My Younger Self Didn't Give...

Passion Fish  enough of a chance, even if it does have that repetitive "God, I can't feel my legs !1" opening so acutely beloved by Academy voters and industry types(Perhaps Crip Camp could have notched that win if someone in it "woke up disabled" as they had done every day for fifty years.  Right?) And once, again, Ms. O'Donnell is not in a chair, but I think nineteen-year-old me was too hard on her for not being a credit to the minority that she doesn't belong to....can't believe I was ever so ladylike to get so bothered by an injured character's f-bombs, but growing up took me a long time, what can I say? However, a director like John Sayles, who seems to have a leisurely approach to film-making might have been a pioneer if he'd included an actual paraplegic or two somewhere in the film.(Maybe it just *looks* like it spun out like a tall tale, however, still think it would be great for diversity if people looked into how often it's 100% necessary to put in a 16-hour day on a set versus how much the people that do feel like warriors afterward. Just a thought.)

I liked the Louisiana locale much more this time than on my original viewing.(Made for some great, zydeco soundtrack offerings as well.) Initially, I think I had a book-club-questions-at-end-of-the-paperback take on the whole representation question and literally expected to see my own life on screen in a way that would defy logic. The movie kicks into gear once Alfre Woodard, as the attendant with  her own problems(relatable in my experience) shows up. *SO* hoped that  the O'Donnell character eventually finds a new erogenous zone with the Strathairn character, but either way, this movie has a nice sense of future and possibility, given that it's also about a soap actress turning her back on old pursuits.

Usual quibbles apply, in terms of money(it would be *ungodly* expensive to buy "all the stuff in the gimp catalog" for real.) and how much access you could get in a  Louisiana farmhouse. Like May-Alice goes from marooned on one couch in a corner to cooking in the kitchen.  Really? Straitharn has a magic toolbox.

Most people don't find my time valuable...

 but sometimes I wonder if, you know, I'd have a Master's if I weren't always calling about crappy legislation.

How much of my life has vanished on Hold?

I Don't Know "How I Do It" Either...

 nor if I will ever receive a compliment without that asterisk or exclamation point, whichever it is. I have no secret to offer,and even the most obvious answers, eg."putting one foot in front of the other" seem to provoke more questions than answers.

I have no secret. Which probably makes me the only crip of my age and station not hanging out my shingle on the motivational circuit.(Not to say that some of them aren't good, but it does remind me of seeing all those medical-assistance ads and wondering if there are that many teeth to clean.)
There are days wherein  I really don't kill it, instead becoming overcome with envy or sloth.

Sometimes, I likeThe Omar Answer.(In case the clip doesn't play, the famous homo-thug testifies against someone he stole from. The lawyer asks how Omar survives, stealing from drug dealers.

"A day at a time, I suppose."
Sometimes I really do say this, but I don't quite carry it off.

Having no choice doesn't hurt the manageability issues(although I'm aware that some new age people tend to think my soul picked this off some pre-natal menu, but I hope not...my soul doesn't make great choices, if so. 

trying to think about all I may have to do feels like being full and having to think about all the food I'll eat for twenty years.

Got through the Pro-Act training....

 without struggling with any tech or hitting any inconvenient crypoints.

(They didn't play any labor songs last night...something about that music presses a big button when your life has been structured around the idea that the accident of your birth is a personal tragedy for  your family, despite something like it happening hundreds of thousands of times a year..) The idea of people getting stronger by teaming up in their own interest is something of revelation, like everything else the Man tries to hide in high school.

Frank Sobatka from "The Wire" made me cry like that sometimes, outside of Chris Bauer being an excellent actor. I do think it's related to some buried, almost ancestral memory.
I thought that sort of thing is what the  collective unconscious is but I think it goes back even further than that, to why ancient people hated spiders or why kids are afraid of the dark.

I do think it's kind of related...it was a little embarrassing that strangers saw me do that, as well as struggling with the dialler, but it came from a good place, not throwing a fit or anything.

Anyway, call your Congresspeople and tell them to end the fillibuster and pass the PRO Act.

Disturbing Thoughts that Don't Need Their Own Posts...

 -Still kind of troubled that Piers Morgan has no problem admitting that a craving for attention was the thing that animates his whole life and career(Aware of course, that I never post anything initially thinking "gee, hope they pass this up," although sometimes I catch a mistake or something and don't feel too badly that that one is mostly ignored.) but as a rookie journalist, I heard a lot about what drives people into the fold and, usually it's not that they only feel alive when the red light's on, right? Usually, i've heard more about curiosity, being the kid with all the questions...which makes for some hokey presentations, but at least there is a kernel of something I can recognize. Some of us are writers and really thought we could develop our crafts and get paid something...sadly, this was me trying to make a practical choice, believe it or not.Some people are just balls-out fascinated by something so that they're born with a beat, whether it was workers or Latin America(I'm a little bit like this, too)

None of those responses make me picture them doing their job in a crab costume or something. Piers does.

Who the fuck does Mitch McConnell think he is? I warn you, but gives us money? Don't like most CEOs either, but I hope they tell him to get stuffed.

I also think, in the conversation that attracted Morgan's attention, I made myself too small. (although my point was that people with successful ventures probably shouldn't worry about their social-networking presences so much,)

Bohemian Crip Watches Movies "Kelly and Cal"

 Can't quite recommend Kelly and Cal as disability representation, though it is a sad statement how excited your correspondent was to see a sense of possibility, no matter how ambiguous, attach to a young disabled character, instead of providing closure for the non-disabled married couple through a tragic-yet-photogenic death.. Some abled screenwriters, as, indeed, many crips, do tend to struggle picturing a life for us that's not recovery or parent-focused.(I used to get more angry about this, but then my old dreams didn't come true and my new ones felt cobbled together, which does feel like a living and writing challenge...i just wish more people cared enough to reach outside medical-drama tropes.)

If you like Juliette Lewis, though(I always have), you'll like this one, though I bet I'm not the first member of Generation X, disabled or not, who feels like she turned her back for five minutes and some of us struggled with maternity.(I'll leave it up to my peers to decide whether we feel too young, or expected to die in nuclear destruction by now.)

What am I missing?

 So far, I like "The Goldfinch" in an old-fashioned, hero's journey kind of way(Can't call it a picaresque cause there's so little sexuality in it, and it's also a big paperback at over 900 pages.) I like it fine, but it doesn't make me want to wet myself, even intellectually.

Every review it ever got was a love note, though. Why? I mean, maybe it's got some kind of great ending that knits together disparate plot threads as handily as the antique-dealer character pieces together reproductions as the real thing, though in my experience, it's more likely that a bad ending messes up something I really loved than a good ending redeems anything.(Except for "My Best Friend's Wedding")

I'll have to see. I kind of hope it does, because otherwise? I'm kind of left with "New York elites, blah blah, prep school blah" and feeling insecure about my land-grant education in the American Southwest, which was kind of an old story when "The Secret History" was my read of choice on the plane to my biggest ADAPT direct action.

(Of course, if any of us knew what makes a book The Next Big Thing, we'd be having the conversation in nicer home offices, right?)