The greater your high horse, the worse the fall

I care a lot about right and wrong. This means I’m willing and highly likely to wade in and point out when others make mistakes.

This is not just annoying, but also, sometimes, I’ve found myself doing more wrong than the person whose foolish ways I set out to correct.

For instance, I recently learned AGAIN, if you’re angry with someone over something they said, tell them to their face – don’t post it on facebook. And if you do do something that stupid, be prepared to fix the problems you caused, yourself, for a while to come.

For some reason, this correction to a sign in Little Tokyo area of LA seemed a perfect illustration to me of my own foibles.

Woops. Preposition fail. But we know what they mean, right? Don’t take our trollies out of here, okay?

I can’t even tell if it’s Korean, Chinese or Japanese and I doubt the person who whipped out a magic marker to correct the error in the English version can either.

Grammar #correctionfail. So fun.

Love mostly fails…

“…but sometimes love never fails.” Some wisdom from my Dad in what will probably turn out to be a series of takes on Corinthians, everybody’s favorite wedding bible verse.

Who are you? And is it still true?

“It gets harder to fall in love as you get older” a talented film maker who is way to young to say that said to me the other day. I pretended to disagree but I know he’s right. It does get harder.

You fall for love’s tricks three, maybe four times and then you start to fear it before you even feel it. Fear and joy are sworn enemies. Or it’s more complicated. Maybe being in love is the emotional equivalent of being in the 1% of America’s super rich… just not normal.

I remember asking my Dad if I would ever have a successful relationship. I was miserable. So miserable that my body just “sat” as salty liquid oozed out of my eyes steadily, day after day. My second long-term boyfriend and I had just ended things and I thought I’d never feel love again. He sighed sadly, as he did a lot back then, and said something along the lines of:

“Well, it’s unusual to be happily in love all your life. I only know three couples who are. And they’re all unusual…”

“Who?” I blubbered back. Who wouldn’t ask? And now I’m going to change names, job descriptions and more to hide identities.

“Well Mike and Janine are happy, I think,” he said. “But that’s because they hardly see each other. He’s always on the oil rig. He comes home for a week at a time and of course, they’re happy to see each other. It’s always fresh.” A pause as my Dad thought about it, then continued. “Then there’s Lilian and David,” he continued. “And that’s even rarer. He just loves her more than anything else in the whole world. Just more than anything. It doesn’t matter if she’s fat or if she’s thin, or angry or smiling. She’s the only thing that matters. He would do anything for her. Anything.” And then my Dad got stuck and I realised he said “Three couples” having no idea if he actually knew of three couples who were actually happy. He’s a writer too and we tend to organise things that way. But sometimes life cuts you short, I guess.

“What about you and Mom?” I helpfully suggested, regretting the words the instant they left my mouth.

He laughed. “Sometimes we are,” he conceded. They divorced two years later. The other two couples are still together. I had another three serious relationships and am currently convinced I’ll never love another man again.

Writing it on a wall won’t make it last. Ask the old guy on the phone. Whoever he is… he probably knows.

A great day / night; an imagined life

YEAH I’m using pretentious punctuation. I had one of those days where you imagine a life, with someone, and it seems perfect. Hell, it was perfect. Here’s what happened.

He went for a job interview and I wandered around a shitty area. Beverly Hills ubertown, where it’s totally fine to treat people like shit if you’re rich and famous. Not accustomed to normal hours, I found a 2 hour parking spot to sleep in. When he was done with the interview he understood how I felt about THIS.

Beverly Hills is a segment of a town where fame is everything. So in a health shop window: Whacko Jacko. The guy you worry about when it comes to health. Also featured in their creepy security cam footage: Kate Moss.

The protesters are clearly crappy at the internet, or else the internet is unwilling to lose advertising. Charlotte Olympia is a footwear brand that must cost a fortune, cause a coffee is ridiculous. The only complaint I found online was re. a broken heel.

Another protest. Organized labor in America is a small crowd compared to where I’m from. But I’d be scared too. McCarthyism is alive and well.

Funny, cause as cool as people pretend to be they still eat here. Fakers, more like.

My cohort, who I can’t really call a date since we’ve both remained single on FB for 3 years and this is 2013, said there was a Banksy near the theater where we had decided to go watch docs. Turns our the owner of the building painted over it. So I just kept walking around the corner and found this.

This is a great picture. I don’t care who it’s by. I love to surf. I know this moment even though for me it’s with foamies on a boogie board.

Two cool doccies for $8? I’m in. For my SA readers, that’s less than the normal ticket price for two films. At Quinton Tarantino’s theater. No quibbling.

At the New Beverly (by Tarantino) the drinks are between 1-3 dollars and the popcorn too. Best of all, the butter is real. Real butter on movie popcorn. THAT’s America.

Took this the same night. Stopped dangerously. 40mph to 0 in 3 seconds, then a reverse. What is it? TELL ME.

The films were amazing. Find them. Watch them.And also, I couldn’t help wondering how my life might be if I lived with him and we went there. If we just went there a few times a week.

“Mud”, and the New Marlboro Man

Mud is easily in my top 3 movies of 2013 so far. Maybe it’s number one but I have to wait a couple of days to see how it settles. And if anything bumps it out of top spot, it’s one thing: Marlboro – and what looks suspiciously like very clumsy-ass product placement.

If you saw Take Shelter (writer/director Jeff Nichols’ previous film) and wished you liked it but weren’t pretentious enough to actually honestly enjoy it, don’t be put off. Although could acknowledge the mastery of his craft Nichols displayed in that, it feel like a very, very, long and tedious short film to me and I didn’t buy the marriage at all. If you liked Take Shelter, then Mud offers that kind of cinematic beauty, only this time, it’s combined with compelling story telling. Even the slightly studio ending with it’s extraneous “I love you” doesn’t manage to ruin it for me.

Go see it. On a big screen. Don’t forget.

Back to the only thing that really bothered me: the product placement. Now, I assume that they had to make a few moral compromises to get the 10 million dollars to make a decent movie in an industry that doesn’t really care to finance that sort of thing anymore? And I’m fine with that. I love making movies so much that I wouldn’t care if this one was funded by… *thinks* … who do I hate more than big tobacco? McDonalds. But what bugged me was that the story involves Mud (Matthew McConaughey) being stranded on an island off the Mississippi without food and needing to be brought cans of beans by two kids he befriends. Yet although he is starving to death, and smokes constantly, he never, not once, runs out of cigarettes. Even pinching them (which he does) wouldn’t explain this. Unless the kids are supplying him with that too. It took me out of the story for a second. And that, not the fact that cigarettes cause cancer, is what bothered me. Lots of stuff causes cancer. And most of it is harder to avoid than cigarettes are. Don’t smoke ’em. Easy.

Howdy kids! None of the publicity stills show him lighting up, but he does it a lot… as does his love interest, played by Reece Witherspoon (she prefers the menthols).

These days, the good guys smoke. It helps with the stress. The packet of Marlboro Kings is always clearly visible through his white shirt pocket.

It’s always helped with the stress.

And it’s nice to do it as a family. Here, a dad and his daughter spark up a Marlboro – and share a moment of closeness!

Notice the similarity, or is it just me?

PS: Jeff is not related to film director Mike Nichols. He IS, however, directly related to his brother Ben Nichols – lead singer of the band Lucero.