Once upon a time, when I was a teenager, a husband-and-wife serial killer team tore my hometown apart.
Everybody who lives (or lived) in my city, St.Catharines, Ontario, has those two or three years permanently carved into the psychic structural landscape of their brain, and all those wounds will soon be reopened with an American film that dramatizes the case called Deadly (www.deadlythemovie.com).
The basics: A Ken-and-Barbie couple, Paul and Karla, who lived in St.Catharines, kidnapped at least two teenage girls, raped them, killed them. They also killed Karla's sister, when their plan to knock her unconscious, videotape and rape her went horribly wrong and she 'accidently' died. (Paul was also later found to be the 'Scarborough rapist' who terrorized Toronto for a good many years.)
One of the girls who they killed was a St.Catharines girl, Kristen French, who lived about five minutes, by car, from my house. When I was in Grade 8 at Dalewood Junior High, she was in Grade 7; we were in the choir together, though I never knew her then, and only figured this out later. (Oh, those small and slim connections we all found to somehow link us to the deceased.)
I can't write about this too much because it's, well, too much -- my idyllic (t0 me) hometown was ripped to shreds when this happened; a part of it died, and a part of all of us who lived there died too, I think.
That may be putting it harshly. I was in early-to-mid high school when all this went down; I went to school, ran track, watched movies, read books. I wasn't obsessed with this case, no, but it was always there for a good two years or so, blatantly exposed each and every day on the front page of The St.Catharines Standard, hiding more delicately on the faces of friends, teachers, family.
How could this happen? A perfect couple, kidnapping teenage girls in broad daylight, raping them, murdering them? This was the stuff that happened in movies and in Stephen King books; this was the stuff that had no business being in my hometown.
I was naive.
And now it's twelve years on, and the wife, Karla, is getting out of prison this summer, while the husband, Paul, will sit in solitary for life, and a movie will make its way to some theatres across America and Canada.
I won't watch it.
I have no problems with them making it; I think freedom of speech is freedom of speech, and it would be very hypocritical of me, who has enjoyed countless true-crime stories, to cry out against the airing of this one, be it in cinemas or on TV.
But you see, when I was sixteen, my family went on vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and I can remembering watching the Van Halen video Right Now on MTV, and this particular video featured all these cool catchphrases splashed across the screen, and one of them read 'Right now a killer is walking the streets of your hometown', and I thought no, no, not in St.Catharines, sorry, and one of the girls who was on vacation with us at that time was best friends with Kristen French, the girl who would be murdered in a few months, and so, you see, eloquence fails me at a moment like this. I had planned to write more, to delve deeper, to chart how my childhood somehow ended during this time, and how that little inconsequential personal fact pales in comparison to what the victims' families went through, and what they'll go through again with the release of this film, and how it's all bubbling back to the surface again, but I hope you'll forgive me for exiting early from this topic.
Sometimes reality itself is too much.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Sunday, March 27, 2005
ME AND THE MOTODOPS
We're tight, me and the motodops are.
You don't know them? They're the dudes who cruise through the streets of Phnom Penh on their motos like erratic, slightly crazed sharks hunting for human prey, zigzagging past pedestrians and bicycles, cars and cows, ignoring the traffic rules that I'm not sure they even knew existed in the first place. (Actually, that's not entirely fair; I don't think the rules actually exist, and I'm exaggerating about the cows, but last night, around nine, on the back of a moto, I did see three carts of timber being pulled by three men on horses, so you can see where I'm going from).
They're the informal taxi drivers of Camboida, is what they are. From about five in the morning to nine at night, you can basically just walk along any major (and usually minor) street in Phnom Penh, wait five, four, three, two and one seconds, and wham, bam, thank-you ma'am there there'll be, the motodops, wearing their sun-worn baseball caps like a knight wears his helmet, raising their index finger, hoping against hope that you'll say yes, yes, yes, you'll take them for a ride.
The thing is, I usually do -- but not weekdays around five p.m.
Nothing personal. That's just when I walk home from work, slowly, casually, usually trying to read a book as I walk, which proves I haven't learned any lessons from life whatsoever, because I was reading a book as I walked when a homeless nut in Tokyo whacked me in the stomach with a two by four and forever changed my attitude towards violence, but hey -- I live and learn, and then I forget. That's what I do.
The motodops don't know this, though.
They think I want to ride with them.
I could write a whole book on the looks and grins and scowls and words that motodops and I exchange on a daily basis. (And I just might, along with the novel about Santa Claus I'm considering doing, and I am too serious about that baby, just wait.)
A partial and by no means comprehensive list of motodop lingo, both verbal and physical:
The offer: "Motobike, sir?"
The surprised gleam in the eyes: They've seen a foreigner, spotted the potential for money, cash-in-hand, and their body reacts.
The backward glance: A quick shift of their head as they realize they've driven by a foreigner.
The raise of the finger:-- one, two, three: The three,three,three-rides-in-one! offer they offer you as you shake your head in rejection, hoping that the first time you said no was a joke, the second time a maybe, the third time a yes.
The sheepish smile: Common to all Cambodians is the nervous, slightly shy smile that they use when they get embarassed, or are at a loss for words. These smiles are one of the many charms of the Cambodian people; you reject them, and they smile, and they're a stranger, and you smile anyways, and they smile, and that's how humanity gets a few more brownie points because of it.
It does get annoying after awhile, this constant badgering on a daily basis.
It's not a big deal, I tell myself, and it isn't.
And the truth is, when I'm back home, I miss it. Back home, there's only paved roads and odd-shaped cars and traffic walks and everybody ignoring each other, going where they need to go, oblivious to who's next to them, whether they're driving or walking, biking or rollerblading.
Here, on the streets, it's life close-up and personal, life intensified, life and all the human interactions it requires in-your-face, twenty-four seven (or just about). There's dust and dirt, coal and fog, donkeys trucking wood and kids shitting in the sewers. (Which, when you see this, at twelve midnight on a Saturday night, on a darkened backstreet, makes you pause, wretch, wonder what kind of world we live in, what kind of God is presiding.)
And there's also your friendly neighbourhood motodop -- a throwback to another time, perhaps, when a complete stranger would take you from here to there and back again for a small fee.
Funny that I would find that here, of all places.
You don't know them? They're the dudes who cruise through the streets of Phnom Penh on their motos like erratic, slightly crazed sharks hunting for human prey, zigzagging past pedestrians and bicycles, cars and cows, ignoring the traffic rules that I'm not sure they even knew existed in the first place. (Actually, that's not entirely fair; I don't think the rules actually exist, and I'm exaggerating about the cows, but last night, around nine, on the back of a moto, I did see three carts of timber being pulled by three men on horses, so you can see where I'm going from).
They're the informal taxi drivers of Camboida, is what they are. From about five in the morning to nine at night, you can basically just walk along any major (and usually minor) street in Phnom Penh, wait five, four, three, two and one seconds, and wham, bam, thank-you ma'am there there'll be, the motodops, wearing their sun-worn baseball caps like a knight wears his helmet, raising their index finger, hoping against hope that you'll say yes, yes, yes, you'll take them for a ride.
The thing is, I usually do -- but not weekdays around five p.m.
Nothing personal. That's just when I walk home from work, slowly, casually, usually trying to read a book as I walk, which proves I haven't learned any lessons from life whatsoever, because I was reading a book as I walked when a homeless nut in Tokyo whacked me in the stomach with a two by four and forever changed my attitude towards violence, but hey -- I live and learn, and then I forget. That's what I do.
The motodops don't know this, though.
They think I want to ride with them.
I could write a whole book on the looks and grins and scowls and words that motodops and I exchange on a daily basis. (And I just might, along with the novel about Santa Claus I'm considering doing, and I am too serious about that baby, just wait.)
A partial and by no means comprehensive list of motodop lingo, both verbal and physical:
The offer: "Motobike, sir?"
The surprised gleam in the eyes: They've seen a foreigner, spotted the potential for money, cash-in-hand, and their body reacts.
The backward glance: A quick shift of their head as they realize they've driven by a foreigner.
The raise of the finger:-- one, two, three: The three,three,three-rides-in-one! offer they offer you as you shake your head in rejection, hoping that the first time you said no was a joke, the second time a maybe, the third time a yes.
The sheepish smile: Common to all Cambodians is the nervous, slightly shy smile that they use when they get embarassed, or are at a loss for words. These smiles are one of the many charms of the Cambodian people; you reject them, and they smile, and they're a stranger, and you smile anyways, and they smile, and that's how humanity gets a few more brownie points because of it.
It does get annoying after awhile, this constant badgering on a daily basis.
It's not a big deal, I tell myself, and it isn't.
And the truth is, when I'm back home, I miss it. Back home, there's only paved roads and odd-shaped cars and traffic walks and everybody ignoring each other, going where they need to go, oblivious to who's next to them, whether they're driving or walking, biking or rollerblading.
Here, on the streets, it's life close-up and personal, life intensified, life and all the human interactions it requires in-your-face, twenty-four seven (or just about). There's dust and dirt, coal and fog, donkeys trucking wood and kids shitting in the sewers. (Which, when you see this, at twelve midnight on a Saturday night, on a darkened backstreet, makes you pause, wretch, wonder what kind of world we live in, what kind of God is presiding.)
And there's also your friendly neighbourhood motodop -- a throwback to another time, perhaps, when a complete stranger would take you from here to there and back again for a small fee.
Funny that I would find that here, of all places.
Saturday, March 26, 2005
AUDIBLE GAPS
The sound of my fingers tapping the keys. People chatting in languages I can't even identify, let alone understand. Honking cars. Hawking streetkids, yelling daily, daily, the new one, the new one. A familiar word of Japanese. Flip-flops doing their languid flips and flops across the tiled floor. A door creaking open. A chair being pulled back. A drawer opening. A calculator sliding across the desk.
I hear all of this, and my mind wanders, and I suddenly wonder what it would be like to be deaf, to have these ordinary, everyday sounds absent from my consciousness. Can you miss something you never had? Do deaf people dream of sounds, and if so, do they savor those sounds, cherish them for whatever length of dream-time is available that particular night, or do they resent those intrusions from an outside, possibly celestial force? What do they hear inside of their head when they awake? Is it an empty or hollow sound, like the sound of the ocean in a seashell? Can they find pockets of audible noise in the silence of their thoughts that those of us in the hearing world neglect to locate?
I'm twenty-nine, and there is so, so much I do not know. So many questions I've yet to ask.
I hear all of this, and my mind wanders, and I suddenly wonder what it would be like to be deaf, to have these ordinary, everyday sounds absent from my consciousness. Can you miss something you never had? Do deaf people dream of sounds, and if so, do they savor those sounds, cherish them for whatever length of dream-time is available that particular night, or do they resent those intrusions from an outside, possibly celestial force? What do they hear inside of their head when they awake? Is it an empty or hollow sound, like the sound of the ocean in a seashell? Can they find pockets of audible noise in the silence of their thoughts that those of us in the hearing world neglect to locate?
I'm twenty-nine, and there is so, so much I do not know. So many questions I've yet to ask.
Thursday, March 24, 2005
EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN (AND AGAIN) or WHY CADDYSHACK II IS BETTER THAN YOU'VE BEEN LED TO BELIEVE
WARNING: Some major-league, big-time, movie-geek loving is about to commence. If you don't get off on reading about movies, this one might not be for you. But to paraphrase Martin Short as Ed Grimley, pondering the possibility of his idol, Pat Sajak, against all odds actually being an okay guy: "But then again, maybe it will be, it's hard to say..."
All those whiners and moaners who declare that Hollywood isn't making anything original anymore obviously haven't heard the news that a director for The Santa Clause III (starring Tim Allen) was just hired, that Saw 2 is on the way, that big screen versions of Baywatch and The Dukes of Hazzard and Bewitched are in the can (or almost there), that remakes of War of the Worlds, Death Race 2000 and Herbie The Love Bug are in the cards, that Final Destination III and X-Men III and Spider-Man III and Hellboy II and Batman Begins and Superman Returns are coming soon, or most importantly of all, that Miss Congeniality II: Armed and Fabulous is currently showing at a cinema near you (but not near me. Thank God).
Things are getting crazy. When for-the-love-of-god Miss Congeniality gets a sequel five years after its original release, something's out of whack.
(Full disclosure: I watched Miss Congeniality, in the theatre, yes, but I was in Japan and there was nothing else on, I swear, and I needed a touch of home, and William Shatner, proud Canadian that he is, was the closest thing I could find, and he was the best part of that movie, and so even though I guess by admitting that I paid money to see it, even if that money was Japanese yen, I thereby contributed to the profit margin that deemed a sequel feasible, it's still not right for the follow-up to be made, not proper, no, not sane.)
And this is coming from a guy who, as I've elaborated before in this humble little space, actually likes sequels.
The thing is, growing up, I watched a lot of episodic television, where you got to watch and grow with and even love the characters as they, and you, journeyed through life. (Yes, yes, I said 'love'. I'm not saying I 'loved' Nell Carter on Gimme a Break or Natalie on The Facts of Life or Lee Majors on The Fall Guy or Mr.Drummond on Diff'rent Strokes or DaisyDuke on The Dukes of Hazzard or the brown haired girl on Silver Spoons or -- wait a minute. I guess I am saying that. Kids love stupid things, right, like the sound of farts and the taste of Pez, so I'll admit it, I loved them all, those second-rate actors on those admittedly-lame sitcoms, but they were my childhood, and they made me laugh, and if that's not a recipe for love, what is?)
Movies, though were altogether bigger, grander, with more depth and power and bravado. Seeing a sequel, two, three, five years after the original was an affirmation of sorts, a twisted acknowledgement that the elements that we loved and cherished in the first films were not isolated at all, that they continued, they endured, they twisted and moved and aged but still retained their authentic, orginal ability to sneak into our hearts. (A childish romanticism, sure, but I actively seek to hold on to that which once moved me, fearing what will happen if I let such fundamentally silly notions go free, fearing who I might become, jaded and cynical and crusty.)
I should also add that I abhor the act of giving sequels plain old numbers: 2, 3, 4, etc. Back in the day, when there was a sequel, it was given a roman number, for chrissakes, a II or III or IV. It gave sequels a certain dignity, a certain link to the past, as if they were but mere chapters in a larger, denser story. So I'm classifying all sequels with a roman numeral, regardless of how they appeared when they first came out. Cuz I'm a weird guy that thinks about this stuff.
And so, in that spirit, which only a ten year old waiting with something approaching delight bordering on awe for the lights to go down before the show begins can truly appreciate, I appeal to you to search for that child within yourselves, however deeply buried he/she may be. Ladies and gentlemen, I now present the good sequels:
1) French Connection II -- great. One of Hackman's best performances ever. If Robert Redford's The Candidate has the best final line ever, French Connection II has one of the the greatest final shots ever -- not visually or stylistically all that impressive, no, but it rocks the house simply for the clear and present punctuation point it provides for the series. For its finality, brevity, simplicity, this can't be beat.
2) Back to the Future II and III -- wonderful, convoluted mind-warps. Touching and silly. I was so excited when Back to the Future II came out I couldn't eat or sleep, that's how much I'd been waiting for it. And me and my friends Eric and Steve loved it so much that we couldn't contain ourselves in the parking lot of the Pendale Cinemas when it was all over, so excited that there was a Part III on the way.
3) The Godfather II and III -- exceptional. Landmark. Everything movies should be. (Yes, even the third one. I'll defend it to my grave as a fantastic coda, or epilogue, to the first two films, which are, hands down, the two best films of the last thirty years, with Apocalypse Now running a close third, which means Coppola is the man, even still, even now, despite his daughter's success. And it was while watching the new version of Apocalypse Now in the theatres in Japan a few years back that I had an epiphany during Robert Duvall's famous "I love the smell of napalm in the morning"speech. During that scene, as he spoke, I had thought something I had never, ever thought before during a movie: This is one of the greatest moments ever put to film. The juxtaposition of words and image, of the beauty of what he was feeling and the horror of what he was saying, the madness of war personified in the grace and wretchedness of this soldier -- it's cinema, that's all. Whatever cinema can or should do, whatever dialogue should or can be, whatever thematic resonance can or may be highlighted, it's all there, in that scene. You can't get better. You can't.)
4) The Two Jakes, the sequel to Chinatown -- Intricate and involving. I still haven't figured out what all went down, and yes, you won't understand anything that happens in the movie unless you watch Chinatown, like, immediately before watching this one, that's how much it relies on the first one, but still. Jack Nicholson directed this one, and he proved he can direct; I wish he'd direct more.
5) Rocky II -- "the sweatiest movie ever made" according the folks on Cheers. And the best of the four sequels.
6) More American Graffitti -- flawed but original. (Does the word 'graffitti' have two effs and two eyes? Or even two tees? Not sure about that one.) I bet that you didn't even know that there was a sequel, did you? Now, the first one is probably the one movie in the history of cinema that really, truly doesn't need a sequel, but the thing was, Lucas had promised Universal another film, and after the success of Star Wars, the studio said hey, we want that film to be a sequel to the first Graffitti, the idea of which Lucas hated, but he said all right, f--ck it, we'll do a sequel. Hired some guy named B.W.Norton, and the film takes place on New Year's Eve at various points in time over the span of five years, and it features most of the original cast, even Harrison Ford (but sorely missing Richard Dreyfuss), along with a lot of experimental, split-screen type effects, the last gasp of alternative seventies filmmaking, you could say, and while I can't say it's a really good movie, it's different, it's honest, it attempted to do something, if not fresh, at least unstale.
And now, sequels I would never, ever publicly admit to liking (except for here, on a blog nobody reads, although I realize that these may be held against me in a future cinematic court of law):
1) Caddyshack II -- Jackie Mason is an amiable replacement for Rodney Dangerfield, Robert Stack does stuffy like noone else, Dan Ackroyd does a suitably odd offshoot of Bill Murray's character from the first one and Chevy Chase is at his supreme level of cheviness. What's not to like?
2) National Lampoon's European Vacation -- More classic Chevy. Highly underrated.
3) Police Academy IV: Citizens on Patrol -- Good comedic work from Guttenberg. His swan song to the series.
4) Rocky IV -- As a die-hard Rocky fan, I loved the fourth installment as a kid and hated it as a teenager, coming to think that it violated the simplicity of the original, but now I see it as the ultimate '80's amplification of the Cold War, the Rocky mythos stripped down to its comic-book ethos, then pumped up and overblown to exaggerated, kinetic effect, with Stallone as a director being the MTV Michael Bay of the '90's, a style abandoned for Rocky V, which brought us (more or less successfully) back to the grittiness of the original.
5) The Karate Kid III -- Daniel and Mr.Miyagi's relationship matures. The story's stupid; their bond is touching.
6) Psycho III -- Anthony Perkins' directorial debut, and a violent, creepy, dread-inducing little film, much better than the second installment and light years ahead of the fourth one. Doesn't come anywhere near the original, of course, but it's tight and lean and actually adds some, dare I say it, touching insights into that great cinematic character, Norman Bates.
7) Star Trek V: The Final Frontier -- Canadian legend William Shatner's directorial debut, generally regarded as the worst in the series, but I think it's actually quite smart, funny and philosophically ambitious. Yes, the effects near the end suck, and the structure is a little wonky, but if you look at it as a big-screen version of one of the original episodes, you might like it.
8) Halloween II and V -- The original is, hands down, the scariest flick I think I've ever seen, next to the original Exorcist (which operates on its own, heightened level of cinematic greatness). The second one picks up, literally, at the end of the first one (like Rocky II and Back to the Future III and III), and the plot is, well, Michael Myers killing some more. (When SNL's Mike Myers, Canada's golden boy, hit it big, I said: "Hey, he stole the Halloween guy's name!" Cuz that's the kind of kid I was...) The thing is, the first one and the second one all take place during the same night. That's a hell of a long night. The gore is more, the suspense a little less, but Donald Pleasance is fantastic, as always, and it still does an admirable job of plucking our universal fears. The fifth one I included just because, by rights, there's now way this movie should be any good -- but it has a genuinely freaky-deaky, cliffhanger ending. I never saw Part III, or part VIII.
9) Superman IV: The Quest For Peace -- This movie was butchered in the editing room after disastrous test screenings, as they cut over forty-five minutes out of the flick. In the original version there were actually two Nuclear Mans, not just one. You're shocked, I realize this. (I know what was cut out because I read the comic book version as a kid, in addition to the novelization. Yes, I was a geek.) But actually, if you watch it again with a somewhat open mind, it's not half bad. Similar to Star Trek V, it kind of feels like one of the old Superman comics you'd pick up in the quarter bin at the comic book shop on rainy Saturday afternoon. Reeve is great as always as Superman, and Hackman as Lex Luthor is, well, Hackman -- fantastic, as always. There are some nice bits with Clark and Lois, with scenes that are, dare I say it, charming. At ninety minutes the film is ridiculously short, and the final twenty minutes of the movie don't make much sense at all, and the special effects aren't that great, but it's a Superman movie goddamnit; my childhood self demands I at least like it. And I do.
(I was going to go on and defend Superman III, as it's one of my favorite movies, ever, but I don't have the energy, and I've defended it before. And let me just say that while I'm looking forward to Bryan Singer's new Superman movie due out next year, with the unknown Brandon Routh in the title role and Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor, the original films will always be, well, sacrosanct. The canon. The link to my childhood. So they could just release all four back on the big screen for a week or two and I'd be happy.)
Hmmmmm...
By this point, you've either been a) nodding your head in appreciation and interest, as you, too, have seen more movies than is humanly healthy or b) you are thinking I've completely lost my fu--ing mind, and are wondering how I ever made it out of high school. (I wonder that sometimes, too.)
But, we are what we are.
And I've just realized something.
This post was supposed to be about the moral bankruptcy of most sequels, but I must admit, based on the above evidence, that I like a hell of a lot of those that have been made. Even the bad ones. Which means that, even with a degree in Creative Writing (it is too a real degree, I swear), umpteen university Literature classes, four years in Japan and two years in Cambodia, I'm not as worldly and sophisticated as I'd assumed.
Still.
Was there really, really that much of a demand for a Miss Congeniality II?
(Oh, as I've mentioned before, I watched Ocean's 12 on DVD here, and I couldn't understand what happened. Didn't get the twist at the end, the whole heist-explanation thingee. I'm readily admitting that. I'm chalking it up to the fact that the copy I saw had French titles, so I wasn't sure what was happening on what day in the film. That's my excuse, rather than just admitting I wasn't bright enough to follow what was going on.)
All those whiners and moaners who declare that Hollywood isn't making anything original anymore obviously haven't heard the news that a director for The Santa Clause III (starring Tim Allen) was just hired, that Saw 2 is on the way, that big screen versions of Baywatch and The Dukes of Hazzard and Bewitched are in the can (or almost there), that remakes of War of the Worlds, Death Race 2000 and Herbie The Love Bug are in the cards, that Final Destination III and X-Men III and Spider-Man III and Hellboy II and Batman Begins and Superman Returns are coming soon, or most importantly of all, that Miss Congeniality II: Armed and Fabulous is currently showing at a cinema near you (but not near me. Thank God).
Things are getting crazy. When for-the-love-of-god Miss Congeniality gets a sequel five years after its original release, something's out of whack.
(Full disclosure: I watched Miss Congeniality, in the theatre, yes, but I was in Japan and there was nothing else on, I swear, and I needed a touch of home, and William Shatner, proud Canadian that he is, was the closest thing I could find, and he was the best part of that movie, and so even though I guess by admitting that I paid money to see it, even if that money was Japanese yen, I thereby contributed to the profit margin that deemed a sequel feasible, it's still not right for the follow-up to be made, not proper, no, not sane.)
And this is coming from a guy who, as I've elaborated before in this humble little space, actually likes sequels.
The thing is, growing up, I watched a lot of episodic television, where you got to watch and grow with and even love the characters as they, and you, journeyed through life. (Yes, yes, I said 'love'. I'm not saying I 'loved' Nell Carter on Gimme a Break or Natalie on The Facts of Life or Lee Majors on The Fall Guy or Mr.Drummond on Diff'rent Strokes or DaisyDuke on The Dukes of Hazzard or the brown haired girl on Silver Spoons or -- wait a minute. I guess I am saying that. Kids love stupid things, right, like the sound of farts and the taste of Pez, so I'll admit it, I loved them all, those second-rate actors on those admittedly-lame sitcoms, but they were my childhood, and they made me laugh, and if that's not a recipe for love, what is?)
Movies, though were altogether bigger, grander, with more depth and power and bravado. Seeing a sequel, two, three, five years after the original was an affirmation of sorts, a twisted acknowledgement that the elements that we loved and cherished in the first films were not isolated at all, that they continued, they endured, they twisted and moved and aged but still retained their authentic, orginal ability to sneak into our hearts. (A childish romanticism, sure, but I actively seek to hold on to that which once moved me, fearing what will happen if I let such fundamentally silly notions go free, fearing who I might become, jaded and cynical and crusty.)
I should also add that I abhor the act of giving sequels plain old numbers: 2, 3, 4, etc. Back in the day, when there was a sequel, it was given a roman number, for chrissakes, a II or III or IV. It gave sequels a certain dignity, a certain link to the past, as if they were but mere chapters in a larger, denser story. So I'm classifying all sequels with a roman numeral, regardless of how they appeared when they first came out. Cuz I'm a weird guy that thinks about this stuff.
And so, in that spirit, which only a ten year old waiting with something approaching delight bordering on awe for the lights to go down before the show begins can truly appreciate, I appeal to you to search for that child within yourselves, however deeply buried he/she may be. Ladies and gentlemen, I now present the good sequels:
1) French Connection II -- great. One of Hackman's best performances ever. If Robert Redford's The Candidate has the best final line ever, French Connection II has one of the the greatest final shots ever -- not visually or stylistically all that impressive, no, but it rocks the house simply for the clear and present punctuation point it provides for the series. For its finality, brevity, simplicity, this can't be beat.
2) Back to the Future II and III -- wonderful, convoluted mind-warps. Touching and silly. I was so excited when Back to the Future II came out I couldn't eat or sleep, that's how much I'd been waiting for it. And me and my friends Eric and Steve loved it so much that we couldn't contain ourselves in the parking lot of the Pendale Cinemas when it was all over, so excited that there was a Part III on the way.
3) The Godfather II and III -- exceptional. Landmark. Everything movies should be. (Yes, even the third one. I'll defend it to my grave as a fantastic coda, or epilogue, to the first two films, which are, hands down, the two best films of the last thirty years, with Apocalypse Now running a close third, which means Coppola is the man, even still, even now, despite his daughter's success. And it was while watching the new version of Apocalypse Now in the theatres in Japan a few years back that I had an epiphany during Robert Duvall's famous "I love the smell of napalm in the morning"speech. During that scene, as he spoke, I had thought something I had never, ever thought before during a movie: This is one of the greatest moments ever put to film. The juxtaposition of words and image, of the beauty of what he was feeling and the horror of what he was saying, the madness of war personified in the grace and wretchedness of this soldier -- it's cinema, that's all. Whatever cinema can or should do, whatever dialogue should or can be, whatever thematic resonance can or may be highlighted, it's all there, in that scene. You can't get better. You can't.)
4) The Two Jakes, the sequel to Chinatown -- Intricate and involving. I still haven't figured out what all went down, and yes, you won't understand anything that happens in the movie unless you watch Chinatown, like, immediately before watching this one, that's how much it relies on the first one, but still. Jack Nicholson directed this one, and he proved he can direct; I wish he'd direct more.
5) Rocky II -- "the sweatiest movie ever made" according the folks on Cheers. And the best of the four sequels.
6) More American Graffitti -- flawed but original. (Does the word 'graffitti' have two effs and two eyes? Or even two tees? Not sure about that one.) I bet that you didn't even know that there was a sequel, did you? Now, the first one is probably the one movie in the history of cinema that really, truly doesn't need a sequel, but the thing was, Lucas had promised Universal another film, and after the success of Star Wars, the studio said hey, we want that film to be a sequel to the first Graffitti, the idea of which Lucas hated, but he said all right, f--ck it, we'll do a sequel. Hired some guy named B.W.Norton, and the film takes place on New Year's Eve at various points in time over the span of five years, and it features most of the original cast, even Harrison Ford (but sorely missing Richard Dreyfuss), along with a lot of experimental, split-screen type effects, the last gasp of alternative seventies filmmaking, you could say, and while I can't say it's a really good movie, it's different, it's honest, it attempted to do something, if not fresh, at least unstale.
And now, sequels I would never, ever publicly admit to liking (except for here, on a blog nobody reads, although I realize that these may be held against me in a future cinematic court of law):
1) Caddyshack II -- Jackie Mason is an amiable replacement for Rodney Dangerfield, Robert Stack does stuffy like noone else, Dan Ackroyd does a suitably odd offshoot of Bill Murray's character from the first one and Chevy Chase is at his supreme level of cheviness. What's not to like?
2) National Lampoon's European Vacation -- More classic Chevy. Highly underrated.
3) Police Academy IV: Citizens on Patrol -- Good comedic work from Guttenberg. His swan song to the series.
4) Rocky IV -- As a die-hard Rocky fan, I loved the fourth installment as a kid and hated it as a teenager, coming to think that it violated the simplicity of the original, but now I see it as the ultimate '80's amplification of the Cold War, the Rocky mythos stripped down to its comic-book ethos, then pumped up and overblown to exaggerated, kinetic effect, with Stallone as a director being the MTV Michael Bay of the '90's, a style abandoned for Rocky V, which brought us (more or less successfully) back to the grittiness of the original.
5) The Karate Kid III -- Daniel and Mr.Miyagi's relationship matures. The story's stupid; their bond is touching.
6) Psycho III -- Anthony Perkins' directorial debut, and a violent, creepy, dread-inducing little film, much better than the second installment and light years ahead of the fourth one. Doesn't come anywhere near the original, of course, but it's tight and lean and actually adds some, dare I say it, touching insights into that great cinematic character, Norman Bates.
7) Star Trek V: The Final Frontier -- Canadian legend William Shatner's directorial debut, generally regarded as the worst in the series, but I think it's actually quite smart, funny and philosophically ambitious. Yes, the effects near the end suck, and the structure is a little wonky, but if you look at it as a big-screen version of one of the original episodes, you might like it.
8) Halloween II and V -- The original is, hands down, the scariest flick I think I've ever seen, next to the original Exorcist (which operates on its own, heightened level of cinematic greatness). The second one picks up, literally, at the end of the first one (like Rocky II and Back to the Future III and III), and the plot is, well, Michael Myers killing some more. (When SNL's Mike Myers, Canada's golden boy, hit it big, I said: "Hey, he stole the Halloween guy's name!" Cuz that's the kind of kid I was...) The thing is, the first one and the second one all take place during the same night. That's a hell of a long night. The gore is more, the suspense a little less, but Donald Pleasance is fantastic, as always, and it still does an admirable job of plucking our universal fears. The fifth one I included just because, by rights, there's now way this movie should be any good -- but it has a genuinely freaky-deaky, cliffhanger ending. I never saw Part III, or part VIII.
9) Superman IV: The Quest For Peace -- This movie was butchered in the editing room after disastrous test screenings, as they cut over forty-five minutes out of the flick. In the original version there were actually two Nuclear Mans, not just one. You're shocked, I realize this. (I know what was cut out because I read the comic book version as a kid, in addition to the novelization. Yes, I was a geek.) But actually, if you watch it again with a somewhat open mind, it's not half bad. Similar to Star Trek V, it kind of feels like one of the old Superman comics you'd pick up in the quarter bin at the comic book shop on rainy Saturday afternoon. Reeve is great as always as Superman, and Hackman as Lex Luthor is, well, Hackman -- fantastic, as always. There are some nice bits with Clark and Lois, with scenes that are, dare I say it, charming. At ninety minutes the film is ridiculously short, and the final twenty minutes of the movie don't make much sense at all, and the special effects aren't that great, but it's a Superman movie goddamnit; my childhood self demands I at least like it. And I do.
(I was going to go on and defend Superman III, as it's one of my favorite movies, ever, but I don't have the energy, and I've defended it before. And let me just say that while I'm looking forward to Bryan Singer's new Superman movie due out next year, with the unknown Brandon Routh in the title role and Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor, the original films will always be, well, sacrosanct. The canon. The link to my childhood. So they could just release all four back on the big screen for a week or two and I'd be happy.)
Hmmmmm...
By this point, you've either been a) nodding your head in appreciation and interest, as you, too, have seen more movies than is humanly healthy or b) you are thinking I've completely lost my fu--ing mind, and are wondering how I ever made it out of high school. (I wonder that sometimes, too.)
But, we are what we are.
And I've just realized something.
This post was supposed to be about the moral bankruptcy of most sequels, but I must admit, based on the above evidence, that I like a hell of a lot of those that have been made. Even the bad ones. Which means that, even with a degree in Creative Writing (it is too a real degree, I swear), umpteen university Literature classes, four years in Japan and two years in Cambodia, I'm not as worldly and sophisticated as I'd assumed.
Still.
Was there really, really that much of a demand for a Miss Congeniality II?
(Oh, as I've mentioned before, I watched Ocean's 12 on DVD here, and I couldn't understand what happened. Didn't get the twist at the end, the whole heist-explanation thingee. I'm readily admitting that. I'm chalking it up to the fact that the copy I saw had French titles, so I wasn't sure what was happening on what day in the film. That's my excuse, rather than just admitting I wasn't bright enough to follow what was going on.)
MY (ALMOST, BUT NOT QUITE) CAREER AS AN INTELLIGENCE AGENT IN THE CANADIAN C.I.A.
A week or two ago I was flipping through an old copy of Reader's Digest I had brought back from Canada last September, and I noticed an article I hadn't read before, about a Canadian aid group that was investigating prostitution here in Phnom Penh and its surrounding areas, and it only took me a few seconds of reading to realize that the main dude in the profile, the Canadian do-gooder at the centre of it all, was the same guy who tried to recruit me into a branch of the Canadian C.I.A. two summers ago.
Let me back up.
In the late summer of 2003 I was chilling on the waterfront in Cambodia, sitting at one of the numerous drinking joints that line the river, throwing back a Coke with a Canadian friend. She introduced me to her friend, another Canadian, who was heavily involved with a (you guessed it) Canadian aid group here. Nice guy -- very polite, well-spoken, good humored. He was a campaign consultant for Preston Manning and Mike Harris and the Tories back home -- kind of like the Canadian version of the Republicans.
He asked me what I did, where I'd been, yada yada yada. After learning that I'd spent four years in Japan, he started asking about my Japanese level, how fluent I was, bla bla bla. Then he said something to the effect of:
"Well, you know, I'm involved with a lot of different groups, one of which is ________, which basically monitors various kinds of transmissions that are emanating from different foreign elements, and they ensure that proper communication systems are within place between neighbouring nation-states, and they're always open to engaging people with various different language capabilities."
I had no idea what he had said.
But I got his email, remembered the name of the organization, looked it up on the web.
It was basically an offshoot of CSIS, the Canadian CIA -- a communications agency that 'monitors', which means 'spies', on other countries. They need people with language capabilities from all over the world, because, I guess, even Canada, yes Canada, is continuously spying on everybody all over the world.
Just for the hell of it, I emailed this organization, told them a variation of this story, asked how to apply. Somebody got back to me right away, in a very cordial, professional email, detailing to whom I should contact, with this caveat: "Oh, and if you do manage to get an interview, please don't tell them you contacted me, or know who I am. Cheers!"
(Full disclosure: I'm not sure I used the word 'caveat' correctly, but I thought I'd give it a shot.)
Weeeeeeeeird.
The thing is, I've always been interested in intelligence gathering organizations. I think the C.I.A. is up to more nefarious stuff around the globe than we can even begin to contemplate; I think its reach is wide and sharp and octopular in its range. (That's not a word, 'octopular', but I decided to throw caution to the wind there.) Seeing Oliver Stone's J.F.K. and reading Norman Mailer's massive novel Harlot's Ghost whetted my appetite at a young age for the illicit political machinations that governments perform in the name of national security. I like reading about it, thinking about it, and trying to figure it all out -- in the movies, in books, and in real life.
And this time, real life caught up to me.
But it made me wonder:
Was this young Canadian's entire aid group here in Cambodia nothing more than a front group for the Canadian C.I.A.? Is this how young recruits are, well, recruited? Over late-night Cokes in Phnom Penh? Does the fact that he positioned himself as a consultant to Canada's conservative parties mean anything at all?
Who knows?
Kind of fun, though.
I'm from St.Catharines, Ontario, see. To even contemplate the fact that I may have been a possible candidate for recruitment into the Canadian C.I.A., and that this whole endeavor went down in Cambodia, of all places, is proof that Life with a capital 'l' will gladly, even eagerly, throw its own warped and tantalizing surprise parties every now and then.
(Oh, and if you managed to read all of this post all the way to the end, please don't tell anybody that I contacted you, or that you know who I am. Cheers!)
Let me back up.
In the late summer of 2003 I was chilling on the waterfront in Cambodia, sitting at one of the numerous drinking joints that line the river, throwing back a Coke with a Canadian friend. She introduced me to her friend, another Canadian, who was heavily involved with a (you guessed it) Canadian aid group here. Nice guy -- very polite, well-spoken, good humored. He was a campaign consultant for Preston Manning and Mike Harris and the Tories back home -- kind of like the Canadian version of the Republicans.
He asked me what I did, where I'd been, yada yada yada. After learning that I'd spent four years in Japan, he started asking about my Japanese level, how fluent I was, bla bla bla. Then he said something to the effect of:
"Well, you know, I'm involved with a lot of different groups, one of which is ________, which basically monitors various kinds of transmissions that are emanating from different foreign elements, and they ensure that proper communication systems are within place between neighbouring nation-states, and they're always open to engaging people with various different language capabilities."
I had no idea what he had said.
But I got his email, remembered the name of the organization, looked it up on the web.
It was basically an offshoot of CSIS, the Canadian CIA -- a communications agency that 'monitors', which means 'spies', on other countries. They need people with language capabilities from all over the world, because, I guess, even Canada, yes Canada, is continuously spying on everybody all over the world.
Just for the hell of it, I emailed this organization, told them a variation of this story, asked how to apply. Somebody got back to me right away, in a very cordial, professional email, detailing to whom I should contact, with this caveat: "Oh, and if you do manage to get an interview, please don't tell them you contacted me, or know who I am. Cheers!"
(Full disclosure: I'm not sure I used the word 'caveat' correctly, but I thought I'd give it a shot.)
Weeeeeeeeird.
The thing is, I've always been interested in intelligence gathering organizations. I think the C.I.A. is up to more nefarious stuff around the globe than we can even begin to contemplate; I think its reach is wide and sharp and octopular in its range. (That's not a word, 'octopular', but I decided to throw caution to the wind there.) Seeing Oliver Stone's J.F.K. and reading Norman Mailer's massive novel Harlot's Ghost whetted my appetite at a young age for the illicit political machinations that governments perform in the name of national security. I like reading about it, thinking about it, and trying to figure it all out -- in the movies, in books, and in real life.
And this time, real life caught up to me.
But it made me wonder:
Was this young Canadian's entire aid group here in Cambodia nothing more than a front group for the Canadian C.I.A.? Is this how young recruits are, well, recruited? Over late-night Cokes in Phnom Penh? Does the fact that he positioned himself as a consultant to Canada's conservative parties mean anything at all?
Who knows?
Kind of fun, though.
I'm from St.Catharines, Ontario, see. To even contemplate the fact that I may have been a possible candidate for recruitment into the Canadian C.I.A., and that this whole endeavor went down in Cambodia, of all places, is proof that Life with a capital 'l' will gladly, even eagerly, throw its own warped and tantalizing surprise parties every now and then.
(Oh, and if you managed to read all of this post all the way to the end, please don't tell anybody that I contacted you, or that you know who I am. Cheers!)
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
WHAT I KNOW
One and one is two.
A glass of lemonade, pink or yellow, is, hands down, the best tasting stuff in the galaxy.
Bill Murray's work in Lost in Translation is overrated.
Bill Murray's work in Stripes, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Mad Dog and Glory, Rushmore, Scrooged and Meatballs is way, way, way underrated.
Saying Bill Murray is underrated is now overrated.
The Jesuits who tried to convert the Japanese all those many moons ago believed that the Japanese language was created by the devil in order to thwart their efforts -- and I tend to agree with them.
The Japanese language is very, very, cool.
The last line of Robert Redford's The Candidate is probably the greatest final line in movie history.
The first line of John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany is probably the greatest first line in literary history (according to me.)
People are good.
People are bad.
People are neither good nor bad, but driven to either by those around them.
Running is the equivalent of that old line about the guy finding his friend bashing his thumb in with a hammer, and, when asked why he does it, answers: "Because it feels so good when I stop."
Winning a race does wonders for your self-esteem and sense of place in the universe.
Losing a race you're supposed to win blows. (But it's true, I know, you learn more in losing than you do in winning.)
I haven't won a race in thirteen years.
I haven't eaten chocolate since lunch.
People living in Ontario don't think of themselves as 'Ontarians'.
People living in Alaska sometimes think of themselves as 'Alaskans'.
There is no such thing as 'Asia' -- just Japan, and Cambodia, and China, and Burma, and...
The last episodes of Family Ties, Cheers and Newhart ended perfectly.
The last episode of The Waltons was unseen by me. (And will, God willing, remain so.)
Life gets really, really harder the older you get, physically and emotionally.
Getting older is much, much better than the alternative. (Which is death.)
That lady who they've pulled the fluids out of the in the States should be allowed to live, because there's no written, legal proof that she said she didn't want to live if she were ever in such a state, only the statements of her husband, and besides, starving someone is not the way to go.
Watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off at twenty-nine, as opposed to fifteen, is a revelation -- what was once mini-James Bond heroics now comes across as a tender, somewhat innocent look at teenage idealism.
Watching The Battleship Potemkin at seven on a Wednesday morning in your film theory class is never, ever recommended.
A pink and orange sunset can't be beat.
The mysteries of the universe will never be explained to me. (Or you, for that matter).
We should keep on asking the universe to account for itself, even though it won't answer.
Dr.Phil should not be trusted.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen should not be trusted.
Smiling and being polite will get you everywhere in life.
Asking other people really interesting questions about their life, even though you're not really interested, will not only allow you to get to know them better, but will also open a new way of approaching your life on this earth that can only lead to greater and great avenues of enlightenment.
Random email inquiries when looking for a job are highly, highly recommended.
Existenialism is the only rational way of looking at life -- but it gets awfully depressing after awhile.
The final few seasons of Who's The Boss, when Tony and Angela finally got it on, got awfully depressing after awhile.
The smell of freshly baked cookies is proof, if not of God, at least of the possibility of one of His descendants still walking among us.
Boxing is cruel, barbaric, idiotic, and a truly humane, wonderful endeavor, life in a microcosm, life distilled.
People in Canada and America, for the most part, have no real grasp of what utterly abysmal conditions most people in the world live in.
Poor people are usually, almost always, nicer than rich people.
Poor people do not necessarily resent rich people; they just want a piece of the pie, too.
Books are one of the Platonic forms that, um, Plato talked about.
Alexander is actually a great movie, advanced, ahead of its time. (I'm serious.)
No one else will believe that Alexander is actually a great movie, advanced, ahead of its time.
Fifty is the new forty, and six is the new eight months.
Humor is hard (see above).
Roberto Benigini is really, really funny.
Gilbert Gottfried is really, really, really funny.
Nobody watches Canadian dramas.
Everything is relative, including knowledge (but the human heart isn't, hence its eccentric, elusive tastes...)
A glass of lemonade, pink or yellow, is, hands down, the best tasting stuff in the galaxy.
Bill Murray's work in Lost in Translation is overrated.
Bill Murray's work in Stripes, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Mad Dog and Glory, Rushmore, Scrooged and Meatballs is way, way, way underrated.
Saying Bill Murray is underrated is now overrated.
The Jesuits who tried to convert the Japanese all those many moons ago believed that the Japanese language was created by the devil in order to thwart their efforts -- and I tend to agree with them.
The Japanese language is very, very, cool.
The last line of Robert Redford's The Candidate is probably the greatest final line in movie history.
The first line of John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany is probably the greatest first line in literary history (according to me.)
People are good.
People are bad.
People are neither good nor bad, but driven to either by those around them.
Running is the equivalent of that old line about the guy finding his friend bashing his thumb in with a hammer, and, when asked why he does it, answers: "Because it feels so good when I stop."
Winning a race does wonders for your self-esteem and sense of place in the universe.
Losing a race you're supposed to win blows. (But it's true, I know, you learn more in losing than you do in winning.)
I haven't won a race in thirteen years.
I haven't eaten chocolate since lunch.
People living in Ontario don't think of themselves as 'Ontarians'.
People living in Alaska sometimes think of themselves as 'Alaskans'.
There is no such thing as 'Asia' -- just Japan, and Cambodia, and China, and Burma, and...
The last episodes of Family Ties, Cheers and Newhart ended perfectly.
The last episode of The Waltons was unseen by me. (And will, God willing, remain so.)
Life gets really, really harder the older you get, physically and emotionally.
Getting older is much, much better than the alternative. (Which is death.)
That lady who they've pulled the fluids out of the in the States should be allowed to live, because there's no written, legal proof that she said she didn't want to live if she were ever in such a state, only the statements of her husband, and besides, starving someone is not the way to go.
Watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off at twenty-nine, as opposed to fifteen, is a revelation -- what was once mini-James Bond heroics now comes across as a tender, somewhat innocent look at teenage idealism.
Watching The Battleship Potemkin at seven on a Wednesday morning in your film theory class is never, ever recommended.
A pink and orange sunset can't be beat.
The mysteries of the universe will never be explained to me. (Or you, for that matter).
We should keep on asking the universe to account for itself, even though it won't answer.
Dr.Phil should not be trusted.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen should not be trusted.
Smiling and being polite will get you everywhere in life.
Asking other people really interesting questions about their life, even though you're not really interested, will not only allow you to get to know them better, but will also open a new way of approaching your life on this earth that can only lead to greater and great avenues of enlightenment.
Random email inquiries when looking for a job are highly, highly recommended.
Existenialism is the only rational way of looking at life -- but it gets awfully depressing after awhile.
The final few seasons of Who's The Boss, when Tony and Angela finally got it on, got awfully depressing after awhile.
The smell of freshly baked cookies is proof, if not of God, at least of the possibility of one of His descendants still walking among us.
Boxing is cruel, barbaric, idiotic, and a truly humane, wonderful endeavor, life in a microcosm, life distilled.
People in Canada and America, for the most part, have no real grasp of what utterly abysmal conditions most people in the world live in.
Poor people are usually, almost always, nicer than rich people.
Poor people do not necessarily resent rich people; they just want a piece of the pie, too.
Books are one of the Platonic forms that, um, Plato talked about.
Alexander is actually a great movie, advanced, ahead of its time. (I'm serious.)
No one else will believe that Alexander is actually a great movie, advanced, ahead of its time.
Fifty is the new forty, and six is the new eight months.
Humor is hard (see above).
Roberto Benigini is really, really funny.
Gilbert Gottfried is really, really, really funny.
Nobody watches Canadian dramas.
Everything is relative, including knowledge (but the human heart isn't, hence its eccentric, elusive tastes...)
I MISS HOT SHOWERS
I miss hot showers.
There. I've said it.
I'm living in a country where only 20% of the population (give or take) have access to toilets, or running water, a country where the life expectancy hovers around age 50, a country where the prospects for a reasonable, livable, decent life (I didn't say happy) are slim and far between. (And what a weird phrase that is. Not even sure what it means. Sorry about that.) I shouldn't be thinking of my own personal comfort needs.
Still.
I miss hot showers.
In my apartment, there's only cold showers available. Often, that's enough. After a run, or on a particularly hot day (which means every day), a cold shower can feel damn good. Soothing. Rejuvenating, even.
Still.
I haven't been entirely without a hot shower in my almost two (gulp) years of living here. I've had them at the hotels I've stayed at, the guest houses I've stayed at.
So, let's see -- less than five hot showers in two years?
It's not that I think about them that often, to be honest. But every now and then, the memory of a hot shower, potent and fierce, appears in my mind, like a picture you can only feel, not see.
And then I think of most Cambodians, who have never experienced and will never experience the simple goodness of a hot shower. I swallow my pity and get on with my day.
Still.
I admit it.
I miss hot showers.
There. I've said it.
I'm living in a country where only 20% of the population (give or take) have access to toilets, or running water, a country where the life expectancy hovers around age 50, a country where the prospects for a reasonable, livable, decent life (I didn't say happy) are slim and far between. (And what a weird phrase that is. Not even sure what it means. Sorry about that.) I shouldn't be thinking of my own personal comfort needs.
Still.
I miss hot showers.
In my apartment, there's only cold showers available. Often, that's enough. After a run, or on a particularly hot day (which means every day), a cold shower can feel damn good. Soothing. Rejuvenating, even.
Still.
I haven't been entirely without a hot shower in my almost two (gulp) years of living here. I've had them at the hotels I've stayed at, the guest houses I've stayed at.
So, let's see -- less than five hot showers in two years?
It's not that I think about them that often, to be honest. But every now and then, the memory of a hot shower, potent and fierce, appears in my mind, like a picture you can only feel, not see.
And then I think of most Cambodians, who have never experienced and will never experience the simple goodness of a hot shower. I swallow my pity and get on with my day.
Still.
I admit it.
I miss hot showers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)