Hand held movie cameras and public health

In my entire life I 've only walked out of three movies. The first was Oh God Book II. I don't really remember much about it, except it had an interminably cute ten-year old girl and George Burns wasting my time. The second was Showgirls. I don't really remember much about it either, except that one chick with the overbite and Gina Gershon were topless for much of the movie. In hindsight, I'm not so sure what made that such a bad thing. I just remember getting up and leaving. Today was my third movie.

Now before I say what this movie was, I want people to know that I actually watched most of "The Blair Witch Project" (the rest I listened too in the aisle). You see, I get nauseated fairly easy by the shaky camera techniques. It doesn't add realism......or grit.......or integrity........or anything else good. It just makes me sick to watch. Blair Witch was the first movie I recall watching with this camera use. It was also a truly dreadful movie. But my new champ is "The Wrestler".

I like movies about redemption. Characters that realize the futility, or destructiveness of the path they have followed, who realize that they must change. Of course, the protagonist had screwed things up so badly I doubt he was going to make it. Even if the cameras had been mounted on a tripod this movie would have still sucked. With still cameras, I would have been physically able to view it without having to reach for my bucket of popcorn so I could fill it with puke. I don't know whether the movie ended well, poorly, or ambiguously. By the time I got up and left, I was convinced it just wasn't going to end!

The nausea that I felt was so severe, that I came right home and took a 25 mg Promethazine. I've feeling much better now. There were two good things about that movie though and Marisa Tomei had both of them. She's like my age I think. NICE!!

On to topic number two. I got some mail today reminding me that my daughter (who will be entering 7th grade) will need her immunizations to be current. It just two nausea-fueled (thanks to the movie) tangential leaps to think about the people that get incensed about young girls being immunized with Gardisil starting at twelve or so. For those not in the know, Gardisil is a vaccine against HPV which causes a large amount of cervical cancer. Cervical cancer is a huge killer of young women worldwide. The vaccine makes a huge reduction in the incidence of cervical cancer. The people that developed it should have won the Nobel Prize for medicine. At the very least, I hope they are making gobs of money. They deserve it.

Anyway, I digress. The point I wished to make was that Gardisil has to be given BEFORE a woman becomse sexually active. There are those who bristle at the idea of the implication that girls as young as my daughter are sexually active. Infact, the thought of my daughter being sexually active is repugnant to me also. However, this isn't about morality, or propriety, or anything else but public health.

Are kids aren't supposed to start drinking until they are 21. Does that mean we should withhold any discussion about the dangers of excess alcohol consumption or drunk driving until they are 20? Of course not! Even the puritanical blowhards would have to agree with me on this one. So my advice to all those with young daughters is this. Get her immunized on time. If your feeling nauseated, come by the house. I've got a few extra promethazine.

One more thing. I don't want anybody in my presence to misuse the word nauseous. People always say I feel nauseous. Some people are I suppose, but most are nauseated not nauseous. For example: If I eat an unidentified mushroom and get very sick it is because I was POISONED by a POISONOUS mushroom. If I eat a rancid 7-11 burrito it is because I became NAUSEATED by a NAUSEOUS item of food. I might also say I was nauseated after seeing that nauseaous movie. That's about it for now.