Thursday, August 6, 2009

L.A. story.

So one of the things we did in L.A. was see movies. Mom's a SAG member so she gets into all these great movies, often not-yet-released, for free. And when you go to a SAG movie, no one ever talks at the quiet parts, there's generally applause at the end of the film, and people stay in their seats through the credits. (I happen to have the worst movie karma EVER, and even in virtually empty theaters manage to sit next to the talkers or in front of the seat-kickers. So it's always sort of magical to have such universally good behavior.)

The first movie we saw was called The Cove, which hasn't been released nationally yet but is winning all sorts of awards at film festivals. It's an awful story about the absolutely senseless and brutal killing of 23,000 dolphins every year in the town of Taiji, in Japan. And the movie ends and you just feel sad and frustrated and helpless. Activists have been trying to get the fishermen to stop, but they won't, and don't respect outsiders coming in telling them what to do on their turf. And the government doesn't care and seems to be part of the problem. I can't recommend the movie highly enough, and there's a list on their website of things we can all do to help try to stop it.

The next movie was The Hurt Locker (the website makes me a little queasy), which I'd been hearing a lot about on NPR and in the New Yorker, mostly about what a gripping story it was and how unusual that it was directed by a woman. (Whatever.) It was AWESOME. The trailers don't do it justice. It's full of suspense and conflict and real emotion, and isn't at all just another "war movie". And after the movie Kathryn and writer Mark Boal and two of the three lead actors showed up for a Q&A, which was really cool. I was too shy to ask the questions that I really wanted to, like was the thing the guy dropped on the stairs significant, or just to mess with the audience, and what is the purpose of killing kids and stuffing bombs in them. Go see it.

And then of course we hit the Dollar Book Store, where I have done significant damage in the past. This visit I only spent $23. I found a book on bees, one on chickens, a beautiful old Sandburg on Lincoln (because I love him so), a barn book for Frances (because she loves them so), Gore Vidal's Hollywood, because I enjoyed his Lincoln and Burr so much, a fifty-year-old first edition of Simone de Beauvoir's memoirs, because I don't know a thing about her, a screenplay just because I want to see the way it's laid out and what's included, the curious incident of the dog in the night-time (which I bought because I remember reading about it some time ago but it turns out I bought a copy the last time I was at the dollar book store and still haven't read it - hm), Sue Monk Kidd's latest because I enjoyed Bees, and a bunch more airplane books that I can just leave wherever I am when I finish them.

(And as a side note, I just read my first Kindle book, which was a sort of addictive experience even if the book I chose wasn't great...)

Finally, Things To Avoid Doing at Gas Stations. Many many years ago, when I was living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I decided to drive home for the weekend. To North Carolina. So I left around 6am on a Friday morning. By 6pm I was somewhere in eastern Tennessee, and was a tiny bit delirious. With six hours to go. After stopping for gas, I walked out of the station, got in my car, and started to drive away. The gas pump nozzle, still jammed in my gas tank, broke away from the hose, and gas spewed EVERYWHERE. Chaos - the poor attendant came running out, I stopped the car, he stopped the pump, we retrieved the nozzle, and after profuse apologies I was on my cautious way. A week ago I was at a station here in Santa Cruz, filled the tank, went inside for a cold drink, got back in my car and drove away. I was at the curb, waiting to pull into traffic when a woman with a stroller rapped on my window. I opened it and looked at her, expectantly. "Your gas tank is open," she said, a little suspiciously, "and your gas cap is on the back of your car."

Luckily, in the ensuing years since the first incident, gas pump nozzles have been fitted with some sort of release mechanism for idiots, and the nozzle and hose were intact, albeit on the GROUND, when I circled the station and returned to the pump.