Movies – Rant and Roll

In it for the long run.

Oh hey y’all!

Long time, no write.

And I must express my sincere contrition.

Now, I know I sound like a broken record every time I return after a long wordless sojourn, full of the same old platitudes – “Life is so crazy!” “Time seems to be slipping away all the quicker every day!” “Why can’t I ever keep track of where I leave my hairdryer!?” – but, in my defence, these inanities are sincere.

TO WHERE THE DICKENS IS TIMING SLIPPING AWAY!?

And it’s not as though I don’t want to be engaged with the blogosphere. I am always very aware that I want to be writing, and get frustrated when I am not.

I miss feeling my fingers fly across my laptop’s keyboard, tap-tap-tapping out a tale or two about the banality of hair removal, or the injustice of fast fashion (and my inability to restrain myself from consuming, and therefore sustaining this industry) or the life-altering qualities of a really good lipstick..

I miss interacting with other writers, and kind commentators, and thinking about my next scheme, or post, or story.

Last night Marc and I cooked up a pasta feast and enjoyed a candlelit dinner, taking turns reading to each other from Catullus’ complete works of poetry.

In between my laughter, I continually croaked, “THIS – THIS IS NOT A POEM!”

Bawdy stuff there folks.

BAWDY AS HECK.

Afterwards, we watched a pretty mediocre movie on the 4 Deserts Ultra-Running Race Series (racers run through the Atacama, Gobi, Sahara, and Antarctic Deserts) which we thought would be awesome, but left us feeling pretty lukewarm at best.

(Unlike the weather conditions in any of those places.)

However, despite the film’s shortfalls, I was completely jazzed just watching each of the runners take on such insane distances (250 kilometers) in downright torturous conditions (unrelenting heat, windstorms, sharp drops in temperatures, freezing rain.)

And I wanted to something similar.

I wanted to push my body to do something it had never done before.

Even if I couldn’t wake up this morning and race across the Gobi Desert, I wanted to do something, anything so to feel a connection with these amazing, fearless racers.

So when I did wake up, I decided to run from my house in New Westminster, to the Broadway/Commercial Skytrain station in Vancouver.

Now, technically speaking, this run would take me across two cities and past eight skytrain stations -which seems like a really long way to run!

But in reality, it only clocks in at sixteen kilometers.

Which seems incredibly short!

(Yet such is truth, spoken by the infallible gospel of Google Map My Run.)

However, in the end, it was a pretty bonkers route, with almost 350 meters of elevation gain, a battery of rogue crosswalks and the odd sketch individual or two, where the only thing rushing through my mind was “don’t want to know what’s being decided upon in THAT interaction!” as I motored on past.

Also, before I left, Marc told me that it very cold outside (due to the amount of fog that was blanketing our house and its environs) so I made the tragic mistake of wearing a tight, long-sleeve fleece, over my wicked (also long-sleeved) running shirt.

Marc’s note: “It WAS cold! I went out running an hour and half before you!”

Thank goodness I forwent the toque.

By kilometer four I thought my head was going to blow right off of my body, leaving the remains of my cranium looking like modern day Vesuvius.

I feverishly tore the fleece from my body and immediately felt the cool relief of the morning’s breeze make its way across my steaming torso.

Then I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to run the remaining twelve kilometers with my shirt tied about my waist.

Now, I’m not sure exactly what it is that bothers me so much about clothing tied about my midsection, but since childhood it has driven me to distraction, and I especially hate it when exercising.

I guess I have always (erroneously) equated (or conflated it) with non-serious runners, and prided myself on knowing how much clothing to wear at any given time, on any given run.

However, this silly theory of mine was completely obliterated on my run today, as I went on to spend the majority of my time, waist cinched, simply flying through Burnaby and into East Vancouver.

So, I’ll be the first to say it – I’m still learning.

And I hope to heck that I never stop.

Just like those ultrarunners.

So hang tight. I’ve got but two hundred and thirty-four kilometers to go.

Roll the clip

Alright folks, let’s get a few things straight.

Today is September 20, 2014.

We are approximately three days away from the beginning of the Autumnal season.

I am twenty-nine years of age.

You are whatever age you currently are.

This is where I am sitting:

Everything is both beautiful and terrible. Everything is both unadulterated brilliance and unmitigated bonkerness.

Everything just is.

Sometimes, whenever I start to get really down by all of the fuckery that seems to dominate our world’s discourse (not to mention actions!), I just really try and focus on all the amazing, beautiful, and breathtaking things and events of which I am privileged enough to both behold and partake.

And sometimes, I just think about the quiet world of my early morning, pre-work runs.

When the sky is a mottled blend of purples, pinks, greens, and blues.

When the sky is the most beautiful bruise.

I run down along the boardwalk with my heart in my throat, and my tears in my eyes. My legs feel as though they are six miles long, and my arms pump, just like my blood pumps, and everything feels right and strong.

And I know that I am flying.

Sometimes I feel silly and trite writing again and again what it feels like to run. How propelling myself forward as hard and as fast as I possibly can brings on such infinite joy.

But I can’t.

Just like running itself, I cannot stop.

I cannot swallow these words.

They are a compulsion.

They are a joy

…

Work has been a little batty of late (50+ hour weeks), spent zipping about like zipping things (zippers!!).

However, seeing as though my fellow colleagues are gentlewomen and squires of the highest order, I cannot bring myself to complain.

The fact that I am passionate beyond a thought about my job and the work that I do is, of course, another boon.

However, this is not to say that we can’t have a great laugh at our own expense, especially in the lead-up to a very large event, of which we have been working on since March.

March!

Case in point:

I, like we all, have the capacity to be a grumpy cat.

Hence, I am actually grumpy cat.

…

Remember movies?

I do, but barely.

And this leaves me feeling a little melancholy.

Because movies used to mean so much. They used to mean so much to me.

I recall the first movie that I ever saw in a theatre.

Beauty and the Beast was everything a movie should be (in my very discerning six year old mind). It was funny and scary. There was a beautiful, brilliant, strong female lead who loved to read and who wouldn’t take crap from all the ridiculous idiots who populated her “provincial town.” She, rightly, loathed Gaston, and held her own when it came to The Beast’s infantile temper tantrums.

In truth, it’s probably the only Disney princess flick I’ll ever be okay showing my future kidlets (but that’s another post for another time.)

I am fairly certain it was my nanny Suzanne who took me to the movie, and it was her gift to me on my sixth birthday. We went to the old (and now sadly demolished) Capital Six, back when Granville Street was in its full grunge-tastic glory.

Memories!

The first “grown-up” movie I ever watched in theatres was when Shona Langmuir, Patricia Beckerman (aka “The Girls”), and I went and saw The First Wives Club when we were in grade five.

Note: please let me emphasize the term “theatres” in the above sentence. My family were rather lax when it came to flicks seen by us kids, and we were viewing adult movies at a very, very early age. I remember watching the Fugitive on Easter Monday in grade two.

Nothing like collecting a bunch of chocolate eggs and then sitting down as a family to watch Harrison Ford clear his name!

Good grief.

But I digress. Holy damn did I ever dig The First Wives Club. Sure I didn’t get a lot of the jokes, and the scene where Brenda eats dinner by herself absolutely destroyed me. But it didn’t matter. It was three women who loved each other, out in the world, kicking ass and taking names.

Too this day I re-watch it at least once a year.

You don’t own me!

Looking at both this film and Beauty and the Beast would you say that there seems to be a pattern emerging as to the type of movie that really resonated with my younger self?

Oh to be that wide-eyed, bushy-tailed, newly emerging feminist!

There are so many more movies that, collectively, with the thousands of books, songs, and other miscellaneous artistic detritus that I’ve encountered and loved along the way, have helped inform who I am as a young woman today.

For instance: I LOVE Forrest Gump.

Next time you see me, ask me to quote the entire movie. I will do this for you.

I also love Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and A Fish Called Wanda, and I will always adore Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral.

I saw Amelie in grade eleven with my first boyfriend and spent the entire summer pretending to be her.

I adore Kieślowski’s Three Colours trilogy. My favourite of the three films being the darkest and most brilliant black comedy of all time, “Blanc.”

I will go to my death extolling the cinematic virtues of The Big Lebowski. For me, nothing will ever be funnier than this brilliant pieces of the Coen Brothers subconscious. I quote it all of the time and there are total parts of my and Marc’s vernacular made up solely by movie lines. I can also never look at a bowling alley the same way again.

It’s weird.

I love dramatic films as much as I do comedy, however I just am never one to really revisit these masterpieces, and as such they don’t influence my life to the degree as my favourite comedies.

And it’s not as though these two genres cannot exist simultaneously. In no uncertain terms are they are not mutually exclusive concepts.

It just takes one hell of a filmmaker to pull this off.

(Like the Coen Brothers.)

But isn’t movie watching also so much about the experience? The memory of that time spent in the theater? Where you were? Who you were with? Where you were in your life?

Probably one of my most cherished movie related memories is from the first few months of Marc’s and my courtship. Only four months into what is now an eleven year love affair, the two of us went to see Love Actually on a dark, went and very cold Vancouver November afternoon.

I had spent the night at his place and, because I was in my weird “only skirts, no pants” phase, I was wearing a pair of his cords because I didn’t have a clean pair of tights. They were absolutely huge, and I looked a bit of a sight. We had spent the morning at a community theatre on the Westside where I auditioned for a part in an upcoming play (spoiler: I didn’t get the part!), and then had bussed downtown. Arriving at the theatre (also the Capital Six!), we ran up the escalator so we wouldn’t be late for the previews.

I so wish I could properly communicate how much I felt watching that movie, sitting next to the man (the boy!) for whom I felt so, so, so strongly.

My body completely electric as I held his hand, I laughed at Bill Nighy’s amazing portrayal of Billy Mac and felt my heart break and break and break for Emma Thompson.

I just loved it.

I hate that I am even typing this, but for me, at that moment in my life, love truly was all around.

(I’m sorry!)

But it’s true.

And that’s why movies matter.

And why, despite the fact that I never go to the theatre anymore, and I only use my Netflix to watch old episodes of QI and MI5, I’ll never let them go.

I couldn’t even if I tried.

Putting in a little elbow grease

OH MY GOD KEN!

SOMEBODY JUST CALLED!

…

Please play this song as you read this post because I am utterly obsessed and listen to it constantly and I like to pretend that as I walk about town that it’s the soundtrack to my life and we’re just at the mid-way point montage and everyone is like – WILL SHE MAKE IT?

And the answer is YES! YES SHE WILL!

Dear readers.

What adventures have you encountered of late and which hearts have grown five sizes from the lips of new kisses and which faces have been warmed from this bright sun’s wide strong rays and which eyes seem ever the brighter from a clear sky that looks to float just out of arms reach, and yet touches everything with the softest of fingertips so that we might all blush the lightest blue?

Regale us with your stories.

Because of late everything is so beautiful.

On Saturday morning I woke up at six, pulled my legs out of bed and ran seventeen kilometers. The early morning air was cool enough to keep me going, but I cannot say that the heat did not creep.

Because the heat always creeps.

Afterwards, I arrived home, showered and then hopped on my bike.

It’s been over a year since I last rode atop my noble steed. My “champagne green” beauty of a cheapskates find that I love because once I get into that saddle I forget all pretense of “taking it easy” and just GO GO GO.

Biking is funny to me because I never think of it as exercise because I am utterly committed to “looking cute” any time I do it.

I will never, ever ride a bike in running shoes.

I would rather be strung up from my (non-running shoed) toes.

And yet I will never go slow.

I am a study in contrasts.

And sillyness.

I biked to the Big Sisters BBQ and then back, a journey which totaled another twenty kilometers in the searing mid-day heat of a long and magnificent Vancouver summer day.

Once home I took a few minutes to sit.

The next day I biked from News Westminster to Kits Beach.

And then from Kits Beach back home.

This too is pretty far – about 56 kilometers.

Coming back, the sun was slowly sinking back from whence it came (Godzilla’s guest bedroom?) and the breeze kicked up and everything felt aglow with the possibility of a summer, and Sunday nights and family dinners, and young romances, and new friendships, and everything was heightened by the butterflies that fluttered about my stomach because I truly believed that anything and everything is possible and so very likely to happen.

Arriving home at nine, sweaty and salty and sand-touched and sun-kissed, I ate all of the Greek yogurt and blueberries that one famished and helmet-haired gal could manage.

I am also a master of disguise.

On Friday night we ate a lot of nachos.

On Saturday I watched Old Boy.

OH(LD) BOY.

I need to start investing in some iron clad undies because goodness knows I really don’t sufficiently gird my loins when taking a chance on more, shall we say, non-traditional cinema.

As perfectly summed up in a text message between myself and the friend with whom I watched the film:

ME: You had sex with your daughter and then you cut your tongue out?!>! O________________o

HIM: I hope no one reads my phone now.

ME: HAHAHAHAHA. Good point.

I am learning to see.

See so many things.

“Oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. They nest in Time. They make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. They live inside the gift, know power, accept, and need not mention it. Why speak of time when you are Time, and shape the universal moments, as they pass, into warmth and action?” – Ray Bradbury

Enjoy these long, eternity-tinged days.

For you and they are filled with magic.

No post on Sundays!!

On this Oscar Sunday, to celebrate all things cinematic, I made this:

It’s not over!

IT’S NEVER GONNA BE OVER!

…

(Man I never even watched this movie, yet this exchange has been making Marc and I laugh like loons for years! At the time of its release, he was working as a projectionist at one of our local theatres and according to him, he’s seen the film as many times as Ryan Gosling, “wrote those goddamn letters.”)

I DIE.

Happy Sunday all!

Love Actually, is, all around (can we move the Japanese Ambassador to 4pm tomorrow?)

Well, it seems as though the Christmas season has officially arrived here on the West Coast of Canada.

Which means, it’s only a matter of time before I watch my three favourite holiday movies:

Muppets Christmas Carol

Home Alone

Love Actually

It’s actually the third film on this list that was the impetus for me writing this post.

I was thinking about when would be an appropriate time to sit down for our yearly viewing of this masterpiece, before asking myself (for maybe the millionth time) – DID ALAN RICKMAN REALLY CHEAT ON EMMA THOMPSON?

This questions has been plaguing me for the past ten years.

Common consensus would say, yes, Harry and Mia did in fact engage in coitus (hence why we see her putting the necklace on in her undies, with an unmade bed in the background – I HAVE SEEN THIS MOVIE MANY TIMES) but I have such a hard time accepting this reality.

But most likely this is because of my all-consuming, and always growing love for Ms. Thompson.

Ya know?

EXACTLY.

Anyway, even though to me, this movie is perfect (to paraphrase Rick Grimes and all), here are a few other problems that always arise upon every viewing.

*holds up sign of mummified human being*

Too much?

ONWARDS!

1. I don’t believe that Colin Firth’s (Jamie’s) wife would cheat on him with his brother. I mean, THAT GUY? Really? HIM? Could they not have cast some crazy, smoking hot dude (a real Carl if you will!) to play this part?

And why is everyone so disappointed that Uncle Jamie isn’t staying with the family for Christmas? HIS BROTHER WAS SEXING HIS WIFE BEHIND HIS BACK! The fact that his entire brood of blood relatives is willing to excuse that horrible behaviour, but is insanely upset that Jamie won’t carve the bloody turkey is WAY COLD. And I’m not buying it!

Although “I HATE Uncle Jamie!” has become one of Marc’s and my most favourite sayings to date, so – not all bad I suppose.

2. “Miss Dunkin’ Donuts 2003.”

COME ON RICHARD CURTIS. We all know Aurelia’s Portuguese Dad isn’t using that as his insult of choice when he’s fat-shaming his other daughter.

What the hell man? IF you’re going to go for the cheap weight-related joke, at the very least use your imagination and don’t just go for the lazy laugh!

3. That photo of Harry (Alan Rickman) and Bernard (his son), framed on Karen (Emma Thompson’s) dresser cracks me up every time I see it. Bernard just looks completely nuts, and is making the most bonkers face of life.

I can never NOT see it now.

4. What is UP with the Prime Minister’s Press Secretary (Is that her title?) who likes to make fun of Natalie? Is she in love with the Prime Minister? Why the hell would she make such a crappy comment about the size of Natalie’s bum? I mean, isn’t that crazy unprofessional? I DON’T GET IT.

5. Daniel (Liam Neeson) and his step-son get over his wife’s death way too quickly. Also, no one learns to play the drums in a week. TAKE THAT YA WEE MONGREL!

6. Do we really think that backpack is chock-a-block filled with condoms?

7. What is UP with girls from Wisconsin? Is Christmas Eve and Budweiser some kind of lethal sex combination for these young ladies OR WHAT?

8. Look man, I think Kiera Knightley is as lovely as the next gal, but what the heck is up with that wedding dress? Midriff baring? In the middle of winter? And is she wearing feathers in her hair? I mean, look how effortlessly amazing Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is in his suit. Could we not have at least tried to match this?

9. Also, am I the only one who thought that Mark (Peter’s best friend) was in love with Peter? I still kind of wish that this was, in fact, the case. And that he really did hate Juliet, because she had taken away not only his best friend, but the love of his life.

10. LAURA LINNEY. What are you doing friend!? TAKE CARL AND RAVISH HIM. We all die, over and over again, every time we watch you waste such a magical chance to bed Carl the enigmatic chief designer-cum-underwear model!

So there you have it dudes. My (small!) beefs with one of the best holiday movies of all time.

Do you agree?

Disagree?

Let me know.

But in the meantime, I’ll let Joanna have the last word:

All I want for Christmas is YOU.

(And you.)

(And you!)