Movie Magic

  Who remembers their first time at the movies? I was very small. So small, in fact, that the theater seemed like it would fit a thousand people. I don't remember exactly which movie I saw the first time at the movie theater, but I do recall one of the first movies I saw at the theater: 101 Dalmatians, the original animated version. Despite my extreme shyness as a child, I was so overwhelmed by the awesome spotted dogs that were outwitting the maniacal Cruella De Vil, that I cried out: "Puppy Power!!" in the middle of the movie, holding up my little stuffed dalmatian that I insisted on carrying with me everywhere at that time.
    My dad only had to tell me once that you're not supposed to yell out in a movie theater, but I'm sure everyone else thought it was pretty funny rather than annoying, so I guess that particular mistake in etiquette was not so bad.
    Throughout the years, I have developed a profound connection and adoration for film. And yes, my admiration extends beyond Disney movies now. I have seen some of the original moving pictures, the ones that are all disjointed and only have music, no dialogue. I've seen the first talkie. I've seen movies in black and white, color, and some movies that tried to combine the two. I've probably seen less than a dozen truly bad movies, because generally, I think most movies have merit in some way, for some people. No movie is for everybody. As much as I'd like to tell everyone in the world they haven't lived until they've seen Casablanca, romance, wartime stories, and even black and white isn't everyone's cup of tea. That's their too bad--because Casablanca is amazing. There are movies that I watch and enjoy the story, but sometimes, I have to marvel at the filmmaking itself. The process. And the magic that movies create as only they can.
    No matter how technologically advanced we become, there is still a thrill in going to the movie theater, sitting down in the squeaky seats, and watching a story play out on a gigantic screen for two hours. You can take my MP3 player, my video games, and my computer, but don't take my DVDs and a TV to watch them on. Even now, after I've been going to movies for about twenty years now, there's still this wonderment and excitement that happens when I go to the movies. I've seen most if not all of the previews already, but when the lights dim and the movie starts, I can shut up, ignore my phone, and lose myself in the film.
    I'm not biased, and I'm not really a movie snob the way some people get to be. I like everything from chick flicks to action movies. I love Die Hard and Jerry Maguire. I am just as big a Star Wars nerd as I am a Wes Anderson fan. And even actors I once disliked usually grow on me after I've seen more of their work. (Ahem, Kevin Bacon, Kim Basinger, and Michael Douglas, to name a few.)
    I can't even say I discriminate the award-worthy movies from the movies that are just there to make you laugh and make money. They all have their value. The former are the last remaining effort to keep filmmaking an art form, and the latter may be fodder for the masses, but they're entertaining, and that's part of what movies should be. Movies don't all have to be educational, or documentaries. They don't all have to be creative works.

"Make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh, don't you know everyone loves to laugh?"

That's perfectly fine with me.

    I love the movies so much that I will go by myself if no one else is willing to chuck out the $8.75 to $10.50 (or more) it costs nowadays. I don't mind, because I will admit, I'm a pain in the ass to see a movie with because I'm talking (whispering) the entire time, commenting on this thing that reminds me of that movie or that actor who I saw in this other movie.
    Despite the extreme inflation of the cost of going to a movie, a single person can spend $15 to $20 bucks easily on snacks, drinks, and a single admission, people still go. Every weekend. The parking lot is packed and the auditorium showing the new release is always full. Because people love the movies. Maybe not for the same reasons as I do, but they do. Movies make us think and feel things that we didn't always realize we were thinking or feeling. They aren't always true to life, science fiction tries specifically not to be, but it's not the spaceships or magic spells or happily ever after in the movies that gets us to go: it's the people. They may be better looking, but there's something real about the people in the movies, and that's what keeps us going. If we couldn't relate to them, they would cease to hold our attention.
    It's Saturday night, so go catch a movie if it isn't too late, or stay in and watch one with a bowl of microwave popcorn and a cup of soda. They make us laugh, cry, scream, and gasp, and the best movie is one that does it all.

We'll always have Paris.

Pros and Cons of Being a Grown-Up

I had a moment this morning, powering through my work and listening to my MP3 (No, I do not have an iPod, for a reason) when I felt very adult-like. Typing fast, jamming out to Suffragette City and Sunshine Highway, and being totally productive, something I'm mostly able to do now that I don't have to leave halfway through the day to go to school. It was awesome.
    While being a grown-up does suck on occasion: losing a significant amount of my paycheck to taxes, paying rent to apartment Nazis that shut off my water every other week, paying bills, the possibility of getting called for jury duty (yeah, good luck with that one--I've got so many addresses my name is connected to in the past five years!). I wish I could think of more grown-up responsibilities that didn't involve money, but unfortunately, it seems that my life does revolve around finances at the moment.
    There are some pluses to being an adult: I can legally purchase alcohol, I can pay for my own gas (that could be a negative, but for me, it's a pretty big responsibility), I can give money to charity and write it off on my taxes, I can rent an apartment, I can complain to the apartment managers and my complaint actually carries weight, and I can buy my own stuff. That may not seem like much, and much of it does still have to do with money, but being able to support yourself, even if it's rather frugally, is a pretty cool thing.
    I've been living off my parents for twenty-two years, and to be able to pay for my own movie tickets, take my parents out to dinner, buy my own groceries, and even cook some of my own meals. So, adulthood has some things going for it, and some things that are a pain in the ass. I do miss childhood though. I enjoyed high school. It was the only time in my life I really had friends. Almost all my friends are long-distance friends now.
    And I enjoyed life when I was little. My Barbies and stuffed animals, the Bailey School Kids books, R.L. Stine books, getting hooked on movies that weren't produced by Disney, learning to read and write, and learning I was pretty good at both. I think I'm still somewhere in between being a kid and being a grown-up. I only act grown-up around other grown-ups. On my own or with people I'm close to, I act like the crazy teenager I was a few years ago.
    As much as I enjoyed being a kid (though at the time, I couldn't grow up fast enough), I like being grown up too, at least 60 or 70 percent of the time. We may take on more responsibilities and have to deal with things way beyond our maturity level being older, but as long as we never lose our childish enthusiasm, we can stay young at heart. (Side note: I just quoted 2 movies and a song in one sentence. Which ones?)

Live long and prosper.

Paper or Plastic?

No, it's not Green Week on Insistent and Persistent. Today's topic is finance. 

    I have always been cautious, perhaps excessively so, about my personal finances. I'm old school to the core. I have an instinct that tells me not to trust banks or credit. Part of this has been my fear of getting caught up in buying things on credit and accumulating massive amounts of debt. On the one hand, I've always been extremely responsible with my money. I saved up my money for my first "big kid" bike and bought it myself. I saved my money up for a year to buy a particularly expensive Beanie Baby (this was about ten years ago when Beanie Babies were still something of a trend). I managed to save up to pay for some of my school expenses and my own living expenses (for the first time ever!) this year. But I refuse to get a credit card; I'm terrified of having a checkbook; and I can't even bring myself to take the proverbial cash out from under the mattress.
    As much as I'd like to agree with pretty much everyone I know who says I'm being paranoid and over-protective, something still nags at me. Can we really trust the banks? Of course, due to the society we live in, we kind of have to to some extent. Some places don't even accept cash anymore. *Gasp!* Moreover, can we trust ourselves with that kind of freedom? I, for one, do not. Yet another reason I do not have a credit card. I would be buying almost everything those infomercials try to sell me. I would be a total sucker. If there's a free gift for making so many purchases from infomercials, I would probably get it if I were given a credit card to order off the television with. Despite how responsible and careful I've been my whole life, I am not sure I could resist the temptation that comes with purchasing things on credit. I'd be cautious and pragmatic at first, much like I am now, but eventually, that "gotta have it" bug would creep up and I'd be charging clothes, shoes, purses, infomercial junk, and every electronic item you could shake a stick at--I'm still way behind on the technology, but with a credit card, it'd be a flat screen TV, Blu-ray player, I-Pad, MP3 and probably an overly complicated stereo system that I would never learn how to work.
    Credit can be just as dangerous as it can be life-saving. And for me, I think it would end up being dangerous. With all the credit card debt and irresponsible usage of credit these days, it seems just as possible that I could become one of them. Again, maybe I'm being overly cautious and critical about credit and the financial and economic system of this country in general, but when we look at the state of the economy, and some of the reasons it's taken such a long time to begin recovery, it does seem slightly more rational (or perhaps, more accurately, less irrational).
    As a disclaimer, I have absolutely no financial or economic expertise to lay claim to, excepting my own experiences, which, as I'm sure you've concluded, are quite limited. That being the case, I'll just leave you with this: If the good life were meant to be had through credit, credit would not be causing the kind of havoc it causes to so many people in this country every day.

Cash is still king in my book.