The Salad Days are Gone? (Heh, What a Silly Phrase)
[Disclaimer: This entry has been deemed extraneous. It is highly disjointed and not necessarily coherent. Read at own risk.]
Thursday was my birthday – the day that I was born, twenty-one years ago, at around the time of the rising sun. Apparently, it was a long labour that started the night before, when all the Irish were out in pubs, drinking their ale, dancing, and singing. I was named Cory because it seemed unique, at the time – The Celtic spelling, not the Gaelic. Jay flowed together with Cory to make a nice, ringing sound of musical nomenclature, according to my mom (and I tend to agree). I didn’t get drunk or anything; my roommate and I shared about half a bottle of Captain Morgan’s Parrot Bay Puerto Rican Coconut-flavoured Rum, which I highly recommend to connoisseurs of good-tasting alcohols. I’ve always been a fan of Coconut Rum, especially mixed with Coke (or just straight). I converted my roommate to Coconut Rum with that, too, and we both agree that the next flavour of Coke should be Coconut Coke – It’d be awesome.
For my birthday, I received a black fiddler’s cap and the DVD for About Schmidt. Fiddler’s caps are neat hats, and I’ve always had a personal taste for hats I deign to be neat. Jack Nicholson is the embodiment of what it is to be the proverbial “The Man,” if you ask me; moreover, he is one of the greatest actors of his generation. I can not express in words my admiration of Jack Nicholson, and I was happy to make a second addition to my future collection of all movies with Jack Nicholson (the first was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest). So, we sat down and watched About Schmidt, after visiting Outback Steakhouse and being filled with dead, delicious cow-meat (Huzzah for being a carnivore).
About Schmidt is a movie about a man at the end of his life, wherein it all begins with his retirement from years upon years of service to Woodmen of the World, an insurance company that employed him as Assistant Vice President and Accruement (I think that’s the term, may be wrong). Warren Schmidt was a man with plans to start a business of his own, but, instead, ended up chained down to a wife and daughter. Feeling the weight of being at the end of his life and having nothing left to occupy his time with, he decides to sponsor an African child through the Child Reach program. And it is through the letters that he writes to Ndugu, his foster son, that the inner thoughts of Warren Schmidt truly spill forth.
I was never really sure how to classify this movie, or what to call it: in a way, it’s a comedy and you find yourself laughing. But, it’s not really a funny movie – in the comedic sense, at least – moreso than it’s a . . . Drama, I guess. This is the story of a man at the end of his life who can do nothing more than look back and assess what he’s done, and slowly come to realize that there is nothing left for him to do. It’s sort of sad, at times, and it’s sort of ridiculous, at other times.
What is truly interesting about About Schmidt is that, at the least ways for me, you fail to ever really have the opportunity to develop an opinion on any one character; not one that is solid or concrete, in any way. Not even for Schmidt, himself, did I have a strong feeling one way or the other towards him. You can say that his daughter’s fiancé is a complete moron, but you can also say that he’s just a little scatter-brained albeit good-natured. Schmidt’s daughter: well, she is the most straight-forward of the character cast, but it’s hard to say whether or not she’s wrong or right to act how she does. At times, it may seem like she’s just being irrational and cruel, but then you have to give her that she is legitimately at the end of her rope. Everyone is kind of ridiculous in this movie, and it all lends itself to a feeling of a jaded, burnt-out vision of a chaotic world, through the eyes of Schmidt.
I found it rather ironic that my dad chose to pick this movie up for me in celebration of my birthday: a movie centered around a man at the final milestone of his life, looking backwards and revisiting everything he ever stood for in principle. At an age that is supposed to be symbolic of the coming into of adulthood and the figurative “rest of your life,” I find myself somewhat doing the same. In a way, everything was planned for and leading up to this age; humans are short-sighted creatures, so it was never in my capacity to think ahead of age twenty-one or thereabout. It all feels like, from this time and henceforth, everything is up in the air and intangible. The only grasp I have on what I will absolutely be doing is getting a degree (or two) from college in the near-future – Never before has it really felt like it was near that I would graduate college. My slate is clean, per se, and all that is left to do now is lay down new plans, new ideas, and new goals for the future.
Twenty-one is young, really. I have a lot of time ahead of me, according to general statistics for my demographic and all that. I could die tomorrow, but that’s fine – I’d rather not think in terms of brash realism, always. I’m not old, and I don’t feel old, because I shouldn’t feel old and anyone who says they feel old and have done it all at twenty-one . . . Well, they’re full of shit.
Adios.
Thursday was my birthday – the day that I was born, twenty-one years ago, at around the time of the rising sun. Apparently, it was a long labour that started the night before, when all the Irish were out in pubs, drinking their ale, dancing, and singing. I was named Cory because it seemed unique, at the time – The Celtic spelling, not the Gaelic. Jay flowed together with Cory to make a nice, ringing sound of musical nomenclature, according to my mom (and I tend to agree). I didn’t get drunk or anything; my roommate and I shared about half a bottle of Captain Morgan’s Parrot Bay Puerto Rican Coconut-flavoured Rum, which I highly recommend to connoisseurs of good-tasting alcohols. I’ve always been a fan of Coconut Rum, especially mixed with Coke (or just straight). I converted my roommate to Coconut Rum with that, too, and we both agree that the next flavour of Coke should be Coconut Coke – It’d be awesome.
For my birthday, I received a black fiddler’s cap and the DVD for About Schmidt. Fiddler’s caps are neat hats, and I’ve always had a personal taste for hats I deign to be neat. Jack Nicholson is the embodiment of what it is to be the proverbial “The Man,” if you ask me; moreover, he is one of the greatest actors of his generation. I can not express in words my admiration of Jack Nicholson, and I was happy to make a second addition to my future collection of all movies with Jack Nicholson (the first was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest). So, we sat down and watched About Schmidt, after visiting Outback Steakhouse and being filled with dead, delicious cow-meat (Huzzah for being a carnivore).
About Schmidt is a movie about a man at the end of his life, wherein it all begins with his retirement from years upon years of service to Woodmen of the World, an insurance company that employed him as Assistant Vice President and Accruement (I think that’s the term, may be wrong). Warren Schmidt was a man with plans to start a business of his own, but, instead, ended up chained down to a wife and daughter. Feeling the weight of being at the end of his life and having nothing left to occupy his time with, he decides to sponsor an African child through the Child Reach program. And it is through the letters that he writes to Ndugu, his foster son, that the inner thoughts of Warren Schmidt truly spill forth.
I was never really sure how to classify this movie, or what to call it: in a way, it’s a comedy and you find yourself laughing. But, it’s not really a funny movie – in the comedic sense, at least – moreso than it’s a . . . Drama, I guess. This is the story of a man at the end of his life who can do nothing more than look back and assess what he’s done, and slowly come to realize that there is nothing left for him to do. It’s sort of sad, at times, and it’s sort of ridiculous, at other times.
What is truly interesting about About Schmidt is that, at the least ways for me, you fail to ever really have the opportunity to develop an opinion on any one character; not one that is solid or concrete, in any way. Not even for Schmidt, himself, did I have a strong feeling one way or the other towards him. You can say that his daughter’s fiancé is a complete moron, but you can also say that he’s just a little scatter-brained albeit good-natured. Schmidt’s daughter: well, she is the most straight-forward of the character cast, but it’s hard to say whether or not she’s wrong or right to act how she does. At times, it may seem like she’s just being irrational and cruel, but then you have to give her that she is legitimately at the end of her rope. Everyone is kind of ridiculous in this movie, and it all lends itself to a feeling of a jaded, burnt-out vision of a chaotic world, through the eyes of Schmidt.
I found it rather ironic that my dad chose to pick this movie up for me in celebration of my birthday: a movie centered around a man at the final milestone of his life, looking backwards and revisiting everything he ever stood for in principle. At an age that is supposed to be symbolic of the coming into of adulthood and the figurative “rest of your life,” I find myself somewhat doing the same. In a way, everything was planned for and leading up to this age; humans are short-sighted creatures, so it was never in my capacity to think ahead of age twenty-one or thereabout. It all feels like, from this time and henceforth, everything is up in the air and intangible. The only grasp I have on what I will absolutely be doing is getting a degree (or two) from college in the near-future – Never before has it really felt like it was near that I would graduate college. My slate is clean, per se, and all that is left to do now is lay down new plans, new ideas, and new goals for the future.
Twenty-one is young, really. I have a lot of time ahead of me, according to general statistics for my demographic and all that. I could die tomorrow, but that’s fine – I’d rather not think in terms of brash realism, always. I’m not old, and I don’t feel old, because I shouldn’t feel old and anyone who says they feel old and have done it all at twenty-one . . . Well, they’re full of shit.
Adios.
posted by c.Jay Wrong at
2:45 PM
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