Six Fours (And More) ... Part One
Tuesday, July 29, 2008 at 12:44AM 
Recently I received a cyber-tap on the shoulder from a blogger I like a great deal, namely, Diane at Much of a Muchness. It's one of those "meme" things which involves revealing information about myself that I cannot imagine anyone would find even marginally interesting, but to ignore Diane's cyber-nudge would be cyber-rude and I'm not into that at all, y'all. I have been referred to as intractable but actually I'm very nice, and not only in cyberspace. Really. Stop smirking.
Be that as it may, if you opted to click out at this point in order to squirt scrubbing bubbles on your shower grout or rearrange the plethora of health and beauty aids clogging the shelves of your medicine cabinet, I would not blame you in the least. In fact I would applaud your excellent time management skills. But if you're like me, you enjoy reading blogs much more than performing mundane and meaningless tasks, however pressing. Furthermore, if you've read this far you're likely to stay with me; right?
It pulls every heartstring there is to pull but it hurts soooo good.
One can only hope.
If that is in fact the case and you plan to read on, as my son would say: Preeshate it! Word to your mother!
(First let me point out, this meme looked real good to me from the start on account of, four is my favorite number. Forty-four is absotively posolutely the number that sends me into orbit. I am not superstitious but I am weird -- stop smirking, I said -- and I am telling you right now, the sight of the number 44 makes me happy. Some of the more astutely observant of my half-dozen devoted readers might have noticed that I nearly always post at :44 of any given hour. Sometimes I have to fudge that by changing the time in my text editor, but mostly it's within five minutes of something forty-four. Yeah. Weird. I'd apologize but I'm not into that either.)
So here's the dealie-o. According to darling Diane I have to tell you four jobs I've held, four movies I'd watch over and over again, four TV shows I like (she said "love" but I don't love any TV shows so I'm going to go with like), four places I have vacationed, four of my favorite dishes, and four blogs I visit every day.
And you know that only if swine are airborne in your neck of the woods at the very moment you read these words and said porcine critters are crooning I Heard It Through The Grapevine in four-part harmony while strumming pink polka-dotted ukeleles, I am going to merely list the items in these categories without elaboration. In other words, I'm going to tell you all about it, y'all. We dooz it large here at IHATH.
Ready? Let's git 'r done, 'k? You have stuff to do.
FOUR JOBS I'VE HELD. First let me establish: I am lazy and do not like to work. That being said, I have worked pretty much steadily and gainfully since the age of 15 when I landed my first (paying) job: working the counter at ...
[1] ... Burger King on Candler Road in Atlanta. The restaurant was down the street from my school, so I'd change into my uniform in the ladies' room and walk to work. I worked as a waitress one other time too, while in college. I loved that job. Let's see ... later I was ...
[2] ... owner of Expert Resume Service, wherein I was self-employed as a professional resume and cover-letter writer, for eight years. I met lots of people and learned lots of stuff that I still use. I was very lucky to be able to have that job, which by the way I invented. I don't mean I invented resume writing; heavens no. I invented Expert Resume Service. Then I became a ...
[3] ... legal assistant and did that off and on for the next eleven years. And although I still work all the time with lawyers and have several friends who are lawyers and actually have a few readers who are lawyers, I don't mind telling you that I would go back to being a waitress before I would do that job again. Nothing against lawyers individually or collectively; I just don't like getting up early every morning and going to an office and being told by other people what to do. (Lazy; remember?) Moving on, I've also been a ...
[4] ... court reporter for the last four (4!) years and that's a pretty good gig (most of the time), but I'm more than ready to retire and begin my career as a bestselling author, which I truly hope is my last job.
FOUR MOVIES I'LL WATCH OVER AND OVER. Let me say right here, there are hundreds of movies I will watch over and over. For example, if I have time I will sit down and watch just about anything made between 1939 and 1949. There were so many magnificent movies made during those ten years, I could go on forever about them but suffice it to say, I love those films.
I do adore a good movie ... and by "good" I mean a great story with great acting and minus the gratuitous profanity, violence, and adult themes that plague movies today. I don't like guns, I don't like off-color language, and as far as romance goes, unless it's my own, I prefer to use my vivid imagination (although I do love to see people kiss). With that caveat, of the two-point-five percent of Hollywood movies that remain which are not geared to the under-12 set, here are the movies I will watch over and over again:
[1] Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) ... starring Johnny Depp ... need I expound on this one except to say, I have lost count of how many times I've seen POTC:CotBP? I think not. But I will anyway. Johnny's performance as Captain Jack Sparrow is so funny, so poignant, so smart, so flamboyant, so daring and so brilliant, that I believe this to be his definitive role ... the one for which, out of all his impressive and still-in-progress body of work, he will be most remembered. POTC:CotBP may not be the greatest movie of all time, but in my humble opinion it is securely in the top fifty.
[2] The Trip To Bountiful (1985) ... starring Geraldine Page (in an Oscar-winning performance), John Heard, Carlin Glynn (who incidentally is the mother of Mary Stuart Masterson, who starred with Johnny in Benny and Joon, which is a good movie but not on my list of only four), and Rebecca DeMornay. This movie is so perfect, it practically defies description. It pulls every heartstring there is to pull but it hurts soooo good.
[3] Hoosiers (1986) ... starring Gene Hackman, Barbara Hershey, and Dennis Hopper ... I was born (although not raised) in Indiana and married a basketball player and coach, but that's not why I love this movie. From a sensory, visual, and auditory standpoint, Hoosiers is one of the most atmospheric movies I've ever seen. Watching this film you can feel in your bones the raw cold of an Indiana winter. You can smell pungent woodsmoke, decaying leaves, falling snow, and the popcorn and sweat of the gym. When you hear the squeak of Chuck Taylors on polished pine, the wheet! of the ref's whistle, the strident finality of the buzzer, the sounds come alive as if you were there. The soundtrack is one of the best ever, too ... and there's romance. I feel like watching this movie right now.
[4] Penny Serenade (1941) ... starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. This movie is such a tear-jerker that if you don't need three hankies at the end -- one for each eye and one for your nose -- you'd better check your pulse because I think your heart is missing (incidentally, this is the movie that Spencer and Jillian like to watch in Johnny's quasi-yawn of a film The Astronaut's Wife).
Looks like this will have to be a two- (or five- or seven-) part post. Go figure.
To be continued ...
Reader Comments (18)
Well. At your mention of our perhaps wanting to forego this post in favor of scrubbing the shower or reorganizing our medicine cabinets, I stopped for a brief .0001 of a second to contemplate giving my goldfish a bath instead of reading ahead. However. Glad I didn't! Very entertaining - gotta love the waitressing/food biz, eh?? Can't wait for part 2 (or 3, 4, and 5...)!!
Angi, LOLOLOLOL! Your goldfish needs a bath? That's the funniest thing I've heard all day!
Well, it was a toss-up between him or my turtle... ;)
Is his name Cuff or Link?
"Sea turtles, mate ..."
Well, when I first saw this post, I went off and vacuumed, but as you can see, I came back to it.
I don't think I've seen Penny Serenade, and I have seen a LOT of Cary Grant movies. I'll have to look for it on TCM or some such channel.
I worked at Burger King the summer after my freshman year of college. It was there that I heard that Elvis died. That is appropos of nothing, except that's what I always think of when I think of working at Burger King. That and the totally hideous uniform I had to wear.
Ruth, I wholly advocate reading IHATH with a clean floor beneath you! I believe it enhances the experience, as just about anything would ... LOL!
So funny that you mentioned Elvis ... a few weeks ago I wrote a piece named The Day Elvis Died ... I submitted it a few places but I'll probably post it here on August 16th. I was a shoe salesperson that summer! And yes ... those BK unis were awful.
I hope you have an opportunity to see Penny Serenade!
Oh, I have to agree with you 100% about mr Depp and POTC... one of my all time favorites. I adore Johnny.
Maureen you are a woman of highly refined tastes in gorgeous and uber-talented actors! Thanks for reading, luv.
Popped over from Rosezilla's. I have enjoyed my "visit" and will be back! I work in Columbia and live in Elgin. Small world, isn't it! It was interesting browsing through here and seeing pics of Columbia,
Welcome Connie, and thanks for reading! I enjoy visiting Rosezilla's blog whenever I can. It certainly is a small (and wonderful) world!
Very interesting meme!
I love Penny Serenade!
What about JD in Chocolat? Did you like that film? For some reason, Johnny's performance in that film stood out for me. Of course, Pirates is definitely a watch over and over again film...
Keli, girl, I thought JD was great in Chocolat! I liked the movie too. And one can never get enough of the pirate ...
HOOSIERS!
One of my very favorite movies of all time. The ultimate underdog/feel good ending/college sports movie ever.
And you're quite right in describing how effectively the movie evokes the atmosphere of the time and place.
Is Gene Hackman God?
No, but he sure sounds like it on the Lowe's commercials! He has told me to go buy new carpeting!
Well, well, Pirates of the Caribbean! What a surprise! Funnily enough, I can watch that one over and over, too!
The number 44, huh? For me it's the number eight. I used to force things into eights, when I was young, don't do that anymore, but I'm still ridiculously happy when something happens to fall on 'eight'.
You're weird, but you're my kind of weird. I like you!
Back atcha, girlfriend!
Yeah ... POTC ... who'd a thunk it?
That's cool that you're wild about the number eight! I do all sorts of weird stuff with words too, like say them to myself backwards.
I'm giving you a blog award today. It will be posted in a couple of minutes. (Still checking my links.)
Ruth, I am so honored! I'm going to trot right over there and see what it is!