Thumbsucker 2: Hyper

I was very pleased with the quality of comments at Book Club last week. The level of discourse was [surprisingly.--ed] high. Book Club may actually become a running feature. Anyway, let's do this. Today, I'm going to ask someone else to start things off so I don't monopolize the thread.
Go!

[no one's comin', dude.--ed.]

Update

Thank you to everyone who contributed toward Megan's Team in Training entrance fee. With your help, she surpassed her $2,500 goal today. Of course, you're welcome to donate more, but at least now she doesn't have to spend anymore money out of her own pocket. I don't care what anyone says, you guys are the best.

Now's the easy part, she just has to do a triathlon and swim in the East River [ewewewew.--ed.] .


Also, Book Club tomorrow, Part 2 - Hyper. Just because you missed last week doesn't mean you can't jump in now.

Our review is here! Our review is ... oh, you don't wanna see this...

The Reaping

The 10 Biblical plagues* engulf Haven (no, seriously), Louisiana and widower/ordained minister/suicide survivor/college professor Hilary Swank is called in to do... I don't know what, exactly. Plagues ensue!

I like Hilary. I think she's a fine actress (also, I saw her at the grocery store last year - call me!) and never miss an opportunity to see her in a paycheck film [see: Core, The]. This one is a doozy! She tries, she really does, but for all of her toothy goodness she still can't elevate this thing to the level of Fright Night**. No matter how seriously you take the proceedings, no matter how earnest, you can't make a good film with a bad director. This movie has one of the worst around.

Director Stephen Hopkins**** (Predator 2: Hunger for Hollywood) mans the helm with catastrophic results. The story is here, the stars are here, and he's got money to burn - yet he has no fucking idea how to make a film. This is a primo example of bad filmmaking. They should honestly show this in film schools as a "what not to do". I think my favorite part is when there are a few scenes where the actors are able to bring something good to the screen, he immediately throws in some ridiculous hallucination or unnecessary CGI. This story is pretty simple, yet Hopkins still felt compelled to throw in 3 different "flashback" sequences to make sure we didn't miss anything! It's not like he's a rookie, he has over 20 films and tv shows in his credits, he's just really, really bad. If he was any less of a hack, this thing would have been released as an Alan Smithee film.

Swank isn't the only one slumming here. The demon child is played by AnnaSophia Robb (despite the saucer face, she's not actually a Fanning). She's mute, which in a perfect world, is how all children would be. David Morrissey (Basic Instinct 2) plays a hunky Cajun science teacher who lives on a plantation and speaks with a Liverpoolian accent. Tragically, Stringer Bell is in this thing too, and unsurprisingly, doesn't see the closing credits.

Am I telling you to avoid it? Not exactly. Don't add it to your queue or rent it, but if it's on Cinemax after 9PM on a Tuesday, you're unemployed, and clinically depressed, then you should check it out if only to watch Hilary Swank tenderly offer to clean the menstrual discharge off a young demon's leg.


* (in descending order) Poor Fashion Choices, Tight Perms, Dirty Faces, Shoeless Feet, Really Old Bicycles, Trucks With Gun Racks, Fillin' Stations With Cool Pumps, Fat Mayors, Inconsistent Southern Accents, and Sweat, lots and lots of sweat.

** Fright Night was fucking good and if you disagree I don't care for you. I mention it because William Ragsdale*** plays the portly sheriff in The Reaping and he was the kvetching vampire hunter in Fright Night.

*** He also nimbly replaced Andrew McCarthy for the blockbuster Mannequin 2: The Mannequinning. Only Meshach Taylor reprised his role from the original film. Sad.

**** He once cast Tommy Lee Jones as Irish explosives expert Ryan Gaerity, a man who was so radical in his views that the IRA was afraid of him.

Mr No

I'm not a huge baseball fan; I'm a Red Sox fan. Last night, Jon Lester [see: above] threw a no-hitter. All no-hitters are sweet, this one was sweeter. Go find out why for yourself at the best baseball blog there is.

Thumbsucker

[If you're just tuning in, this is what we're talking about.]

I don't know how to do a book club on the internet, so I say we keep it simple. Let's talk about the book and share opinions. Be as brief or as wordy (cough cough CrimeNotes cough cough) as you like. All I ask is that you keep the discussion to the first section (no mentions that it's all just a dream!) and remember that these are opinions, so discussion is good, but statements like "How can you not see that _____ is actually ______? Are you dim?" are not.

Go!

[no one's comin', dude.--ed.]

Quick Word of Thanks

Chubba rejoices!!!
To everyone who had kind words and to everyone who contributed, I can't thank you enough. I know this is only a blog but occasionally it's just a little more.

Book Club starts tomorrow. First hundred pages. You can do it.

JHC

Holla Atcha Moms If You See Her In The Street

L to R: Snowflake, Moms, Chubba
It's Mother's Day, and here I am again, thinking about my Moms and trying to remember. That part's getting harder. She's been gone so long. There are parts of her that are in the wind, pieces of the puzzle that'll never be found. Sometimes, I have a thought pass by me, like a bit of recognition, but I've no idea where it's from. Days later, it'll come to me, usually at night, in the quiet. I realize it's part of her. Part of her I'd lost hold of. A facial expression, or the way someone enunciated a word. I saw her, in them, but it took me days to realize it. Those are the things that make me sad. It's not so much the years since she's been gone, the time I've spent that should have been time spent with her. Losing something that never was doesn't hurt. It's the fact that I'm losing what did happen, everyday, and there's not much I can do about it. There's no record of it. No record of her, or of us. Just what I can hold onto.

I can't talk about her either. I don't really want to discuss her with people who never knew her; I suppose it comes off as mopey, besides, that ends with them feeling sorry for me, which is the last thing I want. When I mention her to Snowflake, she just gets all upset. Not about Mom, but about how she treated Mom. She treated her relationship with Mom as something disposable. She would never admit it, but I think she sees her bad relationship with Mom as her life's biggest failure. I remember when she flew home from California to visit about a month before Mom died. She spent her 4 days home, shopping with friends, going out to the bars, and avoiding Mom at all costs. Finally, the night before she was flying back, I took her for a drive and laid it out to her. I told her, "I know you're having trouble dealing with all of this. I know what it's been like for me, but I have no idea what it's like for you. This is what I do know. It doesn't matter what happened 10 years ago, or 6 months ago - that shit doesn't matter - all that matters is the conversation you have with her tonight. The next time you come home it will be for Mom's funeral and if you don't talk to her tonight, you'll always regret it. So just talk to her. Please." She sat there in silence for about 10 minutes and finally came out with, "I can't."

And that was it. And she didn't. And here we are. So now, when I bring Mom up, I know she thinks about that conversation. I can just feel it. It's like she thinks I'm rubbing it in her face that I was "right". Admittedly, I don't mind lording it over someone when I'm correct, but this isn't that. My point is - Mom's fading and I don't know what to do about it. Writing about her seems maudlin, in fact, the only reason I'm doing this now is because last year, when I wrote about her, someone told me that reading it helped them tremendously in dealing with the loss of their mother. Talking about it leaves me feeling exposed and slightly embarrassed.

When people have asked me what it's like to lose your mom, I've always fumbled the opportunity. It's one of the only times when I've felt ill-equipped to express something with words. It's only now that I think I have a grasp on it. It's like a part of you is gone--no, that's not right--that part isn't gone. It's still there, just empty now, like a room in a house where the door stays shut and you quicken your step when you pass it. No matter what your relationship, or how you grade her performance as a mother, when you lose her, your life changes. The way I see her changed as well. I no longer see her as a "mom". I now see her as a person and that shift in perspective changes everything. I think of her as someone who had their own life, with their own wants and needs and problems, but put them aside to deal with mine first. Becoming a mother doesn't transform you into a saint. You're the same person you were before, but with a little person following you around all the time. I couldn't do it. She did it 5 times. No. Idea. How. So, in the past few years, I've been remembering her more fondly, not because she was a supermom (because she was pretty mediocre, honestly) but because I look at her as a woman. She was a good woman, and if one day someone looks back at me as I do at her [not as a woman, presumably.--ed.] [nice catch--JHC.], I'll have done it right.

I rarely dream, but when I do, it's frequently of her. It's nothing adventurous, or spectacular; my dreams of her are like her life - simple. In the dreams, she's older (she died at 50), grayer, and always sitting at the table. Usually, it's at my house where I live now. It's just us, and we're just talking. That's it. When I wake, it takes me a minute to remember that she's gone. Then I lie there and try to remember what we talked about in the dream. Was she trying to tell me something? Is she trying to boss me around from the beyond? What I wonder more than anything is - what would she have me do? How would she like me to remember her, or to carry her memory? I think she'd want me to do something to help others. She always said I "made the lights brighter when I walked into a room" [I always took this as a compliment, but in retrospect, I'm beginning to wonder that with her love for the drink, it might have been a reference to my tendency to be overly expressive and bombastic at times. I wonder if she was saying I intensified her hangovers? hunh.--JHC]. So, I decided this week, I'm going to get actively involved in the effort to find a cure. Just sitting here being awesome won't cure it. Writing a blog won't cure it. I honestly don't know what, or where, or how I'm getting involved -- but I promise I will.

I love you, I miss you, and I'm not letting go.

JHC


[UPDATE]

We've all known someone who had/has/will have cancer. A friend of mine lost her mother to cancer last year and she's doing something right now that I've never had the balls to do myself. She signed up for a triathlon and she's raising $2,500 for cancer research and patient services. Whatever she can't raise, she's paying out of her own pocket. Again, she's paying $2,500 for the opportunity to punish her body horribly. The training is something I can't fathom--let alone actually doing the race itself-- but she's doing it, and without a complaint. She's doing the triathlon for her mom but she's raising money for yours. It's too late to save my mom, or hers, but if you donate to her cause, you might help to save your mom, or your sister, or yourself. Follow the link and check it out.
Godspeed, Megan, and have fun in the Hudson.

I Can't Beat This

You may be familiar with the musical stylings of commenter extraordinaire, The Great Barstoolio. Her musical taste is surpassed only by her snarky wit [...and her lips - pow!--ed.] [word.--JHC.]. Today, she's outdone herself with an awareness campaign that defeats all others.
Enjoy.

Book Club 1: The First

We have our inaugural MvT Book Club selection--Thumbsucker FTW!!! Now, we just have to read it, which shouldn't be that difficult, since it's a good book and it's only 300 pages. Why don't we do Part I: Mouth to Mouth (up to page 102) for next Tuesday (May 13th)? You're going to want to read ahead but let's keep the discussion to the first section only.
If you have trouble finding a copy, drop me a line at jeebsy@gmail.com and we'll get something worked out.
Onward!