mona lisa smile

so back home... i'm going to sell my dad... he's trying to be funny right now, but although he gets mad when we yak while he's trying to do stuff, he doesn't return the favor when we ask him to wait a minute.

so it was a good evening... saw jessica two weeks ago in philly, and now again tonight... after catching sandwiches for dinner and trading presents, we went to see the movie mona lisa smile... last time we visited i complained how she has a country station in philly and i can't pick up any NYC/NJ ones, and i was also debating about getting a billy joel double CD or an elvis double CD... so for a christmas present she mixed me up a country hits CD and an elvis CD... durn spiffy of her. =) she did quite well.

enjoyed the movie, although it was different from how i expected... basic plot is that julia roberts is a new professor at an all girls school in the 1950s... she's single, unmarried, and working on her art history dissertation and wants to see her students be so passionate about their fields that they'll go further in their education/potential careers after college as well... however, brilliant and studious as they are, most of them have the single goal in life of getting married and being housewives. it was all setting up for it to be a dichotomy of julia vs. the students and her converting them, but two scenes i didn't expect complicated things... in one of them, julia ran into a student she'd been encouraging to go to law school and was discussing future plans with her, when the student tells her "you don't understand... i just eloped this weekend -- i'm married!" "but what about yale? what about law school? you can do both, you don't have to choose!" "you're the one who told me i could be anything i wanted. but you see being a housewife as giving up on your dreams. that doesn't have to be it at all. this is what i've always wanted. and it's what i'm going to be.".... later in the movie another professor told her "you think you came here to teach them all a different way to do things... you came here to teach them all your way of doing things". in the end, she left, a role model for all the students regardless of what they ended up doing, and going to learn more on her own... but it was interesting how the movie was publicized as julia roberts's character enlightening all these students, when they really showed her some faults in her own "liberalized" view of things... parts were slow, but it was still a quality film. interesting for me, because the julia roberts character is halfway like me (definitely not completely)... a woman in academia, but in contact with a plethora of people not and trying to figure out how the two very different world views from these two life experiences can coincide/work together to understand each other... dude, i'm tired... no idea if it made sense or not... mom wants to see the movie too, so i'll probably end up seeing it again while i'm in town, and can think through it all again.

after the movie, jess and i went to get coffee and dessert and just chat a little... i really enjoy the fact that jess is a memphis friend i've known for forever but is accessible in NJ too... she's not in direct daily contact w/ me in NJ, but she's visited and knows the people there and my situation, and me similarly with her setup in philly... so we can visit in memphis, have fun in our HS hometown together and chat about our respective grad schools knowing full well what the other one is talking about, or we can hang out up northeast and get a taste of home again, enjoy our country music, chat about memphis, and have fun that way too... it's the first time i've had a friend that is part of two different places i live at at the same time, which is kinda nice... in memphis, she's an escape from family/memphis life to chat about NJ... in NJ she's a break from stresses there to chat about memphis... and many other things too, but it's kinda fun that way. =)

random observation of the day. when i go get coffee or snacks at a restaurant down south with another friend, the waiter always pays for our coffee/sodas/whatever. when i do that up north, no, whether it's midwest or northeast. go figure. the end. go memphis and yay for free coffee. =)