EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—By the time you all read this, I will most likely be on the road, traveling with my family to the first national park ever established in the world. That's right, we're going to Yellowstone National Park!
Actually, my enthusiasm for going to this U.S. landmark is a bit more tempered than the exclamation mark in the previous sentence might indicate. Why? Not because of the venue, certainly; I, for one, have never been there, and am eagerly looking forward to the chance to see Old Faithful, among other sights, up close and personal. (Yes, my friends, there will be photographs.) No, my lack of unadulterated excitement for this trip stems from pretty much one fact and one fact only: I'll be spending 12 straight days in the presence of my mother. For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you know what that means: the potential for lots of barely suppressed tension. As usual with family getaways, this trip is completely her idea, and for the next 12 days, the rest of us are basically at the mercy of her whims. Let's just say, that prospect fills me with less sit-back-and-relax-forget-about-Mars Attacks! satisfaction than it used to inspire.
Nevertheless...as Ludwig van Beethoven famously added to his setting of Friedrich Schiller's "Ode to Joy" in the finale of his Ninth Symphony, "Oh friends, not these tones! / Rather, let us raise our voices in more pleasing / And more joyful sounds!" And so I will try my best to take my mother's advice, for once, and put myself in a more positive frame of mind as my family and I embark on the long drive out to the other side of the country. Besides, if I'm being honest with myself, I probably could use the break from work anyway. (On the other hand, my cinephilia will be taking major hits as a result of this trip: I'm missing Dial M for Murder and House of Wax in 3-D at Film Forum in the coming week, and completely missing Film Society at Lincoln Center's Eric Rohmer retrospective while I'm gone. Believe it or not, Mom, I actually do make personal sacrifices for family time!)
So if you notice that posting is light for the rest of month at My Life, at 24 Frames Per Second, then that is why. Supposedly the campground at which my family and I are staying when we get to Yellowstone will have wifi, so I won't be completely offline. And I may not be completely deprived of filmed entertainment either: Maybe this is a good time to finally tear through Twin Peaks beyond the first five episodes, the last of which I watched maybe a couple months ago. And oh yeah, a friend of mine did give me her copy of the first season of Lost, didn't she...?
My name is Kenji Fujishima, and I am an entertainment addict.
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