Plugged the Hay In

photo love, via swissmiss

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We heart books and movies like they're our real live friends and sisters. Well, that's because they are. No, reeeally! We hear 'em chitter to each other all the night through, sitting and pondering the wonders of life in the crevices of our bookshelves, and now, temporarily, in boxes and suitcases, stashed away for another brighter tomorrow in a new land called Buxtown.

A Tenenbaum might query, 'But what is life to me/Life has forgotten me,' while moodily smoking a ciggie in a tent on the floor, and a Didion might holla back, 'My husband died at 5:51a.m. and let me tell you why life matters and what love means,' while sitting at the Reg Bev Wil waiting for her daughter to get better so they can go chillax with Alice and friends in creepcityville Wonderland.

And so goes a night at Jude's while all the zombies and otters are sleeping soundly. The books and movies, side by side in perfect harmony.

But alas, sometimes it's hard to find the time to give books their due time when movies are like inviting cherry pies of SparkNotes for the words of pretend lives. We're so plugged in allll the time that we can only get to so many books but anything electronic and shortened serves us much better in the day-to-day, we're very saddened to say. We might have taken the time and turned off the cellie long enough to read 100 Years of Solitude but we haven't cracked Love in the Time of Cholera (even though word on the side street is that it's way the hay betta than 100 Years), and that's the one with a movie comin' out, but ya know what GI's? We'll probably just watch the movie and get to the book when we have the good ol' time to really sit down and eat it alive.

And it turns out, the divine miss Nora knows exactly how we roll. Ms. Ephron penned a nice little ditty for last week's New Yorker, and oh, my, my, if it isn't a delightfully right-on cream pie in the sky...

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"When they got home that night, she went to get the book. She’d ordered it earlier in the week and meant to read it before they went to the movie, but it was a hard week and things got away from her. This was happening more and more.
"Maybe we’ll find out what happened at the motel, he said. Why did it skip forward like that?
"He said it’s the same in the book.
"Who said?
"I told you who. The guy I was standing with while I was waiting for you to come out of the men’s room. The guy outside the men’s room said there’s a scene in the book that’s not in the movie. He said Javier goes to see a total stranger in some office, who’s never been mentioned earlier.

"Why did they leave that out?
"How do I know? Write a letter to the Coen brothers.
"She opened the book and started reading from the end."

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We're pretty sure we've had this same conversation about a dozen and a half other times after seeing certain movies. Well, except for different names were sometimes substituted if Benicio couldn't swing a role in said film. But you get the idea. We get the idea. Nora certainly has the idea down pat. So let's go read a book, dearies. We'll know a whole heck of a lot better what the hay we're talking about. At least on Thursdays.

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