Six Thousand Egg Rolls

Just saw the movie Big Fan the other night. Loved it. It's a dark comedy that skirts tragedy, a film about Paul from Staten Island, a parking attendant who lives with his mother and defines himself by his love for the New York Giants. This fantasy world gets challenged when he meets the quarterback for the Giants at a strip club. I won't give the plot away, but in all honesty, it wasn't the plot that had me most compelled. It was the details of Paul's life, my favorite being when we see him and his only buddy going to the Giants game and realize they don't have tickets. They sit out in the parking lot with their television hooked up to a car battery and watch just to be closer to the team they love. "They can't lose if we're out in the parking lot," Paul claims.

I'm guessing we all feel this way from time to time, that close is as good as we're going to get. Paul and his mother have a bit of the Grey Gardens' type relationship going (my shorthand way of describing an enmeshed symbiotic situation), and my favorite scene is with the two of them is where Paul's mother is sorting soy sauce, duck sauce, and hot mustard into Ziploc baggies. Paul eats his take-out and watches her, musing that she doesn't even like Chinese food and that what she really needs are "six thousand egg rolls." I don't know a better way to describe this movie. It's for all of us with bags of useless shit that we don't want to waste, but will never use, for those who try and go along and do what we can, who want to feel like part of something bigger, something magical.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was." Anne Sexton

Cocktail Hour
Tonight is the first full moon of the year, the wolf moon -- take a look if you dare brave the cold!

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Friday!