I've bored myself with all the negative/political crap that I've been writing in this World Wide Web log. I'm going to think of something pleasant and apolitical to write about.
Hmm ... Oh hey, my cat did the cutest thing the other day. She ran over to me and said "What the hell is wrong with the Republicans in Congress? Are they capable of anything besides obstructionism for political gain?"
No, that's not true. My cat is actually a right-wing freak who thinks that the Senate's health care plan is fascism, despite the fact that it is very similar to the plan that Republicans put forth in the early '90s, and by the way, have the Republicans offered any constructive criticism during this whole thing? I'd like to ... OK, I'm going off track again.
Hm. Well, here's something that could be interesting, at least. I have a few conventions of movies and TV that always make me laugh, because when you think about them, they're preposterous. But for some reason we always accept them. Read, enjoy, and have your movie-watching experience permanently damaged by intrusive realizations of the niggling implausibility of what you're seeing.
1. A character awakens from a scary dream and sits straight up immediately. Try actually doing this sometime. No matter how scary your dream is, it is almost impossible to sit up ramrod straight immediately. There's actually a scientific reason for this. During certain parts of your sleep cycle, your body is in a sort of rigor mortis -- your muscles are locked and cannot move. Some people have a disorder in which they wake up while in this state, which is very scary, as you can imagine. Some believe that it's in this waking rigor mortis that people have delusions about being kidnapped by aliens -- the fear translates to terrible semi-conscious dreams that they are later convinced really happened. But anyway, that's besides the point.
Point is, most people experience this state of rigor mortis while they're dreaming. You can wake up with a start, but your eyes will open and that's about all you can do for at least a second or so.
2. A character coming home from the grocery store always has a baguette sticking out of his/her bag. I'm actually stealing this one from Roger Ebert, who's such a terrific movie reviewer that I'll read his reviews for fun, even if I have no intention of seeing the movies he describes. He documented this observation, which is an especially odd convention because I'm betting that a huge percentage of Americans have never bought a baguette in their entire lives. But we just implicitly accept that every movie character loves baguettes and buys them constantly.
I won't use up more spots for other Roger Ebert rules, but I have to include a few more in this one. He also has the Rule of the Apple Cart, in which every high-speed chase through a city involves someone knocking over a large cart of fruit, as if every city is lousy with them. My favorite, though, is the Meet Cute, in which every couple in a romantic comedy has to meet in some ostentatiously cute way, such as smashing into each other in the street or grabbing each other's genitals simultaneously during an orgy (awkward!) or something like that. It's never a matter of the guy just sort of sidling up to the crazy drunk girl during Dollar Shot Night at the Tipsy Pelican like what happens in real life.
You know, this is probably because in real life, meetings of potential mates are always painful and unseemly to watch. In fact, everything about the human mating process, in real life, is horrible to watch. If you're watching bad relationships, you feel icky and sad for both people. With good relationships, the people seem sickly sweet and annoying. Best to keep love off the screen entirely and just stick to watching stuff fart and explode.
3. Characters using computers in movies often end up with screens that blink "ACCESS DENIED!!!" in massive, boxy red letters. Movie characters seem to always be using computers that are actually running Atari games from the early '80s. In real life, you'd get a tiny little box coming on the screen saying "Password does not match username. Please try again." I guess that doesn't have quite the same cachet for the big screen.
4. Characters in different movies often use exactly the same scream. There's the Wilhelm scream, which is sorta famous and might actually be extinct now because it's too famous. Here's a video that compiles Wilhelm screams in various movies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdbYsoEasio
But there are other ones I notice often. In TV ads I often hear a surprised sort of "WhaaAAAAaa!" that I of course can't describe further because I don't know what it's called or anything. So it's kind of pointless to bring it up. Oh well.
What else? I'm sure I'll think of more later. And when I do, I'll delete this part and put in another one. Kinda sad, really. These words never got the chance to fly on their own. Sigh.
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3 comments:
I always noticed, in addition to the silly baguette, that there are usually floppy leaves sticking out of the top of the bag, too. Like celery or beet greens.
Another thing I've noticed, mostly with sitcoms, that when someone takes out the trash, it's always in a bag that's clearly only about 1/3 full. Who takes out the trash when it's still mostly empty? Unless there's rotting pork in there, everyone I know stuffs his/her trash bags to the limit.
The waking up one is funny. You're totally right about it. I've never leapt up after a bad dream. Or any dream.
You're also totally right about watching dates. I once wound up at a restaurant a few tables away from someone I knew who was on an awkward date. As if it wasn't awkward enough to begin with, it was a quiet restaurant and there I was watching and listening to the whole painful scene.
The thing is, I'm not sure I'd want to watch a Meet Real. In the rare films where scenes like that are true to life, I find myself cringing and just wanting them to be over.
I was listening to the radio this weekend, and they actually did a story on why movie computers always go "ACCESS DENIED" in giant letters. And the answer is: video games! Nicely intuited, Ed! Back in the olden days (early '80s), no one except nerds, geeks, and Wall Street gurus had ever even heard the word "computer", let alone seen one or used one to find out the worst fashion mistakes at the 2010 Grammys!! (what was Beyoncé thinking??).
But they knew all about Centipede and Frogger. And since most people are pretty bad at video games, they were used to seeing "GAME OVER" in those special, 8-bit block letters. So they adapted it to spy computers in movies.
The other interesting thing the guy said was that nothing actually happens when people type or punch buttons in movies. They have someone offscreen sitting there with the ACCESS DENIED screen all ready, and when the Matt Damon-like superspy character shows up (he's been making several appearances in my comments lately, it seems), and mashes the keyboard, some dolly grip or best boy or horse handler flips a switch, and bam! there's your ACCESS being DENIED!!
On the nightmare issue, I have an apropos story, dedicated to Chris, my brother, whom I slept with. We shared a room, and one night I came in after he was asleep, and he made a little snort, and zhip! he sat bolt upright in bed, looked out into the middle of the room, and said, "Hey! Did Mom (mrl grabbl flap)...?" At which point, with alarming speed, he went zhwomp! back down on the bed, flat out. He missed cracking his head on the wall by like an inch. I winced looking at it. I was like, "Hey Chris, what did you say?", and he said, "(Grbl nmph)."
So I can personally attest to instant bolt uprightness in bed, but only when the person is still asleep, not waking up from a nightmare.
Huh, Joe, your story about your brother reminds me of a story my sister told me about me one night. We were watching a movie and I fell asleep on the couch. Mid-sleep, I stood up and said to her, "There are too many jumps." She said something like, "what?" and I said, "There are too many jumps, you dolt" and I laid back down on the couch and continued sleeping. That tale always kind of gave me the willies. I've wondered if I've ever done that again.
I like the ACCESS DENIED factoids. I always assumed it was so we viewers could read the big letters easily. Same with the giant username and password fields. I like that it hearkens back to our GAME OVER days.
Al and I actually got into an argument about the silly baguette. He claims it's critical to story development that we know that the bag is of groceries and that the person is just coming from a grocery store. I maintain that if the bag were obviously full but we didn't know what was in it the viewer would be challenged to do a little more interpretive work about where the character was coming from and thus enhance the viewer experience. I suppose one could argue that if we didn't see the baguette, we'd be distracted from the point of the movie with our thoughts about WHAT'S IN THE BAG????
Just once, though, I'd like to see someone carry home three plastic bags instead of one paper bag.
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