1/13

"A Sunday" By Jimmy Eat World

On a Sunday I'll think it through.
On the drive back I'll think it through.
What you wish for won't come true.
Live with that.
On a Sunday she thought it through.
Now as I drive back, there's thirty-six less hours I have to change
the course I send myself.
Live with that.
On a Sunday go once around.
Because when the rides done, the hopes that you have carried,
they fall out from your hands back to the ground.
Live with that.
Learn as the drugs leave.
Learn as you lose it.
You will.
The haze clears from your eyes on a Sunday.


Is there anything more lonely than a Sunday night? If you were set for execution and they brought you an array of the best food you'd ever had in your entire life, prepared exactly as you remembered it, could you really enjoy it knowing what was going to happen when you were finished eating? Same thing with Sunday nights. I try to pack in as much leisure and enjoyment as I possible can, yet the squawking Monday morning alarm clock looms inevitably like the executioner on his smoke break.

I just finished watching "Unbreakable." I still say that movie got a bad rap. It was the victim of a misleading marketing campaign. Much like "Dan in Real Life," another fantastic though misrepresented movie. The latter wasn't nearly as badly handled as "Unbreakable," but I did think they chose the least appealing clips of the movie to include in the trailer. They seemed to miss the whole heart of the movie.

Going back to Sunday night and "Unbreakable," there was a line in the movie that struck a chord with me. Samuel L. Jackson's Mr. Glass character says to the Bruce Willis's character...

"...That little bit of sadness in the mornings you spoke of, I think I know what that is. Perhaps you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing."

If you substitute morning for Sunday night, I can most definitely relate. Which is not to say I hate my job because I don't. This show seems like it will be much different than those I worked on before and the people around me seem genuinely nice, interesting, and of a refreshingly balanced perspective when it comes to the job we do, i.e. doing it without losing your mind and becoming a corporate drone. But it's still a job. Where is my work?

Another line from the movie:

"Do you know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world."

Does anyone really know their place though? Okay, surely some do, but do most people really feel like they know? I'm guessing not at 29 anyway. And if they think they do, I would bet they're proven wrong a couple times. But there is definitely something scary about it, I think. Not scary in the sense of swimming in the ocean and looking down to see the open jaws of a 25-foot Great White looking up at you, but still pretty frightening. I'll go one further and say even scarier than not knowing your place in the world is glimpsing your place and being severely disappointed.

Also saw "Knocked Up." Wow. This was an exceptionally good movie. As a wannabe writer, this was one of the movies that makes me say "Well fuck me, because I could never write something like that." It's one of those that makes me want to pack it in and open a beef jerky stand. Not that I know the first thing about the dried meat business.

By the way, "Atonement" was decidedly NOT a jerky-stand movie. I think the book was entirely fiction (right?), but it felt like a movie handicapped by being based on a true story and having to stick close to that true story when it really could have done so much more. Same goes for "American Gangster." "Knocked Up," in my opinion, was more insightful, original, and endearing than either one of the other two movies which will probably rake in ten Oscars between them.

On that note, I think I will do a post giving out my own version of the Academy Awards. Yeah, that's the ticket.

By the way, do we finally have enough movies called "American (something)" or featuring the word "chronicles?" Seriously, off the top of my head:

American Pie
American Wedding
American Gangster
American Psycho
American Me
American Beauty
American History X
American Movie
American Graffiti
American Dreamz
American Gigolo

ENOUGH!