Random bits and pieces...

I’m watching King Kong on Cinemax – the new Peter Jackson version, not the old one. I’ve never seen the old one, but I know it ends with King Kong falling off the Empire State Building. So I’m assuming that’s how this one will end, too. Trying not to get too attached to the giant monkey. Some parts of this movie are just dumb – like the “runaway dinosaur convoy” scene, where a herd of dinosaurs are running through a canyon, on the heels of many ill-fated humans. I couldn’t figure out why the people wouldn’t just stop running and allow the out-of-control dinosaurs to pass… and now I’m watching a strange scene where Kong is defending his blond-haired human toy from three other dinosaurs. There’s a little too much CGI going on right now… I feel like I just stumbled into a new Dreamworks/Pixar movie…

I made some popcorn to eat while I watched the movie. Gotta have popcorn with a movie, right? And while it was popping, and the scent of superheated corn kernels filled the air, I started thinking about elementary school. Remember when you were a kid, and every now and then as a “treat” you’d get to pop some popcorn in your classroom for a snack? It would smell so good, and permeate the hallways, and you’d always be able to tell when ANOTHER class was popping popcorn, and be jealous that it wasn’t YOUR class. But eventually you’d be fortunate enough to have a Popcorn Day in your classroom, and the teacher would pop the corn, and everyone would get a little cup filled with freshly-popped popcorn. And you’d finally have a chance to taste that stuff that had smelled so good for so long… you’d take your first bite – and promptly want to spit it out. Because in school, they’d never add butter or salt to the popcorn. Apparently there was some concern about high cholesterol and high blood pressure amongst first graders. You know, because six-year-olds are such hard partiers. So instead of tasting like popcorn, that “popcorn” would always taste like styrofoam. It was such a cruel deception – to allow us all to smell the wonderful corn-popping smell, yet deny us the perfect marriage of corn, butter and salt. (Was it just my school? Or were other people given plain popcorn in school, too?)

So I’ve noticed something about Christmas lights the last few years. There’ve been “trends” that have come and gone. First it was icicle lights – those white lights that are stung along in lines of five or six to look like electric icicles. I really hated icicle lights, I think mainly because pretty much every other house in the neighborhood was displaying those things. There was no originality at all. I see fewer icicle lights these days, but there are still a few holdouts here and there… In 2001, after 9/11, the big trend was red, white and blue lights – which was actually rather cool because it had never been done before. Even the tree in Rockefeller Center was decorated with red, white and blue. The last few years, I’ve noticed another trend emerging – something I call “Stuff Strewn on the Lawn.” And as that name implies, it seems to consist mainly of stuff, which is strewn about people’s front lawns. The “stuff” is any or all of the following: light-up reindeer, light-up mini trees, inflatable holiday scenes of various Disney characters, plastic figurines, lights in the shape of trains, lights in the shape of gifts, lights in the shape of just about any other kind of Christmasy item imaginable. One of our neighbors has almost all of those things blazing on their front lawn, PLUS a big plastic printed sign that says, “Happy Holidays.” In case we couldn’t get the gist of what they were trying to say with all those other things…

Okay, King Kong is over now (“it was beauty killed the beast” – famous last line. Like I said, I’ve never seen the original movie, but I knew that was the last line…) It was a surprisingly touching reflection of the feelings between a woman and her giant ape. You could see the love in their tiny blue and gigantic hazel eyes, respectively. Okay, so maybe it was just a little bit weird… but since it’s after midnight (that was a long movie…) I’m off to bed. Hope everyone had a nice weekend… :)