It Isn't Me

Funny what you do with extra time on your hands, that "found time" that isn't really all that scheduled. Sure, I've mowed, weeded and moved rocks. I've dusted, Windexed, and scrubbed. Stacked, removed, thrown out.

And set the TiVo for really bad movies.

How bad? Mission: Impossible 2 bad. The kind of bad that's sold to a consuming middle America as "M:I 2," because letters an' numbers is easier than words.

Is it easier than watching something more challenging? Sure. It's easier than making something, that's for sure. It is just kind of... easy.

To save some face, I'll say that Glory is in there, and that won awards right, so that's good? And The Fisher King, where I learned that movies can be made by people working with one vision, no matter how Pythoned out it may be. But usually my TiVo que is a hodgepodge of mediocre to bad. Comfort food for the summer cold.

Tonight I feel a little more obliged to eat some tofu sprouts and curd. I feel a little fat. A little "temporary."

John Cusack's Martin Q. Blank describes himself as "feeling temporary," a line lifted from Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman. We all know how that ends.

Grosse Pointe Blank is the first and only movie I've seen in the theater three times. I watched The Fisher King in the theater twice and a couple of seasonal movies (your Star Wars re-releases, your Love Actuallys) but few movies I've felt compelled to see in the theater more than once.

I unequivocally love Grosse Pointe Blank.

"Even a hitman deserves a second shot." A tagline almost to clever by a hair. Almost.

I took an evil in literature class in school. We looked at how evil has been written about over the centuries, mostly middle English to present day. I wrote a paper on Grosse Pointe Blank and moral ambiguity. John Cusack searches for meaning while killing people for money, with an astonishingly good soundtrack from the 80's (I think the GnR version of "Live and Let Die" is from the 80's. And how about that great transition into the Ulti-Mart where the muzak continues the riff).

"What are you doing here?"
"I work here!"

"You can never go home again, Oatmen, but I guess you can shop there."

You really can't go home again.

I met some of the neighbors tonight. We chatted about dogs, high school graduations, and photos in the local papers. They seem nice. They were on their way to something where you take a dish. A supper, a funeral, a night of Canasta.

I made tacos. In a house that I co-own. While I checked e-mails for a business that I co-own. In 2007, I didn't guess any of this. I didn't plan it.

This movie is fairly efficient. It doesn't waste time and yet it's not rushed. It doesn't spoon feed and it's easy to navigate. I think it probably spans more age and gender demos than I give it credit for, usually.

"You tell me about yourself."
"Been in California. Travel around a lot ...on business."
"That it?
"Yeah."
"That's ten years?"
"...yeah."

It's been ten years since I watched Grosse Pointe Blank in the the theater. I didn't fully "get it." I probably don't now.

What will it be like in another ten years?