Mishna Wolff

Forest ranger Finn Wheeler is newly assigned to the small town of Beaverfield, which is currently divied over a proposal to build a pipeline. Some of the residents welcome the pipeline because they'll be well-paid for it, while others feel that it would mar the area's natural beauty.

As a severe snowstorm blocks the way out and something busts up all of the town's generators, the town is suddenly faced with a killer in its midst. Chachi, a small dog owned by one of the residents, gets taken, show more and a local man everyone had thought had left with his mistress is discovered dead, partially eaten, and stuffed under his house. As the town devolves into paranoia, the new ranger tries to figure out what's going on.

I haven't played the game this is based on, but I got the impression that the folks who made this movie decided to take a page out of the Clue book when it came to adapting the game. This had a weird, quirky, and entertaining energy that reminded me a lot of the Clue movie.

The movie started with a Mr. Rogers quote, which was fitting since he was basically Finn's patron saint. All Finn wanted was for everyone to get along and support each other like a proper small community. Instead, folks were more inclined to look after themselves and their loved ones and leave everyone else to whatever fate awaited them.

In addition to its newest resident, Beaverfield had a sarcastic postal lady, a rich gay couple, a couple of hicks, a scary loner, grabby Mr. Anderton, and his Trumpish wife Trish. It was like the cast of the cozy mystery dialed up to maximum. Finn, a wet washcloth of a man who spent his trip to Beaverfield listening to a motivational recording in an effort to grow a spine, rounded things out. My favorite of the bunch was probably the environmentalist who didn't do emotions - hurray for stiff, weird scientist lady!

Overall, this was funny, not terribly gory, and entertaining. I'd rank it up there with Clue in terms of movie adaptations of games, despite the fact that it lacks Tim Curry.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

Spotted the cover (how could it be missed!?!) and right to the shopping cart this one went! Got home, opened the book, and `straight up' took to the humor. What other way does one parlay "she was shy, uncool, and painfully white" up against "too black to fit in with her white classmates"? The best way to invest in this very painful observation is to stroke it with humor, which Mishna does well.

A little piece along however, I did sour on the uneven (at times) tone in the little ones' voices. show more Sounded too much like adult POV's being stressed. Ultimately I choose not to harp on it because once I moved closer to the end, Mishna's story really blossomed into a memoir to treasure. No words other than Mishna's can upright a distressing childhood that humored me, annoyed me, saddened me, made me angry to the point of restructuring this comment... and then warmed my heart to the bittersweet end. Mishna touched on a key point; short-sightedness! ...in which depending on the visionary, it means something different to every one of us.

I'm Down is a hard run up against a brave, beautifully won race. I loved, loved this memoir! show less

An amusing, absorbing, fresh memoir unlike any other I have read. Funny, sometimes heartbreaking, the author shares her life through age 14, leaving me hungry to know what high school and young adulthood were like for her. As the sole white kid (other than her sister) at school, track team, day care, church...her childhood in Seattle was not like the black kids and not like the white kids. Then she is sent to a private school, where everyone has enough to eat and no one understands what it show more is like to be poor. But she comes to realize that many of those upperclass kids have their own kind of poverty and deprivation in their families. show less

I actually enjoyed reading this book from beginning to end. The author, Mishna Wolff, bravely writes with humor about such sensitive topics as race, class, and parenting. The main focus of the book is the story of her father identifying with black culture so much that he decided to act like a "black man" and, among other things, to raise Mishna and her younger sister in a predominately black, low-income neighborhood in Seattle. Mr. Wolff (who, like Mishna and her younger sister, is white) show more listened to black music, decorated his home blackishly, socialized with black men in his neighborhood, and dated black women. He even spoke in a blackish dialect, as is clear from Mishna's renderings of her father's speech. Apparently, Mr. Wolff's raising Mishna and her younger sister in this way made such a distinctive impression on her that she felt compelled enough to share her coming-of-age story in this memoir, comically titled I'm Down and featuring an even more ribald picture of Mishna with an exaggerated afro on the cover.

There were several moments while reading when I literally laughed out loud. For example, desperate as a child to fit in with her black, low-income peers, Mishna teaches herself how to play "The Dozens". Eager to try her newfound skill on her unsuspecting mother, who'd recently gotten interested in Buddhism, Mishna cracks on her mother, "You're so dumb, you thought Buddhism was about booty." I found it comically charming when the adolescent Mishna discovered that playing The Dozens with anyone other than the black peers in her neighborhood (for example, her white mother and father, or the white students at the elite private school she attended) wasn't received well.

And there are many other laugh-out-loud moments. Even though the humor waned considerably during the last fourth of the book, it was still a compelling read as Mishna recalls, from a child's perspective, what it was like living with a father whom she dearly loved, but whose love for her wasn't always shown in ways easily comprehensible to a child. show less