Donnie Darko

I finally saw this. Cool movie. Random. Has “cult classic” written all over it and inserted at low volume and backwards into the soundtrack.

It’s interesting how one can often ascertain the time period in which a movie was made (or at least in which it’s set) when political candidates are mentioned. Donnie and dad are driving and the radio news mentions Dukakis, so automatically I know this has to be late 1980′s or so.

By the way, Michael Dukakis lost to George Bush because of his name. I had this discussion (jokingly, but you know it’s true) with and with reference to my little sister, who spent last summer writing a book. She completed it and is looking for publishers. It’s a fantasy story intended for a young audience; I’ve read the first few chapters so far and am impressed. She plans this to be the first book in a cycle of five.

Anyway, I had asked her if she planned to use a pen name, and she said no, she wasn’t. I brought up how Douglas Adams, in The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul (I’m almost done with it, Jackie, it’ll be any day now!) describes a certain bestselling author, Howard Bell, who writes utter trash that nobody actually ever gets around to reading, where everyone just buys his books because he has such a consise, authorly-sounding name. So I said, that just as a selling point (to supplement the high quality of the book material itself, of course), she should invent a name with the same Howard Bell kind of ring to it. (One of these days I’ll cease being lazy and actually look and post the quote from The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul (which is sitting right in front of me) wherein Adams actually describes what I just charmlessly attempted to repeat.) You can stop groaning now, too.

What I’m getting at, of course, is that names sell. “Bush” is just one of those concise, presidential-sounding names. Howard Bell. George Bush. There, see, we elected someone with that same name twice.