The Blog I'm Not Writing

Department Of Stop Giving Women TBI And Calling It A Plot Device

Can you identify the following three movies, each featuring a female in the lead role and each movie released within the past 18 months,   [1]  based on the following sentence fragment pulled from the movies’ respective plot summaries:

(1) Things go from bad to weird when she gets knocked unconscious during a subway mugging and magically wakes up to find herself in an alternate universe….

(2) … she falls off her bike during an exercise class, hitting her head. When she wakes, she believes that her appearance has magically changed…. 

(3) …when she has an accident that knocks her out cold, she wakes up in the hospital with the ability to….”  

Ah, the joys of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), that cognition-altering case of concussion or other forms of acute cranial damage, which the great minds of Hollywood have decided makes for innovative and wacky entertainment value.

 

 

 

 

By the way, the movies are

(1) “Isn’t it Romantic” (released in 2019);

(2) “I Feel Pretty” (released in 2018);

(3) “What Men Want” (released in 2019)

All three movies feature talented and appealing actors (respectively, Rebel Wilson, Amy Schumer, and Taraji P. Henson); aside from a ridiculous, knock-’em-out-wake-’em-up plot device more commonly associated with a soap opera cliché,   [2]  IMHO movies #1 and #2 had a few genuinely funny and/or touching moments. I can’t give a fair review to #3, What Men Want, as I (along with two of the total of five patrons who were in the theater during the showing I attended)  [3]  left before the movie was over – it was pushing too many buttons on my Skanky-does-not-always-equal-funny-meter.

 

 

 

 

I believe all genders/ages/ethnicities were equally guilty involved in the producing/directing/writing of each of those flicks; thus, I cast my net of appeal to all movie moguls:  for your next feature, please, can y’all agree to use another/less stale plot pivot point?   [4]

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Best Antidote For A Bad Movie Is One That Makes You Want To Fly

I sorta/kinda wanted to see the Captain Marvel movie, but thought I’d wait at least ten days before venturing to a movie theater to do so, to avoid the premiere week crowds. Although I’ve seen several of the superhero type movies I’m not fond of the genre. Whether the movie takes place in the Marvel Comics universe or the one with the X-men – those are separate comic book based “universes,” right? I have trouble telling them apart…and don’t care to expend the mental energy necessary to learn to keep them straight – I find them to be too same same.  There has to be the promise of something different to get me to go see those movies – I’ve learned that they never surprise me; I never feel for any particular character being in danger ’cause I know they are somehow going to superhero their way out of it (crash bang boom… yawn).  [5]

The subversive, fourth wall -breaking humor of the two Deadpool movies appealed to me, as son K assured me they would. Other than that I’m disappointed in the genre and have to be heavily lobbied (by MH and/or my offspring) to even consider seeing the latest release…like last year’s Avengers Last Stand Infinity Apocalyse of Mutant XMen’s Endgame . Or whatever.

Exception confession: I did enjoy the first The Avengers movie.

 

 

So, then, what with lowered expectations and all, how much fun was it for me to find myself really, really enjoying Captain Marvel?  Compelling, multi-dimensional good-and-bad-guy characters and good acting (I’ll cross the street to see Annette Bening in anything), and interesting (and concussion free!) plot twists.  AND…big sigh of right on, sistah! relief: no love interests getting in the way !!!!

Digression: I lack words to describe how refreshing it is to see a movie wherein the female characters get to do what females all over the world – excuse me, make that all over the universe, this being a superhero movie – do every day, which is to lead their lives/make decisions/save the planet without having their romantic interests featured as the most important thing about them.

After the matinee let out I had to make myself sit in my car for several minutes, ignition off. I knew I could not drive normally – read: safely – after seeing that movie. I recognized in moiself the urge to put the pedal to the metal and zip out of the parking lot as fast as I could…which, even had I done so, would have been a poor excuse for what I really wanted to be able to do: fly up into the stratosphere in my special, fire-glowing suit!

 

 

 

 

It was difficult to go grocery shopping like a mere mortal, after that.

 

*   *   *

Department Of Am I The Only Person Who Remembers Doing This?
Sub Department Of Perhaps This Is My Own Symptom Of TBI

I’m not sure if it’s a thing anymore – or maybe it was never a thing, and I was the only one who did it (although I’m thinking at least one of my siblings performed a similar ritual).

Scenario: I am a child of indeterminate grade school age; it is a school morning and I am sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal, the bowl placed inside a cereal bowl “fort” which I have constructed thusly: a box of cereal directly in front of me, with two other cereal boxes placed on either side of the middle box,  [6] extending outward/toward me at a 45˚ angle. I have constructed this fort in order to read the back of the cereal boxes while I am eating my cereal.

Perhaps this presaged my adult habit of reading the newspaper at breakfast?   [7]

Certainly, the content of the back of the cereal boxes could have been neither compelling nor new to me (I’d “read” the boxes multiple times).  And  I don’t know why I did that – I only remember that I did do it, almost every school morning, during my early elementary years.

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of The Joys Of Belatedly Tuning To The Tonight’s Top Stories Preview
Of A Radio Newscast, At The Moment Where All You Hear Is A Fragment Sentence Like…

“…and someone stealing goats in Fresno.”

 

*   *   *

Department Of Feminine Intimacy

Not to worry – what follows is not an endorsement for one of those kind of products.

 

 

Over the years I have received feedback from a few readers regarding the fact that although moiself will write in broad strokes about, say, my political, cultural and even culinary opinions, even though I will sometimes mention what’s going on with family and friends I rarely post anything of a truly personal nature. 

 

 

 

To which my honest reply has been something along the lines of how this is Not That Kind Of Blog ®.  But, it is a fair observation.  And, okay, this standoffishness ends today.  [8]

I will reveal something that is deeply personal to moiself:

I am living with EBPOS – Ear Bud Pop Out Syndrome.

 

 

It doesn’t matter the size of the cushion/caps, nor how assiduously I follow proper insertion technique  [9]   advice, the ear-tip thingies simply refuse to stay put. I have come to consider it a good morning when I’m out for a walk and listening to a podcast and have to reinsert the ear bud only two-three times. One day late last week…oy, not so good. I knew the day was getting off to a bad start when I was returning home and thinking to myself, Holy hamster shit, it’s a seven pop-out morning.

 

*   *   *

 

May life spare you from experiencing a seven pop-out morning;
May we all, if only in our dreams, get to fly like Captain Marvel;
May you never think, even for a moment, that I was capable of stealing those goats;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

 

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

 

[1] (and each seen in a movie theater, by moiself).

[2] “Hmm, what can we do with this character and where can we take his storyline – I KNOW, LET’S GIVE HIM AMNESIA!”

[3] The two were sitting a few seats down from me, in the back row. They were clad in saris, possible a mother and her adult daughter, judging from their apparent ages and interactions. They were conversing in Hindi (?) during the previews…and they left a nearly full bucket of popcorn behind when they exited the theater.

[4] And by that I don’t mean time travel.

[5] Isn’t the worst review you can give to an “action” movie is to have been bored by it?

[6] The center or middle box was  the cereal I was actually eating, and the other two were choices set out for other family members. Say, a Cheerios box, a Wheaties box and Cornflakes box trio.

[7] The newspaper my family subscribed to at the time was delivered in the afternoon, not the morning.

[8] If only for today.

[9] Which sounds vaguely sexual…for which I am truly sorry.