Tuesday, September 18, 2012

The Script Writers

Did you ever wake up and realize that if they made a movie of your life, they'd cast Paul Giamatti to play your character?  The movie would be called 'The Insomniac.' If you're female, like me, being portrayed as a man would be horrifying and unfair.

Well, it was funny this morning. Mike thought it was funny, anyway.  I just couldn't get over the fact that the script writers would have changed me into a man.

They would have changed me into a man because no woman, at least the stereotypes offered on screen, would have that many dirty dishes in and around her sink.  No woman would be so apt to splatter mayonaise on her favorite shirt as she was trying to rinse out the very nearly empty jar to recycle it.  No woman, for that matter, would call that faded green Tshirt her favorite shirt.  And no woman, at least an on-screen woman, would put that much garlic in her daughter's lunch. 

Furthermore, Mike decreed that my character, in the movie, would have to be divorced so as to be as miserable as possible.  He would have driven away his wife in his myriad ways of being miserably cranky from all the interruptions to his sleep, and inept in his attempt to finish any project.  Even when he went to bed at 10:53 pm, the lonely cat woke him at 2:17 am meowing at his face.  The dog woke him at 4:57 am needing to go out because he forgot to take the poor guy out before he shuffled off to bed.  Cheerful parents of Giamatti's daughter's friends would text him just as he got back to sleep at 5:54 am asking to know if Sherri was going to ride the bus that day.  The next night, brown-nosing coworkers would email at 11:37 pm and CC him as if he gave a damn crap about whether they shipped 47 free samples of lip balm to the potential client to cover all their staff or 94 to include spouses as well.  He would not have figured out how to turn off the beep or the buzz of his phone every time he got an email, so that it even beeped or buzzed the resonant wood of his desk when junk mail was sent from Clinique at 12:00 am because his daughter signed up for some free stuff and gave out his email to get it.  The worst of it was that when his phone was occasionally silent at night, he often dreamed he heard it beep with some urgent message at 3:14 in the morning.  It just seemed so real.  And then he'd lie there and worry that he hadn't called to schedule a hair cut and his hair was getting long.  He needed to refinance the house to get a 2% rate, but they only offered that rate for a fifteen year loan and he wanted thirty. 

Yes, Giamatti would do a great job playing this role.  He would make it miserably funny.  The worst part of it all is that all would not end well in this movie.  It would not be allowed to end happily ever after.  No, the script writers would change that too.

Thank you for listening, jules

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