Appreciation

Ok, it's Saturday, so there's going to be some silliness.

And I'm sort of fleshing this out as I type, so bear with me. This is a simple mental exercise that might help you appreciate some of your favorite movies and TV shows even more. I'm not sure why I feel you need to appreciate these things in greater quantities of whatever units of measurement are used to gauge appreciation. But I do, and here's the way to do it.

Take a movie and identify the two principle characters. For example, let's do Annie Hall and Aliens. In Annie Hall you had Woody Allen playing Alvy Singer and Diane Keaton playing Annie Hall. And while Aliens was more of an ensemble piece you still had Sigourney Weaver playing Ellen Ripley (and no, I didn't have to look that up) and Michael Biehn (who has had a stellar career. Seriously, go check for yourself) playing Cpl. Dwayne Hicks.

Now here's the mental trick you pull to suddenly make yourself love these movies at an even deepr level. Imagine those roles, the ones identified in the previous category, being played by Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock*. It made me giggle. And then it made me think, "Wow, I'm really thankful those weren't the original actors!"

I guess if you want to look at a very silly idea and make some sense out of it you could argue that maybe it's important to stop and just be thankful that the things you like, be it a book, movie, or otherwise, were created how they were. It's easy to complain about how something could have or should have been better, but maybe it isn't so terrible to realize that it didn't have to be so crazy awesome in the first place.

*It should be noted that I LOVE Sandra Bullock. Not so much her work, but just her entire vibe. She seems incredibly cool and with it. That being said, pair her with Kean-O and things seem to go downhill.