"if it's good news, it must be someone else's"

Friday, July 31, 2009

937. julie and julia

i'm reading the book before i see the movie.
and i have to admit, it's enjoyably inspiring.
it is also very, very funny.
the short plot version goes something like this.
julie, who is going nowhere painfully slow in her dismal secretarial job, decides to undertake a project to fill her life with something meaningful.
she sets out to prepare every recipe in julia child's first cookbook, mastering the art of french cooking—a kitchen talisman to the blah betty crocker set of the june cleaver era—within one year.
and she blogs about the project, which after some success she tranlates into this book about her project, her painfully slow nowhere life and the parallels to Julia Childs' own memoir.
julie and julia has quickly become a wild success, and is now the subject of a nora ephron movie, which i can't wait to see.
a great american rags-to-riches story if ever there was.
and it's with my obligatory getting-in-touch-with-someone-else's-feminine-side assignment that i undertake this effort as part of the keaton/bob healthy relationship plan.
but this is one obligatory that is a breeze thanks to julie, her story, and her natural sense of humor.
she is one funny, dream-come-true desperado.
she reminds me of the character juno, from the movie of the same name, ten years older.
a sometimes irreverent, sometimes sensitive, always wild wordsmither of wit, who can slice through a phony with the same ease as through a bologne.

her blog, book and movie have arrived at a time when i need a shot of inspiration, if not a dollop of rich marrow sauce on the next steak i sneak in the house.
don't we all.
it's like a new tune that i can't get out of my head, after i had already conceded that there could not be and would not be another.
or that perfect dinner, when everything comes together, including the conversation, and it's hard to separate the food from the voices from the visions from the transcended state of mind.

enough said—any more and i might just become downright womanly.
not congenial to my brutish, manly ways.

3 comments:

itsmecissy said...

I can't wait for this movie to open either bob. Out here it's next Friday, August 7th.

I heard a good review of 'Funny People' this morning. Guess I gotta see that one too.

Anonymous said...

Read the book on a western road trip. It was wickedly funny in parts and I loved her foul language. Can't wait for the movie.

Robert Crane said...

itsmissy: yeah, with your love of cooking i imagine you as kind of a west coast version of julie.

joan: welcome! thanks for taking the time to comment. julie strikes me as a character and a half! can't wait to see what nora ephron, who is also a character and a half, does with julie's persona. should be a good one.