Susan's Scribblings the Blog

So the Fourth of July falls on a Friday this year. What a great idea: take Friday, Saturday and Sunday off. That means one day to overeat and two to get over it (not to mention the fireworks which will dull your hearing for hours). I will have the day off, and as per the family tradition we will eat hamburgers and potato salad. We use Miracle Whip(R) on our potato salad, which freaks out the mayonnaise purists no end. I don’t dislike mayo, but I prefer using “the Whip.” Some folks, on the other hand, won’t touch “the Whip.” It’s got a little tang to it. Mayo has a bit of a greasy thing going on, but for me it’s all good, and I don’t mind that some folks have a problem with “the Whip.” That means more for me.

Having a Friday holiday is tough on businesses who normally pay people on Fridays. That is why I spent a few hours on a Saturday at work crunching timesheet numbers so everybody can be paid a day early next week. When you look at how many hours people work, you develop an appreciation for the amount of time we labor to earn our living, and how complex it can be to figure it all out so everybody gets a proper paycheck. It’s all that math we learned in school and promptly forgot about, with a little common sense, levity and policy enforcement thrown in. It is important to make sure that everybody has money for the big weekend, including me. Of course, somebody else reviews how much I worked, so I don’t have to enforce policy on myself (that would count as masochism, I think). It will be nice to have a different kind of three day weekend for a change, since we are all used to Mondays off for any holiday not falling on a Monday to begin with. Of course, by the time Monday actually rolls around, everybody will be grumpy because they actually have to go to work on a Monday, and anybody with a question about what they were paid will inundate us with questions first thing in the morning. That is why Tuesdays after Monday holidays are much easier to tolerate. Independence Day falls on Monday, July 4, 2016. That we can all enjoy, and it will seem normal. Except when I bring up the Whip in the potato salad.

The other night there was an interesting movie on Turner Classic Movies called “All That Heaven Allows” from 1955, starring Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman as a gardener and widow who fall in love and have to deal with social snobbery to find happiness. By today’s standards it’s rather tame. Word spread by telephone in those days, rather than instant posts on social media, but the message of love conquering all is timeless.

It’s what you might expect of a melodrama of that time: the town gossip envisions the stud-muffin young paid laborer servicing the lonely widow, and Wyman’s two young adult children make it practically impossible for her to follow her heart. The daughter has a minor problem with her boyfriend after rumors circulate, and she feels her mother doesn’t understand how important her own status is. How can you think of moving in with him, the son accuses, and get rid of the family home we’ve had for generations to move into a barn (which Hudson has painstakingly refurbished)? The town’s lecherous resident makes a move on Wyman and Hudson puts a stop to it, but he is the one who gets snubbed for it, not the jerk. Wyman breaks off their engagement. By Christmas, however, the son is getting a better job and is all for selling the house, and the daughter tells her mother she should not have taken her seriously for having an immature tantrum. Realizing she has let others dictate her future, she goes back to Hudson, who never gave up on her.

Why do we, as human beings in general, go so far out of our way to interfere with how others live their lives? It really isn’t our business. Even if somebody is doing something criminal, we have authorities for that, and it isn’t our place to step in. Now I’m not saying that you should not deal with an immediate danger (if somebody is going to injure a person needlessly, for example), but we always insinuate our own ideals to others and expect total conformity when such a thing is not at all possible. It is the differences that make us special; our ability to rise up to a challenge, make compromises when needed, sacrifice, stand firm or speak up, that defines the rich uniqueness of the human condition. We look at the redefining of the family, of human rights, of our humanity and inhumanity, and we cling with fear to old tenets that have outlived their shelf life.

I enjoyed watching that movie. Everybody lived happily ever after in spite of social snobbery. We should all be that fortunate.

I went to the movies with a friend of mine last night. We sat a few rows from the front in an IMAX theatre with 3D which, until we experienced it, we didn’t know what a mistake that was to sit so close. The sound turned our eardrums into colanders and I could almost smell the bad breath of every villainous vile creature onscreen (if we had Smell-O-Vision).

Of course the first few trailers were, as the theatre chain drily noted, not part of the IMAX experience. Meaning if you forgot your overpriced chocolate dobobbers, if you ran you might nab a box from the concession stand. We had already put on our 3D glasses (and I wondered whose noses they had sat upon before me), and I can tell you from my experience that the non-IMAX previews were no more or less exciting than the ones after we received the military command to put on our 3D glasses NOW.

We saw quite a few movie trailers for upcoming features, and frankly I found them all to be stupid. First of all, the theatre tacks on a reminder that the movie opens on such-and-such a date, taking the time and expense to insert the movie title for each one, in type so plain it’s obvious that they are pandering to those in the audience who might not read or missed the film’s title amid all the crash and bang and bodily injury inflicted in those few seconds of digital mishmash. Sometimes the work done to embellish a movie title could be better spent on scriptwriting.

Second, all the movies really seemed the same to me. A misfit, or two or twelve, find that they have the power to change the world they live in (usually post-apocalyptic or other realm not our own), so they train, gather their forces, have a few emotional moments in the arms of a loved one and then charge into the fray. Yeah, we’ve seen it, we’ve done it, and it got old after the tenth one.

Once the film’s title is revealed, near the end of the preview, there is usually a few more seconds of footage showing some desperate clash of titans or a giant ship or monster roaring into your face as you sit with your 3D glasses. If you didn’t go deaf in the first few seconds of the trailer, the last five will do it for sure. Plus your youngsters will have nightmares for weeks.

I’ve only gone to the movies once or twice a month lately, but these trailers, which are supposedly designed to make upcoming features seem exciting, are so formulaic and banal, I plan to go to none of the features advertised. The persons putting the previews together have given away all the key points of the film (not that they are in any way unique) and provided nothing novel to encourage me to come back.

Okay, maybe one exception: The Book of Life, an animated feature by Guillermo del Toro, had originality and held my interest. Also, it was pleasing to my poor punctured ears.

I’m working on a project so am taking this week off. A new post may appear earlier than usual next week as I won’t be posting on Saturday 5/03.