Moving Mountains: Gold Star Stay the Catskills Way

The first Elyssa Friedland book I ever read was The Floating Feldmans, which was a funny family drama set on a cruise ship.  Last Summer at the Golden Hotel is a lot like it, except the cruise ship is a hotel, and the main characters own it.  The Goldmans and the Weingolds have been the proud proprietors of the Golden Hotel for decades.  Nestled in the once-trendy Catskills, or as the locals call them, the Jewish Alps, the Golden Hotel has feted everyone from Joan Rivers to Jerry Seinfeld in its famed theater.  Families have come for generations to bond over brisket and shuffleboard, their happiest moments frozen in time in the hotel's Memory Lane photo gallery.  But time has not been kind to the Golden, and now it's falling apart.  These days, people want organic meals and Wi-Fi, and they're going elsewhere to get it.  Which forces three generations of Goldmans and Weingolds to ask themselves the dreaded question: should they stick it out or sell?  While trying to find the answer, they learn new things about each other -- and themselves.  

Last Summer at the Golden Hotel is fun and nostalgic, harkening back to the days of Dirty Dancing and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, both of which it references.  While reading it, I used the sunflower bookmark I bought at Beyond Van Gogh.  It matched the cover so perfectly that I couldn't stop looking at it. 

As they say, it's the little things.           

Notebook Hook: Forever a Fan of Catastrophe Mastery

Not too long ago, I was bubbling over with enthusiasm for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.  Since then, I've enjoyed many a return cruise down the Amazon, streaming entertainment as easily as if I'd rolled up to a drive-thru and yelled, "I'll take two dystopian life-after-deaths, one bag of bite-sized love stories, one round of Russian roulette, one middle-aged shotgun wedding, and one woman called a kind of motel who likes to break the fourth wall."  

Each show has its charms.  And although they're all different, they're also sweet and salty by turns, not unlike McDonald's French fries.  Here's a lightning fast food round sound bite for each:

Upload: What happens after we die with a twist. 

Forever: What happens after married people die with a twist.

Modern Love: Kind of sappy but kind of nice.

The Romanoffs: Kind of creepy but kind of great.

Catastrophe: Brit wit buffering bad romance.

Fleabag: A woman who tries not to be awful.  

I like them all, but it's this quote from Catastrophe that sticks with me:

Sharon Morris (Sharon Horgan) and Rob Norris (Rob Delaney) (they of the bad romance) on downsizing:

Sharon: "I'm a simple person.  I'm from Ireland."

Rob: "You're not a simple person.  You're a clothes fiend who moved from Ireland to London because it has more shopping."

This speaks to me because, clothes.  Yet in terms of the deep stuff, i.e., the meaning of life and human relationships, it's Upload and Forever that I find the most thought provoking.  Also confusing.  But then, thought provoking things usually are.  And that, of course, is why we (I?) watch TV.  To be enlightened (also to escape, but that's a rant for another post).  Not the way we're enlightened by books.  Because books don't have product placement or opportunities for us to exclaim, hey, wasn't the main guy the stepbrother in that movie about the halfway house for hoarders?  But the way we're included in a world of walking, talking people thoughtfully mapped out for us.  

I like TV so much that every time I finish watching a series, I write the name of it in a notebook.  I also have notebooks for each movie I watch, each book I read, and each Pinterest board I create.  I started doing this in March, when I began quarantining, and I'm so glad I did.  It's nice to look back on what I've been doing and think about what I've learned.  Because fiction isn't just fun -- although it is fun, much more so than a pre-popcorn spin on the Tilt-A-Whirl -- it's a learning experience.  In the eighth grade, I got annoyed with this math whiz who said that novels are important only because they help people relax (yes, this is what nerd fights are).  She made reading sound as if it had as much value as playing mini golf.  I disagreed, insisting that reading isn't just a hobby but an important way for us to understand the world.  Or something like that.  Maybe I just called her an ass clown and stole her algebra homework; I don't know; it was twenty-five years ago.  The point is, I still believe that books are our greatest teachers.  And infinitely better than birdies.  

Hence, the notebooks.  And the devotion to, not just Amazon's books, but its programming on ye olde boob tube.  I guess you could say that I'm a collector -- no, make that hoarder -- of vicarious adventures.

Maybe there's a halfway house out there for that.     

The Bold and the Beautiful and a Life Less Dutiful: She Who Laughs Last Laughs Loudest

Dress: Candie's, Kohl's

Bag: Marshalls, embellished by The Tote Trove

Belt: Wet Seal

Love bangle: Boscov's

Other bracelets: Mixit, JCPenney

Hip Flip Barrette Brooch

Shoes: Katy Perry; Sunglasses: Wild Fable, Target

It took a quarantine to get me to finally watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.  I'd been wanting to, I'd heard it was great, but something was holding me back.  Partly my difficulties streaming Amazon Prime, partly my fear that once I'd binged the show I'd have nothing in my back pocket of rainy day entertainment.  Yet, after watching one rerun too many, I was ready to ditch these deterrents.  

And I was so glad I did!  The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has everything I could ever want from a TV show: comedy, fashion, romance, old-timey glamour, and girl power.  So, I'm going to recap the premise, even if most of you probably know it.  In late 1950s New York City, young Jewish wife and mother Miriam "Midge" Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) gets thrown over by her wannabe stand-up comic husband Joel (Michael Zegen) only to find that she's the one who needs to stand up because she's got something to say.  Hilariously and in four-letter words in the very bar where her hubby bombed.  That's right; she's trading in (okay, maybe just jeopardizing) her socialite status to try her hand at the funny business.  And embarks upon the most delightful way anyone has ever blown up her life.  With a hat-heavy wardrobe as snappy as her one-liners, Midge takes on the masculine and streetwise Susie (Alex Borstein) as her manager to take Manhattan by storm.  Well, almost.  Pitfalls await in the old boys' club of comedy, Susie's stumblings (Midge is her first client!), and Midge's painfully proper parents Rose (Marin Hinkle) and Abe (Tony Shalhoub), who are in the dark about their daughter's double life.  Also, there's the small matter of money.  After being dumped by Joel, Midge moves back in with her parents and takes a job in a department store at the Revlon counter (apparently that used to be a thing instead of just a rack at Rite Aid).  She turns out to be a talented lipstick pusher, recommending my own beloved Cherries in the Snow to one customer in search of the perfect red.  Balancing work, children, and the nightclub circuit makes for many a madcap mishap, including getting bailed out of jail by none other than comedy bad boy Lenny Bruce (Luke Kirby).  Then there's the annual family trip to the Catskills where Susie tags along incognito and gets mistaken as the resort plumber.  During this quarantine and the unfortunate purchase of some this-is-all-we-have triple ply, I've often found myself at the mercy of a dubious plunger, thinking, where's Susie when you need her? 

But The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel isn't all brisket and hi-jinks.  Midge learns a lot about herself and the people in her life.  Like when she's dating an art collector and buys a twenty-five-dollar painting by an unknown artist that comes with -- get this -- a free hat!  She doesn't buy it because it's valuable (or even because of the hat), but because it speaks to her and makes her feel a connection to it the way good art should.  When she relays the story to an esteemed artist and her beau, the artist understands but the beau doesn't.  This vignette and others is why I really love this show.  It tells us that women can and should stand for something and do something more than look pretty -- while still wanting to look pretty, if that's what they want.  That's feminism, the freedom to have it all without having to choose, a message that's as important today as it was in 1959. 

That said, this post is as good a place as any to show off my new Hip Flip Barrette Brooch.  Even if it is hatless and more That Girl than Miriam Maisel.  Of course, Midge's hair and attitude are plenty flip in other ways.  Also, Midge makes me think of that other '60s fashion icon named Miriam, Miriam Haskell.  Even if Ms. Haskell was a real-life costume jewelry designer and Mrs. Maisel is a made-up comedian.

 

So, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.  It's glitzy and heartfelt and oh-so-side-splitting, a must see for any woman who's ever had something to say.  

So . . . all women.  

Amazon, is there anything that you can't deliver?

Missed Connection Objection: From Wi-fi to Wifey

Imagine getting fired for checking your personal email seventy-five times a day.  One minute, you're on the partner track at your law firm, and the next you're chucking your laptop into the East River.  Well, that's what happens to Evie Rosen in Elyssa Friedland's novel Love and Miss Communication.  In addition to being ousted from her office, Evie makes an unpleasant discovery.  She learns that her commitment-phobe ex-boyfriend is married just six months after their breakup, a factoid she stumbles upon while on Facebook.  Evie is so traumatized by the havoc that social networking has wreaked on her professional and personal life that she vows to quit the Internet for a year.  Yet no Internet means no Monster, which makes finding a new job nearly impossible.  Luckily, Evie lands a temp gig as in-house counsel at the private high school where her best friend teaches.  Although grateful to have the work (and to be able to wear open-toed shoes!), Evie is just as uninspired as she was at her law firm, causing her to wonder if she's making the same mistake twice.  What's more, she's bitter about being single, and her friends, all of whom are married and have problems of their own, are beginning to lose patience with her.  But then her beloved grandmother Bette gets breast cancer, and she's forced to count her blessings.  Also, to become acquainted with the handsome surgeon devoted to Bette's care.  Unable to indulge her habit of Googling every man she meets (and no, that's not a euphemism), she has no choice but to get to know him the old fashioned way: by talking.  And she's surprised to find that she likes it.

"It was refreshing to learn something new about him directly -- a fact he chose to share, not something she discovered through covert research.  It was so much more satisfying watching his story unfurl like a blooming onion than to crack him open like a pinata." (231)

Fun, right?  I don't know about you, but I always appreciate a little Outback imagery.

Still, despite her progress, Evie finds that going off the grid has its cons.  Living the Luddite life means that she's out of the loop when it comes to her friends' get-togethers and major moments, threatening her already shaky relationships.  Also, she avoids using the Internet at work, instead getting a student to go online for her, a situation that blows up big time.  Nevertheless, being offline -- not to mention away from the corporate law rat race -- forces her to slow down and examine what she really wants, even if it's not what she expected. 

Love and Miss Communication is a joy to read because Friedland is a clever writer.  If I can get inside a character's head and come out feeling like I know her, then I count that book as worthwhile.  And if the book also has colorful descriptions and/or makes me laugh?  Well, there's not much more I can ask for.  Love and Miss Communication checks all those boxes.

Now, on to the important question.  Do I think it's a good idea to quit the Internet?  And more to the point, could I, like Evie, live sans Internet for a year?  Um, that would be a no.  Like TV, credit cards, carbs, and other polarizing things, the Internet's all in how you use it and is not in and of itself evil.  I, for one, am not about to renounce "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," my Discover cashback bonus points, or cinnamon raisin bread for an existence of silent nights eating kale while wearing last year's cold shoulder muumuu.  And that goes double for the World Wide Web.  Sure, I could probably wean myself off of Pinterest.  And Etsy wouldn't be a problem because, due to the quarantine, The Tote Trove is currently closed.  But going without this blog is a nonstarter.  There's something satisfying about publishing my thoughts each week, even if only a handful of people read them.  Even if nobody reads them.  I guess it's like that whole if a tree falls in a forest and there's no one there to hear it, does it still make a sound thing.

I'm saying yes, it makes a sound.  For better or for worse, my sounds are my words.  Even if they fall with the whisper of a sapling instead of the thud of a redwood. 

Now, if only spam would stop being a ham like it's open mike night at The Inbox.