Actually, I do want you to be my friend

That was then

Be Free

That Night

Before she was slaying vampires with Buffy, cheering with Kirsten, or playing a more acceptable version of a futuristic, brainwashable prostitute, Eliza Dushku was an awkward little girl, battling Katherine Heigl and trying to be Juliette Lewis in That Night, the Romeo and Juliet for the born-in-the-80s, latchkey-kid sect. A summer HBO staple, this movie was the stuff of fantasy for a number of young women. For me, it's sort of strange looking back on this admittedly rather mediocre film and recognizing some of these now-famous faces...because I want this movie to exist in the sort of capsule of naive magic it made me believe in as a young girl.

Maple

Perhaps it is subconsciously due to the upcoming Valentine's Day, despite the fact that I think it's more related to events currently happening in my and others' lives, that I have been in a particularly sappy mood. It is also partially due to all of the flack the movie He's Just Not That Into You is currently receiving for being a shitty movie, which is unfortunate, because romantic comedies don't have to be trite, sexist displays of patheticness. Anyway, I'm in a romcom mood.

Edit: I originally included a clip from Notting Hill, but since I'm actually watching My Best Friend's Wedding (or just finished watching it) and because I find it more pertinent to singles than Notting Hill, I've included the final scene below, that pretty much almost changed my life in high school, for putting words to something that had been scratching in my consciousness. Spoiler alert, obvs.

Me and you...

"I don't want to have to do this living. I just walk around. I want to be swept off my feet, you know? I want my children to have magical powers. I am prepared for amazing things to happen. I can handle it."
-Richard Swersey in Me and You and Everyone We Know

Fading Out

I have this miraculous way of missing important trends. One of the biggest things I missed out on was the Amy Winehouse craze. I mean, you know, her music, not her going crazy. I caught that part. Of course, pop music can be so ubiquitous, that a lot of it I absorb simply through osmosis (or you know, I'll hear it in a store, or blaring from car radios). I'll find myself humming songs not knowing where I've heard it, who it's by, only to discover that it's been the number one song on the charts for weeks and weeks. "Rehab" and "Back to Black" were two songs like this. I vaguely knew them, could utter a couple of words of the choruses, but knew nothing about them for quite some time.

On the tail of spending a couple of days listening to Nina Simone, Patsy Cline, Billie Holiday, and a few other soulful greats, I found myself itching to listen to "Back to Black" again. There's really something extraordinarily special about this...her voice, the words. I don't know if it's possible for anyone who does not feel some deep sense of authentic pain could sing this song the way she does.

The sound of pain

I just suddenly became overwhelmed by the sounds around me. I think there are crickets...but it's mostly a high-pitched electronic song, evidence perhaps that we really are in the Matrix? Now that I'm aware of it, it's rather disturbing. I turn things off, but it doesn't go away.

In movies when one stops and contemplates the sounds of the world existing, it always sounds like music. There's a beat, a rhythm, a natural beauty. I guess if you take out the nature, the world sounds like death. I faintly hear crickets. But they are losing the aural battle.

Recognition

Have you ever watched a commercial and recognized an actor from some obscure, long ago work?

Well, I was recently watching this CitiCard commercial and thought, "That looks like the chick who became the third yellow Power Ranger!" I remember her most from an episode in which she discovers that she's a great baseball pitcher and starts playing for the team. That episode made me cringe because her form was so terrible.

Her name is Nakia Burrise, FYI.

No Life

Kiss Series, The Movie Spoiler Edition: L'Ultimo Bacio

"Don't do it!" you yell at the scream. Carlo is 30. He has a beautiful girlfriend who is pregnant with their first child. He has a good job. His friends are going through growing pains...and so is he. And here he is, at a party with a young high school girl, blond, beautiful, crazy about him. He succumbs.

And the kiss is lacking in true emotion or even sensuality. It's just about sex. Not the sexy sex. The sex that happens to fill some proverbial, non-sexual void in one's life that one doesn't yet realize can't be filled by a good looking person who isn't his/her significant other. It's the kind of sex that increases the void.*

*-No vagina jokes.

Kiss Series, The Movie Spoiler Edition: Penelope

It's very difficult for a kiss involving James McAvoy to be anything other than incredible and steamy. No psychological analysis for this one. It was just amazingly choreographed, written, and executed.

Kiss Series, The Movie Spoiler Edition: Anywhere But Here

What makes this scene so memorable isn't the fact that this is some great, deep emotional, teenage romance. It's a quirky and sweet and fairly sad since it's always clear that he's more entranced by her than she ever will be by him. But the look of need in Natalie's face when they finally kiss...the way her vulnerability shines through this cool veneer she's attempted to erect just shows how young they really are. And they'll go on to their separate lives, fall in love with other people, but at this moment...

And apologies for the shitty quality of the clip. It's the only one I could find.

Mmmm...Gay Soup Wrestling

American President

While watching the movie Dave earlier today, I got inspired to compose a list of my favorite fictional American Presidents. However, as I was making the list out, I realized that it would all just be an elaborate ruse, superfluous fluff intended only to justify the posting of this video, of this fictional president whom I would follow to whatever end:

Movie Review: Penelope

Penelope was actually quite a pleasant surprise. I'm obligated to love Christina Ricci, as her onscreen, adolescent angst corresponded with the budding of my own offscreen angst...but as an adult, she has proven herself to be an inconsistent actress. However, there's something about her huge brown eyes in this movie that make you ignore her rather annoying way of speaking (has her voice gotten higher as she's gotten older?) and fall hopelessly in love with her innocence and spunk. James McAvoy is, as always, beautiful and brilliant as the main love interest, and not surprisingly at all, Reese Witherspoon stands out even in the smallest of roles.

The movie calls itself a modern day fairy tale and like a fairy tale, is a thinly veiled moral lesson, as anyone can see that this hideous pig-faced girl is a hottie and not the monster all of the characters in the film make her out to be. But the film's higher goalss never seem forced or too over-bearing, as the tone is always light and sweet, a necessity if the audience is not to be offended. Consider this a delicious, healthy cupcake, with slightly too sweet frosting.

I'm suddenly feeling very naive

I was going to write this a couple of weeks ago...when it became obvious the National Enquirer was in fact not bullshit. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. Because somewhere, deep down, I wanted it to not be true. Ok, it was not so deep down. I still want it to not be true.

When the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, my thoughts were: that's fucked up. He's an asshole. He shouldn't have lied. I don't care what happens in his private life, though, as long as he does his job. So why is this different for me? Because I was actually stupid enough to believe in John Edwards as a person and a politician. How often does that happen? How often do we have 100% decent people working hard and making strides in politics? A part of me needed to believe that someone in Washington could make a difference...and live with the same idealism they spit at the public. To walk the walk, so to speak.

The thing is, most politicians are self-centered, self-important, slicksters. But I truly believe that any person who pursues politics with any sort of sincerity must realize that he or she now has obligations to his or her constituents...examples to set in lifestyle that reflect one's political agendas. This means sacrificing selfish desires, just as parents have to do, just as couples have to do. Sure, people make mistakes, and I am not judging Edwards for his mistake. I am just disappointed that he could not look in the face of temptation and walk away for the sake of the American people, if not for the sake of his family who should have been enough.

Also, the lack of coverage of this by the media prior to Edwards' confession is very suspicious. See:

• Bias
• Edwards affair: Was media part of a 'conspiracy of silence'?

For your amusement

Live a Life of No Regrets

"Gerry, I'm a woman! We don't say what we WANT! But we reserve the right to get pissed off if we don't get it. That's what makes us so fascinating! And not a little bit scary."
-Lydia in Sliding Doors

Keep Looking....

"Who am I when I am not with you?"

Creating labels for ourselves limits us and impedes upon our ability to live up to our full potential.

Defining ourselves by, or revolving our lives around other people is also dangerous and destructive.

But it is so very easy to do.

Each man or woman will forever be lost to himself. We must find comfort in our inability to find ourselves. For the moment we decide that we have been found, we become officially imprisoned in our own fortress of mediocrity, no matter how grand we think ourselves to be.