Road Trip–Crazy Stupid Love

It was off to the movies again this Saturday.  This time it was The Girlfriend and I and just as it about 90 per cent of the time when we go together, it’s a ladies choice.  And her choice this day was the Steve Carell film, Crazy Stupid Love.

Since it was a return trip to the Reading Valley Plaza, I can pretty much dispense with most of the travelogue portion.  I had already figured out before hand that we were going to be viewing the film in one of the tiny cigar box auditoriums in the back left hand side of the Cinema, just as we did on this occasion. when we saw Cowboys & Aliens.  But did I say cigar box?  This one was more like a sardine can.  I counted less than a hundred seats in the place, and there are probably less than half of them in which you would really want to sit and view a movie.  We were in Screening Room 9. 

 

And I really have to remember to drag my better camera along.  The pictures I took with my I-phone really weren’t worth a squat.  As you can see, there was too much glare from the light on the sign (or there was until I photo-shopped it.  Let it not be said that I’m not creative), and the interior shots were way too dark although it wasn’t really that dark inside.  But I post them here anyway to give you some idea of the size of the thing.  But thankfully, there was no little brat climbing up and down off of her mother’s lap like there was the last time.  In fact, it was a rather peaceful evening as far as any theatrical disturbances go, and one is always grateful of that regardless of the quality of the film itself.  So was Crazy Stupid Love what the title implied it would be, or was it just stupid?

It was a bit stupid and maybe towards the end a teensy bit crazy.  But not in a good way.  It just wasn’t that good of a film, despite it’s lofty 76 per cent critic approval and 85 per cent audience approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes. 

 

It probably helps you’re attitude towards this film  if you’re a really big Steve Carell fan, but I was not born of that ilk.  I like him well enough, but in every film of his I’ve seen he basically plays the big hapless  shmuck.  His shtick gets tiresome after a while, and Carell’s absolute totally straight faced deadpan portrayal  of Maxwell Smart in Get Smart was an abomination that made that particular film a major disappointment for me..  Playing such an unlikable shmuck like Cal that he plays in this film, doesn’t help to make the heart grow fonder

. 

But my low regard for this film wasn’t entirely his fault.  Cal’s wife Emily, played by Julianne Moore wasn’t particularly likable either.  When your husband asks you what do you want for dessert and your answer is “a divorce” it doesn’t exactly endear you to the audience, even one as small as the non-crowd inhabiting Screening Room 9.  Nor does it make you laugh either.  I suppose that Cal jumping out of a moving car shortly thereafter was meant to draw some guffaws, but it doesn’t.

 

Unfortunately for Cal and Emily, upon returning home, their son, Robbie and the baby sitter Jessica quickly find out the happy news:  She’ll be babysitting for either Cal or Emily but not both at the same time.  Truthfully though, I almost wish they had revolved the whole film around Robbie and Jessica because they have the funniest, most sympathetic plotline..  Even before Cal and Emily arrive home, we discover that Robbie, who is 13 has a giant crush and has fallen hard for Jessica who is 17.  And we also find out that when you’re discovered playing fantasyland  by the babysitter, it’s not such a good idea to go into details about what was on your mind that made you raise the flagpole in the first place.  But while Jessica is busy trying to dampen  Robbie’s not so subtle ardor, she is carrying the torch for his father, Cal.   I guess that’s Crazy Love any way you look at it.

 

Cal tries drowning his sorrows at a local tavern, but does it verbally and loud enough so everybody in the bar soon knows he is getting a divorced and that his wife slept with David Lindhagen.  So ladies man Jacob, played by Ryan Gosling, who is as sick of listening to Cal whine as we are, and who takes home a different woman practically every night,  decides to take Cal under his wing to become Mr. Miyagi to Cal’s Daniel San.  It’s bachelor makeover time, and it isn’t long before Cal is picking up women almost as well as his mentor. 

 

Of course, you have to crawl down the runway before you can fly and Cal’s early attempts end in failure, until he hooks up with schoolteacher Kate played with hilarious abandon by Marisa Tomei, who always seems to rise way above the material. 

 

And let's not forget  Hannah played by Emma Stone whom I absolutely loved in Easy A which came out almost a year ago.  Here, she plays a law student who may or may not be in love with another lawyer, but definitely thinks he will celebrate her passage of the bar exam by proposing.  At the outset of the film, she is one of Jacob’s few failures, and is smart enough to see through his phony suave aura, and cliché pick up lines.  Then, to our chagrin,  she disappears for a long long  time until the plot needs her some more.  When Hannah reemerges, it is some time later  and when the lawyer boyfriend fails to propose marriage, she heads straight for the bar to find Jacob and become a one night stand.  Jacob, for his part, seems more than happy to oblige.  Do  you need for me to tell you what happens next?  I didn’t think so.

 

There are about three really big problems with this film that it never overcomes.  Problem one is that we end up not caring about the main story, which is the break-up of Cal and Emily’s marriage, and the continual “will they or won’t they get back together” that is the bulk of the running time.  It would have been nice, just this once, for Carell not to be such a doofus.  He spends way too time moping around and only becomes partially interesting when he is given a makeover by Jacob.  The problem with that is, now instead of a shmuck, he’s a jerkoff just like Jacob is.

Likewise, Emily fares no better.  We never fully understand her reasons for the divorce and for screwing the guy where she works except that she was bored with her life.  All well and good, but while Cal accepts his share of the blame for the failure of their marriage, she never really seems to come to terms with the part her own infidelity played in the disintegration.  So it’s difficult to root for either one, except that we do keep hoping that Cal will grow a pair of balls and take matters into his own hands.  But he never really does, and is controlled more by the circumstances of the script than anything else.

 

Problem two is Jacob.  Ryan Gosling is excellent as the ladies man so this is no knock on him.  He in fact, reminds me in many ways of Jerry Lewis’s alter ego Buddy Love in the original Nutty Professor.  We’re fascinated by him, but despise his treatment of the woman all  at the same time.  So having spent the majority of the film making us love/hate him, we are suddenly suppose to switch gears and just love him?  The change is so sudden, that we don’t really believe it.  We can’t.  Maybe if the film were called Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde but I saw no mysterious secret formula’s being served at the bar. Maybe if we had seen more of that aspect of the plot developing and spent more time  with Jacob when this change of heart is taking place we might have bought into it.  But the script couldn’t allow that to happen because it would……..well that brings us to problem three.

 

Problem three is that the film depends way too much on some major improbable, almost impossible,  coincidences that I cannot relate to you here.  The first one, involving the Marisa Tomei character didn’t bother me too much.  I was too busy laughing (when Kate is on the screen is one of the few times the film makes you laugh)  and gave the movie a pass on that one.  But when the really “big reveal” comes towards the end, the absurdity of it, and the astronomical odds against it  are just way too overwhelming to give it a pass.  We are too stunned to find it funny, and too put out by how ridiculous it is.  If this were a whacked out comedy like The Hangover or Harold and Kumar, it wouldn’t matter so much.  Those films are built from start to finish on the absurdness of improbability.   But this film seems to want take a higher road than that and to send a message, despite the fact that it purports to only be a romantic comedy.  And any good will we might have had earlier on is lost in one big swoop.  Even The Girlfriend who was with me for this trip, found it to be a bit much, although she liked the film overall more than I did.

The bottom line is that the film is sweet and entertaining when focusing on it’s subplots revolving around Robbie and Jessica, and when Emma Stone and Marisa Tomei are up to bat, the movie absolutely sparkles.  But those moments are way too few and far between, with the focus being on the main story line that never gets over the hump.

 

Now putting everything on the old Clyde’s Movie Palace Scale, I have no choice but to give Crazy, Stupid, Love, a not so crazy grade of C.   And if you haven’t checked out Emma Stone’s Easy A, now would be a good time to do so.

 

When we left the theater I grabbed this screenshot of the main concession stand.  Notice the huge painting on the wall.  It’s the coolest thing about Reading Valley Cinema’s so I thought I would share.

 

A Day in the Life: Health and Medical Stuff-Angela Has Left the Building, Goodbye to Dr. A.C., And now an ultra-sound.

When I started to revamp the blog, I had decided to write more articles of a personal nature. I wanted this blog to not only be the things I loved writing about, (or as in the case of “Old Blog Crap” stuff so old they still have the smell of Rome burning), but to make it personal with the mundane boring crap that I deal with on a day to day basis. Hey, if I have to put up with crappy life, why shouldn’t you?

But in between reposting old crappy articles like this one, moving crap over from other blogs like this article, and keeping up with writing new stuff like this and this, I haven’t had much time for the boring life stuff. So if you need to catch up on what this entry here will be about, read this short piece that started it all.

At the radiology place, the only MRI’s they took was of my lower spine, which I thought kind of strange since I was sent to Dr. A.C. Neurologist for much more than that. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the one they did on my brain. At least this time I was able to wear noise canceling ear muffs, and in fact almost dozed off a few times.

When it was finished, I once again had the numbness in my hands and fingers, which is why my typing skills have deteriorated about 300 per cent over the past couple of years. Typing, which used to be second nature to me, had become something I struggled with constantly at work, and there was damn little left over for anything else like writing articles or stories. But now I am on some mediation that helps, as you are about to discover.

But all of this goes back to what Dr. Angela AND the radiologist saw was my problem after the initial brain scan: Symptoms that appear and then seem to somewhat disappear over the years, then seem to get better for a while but eventually return. And what the radiologist saw on the brain scan pretty much confirmed it. I had the onset of Multiple Sclerosis. No telling how long I have had it and no way of knowing for sure how bad it was going to get. That’s par for the course for MS though. Some people never have symptoms. For others the symptoms are often mild, while in still others the disease can be crippling. But still, as far as I’m concerned, whether I even have it remains an uncertainty at this stage.

But everything I read fit me to a T whereas no other diagnosis has. So my primary care provider, courtesy of Dr. Angela (but no long, she has it seems, moved on to another gig, more about that momentarily) had set me up the appointment with Dr. A.C. Neurologist very quickly. Even my insurance company, who doles out my HMO care as if every test was an affront to their bottom line, quickly approved the appointment even labeling it stat/as soon as possible.

But Dr. A.C. Neurologist dismissed the diagnosis of M.S. out of hand from the very beginning, even without an examination. As soon as she walked into the examining room and sat her old scrawny and wrinkly ass down A.C. gave off this aura that anybody who dared to even hint at a diagnosis before she made her examination was just a blathering foolish idiot not worthy of her skills or her time. So 99 per cent of the initial session was taken up by questions and answers, and if you didn’t give her the precise and exact answer she wanted, Dr. A.C. quickly became ill mannered, insensitive, and treated you as if you were the dumbest fuck ever to walk the planet. In other words, she was an asshole.

She signed me up for the aforementioned spinal MRI, with insurance approval of course, and then she scheduled some more tests of her own, which she would do as soon as the insurance company agreed to pay her. She prescribed motion sickness pills for the dizzy spells, even though I hadn’t done any traveling for a over a year.

And yes, the pills pretty much turned out to be useless. Between the Meclizine, the Neurontin, and the vicatin, I couldn’t stay awake long enough to know if I was having a vertigo episode. So I suppose if you look at it that way they worked. And I can type like a boy wizard now, so at least that’s a plus. For me though, not for you suffering through this lame ass article.

So about four days after the MRI I returned to Dr. A.C. Neurologist. Once there, she and an assistant proceeded to shoot my legs and thighs full of electricity. At one point she tells me I have some neuropathy in my left leg.

“No shit, Sherlock!” I wanted to say. “You have to pretend I’m your Frankenstein monster to find out what I and several other doctors already know?”

So I asked her, “Does this have anything to do with the numbness in my hands and arms?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” she replied testily. “They didn’t send you here for that. They only sent you here for your lower spine and your legs.” And although you had to be there, the nasty tone in her voice was unmistakable. I had heard it often enough on my first visit.

And that’s all it took to piss me off for the rest of the exam. Every time you asked this woman a question, she acted like either the daily loser on Jeopardy or that you had sent her poodle dog to Korea to become a dog meat sandwich.

It got worse. Moments later she asked one of her aides for the results of the MRI that I had gone for the week before. They didn’t have them. So they had to call Truck Stop Radiology who sent them a preliminary report.

“We have the radiology report,” she told me later while shooting more electrical juice up my spine. I was beginning to feel like Michael Clark Duncan in The Green Mile. “It shows you have some renal cysts. You should tell your primary care physician about that for follow up.” Just like my head, my arms, my fingers and my hands, I guess my damn kidney’s were not her concern either.

Okay, maybe I’m wrong. But one would think it would be automatic that they would send a report like that to my primary care physician. After all, I wouldn’t even be in Dr. Neurologist’s office without their initial referral. But that’s all she said. She didn’t say if it might be a bad thing or whether it could be something serious, a minor inconvenience, or nothing at all.

Later, she told me she had found a pinched nerve in my back.

“Did I give you any medication the last time you were here?” She asked.

I felt like asking her why she didn’t look at her own files to find that out. I told her that she had given me the medicine for the lightheadedness and dizziness. No reaction from The Wicked Witch of the West.

“Are you taking any other medication,” she asked.

Again, something she should have known without me telling her if she would bother to look at her own paperwork, as if she really gave a shit. As everybody knows, on your very first visit to any doctor, that is one of the most important things you can tell them. But again I repeated it back to her the information.

“What’s the dosage of the Neurontin?” she asked.

Three hundred milligrams three times a day,” I told her. “But I just started taking it a few days ago. I had some 100 milligrams three times a day that I wanted to finish before starting these,” The pills had been given to me by a pain specialist.

“Well, that’s not strong enough,” she said nastily. “You should be taking three times that amount.”

But that’s all she said, other than the fact that I should take the medication and come back in two months. Right away I wondered that if she thought the dosage was too small, why didn’t she offer to get me a stronger dose. And second, the amount of the neurontin I did have would run out in less than a month if I took the stuff the way it was prescribed. So why didn’t she ask about that? I simply made the appointment for October and left. And when I left I made up my mind I wasn’t going to take anymore of their medication until they could give me a convincing diagnosis. And since Angela was gone from my PCP (primary care provider from here on out, I was in no hurry to make an appointment with them either.

But as luck would have it, my PCP called me and said they wanted to make an appointment for me to come in and discuss my newest MRI. Or at least the secretaries did. Frankly, I think this is a racket. They call me in. They get my $15 co-pay plus whatever else the insurance company throws in each time I walk through the door. I don’t even want to know how much that has added up to this year. So I went ahead and made the appointment against my better judgment.

The last time they pulled this stunt was when I found out that my favorite medical person Dr. Angela was no longer there. I was supposed to call after my first visit to the neurologist and make an appointment, which I did only to be informed of Dr. Angela’s decision to suddenly take flight. Her replacement was someone called….well we’ll call her Dr. Britt even though like Angela she is no Doctor and worse, unlike Angela she isn’t even listed as a Physician’s Assistant. She is listed simply as “Aide. I mean, is that like an intern, an orderly or does she just wash out the bed pans?

I don’t know. I do know on my first visit with her now in charge of my bodily functions, she wasn’t exactly the brightest bulb in the room. She hadn’t even bothered to read my files or any of my case history before I arrived, leaving me to fill in the blanks. Blanks hell, the whole damn page was empty.

I was hoping things would be different this time but they weren’t. After sitting in an empty examining room for over half an hour, she finally poked her head in the door.

“What can we do for you today,” she asked. Honest to God, the only thing I could do was lay completely back, and roll my eyes and shake my head negatively. I would have to bring her up to speed again, since obviously she had the memory retention of a four year old.

I reminded her that they had called me, that I didn’t call them. I reminded her of my complaints about Dr. A.C. Neurologist and that my latest visit wasn’t much better. I informed her that Dr. A.C. said that I should tell them I have Renal Cysts.

At one point, Dr. Britt asked me what Dr. A.C. had said about the cysts?

“She told me to tell you guys, you are my primary care provider are you not?”

She nodded affirmatively, but I can’t be sure she was even positive about that.

“She told me to tell you to get a copy of the MRI done on my spine.” I then went on and on and on about my litany of complaints, the same ones that I have just spent writing about for the past half hour, thus inflicting an enormous amount of boredom on any body who bothered to start reading and stay reading for this long. But have heart, we’re almost finished.

So Dr. Britt eventually left and sent out for the MRI. Finally the report came, and she told me they were going to send a request to the Insurance Company for an ultra sound on my kidneys, and for a new neurologist and that I would undoubtedly like the new Dr. Neurologist. But we’ll see.

The approval for the ultra-sound came in the mail today but I won’t make the appointment right away. I’m sure Truckstop Radiation will be calling Monday wanting to make it for me. I know they’ve lost a big contract recently, so this will be money in the bank for them. No word on the new neurologist. I can see the insurance company being hesitant about that. But if they are, I’m prepared to write them a little note and let them know that in my opinion, Dr. A.C. Neurologist should spend the rest of her medical days studying the brain scans of chimpanzees to prepare for the Rise of the Planet of the Apes. She can say hello to Cornelius and Dr. Zira for me.