3: January 2004 Archives
I think it was around the same time that we decided on Chicago as our first soundtrack purchase, before we realized that listening to Chicago for a week straight, on a continuous loop, would make us absolutely nutty, that C and I decided that we needed the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, as well. We never bought the soundtrack, but when we got back to Austin, C reminded me to add the movie to my Netflix queue, and it arrived today.
When Dirty Dancing came out, I was ten, going on eleven, and that movie served as my own personal introduction to what love with a tough-but-kind-hearted rebel might be like. I learned valuable life-lessons about back-alley abortions and the merengue and joining the Peace Corps, and my sister and I watched the film over and over, making fun of the (geeky) older sister and admiring the hip, sexy younger one. I'm not sure what that said about us, or me, the geeky older sister, for that matter.
It's harsh to watch a movie like that years after the fact. Suddenly, the plot was forced (though I remembered lots of crucial lines, years and years later. "Nobody puts Baby in the corner!"), the dance moves were sort of stupid, Patrick Swayze was sorta gross and greasy, and the dialogue was insipid in spots. C once told me about how she watched Dirty Dancing illegally when she was younger, having obtained a pirated copy from some other country somehow, and I understand now why she couldn't bear to have the film ruined for her by the Mr. Sinus guys -- this stuff was sacred to our childhood and adolecence. But it was great to laugh at now, more than fifteen years later.
The part that really made me laugh, though, was the part where C asked, in all seriousness, "Where's the pottery scene?" I lost it then, explaining as nicely as I could in between uncontrollable fits of laughter that there was no pottery scene in Dirty Dancing, she was thinking of Ghost. With Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg.
She didn't believe me, and between you and me? I think it ruined the movie for her.
As I write this, it is 11:56 in Tucson, Arizona, but C and I have already celebrated New Years on Texas time, and we're satisfied with that. You might call us wet blankets, but we prefer to call ourselves overachievers.
As for Tucson, well... as far as we're concerned, we resolve celebrate the fact that we don't live in Tucson daily. Austin is so, so, so much cooler. We weren't able to find any planned events for New Years, so C and I headed to downtown Tucson to look for something interesting going on.
As C explains it, it's a Romanian superstition that whatever you're doing at New Years, that's what you'll be doing for the rest of the year to come. It's been a long day of driving, so I had decided I'd be happy with a year of sleep and relaxation, but C seemed interested in celebrating, so we went downtown. We were unimpressed.
We found a grill with decent pasta primavera, so we're starting the new year with our bellies full, but we weren't halfway through dinner when we decided to celebrate New Year's on Texas time, an hour ahead of Arizona. We decided we'd buck the trend by going back to the hotel and watching Dick Clark on television, rather than going to a bar that requires a cover charge in exchange for the honor of buying drinks from them.
As it happened, we brought in the new year in Texas time laughing uproariously; if I spend the entire year laughing, it'll be a good year, as far as I can tell. And now, just after midnight in Arizona, I'm relaxing, listening to a biography on television, and posting this entry with the sound of fireworks cracking outside. I have money in my pocket and food in my belly, and I'm indulging my constant desire to travel; if the Romanian supersitition is right, I think 2004 will be a good year.
