Pills Rattle

I am not a poet. But I am trying to get myself ready for a semester of Capstone work, and this is what came out from thinking about my Capstone this evening. Maybe posting this is the therapeutic part of writing it. Enjoy!

In her dreams
He's
One giant pill
The big blue rectangle, not the harmless white circle
And she can’t tell the difference
Between that
And the real thing

She thinks she should stop him
But there’s nothing you can do, she tells herself
You’re only 16, she says to the mirror
He did this to himself, she whispers to her teddy bear
But it doesn’t help
Dull the pain she feels
For letting it happen to him

The guilt keeps building
Everywhere she is, Guilt is too
Until she thinks she’s going to break
Burst at the fraying thread seams
And the burden of keeping it a secret cripples her
And she wonders how they don’t know

Pills rattle again and again
Disappearing one after another after another
Until there is nothing left of him
Her parents don’t notice
Until it is much too late to save him
Mother cries, Father yells
Then Father cries and Mother yells
And they ask her: did she know?

Did she know?

The Fighter: horrendous title, amazing film

There are very few movies that I like. There are even less that I love. And when I love a movie, I really, really love it and will defend it to almost any length. The Fighter was one such movie.

I have a list of celebrities that I would kill my own mother to converse with.(Okay, not literally, please no one call the cops on me.) I refer to them as the "top five" and I have a poster of each hanging on the wall of my bedroom. They are as follows, in order of importance to me: Russell Crowe, Vin Diesel, Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, and Bradley Cooper. Now let's take a moment to think about the actors in The Fighter: Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale. I was in love before it started.

While the amount of eye candy was high for the film, that isn't why I loved it. It was honest. It was heart-breaking. And while it was about a man who was a boxer, it wasn't about fighting. It never lost sight of the real story: the struggle to separate yourself from the people and things that are holding you back in pursuit of your dreams. In the case of Micky Ward, flawlessly acted by Marky Mark himself, he faces an internal struggle about whether he should ditch his drug addict brother Dicky (Christian Bale) as his trainer in an effort to further his boxing career, or whether his family is more important than a job.

As if this were not enough to fuel the story along, throw into the mix his cannonball of a mother, Alice, and his opinionated sisters, of which there are seven, and the girlfriend (Amy Adams) who comes along to try to convince him that his family members are all scumbags and even gets into a fist fight with one of them, and you've got yourself a wonderful film that is sure to be nominated for a couple of awards.

I've read a lot of reviews of this film that have said that it's an inspirational story of a man finally catching a break, but I'm not sure that's quite right. I think it’s the story of a man finding his inner strength and the courage to stand up to his family and demand that he finally get the respect that he deserves. I think it's about a man who learns to stand on his own two feet and cut the ties from the brother that he's legended. It's also about his brother letting him become his own man.

Like I said, it's not often that I find a movie that I love. But when I do, it's a true champion. It's even less often when I can't find anything bad to say about a movie, but I have nothing bad to say. This is a film that everyone should see. Regardless of whether they like boxing.

A little rant

I hate texting. No, not hate, loathe. If I were to ever meet the person who invented texting I would give them a big ole' Archie slap right across their face. (Side note: if you don't know what an Archie slap is, check out Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla immediately.) I would slap them and then I would storm away in a huff.

Sure, texting is useful for some things. When my roommate's at work and I need to remind her to pay the bills when she gets home, it would be inappropriate to call, but I will probably forget before I actually see her, so I send her a quick text to remind her. When I'm bored in class, I occasionally text to pass the time. The other day my mother sent me a picture of their Christmas tree and it was nice because a phone call describing it would not have done it justice. If I want to tell someone something quick that doesn't need any sort of response, a text works nicely. So, I admit that it's useful at time, but in general, I hate it.

And I can't escape because that's the primary way that people are communicating. I can't remember the last time my phone rang and it was anyone other than my mother or father calling. People text, so I text. I'm just like everyone else--I want to be kept in the loop and I'm afraid that I'll miss all the gossip and invitations to do stuff if I didn't.

I hate how fake everyone is through text. It's like how I imagine online dating to be--you're only going to show your best side and hide away all your craziness and neurosis to unleash at a time when you are having that actual, rare face-to-face interaction. I hate getting to know someone through texting. It takes me an hour to think of something clever, yet casual, to say, and then another hour analyzing what I sent and thinking of all the better things I could have said. And by then he's responded and I have to think of more endearing things to say.

I'm not witty over text. I'm not funny or engaging. I came across as soulless and flat as the piece of technology that I’m being read and analyzed over. You can't be sarcastic over text or pick on someone affectionately--you end up coming across as a snide, rude bitch. Which I am not. (Obviously.)

And then you find yourself sitting with your phone in your lap, willing it to go off, channeling all of your telekinetic powers to tell that phone to flash the message you've been waiting for. And when it doesn't, you obsessively read through your text conversation, searching for what you said wrong. Did he really think that funny story that you sent him was funny or was his "haha" just being polite? And maybe you should have been a little more open-ended and inviting with your responses to his questions. Remember all that craziness and neurosis that I was talking about before? Well it's in full force now.

I have a phone. It dials and accepts calls. Try it sometime. We can have an actual conversation. You can use that conversation to ask me out on a real date, where I can be awkward and vulnerable instead of just being a series of perfectly pieced together texts. I'll say something, you can say something back, you can ask questions, I can answer them and ask you more, and we can really get to know each other, neurosis and all.

Childhood just got a little less cuddly

Last weekend, I went to New York state with my parents and brother to go Christmas shopping at the outlets and while my brother and I were enjoying the pool at our hotel, we took a walk down Nostalgia Lane, and it made me realize that sets my childhood apart from a lot of other people I know.

When my brother and I were little (me a lot littler than him since he’s seven years older), our parents did not care what we watched. And I mean, did not care one bit. Their motto was that if we were old enough to turn on the channel or put in the movie, we were old enough to watch it. And in their mind, there was absolutely no distinction between an animated film and a cartoon. As a result, I have never seen Barney, Sesame Street, or Blue’s Clues. Even as a child I had good sense enough to watch something else.

Also as a result, I have an interesting collection of films that characterize my childhood. This is a list that I would like to share since it’s surprising to me that number of people who have never seen, or heard of, any of these films. And you really should watch them if you have not.

!) The Flight of Dragons
In a world where humanity is turning to logic over magic, Carolinus the green wizard decides to build a shield around the magical world to preserve it for all eternity. Ommendon the red wizard and Carolinus’ brother (and appropriately voiced by James Earl Jones) stands in his way, so Carolinus must call for a quest to steal Ommendon’s red crown and the source of his power. The quest is led by a man named Peter Dickinson (who is also the author of the book that the film is based on, and voiced by the late John Ritter), who is the first man to come from both worlds or science and magic. He is joined on his quest by a dragon, a knight, a forest elf, an undead world, and an archer in a series of delightful and horrific episodes that he must endure throughout his journey to face Ommendon.

(Peter Dicksons' first encounter with a dragon.)

2) The Last Unicorn
Alright, so I know a lot of people who are familiar with this film, but it is more than worth mentioning for those of you who are not. This is the tale of a unicorn who hears a rumor that a great bull had rounded up all the other unicorns and shepherded them into the sea, and she is the last. This leads her to leave the comfort of her forest and embark on a quest to find and rescue the others. Accompanied by a wizard who inadvertently turns her into a human and a forest thief’s wife who has lost all hope in the world, she must save the others before the bull entraps her too.

(The unicorns running from the red bull.)

3) Wizards
Similar to Flight of the Dragons in that it tackles a similar magic vs. technology theme, this is a tale set in a post-apocalyptic world where a wizard named Avatar must save the world from his evil twin brother, Blackwolf, who likes to confuse his enemies in battle by projecting films of Adolf Hitler speeches. Avatar is also joined by a promiscuous elf queen, a vengeful and short-tempered elf soldier, and an assassin named Peace who is struggling to break free of Blackwolf’s mental conditioning. This is definitely one of the more adult films that I watched as a child, and the message is much more powerful than I was able to handle as a child, but now that I’m older I have a much greater appreciation of the film I enjoyed so much as a child.

(The assassin, Peace.)

4) Watership Down
I’m going to assume that everyone has seen, read, or heard of this film. I think it’s safe to say that this is a movie that traumatized everyone’s childhood, but in case I’m wrong, I will say this: it’s about bunnies dying. Bunnies drowning, bunnies getting shot, dead dead bunnies. And there really isn’t anything else to say about it.

(Yes, this was the necessary photo.)

5) Dot and the Bunny
A mix of animation and live action footage (much to the vein of Wizards only far less disturbing in nature), this chronicles the tale of young Dot on her adventure through the Australian outback. Dot makes a promise to a mother kangaroo to find her lost joey, and an orphaned rabbit overhears this and pretends to be a kangaroo in order to get a mother. This is a much less violent and adult-content film than the others, but it does have a bittersweet quality to it: Dot can’t stand the bunny and tries to abandon it at every turn, and the rabbit is all alone having no parents or family of its own.

(Sorry this picture sucks, there wasn't a lot out there!)

So, as you can tell, I was pretty into quests as a child. I was also into obscure films that you can’t get on dvd now (but are well worth busting out the vhs player for), and that I probably shouldn’t have been watching as a child. Maybe it explains a fair amount about the person that I ended up becoming. Or maybe not. You decide.

Whatever you do, check these films out if you haven’t already seen them.

Who knew comics could be funny?

The other day, one of my friends, who I never ever see, came over and instead of wasting our money of bad alcohol and junk food, we decided to stay in and watch movies in my tiny, cold apartment. Initially I wasn't too excited with the idea, but then he pulled out this little "movie" (and I use the term loosely since it was hand-drawn comics and only forty minutes long, but I don't know a better word to call it), and I found myself laughing and agreeing with what it was saying immensely.

This little gem that he showed me was a collection of Levi Yilmaz comics, which are called Tales of Mere Existence, put onto a DVD and sold as an accompaniment to his book, Sunny Side Down, which I regret to say that I have not read, but plan to in the future. I also plan to buy the accompanying DVD because seeing it once was just not enough for me to capture all the humor, especially since I was watching it with a friend who I haven't seen in a while and wanted to talk to (which is never a good thing to do while watching movies).

It was a simple movie. That was possibly the best thing about it. It didn't try to make itself something that it wasn't with a lot of ritz and glitz. It was just a guy drawing simple little pictures as he told a story, and it was a bunch of these little stories strung together under the theme of "existence" and what it means for him to exist. There was the tale of getting ready in the morning, deciding on a job, his relationship with his father, and this one, my personal favorite, the decision to take your shoes off in bed:



This isn't the type of thing that I normally watch. I read Calvin and Hobbes in the paper when I was little and I'm pretty fanatical about Batman, but I wouldn't say that I'm a comic fanatic. I don't follow any comics now even though I stumbleupon them all the time, and I certainly don't know anything about comics in the way that I know about books. So, to me, this was a pretty obscure find and I was pretty excited about it.

Hope you enjoyed the clip!