So I may not have created an entirely honest impression with last week’s Stupid Question.
I describe a scene in “Raising Arizona”:
I mention the final scene and those two moments in particular because they will, without fail, make me cry. Not outright bawling, mind you, but definitely watering eyes and runny nose.
And one in Infinite Jest:
The only other sure-fire trigger I can think of for the water works is a two-word sentence spoken by Joelle van Dyne to Don Gately after a Major Plot Occurrence in Infinite Jest.
I kinda maybe fudged a bit on the “only other” bit. While technically true that these two scenes are the only 100% reliable triggers for media-induced crying, there are plenty of others that either usually make me cry, or haven’t been field-tested with sufficient frequency to establish the certainty of their effect.
I’m pretty sure that every Pixar film I’ve seen (in its entirety, at least) has at least one scene that will probably make me cry. Given the right circumstances, certain songs are likely to make me choke up — when we get to the “Never dreamed you’d return” bit from Pearl Jam’s “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town,” random moments in U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found When I’m Looking For” or “All My Friends” by LCD Soundsystem. I’ve only seen “Schindler’s List” once, but considering that I reached near-dehydration levels of fluid loss through my tear ducts the first time I saw it, a second viewing would almost certainly get a similar response.
It turns out that I am ridiculously susceptible to media manipulation of my emotions. If the director scribbles “viewer will choke up here” on his copy of the script, chances are I will choke up there. It’s why I refuse to watch horror movies, of course. The movie says “be scared,” and I actually feel scared. Since I find the sensation of terror viscerally unpleasant (nigh unbearable), I cannot fathom the appeal of sitting through them.
Every so often I’ll see a movie that somehow manages to miss the mark. I know I was supposed to cry at the end of “The Joy Luck Club,” but somehow didn’t. (Having written that, I will probably collapse into a blob of sobbing protoplasm if I should happen to see it again.) But more often than not I’ll mist up if I’m meant to.
The movie that made this particularly, irritatingly apparent was the big-screen adaptation of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” Now, the book on which it is based is among my favorites in the whole wide world. I adore the entire “Chronicles of Narnia,” and have read the whole thing over a dozen times at least. And I hated everything about the movie that is not Tilda Swinton. (And OK, the big climactic battle scenes at the end are pretty good, too.) Every time I catch part of it, I dislike it even more. But for some reason we decided to watch when we came upon it midway through on television the other day.
And even though I don’t like the movie and think the kids who played the Pevensie children were poorly cast (with an arguable exception about Lucy) and think the CGI Aslan was wholly unimpressive, damned if I didn’t choke up when he said “Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen!” Which I found so embarrassing I tried to cover it up by making fun of how lame the scene was, fooling the Better Half not the slightest little bit.
I am ridiculously manipulable by the media overlords, people.
So that’s this week’s Question — anyone willing to cop to psychological weak spots? Chinks in the armor you use to face the world? Those little vulnerabilities that remind you you’re human?
Huuuu-man? Huh? What’s that?
This may seem odd, both in a vacuum and if you know me well at all… but I develop a huge crush on any reasonably attractive female singer or dancer I see in person. If we go to a musical or see a band perform or some sort of dance show, I will inevitably walk out in love with at least one of the female performers. I can’t really explain it… it doesn’t happen if I just watch them on TV… but it happens seemingly without fail.
I don’t know if it is because they are demonstrating a set of skills I don’t have but sort of wish I did or what… but, yea, it happens, like all the time. Even with the green girl who played the bad witch in “Wicked”. Totally into her for like the few hours after the show… goosebumps level into her.
I feel like I wouldn’t be susceptible to such things if I were as super-human as I like to pretend I was.
On a related note, I similarly developed feelings for any girl I ever kissed. I was the guy in college who actually called each girl after a drunken kiss despite all evidence indicating nothing would ever come of it. As a friend once said, “It’s like you slept through Hook Ups 101.” I did have relationships that were ultimately no-strings-attached, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have a bunch of loose threads hanging off me. Obviously, this is no longer an issue I face but, yea, that was a thing for me for a while.
I’m also a total sucker for competition… I watch entirely too many reality competition shows and would be lying if I said I’d never been late to high school because “Angels in the Outfield” was on and Tony Danza’s diving stab off the mound led to me jumping off the couch.
If I were to ever kiss the lead in a musical adaptation of “A League of Their Own” my heart would probably explode…
because they are demonstrating a set of skills I don’t have but sort of wish I did or what
I’d say it’s “or what”…they are definitely demonstrating a set of skills all right, and one that your brain is wanting to “have” but not exactly in the way you are saying. Lots and lots and lots of species have courtship dances and songs. Male singers get laid out of all proportion to their looks too.
And in case it’s not clear, I am not above this (I don’t know anybody who is). My list of female singer/musician crushes is epic.
Whatever they’re doing… it works…
Because I sit there, and I’m transfixed. And not just in a, “I like the way she shakes her hips way… that’s sexy.” In a, “Wow… she’s really talented… and she’s beautiful, too. And I bet she’s really nice, too. I bet we’d have interesting conversations and try new, cool restaurants and she’d wear scarves when the weather doesn’t dictate it’s appropriate but would still look cute and not weird. And unlike every other theater person I’ve known/dated, she would be able to “turn it off” and be normal and laugh cutely without drawing needless attention to herself. Oh… she can sing, too? Of course she can sing… I bet she sings when she cooks… with her hair up in a messy bun… like I’d come home and ask what she was cooking and she’d say, ‘Oh, nothing’ but she was actually making something really complex but rustic like a frittata or quiche and I bet she’d even know the difference between the two…”
Then Zazzy comes back from the bathroom and asks what happened and I can’t answer and then decide the actress is probably a prima donna who’s sleeping with the director anyway.
AND THERE YOU HAVE IT, DOC! I’VE BARED MY SOUL FOR YOU! HAPPY NOW?!?!?!
AND THERE YOU HAVE IT, DOC! I’VE BARED MY SOUL FOR YOU! HAPPY NOW?!?!?!
Indescribably so.
And a frittata is quiche without the crust.
“And a frittata is quiche without the crust.”
Let me ask you… do you sing when you cook?
And how do you look in a scarf?
I appreciate that you are drawing a distinction between “crush/love” and “desire/lust” but they are not really all that different, and are working to the same end. That little “hearth” fantasy sounds a lot like a “nest”, which is more likely to result in the production and care of offspring (conveniently, the noisy/smelly/demanding little suckers are usually absent from the fantasy – evolution ain’t stupid).
When they sing, they are in a sense tricking your brain into an intimacy that’s not really there – “why, she’s telling all of her deepest hopes and fears to ME, in a way that is either comforting or moving or arousing! This could totally work!”
It depends on the music I have playing in the background, but yes… I often sing along when I cook. And I dance ever so slightly when I’m doing my ironing.
I look rather nice in a scarf, I’m told. My favorite colleague here in the office gave me a very nice one, which I guard jealously. (I have a habit of losing scarves.)
Glyph,
What I mean is that I can watch a Beyonce video and think, “Damn!” and ‘fall in love with her’ in a way that is largely driven by my little head, but it doesn’t tug at the heart strings. And the feeling is gone by the time the next video comes on. (They still make music videos, right? RIGHT???)
But the green chick from “Wicked”? My heart was aflutter. And for some time afterward.
I realize these emotions all ultimately seek the same or similar ends and are playing on the same or similar internal drives but they manifest in very different ways, which is what I’m getting at.
I will admit:
1) When I wrote this, I totally thought “Kazzy will have no answer to this question.” I am charmed to find I was wrong.
2) That thing with the female singers and dancers. It’s not all the time for me, but I can get similar occasional infatuations. Except, y’know… not with females.
Heh… it took a bit of thinking, but, ultimately, I am indeed human.
And, just for you, I’ll totally cop to enjoying “You’ve Got Mail” entirely too much. I can’t explain it… I don’t know what it is… I’m not much for whatever that other movie Hanks/Ryan did that was apparently just like YGM but much better…
If loving that movie doesn’t instantly make my britches* must better fitting, I don’t know what will…
* In one of our many conversations about that aspect of my nature that made you think I wouldn’t have an answer to this, Zazzy just blurted out, “You need smaller britches! Or bigger britches! Whatever will make them fit right! YOU HAVE ILL FITTING BRITCHES!”
I think she was trying to say that I’m too big for my britches… I think…
but I develop a huge crush on any reasonably attractive female singer or dancer I see in person.
Never come to SXSW. No one person can handle forming that many crushes in that short a span.
I didn’t answer last week’s, but my weakness is essentially the same as yours. I tear up when watching movies or TV shows all the time.
Heck, I’ve gotten misty at plenty of melodramatic moments in video games. I practically bawled through the end sequence of Bastion on all three playthroughs.
I have a strong tendency to seize on a particular interpretation of a text, a spoken statement, or a work of art, and that interpretation is often wildly eccentric — completely unshared by anyone else. But it’s mine, and I love it.
Now, often I’m actually very good at interpreting media; it’s part of my job, and that’s for a reason. Usually I can interpret a text or a film with the best of them. But when I miss the mark, oh wow do I ever.
I recall laughing sardonically at the end of American Beauty. “This can’t be for real,” I’m thinking to myself. “It’s just got to be ironic. It’s so goofy.”
And then I look around. Tears. Lots of tears. And I realize yet again that I am a horrible person.
I think your story about “American Beauty” is hilarious. (And I don’t think you’re a horrible person for it. I think you’re a horrible person because you’re a libertarian.) (I jest.)
Given that the end of “American Beauty” is among my all-time favorite cinematic moments, and that I find it almost painfully beautiful, and that the film in question is one of the few times I’ve said of the Best Picture winner “they finally got it right,” you may conclude that I do not share your interpretation of the movie.
But I still think the title for Interpretation of a Beloved Work of Fiction that Most Diverges from Mine is held by your husband for his views on James Incandenza.
like jason, i laughed at the end. mostly because i thought it was a thinly-veiled jab at the emotional distance of the kid shooting the video; it fit as an example of stereotypical film student sentimentality of the time. a voyeur who leers through a beret. i don’t remember if the rest of the audience was crying, though. but i’d stand by that interpretation, though it might not hold up as i’ve not seen that film in a long time.
but i also laughed hysterically through most of american psycho. the business card scene is one of the funnier bits of cinema ever.
I’ve never seen “American Psycho.” My reaction to the bits of the book I read was… negative, so I didn’t take a chance on the film. That said, my understanding is that it managed to succeed as a dark, dark satire in ways that the book perhaps did not.
And I never thought the kid was emotionally distant. Quite the contrary, actually.
Doc, I HATED the book, but loved the movie. For whatever reason, the comedy did not come through to me in the book.
dhex is correct about the business card scene. “Oh my God…it even has a watermark.”
while i really enjoy most of the writing of mr. easton ellis, i also generally warn friends not to read that one. especially if they’re women. i like the blank moral nihilism and slide into unreliable madness, but it’s not for everyone. cocaine nabokov, etc etc and so forth.
the film displays the narcissism and sadism really well and skips a few more of the problematic parts of the book. but i also laughed really hard at the atm scene, too.
on that note, a colleague of mine who is really into animals won’t watch that film in part because of the atm scene, but also didn’t finish blood meridian because of the puppies bit. which kinda horrifies me – how can drowning a few puppies compare with all the rape and murder that bookends that part?
“And I never thought the kid was emotionally distant. Quite the contrary, actually.”
i will grant that the obsession with constant documentation correctly predicted our current self-broadcasting media sphere. but he struck me as being unwilling to participate in the actions around him, hence why i interpreted the final scene as either a first step at trying to move beyond constantly recording one step removed from the action or a jab at the kid, saying “see? he’s learned nothing!”
APwas the first Easton Ellis I ever read (I later read Less Than Zero and something else I can’t recall right now?) and I had no prep going into it.
So the joke of the shallow/narcissistic narrator “describing” characters, solely by listing their clothing labels, flew right over my head.
I thought Ellis was such a shallow/bad writer, that that was the only way he knew how to describe characters.
The movie makes the joke obvious (or maybe I was just too dense/young at the time I read AP).
FEED ME THAT CAT.
Re: “American Psycho,” I was working in a bookstore at the time. One of the things I loved most about the job is that I had ample access to more reading material than I could possibly consume. [Kids! Back in the stone ages before the Internet, it was still possible to not have limitless reading material instantly available!] It was at this time that I got hooked on comic books.
Anyhow, “American Psycho” was on our shelves, so I pulled a copy down and started reading. I cannot remember the exact moment when the switch in my brain got thrown, but at a certain point I threw the book in the trash, removed all of the other copies and threw them in the trash, and then told my manager she could take it out of my pay.
(She fished a copy out of the garbage, read a few bits I pointed out, threw it back in and declined to dock my pay.)
“…I threw the book in the trash, removed all of the other copies and threw them in the trash…”
You know who else destroyed books…
My three-year old? (He is sometimes careless with the page-turning.)
You know who else destroyed books…
Any bookstore that sells MMPBs. (Seriously; unsold mass-market paperbacks aren’t worth shipping back to the publisher, so the procedure is to rip off the front cover and destroy the rest of the book. The covers get mailed back as proof that the book was unsold. If you ever see a used paperback missing its front cover, it’s basically stolen merchandise.)
millicent on the march!
i admit to being a bit dismayed at the wanton destruction of books, though. even terrible ones.
I’m not a big advocate of book destruction, either. If those had been the only copies in existence, I’d have kept them and then spat three times every time I heard the title mentioned.
But I was a high schooler with Passionate Opinions (and yes, Millicent has been with me for quite some time), and I didn’t want to know someone had purchased something I considered so sadistically misogynistic where I worked, so I chucked it. Thankfully, the manager didn’t want us to sell it, either, so I had a little bit of back-up.
Thank you! I think…
You’re welcome! If memory serves, we were crossing whatever street it is that runs right through the middle of the Vegas Strip when you were discussing your interpretation of his character and I was thinking “That is totally different from anything I have ever heard or read anywhere else!” Which is the whole point of fiction and art and all, no?
Oh, I thought we were sitting at that table beside the chocolate shop (the one with the giant fountain). But no matter where it was, I believe you said aloud what you were thinking. I wish I could remember exactly what you found so strange; it’s been long enough since reading the book that I can’t sort my impressions of the book from the actual content in my memory very well.
I believe we were discussing 2666 at the table by the chocolate shop. (And Jason’s enjoyment of that book also diverges widely from my seething hatred for it.) I’m pretty sure the Infinite Jest discussion was in transit from one location to another.
And I believe your interpretation of James Incandenza was that he was a truly happy man.
I’ve had at least two false starts on 2666.
Worth it, or not?
Go!
2666 is the single most overrated book I have ever forced myself to finish. (I was reading it as part of a collective online book group at an old, defunct blog.) It is an incoherent mess, made morally ugly and almost impossible to tolerate by its appalling appropriation of the real-life murders of women along the Mexican-American border. It is needlessly obscure to the point of near-opacity and adds up to nothing worth the effort at the end.
I hated it more than any book I have ever read, before or since.
Sounds like an endorsement! 😉
Nah, I tried at least twice but I just kept getting bored. My understanding is that there’s a bit of postmodern tricksiness going on in the book, which I am normally game for (Wallace, Pynchon, Barth, Mitchell, et al) but it was just…so…boring at the start. If you are going to give me more love crises of mid-life professors, at least make them entertainingly catastrophic, like Wonder Boys or something.
It’s definitely postmodern, but it’s not showy about it. There is very little in the way of textual or stylistic oddity. You won’t find any footnotes at all, and no chapters consist entirely of a menu written in Hebrew.
That said, the book is very content with inadequate explanations, starting with the title, which is never referenced at all in the text.
I like the explanation I have read that says that 2666 is the number of years between the Fall of Man and the exodus from Egypt. Juarez in the novel is a kind of biblical Egypt, from which Archimboldi — that is, God — seeks to deliver the captives. At least those who still can be saved.
Besides being very biblical, it’s also existential. Life is absurd and full of meaningless violence and death. This is the backdrop before which we are compelled to act.
Dangit Jason, why did you have to go and complicate things! 🙂
It’s still in the stack. Maybe I will give it one more go.
But my judgement is to be considered final and all must abide by it. If that means sending Millicent bookstore to bookstore with a torch, be it on your heads.
(Wherever it was, it was said aloud, because I remember either hearing the conversation or hearing about it shortly afterward, not sure which.)
Thanks for clearing up my memory, RS.
Ha! What a memory! I got so mad at you. (For the rest of ya: Those “Tears. Lots of tears” were all coming out of me.)
I hit some songs in last week’s installment, so I won’t do it again, esp. b/c at some point I may have to write up “All My Friends” (it has two clear spiritual/musical ancestors that often produce similar effects in me).
I will say that I am a complete sucker for Roger McGuinn/Byrds-style ringing/jangling guitars, and any band or song that employs them will probably rope me in. In the “Road Trip” thread I noted that “Special” by Garbage starts with one, and even that brief taste would probably be enough to make me love the song, even if the rest of it was total…well, you know (luckily, it’s not – and the first time I heard it, I was *so* happy when she starts singing Pretenders at the fadeout, since I had already caught the Hynde nod on the chorus vox).
Just watched “Raising Arizona” again this weekend and found the ending to be not even remotely moving (so let down was I that I screamed out “what the F***?!!!” and woke up Janet. I then had to make her pancakes).
Is this a recent reaction to the movie, since becoming a parent? Hmmm?!!
When was the most recent time you’d watched it before then?
And no, I’ve always found the ending incredibly moving. I now fear that, by writing about it, I’ve somehow destroyed its mojo and will find it “meh” the next time I see it. (I suspect not, given that I am even now getting mild throat-tightening just remembering the words “We can be good, too.”)
But (as I believe you are well aware) I’ve been a total sap pretty much my whole life, so it’s hardly surprising that your reaction would diverge from mine. And I love that Janet can force you to make her pancakes as penance, but am not in the least little bit surprised.
Please rediscover “The Big Lebowski”
I always turn my head away when I see couples make out in public or very strong Public Displays of Affection (like when it looks like they are two seconds away from ripping their clothes off each other in public.)
Let’s just say I have never been in a relationship where this was the norm and something about such PDAs makes me feel both lonely and like I am intruding and somehow ended up in the couple’s bedroom.
as to the original question from the good doctor, i can listen to mogwai’s “r u still in 2 it” for hours. it’s just the sparsest, saddest song. years ago my wife came home after researching at nypl all day and i was still playing it about eight hours later. she thought i was losing it.
The song of theirs that often gets me is Rock Action‘s “2 Rights Make 1 Wrong” (which – and I can’t believe I never noticed this and it took a freakin’ YouTube comment to point it out to me – shares a melody with a 1987 Cure B-side called “Breathe”).
hmm, i never noticed that either.
i’m more shocked something good came out of youtube comments, though.
Yeah, I was shocked about the useful YT comment too. That never happens.
That Cure tune is good too, I had it, it was one of 2 B-sides to the “Just Like Heaven” single (up through Disintegration, that band threw more good songs out as B-sides than 99.99% of bands could manage for A’s).
I can’t think of any one thing in particular, but somehow over the past several years I’ve gone from never tearing up at anything to finding myself at least on the verge of tearing up frequently during scenes scripted to be moving. It really pisses me off.
Manopause.
!!!!!!!!! – Thank you!
Heh, you’re welcome, though I can hardly take credit. It is not an original but something I heard somewhere else, the ultimate source of which I do not know. But enjoy!
Easy for you to enjoy, youngster. Now get the hell off my lawn.
Among a long list of things, I can’t keep it together once I see James tear up. I am vulnerable to his vulnerability.
This feels like a copout answer because it is so near-universal, but individual athletes and sports franchises betray such a weak spot.
I can live off the emotional high of a championship for weeks; I’m sure it takes me as long to recover from a devastating loss as the actual athletes whose lives are actually effected. Hell, this next year will be the first in I don’t know how many years that I really pay attention to the NFL, because up till now watching my Seahawks perennially underperform was simply too heartbreaking to watch in real time.
But I don’t even have to be a fan when the emotions run high enough. I remember when Jordan came back and won his first ring after his first retirement. After the final horn blew, instead of jumping up and down hugging his teammates, he ran straight to the locker room and collapsed on the floor in tears. It was so overwhelming, such a naked display of emotion from a player that at that point didn’t do anything off court that Nike or his publicist hadn’t written, vetted and focused grouped that I found the tears flowing from my own ducts as well.
It should be noted, particularly for Russell’s sake, that Jordan’s show of emotion was primarily related to his father’s murder, which precipitated his initial retirement two years earlier.
Thank you for the detail. I knew essentially nothing of the details of his initial retirement, so this is news to me.
While there are a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding Jordan’s initial retirement, his public statements generally pointed towards two prime factors: a loss of drive to play the game and the murder of his father. The former is largely believed to be the result of Jordan seeing no worthy competition for his greatness, thus leaving him with little to compete for and achieve; Jordan’s most defining characteristic, both his greatest gift and his darkest demon was his competitive drive. The latter ultimately drove him to pursue his baseball career, as his father always envisioned him as an MLBer, not an NBAer.
His father was murdered in what amounted to a car jacking.
Terrell Owens’s first truly great moment was a game-ending TD catch to give the 49ers a come-from-behind playoff win, after which he collapsed into tears. I was so moved by that it took me years to realize what a selfish, destructive jerk he really is.
And I somehow forgot what a selfish, destructive jerk he was when he “signed” with the Eagles… only to come to my senses a year and a half later.
Which instrument did he play?
He toots his own horn.
Many days, I am almost nothing *BUT* my psychological weak spots / chinks in the armor (including about 80 percent of those discussed above, just for starters). So a list would be rather exhausting.
In terms of stuff that runs my brain even when I would rather run my brain, anything that involves (what I perceive as) 1) people dismissing other people’s sincere fears or anxieties out of hand, or 2) people playing the victim, downtrodden, or noble crusader (or using a sincere self-image of such) in order to bully other people, flips me into deeply emotional mode instantly. [Yes, those two things sometimes overlap. Yes, that makes it harder.] Even when the issue has NOTHING to do with me (sometimes it’s even more pronounced then). I know why I do it, and that it was a useful response in the context where I learned to do it, and that it is often counter-productive now… but I still go there every time.
I anthropomorphize *everything*. I get on my bike: (whispered) “o.k., let’s go, fella.” I grind the gears in the car: “Oh, crap, sorry dude. Are you o.k.?” (pats the dashboard). The little shoe-wiping thingie that’s shaped like a turtle and has a smile: I wink and do the little “Pistol with the finger” move *every* time I walk by. (And since he’s a turtle — his name is “Shelldrake.” Sheeesh.) Don’t get me started on teddy bears.
I cry extremely easily at movies and such and through the years I’ve come to realize that it has as much or more to do with the music score than with the actual image/story. The music won’t get me past a crappy film, but if the film is at all good and the music is terrific — I’m helpless.
I would love to follow you around for a day. Or all of them.
When you get the funding for your dissertation on “Manopause — Piaget’s Genetic Epistemology Underdefines the Fifth Step of Development” be sure to give me a call.
Otherwise, I walk a dull path. I had an aggregate of about 15 – 17 really interesting days back in 70s, but now…not so much. 😉
Just seeing you finger-pistol Shelldrake would make it *ALL* worth it.
I’ll give the little feller your regards.
It is nice to have a “sanity early warning system” in place. Winking at Shelldrake means I’m something of a loon; when Shelldrake winks back, then I’m truly loony.
<3. (Me too.)
Oh gosh, I cry at so much these days. We watched “The Princess and the Frog” with Alice this weekend, and at the death (no thpoilerth) the waterworks turned on. It didn’t help that Alice, who was cuddling with me just then, said very softly “She’s crying.” I was just glad she didn’t look up to see Papa was crying just about as much.
I cry when we watch Yo Gabba Gabba together and Muno learns it’s not nice to bite your friends or when Argyle the Octopus learns his colors are special, not bad. I cry when Alice says “Are you sick, Papa? Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you.” Pretty much anything that I suddenly see through the lens of being a father to such a sweet little girl. (I only just barely escaped tearing up right there.)
But in a more general sense, whenever a movie wants me to cry and uses music to do it, I will cry. If it’s a bad movie, I will be annoyed rather than sad, but the tears will still flow. It’s completely Pavlovian; I once actually, when it was really, really important to me not to cry, closed my eyes and boxed my own ears to prevent the stimulus from reaching my brain.
What else? Oh, this one I like: After a film involving good acrobatic martial arts combat, I feel as though I can move much more swiftly and effectively, like all my senses are heightened and my muscles taut. My most recent experience of this was “Breaking Dawn, Part 2.” Absolutely fantastic battle scene.
One of the chinks in my armor is that I am uniquely susceptible to getting songs from children’s shows stuck for absurdly long periods in my head. The mere mention of certain shows, such as, I dunno, Yo Gabba Gabba and/or Muno learning his lesson therein not to bite his friends is 100% guaranteed to cause me a Tourette’s-like inability to control the words spewing out of my mouth for the subsequent 48 to 72 hours, as the slightest interlude will result in my singing – loudly – “Don’t….Don’t…. Don’t Bite Your Friends! BITE! BITE! BITE! No! No! No!”
Thanks, Boegiboe. Thanks a lot.
There’s a scene in the George C. Scott “A Christmas Carol” (put out in about 1984 or so) that nearly gets me every time (several scenes, actually). I’m a sucker for Tiny Tim and the Cratchets’ tragic lives.
It doesn’t help that the story itself is tied to my fondness for redemptive tales. I don’t know that I’ve witnessed a lot of redemption in my life, but I’m a sucker for cinema representation of it.