More Motel Movie Mind Expansion

As many of you know, my husband, Billy, is one of my best (Read: only) friends. We do everything together. I am actually afraid to leave the house without him (he's big and he talks out loud; two things the outside world seems to demand). So when he's not around, I'm generally inside.

Last week, Billy went to Portland, OR and left me, the children, the dogs and the TV alone. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time with the TV. As if that magic box owed me anything after all the gifts it has given me...here is what I learned:

I had limited myself to only four Motel Movie Genres, when in fact, there are hundreds. You take them like medicine; some are aspirin, some are morphine, some are Band-Aid® brand adhesive bandages and some just make you go, "What the hell?".

Here are some more horizon-expanding MMG's, based on the self-prescribed medicine I took this week:

Looks Don't Count - A smart, kind, ugly man must prove that he is worthy of dating cheerleader-models. He does this by being an excellent human being and standing next to a sharp looking but transparently evil man by whom a cheerleader-model is initially fooled. Then the evil guy trips himself up by being extra evil, making the hero guy look extra good. Luckily, it's not difficult for the hero to be an excellent human being because he is smart and kind. It does not occur to him to date smart, kind, ugly women, however, because they are invisible.

Ebony and Ivory - The plot is that people who have different color skin are also different on the inside. The plot is also that they are the same on the inside.

The Jungle - You are in the Big City and it gets dark there at night and there's garbage everywhere and nobody cares and someone is chasing you (or you are chasing them, I'm not sure) and you run on the dirty sidewalk and you bump into a mean guy who yells "Hey! Watch where you're goin'!" and there are scary punks, with bright red hair and piercings leaning on fire hydrants who snarl at you and then you run into the street and cabs swerve to avoid you and the cab drivers either shake their fists at you (Rated PG) or flip you off (Rated R) and then there's a homeless guy ranting and you run down an alley, and you have two guns (one for each hand) and you fire them both at the same time and you miss practically everything you aim at. Whew!

The Lady Jungle - It is always daytime unless it is the sparkling twilight lit by Christmas lights and streetlamps. You have an apartment that is soft and feminine, like you, and your doorman has a name, as does everyone in the city because you know them all and they care about you and your love life. You go to The Office and The Gym and The Bar and you have Girlfriends who know more about your personal life than you do and talk about it constantly. You fall in love but it's confusing because of the amount of money the guy has (either a little or a lot) but then it's great anyway and then it's not and then it is again. Whew!

Love,
Kristin

Now Is Full

I'm having trouble watching TV these days. Which is a bummer, 'cause ordinarily I love TV. I think it's an eloquent and effective medium, a basically good guy, and like every non-Commie, I adore it. It's gotten me through some tough times. Even its shameless advertising is adorable. So blatant, it's almost guileless ("Hey, old people! Buy THIS!").

The problem is, real life is so...full right now, television is boring us. We can't find any shows that are more dramatic than our lives and all the sitting and talking they do is making us tense. Our reality is overflowing with agony and ecstasy and nothing in between. So craving either reflection or escape, we're finding only stillness and clever conversation. And not all that clever, either.

As it turns out, life's a bitch and that bitch is sitting on the couch between us, holding the remote control.

So after trying to watch a nature special on man-eating piranhas which turned out to be (I swear to you) about a man who cooks and eats piranhas, I decided to alter my viewing tactics. Given that my taste in film runs fairly "frat boy" anyway, I am now on the Motel Movie Diet. You've probably ignored hundreds of these in your lifetime, but motel movies are like airplane movies with more varied themes. There is absolutely nothing asked of you in the viewing of these films and you have no chance at all of relating to any of the characters or anything that happens to them. Talk about escape!

Here are some of my favorite motel movie genres:

1. Running Down Shiny Hallways - An hour and a half of smooth hairdos, cool sounding footsteps and sweaty typing at computers...sometimes these movies are political, sometimes they're sciency, but the plot is usually lost on me because it involves intrigue and a secret machine and also I fall asleep

2. Women Together - Women have to hang out together because men are dumb...the women drink and they talk about feelings and hip size and penises...the plot often references the breaking of rules I know nothing about and nothing EVER happens

3. Men Together - Men have to hang out together because women are dumb and they talk about feelings and hip size and penises...the men admit that they are also dumb, but in a more attractive, golden retriever-like way...they drink, too, but then things actually happen to them

4. When Stuff Explodes - These are the best ones (they're good airplane movies, too, except for all the plane crashes)...the plot is that there is a man and a lady and they're spies/government officials/military personnel...the man has no respect for the lady because he thinks she's hot and the lady has no respect for the man because she also thinks she's hot...then she cries because she's stressed out and he uses his muscles to break something and then jumps off of something high and and then she thinks hard and does something smart and also jumps off of something high but he catches her and Stuff Explodes!!!

Brilliant...and much cheaper than therapy.

Love,
Kristin