We made it to 100 posts!
Indeed this is the 100th mixture of rumbling, preaching and (hopefully) witty writing I am going to send out in this huge void that is the Internet.
It's a milestone and as such it deserves a little reflection.
A blog is very often about personal views and opinions. I tell to who cares what I have been up to, I share how I feel about whatever attracts my attention and I try to describe the mess that is my train of thought.
This pats weekend I watch the movie Welcome to Me. Bare with me, I have got a point.
Alice (Kristen Wiig from Bridesmaids) is a woman with severe personality disorders who wins the lottery and stops taking her medication in order to pursue her dream of making her own talk show (in which she relives the most painful moments of her past, cooks food, takes naps, and neuters animals). Things go exactly as badly as you think they will.
This movie is not one of those mega productions with box office royalty all wrapped up in superheros costumes. No.
It’s not an easy sell to audiences, except that it’s wonderful and funny and heartbreaking in so many ways you rarely get from mainstream cinema.
It's a lovely comedy-drama with great characters and a super performance by Kristen Wiig.
I am sure most of you will find this story a bit strange but this is exactly the kind of movie I am crazy about (pun intended).
Films about mental illness deal with touchy subject matters to begin with. When the film is a comedy the fine line between mockery and heartfelt portray becomes even thinner.
Welcome to Me manages to walk this fine line like a dexterous tightrope walker.
What I loved the most about this movie is how it sets up a scenario where you think you’re going to be laughing at this woman and her behavior, but that’s not really how it plays out.
Alice is indeed mentally disturbed.
When she needs to say something important she actually writes it down before hand and when she is about to deliver it in a speech she starts by saying "I have a prepared statement".
Genius.
She hasn't turned off her TV in 11 years.
She writes a check for 15 million dollars to a tiny network so that they will have the funds to produce her own talk show. Alice wants it to be just like Oprah's talk show (by the way she has all the bog O's episodes on tape and knows them by heart - word by word).
The only difference is she won't have guests or a different topic to tackle every day. No.
Alice will have two hours live on the air daily and she will talk about herself.
The one and only subject will be herself in her mentally unstable totality.
Alice talk show is called Welcome to Me.
That got me thinking.
Isn't it that what most of us are already doing thanks to the social medias and modern forms of interaction in general?
We are perpetually welcoming people (most of whom are basically strangers) into our lives.
Showing them what we look like when we wake up or when we are ready to go out, what we eat, where we go, what we are listening to. We wash our dirty laundry on FaceBook and we are more than happy to give up our privacy in the name of instant gratification, likes, followers, re-tweets.
We write about our latest colonic (sparing no details mind you) but we also make sure that our last Instagram selfie has been filtered as much as expensive vodka: to perfection.
However let me talk for myself.
It's always wiser not to generalize...
Just like Alice I share a lot of my life. It is basically all out there, Grinder smoldering profile pic included. If you have the time and the will to read or at least click on my post's links you should have a pretty accurate idea of what the hell I have been up to not only since I moved to Miami but even further back.
The only difference between Alice and I is that she has no filter. She is not able to mitigate her emotions when they take over. In other words she is completely transparent. Her mind is not capable of triggering only the socially approved amount of emotions. Alice just let it rip.
Alice talks exclusively about herself during her talk show. She goes as far as investing millions of dollars to enable herself to be the center of the universe for tow hours at the time on live TV.
I write to achieve that.
I post lovely pictures to achieve that.
I check-in on FaceBook to achieve that.
I tweet to achieve that...the list could go on and I could also easily substitute the "I" with "WE" and I would be rather accurate as well.
But Alice is mad. She has an excuse to be so blatantly egocentric.
What is my/our excuse?
Where is this all leading to?
Heavy shit I tell you.
On a lighter note Alice loves swans and walks around under a tiny parasol.
I loved swans so much as a child I managed to be cast as the lead in The Ugly Duckling on my first year in elementary school (the lead was always reserved for the fifth year kids). I loved swans so much that I eventually got bitten by one of them at a public park since I tried to pet them while they were minding their own business in the pond. My left index finger was not pleased.
Regarding the parasol I won't need to waste a word. I will only post these pics:
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| True story... |
I do find Alice's idea for a talk show rather amazing and if any of you should have a few million dollars to spare I would be more than happy to present this format to any cable Network willing to transform me into Welcome to Me.
You are welcome.
Ciao for now.
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