This is just one of those weeks.
There's not a thing that I'm burning to write about for this column.
Most weeks, I do have an idea, or run across someone else with an interesting story -- even better -- and write a column about them.
Someone entrenched in the countdown to this weekend's opening of the newly refurbished State Theatre in downtown Traverse City suggested during our correspondence about those events that I should write a column about movie memories.
I thought about it. I love movies and going to the show. In fact, I have always found it to be a great escape, the lure of fresh buttered popcorn being no small factor.
That started back when my family lived in Detroit and as children, we could walk a few blocks to the Nortown Theatre at Seven Mile and Van Dyke on Saturday afternoons. It was at the Nortown that I saw all of the Beatles' movies and I can't remember what-all else, though "The Three Stooges" and "Lassie" come to mind. Seems to me that I drove by there years later, after my family had moved to the suburbs post-riots, and it had become a porn palace. (It's hard to picture that the State Theatre could have ever become a porn palace, isn't it?)
My grandmother took us to see "The Sound of Music" when it opened at a magnificent theater in downtown Detroit that I remember as "The Cinerama." I also recall my dad taking some of us on an eighth grade field trip, downtown again, to see "Camelot" -- and the subsequent hand-wringing about the suggestiveness of the content.
After that, there were brand spankin'-new theaters in the suburbs. Then came drive-ins. (For the record, I was the good girl -- the one in the front seat.)
But there's something about this column that has to come from within. People occasionally call up with something they're upset about -- a policy in the schools, or an issue with local government -- and urge me to write about THAT. Even if I agree, if I don't have a burning desire to expound on it myself, it feels flat.
I think occasionally coming up blank is a sign that I'm just out of juice at those particular times. Sometimes there's so much going on that there isn't time to reflect and then write about anything on a meaningful level.
Other times, everything that's going on and could make a really good column is too personal. Some weeks I feel the urge to just lay it out there anyway, knowing that behind your closed doors, you've got quirky, complicated or stressful stuff going on, too, and would maybe not only relate, but appreciate the frankness. Maybe someday I will, when it can't embarrass anyone else.
Maybe even next week.
This week? I think I'll go see a movie.
Pass the popcorn.
Reach Kathy Gibbons at kgibbons@record-eagle.com
Print this story
E-mail this story
