Just Off Center

Last night, Nina and I were flipping through the channels via the miracle of TiVo when she came across the Country Music Channel's Tribute to Johnny Cash. Now this we just had to see. Nina and I were first introduced to the man in black when I was in the Air Force by our uber-cool emo chick neighbor, Brandeye. It took less than an hour to hook me in. At the time I was listening to Eminem, so this was one hell of a switch. But Johnny's music just took me right away, and I've loved it ever since.

Everyone was there. Song after song was played by country music legends, family, and rock and rollers that you might have never thought would be so influenced by Cash's music. It was really quite touching. You know how on soap operas, right before they go to commercial, they show the title shot and say "General Fucktards will be back right after this message about douches"? They had something like that here. Right before the commercial break they cut to a picture of Johnny Cash with the title of the show and play a section of one of his famous songs on an acoustical guitar. One of the first ones was a strumming of "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails that Cash covered in a way that made it even more depressing. I just thought how fucking cool would it be if Trent Reznor was there to sing "Hurt", but in the manner that Johnny Cash sang it. Now that would be cross-genre influence at its finest. But it was Sheryl Crow who strummed those clashing tritones of "Hurt". And how I cried at how beautiful it was.

These tributes always get me thinking a bit about how I'd like to be remembered. I guess in the end I don't really expect to be remembered at all. That's just fine with me. It'd be nice if there was some grand spectacle put together to honor my memory, but I'd be just as content with having my name etched into a limited order of about 5,000 hollowed-point 9mm bullets. I don't know why exactly, but that fits my life more than people singing songs.

For the little thought I was compelled to give on the subject, Nina was giving that amount ten times over. She said that these things make her sad and wonder what purpose she has on this Earth. She knows that she wants to be remembered for helping people in some way. That never occurred to me before. But for Nina, I don't see any way for her to be remembered other than as some kind, generous soul who made at least a handful of people ask themselves, "what would Nina do?" In fact, I think I'd be far more emotionally tied to the idea of securing her memory than my own. But then we looked at each other, sitting in our pajamas in our living room, having accomplished exactly dick over the course of yet another weekend and went back to the tube.

So with only ninety minutes to go before the bedtime of yours truly (I need my eight hours, people), we decided to TiVo the rest of the show and watch the last movie that we got from Netflix that we hadn't yet watched. It was 'The Last Unicorn'. For those of you who have seen it, you're saying to yourself "Oh my God, I remember that movie! I loved that one!" For those of you who haven't seen it I'll explain the plot. The last unicorn in existence meets a butterfly who leads her to a magician who helps her free a harpee that kills the gypsy. Then they are caught by bandits who get fed by the hag who cries over the unicorn who is turned into a human by the magician to escape the red bull. They all go to the castle with the king and the prince who kills the dragon and falls in love with the unicorn who goes with the magician to talk to the skeleton to get to the bull who is drowned by the unicorn who has been turned back into a unicorn. The king dies when his castle falls apart. The prince just kind of goes away. And the unicorn goes back to the woods to help the other animals hide from the hunters. The end.

I may not have completely gotten all of the emotion in the movie tied to that synopsis. I was afraid to watch this movie again, because of how much I remember loving it in my youth. We watched 'The Hobbit' two days prior and it was just ok. That was kind of bummer and I didn't want to lose my great memories of the last unicorn to be replace with how shitty it actually was. Well I was completely wrong. I love this movie now more than ever. As a boy I never was able to realize how great the artistry and music were. The entire soundtrack was played and sung by the band America. At any rate, I highly recommend it.

After that we went to bed. Nina started lovingly cuddling with me and I fell asleep and started snoring. It was magical.