Barbie and Marie

How I fell asleep on the Airplane and woke up in Saint Chapelle

First of all, today is my birthday. I just thought you should know.

CAPRICE DES DIEUX | The Cheese Lover

To celebrate, last night I ate a baguette, a half stick of good butter, and a cheese called Caprices des Dieux. Matt ate some duck pâté and a few bits of crab in herbs and olive oil. And that, my dears, is the difference between us.

Second of all, I was over in WORLD yesterday talking about raising boys! Check it out:

For me, what’s really impossible is escaping the filter by which the problem and its solution are determined: progressive—one might say, self-indulgent—feminism. Self-sorting under the “boymom” hashtag, young mothers face a curious crisis of identity. Figuring out who you are and what you believe about the nature of the infant—whether essentialist and immutable or malleable according to social conditions—is as crucial as “keeping the baby human alive.” Whatever happens, in this posture, the mother occupies the frame. I can’t help but feel that this is the most boutique of all modern tribulations.

And third of all, on the plane, being so fatigued, I gradually came to the disappointing realization that there was no way I would be able to read the book I’d provided for myself for such a time as being uninterrupted by my phone for six whole hours. It was going to have to be, tragically, the movie option, which is usually pretty dismal.

However, I discovered, to my astonishment. that Delta offered A Room With A View—a book every young person should read before they consider marriage, of which the movie adaptation is, in fact, excellent. That Daniel Day-Lewis could have played Cecil and the guy in Last of the Mohicans in such a quick turnaround is pretty epic. Also, I didn’t know this, but apparently this was the movie that propelled Helena Bonham Carter to fame. Can you guess which movie I’d really like to talk about? It’s not Barbie.

File: Barbie Doll Display at Barbie Expo Les Cours Mont-Royal.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Which I did watch—sort of. Honestly, I fell solidly asleep two or three times and so this cannot be counted as a review. I was really tired, what can I say? And also, the movie was providentially boring, given how sleep-deprived I was. Seriously, so boring.

Why was it boring? I’m not sure, other than that even though they were trying to, I guess, deal with male and female experiences in an interesting and nuanced manner, they failed, for me anyway, to position themselves for success. How boring was this movie? Can I even count the ways?