Happy Me

Yeah, so I'm relatively happy today. No idea why, it was a Monday, and I have "early morning" this week, and my left foot hurts (but that's all in my mind, right?).

And by the way. You know, when you buy a house, there are things you expect are going to happen, like the leak in the washing machine and a cameo appearance by Mr Snake. And there are things you'd never expect to happen, not in a million years. One of the biggies on that list for me is, for some reason, I never expected to have to deal with people whose greatest joy in life and favorite pastime apparently is to throw the garbage from their cars out the window right into my yard.

Twice a week, I'm out there, after work, with a little plastic bag, picking up whatever fast food bags, paper cups, pieces of the newspaper color supplement, and basic nondescript food wrappers are out there, sometimes they're nice and dry and I can just tuck them in the bag and go on, but sometimes they're wet and slug-covered, and I wince with every item. Damn people who are so lazy, or idiotic, or just plain scummy, that they'll throw their trash, well, outside at all, much less into some unsuspecting person's yard. I hope there's a really slimy corner of hell reserved for them.

I practiced the clarinet a while tonight, till it was time to watch my movie. Mr M loaned me a movie, on loan from his advisor, "Life As A House." We seem to have started a mini-trend of watching "psychologically-related relationship movies for discussion afterwards." Not that there's anything wrong with that.

It all started with the Mike Leigh film "All Or Nothing," which I'll make no bones about being the best film I've seen this year. (Along with "The Philadelphia Story," but it's hard to rank moderns and classics together.) Anyway, "All Or Nothing," I'm recommending it. It had an impact on Mr M as well, and it got me to thinking about the first Leigh film I ever saw, which became one of my favorites, a little movie called "Life Is Sweet." And so I decided to buy it for Mr M as a birthday present. Yes, folks, that's what we call in the business a "sheriff's badge," buying someone a present because you yourself want it. (So named for a little boy's habit of buying his dad a present of a baseball hat or a sheriff's badge.)

We watched "Life Is Sweet" on Sunday afternoon. It'd been probably 10 years since I'd seen it, but it was still a great watch. There was a scene I remember hitting me really hard the first time, and seeing it again was still great. It's hard to explain, the movie is about... ha! What is it about? It's about nothing and everything. Generally, it's about a mid-lower class British family and their life for a small window of time.

But within that is the story of the kids of the family, twin girls, about 18 or so. One's a responsible happy girl who works as a plumber. The other's a total mess. Just an absolute mess. And the scene I remembered so well was when the mother finally confronts the "mess" about her life. Or lack thereof. It's not a screaming match, it's not a huge epiphany, it's not major catharsis. It was just like eavesdropping on a mom and daughter having a major discussion, and it really hit me when I first saw it. It was still a great scene all these years later.

I often read about how Leigh only has skeletons of scripts and the actors flesh everything out themselves by improvisation. I don't know how much truth there is to this, but if it is true, man, they all deserve Oscars. Every year. Whether there's a movie out or not.

"Life As A House" was a little different. Dying man with his share of mistakes behind him finds out he's dying, and collars son with his share of mistakes ahead of him to spend a summer together, building a house and finding love. That's a pretty pat description of a movie that wasn't that bad at all. There were certain paths the movie took that were really nice and enjoyable, then just when you were lulled into thinking you were watching something really good, they just had to throw in some horrible, hokey, pulled-out-of-their-ass plot twist. Still, how can you not like Kevin Kline? And Jamey Sheridan - someone give that man a non-asshole movie role, OK?

And so, OK, I admit it. Today was kind of a happy day. I even thought it was funny when "Laura" and her blog seemed to take over blogrolling for a couple of hours this morning. (Did anyone else catch that? It was bizarre - all blogrolls were nothing but links to this Laura's blog.) I do wish I knew what in the hell was going on with my weatherpixie, though. I've checked the site and nothing's out of the ordinary there. She's just disappeared. That flag standing there alone looks like it's been poked into the surface of the moon.