fearlesstemp (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fearlesstemp) wrote2004-08-08 02:33 am
fearlesstemp) wrote2004-08-08 02:33 am
Entry tags:
give me my car, please
How can Groundhog Day only get two and a half stars? I checked the info-on-demand thing on my aunt's digital cable while I was watching the movie, and that's what the info-on-demand Gods had given it. How is that possible? How?
It's one of the greatest movies ever! At least I think so. And does anything matter but what I, personally, think? An emphatic "No!" is the correct answer to that question.
(I say this all in good fun, of course; other things matter too. Can't think of any right now, but that's just the kind of mood I'm in. I'm sure I'll think of something tomorrow.)
It was very necessary that I saw this movie tonight, since I was feeling all torn up inside after finishing The Poisonwood Bible today. Groundhog Day and The Poisonwood Bible both made me cry today, but they were different kinds of crying, and it's good that Groundhog Day came second and at the tail end of the day. I loved The Poisonwood Bible and everything, but I've gotta tell you, and I don't think I'm spoiling those who haven't read it yet – a book about missionaries and postcolonial Africa? Not going to be happy go lucky!
Other notes: House- and pet-sitting continues on. Sprout the kitty woke me up several times before my alarm this morning. It is a testament to my animal-loving nature that I did not maim, kill, or bear any ill-will towards him, since waking up before my designated wake-up time is one of my least favorite things to do. Especially on a Saturday, when having an alarm set at all seems cruel. But I had to be up to let the dog out, and so I had to set an alarm; I've been known to sleep for thirteen hours at a time after a long week, and this week was definitely a long one, what with smelly attorneys and dogs flipping out and my grandfather having surgery (he's doing okay now) and my car being towed (details below). Leaving the dog in the house for thirteen hours could only lead to messes I would have to clean up.
When my cats want to wake me up, they usually sit on my head. I get used to that after a minute and generally go right back to sleep, but Sprout was more determined and also more polite. Sprout sat quietly next to me, and patted me on the cheek with his paw until I woke up, blearily waved my hand in the general direction of his head in an attempt to pet him, and then rolled over. Two minutes later, just as I was drifting off, he'd do it again: Sit there, stare at me, and pat pat pat until I opened up my eyes.
I did this four or five times and then finally just scooped him up in my arms and put him under the covers with me, giving him a big old hug. This freaked him out, as I knew it would (cats only like so much personal attention), and he promptly stalked away to the foot of the bed, where he slept at a dignified distance until I woke up for good two hours later.
Frankie the dog continues to be the height of adorableness, even if he did tear through the contents of my bag tonight. I, being the super-observant dogsitter I am, did not notice until he plopped down three feet in front of me and started chewing on my bottle of ibuprofen. Thank God he didn't get it open or break the bottle. All I ask of this trip is that I don't kill the pets or break a major appliance.
Note: Bringing Up Baby is on now and the info-on-demand people have given it only three and a half stars, which is also sheer madness, because if there ever was a four-star comedy, this would be it. Oh, it's the great phone conversation about the leopard! Everyone should see this movie if only for this scene, and also the part in the jail when Katharine Hepburn pretends to be a gun moll, and also the part where Cary Grant wears a women's robe and jumps up saying, "Because I just went gay all of a sudden!"
Okay, you should just see the whole thing. "There are only two things I have to do today: Finish my brontosaurus and get married at three o'clock."
How can you not love a movie with that line? And this exchange, which I think I've quoted before:
[David discovers the leopard in Susan's bathroom.]
David: Susan, you have to get out of this apartment!
Susan: I can't, I have a lease.
Sheer greatness.
Yesterday I got out of work at 4:15. I was so excited I almost danced out of the office, and then down the street, around the corner and down three blocks more, when I stopped where I'd left my car that morning.
It wasn't there.
The cognitive dissonance of that moment is hard to describe. For a moment I thought my car had gone invisible, or moved of its own volition, or even been stolen. But then I realized that the first two options were completely impossible and the last one only the teensiest bit less so. Cars don't go invisible or move by themselves (unless you forget to set the emergency brake, that is, which I've done before, but this time I was on flat ground with a line of cars to stop my rogue station wagon), and as for someone stealing my car? I love my sweet ride, I do -- rattly transmission, hole in the bumper, peeling trim and all -- but it's not a love that comes at first sight.
I mean, I don't even have a tape deck.
And here's a revealing moment: As I was standing there, wondering if it had been stolen, my first thought was, "But it's such a MESS!" As if the thieves were going to be driving around mocking my carkeeping skills.
"Just look at this! Granola bar wrappers everywhere," Imaginary Thief One says. "And a bag of empty soda cans in the backseat! That's why this car smells like rotting chemicals!"
"Screw the smell, have you seen these pre-sets?" Imaginary Thief Two says. "I mean – Easy Listening! Corporate Top 40! Wait – ANOTHER Corporate Top 40! And a token college station."
"And look at this, a ziploc bag with a spoon in it. Just sitting here on the dashboard. This girl is a PIG!"
And then they both shake their heads at what a sad, slobby creature I am. Sometimes I'm so much like my mother it scares me
It took me a good three minutes to realize it had been towed. I saw the sign in the morning, except when I saw it, I read it as "No Parking Monday 9AM - 12PM". This, of course, was not what it said. It said "No Parking: Friday 9AM - 12PM". How I misread the sign that way (and I did, I remember specifically thinking, "Oh, I'm so glad it's Friday and I get to park here! I wonder why there are no cars? It's almost nine! Maybe a lot of people took today off."), I'll never know.
Why did they tow my car? Why? Why couldn't they have just given me a ticket? But no, they towed it, and so I had to call my brother for a ride, and call my father to find out how to track it down, and sit in a bagel shop staring at the clock for a half hour, stressing that I wouldn't get to the car lot before five, when they closed for the day. And for the weekend. Which would mean no car for the weekend, and also a holding charge for keeping the car there for the weekend.
I have to tell you, this whole experience made me want to get into the car-towing industry.
It got to be 4:50 and still no sign of my brother, which made sense because it was rushhour and there was roadwork going on by my house and, also, my family is not quick-moving by nature. Still I stressed and fidgeted because I wanted my car! Really wanted it! Wanted it so much that I ended up leaving the bagel shop and running up the street in the direction I knew my brother would be driving from!
I was on the phone with my father, asking him if the quickest route to the car place when I spotted my brother merrily driving in my direction and looking past me at the bagel shop I'd left five minutes before. And here is when I had another out-of-body experience like I had the other day, when I chased Smelly Attorney down the street to tell him about the Affidavits – I jumped out from between parked cars into traffic to catch Jimmy's attention, waving my cell phone-holding arm wildly, hollering, "JIMMY!"
He saw me just in time and screeched to a halt a few feet in front of me, at an intersection where he had a green light. I pulled the door open, jumped in, and hollered, "We're going left!"
"Left?" he said, staring uncertainly out the window; he was in the right lane of a two-lane one-way street.
"LEFT!" I said so commandingly that he promptly gunned the engine and swung around the corner, barely avoiding an accident.
"Where were you?" I hollered, and then remembered my father, still waiting on the cell phone line. I picked up the phone and said, "Dad, I'm in the car, on my way, talk later!"
"I had to get gas!" Jimmy said. "It's a twelve gallon tank and it needed 11.75! I had to get gas!"
"I completely understand! That makes sense!" I tried to sound grateful and understanding but everything came out in this harsh, angry voice. "But we have to get across town in the next eight minutes or they will keep my car over the weekend and I need to have a car! I'm housesitting! I need a car!"
My brother floored it so suddenly that I grabbed the door the same way my mother does when I drive (I should really watch my speed) and said, as if it were completely obvious, "Well, that's okay, you can just take my car for the next few days if you have to."
And that's why I'm glad my parents didn't stop at one kid. He's a good egg.
We screeched to a stop double-parked in front of the garage, and I ran inside at two minutes to five, terrified they'd close early the same way the post office does sometimes. But they were open, and there was a woman there sitting in the office, waiting for the end of the day. I told her about my car and she gave me this hard, annoyed look.
"Your father called, right?"
I took a second to answer because this sounded dangerous. "Yeah, I think he did."
"Well," she said, walking over to the desk. "Hm. You know what he said on the phone? I picked up and he said, 'My name is Mr. MyLastName and I'm an attorney' – why does he do that?"
"Uh," I said. "I...don't know. He is an attorney."
"That's like my daughter calling someplace and saying, 'My name is Tammy and I'm a massage therapist.' Why would a person do that?"
The way she was talking about my father is one of the few ways people can get me to be flat-out rude, but – and this is important – she had my car. I was completely at her mercy. It was murder.
"Well," I said, trying to be diplomatic. "I did call him at work, and sometimes that's how he has to talk on the phone so people know why he's calling them."
"Hmph," she said. I could tell she was the type of person who hated lawyers just for existing. I like to think I don't really hate anyone, but if I did hate a certain kind of people, people who hate lawyers just for existing are exactly the type of people I'd hate. And people who drive slow in the fast lane.
She started pulling out forms and filling them out with the neatest, slowest script I've ever seen, all the while engaging me in lovely conversation about things like how annoying my father had been, and the prank callers they'd had a few years before.
"They used to call and say things like, 'I'm going to cut you open so bad that your husband won't recognize you, and leave you naked wearing only a baseball cap.'"
"Wow," I said. "That's really...vivid."
"And they used to call and tell me the clothes I was wearing," she said, and at this point she completely abandoned my forms and started telling me about how often they called, and how they found the two kids that did it, and how the parents reacted, and what they're doing now, and OH MY GOD I JUST REALLY WANTED MY CAR. For about three minutes she stood next to the credit card reader with my credit card in her hand, just talking to me instead of running it through.
It was maddening. All I wanted to do was scream, at the top of my lungs, "I don't care! And please stop telling me these horrible stories! They're scary, and long, and I WANT MY CAR!"
And instead I was polite and even friendly, if very quiet, because that's just the kind of person I am. A wimp.
But this all ends happily: I got my car from the lot, even if I did drive away $108.00 lighter. My brother didn't have to mow the lawn because I called him just as he was about to go outside, and by the time he got home it had started raining.
And now it's Saturday night, and I've see Groundhog Day and most of Bringing Up Baby, and earlier tonight I saw Anchorman, which was very funny, and I finished The Poisonwood Bible today, which I loved even if it did make me cry in a painful way. Now I must go hop in bed so that I can be well rested when Sprout starts trying to wake me up tomorrow. Being cranky on a weekend morning is just wrong.
It's one of the greatest movies ever! At least I think so. And does anything matter but what I, personally, think? An emphatic "No!" is the correct answer to that question.
(I say this all in good fun, of course; other things matter too. Can't think of any right now, but that's just the kind of mood I'm in. I'm sure I'll think of something tomorrow.)
It was very necessary that I saw this movie tonight, since I was feeling all torn up inside after finishing The Poisonwood Bible today. Groundhog Day and The Poisonwood Bible both made me cry today, but they were different kinds of crying, and it's good that Groundhog Day came second and at the tail end of the day. I loved The Poisonwood Bible and everything, but I've gotta tell you, and I don't think I'm spoiling those who haven't read it yet – a book about missionaries and postcolonial Africa? Not going to be happy go lucky!
Other notes: House- and pet-sitting continues on. Sprout the kitty woke me up several times before my alarm this morning. It is a testament to my animal-loving nature that I did not maim, kill, or bear any ill-will towards him, since waking up before my designated wake-up time is one of my least favorite things to do. Especially on a Saturday, when having an alarm set at all seems cruel. But I had to be up to let the dog out, and so I had to set an alarm; I've been known to sleep for thirteen hours at a time after a long week, and this week was definitely a long one, what with smelly attorneys and dogs flipping out and my grandfather having surgery (he's doing okay now) and my car being towed (details below). Leaving the dog in the house for thirteen hours could only lead to messes I would have to clean up.
When my cats want to wake me up, they usually sit on my head. I get used to that after a minute and generally go right back to sleep, but Sprout was more determined and also more polite. Sprout sat quietly next to me, and patted me on the cheek with his paw until I woke up, blearily waved my hand in the general direction of his head in an attempt to pet him, and then rolled over. Two minutes later, just as I was drifting off, he'd do it again: Sit there, stare at me, and pat pat pat until I opened up my eyes.
I did this four or five times and then finally just scooped him up in my arms and put him under the covers with me, giving him a big old hug. This freaked him out, as I knew it would (cats only like so much personal attention), and he promptly stalked away to the foot of the bed, where he slept at a dignified distance until I woke up for good two hours later.
Frankie the dog continues to be the height of adorableness, even if he did tear through the contents of my bag tonight. I, being the super-observant dogsitter I am, did not notice until he plopped down three feet in front of me and started chewing on my bottle of ibuprofen. Thank God he didn't get it open or break the bottle. All I ask of this trip is that I don't kill the pets or break a major appliance.
Note: Bringing Up Baby is on now and the info-on-demand people have given it only three and a half stars, which is also sheer madness, because if there ever was a four-star comedy, this would be it. Oh, it's the great phone conversation about the leopard! Everyone should see this movie if only for this scene, and also the part in the jail when Katharine Hepburn pretends to be a gun moll, and also the part where Cary Grant wears a women's robe and jumps up saying, "Because I just went gay all of a sudden!"
Okay, you should just see the whole thing. "There are only two things I have to do today: Finish my brontosaurus and get married at three o'clock."
How can you not love a movie with that line? And this exchange, which I think I've quoted before:
[David discovers the leopard in Susan's bathroom.]
David: Susan, you have to get out of this apartment!
Susan: I can't, I have a lease.
Sheer greatness.
Yesterday I got out of work at 4:15. I was so excited I almost danced out of the office, and then down the street, around the corner and down three blocks more, when I stopped where I'd left my car that morning.
It wasn't there.
The cognitive dissonance of that moment is hard to describe. For a moment I thought my car had gone invisible, or moved of its own volition, or even been stolen. But then I realized that the first two options were completely impossible and the last one only the teensiest bit less so. Cars don't go invisible or move by themselves (unless you forget to set the emergency brake, that is, which I've done before, but this time I was on flat ground with a line of cars to stop my rogue station wagon), and as for someone stealing my car? I love my sweet ride, I do -- rattly transmission, hole in the bumper, peeling trim and all -- but it's not a love that comes at first sight.
I mean, I don't even have a tape deck.
And here's a revealing moment: As I was standing there, wondering if it had been stolen, my first thought was, "But it's such a MESS!" As if the thieves were going to be driving around mocking my carkeeping skills.
"Just look at this! Granola bar wrappers everywhere," Imaginary Thief One says. "And a bag of empty soda cans in the backseat! That's why this car smells like rotting chemicals!"
"Screw the smell, have you seen these pre-sets?" Imaginary Thief Two says. "I mean – Easy Listening! Corporate Top 40! Wait – ANOTHER Corporate Top 40! And a token college station."
"And look at this, a ziploc bag with a spoon in it. Just sitting here on the dashboard. This girl is a PIG!"
And then they both shake their heads at what a sad, slobby creature I am. Sometimes I'm so much like my mother it scares me
It took me a good three minutes to realize it had been towed. I saw the sign in the morning, except when I saw it, I read it as "No Parking Monday 9AM - 12PM". This, of course, was not what it said. It said "No Parking: Friday 9AM - 12PM". How I misread the sign that way (and I did, I remember specifically thinking, "Oh, I'm so glad it's Friday and I get to park here! I wonder why there are no cars? It's almost nine! Maybe a lot of people took today off."), I'll never know.
Why did they tow my car? Why? Why couldn't they have just given me a ticket? But no, they towed it, and so I had to call my brother for a ride, and call my father to find out how to track it down, and sit in a bagel shop staring at the clock for a half hour, stressing that I wouldn't get to the car lot before five, when they closed for the day. And for the weekend. Which would mean no car for the weekend, and also a holding charge for keeping the car there for the weekend.
I have to tell you, this whole experience made me want to get into the car-towing industry.
It got to be 4:50 and still no sign of my brother, which made sense because it was rushhour and there was roadwork going on by my house and, also, my family is not quick-moving by nature. Still I stressed and fidgeted because I wanted my car! Really wanted it! Wanted it so much that I ended up leaving the bagel shop and running up the street in the direction I knew my brother would be driving from!
I was on the phone with my father, asking him if the quickest route to the car place when I spotted my brother merrily driving in my direction and looking past me at the bagel shop I'd left five minutes before. And here is when I had another out-of-body experience like I had the other day, when I chased Smelly Attorney down the street to tell him about the Affidavits – I jumped out from between parked cars into traffic to catch Jimmy's attention, waving my cell phone-holding arm wildly, hollering, "JIMMY!"
He saw me just in time and screeched to a halt a few feet in front of me, at an intersection where he had a green light. I pulled the door open, jumped in, and hollered, "We're going left!"
"Left?" he said, staring uncertainly out the window; he was in the right lane of a two-lane one-way street.
"LEFT!" I said so commandingly that he promptly gunned the engine and swung around the corner, barely avoiding an accident.
"Where were you?" I hollered, and then remembered my father, still waiting on the cell phone line. I picked up the phone and said, "Dad, I'm in the car, on my way, talk later!"
"I had to get gas!" Jimmy said. "It's a twelve gallon tank and it needed 11.75! I had to get gas!"
"I completely understand! That makes sense!" I tried to sound grateful and understanding but everything came out in this harsh, angry voice. "But we have to get across town in the next eight minutes or they will keep my car over the weekend and I need to have a car! I'm housesitting! I need a car!"
My brother floored it so suddenly that I grabbed the door the same way my mother does when I drive (I should really watch my speed) and said, as if it were completely obvious, "Well, that's okay, you can just take my car for the next few days if you have to."
And that's why I'm glad my parents didn't stop at one kid. He's a good egg.
We screeched to a stop double-parked in front of the garage, and I ran inside at two minutes to five, terrified they'd close early the same way the post office does sometimes. But they were open, and there was a woman there sitting in the office, waiting for the end of the day. I told her about my car and she gave me this hard, annoyed look.
"Your father called, right?"
I took a second to answer because this sounded dangerous. "Yeah, I think he did."
"Well," she said, walking over to the desk. "Hm. You know what he said on the phone? I picked up and he said, 'My name is Mr. MyLastName and I'm an attorney' – why does he do that?"
"Uh," I said. "I...don't know. He is an attorney."
"That's like my daughter calling someplace and saying, 'My name is Tammy and I'm a massage therapist.' Why would a person do that?"
The way she was talking about my father is one of the few ways people can get me to be flat-out rude, but – and this is important – she had my car. I was completely at her mercy. It was murder.
"Well," I said, trying to be diplomatic. "I did call him at work, and sometimes that's how he has to talk on the phone so people know why he's calling them."
"Hmph," she said. I could tell she was the type of person who hated lawyers just for existing. I like to think I don't really hate anyone, but if I did hate a certain kind of people, people who hate lawyers just for existing are exactly the type of people I'd hate. And people who drive slow in the fast lane.
She started pulling out forms and filling them out with the neatest, slowest script I've ever seen, all the while engaging me in lovely conversation about things like how annoying my father had been, and the prank callers they'd had a few years before.
"They used to call and say things like, 'I'm going to cut you open so bad that your husband won't recognize you, and leave you naked wearing only a baseball cap.'"
"Wow," I said. "That's really...vivid."
"And they used to call and tell me the clothes I was wearing," she said, and at this point she completely abandoned my forms and started telling me about how often they called, and how they found the two kids that did it, and how the parents reacted, and what they're doing now, and OH MY GOD I JUST REALLY WANTED MY CAR. For about three minutes she stood next to the credit card reader with my credit card in her hand, just talking to me instead of running it through.
It was maddening. All I wanted to do was scream, at the top of my lungs, "I don't care! And please stop telling me these horrible stories! They're scary, and long, and I WANT MY CAR!"
And instead I was polite and even friendly, if very quiet, because that's just the kind of person I am. A wimp.
But this all ends happily: I got my car from the lot, even if I did drive away $108.00 lighter. My brother didn't have to mow the lawn because I called him just as he was about to go outside, and by the time he got home it had started raining.
And now it's Saturday night, and I've see Groundhog Day and most of Bringing Up Baby, and earlier tonight I saw Anchorman, which was very funny, and I finished The Poisonwood Bible today, which I loved even if it did make me cry in a painful way. Now I must go hop in bed so that I can be well rested when Sprout starts trying to wake me up tomorrow. Being cranky on a weekend morning is just wrong.
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"You know I don't speak Spanish!"
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I've never seen Groundhog Day, and barring kidnapping by someone with a dvd player in the musty warehouse where they'll no doubt keep me, I never will. Cannot stand Bill Murray, no, no, no. But I *adore* Bringing Up Baby. That and The Philadelphia Story. near- perfect movies :)
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Oh, but Groundhog Day is really good! But it's true, if the movie starred someone I couldn't stand, like...am I really so easy to please that I can't think of an actor I can't stand? Maybe I'm just tired. But I understand, if you hate the lead it's hard to love or like the movie.
Isn't Bringing Up Baby lovely? I could watch that movie once a day and not get tired of it.
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It's because of Andie McDowell. If they'd chosen ANY other actress for that role, or even, say, a large furry mammal, it would've received five stars. She has the ability to totally ruin fabulous movies. Why does she exist, anyway?
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I'm not a big Andie fan either, but I love Bill Murray and the movie so much that I practically will myself to like her in the movie too. Such is Bill's power!
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But! When she wants my father to pet her, say, when he's sitting on the couch, she does the paw tap-tap-tap thing on his shoulder, or face, or whatever she can reach. It would be more charming if she were declawed.
Your towing adventures reminded me a.) of the brilliant Darin Morgan episode of Millennium, "Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me," and the censor's parking woes, and b.) of my own car retrieval, after my car was stolen out of my parents' church parking lot lo these many years ago. Your scary receptionist beats my grizzled ex-con gate keeper though.
I could never figure out what my car thief (or thieves) would've thought about my car, other than it was easy to steal (Pontiac 6000, '88 model, I think -- big experimental year for Pontiac) and contained my father's cigarettes. Which, this close to Kentucky, are a big draw, no doubt. ;-P