Eighteenth Lovely

Lucky for me, I managed to get the entire show's basic planning done Sunday night. So all I needed to do in the office on Monday was to report and turn them in. Boba was satisfied, and I was let off early. Well, not without a nice survey to be carefully filled out by Friday. He claimed it was to develop the show's advertisement. I asked why I couldn't just do that instead, seeing as I was handling that too. So he gave me until Monday to arrange the first flyer to go around. Wonderful.
Instead of dealing with all of that, I decided to just let the dog sitter off early and spend some time with Dot. The little puppy was too rowdy for me, and I was just too exhausted to not take him outside. Unfortunately, we didn't have any dog toys, so he still couldn't entertain himself. So, the dog park it was.
I drove down there, only relatively smoothly. It's hard to have a relaxing drive with a puppy chirping every two seconds. We pulled up and I was quick to let him run around with other puppies and public toys. While he did that, I fell back into a wooden bench and sighed.
"Hey!" I looked up and saw a thin woman with jet-black hair brushing her wrists.
"Oh," I waved back. "Rachel right?"
"Yup!" she grinned. "I'd be a little irritated if you'd gone and forgotten my name so quickly, Samba." Rachel put her hand on the side of the bench and tilted her head a bit.
"Well, good thing I didn't." I was too tired to be more enthusiastic and didn't try to fight it.
In response, she gave a disappointed, "Yeah."
"Did I...tell you my name?"
"You filled out my mother's form. I checked it." I gave her a look, and she squirmed a bit under it. "Um, how's Couro?"
"Good," I hummed. "She's coming home late today. She decided to join this book club at school." After a second, I leaned over and whispered, "I give her a month."
"That's not fair!" Rachel said between laughs. "She might pick up something."
"She's eight."
She shrugged. "She said something about a brother?"
"Yeah, Gora. He's sixteen."
"Sixteen?" Blinking fast, she looked at me in disbelief. "Are they yours or...?"
A little taken aback, I paused, "Uh, yeah."
"So, the product of a happy marriage then, huh?" she grimly joked. "Sixteen years with one child, and eight with another."
"Yup. But uh, not anymore." I looked away for a minute. A faint image of Kutu sitting beside me appeared, and I didn't want her seeing me like this. "So here, I am," I continued. "Juggling two kids. And a part-time puppy."
"Part-time?"
"We're just nursing him for now. In a few weeks, he goes up for adoption."
She looked over at Dot and laughed, "So I'm guessing you don't know how to care for one?"
"Not at all."
"Well, if you need anything, I'm always here."
"Trust me, me coming all the way here will be a rare occurrence. I doubt it'll ever happen again given with the holiday schedule they're giving me."
"Ah, that sucks." I looked up to see Rachel force herself to say, "Hey, how about you take my number? You can text me for help anytime." She dug into her pocket and stuffed a small slip of paper into my hands.
"Uh, thanks."
"Try it," she insisted. So, I did. Her phone chimed and she held it up to confirm it was me. By the time we settled that, Dot was back at my feet, barking and whimpering. "Think he's ready to leave," Rachel giggled.
I forced a big smile and waved, "Well, thanks, Rachel. See you."
"Bye!"

As I loaded Dot into the car, my phone buzzed. Rachel.

I just realized, I never asked. How old are you?

44.

Movie Review: Wedding Cake

Wedding cake is an 8-minute, 33-second long short film directed by Viola Baier and produced by Iris Frisch. Its initial release was in Germany on June 30, 2013. It can now be found on several YouTube channels like KIS KIS - Keep It Short, The8Bittheater, and Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg GmbH. 
We follow the married life of two wedding cake figurines. At the reception, the groom spills wine on his new wife's dress, but she brushes it off quickly. The stain remains and she continuously tries to remove it and fails. 
The marriage starts out great. They move into a "place"--which is really just the cake's top. The start to renovate and we get to see them communicating and making decisions together. It's really cute in all honesty. The first hitch is when the groom builds a crib. It's a really nice and fancy crib, but the bride isn't amused. She makes it clear that she has no intention of getting pregnant. (Which, if you ask me, that's should be something the guy shoulda known before the wedding but whatever I guess.) The guy's upset, to which his wife brings in a puppy. It cheers him up and their back to their cutesy, coupley selves.
The next scene is a hitch in itself, the whole scene is a tense disagreement between the two. We first see the wife enjoying some romance and very clearly cooing over the male lead's body. Weird, your husband's right there. But he doesn't seem to mind much. He instead begs her if he can pick something to watch, to which she relents. The groom goes and switches it to a soccer game. And, for the commercial break, a woman he's very audibly looking at. With his wife right there, not caring. I guess this is a mutual thing.
The bride then gets the idea of a vacation. Her husband then says they have no money. He suggests a camping trip. She fears getting mulled by a bear. The groom shrugs it off and goes back to his game, leaving his wife to boil in her seat and scrub at her wine stain. He sees her anger and pulls her into this cuddle-over-the-dog sort of thing, but neither really react to it. They're just there, blankly staring while their heads touch.
Next scene: it looks like the bride is juggling a pile of places and a cup while the dog is barking at her, begging for a walk. She calls her husband in to help her, but due to his soccer game, he can't hear her. Angrily, she storms in and screams at him. He hears nothing. She goes to the table where the T.V. is sitting, and lifts it, crashing the T.V. Now, the groom notices and is furious. He then goes and murders their dog, and makes a smaller T.V. I guess, in their world, it's fine. Considering everything is just icing and the wife didn't really react past "there's goop on my face!"
What isn't fine, is the bride's feelings. She goes into the other room to sulk and cry and is later met by her husband. She's busy scrubbing off the same stain again, probably in hopes it would help her feel better. The groom then takes some icing and plops it on the stain, covering it up. The bride's happy. When the goop of icing starts falling, he reaches to spread it all over her chest. She's still happy. Then, with a ball of icing in his hand, the groom gets the genius idea of faking bigger breasts on his wife. Obviously, she's hurt and retaliates. She then starts picking icing out of his stomach to add to his arms. The whole ordeal heats up and they end up ripping each other apart.
We then see the real couple, opening up their destroyed cake. They shrug and return to their ceremony. Lo and behold, the groom spills his drink on the bride's dress. She's mad for a moment but then brushes it off--nearly replicating the beginning scene with the figurines.
In the credits, we see many similarities between the figurines' and the people's marriages. Like how both brides don't want kids and never manage to get the wine stain off. Or how both grooms obviously prefer bigger breasts and are obsessed with soccer. So like, this is nice and all. But does this mean they'll get a dog? What'll happen to it?

Movie Review: Sidewalk

Sidewalk. What a classic.
Sidewalk is a short 4-minute, and 15-second comedy produced, animated, and directed by Celia Bullwinkel. It was uploaded to her YouTube channel on September 23, 2014, and has garnered over 900 thousand likes since. The music was produced by Josh Moshier and was first released on April 18, 2013.
We follow the story of a young girl, who I shall call Ellie. In the actual short, she remains nameless, but she looks like an Ellie to me. So Ellie starts off at home. Her mother is at her doorstep with her lunch, ready to see Ellie off for school. And, off Ellie goes. Happily, she skips along, playing games and enjoying the bliss of childhood. Then, she walks by an advert. One clearly meant to represent she's grown up a bit and is more exposed to the world. Someone's told her how a girl should act, and being an older child, she soaks it in and copies it verbatim. She's still happy though. The first signs of maturity are appearing and she's swimming in the joy of it.
Then, the lampost. It serves as a scene change, and now we see Ellie as a preteen. Ten, eleven, twelve, maybe thirteen. The most awkward years of anyone's lives. You're too old to keep doing things you've always enjoyed and people expect a solid level of maturity in you. But you're too young for everything that entices you and everyone still treats you as a baby. Middle school. Awkward body proportions. Pure confusion. No wonder Ellie looks so confused. And to add salt to the wound, the bus stop pole blesses her with puberty.
Then, the heart of the teenage years. Every teenager goes through a time where they're just upset with everything and everyone. For some, they might express it differently than others. And some, it may be more than just a phase. But on a perfectly healthy level, everyone goes through it. But, you get out of it. Hormones start to settle and your mind clears. With it, you finish maturing, as the next lampost demonstrates.
The next scene change is done by a car--how fitting. Ellie's all grown up now. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty. You have your adult body, adult rights, and adult freedom. Power move time. Ellie struts the sidewalk, ready to live her life to the fullest. But, she's discouraged by the catcalling passers-bys. Which, could easily represent the world in general. As soon as you're in the real world, it rears its ugly end and has you missing your days of teen angst. Angrily, Ellie storms off into the tree. And returns a working woman. Barely settled, she's a twenty-something-year-old barista, working her way through school, and constantly stressed. Long story short: she's just tryna feed herself every night.
Another lampost and Ellie has herself together. A sophisticated businesswoman in her thirties, strutting down the sidewalk she likely paid for herself. She's proud of the life she's built up and bumps into a businessman who matches her energy. Comfortable with life, she's ready to next be seen juggling a baby bump in front of her.
We see Ellie envy another younger woman's body for a minute before a bus runs by and treats us to a drained mother pushing around her screaming baby. Her body is thin and frail, most likely from exhaustion. Another bus passes by and her son is clearly older than she was at the beginning. Placing her second pregnancy in her late thirties/early forties. Unlike her earlier pregnancy, you can already see in her face and waist that her body won't revert as well as it did the first time. And, as many people that age have this revelation, we see her inspecting her body and thinking, "Man, I'm getting old."
So she runs. For like, two seconds. I mean, A for effort and A for keeping it realistic. She doubles over the lampost and falls into the body of a chubby, graying woman who just passed fifty. Ellie looks around, clearly dissatisfied with her body and maybe her life even. At this point, her kids are all grown up and it's easy to fall into a bland routine at that age. Ellie eyes an advert, similar to the one she saw as a young girl. And, after a bit of thought, she's made up her mind.
A car passes by, and...mid-life crisis. She puts on tight clothing, outlandish makeup, heels, and adorns herself. She struts the sidewalk like she once did a few decades ago, frightening other people and making them turn away. Eventually, a mirror catches up to her and we can see Ellie's confidence shrivel away. The next lampost gives us a woman nearing her seventies. We see her body fat comically redistribute itself as she tries to put it back, grasping at the last straws of her youth. The next lampost takes the rest of it and gives us a sweet old lady budding paths with a lost little girl. They hold hands as Ellie guides her to the tree, were they both age a few years. There, they split ways and Ellie finally walks out of the frame at last.
All in all, I've watched this at least ten times and I love it more with each go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zye28xU3F64