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Last night Sarah reported that she wanted to watch a movie, so we sat down and rented “Garden State,” which she had seen, but I had not. (If it seems odd that Sarah would request that we watch a movie but then defer to me to make the pick, then YOU OBVIOUSLY DON’T KNOW MY DOG.) She mentioned that it was “dark,” and “weird,” and that I might not like it.

I did. A lot, I think, although like Anchorman and some other things I’ve seen recently, I’m probably going to have to watch it a few times before I can say for certain. The best way I can describe the film is another adjective that Sarah applied to it: “Awkward.” It was clearly designed to be that way. Zach Braff wrote, directed, and starred in the film, and plays a character that withdrew from all emotions at about age 14. Much of the movie plays out like pimply freshman trying to hold a conversation with the senior homecoming queen. “Uncomfortable” is another good word.

The basic plot is that Andrew Largeman (Braff), a struggling actor in LA, flies home to New Jersey for his mother’s funeral. While there, he goes off his psychiatric medication, visits old friends, meets a strange girl named Sam (Natalie Portman), and begins to explore his guilt about the accident that paralyzed his mother and contributed to her untimely drowning in a bathtub.

(Holy crap, that paragraph looks like something I ripped out of a Leonard Maltin piece. Apparently any idiot can write movie reviews. This is awesome.)

Much of the awkward feel of the movie comes from Portman’s character, who is outgoing and talkative to a fault. Something strange will happen, like when her mother meets Andrew for the first time and immediately reports that one of their pet hamsters has died and needs to be buried, and Sam immediately launches into a giggly monologue about how weird things must feel, and how Andrew probably just wants to run for the door, and then there will be a painful silence. Later, she introduces him to her inescapably African brother, which requires a lengthy explanation, followed by a repeat of the “you probably want to run, and that’s okay, if you want to leave, I won’t -” and Andrew interrupts her and asks her to stop saying that, if he wanted to leave, he would have left.

She is also a pathological liar with a strong guilt complex; she’ll say something in one scene, and then in the next, apologize and reveal the truth. At least once during the early scenes I turned to Hearnwife and said “Natalie Portman is pissing me off.” She agreed.

The thing that made the movie the most difficult for me to watch is a bit of a spoiler, so I’m going to steal a page from James Lileks and make the text the same color as the background. To read it, just select it as if you were going to cut and paste the text into an email to send to your newspaper editor brother to say “Hey, you should give this guy a weekly column, he’s freaking hilarious:”

Sam and Andrew meet at the neurologist’s office. He’s there because of some odd headaches that he’s been getting, and she says that she’s there to meet a friend. Later it’s revealed that in point of fact, she has epilepsy. The problem was that after Sarah had described the film as “dark,” I assumed that meant “the ending is really depressing,” which meant that I watched the remainder of the film under the assumption that Sam was going to have a grand mal seizure and die.

But it’s also why I need to watch it again, to see if I missed some things while worrying about Sam’s health, and see if I actually like the film.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a watch. Right now if you have Comcast and HBO, it might be available “On Demand” for free. It is in our area, anyway. But then, we’re living in a major metropolis, and I think most of my readers are still living in trees and throwing poop at tourists.

I’m not insinuating that Sarah is a dog, because I like not getting stabbed when I sleep. I’m just being weird. And quoting another movie, just to perpetuate the theme.

I need help analyzing another dream. Except that I don’t really remember the dream. What I remember is this:

At about 12:30am last night, I woke up, sat bolt upright, and started frantically looking around the bed, saying, “Where are they?”

Sarah wakes up and says, “Where are what?”

“There’s supposed to be five of them! Where are they?”

“Five of what, honey?”

“There’s supposed to be five! Where are they!”

At this point Sarah realized I was just spazzing out over something and managed to coax me back to sleep. This morning, she reminded me of it, and I realized I wasn’t entirely sure what there were supposed to be five of, but there’s a strong chance that the answer is “feet.”

What the hell does it all MEAN?

Me and my body? We can no longer kick it. We are not friends. I DESPISE THE CHUB.

In short: I have a muffin top.

Back in May, I was a fit-and-trim fighting weight of about 225 lbs. (hey, I’m a big mamma jamma, there ain’t no way around it), but through decay and hard living I have regained most of the chunk around my middle. I now have a body only a wife with serious vision issues could love (HW admittedly does still love my butt, nasty fungus and all), and I think it’s time to make a change.

Here are the options I’m considering:

1. Go back to the low-carb jaun. This worked like a champ last time, but I hate it. I get no cereal, no beer, no potatoes. It’s basically nothing but bacon and cheese. Not that I have anything against bacon and cheese, of course. But what good is bacon without beer?
2. Do a calorie cutting diet. This is worse; I just hate keeping track of all the crap I eat in a given day. Plus, sometimes I just don’t have any idea what the nutritional value of an item might be. If I go out to dinner, I’ll order a salad or something, but I don’t really have any idea how many calories are in it, particularly if it contains little mandarin oranges or something, which they always do, just to MESS ME UP. Restaurant dining is like a roulette wheel this way, and HW and I like to eat out.
3. Exercise. Hahahahaha! Boo to that.

It would help if my wife and I weren’t basically the worst possible support for one another. Here’s how many of our conversations run:

Sarah: “Man, I’d sure like to lose about 10 pounds.”
Matt: “Yeah. You hungry?”
Sarah: “I could eat.”
Matt: “Good, I ordered 2 pizzas and 50 wings. Let’s drink beer until we see demons with Benicio Del Toro’s head on ’em.”
Sarah: “Okay.”

So it’s going to be a tough row to hoe. But I’m confident I can do it.

After I finish these cheese fries.

Man, whole milk is awesome. Normally at Casa De Hearn, we drink 2% milk, in a valiant but Spartan-like effort to keep us from turning into perfectly round bundles of chub. (For the purposes of this conversation, chub means “obesity,” and not “half-fatness,” if you catch my winking drift.) The other day, HW noted that we were out of milk, so I said “Ain’t nothin’ but a thang, boo, we roll up onz the Shizell, get some pizetrol and a gallon of dat swizeet bovizine nectah…mmmm…BEOTCH!” and stopped by the gas station by the house.

I left HW in the car to ponder why the hell she married someone with such obvious and major mental ish, and went inside. There I discovered the following:

• 2 gallons of 1% milk, each extremely dented. One of which looked like the milk had actually contracted within the jug, sucking the sides in. I said “BOO TO BOTULISM” and passed on those.
• 3 gallons of skim milk, which I won’t drink because it tastes like pigeon poop. Plus it’s fricking BLUE, which is just filthy. What do I look like, a Fugate? (Obscure reference explained here.)
• 8 gallons of whole milk, calling out to me with their creamy white goodness.

I kicked it with the whole milk, and I cannot tell a lie, it’s so flavorful and awesome. It’s like when I occasionally drink heavy cream, except without quite as much chest pain and arm numbness.

It’s worth noting that I’m fatter than I’ve ever been before.

Last Monday I had jury duty. I know what you’re thinking: “Dag, Jiffypop, seems like you end up with mad jury love every 2 years on the dot!” You’d be right. Since I became eligible for juries at age 18, I have been called four times. In 9 years. I’m a popular guy, down at the Jury Picking Division or whatever.

This time, I was called to Federal court, which is nice because you get paid more. $40 a day, plus travel expenses, because there’s only one federal court and you can be called up from Rehoboth or wherever. To make the money you actually have to get picked for a jury, but since I was batting a thousand for that, I figured it wouldn’t be a problem. Also I discovered that federal civil trials don’t require a full jury of 12; they usually pick 9 or so, with no alternates, and as long as there are still 6 at the end of the trial, it’s all gravy.

So I rolled up to the courthouse, where they told us all about how the jury would be picked, which is 30 minutes of my life that I’m not getting back. Then they dragged us all up to the courtroom, where I brought all kinds of reading material (the smart juror brings two magazines and a fun novel at minimum).

The judge (The Honorable and Extremely Bitchin’ Kent A. Jordan) explained what the trial was going to be about (some prison inmate was suing some of the guards that allegedly beat him up and took away his girlish laughter), and asked a bunch of questions related to it, like “Do any of you know the plaintiff,” “Do any of you know the defendants,” “Have any of you been beaten in prison by a giggling warden with yellow eyes,” that kind of thing. A bunch of us stuck our hands up (my buddy Craig is a prison guard), and so the judge had us come up individually and explain ourselves.

During this process, we weren’t permitted to read any of our stuff. Apparently the bailiffs wanted us paying close attention to what was going on, even though the judge and lawyers were whispering and we couldn’t hear a damn thing. This meant that I sat there largely without entertainment for the better part of 2 hours. Plus I had to pee.

Finally the judge got to me and I reported that I have a friend what works at the prison, and also yer honor I don’t much care for them muhnorities and stuff, and if y’all could see fit to lettin’ me outta this I could be gettin’ back to my huntin’ and drankin’ and birthin’ lizard babies. Then I sat back down.

Finally, they started drawing names out of a hat to fill the initial jury pool. They were going to pick 18 people, and then the lawyers could whittle that down to the 9 they wanted. I figured there were 40 or 50 potential jurors, so I had a theoretical 36-45% chance of being picked, but because God likes to see me on juries, I was sure I’d be picked, probably at #18 just to add to the humor. (Whenever I get picked for a jury, I’m pretty sure God is up in heaven screaming “BURRRRNNNNNN!!!!!” at me.)

Oddly enough, I didn’t get picked. I was like, “whaaaaa?” but sat quietly as they filtered the jury down to 9 sad individuals. Then the judge dismissed us, and I sprinted from the building before they realized that they had freed me.

To be honest, I almost wish I’d been picked. Of all the juries I’ve been on, I’ve never actually gotten to hand down a verdict, which would be pretty awesome. And that plaintiff looked like he needed a good dose of reality. (A reality in which prison guards can beat the prisoners for fun and profit. That would be awesome. Particularly if they then shared the profits with me.)