Directed by Michel Gondry

If my life were a movie, two things are for certain: it would be directed by Michel Gondry and star Michael Cera in a cascading blonde wig. It would probably focus on one rather banal day in my life, only in Gondry’s imagining everyone would have giant, inflatable hands. Dave would be played by Seth Rogen and Olive would be a robot. Every moment in my life up until page one of the script would exist solely to provide background for the script, and everything that happened post-page 120 would be unimportant. By the end of the film we would all see truths regarding relationships, art, and dreams.

The first act might begin with my first day of training at the yoga studio. As I travel to the yoga studio, following a crumpled page of directions, everything is just a little disorienting. For the first ten minutes of the film everyone on the bus is speaking to me in Spanish and I could certainly use a glance at the subtitles the audience is reading.

Once I finally find the studio, everything is peaceful. The studio director, played by Sylvie Testud, puts the phone to her chest and points for me to sit in an empty room across from the front desk. I leave my boots at the entrance and sit cross-legged on the floor. The room contains nothing but a room divider, an upright skeleton, and a system of ropes suspended from the wall. My face contorts as I scrutinize the system of ropes but my train of thought is quickly interrupted by a voice.

“Do you mind if I use the room?” a woman in the doorway says. She is very skinny and wears all gray. I nod and gather up my things so I can get out of her way. The woman tangles herself in the ropes and the gears behind her begin to turn. They are powered by some sort of Rube Goldberg machine: a mechanical hand dripping ice cold water from an infant medicine dropper onto the back of a dwarf hamster which runs on its wheel and propels a conveyer belt that rotates the gears of the rope system. It is Sylvie the studio manager’s invention. The ropes contort her body into impossible forms. I assume that she must be a teacher.

“What’s your name?” the woman asks me in a voice almost like a child.

“I’m Brittany,” I say. “What's your name?”

Her body is bent into a perfect triangle with bulging tendons and she looks at me from under her armpit.

“Marie.”

“I was wondering what this machine was for,” I say, taking a closer look.

“Do you want me to show you how to use it?” she asks.

She helps me twist the ropes around my arms and waist and before I know my body is out of my control. The ropes pull me into downward facing dog and I hang from my waist like wet rag, my fingers and toes dangling just above the ground.

“Keep your knees bent,” Marie says. “You aren’t warmed up yet.”

“Brittany, what are you doing? I’m ready for you now,” Sylvie says from the doorway. “And Marie, what are you doing in the teacher’s room?”

I untangle myself and drop to the ground.

Marie wanders into a classroom, where everyone is standing on their heads. When the door shuts, the studio manager turns to me.

“Just so you know, Marie is one of our more… difficult students. I've been putting up with her for a long time, but sometimes she just loses it and I have to ask her to leave. Usually she does this when the temperature isn’t exactly seventy-four degrees.”

Just then, Marie ambles out of the classroom with a pair of black goggles strapped to face. We both give Marie a strange look. The perspective shifts to Marie and we see everything through her infrared goggles. Sylvie and I are outlined in red blurs on a fuzzy, black background. Green digital words and numbers pop up on the margins. Next to Sylvie’s head “98.6 degrees” flashes in red, and next to mine “96.6 degrees” flashes. The words “REPTILE” blinks across the screen. Marie gasps.

We watch her roll her hips and drop into warrior three. She bounces her torso to get a good stretch.

“Things have been better since I started going to that studio in Connecticut,” Marie says. Her torso falls and she hangs in a standing forward bend. “The teachers there are wonderful. I want to take the postures home with me, it’s really special. And of course, now that the season is changing I’ll be coming here more often. It’s just hard for me when the temperature is too hot. Anything over seventy-four degrees.”

She stands up straight. “I’ll see you on Thursday, Sylvie.”

Marie walks out the door, detecting the temperature of the passing vehicles. To her delight, this charming fall day is exactly seventy-four degrees.

I watch training videos on a computer screen. Over a period of a couple of hours my face grows increasingly weary and my eyes begin to lull shut. The first video is a busty woman explaining different brands of yoga gear, the second is about how to clean the rental yoga mats with a squeegee. I yawn. In the next video, an angry man in a bathrobe is nailing a yoga mat to the door of a Catholic church and yelling something about hypocrisy.

“What do you know about enlightenment?” he cries. “What do you know?!”

I stretch my arms out and it doesn’t strike me as unusual that at some point in the transition into the dream sequence I changed into a lizard costume. Now I am a lizard in a cascading blonde wig. I leave the desk and join a yoga class that starts at 12:30. The teacher is playing a popular song by Enya and the lyrics to the song are a string of pasta dishes served at the Olive Garden.

“Brittany, do you have any medical conditions I should know about?” the teacher asks.

“I am a lizard,” I tell her dreamily.

“Do you know what kind of lizard?” she asks.

I roll out my mat. As the class begins, we all come to our hands and knees at the front of our mats, tilt our heads up, bulge our eyeballs towards the ceiling, stretch our tongues to the points of our chins, and let out a growl from the backs of our throats that releases all the awkwardness and embarrassments of the day.  

The Mind Reels

The inspirational music of Soul Surfer is seeping through the cracks of my door. Now I feel confident that I can do anything, including but not limited to writing multiple blog posts. Seeing bits and pieces of the film as I amble into the kitchen for chunks of cantaloupe has made the films strips of my mind reel with alternate endings. Perhaps if it were not based on a true story, and if it were renamed Moby Dick, things would have concluded differently.

One

The Soul Surfer paddles out into the ocean on her board, now confident in her ability to surf with one arm. The plot comes full circle as the fin of the same shark that attacked her before surfaces. She sees it cut across the water and her eyes narrow with the wisdom that she has gained from her journey. Since the accident, the Soul Surfer never paddles out to sea without a harpoon. She uses her remaining arm to launch the harpoon into the approaching predator. Blood surfaces on the water. The waves carry the Soul Surfer and the struggling shark to shore, where she guts the fish and retrieves her severed arm from its esophagus. Modern science provides a way to reattach the limb to her body. Modern taxidermy provides a way to mount the cartilaginous skeleton above her decorative marble fireplace – providing the film’s closing image.

Two

The Soul Surfer paddles out into the ocean on her board. A fin surfaces, the fin of the same shark that previously attacked her. She assaults the shark with her trusty harpoon and a knife between her teeth and drags it to land. As she guts the shark on the lonely stretch of Hawaiian shore, she finds no trace of her arm. For retribution, she slices off the fin of the offending shark and leaves it, gills heaving, in the sand. Modern science provides a way to attach the aquatic limb to her ocean-amorous body. An image of her gliding across the curling waves on her board, extending her shark fin for balance, fades to black.

Three

The Soul Surfer paddles out into the ocean and sees the fin of a shark moving towards her. She hurls her harpoon, skewers the shark, and guts it in the smoldering crystal sand. Triumphantly, she leaves the beach with a surfboard in her hand and a shark fin between her teeth. An eye for an eye; a fin for an arm, she mutters unintelligibly as she spits the fin onto an operating table. The tide gently pulls the suffocating shark back to sea. The shark community is outraged by the story of the 100 millionth human attack on a shark that year, imagining that the lost fin went on to be fermented into hakarl, a traditional Icelandic dish. The wounded shark is told that it will never swim again, but against all odds, it does.

Four

The Soul Surfer is making banana bread one morning when she hears a sharp knock on the door – the sharp knock of a shark. The predator apologizes for the whole incident, admitting elusively that it thought she was someone else. It announces that the shark community’s advances in stem cell research have produced a new arm for her. Then it returns the partially digested arm and gives her a large loaf of banana bread as retribution, making the situation all the more awkward for the Soul Surfer as she wonders what she should do with the banana bread batter she already has on the table. Should she freeze the batter, bake the bread and freeze it in some foil? Who knows? She decides to re-gift the shark bread.

Nematodes in Popular Culture

In Season 1, Episode 1 of Doug, called “Doug Bags a Nematode,” Doug captures a nematode to become the hero of Bluffington. The supposed nematode, which resembles a small, lumpy moose, turns out to be Doug’s dog Porkchop under a coating of mud.

In Season 3, Episode 2 of Real Housewives of New Jersey, Melissa says, “The nematodes looked just like spaghetti. I’m Italian, so I know what looks like spaghetti.”

In the film Inception, Dom Cobb’s team is forced to move more quickly through the second level of Robert Fischer’s dream as nematodes infiltrate the labyrinthine dreamscape.

“Nematodes” is a song by Billy Currington, on his album “A Little Bit of Everything.” In the chorus, he sings:

I’ve been down some ugly roads

But at least I don’t have nematodes

“Nematode” is a song by Of Montreal, on the album “The Bedside Drama: A Petite Tragedy.” The song makes no mention of nematodes, but it is characteristic of the band to fuse a titular reference to a devastating parasite with buoyant melodies and hooks.

In the Soap Opera “General Hospital,” 12 year old Michael Corinthos III falls into a seemingly permanent coma after a nematode infection causes damage to his brain. Two years later, Dr. Patrick Drake removes the nematodes using an experimental surgical procedure and awakens the now 17 year old Michael, now played by Drew Garrett.

Mars Needs Drama

For my Playwriting class, I was supposed to use a New York Times article to make three ideas for plays. I found this article about Mars Needs Moms incredibly inspiring for this assignment.

Mars Needs Ideas – A Tragedy

Bob, Jack, and Steve, three filmmakers, sit together around a table on stage. While brainstorming and smoking cigars, they come up with a brilliant idea for a 3-D film about Martians kidnapping the mothers of ungrateful earthling children. The three filmmakers take turns fantasizing about all the money they will make and how they will spend it. They invest $175 million into making and marketing the film only for it to flop. Later, they sit around the same table wondering where they went wrong as the contents of their studio are carried away.

Mars Needs Film Producers – A Comedy

Three producers – Bob, Jack, and Steve – are kidnapped by a space ship full of Martians, transported to their home planet, and dropped into some sort of inescapable chromium zoo. They find that the creative team of The Adventures of Pluto Nash is already there. A little green Martian explains to Bob, in fumbling English, that Mars has a severe shortage of intergalactic family films. The three producers then smoke cigars around a chrome table and brainstorm the idea of Mars Needs Moms, inspired by the adventure that brought them to this strange and mysterious red planet in the first place. They spend $175 million Mars dollars making and marketing the film only for it to flop because of its socially insensitive depiction of Martians.

Mars Needs Film Producers – In 3-D!

A play that will be performed in… 3-D! The story will be the same one mentioned in the previous paragraph, but the audience will pay 30% more for the tickets.

Mars Needs Pixar Animators

The characters of Toy Story quietly watch a bootleg copy of Mars Needs Moms on Andy’s giant television. They feel sort of embarrassed and turn it off.

Mars Needs Action Romance

Bob and his two film-making friends are kidnapped and taken to Mars. They are dropped into some sort of chromium zoo where several slovenly Neanderthals with outdated filming equipment seem to have been stranded for years. Bob and his friends watch in horror as the hideous, green Martian faces gaze down from the space-glass above. Zafronia enters through steel doors and explains, in fumbling English, that the Martians want them to make an intergalactic family film. She has stylish hair and breasts which indicate that she is an attractive female Martian. Bob, Jack, and Steve desperately work together make a film, but it flops in the intergalactic markets. Conveniently, Zafronia has a warship and helps the filmmakers escape during the disastrous premier. She reveals to their surprise that she was just an Earth-Mom that was kidnapped and turned into a Martian. After blowing up Mars, they return to Earth and make the film Mars Needs Moms.

The Zemeckis Technique

Actors will perform Mars Needs Moms on a bare set wearing uniforms outfitted with sensors that record their movements. An avant-garde production for the whole family!

(Image credit: www.joeacevedo.com, home of the perfect Martian woman.)

Movie Adaptations

After watching Easy A, I realized that my professional direction may be writing teen movies based on books we have all read in high school English class, a project that will challenge my storytelling skills and intellect and give meaning to my life. There may be no nobler task than the dumbing down of celebrated masterpieces for the culturally apathetic youth. I have since set myself to work, diluting beloved literary classics into hollow adolescent clichés.


The Great Gatsby

When Nick Carraway’s family moves to Long Island he discovers that he has a mysterious next door neighbor: Jay Gatsby. The wildest parties at West Egg High take place in Gatsby’s gothic mansion almost every night and his parents never seem to be home. His cheerleading cousin Daisy, her cheating quarterback boyfriend Tom, and her best friend Jordan Baker try to make Nick feel at home as he is sucked into a world of rich kids, crazy parties, and varsity sports. Nick’s relationship with Jordan blossoms as shocking secrets are revealed. What happened at summer camp between Jay and Daisy two years ago? Scandal and secrets unravel without the interference of social themes and symbolism in this gripping new adaptation of a classic story.


Jane Eyre

In Lowood High School, freshman Jane Eyre is the victim of bullies, snotty sisters, and evil principals. When she volunteers to tutor Adele, a glamorous French exchange student, things finally start to look up. Through Adele she meets Eddy Rochester, a silent and brooding senior football star who happens to be part of Adele’s host family. Adele gives Jane a Parisian fashion makeover, and Jane begins to attract Eddy’s attentions. Just when Jane begins to feel happy for the first time, she discovers that Eddy is secretly hiding his insane ex-girlfriend in his locker. Can their relationship survive in this clever adaptation which conveniently ignores the moral questions and Gothic elements of the original novel?


Julius Caesar

In spite of his epilepsy, sophomore Julius Caesar takes the varsity basketball world by storm. While the impressionable students of Rome High School think of Caesar as a hero, his teammates aren’t his biggest fans. Caesar has undermined the rest of the team in his rise to fame and lowered the former team captain Pompey to the ranks of the school mascot. Brutus, Caesar’s teammate and best friend, launches a plan to teach Caesar a lesson he won’t forget. Will Caesar learn what it means to be a team? And why does the janitor who waxes the gym floor keep repeating, “Beware the Ides of March?” The answer will surprise you in this fresh, athletic take on a Shakespearean tragedy that will teach us all a lesson in friendship.

Plsen: Land of Beer

Yesterday some friends and I took a trip to Plsen, a city famous for its beer. We booked the bus tickets at the last minute and accumulated a rather large group of interested people, which turned out very badly for us. The night before, when we were purchasing our bus tickets, we decided we would take a ten o’clock student bus and on the way back we would take the six-thirty Phil Collins bus home. (Spoiler: Phil Collins wasn’t there.)

I’m afraid there are no pictures to accompany this story because I deleted them all by accident. It was just the cherry on top as far as disasters go.

Sunday morning I was in the breakfast room, ready to go, and I called my friend to see if she had purchased a ticket yet. It turned out that I forgot to tell her that we were taking a bus at ten, and she thought that we were taking the bus at noon. Besides not having a ticket, she was just getting up. I was rather angry with myself and decided to quickly buy her ticket online and print it in our dorm mother’s office so she could get ready quickly.

I did not notice until later that, in my haste, I took out my ticket to make sure that I was putting my friend on the right bus and I left it on my desk. I also did not notice that I only bought her return ticket. Once everyone had printed their tickets and was ready to go, catching our bus did not seem plausible. We boarded a tram that seemed to be driven by a student driver. It was caught behind another tram which was probably also driven by a student driver. At one point we slowed down so much that we came to a complete stop in the middle of the track. Meanwhile, the crazy Czech drivers cross the tracks at their leisure.

By the time we got to the metro we had a less than a half hour to get there. The clock struck ten before we even reached the station, and we all resigned ourselves to the fact that we would have to buy new tickets. I felt terrible because if I had just told my friend what time we were leaving we might have made our train. On the bright side, it didn’t matter that I bought her only a return ticket by accident. It also didn’t matter that I seemed to have lost my ticket to Plsen. However, I had also lost my ticket back. The man at the ticket window informed me that the only bus back that hadn’t been filled was at nine at night, hours after my friends would already be gone. I seemed to have no choice but to buy it. We tried looking up my ticket number on a friend’s smart phone, but the man at the counter would not accept it.

After everything that could possibly go wrong did, we made it to Plsen and toured the famous brewery. We watched a video about how “Plsen is made from three gifts of the Czech nature: WATER, BARLEY, and HOP.” The theatre reminded me of a universal studios ride. We stood on moving risers, and I never figured out why it was necessary for them to constantly rotate just slightly to the right. The film was very surreal, with music from Tom and Jerry, historical beer related footage, and a man burning in a fire on the left screen.

At the end of the tour, we descended underground to a special vault of unpasteurized Pilsner that they keep just so tourists don’t get hypothermic wandering the cellar looking for it. We got a lesson in the proper way to taste beer and I discovered that I still don’t like it. Based on the factory tour, I think it might be the hops. Some of my friends tasted ground up hops and it was so terrible that they went back for more malt pellets just to get rid of the taste. I suppose there’s a reason that hops doesn’t seem to be used for anything else.

Moving on to more delicious things, I had the best meal that I had in the Czech Republic so far at a pub in Plsen. I ordered grilled vegetables that were soaked in some delicious combination of butter or oil and wine and baguette. And who calls the Czech Republic “the country that forgot vegetables?” I’ve only accidentally eaten meat once, and it was in some Laughing Cow cheese of all places.

It all worked out in the end and I was able to get on my original Phil Collins bus and refund my nine o’clock ticket. My friends were incredibly disappointed to find that not only was Phil Collins not on the bus, but that the ride had nothing to do with Phil Collins whatsoever. Phil Collins was just the bus’s name. I wonder if the Michael Jackson bus would have been better.


It always comforts me to think that when everything goes wrong and all of the pictures are accidentally deleted, at least it will make an amusing story later.