Keys to Surviving a Post Blizzard NYC

• Wear high waterproof boots. Once the snow starts to melt a little bit, rivers of black icky water fill the potholes of NYC and you don’t want to be the one with the gross wet sock all day.
  
• Heads up! As the sun heats up, so do the ice on the buildings. I almost got hit with a small glacier falling from the Bank of New York Building. Scary.
  
• Before leaving your apartment, have a plan. Make sure you know how to get to the subway. It helps to dig a series of tunnels from the sidewalk to the street.
  
• Avoid the yellow snow. The snow seems so beautiful on the first day, but then it becomes city snow. It will turn strange shades of yellow, sometimes brown and then eventually a sickly black. (Another reason you want high waterproof boots).
  
• Is it really a blizzard if I still get my New York Times? For some reason, even the day after a record breaking snowfall, I continue to receive my New York Times. It’s more reliable than the US Postal Service.

What the hell is “Curling” anyway?

Someone recently told me about “Curling” and why they thought it was a strange and slightly amusing Olympic sport. My thoughts were: lifting weights can’t be that strange as an Olympic sport. I soon came to realize that “Curling” was not lifting weights. As I surfed past NBC’s coverage of the XX Olympic Games today, I happened upon “Curling.” The word strange cannot begin to describe this “sport.”

From what I observed, “curling” consists of a team of three people. The game takes place on an area of ice. It almost looks like a shuffleboard court. One team member takes this “rock” (which looks like a slightly smooshed snowball cookie with a handle on the top) kneels down and pushes off in a lunging kneel and slides across the ice and lets go of this “rock.” They all appear to be wearing sneakers. The “pusher” wears a black sneaker and a white sneaker (much like a Ked). The remaining two team members are each holding something that looks like a Swiffer. They wait until the “rock” is launched and furiously “swiff” directly in front of the sliding “rock” without touching it. I think they are trying to “curl” the “rock” to take a certain course. The “rock’s” final destination should be inside of this target like thing at the end of the ice.

I do not understand why this is an Olympic sport. Apparently, this sport has been around since 1867. The hotbed of “Curling” activity at the time was surprisingly, New York City. Today, there is a curling club about 12 miles from Yankee Stadium. It is extremely strange to watch and from an aerial view at the Olympic Games, it looks a bowling alley with people holding brooms.

In watching this for a little while, I have come to the realization that this is probably the only Olympic sport that I could actually accomplish.

What was lost on "Munich"?

Munich is a wonderful depiction of a time in history when politics were confused and the consequences were vicious. Unfortunately, if you are not familiar with the finer political nuances of the early 1970’s, you may be missing some of Munich. After sitting for three hours, one may think one wouldn’t miss a thing, but there is a vague veil that hangs over this film and it takes research either before or after it to pull it back. The film is peppered with rich and beautifully acted scenes masterly directed by Steven Spielberg.

The acting is superb. Eric Bana (The Hulk, Troy) is surprisingly dead-on in his role of Avner, a young Israeli working for his government as the head of a group of five men, killers hired to settle the score with the Palestinians who orchestrated the Munich murders. At first sight you may keep picturing the Hulk, but that feeling soon wears off as he saunters into his character and becomes Avner. Geoffrey Rush (Shine, Shakespeare in Love) plays Ephraim, the man who assembles the team of assassins. As usual, his performance is seamless and wonderfully calculated.

Munich tells the tragic story of the hostage situation and murder of eleven Israelis at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. The film is primarily centered around the Israeli government’s response to this violent attack. The goal: to locate and kill the eleven people allegedly responsible for the murders. A team of five men from very different backgrounds and expertise is created by the Israeli government in a very covert operation. They are given names and pictures and are told to find and kill these eleven men. None of the 5 men has any experience in assassination, but each is skilled in something useful. One man is an expert bomb builder, one a master forger, one we are told is a “worrier” (he winds up cleaning up the gauche crime scenes that the novice assassins leave), etc. These men are not professionals in the government killing scene. The inexperience and stagger in which they approach their jobs is natural and undeniable. The scenes in which subjects are found and ultimately murdered are fraught with emotion and violence. The first of these scenes is a nerve wracking experience (not to mention watching it). Men that have never killed another before, struggle with their emotions and morals as they choose between doing what they have been hired to do and doing what they feel they should. It is a highly energized scene that begins in clumsy indecision and ends decidedly in bloodshed.

Audience reactions to the film were audible. I viewed the film at BAM in Brooklyn on a Sunday afternoon. I purchased my tickets ahead of time out of habit, but thought that I would not have a problem finding a seat. To my amazement, the medium sized theatre was filled by show time. As the tension rose, so did the audiences vocals. One could hear small squeamish groans during the Munich killings. A particular scene, in which a bomb takes the characters, and audience, by surprise resulted in loud gasping and obvious jumping in seats. The audience, on this particular Sunday, were enthralled and openly mesmerized by the film onscreen. I looked around at the faces around me at some point and realized I was surrounded by a truly captive audience.

The first scene in which the five man team bands is around a dinner table, is an interesting portrait of men fumbling to grasp what they have been asked to do and bonding together over a homemade meal. The scene seems all too familiar, like a family gathering or a group of friends chatting and joking. Though Spielberg uses a cheap montage shortly after that goes over the top to push the audience into an emotional reaction to this group of men. The dinner scene alone would have had a better effect without feeling like excess. The necessary feeling was already there.

The film runs 164 minutes. I felt that for the length that it was, too many things remained vague and unanswered. The drawing out of the response to Munich and the killings that followed was time that could have been used to further explain the politics in slightly better detail surrounding these events. A younger audience or one without prior knowledge of the international politics of 1972 will be at a loss after this film ends. Though it is an expertly written, directed and acted film, Munich winds up being slightly inaccessible to a large audience of Americans.

I was on the fence when I left the theatre because I felt it was well worth my $10, but I wished that I had known more about the subject matter going in to the film. Much like a Broadway show, I wondered if I had been better off with a synopsis explaining the events surrounding the Munich killings. In the end, Munich is a very well acted and directed film. For entertainment’s sake alone it is worth seeing. If you are a fan of films, you will be entranced by the beauty and loss that is depicted in this haunting tale woven by Steven Spielberg. You just may leave wanting more.