The Big One

I watched Michael Moore's The Big One this weekend. I don't know how old it was but I think it was during Clinton's reelection when Dole was running against him. Much of it is just lectures and book signings from his book tour after writing Downsize This. I read it and liked it but he is so much better in front of an audience or with people around him than he is as just a writer. Still, I love him. The Big One is very light and easy but which much less heart and passion than his other movies. Less polarizing. I recommend it.

I was talking to my dad yesterday at dinner about how much it drives me crazy that the patients where I work are constantly saying things like, "if I live that long" or "if I'm still alive next week." They think it is funny but it really wears on me. Because some of them won't. And when you hear that 20 times every day anything can get annoying. But especially when it constantly reminds you of death and mortality. And they sound so needy and pathetic, feeling sorry for themselves. So if you read this and you say this to people at your doctor's office, keep in mind that they hear this 20 times a day and you are depressing me.

Also, my dad was telling me about one of his uncles who was in the IRA who got sent to New Zealand because he was captured by the British and had to skip town pretty quickly. My dad just watched the motorcycle diaries about che guevara and it reminded him of his uncle because apparently he was a big fan of che's. It made me think about people's personal heroes and how an Irish revolutionary and a Cuban revolutionary live together in this alternate world even though they are on opposite sides of the globe. But mostly it made me mad again that my dad doesn't tell me enough about his family. I don't know if I wrote about it in this blog but once I found a letter to my dad that his cousin Fintan wrote to him from the H-block in Ireland.
It is really weird. He can't write about certain things because they would read all his mail and so it is a very generic and carefully written letter. But he asked my dad to send him a picture of his family, just to make sure that if he does that my dad is not in the picture because they were not allowed to get pictures in prison with any males over the age of 18 in the picture. Secret messages I guess. Not that a woman couldn't give secret messages in a photo. Or maybe seeing pictures of fathers and uncles and brothers incite bad behavior amongst prisoners.

I'm probably going to go see a show tonight at the Cabaret dinner theater in Ashland. So there's that.