Modern-postism (or Hypocracy Now!)

I really don’t have a topic today, but I know that it’s been a long time since I’ve posted so a long rambler of a post might be in order.

I recently left my job of three years. They just couldn’t work with me on my school schedule anymore. It was a good job while it lasted, a means to an end, and I had only planned to stay there until I graduate in December. It was a cooking gig, pretty mindless until the illogic of supervisors—in over their heads and running scared—started affecting my balance of work and study. I won’t make the mistake I made in my early twenties, to forsake school for a crappy job. I’m on the home stretch, and if it means oatmeal and library books for the next eight weeks, so be it.

There, that’s out of my system. On a cheerier note I’ve been catching up on movies and reading. I’m re-reading Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I feel like I’m catching a great deal more than I did the first time around. McMurphy is inspiring me (the constant narcissist in me must relate everything to my own situation) and I had forgotten how Kesey’s protagonist comes on strong, falters, rallies, and eventually is beaten by the system to be chewed up by Chief’s Combine. McMurphy—a great tragic hero, new in style and language, the American war vet, precursor or possible participant in Hell’s Angels ethos—meets his end in a very ancient way, beaten by the inherently Combine-like structure of society.

Okay, so maybe One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest isn’t the best novel to be reading at this moment. But I tend to find inspiration in these types of novels (remember Chief, the one who had them all fooled, escapes) and for a novel that was published in 1962 the character of McMurphy sits in the foreground of a period I am still very much fascinated with, the 1960s. There is hope in this novel which resonates further than the tangible details of its sad ending. The novel seems to predict the rise and fall of youth movements for the next decade.

Away from what I’m reading. There are many great blogs out there about literature and writing, and I am a hopeless bandwagon-jumper, not to mention cliché over-user, so I’ve noticed that I’m tending to try to write as eloquently as some of my fellow blogospherites about what I’ve read. Mixed-results, but I’ll keep trying.

So, on to movies. Because of my previous limited schedule I was unable to see some of the movies that sounded so good but either never made it to my bucolic part of the globe or only played for half a day until the newest Hillary Duff bumped them from the theater. Justin Timberlake is a movie star now—Yikes! And they say he isn’t half bad, Aaaaargggg!

Anyway, the shortage of good films that make you stop and go hmmm a number of times the following day was irritating me. It really began with me viewing the Academy Awards on Sunday night. Of all the films up for best picture I had only seen one, Little Miss Sunshine. The fact that I had no context what-so-ever by which to judge these films left me feeling inadequate, judgment (of all things) being my favorite pastime. So I found myself rooting for Little Miss Sunshine in every category it was nominated for. But I still felt that I had missed so much in the year regarding film, and I took the only recourse I could think of—I blamed Margaret.

“We never go see movies anymore. Why don’t we? I mean we saw Independence Day in the theater. We saw Jurassic Park III in the theater. And now we don’t even see the good movies.”

Maybe that’s why we stopped; I kept dragging her to these films. I remember vividly the first Lord of the Rings movie entering its third hour and Margaret putting her head on my shoulder and sighing as if she had just resigned herself to hell.

When I had finished turning my desire to see movies into an issue of “We never go anywhere anymore,” Margaret gave me her best “What does this have to do with me you silly man?” look, and said “Well, let’s go see a movie.” I said alright, and felt a little disappointed that the argument hadn’t stuck.

We decided on The Queen. I wanted to see Pan’s Labyrinth which I’ve heard so many good things about, but I knew this would be risking it. We went to a matinee at the new monolithic multi-plex (writing about movies lends itself well to alliteration) which is the size of the Greenville airport. Really, I kept expecting to hear a loudspeaker announcing that The Queen would be departing from gate 123 in approximately 40 minutes. I looked around for little golf carts darting movie patrons to the concession stand as I ate my overpriced, undercooked cheese-dog that a hang-dog counter attendent had begrudgingly sold me. We were actually early for a movie. Up is down, down is up.

We loved the film. I especially liked James Cromwell’s portrayal of Prince Philip, possibly because he reminded me of the stuffy, tweedy, blustery, horse-obsessed cousins and uncles on my mother’s side. Lovable stuffy, tweedy, blustery, horse-obsessed cousins and uncles, I might add (note the disclaimer).

The film had enough royal gossip and pageantry to please Margaret and enough politics to keep me happy, and it’s so great to watch a film with someone you know is enjoying it equally. By the end, we were laughing at every word out of Philip’s mouth, (we have an inside joke about the tweedy cousins, and Margaret caught on right away) and the film, in-and-of-itself, was a good tonic. We chatted about the film all the way to Blockbuster. I rented three more films, The Departed, Half-Nelson, and For Your Consideration.

I watched For Your Consideration and Half-Nelson that evening, saving the Scorsese for last. I was able to get about half-way through The Departed, but by that time I was burned out on my celluloid orgy and I kept falling asleep. So, the next morning, I asked Margaret, who was holding her sacred chalice of coffee, if she had finished watching the movie. She said she had. I asked if she liked it. She said: “It was alright—they all die in the end.” …Aaaaargggg!

She took a sip of her coffee. She had just revealed the end of a good movie to me and she hadn’t yet realized what she had done, probably didn’t care either. Now, in the past couple of years, I’ve made great strides in the area of self-control. I’ve learned, for the most part, that I don’t have to be right all the time, I don’t need to win every argument. I’ve become a more forgiving, kinder, gentler me. Great strides; but this took a great deal of will power not to have my ears turn into steam exhausts. I literally felt my head swelling up with putrification, ready to spew vile vitriol across our humble living room and make the dog slink into the kitchen. But I caught myself. I thought of Prince Philip. He would have been incensed at this outrage, and his pomposity over the matter would have made him look appropriately pre-historic. I held my rage, silently blew the anger at the opposite wall, glanced at Margaret, who was innocently slurping her coffee and soy, and started to laugh.

The thing is it doesn’t matter if you know that they all die at the end (and actually they don’t). I watched the movie from beginning to end the next night and there is so much going on with this film that plot and conclusion are almost arbitrary elements. I might write a paper or post about the film, which, against my will, is moving up the ladder of my movie list. It is certainly the best movie I’ve seen this year. I didn’t want it to be, I wanted to disagree with the Academy, to feel superior—old habits die hard, but the Academy of Motion Pictures and I agree, this is a great movie.

Yesterday morning we were in the living room and Margaret was doing the payroll. I was eating a big bowl of oatmeal. I tried to get a conversation going about the pros and cons of oatmeal in general. It was met by impatient glances and monosyllabic responses. I made an off-hand remark about something in The Departed and she looked up and said “yea, that was weird.” Before long we were having an analytic conversation about how the blood splattered and pooled in the violent parts of the film. Just like old times, sitting around pondering Joe Pesci’s performance in Goodfellas. There’s nothing like a hyper-violent motion picture to put the spice back into a relationship.

Later, as she was getting ready for work, I found yet another subject to gripe about, I don’t even remember what. As she put on eyeliner or whatever, she made comments to the effect that I shouldn’t complain so much.

“But why?” I asked. “Why shouldn’t I complain about things that bother me?”

“Because you sound like Prince Philip.” She said.

Ouch.