Love ‘n Euskara for dummies.
Just saw Lars and the Real Girl. It was so sweet it made me choke right up, and feel all wistful and wishfullike inside the way these movies do—and I’d definitely recommend it to you, Henshaw. Because it was well done and believable. And because, when it is well done, I love the idea that social-misfit weirdos can find true love.
I love-! It-! And you know. Um, it’s springtime.

Still, it makes me consider again this tv/film phenomenon of the socially unsalvageable lad whom some perfectly adjusted gal rescues for no clear reason. You know: 40 Year Old Virgin did it, and Knocked Up—and it’s not just Judd Apatow. Consider, too: Garden State, Everybody Loves Raymond and on and on. And sure, we all heard, like, TV Guide, jibber-jabbering away about the “fat guy/hot wife” sitcom phenomenon (“ho, ho, ho”) a while back as though it were some sort of isolated outcropping, the Basque language of that second’s pop culture.

But, please. What’s with the “2005”-labelled shrink-wrap on this phenom? This weirdo, supremely unhealthy notion that the best men are special cases who need to be nurtured back to emotional health and ushered gently into the world by their women is really nothing new. Girlfriend as mother, all that; not new. I mean, gah, consider the entire decade we call the '70s. Nor has it died now that we’ve tired of talking about it temporarily. And, it doesn’t, it does not help men or women in the real world.

So then, what’s with the movie rec, if that’s how I feel? Well, because: competing synapses. Because nurture, too, and not just nature, works on all of us. What if they’d made Sir Main Character Guy really physically unattractive? How much then would I still be rooting for him and how much would I have been forced to confront my own little urge to jump his bones and then make him casserole?

Maybe I’m just disturbed by that. And, by how much that scene of Lars and that girl on the date at the bowling alley? The one where he’s just sighing a lot and rolling his eyes heavenward just trying to think of a good response to her innocuous conversational volley? While she sits there with a damn expectant grin plastered to her face? Reminded me exactly of someone I once dated.


Meanwhile, big, big changes sharp and bright going on, it seems, with friends far and wide. Time for upheaval, Miraclegrow, all that. Carmelita and Ginger are planting all sorts of new things out on the veranda, so this might really be the year I overcome some of my infamous black-thumbage. Also trying to get some friends to start playing the rock together; currently = all I can think about. Ah, spring fever.
Anyway, take care, ya’ll. Get out there in the sunshine.
(now playing: “Imperial” – Unrest, though, in general, lots of “Ceremony” by New Order. I blame those NPR music buttons between news stories for this.)