50 Shades of Raney

Holy Charles Dickens Christmas Carol. I always knew I was different.  I had a visit in the middle of the night.  It was kind of like a literary spirit guide.  I just knew I had a spirit guide and that the other side would one day get a message to me. 

But I’ll be honest with everyone who stalks my blog ;0)

I wasn’t expectin’ Raney

Everyone in North Carolina knows Raney and her talented creator Clyde Edgerton. She defined an Eastern North Carolina woman. She set up the rules for the rest of the world to see:  notice everything, voice your opinion and stick to it no matter how ridiculous it actually is.  Tell a story about anything in tiny little details no one else notices. Make it funny no matter what is going on. 

There you go.

I love my southern writers-Clyde Edgerton, Kaye Gibbons, Jill McCorkle, Charles Frazier.  Contrary to popular belief and our recent voting records, we aren’t illiterate hicks.  We produce good people. Raney is a good Southern Baptist girl who marries a librarian from Atlanta. The novel takes over from there…

I moved up to Connecticut by circumstances out of my control and for now I am staying in the Connecticut and because of the North I have a very good life.  Whatever she had to say to me must have been mega important for a freewill Baptist woman to leave her Eastern NC literary world to come visit me in my woman leased apartment in the north off a town green…

Hello Miss Newsom            

Uh-oh. When you get a Miss and your Daddy’s name instead of your husband’s name, you are in some kind of trouble.

I’ll mind my manners-manners get your farther than acting ugly, trust me.

Hi Raney-want some tea? 

Yes thak you.

She waited.  I guess this means I need to get up and pour her some tea in the middle of the night. She is lucky mint is in season.I have enough sense to know she wants sweet iced tea and not ask her if she would prefer black, green, or oolong.

Sip sip

Did you use sugar?

No m’am, honey

What?

Nothing…I mean, yes, the most refined white stuff I could find in the regular grocery store. I didn’t go to the health food place for organic honey. You are on your way to diabetes. Sip up.

So...What’s this I hear about grey books?

What grey books?

Charles is retiring next year but he says that even in the library in Listre, North Carolina, they can’t keep these books on the shelves. The wait list is 75 women long. I’m not telling who is on that list either and my husband would hit the roof if he knew I looked behind his back, but  some of my friends are using fake names like we don’t know their handwriting.  I saw a copy at my sister’s house and two of my cousins and now my 83 year old aunt had to up her blood pressure medicine over this. What is going on?

I tried to let my creativity handle the situation:

It’s an art book. Fifty shades of grey-charcoal, pencil, elephant, rainy skies, generic sweatshirt….

Don’t you get smart with me little missy. And you wonder how your six year old has an answer for everything?  I know what this Fifty Shades is all about. It's about bedroom stuff.

Well, it’s just one of those things for fun.

Fun?

Yeah, you know…women laughing and acting silly and comparing notes.

She got quiet. Southern women quiet are dangerous.

Let me read a paragraph.

Excuse me?

Pick one scene for me to read.

Raney-who went to her Myrtle Beach honeymoon prepared with nothing but a talk with her mom and a Bible wants me to pick one paragraph from 50 Shades of Grey for her to read?

OK, here you go….she can compare this to the beach.

Let me get reading glasses.... Honey,  how on Earth do you read off this phone?

Well, that way no one knows what you are reading.

She asked what a couple of the words meant, I figured out how to explain. I speak good Eastern NC, my grandmother’s people were from New Bern.

Oh my…no we can't be reading this.

How about, instead of throwing a hissy fit when we don’t get our way, we just say, It is what it is and find another way to have fun?

Girl you have lived up here way too long, you need to pack and go on home. 

 See, part of living up here, means no one tells me what to do anymore.

I’m staying and I will read what I want.

Fine young lady, you read your smut. That’s between you and the Lord. I still don’t know how you have time to read if you are polishing your grandmother’s silver like you should be. Read on but don’t let me catch you in a casino.

Gulp, shudder…

Sometimes it’s ok to lie to someone who isn’t real anyway.

Yes ma’am.

Be careful around those Yankee men…I wouldn’t let a one of them in the house if I were you.

 

Only to fix the sink.

It is what it is…It is what it is…..hmm…I need to go to the mall up in Raleigh and get this book…I hope Charles is still awake when I get home.

And she left

I hope Charles sends me a bottle of wine with a thank you note if she reads all of that.

Wow…I always thought if I had a dream about a literary female, it would be Lisbeth Salander or Cathy Trask from East of Eden, or one of those over the top bad ass women in Game of Thrones.

I didn’t think it would be Raney.

Whenever I think too hard about the South, that means a trip home is in the near future.

I’ll bet those Angels I went to college with could use some grey….

Forty days straight drained me....I'll be back sometime before Pentecost.  Can't wait for ordinary times!

40: The Rocky Horror Picture Show

The Rialto at midnight

July, 1995

Every girl needs a really good DUMPED story.  A time she was left flat on her little tail.

Here is mine:

 The boy in question and I were trying to decide what to do on a Saturday night with my roommate and her boyfriend:

So, what’s the movie about?

It’s about a couple and their car breaks down on their way to visit an old professor, and they end up in a mansion full of freaks.  It’s pretty funny.

Oh, I like comedies.

You will love this-and it’s a musical. Like Mary Poppins or The Sound of Music.

Sounds good.

OK, OK, I know it.  That was false advertising. I left out a lot of pivotal information when I explained the plot to that poor guy.  But anything offensive went right over my head-I really thought about it the way I described it.

The line to get in wasn’t quite the movie goer crowd you would see going to see, say….anything with Tom Hanks or Meg Ryan in it.  There was a lot of leather out at 11:30 at night in a North Carolina July heat wave.

We sat down and the slideshow started-all the different literary allusions to the movie and license plates went by one by one.  This was before Harry Potter had entered my life, I had no idea fans could get so crazed about anything.   

He started to squirm a little bit every time someone yelled a swear word at the screen.  Again, it was all bouncing right off me. I believe I was thinking about what a cute Brad and Janet we would make for Halloween.

The MC asked if there were any virgins in the audience.

I tried to raise his hand and he jerked down and I tried to get him to raise it again but he just wasn’t having it. 

It means you have never seen the show before-this is your first time here.

Well, it really isn’t necessary to let everyone know.

The movie started…and I really believe he found the first thirty minutes entertaining.  We got soaked in the rain when everyone launched squirt guns. 

He was very confused when the MC said, Everyone please stand for the Time Warp.

At this point, he was still enjoying the weirdness of it.  This was interactive theater and all in good fun.  It could happen once, no big deal.

But then....Dr. Frank-N-Furter made his appearance.

Um, Page, That's a man...  Why oh why didn’t I just say, “Oh my God! You are right, let’s get out of here and go shoot pool?”

Instead this came out of my mouth:

Shh…this is my favorite part. And I started to sing along with the sensuous Tim Curry.

Oops.

After that we see Rocky along with half the audience in the theater, strip to their underwear and run around and around in circles.  He looked at me horrified that at any moment my 90’s peasant dress would fall to the ground and I would join in.  I didn’t, but only because I didn’t feel like it -I don’t think my bra and panties matched that night.  

Let’s not discuss the rest of the show-but those that love it know that everyone sleeps with everyone else and has “Meatloaf” for dinner.  Then they get beamed back to their Transexual planet.  

 Ha ha ha ha…

The next Monday night he called me and told me it was over.  We just didn’t have anything in common and he wasn’t as politically correct as I was.

ouch...sob...whatever...find another...

That should always be your mantra ladies: ouch, sob, whatever, find another...

I'll bet he never told a soul about that night.  I don't blame him.  I have a hard time admitting I paid full price for Notting Hill. Sometimes different is just different and novelty wears off.  Pay a mechanic to change your oil or learn how to do it yourself.  Queue 70s shock-value films on Netflix for the memory of it.  There have to people out there that like what you like: ouch, sob, whatever, find another...

Rocky Horror is part of our culture and it is going to live on. Glee did their version on a Halloween episode and Barry Bostwick and Meatloaf took time to cameo.   Tim Curry reads children’s books, The Series of Unfortunate Events, on audio with gusto and cracks me up every time.  I watch Phineas and Ferb with my three beautiful children and I hear Richard O’Brien’s voice and remember his Riff opening the door on Brad and Janet so many years ago to say Hello. 

 Do you think any of them care that they helped me, and probably millions of others, grow up and realize who we are and what we really want out of our lives?

Maybe on my 40^th birthday I’ll do the underwear run with Rocky-whether my bra and panties match or not.

39: Young Adult

 

December  29, 2011

Arlington, Virginia

with: Julie Anne

Well, yeah...last year was one of THOSE years. We have them.  We've had them before and we'll have them again.  No one is immune to one of those years.  So, how to end the year of all years?

I did the Junior year abroad thing.  Academic year 1995-1996 was spent in a beautiful haze of bliss with my American and Spanish friends.

About five months before departure we had to fill out rooming assignment personality forms.  I wasn’t the witty goddess then that I am now, but I remember filling out the form and happily mailing it back to an office at Chapel-Hill.  Carolina-a school I was too afraid to apply to, but was good enough to study abroad with.  

I remember filling it out like this:

I am a studious person.  I need my quiet time and I need to hit the books when it is time to hit the books. However, I love to party when it is time to party but I don’t like living with a drunk that is going to throw up all the time. I also don’t have a lot of tolerance for ditsy girls-give me someone a little more intelligent.

Whoever got that form must have decided the rooming situation was a no brainer. I was giving to Julie Anne.

Julie already had a degree in Politics and came back to school for Spanish.  She was old, I mean really OLD!!!  She was 25-born in 1970!  Even her brother was old-23!  Ironically, her parents were younger than mine.  Is this what happens when you say you don’t want to room with a drunk ditz?  They give you the old lady?

That old lady turned out to be one of the best friends I have ever had in my life! I remember one night we were on our beds studying and I said, “You know, one day, four years age difference isn’t going to matter-like when we are thirty six and forty-who is going to care?”  We had a good laugh that night…

Until last year, when we indeed were thirty-six and forty. 

Over Christmas I was thinking about it-I owed her a visit for her 40th birthday, even though it was a year late.

It all happened over two texts.

Can I come up?

Yes-meet me and my parents at the hockey arena around 10:15.

So I found her amidst the Caps jerseys and we took the metro back to her house.

She is one of those friends that time stands still for.  I walked into the guest bedroom in her house and put my stuff down like I had just gone to the Costa del Sol for the weekend and was coming back to hear about her ski trip in Granada.

Tomorrow? Her sentences can be short.

Doesn't matter-can we bake cookies and watch movies on Netflix?  Maybe that was a bit of a red flag to her. 

Sushi and a movie in a theater. Movies are for the big screen.

She is right-she knows it, I know it, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, and James Cameron know it.  I needed a big screen.

She took me to a place where you pick sushi dishes off a conveyer belt as they go round and round.  That is what I did for about five minutes.  Watched the sushi go by....

We decided on Young Adult.  

I had already seen Charlize Theron go crazy once before in The Devil's Advocate, but this was a completely different crazy.  This was what I'll call possible crazy and not entertaining Devil crazy...The fact that it could actually happen to you or one of your girlfriends makes it worse to watch.

Charlize is playing a divorced young adult novelist named Mavis who gets a photo in an  email of an ex's new baby. The ex boyfriend's wife sent the email.  This triggers a decision to go home and try to get her high school life back.

Anyone anywhere will watch this and say, "Nah...I'll skip the reunion this year...who cares about those people...I'm normal."

It really was like watching a train wreck. Now I get that expression. The crazier she acted the more nauseated I got sitting in the theater watching it happen. I wanted to pull out a notebook and take notes on how not to behave.   

When we get to the root of what really upsets her, I don't know what that other woman was thinking sending the picture.  Then again, we all have good intentions and make horrible mistakes and we can't be held too responsible for the choice someone else makes.

Diablo Cody wrote a brilliant screenplay and nobody does crazy like Charlize. It was sad and it is on my list of movies that certain friends are not allowed to see.  What really resonated with me was that the main character did change a little, but not dramatically.  It doesn't happen within one trip home.

I left the theater feeling very normal.

The next day I ran about twelve miles through the Washington Monuments with Julie's mom and felt even better.

So when you fill out the roommate forms...factor in who will still be around for your seventeen years later- in an adult way, not a young adult one...

38: A Good Pulp Fiction Friday

1994 and 1995

The Rialto twice

Mission Valley

The Studio twice

in Greensboro at the Janus

The Student Center in Sevilla, Spain

The dollar theater at least once

One Friday night, my super hyper college suite mate announced:

We have to see this movie!  We have to this movie! This movie changes everything you ever thought about movies. We have to see this movie!  YOU WILL LOVE IT!

What are you talking about?

You don't get it, John Travolta isn't John Travolta anymore!  And that the control center guy in Jurassic Park, he's in it too...They're gangsters!

Gangsters?  We are going to see a gangster movie?  

Let's go!  Call Amy!

Three sophomores from a Southern Baptist college for women that didn't allow boys or alcohol in the dorms were about to go see Pulp Fiction-two for the first time. 

 I'm not sure if we should have taken our friend Amy.  She gets mad when I say it, but I swear she almost fainted. I can still hear her now: Really Page?  Really?  If I were walking down the street and my head exploded, would you bust out laughing hysterically?  Really?

She didn't blame this on Deanna, she only zeroed in on me....

For the record, she did go see it with us one more time, but she did it for the English major inside her, that is what she told us anyway... :0)

I'm sure many people will roll their eyes when I say it, but watching that movie was a life changing moment for me.

For one thing, you don't have to do things in the normal way.  All the scenes are scrambled. I'll admit it, when my brother gave me the tenth anniversary edition on DVD, which Jeff and Maria still have from this summer, I hit the scenes and watched in chronological order.  My Pulp Fiction force was quite disturbed after that.  It felt icky to watch it from beginning to end in the right way.  Maybe that is way my forty movie theater stories have jumped around in age and space instead of starting with ET and moving forward.

My absolute favorite scene is when Butch is waiting at the stop light and Marsellus is randomly walking across the street from a bakery.  That is something that would happen to me.  The wrong/right people randomly come and go out of your life for all the wrong/right reasons at the wrong/right times.  All his girlfriend had to do was remember the watch. She forgot it, he went back, etc. and so on.

Each little action sets off one and then another.  We never, ever know what ties are going to bind us to any one person.  The solution is to never leave your house, but we can't do that and function on a daily basis. I also wouldn't cheat a head gangster that possibly might have pushed someone out a window over a foot massage, but that is just me.

This movie has so many wonderful stories from my past...

I was working for my aunt at a software company that summer. I was on the phone with a girlfriend planning to go and see Pulp Fiction, she overheard me and screamed, OH NO YOU ARE NOT GOING TO SEE THAT GARBAGE!  Did I dare tell her I had already been about five times?

I went to see it in Sevilla with Kysa, who had never seen it in English. She could not believe what was going on. She was from New Jersey, maybe gangsters weren't so glamorous there.

 I was at a baseball game with a group of girls and kept screaming that we had to be home by ten to watch E.R.  Not because I was all about George Clooney, but because Quentin Tarantino was directing that episode.

That Oscar year was a good one. Forrest Gump won almost everything, but Pulp Fiction came in very, very close behind.  Deanna's mother called us every five minutes to make sure we were watching!

My favorite quote:

  I do believe Marsellus Wallace, my husband, your boss, told you to take ME out and do WHATEVER I WANTED. Now I wanna dance, I wanna win. I want that trophy, so dance good.   Some people seem to think that Mia was an anti-feminist character. I say she wanted what she wanted and got it! 

I hope Julius did get to walk the earth like Kain, but who knows?

 Please, fundamentalist friends, forgive this comparison, but Pulp Fiction was my cinema Good Friday.

This movie changed the way I watched movies.

Seriously, this was when I began to see who was doing the acting, who was doing the writing, what colors and angles the director found important.  How the director told the others what to do.  Gone were the days of passively watching a story on the big screen. There was  a bigger purpose to the project.

After Pulp Fiction, I saw all movies differently.  Nothing before really mattered, and everything afterwards was a thousand times better because I was aware of this.

That is what Good Friday is all about.

Now, I'll just keep trying really hard to be a shepherd...or am I a shepherdess?

37: Boyz N the Hood

July, 1991

Janus Theater

with: My summer camp group and our priest-I could probably name them all but won't

I think I really listen to my priests.  I put them in a category all by themselves.  I remember most of them since Robinson, Illinois. I even went to high school with one of them, but I refuse to go to his station for getting anointed with oil.  We have way too much history for him to heal me. If you have to confess, go to one that doesn't know you so well.

One summer, I went to an Episcopal camp-it was one of "those" camps.  Like the Breakfast Club or any other coming of age movie or sitcom where a group of different kids were together for one week to learn about themselves, life, the universe, and everything.  There was an even number of us, and I think we were half and half on everything. Half girls, half boys, half black, half white. I don't believe in magic rainbow happy endings, but by the end of that week, all of us were closer than we were before. I'm still close to three of them now.

The priest insisted that all twelve of us agree on everything before we made a decision-how Quaker of him.  One of the planned activities was for us to go see the movie Boyz n the Hood together and then discuss when we got back to camp.

Everyone was all for this idea....except one camper.

So the priest, who I have since learned enjoyed starting fights and watching them work themselves out, told us none of us were going because one person didn't want to....

This sparked quite a fight amongst us.

I don't remember all the details, but we did end up going.  She huffed and puffed, but she sat through her first ever R rated movie.  What was my first R rated movie?  I think it was Bachelor Party, it might have been the Godfather. It was definitely something my dad didn't want to turn off the television.  My sixteen year old self has the image of twelve teenagers showing up with a priest in his collar to order thirteen tickets to see Boyz n the Hood...

 Now, for the movie:

John Singleton was only twenty four when he wrote and directed this.  He was the youngest person ever to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Director. I saw him on Oprah and all I could think was you are wearing a hat inside.  I used to be southern.

Cuba Gooding Jr. plays the main character.  The boy in the hood with a present father figure that cares about him.  The character left the hood and went to college. The actor went on to win for Jerry Maguire. The day after Cuba won I put the movie poster up in my room in Spanish. It was translated, "Los chicos del barrio."

We had to watch it for a class at Meredith. The discussion wasn't as deep as it had been at camp. Nothing ever is I guess.  That professor, unlike my priest four years before, kept an edited for television version in the library. She rolled her eyes about hearing kids in the hood say "Gosh darn..." but she gave girls the option.  I would love to see the list of who checked out the clean copy.

My friend Timothy said when he went with his friends he clapped at the end, and when he went with us, he cried. Interesting...

After we got back to camp and had dinner the priest made us do a conflict resolution thing.  Again, I don't remember the mellow drama except maybe the girls got ugly and the boys were like whatever and the priest was enjoying his creation and since I still remember it he must have done something right.

But at the end, he asked us, "Does anyone else, have anything else, they need or want to say?"

And we didn't.

And we didn't bring it up for the rest of the week.

So when you have something to say, say it.  If you don't want to see an R rated movie speak up and say you don't want to go. If you think that maybe just looking at the rating without the entire content is a little too black and white, say that back.  (My apologies for the pun I swear I didn't mean it.) Work together and increase the peace, just like John Singleton told you to do at the end of the movie.  But once it's over, keep the peace. :0)

I wonder how Singleton would write that movie now at 44 instead of 24. Would he change anything?

I hope not....

36: The Skin I Live In...

November 13, 2011

Madison Arts Cinema

with: Adrienne, fellow Gringa Spanish teacher

 Everyone needs to watch their mother lose it once for something she believes in.  This could be over double coupons in a grocery store or this could be over something crazy the homeowner association comes up with. This could be something deeper-you could have one of those moms that is always calling her congressman or is driving her children's teacher's nuts.

The first time I saw my mom lose it this way was in a Blockbuster video when I was fifteen. See why I miss the video stores?

She wanted the newest Pedro Almodovar film.

Pedro Almodovar? Who is that?  For now, we will call him a Spanish film director.

His newest film at the time was translated to English as "Tie me up! Time me down!" In Spanish he had just called it "Tie me."  Good Lord American Marketing Departments! They knew only a quarter of the population was going to go because it was subtitled. I think they thought those people wouldn't show up if they didn't give it a kinky title.  Of course, we all know what women are reading now...

My mom is a Spanish professor at a University. She studied abroad in Madrid under Franco.  We went into a Blockbuster and she asked for it. She was told that family stores don't carry porn.

Enter a full blown explosion about ignorance and bad translations...

The point is, we found a copy at an independent rental store. I was allowed to watch my first Almodovar after my mother explained three things. 1) The title was not correct.  2) When we love each other we are tied together and like it. 3) What Victoria Abril was doing in the bathtub. Thanks Mom, Pedro was better at explaining that than Judy Blume.

From there I saw three more in high school before my senior year: Women on The Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, High Heels, and Law of Desire.



Senior year of high school, April 1993,  I was taking an honors Spanish class and we had to do research projects and presentations. You have no idea how hard I begged that woman to let me present on him.  She said yes and I began to research. Research was so different then and I am so proud of all I found now. I couldn't just Google his name and then sift through the junk. I had to pull out these ridiculously fat volumes to scan for his name and then write down the titles of the magazines or periodicals for the librarian to go get out of the basement. The high school librarian hated to see me coming. You would think he would have encouraged me to research.  I even found out about this really, really cool company from California that would order all kinds of VHS tapes for libraries. So by May of 1993 I had seen everything he had made except Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del monton. That was too much for California at the time...

I learned so much about him and this is what my 18 year old self remembers:

1) He was born September 24, 1949-I first read that from a movie magazine sitting on the orange vinyl couch in the Grimsley High school library. September 24th? September 24th? My birthday? I was born on Pedro's 25th birthday?!!!! No way...no way....we have the same birthday. I was sitting with a friend who by now was quite used to my hyperactivity.

2) He was from a small pueblo in La Mancha and he moved to Madrid and got a job with the telephone company. He had a dream and a vision and he started from zero.

3) He grew up under Franco but was able to go crazy with his film work later after years of censorship.

4) He was gay and it was all right. This was before Carrie Bradshaw had Stanford. This was before characters were openly gay on television.  This was before Dawson's Creek.  I had a gay friend and his name was Pedro. Two year's later I had a real gay friend. I love you Trent, but Pedro was my first.

5) He liked to be sarcastic, cynical, and pointed out hypocrisy.  He loved to film dysfunctional families and crazy love/hate relationships.

6) I have never been so excited to present in Spanish before, but there were two guys that were jerks through the whole thing. I'm not naming names (Josh C, cough, cough Nate, bigger cough) but you better believe I remember them and I can only hope one is a miserable adult-probably on his third wife.

In spite of all of this, until last November, I had never seen Pedro on a big screen.  Ever...I'd seen him on many a couch, but never a theater.

First off, the great debate: Nobody in Spain really likes him.  All right, well...how many Americans worship Kevin Smith, the Coen Brothers, or David Lynch?  Even John Sayles...  There is traditional, and there is non traditional.  That is cross cultural.  Some people like strange and some people don't.  Pick your flavor and go with it.


I really like the other mom I went to see this movie with. We both studied abroad in Spain. We are what I lovingly call "espanolizadas."  We are willing to be as Spanish/Latina as we possibly can. We also left a total of five kids at home mad that Mommy was daring to leave the house without them to see a movie.  Anything for Pedro!

I don't know if other movie buffs feel this way, but seeing a director's latest movie to me is like a visit with an old friend.  I recognized his camera work, his color schemes, his actors. His ability to put whatever he wants you to see in your face.  Antonio Banderas was back where he belonged. Not in a Shrek cartoon, not running around the screen in a mask, but home, in Madrid, with the man that made him who he is.

This was for me, Pedro's creepiest movie, but also his most compassionate. This movie was about our grief and how we handle it.  Sometimes loss drives the rest of the decisions we make-our careers, our family relations, our actions. This is the skin I live in-this is how I handle that skin. This is my pain and my loss.  This is how I react to it.  This is your skin and your loss-this is how you react to it. One loss is not going to prevent another one later in our lives.  Your reactions are going to be desperate and no one should judge you for them, no matter how unethical or hurtful they are to someone else, you are only feeling and reacting to your pain.

I got it.

I get Pedro, I will always get Pedro...

And from now one, I will watch him on a big screen!