SOMETHING I WROTE IN THE SUMMER AND NEVER SENT YOU
Last weekend we went to see Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning at the WALL-E theater, which is to say, the recliner theater where you can order loaded nachos and a 12-ounce pour of grocery store wine. Some movies were made for the WALL-E theater and anything in the Mission Impossible franchise is one of them.
(I not-so-secretly love action movie garbage paired with popcorn and overzealous air conditioning. I am who I am.)
SIDEBAR: I had the same feeling watching Mission Impossible that I did during Top Gun: Maverick, which was: I hope Tom Cruise is having a lot of fun. But then I went down a rabbit hole of googling things like “why did tom cruise insist on calling katie holmes kate,” which cured me of any warm and fuzzy feelings about Tom Cruise.
The answer to that question, by the way, which he gave to a reporter OUT LOUD, was “Katie is a young girl’s name. Her name is Kate now – she’s a child-bearing woman.” In the words of a great woman, that is guh-narly.
Anyway, the movie does what it says on the tin. Just one thing bugged me: the Manic Pixie Dream Assassin.
A Manic Pixie Dream Assassin is a young lady villain simply dyyyyingk to murder people for god only knows what reasons. MPDAs don’t have lines, they mostly just scream and grunt. They use improbable weapons (kudos to MI:DR for adding SAMURAI SWORD to the list). They beat people up and then wipe their mouths with their whole forearms like they have just finished a spicy chicken sandwich with all the fixins. For whatever reason (just kidding, I know the reason, and the reason is: boners) they are usually dressed like Catholic schoolgirls.
In MI:DR the MPDA is a (nearly) nameless young woman who comes out of nowhere, never identifies herself, has no discernible motivation, hardly any lines, and barely a name (the one time her name is mentioned, she’s not even the one saying it).
I recently watched the documentary This Changes Everything about the representation of women in the movie industry and I gotta say, I don’t think “everything” has changed! Sorry to Geena Davis! You tried.
SOME NEWER INFORMATION
Since the conclusion of my vacation, I have continued my French studies, studies in this case being a couple of apps and a French grammar workbook. This is less about being fluent in French and more about poking at my Diet Coke and Instagram-soaked brain to see if there is still anything going on in there.
As it turns out, the things I was bad at in Frenches 1-4 at Cuyahoga Falls High School are the things I am bad at now, mainly grammar. I am improving, though! The next time I go to France I will probably be able to struggle through a lot more rudimentary communication before the French person I’m talking to gently says “we can speak English.”
INQUIRING MINDS
Recently we had some window repairs done. Our window guy is named Mike and he is probably about 70. He works when he wants to, and when he’s not working, you can see him on the local news being mad about a lake that is (maybe?) being drained or dammed or something. He has what I would generously describe as a rag-tag crew of employees who specialize in various micro niches: window glazing, painting, storm windows.
One of this band of merry men can best be summed up as – and I’m sorry because non-Clevelanders won’t get the reference – if the Hessler Street Fair was a person. (There is a particular brand of Old Hippie that likely isn’t unique to Cleveland Heights but is emblematic of Cleveland Heights, if you see what I mean.)
Anyway this guy is very nice and one day he asked me what my dogs’ names are. I told him and he looked at the dogs for a minute and asked, “Are they husband and wife?”
I mean…they are dogs.
SPEAKING OF THE DOGS
I took the bigger one to the vet last week for his regular 10K mile service and oil change, and this is the first time he’s been made aware that his dogsitter, AKA his favorite person in the world to the exclusion of EVERYONE including me, a person who has lovingly tended and reared him since he was a dumb little baby, works at the vet’s office.
Oh the reunion! Oh the fanfare!
Sadly (for him) he had to go home to his family with a clean bill of health. SORRY.