--virtually everybody in Mallrats

Shabbos was spent alternating between sleeping and feeling listless, to the extent that I couldn't even concentrate on reading a book for more than a couple of minutes at a time.

I then stayed up 'round the clock again on Saturday night, being an idiot, not to mention an insomniac.

Then I had to stay up on Sunday morning (although I did get a short nap), 'cause I had to go back to Far Rockaway to pick up the rest of my stuff from my old room. Which I did, on the whole, bringing back nine more boxes of miscellaneous dreck, along with the remains of my drum set. My newly-cleared room is now filled with this stuff, and I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all.

It's mostly papers and stuff that I don't want to throw away, but which I don't have any real way of filing, either. I want a row of filing cabinets, and space to put them all. Something like Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler's setup, in the E.L. Konigsburg book.

(Double-checking on Amazon.Com, I was a bit impressed with myself to note that I correctly spelled both "Frankweiler" and "Konigsburg." Yes!)

Looking through some of the boxes, I rediscovered so many memories... there are some of the ballots for editor-in-chief of my high school yearbook... a note from my paranoid-delusional roommate in Israel... a letter to myself in my own handwriting, which perplexed me for a minute, until I realized that the original letter was sent by a friend in cipher (actually in the "Symbol" font), and this was my decryption of it... various signs I'd put on the bulletin board at school... looseleafs from over the years... and so on, and so forth. I am not getting rid of this stuff.

On the other hand, I have to grant that I don't really need fifty extra copies of some of the issues of my camp newsletter, so I probably ought to weed out most of the duplicates.

Anyway, I may have left some stuff behind, but by the time late afternoon came around, I was too zoned to care. So my brother drove me and my stuff back, and everything was brought to my room, and then I went to sleep, where I stayed for the next twelve hours or so.

Back in the survey I filled out on December 18th, I stated that I'd never seen a film with either Marilyn Monroe or Audrey Hepburn. So Jette wrote me, a bit incredulously, advising me to get right down to that video store and remedy that situation, making particular recommendations.

So I rented Some Like it Hot, as advised. And loved it.

Which once again taught me a lesson that I should have learned in the past: just because there's tons of hype about something or someone, that doesn't mean there isn't something there.

I confess that, not having seen any of her films, it had never occurred to me that Marilyn Monroe could actually act. In my mind, she was filed under "sex symbol," "pinup," and "tragic death at early age with cult following," not "actress."

This has happened before. A few years ago, when I was still in BMG Music Service, I was sent The Beatles Anthology: 1, having forgotten to send back the reply card to decline it. So I gave it a listen, and was, like, "Whoa! These people could really play music!" Which perhaps should have been obvious, but with all the hype around the band, it was easy to dismiss them as a media-fueled phenomenon.

Ditto Madonna's The Immaculate Collection. Say what else you like about her, but she's been responsible for an astonishing range of good music... which I already knew, but hadn't appreciated the full extent of, until getting this.

I guess what it boils down to is that (a) once anything gets hyped too much, it's easier to dismiss it as being only hype, and (b) said hype tends to focus on more superficial matters, further reinforcing one's feelings that there's nothing really there.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that Some Like it Hot was, indeed, a great film, and I'm looking forward to checking out more of Jette's recommendations.

Specifically, she played Eliza in My Fair Lady.

Julie Andrews had originated the role on Broadway, and would have been quite happy to star in the film. She was rejected, however, on grounds that she didn't have enough star quality to make it on celluloid. She took the title role in Mary Poppins instead, but her contract had an escape clause under which Disney would have had to let her go, had Jack Warner changed his mind and agreed to give her Eliza's role.

The result was that Andrews won for Best Actress in that year's Academy Awards, for her role as Mary Poppins, while Hepburn didn't even get nominated. So much for lack of star quality.

Anyway, I liked My Fair Lady a lot, but then I was already in love with it from the script and the Harrison/Andrews cast recording, not to mention that Pygmalion is my favorite play of all time. So it's hard to say how much this counts.

Yes, as of last week, I hadn't seen a single Hitchcock film. Don't all yell at me at once, okay?

So I took out The Birds from the library. More or less at random; it happened to be there, and it was by Hitchcock. I realized shortly thereafter that this might not have been a particularly bright choice, being inordinately predisposed towards being scared of flying things (my feelings toward bees verge on apiaphobia), but okay, I gave it a try.

Well, I confess that after the first big "attack" scene, I stopped watching the screen whenever the birds went on the rampage. I just couldn't; I put my hand between my eyes and the screen, and just cringed.

Otherwise... I just don't get this film. At all.

But then, horror really isn't my genre. Although, given that this position was founded largely in ignorance, I guess it's nice confirming that.

What I've accomplished on my winter vacation: Played Curse of Monkey Island, and watched movies. How nice.