Vicarious Rising

The Film Doctor

I love movies. Reading this blog, you probably wouldn't get that sense. I haven't written much about movies here. In fact, I really haven't watched many movies of late.

I'm not a huge fan of going to movie theaters. I do love movie popcorn and can eat over a bucket of the stuff all by my lonesome (keep in mind I only weigh about 100 lbs., but that stuff is all air, I tell you) and I dig the big screen and sounds. But I hate all the people around me and hate that I feel stuck in my less than optimal seat.

The new house has a media room that is not yet furnished that should resolve a good deal of my movie issues. The primary problem remaining that I have to wait to see movies until they are available on demand or DVD. But since I haven't been going out to see movies in the theater of late anyways, that's hardly a sacrifice.

Today, however, was an exception. We got tickets to "Iron Man" - on of the special digital showing and we drove a little further to go to one of the stadium seating theaters.

The movie kicked ass. Go see it. I have a little crush on Robert Downey Jr. I am so glad he's stayed sober. Hope he continues his success.

So, now maybe since I have gotten bored with blogging about my recovery I will return to an old, old old idea I had to write about movies. See, I pretty much can find things I like about every movie. But, of course, there are ways things could be improved much of the time. So, I had thought it might be fun to blab endlessly about how to fix what was broken in movies, hence the name "Film Doctor."

Ok, writing that out sounds really pretentious, but well, it still might be fun.

Because I am So Superspecial -- All About Me

The other day I declared myself positively boring on this very blog, so maybe I can debunk my own claim by filling out this self-absorbed meme. The amazing Lea Jacobson of Geisha, Interrupted tagged me. For those of you who haven't been to her blog, you should visit her droll diary of experiences as an expat in Japan. Also, Lea's memoir, Bar Flower, will be published in a few weeks. Click here to order it from Amazon.com. I pre-ordered mine ages ago.

Lord knows why Lea'd want to know anything about my upstate New York mom-of-a- teen-boy life. But, hey, I'll take any compliment I can get because I am that deprived and pitiful. Now that I have sufficiently lowered expectations, here are the sordid details of my secret life as a horny housewife:

What I was doing 10 years ago

Living off crazy South Street in Philadelphia and attending the Wharton school for my MBA. My son was 3-years-old and I was one of only three mothers in the grad program. This was out of a total of 750 enrolled. We three were the most exhausted of any of the students, and I am not saying this for dramatic effect. All the men with kids had wives who stayed at home with the kiddos during the program. My husband and one of the other mother's husband was also in the MBA program. The other woman commuted daily from Princeton, NJ so her daughter could stay in school there and her husband could keep his NYC job. Some days we three ladies would just bleerily eye each other and mumble, "no one else understands."

I hated, hated, hated business school. My drinking became an increasing problem. Everyone kept telling me I would never regret getting an Ivy League MBA, that it was a terrific opportunity and my ticket to the big time.

I should have listened to my inner voice that wanted out. Ten years later, all I have is the student loan payments (although those are nearly done, but Ivy League tuition? Pricey. Especially when you follow it up with quitting your first job out of school within 3 months and not ever stepping foot in the corporate world again.), an impressive diploma and dubious bragging rights that I drag out every so often to remind myself that everyone else does not know better than me what is best for me, no matter how pretty the credentials look on paper in the eyes of people who don't see through mine.

I did love Philadelphia, however. I miss the food there. Not the smell of South Street on Sunday morning, though. And I missed the Easter Zombie Pub crawl this year. Bummer.

Later in the year, went for a semester abroad in Milan, Italy. Was the only thing that made going to grad school remotely worthwhile.

5 years ago

Living in the middle of New Jersey (shoot me) and selling US made handbags to vendors in Japan, Taiwan and Korea on eBay. Was a surprisingly entertaining venture, although I spent all my earnings. Had stopped drinking for a year, but not in a program. Buried up to my eyeballs in pretending normalcy. Would pick up again in about a year.

1 year ago

Probably about what I am doing now, hanging out in West Palm Beach, Florida and blogging. My son keeps asking me to play games with him and I keep refusing despite the massive guilt trips. Yep. Same scene. Not a bad scene.

Yesterday

One change in this year's agenda was that I got to see my husband's grandmother from Iowa, who is visiting. That was a treat. She's a phenomenal person. She still handwrites letters, writing things as simple as: "It's 5 a.m. and there's still frost on the ground. The brown squirrel has been searching for nuts, but has given up for the morning. It might snow tomorrow. Made a batch of snickerdoodles and thought I'd send some to you. Made a pie too, from some cherries Wendi and I bought at the Barnes store, but pie wouldn't ship well, now would it?" I adore her.

5 snacks I enjoy

1) Popcorn (not microwave popcorn)
2) Wint-o-Green Lifesavers
3) Rolds-Gold Pretzels
4) Swedish Fish
5) Cheese and fruit - all kinds, even if I can't pronounce it - either the fruit or the cheese. I'll take jams, jellies, compotes, crackers and fancy breads too

5 books I like

1) My big, old dictionary that my husband rescued from being recycled or trashed (sacrilege!)
2) The Stand, Stephen King
3) Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards
4) Any fairytale or mythology book from any country, especially by Andrew Lang, Ruth Manning Sanders, the Brothers Grimm and subsequent updates by Neil Gaiman, or any books with gorgeous illustrations, plus Roald Dahl
5) J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books (this feels like a cop out, but I did love them. there are many, many other books I have loved. I have a rather large library)

What I'd do with 100 million dollars

1) Pay off all my debt.
2) Finish doing all the stuff to my house and yard that I want to get done.
3) Get a new car. Probably a Mini Cooper. My 1999 Toyota 4-Runner has over 100,000 miles and is great here in snow country, but the CD player died about a month ago. That won't do.
4) Set up some sort of investment to live comfortably on and possibly generate some extra money to continually....
5) Give the rest to various charities and environmental concerns, local farmers, small business loans to developing nations, etc.

.....because $100 million won't be enough, but maybe in perpetuity I can do some good. But a girl's gotta live.

5 places I'd love to run away to

1) My Dream House (of course!)
2) Emilia-Romagna, Italy
3) Provence, France
4) Fiji - why not? Actually, I'd probably rather go some place in Asia or maybe back to Turkey. But not permanently.
5) Someplace beautiful I've never seen, but I'll know it when I see it. It's there. I know it. I need to travel more.

5 bad habits and pet peeves I have

1) Pet peeve: bullies
2) Pet peeve: people who write the word "then" when they should be using "than"
3) Pet peeve and bad habit: people who interrupt/interrupting people.
3.5)Pet peeve: being poked to get my attention
4) Bad habit: staying up too late and sleeping too late
5) Bad habit: picking at scabs

5 things I like doing

1) Writing, reading, learning
2) Drawing and painting
3) Cooking and gardening
4) Torturing my son
5) Just being

5 things I would never wear

1) Lilly Pulitzer clothes
2) Fur
3) Birkenstocks or Tevas
4) A blouse with a big bow at the neck
5) A t-shirt with hateful images or sayings

5 TV shows I like

1) Buffy the Vampire Slayer
2) Burn Notice
3) House
4) Angel
5) Dexter

5 movies I like

1) Moulin Rouge
2) Gladiator
3) Heathers
4) Jaws
5) Casablanca (anything with Bogie)

5 famous people I'd like to meet

1) Freddie Mercury
2) Joss Whedon
3) Angelina Jolie
4) Queen Elizabeth I
5) Jesus (and not because I am a believer, but, man, am I ever curious)

5 People I'd like to see fill this out

1) Confessions of a Serenephobic
2) Mantramine
3) Pat of Child Lost
4) Slutty McWhore
5) Syd of I'm Just F.I.N.E.

Cheap Thrills

I've been on a major horror movie kick for the past few weeks, watching all sorts of chiller films, including several from foreign countries. The Japanese have some really creepy works out there. I read somewhere that if you want to know what is happening in a country psychologically, take a look at its horror films and it will tell you its dirty underside. Heh. This is an interesting theory.

A blogging buddy of mine reminded me of the reasons I drank: self-medication. This was definitely the case for me. I was trying to get to feelings buried that only alcohol seemed to free me enough to access them. Otherwise, I was trussed up tighter than a mummy. All petrified too. Booze was my lubrication to get those bindings loose.

I am still inhibited in many ways, but I can get through some of the shit and not just around it with wine. But I think another form of self-medication for me is fear. Not just any fear, but the gleeful horror movie adrenaline fear. The kind of thing that takes your mind away from your troubles and gets your heart pumping. And yet I am still safely ensconced in my favorite chair under my chenille blanket.

The movie I am watching is "1408" starring John Cusack, which is based on a Stephen King story. As I have said before, I absolutely love Stephen King (although I dare say I would find him odious in person. I don't know why. Just a feeling I'd not get along with him at all.) and this particular movie has the lead character as a writer in peril. Just up my alley. I swear Mr. King can see into my brain, and this freaks me out even as it thrills me. Some of the stuff going on in this movie, I swear, gives me the giggles. Cusack's character is screaming into the mini bar in his haunted hotel room at an imaginary spectre that HE JUST WANTS HIS DRINK. Then staggers to retrieve the ever-present hotel Holy Bible to rifle through the pages, only to find every single one of them blank. *sniggger* I bow to you, Stephen King. Overall, OK movie, it's the King-isms that make it. And love Cusack.

As I gorge myself on scary flicks, I'm holding my own demons at bay. I think I'm not going to be to hard on myself - I am working on my own projects too. But I can't help but notice that I'm indulging a bit much on spooks and gore while my personal life is more than I feel like dealing with.

But, really, I think it's all harmless fun. I'm just waiting for troubles to pass, right? May as well pass it with a bowl of popcorn and something that makes me shiver and scream ;)

Hello. You Have Reached the Winter of Our Discontent

I haven't seen the movie "Reality Bites" in ages. I've been keeping odd hours and it's playing on late night TV. This is a movie I actually saw four times in the movie theater. It came out right when I got out of college. It plays a bit like "this was your life." If I'd had a more cool life, that is. I still had a stick up my ass back then.

But I adore that movie. It's a hoot to see Ben Stiller talking on a cell phone in his car that has the big giant box attached with the spiral chord. I forgot how big those things used to be. And they were talking about revolutionizing TV with reality shows.

The movie has so many hysterical lines. And the soundtrack is awesome. I wish Jeanine Garofalo were doing more movies. She's wonderful.

It's funny, though. The movie was really hard to watch this go around. In a lot of ways, I've realized how emotionally frozen I've been. Perhaps how emotionally stalled my entire generation is. I don't know that many of us have progressed much past the state of the characters in the film. I find that disquieting.

I was joking with my therapist last week that I was due for my teenaged rebellion since I never had one. I said I could do it with my kid and wouldn't that be adorable? He laughed and said it was necessary for teens to go through that phase of testing boundaries and deciding for themselves what they believe and want for themselves. My willingness to allow my son to do that is a good thing. And I now need to allow myself the same latitude.

I'm super antsy today, one of those days when remaining in the day doesn't really fly well. I want to take the world by its throat and throttle it a little.

I've been ruminating over my expectations, wondering if they are in need of an adjustment downward in the love department. When I start thinking this, I get somewhat resentful. I came from having few expectations from my partner. Now I'd like something. Am I expecting too much? I'm not sure I am. Maybe only expecting too much from someone who cannot provide it. For example, my husband has never been a handholder, but I've always envied people who show small public displays of affection. Typically he leaves me to fend for myself when we are out, particularly when we are at any kind of party. I might as well have gone alone than have gone as a couple. I hate this. I've told him that I hate this. He says it's not the point of going to a party to spend any time with the person you spend all your time with. I argue that this does not mean you completely abandon them at the door.

I must say, one thing I like about not drinking is that this gives me the perfect out of going to shindigs that he would have pulled the disappearing act on me. I just say that the alcohol would put me in a bad place, and if he wants to go, he can go it alone. The fact that if I were drinking, I'd still not really want to go doesn't matter.

At the end of the day, I really don't want to keep him from enjoying himself at these gatherings just because his goals for the event are different from mine. I have never wanted to begrudge him anything. It may just be that we are at counter purposes. All I know is that I feel incredibly abandoned, and then I usually run into other couples whose significant others have not spent the entire evening avoiding their partner, and it just makes me feel.... well, a million ways rejected.

Although I could take advantage of the situation. There was one time we went to a friend's wedding and he ignored me and some nice looking guy parked himself next to me, clearly interested. We talked for a long while, he knew I was married but seemed a little appalled that my husband was AWOL and gave me his business card with the innuendo to "call him anytime." I didn't look at his card until the next morning and found out he was a vice chairman of one of NYC's biggest investment banking firms. I coulda had me a Sugar Daddy.

I don't know what an appropriate expectation is. I had terrible examples in my family, where I had no rights whatsoever. I guess I don't want to be a silent partner or an invisible one. I'd like to be with someone who enjoys my company enough to not jump ship the second new faces enter the picture.

On Being Green

No, this is not a post on being environmentally friendly. I'm going to beat a metaphor into the ground. I've always loved Kermit the frog. I'm rather fond of the color green.

There is a family that I envy, I'll call them the Barnes, who have been foolish enough to let me into their inner circle. There are five of them in the nuclear family: a mother, father, two girls and the youngest is a boy. This is the same configuration as my family, and like my family, the parents were young when they had their kids. The mom and dad are about 18 years older than I am while the kids range from six to ten years younger. I get along famously with all of them. The oldest daughter is the one whose child was baptized this past weekend.

Mom Barnes and I have a lot in common. We carry guilt in similar ways, are wounded by our childhoods much the same. We don't really discuss the specifics of our past much, but the shared horror bonds us. She is one of the few people I can be quiet and upset around and have her understand what I am feeling without words. Of course, it also means she knows when I am in trouble when I am trying to hide it, and I don't always like that. Her husband completely adores her. He is one of the coolest people I know. He also happens to think I am one of the smartest people he has ever met. He knows a lot of really smart people, so I take this as the highest of compliments. He's a man's man and he's also a real daddy to his daughters. Not the kind that does things he ought not.

The kids are just plain wonderful. They are gorgeous, the stinkers, and nice. The oldest married a man who has money. She is his trophy wife, which is sort of funny as she is his first wife and he is only 34. He treats her like gold, as he should. The middle daughter moved to L.A. a few years ago with her awesome husband and I miss her terribly. When I spoke to her at dinner the other night, she mentioned how glad she is that I now live near her parents and brother because it makes them happy for me to be near them.

The brother is a decade younger than me and has a wicked sense of humor. I'm pretty sure he has a little crush on me, which is just fine as he is pretty hot. I like to tease him about how much older I am than him because it makes him all flustered and protest-y. Gotta love that.

The Barnes are exactly how I wish my family was. To be able to see it in practice gives me hope, but it also tickles my green-eyed bones. Although jealousy sounds like I would like to take what they have from them, and I love being a part of their group - would be broken hearted if it ceased to be. Wistful is maybe a better chosen word.

A woman I went to rehab with was considering ending her stable relationship with her boyfriend because although she loved the guy, she felt bored. All her other relationships with men had been tempestous. This woman had been sexually abused by her father, and while that secret had haunted her life, she admitted that some part of keeping that secret made her feel special. Without that feeling, that excitement, she didn't really know how to have a relationship. Her name wasn't Wendy, but for some reason I kept wanting to call her Wendy. There's another woman in my current AA group whose name is not Wendy, but I want to call her that also. She's on husband number six.

A couple years ago, I watched the movie Peter Pan starring Jason Isaacs (who I think is sexy as all get out), and I thought there were some seriously incestous things going on between Wendy and Captain Hook. I'll have to rewatch the movie because I think there is some connection in my head for this daddy thing and growing up and playing house with a self-centered boy in green named Peter. Not sure. I know I still have many secrets, some I have even kept from myself, and I cannot be well until they are all out. I wonder if I look in the mirror, I will see a girl who I think should be named Wendy also.

I'm not enamored of the idea of mowing through two husbands before reaching 40. Whenever I read that the divorce rate is greater than 50 percent, I always think that seems impossible. But, shit, I already contributed to that statistic once, and I am likely to again. Yet I still wax poetic about finding the right connection. WTF? No question I have an overwhelming desire to be truly loved by a man. Is my current quest simply thinking the grass is greener where ever my feet are not?

To achieve the intimacy I am searching for, I need reciprocal affection. Do I set my cap on waiting for my prince to come in, whispering promises of whatever it is that I think will quell the loneliness? This seems a ridiculous idea. On the one hand, I am trying to learn to be less self-sufficient, to allow people to love me and help me. On the other, this sort of neediness apalls me. Frightens me.

Although we may have a BINGO here about why I choose people who can't actually love me at the get-go.

It makes me think of the delight parents take in a child that the priest spoke of the other day. I always knew that was missing in my childhood. Realization of that lack came to a thundering head when I had a child of my own. My love for him was enormous, and there was no more room for the glamour that my family was loving. But facing that ugly truth was and is, well, ugly.

Now I'm faced with a similar dilemma: admitting I am in a passionless marriage. But I really should not be comparison shopping for greener pastures. Rather I should know when this one is in a drought and all hope of rain is gone. The futility of sticking around is obvious. As several readers have mentioned, a lot of this sorting out is best done with counseling. I have a great therapist to talk to. I don't know about marriage counseling. I doubt it is something my husband would be interested in doing.

The commonality of my first marriage and this one is that in both cases I felt as if my husbands had little understanding or interest in who I am. Their primary attraction to me was how I made them feel about themselves, how I loved them. My therapist has conjectured that, for reasons of my own we have yet to fully uncover, I have chosen men who cannot see past themselves to love me. I think, maybe, traipsing off after my best friend would end me up in that same stew.

The bottomline is that I feel like I am giving up pieces of myself, the opportunity to experience something wonderful. Being alone is not the worst thing I can imagine. The not inconsiderable downside to that is the impact on my son. I could throw in a gardening pruning analogy here, how cutting back the old, dead growth is good for new growth, but I've already overdone the green analogy. That would be pushing it, even for me.

No perfect answers. Time to just chill a little and feel out what I should do next. See if any brilliant insights hit me. I think, though, I'd rather be lonely by myself than lonely with a husband. There is something soul sucking about that state of being. I've gone to the dry well one time too many and I am tired and parched now. It's time to move on. The process of doing so seems extremely daunting.

It's more a matter of courage to change than it is anything else. I've got a cushy thing going here. But even cushy gets uncomfortable when it feels like it is swallowing you whole. It's a formidable task to stay verdant if your heart never sees the light of day.

Tickets to the Horror Show

Horror movies have long been one of my favorite modes of escape from reality. First I loved any of the monster movies I could see on TV, but once we got HBO when I was eight - what a revelation! It is rare for a horror movie to stick with me as a scare for long after the film credits have run. Of course there are exceptions. Nightmare on Elm Street really creeped me out. Parts of The Shining frightened me. And for some reason, The Butterfly Effect gave me an endless evening of nightmares.

This afternoon I was reading in Entertainment Weekly about the the new extreme slasher death movie Hostel 2. In it, the victims are abducted college girls who are auctioned off to respected businessmen. These sadistic paragons go on to torture and murder with an assorted array of creative tools. Some of the torture is described as erotic - I believe this is for the men, not for the victims. The article implies that these crimes are meant to mirror today's online sex trade trafficking that is enjoying global popularity. Everything is for sale for the right price.

As I read this review in search of the next few DVDs to place on my Netflix queue, something snapped off and fell inside me. I began to breathe a little funny. upset, a little outraged, sickened, pissed. A little murderous. It evoked enough of the red nasty rage emotions that I have to ask myself what the hell it was all about. It's not like women exploited in entertainment or the news is a new thing. Why did it set me off today and in this way? Is there something I am ready to hear? Yuck. I hate some of this crap. I don't know which is worse, when I just say "eh, it's just a movie" or when I get indignant about how shoddily some women are treated in the world as commodities to be abused and that we get used to it as a "movie genre" or a popular online sex trade. Gross and unacceptable, really.

I've been dancing around some sexuality issues like a bad cliche. I can't even talk about things, like some sort of naive schoolgirl. I want to clock myself sometimes, that's how ridiculous I feel. As my last four sessions with my therapist until the summer break come near, I feel self-imposed pressure to learn more. But I wonder if I shouldn't lay off a bit. It's clear to me that I am avoiding talking about issues of incest, fear of being overtly sexual, anger for feeling like I needed to suppress my sexuality, regret for what I have missed, confusion over what I have missed out on, the decisions I have made due to my past. I've hinted at it all around here, but I have failed to confront it head on. I am not ready to confront any of it head on. But I think today I started tapping into some larger anger about it that I hadn't been able to touch before. It probably is a good thing. For years I was trying to prove that I was more or less asexual rather than really deal with any sexual issues. Being able to identify that it is not truly how I felt, that it was a coping mechanism has been a slowly developing awareness over the past several months.

As much as I would like to, I cannot rush myself into understanding any of this. I have to let it unfold as I am able. I'm glad I feel in a safe place where this can happen. Llord knows, I've escaped from reality long enough on this issue, but I still can take it day by day.

My friend who had gone out and used was back at our morning meeting today. She has looked better. I don't think it was so much the drug use that had her so distraught. She was very fidgetedy, and I couldn't decide what the best course was for me to take with her. I opted for sitting as placidly as I could next to her, with my shoulder just kind of skimming hers. I dunno why, but I felt like I just wanted to make contact. Maybe that sounds odd. Right after I first saw her and just checked in to see that she was in one piece, I felt very much like a mother hen, as if I wanted to count her fingers and toes to ensure they were all intact. When we sat down after the mid-meeting break, I felt tears of relief and anguish spring to my eyes. It was very strange. I also wanted to wring her neck.

I always thought part of the reason I like horror movies so well was that I needed to see that there were things out there sicker than the crap in my head. I'm thinking this is a stupid explanation. There is so much horror in the world, and I don't need evidence of it in a movie. I just have to look at my friend who is probably just a bad drug trip or two from getting herself killed to see horror is sitting right next to me. Some of the ignorance perpetuated in film is bothering me today that never has before. I've never been a raging feminist. I've been blase in many ways. I do still think these are my own issues regardless, not something I need to take a march on Washington for. But I think my reaction to reading that Hostel 2 review warrants a closer look at my anger.

Did I ever mention that in my old home group one of the guys used to refer to me as Chainsaw Girl? Ah... that's another story...

Eye Chart

I finally checked out the movie "The Departed" earlier this week. I was procrastinating on doing my writing homework, so I killed a couple hours watching the Martin Scorsese Oscar winner about "rats" in the Boston mob and police departments. I really enjoyed the movie a lot. My family is from the Boston area. I don't have a Boston, or even a Massachusetts accent, but my entire family is afflicted (save my sister who has a disturbing mix of a North Carolina-Kentuckian accent that I suspect will soon be infiltrated with hints of eastern Mass any day now. I doubt that will have a musical sound.) so it reminds me of summertime in Massachusetts when I hear an entire cast full-out emoting in that signature dialect.

A friend of mine made a disparaging comment about Matt Damon, who I rather admire as an actor, not only calling him a schmuck and a pud, but saying he was unconvincing as a "southy". I found the criticism amusing for a couple reasons. 1) that this friend of mine reminds me quite a bit of Matt Damon, 2) that Matt Damon is originally from Newton, MA and that is his original accent and 3) my friend is from Knoxville, TN and lives in Japan and has no freaking clue what an authentic "southy" would sound like. (As a Southern boy, he really shouldn't be tossing the word "southy" around for that matter. He thinks he is entitled just because he dated a girl from Boston for a few years. He might end up with a bayonet in his ass. That'll be if the girl from Boston and her family don't get to him first.)

The other interesting thing was that he spoke mainly about the movie's violence and swearing, which, for me, was not really the first thing I thought about when seeing the film. I saw it as a story about two very similar boys and the choices they made in life. The violence and swearing were ancillary. Scenery, if you will. It added to the atmosphere, but only really popped out at me when Jack Nicholson's character excessively used disparaging words for women to prove his masculinity. Because it was trying to make that an issue.

But my point here is how interesting it is that people can perceive the exact same thing differently, even two people who are good friends. It's something that I should, in my opinion, be better at remembering. And yet I still manage to get caught off guard at times when someone sees something in a way completely differently than I expected them to. Because it seems obvious to me it should be seen as X or even, such as in the case of this movie, everyone should be looking at things in a certain way, such as the big picture or overall theme, versus at a particular detail, the mood or how something makes you feel.

Having more than one point of view, or at least the ability to see things from several vantage points, is never a bad way to look at the world. And, heck, now I get to watch the movie "Infernal Affairs," the Hong Kong film upon which "The Departed" was based, and compare those visions of conflicted informants with each other. Because then I can put off my homework a little longer.