comedy is hard

went to my second mainstream hollywood comedy in a week - last week was forgetting sarah marshall, this week was baby mama. for those that know me (and who else would be reading this), these are not my normal choices for films, though fsm, being an apatow production, is more up my alley. watching these two films and thinking about them afterwards led me to agree with the masters - comedy is hard.

i enjoyed myself watching both movies - genuinely funny moments where i laughed out loud and probably rather boisterously. but then afterwards...i questioned just how much i enjoyed them. and i questioned their overall quality. this is probably why i would make a crappy reviewer - i tend to overthink things. isn't it enough to enjoy yourself while watching the movie? isn't it enough just to laugh? but in both cases i caught myself halfway through the movie realizing i didn't buy it. i didn't care at all if peter ended up with either girl because, honestly, i didn't think he deserved either girl (and no, it's not penis envy, thankyouverymuch). and if you couldn't figure out how kate and angela's story was going to end, you just weren't paying attention. i guess that's why i found both movies ultimately unsatisfying - as a series of moments, they were entertaining; as stories, they left me wanting.

confession: if i had to rank them, i'd put baby mama ahead of forgetting sarah marshall. not sure why - maybe it was steve's presence. maybe i find tina much easier on the eyes than jason. who knows. so there. guess they'll take away my elitist card now.

you know what else is hard (please keep your jokes to yourself)? endings. neither film had a satisfying ending to me. writing an ending is tricky business - most of the time they feel like the easy way out or tacked on. rarely do they feel like a part of the story. why do we find it so hard to finish our stories? why are the ideas strong, but the execution weak?

too much thinking for a friday night.

favorite moment from the movie tonight: when kate's mom referred to her being single as "an alternative lifestyle." both painful and funny because it's true.

my life, my normal life anyway, ends this weekend, at least for the next two weeks. load the truck tomorrow, load in at the aronoff on sunday then rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal with audience and show, show, show. i'm exhausted already. i know i'll be in heaven once i'm in it, but i'm dreading it a bit right now because i know it's going to take its toll on me. i'm not so young anymore. sleeping would help, if i could do that...

...speaking of which, i got the results back from my sleep study. turns out i have mild sleep apnea. i wake about 18 times an hour (healthy is below five, i think). the good news is it's not the dangerous kind, and it's definitely treatable. they gave me three options - surgery, a mouthguard or a CPAP machine. i'm opting for the latter - my friends who have had them swear by them. the tricky part is figuring out when i'm going to be able to go in for the calibration, another overnight stay. probably won't happen until after the musical, though i suppose i could squeeze it in on our two nights off. will have to take another half day - or maybe a whole day. we'll see. at least i can see the light at the end of the tunnel - or rather, the darkness that will let me sleep again.

mom and dad came down to cincy for the flower show last sunday (which they said was horrible and overpriced, in case anyone wondered) and so i introduced them to dewey's pizza and spent some good bonding time. mom found some .99 copies of microserfs which she brought down for me and i picked one up and started rereading again. sometimes i think it's stupid to reread since my list of books i still need to read is so large. but then i got to thinking maybe it's like friends. sometimes it's good to go out, meet some new people. but sometimes you just want to spend time with people you know, people who get you and who you get. it's like that for me with books - sometimes, i just want the familiar instead of the new. enjoying rereading microserfs - amazing how far we've come computer-wise since it came out in 1995. can it really be that long already?

did i mention i'm old?

enough for a friday night. need to go catch up on my backlog of tv, which is only going to get worse the next two weeks. and get some sleep. night.
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