I know there are a few things that i like to talk about but at this time I can only think of one and it's TV and movies. Under many circumstances I would be inclined to defend this and to prove to you that this is a worthy subject of dedicated interest. However, I'm just not going to do that today. The truth is that I'm probably a philistine anyways, so who cares.
I made a little publication about this once. It was a collection of my memoirs related to film and television called TV GUIDE ME. I used the last issue of the TV Guide ever printed to bind them. I still have a few, if you want one.
I remember writing in my diary a few years ago about how nice it is that we have these four seasons that are so predictable. We know that we will go through all kinds of emotional cycles based on whether there's snow or flowers or sun. And as December rained, I re-thought it and decided that reliable experience really only comes from watching the same movie or show over and over again.
Every year at Christmas I watch It's a Wonderful Life. Every year it makes me cry and it's usually at the exact same moment when they get the telegram from Sam Wainwright saying "Mr. Gower cabled you need cash, stop. My office instructed to advance you up to twenty-five thousand dollars, stop. Hee Haw and Merry Christmas! Sam Wainwright." I know it's not the most sentimental moment of the movie, but something about the way that Mary and George react to this- I don't know it just tips the bucket of tears over.
But once they start singing Auld Lang Sine and once the policeman rips up the warrant for George Bailey's arrest and joins into the singing, I know I'm only crying because this is something that I want so much that is never here. But, stories speculate on possible truth, so I sometimes like to imagine that these old movies are simply representing something that's truer than true.
