My dad and I used to have a game (my dad loves movies as well, Freud or anyone else can SUCK it) where he would ask me to name five movies off the top of my head that Eddie Murphy/Tom Cruise/Al Pacino/Robert De Niro were in...I freakin' rocked at that game; also, don't even try the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with me...you'll lose horribly. My mom hated it. She is not so much a movie aficianado. She has had an affair in her head with Robert Redford and Paul Newman (until he died) for the past 20 years, but other than that, if it's a movie, she doesn't know who's in it or who they are.
My best friend Amanda used to tell me that if she ever was on some type of trivia show where she could call someone needing entertainment/movie knowledge, she'd call me. Smitty asks me "Who was in that movie we saw last week who was in the TV show with that other guy from that movie?" and I know exactly who he means, and he's just accepted it as one of those Rain Man-like qualities that I have, like who sings that song, although, really, I know the movies more. It's a completely useless, in fact, utterly useless, quality in my daily life. I know more about movies than most people, but unless, I am granted a movie column that makes me a lot of money, it really doesn't serve me that well..... Except that maybe along with my incredible sense of whimsy, this may be a thing I pass along to our kids. This is one of those idiosynchratic traits that honestly, I could only have picked up from my dad...really....
What does this teach us? Nothing. I'm telling you, I'm passing along my useless hobby......love movies! When they're good, they're awesome. I watched "Dead Poets Society" at the age of like 12, and I realized that this was something that moved me deeply. Stemming from that, I have a love of poetry, literature, and nonconformity. Living life as a nonconformist since '77. Try it; it's quite wonderful. You'll never settle, and you shouldn't anyway. Settling is for losers.....and Republicans.
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