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My Profile
Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
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1:02 p.m. - 2013-04-03
It's tedious work but kind of interesting too, I'm sorting my movies and lining them up on the new shelves and discovering my taste in cinema is more varied than I thought. Sure enough there's plenty of princess movies and comedies- romantic and otherwise. There's the John Hughes movies and lots of classics from the 30s, 40s, and 50s. There's a whole bunch of musicals. But there's more than a few action movies and even some horror too. If you'd asked me yesterday if I liked horror movies I'd have snorted and said no, but there they are. No slasher flicks, but there's some seriously creepy stuff. 'Rosemary's Baby', 'The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane', 'Gaslight', 'Donnie Darko', 'Sex and The City'. (*giggle*) What about 'True Blood'? I just bought the fourth season. Little Miss Squeamish likes this nasty show about vampires? A show where the budget for fake blood far exceeds the actors' salaries and there's at least one mutilation per episode? And speaking of killing, there's a fairly decent selection of film noir and many, many oddball titles which defy categorizing. For instance, 'Eating Raoul'. Camp comedy? Murder mystery? Filth with zero redeeming value? What does it say about me that 'Pulp Fiction' is a comfort movie? Perhaps it doesn't say anything except that life is complicated and people are even more so. Something Mick is struggling with right now. My law and order, no shades of grey guy began a process on our first date, a process that continues to this day. When we met Mick had life knocked. He was certain there was One Right Way- a single moral code that applied across the board to all people in all situations and anything and anyone who deviated from it was WRONG. No extenuating circumstances, no wriggle room. Life got very complicated when he met me. I laugh sometimes and think about the conversation in the kitchen between Cher and her father. Cosmo: "Where's the ring?" That was my Mick when we met. Now, of course, he lives with me. Only my wardrobe is black and white. I live in the grey. Mick's learning. My admiration for him is enormous. It takes all kinds of mad courage to upheave one's life view and embrace change. He's a lot braver than I am, I tell you what. Mick's willingness to grow and change and leave behind the habits of a lifetime to take on new ones, new thoughts that have made things messy and complex where before he was always sure, wow. I bow before such courage. But this messy place in the grey often leaves him floundering. Take for example Butch's wake. Jay was the third guy in the Gang o' Three. Mick, Butch and Jay. A trio of cops who weight-lifted and chased women in their off hours. When Butch died, alone and broke, Jay was the one who arranged for the wake. Jay took on the sad duty of calling all the old friends, he helped Butch's grieved ex-wife with all the details and made sure Butch's daughters were met at the airport and had a place to stay. A good guy, right? Yes and no. Jay was a stand-up guy when it came to arranging the funeral, but he was and is an enormous pussy-hound. Jay was married during the skirt-chasing days. Still is. Never stopped him. So what does he do at the wake of his old friend? He's introduced to me and immediately makes a mock of my name. He tosses off a comment about my boobs. Jay completely disrespects me and by extension his other old friend, Mick. The creepy leers and inappropriate suggestive crap goes on all night. When I shook his hand to say good night Jay tickled my palm and gave me a look that made it clear he'd be open to us slipping off so I could blow him in the shadows of the funeral home parking lot. Disgusting. Mick didn't miss a beat of this garbage and was furious. And sad. And woefully confused. How? How could Jay do this amazingly kind thing for Butch and Butch's family and yet be such a greasy disrespectful pig to me and Mick? There's no good answer. And it's exactly this kind of mixed up moral ambiguity that Mick wrestles with every day. His formerly solid place to stand for Right and Wrong has gone awfully wobbly underfoot. He'd love to write Jay off for being an asshole, but Jay also showed remarkable kindness and decency toward Butch and his family. So it is that fluffy, happily ever after LA can shelve 'Secretary' in the romance section and 'The Toxic Avenger' next to 'Shrek'. From one of the original multi-genre mash ups.
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