Too Much of this Makes My Head Hurt
I think I've been in a hazy fog for the last two days. Maybe too much sleep, or not enough - and apply it to television, carbohydrates, and caffeine. It'll be brief because I am tired and haggard. The irony of all of it is that I've been off from work and should be sharp and recreational, instead, I've become everyone's page girl and darting all around town to move things from the to-dos to the completed list. Finally reunited with the sun and that's always good for the spirit, hoping for more tan time tomorrow, an excuse to be outside and be shackled to a book and actually finish one.
Feeling like a fledgling film student these days, my industry history in one hand, the library card in the other. Naive observation numero uno: it is interesting to me to consider the very early beginnings of the film industry - before it was "film" or an "industry" in the 1880s forward, where people scrambled together to get the technology to make and show moving pictures of itty-bitty lengths in a whole variety of slapdash venues. I guess it is interesting to me to know that this evolved into a highly specialized, rigid, and professionalized industry only to then take a turn back to amateurs where any yahoo with an imac and a digital camera can splice together a feature and post it up on the internet. It's interesting that the internet has led to the de-professionalization of many industries. The same can be said of the once slick and pristine Madison Avenue ad agencies - and now PR can be hiring a recent college grad-cum-hacker to whip together a company website for pennies on the Ad exec dollar.
In addition to remembering how to read, I've also just been better (and I mean less-lazy) about getting out and watching films. It's not like I am following any sort of formal or important curriculum, I am just believing that more is better and trying to either broaden my horizons or just keep my self stimulated. Yesterday my sister and I went to see Audrey Tautou's new movie (she actually has two playing in the area) we saw the weird one. Expecting a lighter romantic comedy, we were both thrown by the reality of
He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not. It wasn't a romantic flick at all, it was an updated
Psycho-like feature about a disturbed psycho who invents a love affair and wraps herself in it until she loses touch with reality. Maybe because it seemed to come entirely out of left field (I saw the trailer and it was extremely misleading) I think I was put-off a bit, but additionally, a Sunday matinee also left us both aching, squinting, tired, and sort of stunned.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the SW Public Library has a very decent DVD/video rental section. Considering the one palsy video place in town, the library has the local leading collection of foreign / art / quality films. I rented (**free**) my six (you are allowed to take six out for a week) today and figure it'll give me something to do when I get home from work all antsy-like. Tonight I watched Woody Allen's
Manhattan and truly enjoyed it. Maybe the authenticity struck me in that I feel more than slightly relieved to not be walking down the New York path immediately. Neuroses seem to be handed out with Subway maps in that city and I don't know if I have the energy to trudge through that, those characters. Just the same, it's a beautiful film and he did my city justice - the park, MoMA, the skylines. It's perfect for a girl who
idolizes New York,
romanticizes it too much, even
adores it.
I also submitted myself to a less-respectable undertaking tonight, Fox's televised national IQ test. My mother and I did the multiple choice test together and found it eerily accurate. My results tonight were within a point of my standardized test scores from elementary school when they formally test you for tracking purposes. I feel weird about revealing the score, for some reason, it's a coveted secret - almost like women and their weight at the DMV, like the actual number is probably twenty-pounds or so lighter than the scale, but believable. It only seems that people who want to brag reveal these numbers - for example, if you weigh 108, you are all like, "I weigh 108, it's no big deal." If you are in MENSA, it's obviously no big deal for you to start dinner conversations by saying "I have a 144 IQ, pass the salt... " - but for all the regular people, it's just something you don't need to say a whole lot about. Salary tends to be the same way - if you're raking in $250,000 a year or $12,000 (like a certain grad student I know) the more people that know, the better, if you are middle-aged and pulling in $40,000, it's hush hush. I am well-over the national average and I am comfortably in a position to be pursuing graduate student and going into an academic life without insecurity. It's amazing though how my scores varied on different sections of the test. I scored perfect on the analogies / language / memory sections - but when it came to spatial patterns, I couldn't make sense of the patterns (they show you four different reflected images and you need to pick which doesn't belong). My abilities, much like the GRE, the SAT, or anyone on the street could tell you, are spread out. The most shocking part of tonight's show - at the end, the hosts read off statistics and results from the show. Whereas I took the test with pen and paper in the comforts of my living room, you had the option to take the test on-line and have your scores compiled with national statistics. Boston was the smartest city, which didn't really surprise me on the list of urban city results. What really shocked me, though, was that little Manchester, CT scored in the top ten smartest towns in America, averaging a really brilliant 132 (national average is 90-110). This just blew my mind, because trust me, I haven't encountered many genuis types in my lifetime around town. Way to go, though, Manchester.
posted by lmjasinski at 12:49 AM
