I am met only with incredulity whenever I mention that I haven’t seen it. Personally, I don’t understand the sheer and utter disbelief most people express when they find out that you haven’t seen a movie. Movies need to be found, sat down in front of, paid attention to. Much easier to hear music; I feel as though I ought to reflect back an equal amount of shock at people who claim that they don’t know any songs by David Bowie, or the Beatles.
Various women in my life have managed to seat me in front of the classic flicks of the eighties, but I still have survived with a big gap in the area of mid-nineties cultish comedy classics, to which my noise was firmly upturned at the time. The one movie that most often draws a reaction from my friends and colleagues is Office Space. How, oh how, could I appreciate working in a corporate office without having watched Office Space?
A more surefire tact would have been to mention that Jennifer Aniston played one of the few female roles in the film, but apparently she isn’t worth a mention in the midst of such apt critique of the business world. Something about “PC Load Letter?”
Taking pity on my ignorance of this film classic, my colleague John took it upon himself to loan me the DVD for my home viewing pleasure. And, well, I have derived some pleasure from it, though not as much as everyone seems to expect me to. I should preface this with a caveat that I only managed to sit through half of this dreadfully paced farce, and so could still be missing out on some golden epiphany that comes nearer to the end of the film.
I just don’t think it’s funny. I cannot have pity on hapless morons just because they work in an office, and I certainly can’t find the mocking of the Y2K code replacement especially amusing since grunt work like that is what averted a worldwide financial and nuclear fallout on New Year’s Day that could have effectively canceled my spectacular first kiss.
Aside from the obvious support of any character who romantically pursues Ms. Aniston, there was one scene in the movie that especially struck me. The bit about having a million dollars. We’ve all thought about having it, but I don’t know that the thought ever occurred to me that what I would do with it would be the ultimate reveal as to what I should be doing with my life.
I figured out what I would do while at an art show with Melon, Erika, and Kate over the weekend. I would do art. Not just pictures, or music, or words. I would surround myself with inspired and beautiful things and with tools, guitars, pianos, canvases, empty notebooks, and just create all of the time, every day.
What’s funny is that after you answer the million dollar question, the answer doesn’t seem so obscure any more. This weekend I spent a day going through my belongings from childhood through high school graduation in preparation for my mother’s quickly approaching settlement on a house, and everything I found was art. Academic papers, a comic book I had drawn across the headers of my eighth grade math notebook, a folder full of scrawled out short stories, two full-program scripts from high school health fairs, a binder of plotting outlines for my own series of superhero comics complete with logo designs, a pile of literary magazines that I edited. No science fair projects. No math tests.
A million dollars would just confirm what I’ve tried to do all along. Would it for you?