Meme ideas

Being John Malkovich is the Monday Meme


We watched most of the film Being John Malkovich over the weekend. Well, maybe not most. Half at least. I gave up and had to get some sleep right after John Malkovich was John Malkovich, a disturbing statement on a person’s inability to back up from his/her own point of view in order to gain perspective.

This film represents our ongoing quest to exhaust the John Cusack option. The reason I was too tired to finish BJM was that we’d tried to watch Cradle Will Rock first. Twenty-six minutes in, however, Rob invoked a recent film viewing rule we have put in place and pulled the plug.

I am not sure if it was the truly awful acting, or the fact that one of seemingly major sub-plots involved a musical playwright who was talking to someone who could have only been his dead wife – we never did get clarification on that* – but Susan Sarandon’s Transylvanian inspired accent pretty much did the film in for me and poor old Johnny (who was portraying Nelson Rockefeller, really)  barely spoke three lines before Rob invoked the rule.

The rule?

If either of us is bored past coherent thought, the movie is over.

The premise of  Being John Malkovich is people entering a portal into his mind to be John rather than themselves for 15 minutes, a cute twist on the 15 minutes of fame thing. Cusack’s character goes further in that he manages to hijack Malkovich and live through him rather than merely be a vicarious spectator, again interesting indictments of the preoccupation society has with the rich and the famous.

Being me, I went to Wikipedia and found a synopsis of the movie and preferring reading to watching, I find I am satisfied and don’t need to finish viewing. But the idea lingers. Who is my John Malkovich? Whose brain would I crawl into and eyes would I peer out of if given the opportunity?

I really don’t know. There is a line in Sondheim’s Into the Woods where the characters admit that once upon a time they would have traded their lives for someone else’s but that was before their wishes were granted. I felt too once that I would have traded lives with anyone really, but that was before.

Do you have a John Malkovich? Or are you okay looking at life through your own eyes?

 

*Ah, the streak lives and to compound the matter for family movie night, we watched Nim’s Island with Jodie Foster and Gerard Butler. ED gave it to us for Christmas. Within the first minutes the little Nim loses her mother in a tragic whale encounter of biblical proportion. Seriously, can we pick movies or what?

Reviewing is the Monday Meme


This is a neat meme I ran across on another blog. A personal review of the previous year via old blog post. Something of a challenge given that I blog five days a week and sometimes all seven. In fact this post is number 701 in a two and a half year blogging “career”.

So here goes:

January: The first Canadian winter was a festival of critters, anniversaries and bum numbing cold.

February: A tiny writing victory and another funeral.

March: Was honeymooning in a cabin by a pond.

April: Obama, Obama, Obama.

May: Spring cleaning, the now defunct Moms Speak Up contributer gig which began my Internet blogging “career”, and Mother’s Day.

June: Brother drama, a first anniversary of a damn long time and POTUS.

July: The Ghost of Iowa Past, how I always end up sick after a visit to the U.S., skinny bitches.

August: I am Not a Mommy blogger and a couple of birthdays.

September: The end of hump days, lung cancer and Unetaneh Tokef

October: Dying, dying, dead.

November: Memoirs, my Al Pacino moment and NaNoWriMo.

December: A new domain, wee houses and discovering a piece in the puzzle that is my calling.

This is one effing time comsuming meme. No one therefore should fear a tagging. I did find an even greater appreciation of my dear readers as I sifted through the posts of the last year because I posted a shitload of entries, the Tolstoy of blogging. You people are to be commended.

If you feel up to this linking exercise, please link back but don’t feel obligated.

A New Year is Monday’s Meme


With all the counting down that happens this time of year, perhaps we should do a bit ourselves?

But what is the question? Books? Movies. Music? World Events? Fashion?

And should we do best of show or worst ever?

Here is you challenge then. Create a countdown list in the comments. Minimum of 5 but maxing out at ten. Don’t limit yourself. Any topic. Here’s mine:

Top Five Setbacks for Women

 (and by extension the other gender)

in 2008

1) Sarah Palin being the most qualified woman McCain could find to run with him.

2) The media’s sexist treatment of Hillary Clinton. (When cankles and pantsuits are debated seriously by pundits, we might as well start lobbying for our own Liberia.)

3) The Bush Administrations rush to implement protection for health care workers tender consciences (here’s hoping you never need a blood transfusion and your doctor is a Jehovah’s Witness).

4) Oprah is fat again. (If a billionaire kingmaker like Winfrey can’t elude the superficial demons of American culture, the rest of us are doomed.)

5) Caroline Kennedy makes the cut for possibly replacing Clinton in the Senate. (A setback? Surely I jest? Nope, the media is giddy with the idea Kennedy can be compensated for her losses with a Senate seat because being a Harvard lawyer with constitutional credentials out the ying-yang and years of experience running mega charities don’t count as much as having been semi-orphaned and photogenic as a girl-child.)

Can’t wait to read yours.