Obsession # 3: Jimmy Stewart

This post perhaps takes off from the previous one. 

I don't know if it was Rear Window or The Shop Around the Corner I saw first. I don't think I put together at that point that it was the same actor. I liked Rear Window, which is a pretty awesome Hitchcock deal, but I fell in love with the tall, lanky guy from The Shop Around the Corner, and his unique way of talking and the flailing of his arms. This resulted in a whole black and white comedies thing, the highlight of which was The Apartment and The Philadelphia Story. Everything I read seemed to suggest that Cary Grant was the romantic lead to crush on, but I watched The Philadelphia Story (starring both) and I knew: James Stewart was the guy I would always root for. Particularly when it was him vs. the odds, as in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or It's a Wonderful Life. A few days ago, it started all over again. But this time, rather than sidetracking into black and white comedies in general, J. Stewart's filmography was the point of interest. This guy has done a ton of movies, and I am on a mission to watch every one that I can get my hands on. 

Today, though, brain-fried from doing probability problems, I laid back (feeling rather ill, to be honest) and watched this documentary about his life -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVn-NCXXoRo - and his reading of this poem he wrote about his dog -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwGnCIdHQH0. You really just have to read his Wikipedia page, I guess. What a fantastic man! What a remarkable life - from the accordion and Princeton to being an actor and a fighter pilot, building a life on friendship,

camaraderie, decency and all those things I am too unromantic to even completely believe in. I won't make the mistake of saying they're not made like this anymore - I've known a couple of spectacular folk - but I find that I am really rather sad that I don't live in a world with Brig. Gen. James Maitland Stewart in it. He was so fortunate in so many ways, but he watched almost everyone he loved most dearly die. His last words to his family: "I'm going to be with Gloria now" (Gloria Hatrick McLean was his wife for 45 years until she died in 1994). It seems like a great way to go, loving and loved.

The guy was a decorated war hero, a poet, a musician, an actor, a model citizen, and an all-around nice guy. This is one Republican (after Lincoln) that I don't mind at all.

Obsession # 2: Love

Sorry about the long break. There's really no excuse for it: it isn't like I haven't been obsessed with anything for this long. I went through a whole Pentatonix thing (during which I also watched way too many Superfruit videos). I watched a whole season of Blackish, got a new oven and got really excited about that, rediscovered my love for Nutella in a big way but, on the other hand, also got very into how awful sugar is. I also realized I'm not as sapiosexual as I thought I was, because of how much I adore this character named Billy from the (unfortunately) cancelled show Sirens. 

When asked to try the roux

Ah, beautiful, sweet, completely and utterly dumb Billy! Despite all this, there has been a definite undercurrent of math and love in the novella of my life for the past couple. And since math, though fascinating, isn't half as completely indulgent and ridiculous as l'amour, I figure I'll talk about the latter.

For at least more than a decade, I have been fascinated with love. Probably at some point, I even believed in it. A character in a movie, I seem to recall, said something about believing in it if it happens. In my case, love is like any obsession (I, of course, mean the subject of love, not the object). Recently, I compared it to my fascination with Harry Potter (my first recorded obsession). I love everything about Harry Potter, every nook and cranny of that world is interesting to me, but I don't believe it to be true. 

There is something rather incredible about delving into such an abstract, fantastical idea as love. You can give it any shape and form, inform it with everything you've read and seen, take things away from it, and add to it. You can do this on a ginormous scale. There are so many dynamic elements involved. I love writing about love, adding to that nebulous network of living, breathing bloodiness. And I am a sucker for a happily-ever-after. I've read every Julia Quinn book, and watched 78 movies off this list: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls058479560/. My tolerance for bad storytelling has gone down over the years, but there is nothing I love more than a well-told love story.

I'm pretty sure this is one of those things I'll carry with me for a while, and I think that's mostly owing to the fact that I still have so many questions, so many more aspects that pull me down so many different avenues with this thing. I don't have all the parts I need to shelve it, and chances are, I never will.

Here are some favourites:

Favourite Romance Movie: Moonrise Kingdom

Favourite Romance Novel: Romancing Mister Bridgerton

Favourite Romantic Couple: Oliver and Jen from Erich Segal's Love Story

tibi multo amore.

Takeaways: Landon Pigg songs.

Obsession # 1: Asa Butterfield

Note: re: the numbering of the obsessions: The numbering is simply to keep track of the number of obsessions I have listed on here. It does not have anything to do with the chronology of the obsessions, either with respect to my whole career as an obsessive or even their order in the present time. I am prone to regressions, and so, further down the line, there might occur a blog on Harry Potter or Tina Fey. You must, I suppose, conclude that the numbers are solely for my benefit. Any benefit you derive from them is purely coincidental.

How someone can be so distracted and so focused is beyond me. But this is, for all technical purposes, my modus operandi. I tend to shoot off at a tangent and come back, sometimes rather seamlessly, but most times in an erratic irregular-heartbeat-ECG sort of way. What remains when you've husked through all that is the point of interest.

Remember the kid from The Boy in the Striped Pajamas? Remember his soulful eyes? I've always been fascinated by actors who can communicate a lot with their eyes. One simply has to look at Adrien Brody and Matthias Schoenaerts to witness the somewhat abstract quality that lends their eyes such a supreme capacity for pathos. This is not to reduce the actor to his physical givens, because many people have beautiful eyes; few display such pliable transparency. Anyway, I found myself looking into the same eyes some time ago when I was watching Merlin. It escaped me where I'd seen the face before, and I didn't give it much further thought (which, to be honest, is rather uncharacteristic).


Today, I was looking at Hailee Steinfeld, because I'd watched Pitch Perfect 2 on Friday and have been listening to the soundtrack since. I vaguely remembered her being nominated for an Oscar as a child, so I went to check that out. On her list of works, I found Ender's Game, a movie based on a book that is on my reader and which I've been putting off for about a year now. The cast list of the movie is headed by one Asa Butterfield. His list of works shows Hugo and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. He's also done another movie with Steinfeld called 10, 000 Saints. Further down the line, there it is - Merlin.

The kid has had a pretty fantastic career so far and one can only hope he doesn't go down a child actor drain. It has escaped no one's notice that British child actors fare so much better than Hollywood ones. They thrive, even. Case in point: all of the Harry Potter cast. Anyway, Butterfield (such an English surname) seems like a good egg, who has already worked with the likes of Martin Scorsese, Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley, and has a propensity to play rather extraordinary characters. Also, he's apparently co-designed the only iPad video game that can be played with your eyes closed. He and his father came up with the idea when he was working on Striped Pajamas (at which point it was only a pen and paper game). With all that, we can only hope he hasn't peaked yet.

Secondary take-aways: Beans on toast.

A Lifelong Condition

The world is a very accepting place, I've come to understand in the past few years of my still rather short life. It's also a rather cruel place, as I'm forced to admit from what I've read of YouTube comments. So, when I say I'm an obsessive, I'm prepared for most eventualities. I must state clearly at the very onset that I do not suffer from OCD or OCPD or any such clinically relevant and, therefore, forgivable conditions. I am merely a person that gets very obsessed with random things at any given point in time. For years, I've tried to be an interesting person, only to discover that I really am not. What I am is a very interested person. There's a note on my school record from a teacher that says I'm "very interested in how things work" - a comment that is almost certainly a generic, typically middle-school teacher sort of thing to say. You see, I was a boring child, but on the plus side, I was seldom a bored one.

In the past, I have tried to cure myself of my obsessiveness, not only because it is rather uncool and I already had a plethora of traits that made me, for all intents and purposes, a loser, but also because of the all-consuming and rather unsettling nature of these obsessions. At any given point, I am so invested in something that it takes over my whole life, influences everything from my mannerisms and my language to my whole world-view. I realized after many failures in the endeavor to rid myself of this rather intrinsic part of me that this is the only way I know to be. I cannot but be this person, and it was tiring and entirely not worth it to try and change. And in any case, I hide it pretty well - unless, that is, you're a close friend, in which case, you've probably been bombarded with information that you do not need or want more times than you care to remember. Thankfully, my posse have, at worst, accepted this about me, and at best, celebrated it.

This blog is a rather odd thing, and will only fully appeal to those who appreciate the random and yet methodical human mind, and how full of awesomeness the world is. It will partly appeal to almost everyone. There will be a select few to whom this will appeal not at all. For them, I have another blog amina-abdurazak.livejournal.com, that is full of mostly serious writing. If that isn't your cup of tea, read a Harry Potter book. If you do not like that, I can only hope and presume that you have the good sense to bugger off.

Some people, I tell ya.