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*As in "Welcome to" and where "Gator Country"
means "Los Angeles"
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Gator Country: movietime
i always wondered what it felt like to sit at LAX and write on happyrobot on one of those "internet" thingies...
anyway.
there is one film i saw in college that has affected me longer than a decade. not brazil or chinatown -- though i'm sure they had some affect on my ultimate decision to live in LA (and i did get to meet my idol, terry g at a special screening of brazil a few years ago). i was a student at the university of new hampshire in durham, over there by the coast in that state people outside new england confuse with vermont. i know that when i used to live in texas, i thought vermont and new hampshire had some sort of dual libertarian government or at least shared books through interlibrary loan. then i found out that new hampshire was created as a state-sanctioned witness protection program for the new york mafia. but i digress.
unh was close to boston. so when we tired of the portsmouth music scene, we'd go to boston. when i was a freshman, a bunch of us drove down to boston to catch the rocky horror picture show. i hated it. we drank on the way down, and everyone but this frat guy and i fell asleep in the theater. i stayed awake out of sheer stubbornness--i went only because i wanted to make out with him, which i earned the hard way: three hours of suffering through the time warp tooodddaaayyy (he knew every word and sang it, etc.)... my gawd. at least i slept on the way home. you'd think this might be my seminal movie, but no. i grew up a little, and drove down to boston one weekend as a senior to catch an art house showing of wings of desire. i sat by myself in the theater, big bag of popcorn, and settled in for 3 hrs of something that i was told i had to see. boy howdy did that movie mess with my mind.
i don't think i've ever been as sad in my life as when i watched it that night. i don't remember driving home. i don't even think i remember what i did for days after. i think about this movie all the time, at least once a month. even now, as i sit here typing on my neptune networks email station, i wonder, is there an angel watching over me? look at all these people. i wonder what they're thinking. who do they love? where are they going today? there's a man on his cell phone, waiting in line for standby; there's a man with his glasses on a string in a golf shirt; there's a woman with a new baby; a blind man with a giant red birthmark on his cheek. i'm trying to figure out if they're happy or sad, if they are in love today, if they woke up this morning and stayed in bed for an extra five minutes thinking about what to do, what to be, what to say, how to live, how they'll die.
i live in black and white. i want to fly over berlin. i want to stand on top of a monument in a city and not fear falling. i want to be human. i want to know what it would feel like to choose to be human. i want to stand on a beach and watch the sunrise every day.
i've tried to erase these thoughts with porn. you laugh, but i'm serious. i've seen the sopornos, behind the green door, saving ryan's privates .... i watch late night cinesex, hoping the angel will be disgusted at my baseness and get off my back. you don't want to be human, honey. it's more painful than anything you've ever known.
plane's boarding.
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