happy birthday france

my family likes Bastille Day, i don't really know why. maybe b/c my grandparents secretly thought they were European. anyway, lets celebrate by only working from 10am to 4pm.

Film Review: Winter's Bone

i know this film had a unique appeal for me, but really, it is amazing. go watch it!

as some of you know, i have been a little bit obsessed with this film for the last month or so. according to IMDB, Winter's Bone is about "an unflinching Ozark Mountain girl who hacks through dangerous social terrain as she hunts down her drug-dealing father while trying to keep her family intact." well, i finally got to see it tonight and it was brilliant (in an exceptionally dark way).

of course i loved dark subject matter & the stark cinematography. filmed on location in rural Missouri, the film did a good job of capturing rural southern poverty. a few silly film reviewers (who always disagree with the consensus to get attention) complained that it was a caricature of these lives. clearly these reviewers have never ventured out to the farms of rural Tennessee. it was pretty accurate. and even though i grew up in a subdivision in "the city", in some ways, these people remind me of home. also, thanks to being a missionary, i am rather familiar with/fascinated by the meth culture. combine southern poverty and meth? i'm already in love.

i also enjoyed the restraint shown with the subject matter and the violence. even though it was realistic about the desperation of this town, it did not needlessly dwell on the horror of their lives. the violence that occurs happens off-screen. i really appreciate it when directors let us surmise without throwing violence or sex in our faces. i don't need to see someone getting beaten up to know it happened. (it was rated R for a few f-words & people doing meth on screen. nothing we haven't all seen in real life, right?... ok, and for the violence that happens just out of the frame)

finally, i liked that the female characters really drove the story. (the film was directed by a woman, but based on a book by a man, which makes the feminist overtones even better). because, lets be honest, in that culture, women do drive much of what happens. as RationalThought said, "the men are too busy cooking meth". obviously the main character is the heroine, but with the exception of her uncle, all the major actions are performed by the women in her community. the film did a good job of displaying the paternal culture and how women both manipulate it and are manipulated by it.

things i did not love: the black & white dream sequence (unnecessary) & the weird close-ups of that horse on the porch (too jarring/what was the point?). also, how did Ree turn out so put together in that mess of a family? this is not explained.

final thought: even though i liked the film for the souther meth edge, this same plot line could take place in Arizona on the rez or in western Atlanta (with crack replacing meth). really, anywhere poverty & drugs mix (and there is rarely one without the other), people have these lives.

overall, Winter's Bone was excellent. i give it 5 out of 5 stars.

friday night at the plaza

so Atlanta has this really old movie theater & every friday at midnight they show the Rocky Horror Picture Show with a theater troupe acting it out on stage below the screen. people like to dress up, yell things at the screen, dance in the aisles with the movie, etc. it is pretty crazy. i went with 3 guys in my ward, including this dude: (it's ok, i know you are jealous)

he prefers to be called "Magnolia Steel"

tragic

this was the most heartbreaking soccer match i've ever seen

my work schedule, of late

9am – arrive at work/see how the 1st World Cup game of the day turned out
10am – pretend to work/listen to the second World Cup game online while also following the game cast on both FIFA & NYTimes [sometimes setting up the video - for the most important games]
11:30am – talk with my co-workers about the games for half an hour
Noon – lunch time
1pm – work for real
2:30pm – pretend to work/same ridiculous following of the late game as before
3pm – constantly update my gchat status to reflect what's happening in the game
4pm – discuss day’s games with co-workers/online/via text message with everyone I know

5pm - work for real
6pm – go home & read Facebook comments about soccer

*except for this Friday. i will be spending my morning at the local bar, watching the USA beat Slovenia!

suck it england

our keeper is better

Self Destruction

Yesterday afternoon I was feeling like I had made a bad decision. I choose to do something rather self-destructive. It wasn’t morally or ethically wrong, but I foresaw potential emotional damage to myself. As the time came, I started feeling extremely high anxiety and wishing I had a stash of Xanax (My mother refuses to give me any - she is so cruel). I briefly entertained the thought of backing out on my anxiety-causing plans, but I am never one to shirk from some good emotional drama. Instead, I started planning the blog post I would write later about how we all make unwise choices and self-destruction is part of human nature and I could throw a recent example of self-inflicted pain from The Manorexic in there yadda yadda yadda.

So off I went, into a world of doubt & confusion & feelings. And when I came out on the other side, I had eaten some seriously delicious food, gotten hit on by a harmlessly nice guy, & won a free shot glass at a bar. But most importantly, I was totally fine. If anything, even more content with my life than when I began my evening. Let me say here, this is not always the case in this scenario, which has happened repeatedly in the past. But after last night I feel like the more I throw myself into this sea of self-destruction, the more I learn to handle it, cope with those issues, & come out the better for it. Being exposed to that potential for emotional heartache and making it through can show us how far we’ve progressed. Perhaps a little self-destruction can be a good thing.