Paul Thomas Anderson
2007
158 minutes
This is another one it took you ages to actually watch, having primarily been familiar with the milkshake-drinking speech (out-of-context). You always preferred malts yourself, which always had a more interesting flavor profile than shakes. It was like drinking crushed Whoppers, the little chocolate ball treats that came in the milk containers. You remember the perennial MTV hippie presidential candidate Randee (with two e's like the river) of the Redwoods professing to this same preference in his campaign song, "Either Way It's Fine With Me" ("It's my motto, and it gets me out of a lotta mental jams!") Randee taught you that it's fine to be chill about things that don't matter much in the grand scheme of things, or things that are beyond your immediate control. He preached a sort of hippie stoicism that you found beauty in.
You wonder if there is anywhere in Baltimore you could get a malt at this hour. There used to be a frozen yogurt place near your apartment, but that closed long before the pandemic and was never open quite late enough anyway. You can feel the absence of butterscotch in your mouth at the thought. It was always a reliable place to get a few ounces of fro-yo (often taro-flavored) chased by some absurd amount of toppings. You tried not to think of the toppings bar attracting vermin. You pretended the toppings were locked up overnight in some utterly secure roach-free container. You imagined he same sort of anti-roach Faraday cage being used by water ice/snowball/sno-cone stoop vendors in their basement to keep mice and bugs away from their syrups.
You might be able to get a chocolate egg cream somewhere, though that's more of a New York City thing. Sometimes the Jewish delis have that. You suddenly have an urge for a cucumber-flavored soda as well.
You realize you haven't eaten for a few days. You've been too busy watching movies. You also realize at the climax of this film how bad you are at bowling. You rolled a 27 after Prom, which was disheartening enough to make you give up on the sport. Theoretically you should be pretty good at it, since you have plenty of upper body strength. It occurs to you that your technique is probably significantly flawed. You're strong enough to try to treat a bowling ball as a projectile rather than firmly rolling it, but not quite strong enough for that to actually work. Maybe you should have taken up shot put instead.
You wonder if you could dodge a bowling ball.
Time to choose something different: