Mid-Summer Matinee

Back in the boondock days I took a class on modern cinema.  It was a good exercise because I was exposed to films I wouldn't ordinarily have watched--black-n-white French stuff I really didn't understand, Italian movies filled with oblique angles and dark shadows, rickety early Russian gems like "Battleship Potemkin".  You get the idea.

And I spent hour upon hour listening to several know-it-all classmates pontificate on the meaning of art.  The professor allowed such meditations to chew up the bulk of most class periods--the end result being, of course, we never defined "art" and I turned in my final exam certain that the value of my parents' tuition dollar had not been fully realized.

Some thirty-plus years later I find myself engaged in similarly circular conversations, only now with my own kids and their friends over the value or lack thereof in certain highly popular movies--movies which are either reflecting or shaping the culture in which we live.  Either possibility is frightening to me, because said movies seem so bereft of human spirit.  Funny they may be (depending upon one's own taste in humor), but humor that leaves me with a sour taste and a need to scrub my face isn't really funny in my book.

Generation gap?  Probably.  Subjective?  Of course.  It's summertime, after all, and the crop of summer movies has always been, even in my day, one of cotton candy carnival fare.

So how about some fluffy, adult-sized cotton candy?

Yes, that's Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks.  Yes, it looks like your typical leggy Julia Roberts-biggest grin on the planet-biggest belly laugh of any modern American film actress, fare.  But it's not.

It's better.  Tom Hanks and Nia Vardalos (of "My Big, Fat Greek Wedding" fame) co-wrote a script that is smart and funny, doesn't miss a single detail of the man who is Larry Crowne, isn't afraid to make Ms. Roberts a teeny bit unattractive with a nasty little drinking habit and a pretty nasty husband to boot, and a quirky assemblage of folks who make you want to go back to school at the local community college.

It's fun.  Sure, it's not real life, but wouldn't it be nice if real life was a little more like this--where a pipe-smoking neighbor with a perpetual yard sale who is a pain in the rear can also be a friend, where it's cool to ride a non-adrenaline pumping scooter (no chase scene in the entire flick), where the Dean of Students does tai chi in a bow tie, and public speaking is the new You Tube?

What makes it work is that they (Mr. Hanks, Ms. Vardalos, et al) know people and they like them.  They know we aren't perfect, out here in the suburbs and the backyards of America.  They know we're actually pretty dorky and kind of dull, but they also know we're kind of fun, too.  After all, every single guy isn't a hung over wedding crasher who can't remember the name of the last person he slept with, and every single chick isn't a pushed up, pimped out, revved and ready pole dancer. 

Ill-fitting khaki pants and a Boy Scout sort of do-unto-others attitude can be pretty sexy, too.  Thanks for getting it, Tom and Company.

Play List

I sat down at my computer this morning to do some basic appointment scheduling, e-mailing...the usual muck-a-muck business.  An unknown member of the family or perhaps a visitor to the house (we have many), left this surprise up and loaded, the perfect beginning to an ordinary day:

I'm old and out of touch with the current music scene.  Even in the days when I was young I was out of touch with the current music scene.  If it didn't make its way to my car radio, I probably didn't even know it existed.  With advanced age and ever more distraction, I am even less in tune.  But every once in a while some tolerant young person introduces me to a little known gem that makes me happy to share their musical universe.  Mumford and Sons are such a gem.

Young enough to be my own sons, they are old enough to see the world with brave new eyes, wise enough to reflect upon what they see, daring enough to share the vision, poetic enough to make it sing.

Hailing from England, this new Fab Four is making its way around the world, living out their dream of "...[making] music that matters without taking themselves too seriously."  That's tough to do:  create something of import, of power, of substance, all the while never getting too big for one's britches.

Readers, photographers, culinary wizards--it doesn't hurt that these young men have numerous interests and passions, all of which fuel their music and make them guys you'd want to hang out with.  Shakespeare and Steinbeck come easy to their tongues, they manage an on-line book club that includes allusions to G.K. Chesterton.  Find me an American English major who's made his/her way through G.K., and I'll buy you a Diet Coke.

They aren't afraid to acknowledge the dark, because they are so vibrantly aware of the light, as they challenge the most basic human fear of dying in "After the Storm".  I'm loving the fact that even when alone, cold, soaked to the bone, the singer refuses to keep his eyes on the ground:

And after the storm,

I run and run as the rains come
And I look up, I look up,
on my knees and out of luck,
I look up.
 

And then, a reminder that life is full of one paradox after another, that perhaps it was thus designed in order for us to be jarred out of complacency long enough to notice, to appreciate:

Night has always pushed up day
You must know life to see decay
But I won't rot, I won't rot
Not this mind and not this heart,
I won't rot.

Now, to the heart of the song, to the deepest most personal fear shared by all humans:

I will die alone and be left there.
Well I guess I'll just go home,
Oh God knows where.
Because death is just so full and mine so small.
Well I'm scared of what's behind and what's before.

Bottom line--they make music.   Bottom line--they aren't afraid of the tough stuff of life, but they never forget the good.  


It's poetry, sure, poetry that sings with soul played by troubadours who aren't afraid to let themselves be overcome--overcome with sorrow, overcome with joy.

Travelogue

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

                                                 - Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad

Partly due to necessity, partly due to family, partly due to personal whim, I have, of late, been a certified road warrior. In the last week I've traversed the country on a southerly journey that took me from cool, green Minnesota to the blistering white sands of the Gulf.  

Stark contrasts in geography.  Stark contrasts in society.  Countless reminders of the basic humanity that unites us all.  

Here I, a mom from Kentucky, sat at a table with a sad-eyed Iraqi girl, and her own, unyielding mother.  She smiled at me and said she liked my accent.  I smiled back and said I liked hers.  Through an interpreter her mother spoke confidently, unquestioningly, of disciplining children, of cultural differences, of what is right and of what is wrong.  I never saw that graceful girl again.

I stood on the banks of the Mississippi where Twain's own eye had scanned the horizon and I thought about just how far that scruffy little river boy traveled in his life.  I felt his unspeakable sadness, I treasured his mustache-twitching humor, and I remembered that, no matter the sophistication of his audience, he always celebrated the best and the worst that makes us human.

I traveled the red dirt roads of Georgia.  I mucked through the muck only dairy cows can produce, I swatted at the flies and felt the sweat roll down my back.  I came face to face with the hard reality of  decent jobs no fat, lazy American will perform, and of the "illegal" dedication of sweetly sad men who gladly sweat through 15-hour days to provide for far away family growing up, growing away, without them.

I saw the handmade implements of men forced to create in order to survive.  I saw how ugly we can become, regardless of country, regardless of race, regardless of religion--I was reminded that the brutish animal isn't far below our shaved and deodorized exterior--and I reveled in man's own will to live, to care, to share.

I  thought about a country gone mad over a gross maternal miscarriage of justice, of a people more captivated by cupcake wars than by stopping war.  I looked forward to heading north on I-65, to looking into familiar faces, to hearing a familiar laugh.  I marveled at the resolve of those who came before me--the steely will to make this home for all of us--for those with accents just like mine and for those with uncommon poetry on their tongues.

And I was grateful.  For it all.