I started watching “Lost in Translation” with Bill Murray only because it had oscar buzz a few years ago. I think I remember hearing someone say that he’d really pushed the envelope, blah, blah, blah.

Blah, blah, blah is right.

I mean this is what’s getting up for oscars?

Am I disconnected or something?

I don’t think so. But then how can I tell?

If only there was a moment in the movie that I connected with the characters but it starts with a close up of Scarlett Johanson’s butt in bed, wearing a see-through panty, and it went down hill from there.

She spends half the movie (so far–okay I admit it, I couldn’t finish watching it) staring out the window and Bill Murray spends pretty much the other half slurping down a whiskey.

Where’s the story?

Is this what people’s lives have really come to?

And he’s falling in love with her? Why? Is her banality really any respite from his wife’s with the burgundy carpet swatches?

Now by not watching the rest of the snorefest, I admit I run the risk of missing an amazing epiphany. Maybe, just maybe, something incredible will happen and the whole thing suddenly makes sense and it all falls into place. Kind of like a movie I saw a while back, now I can’t remember the title, that seemed equally banal at first glance but yet kept you watching because there was something intriguing about the set up of the story.

It turned out to be a murder mystery, and was set in an English manor. Oh, dear. I can’t remember what it was called but it too, was critically acclaimed and as far as I was concerned, it actually deserved it.

This one reminds me of Driving Miss Daisy. Sorry, just couldn’t get into that one either.

B-O-R-I-N-G.

Maybe North Americans are running out of stories. They’ve explored every depth and nuance, or so it seems, and it’s all been done.

Nah! There are stories all around us.

It just requires a different angle.

But one thing that was kind of intriguing. I kept thinking of Robert Munsch’s admission to being addicted to crack cocaine.

Since Bill Murray was pretty much playing himself–a washed up middle-aged movie star, if that’s what his life has sunk to, going to Japan and posing ‘with more intensity’ with a glass of fake whiskey in his hand just to get some money, then I wonder if it isn’t similar to what anyone who has become so financially successful undergoes.

It all seems rather pointless and empty.

Many many years ago I painted a water colour picture in silhouette of a mountain climber who was perched on the top of a mountain peak, and the body language clearly depicted a resigned air to him. A “now what” kind of pose.

I wonder if that’s not what people mean by saying that the joy is in the process, in the getting there, not necessarily in the destination.

Human beings were designed to strive.

It seems like too many people don’t have anything significant to strive toward.

Fame and glory are not enough.

I think it has to involve an epic struggle of right over wrong, and maybe that’s where so many people get lost.

They’re cynical, and nothing is black and white any more. It’s all a drab grey.

I wonder if that wouldn’t drive anyone to try to fill the void with booze and drugs.