What is the difference between Based On a True Story and Inspired by Actual Events? It seems like Inspired is more arbitrary than based, True is subjective at least more so than actual, story has more fictional connotations than events. Just saying. When a movie begins with either of those I assume they are suggesting the dialogue is invented or they are trying to be funny.
A few days ago my friend and I were trying to find a store on the west end near what used to be a shabby mall. I mean it was shabby forty years ago when I was there last and seeing how Lansing has lost all her industry I was expecting pretty much the same. Not so, it’s large, expanded, new construction and such.
I waited in the parking lot and my friend ran into the store. I was surprised to see seagulls circling the parking lot. A mall or strip center is not a bad place for seagulls, they are scavengers. I don’t really like seagulls but it’s ok if you do. I like the sound of seagulls because under normal circumstances it means I’m near the ocean. Lansing Michigan is the center of the mitten. It’s a long way from any ocean, 800 some odd miles as the gull flies, though I’d understand why they’d be near one or more of the great lakes, still, 100 or so odd miles as the gull flies.
I don’t know, I sat in the parking lot watching the gulls circle and thinking about how wrong things had to go for a gull to get stuck in west Lansing; divorce? Bender? Kidnapped? My friend came back smiling and so I forgot about such things and we went to a nice restaurant for steak and sweet potatoes. The restaurant had some special on surf and turf. Unlike the gull I count the distance from the surf. We are very close to the turf here, we are too far from the surf for me to feel comfortable eating surf bites.
A week or two forward or backwards her and I were at a Chinese buffet, yeah, I know, everything tastes the same at those things, but this one was good. They had a steam tin full of steamer clams. It was nostalgic enough to look at them. Same 800 odd miles for a clam to travel and I’m not eating anything that divorced, drunk or kidnapped.
My dad was actually raised as a pretty dang orthodox Jew. He would have piled his plate with clams. I mean he loved seafood, he had a shockingly unsophisticated palate, but he loved seafood. Shellfish, hence the Jew comment. Unsophisticated palate as in he’d eat anything and, if in a restaurant, tell the server any number of glowing accolades about the inedible tripe he was being served. He grew up in atlantic city.
I don’t know why I love seafood, I lived at least fifteen of my first 18 years right here where I’m typing. Fresh water fish a’plenty. I visited once in the late eighties and the grocery stores had tanks with live lobsters in them. They don’t any longer though you can buy frozen tails like you can in most of the states. I had become very used to Dungeness crab in Oregon. Sometimes fresh scallops, often fresh clams, and, well, see, There’s a big fucking Ocean on the west coast, hence the coast part of the West Coast. Big fucking Ocean. Seeing a seagull in Portland wasn’t weird at all, mildly buzzed, recently separated or just a tad gull jacked and you could fly up a river and find yourself circling a mall.
Um, you could also probably survive in town most winters with your cold feathery ass intact. I haven’t a clue what a Lansing Mall gull has to do when the snow starts falling. It’s a long flight to anywhere without snow from here. I’ve never seen gulls migrate.
Ok, that’s enough paw practice. My left paw needs a metaphorical thorn pulled from it in the worst way or, preferably, the best way. I’m beginning to think it’s somehow related to ulnar nerve surgery I had a few years back. That thing that tingles when you hit your funny bone? It’s a nerve that for some stupid reason of a design flaw runs through a very narrow cavity in the elbow. Mine got moved. My paw has been swollen for almost a month now.
Ok, be nice or fake it until you make it.
Loading comments...