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.

Eating Spaghetti in the Bathtub

When I saw Cloris Leachman eating spaghetti in a bathtub during this week's episode of Raising Hope, it took me back to a similar scene in the movie Gummo that haunted me for years. For years.

When I saw the movie Kids back in the mid-1990's, it affected me deeply. My teenaged life had been nothing at all like the lives of the kids in Kids, so it wasn't that I identified with them strongly. I didn't identify with them at all really. My square middle-class Midwest upbringing bore no similarities to the lives of these New York City kids who comparatively ran wild. Maybe it was the realization that someone's life could be so diametrically opposite from mine that struck a chord. I don't actually know what it was, but I do remember being so hypnotized by the characters and their stories that the first time I saw Kids I stayed up until five in the morning watching it twice back-to-back. Shortly after that I felt like I couldn't live without continued access to this movie so I special-ordered a VHS copy from a movie store at the mall. (Remember life before DVDs, DVRs, even before widespread use of our friend The Internet?! What a different world it was back then)

When Harmony Korine, the writer of Kids, directed his first movie, Gummo, a couple years after Kids came out, I was super-excited to see it. I was certain that lightning was going to strike twice and Harmony was going to change my life again. I wasn't wrong, but it wasn't what I expected. Gummo affected me strongly too, but not at all in the same way Kids did. Whereas Kids told the somewhat/sometimes attractive stories of 'cool' teenagers in NYC, Gummo tells the stories of complete weirdos in completely weird Xenia, Ohio. While Kids had instantly captivated me, Gummo immediately and forevermore repulsed me.

I can't remember what theatre in Chicago showed Gummo, but I remember it was old and dirty and I was wearing a ridiculously short dress that just barely covered my bottom when I was standing up (Ah, Youth!). The longer I sat with not nearly enough material between my body and that dirty seat, and the longer I watched scene after scene of filthy houses and strange-beyond-belief people, the grosser I felt. The scene that disturbed me the most was the one where a dirty kid is taking a dirty bath in a dirty bathtub while eating a plate of spaghetti. I'm not a germaphobe, but I couldn't get all that dirtiness going on out of my head and I went straight home and took a shower, plus I couldn't bring myself to eat spaghetti for years after that. For years.

I'm sure I can find the scene on youtube, but honestly I don't want to see it again and I don't want anyone reading this to feel like they have to watch it either. Trust me when I tell you that it's OK if you never watch a minute of Gummo. Just picture every house you've ever seen on Hoarders being in the same tiny burned-out town, and that entire town is wholly populated by the 32 people included in a bizarre special Redneck edition of the Who's Who of Mental Illness.

Times I Have Been Pooped on by Birds

1. I was eighteen years old, sitting on the front porch of the house I grew up in, smoking my first cigar. The situation was strange enough already (why was I smoking a cigar?), but it got stranger still when suddenly a bird pooped on my knee. The poop was white.

2. I was in my mid-twenties, eating lunch with a friend at a Chicago park during our lunch break. I had just bitten into the first half of a delicious sandwich when a bird pooped onto my forehead. The poop got in my hair, on my face, and on both halves of my sandwich. After not moving or responding in any way for a good ten seconds, my friend interrupted my shock and disbelief by suggesting that I go inside and wash the poop off. The poop was green.

3. Probably a year after #2 (hee-hee), still in Chicago, I was walking down the street minding my own business when I felt something wet drop onto my arm. A quick glance up into a tree revealed a ballsy-looking bird just staring back at me like he had every right to poop on me. The poop was clear-ish.