By Ryn Gargulinski
Anyone who thinks it’s gross if a 20-something dude who looks 13 were to fall in love with and marry an 80-year-old gal is right.
It is.
Unless it’s Harold and Maude.
This movie not only erases society’s baseless initial shock and repulsion at such a match, but it opens the doors to examine other societal “rights” and “wrongs” that all of a sudden seem ridiculous. Like why is it OK when Anna Nicole takes on an 80-year-old lover but disgusting to some when Harold does the same thing? Why is it disgusting at all when love transcends everything, even death?
This entertaining and wholly kitschy 70s flick also opens other doors with more questions and varied interpretation. Is Maude a real person or just a figment of much needed love for Harold’s imagination? Does Harold really die during one of his “suicides?” Is Harold alive in the first place? Is Maude? Is he really only 13?
These and many other inquiries, like how the heck Harold could weld a really cool mini-hearse out of a Jaguar in less than two hours, prey on our minds.
They make us think. They awaken our senses. They make us look at love, maybe even experience it. Heck, one of my friends said he'd marry Maude in a second (but alas, Ruth "Maude" Gordon died in 1985). (Bud Cort, who played Harold, simply got all obscure like child actors even though he wasn't a child but just looked like one.)
This is not your average sit-and-absorb-things-like-a-fat-blob-eating-popcorn movies. Nor is it annoyingly philosophical, yet it does tend to preach.
I won’t ruin the film by either revealing the ending or telling you what Maude likes to preach about. But I will say you won’t mind sitting in the pew.
Highlight: Opening scene that leaves Harold hanging himself from a rafter and his subsequent string of suicides.
Lowlight: Imagining life with a mother like Harold has.
Rating (1-10): 80,888
Showing posts with label kitschy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kitschy. Show all posts
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Saturday, March 03, 2007
Chia Pet Revival
By Ryn Gargulinski
Imagine your surprise if you opened a gift mailed from your mom and found inside a Chia Pet.
What a blast from the past. What a cute, funny gift. What a fine, kitschy find.
What a hunk of junk.
This is not to say that Chia Pets in general are hunk of junk. Well, the head that grows hair and the hippo are somewhat stupid, but the idea itself is quite adorable.
Millions of others thought so when the Chia Pet craze hit like a wave soon after it was marketed by Joseph Enterprises in 1982. This is the same company that brought us the infinitely amusing – and effective – Clapper, although it took lots of convincing to get my boss to buy one for his inaccessible lamp in the corner.
For the Chia Pet, the best selling point, by far, was not the promise of fresh herbs sprouting on your kitchen windowsill. Nor was it the adobe molded ram that could have very well come from the wiles of old town Mexico.
The selling point was the jingle.
Catchy and cute, the stuttering ch-ch-ch-chia song can still make one dance and sing with significant glee.
With that stuttering song strumming in my head, I promptly opened my mom-sent Chia Pet expecting a long-lasting relationship with an adorable chunk of adobe.
Instead I found a mangy something encrusted in at least 20 years of dust, crust and blacked herbs. Herbs evidently don’t like it when you stuff them in a box in mom’s basement for a couple of decades.
After dutifully scrubbing the adobe with a vegetable brush I’ve since thrown away, I mixed the exact three tablespoons of herbs with the exact three tablespoons of water and slathered my newly-clean Chia with the mixture.
It promised to grow in five days.
Five days later, it did grow.
It grew mold.
Perhaps I should have been tipped off when the seeds had a test date of 1988.
I left it there for a few days, hoping the mold was not really mold and just the way Chia seeds are supposed to sprout.
But once white stuff started breaking off the ram’s butt and floating around the kitchen, I figured it was time to let it go.
After my dog and I stopped choking on floating mold spores long enough to tell mom what happened, she promised to send a new gift to make up for our pain and suffering.
I opened the mail yesterday to find a pet rock.
Another fine blast from the past.
With green, fuzzy spots where the eyes should be.
Imagine your surprise if you opened a gift mailed from your mom and found inside a Chia Pet.
What a blast from the past. What a cute, funny gift. What a fine, kitschy find.
What a hunk of junk.
This is not to say that Chia Pets in general are hunk of junk. Well, the head that grows hair and the hippo are somewhat stupid, but the idea itself is quite adorable.
Millions of others thought so when the Chia Pet craze hit like a wave soon after it was marketed by Joseph Enterprises in 1982. This is the same company that brought us the infinitely amusing – and effective – Clapper, although it took lots of convincing to get my boss to buy one for his inaccessible lamp in the corner.
For the Chia Pet, the best selling point, by far, was not the promise of fresh herbs sprouting on your kitchen windowsill. Nor was it the adobe molded ram that could have very well come from the wiles of old town Mexico.
The selling point was the jingle.
Catchy and cute, the stuttering ch-ch-ch-chia song can still make one dance and sing with significant glee.
With that stuttering song strumming in my head, I promptly opened my mom-sent Chia Pet expecting a long-lasting relationship with an adorable chunk of adobe.
Instead I found a mangy something encrusted in at least 20 years of dust, crust and blacked herbs. Herbs evidently don’t like it when you stuff them in a box in mom’s basement for a couple of decades.
After dutifully scrubbing the adobe with a vegetable brush I’ve since thrown away, I mixed the exact three tablespoons of herbs with the exact three tablespoons of water and slathered my newly-clean Chia with the mixture.
It promised to grow in five days.
Five days later, it did grow.
It grew mold.
Perhaps I should have been tipped off when the seeds had a test date of 1988.
I left it there for a few days, hoping the mold was not really mold and just the way Chia seeds are supposed to sprout.
But once white stuff started breaking off the ram’s butt and floating around the kitchen, I figured it was time to let it go.
After my dog and I stopped choking on floating mold spores long enough to tell mom what happened, she promised to send a new gift to make up for our pain and suffering.
I opened the mail yesterday to find a pet rock.
Another fine blast from the past.
With green, fuzzy spots where the eyes should be.
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