had suffered through adolescence without a dermatologist, so they were happy I
had the option.
My post-college years included a patchwork of health care
options.  Like many people in their
twenties, I tried on different jobs. 
Sometimes I had coverage (of varying capacities) through my employer,
sometimes I did not.  I also had some
luck.  At a time I did not have health
care I was diagnosed with major depression.  Because I lived in Massachusetts at the time
and I didn’t make a lot of money, nearly all of my treatment was covered.  This was before Massachusetts had moved
toward universal coverage, but even then, the state seemed to fund health
insurance more than others I’ve lived in. 
It was a great feeling of relief when the nice man at the hospital took
my pay stubs, crunched some numbers and told me that I would be paying about
$40.00 per month for my treatment.
Aside from that, my health care needs were few.  When I had a boyfriend, I paid for my birth
control myself—I usually went to Planned Parenthood for that.  I had an accident involving wisteria and my
eyeball that involved an emergency room visit, some drugs, and two visits to an
ophthalmologist.  That was also in
Massachusetts and also nearly fully covered.
Then I turned 27 and soon after had a mysterious patch of
flakes appear on my scalp.  It wasn’t
dandruff, because it was isolated and somewhat scabby. I had no idea what it
was.  I moved to Oregon, leaving
Massachusetts’ excellent health care for the poor behind me.  In Oregon, I started temporary work, and
preparing for graduate school.  My head
got worse, much itchier and more scabby and flaky and finally, I looked up dermatologists
in the phone book, called a few to find out how much they cost and took a long
bus ride to see one of them.
Psoriasis.  It seemed
I had an auto-immune disorder, never a good diagnosis for someone with health
insurance, much less someone without it. 
He proscribed a solution for my head, I wrote him a check for $150.00
and the pharmacist another check for $50.00 and entered into the non-health
care, non-healthy world.  The solution
dialed back the itch and the flakes, but it didn’t stop the spread.  As I continued temping and continued waiting
to begin graduate school I watched as the mysterious scab on my knee never
healed.  It turned out to be psoriasis
too.  And slowly but surely, the psorasis spread
from my head onto my body.
Once in graduate school, I happily paid the extra fee for
health insurance and went to see the campus health services.  They gave me a steroid cream for my legs and
referred me to the teaching hospital on the hill.  The doctor there saw me and prescribed four
different creams, none of which were covered by insurance and all of which were
more than I could afford as a graduate student. 
I didn’t fill them, left the pharmacy in tears and never went back to
the specialist.
As graduate school ended, I found myself in a panic about
the end of my health insurance.  The term
“pre-existing condition” was featured strongly in the health care news.  If I didn’t do something quickly, I was going
to be one of those people with a pre-existing condition and no one would ever
cover me.  Someone told me that if I had
continuous coverage I would not have a pre-existing condition, so I bought a
catastrophic health insurance plan. I paid $125.00 per month through six month
of unemployment, and crossed my fingers that this continuous coverage plan
would work.
I did get a job and entered the land of the fully insured with relief.  It was hard to see a
dermatologist—my health insurance company is great with preventative care and
great with computer records and skimps on the specialists.  When I did see one, he proscribed creams and solutions
and I began to beat back the scabby skin that had spread while I was uninsured.
That was in 2005 and I’ve been insured for seven years now
through my employers.  I’m incredibly
thankful, for I know what it is like to not have health insurance. But the
insurance also holds me hostage to my job. 
The job I had in 2005 was not a good fit and it took me 18 months to
find another one.  Those were a very long
18 months.  Every day I wanted to quit
and every day I got up and went to work because I didn’t want to lose my health
insurance.  Right now, I’m looking to
change careers again.  It would behoove
me to quit my current job and to take a part-time job in my preferred field.  I could do this, and find another part-time
job to make up the difference.  But I
don’t do this, partially because neither one of those part-time jobs will give
me health insurance.
I’ve also flirted with going back to school for a degree in
a different field.  I won’t be doing that
because the program would have me finishing with a crazy amount of loans and
also because I would have to buy my own health insurance.  I’ve done the research and obtained quotes.  If I buy my own coverage, I would be paying $150.00 per month for a plan that did not cover
prescriptions.  I know the full cost
of my prescriptions, for my insurer lets me know how much they have covered every
time I fill one, I would have to pay over $400.00 per month into health
insurance to ensure I could fill my prescriptions.  That wasn’t going to happen.
So I’m partially held hostage by my insurance coverage.  I know I’m not the only one.  How many would-be entrepreneurs stay in their
jobs because the jobs provide the health insurance for their families?  We are not a nimble and quick nation in the
realm of health care.  I write the check
every month for my employer health care plan and I know how much it costs to
keep the eight of us insured. It is an incredible sum.
What would I like?  I
would love a single-payer system, as no one has yet convinced me what the point
of keeping insurance companies if everyone is insured.  Talk about wasteful spending, just think of
all the money that could be saved without all the complex coding.  But I’m happy to settle for living in a
country where my health insurance does not seem like the incredibly tenuous
thing it is now.  I’m hoping the
Affordable Health Care Act will move us in that direction.  But nearly 20 years as an adult with a health problem has made me
wary.

Three sentence movie reviews: Winter’s Bone

I watch a lot of movies and every once in awhile a movie hits the sweet spot and leaves me with an elated feeling that lasts a few days.  This was such a movie and I highly recommend it, all those quotes on the poster are spot-on.     It transported me to a world I (thankfully) don’t know, it had amazing acting (much of it done by normal looking people) the story was gripping, and the lives shown were depicted in such a matter-of-fact fashion that I simply experienced the movie it happened and then spent a lot of time thinking about it after.

Three sentence movie reviews: The Pirates! Band of Misfits!

We saw this for free too and it was not very good (Matt fell asleep).  There are some animated films (Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Up, etc.) that are very good watching for adults and then there are some animated films that just aren’t.  I saw a preview for this film yesterday and there were so many good bits in the preview, I found myself wondering why they didn’t all knit together nicely into a good movie.

Three sentence movie reviews: Battleship

Another for-free flick, this was quite enjoyable mostly because it wasn’t very good, but we expected that, seeing as how Hasbro (a-hem: toy manufacturer) is the first title card they put on the screen.  I thought that, aside from Alexander Skarsgard who was a horrible actor, Rihanna was incredibly awful and I spent a lot of time wondering why they didn’t hire some nice black actress who could act and actually needed the money, while Matt was not too bothered by the both of them and couldn’t stand real-life Iraq hero Gregory D. Gadson who I thought was fine.  So there’s a possibility that this might be a good movie after all for just the right person, although it’s a slim possibility indeed.

Instead of watching Battleship, watch How it Should Have Ended: Transformers Play Battleship.

ps.  I chose this poster because my friend is having a “thing” for Taylor Kitsch that parallels my Chris Hemsworth thing.

Essay: Etta.

Just as I can recall where I was when the spaceship
Challenger exploded* and when I heard that Jerry Garcia died,** so I can tell
you exactly where I was the first time I really heard Etta James.
My time with the Fresh Pond Bread and Circus was brief, from
a life-span perspective.  I only worked
there about two years.  But the short
amount of time spent there coincided with a period in my life where a lot of
things were happening.  It was a period
like High School.  High School is three
years—at least it was in my case—which seems like forever when you are in it,
but is a small amount of time overall. 
However, so many things are going on during those three years, that the
story written of your life about that period would be a weighty tome, full of
John Irving-like labyrinth plot combined with Michael Chabon-dense prose. Whereas
the story written about the three years of work you did mid-career would be a
short, (and most likely boring) novella. 
See: Shopgirl.
At Bread and Circus, I worked in Prepared Foods.  In less fancy grocery stores, Prepared Foods
would be known as the deli section.  We
sliced and packaged lunch meat to order—never ahead of time.  We scooped various vegetable, grain and meat
dishes for picky people who couldn’t be bothered to cook for themselves: “I’d like the carrot, onion and potato dish,
but I don’t want any onions.”  We cut
cooked chicken into quarters and scooped tubs of mashed potatoes and macaroni
and cheese.  We gave samples to people,
refilled the dishes when they were low, put away everything at night and pulled
it out again every morning.  When we
needed a break, from the customers or the monotony, we would wander back to the
kitchens to grab some water and chat with the cooks.
In my opinion, the cooks had the better job.  They avoided the customers, cranked out a lot
of the food we sold and actually made something.  Out front, we were like the ocean, lapping at
the shore. A dish would run low, we would refill it.  It would run low, we would refill it.  After all the refilling, the tide would go
out at the end of the day and all the dishes would be emptied back into the
containers.  In the morning, the new crew
would take that same food out of the same containers we had placed it in eight
hours before and put it back in a dish and begin the refilling process.  Whereas, I watched the cooks actually do
something like take massive amounts of eggs, some of the prosciutto ends, a bit
of spinach and several pie crusts.  With
a bit of chatter among their colleagues as they worked and some chopping,
mixing and stirring, six quiche would appear from the ovens, ready to sell.
The cooks also got to listen to their own music while they
worked.  Out front, we were held hostage
to whatever the muzack station was playing. Sometimes that wasn’t a bad
thing.  By that point, muszack had
expanded to playing actual music on genre specific stations.  At times, we were even lucky enough that the
otherwise straight-laced manger put on the 70s hard rock station.  I can guarantee that most of America has not
had the pleasure of scooping Orzo Salad, humming along to Led Zeppelin, only to
emerge from the case with a full container to hear the “lady who lunches” with
the fur coat and the coiffed hair say in a voice of upper class outrage, “What are they playing? It’s entirely too loud!”  Alas, the lady would then usually march over
to customer service and complain and this happened enough that pretty soon we
did not hear the 70s hard rock station played very often.  Mostly it was middle-of-the-road adult light
rock, but I did hear Dan Bern played a few times, much to my excitement.
The cooks’ taste in music was eclectic and so it was always
interesting to hear what was going on in the back.  One day, 
I was taking a long drink of water and Andy changed out the CD.  A great sweep of violins filled the space,
followed by two sustained notes by an amazingly powerful voice.  We were four measures in and I was
hooked.  “Who is this?” I asked.
“Etta James.” Andy told me.
I’d never heard of her, but I found reasons to wander
through the kitchen again and again as the CD played.  It wasn’t long before I had my own copy.  Etta James. Her best.  Then, I would annoy the cooks and sing along,
telling them that my voice was just like hers. 
We all new that it wasn’t, and they felt free to remind me.
I lived with four roommates at the time—all women, all in
similar life transitions as I was.  Given
that we were young and in our twenties, we all smoked and would often sit
around the kitchen table drinking cheap wine, smoking and talking.  There would usually be music playing and Etta
James was in heavy rotation.  I’m glad I
don’t smoke anymore and that my life is not as full of transitions, but I
wouldn’t trade those conversations around the table.
It seems like everyone knows, “At Last.”  I once read that countless brides have swept
down the aisle to it, and it was played at Barack Obama’s inauguration.  One year at Boston’s Fourth of July Fireworks
celebration, I even saw fireworks explode in time to it. It’s a good song and I
like it too, but it’s not my favorite Etta James song.  That would be “Sunday Kind of Love.”
I’ve rejected marriage for myself, so I won’t be sweeping
down the aisle to “At Last,” but even if I was going to get married, it would
be the choice anyway.  It’s a song that’s
bit too sure of itself, and I sometimes worry that the singer maybe isn’t quite
able to see the whole picture. That perhaps she’s overcompensating in some way.  I mean, “my lonely days are over, and life is
like a song.”?  I’ve read enough novels
to know that you can be lonely, even after your love has come along and “life
is like a song” is a bit too fairy tale for me.
“Sunday Kind of Love” however is more of a classified ad, or
a nice list of goals.  The song starts
with just her big powerful voice, telling us that she “wants a”—and then the band
comes in on “Sunday kind of love/A love
to last past, Saturday night.”  At the
time I heard this song, I was in what seemed at the time  to be an extended
period of not being in a relationship. 
In fact, Linda McCartney died and Paul McCartney mourned and remarried
and I was still not in a relationship. 
“I’ve been single longer than Paul McCartney!” I exclaimed to my friend
while looking at the magazine cover of the wedding picture while standing in line
at the store. The older woman behind me snorted with laughter.
I dated, which was no fun at all, and cycled through some
relationships that were Junior High in length—no more than a few weeks.  My lack of a steady relationship was one of
many unsure things in my life: When would I move to Portland? What would I do
for a living?  Should I go back to
school? Would that job over there be better for me? Who, exactly would love me?
I related to Etta James “Sunday Kind of Love” lament.  And I eventually figured things out, mostly.
*Watching on TV with the rest of my fifth-grade class
**Working at a liquor store in Boise, Idaho.  I’d just come from my other job at a Super 8
motel and I heard the news on the radio. 
My friend Sara, who worked there too, commented that she thought I had
heard, or she would have told me.

Three sentence movie reviews: The Five-Year Engagement

We saw this for free and I had low expectations, but found it to be quite good and also a great example of modern couple dynamics (unlike say, He’s Just Not That Into You).  However, it is a romantic comedy written by two men not interested in holding the romantic comedy genre sacred so there are a lot of f-bombs and the sex is quite real-world graphic in places, at least for a romantic comedy.  That said, it was funny and interesting and very good all around and I think you should see it.*

*Assuming you are someone who does not find f-bombs, somewhat real-world graphic sex and the romantic comedy genre turned on its ear offensive.  (In other words, it’s a NFS (not for Sara) production.)

ps. Mad Men fans.  You MUST see this just because Alison Brie, the woman who plays Trudy Campbell is so incredibly awesome.

pps. Good date movie. Assuming both people in the couple meet the above qualifications.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2012/five_year_engagement.html

Three sentence movie reviews: Ca$h

I had to go to Netflix for this movie as the library and my local video store did not carry it.*  It was a low-budget indie, and suffered a bit from both the low budget and the indie, I think.  Though it did bring up some interesting questions, had the most screen time with Chris Hemsworth of any of his movies, and Sean Bean was quite good.

*the movie poster isn’t even on my favorite movie poster site.