We (Mark, Gene and Ellen) saw two movies today in the theater for the price of one. We surrendered our morals to Buddha so we felt no compunction in cheating the movie theater out of the price of three extra tickets.
The first movie was I Love You Man. This was a pretty damn funny comedy though with a slightly far-fetched premise: Paul Rudd, sexiest man alive according to some magazine or another I'm sure, has never had a guy friend. Now his wedding/funeral is approaching/looming and he needs to find someone to be his best man. I don't buy it, but given the given, it's a hit.
Gene was saying today how the latest protagonists in movies are anti-heroes. We used to have classic-definition heroes like James Bond - indestructible and irresistable to women, Tom Cruise - pretty boy with that vulnerable touch, Arnold Schwarzenegger - sexiest man alive and all-around badass.
These days we've advanced/regressed to heroes like Seth Rogan from Knocked Up - fat losers with Jew-fros, Jack Black from School of Rock - fat losers with body odor, and Steve Carell - idiots. And it's amazing, but after one of those movies, you actually want to be that fat smelly retarded loser! But what's really crazy is that not only you do, I do too.
The second movie was Sunshine Cleaning. This is about two girls with no skills except remembering their dead mother, who start a crime-scene-cleanup business. It's a pretty good movie, but don't go trusting IMDb that it's a comedy.
Sunshine Cleaning had more (implied) blood and headless torsos than Saving Private Ryan, so it got me thinking a bit about mortality, albeit in a sci-fi direction.
I was thinking:
If human beings were virtually immortal, if the only way they really died was by offing themselves, what do you think the average lifespan would be? I think it might be even lower than it is in our reality. Think about it. Living is a very complicated and hard habit. People are horrible at maintaining hard habits. That's why I do all these 30-day trials, because I know that it's just 30 days, it'll be over soon.
Same thing with life, it's like a long 30-day trial; you feel like an ass if you quit half-way. If there was no half-way point, you wouldn't feel so bad about quitting. When you go on a run and you say "I'm going to run 5 miles," you're going to run waaaaaaay farther than if you say "I'm going to go for a run and see how far I get." I've been saying the second one since the 5th grade and I still haven't left the couch.
Human beings are interesting in that they adhere to both the immortal and mortal states of mind. On one level, everyone acts like they're immortal - the way they live unhealthy lifestyles, the way they plan for the far far future when they might not even survive the day, and especially the way they drive. On the other hand, people know all about their own mortality. You can see this from the fact that they very rarely ask themselves "am I enjoying living?" The subconscious response to that is "whatever, I'm mortal anyway, I'll just go ahead and finish this crapola." They keep living even if they don't enjoy living at all, precisely because they're mortal.
It's kind of like when you order a meal at a restaurant. It's good, but you're full, and you feel sick, but you keep eating because you don't come here very often and today's the only day they're serving Komodo dragon. If you had free all-you-can-eat Komodo dragon ribs every day of the week, you wouldn't bother sticking feathers down your gullet mid-meal to clear up some space for the lonely leftovers on your plate. You'd throw them right down the trash chute. Same with life. If we were all immortal, we'd probably all shoot ourselves in our late twenties.
Ok, that said, don't commit suicide you lazy bastards.
By the way, Tuck Everlasting sucked. Book and movie.
Helpful friends:
Mark: 怎么说 to clean? (how do you say "to clean")
Pei: убирать
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