Today’s theme from 30 Days of Creativity is “Quotation Marks.”
The Ram directs a scene from the movie He Said, She Said.
I’ll admit that early in the month, when I was in the planning stages for the Ram’s movies, I saw today’s theme and was stumped. It was Tom who suggested this 1991 Kevin Bacon movie.
“Good idea,” I said. “Is that the one with Elizabeth Perkins and Alec Baldwin?”
“No,” Rhonda said. “You’re thinking of [1988’s] She’s Having a Baby with Elizabeth McGovern.”
“Oh, yeah.”
What is it with Kevin Bacon, romantic comedies, and Elizabeths?
Thanks, imdb.com, for giving me a photo of the movie’s set-within-a-set to work from.
Since I recently shared a picture of my nephew Daniel with his bicycle, this one caught my eye as I was paging through a photo album. Josh was around four here and living on an Army post in Kentucky. I was visiting, and some things I remember that happened during that trip include:
One of the twins–I think Gina–injured her finger in a door, and her parents took her to the emergency room. This explains why, in photos from that morning, Sarah’s hair is an uncombed mess (the one who went to the doctor was groomed; the other was left with Aunt Becky, who didn’t think to brush her hair). Being left with Aunt Becky might also explain why Josh was on his bicycle without a shirt. Kids didn’t wear bike helmets in those days, but I could have made him get completely dressed. Sorry, buddy. At least he’s wearing shoes and a belt. He looks so blond here, and SO LITTLE on that bike. I like the contrast of badass cruiser handlebars with training wheels.
This may be the visit when a babysitter was brought in, and the grown-ups went to see a new movie that came out that summer called Star Wars. That movie managed to infiltrate just about every part of our lives, including our language. We loved it.
It was definitely where I was when the news broke that Elvis died.
Today’s theme from 30 Days of Creativity is “8 Bit.”
The Ram lets the kids kick it old school during a break from filming Super Mario Brothers.
Thanks to Tom for the props, because I didn’t know “8 Bit” from an interdimensional hole that could take me to an alternate universe where dinosaur descendants rule and plumbers are heroes. On second thought, plumbers are heroes in this dimension, as well.
Before I reached thirty-five years of age (the first and only real time I celebrated that birthday), I’d endured seeing:
Melanie Hamilton Wilkes suffer a grueling childbirth and outrun the Yankees only to fade to paleness between two long braids before she breathed her last off-camera;
Juliet Capulet take a dagger;
Jenny Cavilleri Barrett flare her nostrils one last time before giving up on Bach, the Beatles, and breathing;
Mary Rose Foster self-destruct with drugs;
Aurora Greenway make sure daughter Emma was allowed to say goodbye without pain;
Miss Daisy Werthan get driven somewhere for the last time;
Ruth Jamison eat fried green tomatoes before she kicked it;
Shelby Eatenton Latcherie drink her last glass of juice.
I think you get the picture. The BIG picture. On the big screen. A crazed excess of female death. If her own death was defied, our fairer sex might end up on the side of a road spit-wiping blood from her dead lover’s face.
Liz messing with a cookie press while making cheese straws. Dig that 1970s wallpaper.
Whenever Lynne, her sister Liz, and Liz’s BFF Brigid would get together, they’d always bring up Beaches.
“No, thanks,” I’d always say.
“But we have to seeeee it–”
“I read the book,” I’d counter.
“Pleeeeease.”
“Leave me out of your estrogen-saturated sob fest,” I’d insist.
Brigid looking all innocent with a teddy bear.
But the time came when Lynne and I went to visit them in Dallas. I was plied with a spaghetti dinner. I was promised Yahtzee. I was given a box of Kleenex and no choice, because Lynne had the car keys since it was her car. And I was forced to watch Beaches.
Should this account have a happy ending, with the four of us wiping tears from our eyes and vowing eternal friendship? Yeah, yeah, I cried, whatever. Then I annihilated them at Yahtzee.
Movies referenced above: Gone With The Wind, Romeo and Juliet, (the 1968 version), Love Story, The Rose, Terms of Endearment, Driving Miss Daisy, Fried Green Tomatoes, Steel Magnolias, and the 1976 version of A Star is Born.
