Running with Knives

I remember a few cardinal rules of childhood about safety:

1. Never run with exposed sharp objects, in either hand (this covers No. 2 Mongol pencils, scissors, butter knives, bamboo barbecue sticks, Zesto plastic straws, etc.).

2. Never put sharp objects in the pockets of your pants (you've heard about that poor guy with a single testicle, right? Remember the slick, bushy-browed brother in "While You Were Sleeping"?).

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This film zapped me out of my Wednesday stupor.

Appropriately enough it's called "Running With Scissors". I came across this through the new Youtube interface. They say Youtube is now aligned with the more social ecosystem of Google+. In short, a machine, somewhere in Kansas (let's call her Dorothy) is profiling me and has just cheerfully suggested this film. Wonderful. Cue in Twilight Zone theme.

More on this in later posts but Dorothy is getting very uncanny about her tips. She knows exactly what I like. She's like a friend, innocuously lurking online, ready to cash in on me--- per her master's bidding who is somewhere in sunny California.

I'm taking that red pill, Neo.

I vaguely remember a bargain book of the same title tucked somewhere in Booksale limbo. I was too chicken (nay, cheap. But at Booksale!? Sheesh.) to buy it, although, I found it interesting, past three or so odd pages. Regret can give a hefty kick in the mind.

The movie has a Yalie shrink and patriarch who lives with a family of women who are dancing on the edge of their sane universes. Did I mention that their universes are as frayed and as unsettling as the pink mansion they call home? Augusten, the protagonist, is a junior high truant who was adopted by his mom's shrink after his parents (Annette Bening and Alec Baldwin) abandoned him when their marriage OD-ed on emotional blackmails and psychological abuses.

I'm only halfway through now but the movie is populated by a progressive, fractured lot. It's a hedgehog world careening, with all it's stakes and spines, into entropy. Social, moral and other conventions, circa 1970, just didn't seem to lubricate much of their existence and interactions. Their run down, crowded house is a good candidate for a Clean House makeover. Not unlike them, it's an oddball screaming in a suburb of manicured lawns, respectable nuclear families and Church-going community. Yeah, misfits can generate really engaging characters. Somehow there's relief in seeing a bit of our stained, but secret lives in them (we're not alone with our demons) and yet there's still some safety because we're much less deviant (we're not too skewed away from the center of the bell curve).

During a "confrontation" with Augsusten about a pederastic relation with his adopted son (Joseph Fiennes), Augusten admitted that he did not fit in. Hence, he wanted out of school, out of his misery. Dr. Finch wryly noted: "Where would we be without our painful childhood?".

Much later, in one of his depressed moments, while recovering from a staged suicide to finally get off from High School, thanks to Dr. Finch's idea, the weird (an understatement)and zoned out zombie, kibble-nibbling matriarch gave him a book on Cosmetology. He confided earlier that he wanted to study Cosmetology and to build an empire like Vidal Sassoon. Then in one rare gift of lucidity, she consoled him, "It's good to have dreams, Augusten. Dreams get us through the hard times."

It is beautiful.

Oh, incidentally Ryan Murphy of Glee directed. No wonder Gwyneth Paltrow and Kristin Chenoweth make their appearances here, too.