AK Dobbins

Since I sometimes use this space to make a public admission of my wrongs, let’s get this out of the way.  The Blind Side was great.  I was wrong about it, and I freaking loved it.  Much of this has to do with the fact that I am a sucker for a good football story; I left Rudy weeping, at the age of 8, and swore I would go to Notre Dame for both college and law school.  (Wanting to go to law school at age 8 is another admission of wrong for another day.  As for the Notre Dame devotion, it expired roughly around the time I learned that clergy members live in every dorm, the better to enforce strict single-sex policies.) I also have a well-documented love for Friday Night Lights and am known to scream about the “life thesis statement” that is Coach and Mrs. Coach when the wine is flowing. 

So it’s pretty simple: I was being a movie snob about The Blind Side, and I was wrong.  It’s colorful and heart-warming and Sandra Bullock is no more over-the-top than Meryl was as Julia Child, plus she made me cry more.  But football and Sandy aside, a lot of my personal enthusiasm for the movie comes from all the small personal connections I have to it.  For one, The Blind Side was filmed at my high school! That wood-paneled library is where a boy (recently engaged! not to me, duh) hid a pack of Twizzlers and a copy of The Snows of Kilimanjaro as his way of asking me to Junior Prom.  The bald man standing next to Big Mike’s football coach is Westminster’s actual coach, though he had a lot more hair when I was there.  That stadium is where I ran countless 1000m sprint drills and **saccharine alert** where one Jim Hobart asked me to prom as a SOPHOMORE.    (I can’t believe I just mentioned Prom twice in one paragraph.  This movie really did weird things to me.)  The movie even pits Big Mike’s team against the Lions (our rival school/the school for the dumb kids) in his first game.

There are a million other familiar details from my Southern childhood; I was super excited to see Phil Fulmer, known as the Great Pumpkin in my fanatic Vol family, and even Lou Holtz (demoted from Notre Dame to SC, sadly).   Tim McGraw reciting “The Charge Of The Light Brigade” was silly and moving in almost exactly the same way that Tim McGraw singing “Don’t Take The Girl” was when I saw him in concert at 15.   Those fancy lady lunches could be at any of the Atlanta country clubs, a string of interiors I am acquainted with from the semi-obligatory pre-debutante circuit.  (No, I did not deb.)  I doubt that these details add up to a meaningful cultural snapshot for an outsider, or even for me, really, if I’d wanted this movie to be a taste of home.   But I was surprised at the fondness I felt, for places I thought I’d outgrown and traditions I’d never felt a part of.   For all the years I’ve spent bitching about cheerleaders and forced Bible Study etc etc, when the movie cut to our well-worn football stadium, I could only remember how hard those bleachers shook when Westminster beat Lovett The Dumb School 22-21 in overtime.  I was there with my friend Allie, a cheerleader.

Oh, so that explains this.

Well said. (I’m only half-sarcastic on that?)

gumplr:

standing in the valley of the giants

That one guy was definitely a male model.  (Yes, that makes concert peek-a-boo worth it.)

How, how did I miss this?

Courtesy of Paul Heintz.

joyengel:

Wow. It’s like this was written just for me.

(via fuckyeahryangosling)

Ha, what she said.

gumplr:

(via @clinthendler)

Two notes:

1. It’s telling that the only translation my friend has sent me, in preparation for a flight to Sao Paulo, is for “cheese bread.”  (With an option to order 4 such items.)

2. Portuguese is truly a ridiculous language.