When Bad Movies Happen to Good People

Ah, the beloved internet! An opportunity to speak one’s mind, blow one’s horn, or tell one’s story. Or in this case, to rat oneself out as a lowbrow counter-intellectual.


Confession: I have just wasted 101 minutes of my life on the worst movie ever made. What’s worse, I sensed this from the previews, but watched it anyway. My excuse? –my husband, the Center of the Universe (CoTU) wanted to see it. He twisted my arm (figuratively, of course), but that’s really no excuse for having given more than an hour and a half of what precious life is left to me on this planet to such a horrendous film. In fact, it’s so bad, it gives bad movies a bad name.

I can’t yet bring myself to tell you the title, but I’ll try to work up to it.

This whole nightmarish episode started innocently enough when we were watching a completely respectable, yet mediocre movie called “Date Night”. Right—if you’ve seen it you know it’s not great, but not embarrassingly bad either. And if you like Tina Fey and Steve Carell, you’re willing to put up with a crazy and predictable storyline. I had rented the DVD just for something to make us laugh, after a tough week with two funerals and nine inches of snowfall.

The situation germinated during the previews on the rented DVD. A buddy movie, four guys (three middle-aged and one Gen-Xer, cavorting in a ski lodge, in and out of a hot tub, and clearly caught in a time warp that has taken them back to 1985. Now if you recognize the set-up, you’re as big a lowlife as I am. Could you possibly ever admit that you’ve sat down and watched “Hot Tub Time Machine”? And for those of you who think I am making this up, let me just say, if only it were so…

Now in my defense, the movie starred John Cusack who I grew quite fond of after Hi Fidelity, About a Boy and Must Love Dogs. Okay, I should have stopped after Hi Fidelity and About a Boy, but at least I’m keeping mum about America’s Sweethearts, which must at least rank in the top five worst movies I’ve ever seen… So CoTU is cracking up over the previews for this so-called movie, and I’m shaking my head as if I’m being force-fed The Three Stooges. Which, in essence I was, except that it was The Four Stooges.

“We’ve gotta rent this!” he gushed, laughing at the lunacy of this quartet. “Over my dead body,” I reasoned. “Come on,” he urged. “You love John Cusack! –and there’s that guy from The Office!” (Did I mention that Craig Robinson who plays Darryl Philbin on The Office was in this abomination? He is. And in case you’re wondering, he’s not Michelle Obama’s brother—that’s a different Craig Robinson.)

I groaned, grunted, moaned, and accidentally let out a single guffaw at a bit of humor that was sneaked into the previews, so I was pretty much cooked. CoTU asked me to look for it the next time I wanted to rent a comedy.

Sadly, as it turns out, I was in the library the next day to pick up a book being held for me. I could say it was “War and Peace” or “The Sun Also Rises”, but 1) I don’t lie, and 2) you wouldn’t believe me anyway. After I grabbed my book from the “Hold” shelf, I took a quick look on the DVD display. They had (believe it or not) not one, but two copies of “Hot Tub Time Machine”. I picked one up, and dutifully checked it out. (In retrospect, I can’t believe that your tax dollars and mine bought these movies for the library!)

Two minutes into the movie I tried to walk out. Said I was heading upstairs to sort my socks or alphabetize the medicine chest. CoTU implored me to stay, “This is funny stuff!” he insisted. “Puh-lease, honey, this is pathetic and gross," I countered. But he used his most persuasive voice and facial expressions, and I relented. (I should have at least used this to leverage some off-setting possibility, you know—a bargaining chip for watching one of the ‘slice of life’ movies CoTU so opposes, but I wasn’t thinking.)

So I saw the whole awful mess of a movie, and I mean to say Mess with a capital M. I’m not proud of it, except perhaps as a testament to my endurance. When it was over, CoTU had to admit that it was a terrible movie, though it provided him with a lot of laughs.

“You know what the good news is about this movie?” he asked?

“That it’s over?” I suggested.

“Nope. That it’s on your library card. Not mine!”

“Yeah, but the library’s not allowed to make that information public, and you’re the one who rented “Year One”—at Redbox.”

Who’s got the last laugh now?

Playing Catch-Up! Thanks Again, Nancy!

The long overdue debt to the lovely Nancy at f8hasit is paid at last! Nancy honored me with the Your Blog is Fabulous award all the way back on November 11th, and I am overdue to execute the responsibilities of this award. Can she rescind it? Well, maybe if I get on the stick today, she’ll cut me just a little more slack…

But seriously folks, since November 11th I’ve traveled to Pittsburgh for a lovely visit with my son and the daffodil (remember: De Facto Daughter-in-Law), nearly burned to a crisp in a hotel fire en route home, (you read that post about ten days ago?) and hosted a gala Thanksgiving dinner here for 16, which (by my own rules) involved marathon cooking for days in advance. And the use of dishes which can not be put into the dishwasher. (Yes. I am nuts.)

So I’m just saying, I have tons of excuses for the lengthy delay…

Anyway, my obligation is to tell you of five obsessions, and to bestow the aforementioned award on five more bloggers. First, my obsessions.

1. Billy Collins. His poetry totally rocks my world. He can make me laugh and cry both within the same poem. He sees things with clarity and insight and shares them like a ripe peach. Oh, please buy his books, read his work, and worship him as I do. We will be the Billy Collins cult. And The Lanyard will be our anthem. Or The Trouble With Poetry. Or The Poems of Others. Or The Man in the Moon. You will so love this man’s work.

2. Fabric. I love everything about it. Touching it, turning it, cutting it, ironing it. Wait—maybe not so much the ironing part. I started sewing when I was very young, and fell in love with what I could do with fabric. Make myself a dress, make curtains for my room, later make clothes for my kids, re-cover seat cushions to my liking, make fun purses, etc. When I discovered quilting about twenty-five years ago, a whole new world of fabrics opened up to me. Great and wonderful colors and designs are out there, and there are new lines and designers coming along all the time. Amazing things can be done, and one can never have too much fabric. That is axiomatic. You can believe the bumper sticker She Who Dies With the Most Fabric Wins.

3. Justice. I know, this should have been first, not third, but I’m weak. I despise and detest injustice in all its many forms. I cringe, rail, and shake my fist in the face of any display of bias, discrimination or unfairness. I write letters to the editor, to my senators, to my congressman, to anyone I think can effect change in the face of some perceived wrong. I attend meetings, sometimes I organize meetings, letter-writing campaigns, or other means of protest when I think that justice is not being served. Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and who are we if we do not speak up when we witness an act of inequality?

4. Reading. My earliest memories are of reading. It was Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson. I have very vivid memories of riding the Elmwood-Darstdale bus to the Delmar Loop to visit our local library on Saturday mornings. I can (seriously) conjure up the smells of that wood, and the marble floors and the beautiful, and seemingly endless, shelves of books. I recall that I was allowed six books each week, and would read them over and over again until the next Saturday rolled around. I also remember that I couldn’t wait for my fifth birthday to come, as that was the day I was permitted to get my own library card. I printed my name on the line, and my mother attested to my age. This was perhaps sweeter than getting my driver’s license. A license to read. My driver’s license had more limits than a library card. I still couldn’t leave our metropolitan area at sixteen years old, but even at age five, with my own library card I had a passport to everywhere. I was reborn! (We should talk about The Elegance of the Hedgehog—have you read it?)

5. My kids. (Photos some other time!) Enough said. I’m getting ferklemt just going that far, so fill in the rest for yourselves. And this includes, of course, the grandkids. Sniff, sniff.

Step two: Bestow the award on five deserving recipients. For that, tune in Friday! This post has become a tome in itself!

Good Manners, Part Two

I can tell by the comments you all (bless you all!) have left that I touched a nerve. Let’s talk a little about what used to be called common courtesy.

This week, courtesy was the topic du jour, jour after jour. I’ll touch on a couple of my favorites.
From Amy Dickinson, who writes a syndicated advice column (replacing the late Ann Landers at the Chicago Tribune when she died), there was a discussion of “What Happened to Civility” on Thursday afternoon’s “Talk of the Nation” on NPR.

After all the obvious things were reiterated about how awful the Big Three events were (to recap: Joe Wilson yelling, “You lie!” at the President, Serena Williams harassing and threatening an official at the U.S. Open, and Kanye West rudely usurping Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the VMA ceremony.) In my estimation, the best point Amy made was about apologies. She cited a letter from one of her readers asking about whether an apology was called for in a certain incident. Amy’s advice? If you ever wonder whether you need to apologize, the answer is yes. Well put.

On “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” (another NPR show) the whole panel had a field day, doing riffs on each and every one of the three rudesters and their shameful behavior. My favorite was Mo Rocca recommending that the three should end up in a current-day “Breakfast Club”, and I believe he had some ideas about them force-feeding tennis balls to each other.

But the finest moment belonged to Ellen Goodman, whose column in the Boston Globe (and nationally-syndicated as well) was titled “Clinging to Civility” this week. She reminded us that as a candidate, President Obama was urged to get tough with Hillary Clinton. “He didn’t and he won.” Then he was advised to ‘duke it out’ with John McCain. “He didn’t and he won.” She notes that in the very speech that was so rudely interrupted, the President said, “I still believe we can replace acrimony with civility.” And he models that behavior. You gotta love that.

Okay, but back to our own everyday lives…

We interact with others all the time. Sometimes in person, sometimes on the phone, and more and more, we interact online. Each encounter has the potential to be positive and uplifting, to be basically a neutral outcome, or to be a bummer. For me, much of that feeling is determined not by the actual end result, but by the way it occurred. As my mother would have said, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” So if the cashier doesn’t say ‘thank you’ when I leave the supermarket, I still paid the same money and left with the same groceries, but it feels different from the times when they say ‘thank you.’

So you can let the post office door slam behind you, although I’m close behind with my arms full of packages to mail, or you can glance over your shoulder and hold the door for me. You can keep driving past my subdivision, bumper-to-bumper, and leave me waiting with my turn signal on, or you can stop and wave me out into the traffic one car ahead of you. You can let me hold the door for you, and not even mumble a thank you, or you can smile and hold the door next time for someone else. There’s that opportunity to ‘pay it forward’, as they say, and maybe we will all go back to the good old random acts of kindness.

I have a few personal favorites. One, when I’m walking into or out of the library, if I see a car pull up to the curb, I’ll walk up to the driver’s window and offer to drop off their books for them. They don’t have to get out of the car, and I feel like I did a good deed. Two, I like to let someone pull into traffic. Not twelve cars, but I can let one or two in… How much later am I going to get where I’m going? Of course, when the other driver doesn’t so much as wave a little thanks, I kind of grimace, but hey—I tried. Three, when someone even older than I am (and there are a few of them left who still go out in public) I try to make sure I get the door for them. I’m not looking for applause; chances are you do all these things, too. Most of us are courteous and thoughtful people who look for ways to be kind and pleasant. Maybe that’s why we notice when others don’t.