Cultural sidenote 1:
Probably it’s my massive 21-year-long want-to-be-her-when-I-grow-up girl crush speaking, but I wonder if the people who slammed Jodie Foster’s speech at the Golden Globes as rambling or incoherent were listening to the same thing as I was. It seemed pretty clear to me what she was saying: “I’ve loved my life in film, I love the people I’ve experienced it with, those are the people who matter and the people with whom I share what makes me, me, and with all due respect, I need to keep part of me private for myself, and for those people. Also: I love my mom.”

I don’t see anything particularly defensive, incoherent or hypocritical about that, but judge for yourselves. Also: She’s stunning.

Cultural sidenote 2:
Even as I totally understand and love how gracefully she has navigated the public eye through good and bad without splaying herself open to all comers, I am fascinated by the Foster-Downey-Gibson bro-some. Two-thirds of that triad are spectacular, and then there’s ol’ crazypants-apocalyptic-Christian-cult-wife-beater Mel. How does that work?

Cultural sidenote 3:
I was SO HOPEFUL that maybe Robert Downey Jr was wearing real shoes with his tux during that, but then I found and close-up and nope: sneakers. Such a pretty man, such terrible shoe habits. Seriously. Google-image his footwear sometime.

Cultural sidenote 4:

Apocalyptica are a quartet of Finnish cellists who made a name for themselves originally by playing Metallica covers. My iPod shuffled to them recently after I hadn’t listened to this in a while, and I think you will agree with me that this strikes a pretty great balance between pretty and badass.

In sickness and… more sickness:
The big kid’s slow strep test came back positive, so we finally got some medicine in her this weekend and she is better now. The little one came down with pink-eye (says the daycare, I think she’s just tired and has a cold, but fine, we’ll put the drops in her eyes).

The cat has been to the vet 4 times in 5 days to the tune of somewhere around $700 but is no longer vomiting and has started eating. They are trying to convince us to drop another $1200 (minimum), which, haha, NO. They want us to get him an ultrasound and biopsy, which will tell us whether it is one of 3 conditions. Two of the three are treated by injections of steroids, antibiotics, and vitamins. The other is basically a death sentence that would only be drawn out by invasive treatments that would destroy his quality of life even as it drew out its end, to no benefit that he could understand. Jim and I are thinking, well, OK, so why not treat him with the not-ruinously-expensive method, and if it works, great, and if not, at least we won’t have spent $1200 and terrorized him during his twilight days. I get that other people would decide differently, but I have a lot of opinions about dignity and death without undue suffering.

I get that the Shame thing is getting tiring but:
I spent a lot of time this weekend riding the subway, listening to the soundtrack of that movie and thinking about how well it fits the city. I also think it’s interesting that the most negative reactions to the movie have come from men, while women find it powerful and moving. I don’t think it has anything to do with naked Fassbender (or, OK, not as much as one might uncharitably wish, if one were a dude), and more with women being better attuned to the emotional truths on offer. Put THAT in your gender-stereotypical pipe and smoke it.

Parenting, captured:
A friend of mine is on vacation with relatives who are helping tend the children.
“I just ate lunch all at once using both hands,” she emailed me, a trifle giddily. I, who this evening had butternut squash in my armpit from the toddler who felt it necessary to sit on my lap whilst eating soup, lived vicariously.

Art, captured:
OK, so I took a few pictures while at the museums this weekend, but they were of a hey-look-what’s-in-this-museum-it-made-me-think-of-you nature, and therefore I do not feel in any way hypocritical about making fun of the people who clustered around Edvard Munch’s The Scream and took careful (no-flash) images with their iPhones and iPads. They were so SERIOUS about it, and you know those images are going to be terrible quality. They stood in front of the thing forever, awaiting their turn, and then walked off without a second look.

For the record, Munch’s stuff is a thousand times more impactful in person. The colors, the sense of the hand that drew the lines — powerful and creepy and gorgeous. My teenage Goth heart skipped a beat.

Art, appreciated:
The best thing about the Metropolitan Museum of Art is that it’s so massive that I’m still finding new sections. This time, a bunch of Etruscan stuff, and then a reconstructed weird Roman room that was painted all black. Speaking of my teenage Goth heart…

New territory:
I went up to Inwood, the very tippy-top of Manhattan. It’s where the rivers split around the island. I found this oddly thrilling.

And old:
Union Square Market. Saturday morning. Cheddar-jalapeno scone and hot fresh apple cider for breakfast. Best meal I had in the city all weekend.

Also:
My feet hurt.