COLUMN: Remodeling goes to the movies

By Tobin Barnes
Note: Despite the unrelated introduction, this will eventually be about movies.

We’ve been having work done to the downstairs floors of our house. It’s been somewhat of an adulterated joy, to put it mildly.

No doubt the results have been great and the workmen nice to deal with, but as you know if you’ve been there, remodeling can be a major pain in the butt as far as consistency of lifestyle is concerned.

And as you have inferred over the years, I am about nothing if not consistent lifestyle. Some would go so far as to say that using the word “lifestyle” would be a gross misnomer as regards my existence. They’d say my daily drone instead might be more akin to that of a very short stick in some very thick mud.

Whatever. Have fun at my expense, but there’s something to be said for being in the same place doing the same thing at the same time on any given day. What’s lost in spontaneity is gained in clockwork. (For example, I don’t need a wristwatch.)

Anyway, when your floors are getting worked on, furniture necessarily gets moved here, then there, then back again. Things are generally scattershot.

Not only that, the familiar detritus of everyday life--the-small-but-oh-so-important stuff that you usually don’t think about but really need--gets shifted around and about to an eventual effective oblivion. Because it’s no longer reachable and/or findable, it no longer exists in a practical sense.

The process turns you into an alien in your own home, a stranger in a strange land in a science fiction/Robert Heinlein sort of way. It’s your place, but in many ways it isn’t. The needs of the floor now own the house, not you.

Because of the location and nature of the work, we oftentimes found ourselves confined to an upstairs bedroom. Admittedly, this was a hardship of no major significance in the greater scheme of things but confining nonetheless. And then, some days, we had to vacate the house altogether. The treatment they were putting on the floors went right to your eyes, nose, and lungs.

At that point, we went to the movies to avoid what we perceived as toxic shock.

And here’s the good news. We saw some fine movies.

First one I’d recommend is “Knocked Up.” (I had a hard time saying that to the ticket seller at the theater. I don’t know, it seemed a little weird. But don’t let that stop you.) The movie’s basically a guy’s doofus slacker dream. That is, be an irresponsible goof-off well into your twenties but still end up with the babe of your dreams and thereby finally accept adult responsibilities at the same time. In other words, everything turns out great though you did nothing to deserve it other than be your lazy crusty male, low-life self. Like I said, every guy’s dream.

Though it’s a lot of laughs, be advised. This isn’t your mother’s my-girl-friend-got-pregnant movie.

My next recommendation is “Sicko.” Though this movie is satirically witty, it’s definitely not funny. In many ways, it makes YOU sick. That’s because here’s the point of the movie: Our countries’ healthcare, though horrendously expensive and for millions unaffordable, ranks just above Slovenia with about every other industrialized country above us. And the worst part? It seems to be in a lot of people’s interest to keep us there because it’s profitable for them, and they’re not the ones getting the Slovenian healthcare.

People demonize Michael Moore, but this time he’s in your corner, and thank goodness someone is.

Next, we went to “The Simpsons: The Movie.” And if you like the TV version, you’ll like the movie, too. But as Homer tells us at the beginning, we must be stupid to pay for something we can get for free. Doh!

Finally, there’s “No Reservations.” She’s a control freak, top-notch chef in a fancy New York restaurant, but she’s strangely unhappy. Obviously--to the men in the audience at any rate--she needs a man in her life. Instead, she gets custody of her sister’s sweet little daughter when her sister dies in a car accident. The young ward, after a difficult adjustment, then helps the chef find her perfect man, who just happens to be another chef.

Seen something like this before? Well, it’s worth seeing again. Plus, you get a realistic trip back into the kitchen of a fancy restaurant. (Only problem with fancy food? To paraphrase Julia Child, with all that arrangement, you just know someone’s had their fingers all over it.)