Welcome to Two Grumpy Old Men

Please note: this blog post contains spoilers for the movie "Up" (2009). If you haven't seen the movie, go watch it. I bet you'll be crying within ten minutes.

Have y'all seen the movie "Grumpy Old Men" (1993)?

I did a long time ago with my parents. It was on TV, though I think we did have it on VHS (if you know what that is, you know what that is). I thought the name was funny and I remember enjoying it. I think it was the first movie I saw with Jack Lemon in it (I love him in "Some Like It Hot").

Grumpy old people bickering is a funny trope in movies and TV shows. It's usually between two people who have known each other way too long and know each other way too well. They're usually friends, though sometimes siblings or a married couple, or their relationship has descended into frenemies. It's comedy gold when well written.

I hope to some day have a person like that in my twilight years. 

Some notable works of media with grumpy old people arguing with each other include "The Princess Bride" (Miracle Max and his wife), "Mary Poppins" (the bankers), Disc World Books featuring Granny Weatherwax and her gaggle of companions, and, of course, Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets.

Maybe Sesame Street will one day do an episode where they show Bert and Ernie as grumpy old people...or Zoe and Elmo. Honestly, I would pay to see a grumpy old Elmo arguing with an equally elderly Zoe about Rocco.\

On Thursday, I had the opportunity to watch two grumpy old guys on a big screen outside my apartment complex. 

No, these aren't the two grumpy old guys you're thinking of.

I'm talking about the movie "Up". 

My apartment complex was hosting a resident appreciation day, which included turning part of our parking lot into a mini campsite with theater space complete with popcorn machine and s'more makers. The movie they opted for, likely trying to stick with the theme and draw a larger audience, was "Up".

And "Up" has some amazing characters from Russel and Doug to Kevin and Alpha to, of course, Carl Frederickson (voiced by Ed Asner) and Charles Muntz (voiced by Christopher Plummer - I think he had a lot of fun with his last decade of roles he chose). 

Carl Frederickson is the quint essential grumpy old man. One of my favorite scenes is when the house is flying through the air and Russel knocks on the door, begging to be let inside. Mr. Frederickson just says "no" and slams the door shut before opening it again and ushering Russel inside the flying house. I laugh every time and it is peak grumpy old man. 

Some might argue that Muntz isn't a grumpy old man, he's just a crazy old man. However, I'd argue that if I'd been stuck in an isolated location looking for a mythical "monster" with a bunch of talking dogs for decades, I'd be a bit grumpy along with the crazy. 

The ending showdown between Muntz and Mr. Frederickson is hilarious because of their physical comedy and snipping one liners. I'd almost feel bad for Muntz, except that he was a crazy murderous loner who was relentlessly hunting Kevin (who's a girl by the way). Mr. Frederickson saves the day and ensures that Russel gets his helping the elderly badge, gives Doug a loving home, and gets Kevin back to her babies. He also becomes just a little less grumpy.

"Up" is a family friendly grumpy old people movie and I love it.

Kevin might be my favorite character...

It's also a movie I can only watch every once in a while. I cry every time within the first ten minutes and then again when Mr. Frederickson find's Ellie's Adventure Book. I was also bawling my eyes out when the credits rolled - not because of a sad scene, but because I'd recently experienced a loss of a loved one. "Up" just hits me right in the feels. I love the story and it's one of the movies I watch (like "Coco") when I need an uplifting movie that will also make me cry (it's a rare combo, but the need does sometimes strike me).

It was certainly a better Thursday night watch than what was happening on CNN.

Have you guys seen "Up"? What movies do you guys like with grumpy old people bickering away? Are there any movies you guys love, but find hard to watch because they also make you feel feelings you might not have felt in a long time?

Let me know in the comments. 

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y'all like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to Journaling

Recently, I started taking a MasterClass class on short story writing and one piece of advice was to keep a journal. I really like this idea. Journaling has helped me to privately express myself for years, while also gushing about the different kinds of food I enjoy while traveling. Occasionally I get a kick out of going back and reading these journals.

I have kept a journal on and off since I was a child. When I was in elementary school, my interest in journaling came about because of the Dear America and My America books which were written as a series of diary or journal entries by kids living during a particularly important part of American history. Eventually I started working my way through the Royal Diaries collections (which is where I learned about Lady of Ch’iao Kuo also known as Lady Red Bird and the amazing Angolan princess Nzingha).

As a little kid, I tried to emulate the way the dairies were set up - with recorded conversations, notes from newspapers and letters, and more details than a normal journal writer really records. Needless to say, trying to copy this style was exhausting.

Then I went to Japan.

Prior to that trip I was given this really cool journal to write about my time while traveling. My aunt and father also told me about how my grandmother always kept a travel journal and kept  one on what happened every day. Wanting to be like my grandmother, I made my first attempt at keeping a travel journal.

This turned into a bit of a chore when my aunt realized my penmanship was awful and made me sit at the dining table every opening, in Japan, to practice my writing. It wasn’t the most fun activity for an 11 year old. Years later, while reading one of my grandmother’s journals, I discovered that my aunt also had bad penmanship at my age (it was her only “bad” grade in that report card) and I felt a little better about myself.

However, that first travel journal got me into the habit of keeping a journal anytime I feel like I go on an adventure. Last year, before I went on my second trip to Japan, I reread the journal and noticed two things. One, I really liked sparkly gel pens. Two, I was seriously obsessed with the food. I grew out of the first habit and haven’t lost my love of the second habit at all. Every travel journal I keep has a lengthy passage everyday about what I ate that day.

My college journal had been given to my by one of my aunts as a graduation gift. My roommate could often find me recording my thoughts every night before going to bed and it became a major part of my nightly sleep prep ritual.

Compare this to my high school journal which is filled with stories, bad poetry, some even worse drawings, and the occasional spell (clearly I knew I was a witch in high school). Honestly going through that journal is painful and some days I wish I would burn it off the face of the world, but I can’t seem to let it go.

My journal keeping habits since graduating college has varied greatly and I could go years before writing down my thoughts again. However, given the recent pandemic and quarantine, I’ve found myself writing in my journal more and more. It helps with my anxiety about COVID-19 and social distancing. It allows me to organize my thoughts around events and even record some of my weirder dreams (and boy do I have some weird dreams).

Keeping a journal might be a good idea for some people during these trying times. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I once kept an agenda beside my bed to simply write my general mood for the day. A simple spiral notebook works well or even keeping a digital journal in the notes section on your phone.

If you have kids, helping them to start a journal might help them with their writing skills and allow them a bit of privacy to express themselves while we’re all living out of each other’s pockets (just don’t read your kid’s journal - it’s a deep violation of trust - unless invited to).

In some ways this blog post is like a journal. It’s a place where I write down my thoughts and give my opinion and record what’s going on in the world. I just know that anyone on the internet can read it.

If you’re looking for something to help you through these times, try journaling. I can’t say if it’s for everyone, but I do know it’s helped me. And sometimes I laugh at what my younger self thought was important.

If you enjoyed this post, or it really pissed you off, please like share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope y’all like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to Losing a Beloved Pet

My dog, Gertrude, died on Tuesday. On some level I'm still processing that she's gone. I just saw her while vising my mom in Michigan for the holidays. On another level, I knew that it was very likely to be the last time I saw her.

Gertrude was nearly 14 years old. We had had her since she was a tiny puppy who could barely jump onto the couch. She grew until she was nearly 3 times the size that we had thought she would be (75 lbs versus 35 lbs). I especially loved her awkward puppy phase where she was nothing but legs and ears.

She was my first Facebook profile picture and the first time someone tried to make fun of my blog, they specifically referenced how they "didn't want to hear about my dog" (I blocked them). She was a constant companion during high school and always happy to see me when I came home for a visit after I moved away. She was a Boarder Collie German Shepard mix and could fit in my dad's hand when she was a puppy. She was sort of friends with our cat, Karma. In the last years of her life, she got to play with her adopted sister Millie.

I'm glad she had a good long life.

She wasn't my first dog or even my first pet. My sister and I raised hermit crabs for a long time before we finally got our first dog. He was an equally wonderful dog who would never have allowed anything bad to happen to the family. It was tough when he died and we waited a while before adopting Gertrude.

Pets are wonderful family members, and yes they are family. It's nearly impossible not to love a dog or cat or hamster or any of the other furry critters that come into our lives. I'll even give people who raise reptiles as pets credit. The amount of pictures of cute pet snakes on Pinterest alone can have me falling into a black hole of saying "aww" for an hour or two.

There are many days I wish I had a pet with me. I'd love to come home to an excited pooch happy to see me. But it's just not possible right now. Pets are a huge responsibility and I couldn't commit to having one with my current lifestyle. Plus I'm super allergic to most pets that aren't dogs.

Instead I raise plants.

Plants aren't animals, though, and they are hard to cuddle with (especially my temperamental cactus). Also, when a plant dies, I don't feel quite as bad. Don't get me wrong, I'm still sad when I accidentally kill one of my plants, but I've taken steps to only look after really hardy plants that are really hard to kill.

My emotional attachment to a pet is a lot higher than to a plant. I am still adverse to watching any emotionally driven movie or horror movie with a dog in it. It's an almost automatic hard stop if a dog, cat, or horse dies. I've heard a number of authors state that they avoid killing a pet (especially a dog) because it will generate enough hate mail to fill their entire house.

A pet's passing is something that hits us right in our basic emotions. I cried for a few hours while I tried to process that Gertrude was gone. Other people also understood how I felt. Everyone who has heard of Gert's passing has been very nice and sending me their condolences.

I wasn't the only person in my sphere of friends to have lost a furry family member. From what I was able to gather, these beloved pets were also older and had lived good long lives. They were loved and cherished until the end.

I'm going to miss Gertrude. She was awesome.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really hit you in the feels) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Welcome to Expression Without Words

Sometimes words fail me.

Maybe that's weird since I write so much (and occasionally can't stop talking), but it's true. Sometimes it's hard to verbalize what I'm thinking and feeling. It's as though there's a disconnect between my mouth and mind. 

Sometimes it's not words that fail me, just one word. I'll do my best to describe it, but my meaning is nearly always lost in translation. I'm sure it's a problem everyone has experienced. That doesn't stop me from getting frustrated when I can't express what I need or want to. 

Communication is an important part of being human. But when I can't use words, how can I express myself?

When I get hurt, it's easy to tell someone I'm in pain. It's when I'm asked to explain the pain that things get tricky. Is it a burning pain? An ache? Does it feel like I'm being stabbed? Is it emotional pain, but still manifests itself with a sickening physical feeling? 

Maybe I can draw a picture instead of trying to describe something that can't be described? Art is a wonderful means of expression. Things can still get lost in translation and meanings can change over time, but often art is the greatest means of expressing what words fail at. 

The visual medium can express so many different things. I especially love the abstract and expressionism. Paintings like the scream are incredibly stimulating and thought provoking. I can't always verbalize what attracts me to these paintings, but sometimes I think they do a better job expressing my emotions when I put pen to paper. 

Music is another medium I often turn to when I'm having trouble with words. Yes, a lot of music has words in it, but there's a lot more that is just sound. Music is a collection of sound that can exist simply to exist, to tell a story, or to make the listener feel an emotion. 

When was the last time you watched a movie without a soundtrack? Alfred Hitchcock's movie, The Birds,  is incredibly off putting because there's no soundtrack. Music helps convey emotions in movies, especially if the characters on screen aren't speaking. 

There are many days that I wish I were a better artist and musician, but I don't think I was born with the talent and I lack the patience to constantly practice. However there is no denying that art and music are incredibly important mediums for conveying information that I might otherwise struggle to communicate. 

Words aren't always enough. Sometimes I need something else to help me describe what is going on in my head.

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Welcome to Icons Part 4: Emoji

Last week, we were gifted with one of the worst movies of the year. With 7% on Rotten Tomatoes, The Emoji movie is clearly not one of the must see movies of the summer (though 44% of people seem to like it).

I haven't seen the movie, so I can't comment on exactly why it's bad (though I'm sure I could find out if I really wanted to). Hopefully it'll quickly disappear into the void of forgotten bad media and we'll have better animated movies to talk about.

So why even bring up a terrible movie when I'm writing about icons? Clearly this won't be considered an iconic movie anytime soon.

It's because emoji are icons.

He's a cool smiley face!

No, I'm not joking. Emoji are images that symbolize different things, which is one of the definitions of icons. Most emoji have one very specific meaning, but some have gained multiple meanings as people use them more and more. There can be a lot of nuance in their context, similar to how we use other images and language.

Most emoji meanings are fairly straight forward. If someone sends a heart emoji, the first reaction isn't that the sender wants a heart. It means that they are expressing their love for something or someone. The majority of people are going to know that when they are sent a happy emoji.

The ways we communicate is constantly evolving. Texting and social media have led to fewer face-to-face interactions, which can cause miscommunication when an emotion can't be detected. Sarcasm in particular has been hard to convey just through text. The use of emoji helps us to communicate emotions when we can't see each other. It is an expression of our feelings. Facebook has changed it's "like" button into several emotional choices for people to react with.

Some companies have embraced this change in communication. The pizza delivery industry has been running a bunch of promotions about how you can order your favorite pizza by texting the pizza emoji. All so that we can get our pizza even faster.

There are some less obvious ones that have taken on completely different meaning from the original image, like how the eggplant is being used by hookup culture. It's similar to how slag forms. The younger generation develops it, mass media embraces it, all while the older generation looks on in confusion. As the new meaning of an emoji evolves and changes, it becomes the new accepted definition. Which is kind of what happened with the original definition of icon. Few people will automatically associate religious imagery with icons in this day and age.

But that doesn't mean we needed an entire movie dedicated to the smiley face.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me. Until next week.