I got pulled over by the police today for making a U-Turn. I totally objected to the matter for the simple reason that there was no presence of an identificatory sign. I cried, and complained. I was "excused" in the end, happily ever after... It was a degree less embarrassing then when I got stopped by a cop-on-a-horse who wanted to fine me for J-walking!!
Above is one of my favorite scenes from the conveniently-named U-TURN movie with Sean Penn, Claire Danes and Joaquin Phoenix... It came from Stray Dogs by the master John Ridley and Oliver Stone had the heart to direct it. He brilliantly accomplished the task of bringing to life this little underrated gem of a film where humor is shielded by subtlety and taunting sardonicism. Needless to say I love it. Have you seen it?
"We flip it around for variety" - Donald Sutherland´s character expressed delightfully during a very memorable scene from the movie Six Degrees of Separation. A side note on the brilliance of the film, strong characters and dialogue. Will Smith at his finest, particularly during his - Catcher in The Rye Thesis - monologue. Well worth watching several times to capture every word about imagination....
Another protagonist in this film is Kandinsky, the Russian painter along with two of his very famous artworks; "Black Lines" and "Several Circles", except in this occasion they´ve merged them together into a one-sided form in order to create a meaningful correlation between art and the film. You can watch a mini clip of the characters showing off their multifaceted prized possession...
Duality. Isn´t everything in life some way double sided? We say that there are two sides to every story, and we flip a coin for head or tales in order to make a decision, right? The way I see it, we always have at least two choices in everything we face in life. You can take the easy way out or fight the hard way, you can change paths into a different direction or continue whatever it is you're doing. You can ride on the wave of chaos... or control...
Or better yet, find the balance between these two. This is something particularly hard for me. As Ive shared with you in the past (ok, yesterday), Im a bit of an extremist so balance is something Im constantly striving for. But I can´t help but think that things get much more interesting when you add up different angles or points of view, don´t you think?
For example, I love pink. Im gaga for tutus, Audrey films, tea at The Ritz and baby pandas. But there´s a whole other side to me, the one that devours film noir and anything Orson Welles, respects sarcasm (Im obviously lying here and I despise it) and the obscurity of Edgar Allan Poe and other not so Winnie The Pooh-esh type of things... And don´t even get me started on the different types of men I´ve had the immeasurable pleasure of dating or being in a relationship with. Night and day. Oil and water. My taste in music also has a wider range than Meryl Streep´s acting abilities and I can switch from Sporty Spice to Lazy Spice in a split second, not too proud of this last one...
Look at Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the example may be quite exceptional but let´s examine this for a moment. Ok, so this guy is a little beyond bi-polar and I would imagine slightly aggressive during courtship but if I were to remove something so minor like his dissociative identity disorder, I would totally date him. You get two guys for the price of one! Perhaps a bit morally disturbing but the taste of both worlds nevertheless. Remember to "flip it around for variety".
And let´s not discount the universally acclaimed -Looking at the glass half full or half empty-, ok that´s a difficult one... How do you meet this one half way? If you have any ideas, please let me know, Im not very good at math to begin with! I guess technically, the glass is always full and Im getting pretty thirsty now so Im gonna go....
We´re talking 1997 and since then every May 5th I can´t help but think of one thing: Seinfeld´s Millennium episode. Number 20 of the 8th season. This photo might stir up some memories for you...
The script reads:
Elaine tries to run an ethnic-themed clothing store called Putumayo out of business after receiving bad customer service. First, she tries shopping at a competing store, Cinco de Mayo, but discovers that the same woman from Putumayo owns both stores. Later, she tries to get Kramer, under an alter ego named H. E. Pennypacker, to change the price tags on the labels, but he accidentally destroys the pricing gun before he can finish. Instead, he tries to take the desiccantpacks from the clothing as Plan B, so he only manages to ruin the clothes in about five years, making Elaine more distressed and presumably gives up. Kramer then eats some free chips the store gives out to its customers and unknowingly drops one of the desiccant packs in the salsa dip.
We don´t actually celebrate this holiday in Mexico, even less in Argentina (my home planet) but if I had to party to this one, Id say get chips, salsa and watch this episode!
Scientists have found that the evolution of the control of speech and hand movements can be traced back to the same place in the brain, which could explain why we use hand gestures when we are speaking. And you thought it was the italians!!
{Professor Andrew Bass (Cornell University), who will be presenting his work at the meeting of the Society for Experimental Biology on the 3rd July, said: "We have traced the evolutionary origins of the behavioral coupling between speech and hand movement back to a developmental compartment in the brain of fishes."
"Pectoral appendages (fins and forelimbs) are mainly used for locomotion. However, pectoral appendages also function in social communication for the purposes of making sounds that we simply refer to as non-vocal sonic signals, and for gestural signaling. Studies of early development in fishes show that neural networks in the brain controlling the more complex vocal and pectoral mechanisms of social signaling among birds and mammals have their ancestral origins in a single compartment of the hindbrain in fishes. This begins to explain the ancestral origins of the neural basis for the close coupling between vocal and pectoral/gestural signaling that is observed among many vertebrate groups, including humans.
Professor Bass said: "Coupling of vocal and pectoral-gestural circuitry starts to get at the evolutionary origins of the coupling between vocalization (speech) and gestural signaling (hand movements). This is all part of the perhaps even larger story of language evolution."
sciencedaily.com }
Above: John Cusack gesticulating away with his pretty hands.
Im having a Tai Fraser moment. I know, I have many of those, I can´t help it... Amy Heckerling made Clueless my bible when I was a bitty witty teen. That woman has some word power!
Today I went hiking, as I do every morning (well except when I stay up really late watching Seinfeld reruns and I can´t get up the next morning, oh and Sundays, as if!). I absolutely love the feeling of accomplishment that I get when reaching further heights, I literally get high on being high... And I have so much fun up in the hills, when Im on my own and I can just play around pretending Im in a musical or some stage like The Voice. Ive been working on my coreo for Nina Simone´s I love To Love ♪♬ ♩ "I just need a guy with a Frank Sinatra touch" ♪ ♫ ♬.You´d be surprised at how excellent Nina goes with hiking, good combo for any day of the week ... except Sundays! As I was stabilizing my position for my grand presentation, I saw not one but TWO hotties pressing their brakes on downhill grade and just passing me by. I got a little embarrassed of course, considering I was thinking that the hills were completely my own and being a Saturday I had the best idea of them all, I went hiking in my pajama pants! I was not feeling very sexy, needless to say. But the thing that worried me most were my buns (referred to as bums in some hemispheres). Ass, behind, gluteus maximus, all of the above! I felt very self conscious for a moment about that rear-end and the fact that despite all my efforts, you could still pinch em´ with a certain ease...
(About twelve years ago I embarked on a pilgrimage towards Basilica de Luján in Buenos Aires. Thousands to see the virgen, I went along to tighten my thighs! Im not religious but I really needed the exercise. As I recall, I kept stopping every few miles to check if they were getting a bit harder. I didn´t make it all the way but I did lose a couple of pounds along the way so it was worth the effort!)
So in this moment I started having doubts whether this type of exercise was working for me, if I shouldn´t try running or swimming instead... This uncertainty made me feel really sad, how could I go from having the best time ever to been nothing-butt depressed? And before you start jumping to conclusions of whether Im bipolar or straight up insane, I should make something very clear. I am a bit of what you would call an extremist, an all or nothing kind of girl, Im working on it and it´s one of the reasons I created this web space. Im sorry it´s notjust to make you happy... So I did feel a bit of frustration when I realized there was still a lot of something hanging loose back there. I had an - Ive been on a diet for a month and I gained 10 lbs - moment! But then I stopped for a moment and I thought about all the reasons I began to hike in the first place and it became clear to me that having buns of steel was just one in a bunch. And if I had to live for the rest of my life with a jelly jiggling backside, I would be totally ok with that, after all it´s my backside. And I would still have the time of my life going up the hill (backwards). I do that sometimes, to change the scenery... Sometimes our view needs to be widened, we get stuck on the little things that make us uncomfortable or unfulfilled and in reality we have a whole lot more going on. There is never a sole purpose for doing the things we do, instead it´s a combination of many goals that we conveniently tie into one. So try breaking this combo down and you will find a million reasons to be motivated to pursue whatever it is you're doing...
“It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.” - George Eliot
