you can go to places in the world with pudding

Don't read this.

Day 989, so close to 1000 entries and after a depressing day punctuated by comedy (watching the end of the final season of Seinfeld) and obsessing about finding the original version of a particular source for my master's thesis when I could just quote it indirectly, it occurs to me that 1000 is a nice round number and rounds numbers are great ends.

Not that everyday me wants to finish doing this. Unless I could justify going back to writing fiction each day, I am lately again of a mind that I need these words each night to get by.

It's that kind of day.

And Punch-Drunk Love is on, the abrupt car accident just happened followed by the inexplicable dropping off of the... whatever kind of organ that is. Meanwhile, Barry Egan (Adam Sandler, twisting his usual comedy tendencies into a rather disturbed sort of drama) has discovered that he can get a whole lot of frequent flyer miles by buying a bunch of cheap products, and then he's met Lena Leonard (Emily Watson, who I've totally had a crush on since Von Trier's Breaking the Waves even though, generally speaking, she's not my type). And, truth be told, I'm mad and I'm sad and weirdly energized by wasting the last few hours after getting some work done on my thesis earlier, and it's the weekend when I could totally justify not getting any work done if I wanted to, and I barely even feel up to this ramble right now, or maybe I feel a little too inclined to ramble right now, like I wish my day would be suddenly altered by the introduction of a beautiful stranger or a strange organ, or Luis Guzman shining a whole lot of light (literally) on things.

Then there is an interlude of strange colours and music, which reminds me of the aforementioned Breaking the Waves. And, a few bars of "He Needs Me" from Popeye and seriously, this guy makes toilet plungers? Or sells them, anyway. Not that I want all my movie characters to be detectives or superheroes or some fancy schmancy, sexy sort of occupation. I love this movie. I love its awkwardness. I love that no breakable handle demonstration results in a broken handle. I love that Barry's sisters (he's got seven, I've got six) worry about him and call to check that he's coming to a family thing later when I barely talk to my own sisters (we both have a sister named Kathleen, by the way) because I'm an increasingly antisocial person desperate for attention. It should be no surprise that my favorite song has the singer say,

I am nothing more than a little boy inside
That cries out for attention
Yet I always try to hide

Because that is my life. That is Barry's life here...

And, I want to just leave a gap in the entry here, like I'm enthralled in the film, and not have to say anything, or feel like I have to say anything, but I'm feeling stupidly wordy, or maybe it's brilliantly wordy. Because that I identified as much as I did (and do) with this movie, and my wife hated it, seems like an insight.

And maybe buying a bunch of healthy choice items, especially the pudding, and escaping to Hawaii is the dream. Like everyone in the modern world needs a fucking vacation, but we can't all go on vacation because there would be no one to run the damn hotels and the restaurants and the amusement parks and museums and whatever the hell it is that floats your boat when you're on vacation. But, as long as we're all stuck working and working for money day in and day out and so many of us have ongoing psychological issues we're dealing with, it seems counterintuitive to think we can, for example, vote our way to a better world, legislate our way to a better world.

As a teacher, I think I like to assume the angle Daniel Quinn had in... I think it was My Ishmael, when the question was how, specifically, do we fix the things that are wrong with the world, wrong with each of us, what is the singular plan that we can set into motion to save the world, the implication is not that we need a singular plan, but just to have enough people know what's wrong that that eventually, we'd get to the right people who were intelligent in the right way to come up with solutions even if we cannot. Or something like that.

Sidenote: I was just reading, on IMDb, about how Mary-Lynn Rajskub, who plays Elizabeth, one of Barry's sisters, had just ended a long-term relationship with Jon Brion, the composer for the film's score, so while scoring, say this scene right now, in which Elizabeth and Lena wait while Barry has to talk to the phone sex girl who's trying to extort him for money, this percussive score was put together by a guy watching a scene starring his ex.

And, Barry touching the harmonium (that organ) when things get tense, is a great writing/directing/acting choice. The kind of thing many of us can relate to--objects that ground us when we need grounding, actions that hold us down, hold us back, hold us in, when life wants us to blow up, blow out, blow away.

 

 

 

 

 

I injured my leg yesterday, a nice scrape on my knee and a bit of a... something to my ankle, on the stairs at the front of our apartment building, and it's so easy to feel pain today. And, it does occur to me that that is a fucked up statement to make, so negative when lately I've had my shit together and my life in line with something like normalcy. But, despite the regular pageviews, I'm not sure anyone actually reads any of these entries all the way through, anyway, so I will say what I will say. And, oddly, given the film tonight, it's appropriate anyway. Because, this movie is about a guy who doesn't know what he's doing but still does it fairly well.

Right now, Barry is lost getting back to Lena's room, and I would not have that problem. My sense of direction is impeccable. Even when I don't know where I'm going.

That's poetic.

That's pathetic.

And that's stolen from Rent, so...