Tag Archives: movies

Foosball

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I am having an existential moment.  I now like playing foosball more than reading a book, even if it is on an e-Reader–the coolest thing ever.  Its is in our basement–because when my husband determinedly refused to return the purchase–I made him compromise–either in the garage or in the basement.  My first reaction goes back to the days of sitting in dorm, when I wasn’t supposed to be, and was among the pool table, the TV, the Foosball, and the pinball machine. At the right time, all four machines would be on, and anyone would have to wait for a turn.

It was during these times that the most “epic” conversations would take place.  “Epic” is the term because we would venture to use words and ideas that we were in fact just beginning to study in our classes.  We would discuss, as in the salons of Paris, France, as if we were the Professional Wordsmiths and Ideologues that drove the invisible machine of thought and taste and popularity.  We would bet each other, upping the ante, to try to find the proof of our ideas and our favorite things.  If everything turned out true, and truly, we would have enough riches from the day to get a free pizza and a pop from the others.

Once, someone brought in the movie starring Robin Williams.  And, when we convinced the Lords of the TV to let us use it… even if they weren’t invited to watch, we immediately began the two-hour marathon, titled, “Dead Poets Society.”  There were few of us who had not yet seen it, and for the other couple of us who had seen it, it was considered “gold enough” to re-view.  The beauty of the movie is its very unconventional approach to being young and immortal.  No Professor of any type is ever sexy… And, for Williams’ students to fall in love with their Professor, is very unheard of.  This is not a Woody Allen movie where the nerdy, intelligent, and anxious intellectual courts his students and many other younger ladies.  This is a boy’s film… a man’s film, if you will.  The boys at the boarding school where Professor Williams  teaches, is ripe for intense drama and the bravery that leads to the bravery facing death.  It is, like the Classic Plays of William Shakespeare, a great tragedy.  The students may as well bathe in the blood of their brothers, as we all know, that secret societies are like this.

So, as the viewing ended, we sat quietly, now a late hour, and those of us who did not live in dorm, were, in fact broaching the rules.  But, we sat there, contented with the movie, and with the quiet all around us, we began to wonder…  “Was that ending necessary?”  Like all tragedies.. something always feels unjustified, after great effort, and great expenditure, should there not be a life worth living come from it?  Why does the victor die?  And, why, is it that we know, even after the death, that nothing truly is changed… Another hero will come, and this hero, too, will die, unjustified.  There is no life, in these Classical Plays that is worth living.  All lives are lost, and sacrificed, and given up.  And, of course, the secret is kept…  How many will go to hell…  and, How many will go to heaven?

Even recently, that I have caught, movies like “Gladiator,” and “Troy,” and “Armageddon” all have that classic hero myth that makes the hero a dead guy.  And yet, we love them!  So, thank you to the foosball table, which allowed me to hang around the room in dorm.  I made friends who shared their wealth of knowledge and talent with me.  I would never go to the movies by myself, but I wouldn’t mind mooching a couple of hours from others.  To even the score between the moochers and the givers, we could play a game of foosball and yell out our frustrations… making a night in the dorm room more fun and cheaper than going to the student lounge or one of the bars just off campus.

Now, being quite an expert Foosball player, I do challenge my son AND daughter, to the games.  But, I excuse myself…  I am trying to justify my husband’s crazy purchase!

Why Thunder Storms Thrill Me

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Men are big, like a thunder head.  As frightening and as surprising.  I stop and laugh and breathe in my laugh.  Then in three seconds I see the lightening.

I have learned to fall asleep in a thunder-storm–the noise and the light a soothing background outside my curtained window.  This is the type of beauty that is heard first–the rolling noise, and sometimes the bang–coming first to be followed by the bright flash of light.

Sometimes I miss these thunderstorm days, which make making decisions and trying to find something to do automatically done and decided.  If you go outside during a thunder and lightening storm, you risk being struck dead by lightening, and this probably is more likely if you carry an umbrella.  (Metal attracts electricity.)  The umbrella, being standing high and tall, is a seeker of the lightening, especially on a golf course.

So, take care, if you have to be outside.  I often cancel all my plans for some relaxing nap time.  If I am on a schedule, and I have to go out, I will rush from door to car and then drive very carefully and then rush from car to door.  Even though I feel secure in the car, because of the four rubber wheels that insulate from electricity, I am afraid of the wet roads and front windshield full of rainwater running down.  Almost no visibility and wet rubber slipping and sliding make me nervous.  Brakes and engines do not respond like hands and feet.

So, when I have the luxury to reschedule and just fall flat  into bed, I do.

I f I am with my husband, he is guaranteed to drive.  In fact, it makes me nervous having him beside me in the passenger’s seat.  So, a happy house and home is me in the passenger seat, yelling at the kids to keep quiet while we are driving!  My husband…  God bless him, does the dangerous thing of yelling too…  I warn him again, and again, that he might as well be texting when he takes his mind off the road!  So, we risk our lives every time we get into this contraption that is the car.

I also know, that even when he uses his membership at the race car track to drive a speeds imagined vicariously on iMax screens, that that is not really enough.  He denies it, but I know when we are not in the car with him, that he races between the stoplights.  On the highways, he waits for the fun curvy part, turns on his police radar, and races.

It is so dangerous.  It is frightening.  And I cannot stop him.  It is an argument we have… both for real and both for the sake of arguing facts..  Sometimes I just give up.  Sometimes, I become affected and I have to yell very loudly at him before I can calm down and just let my thoughts and sentiments be known in a precisely said word.

So, if you happen to be reading this…, please…. please….  Stop racing the car!!!!  Stupid.

These things are just the things that nature makes.  I ponder and think, and still cannot come to an understanding.  Where is all the sense?  Where is all the reason?  Where are these things of the brain and the mind?  Well, I have to agree with most people, reading a book is not the same thing as watching the movie.  Movies have come a long way since the nineteen-twenties.  There is sound, color, foley artists, and magical flying brooms.  I wouldn’t know what a magical flying is if I didn’t watch it on a movie screen.  The safe thing about watching it in a movie, it that we know the actors are not likely to die to the real world and never appear again.  If we attempt the magic at home, we also attempt suicide.   So, this is my sense, and this is my reason.  We can still live and have a good time even if we do not carry AK-47‘s and fly fighter planes into an air battle.  We can stop pretending to be on a race car track in between the stop lights, as that… driving at track speeds on a narrow road where stopped cars, slow cars, and cars that are changing lanes, is what will kill you and the other driver.

So, husband of mine, please drive like a normal person!!!  He is spoilt and has access to too many gadgets.  He knows too many tricks.  And a crazy, ability to figure out any type of engineering.  Stupid.

So, I welcome thunder and lightening storms.  We are in agreement that when there is one, I will drive, otherwise we stay at house and home and have a nap.

Gods, Actors, And Cannes

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The most beautiful thing about an actor is the way he looks into your soul, simply by turning his head and gazing into your eyes.  It is impossible to return the favor and we swoon as the movie continues.  We feel secure when the actor does this…. revealing the complete meaning of being alive.  Sometimes it is almost as if God is speaking, as if the messenger from heaven, wings unfurled and flight through the air to rush towards earth, is the breath of the one who creates.  Are we ever so lucky?  Do we ever get to see this extra-ordinary circumstance any more than once or twice in our life?  And, why do we pine so, just for these one or two circumstances?

I am willing to pay for a movie theatre experience, which can add up to one hundred dollars for our family when we do this outing….  I love that the size of the actor takes the whole wall.  I love that the music, the voices, the dialogue, fills the entire room.  I like the dimness, shared with all the audience.

Movie awards season has started again.  Cannes, France is the host of the Cannes Film Festival, and it is the premiere film fest in all the world.  It means something…  something good, to be there.  It is difficult for me to get any juiciness out of it…. I ravenously swallow all the information that I can find….  But, as always, as an outsider, I can only admire the red carpet poses and read the opinion of the local film critic.  I, too, have fallen in love with the great actors and the great leading men.  Who can forget Russell Crowe in Gladiator…  and of course, Brad Pitt in Fight Club or Seven….  Or more appropriately, in Troy or Mr. and Mrs. Smith?

These actors take over the screen, and screen by screen, they take over the world, making money fly.  I could watch several movies from Hollywood in one day…  And not be blind to everything by the end of it.  I could enjoy as if I gorget the horrible facts of reality.  But in the end, I always find the incredible efforts of these global names takes me away and I know I will live forever.

The wish for many gods to exist is not some barbaric pagan dream.  It is not about trying to ignore reality and hope for something that we can understand.  It is about seeing.  The look of a god.  The meaning of a god.  The wish come true of what God is.  It is about having and believing, because one God can only look like one thing….  Perhaps the greatest?  Perhaps the only?  Perhaps nothing like the way I am, the way I live, the way I think,  the way life is?  Why is there a God of everything when everything just cannot meet the standard that this One God is creator of?

What if the Greeks of ancient times, actually are right?  What is there are different dieties?  That let us say, each race, each  ethnicity, is led by a god?  That there is great importance to this each god?  That these gods are exactly perfect in who and what they are, in the role they have in creation, in nature, in life?

If we use the example of Hollywood, with all their screen gods and goddesses, it suddenly becomes possible and probably…  that a universe of many gods can exist.  I am not saying that one great God cannot create what it is that we have, I am saying that we do not have to rely and believe only in one God just because it makes sense that one God ca make reality make sense in every single case.  Many gods can come from the same point of view.  Many gods can still make one reality.  God and gods and existence is not about endeavoring beyond ability to create.  Things suddenly exploded, as in the Big Bang.  Things just interlace.  Things just rely and delegate and work together.  It does not necessarily gave to be a lonely universe…  a lonely planet.  Our desire for more, for relatedness, for company, for greater, for love, for familiar, for just plain old life, is the mirror of the being or beings that lead all of this creation.  They show the way time after time after time.  With each birth.  With each death.  And with each moment that we catch that glimpse of God.

So, I am looking at Cannes…. Looking to see what it is that that lonely planet of Hollywood and all the other planets of movies have created in their gathering for Cannes.  I am thinking that they try their best at Cannes.  That the movies are always greater there.  I wish I could join the crowd that has gatherer from around the world there.  They are gathered there to see each other and to see everyone.  They are there for a great party, once a year, because Cannes is the siren call for all greatness.

One day, in another life, I will get the chance to fly to Cannes.  I will remember here, where I am now, but I will be in the future.  I am looking forward to it.   A bientot, Cannes!