the Dalaverse

For no particular reason, I feel like sharing my very favorite passage from Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell. It's from the chapter on James Garfield.

"If there is a recurring theme in Garfield's diaries it's this: I'd rather be reading. That might sound dull and perfunctory, but Garfield's book fever was a sickness. Take, for example, the commencement address he delivered at his alma mater Hiram College in the summer of 1880. Traditionally, these pep talks to college graduates are supposed to shove young people inot the future with a briefcase bulging with infinitive verbs: to make, to produce, to do. Mr Loner McBookworm, on the other hand, stands up and breaks it to his audience, the future achievers of America, that the price of the supposedly fulfilling attainment of one's personal and professional dream is the irritating way it cuts into one's free time. He tells them,

'It has occurred to me that the thing you have, that all men have enough of, is perhaps the thing that you care for the least, and that is your leisure - the leisure you have to think; the leisure you have to be let alone; the leisure you have to throw the plummet into your mind, and sound the depth and dive for things below.'

The only thing stopping this address from turning into a slacker parable is the absence of the word 'dude.' Keep in mind that at that moment Garfield was a presidential candidate. The guy who theoretically wants the country's most demanding, hectic, brain-dive-denying job stands before these potential gross national product producers advising them to treat leisure 'as your gold, as your wealth, as your treasure.' As Garfield left the podium, every scared kid in the room could probably hear the sound of the stock market crashing him back to his old room at his parents' house where he'd have plenty of free time to contemplate hanging himself with his boyhood bedsheets."

If you enjoy that passage, I guarantee you'd love the whole book.

Also (I'm watching it as I type) - I believe that "The Princess Bride" is probably the most perfect movie ever made. At the very least, it is the most perfect movie ever made specifically for wee, current, and future Dala ::loves on it:: I don't think it would be an exaggeration to guess that I've seen it two hundred times or more (hee, Dwight - "I'm an expert on films, I've seen over two hundred." That's, what, four hundred hours total (it's not two hours itself, but counting all the times I've watched a scene or five whenever it's on TV, I'd say it evens out) - a little over sixteen days of my life have been spent watching TBP. When we watched it in Oxford, I was sitting in the back, on purpose. But Eddie still cracked up at me when he got up to go to the kitchen and saw me back there animatedly mouthing every single line through a manic grin. Oh, my love is deep and true.

...Is it completely weird and creepy that I have this fantasy of being proposed to on the Cliffs of Moher/Insanity?

And on that note, I'm for bed. After the swordfight, against which all other cinematic swordfights I see are measured. The one with Inigo and Ruben isn't much in its own right, but that right there - the revenge scene - that is my favorite scene in all cinema, and I seriously doubt anything will ever take its place.

Oh here it is for the first - wait for it - "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father; prepare to die." THE LINE. (Although I've seen the punctuation written so many different ways, that's my favorite.) And SWORDS. Now I like a good special effect, but I love a good stunt. This movie is probably the reason why. Okay, I really have to knock it off now or I'm going to be up all night pontificating about why I love TPB so very, very much.