Midnight in Paris
Good morning, y’all. Dang, it’s cold, and I seem to have caught one. The winds have died down a bit, but it’s still dropping below freezing at night. I’m thinking I may have breathed deeply of an allergen while trying to catch my breath from the shock of the cold air hitting exposed skin. I’m hoping the Claritin and Vicks will keep my breathing going while I wait for the cold to dissipate. Buzzy and dry is better than stuffy and miserable in my opinion.
Well, the cold didn’t dampen my first field trip after my release back into the wild. I rode shotgun with Mulva while she made a quick trip over to the Walmart. It saddens me deeply to say that I was looking forward to the trip. I guess the experience could be used as a gauge for isolation. If you’re so desperate to see a new surrounding that a trip to the Walmart gets you excited, you’ve been cooped up too long. I will say that there is a sameness about a Walmart that gives comfort. From the blue color scheme, to the registers near the door piled high with last minute, “I bet you forgot to get this”, items. When you walk into a Walmart, you know that you’re in a Walmart. In fact, if you were unconscious and woke up in a Walmart, you’d know instantly you were in a Walmart. Walmart is not like one of those mall stores in the city.
The Walmart was in the same location as before, and I’m betting the exact same folks that were there the last time I visited were in attendance today. Not many surprises at a Walmart. I was able to beeline to the $2.99 movie bin on my own while Mulva did her shopping. Unfortunately, the bin was kind of picked over. There were a lot of anime and learning programs for kids. After I dug as deep in the bin as I felt like I could without actually falling into the bin, I decided to up my ante. I went straight to the $9.99 bin. We should be able to splurge to celebrate my homecoming, right?
Well, the selection was much improved in the $9.99 bin. I found a Woody Allen movie, “Midnight in Paris” and was quite pleased with myself. I do love the Wood Man. No matter what his prolictivities may be, and I’m sure most of the rumors are true, he is a brilliant comedian and film maker. I secured my choice and headed for the giant buckets of caramel popcorn. They were right were I left them. A giant box of Milk Duds and a giant Nestle’s Crunch for Mulva, and I headed for checkout counter Number Two to wait for Mulva. Number Two checkout is always our spot to meet up. I’ll let you cogitate for a while as to why I could always keep Number Two straight in my mind, no matter what condition I was in. We made it back to Number Two at TackyToo without incident and waited for the Rec room to close to begin our date night.
Well, “Midnight in Paris” was a beauty. It starred Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams as the love interest with Marion Cotillard thrown in to spice things up. It is a time travel romance with several twists, one of which is that Marion Cotillard’s character, Adriana, exists in the past. Owen Wilson discovers he is able to travel into Paris in the 1920’s by waiting for a car that appears at midnight. He is so enthralled with Paris in the 1920’s that he travels back several nights in a row. On theses travels he meets several American ex-pats who lived in Paris during that time period, including Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, and Gertrude Stein. It is a magical time, and Wilson has a hard decision to come back and live in his own time.
“Midnight in Paris” won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and was nominated for three other Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Art Direction. It was beautifully filmed and it made me anxious to see Paris once again before “dancing on those streets of gold”. A trip to Paris for $9.99, imagine that. Not to mention that the snacks I bought were way better than what they serve on Delta.