Today’s challenge: · declare your love for an uncool movie.

Just got in from a good training session (2100 CST) where I ran to the gym and back.  Because I was dressed in a fairly neat-looking outfit for a change, I wore it down.  I had on a white tank top with a pair of boxers swapping punches and white shorts with the coolest ‘blue blue blue’ striped trim.  I knew that I looked good because I FELT good.  But wearing a tank top without a long or short-sleeved tee underneath (a la the ‘Hoya Paranoia’ look of the 80’s when Patrick Ewing and Georgetown terrorized opponents in college basketball) is how I normally go out.  There is a reason for this and it goes way back to when I would come back to the motor during the summer to visit Skye during breaks in school.

Back then, I did not mind people ‘ooh-ing and aaah-ing’ when they say me, especially when I was at my kung-fu mega tightest!  Unfortunately, my then only natural daughter (cause I would count BJ but…) would get upset at all the extra attention that I would draw from the ‘non-qualifiers and otherwise ineligible’ women we’d pass while we were out together.  Since I knew that our time together was at a premium and I needed to make sure she knew my focus was centered on her.  That is when I began to layer my tanks with tees and the look has become de rigueur when I go out in public.  Today, some of the comments that were made to me in the gym confirmed my reasoning for keep with the layered look.

Somewhere around is my ‘tale of the tape’ from a few years ago.  When I see those numbers, I don’t think ‘big’ as much as I do think ‘normal’.  But since I stopped boxing, I really have not been working as ‘hard’ as I once did and worse, the six-pack that Nixxie teased me about still hasn’t returned (but it is on its way!) and that is part of the reason why …

…an-nee-WHO!  Several of the regulars mentioned that they had no idea that I was so ‘big’.  This is not to say that they did not know I was big through the outline of my clothes but it is one thing to ‘look big’.  But seeing me in a tank, I guess you get to see the definition that many ‘sorta big’ cats don’t have to their physiques.  This entry isn’t about all that but I am jus’ sayin…

NERD MOVIE

I don’t have ‘nerd movies’ but there are several art house movies that I would like to share (because I could not pick just one!).  The first movie that I would like to mention is ‘Boxing Helena’.  When Tee Jay and I had one of our first movie nights at her house with some of her peeps, I rented it and we watched it after the family movie (for her daughter) and then whatever was the popular urban rental of the day (they all sort of blur together, don’t they?) and it was fairly late when we popped the Sherilyn Fenn – Julian Sands character piece in for viewing.  Usually I don’t ‘test’ people (not deliberately at least… that is some crap I don’t take well, so if you do run one on me, you best not NEVER let me discover that you did… cause that could draw ‘retroactive penalties for procedural violations’) but for some reason I purposely slipped that movie in the stack to see if she could deal with sitting for two hours of watching something that was out of her realm of what qualifies as entertainment BUT is an experience that I find is entertaining and pleasurable.

After we watched the movie ‘with the gang’, on the occasions that we were a part of get-togethers at her or one of her fams or friends place and the topic of movies would come up and mention made of that movie night, she always, unfailingly and unflinchingly would say that she thought it was an interesting film and she liked it too… even though her peeps ‘had jokes’ for the both of us… man, did I BLOW IT BIG TIME WITH HER… deee-AAAAANNNGG IT!!

Why do I like art house movies..?  Cause I do, that’s why!!  I really like character studies and that is when I find I am willing to invest into the film.  That is why even a movie that I find is entertaining, like the summer blockbusters or ANY-thing with Tyler Perry’s fingerprints on it (save for ‘Precious’… I thought that was a very good film and had very little to quibble about regarding it) I am going to find plot holes and along with probability and critique it accordingly.  But I was able to identify with Tommy, the center of Steve Buscemi’s ‘Tree’s Lounge’.  The cat just could not buy a break, a vowel or anything else in this movie.  It wasn’t that he was a ‘bad’ guy as much as if a situation could go one of two ways and one of them was the worst outcome possible, then that is the way that they went!

The two previous movies that I mentioned were uber-personal faves but the third movie is one that I will recommend without reservation and if you haven’t seen it, please, please do.  I remember after I watched at a theater in Raleigh being so blown away that I called Hutch and told him that he simply HAD TO see it.

‘The Straight Story’ is about two brothers who had a falling out years ago and had not seen each other in decades.  When the one falls ill the other goes to see him and his journey is quite the tale.  Richard Farnsworth would earn an Oscar Nomination and the supporting cast was stellar.  Who knew that David Lynch has such a deft touch with his direction?

Well… it is twenty after eleven HERE in Omaha, so I got this in on time!!