No more tears.

Two conversations from Friday night:

A – Dad calls to ask some random furniture questions, and I am crying my eyes out watching Across the Universe. Y’all. I’m sure you have heard of Across the Universe – you know, the Beatles-but-not-really movie? Trust me, if you have not yet seen it, I strenuously urge you to hit up ye olde Netflix. It’s fabulous. Anyhow, there is this scene involving the Watts Riots and the Vietnam War, and it is held together with this rocking awesome Gospel rendition of “Let It Be.” I have seen this movie 47,000 times and I cry every single time I watch it. Very cathartic, you know. Check it out:




I keep hoping my church choir (yes, we are one of "those" churches) will do this on a Sunday. No offense to Lennon/McCartney et al, but thay have been totally trumped by this interpretation. I really don't think the song should ever be performed any other way. However, Dad is not impressed, not having seen this masterful powerhouse performance, and is pretty much ridiculing my emotional distress. So I say, “Dad, you don’t get it. It’s like the kangaroo, but with people!” Dad is immediately remorseful, though chuckling.

B – The Todd calls not long after that, and I answer, still sniffling because I had to rewind the “Let It Be” scene due to el Padre’s interruption.
Pete: “What are you doing?”
Jamie: (sniff, sniff) “Watching a movie” (sniff, sob, sniff)
Pete: “Are you watching the kangaroo? BY YOURSELF?!?”

What, you ask, is the kangaroo? Only the single greatest (though, I fear, inspired by a really serious trip with the brown acid) specimen of Australian Animation ever to come out of Sydney. Dot and the Kangaroo. Cartoon characters spliced on top of actual video of the Outback? Adventures during which one rides in the pouch of a red kangaroo? A singing platypus? What more could you ask for? By the way, not showing off or anything, but the Latin term for the platypus is Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, which I learned at the foot of the singing mammal himself. This made the letter P so much easier, you have no idea.

For those of you with children, know that I will one day show up at you house with a copy of this movie, but I warn you that it is not without its problems. First off, there is a Bunyip. I would explain the sheer terror of the Bunyip scene, and its accompanying song, but it gives me nightmares to think about it. I am thirty-one years of age, and I will skip this scene. God bless DVD’s. Second, the crying. Oh, the crying. Obviously, kangaroos are meant to live in the wild of the Australian Outback. Pioneer children like Dot are meant to live in cabins. One cannot really change this territorial pattern. Let me just say that whole “wild animals need their freedom” discussion was lost, totally lost, on Toddler Jamie. Witness the sadness:




I am CRYING. Tears running, right now. Is that not the worst thing ever? Oh, it just rips my heart out. I think it’s the change from cartoon kangaroo to real kangaroo that does it. Sort of like an Australian Velveteen Rabbit, if you will. As a child, I would just work myself up into a sobbing frenzy, and then beg to watch the film again, promising I would not cry if they would just rewind it. And nothing, nothing, has ever come close…….except for the Let It Be scene.

I think I will watch that again.