Monday, August 11, 2008

Less anger, more mud


I love this place, two years after moving up here I consider myself blessed to call it home. Most days I don't even mind that I live on the north side of the Columbia and not in Portland.
It's amazingly beautiful and summer here is generally mild and warm.
Today, it's sunny, warm and down by the Columbia, muddy. We took the dogs out to play. Sam is black and white, poorly behaved and mine. Ru is a red healer who belongs to my friend, he is better trained and much more intent on the frisbee. Sam just basically got in his way.

A Rant about Hollywood (I'll skip the introduction for later)

So, at the END of my summer I've decided to do this thing for real. I'll show some of the projects I've been working on but first a rant.

I watched 27 Dresses yesterday. It was slightly disastrous. I didn't end up a teary mess, but honestly I finished the movie and was pissed off. Really angry.

Now, I admit that my timing may have been less than stellar. My younger sister K got engaged this weekend and she and her betrothed stopped by on a pretense of hanging out on their way home, they were at the coast, but really so she could show me her ring. Which was great, I wanted to see it and them. I'm super excited for her and love him. They've been together forever and need to get married. I want to be an aunt. Some might say this is anger/jealousy being directed a cultural ideal instead of at my sister whom I adore. I guess this could be true, but really it's Hollywood endings I have a problem with.

So, the whole movie is about how this girl is sweet and wonderful, she helps everyone she knows and is basically a doormat. One could call it kind and generous but anyone who can't say no is a doormat. In the last half hour of the movie she ruins her sister's wedding, confesses her love her boss, jumps (literally) into the middle of a total stranger's wedding, and then lives happily ever after with the handsome cynical man who spends the whole movie not believing in marriage.

No problem right? Happens all the time.

Now this is my issue: she supposedly has this big epiphany. She is able to say no, stand up for herself, and express her own wants and needs. Great. Self-actualization, what we're all heading for, what we all hope for and work towards right? Or at least on a good day. She starts heading in the right direction and then black screen and One Year Later?

Beach wedding. Of course, how could one hope to get past that apex of happiness. The whole damn movie was about her obsession with weddings and the over importance she seemed to place on this idealized day. Maybe for some, even most, people their wedding day is perfect. I've been in 8 weddings (I've performed 5 ceremonies, been the maid of honor, a bride's maid and a reader) and most of those women would not have changed a single thing about their wedding day. Although one claims she should have just gone to Vegas. But, this pinnacle happiness as proscribed by Hollywood. Am I the only girl, single married or whatever who would like there to be something more. Why is a wedding the end all be all?

Or am I just cynical and bitter?