I recently saw a commercial for a personal back hoe. (Really.)
At first I thought it was absurd. But I gave it a little thought — the commercial was very convincing — and I was soon persuaded that everyone needs one…even apartment dwellers.
Because how else are you going to discreetly bury the bodies of people you kill in the middle of the night? I mean, you don’t want to borrow a neighbor’s backhoe for that, not at 3:00 a.m.
I forgot my book the other day, so I spent my lunch break flipping through an old “Parade” magazine I found in the break room. It had a little blurb about how Christian Slater was working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on an initiative to reduce the high school drop out rate, because he had been a high school drop out himself and felt very strongly about the whole thing.
All I could think of was this: Do you think a celebrity who dropped out of high school and became famous and successful anyway is really the role model for kids who might drop out of school?
Okay, his “success” is debatable by Hollywood standards, but he looks pretty damned successful compared to unemployed roofers and people working at Taco Bell. I might get behind this thing if he was working on an initiative to encourage adult drop outs to get a G.E.D. (like Slater recently did). That makes sense. But I don’t get just standing up and saying, “Hey, kids, I’m a high school drop out who went on to make such films as ‘Broken Arrow’ and ‘Hollow Man II’ — don’t be like me! Stay in school!”
Wait, maybe that is persuasive. Nobody’s too proud of “Hollow Man II.”
Never mind.
P.S.
I have a G.E.D. I am not dissing that at all, though I should add — in the spirit of full disclosure — that I didn’t drop out. I was homeschooled and went to college early.
I have to make up a story for everything, it seems.
For instance, my partner and I drove by the house on Woodhead with the dancing bear topiaries the other night. The bears are usually decorated for whatever holiday is current: Bunny ears for Easter, flags for July 4th, masks and pumpkins for Halloween, and so on. But the bears are currently bare, and I remarked to Lennox that I hoped the kids weren’t getting too old for it. I said I would miss the decorations — and that I really looked forward to them each holiday.
Lennox agreed, but just shook his head as I went on to re-enact an imagined conversation between the mom and the two kids (who appear to be gradeschool aged, as I have seen them in the yard). My performance included the phrases “Seriously lame” and “Do you know how hard it is to be the kid from the ‘Bear House,’ Mom? The ‘Bear House’? This is Montrose, Mom, do you know what a ‘bear’ is?”
So, you know. I require narrative. And where it is absent, I create it — from shrubberies, when necessary.
I am almost sure I just walked through a random scene from a David Lynch movie:
I mean, it wasn’t from a specific film — it simply had the feeling of the Lynchian oeuvre. You know? At least I didn’t find an ear on the way, or get taken to Club Silencio by my (imaginary?) girlfriend…
Never mind. More of a fleeting thing, open to interpretation. As all Lynchian things should be.