10.31.2006

SNOWMAN - AND LITTLE CHILDREN


A new movie opening around the country this week is based on the novel Little Children by Tom Perrotta.

The movie stars


The movie stars
Kate Winslet and Jennifer Connelly. What more do you need to know?

The guy, known as The Prom King, in this book has to decide between running off with his summer-girlfriend or sticking around with his beautiful wife. There are plenty of complications to keep you wanting to read straight through to the end.

Connelly appeared in
Seven Minutes in Heaven, a 1985 release that was filmed partly in Nutley and Bloomfield, N.J. She played a high-school girl living alone in a big house who let her best friend, a boy live with her, platonically, of course.

She later played a dutiful wife opposite Russell Crowe in
A Beautiful Mind, a 2001 film that was partly filmed at the former Essex County Isolation Hospital in Belleville, N.J. A portion of that film set is now City Homes at Essex Park whose streets were recently renamed.

I first read New Jersey native Tom Perrotta in
Italian American Writers on New Jersey: An Anthology of Poetry and Prose.

A while ago I ordered Bad Haircut - Stories of the Seventies, and it was so weird to be reading and living on those New Jersey streets again.

I picked up Joe College. Now, that book was such a hoot, I was afraid of becoming Perrottatized! Turns out that I worked with a lot of the same characters Joe College worked with, although a decade earlier and not on a roach coach. But it was all too real to me.

So the latest thing I pick up, and find so hard to put back down, is Little Children. I was a good ways through the book before I remembered reading something about a movie based on the book in my hands.

So I Google Perrotta because I remember reading that he did the screenplay. Well, sure enough, there's the info and a
film trailer on the film made from the words on the pages in my hands.

Now, I'm thinking of these characters in terms of the actresses in their roles.

There are two things to do. 1: Go out and see the movie now that I've finished the book. And 2: pick up the last two Perrotta books I don't have: Election and The Wishbones.




It's the book cover. What's up with the goldfish?
Yes, yes, that's all very good, but by now you want to know why I keep reading this fellow. Don't you? (Why else would you have read this far?)
It goes back to one of the stories in BAD HAIRCUT. The story, SNOWMAN, starts out with two teens on their way to shoot hoops on a super cold north-Jersey winter day. They have a snow shovel to clear the court and a basketball.
Turns out that on the way, they have an altercation with another teen on a bike who gets the best of the teen telling the story.
The would-be basketball players split up when the tale-teller splits with some hoods to go find the kid on the bike to beat him without even gettting off the bike.
So the tale teller and one of his hood friends spy the bike kid staring at a snowman. The bike kid gets away but the hood and the tale-teller stare down the snowman - which is meticulously created and has a dog photo wrapped in plastic.
The boys figure the snowman belongs to the bike kid and the hood smashes it with the crowbar he was carrying to use on the bike kid.
But here's the thing, the story takes a heck of a twist when the boys go into the house to wait for the bike kid to come home.
And though it's been a month or two since I read this story, I still can't get it out of my head.
And that's why I keep reading Perrotta.
Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

10.30.2006

LITTLE CHILDREN Trailer

Little Children trailer, featuring Kate Winslet, Jennifer Connelly and Patrick Wilson. Directed by Todd Field and written by Tom Perrotta.
Imagine having to choose between Jennifer Connelly and Kate Winslet! Tom Perrotta has penned a swell little novel here.

10.28.2006

SWIRLS BEFORE PINE

My Kind Of Spam

If we only knew, maybe we could have helped...

"Quickly. Miles above him. A the dole queue at over from space, but they entered. - clearer ravines, stare into one to see his so tense? - Yes, thats what am I? - Hi, - No, nor why his heads and just fine. - he said. - Hey, come to of time actually here, I only of that you can do idle whose - The cats own tousled become President of Antares (an the wind. As with iron mallets; of I dont.

Another infected chain saw direction but here have it of the original - his heads together not the door, - he representative Arthur was clearly something out to clear idea who? Or beer what they die? - Hey... Yeah! - Look, dont give up fully clear. Somebodys got as my life. large circular - said Ford. - For today should have a lunchtime a long and grinned his job - said Trillian. - What, no... well, - said Slartibartfast turned her head and a small planet Collapsing Hrung is, youll

movement, clapped his reasons whose two-man crew of creation. Arthur blinked at it would have because a home got problems. Chapter 9 Plural Z finally to make it were screaming through the air with life, of the conversation, having merely had become it one poetry at that they become economists, its... - he was like to build another drear morning Arthur Dents house got problems. Arthur once off a single of something. - said Ford ignored to the only archipelago of paper, which contained her again. There

Dentrassi? - he said, they had inevitably settled sharply, shooting people out God bless... Youll ne... ver... walk... alone! - hiker has already usually rich resonant and weve met. - What were of Jaglan Beta; you hear enough so Ive got to account for seven and Column has ever heard. Ive heard rumors about its gleaming brushed steel door very safe that of Arthurs voice was a quick examination of Soulianis and subtle complexity that anything to our race he Im trying ship suddenly dropped to him he said."



 

10.23.2006

WATERLOO VILLAGE, REVISITED

Save a treasure

New Jersey is a state of paradox. Within five days, Star-Ledger readers learned about a group trying to restore a part of the Morris Canal in Wharton and the im pending collapse of the Waterloo Foundation for the Arts. The latter group includes Waterloo Village, a restored 19th-century Morris Canal hamlet.

The first story discussed archaeologists' efforts to involve schoolchildren in the rediscovery of a lost lock of the canal. The lat ter story discussed the cuts in funding to maintain the 400-acre village visited by 35,000 students each year.

As a recent return visitor to Waterloo Village for the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, I can tell you don't need to be Allen Ginsberg to see that the village has seen better days. Despite the beautiful weather on the first day of the festival -- which saw thousands of high school students enjoying the air of enlightenment -- the sun beat down on two dilapidated bridges apparently held together by baling wire and duct tape.

It's much easier to preserve a treasure we have than it will be to return with schoolchildren ages hence to dig for what we intentionally neglected.

-- Anthony Buccino


The above letter to the editor was published in the Star-Ledger on Sunday, Oct. 22, 2006

© 2006 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with permission.


Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

WE'RE NOT IN KANSAS, ARE WE, MISS DOROTHY?


Me oh my, Miss Dorothy, you sure have grown! Umm, you want to play Twister, or something?



 

10.09.2006

ANTHONY'S WORLD

If you can't get enough
of Tonoose's writing here,
Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

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10.01.2006

A WALK IN THE PARK - DOGFEST 2006

Zamboni, our chocolate Labrador retriever, had a great time meeting other dogs, ducks and geese at Dogfest 2006 in Kingsland Park.

Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved

The Gazebo Photo

Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

Zamboni's World

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POETRY IN THE WOODS - Part 5 Wandering Poet


What would the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival be without a wandering poet sharing verse with festive festival goers in the woods of northwestern New Jersey?


Edmund Charles Baranowski, aka TheWanderingPoet has spent the past few years coupling poems with performance.

At the Dodge festival in 2002, he stood up at an open reading and just couldn't get the poem out through his locked voice.


Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.The Wandering Poet discusses verse with Dawn Nordstrom

Later that day, he comandeered an open mic and said to himself he would overcome the blockade between his poetry and speaking it. It worked.

Several hours later, he was asked to relinquish the mic because the festival had been over for an hour.

Baranowski has been touring Rennaissance festivals and poetry festivals. Quite a few poets at the Dodge festival were stopped in their tracks and treated to a poem by the Wandering Poet.


Copyright © 2005-2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.The Wandering Poet with his staff

True to form, The Wandering Poet - who, by the way, has a degre in literature from Rutgers University - prints his own poetry collections - each with 13 poems. He says he adopted the number 13 because everyone else shunned it. He says his mom helps him tie the pages together with yarn.
In addition to treating you to a live spontaneous reading of his poetry, The Wandering Poet carries in a rucksack bound copies of his verse for your reading pleasure at your leisure.

Two of his hand-made books include A PEASANT'S PORTFOLIO and A BAKER'S DOZEN.


Copyright © 2006 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival 2006

Poetry in the Yahoo! Directory

Poetry in the Woods - Part 1
Poetry in the Woods - Part 2
Poetry in the Woods - Part 3
Poetry in the Woods - Part 4

Kind Words from the Poet Laureate of York, Pa.

Afraid of the Water

Yountakah Country