Everything I Tell you is Hearsay

This is what Google tells us spring break should look like...

despite the excitement i no doubt generated by the enthusiasm of my heading, i have to admit, mine was pretty dull.

i worked. i had medical procedures. WOO HOO!!

i did throw up, but not in a good way. not in a “i had way too many mojitos” kind of way. more in a “when they tell you to take those antibiotics with food, they are not kidding” kind of way. as much as i loathe vomiting (and rest assured, i loathe it more than almost all else in life) i am proud to report i can now claim the honor of having vomited while driving a moving vehicle down the freeway and managed

A) not to crash

and

B) not to get any on me

this makes me inordinately proud.

no one else i know had any fun either, though, so i don’t feel like it was all my fault spring break was a bit of a bust. when i asked hodie what the best thing about HER spring break was she said and i quote

“going to the dentist”

top THAT for excitement!!

not that i claim to have my finger on the pulsing throbbing hemmorhoid of pop culture or anything, but i like to think i’m good at recognizing people who have been in movies i have seen. it’s kind of an obsessive hobby of mine;

“oh, that guy was in the 3rd to last episode of Arrested Development, and the commercial for Olestra, and Dune.”

but there is NO WAY i would have been able to identify

THIS GUY

ignore the black baby for a second

as the same guy as THIS GUY

seriously. i could have stared at it all day and all night and all damn day again.

and since i am not a huge fan of the humiliation humor, and i think this new project will project will be just as squirm-worthy as his last offering… i say yikes.

magnolia is one of my very favorite movies ever. i unwisely lent my copy to some reprobate neighbor of mine about 5 years ago and thus hadn’t seen it in about that long. but sunday i spent most of the morning in bed watching it. and i remembered anew why i love it so very much.

it isn’t just because it helps me remember a more innocent time when watching tom cruise’s palpable intensity only moved me rather than creeping me out. nor only because jason robards delivers such a touching performance and i always wished he was my grampa ever since seeing “Max Dugan Returns” as a small child. the entire cast of this film moves together in a nuanced and tender way that exposes such loveliness and tragedy all at once.

i somehow forgot how many little tics i picked up from this movie. the scene where the little boy raps to Officer Jim about the identity of the murderer is classic:

i’ll help you solve the case, gotta get paid though, gotta get paid

i say this constantly. and of course, we all know i subscribe to the Seduce and Destroy credo

RESPECT THE COCK! AND TAME THE CUNT!

likewise, when Frank TJ Mackey gets cornered in a lie by the reporter and clams up on her, she asks him what he’s doing, his reply:

i’m quietly judging you

classic scorching derision!!

and not only this, but Magnolia contains what is, for me, the singlemost moving and beautiful scene in any film i have ever watched; each cast member sings a line or two from Aimee Mann’s hauntingly lovely song “Wise Up” and it does not matter if they can, or if they are even conscious but only that they are all bound together in this moment of vulnerability and wonder.

there was some unbridled crying in front of my cohort during this part of the movie. apparently my relentless sentimentality is no secret to anybody.

then i went to breakfast and had spicy potatoes and a screwdriver. it was a very nice sunday indeed.