December, 4, 2005 archives

elf is a fun holiday film. it does a good job of evoking the old stop-animation holiday specials, and jon favreau love of practical special effects (versus cgi effects) really turns out well. and zooey deschanel can sing.

the girl next door is your classic porn-star-falls-in-love-with-guy, guy-acts-like-a-creep, guy-redeems-himself-and-porn-star movie.

i mean, what porn star isn’t really just a good-hearted girl yearning to pursue a normal guy, fall in love, and step into a normal life?

that’s realistic, right?

to kill time, one of the things i’ve been doing is throwing a ball against a wall in my apartment. but i’ve been throwing left-handed, even though i am right-handed.

i have put a lot of practice into throwing right-handed over my life, without ever really giving it much thought. (and by that i mean it is something i have done a lot, not some skill i have been cultivating.) and all that practice translates into throwing right-handed being an essentially thoughtless, natural-feeling act.

throwing left-handed does not really feel like that, although with just a little practice i can sort of feel how the mechanics are the same (if backwards). but both the wind-up and follow-through still feel strange.

according to an old article in the atlantic monthly, john goodman had to learn to throw (and hit) left-handed for the babe, in which he played babe ruth. after the movie was released, he said “i’ll never say something like ‘he throws like a girl’ again. it’s not easy to learn how to throw.”