Happy Thoughts...WOMP WOMP

So I was watching a rerun of the "Golden Girls" last night (I guess they're by definition all reruns since only one of the Golden Girls is still alive, shout out to Betty White). A subplot in the episode was that one of Sophia's friends from her retirement home was being sent to "Sunny Pastures" which was a nursing home, and an awful one to hear Sophia talk about it, with crusty stuff on the floors and smelly. It suddenly hit me that I may be the person one day going to "Sunny Pastures" and that unless I make a boatload of money I will probably have to go to some awful nursing home if it comes to that! I suddenly saw my life 40 years from now and how awful it might be to have to go into the nursing home...Then I thought, "Well, if I just look at it like it's going to college and living in the dorm then it might not be so bad." But only if a nursing home has a guy next door who smokes pot all the time and a guy down the hall who always has beer in his fridge. OF course, I then thought "hey you're way out in front of yourself here, hooker (I call myself hooker sometimes); maybe you can rein it in a little bit and don't go worrying about going to the nursing home right now." But I think I finally realized that, barring some unfortunate accident, I will most likely grow old and will have to deal with going somewhere...Oh this is just too depressing I will think about this another time

womp womp

The Lincoln Lawyer

So I met Mom yesterday in Sulphur Springs and had lunch with her at Chili's (uggh, I hate eating at corporate restaurants but unfortunately that was the best they had to offer) and then we went to see the movie "The Lincoln Lawyer." I didn't really know what to expect other than I knew it starred Matthew Hottie McConaughey and Reese Witherspoons ex husband. I was sort of pleasantly surprised.

I love any movie that has a Lincoln Town Car as a plot line. I love old Lincolns and Cadillacs and watching them drive around LA in a square Lincoln Town Car was awesome. I think they could have actually made it a bit more evident why he drives around in a Lincoln, and why he has a driver.

Resses Witherspoons ex husband is hot, and was sort of good. Well, not really, but he was able to pretty effectively portray the type of guy he was playing, a rich, spoiled white guy who has had everything handed to him on a silver platter and drives around town going to exclusive clubs and banging hotties. There were times, however, that he overacted and wasn't a really effective villan. Thank god for him he never had to share the screen with Marissa Tomei because he would have been chewed up and spit out by her amazing ability. She still looks good after all these years and it's nice to see her on screen.

Matthew was good, but at times his "man of the streets" schiptch was a little over the top. During those scenes (especially with the bikers) he seemed to be trying a bit too hard to be the tough guy and I wasn't buying it. He did do a good job of showing how the character, once he realizes what's really going on and his life sort of falls apart (not to spoil anything), can sort of self-destruct, then pull it all back together again. The final scene is sort of surprising so I won't give it away, but suffice to say although we think we know mid way through how it's going to end, it doesn't end that way.

This film is also interestingly noir and shows a side of Los Angeles that we usually don't see, not Beverly Hills or Brentwood, but the nitty-gritty Los Angeles Basin LA. The prosecutor was actually very good, and sort of cute...I'd like to see him in more things.

Well I"m not a movie critic but if you want to be entertained for a couple of hours go see this movie. It's not a complete waste of money

Characters

I grew up in a small town and in a small town there are always those characters that make life interesting. In Winnsboro we had Jerry Peckham, who used to walk up and down Main street alternately singing and cussing people out who drove by. His only visible means of support were the odd jobs people would give him...If I remember correctly Stan Redding used to let him sweep up in front of Redding's Store for pocket money. Then there were the Fulmer boys who drove bicycles with steering wheel type handle bars. We would most often see them riding their bikes east on Highway 11 going to their sister's house. One time I asked my mother why those Fulmers were the way they were and she said, "It's because they married their cousins back in Arkansas."

So it hasn't been that shocking to find characters in the tiny town I have moved to while I'm working on my PhD. There is the one woman who wears too tight clothes and has a bad red hair dye job who walks down washington street pushing a baby buggy with God knows what in it. But the best place to find true characters in Commerce seems to be the Dollar store across the street from my house. I went there Tuesday to buy coffee (they have the best priced coffee) and as I walked in there was a woman in a big blonde wig with a panama type hat on her head, skinny as a rail and too much eye shadow sitting in a plastic chair with her feet on a plastic ottoman in the checkout line. She was trying out the chairs before she committed to the $5 each charge for them. After having decided that they were in fact worth the price, she then proceeded to talk to the check out lady about a variety of topics. At first she talked about her neighbors dog who "Come up in my yard and now I have to feed the sonofabitch" By this time I had my blackberry out filming her. She then asked the checker, in a conspiratorial tone, "Are the restaurants in Commerce safe to eat in?" The checker said, yes, she thought most of them were...and this is when the checker made her mistake, she asked "Why?"

Wig lady said, in a very loud voice mind you, "Well, last time I ate at that Mescin (mexican) restaurant in Greenville I got the squirts something awful! I had to take my pants off outside my house and walk around my front yard nekkid as a jaybird!" she said. "Why I barely got to the front door of that restaurant before I was a squirting to beat the band."

By this point I couldn't keep from laughing a little bit and was just praying that it all was going to get on video because no one would believe it!

finally the lady loaded her chair, ottoman, dog food and assorted other dollar store finds in her buggy and shuffled out of the store. As I walked up to the checker I said, "Well she is a character." The checker then said, "Yeah and she shoplifts. We have caught her a bunch of times stealing stuff but she still comes back like nothing has happened." I asked, "Where does she put what she steals, under that wig?" The checker, without cracking a smile, said "No, her purse I believe."

So I paid for my coffee and left. And unfortunately, my blackberry didn't record the sound so all i have are grainy images of a woman in a wig talking about her bowels.

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