Meatballs

Have you ever seen the movie Meatballs? It's hilarious. The synopsis on imdb is "Wacky hijinks of counselors and campers at a less-than-average summer camp." ("hijinks"!! Best word since shenanigans!) That explains the basic idea but you can't begin to comprehend the laughs without seeing it.

When I was a kid, this one St. Louis tv station used to play the same movie pretty much the entire weekend. One weekend the movie was Meatballs and my brothers and I watched it maybe 10 times in those two days. I've loved Bill Murray ever since that fateful weekend.

I distinctly remember my mom walking in on me and my two little brothers all laying on the floor of her bedroom watching it on the tiny tv from our van and asking incredulously "You're not watching that again, are you?!" Then she told us to go play outside, which we didn't. Then she came back in later and got mad because we were watching it yet again and none of us had moved an inch the entire time. That tiny tv made the rounds of rooms in our old house when it wasn't actually in the van, though I can't really explain why the floor of my parents' bedroom was ever a good spot for it. The screen was maybe 6 inches and the picture was always terrible, but when you love tv you make certain sacrifices.

Jonny just quoted "Don't you change" from Meatballs this weekend, and we both throw out "What, no mustard?" on a weekly basis. I can sing you the entire C.I.T. (Counselors In Training) song on request. Quotes from Caddyshack come up quite regularly as well. God bless Bill Murray! A while back I went on a couple dates with a guy who admitted that he didn't really remember lines from movies and I'm not kidding when I say that that was one of the reasons why we only went out a couple times.

I'm a huge movie re-watcher to this day, using the skills I learned as a child. The last Chicago apartment I lived in didn't have cable so I watched Bottle Rocket every day for six months in lieu of tv. I don't currently have a "go to" movie, but the last time I did it was The Darjeeling Limited. Thanks for all the good times, Wes Anderson!

Jonny watches Polar Express all the time, and he has this funny bit where if somebody walks in while he's watching it he pretends the remote control is broken as if that's a valid reason for watching a kid's movie for the 100th time. [Jonny wants me to point out that this bit originated when he used to watch Beauty and the Beast on VHS constantly and if somebody walked in he'd claim that the vcr was broken and he couldn't get the tape out.]

Speaking of remote controls, my family has always referred to ours as "the mote." I wonder if anybody else calls it that.