Come to Debbie Country

Yesterday J and I took off in his Saturn with no agenda but to do something fun and maybe a little adventurous. Perhaps visit some places we hadn't before. We ended up driving down roads off Franklin St., ogling the huge houses and gorgeous, immaculately-kept gardens. We drove down 15-501 to Fearrington Village where I showed J the barn swallows I'd spotted while covering an event the week before. We took country roads down to U.S. 64, crossed Jordan Lake and drove all the way to Raleigh where we visited the Museum of Natural Sciences briefly, before I started feeling very tired and headachey (nothing more than seasonal allergies) and we headed home after a busy day.

Once there, and I wasn't feeling all that much better, I decided that a night lying on the couch wouldn't kill me and, while J took a nap in the bedroom, I settled into one of my favorite recent activities: watching movies I've seen about 100 times. It's not that I don't want to watch new movies, or that I'm not thrilled with our digital cable (that is absolutely mind-numbing) just that the comfort of movies I've seen over and over is too tempting not to give into lately. I don't know if I'm stuck in a rut, or there just aren't any good movies coming out. I think it's mainly just knowing what's going to happen next in these, my favorite stories, that makes it such an enjoyable experience. And since J won't let me watch "The Office" (British version) over and over anymore, it's come down to movies, like "Best in Show," and "Old School." Sometimes "Ghostbusters."

But last night I picked what might just be the ultimate in this category of movies, "Singles", a movie I watched in high school, after it came out, and shortly after plotted a move to Seattle with friends. We'd rock, we'd dance in the rain, we'd drink a lot of coffee. Of course, that potential Seattle venture was merely a nod to the times. The 1990s were all about that. I mean, I didn't wear leggings and a long flannel shirt just for kicks. I wanted to be an integral part of that whole movement.

"Singles," however, for me, went beyond the whole Seattle thing and into realms much more meaningful. Like the part where Janet Livermore, who loved leggings and flannel by the way, played by Bridget Fonda, decides she'll break up with the commitment-phobe Cliff, and in the next shot we see her sitting atop the roof, happy and carefree - but with the phone within reach. Too true Cameron Crowe! The scene I like best, the one that still moves me after all these years, is when Steve, played by Campbell Scott, sits in the telephone booth at the club after having "many beers" and tells Linda's answering machine that he loves her. That he shouldn't have been Mr. Casual, and wants to be Mr. New to her, and all the while other club-goers are knocking like crazy on the booth's door, because they think it's the bathroom.

I like this movie so much that the actors who were in it can do whatever the hell they want as far as I'm concerned and they're always going to rock. I stumbled upon the award-winning "Lake Placid" the other day on one of our hundreds of channels. Fonda is in that, too, but criticize her for that career move? Hell no. She was in "Singles."