Fallin' and Flying

I’ve been a movie lover since I was a little girl, my maybe because my grandfather was a film projectionist, my cousin owned a movie theater, or my cousins, brother, and I went to the movies every Saturday afternoon. I turned into one of those crazies who stay up past bedtime each March to watch the Academy Awards (and now the surgically enhanced stars parading around in their designer clothes), even though these days you’d think I was old and wise enough to know better. Don’t worry, I’m not, since it’s one of my all-time favorite habits, which I refuse to break (along with cleaning my ears with Q-tips). This is why my DVR is set to tape both the red carpet and awards ceremonies.

What I hate watching, though, are bad movies, because I’m a movie lover who finds them annoyingly frustrating and disappointing. So much so that my husband created the five-minute rule to cut down on my complaining (even though sometimes we don’t follow it, because hope continues to spring eternal). The rule is: we watch for five minutes, and if it’s not good by then, we stop, knowing with 100% certainty it’s never going to improve (even though most people – and critics - swear up and down that we’re wrong).

I hate to hate those crappy movies, but I do, and yet, I get no kick from hating them (although I do get one from champagne and watching ice skaters fall). I’m such a movie-lover, I watch almost everything (except violent movies), because I’m convinced I’ll miss out on the next best thing if I don’t. This means I end up watching (for five minutes) a lot of crappy ones.

Like 17 Again, which I watched last week when I was sick, and which I thought was one terrible, drekky, crappy film, even though both my husband and daughter promised me I’d love it, since they both did. Feh. Or The Hangover, another five-minute failure, even though my sister, son, and many (too many) friends said it was hilarious, and made them laugh non-stop. I hated it so much I had to get up and walk out of the room, away from the TV, where my husband stayed, in violation of his own rule, even though he agreed that it stank after less than five minutes.

I know. I know. No one likes a movie hater, which I admit I often am. Ooh – this definitely explains why I’m never going to be unconditionally loved in my movie-schmoovie lifetime, doesn’t it?

But – in my defense – there are so many movies I love, love, love. Unfortunately (for me), many (O.K. – most) aren’t embraced and adored by my friends (or most of the world), so my favorites often turn out to be so foreign even to those who try to please me by watching them, that I come off as a radical, weird-movie-promoting wackadoodle, which I don’t think I am.

What’s worse than the oddball label is how I have to constantly force myself to bite my tongue when the topic of movies comes up, which it always does, because I’m obsessed with talking about them. Yeah, it’s true: I tend to blurt out a stream of negative opinions about what I call drek (and most people call must-see). But if I don’t, I don’t have much to talk about, like, say, about one of my favorites, the six-hour Italian masterpiece, The Best of Youth, which I love to recommend but rarely succeed in convincing anyone to love or watch, no matter how hard I try.

I should probably stop trying so hard, even though my friends never do. They constantly try to convince me that the movies they love (which, duh, I more often than not end up hating) are absolutely, positively worth seeing. Since I rarely agree, that means I’m rarely in sync, odd woman out – a veritable, cultural poopy pants. Even though it’s no longer 1966, when fitting in mattered (and I made sure I fit in back then, come hell or high water) – it still stings to be out of mainstream America’s popular culture loop. Sigh.

So – for all of those who’ve asked: no, I haven’t seen Avatar (please! blue people? 3-D glasses? Spare me!), Up, The Blind Side, District 9, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious (I read the book about twelve years ago, though), or A Serious Man.

I saw An Education, which I didn’t love, because I’m not a fan of watching older men prey on younger, innocent women, and Julie and Julia, which I adored (plus I followed Julie Powell’s blog when it first appeared, and I read her subsequent book).

I saw Crazy Heart, which I thought was merely eh-only-fair (it was only playing in one out-of-the-way theater in Manchester, CT., so I should’ve known it wouldn’t be all that great). I loved the music (six original songs, no less), but utterly hated the greasy-haired, alcoholic, cigarette-smoking Bad main character. He made me cringe (but my friend swoon). No way, José, I told her, would I have had either sex or a relationship with that loser guy, even though the women in the film (and my friend) seemed to want to jump into dirty, unmade beds with him. I’d run in the opposite direction, I exclaimed, holding my nose as I backed away so I wouldn’t get a migraine from inhaling the boozy, cigarette-smell odor I’m sure he wore like an invisibility cloak. My negative review annoyed my friends, I’m sure, which is probably why they defiantly hooked arms and loudly announced that they adored both the characters and the movie. My husband gave me a CD of the soundtrack for Valentine’s Day – so I made them a copy to make up for not liking the movie they loved.

I thought Invictus was one-note, because it presented the same information over and over, had Matt Damon acting like anything but a famous South African rugby star and contained way, way too much rugby (which I thought was booooring. Thank god I’ll never have to watch that ever again). My husband frowned at my critique (which makes sense, because he cried during parts of the movie), then argued that I should’ve been as moved as he was by the Nelson Mandela story. I told him I was moved by the idea of Nelson Mandela, just not this film version, which I found a weak substitute for my fantasy of the man. I couldn’t figure out how to care about Morgan Freeman as Mandela, whom he portrayed as so he-manly sports-focused. Feminist me hated that Mandela used a guy-centric game to advance his country, even though I’m a rabid UConn basketball fan.

And that’s all, folks!

Ah! Woe is Me

I was feeling sorry for myself today, because my husband and visiting daughter got to traipse off to NYC to visit my granddaughter, while I had to stay behind because I’m sick. I thought I’d perk myself up by watching the movie Bright Star, Jane Campion’s take on the poet John Keats and his muse (and love) Fanny Brawne, but I ended up sobbing uncontrollably, along with Fanny, after Keats died in Rome. I continued to sob some more while I reread The Poems of John Keats, a lovely, leather-bound book given to me by an ex-boyfriend I first met in Amsterdam in 1968, on my first trip to Europe. (He was leaving me to visit Keats’s apartment next to the Spanish Steps, so he promised me a present when we met up back in the USA.)

Ah – isn't there just something to love about crying over spilt prose?

Because I still need cheering up, plus a quick reentry back into the 21^st century, I’m going to curl up under my quilt and watch the movie 17 Again, which both my husband and daughter saw last night and promised me was entertaining.

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! This afternoon's turned into a two-movie, marathon-watching, beautiful day in my indoor, homebound neighborhood.

Some Pig

I know – some of you are going to complain that I should be writing about interesting stuff, like string theory, sustainable energy, or how hard it is for me to lose weight in the winter. I’m even betting that a few of you are going to exclaim, “Who wants to read about your knitting addiction?” Please, don’t prove me right, because that’s who and what I was and now am, once again, which is why I’m asking you to grin, bear it, and (pretty please with strawberries on top) give my newest blog entry a chance to unravel.

Allow me to offer you a tiny peak into my knitting history: I taught myself to knit when I was about five (or four – who can remember that far back?) with pick-up sticks and string. I have no idea how or why I taught myself to knit, because there sure wasn’t anyone around me to copy – except for my Aunt Ceil, a fabulous knitter, who I saw maybe once in a blue moon during my entire early childhood. My one and only knitting memory of her involved raffia (she was making a sweater out of it), which I remember thinking was incredibly exotic and exciting. But, since I was about 11 at the time, and I’d already been knitting for years, I would have to guess I didn’t inherit my knitting gene from her, and that I was born a knitting addict – with the propensity for knitting and purling woven into the very fabric of my DNA. That sounds wacky, but interesting, eh?

Moving on: If you’d lived in Cambridge, MA with me in the 60’s, you’d have known that I also taught myself to crochet (with a little help from a mean knitting store owner in Central Square, who didn’t want to teach me, she just wanted me to buy yarn and get the hell out of her store). My first big crocheting project, which continues to live with me today, covering the back of the living room couch, was a patchwork afghan (the same one appeared on The Cosby Show, much to my delight). I worked on it my one semester in college, during large lecture classes – probably driving my geology professor, Erskine Caldwell’s son, insane. (He once asked me if I was related to Madame Dafarge, which meant he was a Dickens reader, but not a good enough reader to know that Dafarge was knitting, not crocheting, like I was.) I later pieced that gigantic project together in Philadelphia, on the floor of my boyfriend’s parents’ apartment – taking up the entire living room and driving his father insane (because I was having so much trouble deciding which square went with what). That boyfriend became my husband, whom I later knit an Irish Fisherman Knit sweater for, which he wore to death (but before he did that, my sister-in-law memorialized it and him in a drawing she did of him holding our baby son, which I framed and hung).

I continued to knit (and sometimes crochet) things for my kids, family and myself (plus two Cabbage Patch dolls) - until one day, when I had to quite, cold turkey, because I started having hot, hot, hot flashes that made me so boiling hot that just hearing the word “wool” threw me into a blazing round of intense sweating and flashing.

I kicked my knitting habit so thoroughly that I gave away my huge Mexican basket of yarn on Freecycle. Yep. I got rid of my lifetime stash of yarn, which I’d religiously saved for all my one-day-in-the-future projects. I quickly became a knitless wonder (since I could no longer wear even one sweater out of my collection, or anything wool, turtleneck, or long sleeved). I turned into a sleeveless, 100% cotton top-wearer, because that sweaty, always-steaming skin of mine now had to remain uncovered (and, alas, knit- free).

Then, I found out I was going to be a grandmother. Although I’d given away all my yarn (ouch – I no longer had my vast collection to create with), I smartly held on to my knitting needles, knitting and crocheting tools, and patterns. Thank goodness I did, because the second I found out I was having a grandchild, that old knitting addiction had me in its spell, and I was once again obsessed with knitting things, small things - like a striped hat and socks, to begin with (small things = small sweat droplets).

The day I fell off the wagon and found myself back under knitting’s spell, I found I was unable to go anywhere without my latest project at my side. I now knit at monthly library board meetings (so far, no one’s said I had to stop – or mentioned Madame Dafarge), during UConn basketball games, in the car on trips to NYC, and each Wednesday afternoon at my neighborhood library, where I volunteer in its all-ages knitting program. I joined Ravelry, an online knitting forum – where I’ve learned a few new tricks (thanks to YouTube knitting videos), and spent far too much time ogling other people’s knitting projects.

A few weeks ago, my daughter’s started knitting (I taught her how when she was in college) - finger puppets for her new niece – and she calls me for advice on how to follow directions. Friends have started calling to ask me to help them fix their knitting, which means the word’s getting out about me and my knittingness.

I’ve enjoyed picking up the pieces and putting them back together again, even though yarn is more expensive than it used to be. My fingers have loosened up nicely and these days I feel like Charlotte the pig, lovingly knitting (yes, knitting - not weaving) my own version of T-E-R-R-I-F-I-C into each new, little creation, because sweating the small stuff is lately a small price to pay.