So I went to see this movie with Jean and Rebecca last night. Have you heard of it? Oh, it was really lovely. A musical, actually. It took me a few minutes to settle into the accents and the language (seriously, English with Irish and Czech accents are so easy to understand), but the dialogue was at times poignanty and witty, the music moving and the scenery lovely. Pretty sharpish, I started wondering how Neel would look with a beard. And curly red hair. I can't really imagine why I bawled my dang fool head off through most of it. Could be that it's a little sad too...

We don't go to movies much in our family. I tend to think that people are either movie people or not-movie people. We're definitely not-movie people. Given a choice, I will almost always pick food and conversation over sitting in a theater. By the time Callum turned three, I could tell people that the last movie I'd been in the theater was Shakespeare in Love when I was pregnant. Neel and I tried to go and see A Beautiful Mind for his birthday one year, I'd even bought tickets for it. We went to dinner first and it was so nice just to sit and drink sangria and eat tapas that we let time slip alongside us and we never made it to the movie. I still haven't seen it.

Now that Callum's older we make it to more movies. Every installment of Pirates of the Caribbean when it first comes out. We saw Ratatouille a few weeks ago and Underdog comes out this weekend. Kids' movies I can make it to, no problem, it seems. Last night, nothing but the grown-ups, was a treat indeed. I'm starting to see the movie-people side of things. We had an antioxidant, free-radical infused cocktail beforehand (what the hell is an "acia berry", anyway?) to make up for the copious amounts of popcorn that we intended to consume. Great seats, front row of the balcony, in a great independent theater here in town. Rebecca was definitely driving the bus to get us to this show, and let me tell you dearheart, despite all of the bawling I did, I'm glad we went.

When my dad was up a few weeks ago, he brought a CD he'd purchased because of one song he'd heard on the Sopranos. The song is Evidently Chickentown by John Cooper Clarke. (There's an expletive or two in the song, not counting "bloody", so be careful when you click on the link.) As often happens in our family, song lyrics or phrases enter our personal lexicon, and for the rest of the week he was here and even after we've been saying, "Keep that bloody racket down, this is bloody chicken town." Dad asked why I thought he liked the song so much and I asked what he thought "chickentown" really was. My image was of darkened Dublin streets, washed in streetlights and recent rains. Angry young men clinging to the edge and dying to get out, out, out, anywhere else by here. The kind of images that ran through my head whenever I would read James Joyce or WB Yeats. 'Cause you know, I've always got my James Joyce nearby.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;/ mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. -The Second Coming, WB Yeats

Well, Once is Evidently Chickentown. Just what I pictured. Bloody Chickentown. It was nice to see my mental images blown up big on the screen.

Here's another story about last night that has a potential spoiler so don't read on if you don't want to. After the screen went black, we all sat there, three in a row at the front of the balcony, me scrambling madly for napkins to wipe my seeping eyes. Shell-shocked. We couldn't belive it was over (and believe me, we berated Rebecca quite considerably on the way home), ended just like that. And I remembered this story about going to a movie with my mom, a long, long time ago. You know where this is going, don't you MJ?

There's a great old theater in Knoxville called The Tennessee Theatre. Our own independent theatre here is a scruffier version of The Tennessee, but hey, where else can you get baklava at the concession stand? Or yeast flakes on your popcorn? The Tennessee shows everything from old movies to concerts. They even have a Wurlitzer, can you believe it? Before every show the Wurlitzer rises up, the curtains open and a bouncy ball hops over the words to The Tennessee Waltz as everyone sings along. You know the movie is about to start when you sing The Tennessee Waltz. This is a place you go for the experience as much as the movie itself.

So one year when I was maybe nine or ten, my mom took me and my friend Stacy to The Tennessee for a matinee of The Kind and I. Just like last night, we sat upstairs in the balcony, and just like last night, the ending was an abrupt surprise. When the lights went up, and as we were walking out, my mom said what we were all thinking, "Nobody told me the god-damned king was gonna die." After reading this, if you go to see Once (and despite it all, I really hope you do), you'll now know that, metaphorically speaking, the god-damned king dies. I think I'll go download the soundtrack.

Jean and Rebecca will know that another phrase from the movie has entered our own neighborhood lexicon, but I'm too polite to say it here. Just as I was congratulating myself on my diminished use of that word too.

And the Yeats quote up there in the middle somewhere? That's another one that's entered into the fam. lexicon. Import it into your own, I bet you'll find it applies...a lot.

And another funny thing. Because of that song, I finally learned how to spell "evidently". Seriously. It took a long time. I was always adding an extra syllable or two.

Callum and I are going to have an Emergency! filmfest on my bed today (with the ac a crankin'). Now that's some watching I can relax about.