Some Favorite Movie Scenes

I'm a huge film fan.  So when My Husband asked me last night what some of my favorite movie scenes of all time were, I had to oblige him.  And then I had to write them down and share them with you :)  Every single one of these movies is worth seeing; so if you haven't, I apologize for the spoilers and encourage you to rent them all!

Here are some of my top cinema scenes of all time (in no particular order):

• THE SHOOTOUT ON THE STEPS from The Untouchables, 1987

Almost the whole thing is in slow motion and you still never get bored.  Plus it's got Kevin Costner and Andy Garcia in their heyday shooting bad guys and saving babies.  You can't lose.  Photo courtesy of http://smith-wessonforum.com/s-w-hand-ejectors-1896-1961/148505-s-w-untouchables.html 

• SHADOW COMES HOME from Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, 1993

Just when you think the old timer golden retriever didn't make it in this live-action Walt Disney flick, he comes limping up a hill and runs to his crying boy.  A must-see for dog lovers everywhere.

• RAQUEL WELCH SPILLS HER SECRET from The Shawshank Redemption, 1994

Iconic photography, atmospheric music and stellar acting...there is nothing like seeing Warden Norton's face when he realizes Andy Dufresne has tunnelled his way to freedom.  Photo courtesy of totalfilm.com

• THE GRINCH'S HEART GROWS from Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, 1966 

What a heart-warming testament to the redemptive power of music and love!

• REUNION IN THE REFLECTING POOL from Forrest Gump, 1994

As the wife of a soldier, I have a soft spot for emotional reunions.  And there's thousands of people applauding as Forrest and Jenny embrace in front of the Washington Monument.  Spectacular.  Photo courtesy of Max Sees Movies Blog

• "I WILL FIND YOU!" UNDER THE WATERFALL from The Last of the Mohicans, 1992

Speaking of romance, there's really nothing like a soaking wet hero pledging his everlasting love for you while the scents of gunpowder and danger fill your nostrils.  Daniel Day-Lewis has been a pillar of the acting community for decades and damn does he deserve it.

• THE FIRST TIME THEY SEE THE DINOSAURS from Jurassic Park, 1993

The music is epic.  The story is fantastic.  And when you stop to think about the fact that these actors aren't actually looking at...well, anything...the scene becomes that much more impressive.  Photo courtesy of blogger Amy Wong

• CINDERELLA SPINS INTO HER BALLGOWN from Walt Disney's Cinderella, 1950

Who doesn't want to take a slow-motion spin in a moonlit garden and have a bunch of sparkles turn you into the belle of the ball?

• JANE RUSSELL AS MARILYN MONROE from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 1953

A very funny movie that's well worth the Netflix...especially the scene toward the end where Jane Russell's character Dorothy impersonates Marilyn Monroe's character Lorelei in a French courtroom: platinum blonde curls, husky whisper and all.  Photo courtesy of the Film Experience Blog

• SIDNEY POITIER TELLS IT LIKE IT IS from Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, 1967

As my generation struggles to live with the choices and rectify the mistakes of the "Baby Boomers," John Prentice's speech to his father captures a feeling of repression, passion and restrained power I could never hope to articulate.  "You and your whole lousy generation believes the way it was for you is the way it's got to be!" he rages.  Undoubtedly one of a great actor's greatest scenes.  Photo courtesy of movieactors.com

Osama bin Laden is Still Dead

Buoy and I are exhausted.  Last night while perusing the Internet about 9pm Central Time, I read on my homepage (CNN.com) the president was going to make a very important announcement from the White House in about a half an hour.

Now, any Army wife will tell you when the president makes an unscheduled announcement late night on a Sunday, it's usually a bad thing.  Well, it may not be a "bad" thing, but it's definitely something that directly affects you.  My Husband and I waited patiently for the president's speech and we speculated what this "dramatic national security event having nothing to do with Libya," as Wolf Blitzer said, could be.  I thought Joe Biden died and that's why so many people had to be notified before Mr. Obama could come on the air.

 As the specified time for the announcement came and went, the producers at CNN decided to break the news the president would later elaborate on...Osama bin Laden was dead.  A group of special ops and/or Navy SEALS (I've heard both) entered the mansion where he's been hiding for what may have been years and shot it up for about 40 minutes.  A woman attempted to shield bin Laden and was shot.  His 19-year-old-son was shot.  Apparently the soldiers offered bin Laden a chance to surrender; he refused and opened fire with an automatic weapon (this I'm not entirely sure of...I wouldn't fault the soldiers for shooting an unarmed fugitive, but I know why they're saying it if it's not true).  The soldiers shot him at least once in the head.

They recovered his body after another woman at the compound concurred it was bin Laden.  Taking it to a US ship, they proceeded to positively confirm his identity with DNA (Huh.  Kinda wish police stations had that kind of technology for rape kits).  Osama bin Laden was then given a "proper Muslim burial at sea."  I don't know about that part either, but at this point I'm pleased enough with the success of the mission and the lack of American casualties that I don't care about white lies like the government keeping a terrorist's body.

I wept with relief as I watched people gather in front of the White House to celebrate.  I texted almost everyone in my phone contacts and made My Husband call his mom.  I wanted to shout the news from our balcony; I wanted to knock on every door in the building.  I like the fact that so many of my peers heard the news first from me.  It stems from some journalistic spark still burning inside me, I guess.

And so the conversation turns to what will come next.  I'm sure terrorism will continue...in fact I think it will get worse before it gets better.  But considering the amount of information the soldiers recovered from the compound (if it was safe enough to hide bin Laden just think about the records kept there as well) and the rage stemming from the murder of their leader, I hope people will get sloppy enough to get caught.

I'm trying not to get too excited, but this could mean the end of our deployments.  No Afghanistan...please God, no Afghanistan.

But life continues.  My Husband left about 3am for a week of overnight field exercises.  May and June are full of field exercises for us.  He'll have weekends off, for what that's worth. 

We stayed up all night last night watching the coverage of bin Laden's death.  The celebrations reminded me of some of the video from September 11 when Islamic fundamentalists passed out candy in the streets, danced, sang and shouted with joy at our destruction.  Life is very strange right about now.

So Buoy and I spent today schlepping around after I got home from my shift at the shelter, attempting to recover from an exceptionally emotional weekend.  I've never cried so much about complete strangers, both good and evil events, in my entire life. 

Hypersensitivity

I'm not sure I can adequately describe how I feel after the morning I've had so far.  Feel free to read this and say, "Oh, she is SO hypersensitive I have no idea how anyone can be around her."  Sometimes I don't know myself.

On Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings I volunteer at a no-kill animal shelter about 20 miles from here.  There's a school zone a few blocks from it with one of those flashing 20mph signs.  Today a cop was hanging out on the side of the road.  As I approached him, he stuck his hand out the window and pointed down to the pavement a few times; I assumed it meant he wanted me to slow down.  So I did.

Obviously to some of you this doesn't seem like much, but I have this terrible guilt when I'm corrected by an authority figure.  I mean, he didn't even follow me or anything, but it still tweaked me to the point where I felt bad for having been "that person" who needs to be told to slow down in a school zone.

Anyway, I got to the shelter this morning and tried to put it out of my mind.  I walked some dogs, gave a little extra love to one who can't play for two weeks because he's being treated for heartworm and got in my car to go home.

A good chunk of the 20 miles between the shelter and my home is a two-lane state road with a 70mph speed limit.  I ususally go between 70 and 75mph in the left (what I was taught was the "fast" lane).  I was coming up behind a Lincoln in the left lane that must have been going, like, 60mph...cars were passing it on the right.  Unfortunately, as soon as I decided to be one of those cars, a D.O.T. truck appeared in the distance just over the line of the breakdown lane.

In this state you're supposed to move over a lane if you're passing a stopped vehicle on the side of the highway.  I couldn't pass the slow Lincoln on the right fast enough to get back to the left lane and give the truck its space, so I ended up passing right beside this D.O.T. truck (and its driver, who was standing next to the driver's side door) at about 60mph.  The driver had to move around to the front of the vehicle to avoid me.

So I got about 4 seconds of his enraged face filling my windshield and his mouth twisting into just about every disgusting name one can call a female as I passed.  It was harrowing to see him so angry at me. 

Maybe if either of these occurences had been it for my day I wouldn't have minded so much.  But I'm on the superstitious side, and I think bad things come in threes and the third one is usually the worst.

I continued on my way, now very eager to get home and driving a good deal UNDER the speed limit in the right lane when I pulled up behind a tractor-trailer.  It had open slats all along the trailer and was stacked to bursting with pillows.  Their stuffing peeked out of every slat all along the length of the vehicle.  Except as I got closer I realized they weren't pillows...they were live, white chickens.

I got physically ill.  Not from any kind of smell, but from the sight of hundreds of chickens stuffed haphazardly into their crates.  Wings, beaks, feet and bits of flesh and feathers were protruding from every angle and fluttering wildly in the wind.  I could see their eyes blink against gravel kicked up by the spinning tires; I could see some with a few inches to spare attempt to peck themselves clean.  And I may be overreacting, but all I could think about were those drawings in our history textbooks of African slaves piled into wooden ships and the descriptions of the cattle cars Nazis stuffed their "undesirables" into, where people were packed so tightly one could faint from lack of oxygen and stay upright.

All that suffering just to go somewhere else to die.

I was stuck behind that repulsive vehicle for eight minutes before it pulled off the road and onto another.  I came home and threw up my breakfast.  I'm still trying to soothe my stomach as I write this.

It was...it was just an awful morning for me.  I'm trying to focus on Buoy right now, who is happily chewing her Nylabone® next to me on the sofa.  I wish My Husband was home so I could tell him what happened.  He'd hug me and tell me "It's alright," and that he loves how sensitive and that it's an advantage and not the weakness it feels like at this moment.  But he's at work, and will be for the next ten hours, so I'm telling you.
I tell myself I don't have the "strength of will" to be a vegetarian or vegan.  I know, deep down, that if I subject myself to chickens having their beaks twisted off in hatcheries or pigs being slaughtered with a nailgun to the forehead or cows being rolled with a forklift from one pen to another because they can't stand I will never touch animal flesh again.

So what do I do?  I avoid those visuals, those descriptions at all costs.  I COULD be a vegetarian.  I actively prevent myself from living that life.

But as I sit here I remember those chickens, and I've never felt so spineless. 

Relapsing

My Husband became his Troop XO (Executive Officer) at the beginning of February.  This is quite a different position than platoon leader, which was his job from his deployment until now.  It’s a lot more paperwork and a lot more involvement with his Commanding Officer (CO) and the rest of the leadership.

He’s been working 14-hour days for almost two weeks now.  He goes in at 5:30am for Physical Training (PT) and gets home after 7pm if we’re lucky.  Yesterday he was home about 6:30pm, but it was because he brought a bunch of work to do here at the apartment.

And watching all the enlisted guys wander home before the 5 o'clock local news is really starting to get on my nerves.

Speaking of yesterday, he had to go into work at 3:30am for some kind of march.  It was so foggy and dark, and he was so tired…I haven’t been this worried about him since he was deployed.  Deer wander around here at all hours, the roads wind unpredictably and it was just SO FOGGY.  You couldn’t see 10 feet in front of you.  And I’ll be damned if there are street lights more than every 3 miles out here.

Last night I had my first nightmare about him since he was overseas.  In the dream he was sick and having trouble breathing.  We were staying in some kind of barracks or something, and I was watching a movie with the guy in the next bed while I sat in a chair next to My Husband’s head.  A paramedic came to take a look at him and told me he had a terrible lung infection and his organs were shutting down.  I remember crying, saying that an infection should be curable.  My Husband stirred in his bed and told me it was OK, it was going to be really good to finally go to sleep.  I lay down in bed next to him and covered us with a blanket, and I whispered in his ear, “Alright, my love.  Just go to sleep.”  And so he died.

I woke up with tears on my cheeks.  It was 1:30am.

And there is his silhouette in the dark, in the bed next to me.  And I can't wake him up to tell him about the dream and have him hold me while I'm crying because he's not getting enough sleep as it is.  So I don't.  I stared at the ceiling for an hour until I fell into a fitful doze.  His alarm went off a little while later.

So obviously I have some anxiety about him…I take it the dream means I am afraid something seemingly preventable could take him from me forever.  Like falling asleep at the wheel at some God-awful hour of the morning.

I certainly hope the rest of the leadership is in that stupid office until 1930 hours.

"Every Bird as it's Reared and for the Lark, the Bog." -- Irish Proverb

Dear Digital Universe,

My name is Lark Delaney.  I am almost 26 years old and I live with My Husband and our spaniel, Buoy, in one of the square states in Midwestern America.  My Husband is a soldier and the U.S. Army stationed us here just after our summer 2009 wedding.

I spent my first year here alone with Buoy…My Husband deployed overseas just after we moved in.  He returned safely in July 2010 and we’ve been adjusting to living together permanently since.

My parents have been married for 30 years and live in the Northeast, where I grew up.  I have an older sister, Chloë, who lives with her boyfriend about 20 minutes from my parents.  My younger sister, Sarah, works at a small college on one of the Great Lakes and is getting her Master’s degree while she’s at it.

Both of my sisters went to (or are attending) graduate school.  I spent four years at Major Metropolitan University (not Major Metropolitan College, which is only a few miles away) and graduated a year before My Husband finished up at his Military College.  I worked a number of small jobs the following 12 months to save up for our wedding.  It’s been almost four years since I completed university and I haven’t come close to a job that has anything to do with my journalism degree.

I can’t remember a time I wasn’t writing…my mom probably still has my original crayon-crusted picture books about unicorns and talking dogs floating around somewhere in their attic.  When My Husband deployed a handful of people suggested I start a blog about my “experiences,” but frankly, I didn’t handle the deployment as well as I could have and didn’t want to poison the internet community with my pessimistic ramblings.  My slightly cynical, possibly sarcastic and occasionally interesting quips about everyday life now that I’m recovering will be much more entertaining for you, I’m sure.

So thank you for stopping by my blog and I hope you’ll be a regular visitor here.

Yours,

Lark