Jeremy Blachman's Weblog: 2009

My Grandma Reviews: The X-Files

"I wanted to leave right in the middle!  All you see is people not in regular neighborhoods, but in very very remote locations, not neighborhoods where you can see normal things going on, normal people.  And it was very dark, the whole movie.  I think it was one of the worst things I've seen.  I was watching old movies on television last night -- Charlie Chaplin -- I think it was fascinating, he was able to keep my interest, no talking, just him on the TV, and the way he made me laugh -- much better than this movie I saw today."

My Grandma Reviews: "Mamma Mia"

There was a lot of action, but one thing doesn't seem to be connected with another.  I've seen so many wonderful pictures in my life, I can't say I was thrilled with this movie.  It was mostly music, only a little bit of it was talking.  The whole thing wasn't important.  There wasn't a good plot.  People used to think of things that were real.  This thing, maybe if you never saw a musical before, you'd be thrilled.  But I've seen musicals.  The singing wasn't good at all.  They're singing but their voices weren't very good, they aren't really carrying the tune properly all the time.  The end became serious, or at least it tried to be, but it didn't do anything at all for me.  It wasn't imaginative, I don't know what they give you today.  A lot of people pushed together and singing and then they walk away, the acting all looked fake, it wasn't real, it wasn't stimulating at all.

My Grandma Reviews: Hancock

"Terrible, for me.  I didn't even want to keep watching it.  There was somebody in it who was famous.  I know I've seen movies with him in it before.  It had a lot of action, but constantly, they didn't stop.  It wasn't real.  I like realism.  And young people like this type of thing.  You would probably think it's a good movie.  They're constantly doing something.  On the ground, in the air.  I want realism, where people have problems and they show you how to solve them.  Or love stories.  You can't even keep track, it's so fast.  They're jumping on the water, into the sky, it certainly wasn't my kind of movie.  I couldn't wait until it was over.  I'm beginning to say to myself, it's not that it's bad, I just don't like these kinds of movies.  It's me.  Not the movies.  They have to have action today.  You don't see a movie where people sit down and talk about things.  You just see him jumping up and down and around.  I don't know.

And then we ate dinner and I came back to the house and I've been watching the Mets game.  They've been doing so well lately.  Maybe they were threatened they would lose their jobs.  All of a sudden they all got so good.  I know they have the new manager, but he stands in the dugout, he never smiles, he seems like he is not enjoying himself, so I don't know if he is the one motivating them, but something must be going on because all week they have been winning every game."

My Grandma Reviews! "You Don't Mess With The Zohan"

I wasn't actually sitting in front of the computer when I talked to my grandma earlier today, and even though she went to the movies with her friends on Saturday -- for the first time since her stroke -- I didn't expect she'd actually have anything to say about the film.  But I was very, very excited and pleased that she was able to follow the movie, had a good time, and had actual things to say about it -- and had I pressed for more, I probably could have gotten a real post out of this.  But what she said about it: very crude, and especially when Zohan was having sex with the elderly people, that's not the kind of thing elderly people would enjoy seeing, it seemed like they were making fun of them, and certainly that's not what happens in the salon she goes to (I should hope not!).  She thought the hummus gags were funny (as did I, when I saw the film), but the whole thing lacked substance and she didn't think it really had anything much to say about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  She's not sure why it was a movie, why anyone thought this was a movie worth making.  So her opinion of movies has not changed much, and yet at the same time she enjoyed going and hopefully she'll get back in this routine with her friends and go again next week -- she's worried they didn't have as good a time, because she was there with her aide, but I expect they had the same kind of time they had before, and it's all fine.

I got to see her a bunch while I was home and I'd say she's 70% back to herself overall -- she's having trouble with some small stuff, she's not really able to decipher menus and make sense of money (she doesn't seem to be able to remember what different kinds of things typically cost, which seems like a very specific thing to be having trouble with), but for the most part eating out lunch with her was good, and more and more I'm finding that she's back to herself as far as following conversations and being able to talk about things beyond the stroke and being able to be a part of my life and of the lives of the rest of her family and friends without any real change, so that's good.  And she's seeing a psychiatrist on Wednesday for the first time, who will perhaps (and perhaps hopefully) get her on some sort of anti-depressant to help her feel even more back to herself.  More than before, having now spent some real time with her post-stroke and post-hospital and post-rehab, I feel like she really dodged a bullet and was really really lucky that her deficits are pretty minimal, and that it's likely depression more than anything else that's causing most of her problems at this point, besides some task-related stuff, and the reading that doesn't seem to be coming back, at least not very quickly.  But hopefully eventually.

Grandma update

I wanted to write a post about my grandma today, something like a My Grandma Reviews: What She's Been Going Through.  She's been back at home for about a week now, having physical therapy and occupational therapy and language therapy each day at the house for about an hour, and spending the rest of the day not doing all that much, and she's had good days and bad days as far as her mood and energy level, probably partly because the medications she's taking are still being adjusted and partly because she's bored sitting around the house and partly because she's a little down about her situation and all of this having happened.

Her deficits from the stroke are pretty minor all things considered, but still pretty devastating for someone who was living independently and getting around really well by herself, going places and doing things every day.  She can't read yet, unfortunately.  We're hoping that'll come back.  I keep pushing my mom to go over to her house with some children's books and try to push with the pictures and help her figure out the words and try to regain some of the reading.  I'm not entirely sure what her brain is seeing and not seeing as far as what's making the reading difficult -- like, she's seeing the letters but it seems like, from what she's saying, she can't really process them into words and get meaning from them.  But the brain is weird -- she can write without much problem -- if someone dictates words, she can write them; if she wants to take down someone's name or phone number, she's able to do that; she's able to translate print to script or script to print without a problem; she just can't read any of it back.  So that's frustrating to her.  She's also having trouble remembering names, although that seems to come and go -- it doesn't seem like there's a lot of memory loss more widespread than that, but names of anyone outside of her family are escaping her at times.  And she's a little wobbly on her feet, but walking unassisted without too much trouble and the unsteadiness is likely more due to the blood thinner they've put her on than anything stroke-related.

What's perhaps frustrating her most is that she's completely self-aware about everything that's going on.  She's been talking about how what's most crazy about all of this is that in conversation with her friends, no one feels like anything is wrong with her.  She had some friends visit and she said she was completely able to fake it, she can follow enough of the conversation that she seemed completely herself and they kept telling her she seems back to normal and nothing's wrong -- but she knows she isn't processing information in the same way, and that the gears are moving more slowly in her head, but when she says that, no one believes her.  And she feels like when she talks to people they expect her to be the same person she was, and she doesn't really feel like they understand what's going on, because she seems so much herself. 

It's been hard for her to sit in the house all day, because she's not used to it.  She has a full-time aide with her for now, and she likes the aide, but it's not really company in any fulfilling way.  It seems like there are days when she's been a little more energetic, and she's taken a walk with the aide, and she's been able to watch TV and get engaged with whatever's on, but there have also been a couple of days (like today) when she's saying that she's not understanding the TV as well as she was yesterday, and the people are talking too fast for her to fully process, and that's really scary for her, because she feels like it means she's going downhill and not getting better.  But at the same time, in conversation on the phone, she's lucid and with it and able to articulate everything that's going on, and ask questions about what's going on with me, and it's a normal conversation, and she remembers what we've already talked about and there's not really a noticeable cognitive deficit.  The biggest difference from before, just on the phone, is that she's pretty clearly quite sad and bored and doesn't know what to do with herself.

So the challenge at this point, I guess, is to figure out how to add back some routine and meaning into her life -- to figure out what she's able to do and derive pleasure from, and try to start stacking her day with those types of activities.  Which will be easier once the therapy ends a week from now, because she'll have the day free to go somewhere.  But it'll also be harder, because she won't have those three hours of activity and it will really be about filling the entire day, somehow, with stuff to do that can keep her mind off of just sitting there and feeling sorry for her situation.

I'm not sure I think being at home with the aide is the best situation for her in the medium- or longer-term.  But we're not sure she's functional enough for something like assisted living, where she'd be on her own in a small apartment -- I'm not sure she can do things like work the remote control for the TV, or cook for herself (not that she'd have to do any cooking, but even just to boil water and remember to turn off the gas -- I *think* she'd be okay with things like that, but I'm not sure, and we haven't really had the chance to test it and see).  If she could be in assisted living, at least there would be people around her that she could spend the day with, and activities and meals and socialization without having to get on a bus or in a taxi and go somewhere.  But it would also take a big adjustment to be out of her house and in an unfamiliar place.  So I don't know where the scale would balance, and it's not really up to me anyway.

So given that for now she's at home with the aide, I keep trying to think of things she can be doing.  Not that she's going to play with toys or anything like that.  But without the ability to read, or the mobility to be doing anything more active than taking a walk outside or getting in a taxi and going somewhere, I'm not sure how she's supposed to fill her days.  I'm not sure how anyone fills their days, really.  I'm not sure how I fill my days, sometimes.

It's weird to me to think about how tenuous our hold on happiness and fulfillment really is -- everything, when analyzed enough, can be stripped of all its meaning pretty easily.  I'm writing a script right now that I can either care about or not.  People will either read it or they won't.  Thousands and thousands of people write things, and very few of them get anywhere "real".  Yet there's still that drive to write.  Without that drive, what is really the "reason" for doing anything?  Historians, scientists, anyone can spend years working on a paper or a book that not many people will read, and won't change the course of the world, but still they do it.  People get themselves to care about a lot of things that, objectively, might not be that important to care about.  But once you lose that feeling -- once you stop caring about too many things -- you're in this hole that you can't dig out of.  My agent sent me a stack of pilots for the fall -- some coming to TV, some rejected.  And some of them I watch and am really impressed by, and can see why the writer cared, and can see the inspiration and energy behind them.  And some of them I watch and can't see how anyone could care, and think about the hours spent writing, casting, filming, and it's all for what?  For a mediocre 22 minutes of tape that a hundred people will see, on DVD from their agents, and all hundred of us will think it's a waste anyway.  Okay, clearly, I'm getting to an unhealthy place here, and it's become entirely about me and not about my grandma.  But I did have a point in here somewhere...

Okay, here's my point.  I want suggestions for things my grandma might be able to do to regain that feeling of satisfaction about her day, activities and pursuits that can give her days some meaning or at least some distraction.  What do your grandparents or parents do with their days when they've lost some of their mobility or energy?  Or is it just about sitting there in front of the TV, sadly, waiting to die?  She gets pleasure from talking to me, she gets pleasure from talking to the rest of her family and to her friends.  But there's a limit to how much pleasure she's really getting from being on the phone, or having visitors come and see her.  And once the therapy ends and her days are more available to her, I'm hoping she'll get back into a routine, and start going to the senior center again for classes, even if she's not able to get as much out of them... but I'm worried she won't want to get back into that routine, and that she's setting herself up to just sit there in the house feeling sorry for herself.  And I don't know how to prevent that, or make her see that there are still things she can enjoy and get pleasure from.

I told her to try writing about what she's feeling, even if she can't write the words as quickly as she can think them -- that the aide could take them down, or I could take them down, but that maybe it would help her if she tried to tell the story of what's going on in her head.  And she said she doesn't know if she has the energy for that, but maybe she'll try.  I don't know.  It's sad to get old.

Uh Oh

And just when I posted a picture of her on the blog...

My grandma apparently just had a stroke, or a mini-stroke, or a transient ischemic attack that hopefully -- hopefully -- will resolve itself.  I spoke to her on the phone this afternoon at about 6:30 eastern -- before any of this -- and she seemed okay.  But then half an hour later my mom called me -- apparently my grandma called her to say she was feeling funny, and my stepdad drove over to her house and she wasn't making sense when she talked.  So they called an ambulance and she's in the emergency room now and they just took a cat scan.  Physically she's okay, so that's a good thing -- doesn't seem to have muscle weakness, etc -- but her memory doesn't seem quite right and she's confused and isn't sure what's going on.

Hopefully since we're in some time window they can give her a treatment that will hopefully make things better but I don't know anything really, and having been back in LA for 24 hours I just booked a flight back to NY that leaves 3 hours from now and gets me in at 6AM, because as soon as I had to ask the question I figure it's better to fly.  In any case, pray for her.  I know I am.

At least this is happening post my mom's surgery and not during it.  I don't know how people deal with these things, I really don't.  I'm having enough trouble having articulable thoughts and making words and all that.

I Just Got a Request From a Reader...

...to post a photo of my grandma so you can put a face to her reviews, if you like.  Here she is:

My Grandma Reviews: "Iron Man"

My grandma turned 92 yesterday.  We didn't really get a chance to do anything to celebrate -- my mom came home from the hospital yesterday evening, and is doing pretty well... laparoscopic surgery seems an awful lot easier/faster to recover from than open surgery....  In any case, my grandma went to the movies today and saw Iron Man -- I convinced her that would be better than the one her friends were pushing, "What Happens In Vegas...," which got pretty terrible reviews.

"I was fascinated with the photography, how they have him going up, shooting up to the sky.  I couldn't really analyze what was going on, you have to know about computers and pressing buttons and things like that, but I was definitely interested.  And, you know, what made it more tolerable than just a picture about crazy things, the fact that there were human beings involved in this, they didn't just leave human beings on the Earth and go up to the sky with aliens and creatures, but the whole picture was actually about human beings and so you could relate to it a little but.  But the photography, how they film these things....  As you know, I used to be a photography nut, developing my own pictures and enlarging them and always I was aware of beautiful pictures with the sky, sunlight, moonlight, and the clouds, so I'm very much interested in this kind of thing.  And this movie was like a million pictures I couldn't believe -- they soar through the sky and come back to Earth and it was just magnificent the way they did this photography, with the computers, and made it look like this.  It was just amazing to watch even if you didn't know what exactly was happening.  And it got me thinking, who knows, maybe 150 years from now we'll go into the sky, people will just press a button and be flying through the air.  You never know what this world will be like, maybe in 150 or 200 years, this is how people will be living.

But [one of my friends], she's a nut.  The Mets had a doubleheader today because of the rain yesterday, and she can't miss a game, she took her radio with her, and while she's watching the picture she's listening to the game, she keeps it very low in her ears.  I don't know how the people around her don't seem to hear it, or how she's even able to pay attention to anything, the game or the movie, but she's a nut.  She's complaining even though they won, she's complaining that the manager, they ought to fire him, I don't know what she was saying.  And I was surprised she even went to the movies when a game was on, but I know why she went.  It's so strange.  The manager keeps letting us in for free.  And she loves a bargain.  Why is that?  We want to know!  We're there every Saturday and lately, he won't let us pay.  I mean, I guess he sees three little old ladies and feels bad for us, but it's very awkward.  They won't take our money.  And it's not like we tell him we can't afford it.  I go up to the ticket line and the woman just waves us in, tells us to go to the front and the manager will take care of us.  Every cashier now, they all seem to know, and they just let us in for free.  And [my friend], she loves a bargain.  Otherwise she wouldn't come, especially with the game on, but saving even a penny means a lot to her.  If she can save a nickel in the supermarket, she gets so excited, she tells us about it, like it's a hundred dollars to her.  I'm glad she got home in time to watch the second game of the doubleheader though.

Here's something else I'm confused about.  The cab I took.  You know, I always call the same company, usually a few times a week when I don't feel like going on the bus to the senior center, or on Saturdays to the movies when I don't take the Access-A-Ride.  But it's not like it's every day or anything.  And it's not like they know me or when my birthday is.  But yet somehow, I don't know -- I called up to get a cab and the woman on the phone asks me where was I yesterday, and how am I doing, and wishes me a Happy Birthday.  And then -- it gets even more bizarre -- I'm in the cab, and the driver stops at their offices on Avenue U and the woman comes out and gives me a beautiful rose.  You know, wrapped up in plastic like the way they sell them.  I mean, I'm not her friend, and on the phone sometimes I don't know if it's even this girl or another girl answering, and I  never say "how are you" or anything like that, because I don't want to say it to someone else if it's not the girl I always talk to, and I know there's more than one of them.  But I'm not her friend.  And I don't know how she knew it was my birthday!  And why she's making such a big deal about it.  I don't know her personally.  I saw her, she brought the flower out.  And I didn't even realize -- I thought it was a young girl who answers the phone, but she's not -- she looked like she was about 60 years old.  So I definitely don't know this woman.  It's all very strange.

And I got this wonderful card from [my other friends], they said they're gonna take me out for my birthday.  Which is nice of them, but it makes me uncomfortable -- I didn't do anything for their birthday, and I don't want people making such a fuss.  It's not like I feel any different now, at 92 instead of 91.  Do people just think that once you're this age, they better pay attention to your birthday because this one might be it?  Maybe they just know i've had this trouble with your mother's health, but still.  I had to make all these calls when I got home -- and I was tired!"

A Poem By My Grandma

My grandma is in a poetry workshop at a senior center where she takes classes.  Tomorrow they're doing a "reading" at lunch -- each of them gets up and reads one of their poems, and the audience is "held captive," she said -- "they don't get to eat until everyone is done."  She read me her poem and I thought I'd share it.  Here it is:

"What Is Old Age?"

I look in the mirror and what do I see
Red-rimmed eyes, deep wrinkles, and white hair staring back at me
But I don't care
When I look deeper and beneath the surface
Past the superficial outside to what's really inside
Each wrinkle is an experience, each one a tear
My eyes red from looking at the world all these years
My white hair a symbol of the things I have done
The people I have touched and who have touched me
I don't fret
I am glad for the red eyes, the wrinkled skin, and white hair
They are my memories

My Grandma Reviews: "Made of Honor"

"They're crazy.  Making movies like this, that aren't about normal people.  It was a fairy tale.  That's all it was.  It's so unnatural.  He's in love with her, but it's so stupid, he won't just tell her, and then right at the end, he hurries and goes over these mountains in his car just to get there right at the moment before the priest says she's married to this other.  And he gets there right in the nick of time, and of course she turns to him, right as he's going to pronounce them married, and she walks away from this other guy and into his arms.  A happy ending that everyone in the theater knew was coming and was so contrived and silly.  And the way everyone in this movie talks, like all of these movies for young people.  They're kissing each other constantly.  In public, in a crowd, all the time.  People don't act that way.  They're unreal.  Like plastic dolls.  I'd love to hear some reviews of this, what the critics say."

"Okay, sure.  Well, 86% of the reviews were negative."

"Hallelujah!  I thought I was the only one, the way some of these people laugh at the stupidest things in the theater!"

"Okay, here's some of the review quotes: 'Made of Dreck is more like it.'"

"Ha, exactly.  You know, "dreck" is Jewish for "shit."  Did you know that?  They use a word like that in the newspaper?  I didn't think they were allowed to use words like that.  But, yes, that describes the movie perfectly.  What else?"

"[from Rotten Tomatoes:] 'This is silly stuff, made of cardboard, with one of those Gordian-knot plots that could easily be cut through by one person's simply being honest with another person for 30 whole seconds. There's not much more to say.'  'Pretty awful and awfully predictable ... it's a sappy and stupid romance about characters who feel about as real as plastic action figures.' 'It’s hard to sympathize with characters who bear no resemblance to any existing member of the human species.'  'It's offensive because it's so incredibly, almost supernaturally, stupid.'"

"Yes!  Is your grandma right, or what?  At least the reviews agree with me.  I know they don't always.  But if they didn't for this one, I swear, I would give up.  I would stop going to the movies.  I want to see something in depth.  Not like there where they're unreal, completely.  Caricatures.  People in the ladies room said it was cute.  Why don't these people recognize how fake it all is, why don't these people have any standards?  Not just the people in the ladies room, but the people who make these things?  So many people expect so little.  They're so shallow.  And they don't remember what real entertainment used to be like.  People say, oh, it was cute.  What was cute about it?  It was a waste of time.  And why was it set in Scotland anyway?  Just for the scenery, not for the reality of it.  Ooh, mountains.  Ooh, trees.  This is what they think people need.  Just put some pretty people in a pretty place and no one will care about the plot or the characters or anything that's going on, like they're mesmerized by the mere fact it's in Scotland.  How easy it must be to put something like this together.  Just take a pretty person, why not put them on the moon?  You don't even need any dialogue, just have her stand there and smile, on the moon, for two hours.  [One of my friends] didn't like it, thank God.  Except she liked that garbage we saw last time, that Sarah Marshall thing.  Which, again, people say, oh, it was cute.  No, it was vulgar and sexual and offensive.  [My other friend] is very stubborn -- and yet we keep listening to her.  It's like she has to defend these things.  If she recommends it, she'll fight to the death insisting she was right and it was funny.  All these terrible pictures she recommends, and then she tries to defend them.  I watch her in the theater, and she'll laugh, all the time, while I'm looking at it in disgust.  I think it's an act.  I think she laughs because she knows if she doesn't laugh, the two of us will tell her, see, you picked a bad movie, and then she'll feel bad.  I don't think she has good values, some of the things she finds funny.  I don't know.  I'm glad you read me these reviews, I assumed this movie had all good reviews and there was something wrong with me." 

"Nope, mostly bad reviews."

"And one more thing.  And I usually don't care about this, but I happened to notice.  I'll tell you -- there was one older person in the movie, I guess she was the bride's grandmother.  The only old person in the movie, and all she was there for was so that they could make fun of her.  They make such fun of her, they ridicule her.  They make her look helpless and stupid, and she's wearing some ridiculous thing around her neck, and it's like they think she's an animal at the zoo, and all they do is ridicule her.  This is what young people think of older people these days.  I'm afraid for it.  These stupid young people think oh, an old person, she must be incompetent.  Never, in any of these movies, do you ever see older people in any other role except to be laughed at.  And there are so many wonderful things someone could write about, things that are true to life, real drama that happens to real people.  Instead, all they wanted to do here is show off the figures of these young women -- and they did have beautiful figures -- but they think that's enough to get an audience, people come to view a sexy little thing in a slinky dress.  And it's so stupid.  She's kissing both of these guys before she gets married, and then he has this phony little dilemma right at the end, he's going to leave and then, no, he has to turn around and stop the wedding at the very last minute, as if the whole point was to wait until the very very last minute just so they had a movie long enough to put in the theater.  There was a nice-looking, intelligent-looking girl who sat in front of us, and then she was in the seafood restaurant afterwards, where we go, across from the movie theater, and I looked at her and asked how she liked the movie, and she said it was very cute.  Ugh.  She had lobster. Twenty-three dollars.  I don't know how people spend all that money on themselves.  I mean, if you go to a good restaurant I know you have to spend $25 on a dish for yourself.  But as an every day thing?  Twenty-five dollars used to be real money.  And she cut the lobster up very small and boy was she enjoying it -- she really was.  And how I used to love lobster, I really did.  But I don't want to spend $23 on myself.  It's silly to feel that way, probably.  But that's how I feel.  It's stupid in a way, I know.  But what can I do?"