the people and the fun

Extras amuse me sometimes. The waitress at the Cherry Street Inn, for instance. She always shows up during Phil's conversation with Mrs. Lancaster, looking for something but not finding it near the toaster.

The guy who walks past the Old Man a little behind Phil, big guy with earmuffs... at least, I hope those are earmuffs. He gives O'Reilly money every morning. That's nice of him.

But, really I don't feel like writing about extras--and certainly not without the ability to do screencaps easily. I'm not at my apartment this week. Not on my usual computer. Instead, I'm watching the movie on DVD on a television--I don't currently have a TV at my place, so that's different. And, I'm typing on my iPad.

And, I have this urge to explain in great detail what's going on in my life, but I really shouldn't. The basics: getting divorced, but this week I'm staying at my wife's place with the kids while my wife is away. It's... I don't know what it is. It's nice and it's weird. I miss being around my kids this much.

And, I'm glad for Phil Connors as I type that, because he is that unattached self-centered guy at the beginning of the film. While his visit to his mother in Rubin's original is a nice idea, I never thought it amounted to very much (and I've detailed how it fits awkwardly where Rubin puts it in the structure, but I needn't get into that again). It works so much better--and it's so much cleaner--to have Phil have nothing out there, outside the time loop. I think his depressed stage would have come earlier if he'd been missing family and good friends. He also would have probably had a shorter journey overall if he had the sort of attachments you miss, but that's beside the point.

Day 2--they are earmuffs.

Two of my kids have been sick and I'm hoping old allergies are acting up because of the cats at their place because I don't want to be sick. That's another thing that's good for Phil--it may be midwinter, when some people might be getting sick, but he won't have that problem. He wakes with the same health every morning. There's this nice bit... or rather a tragic detail I suppose, in the short film 12:01 P.M. in which Myron is about to eat his lunch and it's nearing the end of his one-hour time loop, and he points out that it doesn't matter if he eats it because when the clock strikes 1:00 he'll just be hungry all over again.

Anyway, despite personal stuff going on, despite being in the middle of the second week of grad school, despite feeling like I might be catching what my kids have, my mood has still been mostly positive. Or, on the positive side of the scale anyway. I'm reading about Socrates earlier--in Plato's Gorgias--and thinking Socrates is kind of a jerk even though Plato seems to have deliberately set the piece up to make Socrates look good, and I'm glad to be able to spend time on such things. I mean, life can be so much worse.

And, that's not a train of thought I get onto a lot of the time. I mean, I know so many people in this world are worse off than I am, and I have great concern for conditions that make it that way, but it's not something I spend too many of my waking moments thinking about because that would be really depressing. But, I have the time to do stuff like this blog. It's got its useful ends, of course, but it's also an indulgence, something a lot of people couldn't afford.

Insert here a long gap as the movie continues and I get lost looking for a poem I bookmarked but I can't figure out what folder I bookmarked it in. Though I was going to quote it here, I knew it wasn't in my Groundhog Day Project folder. Though I have a printed version of it in my folder of interp pieces in our forensics squad room, it's not in my coaching folder. And, though it's a poem, it's not in my poetry folder. So, I could guess at the line I wanted to quote, or forget about it... maybe I'll use it as the jumping off point tomorrow.

I don't see myself in the mountains, at high altitudes in five years, by the way. I don't think Rita does either, so that's one of those lines that always seems weird to me. Like one of those things she tells people but doesn't actually believe--maybe it's a fantasy, but she knows that's all it is. So, how weird is it that Phil keeps saying that on their date. She just met this guy yesterday and he's got the same damn fantasy she does? It's almost freaky enough she should be backing away, especially after the sweet vermouth thing and that line about the sunlight hitting the buildings in Rome--you know Phil got that from her also. She shouldn't be amazed, she should be creeped out... long before he gets her into his room

Insert another gap as I relax and almost fall asleep, letting Groundhog Day seep into my brain. Remarkably, I don't think I've had any Groundhog Day dreams yet since starting this project. I think I was having forensics dreams after two tournaments. Of course, watching this movie over and over is hardly as stressful as competing in speech and debate. Hell, I think I've mentioned before, this has gotten to be somewhat relaxing a lot of the time, my hour and a half to indulge myself, put thoughts to screen and ramble about whatever comes to mind.

Tonight, I'd rather think about Socrates than my own life. I'd rather worry about Phil as he inches into suicide than think about some things in the real world. I'd rather... I don't know what I'd rather be doing. It's late at night, I'm watching Groundhog Day and I've got a long day of school tomorrow. Sure, some parts of life are hard, but overall, maybe I'm just good at compartmentalizing, or compensating, or something... it doesn't feel that bad. And, Phil is still funny.

Today's reason to repeat a day forever: to get to my more shallow blog topics instead of rambling, I suppose.