Between the devil and a hard place...

There are so many things in my mind that I don't even know where to start. Maybe I'll start with the movies I've seen this weekend: Te Devil Wears Prada and An Inconvenient Truth. Nothing more diverse, don't you think?

Let's start with the light one. The Prada movie is a hoot. I actually managed to convince him to go with me (Meryl Streep was a lure) and we sat through one of those 'sappy' movies. It was fun. I've read the paper-thin roman a clef in which the book is based and I loved it for its cattyness. It goes with my character. The suffering underling that comes out of a hellish job and writes a novel about the bitch from hell that tortured her and ends up with a bestseller. And a movie. Nothing like revenge, served cold.

I also think that the character gives in to pressure, is easily manipulated and that the end is too easy, but I love the clothes. I'm a weird combination of rebeliousness and superficiality. I rebel against the mainstream that inspires me to be rebellious. I abhor conventionality but adore things that look good. Not that everything that looks good is conventional, but when one talks about the lure of a trillion-dollar industry that enslaves women and gay men and makes them conform and bow to impossibly homogenized standards of beauty, we're talking about major evil.
And I accept that I want to look good. And that the clothes that most everybody wears in the movie are awesome. And expensive. And that I, deep down, accept that I would have gone throught the tribulations she went through just for the clothes, a part of me feels defeated. Because I have to accept that I do give in to the lure of what I see staring back at me in the pages of glossy magazines enough to care about it. That I transform it and adapt it somehow does not liberate me from its constraints and traps.

And then we went to see An Inconvenient Truth. All this among some bickering, because we're back to basics. All the love and understanding and all that lasted two weeks.

But that's another story. This movie is scary. Scary because it talks about things that have been of public knowledge for years. Scary because you know that it is not science fiction but reality. Scary because Americans decided to go with an inarticulate born-again idiot who cannot put two sentences together as a president instead of an intelligent, pacient, witty and all-inclusive man who shows respect and compassion for his fellow humans. This is a movie who will make you think about the choices you make every day, about the choices you have made and what you need to do with your life: you feel compelled to improve. To worry. To do something. I left the theater happy that I had chosen only energy efficient gadgets, that I recycle, that my car does not guzzle gas, that I ride my bike, that I try to think before I throw away something that can be re-used.

Hopefully, more and more people will see this movie and more people will do something. And will make some of those people who think it's just a "Day After Tomorrow bullshit" at least stop and think for a second. Because as the man who used to be the president of the U.S. says, we don't have to do it all, and we cannot improve it all overnight. But if everyone does their part, for sure we won't have to deal with 1'000,000 refugees from a place that would overnight be under twenty feet of water. And if not for us, for those who will be here when we're nothing but words on a blog.

Happy fourth, baby boy.