'Is this superbowl weeekend?' 'yeah.' 'Good, the traffic will be down.'

I tend to have involved daydreams. I often daydream about sucess amidst the banality of regular life; becoming incredibly efficient and inspired and learned and making incredible sums of money, living in fabulous places, having incredible romances. Like anyone's daydreams, they probably all function as sort of problem-solving salves to facets of my life that my subconcious feels is lacking. When I say they are 'involved', I mean it in the sense that I don't daydream being rich, or powerful or in a fantastic relationship, I daydream my way to that point, because as far as entertainment goes, it's the part where you get to the happy ending, not the happy ending, that is interesting.

For instance, two days ago, I was given a truly unfortunate task at work. That task was to climb up the six storey scaffold, enter the east attic with a large rubbermaid brute trashcan, and effect the removal of all the detritus that has been created thus far by roof-raising projects, wall demolition, and various other debris making activities. It doesn't seem that bad at first, when you look at it that way, but the process is incredibly complicated by the fact that there is a team of framers (wooden structure roofer guys from pennsyltuckey) who are enthusiasticly 'encapsulating' all of the debris under a new roof about two feet off of the floor, and the fact that each load of debris, be it granite chunks, bricks or spent marlboro boxes, must be loaded into another bucket on the scaffold landing, lowered down to ground level on a well wheel, and then loaded into yet antother bucket to be hauled to the dumpster. Since I am the only one in my particular company on this particular jobsite who is classified as a labourer, the entire process is up to me to complete. So I have to crawl under the new roof on my stomach, in the dust and in the dark, avoid perferating my skull on the huge nails that are sticking through the new tongue-and-groove boards above, grab as many pieces of brick as I can carry with one arm, slither my way out, put it in the bucket, lower it by hand, tramp down the scaffold stairs, load the new bucket into another new bucket, sling it over my shoulder, and slog through the muddy snow to the dumpster at the front of the site. Then I repeat the whole process about fifty times. In order to keep sane, I spend a good part of the beginning having intense fantasies about murdering my superiors, or gaining super powers that will allow me to pulverize all of the debris into dust, and then throw it to the wind.

These fantasies aren't very detailed though, and both are higly improbable, so I end up going back to my standard kind of daydreams. The one that took shape in my head that day was strange, and made me think about the nature of popular romance a bit, so I'll jot it down briefly. There is another job, one that I have applied for, that among other things, involves acting as a liason between the company and a construction company that is building their new building (a construction company, that ironically, is the same company I work for now, but that is of no moment for my daydream). The new building's wooden structure is being built by a Amish Barn-raiser named Aeiff (this part is completely true, and based in fact.). My daydream starts with me being hired for that job. This is my brain answering my brain's constant complaining about my current activity; I escape to greener pastures and am incredibly good in a new job. right. Part of my job is dealing with the construction of this new building, and in that process, I get to know Aeiff. Now Aeiff doesn't drive, being amish, and so at the end of every workweek, he needs someone to drive him back to his quaint farm in Lancaster, PA. I, being interested in the Amish, and ever the good-samaritian (remember, I'm making all this shit up in my head, so of course, I'd be a perfect citizen) offer to give Aieff a ride back to Lancaster every week. In the process I get to know him, and after many conversations with him over his corncob pipe, once He is sufficiently satisfied that I am a good person, albeit a gentile (this may be incorrect, I know that mormons refer to all non-believers christian, jewish and islamic alike as gentiles, but I don't know if the amish do, but you know what I mean) he invites me for dinner. He lives in a perfect movie version of amish life, and the dinner is amazing. His daughter is also amazing. I think you see where I am going with this. I borrows images from that Harrison Ford movie The Witness for this part of my daydream, mostly for what his daughter looks like and how the family is. What ensues is some kind of romance, fraught with cultural difficulties and tough descions. The dream gets hazy at this point, because I'm almost at the completion of it, entertainment wise, and so I stop manufacturing it at a through pace. I don't really know how it ends up, since I didn't end it; I tend to leave all of my daydreams open at the end, with a suggestion about what wil l happen but not a concrete resolution.

But the daydream got me thinking, once again, about the nature of popular romance, or popular romantics. When I run romances in my head, they are often like formulaic romance movies, or stories, because again, I'm doing it for my own entertainment. You couldn't sell a romance movie where each partner treats each other really well, and the entire movie they communicate properly and buy each other ties and flowers and nice dinners. No one would watch it, it'd be boring. Those little old Jewish Ladies who come to the pikesville library every week with a cardboar box of romance novels to return and refill would run screaming back to park heights if in those books the Scottish Lord courted the fiesty and independent, yet trapped by the strictures of her times heroine, took her home to his castle on the moors, and impregnated her happily, creating a lot of noble scottish children, and taking part in a few hunting parties. There has to be kidnappings, conflicts. The characters have to hate each other at one point, in order for their love to be trully realized and shining amid the contrast. At the same time, the characters cannot trully be terrible people for it to be the most satisfying romance. They have to both be people who deserve romance, and so it is necesarry for every conflict to be created by misunderstanding, sometimes un-aided, but also sometimes created by a nefarious lesser character who for reasons of their own does not wish love to prevail.

It makes me think then, if people nowadays (in the general sense) who will not read or watch something about love that works normally, can possibly enjoy relationships in their own lives without noncommunication, or misunderstanding. If all they find interesting is conflict that better illuminates how real a couple's love is for each other, how can they be interested in a relationship that isn't filled with the cinematic ups and downs that are so common as to be cliche in a movie or a book? If their girlfriend wakes them up everymorning with breakfast in bed or a blow-job, or their husband comes home everynight with different flowers, or chocolates, what does any of it mean, if there is no bad to compare it to? Where is the incredibly frantic last minute chase scene in the airport, or the quasi-embarrising protestation of their love in front of a crowd of callow and snide New Yorkers? How often does a person feel strongly enough about a relationship they're in to actually sacrifice something, or on a lesser scale, to do something socially embarrasing for their love? Lotta questions and no answers, but I'm just thinking here.

Back to cinema examples, take The Bridget Jones books and movies. I've not read the books, so I'm just going to talk on the movies, and in fact, I haven't seen the second movie, and only watched the first one beause of some girl, much the same reason that I've seen most seasons of Sex in the City, but I think the movies will still illustrate my point. In the first movie, Bridget, who is supposed to be a regular girl, and so the actress who plays her, renee zellweger, had to gain 20 or 50 pounds so that women would identify with her more, needs a man. As the movie plays out, she has a choice of two: Her asshole boss, hugh grant, is one choice, and he's zany, fun, rich but also unreliable and will probably hurt her, and a uptight lawyer, colin firth, who is a nice, upstanding citizen but has about as much charisma as al gore. She ends up making the responsible choice, and what seems like the right choice at the end of the movie and goes for the subdued but really nice lawyer with the reindeer sweater. Fine. The second one comes out, and I haven't seen it mind you, but I read the tagline and synopsis. Her relationship with the lawyer isn't going so well. He's a conservative voter, and he probably likes to read the newspaper all day saturday, instead of taking her for romantic boat rides in thames. The old boss shows up a bit on teh scene, and the choice is back on! Boring and reliable, or fantasticly handsome and debonair with a air of uncertainty. I don't know how she chooses, I imagine that stays with the lawyer, because people can't really stomach a main character who is a bad person, but here we have an example of all the stupid conflict shit that is necesarry to cement a regular relationship for the bridget jones character.

For more on this subject see those two remy arcand movies, the decline of the american empire, and the barbarian invasions. They are by no means an indepth look into the relationships of men and women, but they do hit on some real interesting points. that and they're funny and sexy and french, or quebecois rather.