Staycation 2010(R) Day Two, and a bit of Day Three (or, a not so exciting thing happened on the way to the Forum)

I woke up this morning thinking about my taxes. Or rather, the Herculean feat that will be my taxes, circa 2009, circa waiting-on-the-w2-to-work-out-the-two-state-nightmare form filing season. Let me recap.

January. New Year. Living in California. The state practically falls apart fiscally. June rolls around. I roll out.

Now New York. First need to figure out the new tax system. Next need to figure out the calculations for Calif. Then need to figure out the calculations for New York. Pro-rating twice, city tax and not to mention write-offs (where to apply?) and applicable laws and debits and donations and slovenly, break-your-calculator-type worksheets and side forms.

I woke up to this today. After the nightmare of moving to Florida.

* * *

About The White Ribbon. I took the time out of my busy neuroses yesterday to view this film, running down to the Film Forum to check it out.

First off, it looks lovely. Black & white, pre-WWI farm village, slightly European pastoral, if you take European pastoral to mean a slight distrust for the more rural of settings and people to the point that everything surrounding is banal to the point of creepy. (Side note: replace banal with folksy in that sentence and you get the American version of this phenomenon.)

Anyway, the movie is a lot to digest, essentially a frame around a teacher's growing disenchantment in this village where a bunch of bizarre incidents and brutalities happen, and the weirdest bunch of kids since either Village of the Damned or Children of the Corn.

I can recommend, but don't be afraid to be disappointed.