Originally published 03/18/11 In addition to being a sometimes actress and sometimes writer, I am an almost-all-the-time shopping tour guide.  Giving shopping tours is my day job.  “What’s a shopping tour?” you may ask.  Well, I work for a company called Shop Gotham that gives shopping tours of New York neighborhoods.  Tourists buy the tours online, show up at the designated meeting place, and I take them shopping for three hours.  “That sounds like the best day job ever,” you may be thinking.  Yes, it is. Being exposed to so much fashion has transformed my  sartorial tastes from thrift-store loving, label-disdaining jeans and a T-shirt sort of gal to a vintage-loving, trend-following aesthete.   Simply put, I love fashion.  I love interpreting trends, I love choosing to ignore them.  I retain my distaste for big labels like Tommy Hilfiger, but get excited when I discover a new, creative designer or see a “piece” I absolutely adore.  I love fashion shows, Fashion Police, Project Runway, all of it.  In my opinion I have excellent taste.  Of course. However, fashion gets limited coverage on Fierce and Nerdy because, while undeniably fierce, fashion is rarely nerdy.  Until now.  We’ve seen the rise of nerdy chic in hipster comedies, independent bookstores and the kind of bars that host trivia nights.  But this season these five compelling trends will allow us all to embrace our lovable inner dork… 1.  Elastic Waistbands. “Why?” my husband asked, blinking, as I explained the proliferation of elastic waistbands I’d seen in stores recently. “I’m not sure,” I responded.  “I think because of the popularity of leggings, which have become jean/leggings, or jeggings, and suddenly everybody remembered how comfortable elastic waistbands really are, especially when you’re gorging yourself on craft brews and artisanal cheeses.  So...

FIERCELY ANTICIPATING Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 Every time the trailer for this movie pops up on TV, I gasp and sit up straighter in my seat.  I have been a Harry Potter fan since page one of the novel.  His journey through the multiplex has been rocky, but it’s fun to have watched a cute, boyish Harry Potter become a chiseled, handsome Harry Potter about whom I have had one or two impure thoughts.  (The fact that in real life Daniel Radcliffe stands a mere 4’3 has no bearing on my affection.)  The films have matured along with their young stars, and the juicy supporting cast, killer plot lines and crackerjack special effects promise to make this a surefire hit.   And an Anglophile’s wet dream. Coming July 15. SORT OF WANT TO SEE X-Men: First Class Not even my affinity for the slightly-gay Hugh Jackman could convince me to see the previous X-Men movies. I’ve generally considered this franchise to be thin on plot, high on special effects, and loaded with two-dimensional characters about whom I couldn’t be bothered to give a shit.  In other words, not my kind of movie.  So what does First Class have that the rest of them haven’t?  Answer:  James McAvoy.  My husband and I “discovered” him when The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was playing innocently in the background on ABC Family or something.  We were sucked in by McAvoy’s simple, playful elf.  (Or troll.  Or whatever he was.)  Just recently the two of us were lamenting that the talented McAvoy had disappeared from Hollywood.  (Why wasn’t he in the cast of Inception, for example?)  But then we saw his mug staring down at us unexpectedly during previews for this movie, and now...

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must confess that while I live in New York and am a member of the theatre community, I have not seen every production nominated this year.   Nor have I attempted to predict who the winners will be in categories out of my realm of expertise  (lighting and sound design, orchestrations, et cetera).  But as a fairly well-connected theatre insider, I do feel qualified to predict the winners or front runners in almost all categories.   Read on… part of the fun is the debate that will ensue! Best Play: War Horse While Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem may be a superior play on paper, War Horse’s astonishing theatricality and emotional  punch make it the must-have ticket of the season.  Tony voters will act accordingly. Best Musical:  Book of Mormon This one’s a no-brainer.  Unless you live under a rock– and that rock isn’t in Utah– you’ve heard that Book of Mormon is the smartest, funniest, most heartfelt show produced on Broadway in the last ten years.  And while you may or may not believe the hype surrounding the show, you have to concede that it’s a shoo-in for Best Musical. Best Book of a Musical:  Book of Mormon For reasons listed above. Best Original Score:  Book of Mormon Wait a minute, am I predicting a sweep?  I certainly am.  Book of Mormon will be like Producers circa 2002.  However, some musical theatre snobs quietly believe that David Yazbek’s Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown was unfairly maligned and is, at least on CD, the best recording of the season. Best Revival of a Play: Importance of Being Earnest I’ve chosen Earnest based on populist excitement over this revival.  Simply put, everyone has seen it.  Not only is it...

With the most obvious NY theatre territory already reviewed (I’m referring of course to Ryan Dixon’s excellent review of Spiderman), I turn my sights to three other productions opening in New York this winter.  They range from the new work of a Pulitzer Prize finalist to the polished-till-it-almost-shines turd from Frank Wildhorn.  Read on… FIERCELY ANTICIPATING Gruesome Playground Injuries (Off-Broadway) Last year Rajiv Joseph was named a Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist for Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, joining the ranks of Christopher Durang  (Miss Witherspoon) and Sarah Ruhl (The Clean House).  While I understand the Oscars and the Tonys are clearly the products of well-oiled political and marketing machines, I naively hold onto the hope that the Pulitzer sits above any sort of prize-hungry antics.   Bengal Tiger opens on Broadway this spring starring Robin Williams and directed by Moises Kaufman, but I’m not as excited to see that one.  Because in Gruesome Playground Injuries, I get to see one of my favorite actresses from my favorite television show sharing a stage with fellow Carnegie Mellon alum Pablo Schreiber. For those of you who don’t watch Dexter, Jennifer Carpenter’s work as the title character’s tough-yet-vulnerable kid sister defies all legitimate words of praise.  I am forced to resort to my native dialect, that of music theatre gay:  Carpenter is giving it to you.  Always understated and very intense, Carpenter inhabits a smart character by making sharp, unexpected acting choices.  And while I haven’t seen Schreiber’s work since his junior year production of Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune , which he has assured me is his worst work to date, I am nonetheless excited to see him in this play.   And I should be able to get my fill of these...

Fiercely Anticipating An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination:  A Memoir by Elizabeth McCracken (Little, Brown & Company) The figment of McCracken’s imagination is in this case her stillborn child.  Initially I thought, “Why on earth would anyone want to read a memoir about that?”  Accolades from Oprah didn’t convince me, nor did glowing reviews from the NY Times, the Washington Post or Entertainment Weekly.  No, it was NPR that finally sat me down on a snowy Saturday, as usual, to quietly nudge my tastes in the appropriate direction with Lori Gottleib’s enthusiastic review on All Things Considered. But is ‘appropriate’ really the best word to use when describing interest in a book that describes the devastatingly painful journey McCracken took when, after eight months of an “idyllic” pregnancy, she discovered she could no longer hear her baby’s heartbeat?  Well, yes.  This is a woman who, when pressed by the authorities for a name to put on her baby’s death certificate, supplied the name she’d called him in utero— Pudding.  She tempers unflinching reflections on the fleetingness of life with just the right combination of candidness and humor.  “I don’t even know what I would have wanted someone to say,” McCracken writes. “Not: It will be better. Not: You don’t think you’ll live through this, but you will. Maybe: Tomorrow you will spontaneously combust. … That might have comforted me.” Granted, McCracken relieves the tension somewhat by stating in the very beginning that a second, healthy baby sits on her lap as she writes.  In McCracken’s capable hands what could have been a tragic, sentimental tale becomes a courageous homage to the endurance of the human spirit.   I feel this memoir will be to stillbirth what Anne Lamott’s A Journal of My Son’s...