Ten Thing Thursday

1.  I went to see The Help with my mother at her local mall at noon on a weekday.  I was pleasantly (if snobbishly) surprised to find that there were a few dozen people in the theater, mostly 50-something ladies of a certain age and bearing*, all of whom were talking about how much they had loved the book and excoriating the high school-aged theater staff, a gum-chewing lackwit girl and a FABULOUSLY on-point boy who had carefully gelled hair and tried to upsell everyone on the large popcorn with such charm and sincerity that it broke my heart a little bit.  I sent a silent plea to the universe that he would go away to college in a big city and fall in love with a nice boy who would appreciate him.  Anyway, on the way out of the movie, one lady bellowed across the parking lot to her friend, “When we scrappin’?” and it sounded so aggressive that for a moment I thought I was about to be caught up in a rumble, but no.  Scrapbooking.

*There is a thing called Ohio body type that many women there have, typified by a square torso, skinny arms and legs, no neck, and a regular-sized head. Kind of like a less angular SpongeBob Squarepants, but female.

2.  I am sorry to tell you that I watched Country Strong with my mother last week, but I did, and it wasn’t very good but it does have one very, very good song in it.  I listened to it and cried several times in my car.  OK, several times a day.  It’s a bit twangy.  And with a recommendation like that, who can resist?

Well you can call it fate, or destiny
Sometimes it really seems like it’s a mystery
Cause you can be hurt by love
Or healed by the same
Timing is everything
And it can happen so fast
Or a little bit late
Timing is everything

3.  I saw my first pair of TruckNutz while driving through West Virginia.  Why, America?  Why do those exist?

4.  The heart of a blue whale is the size of an elephant.  Picture that.

5.  I’m reading a wonderful book: The Great Night by Chris Adrian.  Adrian’s books are hard to describe, I think because they use a lot of magical realism, and I hate magical realism, but I love his work.  He writes these awesome characters with very compelling stories and then makes absurd things happen around them, but in a sober and unself-conscious way, and without being heavy-handed.  I’m doing a terrible job of explaining.  Adrian himself went to Divinity School at Harvard and is now a practicing pediatric oncologist.  He also attended the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and I want to marry him.

6.  I have invented the best summer sandwich in history: sliced hard-boiled egg, a slice of straight-from-the-garden tomato, salt and pepper, and a whisper of mayonnaise on some kind of fairly soft sandwich bread (nothing fancy or crusty.)

7.  I’ve received two really amazing emails this week.  One is from my friend who is traveling by herself in India:

…The temples and temples and pushing and shoving and separate lines for women in Delhi (finally, we get shorter lines!), separate cars in the subway (if we choose to use them), and being patted down before entering the metro, pushing and shoving at temples and everywhere, endless crowds, endless sarrees, endless honking, endless amazingness, standing barefoot in the street around the temple at 2am not understanding a word, the only non-indian, non-hindi speaking person there, completely surreal, as a giant black krishna was revealed from behind a curtain…  open eyes, open heart, and so grateful for the little travel angels that seem to be following me everywhere I go.

And one from the friend I’m staying with in New Hampshire this weekend:

Here is what you need to know — we will eat, drink and talk.  We will go to the ocean either for sitting or beach walks because even deep sadness can be penetrated to some degree by a tan and the roar of the sea…We will eat seafood, visit sites, shop and collect sea glass…So you can try to be sad on my watch but waves, sand, shellfish, lighthouses and sangria will be challenging you every step of the way.

Dooesn’t all of that sound amazing?

8.  Note to 2012 presidential hopefuls: my mother says she is ready to start making sacrifices to get this country on the right track, including her mortgage interest deduction. Special to Obama: Give me something to work with here, dude.  I need talking points. I need rebuttals.  I don’t even particularly agree with the mortgage interest deduction, but when moderate little Republicans like my mother start quaffing the Kool-Aid that deeply, we are in trouble.

9.  Not related to #9, because my mother is emphatically NOT a racist, but I heard this Bill Maher quote on a podcast today: Not all Republicans are racist, but most likely if you’re racist you’re a Republican.  That is mean but also, you know, true?

10:  I know I said I wouldn’t ever talk about Game of Thrones again, but ever since my immersion in the books and HBO series, I have had some interesting dreams.  You know how, once you see a movie based on a book you’ve read, you always picture the characters as the actors who portray them?  Well, my favorite character in the books is described over and over again as being hideously ugly and deformed and awful.  Yet ever since I saw the series, I have been having very racy dreams about him, or rather, about him as he is portrayed by Peter Dinklage.  What’s up, subconscious?  This time I really don’t know.  The character is ugly, but Peter is cute, though not traditionally cute, and I’ve never lusted after him before, so…I dunno.

Hey, did I ever tell you that Lieu was 4’6?

Kidding. (Not kidding about the dreams though.)

BONUS: I have been on internet blackout in the heartland and so just saw this.  I think I’m the last person on earth, but just in case: