A night at the movies

I was going to write a big bullet-pointed post, about many far-flung topics, but instead I am going to go to bed because I am tired and (for reasons which I will explain later) also sore and headachy. Instead of rattling on, I am just going to say, quickly, HI I MISS YOU, and then go on to write a brief open letter.

Dear Michael Bay,

You had a chance to make The Island a smart and edgy film, and there were several places within its framework that you could have veered off into another direction and seamlessly directed it away from the shallow fugitive film it turned into.

You could have, but you didn't, and I am so glad. It was much more fun this way. And the stars were so unbelieveably gorgeous that the less in the way of plot or sense or cleverness to distract, really, the better.

Good call.

Love,

me.

PS The scene with the nail gun holy shit dude.

Warning: bullet points ahead

1. I had an epiphany tonight as I was eating part of a box of Bottlecaps I bought to bring with me to the movies. Here is how I eat Bottlecaps (and, indeed, most candy): I pour out a little handful; I sort them by flavor; I eat one flavor at a time, starting with the flavor I like least, and working my way up to my favorite. And here is my epiphany, which I had while forcing a cherry-flavored Bottlecap down my throat (I usually love cherry-flavored candy, but for some reason cherry-flavored Bottlecaps make me queasy): CAMMY, a voice said in my head, YOU ARE A GROWNUP. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO GO TO HELL IF YOU DO NOT EAT THIS ENTIRE BOX OF CANDY. IF YOU NEVER EAT ANOTHER CHERRY BOTTLECAP IN YOUR LIFE, NO ONE WILL SUFFER.
   
   And so I declare this an important day in the Education of Me. No longer will I force myself to eat the banana-flavored candy or the grape-flavored candy or whatever flavor it is that makes me want to claw my eyes out. I will no longer eat it because it is there.
   
   Here's to personal revelations, man.



2. I love me a new website: typedrawing. For those of you who've played with the tools at art.com, this will feel pretty familiar. It's a little limited as to scope, but I just love playing around with it. I mostly just draw and erase, draw and erase, but I did save one tonight, a portrait of Snape. It's #16324, if you want to take a look.



3. At a department meeting on Friday, we had a long discussion about grandmothers. Ever since I heard the horror stories that emerged, the beatings with belts and hairbrushes and the forced labor summer camps at their houses, I have felt compelled all weekend to say this. My grandmothers rock(ed). Breakfast in bed and weird experimental recipes and giant kitchen utensils hanging from the walls and forty-year-old negligees in which to play dress-up and homemade Christmas tree ornaments and orange three-wheeled bicycles and Delaware Punch orgies and days hanging around libraries and nights up late on the sofa reading romance novels.
   
   For all that they are not perfect women, I really lucked into them.



4. I choked at a restaurant on Friday night. We'd already finished our food, even, which made it doubly embarrassing. I had a mint in my mouth and I breathed it down my windpipe and spent half a minute coughing and gagging it up with anxious mothers and waiters hovering over me, ready to do the heimlich and then offering restorative glasses of water with lemon. It was a minor incident; I felt kind of feeble yesterday, from a cardiopulmonary POV, and I feel better now. But I hope I never have to go through it again. To that end, I am now like a chipmunk, storing my mints in the sides of my cheeks.



5. One of these days, I will see a movie set in Louisiana which features NOT ONE of the following things: Voodoo. Swamps. Moss-covered oak alleys. Decayed plantation homes. Ludicrous "Cajun" accents. A New Orleans with streetcar lines everywhere. People who make no money living in $2000-per-month apartments in the French Quarter. Murderous crazy inbred folk. Today is not that day, but I thank my lucky stars that in Skeleton Key, someone at least had the good sense to leave the accent alone.
   
   In fact, now that I am thinking, there is at least one such movie. On the strength of the existence of this movie, I would like to propose that only Steven Soderberg be allowed--legally, I mean--to make movies set in Louisiana.