THEME FOR GREAT CITIES

Baby-Making Music

2012-02-11T18:52:00.000+11:00

Greetings from the gutter.

That's where my mind is at the moment, and in honor of Valentine's Day on Tuesday, I'm going to spend the weekend splashing around down here, paying musical tribute to the next best thing two people can do together after falling in love (which, if you're lucky, will lead to even more of this).

For those who prefer some music on the side, I've curated the perfect V-Day soundtrack. I didn't realize until I was halfway through that it's dominated by male performers. Female singers may move me more overall, but I suppose it's the guys who put me in the mood.

"Heaven Hooked Us Up" Love is so much more than just a four-letter word. It's also Ronald Isley's velvety tenor melting like butter over a smoking red-hot Isley Brothers groove.

"Don't Stop the Dance" Bryan Ferry Not quite better than sex but close. Am I the only one who thinks Ferry spends most of his waking hours making love, pausing occasionally to crank out another great song to do it to?

"Sanctified Lady" Marvin Gaye Sexual healing at its most potent.

"Your Love Is Like the Morning Sun" Al Green The seminal soul of the 1973 Call Me album, which serves up this gem of a love song halfway through, is Green at his seductive peak, the perfect score for the perfect love that closes with an ode to the god of love himself called "Jesus Is Waiting."

"Cruisin'" D'Angelo Like sex on a stick -- and I'm not just talking about the guy who's singing it.

"A Bit Old-Fashioned" Babyface A bracing musical testament to the power of heterosexual love (from For the Cool in You, one of the best R&B albums of the '90s).

"Sara Smile" Daryl Hall and John Oates Before the duo became '80s icons, Daryl Hall was one of the earliest -- and best -- purveyors of blue-eyed soul. Along with the first 20 seconds of "One on One" (a Top 10 hit from 1983 that deserves to be more widely, and fondly, remembered today) this might be the best thing Hall and Oates ever did -- at least that's what I'm thinking today, down here in the gutter.

"Sho' You Right" Barry White Let's raise the tempo and get this party for two started! When I interviewed White years ago, he commended me for having the good taste to love this song. I, in turn, applaud UK music buyers, who once again showed their superior (to their Yankee counterparts) musical sophistication by sending this to No. 14, which is three notches higher than it went on the U.S. R&B chart. Fo' real.

"Love It" Bilal Another one of life's great mysteries: Why do so few people know Bilal's name -- and even fewer this song, one of the greatest things to come out of late-'90s/early '00s neo-soul movement?

"Lovers Rock" Sade What would any musical celebration of love be without her?

A Perfect Day?

2012-02-10T07:15:00.003+11:00

What does it take to make a brand new day worth waking up for? Not necessarily the promise of great adventure nor the love of a lifetime, though I wouldn't dream of tossing either out of bed.

Yesterday is hardly a blur, but on paper, it wouldn't qualify as the most memorable one ever, the greatest one-man show on earth, featuring a very special guest.

So what did I get up to on Thursday, February 9, 2012 -- the 40th day of the year -- then? Most notably, after nearly an entire week, I broke my non-vow of silence. I had an 8am breakfast in South Melbourne with my friend Kimba, who offered me lots of valuable advice about the book that after three and a half years of blogging, and at the much-appreciated urging of friends and former colleagues, I'm finally getting around to writing.

On the way to Cafe Sweethearts on Coventry Street (if you ever go there, order the scrambled-eggs-and-bacon sandwich), I stopped and asked directions from a good-looking guy working in a car-repair shop.

"Excuse me, sir. Could you tell me where Coventry Street is?"

He looked around, confused. "Coventry Street?"

"Yes." I was certain it was the road we were on, but there was no visible street sign. "Is this Coventry Road?"

"Ah, yes, yes. I think so. I think we are on Coventry Street."

I thanked him and walked away. Several meters later, I got my confirmation in the form of a street sign. Idea for a future blog post: people who don't know the name of the street on which they work.

The rest of the day was business I usual. I went running around Albert Lake. I booked a flight to Sydney, where I will spend eight hours next Tuesday. I worked on my book proposal (which received two thumbs up and some helpful edits from Kimba). And I even completed a chapter, a tale of lust, longing, racism and five hours in lock up in Buenos Aires, which I hope will lure a qualified agent or a publisher willing to take a chance on a literary newbie.

What didn't I do? I didn't eat lunch or dinner in a trendy setting (unless the couch in my living space would qualify), see any good movies (though as of yesterday, My Week with Marilyn is now showing in Australia), or spend the day looking forward to a hot weekend date. I haven't been asked out in forever, and aside from the clueless guy who has no idea where he works, nobody has caught my eye in just as long.

I didn't indulge in comfort food, get drunk and dance shirtless on a stage, have sex, or kiss anyone. With the exception of Kimba and garage guy (whom I might not even recognize if I wake up next to him tomorrow morning), I can't recall a single person I saw yesterday. They're all blurs.

Still, Australian Day aside, it must have been the closest thing I've had to a perfect day since I returned to Melbourne five weeks and two days ago. It involved two of my favorite, most-therapeutic things: running and writing. Most importantly, it reinforced an important lesson that I actually learned some time ago but occasionally forget: nice scenery, human and otherwise, is always-appreciated window dressing, but I don't need the glory of love, nor the comfort of a man, to make my day.

Now there's an epiphany worth getting out of bed for.

Shaddap You Face: Why a Vow of Silence Might Not Be Such a Bad Idea

2012-02-08T17:41:00.000+11:00

Curious? To find out why, find a quiet spot, and clink on this link to my column at The Faster Times.

8 Random Thoughts I Had While Watching 'The Artist'

2012-02-06T18:36:00.000+11:00

Better late than after the Oscars, right? The Artist finally hit Australian screens last Thursday, so 11 weekends into its U.S. run, I at last can add my two cents to the hundreds of shiny pennies that already have been tossed into the critical pool.

1. Was there a better-cast actor in 2011 than Jean Dujardin? He not only perfectly captures the carriage and mannerisms of a 1920s screen star, but his dark good looks actually seem to be straight out of the early part of the last century. Every time I see him on the red carpet or at award shows, I need to check my calendar to make sure it's not circa 1930.

2. I'm still not sure how a (mostly) silent film gets a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nod, but "Make way for the young" might be one of the most resonant movie lines in years. So declares Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo) during an interview on the eve of the 1929 stock-market crash/fall of George Valentin (Dujardin). The movie's turning point hinges on this bold statement, which is applicable not only to the film's 1929 silent-to-talkies setting but to the chronological middle ages, too. As anyone who's ever turned 40 knows, Hollywood celebrities aren't the only ones who have to learn to adapt and reinvent when fresh meat arrives on the scene.

3. Is Peppy short for Penelope? It took me a minute to make the connection: Is Peppy Miller, the rising star played by Bejo, somehow related to Penelope Ann Miller, the actress who was almost famous in the '90s and appears here as Valentin's wife? It's a pretty thankless role, but she does get one of the best unspoken lines. Too bad it comes when the actress is off screen, at the end of her character's "Dear George" note.

4. Is James Cromwell 7 feet tall or what? The former best supporting Oscar nominee (for 1995's Babe -- did anyone else make the connection when Valentin jumped over that pig?) towers over Jean Dujardin, and in one scene his head practically touches the top of the doorway.

5. I must love dogs because this movie wouldn't have been the same without Jack. I wonder how many takes it took for them to get the adorable Jack Russell terrier played by the adorable Jack Russell terrier Uggie to roll over and play dead on cue.

6. And the award for my favorite film of 2011 that I can enjoy as much as admire goes to... You know you are watching a near-perfect movie when A) you could you watch it all day on repeat, and B) you wouldn't mind seeing the full-length versions of the movies within the movies.

7. In lieu of Tears of Love, I'd take The Lost Weekend. Director Michel Hazanavicius really nails the look and the feel of Hollywood's silent era right up to the '40s (though the film only goes up to the early '30s). Dujardin's later scenes, from when he drunkenly hallucinates in the bar on, remind me of The Lost Weekend, the 1945 portrait of an alcoholic for which Ray Milland won the Best Actor Oscar.

8. Speaking of the Best Actor Oscar, it might not be as much of a done deal as people might think. Even if he hadn't won the Screen Actors Guild award, I'd say Jean Dujardin, ironically, playing a George Clooney-type star some 70 yeas B.C. (Before Clooney), might have a slight edge over Clooney and Brad Pitt. And I secretly want Berenice Bejo to pull the Oscar out from under Octavia Spencer, too, though that's about as likely as a full-blown silent-movie revival!

The Song Most Likely to Top Billboard's Hot 100 After Kelly Clarkson's 'Stronger'

2012-02-05T13:52:00.004+11:00

No, I'm not talking about the inanely and unoriginally titled "Give Me All Your Luvin'," by Madonna (featuring Nicki Minaj and M.I.A.). To these ears, it's possibly the worst-ever first single from a new Madonna album (MDNA, speaking of inanely titled, due March 26), a paint-by-numbers pop song that doesn't even attempt to be groundbreaking or an essential part of the Madonna canon.

It will likely have a healthy debut on next week's Hot 100 (though not enough to beat Kelly Clarkson to the top), thanks to the double promotional shove of the video's February 3 premiere and Madonna's performance of it during tonight's Super Bowl XLVI half-time show, before embarking on a steep decline. That will open the playing field for "Somebody That I Used to Know," by Gotye featuring Kimbra, which, on the current Hot 100, jumped from No. 50 to No. 31 in its fourth chart week. (Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger [What Doesn't Kill You]," incidentally, is up six to No. 2.)

I first heard about Goyte (pronounced go-tea-YAY, as in Jean Paul Gaultier), a Belgian-born Australian singer-songwriter who's been kicking around since the beginning of the century, a few months ago when a Flemish guy I met in Bangkok sent me the link to the video, which was already a huge hit Down Under.

At the time, I didn't realize how huge. Since I've returned to Melbourne (where Gotye and his family moved when he was 2), it seems not an hour has gone by without my hearing Gotye being name-dropped on TV, in the press, or in real life. While I can't say that I'm a huge fan of the song (musically, it's intriguing, but a bit too plodding to hold my attention for its entire four-minute running time), Gotye and Kimbra nail the romantic angst of lovers turning into strangers as effectively as anyone has since Fiona Apple's "Love Ridden," though not quite as eloquently as Apple did on that standout track from 1999's When the Pawn....

"But you didn't have to cut me off / Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing... Now you're just somebody that I used to know."

Who can't relate? Well said, if not (for me) so irresistibly executed.

Getting back to Madonna, the most tragic thing about the single and video is that it means in the space of one day (February 3, also when M.I.A. released the video for "Bad Girls," the first single from her upcoming fourth album), the usually edgy and confrontational M.I.A. went from this...

... to basically being a head cheerleader for an artist you just know she secretly hates.

The Importance of Being 'Exotic': What Is It With Black Guys in White Crowds?

2012-02-04T10:25:00.000+11:00

Does this cap make me look "gangsta"?

Last weekend, a friend of mine made an interesting comment/observation that I filed away for future consideration. This morning, as I lay in bed plotting my Saturday, it popped back into my head.

I'm not sure how or why, but the conversation last Saturday night had suddenly shifted to being black and living in a place where you're not only a minority but a rarity, too. It's a topic that has been broached several times by friends and acquaintances over the last year -- in Melbourne, in Sydney, in Kuala Lumpur, and in Bangkok -- but I've always tried to steer the conversation elsewhere, having had my fill of the subject in Buenos Aires, where I could never be sure whether someone was talking to me out of interest in me or out of curiosity about me (like maybe I'll drop trou and let them see for themselves if it's true what "they" say about black men).

My friend's comment, though, had nothing to do with size (which, as two female friends have indelicately pointed out in the last two weeks, matters -- who knew?!), or why I would possibly be interested in going to a Soundgarden concert. (Could I be less black?) He was wondering aloud about the aura that he said a lot of black men give off in bars and clubs when there are no other black people in the room. It's an attitude, like, "I can have anyone I want here, so why would I want to talk to you?"

I don't know if anyone has ever actually said that to him, but at first, I wasn't sure what he was talking about. Maybe that's because I haven't met enough black men in Melbourne, or in Bangkok, or in Buenos Aires, and those whom I have met haven't exhibited any special behavior that I didn't notice when I was living in the United States. Of course, I'm black, too, so naturally, they wouldn't pull that I'm-too-cool-for-this-room stuff with me.

Then I got a little worried. "Do I act like that?" I asked my friend. He assured me that I don't, but I couldn't help but wonder how I come off to people who don't know me, the ones standing off to the sidelines, too intimidated or too turned off to approach. Several weeks ago, I got some interesting insight into my public persona while talking to the neighbor of one of my female friends.

After complimenting my physical appearance several times, much to my discomfort (it's not every Sunday afternoon that a good-looking straight guy keeps slipping into the conversation how attractive his new gay acquaintance is), he wondered why I am single. I was tempted to hand him the URL for this blog and tell him to read it and weep/laugh/feel sorry for me, but I was more interested in what he thought.

"Well, if I were watching you talk to me -- smiling, animated, friendly -- I'd think you seemed really cool and interesting. You'd definitely be someone that I'd want to talk to. But if I just saw you standing alone, I don't know. You're good-looking, you have a nice body, and with that cap on, you look like a really tough military guy. I might be a little bit afraid to approach you."

"Military"?! Now that's something you don't hear every day. In fact, I'd never heard that one -- at least not in connection to me. If I were white, I seriously doubt that my olive-green cap would have the same effect. My new acquaintance must have read my mind, because he immediately accused himself of objectifying me. And although he stood by every single compliment he'd given me, he acknowledged that my being "exotic" in Australia might have a lot to do with how people perceive me -- both the bad and the good aspects of it.

I wonder if that might be the case with my friend and his view of black guys in Australia. If they were white and acting the same way, would he even notice? Or perhaps the attention they get might influence the way he sees them. Doesn't any guy surrounded by potential suitors look a little bit like an asshole?

In Bangkok, I'd seen it every time I went to DJ Station. Average guys of European descent who probably get little to no attention back home were suddenly holding court with the cream of the Thai crop. Likewise, the Thai guys and Asian men whose fellow countrymen might rarely give them the time of day, or night, were suddenly being fawned over by white tourists and expats. It was an interesting dynamic to watch, and I did sense a certain cockiness in the air, but like I suggested before, does any guy being pursued from all sides come off as being humble?

Just this morning, I received an email from a photographer who had seen my photos on this blog. "I have been on the hunt for the longest time to find a suitable black male model for my work... would you be keen?" he asked. If only it hadn't been for that five-letter word that starts with a "b," my "definitely maybe" would have been a "definitely, of course." But that's just the way it goes. Six years after leaving New York City, I've come to accept a simple truth about life and lust: A compliment is a compliment, no matter what color it is.

Who knows what people are seeing when they see me? The less it matters what people think of me -- a state of enlightenment that I'm continuously striving to achieve -- the less I care. And if you are sizing me up from a distance, judging me with your eyes and not your ears, it's your loss. You don't deserve what you won't get.

5 Songs (and Lyrics) By the Smiths That Describe Exactly How I Feel Today

2012-02-03T00:34:00.003+11:00

Speaking of last goodbyes, yesterday I said one to someone I really care about. Now today (Friday, the 3rd) is looking a lot like a Smiths day. (Bye bye, Soundgarden -- for now.) Morrissey always did know exactly how to express all of my feelings of personal and romantic angst. He gets it like that.

Today's partial must-listen-to Smiths playlist:

"I Know It's Over" "And you even spoke to me, and said, 'If you're so funny, then why are you on your own tonight? And if you're so clever, then why are you on your own tonight? If you're so very entertaining, then why are you on your own tonight? If you're so very good-looking, why do you sleep alone tonight?"

"I Started Something I Couldn't Finish" "I forced you to a zone, and you were clearly never meant to go."

"You've Got Everything Now" "I've seen you smile, but I've never heard you laugh."

"Handsome Devil" "A boy in the bush is worth two in the hand. I think I could help you get through your exams."

"Well I Wonder" "Please keep me in mind. Please keep me in mind."

Soundgarden in Melbourne: Parting Shots

2012-02-02T06:10:00.000+11:00

Soundgarden: Gods of Grunge, Monsters of Rock

2012-02-01T12:55:00.000+11:00

This hump day clearly won't be one of my most productive ones. There's a cluster of ideas for future posts crowding my mind, but instead of settling on any of them, I'll focus on the one thing that is stopping me from focusing on anything else today: tonight's Soundgarden show at Melbourne's Sidney Meyer Music Bowl, which will be my first major concert in Australia. (What took me so long, right?)

I'll have to do some sort of in-depth analysis of Soundgarden one day (like tomorrow, when I'll be reviewing the show for the Time Out Melbourne website). For now, I think I'll just listen to my three favorite Soundgarden tracks on repeat until showtime.

"Heretic" The song that kicked off my love affair with Soundgarden back in 1990, when it appeared on the soundtrack for Pump Up the Volume, a Christian Slater movie whose title I'd one day steal for my former True/Slant column, and whose soundtrack would be my favorite until 1996, when Trainspotting rolled into the station.

"Outshined" A 1991 Soundgarden single that I still listen to several times a week. (Don't hold that its lyrics inspired the title of the 1996 Keanu Reeves non-masterpiece Feeling Minnesota against it.) It perfectly illustrates why Chris Cornell was the best singer of the early '90s grunge movement. Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder have spawned countless imitators over the years, but no American Idol rocker wannabe has ever come close to pulling off a Chris Cornell.

"Pretty Noose" That a song this hard could go all the way to No. 14 on the UK pop singles chart is precisely why I've always found the tops of the pop in the UK to be far more exciting than it is in the U.S. Now if only they would do something about all of those frothy club cutz and 15-minutes-to-go reality-show contestants stinking up those upper reaches. But I digress. Today, it's all about Soundgarden. Count three and play.

And We Said It Wouldn't Last: What I Once Told Anderson Cooper About Demi and Ashton

2012-01-31T08:11:00.000+11:00

It's good to know that I haven't always been so stupid in love.

Once upon a time, before I got caught up in the rapture of the charms of Argentine men, I had a healthy dose of skepticism and cynicism when it came to romance, and it served me incredibly well on the job. Of course, when you spend years covering celebrities for People magazine and Us Weekly, you learn a thing or two about Hollywood love lives.

Yesterday, while I was writing a post for my blog at The Faster Times on the "whip-it" shenanigans of Demi Moore, I came across a transcript of a CNN interview I did with Anderson Cooper on June 6, 2003, shortly after Demi began dating Ashton Kutcher.

Cooper and I began our chat discussing Bill and Hillary Clinton and who should play them in a TV movie. My choice: Barbra Streisand and James Brolin, "because Barbra is a very controlling woman, very demanding, sort of the perception of what Hillary's like -- and James Brolin, very dashing older gentleman. I think that's the way one perceives Bill."

Then we got down to the good stuff. I was a senior editor at Us Weekly at the time, so I'd seen countless celebrity unions come an go, sometimes in the space between two Monday-night closes. It took a bit longer for Ashton and Demi to flame out, but who didn't see that out of control raging fire coming from nearly a decade away?

COOPER: All right, let's move on to the really important information now, the really important coupling right here to talk about, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher. I'm not even sure if I'm pronouncing... Am I pronouncing that name right?

HELLIGAR: De-MI Moore.

COOPER: De-MI Moore. All right. Whatever... Jeremy, is this relationship real? It is on the cover of Us Weekly, I think People has Demi Moore now on the cover. I've got to tell you, I'm skeptical, but tell us how, allegedly, this thing happened.

HELLIGAR: Well, first of all, it's not really clear when exactly they met. But it's pretty sure that they met probably in early May, late April, when Ashton was in New York City hosting Saturday Night Live.

COOPER: What's got so many people focused on this is, he's 25 years old. She's 40-some-odd years old.

HELLIGAR: Forty.

COOPER: To me, it just seems very coincidental. She's got a movie coming out, Charlie's Angels 2. It just seems like a publicist's dream, kind of a setup.... Jeremy, final thought? You think this thing is for real? Do you think it's going to last?

HELLIGAR: I definitely think that it's not going to last. I would not imagine them walking down the altar, wedding bells. Forget it. But you have to also remember, Charlie's Angels is a franchise. And it's going to do well, whether Demi has a public affair or not. So...

COOPER: Right. Well, every little bit helps.

The wedding bells did ring a couple of years later, but ultimately, the pair ended up exactly where they were supposed to be: Kutcher on Two and a Half Men, Moore at home inhaling "whip-its." Crazy love, Hollywood style.

5 Reasons Why SAG Award Winner Viola Davis Can't Lose the Best Actress Oscar

2012-01-30T16:49:00.001+11:00

There, I said it!

Octavia Spencer and Christopher Plummer have been virtual Oscar locks in their respective supporting categories for weeks now. I privately predicted a Jean Dujardin Best Actor win months ago, when The Artist was still a newbie in theaters, comparing him to Roberto Benigni, who triumphed for Life Is Beautiful in 1999, and my friend, a movie critic for a major national U.S. magazine, shot me down.

"The Artist is no Life Is Beautiful."

No, it's not, but it's beginning to look like something more, a Best Picture frontrunner. Life Is Beautiful may have had more zeitgeist momentum, but it never stood a chance against Saving Private Ryan and Shakespeare in Love, the eventual winner. Despite Dujardin's January 29 Screen Actors Guild win, I wouldn't be too quick to call it any more than a speed bump in Clooney's road to his second Oscar. But if there is an upset waiting to happen, it's here.

And what about Best Actress? Well, it's Viola Davis's world, and for now, Glenn Close, Rooney Mara, Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams only live in it. Sorry ladies! On February 26, Davis will not only make history as the second black woman to win the Best Actress Academy Award, but Oscar, after missing his chance with Precious and The Color Purple, will make history for honoring two black actresses -- both from the same film! -- in one year.

Here are five more reasons why Davis already has such a tight grip on the naked gold man.

1) Her colleagues adore her. Who said only legends get standing ovations? The crowd's reaction to Davis' SAG win was telling. Glenn Close deserves an Oscar more than anyone on the planet, and she never would have received such rapturous congratulations from her peers. Tilda Swinton, who didn't have a chance of winning anyway, clapped slowly and deliberately as if she didn't really mean it, and she still stood up. It took Michelle Williams a moment, but eventually, she got it. On your feet, girl!

2) A vote for her is a vote against racism in Hollywood. Boy, is Davis playing the race card. Not in a tacky way, but in a very obvious one. It makes sense that she would, since the film for which she is going to win the Oscar is about racism, but watching her accept award after award, walk red carpet after red carpet, and sit at roundtable after roundtable, I find myself wishing she'd table talk about racism in Hollywood and how it's prevented her from working more. The Help is her first leading film role. Even Halle Berry has trouble finding work. If I've heard it once, I've heard it a dozen times -- always coming straight from Davis's mouth. Okay, we get it. Now I'd like for her to move on to new business and let her great work in The Help speak for itself.

3) She knows her history, and she respects it. In her SAG acceptance speech, she gave props where they were due, and they are certainly due to Cicely Tyson, an icon among black actresses whom Berry didn't forget to include in her Oscar acceptance speech. And even though Meryl Streep will surely lose again (I think she'll finally win her third Oscar when she stops trying so hard to), we can be pretty certain that Davis won't forget to give a shout out to her friend and Doubt costar. So in a way, they both win.

4) It would continue Oscar's tradition of honoring beautiful women who aren't afraid to deglam on the job. What becomes an Oscar winner most? Telling the world that you are willing to suffer for your art, even if it means checking your vanity at the door. You'll always have the red carpet to say, "This is how I really look. Now do I get the award?"

5) She deserves it. Regardless of what you think about The Help and Davis's place in it (lead or supporting?), there is no denying the power of her performance. She made every gesture, every look, every moment of silence speak volumes. If Hally Berry's Best Actress-winning performance in Monster's Ball hasn't aged so well (Berry was good, but the effort showed), in 10 years, Viola Davis in The Help will still be a gold standard of acting at its finest. And maybe then SAG presenter Sir Ben Kingsley will be able to tell us whether it's Vee-OH-la or Vie-OH-la!

If Only Other Languages Came to Me (and Stayed with Me) As Easily As My Own

2012-01-30T07:43:00.000+11:00

A few weeks ago, I realized that one of my greatest fears since I left Buenos Aires 11 months ago is finally coming to pass: My Spanish is fading away. Whoever said, "Use it, or lose it," sure wasn't kidding.

I was writing an email to the woman who manages my apartment in BA when my lapse in language occurred. I couldn't bring myself to say, "I was wrong," which was strange because I've never had trouble saying it in English. I don't have a problem saying those three words (which are actually only two in Spanish, like "I love you," or "Te quiero," which I still think has a much nicer ring, though it's shamelessly overused in BA) because I seldom have to say them. But now that I did, I simply couldn't find the words.

It was worse than on Saturday night when my friend and I were talking about Juliette Binoche, and I couldn't recall the title of the movie she appeared in with Jude Law. I knew it was directed by the late Anthony Minghella, the man who'd helped her win an Oscar for The English Patient, and Robin Wright Penn was in it, too.

My friend pulled out his phone and started to consult Imdb. The pressure was on! I had to figure it out before Imdb did.

"It was two words. Two words. Two words. Something 'and' something. Two words... Breaking and Entering! Right under the buzzer. Imdb confirmed it for both of us.

Unfortunately, the other week, while composing my email in Spanish and trying to say, "I was wrong," my memory failed me completely. If it weren't for the Internet, I might still be staring at that half-unwritten email on my laptop screen, trying to come up with the two Spanish words for the three that I wanted so desperately to express.

Thanks to a translation website, I only spent several minutes in torture. Me equivoque! I know there is supposed to be an accent over the last "e," but bear with me. My Thai keyboard doesn't do accents, nor that special Spanish "n," nor umlauts, which are sometimes used over "u" when it follows "q" in Spanish, but not with "equivoque."

Me equivoque! Dead wrong. About what had led me to start typing that email in the first place, and to think that you can take the man away from the language, but you can't take the language away from the man. The other night I met a guy from Colombia, and I got in some good practice, but it's not quite the same as calling the place that was fixing my air conditioner every day for several weeks, which I was doing at this time last year, trying to find out when I could put that useless floor fan away for good, or taking Pilates classes twice a week in Spanish, or making pillow small talk with guys who didn't speak a word of English.

I tell myself that's why I never bothered to try to learn Thai. I knew I wasn't staying there forever, so what was the point? I'd only lose it within months of returning to Australia. But who was I kidding? It was the idea of learning a language with a completely different alphabet that terrified me. And if the regular words were anything like the street names (frequently 10 characters or more, or so it seemed, all over Thailand), I was truly f**ked. On the day I left, I knew how to say Soi 2 in Thai ("Soi song," or something like that), and I could write my first name, but only because I have a tattoo of it on my left forearm to guide me.

Yesterday I was reading the Wikipedia entry on Jill Hennessy. Why the Crossing Jordan actress even crossed my mind, I'm not sure? But I was surprised and impressed and not a little jealous to read that she is fluent in five languages: English, Spanish, French, Italian and German. How do people do that? I'm thankful for what I can do with English. It has served me well financially and creatively over the years, but how wonderful it must be to be truly multi-lingual. I wonder how much a UN interpreter makes in one year.

Part of the problem for me is that as a writer, I spend so much of my day immersed in English that there's very little room for other languages. And so many of the Aussies that I meet mangle English, sometimes to a degree that I don't even recognize my own language when I talk to them. I have to work hard not to fall into their syntactic traps.

If I end up returning to Bangkok for good, I'll make an exerted effort to learn Thai. As for Spanish, I'm going to have to spend more time talking to my non-English-speaking Argentine friends online, or maybe narrow my search for Mr. Perfect to "must love dogs and must speak Spanish as a first language." I've also set aside about 10 minutes a day, during my daily runs, where I think only in Spanish.

So far it's working out pretty well. And if nothing else, I'll never again have to say, "I was wrong," when I'm trying to write, "I was wrong."

No me equivoco nunca!

Was Southeast Asia Really All That It's Cracked Up to Be By My Memories? (Answer: Yes!)

2012-01-29T22:09:00.000+11:00

"The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be." -- Marcel Pagnol

Truer words have never been spoken -- or written -- and I read those ones for the first time several weeks ago. Where? In someone's Manhunt profile, of all places. (Who says online cruising never leads to anything good?) The guy who dared to put them there immediately topped my list of most likely to receive a reply because I appreciate a man who recognizes great insight when he reads it.

I especially like the last part because it alludes to hope and faith, two of the most crucial concepts in the lexicon of life. Things have a way of working out -- unless they don't. And even then, what's the worse thing that can happen. Death? In that worst-case scenario, nothing really matters. And if you die another day, at least you're still breathing.

So let it will be. (I promise that's the last Madonna song title I'm quoting.) Doing that brings us closer to a higher state of consciousness, being truly content in the here and now. I'm still trying to get there myself, but six months of Buddhist exposure, has brought me closer than ever.

As for the past, what a truly tricky thing it is. Lately I've been thinking a lot about mine, particularly those six months I spent in Southeast Asia last year. I thoroughly enjoyed my adventure while I was in the middle of it, but three and half weeks after my return to Australia, my memories of Asia continue to grow fonder by the day.

Last night I met a beautiful 29-year-old woman whose father is Malaysian and whose mother is of Irish descent. Although she's never even visited her dad's country, while I was talking to her, so many vivid memories of Kuala Lumpur and Penang began to crowd my mind.

And not an hour goes by when I don't lapse into a daydream, imagining that I'm walking through the streets of Bangkok, standing on my balcony looking out at the city from 14 stories up, or getting ready for a night out at DJ Station. A flaming B-52 shot, prepared by my favorite Bangkok bartender on the second floor, is just the twist in my sobriety that I could use right about now.

Today as I was going through some of the photos from my trip -- which I've really got to post on Facebook ASAP -- I came actress a video from the day I spent touring the temples of Angkor (see below). The Cambodian tourist mecca just outside of Siem Reap was one of the most magical parts of the six months I spent in Asia because it was like all of these images I remembered staring at in Encyclopedia Britannica when I was a kid were coming to life. Not that I'll ever forget any of it, but I'm glad to have photographs and videos to remind me of the life-changing experience that was my half-year adventure.

Southeast Asia, I don't think I'm through with you yet.

How Lowbrow Can I Go?: Why 'Hot in Cleveland' Is One of My Favorite TV Comedies

2012-01-28T08:51:00.000+11:00

I confess.

I'm a television junkie. And I won't even pretend to like the supposedly "quality" stuff. I live for boob-tube fluff. The more mindless, the funnier (sometimes).

Which is certainly not the case when it comes to cinema and music. With movies, I'm never in my element until Oscar season, when sequel fever cools, the action slows down, and Hollywood starts putting out films for adults. And with music, I'm a little bit country, and I'm a little bit rock & roll, the majority of Billboard's Hot 100 be damned. Bruno Mars, LMFAO and David Guetta can score hit after hit, but I'll listen to Katy Perry's entire Teenage Dream album before I sit through "Sexy and I Know It" from beginning to end.

When it comes to TV, though, for some reason, my brain goes soft. My favorite shows of all time -- The Jeffersons, Three's Company, The Golden Girls -- were all LMFAO hilarious, but they'll never be in the TV critics' pantheon of sitcom greats, home to the likes of All in the Family, M*A*S*H and, in the future, 30 Rock and Modern Family, two programs whose appeal flies right over my head.

Though I occasionally roll with the "good" stuff, too -- I could spend an entire day watching marathons of How I Met Your Mother and Family Guy, and I won't turn the channel when Glee is on -- I'm still one of those people who actually finds Two and a Half Man funny, and I've spent the last year or so warming up to The Big Bang Theory. So just shoot me (speaking of shows I used to love).

Notice the absence of hour-long drama in this discussion so far. The occasional police procedural and legal drama aside -- in Bangkok, the TV options were so limited that I learned to appreciate Criminal Minds and the plethora of courtroom series, of which Drop Dead Diva is the only one I truly love -- most hour-long dramas test my attention span. I love my 60-minute daytime soap operas, though, and I'll never understand why people carp about their implausibilities while getting lost (pun intended) in the unreality of Lost and all the vampires and bad acting in True Blood.

The other night I watched Dexter for the first time. And although there was no denying that it's a well-made, well-acted drama, the serial-killer stuff gave me nightmares. That's entertainment? I can live with the violence in a movie like Drive because I know I don't have to see it week after week, but when it comes to my regularly scheduled TV viewing, I don't want to have to watch between my fingers.

Which brings me to my latest prime-time poison: TV Land's Hot in Cleveland -- and not just because it's got Betty White. Last night I watched the ninth episode of the third season (the one in which Melanie's son and Victoria's daughter were engaged, and Joy was dating a blind 22 year old), and I actually laughed out loud five times. Yes, five. I counted. And although I was by myself, each time I guffawed, I looked around to make sure no one was looking. Home alone, I was actually embarrassed.

But this is my official coming-out day. I love Hot in Cleveland. With the exception of Absolutely Fabulous and Family Guy, it's the only TV show that I've ever actually downloaded on my computer. Here are five reasons why.

1. It's not all about Betty White. Not that I don't love her, but she's not the only draw here. Wendie Malick (Victoria), Jane Leeves (Joy) and Valerie Bertinelli (Melanie) are all comedy vets, and the each pulls her weight here, though Malick probably gets a slightly higher number of laughs per episode. But how can she not, playing an aging soap-opera diva whose biggest rival is Erica Kane herself, Susan Lucci, who has appeared on several episodes of the show?

2. The ladies seem to genuinely dig each other. Unlike those desperate housewives, whom I love, there's no bitching and casual back-stabbing here (or behind-the-scenes rumors of it). As quartet-of-female-friends programming goes, most people would compare Hot in Cleveland to The Golden Girls, and not just because Betty White appeared on both shows. But these golden girls have an altogether different dynamic. Yes, Elka (White) has a sharp tongue, tossing barbs at whomever happens to be in her line of vision, but the relationship between the others is less love-hate than the bond was between Dorothy, Blanche and Rose. There's real I'd-do-anything-for-you-camaraderie here that makes this more like Sex and the City -- only in another city.

3. They're no dummies, but they can be delightfully shallow. Neither the show nor the ladies try to sell Cleveland as anything other than a place where, unlike in L.A., they can be the eye candy everybody wants. I was shocked when Melanie and Joy admitted to being freshly Botoxed in one episode, and last night when Joy reveled in the joys of dating a 22-year-old blind guy because there's no way he'd know that she's not really 26 ("in five weeks"), I thought to myself, I'd do that. When Blanche on The Golden Girls dated a blind guy, she was worried that he could never appreciate her for her beauty, something that never even crossed Joy's mind. It's not exactly progress, but it's a glass-half-full approach that totally works for me.

4. Dead or Alive? Get your answers here. Another great thing about having 90-year-old Betty White in the cast is that they have to come up with age-appropriate love interests for her. It's nice to know that Carl Reiner, Buck Henry and Don Rickles are alive and well, comic timing still in tact. (P.S. It's also nice to see so many stars from earlier eras -- Gregory Harrison, John Schneider, Bonnie Franklin, Laura San Giacomo, Hal Linden, and Huey Lewis, as well as John Mahoney, Wayne Knight, Doris Roberts, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Sean Hayes -- back in action in guest appearances.)

5. The ladies date young -- and hot. And if you look like Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves and Wendie Malick when you're over 50 (and in Malick's case, 60!), why the hell not?

Sexual Preference: Nature, Nurture Or Both?

2012-01-27T15:49:00.001+11:00

Same person, different bodies?

To be or not to be... gay.

That is the question. And according to one of my friends, one whose opinion I not only value but usually agree with, it's a question whose answer -- along with everything that we are, beyond the physical -- is determined solely by our environment. In other words, just as the language(s) with which we are raised determines the one(s) we end up speaking, the environment in which we grow up determines the gender we end up wanting to sleep with.

It was a scintillating debate, during which the beer I was sipping affected the clarity of my dissenting opinion, but I couldn't believe the hardline stance my friend was taking, unwilling to accept any exceptions, much less an alternative point of view.

So the environment in which we are raised determines everything about us then?

"Everything."

I wonder what it was, then, that caused that strange, unexpected stirring that I acknowledged for the first time in the fourth grade. Why do some people first feel it on the playground, while for others, it sneaks up on them in their 20s and later? I don't have any solid answers, but I do believe that this might be where our environment plays a role -- it can factor into when we first notice an attraction to the same sex. Everyone is different, but for reasons that only include the environment in which we are brought up.

Consider this: From birth, two babies spend their first two years in the same room, receiving identical care and nurturing. At the end of two years, would they have the same personalities? Would they cry at the same times, and for the same reasons? Crawl, walk and talk at the same time? React to others in the same way? Have the same capacity for learning? The same inclination to excel, or fail, in academics? The same mood swings?

Of course not. We are all born with unique temperaments. But if what my friend says is correct, there is no such thing as temperament. Everything we are on the inside, not physiologically speaking, is decided after birth.

As huge of an influence as our environment does have on us, the way we process its stimuli and react to it is largely built-in. That's why, for no apparent reason, some kids find clowns terrifying, while others are amused by them. Why some girls are tomboys and others are hyper-feminine. Why some boys like sports and others prefer books. Why some people tend to be doom-and-gloomy while for others, the cup is usually half full. Children who are raised in the same home end up having common characteristics, and wildly divergent ones, too. We say it's our nature to be certain things. Our mothers, who were there from the beginning, would attest to that.

The argument for environment determining everything about our personalities simplifies what we are by suggesting that we are born blank slates. That's not only erroneous; it's dangerous, too. If we are where we live, then out goes the argument that people are born gay, straight, or as Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon suggested last year in The Advocate, bisexual. Or perhaps we are all born as one and "turn" into the others? Does that mean we can "turn" back, too, that the young lady who tried to pick me up last month at DJ Station actually had a chance with me?

Nixon recently made the controversial statement that she chose to be gay. While I won't even pretend to know what goes on inside of the mind of the woman who played my favorite SATC character, I interpret her comment not as being a declaration that our sexuality is something we choose. If it were, I think most of us (not me, but certainly most of my exes) would choose to desire the opposite sex because that would make life so much easier.

I think she was referring to what we do with our sexual preference, which is undoubtedly a choice. That said, I suspect she might be likely to take my friend's side of the nature vs. nurture debate in regards to sexuality. She said that she had never been attracted to a woman before she met her girlfriend. She also described her girlfriend as "a short man with boobs," which I think says a lot about her sexual preference. (I wonder if director Oren Moverman took this into consideration when he cast Nixon and Anne Heche as sisters in Rampart.)

For Nixon, being "gay" seems less about who she is than who she decided to be. Perhaps she'd simply had enough of men and was open to trying something new (without relinquishing her attraction to that which is masculine), which would have nothing to do with who she was born to be. But to suggest that for most gay people it is not who they are, at the core of their very identity, would be to do them a huge disservice while giving homophobes a lot of ammunition.

If you think of being gay, or even straight, as being not about our desires but strictly about the lives we lead, whom we sleep with, then it is inarguably a choice. But I prefer not to get too bogged down in politics, or semantics, or putting a label on myself and others. I'm gay. You are whatever you want me to call you. But there's no hiding from sexual preference. It follows you everywhere, regardless of whom you actually sleep with, or how old you are when you acknowledge it, or act on it.

In a nutshell, sexual preference, is not something we choose, nor is it something that is determined by the environment in which we are raised. That is not to deny the influence of environment on who we are. I think it has its place. I just don't buy that it has the final say, the only say, or any say at all in which gender we are attracted to.

We'll never be sure what, exactly, makes us what we are, until we discover a way to track a baby's thoughts from birth to the point where they can start expressing what they're thinking. Until we reach that scientific breakthrough, though, I think it's pretty safe to say that we don't spend those first weeks, during which we mostly eat, sleep and cry, as the same person, only in different bodies.

As for the idea that our environment makes us gay, or straight, peddling such a notion is tantamount to saying that since gay people learn to be attracted to people of the same sex, they can unlearn it, too. It's not like people haven't been trying to do just that for centuries -- via therapy, via religion, via Scientology -- and failing miserably.

10 Things I Loved About Australian Day

2012-01-26T22:41:00.001+11:00

My first Australian Day has come and nearly gone, and I'm still not 100 percent sure what it is. But then, neither are most of my Australian friends. At first, it was described to me as the Aussie version of the U.S.'s Independence Day, but after Devarni did a mobile-phone Internet search, we decided it had more in common with Columbus Day. January 26 is the anniversary of the day in 1788 when Great Britain populated its island territory in the Southern Hemisphere with convicts.

I'm not sure that's quite it, and I'm a little too exhausted to do in-depth Wikipedia research, but the establishing of a settlement of criminals sounds like as good a reason to celebrate Australian Day as any I can think of at the moment. Here are 10 other reasons why I'm looking forward to the next one.

1. It's a holiday that's just a glorified excuse to get drunk in the sun. You'd think something known as Australian Day would inspire a bit more reverence, or even a touch of patriotism, but the only Australian flag I saw all day was tattooed on a young guy's cheek.

2. Blackcurrant cider Five percent alcohol might not sound like too much, but after three rounds of what tastes like berry-flavoured sparkling water, the sky turned a brighter shade of blue, the music rocked harder, and that over-dressed woman wearing the electric-blue platform shoes started to look, well, not quite so ridiculous.

3. St. Kilda's Bowling Club I'm not sure how I feel about Aussie bowling, which is meant to be played on the outdoor grass courts by old men in white suits rather than all those singlet-wearing whippersnappers, but I can't think of a better place to spend a lazy, tipsy holiday afternoon.

4. Foster the People The guys who gave us "Pumped Up Kicks" may be destined to be one-hit wonders in the U.S., but it's nice to hear their music still playing almost everywhere I drink in Melbourne.

5. Good sports Not the bowling, which looks about as exciting as its U.S. counterpart, but all the people cheerfully getting doused by spilled beer, cider and wine without giving so much as a cross look.

6. Only a few more days until the end of the Australian Open Not that I've been paying attention to it on TV, but when it's over, I won't have to hear another word about it. Not that I've been listening either.

7. Crazy people wearing crazier things See left. Enough said?

8. Friends who take photos when you've forgotten your camera at home Thanks, Devarni, for providing the visuals for this post!

9. Greasy Joe's Despite the skewiff wooden tables that were perfect for causing wine glasses to topple over, this beach-side burger joint wasn't just any burger joint, thanks to Andrew, our adorable 20-year-old waiter who incorrectly guessed my age to be 29. For me, the "Greasy" was the draw, but according to Andrew, remodeling soon will be underway, and the "Greasy" dropped, making it, simply, and generically, Joe's. May its culinary decadence remain in tact.

10. Miami Horror Another reason to love Greasy Joe's. The perfect soundtrack to end a near-perfect first Australian Day.

Adventures in Celibacy (Tim Gunn's and Mine)

2012-01-26T07:09:00.001+11:00

Who cares if Tim Gunn hasn't had sex in 29 years?

Well, I guess I do. Sort of.

But not for the reason you're thinking. In general, I couldn't care less about the sex lives of celebrities, or semi-celebrities, like Tim Gunn. And I'm not even sure what Tim Gunn does.

I've never seen anything he's been on. The only reason I know who he is at all is because in 2006, I was at an Entertainment Weekly party, and a friend of mine started to hyperventilate at the very sight of the prim, snow-haired guy who was striking the "Yes, I'm so important" pose that semi-celebrities tend to assume at such events.

"Oh my God, there's Tim Gunn! I'm obsessed with him!"

"Who's that?" I sort of liked his name, although I would have liked it more had his first name been Peter.

I'm not quite so clueless today, but I'm still not 100 percent sure why he's famous, or almost famous. I know it has something to do with Project Runway, but I've never seen that show, and I probably couldn't pick Heidi Klum out of a red-carpet line-up unless she had Seal on her arm. (And since they're splitting up, she'll be even more anonymous to me in the future.)

So why do I care (sort of) that Gunn has been celibate for 29 years, an announcement he made the other day on his new daytime talk show The Revolution?

Because if he can do it, maybe I can, too. About two weeks ago, I embarked on my own experiment in celibacy. Why? It's nothing like the reason why Gunn supposedly cut all hanky panky out of his life. (I'm assuming that's the case, and he's not applying the Bill Clinton definition of "sexual relations.")

I didn't have an ex who made me feel like I was terrible in bed. And I'm not resorting to sensationalism to boost ratings for my new afternoon chatfest, the one that booted One Life to Live, my favorite soap opera, from ABC's daytime line-up. Yes, I'm still bitter about One Life to Live, but I'm no fool. I suspect that Gunn had an ulterior motive, a reason for his full disclosure, which had everything to do with putting The Revolution on the map.

When celebrities, um, semi-celebrities, start divulging the intimate details of their love lives, or lack thereof, there's always something in it for them. Either they're trying to promote themselves or their latest project, or they're trying to prove something (generally, their heterosexuality -- but Gunn is gay, so it's not that).

Didn't Tom Cruise on Oprah Winfrey's couch teach us anything?

Although I don't know if Gunn's declaration of celibacy will work in his favor, or his show's, I've never read so much about either as I have in the last 24 hours. But I'll see Tim Gunn in hell -- or at the sex club, which is kind of the same thing -- before I watch The Revolution!

Getting back to me and my experiment in celibacy, it came about due to a conversation I had a little under two weeks ago with a friend who told me that she's been abstaining for the last two years. There's no spectacular story involved. It just kind of happened. The choice has been hers completely, but it's not one that she consciously made or even carried out.

I wondered if I could ever do something so drastic. I'm not sure. Two years is a long time, and nobody ever said that time flies when you're not having fun. But I'm always looking for a new challenge, so I made an announcement that Saturday afternoon at Windsor Castle in Melbourne: "I'm going to be celibate for six months." It's not like I'm not already on my way there. I haven't done a thing in 2012 so far.

Big deal, the year just began, said my skeptical friends, who have given me a lot of leeway, saying that the state of celibacy allows everything that doesn't fall under the Clintonian definition of "sexual relations." I'm not sure if I'll actually go for the full six months, even under those cushy conditions. This is only a test, and for now, one that's working in my favor.

When sex is off the table, it makes life so much easier. You can go out to bars and actually enjoy the company of your friends without having one eye on the door to see who's coming and going. You can accept last-minute invitations because plucking and trimming and looking your absolute best under your clothes is no longer so important because no one is going to see what's there anyway.

I can now receive text messages like the one that arrived at 3am this morning -- "What's doing? Miss that hot body of urs" -- and roll over and go back to sleep. And if I do happen to meet someone decent, at least I'll know he's in it for more than sex. We'll have to be friends first, which I hear is the strongest foundation for any relationship. But I'm not expecting Mr. Perfect, a guy who's all talk no action, to walk through that door that I'm no longer paying so much attention to.

Of course, my hygiene, oral and otherwise, remains up to the same high standards, but it's liberating to be able to ease up on everything else. If this means I don't have to shave every other day, and I can let the gray come out without having to worry that I might start to look my age, why stop at six months?

Perhaps in the year 2041 when I have my own daytime talk show to promote, I can stand up and proudly repeat after Gunn: "I haven't haven't had sex in 29 years." Of course, by then, it might no longer be by choice.

Burning Questions: 2012 Oscar Nominations Edition

2012-01-25T08:21:00.000+11:00

After making nary a peep all Oscar season, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (whose title I still can't seem to get right) snags a Best Picture Oscar nomination. Young Adult and its star, Charlize Theron, are left out in the cold. And no Bridesmaids or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in a Best Picture category with nine (?) nominees. Those aren't the only unexpected developments that have me scratching my head after the January 24 announcement of the 2012 Oscar nominees (for 2011 films)!

Who is Demian Bichir, and what did he do with Ryan Gosling's nomination? Every year the Academy likes to throw us at least one WTF nomination, and this year, Bichir's Best Actor nod is it. I've read the Mexican star of A Better Life's name on several prediction websites, and he did score a Screen Actors Guild nod, so it's not a total surprise, but it's the first time in years that I can recall two performers no one knew about one year ago -- and both of them foreign-born! -- being contenders in the Best Actor category.

Is Ryan Gosling destined to be a one-nominee wonder? Snubbed yet again. The Academy must hate him. Or perhaps with three big films this year -- Crazy Stupid Love, The Ides of March and Drive -- he simply may have spread himself too thin. So did Jessica Chastain and Michael Fassbender, but it's easier to triumph over overexposure when you're gunning for a supporting nod (like Chastain, who really should have gotten hers for The Tree of Life), and look what happened to Fassbender (shut out, too).

Did the Academy despise Drive that much? It just goes to show you, when it comes to the Oscars, there's no such thing as a sure thing. After showing up in all of the precursors and hogging the critics prizes, Drive's Albert Brooks wasn't invited to Best Supporting Actor. Drive's shutout in the major categories is more surprising after its excellent showing in the BAFTA nominations, where it made the Best Film and Best Director shortlists, tellingly, without nominations for any of the cast. I guess the film's extreme violence went over better on the British side of the pond.

Was The Descendants really that good? Sorry, but no. I knew George Clooney was a lock (though, as pointed out above, there's really no such thing as one), but Best Picture and Best Director, too? I adore Alexander Payne, and he's been making me take long hard looks at my life for years, but, like Terrence Malick, he's so beloved, and he works so infrequently, that he's on his way to becoming a sort-of default contender. If another director's name had been attached to The Descendants, filmed as is, I probably wouldn't be writing about it right now.

Whom Does Tilda Swinton have to sleep with to get a Best Actress nomination? Since winning a surprise Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Michael Clayton in 2008, Swinton has been overlooked for leading roles in Julia, I Am Love and now We Need to Talk About Kevin. She made it into all of the precursor contests (including the BAFTA nominations, where the film and the director also received citations), but I suspect that the movie's dark subject matter may have scared off the Academy. I know mothers who refuse to see the movie because the idea of a mom unknowingly raising a mass murderer-to-be hits too close to home. So out with Swinton, in with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's Rooney Mara.

Speaking of Mara, why so glum? Much has been said of Mara's gloomy appearance on the red carpet all Oscar season. Either she's still in character, or she's simply overwhelmed by all of the sudden attention. I haven't walked a meter in her shoes (not that my feet could fit into them, with my bunion and all), but I imagine that I might be the same way if fame were suddenly thrust on me. She's an excellent actress (one of the best things in The Social Network), so I suspect this is only the beginning for her. She'll grow into it.

Can we go back to five Best Picture nominees, please? Having 10 the previous two years took some getting used to (and I didn't), but nine contenders is just plain weird, especially when one of them isn't The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which means only one Best Actress contender, The Help's Viola Davis, appeared in a Best Picture contender. (Does that immediately make her, and not The Iron Lady's Meryl Streep, the frontrunner?) Inviting so many nominees takes away from the prestige of a Best Picture nomination and dilutes the category of its impact, especially since it almost always comes down to two contenders anyway. This year's: Hugo vs. The Artist.

Is a two-song race much of a race? The other day, a friend of mine suggested that the Academy do away with Best Original Song completely. It's been going downhill since the Disney-dominated '90s, and for most of this century, it's been populated by tunes that hardly anyone knows. I'd be okay with keeping the category if the Academy would revamp the confusing rules that kept Madonna out of the running. But even with W.E.'s "Masterpiece" on the sidelines, there was still plenty of nominations fodder, thanks to Elton John, Mary J. Blige, Glenn Close and others. So how did it come down to songs from Rio and and The Muppets? At least now Elton John and his husband have someone new to bitch over. Look out, Marshall and Sheldon!

10 Great Songs with Famous People in Their Titles

2012-01-25T03:37:00.000+11:00

"Has anyone ever written anything for you?" Stevie Nicks asked on a 1989 B-side.

As far as I know, the answer would be no. Who even "writes" anymore? If not face to face, most communication these days is done by tapping a keypad with your fingers. And texts, instant messages and Facebook wall posts will never count. My ex-boyfriend said he bought me a card for my last birthday, and I presume that he wrote something in it, but he forgot it at home when he came over to my place to prepare my birthday feast, and to this day, I haven't seen it.

Anyway, writing something to me (regardless of the mode of communication) is different than writing something for or about me. Maybe over the course of two decades of dating, there was a poem that I never got to read, but I doubt it, seriously. My first boyfriend did once tell me, shortly after we'd broken up, that he'd written a short story in which we were brothers, but I try not to think about that for obvious reasons that still make me cringe a little if I spend too much time dwelling on it.

I can say with 100 percent certainty, though, that nobody has ever written a hit song for or about me. A lot of my friends call me Jeremiah, but the late Hoyt Axton definitely didn't have me in mind when he wrote, "Jeremiah was a bullfrog," the opening line to Three Dog Night's 1971 hit "Joy to the World." And this Jeremy's never had a gun, so Pearl Jam's 1992 single with which I share a name definitely has nothing to do with me.

But when you are a celebrity, one of the perks of fame is that if you're big enough, you might eventually get a hit song written all for you -- or at the very least, with your name in the title. Some are luckier than others: Barbra Streisand, who deserves a song as beautiful as her voice, had to make do with the execrable 2010 UK dance hit "Barbra Streisand" by Duck Sauce. But what becomes a legend most is a great song befitting an icon. Here are 10 of them.

"Hank Williams You Wrote My Life" Moe Bandy Sometimes when I'm down on love and about to go under, I listen to Bandy's 1975 No. 2 country hit to boost my spirits. It's always good to know that someone knows exactly how you feel.

"Biko" Peter Gabriel Hear the former Genesis frontman name-dropping for a worthy cause, musically and politically speaking, and unlike so many songs named for non-fictional people that are related to them in title only, this 1980 classic beautifully and hauntingly eulogizes murdered South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko.

"Bette Davis Eyes" Kim Carnes Bette Davis apparently loved it (the No. 1 1981 version by Carnes -- I'm not sure if she was even aware of Jackie DeShannon's 1974 original), and didn't she seem like the kind of diva who hated everything?

"Faron Young" Prefab Sprout If you're going to name drop a vintage Nashville singer, you might as well take your elegant pop sound for a ride in the country. The result, which, incidentally, appeared on Prefab Sprout's 1985 album called Steve McQueen, sounds like nothing I ever heard its late namesake '50s-to-early '70s country star do, but it was still one of the band's best songs.

"Monty Got a Raw Deal" R.E.M. Some icons, like the late four-time Oscar nominee and star of A Place in the Sun and From Here to Eternity, need no last name. For those still not in the know, three of the loveliest minutes on 1992's Automatic for the People, R.E.M.'s creative zenith, were all about Montgomery Clift.

"Cleopatra, Queen of Denial" Pam Tillis Why not throw in some clever wordplay while paying homage? (FYI, Tillis, like Carnes, had a big hit with a Jackie DeShannon cover, but "When You Walk in the Room," which went to No. 2 on Billboard's country singles chart in 1994, the year after "Cleopatra" peaked at No. 11, did so without any celebrity assistance.)

"Brian Wilson Said" Tears for Fears If you can't be him, write a song about him that totally does both the man and his musical genius justice.

"Clint Eastwood" Gorillaz The perfect marriage of cool star and cool song, even if one doesn't really have anything to do with the other. If anyone ever gets around to writing a song for me, I hope it's Damon Albarn.

"Marcus Garvey" Burning Spear/Sinead O'Connor More name-dropping for a worthy cause. The reggae band Burning Spear paid tribute to the titular Jamaican hero on its 1975 album of the same name, but it was O'Connor's version on Throw Down Your Arms, her excellent 2005 album of reggae covers, that introduced me to both the song and the man.

"Grace Kelly" Mika Melodramatic and campy in honor of a screen icon who was neither.

Is George Clooney a Good Actor? (Or Is He Just Brilliant At Playing Himself Onscreen and Off?)

2012-01-24T07:19:00.000+11:00

The other day, a film-critic friend and I had dissenting opinions -- several of them -- and our healthy debates, naturally, turned to the subject of George Clooney, one of my favorite actors. The other guy's take on the soon-to-be-quadruple Oscar nominee for acting (and likely two-time winner come February 26) was one I've heard countless times: "Doesn't George Clooney always play himself?"

Wait, that guy he was playing in Syriana was George Clooney? I do not think so, and if he was, then he gained 30 pounds and f**ked up his back on the set for nothing (if you consider a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nothing). My friend concurred (which didn't make up for all the terrible things he'd said about the music in Drive), but still...

I considered three of my favorite Clooney performances -- in Intolerable Cruelty, in Michael Clayton and in Up in the Air -- and I had to admit that there's a common thread stitched into all of them. The characters may have had different names, occupations and crosses to bear, but they were all blessed with The Clooney Charm, that undefinable and undeniable thing we've all seen on the red carpet, in interviews and at the winner's podium at so many award shows. But let's not forget, what you see is not necessarily what you get: The off-screen Clooney, the public persona, could very well be his greatest performance of all, and if it is, it trumps anything Daniel Day-Lewis has ever done.

It's the charisma and suave likability of the Clooney character (in real life and in reel life) that made his kitchen staredown with Ryan Gosling in The Ides of March, or the fact that he looked a little bit old in The Descendants (the one that should bring Academy Award No. 2 any week now) so unsettling this Oscar season. That said, even when he veers slightly off his usual course, there's still no mistaking The Clooney Charm (yes, capitalized because it's an almost-human force of George's nature and demands proper-noun treatment).

But here's the thing you need to know about George Clooney: He's not Meryl Streep. He doesn't specialize in every accent under the sun or mimicking historical figures and pop-cultural icons. He doesn't play the bad guy, he doesn't time travel, and he doesn't go gay just because it's one of the easiest ways to catch Oscar's attention while screaming, "Look, I'm playing against type."

That doesn't mean he can't pull off all of the above, and some day he might. For now, his key career roles are normal men in difficult or unusual situations, real people. It's no wonder that many of his characters resemble the actor himself. But he's not the first highly regarded screen performer to play variations on a theme that is himself. Katharine Hepburn did the same thing for much of her career -- Wasn't her character in Summertime (left) basically her character in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, 10 years younger, unmarried without children, and vacationing in Venice? -- and she was awarded four Oscars for what appeared to be a lack of effort.

And that's where actors like Clooney, and Hepburn, mislead us, mess with our minds. It's often been said that actors like them are so good because they makes it look so easy. It's a little cliche but not untrue. As great as Daniel Day-Lewis is, I wonder if he could play an average Joe onscreen and impress anyone. Not playing himself (and taking Method acting to unbelievable extremes) is his hook, and that comes with its own set of potential mood killers. When you watch him onscreen, you are always fully aware that you are experiencing great acting. But it rarely looks like anything you'd see in the real world.

He would have turned a movie like The Descendants into a one-man show: Portrait of a Lawyer Falling Apart Spectacularly. Cue Oscar buzz! With Clooney taking the lead as Matt King, I felt like I was eavesdropping on conversations between real people while watching The Descendants -- which is the best thing I can say about a somewhat overrated film and my least favorite of director Alexander Payne's last four efforts for reasons that had everything to do with the fact that he made Hawaii look like a drab place that I never want to visit, the annoying voice over that vanished about 30 minutes in, and a punch in the forehead that led to a bruise under the left eye.

Which is not to say that the performances were uniformly great: The best friend of Matt's wife, awkwardly portrayed by Mary Birdsong, went so over the top in her grief over the news of her BFF's certain death that she didn't seem sad at all, just histrionic for the sake of making a mark. She could have learned something from Judy Greer, an actress previously best known by me for being one of Charlie Sheen's many scores on Two and a Half Men, who aced her breakdown scene later in the film.

I do understand Birdsong's situation: Actors in smallish roles have to work hard to stand out, while the star can underplay and make his or her mark over the course of the entire film. In The Descendants, as in most of the Clooney films I've seen, even when the scene calls for heavier emoting than usual -- the one in which Matt bids his unfaithful wife a tearful adieu as she lies dying in a hospital bed -- Clooney does it the way a real person would, without snacking on the scenery.

So maybe he's not as daring as his good friend Brad Pitt when it comes to choosing roles, or he doesn't possess the range of Johnny Depp, to name two of his contemporaries. But as a singer, neither did Frank Sinatra, who is still considered to be one of the greatest of all time. Unlike Nat King Cole, he didn't tackle a lot of stylistic ground, but I've never heard anyone fault him for that. You don't have to hit high notes, low notes and everything in between to be a standout singer. You just have to master your own possibly-limited range.

And so it goes with Clooney. If you want to watch chameleons in action, I can tell you where to find them. But there's an art to playing the regular guy, too, even if he looks a lot like the actor playing him. If you're going to be yourself over and over onscreen, or variations on a character type that strongly resembles you -- or rather, the public's perception of you -- you have to be entertaining while you're at it, and like Clooney, you have to do it better than anybody else.

Five Songs That Were Ahead of Their Time

2012-01-23T08:55:00.001+11:00

Sunday was a day of rediscovery for me. It had been years since I listened to Doolittle, the 1989 breakthrough album by Pixies, in its entirety. So many that I'd nearly forgotten what a fantastic album it is. Then yesterday, on the way home from my morning run, my iPod shuffle landed on "Debaser," the opening track, and it all came flooding back to me.

What was it about Doolittle that made it such a perfect album, so much so that when I started to listen to it for the first time in years, my love for it picked up right where it left off? Is it that the record reminds me so much of one of the best times of my life (my college years at the University of Florida, when I was living on my own for the first time), or is it really that good?

It's probably a mixture of both. Though the songs on Doolittle will always bring me back to a specific period in my life, they still hold up today. Which got me to thinking about timeless music, songs from the last century that could easily be coming out today and not seem at all out of place. Not only were they completely of their time, but before it, too. They could belong to 2012 -- or 10 years from now. Here are five that will be on my Monday playlist.

Donna Summer "I Feel Love" (1977) Sexy without even trying to be, which, come to think of it, is the very definition of "sexy" -- in any decade.

David Bowie "Sound and Vision" (1977) No monster of rock produced more classic songs that are still standing the test of any time than Bowie. This particular one just happens to be my personal favorite.

Tom Tom Club "Genius of Love" (1981) This track, as ageless as anything Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth did with Talking Heads, was a decent-sized hit when it was released but perhaps a bit too arty to be the blockbuster it surely would have been 24 years later, around the time Mariah Carey sampled it for the hook of her massive No. 1 single "Fantasy."

Talk Talk "Life's What You Make It" (1985) Close your eyes, or simply ignore Paul Webb's dated layered ensemble in the video (yes, there was a time when I would have killed for that fringe leather jacket!), and you could be in '85, '95, '05, or 2015.

Elastica "Connection" (1994) It's nearly 20 years old, but it can still cold rock a party (to borrow a not-so-timeless phrase from the timeless rapper MC Lyte) from Buenos Aires to Sydney. Believe me, I've seen it happen with my very own eyes.

The Truth About Being Gay

2012-01-22T09:21:00.002+11:00

Several hours ago, my brother Alexi sent me a link to a Gawker article titled "The Secrets Gay Men Don't Want Straight People to Know." Even if the guy in the photo that accompanied the link hadn't been so adorable, how could I resist a hook like that?

It was an interesting read. Not because it was particularly insightful, or even completely accurate, but because as I read it, I couldn't figure out whether the title was supposed to be ironic. Take this "secret": "Not All Gay Couples Are Monogamous." Um, duh! Don't the holy rollers always trot that one out when they're sharing their laundry list of why gay men don't deserve the right to legally marry?

Not only is it old news, but it also ignores the important point that if women weren't generally inclined to demand marital monogamy, denying their men the right to pursue their manifest sexual destiny (though I should also point out that women cheat, too), straight couples would be equally non-monogamous.

What I'm trying to say is this: The inclination to not be monogamous isn't a gay condition. It's a human one. Whether we choose monogamy or not (and I do believe it's up to individual couples to decide if it's right for them), human beings are not meant to be monogamous. Gay men are just more honest about it.

I won't delve too deeply (pun intended) into what the article claims about "bottoming" and amyl nitrate, or the link between the two (one I only recently found out existed), except to say that you really can't believe everything you read on Gawker. Overall, though, the list was a bit too focused on sex, as if that's all there is to the lives of gay men. It also assumes that straight people are totally clueless about what goes on inside the minds of gay men -- or at least what's rumored to be going on. We want to f**k all the hot straight boys? Who doesn't know that?

But the Gawker piece did save the best for last. The one revelation that made me sit up and cheer on the inside was the final one: "We Don't Love Drag Queens As Much As You Do." Yes! I've actually expressed my distaste for drag on this very blog, and it wasn't until last year when I saw several first-rate drag shows in Thailand that I started to warm up to it.

Alas, it was a short-lived thaw. A couple of weeks into Bangkok, I was back to avoiding the drag shows like the plague, showing up at DJ Station no earlier than midnight, just to be sure that the drag queens were safely tucked away offstage.

In general, I find drag queens to be totally tiresome, and I don't have a single gay friend who doesn't agree, in general. But I think many straight people feel more comfortable with that over-the-top sexless gay persona. It's the same reason why they laughed the hardest at Jack on Will & Grace, while all the gays were gaga for Karen.

If I can draw that uncomfortable gay/straight-black/white parallel, it's kind of like the way white people seem to prefer their black male superstars to be somewhat asexual. (Usher is a rare exception, and Prince always got by on a sort of androgynous sex appeal.) That's why the biggest ones usually make us laugh, or they play the avuncular/grandfatherly figure, dispensing sage advice.

One could make a similar case for actresses not named Halle Berry or, for a very brief window in the '90s, Angela Bassett. Aside from Berry's performance in Monster's Ball, when was the last time a black actress was Oscar-nominated for playing a sexy character, the bombshell? We've had a decade of black female Academy Award nominees playing maternal figures, damaged goods and the help. Now I want to see Viola Davis as the sexy femme fatale. I mean, have you seen her legs? She could totally pull it off!

Then there's Will Smith, who, incidentally, played gay but didn't kiss the guy onscreen in his first major film, Six Degrees of Separation. He hasn't been gay for pay since, but in a way, that performance set the stage for a career that would be largely sex-free. Smith is a handsome guy, but could you imagine him ever being named People's Sexiest Man Alive? He's black, he's beautiful, and he's covered pretty much every Hollywood base except romantic lead. One wonders where his career would be today if he'd gone all the way in his first big-screen gig and followed a more challenging path.

Even Denzel Washington, who has been named People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive and who was said to have dissuaded Smith from kissing a guy onscreen in Six Degrees, has spent most of his A-list years in action flicks. Mo Better Blues was one of the few times that he was allowed to -- or he allowed himself to -- let his sex appeal drive a film, or where he played a character who was defined by his sensuality, or his sexuality. What if he and Tom Hanks had switched roles in Philadelphia? Recent Golden Globe winner Idris Elba is every bit as good-looking as Smith, Washington and Ryan Gosling, and he's talented, too. It will be interesting to see if he can break through the glass ceiling that has trapped sexy black actors like Terrence Howard and Djimon Hounsou on the wrong side.

Getting back to the drag queens, like the asexual black superstars, they represent a dominant factor in a minority world that people from the majority world feel comfortable embracing. The campier they are, the better -- if you're straight. For this gay man (and if the Gawker article is correct, many others), the great irony of drag queens is that one of the quintessential elements of gay life is largely for the entertainment of straight people, sort of like Adam Lambert.

It's a twisted kind of acceptance, but we'll take what we can get.

And the 2012 Oscar Nominees Will Be...

2012-01-22T04:28:00.001+11:00

Time flies. But you already knew that. Every year around this time, though, I'm reminded of just how quickly. Doesn't it feel like just yesterday that it was The Social Network vs. The King's Speech in the horse race for the 2011 Best Picture Oscar?

It's been an entire year, though, and in just a couple of days (January 24, to be exact), the 2012 Academy Award nominees will be announced, which means it's time for my predictions. Having up to 10 Best Picture candidates takes much of the fun out of trying to predict them, so I'll leave that to other bloggers and just say that in 2012, it will be The Artist vs. Hugo, with The Artist likely to be this year's The King's Speech.

And since I'm more interested in the art of acting than that of directing, I'll only say that Best Director is a two-man contest between Martin Scorcese (Hugo) and Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist). I'm giving the edge to Scorcese because I couldn't bear to sit through another acceptance speech by Hazanavicius, whose European "charm" we'll already have to endure -- again! -- when The Artist takes Best Picture.

Which leaves the acting categories among the major Oscar races. Here's who I predict will be invited to the 84th Academy Awards at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles on February 26 as nominees.

BEST ACTRESS
Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs)
Viiola Davis (The Help)
Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady)
Tilda Swinton (We Need to Talk About Kevin)
Michelle Williams (My Week with Marilyn)

Let's discuss: Nods for Streep, Davis and Williams are as certain as death, taxes and Helen Mirren being the sexiest woman in the Kodak Theatre if she shows up as an Oscar presenter. Frankly, I think Streep gave half a great performance. If only her movie had focused strictly on the iron lady and left the old one out of it. Close made a valiant effort, but her performance just didn't make a convincing case for Albert Nobbs' manhood.

Meanwhile, Swinton's numb, grieving mom reminded me a lot of the one that earned Nicole Kidman a nomination last year for Rabbit Hole, but her stoicism never completely crossed over into the full-on rage that would have made her character seem like a real live woman and not just a sort of screen archetype, a martyr suffering for someone else's sins. I'm still rooting for her to make the shortlist, though, because the former Best Supporting Actress deserves to sit at the leading-ladies table for once.

In a perfectly fair world, Streep and Close would sit this one out (Streep will have other shots for her third Oscar, and Close could snag Best Original Song for the tune she co-wrote for her film and finally get the Oscar that has unfairly eluded her for nearly three decades), and Charlize Theron (Young Adult) and Kirsten Dunst (Melancholia), who should have been this year's Natalie Portman, would be in it to win it.

BEST ACTOR
Jean Dujardin (The Artist)
George Clooney (The Descendants)
Michael Fassbender (Shame)
Ryan Gosling (Drive)
Brad Pitt (Moneyball)

Let's discuss: Poor Leonardo DiCaprio. If it were 2010, the star of Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar would be a shoo-in, but I think Invictus may have marked the unofficial end of Eastwood's long run as an Oscar-bait director. As for Gosling, after snubbing him in 2011 for Blue Valentine, doing so again after he had such a great year as the star of three well-received films, would be like a vote of disapproval from Oscar, especially since his Blue Valentine costar is going to get her second nomination in a row. Wasn't losing People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive title to Bradley Cooper punishment enough?

If Fassbender gets in, it will be the most beautiful Best Actor line-up ever, but I wouldn't complain if a less conventional looker -- 50/50's Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Woody Harrelson, who owned Rampart's corrupt cop with a heart of tarnished gold -- takes his spot.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Berenice Bejo (The Artist)
Jessica Chastain (The Tree of Life)
Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids)
Janet McTeer (Albert Nobbs)
Octavia Spencer (The Help)

Let's discuss: Sorry ladies who are not named Octavia Spencer. You don't stand a chance against The Help's comic relief, who was equally affecting in her dramatic moments. The only thing that could make me care about this category would be the surprise inclusion of Melancholia's Charlotte Gainsbourg and/or Bridesmaids' Rose Bryne instead of McCarthy (no offense to McCarthy, an ace TV star whom I've been loving long time).

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Kenneth Branagh (My Week with Marilyn)
Albert Brooks (Drive)
Jonah Hill (Moneyball)
Nick Nolte (Warrior)
Christopher Plummer (Beginners)

Let's discuss: It's Plummer vs. Brooks, but let's face it: It should be Plummer's to lose -- and it probably is. He played a gay man coming out of the closet in his twilight years without a hint of camp or cliche. If the avuncular Brooks hadn't been cast so wildly against type, would he even be in the running? His mob boss in Drive was menacing enough, but didn't Joe Pesci used to do that sort of thing in his sleep?

Take It Off? No Way!: Why I Just Can't Sleep Nude

2012-01-21T08:32:00.000+11:00

I don't know how some people do it.

At 11pm or midnight every evening, they slip into something more comfortable (or rather, they slip out of it), jump into bed (unaccompanied, or not), and proceed to sleep soundly for eight or so hours -- sometimes on their backs! Good God, what are they thinking?!

It's not so much the uninterrupted sleep that I don't get, although I'd kill for even four hours of it nightly, or sleeping in any position other than on one's side, which is least likely to induce nightmares, night terrors or sleep paralysis. (Doesn't sleeping with me sound like such a joy?) It's the part where they take off all of their clothes.

Now anyone who knows me knows that I'm not exactly a prude. Had it come out about a year later, I would have sworn Ke$ha had written "Take It Off" about me. I'll gladly doff my top, unprompted, jump onstage at G.O.D. in Bangkok with the go-go boys (which I've actually done), and proudly display to the 3am after-hours crowd what pilates gave me. But when it comes to sleeping in the nude, or even without a shirt, there's something about it that just seems so... so, immodest. And this is from someone who finds underwear totally encumbering!

Well, maybe I am a bit of a prude, after all. Or maybe just overly modest when I'm without the benefit of whiskey to tear down my walls and my inhibitions. I didn't even get undressed for that Thai massage that went too far!

I suppose sleeping in the buff would come easier to me if I were, um, buffer, and if I didn't generally sleep alone. I used to have a boyfriend who drove me crazy by insisting on taking a shower after we had sex. It would have been equally baffling if he'd concluded afterglow by getting out of bed, putting on his clothes, and getting back into bed.

Getting dressed after sex is the sort of thing you do if you don't plan on spending the night, or if you're sneaking out before the other person wakes up (which, come to think of it, I saw Charlize Theron do twice in Young Adult), or if you decide to stay for breakfast after morning sex. I'm sure some people do it, but I can't think of any circumstance under which eating in the nude would be appropriate.

I always dress for meals, and not just dinner. I may not make them black-tie occasions, but I always remember to cover at least 75 percent of my body. I generally do whenever I'm home alone. I often hear people talk about how they like to lounge around the house naked. But why? What purpose does that serve? Friends once dedicated an entire episode to it, and I still don't understand why Rachel couldn't sing Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby" in some cute Juicy couture and still feel like a natural, liberated woman.

I'll jog around the parks of Buenos Aires with nothing on but running pants and trainers (which is really so bad for the skin, and that's why I've never done it in Australia), but I refuse to run around the house naked, or even shirtless. I know it doesn't make much sense, but it's another one of my strange quirks. I just accept it and live with it. Besides, isn't a t-shirt and track pants (my normal at-home uniform) comfortable enough to watch TV, eat a sandwich and do housework in? Vacuuming in the nude just seems so unnecessary when I can do it in my track pants and a "Mr. Perfect" t-shirt.

And then, of course, there's the more morbid issue of unexpected visitors in the middle of the night, particularly the angel of death. I'm less concerned with leaving a beautiful corpse than I am with leaving a well-dressed one. Death will not become me if my junk is exposed for all the forensics team to see.

On a less gruesome note, I don't own a robe, or anything I can slip into quickly in case of an unexpected act of nature or arson, or unexpected visitors who are not the angel of death and who are not looking for a booty call. So if there should be an earthquake, a fire, or something equally catastrophic in the middle of the night, I'm always dressed for the occasion.

I could go on an on about all the reasons I prefer to sleep with something separating my skin from the sheets, but I just realized that I'm right now dressed for the stage at G.O.D., and I really need to put a shirt on. Now where is "Mr. Perfect"? If I can't wear the guy (who I'm pretty sure does not exist), I might as well wear the shirt!

Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown: 5 Things I Loved About Charlize Theron in 'Young Adult'

2012-01-19T17:49:00.000+11:00

This afternoon as I was purchasing my ticket to see Young Adult (which opened today in Australia), I found myself thinking about the strange beast that the film's star Charlize Theron calls her career. Never solidly A-list and not exactly B-list, the actress has spent the last decade or so with one leg up and the other right below. Though she looks great straddling both sides of mid-celebrity, her filmography is clunky indeed.

Yes, she's famous, but she never quite became a marquee star, someone who can send bodies flocking to the cinema. (Quick! Name five of her movies.) And she's an Academy Award winner (for 2003's Monster), with one follow-up nomination (for 2005's North Country) and possibly another on the way for Young Adult (despite her nicely detailed work, though, I just don't see it happening, not with the movie's light touch and skimpy box office), but she's not exactly what you'd call Oscar bait.

Her Young Adult director Jason Reitman, who is becoming one of my favorites, has a similar problem. He collected several Oscar nominations, including two Best Director nods, for his last two films -- Juno and Up in the Air -- yet he's not in the pantheon of young directors that critics and moviegoers fawn over and call visionary, a circle that includes David Fincher, Darren Aronofsky and Paul Thomas Anderson.

Maybe it's his deceptively simple film-making style. He relies on dialogue (this time, as with Juno, Diablo Cody's), mood and characterization rather than fancy technique and special effects. And his work is less sobering than that of Alexander Payne, who also makes human-interest movies that are more interested in humans and human behavior than plot. Nothing about Young Adult screams, "Important Film -- This way!"

But his movies say so much, and Young Adult is no different. I love the statement it makes about past, present and future and how the way we perceive the lives of others is often so much different from the reality of those lives. Watching it reminded me of my 10-year high-school reunion and how people assume that if you've moved to the big city and have a seemingly glamorous career, all is well in your world. It ain't necessarily so. And when Theron's Mavis Gary wondered about the people in small-town Minnesota who make being happy seem so easy (and she did so without judgement or envy, just bemused awe), I nodded in agreement. It's a puzzle that keeps me up at night.

I also love that despite her awkward career, Reitman cast Theron in the role of "young adult" fiction writer Mavis. A lesser, more commercially minded director probably would have gone with Cameron Diaz, who surely would have turned Mavis all sexy-cutesy and totally glossed over her lost wounded soul. Mavis is one tragically messed-up woman, but thanks to Theron, she's still one of my favorite screen characters of the last year.

Why am I so enamoured? Here are five good reasons.

1. Mavis is me, an insecure writer at a personal and professional crossroads. I can so relate. But don't worry. I'm not about to pack up and head to Kissimmee, Florida, on a whim, determined to reclaim the one that got away (he doesn't even exist), especially if it means breaking up his happy home.

2. She can say things like "Sometimes to heal, a few people have to get hurt," and I still root for her. Mavis is easily the most appealing rom-com anti-heroine since Julia Roberts plotted to steal Cameron Diaz's fiance in My Best Friend's Wedding. And like the prize in that film (one Dermot Mulroney), Patrick Wilson is easy on the eyes, and his Buddy character seems like great husband/father material. But if Mavis can't do better than him, at least she can do more interesting.

3. She's a messy drunk who's even messier with a hangover. A few days ago, a hungover friend of mine was complaining because she never gets hangovers. I imagined her rising and shining -- literally! -- after a night of heavy drinking, smelling and looking like roses. Don't you just hate people like that?! I enjoyed each scene of Mavis waking up fully dressed and face down on her bed. To make matters worse -- but really, better -- she'd reach over for the liter of Coke in bed beside her and take several big gulps. Once, she even burped afterwards. This is how we (i.e., normal folks) do it.

4. She cleans up well. Yeah, we love a sloppy, realistic screen drunk, but who do we love more? Someone who can dust herself off, hit the shower and after some intense primping, look even better than she did the night before, before she started drinking.

5. She doesn't need a man. I knew where Mavis and Matt (Patton Oswalt) were heading from the moment he limped into the movie. (Actually, he was sitting down when we first saw him, but if you've seen the film, you get my drift.) I'm glad that in the end, though, Mavis figured out that there's no shame in driving into your next chapter with no one riding shotgun, without the benefit of a man -- or a game plan. That's my girl!