November 10, 1999
Something very disturbing happened to me last night. Those of you with weak stomachs or small children should leave the room now. It's not for the faint of heart.
OK, are you ready?
Seriously, it's pretty disturbing, this is your last chance.
Still with me? OK. Here it is: last night, I had an erotic dream....
.... about ROGER EBERT. AAAAAAAAAAUGH! Why me?! Why couldn't I have an erotic dream about, oh, Brad Pitt, or Ed Norton, or hell, the kid who sorts the mail in my office every day. Why why why why why did it have to be Roger Freaking Ebert?
Frankly, it was more like a nightmare. I remember during the dream thinking, "Oh wait, I promised myself that I would always be faithful to Keith.. then again, it's just Roger Ebert, he probably doesn't count as being unfaithful". Argh! This is the last time I have a cheeseburger and chocolate milkshake right before bed.
Come to think of it, it probably wasn't MY erotic dream, it was the cheeseburger and milkshake taking over my subconscious and going for a joyride. Yeah, that must be it.
In other, non-psychotic news. Keith and I went to see an anime double feature last night. All week Seattle is having an anime festival. On Saturday we went to see Princess Mononoke, which is pretty good, and then last night we saw Porco Rosso and Tomb for Fireflies.
Porco Rosso was a great story. The plot was a little complex, but it was a great adventure story. The lead character is a Humphrey-Bogart-esque pig who works to defeat air pirates and who has lost his faith in humanity, but no worries, the love of a good woman might (or might not) prove to be his redemption. It's a really good story. There's also a plucky young girl engineer, mean air pirates with hearts of gold, and a lot of really funny puns which somehow managed to stay funny through the Japanese to English translation.
I used to really hate anime, based on all those stupid cartoons that Nickelodeon used to show. You know, the ones with the little kids with big eyes and wide open mouths that all talked in high-pitched rapid paced voices? I hated those cartoons and I always just sort of assumed that all anime was the same way, but it's definitely not. Anime is just like the regular movies, except it's cartoons, and usually the story doesn't suck. I think I'm becoming hooked.
The other film we saw, Tomb for Fireflies, was incredibly sad. I cried at the end, and I hate crying in the movies. It was about a little girl (very cute, maybe three, with freckles) and her older brother, living in Japan at the end of World War II. Their mother is killed, and their father is in the war, so they have nowhere to go but to an aunt who resents their presence. It's incredibly sad because at the beginning of the movie they showed the little girl's ghost, so you know that sometime during the movie she's going to die, and it's terrible watching this cute little girl who likes fireflies and hard candy and frogs bouncing around and giggling, when you know that she's going to be dead by the end of the film. There was no really happy ending, and there weren't any really uplifting messages. To me, the movie was mostly about how sometimes hard times can get the best of people, even good people who don't deserve it. I guess it wouldn't be hard to have a feeling like that, if you'd lived in Japan through World War II (I know nothing about the filmmaker, this is just a guess).
Anyway, we're going to another double feature tonight. I hope that if there's a funny movie and a sad movie, though, we see them in the reverse order. I wish I'd seen Tomb for Fireflies BEFORE Porco Rosso instead of after. I hate seeing movies where children are hurt or die, and Tomb for Fireflies was incredibly sad, which put a damper on my mood for the rest of the evening. I'm not really complaining, because it WAS a good movie, and worth seeing, I just wish we'd seen it first. Porco Rosso was so good, and funny, and sweet, that it would have helped improve my mood.
The only bad part about going to see the double feature tonight is that I'm going to miss West Wing, but we're going to try to get Keith's mom to tape it for us. I love West Wing. West Wing and Saturday Night Live are the only two shows that I watch religiously. Actually, I'm more religious about watching those shows than I am about going to church. Except that's a story for another day.