Film of the Week

Sherlock Holmes has yet to arrive on Blu-ray (wife didn’t watch the two TV show discs we have), so we tried Thirteen Days from Netflix streaming instead.

This was kind of cheating as far as forcing movies for therapy goes.  

It was a fairly intriguing political drama set around the Cuban Missile Crisis and the decision-making done by the key players.  The emotion was all about an event whose outcome I already am well acquainted, so I didn’t really have to stretch myself there. I didn’t feel much emotion, so this was a pleasure.  It was almost like I had a feeling of control, since it was an exploration of how a pre-determined outcome was reached.

The film managed to be pretty good, despite the fact that Kevin Costner was in it.  By the way, he does a Boston accent far better than a southern or “British” one (http://www.amazon.com/Robin-Hood-Thieves-Extended-Version/dp/B001993Y3G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1281269975&sr=8-1)

I was pleased with the willingness of the producers to let the story tell itself without lots of unnecessary shots of crying, people in fear, or without the massive cavalcade of foreshadowing and paralleled emotional loss of say, a Ron Howard (I still hate Apollo 13 to this day because of crap like that).  The concern was subtle, and well developed by multiple individual characters.  Historically, I’m sure the otherworldliness and uber-intelligence they granted the Kennedy’s was overstated, but since Costner tends to workshop at the Altar of “If Only JFK Lived, Everything Would Have Been Better,” I’m not too shocked.

All in all, a good film if you enjoy character studies, anything about the process of high-level decision making, or simply want to educate yourself about the broad framework of the Missile Crisis and don’t want to read a book.

SMotD - Not so trivial pursuit

Like many of us, my special interests tended to create significant repetition, studying, memorizing, etc.  In my late adolescence, my parents purchased a cabin in the woods about 4 hours away from our house (previously mentioned in an SMotD) and during the years when I was too young to stay home, we made regular weekend trips.  This was a long drive, and in order to entertain us, my parents put trivial pursuit game cards in the car.  Not the kiddie version, but the real adult thing.  I always had a good mind for memorizing facts, and I started reading the cards and testing myself on the answers, regardless of whether anyone was playing with me.  After a few years, I became so familiar with many of the correct answers, simply from repetition.  My mother made several positive remarks about this ability, and my sister made some offhanded remark about “how it’s not fun to play with Dave since he knows all the answers.”  So, my NAT mind automatically filed trivial pursuit as “something where I knew all the answers” and “not fun for others to play with.”  A point of pride.  The fall would come at age 18.

SMotD - Cheering is a Team Thing

I’m into sports.  For a while, I was WAY into sports.  And when I say into, I mean, devour-everything-about-a-sport-because-I-suck-at-organized-sports-in-real-life. I decided I needed to live and die with my teams.  I had to HATE the other team.  I decided this in arounds age 14.  God I was awkward.

I went to a school in a major city in the US, where our school was pretty good in my senior year, and we played against another school who had a future NBA star on it. I had also played against this star in 8th grade in league play.  By high school he was awesome, and our school got up for the game.  I decided to go all out and painted my face the school colors. 

Little did I know this would be one of the least embarrassing things I did that night.

SMotD - What Did You Just Say?

Listening.  Though I would never want to reduce something so beautifully complex into one word, if I had to define what most NATs struggle with, it would be the ability to listen.  My mind moves in many different directions, all at once, and if you aren’t interesting me, or if you are saying something that I cannot connect with a learned experience, the chance is you have no hope of garnering my full attention.  Sure, I may nod, but I drift off.  And on the phone…forget it.  You might as well be reading ingredients and proportions off the back of a fruitcake recipe.  I just won’t care.  So is the context for today’s SMotD, the moment I realized that conversation fillers cannot substitute for listening.

SMotD - Losing Control

Most of the time, my meltdowns are verbal in nature, involve screaming or, in exceptional cases, hitting objects.  These days I try very hard not to be physically expressive because I don’t want to hurt anyone.  However, in the past, I can recall a few instances where my frustration over not being understood resulted in actually hurting someone.  Today’s tale involves how violence came about because I was being deprived of something near and dear to me, sleep.

The Film Experiment

I’m trying something new.  Movies have always made me seriously emotional.  I cannot help but become SO frightened at key situations, crying uncontrollably at exactly the moments when skilled directors would have me bawling.  Growing up in a world where boys don’t cry, and in a family that did NOT show their emotions publicly, I came to detest watching movies.  I was always so embarrassed.  

As part of a process to tackle this fear and learn to deal with the emotional swings, I am trying to watch one movie a week. I’ll start slow, things I’ve seen before, popcorn romps like Sherlock Holmes.  But I hope to expand and let myself try “feeling” again. I’ll post movie reviews along with the feeling swings as best I can.

Relationship, young males and Asperger's

This is a very heartfelt post from an awesome guy, Travis, who is struggling to come to terms with how neuro-atypicals begin and nurture relationships with members of the opposite sex.  I think he is very brave for posting this and his willingness to be vocal and open about his frustrations, how his mind works, and how he can improve his relationship.  I want to post something eventually about how I came to deal with relationships and sex as a young male NAT, if only to let Travis know he is not alone.