Dear Movie Makers,
Guess what? We don’t need to see the inside of the pores of the people on screen to get what is going on. Getting so damn close doesn’t make things more meaningful, it makes viewers more dizzy. It isn’t powerful or more emotional to get all up in the business of the action.
Just back off already. You’re killing me.
Signed,
Give me Some Space
I have determined again what I already knew, that I am a hopeless romantic. Not romantic in the sense of rebellion against the industrial revolution and age of enlightenment, but romantic as in loving happy endings, but that isn’t exactly right either. It isn’t the happy ending I love so much as the happy possibility. Maybe romantic isn’t the best word; perhaps idealist. Yes, I’m an idealist (but I already knew that. I take those Myers Briggs personality tests and always end up the idealist (you are 1% of the population–lucky me!)). In any case, yesterday I saw Silver Linings Playbook and loved it. Just loved it. I left the theater feeling all warm and fuzzy. Then when gushing about it to a friend I realized it was similar to Crazy, Stupid Love, another film I absolutely adore, and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, and Sliding Doors. I LOVE these movies. Love them. I can watch them over and over and over. I’m lying here thinking about them this morning because I was unable to sleep past 6:30 even if I didn’t fall asleep until nearly 1 a.m. because my daughter was wiggling because of the extremely late nap she took after a belated Thanksgiving dinner with Daddy and his family that ended with the nap beginning at 6. I thought she was down for the night, it was that late when she finally went down. I’m going to pay for this lack of sleep. Give me a few hours and I’ll be nodding off in my soup.
Alas, I digress. I’m lying here this morning in my sleepless state thinking about these movies and I realized yet again that yes, I’m a romantic/idealist. There is no getting around it. I like possibilities. These films are all like one another, and they are not typical romantic comedies. They are bittersweet. They are dark. . .then light. I leave them feeling like it’s possible the couples will last beyond the first blush of new love, that perhaps they will not be hating one another in four or five years, that perhaps because they see who their partner is and not who they want them to be, their loves might last. Yes, I’m an idealist. It will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.
I do not always adore or believe romantic comedies. Some of them make me absolutely cringe. They can be so formulaic or so far from believable, I squirm. I hate the ones where the couples fight the whole time because they are completely different people and will not accept one another’s flaws, but they have incredible sexual tension and therefore end up together at the end because Hey! they can get it on. Incredible sexual tension is just that, incredible sexual tension. It is meaningless in the scheme of things. What happens when they no longer want to screw one another blind? Then they just hate each other. Boring. What was that film with Jennifer Aniston and the hot Irish guy who is a bounty hunter? Oh, right. Bounty Hunter. I didn’t buy it for a second. They’ll be miserable in 8 months.
Worse are the movies where the man is a shit to women his whole life but this woman saves him. Suddenly he becomes mature and honest after being shitty. He discovers that she is so golden and perfect, he must give up his evil ways, and of course, she takes him back, or he gets her, or whatever. It’s a miracle! Yuck. Or one of the couple has trouble with commitment, but the other gets them and so they certainly must end up together. All is well. Commitment issues — poof! Gone! No Strings Attached or Definitely Maybe. I don’t buy it.
Yet in spite of these bad ones I don’t believe, there are some I do, some that make me want to believe in the happy possibility. Most romantic comedies I like well enough. It’s a go-to genre I can watch if I have a couple of hours to spare, but a lot of them I forget as soon as the credits roll. Yet there are a handful I truly love. I think Silver Linings Playbook might be one of them. I can tell a film is a real favorite if I enjoy watching it multiple times. I won’t know if this is a keeper until I have seen it again and still want to see it again. I’m hopeful about this possibility, that since I want to see it again now, I’ll want to see it again after seeing it again. I can add it to the list of movies I really love. I remain the hopeless idealist, wanting the happy ending.
I wish when movie makers make movies and they want their movies to seem “fresh” and “modern” that they wouldn’t use music that will be dated in under a decade, especially when the movie really isn’t that bad, but the music makes the whole thing distracting. A couple examples of this? Top Gun. Oh gawd, that music is rotten and dated. Roxanne, same thing. Reality Bites. Yep, you got it. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. A theme in these three actually is bad saxxy jazz. Not good saxxy jazz, but baaaad jazz. It’s so distracting. All of these films have okay music mixed in, usually classics that stand the test of time. But those transitional melodies that aren’t really any songs anyone listens to, that were probably made just for the movie, long horn solos to show us this is a place to feel something? The worst.
And now for the non sequitur from my musings about lame movie music. This has been an interesting week. Guess all those astrological prognostications about funny business in the sky maybe apply to me. When faced yesterday with the realization that certain people in my life were capable of Machiavellian treachery, my initial response was disbelief. I finally decided late in the evening that continuing to chant “I don’t believe it,” was not going to remedy the situation, nor was “why me?” In an effort to root out all personal hypocrisy, I asked myself when I have been less than honest, what I have done that might make another shudder in disbelief. I do not want to make anyone feel the way I felt upon this discovery. The goal, going forward, is to behave as honorably as possible in all circumstances because all I can only control is my behavior and my reactions. So now I pick up the pieces and move ahead, knowing what I know and knowing who I’m dealing with. It certainly makes life interesting.
During all this, somewhat in a dither, I called my counselor. She pointed out that when people are operating from fear, they do some mighty unpleasant things. Fear and greed, maybe? In any case, she asked if I was feeling afraid and I had to admit that yes, I am. Part of me is fine, moving forward, setting up shop. The other part of me is scared shitless. How do we root this out of ourselves? Maybe it isn’t possible. Maybe it’s just enough to go ahead anyway in spite of being afraid? I don’t know the answer. I’ll go read my Pema Chodren book on such things and see if she has any advice. I don’t like the unpleasantness of it all, though. Not a bit. But this is life and how it goes sometimes.
I don’t know why I did it. Curiosity mostly. I could tell from the opening scenes that it was probably a bad idea, but I kept on, waiting to see if it really was as bad as it seemed like it was going to be. Time proved to be no cure for my presumptions. As the thing went on, it only got worse. The sanctimonious preacher became even more of a blowhard. The naughty teen girl became even more frisky. The bad boy lead character became even more BAAAAD!
What is it I’m speaking of? Footloose, the 2011 version. The 1984 movie is certainly not Academy Award material, but it is a testament to the folly of its year. Everything about the 80s begs parody, 1984 was ubiquitous, and Footloose was no exception. Big hair! Big music! Big dancing! Big blowhard politicians setting up the destruction of future decades!
But this version, this 2011 version, has such a self-important air it too begs mockery, but it does so too many years too late. We are living what the 80s wrought. This new Footloose should have changed the title and the names of the main character and put itself out in 1984. It might have been a classic. Now we are too jaded and it’s just too awful. And not only that, the music of Footloose wasn’t really so horrible, but for this version, they took it and “updated” it. WHAT were the producers thinking, that viewers today are stupid? Apparently so, because the thing was released. They got me, for about 15 minutes. That’s all I could take before I shut it off and wrote this.
There is a bright spot in the crap that is this movie. It can be used in B-Movie Bingo! B-Movie Bingo is a game played at the Hollywood Theater near my house. You get a card with various bad movie stereotypes all over it, and then you watch a bad movie. Whenever one of the bad stereotypes shows up onscreen, you mark the square. If you get a line, it’s BINGO! Soooo much fun. This movie would be PERFECT for B-Movie Bingo. At last, a purpose for this really awful movie beyond another acting job for has been Dennis Quaid. B-Movie Bingo redemption.
Oh, and one other thing. The kid actors in the new Footloose are too young. They look like teenagers. The teenagers in the original Footloose looked like they were pushing thirty. The least they could have done was pay tribute by hiring some 35 year old actors to play teens. Jeez.
Dear Steve Martin and Dolly Parton,
Your age would have looked better than whatever it is you have done to your faces. You both have always managed to present an aura of self-possession through which the surgeries have exposed a fissure, a dissonance. It’s a shock, frankly. There are other entertainment figures who, if they were to undergo such drastic and obvious alterations, it would seem in character with the person they have presented to the public over the years. But not you.
It’s ironic too, that on some level you were seeking to pass as youthful, with that sort of attractiveness, and in your bizarre caricatures, you have made yourself even more noticeable, but not for the reasons you sought. The attractiveness of your age would have been enough. Having spent years watching you, we would have understood the grace it takes to remain public and mature.
In any case, you surprised me. You under met my expectations. I do hope on a personal level that the extraordinary surgeries have helped you to understand how little important what you desired was to who you are.
I started watching Blue Valentine at the theater, but Isabel would not stay asleep and so I had to leave, but I wasn’t disappointed to be walking out. The thing was depressing and I could not get into it. I wanted to see what happened though, so a few weeks later I began watching again on video at the point I had left off, but stopped because I simply could not get into it. Finally tonight I decided to finish it so I could get rid of the video. I’m glad that I did.
Blue Valentine certainly captures the beginning and the end of a bad relationship. It brings back memories. Funny, they caught the things in the beginning that would go wrong later. Not all of the relationships in my life that have ended started in such a way that the ending could have been predicted, but the ones that have certainly seemed obvious in hindsight. The performances in Blue Valentine, especially that of Michelle Williams, captured that feeling of the beginning of a relationship you know is bad for you. You could tell that deep down she knew it wasn’t the best choice, yet she kept on anyway, living in magical thinking while simultaneously knowing she was headed for disaster. In my case, in the relationship that most closely mirrors that in the film, I knew. I knew and kept on anyway, compelled by some force within myself to try and make it work. At times I felt like I was living two lives, one experiencing and one watching mute and helpless as the train headed straight for the ravine with no tracks.
The woman in Blue Valentine seemed to know too. There were moments of pause before she smiled and responded to Mr. Disaster. She had that same silence about her that I did in the beginning. The scene at the dinner table near the end of the film, where she has brought him home to meet her family was a kind of personal deja vu. The man I introduced to my family wasn’t a high school dropout whose mother had run off with another man at age ten, but the way that he spoke to them and their responses left little doubt that they were just as shocked and wondering What the hell is she doing with this guy? What the hell, indeed.
There are some movies that are so bleak and without hope, I have no desire to watch them. However, there are often movies that hurt to experience, and I still think they are worth my time and energy. I am most certainly not one of those who only goes to see Pollyanna. I didn’t love Blue Valentine–I just could not get drawn in. Yet it is a good film and I’m glad I saw it. Even though one may know intellectually that everything experienced is also experienced by others, it does help to be reminded. For me, Blue Valentine was like that. I’m not the first person on this planet who knew going into a bad relationship that I was making a huge mistake, but I kept on anyway. One thing I know for sure–and I have reiterated it for myself having watched this film–I will never, ever compromise myself like that again.
One of my favorite scenes from a movie is during Fried Green Tomatoes after Kathy Bates has rammed the little car that took her parking spot, the two young drivers of the car come out and she says Sorry, girls. I’m older and I have more insurance.
I love it.
Have you ever noticed that in movies that are “chick flicks,” billed and marketed to women, where there are women in a family going through something or women who are friends going through something, that the movie creators always throw in a scene of them dancing together, often on a bed, sometimes resulting in a pillow fight, usually for the montage of how special their relationship is, or sometimes it is to show how women who were enemies are now good friends, and then they use that in the preview to market the film? Damn, it’s dumb.
It seems like whenever a movie cover has four or five wide stripes, with people in some of the stripes and words in the others, the movie is always crap. Whoever designed that cover style should know that it marks a movie as not worth seeing.
This was published on Huffington Post. See it here.
It is movie awards time. The Golden Globes were just handed out and the Oscar race is nearly on. I could not believe Avatar won the Golden Globes award for best picture. Why is it that if a movie is filled with spectacular special effects it is considered a best picture candidate?
Asking this question is some evidence that I think a best picture is one that actually contains characters who show some complexity, or a story that is unique in some way beyond what the film looks like. I simply do not consider as best picture a movie that is unique only on a visual scale. There were so many deliciously brilliant films this year, I’m frustrated that a film whose only merit is visual is sweeping the awards yet again.
If Avatar had been set on earth, with humans riding horses in their beautifully lush jungle, the imperialists coming to destroy the land for profit, it simply would not have been possible best-picture fodder. I doubt it would barely climb out of B-movie-land. The story has been told, and it has been told better. The Mission comes to mind. Even Australia, which had some predictability and overwrought elements, but visually stunning panoramas, was a better film. At least it attempted character development.
However, Avatar is a visually stunning movie, and for that reason alone, everyone is going to see it and it is winning awards. Give us a few years and its effects will not be quite so grand after we’ve seen the same sort of thing a few hundred times. Remember Jurassic Park? The first time I saw that movie I was awestruck. I saw it again recently and while it is moderately entertaining, the dinosaurs are no longer quite so spectacular because I have seen giant CGI creatures so often, I am used to them. Not such a thrill these days.
Halfway through Avatar I was already frustrated by its bland formula and dialogue. The characters on Pandora lacked anything unusual other than what they looked like. Sure, James Cameron spent years creating this “other world,” but that world certainly looked awfully earth-like to me. The characters were prototypical natives, down to their bare feet, the beads in their hair, and feathers in their arrows. There is the tribal chief queen and the royal children destined for marriage. There is the natives’ intrinsic harmony with that land. And let’s not forget their natural-world deity (native Americans, anyone?). Even their alien steeds, both land and air versions, look like horses — albeit with some extra legs and wings, and reins that could connect to their riders’ minds. Yes, in some of the details, the Na’vi were clearly aliens, but nothing about them was unique to the point they were unrecognizable as fundamentally human, something one might expect would occur on a planet somewhere far from earth.
And the human characters, don’t even get me started. They were such caricatures, I could hardly stand to watch some of them. The bad guys were Very Bad. We knew they would be Very Bad the moment they showed up onscreen. The early dialogue in the film was unrealistic, managing to give us all the background we needed in the span of ten minutes. Hyper bad Marine colonel. Check. Scientist who wants to save Pandora and empathizes with the natives. Check. Evil corporate greedy guy. Check. Main character who will save the day. Check. Sexy native woman who is won over by main character. Check. And on and on. None of them had any depth beyond a mud puddle.
I suppose I should not be surprised that a picture so visually breathtaking while simultaneously lacking any depth is considered by many to be the best picture of the year. Spectacle seems to be the theme in so much of America these days. Rather than intelligent debate regarding complex issues, politics has been reduced to screaming sound bites and accusations. The worse the behavior, the more attention it gets. Reality television has mostly replaced anything resembling more complex programming. Spectacularly bad behavior replays constantly where the most loud and obnoxious wins, at least to the extent that the winner gets their face plastered all over the tabloids, their hideous behavior played out ad nauseam.
I liked Avatar. I did. I was moderately entertained when I wasn’t squirming in my seat at the made-for-t.v. movie dialogue. The visual effects were cool. But I just can’t see it as a best-picture candidate. Best means superlative of good, surpassing all others in excellence. Avatar may be the best today for visual effects, but in all other areas it was barely average. No matter how you cut it this just isn’t what a best picture should be.
Milla, Boyfriend, and I watched the Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn movie Charade tonight. Good flick. Milla really liked it. Some things were kind of dated, but it was still enjoyable. And Audrey Hepburn’s outfits were fantastic. It’s like the child of Duplicity, keeps you guessing. Anyway, I recommend it.
On another note, I avoid the news lately. In my current mental state, I simply can’t handle all the negativity. However, I peruse a few pages including Huffington Post. Today there was a story (see it here) regarding a Republican moron, er, congressman, who has created a, shhhhhh! Secret list of socialists!! Oooooh! Can you BELIEVE this? I was so upset, I could hardly stand it. No wonder I don’t read the news anymore. The one time I do and I discover socialists are creeping into our guvment.
Well, we’re just gonna have to root them dang socialites out, I’m telling you. Get rid of anyone who thinks the guvment should pay for schools or roads or hell, social security (see that horrible word social in there? It’s like herpes, you can’t get rid of it). Big bad socialites, wanting the guvment to help pay for things like healthcare, education, transportation, and the like. Hell, we should let people who can’t afford it DIE if they can’t go to the doctor. And what’s the point of paying for schools? They all teach the wrong stuff anyway. And don’t even get me started on transportation. All roads should be toll roads. That way the people who can afford it will drive and the rest can just stay home. And if they can’t afford a home, well too bad for them! Shit. What is this world coming to people? I swear, the anti-American bastards, we should just line them up and shoot them.
I saw The Great Debaters last night. I spent a good deal of the film feeling even more fired up that we need to continue to fight racism in this country, only lately the racism is more obviously against middle easterners and Mexicans. It is as if racism against these groups is acceptable, as racism against blacks was not so long ago.
I feel so strongly that as a white person, the thing I can do to fight racism is to call it when I see it. Racism is racism is racism. I will not accept racist emails in my inbox clothed in the mask of righteous indignation about how our tax dollars or spent or sent as some deceitful public service message claiming to be about “protecting” me from terrorism when it is really bigotry, and not even much disguised bigotry.
I get SO angry that this continues. As I watched The Great Debaters last night, I got even more fired up about the email I had received on Christmas day. I came home and felt that fire and wanted to DO something and wondered, what can I do? I can write. I lay in bed unable to sleep with the desire to write something, anything more than just an angry response to a bunch of bigots. As I did this, I conceived a novel. I have all of the characters. I have the location. I have the basic premise of the story. And I am going to write it and hope that ONE person reads it and THINKS and gets as fired up against racism as I did when I received that racist bullshit bird poop email and as I watched The Great Debaters.
It is time for those who hate racism in this country to stand up against the racism that is allowable now, racism against middle easterners and Mexicans. It is time to say that racism against these people is NOT okay. Ever.
So I’m at work and I brought my puppy and he’s rooting around on the floor, spinning in circles, being completely silly. He loves rubbing his tummy on the carpet like that. He grunts and makes goofy noises. I love him so much.
So I’m reading this book, well, listening to this book being read to me in my car. I’m really enjoying it. It’s John Irving and he’s always great. Anyway, as is often the case with me and books I enjoy, I can see the movie as I would direct it. How I would tell the story, who I would cast in the various parts, what part of the book I would keep because it’s rare to be able to include an entire book in a movie. Often there are smaller side stories in books that work in books but don’t in movies because of the nature of reading versus viewing. For instance I thought the first Harry Potter tried to include too much. One book made into a movie where I think the movie did better than the book was Sideways. When I read Sideways, it was as if the movie makers saw the book exactly as the author and as the reader, yet they left out some sensationalized side stories that almost seemed like they were written as over the top movie scenes. The movie was better having left them out. I digress.
Anyway, I’m reading this book and I can REALLY see the movie. It’s a great book and I can feel the entire atmosphere of the thing. Then at some point, I hear the name of a chapter and it is the name of a movie and I realize that this book has been made into a movie and I would not have conceptualized it as the movie maker did at all. I hate the movie version. The actors they chose for the leads. Ick. Wrong. And as is often the case with movies turned into books, they took the most sensationalized parts and chopped them together with none of the connecting tissue from the book and just made this big mess. I remember when I saw the movie that I did not like it and feeling like something was missing. Now I know why.
I know movies are different than books, that they are their own creation and I don’t think they should be compared in many cases because they are what they are. But I also don’t think you should try to pretend a movie is the book if it loses so much of what was originally there. Like The Shipping News. Puke. God, I couldn’t even watch it. They fucking butchered the book. Why didn’t they just call it something else and leave the book alone? Get an idea from a book, then go make your damn movie, but don’t pretend it’s the book when it’s not even in the ballpark. I have read The Shipping News so many times. It is easily my favorite book, and that is saying a lot because you can’t pin me down on a favorite ANYTHING. Seriously. This book, I know it inside out and backwards. I know its characters. I can SEE its characters. When I heard the book was being made into a movie, I had to read the book again. I could SEE that movie, see how I would shoot it, the angles, the light, all of it. And NONE of the book made it into that movie except a few pitiful, over the top plot lines and the names of the characters and that was IT. They didn’t even make the characters look like the characters in the book and the looks of the characters in the book are almost characters themselves. HOW could they? Ack. Gags me.
So I’m reading this John Irving book now and hearing it and having to force out the characters and story as envisioned by the screenwriter and director (one and the same in this case) as I try to enjoy this book. The story is actually quite fascinating. I love it. And now I have Jeff Bridges’s face looming in to take over one of the main characters when he’s not even CLOSE! He doesn’t even inhabit the character of the character, let alone the looks. Looks in a movie can be different from the looks of the character in a book if the actor can BECOME the character, but he didn’t. Remember Sandra Oh and Virgina Madsen in Sideways? In the book, Maya looked like Sandra Oh and Stephanie looked like Virginia Madsen, but they are switched in the movie and it doesn’t matter because the actors so inhabited the characters. It just doesn’t detract in any way. But in this book I’m reading now, Jeff Bridges is not the character he plays. Maybe he never read the book. Maybe he just read the screenplay that butchered the book. Because as I conceptualize the character in the book, not only does he not characterize the character, he does not look like the character looks. And Kim Bassinger…I won’t even go there.
Why would John Irving let this happen? Why would Annie Proulx? Maybe they don’t get a choice. But John Irving and Annie Proulx are HUGE authors. They have to be able to maintain some control. Why couldn’t the movie makers just say that the movie was “inspired” by the book and not pretend the movie is the book come to life when it’s not?
Well that’s enough of my film/literary snob rant for the day. What do I know? I just know I can’t stand that movie and it is interrupting my enjoyment of this book.
These can be addicting. I sit here and have these random thoughts and want to write them here instead of my journal. I carry around this notebook to write my strange random thoughts and to draw pictures. Sometimes I’ll have a dream and write it in there thinking it’s profound and I should make a movie out of it. Then I’ll go back and read the dream later and realize it WAS profound…profoundly dumb. Now I’m experimenting with background color. Yes. My time is well spent. Well spent indeed. (:I had a cold in early November. A nasty wicked cold that kicked my ass and left me in bed for days. It lasted about 3 1/2 weeks. It started with a wretched, mind-blowing headache that just hurt no matter how much caffeine or ibuprofen I poured on it. Then there were two days of sore throat that hurt so badly I could not speak and swallowing was pure hell and torture. After that cleared, I suddenly had snot gushing from every available orifice in my head. That started to clear and I began to feel the rumblings low in my lungs of a cough that rattled every joint in my body. I attempted to stave off the cough, but to no avail. I would lie there, feeling it humming in my chest. I would breathe slowly. In. Out. In. Out. Please god, don’t make me cough. Then it would happen and it would hurt and it would not stop. This went on for days. I had to pile pillows high on my bed to prop myself up so I could sleep because anytime I was horizontal the cough would creep up and kick my ass. I would be in that lovely place right before sleep, drowsily imagining flying or that I had three arms, when that cough would smash me right back into reality. I remember lying there with my eyes dry feeling like I would never sleep again. I finally succumbed and took four of Milla’s triaminic cough strips. I don’t like taking those kinds of drugs because they drug me so completely I have a hangover for days, but even a hangover was preferable to that shit. Only it was like the cough sat and waited for the exact SECOND the dextromethorphan wore off. I love saying that word, dextromethorphan. I would lie there and say it over and over to take myself into that sleepy place knowing the cough couldn’t get me. ANYWAY. The SECOND it wore off, the cough would return with a vengeance worse than anything prior to the attempted cough murder. I finally started popping the dextromethorphan like some kind of an addict just to sleep. After about a week of this, my head hurt constantly and I was a walking zombie from lack of non-drug-induced sleep. That’s about when the tickle began. I didn’t have any mucous left. There was just that fucking tickle in the back of my throat. I’d be sitting there on the computer or reading a book or trying to work and feel that wretched ass tickle. Tickle. Tickle. And have to cough. And then I could not stop coughing. I even stuck my finger in the back of my throat in an attempt to stop the tickle. It didn’t work. I looked up the tickle on the internet and found many a distressed sufferer lamenting on various medical websites about the wretched ass tickle. Some had suffered for years. These were people with chronic conditions, asthma and the like. Thank GOD I did not have that. I had the tickle for about four days. I probably would have found a huge bridge from which to fling myself had the tickle continued much longer. I pity those people who live their lives with the tickle.
ANYWAY. What was my point? I had one. The POINT is that I had this bitch of a cold that lasted nearly four weeks, then I began gradually to heal. There was a period of about five days where I sneezed, but had no other symptoms, but that faded as well. Even Milla’s aftercare teacher would say, You are doing better. Then the next day he would say, You seem 10 percent better today. Finally one day he said, I think you are 98 percent better. Does that mean the cold is all gone and you are well? I would say, Yes! I am so much better. Thank you so much for thinking of me.
Well. We were both wrong. I woke up yesterday and the damn headache, lung ache, face snot, sneezing, sore throat, and cough are all back and all at once. No more of that systematic one at a time shit for this cold. No. It’s all back and it’s all back at once. And you know what is really strange? My friend Britta had this same crap about the same time I did and in the same order. And yesterday her shit came back exactly like mine!! It’s like some miracle virus that tricks you into thinking you are well when you’re not! It’s so cruel.
So this is what I’m contemplating as I sit here not doing much work because my head hurts and I’m tired and my lungs hurt and I’m WHINING. Wah wah wah! I guess I will see now if the pretty orange color stays when I actually post this thing.
DAMN!! I just typed in Evil Guerrilla Virus and in the process sneezed the biggest grossest sneeze of ick I’ve sneezed in years! Thank god for tissue and thank god more for soft tissue with lotion in it! Yikes!
I love the movie Waitress. I saw it twice at the theaters and now I own it. It’s an amazing movie. So well-written. So funny and sad at the same time. That moment when she says to the nurse, Give’er to me. Then looks at that baby and the rest of the world fades from view. Nothing else matters. I have never seen a movie capture that feeling, that moment when your child is looking at you for the first time and you know in the marrow of your bones that you have fulfilled your life’s biological purpose; you know why you were born. There is nothing like it. When Milla was born, the doctor put her on my stomach, I laid my hand on her back, she lifted her head and looked at me and I told her Hi Baby.
I will never forget that moment for as long as I live. It was the best moment of my life. I know now why we celebrate birthdays.
Random Thoughts on Everything and Nothing 