The Creator of The "Anthora"

If you recognize this cup, you've been in New York sometime in the last half century. It's been squeezed out by the tall, grande and venti cups (by whatever name), but it's a NYC staple. Leslie Buck, the creator of the "Anthora" (that's the cup's model name...who knew paper cups had names?) has died, but his paper cup lives on. Immortality is a strange thing.

Charming Performers vs. Underthought Dialogue

The Spouse and I decided to go see a movie tonight, despite the fact that there wasn't anything we really were crazy to see. So we settled for rom-com. As it turns out, uninspired rom-com about a woman who gets pregnant via artificial insemination, then meets the guy of her dreams, after which confusion ensues..

Jennifer Lopez and Alex O'Loughlin (plus a double-handful of fine players--Tom Bosley, Linda Lavin, Melissa McCarthy) are really ingratiating in Backup Plan. And there are funny moments. And the situation, while sit-commy, is still amusing enough. But the dialogue in every major confrontation between Zoe (Lopez) and Stan* (O'Loughlin) is so soggy that I found myself bouncing in my seat, muttering, "No, that's not what he means, what he means is..." And not because the writer was aiming for inarticulateness, but because the writer settled for pretty-much-kinda-what-I-was-going-for at just about every turn.

My other problem--and this is something that drives me crazy in Nora Ephron films and Nancy Meyer films--is that while we're told that Our Heroine is a businesswoman (sold the stock options from her highly-successful stint in a dot-com and bought a pet store) we never see her at work. Even Our Hero, who makes goat cheese, seems to actually work at his work (at least, he drives a tractor with his shirt off, and is going to night school to finish his degree). But Zoe breezes into the pet store twice--to gossip with her two employees--and spends the rest of the time sitting around her apartment, going to doctor's apartments, and hanging with her best friend and her single-mother's support group. Would it have killed them to give us twenty seconds of Zoe selling a leash to someone, or getting the books ready to take to the accountant? Something that suggests that she's actually working?

Le sigh.


*Stan? What kind of a rom-com name is that for the hero? Really?