play with your words!

This evening I dragged my ass out to West LA. Why would I ever do that? To go see a free movie, of course. I wasn't willing to do it alone, though, because sometimes being more bored than usual isn't worth that free price tag, so I invited my friend Brian along. After some screwing up with directions (my fault), we made it to the end of one insane line, but soon enough there were plenty more people behind us. I was surprised by the turn out for Wordplay, a tiny documentary about Will Shortz and crossword puzzles. Who would want to see that? Brian correctly guessed it would be popular, because he's more hip to the media around that than I am. I didn't think we'd get in, but we did. We had to sit in the second row. You have no idea how hard that was for someone who always sits in the very last row in the center (even in, and especially in, massive movie theaters, of which this wasn't). My view of the screen was angled in such a way that everyone looked deformed and it was hard to follow the text on the screen (hello, it was about crossword puzzles). The place was a madhouse and they had to turn people away. I should say that was also probably the oldest-skewing audience of any free screening I've ever been to. I was probably the youngest person there, and I'd be hard pressed to have found many others in their twenties.

Enough about the scene. They let me in free so I could tell you how good the movie was so you'd go and pay for it! And I recommend that you do (easy enough for me to say, right?). Seriously, it's funny, engaging, and very humanizing of odd, compulsive behaviors (we need more of that, seriously, really, I'm not being sarcastic for once). I actually found Jon Stewart to be quite obnoxious and annoying, like he was trying too hard (and being too over the top about loving Shortz and his crossword puzzles). My favorite commentator is the former Public Editor of the New York Times who has been logging the time it takes him to complete each crossword for years. There was only one line/part in the film that I cringed and thought "Why did you have to ruin the flow with something so arrogant as that?!" Ken Burns said something to the effect that English is the greatest language on earth. It's like being racist about your tongue. Come on, former linguist sister, there's got to be a phrase for that...

Anyway, I encourage you to play with your words and go see Wordplay. Now back to my game of Sa Do Ku.