MadMup.com

I’m a movie buff. I’m not a movie elitist, though I am a DVD-elitist (or, a “DVDlitist,” if you prefer). I like all sorts of movies and all sorts of genres, and by “like” I mean I am on some sort of movie Prozac – I don’t have many highs or lows. There aren’t many movies I hate and there aren’t many movies I love. As of right now I’ve rated 2,221 movies on NetFlix, and discounting the “Not Interested” ratings, there are less than a hundred, I’d guess, that vary from the 3-star, middle-of-the-road rating of “I liked it.” Very, very few venture into “I loved it” or “I hated it” territory. The 2- and 4-star ratings get a fair smattering, but 3 wins buy a landslide.

This movie buffness is both a blessing and a curse. It lets me into the elitist crowd when I like the latest indie darling, but it also gets me thrown out forcefully from that same club when I like the latest popcorn flick. I’d give specific examples, but I’m about to embarrass myself anyway, so why not just wait for it?

Since today was Tuesday, today was a Best Buy Day. My friend Ryan and I used to hit Best Buy every week, but the summer schedule has kept us from that for a while. He needed to go today, though, because The Simpsons Season 8 came out. I knew there was nothing released today that I needed, but decided to go anyway. I had some Reward Zone coupons and there’s usually something I can get.

In fact, by the time I got there, I’d pretty much decided to get the Bruce Lee Ultimate Collection I’d had my eye on for a while. It’s got every Bruce Lee movie he ever made except Enter the Dragon, and I already had that one, of course. The set was a little more than I wanted to spend on something like that, but the coupons made it reasonable. So when we got there, we headed to the DVD section and picked up our sets. Then, as is our habit, we wandered around the store for a bit. We’d normally play some Guitar Hero, but Purdue University is almost back in session so the whole town’s crawling with college students, and some of them had infested the PlayStation demo station.

While wandering, I noticed that Steel Magnolias was on sale for $6 this week and half-jokingly said something about getting it. Ryan said something derogatory and we passed by. The more we wandered, though, the more I decided to get it. I’d been thinking about the movie lately and hadn’t seen it in a while, and the price was pretty near what a rental would be. So on one of our passes, I lagged a bit behind Ryan and grabbed a copy, deftly hiding it behind my Bruce Lee set.

Well, of course, when we got to the checkout, he saw it and started ribbing me. This apparently gave Cashier Boy free reign to also rib me, because he started in. I defended myself as best I could (“Hey, I’m getting FIVE Bruce Lee movies, too!”), and tried to hurry the paying process along.

At this point, the college girl who had meandered into our checkout line (after the previous ribbing, it should be noted) spoke up and said something to the effect of “Steel Magnolias and Bruce Lee movies?!” and something else which was drowned out in the approving catcalls from Ryan and Checkout Boy. She went on to say something about how she liked Steel Magnolias, but it was too little, too late. I’d now been heckled for my movie tastes by random strangers in Best Buy.

I asked Checkout Boy to give me a bag so I didn’t have to be humiliated further, and he offered to double-bag it so people couldn’t see through the semi-transparent bag. Smart aleck.

Ryan and I went our separate ways and, later on, I watched Steel Magnolias. And I teared up. So there.

And you know what? That’s not even the most embarrassing movie in my collection. That would have to be A Walk to Remember.

Laugh if you must, but it’s a solid 3-star movie. Just like 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I realized a couple of things today that I wanted to pass along:

1) While doing the crossword at lunch and coming across the clue “Jerry’s pal” I realized that “George,” “Elaine,” and “Kramer” all have the same amount of letters (6) in them. (It ended up being “Elaine.”)

2) My school’s parking lot lights go out some time before 1:00 a.m. I never realized how dark 1:00 a.m. can be. And since the battery on the unlocker on my keys is worn down, I couldn’t even turn the lights on until I was three feet from the car. Empty schools are all kinds of freaky at night. In fact, here’s a list of my top three freakiest places in the middle of the night:

a) Churches
b) Cemetaries
c) Schools

I don’t know why darkened, empty churches are so incredibly scary at night, but, man, they are.

I had a little mishap with my checking account last week and it scared me into taking drastic measures. “Mishap,” in this particular instance is defined as “apparently tried to use more money than I actually had.”

While this isn’t the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever revealed on this blog, it’s right up there. I balance my checkbook every month and generally keep a good eye on it. I haven’t been overdrawn in several years. That’s why this is particularly galling to me.

At this point I’d kind of like to rant about being charged an overdraft fee, but it detracts from my main intention. But, seriously – if a dude is out of money, how does charging him $32 help anything? Yes, yes, I know, that $32 covers the fact that the check was paid to whoever it was supposed to be paid to and saves you from all sorts of grief down the road, but the logic escapes me. “Well, Mr. Jones, we see you’re out of oxygen and have died. That’s going to cost you 14 cubed feet of oxygen.” Bah.

Anyway, I don’t want to get distracted from my main point, which is this: I’m reverting back to childhood in one more area.

See, from kindergarten through at least eighth grade (and probably into ninth or more, I don’t remember), I ate the same thing for lunch every day. With very few exceptions, I had a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich on white bread for lunch for nine years. The side items varied from chips to applesauce to juice boxes and all manner of other things, but that sandwich was my staple. In fact, I can actually remember quite vividly a few of the times when I had something else for lunch. One time, for instance, I was allowed to get a slice of pizza from the school cafeteria. They microwaved or cooked it inside a plastic wrapper and the wrapper got burned and gave off a terrible smell, which affected the taste of the pizza for me. I can actually still recall the smell, even though I don’t remember what year of school in which that happened. There were a few other times when I got a different sandwich (bologna or braunschweiger), but I would guess that during my elementary years, I had something other than PB&J less than 20 times.

And I loved it. I never got sick of it. There’ve been foods since then that I’ve loved but have overdosed on and couldn’t have for a long time (Hostess Orange Cupcakes, for instance), but I never got sick of PB&Js.

So when I was going over my budget (which is more of a theoretical budget rather than a written-out statement of policy) to see what I could change, the first thing that popped up was food. I eat out a lot. Most meals of mine, in fact, are prepared by some sort of eating establishment. I’m confident that I could cook if I needed to, but the hassle of cooking for just myself combined with all the extra dirty dishes it produces makes it not worthwhile to me. Also, food prepared for me by someone else tastes better to me than food I’ve made myself, and this includes things like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. I don’t know why this is, it just is.

When school is in session, I can get a school lunch for around $2.50. It’s usually pretty good, and $2.50 certainly beats $9 at a local restaurant, even if they DO have the best coconut cream pie I’ve ever had in my life. Right now, though, school isn’t in session. For some reason my brain spoke up and said,

“Hey, you could eat PB&Js. You always liked them and they’d be cheap.”
“But,” I answered, “I’ve always had a really hard time spreading jelly and I hate it when it’s clumped up in the sandwich.”
“So why not try these squeezable jellies they have now? No muss, no fuss.”
“I suppose I could, but this means I’ll have to wash a knife at work – you know, from the peanut butter.”
My brain lets out a sigh at this point. It’s had to deal with this kind of behavior its whole life. “Yes, I know. Unfortunately, you just might have to wash a knife at work.”

I decided to give it a try. I bought a loaf of white bread (but was sure to get the one that said “Only 30 calories per slice! Not as bad for you as other white breads!” – turns out it’s because the slices are half the size of other white breads), some Peter Pan creamy peanut butter (creamy is easier to spread), and some squeezable Smucker’s grape jelly, and took them to work.

Know what? It worked. I actually made a sandwich. No one’s surprise surpassed mine. And the really neat thing is that the squeezable jelly has a slit rather than a dot-type spout, so it lays the jelly down in strips. I don’t know why, but I thought that was really, really cool.

While I haven’t figured out exactly how much each sandwich is costing me, I know it’s saving me a lot of money. Like, a really lot. Plus it’s a daily reminder of a sense of security I had in childhood, so I’m getting full, I’m saving money, and I’m getting a sense of peace a few minutes out of each day.

Bonus.