Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Keanu Forever

What I am about to tell you will most likely cause you to lose respect for me.

I harbor an unconditional love for Keanu Reeves. He could make one hundred
Sweet Novembers and Lake Houses or a Matrix Regurgitated, and my allegiance wouldn’t wane.

This love affair started in 1988 when I saw a little movie called Permanent Record on cable. At some point in the movie, the camera zoomed in on this punim:

And that was it for me.

Then, three years later, I experienced this scene from Point Break:

To my teenage self, this was the epitome of romance: lying on the bare chest of a gorgeous, pensive man who has great biceps.

So here’s the part where if you haven’t lost respect for me already you might now. The other day, I was lying on the chest of my husband (who happens to be quite gorgeous and have nice biceps), and I thought to myself, “Wow. I’m totally living my Point Break fantasy.”

After that, I have pretty much been letting myself go. I quit my job. I stopped writing. I stopped showering. I mean, I pretty much peaked, right?

Point Break is obviously very special to me, so I am not thrilled about the fact that they are planning on remaking it. Nor am I terribly thrilled about the recent Footloose remake or the proposed Dirty Dancing remake.

Is nothing sacred? Who else besides Keanu Reeves can deliver lines like "You crossed the line. People trusted you and they died. You gotta' go down" or "You gonna jump or jerk off?"

Surely there are plenty of talented screenwriters out there who can write NEW movies.

And along the same lines, why have we chosen to remake words when there are so many new ones out there?

Why must we have two other words that sound exactly like there ? Why must the present and past form of read be the same? The word set has 464 definitions. Don’t you think we could have come up with some new words to bear some of set’s burden?

And I know there are new words out there because I see them every time I am required to use the word verification option. We should just steal the word verification letter combinations and use them to make the English language less confusing.

For example, people commonly confuse the words weather and whether. I say we keep whether and change weather to the word verification letter combination I recently encountered, reanthor. It almost contains the word rain and it does contain the word thor. Perfect!

Any other pressing problems you need me to solve? The high unemployment rate?

Wait...do I mean that the unemployment rate is high, or am I referring to the unemployment rate of those who are stoned? Good question. In this case, I am referring to the latter. Let me just reach into my bag of word verification letter combos to find a word to take high's place.

How about flikst?

26 comments:

Crystal Pistol said...

Clever post as per usual.

And coincidental as I just watched Much Ado About Nothing with my sister tonight. Keanu was in rare form. And though a villain, I could not help but love him with my soul. *sigh*

Ms Belson said...

You had me at Keanu ;)

Shelly said...

Yep- you don't have to say much more than Keanu-

JJ said...

I fell in love with Keanu in A Walk In The Clouds. That kissing scene....hmm.

Rachael said...

I think my phone is in league with you on this new movement, because any time I comment on a blog on my phone and have to type the little fake-word verification, my phone saves it as an option for future text messages. I've joked about just leaving them and letting people assume it's a word they just don't know yet, because my English degree came with a list of every word, ever, but so far I haven't actually done it.

Shannon said...

I recently had a word verification of "pooluv". I was offended and amused at the same time.

Tere Kirkland said...

For some reason I'm reminded of that scene in Hot Fuzz: "Ever fired your gun up in the air while shouting "aaargh"?"

Oh, Johnny Utah, never change!

Traci Marie Wolf said...

I don't know what any of that word verification stuff means but you'll be happy to know that I know the difference between whether and weather. Hallelujah, Hallelujah! Also, I still respect you. Because you see, I live in a world where movies have provided great escape and ideas for how life should be lived.
I had that for Johnny Depp when he was in 21 Jump Street. He was my dream beau.
Keep on loving Keanu Reeves.

the late phoenix said...

okay, this is just weird. i had been thinking for weeks now about doing an hnt featuring that beautiful music video with keanu reeves and paula abdul, and then this post! ha!

punim <-------i'm gonna start using that now this week

Stephen T. McCarthy said...

MISSED PERIODS ~
I LOVE some of the Verification Words, even more than you love Keanu Reeves. (Nah, not really. How could that be so?)

And being the semi-clever/semi-retarded fellow I am, I once got the idea of creating a short story around all of my favorite Verification Words encountered over a 7-month period.

I wound up with a post-apocalyptic/sci-fi monstrosity that satirized a handful of different things.

If you want to read the end result you can click this LINK and hopefully it will transport you to the mess I made.

~ D-FensDogg
‘Loyal American Underground’

Jeff Beesler said...

I want the word verification program to accept tuffet as an actual word. Today I was utilizing that for my NaNoWriMo project, and the spellcheck had the gall to assume that tuffet wasn't even a real word. For shame!

Dylan Fitzgerald said...

Can we also have a shout out for his turn as Don Jon in "Much Ado About Nothing"? Holy cow...

Also, I am frequently glad that English is my first language because I don't know if I would've had the wherewithal to learn it otherwise.

Liz said...

I judge you not. Jared Leto was my Keanu Reeves. Actually this just gave me an idea for my next blog post... Thanks!

Amie Kaufman said...

When I was in seventh grade I saw Speed five times. Oh, how I loved him.

Jo-Ann said...

Keanu.... mmmmm. Yeah. Gorgeous. Even if the letter combo in his name is like a word verification string.

My kids and I play a game in which one makes up a word (eg, grfich), and others offer up possible definitions, you know, things that have no word for them. Such as that tickling itch you get in your nose just before a sneeze. Or the action of flicking a light switch before remembering the bulb needs replacing. The person whose definition gets chosen makes up the next new word.

Ok, keeps 'em busy on a long car trip.

Kelly Polark said...

Have you seen Keanu in My Private Idaho?

My fave Keanu movie is Devil's Advocate.
And Bill and Ted's amused me. But then again, I was a preteen or teen when I saw it!

James Garcia Jr said...

You had me at the word: remake. I hate them, too. I know there have been a few that benefited the re-do, but for the most part it seems wrong.
Now, you'd better be kidding about that not showering thing, little missy.
Otherwise I'm getting out the hose...
;)
Hope you're having a great weekend.

-Jimmy

Anonymous said...

He's a very good actor. (:

JDC said...

Keanu is a very stoic man, I like him though a smile once and while wouldnt kill him.

DWei said...

There are a lot of rumours and stories about Keanu that came out with the advent of "Sad Keanu".

If they're true, I've gained a lot of respect for the man.

Anonymous said...

He is mine all time favorite hero. I would love to go with him on secret date....lolzzzzzzz.

Watch Movies Online

Igneel21 said...

"Excelent!"

my first favorite movie with keanu was bill and ted

Elliot MacLeod-Michael said...

Meanwhile the Sami people have hundreds of words just for "snow" and are completely showing us up. They also have Rene Zellweger (a dubious distinction perhaps).

By the way, this is the same Hollywood that made The Passion of the Christ. They'll commodify anything. It does seem to be getting worse though.

Anonymous said...

As odd as this sounds I fell in love with Keanu in a Shakespeare comedy "Much Ado About Nothing." Dont ask my why but the mix of young Keanu, terrible acting and classic Shakespeare prose really did me in :)

Theresa Milstein said...

Glad Word Verification can at least be entertaining.

What's with the remakes? You can't improve on the awesome badness of Dirty Dancing or Footloose, just like you cant remake The Wizard of Oz or Star Wars...

unless you count The Wiz and those horrid prequels.

Lorena said...

Dear MP,

There IS a problem I need you to solve for me (and maybe you can do it through one of your wonderful posts.) Can you explain this new trend of changing the past tenses of verbs (and making it confusing to all of us?) For example: dreamt and dreamed, knelt and kneeled, learned and learnt. (I can't even remember which ones are the right conjugations anymore!!)