It might have been me, because I enjoyed watching that A LOT.
fmylife:
Today, my mom put some bubblewrap on my desk because she thought I would have fun with it. I’m 18. It was awesome. FML
I didn’t realize that being able to enjoy simplicity was such a burden. The other day I spent ten minutes untangling the cord to the blinds in my living room. I was home alone, it was totally silent, and I purposefully delayed going out to meet my friends so I could complete the task. And it -was- awesome, so what’s there to bitch about?
I read FML in my dashboard and sometimes it’s really entertaining, but for the most part I want to respond to everyone with a little dose of this thing, what’s it called, oh man, it’s on the tip of my tongue, oh right … SELF ESTEEM
Music Man musings
No wide-eyed, eager, wholesome, innocent Sunday school teacher for me. That kinda gal spins webs no spider ever — now listen boy. A gal who trades on all that purity merely wants to trade my independence for her security. The only affirmative she will file refers to marching down the aisle. No golden glorious, gleaming, pristine goddess - no sir! For no Diana do I play faun, I can tell you that right now.
I snarl, I hiss: how can ignorance be compared to bliss? I spark, I fizz for the lady who knows what time it is. I cheer and I rave for the virtue I’m too late to save: the sadder but wiser girl for me.
No bright-eyed blushing breathless baby doll baby, no sir. That kind of child ties knots no sailor ever knew. I prefer to take a chance on a more adult romance. No dew-young miss who keeps resisting, all the time she keeps insisting. No wide-eyed wholesome innocent female, no sir! Why, she’s the fisherman, I’m the fish, you see?
I flitch, I shy when the lass with the delicate air goes by. I smile, I grin when the gal with the touch of sin walks in. I hope and I pray for Hester to win just one more A: the sadder but wiser girl’s the girl for me! The sadder but wiser girl for me.
Oh, The Music Man. I have loved this song for years, mostly because he speaks it so quickly, and as a child I loved memorizing songs with really fast lyrics. Hence knowing the lyrics to “Ya Got Trouble,” also from The Music Man and “Your Fault” from Into the Woods and so on and so forth. It always takes me a little while to step back and actually think about the words I memorized thoughtless when I was a child. I had read The Scarlett Letter and watched The Music Man again in the same year, but it still took a ridiculously long time before I realized that the “Hester to win just one more A” was referring to something. I had just phonetically memorized it at first.
This particular song above was, I noticed, some comfort to the intellectual musical-minded girls I knew when I was a teenager. I know it was a comfort to me, as well. It seems, at first glance, to justify depression, cynicism, and general unapproachableness, all qualities I proudly displayed as a teenager because, frankly, I didn’t have any idea what else to do and I hated every boy I ever met for not wanting to date me. Then I started hating the boys who did want to date me, because they were boring and one of them asked me to fast-forward to the end of Mean Streets once so we could make out before my mom got home. Sorry, pal, but my horomones are not going to overwhelm my filmic needs unless both parties present have already seen the film to the extent that its content can become background noise instead of actively unsexy (uh, Robert DeNiro bleeding violently from the neck, Harvey Keitel screaming at his epileptic girlfriend, much? Yeah, let’s get it on during this dialogue-heavy scene set in a graveyard, you turd, anyway, tangent).
But Harold, good old Harold. He wanted to date the LIBRARIAN who was dowdy and standoffish and so not interested in his showboating. A proper lady with glasses who was soooo unimpressed and not into the crowd-mentality. [Note to self: watch The Music Man again soon.]
But according to the song above, what exactly is the appeal of this woman? She has no virtue, she is not interested in marriage, she “knows what time it is,” she’s an adultress? She’s sexual aggressive, she’s sinful, but she also apparently lacks pretense, as she’s not a breathless baby doll tying knots or spinning webs. But she also misses out on all those other positive terms: golden, gleaming, glorious, goddess. I understand within the context of this song it’s meant to indicate that this “sadder but wiser girl” isn’t untouchable, as a goddess is.
The character, Marian, is a bit of an unwitting schemer, though. She plays it cool and uptight in public, but at home sings that ultimate pining-for-love anthem, “Goodnight, My Someone.” It isn’t that she is uninterested in marriage, or that she’s broken property, or anything of the sort - she just wants something real. Perhaps a marriage based on love and not on manipulation. She is, however, still going to glow and declare an emotional depth as the story progresses, giving us “Til There Was You” and basically turning on her heels as she falls in love with a con-man (that’s an entirely different, entry, btw, the time I realized Harold was a con-man, yowza that major revelation took an embarrassingly long time).
When she sings that song, she has to literally cover Harold’s mouth. He is about to confess something, right, either that he’s being hunted for his credentials or that he’s just not into marrying anyone.
Either way, look, I’m losing my train of thought because I’m at work and these annoying DUTIES keep interjecting themselves into my brain space, so I’ll just say. My point is that there is a lot of pretense involved for the characters on both sides of the “Sadder but Wiser Girl” song. I mean, damn, Harold’s a con-man, straight up, who wins over Marian with his song and dance and persistently borderline-irritating charm. Marian is uptight and unimpressed and standoffish toward Harold, but at home she looks at the window and sings to stars, she is won over by his crooning and busts out an emotional torrent on a bridge during that fair or whatever. How does this end, again? Doesn’t Harold go legit and stay in this podunk town (even though Ron Howard’s character gives it that super lispy adoration in song, it’s still podunk) to marry Marian? Who ARE these people?
Is such transformative power really possible? We’re talking about a romantic comedy musical here, of course, so the temptation is to say, no not at all. But many musicals have this cynical thread running deep in them - characters who are afraid of love, actively avoid it, hate it, hate themselves, etc., only to find it REGARDLESS and then things start to look up, even as they look downdowndown for awhile before that. I just wonder if Harold would ever reprise this song, 60 years old, with a beer gut, never having gotten back on that train where the movie starts out, bitter as shit about how easy it was to melt down this uptight librarian, how unattractive she is now that she’s pliable and she never rejects him. And of course, now that she’s won him, do you think she’s still ready to belt out her feelings while standing in a frilly dress on a bridge? Or does she never leave her house dress and silently seethe at Harold for never singing to her anymore?
I’m not trying to be purposefully pessimistic here, I’m just wondering. As I more slowly realize how ready I am to quit the dating game, quit searching for an abstract and selfish perfection, and instead build something solid with the guy I have, I become more pointedly aware of how few stories exist that give the whole picture start to finish: attraction, union, development, problem-solving, routine, happiness (?), etc. The ends that I’ve seen in real life are either fades to black (very confusing, I know, please see The Purple Rose of Cairo for more) or they pick up after the marriage is established and then we watch that shit fall horribly apart.
It’s like a general wondering, is monogamy dead or dying? And why? Why does it even exist in the first place, and how can we as a culture both hold it sacred yet refuse to speak honestly and dynamically with each other about it? I don’t want any historical contexts so much as I want to know why we allow it to keep being the way it is now. Because it’s not good. The presentation of monogamy is so dishonest that I think something corrupt seeps down deep into our psyches, and it screws things up for people on all sides of the equation. Reject it, conform to it, reject but want to conform to it, conform to it but want to reject it, etc., there’s more subtle confusion and pervasive propaganda than there is around God in these monogamist stories.
Alls I’m saying is, if I’m going to participate in this system, I am damn well going to try and understand why. It was much easier to be a teenage girl, listening to Harold’s and Marian’s songs, thinking “someday, someday.” If the day is approaching, then man, I just do not know what to pack. And am I even allowed to hum Meredith Wilson songs on the trip?
[I hope this makes sense in some way, it was written inbetween reading reports of slip-and-fall accidents, deaths caused, possibly, by chemical exposure, and ignoring subpoenas.]
Someone help me find that picture of grafitti that says 9/11 INSIDE JOB but someone crossed out “job” and wrote “joke.” Then, and only then, will you get my GPOYW picture.
