we went to see the movie yesterday afternoon.
on saturday i called christine and left her a message. I’M GETTING MARRIED IN THREE WEEKS, IN CASE ANYONE CARES. that’s all i said.
she called on sunday. all SHE said was, “go see ’little miss sunshine.’” i told her we’d have time on tuesday. she said “you’re waiting till THEN?” i said it was going to take a great deal of luck to be able to go see a movie. she didn’t seem entirely satisfied with my answer. finally she said “call me right after you see it.”
i didn’t call her. i have some phone calls i need to make, but i’ve developed a pattern of waiting till night, and by then i don’t feel like talking on the phone.
anyway, the movie – quirky. funny. dark. good. it started out pretty damn bleak and i wondered if i’d like it. sometimes christine and i do not see eye to eye on films. i can think of two, “eyes wide shut,” which i found to be mind-numbingly boring and tedious and it went on and on forever but christine felt was the best thing since sliced bread (perhaps that’s a very lame analogy but it’s four in the morning and i’m extra tired and am lucky to even be typing without too many typos”) and “moulin rouge” which is one of my favorite movies but christine thought it was tedious which even if you didn’t like the film there’s certainly no WAY you could describe it as tedious. i was mad at her for a couple of weeks because she thought it was tedious.
in “little miss sunshine,” the family is more dysfunctional than any i’ve seen in a while. the grandfather snorts heroin (i didn’t know you could even snort the stuff, i thought it was all about shooting up, like in the very VERY depressing movie “trainspotting” which i really didn’t like despite the fact that the very attractive ewan macgregor was in it and he was also in “moulin rouge” and i’m pretty sure i didn’t spell his name right but if you think i’m going to bother to look it up right now you have to be kidding), and reads really raunchy porn and the adult brother of toni colette has just tried to kill himself because his world has fallen apart and greg kinnear, the husband, is incredibly annoying and the son, dwayne, is sullen and odd-looking and doesn’t talk at all because he’s taken a vow of silence until he gets into the air force academy and the daughter, Olive, is adorable and wants to be the beauty queen “little miss sunshine.”
and it’s a road trip movie and the family goes through some profound transformations but it’s not all feel-good hollywood happy ending but it does end well and i think you should go see it. i feel like i haven’t entirely ruined it for you by describing everything in it, but i will just also point out that it does an excellent job of illuminating the disturbing-ness of beauty contests for children. the little girls are sickeningly over made-up and sequined and look and act like frightening mini glamorous beauty queens and of course you can’t help but think of jon benet ramsey and that tragedy.
two thumbs up.
on other fronts. mostly i wish i was asleep right now. also, my chief annoyance is that my computer is teetering on the brink of not functioning anymore. the power cord connection has always been a little tenuous, but now if i jiggle the cord to get the computer to acknowledge the fact that it is, indeed, plugged in, it’s just not happening that much anymore and soon it will stop acknowledging it altogether and then the computer will be dead. my friend brendan told me this would eventually happen back in march so i guess at least i’ve had a few more months.
but right now i have NO TIME to look for and buy a new computer. right now i’m using kevin’s computer because i don’t want to be mad about the cord in the middle of the night.
other than that, things are pretty good. people keep saying YOU’RE GOING TO BE SO STRESSED OUT and YOU MUST BE TOTALLY FRAZZLED, but i have to say i’m not. just very very busy. but things continue to progress, wedding-wise, and i’m not too worried about things. i just wish i had a little more free time. but obviously there has been a little time to see a movie plus last night we watched two episodes each of “sex & the city” and “reno 911.”
have i mentioned that show? MFH loves it and i was skeptical and watched the first couple of episodes he has on dvd and thought it was awfully stupid and the cops seemed kind of mean and amy and jim also love it and i thought maybe they were all actually not as bright as i thought they were (but i didn’t get mad at them at all for any length of time). and then i kept watching it and now i’m HOOKED.
one problem with not using my computer is now i’m forced to sit here in the office, which is not going to be tidy in any way for the next couple of months and there are big piles and stacks of things surrounding me and i’m afraid that if i suddenly have some kind of spasm (being grace of course i’m prone to things like that) that the stuff will start crashing around me. plus i can’t sit on the couch where it’s much more comfortable. plus winnie the cat really wants to sit in my lap right now but there’s just not enough room here on the chair so he’s forced to lie on the floor although he is purring anyway so maybe he’s not too upset.
there are many many other things i would like to discuss and i’ll probably forget what they are in the morning, but i should try to get back to sleep right now. i hope your week is going well.
ok then,
tuesday (technically, wednesday) grace.