Mostly I just wanted to show this video to someone who wasn't a Facebooker and am thinking I can maybe do it this way? It's my littlest brother singing along to the fastest-moving song from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.
Turns out it works, so I'm going to upload my other favorite sibling video. This is my sister Elizabeth's deliberately awful pretend American Idol audition. I made her do it for me like six times and kept laughing every time she did.
I told someone today that my Meyers-Briggs personality type is sometimes perceived to be too emotionally distant. (It's not just the Introvert factor coming in, it's also the S/N thing - I'm an S - and the J/P thing - I'm a J.)
This person responded, "Well, you are kind of emotionally distant. You want to get away from people."
I responded, "That's not emotional distance. That's physical distance," but the conversation had moved on to something else and I don't know that I made myself heard enough to make the distinction clear.
It's true, though, there's a big difference between emotional distance and physical or social distance. To me, emotional distance has very little to do with wanting to be around people. I know extroverts who are very emotionally distant but love to be surrounded by people. Emotional distant is about not letting people in. It's about not allowing yourself to be vulnerable or, sometimes, not allowing the vulnerabilities of others. Sometimes perceived emotional distance is about doing what needs to be done despite the emotional responses of yourself or others, which is not always a bad thing.
Either way, it's not the same as being an introvert.
I don't feel I am that emotionally distant. When I care about people, I care about them deeply. Last week I had several friends who were going through some really serious problems, and I stayed up late one night crying because it hurt that they hurt. And I am not even that private a person. Yes, there are some things I don't share with people, but for the most part I don't mind talking about myself and stuff I'm going through. (Especially in writing. Hence the blog.)
Some of the introverts I know are some of the most caring, emotionally open people I know. But somewhere in the culture is this embedded idea that introverts are all Spock from the original Star Trek series: cold, unemotional, unconcerned about others' emotions. And that just isn't true. So, spread the word. Introversion does not equal emotional distancing.
nally a Facebook note composed by a friend of his (Beau Kaelin - credit where credit's due) but it's also been spreading to the blogosphere. (May that be the first and last time I ever use that word.) Here are the instructions:
Rather than posting your 100 favorite films (which has been done and overdone), you simply post your favorite things about movies. I dig the concept, because instead of obsessing over whether the films you put on a list are "objectively good enough" to put on said list, you simply jot down 100 moments/lines/visuals that have made a lasting impression on you or sneak their way into running gags between you and your friends. Just read below and you'll get the idea.
1. "La Marseillaise" in Casablanca.
2. The fact that every single line in Napoleon Dynamite is quotable.
3. When live Broadway shows are filmed and released on DVD. There needs to be more of that.
4. The scene in The Fisher King where Robin Williams follows Amanda Plummer through Grand Central Station and the entire place turns into a ballroom.
5. The first half hour of Wall-E and how it evokes such strong characters and story without dialogue. Or live actors.
6. Tom Baxter from The Purple Rose of Cairo.
7. Watching Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau interact in pretty much everything they've ever done together.
8. The soundtrack for Love Actually. The gleeful Christmas cheesiness of "All I Want For Christmas" fills me with joy every time I watch it. "Both Sides Now" was an amazing, heartbreaking choice of Emma Thompson's discovery of her husband's affair. "God Only Knows" is the best possible song to choose to end this movie. The love theme has made me cry quite a few times.
8b. I absolutely love the "Here With Me" moment in that movie, as Mark walks away from his apartment... then turns back... then keeps turning, until he finally decides to keep walking away.
9. The Woody Allen opening credits. They make me feel at home every time I watch one of his movies.
11. Similarly, the angry warehouse dance from Footloose. There's just something about people releasing so much pent-up emotion through dance...
12. "I do love eating with a spoon, don't you?" -Cold Comfort Farm
13. All of Sinbad of the Seven Seas. My all-time favorite so-bad-it's-good movie. The fact that Sinbad keeps drawing his sword to fight and then throwing it away. The wonderfully awful dialogue ("Gosh, you're beautiful"). The humor that makes absolutely no sense. Sinbad inflating an entire hot air balloon by blowing it up manually. The expressions he makes when fighting the Ghost King.
14. The entire dream city folding in on itself in Inception.
15. How a premise like "Guy falls in love with a sex doll" can turn into something so surprisingly sweet like Lars and the Real Girl. I would never have thought that story would be as good as it was. It gives me hope for other movies whose premises are unimpressive.
16. "You always see the glass as half empty."
"No, I see it half full, but of poison." -Scoop
17. When I watched Shattered Glass and realized Hayden Christiansen could act.
18. The king's speech. In, er, The King's Speech.
19. I take the same emotional ride as the title character in the 1995 remake of Sabrina. Every single time, even though I know how it ends, I fall in love with the guys in the same order and at the same time she does. That's what every romcom should do and almost never does.
20. Anton Yelchin in Charlie Bartlett.
21. "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid. IMHO, easily the best animated musical sequence of all time.
22. The final act of Bug. Eeeep.
23. "Sardines! I've forgotten the sardines... No, I haven't. I haven't forgotten the sardines. I remembered the sardines. Well, what a surprise; I guess I'll just go into the kitchen and fix some more sardines to celebrate!" -Noises Off
24. The over-croweded cabin in A Night at the Opera.
25. Twist endings that take me completely by surprise.
26. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World - probably the most fun I've ever had at a movie theater.
27. Recognizing actors I know and love from TV shows or musical theater in bits parts... an especially bright spot in not-very-good movies. ("Oh my gosh! That's Chris O'Dowd as the blind swordsman!")
28. All of The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra. One of the best genre spoofs I've ever seen. It involves skeletons, meteors, aliens, and several different forest animals turned into a single woman.
29. "After that it got pretty late, and we both had to go, but it was great seeing Annie again. I realized what a terrific person she was, and how much fun it was just knowing her; and I thought of that old joke, you know, this... this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, 'Doc, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken.' And, the doctor says, 'Well, why don't you turn him in?' The guy says, 'I would, but I need the eggs.' Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships; they're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd... but, I guess we keep going through it because most of us... need the eggs." -Annie Hall
31. The imaginary baseball game in Once Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
32. "El Tango de Roxanne" from Moulin Rouge! Well, and the entire movie, but this part of the movie left me literally breathless when I first watched it. The chaos of sound at the end, along with the barrage of images of the Duke's attack on Satine, just mesmerizes me.
33. When Truman sails into the wall from The Truman Show.
34. "All right, Mr. DeMille. I'm ready for my close-up!" -Sunset Blvd.
35. The sad, sad final scene of The Others. So much atmosphere in this movie.
36. Edward Norton in Fight Club.
37. Speaking of Edwards... the title character of Edward Scissorhands.
38. The tiny Stonehenge debacle from This Is Spinal Tap.
39. Watching a classic movie you've never seen before and going, "Oh! THAT'S where that reference comes from!"
40. The moment in Back to the Future 3 where the characters suddenly switch catch phrases. I missed it the first couple times around.
41. When Broadway musicals are adapted into movies and they don't mess it up, despite casting big-name stars.
42. Han Solo.
43. "We'd like you to meet some of our... friends."
"Yeah. This is Dave Beethoven. And, uh, Maxine of Arc. Herman the Kid."
"Bob Genghis Khan. Socrates Johnson. Dennis Frood. And uh, uh... Abraham Lincoln." -Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
44. Finding directors whose films I consistently like. Billy Wilder, Woody Allen, Baz Luhrmann...
45. ...and Richard Linklater, who first convinced me with Before Sunrise. Just two people talking for a couple hours, and yet it's more compelling than most romantic dramas with twists and turns of plot.
46. Life is Beautiful: Robert Benigni deliberately mistranslates the German soldier's instructions in the concentration camp because he doesn't want his son to know what's really going on and get scared. Great bit of comedy in the much darker second half of this movie.
47. Ferris Bueller.
48. Watching a film with subtitles and forgetting afterwards that it was in another language at all because you were so wrapped up in it. (I keep forgetting Pan's Labyrinth is Spanish.)
49. In 12 Angry Men, every character's personality can be seen. You can almost predict when each characters is going to be pushed to vote not guilty. None of it's arbitrary, none of it's random.
50. Elwood P. Dowd.
51. The second stabbing in Psycho. I knew the famous first one, but the second one took me completely by surprise. I'm pretty sure I yelped out loud.
52. "The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle, the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true!" -The Court Jester
53. Finding a movie I love in a genre I hate.
54. The library scene in Wings of Desire.
55. Seeing now-classic actors in the very first thing they ever did.
56. I'm really, really trying not to make this all Woody Allen or musicals-themed, but here are two in a row... John Cusack as the Woody Allen type character in Bullets Over Broadway. Kenneth Branagh, Will Ferrell, and Scarlett Johansson have all tackled the same role, but Cusack is by far the best.
57. The opening of Manhattan.
58. The Lives of Others, which proves that slow-moving movies are not necessarily boring.
59. The talking dogs in Up. Disney's had talking animals in their movies since the beginning, but this was a new and creative way to make it happen.
60. William Daniels in 1776. Everyone else knows him as Mr. Feeny. To me he'll always be John Adams.
61. Actors who seem to be totally different people with every role they play. I'm thinking Amy Adams and Edward Norton right now.
62. The revelation at the end of Tootsie.
63. Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny.
64. Seeing two very different versions of the same character in remakes and discovering you love them both the same.
65. The scene in August Rush when Freddie Highmore first plays around with a guitar.
66. Tiny throwaway jokes that you only catch on a second or third viewing.
67. Jeff Daniels' character in The Squid and the Whale. Such a vivid personality.
70. High Fidelity, the best book-to-movie transition of all time. Every character is exactly what I imagined them to be like.
71. Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense. I'm extremely, extremely picky about my child actors. But he not only didn't get in the way of the movie, he made the movie.
72. Buzz Lightyear.
73. Colin Firth in A Single Man. I think he deserved his Oscar this year, but he deserved it even more the year before.
74. Charlie Kaufman. His ideas are the most interesting and original of any screenwriter out there.
75. The interaction between Josh Hartnett and Radha Mitchell in Mozart and the Whale. The two of them are amazing individually, but the way they play off each other is even more amazing.
76. Robert Downey, Jr. can do neither math nor grammar in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
77. The first appearance of the T-rex in Jurassic Park.
78. Dean Martin playing a parody version of himself in Kiss Me, Stupid.
79. All the fake trailers that start off Tropic Thunder.
79b. ...And the part where the director explodes. I laughed out loud.
80. "I'm 37. I'm not old!"
"Well, I can't just call you 'Man.'"
"Well, you could say 'Dennis.'" -Monty Python and the Holy Grail
81. How silly and yet completely satisfying John Hughes movies are.
82. The unsentimental ending of The Apartment.
83. Rewatching The Wizard of Oz with my brothers and sisters. We used to watch it ALL the time when we were little, then not at all for years, then we went back and watched it again and found all these things we completely misunderstood the first time around.
84. The song "After Today" from A Goofy Movie. It's one of my favorite Disney songs of all time. The movie itself is kind of iffy, but the songs are fantastic.
85. The trailer for Cloverfield. I really liked the movie as well, but the trailer was one of the best I've ever seen.
86. Unforgiven as an anti-vigilante movie. Watching Clint Eastwood's character fall back into that is chilling.
87. Neo fights a bunch of Agent Smiths in The Matrix Reloaded. Not so crazy about the rest of the movie, but that was just cool.
88. The opening scene between James Mason and Peter Sellers in Lolita.
89. Darren Aronofsky, who portrays obsession on film better than anyone I can think of.
90. Watching the American adaptation of Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch and being greatly disappointed... then watching the British adaptation and LOVING it.
91. The animation in Waking Life.
92. Ellen Page in Hard Candy. What a role.
93. Watching Adaptation a few years after it was made and realizing that Ted Dekker's book "Thr3e" has the exact same plot as the terrible movie Donald Kaufman's writing.
94. "Klaatu barada nikto." -The Day The Earth Stood Still
95. A child receives a shrunken head for Christmas in The Nightmare Before Christmas. Makes me laugh every time.
96. "I know a little German. He's sitting right over there." -Top Secret!
97. Kevin Kline tries to do the live show without his contacts on Soapdish. "It seems that Angelique has a rare case of brake fluid. Bran... fluid. Bran flavor."
98. Identifying celebrity voices in animated movies. (Particularly nice that the most celebrity-studded ones are usually the least interesting to watch. "Who's That Celebrity?" is an awesome game to play to pass the time.)
99. Patrick Bateman kills his co-worker after a long explanation of Huey Lewis' work in American Psycho.
100. The absolute main thing I love about movies, though, is that they let me see through someone else's eyes for a little bit.
Well, I may be doing rather an awful job about updating this blog (I keep having blog ideas but then no motivation to write them) so here's some fun pictures.
David McCandless (which is a fantastic last name) gathered together a bunch of the "Must Read" books lists and created a little word cloud infographic indicating which ones showed up the most. I've read a lot of these, but there are still quite a few remaining that I'd like to get to at some point.
My favorite thing about it, though, is that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy appears on so many lists. It's one of the most-represented ones on the list, beating out classics like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Old Man and the Sea, and Wuthering Heights. I'm thrilled that this is the case, not necessarily because I think Hitchhiker's is a better book than all those but because I love that a book filled with such pure silliness holds its own against all the "great art" that are about something.
I say that title like it's going to be a regular feature. Probably not so much. But here are some of the things I found this week while reading my various blogs.
(The title of this blog entry, by the way, should not lead to its being confused with this one. Apparently "Bears!" is my favorite title. In fact, I should have named this whole website "Bears!")
Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one's own senses, and this makes the sense stronger in Italy than anywhere else in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captains of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent "opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors . . ." In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down.
I found this quote while reading Eat, Pray, Love, and I love it a lot. (I hear the movie's awful, but the book is entertaining, funny, and occasionally quite moving.)
I don't want to expand on it much. But I think it relates to why beauty and art are important. It relates to things in the church and in the Bible where the beauty gets hidden because it feels irrelevant. It relates to a cynical generation who constantly feels like they're being lied to.
FlickChart gave me these two movies. I was struck by how weirdly similar the posters looked. However, let it be noted that these two movies are not of the same caliber.
I don't clear out my draft box nearly as much as I should in my phone. Partly because I think it's interesting to see all the things I apparently meant to say to people, but didn't, for whatever reason.
So here are all the ones sitting in my phone at the moment.
To: nobody
Heh. I'm in the RinkChat Oscar discussion room & we're seeing everyone's results. So far you are sadly 0/8.
This was going to be sent to my Rinkie friend Rifty, until I discovered he hadn't actually made any guesses in the Oscar game that year, so obviously he wouldn't have gotten any points.
To: nobody
This family I'm staying with is nice but SO FORMAL. Haha. I'm just not used to this. Lol.
This was going to be sent to, I believe, my mom, until I decided it wasn't productive to make comments like this about people I was staying with. :-) And they were indeed very nice.
To: Anna
It goes faster on the movie when I don't try & call. It's nearly done buffering
I'm pretty sure our movie finished buffering at that point and then I called her on Skype, making my text unimportant.
To: Sarah
Oh, if
Well, that's a promising beginning.
To: B'qi
Yeah, he's just insane. Thankfully I have no more classes with him.
...I honestly have no idea who I would be talking about here. I don't know who I don't have more classes with that I'd refer to as "insane."
To: Sarah
Agreed, she is FREAKING AWESOME.
I'd like to think I'm commending a real-life person here, but I'm probably referring to a fictional character. I suspect it might be Liz Lemon.
To: nobody
I've recently realized I get...more than a little annoyed when
I don't know what it was, but it was also probably something that I decided would be more constructive to not say. Censoring my negative side!
To: Sarah
Lol. Well, maybe that
These are the ones that confuse me. They're so short. Did I decide not to send the message because I didn't know what I was saying? Did I get distracted?
To: Lisa
Yeah. I think my Internet
That sentence was probably about to end with "...hates me."
To: nobody
So I'm awake and up and about.
I'm glad I decided this wasn't a vital thing to tell the world. From now on, I'm going to IM EVERYONE I KNOW whenever I wake up.
To: Sarah
Yeah. If we can't learn to follow
...we'll never learn to lead! No, I don't know what this is about.
To: Lisa
Haha! I
...am laughing!
To: nobody
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SARAAAAAAAH
Well, apparently this was meant for Sarah. I guess I recomposed this message later, because I *know* I wished her a happy birthday at some point.
To: nobody
It looks like in both IL and IN it might be snowing tonight but not tomorrow.
I like imagining that the draft texts I never assigned anything to are Twitter messages. Messages like this are why Twitter sometimes sucks.
To: Mom Cell
Hopefully this will not be tricky. I'm eager to
...start controlling things with my mind. But not if it's too tricky.
To: Sarah
Well, I think so
Well, I do!
To: nobody
Aaaand plans are off once again. My high school
This sounds like it could have been during the "Will I go home? Will I not?" debacle of J-term break.
To: Sarah
Ah
If I was going to send a thought this short, I could at least include some punctuation.
To: Lisa
Well, some we have going on now:
Now I really wonder what were some I had going on then.
To: nobody
Half and half. Parts of it I liked a lot. It was fun to see the Master again. And I liked the scene where the Doctor saved Wilfred.have ended it there. The long drawn-out goodbyes were crazy anticlimactic. (Though my father points out I'd already prepared for Ten's death by postponing the episode for so long. I probably would have appreciated the goodbyes otherwise.) And I probably wasn't supposed to burst out laughing when the Master turned everyone into himself. :-) God bless the hammy supervillains of sci-fi. I love them.
WOW. This extremely long message (with a chunk apparently taken out of it in the middle) was almost certainly meant for Rifty, who's the person I mostly discuss Doctor Who with. I hope I sent at least a version of this. It would be ridiculous to type this much and not use it.
To: nobody
Haha, Jacob says he just saw you w
HAHA JACOB SAW YOU! LOL LOL LOL THAT IS HILARIOUS!
To: nobody
At Starbucks with a friend. This place always makes me think of you.
Wow, *that* sounds like an emo status update. But really it was supposed to be a cheerful "I miss you!" message to, probably, Peach.
To: Sarah
Theory: There are people who are good with everybody & people who are good with a few. But the people who are good with a few are REALLY loved b
I'm pretty sure I sent this theory to her eventually, so I'm guessing it just got cut off. To finish it: they're really loved by the people they are good with. I feel like I'm in that category. There are only a few people I truly click with, but those people love me far, far more than I ever deserve. I cherish this. :-)
I don't think I can :-( I have no way to get down there.
OH SAD MEMORY. This is in response to her asking if I was going to John Brooks and Jessica Page's wedding. I truly wish I'd been able to be there. :-/
To: Sarah
This is true. And I
...eee-I will always love yooooooo-o-o-o-o-ou.
To: Sarah
Gah my phone dioed b
My typing also dioed, apparently.
To: Peach
Ye
O ye who receiveth this text message in its entirety, rather than just the first two letters, thou art blessed.
To: Laura
LOL! I just got your "Woohoo" text & thought you were commenting on my finishing the exam but you werem'
I think I vaguely remember this. Our text messages reached each other at the wrong time so we were having conversations responding to things that weren't actually said. It was confusing, but also funny. She werem'.
To: Emilee
Yeah! I got it, just forgot
Apparently I forgot again.
To: nobody
Hey, can you come let
I suspect I was locked out of my dorm for this one, but found someone to let me in before I finished the text.
To: Emilee
Aww. That's
I'm glad I was sympathetic to whatever Emilee's plight was.
To: nobody
All right, I'll be
...your crying shoulder?
To: Google
Yes
Say "Yes" to Google today!
To: Brittany M-now-H
Haha... I'm doing pretty good. In the middle of rehearsals for our Christmas show. How are you? How's married life? :-)
...Why did this one not get sent? Sad. I was having a text convo with Brittany, who I hardly ever get to talk to, and failed.
To: Sarah
Hmmm. I don't think so.
So there!
To: Sarah
I think sometimes people don't
Don't think so? Because I don't think so. Hmmm.
To: nobody
Oh! I have just realized I don't think we specially
Think so? Because I think sometimes people don't. And I don't think so. Hmmm.
...OK, that's the end of that ridiculous joke. As well as the end of my drafts.
Quick disclaimer: I don't mean to speak for all people everywhere with RA. I'm just drawing on how it's affected me personally. Different people have different experiences.
I also don't want to come across as like "OH MY GOSH MY LIFE IS A FAILLLLLLL" because that's silly and that pity party is not worth the time or the effort. :-) I think sometimes, though, people are interested in knowing what it's like living on a day-to-day basis with something like this. I know I personally like hearing stories from people whose life is different from mine. It helps me understand them (and humanity as a whole) better. So here goes.
I think one of the things that people don't realize about my dealing with arthritis is that it's not just about the pain. Ultimately, I can push past the pain if I need to. Adrenaline for Beauty and the Beast got me through the dance numbers. Looming deadlines get me through typing up long papers.
But it's exhausting.
When I have a flare-up, every action takes about three times the amount of steps it used to. Removing my coat is an arduous process. I'm constantly switching tactics as I try to wiggle myself out of it attempting not to aggravate a joint. (My internal monologue is something like: "OK, that's about as far as I can move my shoulder, let's try to pull the jacket sleeve down with my other hand. OK, now I think I can wiggle my shoulder a bit more and maybe the sleeve will scoot down. All right... Almost... Almost... I just need to pull my whole arm back a little bit and I think that should do it... OK, brace yourself, this is going to hurt. One... two... GO! Oh, ouch. But phew. That's one sleeve done.")
Not only is it physically exhausting, but it's mentally exhausting. I have to think about everything you do, otherwise I suddenly find I've moved my knee in a direction it didn't want to go today. It's like walking across thin ice versus walking across a basketball court. The mental concentration involved in navigating the first one safely means that when you finally get across, you just want to lie down and rest for awhile.
I sleep a lot more when I have arthritis flare-ups. My mind and body get overloaded as I work to protect myself. So, um, in silly lame conclusion: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
