...I have stolen this post from the Archives of our friend Jason Mulgrew. I cant help it. When I am too busy to forge up ANY useless thought if my own, I steal blog posts for your enjoyment. Sue me.
LOVE, ACTUALLY
Work has been hellish lately. All I wanted to do was take the day off today to go shopping and study for my final on Monday (read: sleep in and watch tv), but “The Man” said no. Rather than be a man and good employee, pick myself up by the bootstraps, and show him up with some hard work, here I am trying to break my record for “Most Personal Emails Sent In One Day” and eating tons of little Snickers bars.
Because work has put me in a foul mood all week, instead of going out last night I decided to smoke a little of the good stuff - something that always manages to cheer me up. I then made a huge ass dinner (three teriyaki ginger chicken sausages, rice, creamed corn, and roll with butter and cheese) followed by a sundae, and then sat down to watch some tv.
[A note about the dinner preparation: when we moved into this terrible apartment in June, my roommate Ben, himself a fan of dairy, bought a giant three-pound tub of Country Crock. We’ve been using this Country Crock since. Last night, while preparing my sumptuous meal, I thought to myself, ”Man, we’ve had this fucking Country Crock forever; shouldn’t it expire soon?” Turns out, it did expire - on September 13. Still, I used it on my dinner and then had this exchange with my roommate Brian:
Me: “Dude, the fucking Country Crock expired three months ago!”
Brian: “Eh.”
It’s still sitting in our fridge, where I assume it will remain until it is consumed entirely, or until one of us is giving a presentation at work or running on the treadmill at the gym and violently shits himself all over the place because he laid a little too heavy on the rancid Country Crock on his morning toast.]
I opted out of watching the three-hour (three hours???) finale of “The Apprentice”, and instead found a cure for my holiday blues in the form of HBO In-Demand and “Love Actually”.
Well.
Two things you should know about me before we go any further:
1) Alcohol and narcotics make me very emotional. I think I resemble by Irish ancestors in this respect more than any other (save for the tiny junk). When I’m really fucked up, I like to laugh, cry, fight, scream, dance, or get laid (especially this last one). Intoxicants have a profound effect on me emotionally, I believe more so than others.
For example, last Friday night I was pre-gaming alone in my apartment, tearing through some wine, when “Reverse The Curse” came on. This is the reprise of the HBO documentary “The Curse of the Bambino” (or something), the story of the 86-year championship drought of the Boston Red Sox, which was given a new ending after the Sox won the World Series. I didn’t see the first one, but was interested and watched this incarnation.
By the end of the show, after two bottles of wine in an hour, I was crying. Not “one single tear down my cheek” crying, but struggling to hold back tears, lest one of my roommates come in and say, “Dude, are you fucking crying?“. It’s not that I like the Sox, but the story (and the booze) just really got to me at the end, when they show all these Massholes going to the graves of their parents and putting Red Sox World Series Championship pennants on the tombstones - well, I mean, it’s pretty fucking touching.
(Has anyone ever written the sentence “It’s pretty fucking touching” before?)
The point is that sometimes when I’m messed up, I get a little worked up.
2) I love the British. I don’t know why, but I do. Everything about England. I’m terrified to admit this, but my freshman year of college, I loved the Spice Girls. I didn’t like a few of their songs, I liked all of their songs (freshman year was a strange time for me). I chose to study abroad in London basically because of my affection for Baby Spice.
As a history major, I studied Tudor and Stuart Britain. I almost went to London after college for grad school. I was offered and would have taken a position in my firm in London, had I not been dating a girl in NYC at the time (who conveniently dumped me three weeks after turning down the job - if you’re reading this, thanks again dear). I lived for a year with a random British girl, who I picked to be my and Brian’s third roommate basically because of her Britishness. I went to London last February. I am going again this February. I love England and the Brits. Get it?
Back to “Love Actually”.
Well.
On the subway ride to work this morning, in between darting glances at the attractive little Indian girl standing by the doors, I thought about how I could describe the overwhelming feeling of happiness this movie gave me. First, I thought of the obvious, i.e.:
- “Happier than that time the frozen yogurt machine got stuck pouring out the yogurt and it kept coming and coming and everyone was running up and putting it in their pockets and but I happened to be carrying a bookbag and filled it and so I ate nothing but frozen yogurt for the next three days”
- “Happier than the time down the shore when we were 16 and we got those skanky French-Canadian girls to make out in front of us under the boardwalk for $8 but then Jimmy the Muppet didn’t give them the money and we all ran but the girls caught up to Fat Ass Roger and said they were going to go to the police so Fat Ass Roger freaked out and killed them and no one’s mentioned it since”
- “Happier than the time for my birthday my buddy Joe got me a case of Newcastle and I was like ‘Sweet - thanks’ but then my buddy Bill was all like, ‘I think you’ll like this better’ and winked and gave me an envelope and in the envelope was a polaroid of him taking a poo on some train tracks and giving a thumbs up”
But none of those work.
Then I thought that maybe if I drew a picture it would help express the joy I felt. So I got a crayon and a piece of paper, closed my eyes, and started to draw based solely on what my heart was telling me to do. When I opened my eyes, I had drawn mostly scribbles but you could kinda make out what appeared to be a chicken finger in the upper right corner. So I ate the picture. No dice on the picture.
But then I realized, “Wait, if I write about how indescribable the feeling of happiness was, then maybe they’ll get how much it affected me.” Um, so that’s what I did.
If you haven’t seen this movie, you must do so immediately Stop whatever you are doing, and watch it. If you are work, leave work. If you are fighting a fire, leave the fire. If you are bathing your ten-month old, leave the child in the tub. If you are too poor to rent it, please contact me; I can think of no other way to better spend the donations I received from less than a fourth of 1% of you (zing!).
Because “Love Actually” is amazing. When it was over, I was standing on my couch, tears streaming down my face, exposing myself to my roommates (I was just so overcome, I didn’t know what to do).
I don’t want to give anything away, but it is the story of a collection of people, and their trials and tribulations with love around the holidays. Each story is unique, at times heart-wrenching, at times hilarious. There are Christmas scenes, British accents, kissing, music - everything. I can not think of a thing in the movie that I would change.
You know what? I can’t even go on anymore about it, because I’m not that good of a writer. I can only say it’s simply the greatest movie of all-time. That’s it. That’s all I can say.
So what have we learned about me this week? To recapitulate:
1) I pooped myself
2) I cried (twice)
What a fucking catch I am. What a fucking catch.
