Having a head cold, booooooo.  But one good thing.  Watching old movies-for medicinal reasons.

TWO yesterday!  Two I love and have watched many times before.

1]  Mother is a Freshman, 1949, Loretta Young and Van Johnson

So 1940s east coast.  Trashy novels and sororities.  The colors, the sweetness of passionate (but not sordid) love.  The beauty of Loretta Young and the dashing debonair-ness of Van Johnson.  Yes, I like it.  Very old-fashioned and lovely.

2]  And “You’ve Got Mail,” 1998, Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks

Well, I mean there is the scene where Kathleen Kelly is home with a terrible head cold.  From my own experience, I can tell you she played the scene very well…except they should have reddened her nose up more.  Don’t ask me how I know.  Here she is with her cold~

There are a million quotes from this movie that I adore and have adopted as part my life’s philosophy.  That is because Nora Ephron directed it, she and her sister wrote it, adapting it from a French play and her sensibilities are just, with such sweetness and modernity, spot on.  But I thought this exchange especially poignant at the beginning of a brand new year with fresh new possibilities.  It may or may not have actually caused me to cry, while I laughed.

When our heroine decides she has to close down her children’s book store, being forced out, really, by  the “big, bad, book superstore,” she lets her colleagues know at lunch~

Birdie: So, deary, what have you decided to do?

Kathleen Kelly:  Close.  We’re going to close.

Christina [sad]: Close.

Birdie, brightly as she pours tea:  Closing the store is the brave thing to do.

Kathleen Kelly, feeling defeated, yet resigned:  Oh, you are such a liar.  But thank-you.

Birdie:  You are daring to imagine that you could have a different life.  Oh I know it doesn’t feel like that.  You feel like a big, fat failure now.  But you’re not.  You are marching into the unknown armed with [pause] nothing.  Have a sandwich.

I mean – if you are trying to figure out your life’s theme right now, have a sandwich, ya know?  March into the unknown and dare to imagine!  At least with nothing, you have a clean slate.  Happy New Year!!!  *smile*

Good medicine

Furthermore – did you know you can now watch free full-length movies on YouTube (like Doris Day and James Garner’s “The Thrill of it All,” a thoroughly 1965 little-bit-of-wardrobe heaven) and with an HDMI connection or an Apple TV, you can just stream it onto your high-def flat-screen?  Oh, the-best-medicine is just advancing all the time!  :)  Why have I not known this before?

Yes, if I must have a head cold and be waited on hand-and-foot, then I should get to watch silly, old movies that make me happy.

Aaaah-chooo!