Saturday, March 22, 2008
Favorite Movie Quotes
Current mood: pleased
Okay, so that last blog was pretty grim and dismal. And preachy, and self-pitying. And…nevermind, point made.
So today: favorite movie quotes! At random, for no reason, just individual lines that I like for some reason or another. Maybe they’re applicable in real life. Maybe they were just delivered particularly well in the movie.
“Tina, ya fat lard…com’n get some HAM!!” — Napoleon Dynamite
“I feel terrible.” –
Empire Strikes Back
“Money can’t buy love…but it can buy some of the most remarkable substitutes.” — Gone With The Wind
“No, we’ve come too far.” — Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
“What’s the soup du jour?” “It’s the soup of the day.” “Mm, that sounds good…I’ll have that.” — Dumb and Dumber
“Wanna hear a joke? Knock knock…” — Catch Me If You Can
“We thought you was a toad.” “Nope, I never was no toad.” “See, now that was OUR mistake.” — O Brother Where Art Thou?
“I want my two dollars!!” — Better Off Dead
“Whattaya got on the spacecraft that’s GOOD?” — Apollo 13
“It’s not that I’m lazy…it’s that I just don’t care.” — Office Space
“On the whole, the universe tends to unfold as it should.” — Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
“It’s your dog. It’s your dog, get it? It’s your dog.” — Road Trip
“I didn’t kill my wife!” “I don’t care!!” — The Fugitive
“Be careful what you shoot at, Mr. Ryan…most things in here don’t react well to bullets.” — Hunt For Red October
“There is no try. Do, or do not.” — Empire Strikes Back
“Baby…the other, OTHER white meat.” — Austin Powers II
“AsphinctersaysWHAT?” “What?” — Wayne’s World
“Try not to sing songs that remind them they’re in prison.” “Did you think they forgot?” — Walk The Line
“So it’s basically a smash’n grab.” “Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.” “Well, yeah.” — Ocean’s Eleven
I’m really reaching now…so I’ll cut it off. I have to start cleaning the house for Easter, anyway.
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Friday, March 21, 2008
Talisman; Volvo
Current mood: contemplative
I drive a Volvo. Or should I stand up and say, “Hi, I’m Nick, and I drive a Volvo,” and everyone else in the room can say “Hi, Nick.” Well anyway, I do. This is a picture from back when it was new:
It looks pretty much the same now, nine years later. The hubcaps are off it for the winter, because ice builds up in ’em and makes the car shake like a broken Maytag, but that’s about it. We ordered it from the factory new in 1999, and we’ve put 167,000 miles on it since then. It wasn’t an expensive car, either — A loaded Ford Taurus was more expensive. Hell, there were Subaru’s more expensive.
Yeah, so I’m bragging about my car. Woo-hoo, right? Well, this Volvo is more than just a car. It’s a really large, shiny talisman. It’s one of the last things that remain of my mother. I lost my mom to cancer in 1997. We auctioned off most of mom’s stuff and sold my childhood home. For a couple of 20-somethings we got a lot of money. Debt was paid off, fun was had, family members showed their true colors, hijinks ensued, and in 1999 we used essentially the last of (we’ll call it) my inheritance to buy a Volvo.
So this car is more than a car to me…it’s a reminder of my mother, and that’s big…even if it is more than a bit Oedipal. We’ve had the thing so long now, that our Volvo has become almost a family member in its own right, too. It’s carried my wife and I from Virginia to South Dakota, from Minnesota to Kentucky. All four of our children rode home from the hospital in the Volvo. It’s carried Christmas presents, rolls of carpet, 8-foot ladders and a week’s worth of luggage. It’s been through a ditching, vandals, countles blizzards and a full-on Indiana tornado. It’s on its fourth set of tires and its third set of brakes. 167,000 miles — that’s two-thirds of the way to the MOON, fer cryin’ out loud.
I have another talisman of my mother, actually, that I carry with me wherever I go. When we visited my mother over Christmas 1996, she took us out for Chinese food. We had fun, we talked, we laughed, she told us how her treatments were going good; everything seemed great.
Three weeks later she was dead.
When I was going through her stuff shortly after she passed, I found the credit-card receipt for that Chinese meal — the last time I saw her alive — and it went into my wallet, where it has remained and will remain, even after all of the cheap carbon-copy ink has worn off the thin yellow paper.
Talismans (Talismen?) don’t have to be reminders of doom and gloom, though. I keep a talisman to remind me of my wife, too — her high-school class ring. I wear it on a cord around my neck, always. She gave it to me back in 1994 when we started seeing each other, and I’ve worn it since. It almost means more to me than my wedding band…I’ve forgotten to put on my wedding band in the morning before, but I’ve never forgotten to hang that little silver ring with the pink stone around my neck. I’ll probably still be wearing it when I’m old and wizened, and people will wonder what kind of pathetic high-school girl is dating the old pervert.
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Monday, March 17, 2008
I Never Forget St. Patty’s Day
Current mood: ecstatic
I never forget St. Patrick’s Day. It falls on the day after my birthday (yes, every year) so I kind of have a recurring reminder of it. So yes, my birthday was yesterday. I turned 38. I’ll spell that out: thirty-eight. I don’t feel thirty-eight. I’m pretty sure I don’t think like I’m thirty-eight. I kind of feel like I just graduated for college, except for that 13-year gap that I can’t account for. Heck, I feel more like I just graduated from high school…not like my 20-year reunion is coming up this year.
So it’s kind of a shock to me to be thirty-eight. That’s an age that makes birthdays feel like “yup, another notch on the ol’ gunstock…one less year before I die.” Gruesome. Macabre. Depressing. Somber. Dark. Dank. But yet…this year not so much. I dunno…I kind of look at that number beside the label, “Age:” and this year I’m sorta shrugging and saying, “Yeah, maybe so, but I don’t FEEL that old.”
Funny thing happened after tae kwon do tonight. Sensei made us run around the gym for five full minutes, and do pushups and crunches and jumping jacks…in addition to all of the actual tae kwon do practice. It’s three hours ago, and I can barely lift my arms. Anyway, on the way out to the car, another parent who’s in the class with me (and if she’s reading this, yes, I’m talking about you!) delivered the statement, “Bleah, I’m too old for this.” Well, I know she just turned thirty, so I returned with “I don’t wanna hear it…I just turned thirty-eight yesterday.”
She stopped. Her mouth hung open. (in a pretty way. Really.) She stared at me. “You’re kidding me.”
“No.”
“Really.”
“Yup.”
“I only said that because I was sure you’re five years younger than I am.”
“Wow, thanks…um, nope, sorry, I’m thirty-eight.”
“No way.” and etc. for a bit longer.
So I’m feeling pretty good about myself tonight. I don’t think I look like a 25-year-old by any stretch of the imagination, what with the paunch and the hair in my ears, and the kids that orbit around me…but an even thirty wouldn’t be out the question. And any night that a pretty younger woman thinks I’m in my twenties is a good night in my book. Like, woo-hoo and stuff. And while I spend the next three days in pain from tonight’s class, I can console myself with this, too!
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Saturday, March 15, 2008
Beware The Ides Of March
That’s all, just beware the Ides of March.
Currently listening :
Hang Me Up to Dry
By Cold War Kids
Release date: 16 July, 2007
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