A Silver Screen Peeve

Last night I went to see the movie, "Water for Elephants." I had enjoyed the book, and heard that the movie followed it fairly well. I will not be making any sort of movie review other than to say I'm glad I saw it, but it's not going on my "buy to keep" DVD list.

However, it did again highlight two peeves about movies, especially movies of late.

1. What's up with the mumbling? Either my hearing is going already, the sound system in the theaters I attend sucks/I'm getting spoiled by watching DVDs on my laptop with headphones in, or, more likely, I think, actors and directors seem to think that speaking quickly in an monotone while there's a noisy soundtrack underneath is somehow more dramatic. Instead, I spend my whole time straining to understand half of the more informative conversations, especially those critical to the storyline.

2. Details, folks. Water for Elephants is set in a Depression-era fictional circus that aimed to outdo the infamous Ringling Brothers Greatest Show on Earth. At least two major scenes in the second half of the movie featured the grand entry and spectacular of the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, with all the big acts parading into the big top to the accompaniment of the circus band playing the entrance march. The march used in the movie is the immediately recognizable, Barnum and Bailey's Favorite. Well, except Barnum and Bailey's circus was by that time merged into the Ringling Bros.

The venomous attitude of the owner of the fictional Benzini Bros. would have never have allowed that march to be played in his circus, even if it was out of fashion with Ringling Brothers at that time. How simple would it have been to create a new fictional circus march instead of stealing one that is so recognizable and so completely and totally wrong? Yes, it's a small thing, but the devil is in the details.

Perhaps that small inattention to such details is an indication of why this movie is not going on my all-time favorites list.

Easter Sunday with Tom and Jerrys

cartoons. Not the drinks. (Wrong holiday.)

We began our Easter Sunday with seven adults watching a classic Tom and Jerry cartoons. Seven adults (and no children) snorting, giggling, chuckling, guffawing, and choking in response to the non-verbal, slap-stick humor that is essential to the mid-20th century cartoons.

When the cartoon ended, we turned our attention to the real-life action of Wrangler and Olivia, the never-ending amusement of our own cat-and-dog chase. Walnut, the flying squirrel (and Bullwinkle) are still safely up in Three Lakes.

Things I Don't Want to Know

It seems everybody's after you to make your life better by getting you to quantify your sins: count calories, track spending, measure the distance you walked/ran/biked, etc., etc., etc.

Well, as of right now there are a few things I just don't want to know.

1. How many hours of "screen time" I rack up in a day.

A "screen" might be anything electronic and glowing that we stare at for work or entertainment, but I know full well that 80% of my "screen time" comes from communing with my trusty MacBook and 15% more comes from the time spent staring at my ancient work desktop PC (though most of that is spent staring at the screen waiting for the machine to DO something already, but still, I'm looking at the screen). And between time spent in productivity, personal and work-related, and time spent in sloth, personal and work-related, adds up to too many hours per day. I just don't want to know how many.

2. How many miles driven vs. miles walked in a week (corollary: number of hours spent in a car vs. doing just about anything else, especially walking).

I commute. And I drive around in general for personal and work reasons. Unlike my past lives overseas where most of my daily locomotion was under the power of my own legs, now I rely on 160 horses to get me where I am going the vast majority of the time. I do not want to know how much of my soul I have traded for this convenience.

3. Friendship and relationship hours lost due to my inability to correspond on a regular basis.

How many times have I put off writing that letter/e-mail/thank you note/invitation/etc., to the point of irrelevance?

4. Number of Recommended Daily Servings of fruits and vegetables and Recommended Daily Allowances vitamins and minerals I have not consumed.

I'm still here, aren't I? But at what price down the road? I don't want to know.

5. Hours of brain cell potential lost to unproductive meetings, needless waiting and wading through bureaucracy, technology failures and troubleshooting computer-related incidents, bad movies or books, and my own laziness and procrastination habits.

Enough said.