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Thursday, August 12, 2004

totally unrelated stuff about kids and movies

This evening I told my kids that they had to get their pajamas on and get ready for bed early because they went in their pool without permission (and WITH all their clothes on, and WITHOUT any towels nearby -- you do not even want to think about the state of the floor from the door to their bedrooms when I walked in). Half an hour later I came in the house and you could cut the air of secrecy with a knife. There is a veritable cacophony of "ssh!"s and tittery "it's a surprise"s coming from the bathroom. My thinking is that they're hoping to earn a bit of leniency by cleaning the bathroom. Actually LT just walked through and said as much, only more cutely. I knew there was a reason I had kids.

Total subject change. I have been thinking about movies today. There are a couple of movie phenomena that I'd like to discuss.

1. Movies that make me cry when I shouldn't. I don't cry when the wife dies in Return to Me. I don't cry when Charlotte dies or when Braveheart dies or at any other predictable movie sobbing point. When do I cry, you ask? At what scenes do I inevitably perform a full-out involuntary choke-and-tears with my hand over my mouth? In Fly Away Home, anytime Amy is flying that idiotic goose ultralight thing. At the end of Space Camp and Mr. Holland's Opus. During the Sabbath evening scene in Fiddler on the Roof (but not at the wedding or when they leave Anatevka). I think it has something to do with maternal hormones, because this never happened before pregnancy messed with me. It does seem rather random, though, and I'd like to know why it happens in this particular way.

2. New York. I've never been to New York, OK? So I don't know this for sure. But I am almost certain that New York is not as nice as it looks in movies. And it can't be fun to be a struggling actor or writer or whatever, waiting tables and waiting for a break. But when I'm watching You've Got Mail or even (oh good Lord, this is very embarrassing) The Muppets Take Manhattan, all of a sudden I, the bucolic rube from the smallest town most people have ever personally been to, whose dream house is surrounded by twenty acres of nothing but grass and trees -- I want to move to New York. It is like a communicable disease that I catch from that sort of film. And it doesn't work for other cities -- I've never had even so much as a tiny bit of a desire to move to LA or Chicago or the Bay Area, no matter what movies I watch about those places. Even this website (which is really cool and you should check it out) can bring on an attack. HELP. Someone please write and tell me that New York is a very dirty place where I'd be totally overwhelmed and mugged and it costs and arm and a leg to live there and all that. Please? --------