ZimWex Family Blog

A Night Out.

Last night was a pretty big night! The US premiere of Hysteria at the Tribeca Film Festival.

So we got all gussied up....

We started at a work dinner for Tanya, where I tried to catch my outfit in the bathroom mirror!

We got to the red carpet and accompanied our kids down the red carpet for the first time...

Nice shoes!

We watched Tanya charm the press...

And then I captured this shot of my two glamorous pre-teens.

And got a shot with me as well!!

Then the real fun began...we got to watch Hysteria with 900 other enthusiastic audience goers.  Way to go, my love. I am, as they say around these parts, kvelling!  

AZ

Museum of the Moving Image

I spent last Sunday at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria. It was closing day for a cool Jim Henson exhibit, so we checked it out and also watched two episodes of the Muppet Show on the big screen...Starring...Julie Andrews and Gene Kelly!*

The Museum has been redone this year, and is a great place for a family outing. We combined it with lunch at 5 Napkin Burger across the street, and were happy and stuffed!

Check it out and bring your families....

AZ

*Gene Kelly, like most Muppet Show hosts, was well past his prime, but the Pigs in Space segment did not disappoint!

In costume for my star turn as extra #267

AZ

A few things to be grateful for THIS weekend.

1.  Taco Night.

2.  Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies.*

3. A great visit with a great brother and sister-in-law.

4.  Cooking tips from Mario Batali at a Little League game.**

5.  A o'er-flowing Farmers' Market.***

6.  A trip to the Tribeca Film Festival where we saw the great and important movie, No Woman, No Cry .

7.  Dinner with friends.****

8.  Lots of dancing around the living room to Wicked.*****

9. Sleeping until 8.  Even if the wake-up at 8 is because the milk bottle shattered all over the kitchen floor between 4 kids who are a little freaked out about the shards of glass and puddles of milk.

AZ

*Or cookies without chocolate, if you are Violet.

**On Ramps, which we promptly sauteed to great success.

***where aforementioned Ramps were purchased.

****at which Ramps were cooked.

*****which, to be fair, occurs every single weekend.

We need to catch up.

Okay, so I have fallen off the blogging a tad.

 Its been summer, so give a girl a break!

But as of tomorrow, I once again leave cyber-space, this time for a covered wagon near Rocky Mountain National Park.

Before I go, I figured I should give a quick update on a few important things from the past few days.

1. The wife had a birthday! :)

The 18th that I have spent with her, incidentally.

2. I finished The Story of Edgar Sawtelle .  Yes, this book was begun more than six weeks ago and it seemed, at times, that it would sit by the bedside for a good long time.  However, thanks again to the gods of portable DVD players  I was given a blissful two hours to finally finish it.  Its a great story; a modern-day(ish) Hamlet in which the protagonist is a mute teenage boy from Wisconsin.  Really amazingly written and suspenseful, even though, if you've read Shakespeare, you know its not gonna end well...

3. I saw a movie. Hee hee!! Yes, you read that right, a movie and a book in one week!  Okay, to be fair I have seen several movies already this summer.  Here they are:  Up, Ice Age 3, G-Force, and Harry Potter 6.  Do you sense a theme?  But no, this was a real honest-to-God grown-up movie:  Funny People .  Yes, to counteract the prior movies mentioned, we went straight for the one we could find with the most penis humor, and found it!  We both loved this movie, which was funny but also had  a heart and has  very funny performances from the always-hysterical Leslie Mann and Seth Rogen.  Go see it!

4. I ate lots of good food, some of which was too expensive.  We ate in two, count 'em two, restaurants this week.  First off was Minetta Tavern .  This was the second time for us.  The scene was insane, complete with a bouncer at the door, but the food was great.   Esp. the chocolate souffle we had for dessert.

The second restaurant was Per Se , which was amazingly delicious and insanely, insanely expensive.  Seems like something you do once.  And then the next time you donate money to feed starving children instead...

5. I grappled with the eternal question:  How does the time it takes to pack for a trip always, always expand to fill the available space?  Whether I begin two weeks ahead or the day before, i am always up until 2 in the morning the night before a trip.  Does anyone have an answer to this conundrum, besides the only one I have come up with so far: begin packing at midnight the night before the trip?

6. I woke up to this.

And now I am off again.

As of tomorrow, I will be somewhere in that picture, sleeping in a covered wagon, using a communal shower (or better yet, not showering at all), singin' "Fire and Rain", and hiking in them there mountains.  

Until next week...

AZ

Tanya's trip to the Cannes Film Festival by the Numbers

Number of production team at the market: 3  
Number of countries sold to: 8¹
Number of hours on the ground (combined): 167.5
Number of beds in hotel room: 2
Number of registered hotel occupants: 2
Number of people who slept in hotel room: 3
Number of people who said, “I love sleeping on hard surfaces! Maybe I’ll start sleeping on the floor at home.”: 1

Number of people lying about comfort of accommodations: 1
Number of people lying about something at the festival:  (awaiting final festival attendance tally)
Number of waking hours (Tanya): 50
Number of times I thought, “Wow.  This is all coming together.”: 50x4=200
Number of times I thought, “Shit. This is all going to fall apart.”: 198²
Number of vibrators distributed to choice distributors: 12-13
Number of movies seen by team: 1.33³
Number of boring-french-movies-that-get-away-with-murder seen: 1
Number of cute french movie stars in boring-french-movies-that-get-away-with-murder met:1⁴
Number of glasses of wine downed by on-the-ground-team: 24.5⁵
Number of glasses of wine downed by 2/3 of on-the-ground team: 24
Number of glasses of wine downed by 1/3 of on-the-ground team under immense prove-you’re-not-a-spy-type peer pressure: .5 (yuck)⁶
Number of hot french chicks who smoke: can’t count that high.

Post cards bought: 12
Post cards sent: 0
Percent of budget pre-sold (ish): 30-35% ish
Number of variations on final budget quoted to suit nefarious filmmaker purposes: 4ish... maybe 3.5... I think 3.
Number of Cheesy Jean Claude Van Damm (sp?) movie bill boards: 1
Number of Bollywood movie bill boards touting cameo of $ylvester $tallone: 1
Number of times Anouk (FR Producer) has sold the French Territory in some way/shape/form: 3-6
Number of languages Tanya attempted to speak properly: 4
Number of languages Tanya spoke properly: .5
Number of times that stopped her: 0
Number of items left by Sarah (UK Producer) at the hotel: 2⁷
Number of eyes rolled behind Sarah’s back: 4
Number of items left behind by Anouk: 5⁸
Number of eyes rolled behind Anouk’s back: 2
Number of items left behind by Tanya: TBD

TW

¹ I choose to count Benelux as 3 (Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg) and Australia/New Zealand as 2

² I’m optimistic

³ Anouk got to see new Tarantino with out us.  :(

⁴ Vincent Perez

⁵ Estimated at 2 per drinker per meal/cocktail event (excepting breakfast)

⁶ English has been called into question

⁷ Phone charger & Adapter

⁸ Wool coat, leather coat, blouse, underpants, bra

Toto too?

These are Violet's favorite shoes.

Hands down.

Here's a difference between first (or second) and fourth children.

When Jerry and Ella were little, I would always have them wear proper clothes before leaving the house.  It seemed to me that costumes were for home and dress-up.

When it comes to Violet, she leaves the house in a wedding veil, a Cinderella dress, Ruby slippers, holding a magic wand.  Sometimes all of these at the same time!  Why did I think this mattered before? Or was anything other than the CUTEST. THING. EVER.

I think this is exactly the kind of thing that oldest children complain about!  The privileges of being a youngest....

"when I was their age, I wasn't allowed to wear a wedding veil to soccer class..." etc etc.

Sorry, oldest kids.

Thats just the way it goes.

You will be good at taking charge and organizing things later in life.

And I wouldn't be doing my job as a parent if I didn't give you something to complain about.

AZ

City Kids.

Every once in a while, it occurs to me that I am raising city kids. I am not sure what I think city kids do exactly (go to art exhibits?, eat fancy food, never want to live anywhere else), but I am sure that they are different from those of us raised in the 'burbs.  Sometimes I think it is kind of terrifying, other times kind of cool..  . 

Today was one of the latter days.  We had a perfectly fun city day.

We started by going to the New York International Children's Film Festival.  People have been telling me to go to this for years, but I have never listened.  Or been too busy trying juggling nap schedules.  Or too lazy to leave the house.  For whatever reason, I have never made it, but today we were looking for a "family" excursion and this surfaced.*

We had a great time.  We went to a program called "Shorts for Tots" which was the youngest age group of shorts that they show (ages 3-6).  Luckily our 8 and 9 year old are not especially mature, so they did just fine.  The show was sold out (as many of them are), but you can show up and put your name on the waitlist and they claim you almost always get in.  

We enjoyed the 12 short films, and were especially excited that we got to comment on a ballot for each film as to how much we liked it.  (The categories: loved it, liked it, so-so, hated it).  Our kids, of course, loved or liked basically everything, endorsing the theory that if it has been filmed, it is good.  Only Violet showed a critical side, when in the middle of one perfectly pleasant movie she started LOUDLY proclaiming.  "I Don't Love this One.  I Don't LOVE this one.  I DON'T LOVE this ONE!"  When T asked her if she "liked" it, she said "No" and checked off the HATE-IT box.

Anyway, I enthusiastically recommend checking out this website and going to some of the films offered.The film festival goes for two more weekends.  There are offerings for all ages, and it is relatively affordable, and fun.

After the movie ended, we walked upstairs and found ourselves in the Scholastic Store where all film-goers got a 20% discount.  I don't spend so much time in this store, but it is a really great place to spend time with kids of all ages.  

We then mosied through Soho and had lunch at Kelley and Ping.  This restaurant works well for us because you order at the counter and get your food fairly quickly.  We enjoyed our white rice fancy pan-Asian food and continued our SoHo wander, ending up in Kid Robot just to look around.  Fun window shopping, but too many rules (no photographs inside of the store...etc etc), and also WOW! these are some EXPENSIVE weird-looking collector items.  

We eventually made our way home and it was back to the usual piano practice, cleaning, cooking, organizing, etc...But we had had  a pretty fun city day. 

AZ

*On our family calendar, Sunday is listed as "Family Day".  My kids recently pointed out to  me that this basically had no meaning, as it was the same as every other day, basically.  I took this as a challenge and now planning for "mandatory family fun" for all six of us on Sundays.  The other option involves white-out on the calendar, but is not completely out of the question.

Some thoughts on Oscar Night.

1.   Long live the musical opening number!

2.  Not so psyched on Penelope Cruz.  Shoulda been Viola.

3. Yay for Milk!! They love the gays.

4. How did my wife know La Maison en Petits Cubes would win? Seems suspicious.

5. I like big boobs, but Sarah Jessica's were ridiculous.

6. Tina Fey is funny.

7. When picking short films, picking the German is not enough anymore. This year there were two, and guess who picked the wrong one...

8. I love movie musicals as much as the next girl*, but really? Beyonce and Hugh Jackman singing Grease?

9. The Man on Wire guy was a breath of fresh air.

10. Finally the cleft palate kids are getting a shout out.

11. Most heartwarming speech of the evening?: Indian Sound Mixing Dude.

12. Lovin' Queen Latifah singing the montage to those no longer with us. She rocks.

13. Go Sean Penn. 

I think I am an easy sell, but I liked 'em.  Bring Back Hugh anytime. I did not, however, win my Oscar Pool.  

AZ

*Actually, much much much more.

Things I thought while watching the Golden Globes.

1. SALLY HAWKINS  WON!!!!! This is the actress who has just signed on to T's film, so we are all very very happy.

2. Kate Winslet  winning for The Reader  after her Extras Cameo is about the funniest thing ever.*

3. I should really start watching Mad Men .

4. Ditto for the John Adams  mini-series.

5. Why do they talk about sex before 9 PM when my kids are still watching? (and does this mean I really have to have more of the sex talk with Jerry and Ella?)

6. I can't decide who  looks older: Demi or Rumer.

7. Tina Fey  is very possibly the funniest woman in the world right now. If you didn't watch the awards, you must watch her acceptance speech .

8. Would it be unclassy to have the orchestra cut off the lifetime achievement award? Because Spielberg was a little long winded.

9. I hope I always have friends with screeners.**  Because of them I am all on top of these awards. My friend D who gave me screeners this year, is now my very very best friend. Sorry everyone else. 

10. Can we all age into Susan Sarandon ? Or get the name of her plastic surgeon?***

11. I think maybe the Brits are just better than us. Which I don't mind as long as I get keeping to see them.

AZ

*But is it fair for her to win both? I prefer a more communist approach to this kind of thing. Plus, Kristin Scott Thomas....

** thats fancy industry lingo for DVDS of all the nominated films.

***But not the name of Mickey Rourke's  dentist.