It’s been a week now since I saw the “(500) Days of Summer” movie. I don’t know if it was a good idea, and if it influenced at all the way I enjoyed it, to have a bottle of vodka and a bottle of diet coke at the last row of the kino. Bottles were empty after 10 or 15 minutes of the opening credits.
The movie has started. Zooey Deschanel is an easy crush. I can fall in love immediately. She is pretty. She is more than pretty. She sings The Smiths. I think that’s enough explanation to know this is going to hurt. Pretty girls make graves.
This is a story of boy meets girl. The boy, Tom Hansen of Margate, New Jersey, grew up believing that he’d never truly be happy until the day he met the one. This belief stemmed from early exposure to sad British pop music and a total mis-reading of the movie ‘The Graduate’. The girl, Summer Finn of Shinnecock, Michigan, did not share this belief. Since the disintegration of her parent’s marriage she’d only love two things. The first was her long dark hair. The second was how easily she could cut it off and not feel a thing. Tom meets Summer on January 8th. He knows almost immediately she is who he has been searching for. This is a story of boy meets girl, but you should know upfront, this is not a love story.
What the narrator says reminds me to Nick Hornby’s lines on High-Fidelity:
“What came first – the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person? People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenager watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands – literally thousands – of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don’t know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they’ve been listening to the sad songs longer than they’ve been living the unhappy lives.”
I feel I’m the main character now. And I’m at IKEA with the Zooey. My little sister comes and tells me: “Just because she’s likes the same bizarro crap you do doesn’t mean she’s your soul mate.” Crap. Thanks for the wake up call. I drop the cheap plastic smirnoff bottle. I imagine the whole movie theatre turning around and looking at me as if my cellphone was ringing. Now my little sister in the movie says: “You know, all my friends love you and think you’re great. It’s like they say, there’s plenty of fish in the sea. “ I look to the group of twelve year old girls that are my lil’ sister’s friends, I think of Dugly Stewart’s masterpiece “Your Class” and answer her: “Those aren’t fish. They’re guppies”.
Time to go the restroom. I hate these interruptions! I run fast, and I’m back to my seat. I’m at a park, sitting on a bench with Zooey/Summer. She is so pretty, did I say this before? She has the best dresses. Do you think Zooey thrifts? Maybe at “Beyond Retro”? or on the many stores at Brick Lane? She has found another guy, she will marry another guy. The movie is crap. I tell the girl next to me, “you know, this guy portraying me in the movie, he is not good enough. I would have never let Zooey go”. She says, “you have a distorted sense of reality”. The screen goes pitch black.
But summer never leaves Miami. This is the “Sound of Summer”.
The Candidates – The Sound of Summer
You saw the sunshine, you never felt the rain
You heard the laughter, you never even thought about the pain
I saw your crying, I heard you call my name
I only wanted to be with you again
Did you never realise that there was something close to magic in your eyes
DId it come as some surprise when you told me you were leaving
But now you’re gone where will I get the strength to carry on
You saw the sun, but you thought you saw the moon
You thought your time had come but it was way too soon
You had the world at your feet and it was oh so sweet
You heard the music, but that was just the sound of summer
One year older I’m sitting here alone
Those days of summer seem to cut me to the bone
Those sunshine kisses and promises we swore
Just tales of lies and stories of the ring you never wore
As you were rushing for your plane
You said we wouldn’t meet again
You saw the sun, but you thought you saw the moon
You thought your time had come but it was way too soon
You had the world at your feet and it was oh so sweet
You heard the music, but that was just the sound of summer
I’m looking for some space
I don’t think I could take seeing someone else in my place
Week after week, day after day
I’m still hearing you say
You saw the sun, but you thought you saw the moon
You thought your time had come but it was way too soon
You had the world at your feet and it was oh so sweet
You heard the music, but that was just the sound of summer
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
