Movie Meme Thing

Brain's fried.  Long couple of days.  Just a movie meme that's been passed around ye olde Facebooke:

Movie I Love: O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU?
Most Hated Movie:  LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN
Movie I Think Is Underrated: STRANGER THAN FICTION
Movie I Think Is Overrated: GLADIATOR
Movie I Secretly Love: THE THIRTEENTH WARRIOR
Favorite Action Movie:  PREDATOR (lately, leastways)
Favorite Drama: 12 ANGRY MEN
Favorite Western: THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE
Favorite Horror:  ALIEN
Favorite Comedy: MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL
Favorite Disney Movie: ROBIN HOOD
Favorite Fantasy Movie: THE DARK CRYSTAL
Favorite Science Fiction Movie:  THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL
Favorite Animated Movie: THE IRON GIANT
Favorite Superhero Movie:  THE INCREDIBLES
Favorite Musical:  ANNIE
Favorite Bad Movie: NO HOLDS BARRED
Childhood Favorite: THE GOONIES
Favorite Franchise:  STAR WARS
Best Trilogy:   The Cornetto Trilogy
Guilty Pleasure: THE POSTMAN
Favorite Director: The Coens
Favorite Actor:  That's tough.  Woody Harrelson?  John Goodman?
Favorite Actress:   Holly Hunter?  Catherine O'Hara?
Favorite Movie This Year So Far: Lego Batman
Movie I Have Recently Seen:  Carrie (2013)
What I Thought of It: Not bad.  Uneven, but big props to Chloe Grace Moretz for hitting a lot of the right notes in that one.
Favorite Movie Of All Time: STAR WARS

Three Years

"Are you kidding? You've obviously not read my book I Make More Data Driven Decisions in Professional Learning Communities before Lunch than Most People Make in One Semester. Which is not surprising. It was hideously researched, grossly inaccurate and ineptly marketed. Still, it sold 7 copies in my Amazon Kindle Store, so feel free to use me as a source." ---me, in a FB conversation three years ago.

Easter By the Numbers

Tired, Big Stupid Tommymaniacs.

Easter.

Pretty weekend.

3 9+ hour shifts in 49 hours.

44,300 steps taken in 49 hours.  According to my app, that's about 23 miles.

Went to Welcome to Night Vale at the Bijou in Knoxville.  If you get the time, I recommend it....

I opened this morning.  We had Easter at Mom's.  Was tough, without Dad there.  Had an emotional moment this morning, when I started thinking about it.

 Friday morning, the Easter Bunny visited Mom's house.  He knew that April was coming up with my nephew after church on Sunday.  He created a scavenger hunt, of sorts, in amongst the other Easter Eggs.

The Easter Bunny was proud of himself....the hunt was a hit, apparently....

Going Down to the Hardee's for some Pussy

I found this in my drafts.  I'm tired as anything.  I don't get it, either.  Good night, folks.



Harlan County, Kentucky, couple arrested for sex in public in Hardee's parking lot.

"I guess that gives new meaning to the saying 'I'm going down to the Hardee's for some Pussy,'" he said, the leer evident without my even needing to turn to look at him to see it.  I could feel it.  Its greasy essence nearly prompting me to turn on the defrost.

"That's not a saying," I said, regretting evening dignifying his statement with comment before I got past the second T.

"It's a saying."

"No it's not."

"It's a local thing."

"We're from the same town, Ricky."

"Yeah, I've been around longer, though" he said.  He puffed out his chest.

"I don't care how old you are.  Nobody says that."

"Yeah they do."

"Who says that, Ricky?  Who the fuck says 'I'm going down to the Hardee's for some Pussy?'"

"Lots of people.  It was our class motto when we graduated."

"You didn't graduate."

"Got my equivalency."

"Your class motto was not 'I'm going down to the Hardee's for Pussy."

"Some Pussy," he said, putting respectful emphasis on the words.

"That wasn't your class motto."

"Yes it was," he said, rummaging around in his pocket.

"No it wasn't."

We stopped at the light going up Depot Hill.  The light was green, but a bus from First Baptist was turning left.  We waited, so that the senior spares and pairs could make it to Classic Lanes for their 9 AM league.

"Why isn't there a turn lane?" Ricky said, and then "Look."

"I am looking."

"No," he said, holding his phone out to me, "look!"

I looked at what he was holding out.  He'd pulled up a picture on his phone.  It was Ricky Scott minus 30 years of drive-thru, male pattern baldness and Busch Light.  His silver tuxedo brought out the strawberry in hair that still more strawberry than sand.  He stood regally, green eyes bursting from his freckled skull at his good fortune.

"Who's your girl?" I asked.  She was actually quite pretty.  I was impressed at 1986 Ricky Scott's good fortune.

"Fuck the girl," he said, "look at the backdrop."

I did, or at least I tried, but before I could take in the orange lettering on a red backdrop, a horn tooted behind me.

"Shit," I said, realizing the church bus had turned and I was impeding rush hour.  I dropped his phone into the seat between us.

"Did you read it?"

"Read what?"

"What's on the backdrop?"

"No," I said.  "I'm lead car in a 3-car parade."

"The back drop says "Going down to the Hardee's for some Pussy."

"No it does not."

"It does," he said, trying to retrieve his phone, which had slipped into the crevasse made between the seats by his belt buckle.

"Yes, Mark, it does.  Shit."

"What?"

"Can't reach my phone, asshole."

"It's not my fault."

"Yeah it is, Orel Hershiser" he said, continuing to dig while I pondered his choice of epithet.

"How did your class motto become 'Going down to the Hardee's for some Pussy?'" I was regretting my investment, but we had 20 miles before getting to Hannah's, and if I was lucky, I could distract Ricky before another Steve Miller classic came on the radio, and he needed me to turn it up so that I could have hearing and sanity obliterated by Jet Airplane.

"Well," he said, rooting still with his left hand.  He'd managed to push past his wrist, a quarter way up his left forearm rooting underneath my seat, before he continued:

"One day, when me and your Dad were in high school, we were getting ready for homecoming."

Thoughts from the Ass End of the Night, chapter 315, verse 6

Insomnia night.

I think my work schedule is contributing to this one.

I have to close a couple or three nights a week.  Store closes at 11.  I'm there until 11:15 or 11:30, usually, depending on how long the accounting close takes.  I'll get home around midnight.  If I'm lucky, I'll be in bed by 12:30 or 1, but sometimes it goes until 2 or 3 if I'm wired.

I also have to open a couple days a week.  On those opening days, I have to get up at 5:15 AM.

My boss used to have a penchant for the Turn & Burn shift.  I never understood it, but I had to ask him to stop a couple times, since a turn & burn usually means 6 hours of sleep only if I'm lucky, and it generally means 4-5.  It's doable, but as I get older, it just means I'm done for the night after a Turn & Burn, usually.  Work 20 hours in a 28 hour period, and then come home and crash.

Now, the solution is to put a day off between night shifts and open shifts.  Which is the best I can come up with, but that day after 2 or 3 closing shifts, knowing that you have to get up at 5:15 the day following, it can feel like half a day off.   Usually, I make myself get up at 7 after the closing shift, and that usually does the trick.  I forgot to set my alarm for Wednesday, though.  So I slept until 8:45.

Went to bed at 10.  Wide awake at 2:45, after weird dreams about camping with my friend Julie.  In the dream, it was just after the Superflu from The Stand had hit.

------

It's a weird new world without Dad.  We keep struggling to find the new normal.  I still call and check on Mom a bit.  I'm going over to mow a bit Friday, and take trash to the dump.

Went with Mom last week to Nashville.  She got to testify in front of a Tennessee Senate Committee about a bill that would seek to change the language used by Tennessee Donor Services contacts the next of kin of a family regarding tissue donation.  We consented to donating Dad's tissue, but the decision was made in time of duress and without our complete knowledge of what they were looking to harvest.  Even a few minutes later, it hit us that they couldn't be harvesting organs, since the body had to be kept alive for organs to be viable.

What the folks are doing isn't wrong, or bad.  It just wasn't made completely clear to us at the time, and that's what Mom and the sponsors of the bill are looking to clear up some of the language, and let the family of the deceased know in clearest terms what is being harvested.

Here she is sitting down to testify.  It was an experience watching that whole thing go down.  The chaos in suitjackets of people in the legislative plaza.  

I felt like the committee didn't give Mom and Sonny (the gentleman with her) enough time to speak their case, and there's a small part of me that thinks it was intentional--we were told those bills with witnesses would go first, and they did not....this bill was the last presented, and were rushed for time because the Education Committee was scheduled to take the room.  Mom did get to speak her peace, though, and I was tremendously proud of her.

------

It's been more than a month, now.  I've dreamed of Dad once.  I kinda expected to dream more of him.  I'm kinda sad about that, but then the one dream I did have him left me wrecked.

Part of me wants to believe that dreaming of somebody you lost is part of their coming to say goodbye.  Even pets.  I was told that when I was little, and it's something that I've held on to.

Part of me believes that.  Maybe a large part.

It might be silly, but I'm allowed to believe silly things, even if the other part of me believes it's just random firings in the brain during REM sleep.

I'd like to be able to talk to him.  One more time.  Hear him say "Hey, Bud."  Even if it were a dream.

------

Shyam and I did go to see Logan a couple weeks ago, and it was as good as advertised.  I've never been the big Wolverine fan that a lot of people are, despite years of X-Men fandom.  I've thought character overwrought and not nearly as interesting as people want to believe.  I thought he was most well done in those Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne years of Uncanny X-Men.

SPOILER ALERT, DUMBELLS:

Still, the movie was quite good.  It had been spoiled for me, so his sacrifice at the end of the flick didn't hit me as hard as I was afraid it would.  I was more impacted by a scene near the middle of the flick.  Logan is carrying Charles up the stairs of the home they're staying in.  The charade they've taken is that Charles is Logan's father, an aspect of their relationship that gets touched on from time to time.  For some reason, when Logan was carrying Charles up the stairs, I started cryiing.

I haven't been to a movie by myself, yet.  He was my movie buddy, and we'd hit a couple a month.  Sometimes more in the summer.  It might be hard to go, for a little while.

I still haven't gone to see Kong: Skull Island.

------

Trying to make my work schedule comply with my desire to hit Marble City Comiccon up in Knoxville.  I don't think it's going to work.  We've got a floor strip, and the con won't open until 10.  I'm scheduled to go in at 12 that day.  Which sucks.

It's a small con, but usually has a good vendor selection.  Sorry I'm going to miss it.