30 Days of Shamelessness and Counting

Declare your love for an uncool movie.
I don't know. What's an uncool movie?

Many, many years ago I took a group of my university friends to see Citizen Kane. It's an awesome movie, often called the best movie ever made, but it was deeply uncool to my uni friends (one of whom took a group of us to see Undercover Brother, which, yikes.)

Looking over my Netflix account, here is a list of the last group of (non-documentary) movies I watched:

The Third Man (starring Orson Welles, whom I love)
Searching for Bobby Fischer (probably because I have a crush on the real life Josh Waitzkin)
Macbeth (the version set during WWII, starring Patrick Stewart)
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (I've seen it a dozen times because I love the Russell/Monroe duo)
How to Marry a Millionaire (Monroe, Bacall, Grable? I've seen it many, many times.)
Star Trek (the most recent film version; I love Zachary Quinto as Spock)
Strictly Ballroom (I adore this film!)

I was also on a Gary Cooper jag for a while and saw Meet John Doe, Casanova Brown, and Love in the Afternoon.


Act “girly” or “manly” in a way you’d normally avoid.

I will tell you a story.

Years ago, like almost 20 years ago, I read Richard Feynman's autobiography, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! In it, he describes his experiences with lucid dreaming. At the time I read it, I didn't understand that lucid dreaming simply means that you are aware that you were dreaming while you are in the dream. (I didn't understand that because I'm always aware that I'm dreaming--just as I'm always me in my dreams.) I thought lucid dreaming meant that I could control every aspect of the dream. One night while I was dreaming, I thought: Oh, I need to try that lucid dreaming stuff.

In the dream, I was on a train going from car to car (just as Feynman had described doing in his dream). I tried to change the setting and couldn't and I became frustrated because I couldn't control the dream completely. I could control my own actions, so I went back to a car that I knew had a large mirror in it. I looked at myself in the mirror, lifted my arms. As I did so, I was able to change myself from female to male and back again.

I thought when I woke up, of course I can change myself that way. In fact, I often feel as though I do this all the time, this switch from female to male and back again.
 

Share your efforts at something you don’t think you do well.

Oh, jeeze.

I don't do most things well, I think.

I can't sing very well--but I still sing. I suck at bowling--but I still bowl. I'm miserable at parties when I have to talk to strangers--but I still go to parties (when I can't get out of it anyway) and talk to strangers.

Sweat.

No, thank you.

Expose something messy or dirty you’d usually hide.

Ha! Funny. I am literally messy.  I'm one of the messiest people I know. No joke. It doesn't usually descend to the level of slob, but it hoovers around bachelor.