Turkey Day Travel
My flight to the east coast is delayed, so I've fired up the laptop[1]. Traffic was relatively light, and I made it to the airport with no issues (in stark contrast to a couple years ago). Security line was moderately long, but they had 4 lanes open so it moved pretty quickly and I would've had plenty of time to spare even without the delay.
Over the years I've worn myself into a number of ruts, one of which is that I nearly always watch the same set of movies at the end of the year. Christmas is Love Actually, New Year's is When Harry Met Sally, and for Thanksgiving it's Avalon. Since I'm off to visit the parents for a week, I fulfilled this part of my tradition last night.
If you've never seen Avalon, I highly recommend it -- it's the third movie in the sort of "homage to Baltimore" series from director Barry Levinson (and features a very young Elijah Wood in his first major cinematic role). So it holds some special meaning to me since I grew up there, but it's also just a fantastic movie. Family gatherings at holidays, particularly Thanksgiving, are featured prominently in the movie, thus the seasonal relevance. It has various themes/commentary on the pervasiveness of TV, erosion of the family unit, commericialism etc., but the one that impacts me the most is the inexorable march of time, and particularly the last few scenes, which are set a while after the rest of the movie[2].
[1] This is more of a production than it sounds, because the battery is dead and won't hold a charge, so I have to find an increasingly hard-to-find power outlet, and I dislike getting raped for Wifi without a compelling reason, so it involves a USB cable and PDAnet.
[2] For similar reasons the events-of-the-summer-flashback-montage at the end of To Kill a Mockingbird[3] really affects me too.
[3] The book, I mean. I've seen the Gregory Peck movie too, but forget whether/how/they depicted this. If by some chance you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it also.
Over the years I've worn myself into a number of ruts, one of which is that I nearly always watch the same set of movies at the end of the year. Christmas is Love Actually, New Year's is When Harry Met Sally, and for Thanksgiving it's Avalon. Since I'm off to visit the parents for a week, I fulfilled this part of my tradition last night.
If you've never seen Avalon, I highly recommend it -- it's the third movie in the sort of "homage to Baltimore" series from director Barry Levinson (and features a very young Elijah Wood in his first major cinematic role). So it holds some special meaning to me since I grew up there, but it's also just a fantastic movie. Family gatherings at holidays, particularly Thanksgiving, are featured prominently in the movie, thus the seasonal relevance. It has various themes/commentary on the pervasiveness of TV, erosion of the family unit, commericialism etc., but the one that impacts me the most is the inexorable march of time, and particularly the last few scenes, which are set a while after the rest of the movie[2].
[1] This is more of a production than it sounds, because the battery is dead and won't hold a charge, so I have to find an increasingly hard-to-find power outlet, and I dislike getting raped for Wifi without a compelling reason, so it involves a USB cable and PDAnet.
[2] For similar reasons the events-of-the-summer-flashback-montage at the end of To Kill a Mockingbird[3] really affects me too.
[3] The book, I mean. I've seen the Gregory Peck movie too, but forget whether/how/they depicted this. If by some chance you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it also.