Anybody want a peanut?

This makes me so very happy.

I saw The Princess Bride in the theatre the first weekend it came out in September 1987;  I was in that magical first month of my freshman year at college so for me it's all wrapped up in nostalgia and the delight of new freedom and friendships and the feeling of unlimited possibility. 'Tis true.

My favorite, exceedingly quotable lines that have been dropped into conversation over the years:

As you wish.
Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
ROUS.
No more rhymes now, I mean it! ...anybody want a peanut?
You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
We are men of action, lies do not become us.
Inconceivable.
You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I just checked and I have now mentioned The Princess Bride no less than five times on this blog. Five! It's going to start needing its own tag pretty soon. Here are the others, in case you're wondering:

Hello my name is
As you wish
Ensconced
En garde

. . .

p.s. thanks to my brother Chris for passing these along. I did the math and he was seven when The Princess Bride came out. Youngster.

Glass ceilings and mockingbirds

What a fun & full weekend! On Saturday we met my parents at the MFA & saw the Chihuly Glass exhibit (amazing! look at that ceiling in the big photo below!)

But the real reason we went was to see Hey, Boo!, a feature-length documentary about Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird. Definitely see it if you get the chance. It was surprisingly emotional for me and, judging from the sniffling and wiping away of tears around me, I wasn't the only one. (Obsession alert! I've also written about Harper Lee here and here)

A few take-aways:

1. I always thought that To Kill a Mockingbird sprung sort of fully formed from the mind of Nelle Harper Lee. But it actually took a LOT of work and two years of grueling rewrites even after she finished the initial story. 

2. Two friends (a married couple by the name of Brown) believed so heartily in her talent as a writer that they gave her a Christmas gift of enough $ to support her for a year so she could quit her job as an airline reservations clerk and dedicate herself to writing. She said it was not so much the $ but their complete faith in her that carried her through the creation of the book. What fantastic friends, definitely fifth business material.

3. She started law school but quit to be awriter. Sometimes quitting is good.

4. Atticus is based loosely on her own father, A.C. Lee, who was a member of the state legislature, an attorney, and an editor for Monroeville's newspaper. (I just found a great LA Times article about Lee's last interview and some of her influences here.)

4. While the character of Scout definitely embodies Lee's characteristics as a young girl, over the years she has come to feel more akin to Boo Radley as the media and well-meaning, curious fans have sought to bring her out of her private isolation. "Know what'd happen then? All the ladies in Maycomb includin' my wife'd be knocking on his door bringing angel food cakes. To my way of thinkin', Mr. Finch, taking the one man who's done you and this town a great service an' draggin' him with his shy ways into the limelight – to me, that's a sin. It's a sin and I'm not about to have it on my head. If it was any other man, it'd be different. But not this man, Mr. Finch...Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough."  Although meeting her is one of my dreams, I suppose reading her book is enough for me, too.

. . .

Click here for a clip of the documentary, a portion of the section on Scout.

Oscar night shenanigans

We're a movie family. My mom and her sisters have been known to fly across the country to watch the Oscars together, even bringing fabulously eclectic formalwear gathered from searches of secondhand clothes stores throughout the year. Also, ask my Grandma about our ancestor Edwina Booth who starred in a movie nominated for best picture in 1931 and she will fill you in on all of the details including a purported train ride across Germany and some early Nazi run-ins.

Not everyone gets this movie thing and that's okay. I know it seems a titch kooky. I just wanted to point out that we come by this silliness naturally.

When the Oscars roll around each year, we try to take the chance to make it an occasion. We fill out the ballots and keep score for bragging rights (even though we haven't ever seen all of the films). We tune in early for the red carpet commentary and critiques. This year we spread out Lauren's red snuggie blanket for a red carpet and issued this challenge: dress up like someone from one of the movies or in your red carpet finest.  

Originally I tried to get away with going as Mark Zuckerberg in the Social Network, wearing a hoodie and sweats but then when my daughters got into the spirit of the evening, I upped my game a little:

Maddy started out the evening in a black tutu a la The Black Swan. Then she switched to boxers, knee highs and a t-shirt, a tribute to the locally filmed The Fighter. Lauren went as a red carpet movie star, happy to recycle her prom dress from last year (maybe the boned bodice could be a nod to Winter's Bone?). Sam came down in a cowboy hat and badge as Woody from Toy Story 3. Greg, just home from church and home teaching, came as one of the accountants for the Academy in charge of protecting the honor of the voting system. In retrospect, I'm saying that I went as grown-up Mattie Ross (remember in True Grit when she leaves the graveyard in her Mary Poppins-like dress?). Either that, or Tom Hooper's proud mum who found the idea for The King's Speech and passed it along to her son. The line of the night: "The moral of the story is: listen to your mother."

p.s. Overall, I wasn't that wowed by the Oscars this year but I *loved* Cate Blanchett's hair last night (here's the side and back). Really, really. Don't be surprised if I return to my shorter hair of yore sometime this spring. I think I might be up for a change.

Whatever you say...

Hats off to these dads for enacting on film, exactly, the family stories as told by their kids. You'll laugh. Presenting Kid History:

There are other episodes. Enjoy.

(via Stacy Julian)

Like sand and snow

February makes me all mushy and sentimental. I apologize in advance about that. It's not just Valentine's Day but also our anniversary this month so I have ample occasions for my sentimentality. It's kind of a chicken-egg situation: am I mushy because this is our marriage month? Or did we choose February because of its romantic pull? (Actually, it's a funny story why we chose February, one I'll have to tell sometime when I'm not in parentheses.)

In light of above mentioned mushiness, I'm not just limiting my sentimental posts to one or two days this month. Oh, no. You will not escape that easily. Because, in the name of love, all you need is love, love lifts us up where we belong. Right? 

One of the things I especially appreciate about my relationship with G is our differences. I know it's no huge revelation that--thunder clap--men and women are different. You've got your Mars/Venus comparisons, your unique love languages, your husbands-as-pets philosophies. 

But, by far, my favorite analogy about the transformative power of these differences is within this short film about snow and sand by Kirsten Lepore (recently found via Swiss Miss):

I love you, G. Thanks for sharing you and making me better.

(And sorry for the dead mice I sometimes give in return.)

This 1-minute clip about making the film is awesome, too.