I just finished "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." Ebert didn't like it, and I hold much stock in Ebert. Movies are watched or not watched, good money is spent or not spent, in my household, based on what Ebert has to say about a movie. But in this case, Ebert is wrong. Well, maybe not wrong. I don't think anything he said about the movie wasn't true. I think, probably, the movie offended him. Offended his sense of what is right and true and that's not either wrong or right. In any case, I thought it was grand. Of course, I cried like a baby for the last half hour. I'm not ashamed. That was because of me, not the movie. When Julia Ormond starts reading the post cards from the father she never knew, well, I was a mess, mostly because it reminded me of a valentine's I once received that was 36 years in the making, but that's a story for another day.
Anyway, what struck me most of all, was how common Benjamin was. The whole movie he works as a laborer (well, not at either end, but in the middle). He's just anybody. No one will remember him, he didn't do anything great and yet, the movie is a tale of greatness. It's not the story of an extraordinary man, it's the story of how all of us can have an extraordinary life, even those who seem quite common. To get even trippier, how would you know that many people don't age backward. No matter how many people we have in our lives, there are hundreds or thousands who pass through our lives for no more than a few seconds. If you were to pick out Benjamin at any one moment in time, he would appear quite ordinary, maybe even forgettable (OK, it's Brad Pitt, maybe not so forgettable). I'm not seriously proposing that people age backwards and end up as babies. My point is that the guy who parks your car, or mops the bathroom where you work may have the most amazing story. That's my point.
Another amazing movie I recently watched was Everything is Illuminated. I can't even tell you what it's about. It's about a Jewish guy who goes searching for his roots in the Ukraine. It's about the crazy absurd Ukrainian family that acts as his tour guide/translator. To say it's a Jewish movie is like saying Torch Song Trilogy is a Gay movie. Suffice it to say, Liev Schreiber does the most amazing direction his first time out. I can't believe I didn't hear of this movie earlier. Check out Gogol Bordello, too. Eugene Hutz plays the part of the narrator/tour guide in the movie and the band does some of the soundtrack, which you can check out on the new playlist over here-->
So, there you have it. Enough blogging for one month. I'm off to read reddit.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Nothing ominous here.....
Ominous. I think I spelled that right. In fact, I've just been working, taking care of the family and trying to get 5 or 6 hours of sleep a night. Here's an example of my time shortage. I started watching "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" on Sunday night. It's Friday morning and I still haven't seen the end of it. When I do get on the innernets, I tend to find mindless stuff like this to take up my time:
"It's a Lie!"
Oh, those crazy Republicans! When they're not creating hideous monsters, they're busy disrupting our President with their rude shenanigans. BTW, hope you didn't go to school this week, if you did, you might have heard our President tell you to buckle down, work hard and stay in school. If Nancy Reagan had said it, a thousand comedians would make jokes about it. If our first black President says it, well, you might as well move to Cuba cuz we're all Communists now.
So, that's part of the reason I'm not blogging. Too much of what I want to write about is political and I don't think this is the place for it. I don't want folks to think that you have to be liberal to donate you organs or some such. I didn't think people were that stupid, but then I started watching these town hall meetings and my respect for my fellow Americans dropped into the cellar. I mean, I understand if people are acting like that in Bumble Hills, Arkansas (no offense), but in New Jersey! I can't believe that the people I live with, work with and curse at in traffic would heckle a woman in a wheel chair.
That being said, I LOVE Medicare. I LERV it, even. I had no idea, working on the floor or in the ER, how mindlessly irritating, utterly idiotic and possibly dangerous insurance companies can be. That was before I spent half my life getting prior auth's on meds that MY PATIENTS CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT. Not tomorrow, not next month, not EVAH. And yet, once a year I must continue to justify their use to a beaurocrat. Medicaid, on the other hand, can kiss my ass. I was on medicaid, for a few years when I was young and poor. Medicaid doesn't get you anything except a doctor's scorn. And don't think that the new Medicaid HMO's are any better. You still can't find a doctor that takes it and then they wonder why you show up in the ER at 2am with an earache. Recently, NJ wanted to make medicaid recipients pay copays. Because when you make $11,000 a year, what's $5? Nothing, except maybe a Happy Meal for your kid. But I digress.
So, I've been thinking of starting another blog, but I just haven't had the time. Work is sucking me dry and not in a good way, for those of you with dirty minds. It's not the work, per say, but the office politics. The old boss had run the program into the ground and then lo-and-behold CMS came and everybody had to sit up straight and look smart. Finally, management could no longer deny that everything wasn't happy scrappy. Then came regime change. Tears were shed, heads rolled and now we have a new boss. Who I actually like. Lord knows, she's making changes and I have yet to see a work place respond well to new changes, no matter how much they're needed. I've also been laying low because this blog would NOT be tolerated if it was found out and as I found out at the OPO, it's easily found out. So, I've just been keeping my head down and doing my job and trying to fly under the radar. Then I come home, play with Pooter, eat dinner, yell at the teenager, walk the dog (when I remember, honey) and fall asleep by 9. Until the occassional night when, after a 5 hour nap, I awake at 2am and surf the internet for a while.
So, imaginary internet friends, there you have it. My life or something like it. And now, I'm going to finish "Benjamin Button."
But first, I share with you this:
"It's a Lie!"
Oh, those crazy Republicans! When they're not creating hideous monsters, they're busy disrupting our President with their rude shenanigans. BTW, hope you didn't go to school this week, if you did, you might have heard our President tell you to buckle down, work hard and stay in school. If Nancy Reagan had said it, a thousand comedians would make jokes about it. If our first black President says it, well, you might as well move to Cuba cuz we're all Communists now.
So, that's part of the reason I'm not blogging. Too much of what I want to write about is political and I don't think this is the place for it. I don't want folks to think that you have to be liberal to donate you organs or some such. I didn't think people were that stupid, but then I started watching these town hall meetings and my respect for my fellow Americans dropped into the cellar. I mean, I understand if people are acting like that in Bumble Hills, Arkansas (no offense), but in New Jersey! I can't believe that the people I live with, work with and curse at in traffic would heckle a woman in a wheel chair.
That being said, I LOVE Medicare. I LERV it, even. I had no idea, working on the floor or in the ER, how mindlessly irritating, utterly idiotic and possibly dangerous insurance companies can be. That was before I spent half my life getting prior auth's on meds that MY PATIENTS CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT. Not tomorrow, not next month, not EVAH. And yet, once a year I must continue to justify their use to a beaurocrat. Medicaid, on the other hand, can kiss my ass. I was on medicaid, for a few years when I was young and poor. Medicaid doesn't get you anything except a doctor's scorn. And don't think that the new Medicaid HMO's are any better. You still can't find a doctor that takes it and then they wonder why you show up in the ER at 2am with an earache. Recently, NJ wanted to make medicaid recipients pay copays. Because when you make $11,000 a year, what's $5? Nothing, except maybe a Happy Meal for your kid. But I digress.
So, I've been thinking of starting another blog, but I just haven't had the time. Work is sucking me dry and not in a good way, for those of you with dirty minds. It's not the work, per say, but the office politics. The old boss had run the program into the ground and then lo-and-behold CMS came and everybody had to sit up straight and look smart. Finally, management could no longer deny that everything wasn't happy scrappy. Then came regime change. Tears were shed, heads rolled and now we have a new boss. Who I actually like. Lord knows, she's making changes and I have yet to see a work place respond well to new changes, no matter how much they're needed. I've also been laying low because this blog would NOT be tolerated if it was found out and as I found out at the OPO, it's easily found out. So, I've just been keeping my head down and doing my job and trying to fly under the radar. Then I come home, play with Pooter, eat dinner, yell at the teenager, walk the dog (when I remember, honey) and fall asleep by 9. Until the occassional night when, after a 5 hour nap, I awake at 2am and surf the internet for a while.
So, imaginary internet friends, there you have it. My life or something like it. And now, I'm going to finish "Benjamin Button."
But first, I share with you this:
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