I’m obsessed with gravity.

It’s funny how you think you know someone, you think you know them very well, and then one day you realize that you don’t know them at all, or at least not nearly as well as you thought. And that realization brings on the alarming panic that you don’t know anything at all, your entire bank of knowledge and understanding is just a sham, a ghost, nothing at all. That could be just me.

The only sure thing I know? What goes up must come down. Literally. It’s all about the gravity. I can trust in gravity. It bends my mind. Gravity! You hold something in your hand. You let go. What would happen? If I didn’t already know about gravity, the logic of my brain would tell me it would stay right there. Why would it drop? That makes no sense. It would just stay right there, hovering in the air.

But we have gravity and gravity brings it down. It would keep bringing it down if the ground weren’t there to stop it. How far could something “fall”? It feels like it would fall forever and ever, if it could.

So gravity is just this crazy thing for me, something that amazes the jebus out of me. I don’t actively think about it, yet it’s there, this great force pulling us all down and in; we just keep on about our business.

I watch Ryland and he has no idea about gravity. On some level he does though, because he knows he isn’t up floating around in air. He knows that if he drops a toy, it keeps on going until something stops it, my hand, the floor, the counter, the chair, whatever. He knows he has to work pretty hard to stay upright. But he doesn’t KNOW this, he only feels it, I guess. But watching this learning process, his discovery of gravity without knowing what gravity is or what it does, that is too cool, too cool for school.

I don’t know what I’m going on about. I just really love gravity I guess.

So back to my original thoughts, knowing someone so well, then discovering that you don’t know much at all. This isn’t a bad thing, just unsettling. I am not referring to anyone or anything specific, it’s just been on my mind lately. So then I say to myself if I don’t know people as well as I thought I did, then the reverse must also be true. They don’t know me as well as they think they do; or maybe they don’t know me as well as I think they do.

It disturbs me and it excites me, this mystery about people. I love the incongruities and inconsistencies. I hate not being able to predict but I love having the unpredictable happen. In the end, though, it makes me sad. In the end, I want people to be who I think they are, otherwise I feel lost and disjointed and let down.

And finally, to end the night. I don’t know if it’s because I had a baby or if I’m getting old or the quality of comedy these days is lower, but things are not as funny to me as they once were. Case in point: I didn’t think Dodgeball or Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle were all that funny. I suppose there were a few good jokes in there somewhere, but mostly I just sat and watched, wondering why so many things had to be so completely stupid and over-the-top. It isn’t like I’m against outrageous or goofy. I just like it classier, I suppose. Or logically outrageous. For instance, Harold and Kumar riding a cheetah? Not funny. It couldn’t and wouldn’t ever happen. I understand the comedy of it–haha they’re riding this crazy fast cheetah and they’re all stoned hahaha–but really. It’s not funny. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t smoking marijuana and haven’t smoked in over a year.

But I’ve smoked a lot of pot in my time, I’ve enjoyed it immensely. I’ve watched many things and had many good laughs while stoned. But if you NEED to be stoned to find something funny, then it’s a pretty safe bet that it wasn’t all that funny to begin with.

Here are a few movies that I think are truly funny: office space, old school, rushmore, the big lebowski, raising arizona, harold and maude, lost in america, mother. There are tons more movies I could list, but we get the idea. These movies are funny in all the ways that count.

Is it me? Did anyone over the age of say…16 think Harold and Kumar was that hilarious? I’ve read reviews that talk about the cleverness of the movie and its jabs at buddy films. I guess I missed it?

jeez, I’m such a fuddy duddy now.

• ← dead pixels making me crazy.
• iTunes and my mac. →