A really good day

I woke up feeling like myself again, regular and chirpy and centered. I listened to super great poetry all morning - Amiri Baraka, Anne Waldman mostly, & made a playlist of stuff that went together that was fierce & beautiful - especially riffing off Baraka "cowards" which I must find the text of. It kept making me laugh uproariously.

Some work, some writing, a bunch of applying for jobs. I am feeling very open either to teaching or tech work. Eating is still really tough but I'm going on Prilosec which should help.

Took Moomin to "Happy F33t" - a trip - walked there in the crisp sun with the Pilot and Peanut - She is 2.5 now and very prattly and wiggly in a charming way. It was her first movie theater experience ever! Moomin liked it but howled with huge sobs & sympathy when the penguin got thrown out by the penguin religious patriarchs and by his own dad. He couldn't bear it! Absolutely lost his cookies with sorrow. "Happy" my ass... that movie was intense. If it was not being outcast leper unclean it was all about the terror of falling or sliding down ice tubes with ice boulders or being underwater with red-eyed evil sea leopards chasing you or choking on accidental garbage.. and then the hallucinating in jail, I mean, the zoo, oh man. That was intense. You're in jail! Hallucinating! Watched by aliens! Dance, dance, motherfucker!

It was like that.

Lord knows what Peanut made of any of it. The penguins! They're singing, momma! What happened? The penguins is dancing onna ice, momma! (Dear Peanut, it is sort of about desperate tap-dancing in the face of globalization & imperialism, on top of that eco-message thing. Don't worry, you'll understand it later. It will still be perturbing and confusing though.)

But fortunately with a happy ending (!?) and another big dance number & we came out dazed and pleased into the evening.

Oh and good news- there are cream puffs now right next to the theater.

Comments

[elswhere]

OMG that movie! We went to see it last week and I'd say that about 50% of the time at least one of the three of us was either terrified or completely baffled. It was like "Brazil" crossed with a Dennis Potter TV series crossed with March of the Penguins (which I still haven't seen but have heard all about), all disguised as a cute kids' movie. And the end...as the credits rolled I was still like, "Wait, HOW exactly did he save everyone? By dancing? How did that happen?" And RW was patiently explaining how she thought they pulled that one off, and meanwhile MG, having recovered from her terror about the sea leopard, was climbing all over us begging us to rent all the movies from the previews, since she has no idea they're not released yet.

Yeah. A trip. That's about right. "Incoherent, yet strangely moving" was my capsule review to someone.

[Mary Tsao]

Wow, thanks for the review and you, too, else. I had no idea that movie was so heavy. I'm scratching it off my "fun things to do" list.

But about those cream puffs...

[badgerbag]

Oh, I'd say you should see it, but maybe with a 10 year old not a 3 year old...

The Brazil or "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" part was definitely disturbing because as an adult watching I was aware of that... And the other really disturbing part was the message that, well basically there is no nicer way to put it than this:

- when you are a culture in contact with a more powerful culture, and they are exploiting your country's resources, you had damn well better learn to tap dance so that you won't starve.

[toobeaut]

Movies for kids are unbelievably intense these days as a rule. I'm glad I don't have kids. I could hardly stand the strain of the movies.

I heard today that conservative political types are objecting to that movie because it is "environmental propaganda" for suggesting there is such a thing as environmental damage, ever, much less global warming.

[Kris]

Wow, now I really want to see the movie. And the cream puff place...unfortunately, I know it well. Right near the ice cream place, and the New York pizza place. That is a dangerous part of town....