the groundhog day project

Today, I think I’d rather stay in bed and recite the movie to myself than watch it. Fortunately, as I recently mentioned, watching the movie can fix a bad mood. Anyway, as I press play on the film, it occurs to me that it’s not my personal circumstances getting me down, per se. It’s that today is Day 33 and I still can’t play piano, still don’t speak French (though, neither, probably does Phil), can’t ice sculpt, won’t be going home with a nice dorky girl like Rita from a nice energetic party. In fact, I won’t be doing much of anything today. I should be throwing a Groundhog Day Project party to celebrate making it as many days as Phil does ( on screen, anyway ). I mean, a whole week was nice, making it a month a few days ago was great. But, this is a milestone—there won’t be another milestone for a while, the point at which I can definitively say “It’s like I said, I love this film; I’ve seen it over a hundred times.” I should mention, however cheesy and on-the-nose the lyrics a...

We have all some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time - of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances - of our knowing perfectly what will be said next, as if we suddenly remember it! That’s Dickens in David Copperfield . He’s talking about what we call déjà vu. Déjà vu gets namechecked twice in Groundhog Day . When, Phil asks Mrs. Lancaster if she ever has déjà vu, she mistakes the term for some sort of food—you know, a good fun jibe at those hicks in Punxsutawney. When Rita asks Phil if he ever has déjà vu, he replies with the classic, “Didn’t you just ask me that?” From the French for “already seen,” we usually throw out the term déjà vu for any situation that seems a little too familiar, like it’s already happened before but we can’t consciously remember it. Like we’ve read someone’s blog entry already but it isn’t exactly the same...

So, I think I’ve figured out what it is that gets the time loop going in Groundhog Day . But, first an aside: Last week’s Childrens Hospital episode “The C-Word” involved a running gag in which one of the characters, Owen Maestro played by Rob Heubel, thought he was stuck in a time loop. See, this season, the cast is working in a hospital on a military base in Japan and this guy’s morning started with the bugle playing reveille and a loudspeaker announcement of the time, and then his fellow doctor, Cat Black played by Lake Bell, comes in from working the night shift, which she calls “brutal.” So, Owen goes outside and sees another doctor, Blake Downs played by Rob Cordry, jogging right into some wet cement and then into a plate of glass two guys are carrying—old timey comic bits. The next morning, reveille again, the announcement, Dr. Black coming in from the brutal night shift, then Dr. Downs jogging, but this time Owen warns him about the wet cement. Then, as Owen wanders off, bel...