Brother and Sister Grice Go to L.A., Birthday Week, "To Live and Die in L.A."

Day 6: Depression

Nooooo, not really - but there's something a bit saddening about approaching your birthday (Feb. 14 -- gifts, well-wishes, and handouts are currently being accepted) and your mid-late Twenties without the security of a job you hate. Where do I direct all that negative energy??

So far it's been confined to the sterile streets of Cambridge. This crippled lady has taken to jogging (!!) in this upper-middle class suburbia dreamland; I've cooked more food than I thought possible; I've drawn cartoons, reaching back into my 6th-grade bag of hobbies, which I'm going to hang on my wall with a little placard that reads: "What happens when you try to pass time due to Unemployment."

There's been a couple good developments, however.

Sister and Brother Grice are using Bl'erg severance to go wander around Los Angeles! We're doing it - the tickets have been bought, the e-mails have been sent, the tentative interviews with movie-industry jobs are in the works. It should be grand.

I've also begun planning my usual Morgan's Birthday Week festivities, which begin on Wednesday with another Grice dinner party. On the menu so far are Texas Hold-Ums chipotle hamburgers, chicken rice pots with avocado/sour cream dip, some variety of cookies -- and, as usual, a lot of Grice stress.

Oh, unemployment.

Of course, my Cantabrigian host has been a dear friend and has facilitated much movie-watching to get me through my trying time of sloth and gluttony. My favorite film was the well-timed (considering my very possible Westward move) "To Live and Die in L.A." Man, oh, man -- it features a young Willem Dafoe as a rotten counterfeiter, a cuh-razily young John Turturro, and William Petersen (looks like his only other big thing he's done is CSI, meh) as a Secret Service agent who's going after Dafoe. Wang Chung does the original score for the film ... I mean, you can't get more 80s than this flick. I knew I was going to love it when a money-carrier character goes into a train station, walks up to the Amtrak counter and receives a note that just says "Hello Asshole."

The only thing that comes close was another Friend movie suggestion, "Thief," which I watched a couple months ago. Same synthesizer-loaded music soundtrack, lots of crazy car chases and bad explosions ... It turns out William Petersen was in that oldie as well. Some of these 80s dudes really suited their decade.

The "To Live and Die in L.A." trailer, below.

God, in another life, please make me a cool Secret Service Agent ... or, rather, maybe a cool counterfeiter who is described as Armed and Extremely Dangerous. Don't let me be a laid off movie critic! A second-rate movie critic at that, SIGH!

Job Loss, Great Depression, "The Night of the Hunter"

I arrived at work today to find an email awaiting from a friend asking whether I'd heard these rumors about a third of Goldman's bankers getting the axe, talk of no bonuses, etc.

A minute later, a message from another friend whose financial services company finds out today what (large) percentage of people are receiving pink slips, and what groups will be gone entirely; his boss, who often works virtually, came into the office today.

"Such a weird day...its so dark outside and people are finding out if they're getting fired," he said.

I glanced out the window and, shudder. What sad, scary times.

I tried to think of some funny Great Depression clips to cheer myself up, but the first thing that came to mind was the crazy, awesome movie I watched (fell asleep to) last night, "The Night of the Hunter," which takes place in GD times.

It's an old movie (1955), so while I'd read up on it and how "revolutionary" it was, how it really pushed the envelope, how psychologically thrilling and eerie it was -- "Yeah, sure," I thought. "It's old. Can't be anything compared to what these eyes have seen."

Incorrect.

It's about a religious fanatic, who's a self-dubbed "Preacher." He (Robert Mitchum) has LOVE and HATE tattooed across the knuckles of his right and left hands, respectively (This is also a classic movie that, when you watch it, you immediately get references that are dropped in modern movies that you'd heretofore glossed over.) He roams the countryside killing women after the Lord hath spoken to him.

There are scenes of him in erotic dance houses, as he sits in the audience watching the women writhe with a vicious, loathsome, yet clearly yearning, look on his face. It's chill-inducing.

He finally has to go to jail for a stolen car. While there he meets a man who's been sentenced to death for killing two men and stealing their $10,000 (There's a line where the imprisoned man says he was just too tired of these oblivious, rich, banker-types stealing money from the rest of the impoverished U.S., which I thought resonated to today's time). The Preacher learns that the man's only told his two children (aged 9 and 4) where the money is.

Upon release, the Preacher finds the family, marries the wife, tells her in one of the eeriest scenes I've seen in a long time that he will never consummate the marriage; her body is only for childbearing; and that she's a horrible sinner. The acting is amazing and he goes on to brainwash her and ... well, we'll leave it at that.

A little more scary and depressing than fearing the loss of one's job. But ...

I screened "Splinter" and "Role Models" yesterday. I put "The Night of the Hunter" in too attempt to remind myself that I like movies.

The trailer kind of makes it just look like some old movie, but it's really twisted.