Today the weather was gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. Warm, for October. The only person wearing a sweater was self.
And, for the second time in less than a week, a black Pilot Precise V-7 Rolling Ball pen has flaked out on her. First, one blew up all over her fingers while she was writing, and today another one dried up, just like that, even though she’d barely begun using it.
What on earth is going on ???
Today, self passed on the Occupy Wall Street excitement in San Mateo and instead buried herself in the Stanford library stacks. Surprisingly, for such a gorgeous day, the stacks were full of students. One blonde young man (dressed all in black) interrupted self to ask for directions about using the reference catalogue, apparently mistaking self for a librarian (Okey dokey, that is the last time self wears an all-brown outfit. It may do wonders for Luisa Igloria, but for self it’s another matter entirely. If dear blog readers are unable to fully grasp self’s import, please refer to Facebook Chat of a few days ago, regarding outfits worn by Mz. Luisa to the recently concluded Old Dominion U Literary Festival.)
Self doesn’t know what made her get up and go to the Library. Was it the weather? Was it because she was tired of sitting at home and having Bella the beagle fart in her face? Was she in need of some exercise (though reading a book in the Stanford stacks does not, technically, qualify as exercise)? Was it because, hours earlier, she had just watched a real weeper (not in a bad way): “50/50”?
This movie was notable for
- Featuring the first Seth Rogen performance self has liked since “Forty-Year-Old Virgin.” He actually seemed to be playing a character, as opposed to just being Seth Rogen.
- Being the first movie of 2011 that caused self to cry at the end.
Honestly, self didn’t shed a single tear at the end of “The Debt,” even though the ending was so unutterably sad, and here she was at the end of “50/50”, weeping like she can’t remember doing at any movie since watching Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams in “The Time Traveler’s Wife.” And this movie wasn’t even a rom-com.
Self thinks that Joseph Gordon Levitt is an amazing actor who has really pulled off a serious career. One had no right to expect anything like this of him after “Third Rock.” Because he was so good in that sit-com, self means. But, in a surprising career turn, he did a small indie film called “Mysterious Skin,” and she’s just about fallen in love with every character he’s played since then (with the exception of that Batman movie).
There is one scene in “50/50,” close to the beginning, where he breaks the news about his cancer to Seth Rogen, and Seth Rogen blurts out the most thoughtlessly appalling things, and Gordon-Levitt just looks at him, simply looks at him. And he doesn’t blink or say anything or even have to move a muscle. The camera stays on his face, stays on his face, and we’re there. We’re so there. We’re in that awful situation where you are you (the victim, the cancer-sufferer) and everyone else is Seth Rogen: thoughtless, tactless, and also bursting with vigor and, most unbearable of all, cancer-free.
Anyhoo, perhaps as a result of watching this movie, self was in a very “Gather-ye-rosebuds-while-ye-may” mood, which translated to — HA HA HA — going to the Stanford Library Stacks.
As she was leaving the stacks in a state of intellectual stupefaction, she noticed how many young people were about. These were not tour groups of blasé high schoolers being herded about by a Stanford undergrad — no, these were people who were presumably already ensconced in the hallowed halls of Wilbur (exclusively for freshmen) or Mirrielees or one of the row houses. They were uniformly clad in jeans, and the girls were laughing, and some bikers stopped very courteously so that self could cross the street without having to run and dodge, and she thought: What nice young people! Also, self had this secondary thought: Stanford students are certainly improving in the looks department! Yes, dear blog readers, there was a time when Stanford was known for its dearth of good-looking students (though Jennifer Connelly did graduate from here, with a degree in English), and if son had a choice today between Stanford or UCLA or any other school, implementing his yardstick of “school of choice” (which was: Which campus has the prettiest girls?), honestly he would never have picked Stanford. But that’s neither here nor there.
When self got home, she immediately began to water and then she turned on the TV, and then she saw that the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators in New York had had some kind of tussle with police (And, dear blog readers, take it from self: One never wants to tussle with a New York City policeman. Because they are about three times the size of Redwood City policemen. Not only that, their stares could freeze your blood. One almost hit Dearest Mum and self when we were crossing the street near the UN, because unbeknownst to us Ahmadinajab had just entered the vicinity to deliver an address. Really, unless there were signs posted, saying: No one is allowed to cross First Avenue while Ahmadinajab is in the UN, she doesn’t see why the man in the police car almost ran down Dearest Mum and self. Self feels sure that if Penny had been with us, she would have yelled at the policeman, the way only a New Yorker can yell.)
Anyhoo, there was quite a to-do in New York, and thankfully a policeman was only caught slugging one person (Self thinks it was a woman dressed in a green T-shirt).
OMG, self almost forgot! Self caught a preview of a new Sam Worthington movie, “Man on a Ledge,” which was noteworthy because:
- It proves that Sam Worthington, even with longer, 70s-style locks, is still cute.
- It confirms that Dear Sam has more facial expressions than anyone thought he was capable of: at least, there were at least three or four different ones on display in this preview.
- Jamie Bell is also in this movie. Now, whenever self sees Jamie Bell in a movie, no matter what, self says to herself: This is a movie I’ve simply got to see!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Kanlaon 