I have a lot of things to blog about just now, so be ready for a large post.

First off, have I mentioned how much I love Coldplay? I really do love them a lot, and every time I hear one of their really great songs, like "Clocks", it makes me want to jump up and down and hug them. I can't hug them, of course, because they are not here. However, if they were I can't say for sure that I wouldn't carry out my impulse to hug them, because they seem so huggable, at least over my radio speakers anyway.

Next, just this morning I read a funny yet thought-provoking article by Dave Barry on bridal lunacy. The article was basically about how brides go crazy several months before their wedding and stay that way until the happy event takes place. One reader of his (and it was a female, which I thought significant) pointed out that good funerals are planned only days before, and they have all the same elements of clergyman, reception, flowers, etc. She asked why weddings weren't done in the same fashion. After reading the article, I pondered my own possible future wedding and determined that I would not go crazy, so long as I had a nice dress and planned my wedding look to be extremely pretty. That got me to thinking that the reason why weddings, unlike funerals, take so much thought and time to plan is because the person they honor (the bride) has to set it all up AND she feels that this ceremony and everything surrounding it reflects directly on her as a person. All her latent feelings of insecurity and inferiority come out in full blast and to quench them the bride must spend an insane amount of money making her wedding "perfect". In a funeral, the person being honored is already dead, so he or she will not care if the funeral is imperfect: when my late grandfather was asked what music he wanted played at his funeral, he replied, "Surprise me." However, I think I'm intelligent enough to discern that a wedding ceremony cannot all reflect on me as a person, yet I'm narcissistic enough to want to look absolutely beautiful at mine. After all, I reflect on me, so I should look maaaahvelous!

Finally, I will post a brief review of a movie I saw yesterday, Igby Goes Down. Like another movie that I recently reviewed, this one had no morally redeeming qualities at all. In fact, although bits of it were funny and all of it was well-acted, if a bit incoherent at times, my main impression was one of dismay that people like those in the movie might actually exist. They probably do exist. This doesn't really say anything about the movie, but instead reflects on my lack of life experience, yet I was really appalled to watch this film. Igby, the main character of the movie, was like Holden Caulfield on drugs-literally on drugs. Towards the beginning of the movie, he says something really disrespectful to a clergyman about Christ; that about sets the tone for the entire movie. The interesting thing about Igby Goes Down is that it is so engrossing and oddly charming somehow that one actually cares what happens to Igby, despite his being so terribly skewed as a character. At the end, however, I realized that even though Igby escaped from the bad influences in his life (I'm not shy about giving away the end, as I fully expect you not to see it), he would probably end up being miserable wherever he went as he was taking a lifetime of emotional baggage with him on that plane. The character of Igby, by the way, was my age.