Yesterday I was behind a car with a style of Maryland license plate I hadn't seen before:
When I lived in Kansas I pretty much never saw a Maryland plate. Same with Georgia. I rarely saw one on either of the big contiguous-48 drive-abouts I did, either, for that matter, once I was two or three states away from home. Made me think Marylanders never go much of anywhere, at least with their cars. But Ann Arbor has some Marylanders in it. I probably see the car of one every few months, at least. When I do, I start singing a cheesy promotional song about the state from back when I lived there: "Maryland you are/Beautiful, you are/Maryland, you're taking my breath away....." Bad song. But whatcha gonna do.
I'm probably from Kansas, if I'm from somewhere, but I feel like I'm from Maryland. I lived there from age 10 to age 35 or 37 or something. I lived in it in different parts and different ways. I was first sorta on my own there. It's strange for me to think how far away that world is to me, and how gone. I was thinking about that a lot yesterday.
At night I saw Lady Bird, which was good. I'd heard it's a fresh version of a not-fresh genre, the coming-of-age film, but it's a bigger film than a slice-of-transition niche thing like that. And it has heart. Plus it's well made. It does film things well, and efficiently without skimping or being choppy. There were a lotta moments I liked, but maybe my favorite was a Maryland reminder it offered me. (Small spoiler follows; just skip the rest of this paragraph to skip it.) Mom sez to daughter at emotional moment in car: wanna do our favorite Sunday thing? Daughter sez yes and we get ready to be shown what that thing is. Cut to a brief sequence of shots of them at open houses for houses they could never afford. Once in the '80s my mother visited me in Baltimore, and---her idea---we spontano-dropped-into an open house for a $450,000 house, which is probably worth twice or thrice that now, in Roland Park. This was unlike my mother in more than one way. And I loved it. I remember her asking the real estate person, as we stood on some big smooth wood floor, "Full basement?" Yes, it had a full basement. Then mom said something about good, she likes a full basement, which nearly cracked me up, with her full basement *maybe* the square footage of the kitchen we were in.
One thing the Lady Bird character does that I would like to do better: she experiences her experiences and then experiences her next experiences. I mean, I do that, of course, but she does it better.
I'm probably from Kansas, if I'm from somewhere, but I feel like I'm from Maryland. I lived there from age 10 to age 35 or 37 or something. I lived in it in different parts and different ways. I was first sorta on my own there. It's strange for me to think how far away that world is to me, and how gone. I was thinking about that a lot yesterday.
At night I saw Lady Bird, which was good. I'd heard it's a fresh version of a not-fresh genre, the coming-of-age film, but it's a bigger film than a slice-of-transition niche thing like that. And it has heart. Plus it's well made. It does film things well, and efficiently without skimping or being choppy. There were a lotta moments I liked, but maybe my favorite was a Maryland reminder it offered me. (Small spoiler follows; just skip the rest of this paragraph to skip it.) Mom sez to daughter at emotional moment in car: wanna do our favorite Sunday thing? Daughter sez yes and we get ready to be shown what that thing is. Cut to a brief sequence of shots of them at open houses for houses they could never afford. Once in the '80s my mother visited me in Baltimore, and---her idea---we spontano-dropped-into an open house for a $450,000 house, which is probably worth twice or thrice that now, in Roland Park. This was unlike my mother in more than one way. And I loved it. I remember her asking the real estate person, as we stood on some big smooth wood floor, "Full basement?" Yes, it had a full basement. Then mom said something about good, she likes a full basement, which nearly cracked me up, with her full basement *maybe* the square footage of the kitchen we were in.
One thing the Lady Bird character does that I would like to do better: she experiences her experiences and then experiences her next experiences. I mean, I do that, of course, but she does it better.
