That's Weird

now playing: zuzu's petals, the dustkickers. what a wicked song. any song that alludes to possibly the greatest christmas movie of all time *has* to rock.

Hey guy! (Yes, that's an intentional "guy"... there's a guy in the office who calls everybody guy, and it cracks me up. Idiosyncrosies as a whole make me laugh though.) It's the weekend! I'm up late! I'm going to sleep in. And I'd like to write something tomorrow, but I don't know what to write about. I guess I have a couple of ideas. Let me share one or two with you (we'll decide whether it's one or two when we get to the end of one -- after all, it is long past midnight).

We just got done watching The Prince and Me with Julia Stiles. I like Julia Stiles a lot, mostly cause she doesn't really seem to be all about the "I need to do ultra-sleazy roles to prove my 'maturity' " thing. I appreciate that. What I don't appreciate is feminism trying to impact the romantic comedy genre. ( *Warning: Spoilers ho!* ) See, toward the end of the most recent Stiles movie I watched, she decided that she couldn't follow her heart; she had to go and do all the things she set out to do before she met the dude.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for planning, and I'm all for not just willy-nilly saying, "It felt right in my heart." On the other hand, this is a movie: it is meant to demonstrate -- in some form or another -- something that touches, somehow, the universality of love. Instead, if you check out the alternate ending especially, it appears that the director's original intention was to have the movie end with them both moving in their separate directions, cause she wanted more than just to be with him. There was no "we," there was "you" and "me." I don't know, I guess i just found it lame.

And now a confession: half way through the above, I almost stopped typing. I didn't because I thought a more interesting point could be drawn out from what I wrote above. Hokey Stink -- have I ever bought into a North American view of romance. "Cast all sensibility aside, throw your plans to the wind, and caution therewith! Love... love is all!" The universality of love? What is love? Is love, like Ravi Zacharias implies, Rebekah crossing the desert and meeting Isaac, marrying the dude, and learning to love him? Is love found one night, as in the Stiles movie, hitting on a cute bartender while slightly inebriated? Why do I buy into the Hollywood crap? You know what's worse? As soon as I condemn myself like this, my mind flits to Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle, and the comments Rosie O'Donnell makes: "You don't want to be in love... you want to be in love in a movie."

It is a ridiculous generation that examines themselves and finds that their expectations regarding the utmost of emotional expression are defined by adults playacting on a silver screen. Is romance really what we've come to believe it to be? Is it that shallow thing imbedded so strongly in pop-culture? Let's hope not. Because, unlike those play-actors, real people don't get to wipe off the makeup and go home after a long day. We're stuck with the situations we get ourselves into. And, I doubt if it'd really be all that easy to walk away from being the queen of Denmark.