Monday, January 09, 2006

Get outta my dreams, get into my car.

Today has been pretty pointless. I got up early and emailed my temp agency contacts, even though if I don't have a phone they can't really let me know about any jobs. I didn't want to just wait around for my phone to come in the mail, so I just went back to sleep until 12:30. I checked the mail: no phone. Poop.

I met Kristin at Merchandise Mart for some sweet Arby's. My mother bought me a gift card with twenty five dollars on it, so I was excited to have money strictly for food. Oh, but the Merchandise Mart Arby's doesn't take Arby's gift cards, as I learned when the lady tried to swipe it into the credit card machine, only to realize that it wasn't a real credit card. "We only take the paper ones," she said. She even demonstrated with her hands how big the "paper ones" are, which helped me out a lot.

Today was Kristin's first day back at The Chicago School, so she told me about more bad ice-breakers that she had to go through. Last semester one professor started class with a dumb question, such as "What is your favorite movie?" Apparently some girl in Kristin's class responded with this gem: "Umm, well, I just watched House of Sand and Fog, and that was pretty good, so I guess I'll just pick that one."

Today the question was, "What is your favorite book?" The same girl replied, "Well, over break I read The Five People You Meet in Heaven, so I guess that one."

I have this hypothesis that if your favorite movie is The Shawshank Redemption, then you have no personality. The same thing applies to The Da Vinci Code and anything written by Nicholas Sparks. I think I should add a clause: if you just pick the last movie/book you watched/read, then you have no personality.

Kristin was telling me this on the El. We were sitting in those seats that face the "handicapped-priority" seats, so there was this mid-30s man sitting right in our face. After she told me about the girl's "favorite book," I said, "Wow. If your favorite book was made into a TV movie starring James Garner*, then you have no personality." The man then turned right to me and said, "You're probably right." I'm glad I made a quick bond with a stranger over pretentious criticism of shitty literature.





*I realize now that the TV movie version of The Five People You Meet in Heaven actually starred Jon Voight instead of James Garner, which just makes it that much worse.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

ummm, well I just heard this song by Billy Ocean playing in the background, so yeah, I'll pick that as my favorite song.

K.

Anonymous said...

I have a hypothesis as well:

Those who would presume to know enough of a person to judge their personality after one glib answer to a trivial question are dicks.

Tyler said...

This coming from someone who leaves an anonymous comment on my blog just to call me a dick.

Good form, my friend.

Anonymous said...

I think you need to do some more fact checking! A walk to Remember is a fantastic book, as is the movie based off the Notebook. No one can manipulate my heartstrings when I'm emotionally unbalanced like Sparks.

And James Garner is the shit. Its just a fact. I'm pretty sure he could take you in a knife fight, and he's like 87.

I'm gonna go read Chicken Soup for the PostGrad's soul now.

Ciao!

-Hotsytotsy