So, occasionally, when I’m walking down a street that smells like urine, or on a bus that smells like urine, or standing in line behind someone who smells like urine, I try to nurture whatever zen I have left that hasn’t been completely obliterated from years of tupperware-stored rage by imaging myself in my own life movie. A movie where I am a power-hungry collection development librarian who’s successfully using her position at the forefront of mass literacy to quietly and mercilessly eviscerate the 50 Shades of Greys, Twilights, and One-Eyed Dukes Are Wilds (yes, my friends, that is a real book) of the world. A movie where Jeffrey Eugenides, Jennifer Egan, and I frequent a local pub crawling with the literati to reminisce about our first National Book Award. A movie where my first sighting as a warlord is standing in a remote jungle in the Philippines next to a vast and ominous, dark red puddle – soundtracked, of course, by Okkervil River’s “Piratess” (because how perfect are the lyrics, “Oh, murderess in the wilderness with your victims all around you / Their combined love forms a pool your knife’s reflected in”?).
Ah, yes – the soundtrack. Now we’ve come to it. (“It?” you ask. Yes, it – the point of that elaborate first paragraph; the point, in fact, of this entire post! HUZZAH! WE ARE HERE!) It goes without saying that any movie, real or imagined, starring yours truly is going to have a soundtrack developed by none other than this music elitist herself. And it also goes without saying that no movie of my life would be complete without my better-looking half. So, humor me, friends – a movie with me and Boo, would probably go a little something like this:
1. Food me!
Anyone who knows us knows that Boo and I take our dining very, very seriously. The love there may not compare to the love we have for each other, but believe me, it is in the top 3 of our greatest loves of all time. It knows no bounds, no caloric limits, no fears of diabetes or elderly obesity. It has, and will continue to, conquer all. And with a love so passionate and pure, there is no song to celebrate that moment when you and food first lock eyes than this Marvin Gaye classic.
2. Riding on Buses with Boo
Any time boo and I are together, it is the genuine, textbook definition of a meeting of the minds. It is, I’m sure, exactly what whoever said the following had in the mind when they said the following: “If you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room.” A room with Boo is always the right room. The right room in which this is blaring with obscene shamelessness:
3. Moving Dating It
Boo and I turn movie dates in a grand affair. Intense deliberations are had days prior to the event in which we fervently discuss which of us has the larger tote bag with which to sneak in burritos, burgers, and an assortment of snacks. Should we sneak in large chocolate milk teas with boba, or indulge in movie theater Icees? We should aim for a weekday matinee because then we’ll likely be the only people there and we can make as much obnoxious commentary as we want. It is, quite literally, a party – which is why, even though this Black Flag classic is about television, it still manages to be appropriate:
4. Dances With No One
And when we are lucky enough to be the only ones in the theater, it leaves me with no choice but to do asinine things like this with this song in my heart:
5. Boo Shoots Things
Meanwhile, Boo gets so amped up pre-movie about all the fun we’re going to have during the movie that the only reasonable thing for her to do is take all that energy and invest in a violent video game at the arcade (and it is a not a childish pastime, folks – no, she is merely perfecting her skillset, awaiting the day when she becomes the Red Right Hand of my warlord regime). I imagine her fight song to be this badass little diddy:
6. Boo-toms Up!
We’re very big fans of unwinding with a little “grown-up dessert” at the end of the day, and because we’ve become quite classy drinkers over the years, we definitely warrant this classy classic (heh heh heh, classy classic – GET IT? HURRR.):
– Jayne
Lady Bromance 