The pelican poops anyway

If you've spent as much time as I have researching on IMDb then you are probably familiar with a certain gem from Elijiah Wood's oeuvre, The Bumblebee Flies Anyway. If you watch any of the lesser Encore or Starz! channels available on Comcast Premium Movies package then you may even have seen it. Maybe, like me, you encountered the mysteriously-titled film while browsing at a non-virtual Blockbuster store (so 2003, am I right?) and you had to know "who are the ad wizards who came up with this one??" The plot summary asks "what if, like the bumblebee, who flies not knowing its wings are too small to allow flight, the impossible might be possible?" Turns out the "impossible" is surviving terminal cancer, which becomes "possible" when Janeane Garofalo does a Clockwork Orange on Elijiah's brain so that he forgets to die. Hilaarious.

I think Molly was present for that moment at Blockbuster, though she may have missed out on an 11am showing on Encore Drama a few years later. Hence, the movie (as well as EJ and his gay hobbit sex appeal, which predates being cast as Frodo) has become a running gag between us. 

Last weekend we accidentally drove to Hayward and on our way back over the bridge we noticed a triad of pelicans doing the bird hover, wherein their wing-flapping is equal to the headwind so that they fly in place (brainwave! "Treadmill in the Sky" has just become the first single Obviously Incarcerated will release off their debut LP Objectively Cuter). Molly, in earnest Hollywood copywriter cadence, observed that "the pelican poops, too," an adorable Freudian mash-up of our favorite worst movie title ever and the syntax of Everyone Poops. 

Yea yea, this is a total had-to-be-there story but I nearly died of laughter. If I had been driving we would have crashed. I laughed harder than when Mr Longyear made a "back when submarines had screen doors" joke in 9th grade bio. I convulsed for a solid two minutes. It felt so good.

It's good that Molly is coming with me (yes, I know, it's more like I am following her) to New York. Not only is she an endless source of a specific and priceless form of entertainment - best friend inside jokes - but she's pretty essential to my mental stability. Xin, my other future roommate and sure to feature prominently in many upcoming posts, is also good for that. I am looking forward to my future household with unconditional joy.

You know how I'm saying no to nostalgia? (And it's not even nostalgia when you see the person every day.) Sometimes nostalgia is the greatest thing ever. My 14ish years of friendship with Molly means we have a shared history that is long and deep and irreplaceable. I can't know what my stepmother is going through but I am deeply afraid of it. Losing a long-term best friend is a catastrophe. You can't make a new one. It's worse than divorce. 

Molly, on the serious, you are not allowed to die.