When I was in college, I used to talk to the guy at the front desk of the Registrar's office, where my mom worked. He and I would talk about movies and music sometimes, and he very intently told me, "You should see Bad Lieutenant." He said it was a redemption story. I don't remember what else he said, but I hope there was some sort of warning about the content! Several years later, when I finally started Netflix, I added it to my queue, and I just got to it. When I told a co-worker that I was going to watch it, I got an "Oh..." with a look of disgust, and pretty much anyone else I mention it to who has seen it makes the same groan. So, what's causing all of these strong reactions?

As it turns out, it's because this movie is filled with the actions of a truly bad lieutenant. In the first twenty minutes, I heard all sorts of obscenities, saw several drug scenes, a sort of sex scene, and plenty more. The movie progresses with much more of the same. So who would want to watch that? I'm not exactly sure, which is why I refuse to recommend this movie to anyone. Each person should decide how thick he thinks his skin is before giving it consideration. For me, the sum of the parts is bad, but not much of anything I haven't already seen in another movie. The only exception is one particular scene in which he pulls over a couple of girls who are driving without a license, which made me feel pretty sick.

But, of course, the point of the movie isn't to watch a man being a disgusting human being. The lieutenant, played by Harvey Keitel, is falling quickly into a downward spiral in his own life when he is called to a case investigating the rape of a nun. Raised Catholic (but hardly practicing), he is disturbed by the crime. The nun's attitude of protection and forgiveness toward her attackers confuses him, but ignites a spark in him as well. He keeps returning to the church, either watching her being questioned or questioning her himself. Even in his worst state, he is called back, probably due to his upbringing and his inner struggle, to the church.

I admit that I was watching somewhat passively for a large portion of this movie, but the climactic church scene actually broke me down and won me over, and I liked how the movie ended. Keitel does a great job at a pretty despicable role, for the most part, and the impact of his character's transition is effective, especially considering that the movie is barely over an hour and a half. I'm not telling you to see it, but I'm glad I got to witness that one scene, which wouldn't have been so effective if I hadn't gone through the misery of the first two-thirds of the movie.

I don't think he reads this blog, but happy birthday to Curtis (which ended about 10 minutes ago)!

Today was just one of those days. I had to wait for the water heater inspector to drop by. He was supposed to come between 9 and 4. That's a big window. In that window, I scrubbed down our bathtub/shower, cleaned the bathroom floor, wiped down the sink and counters, did a load of blankets in the laundry, did a load of towels in the laundry, did a load of whites in the laundry, organized all the former refrigerator photos on the inside of a pantry cupboard door, took photos of items I want to sell from our house, advertised everything from books to cups and saucers, took photos of my Nightmare collection in preparation for a little eBay selling, and much, much more.

At 4, the dude called and said he couldn't find my house and had been searching for an hour. Because a big blue and white condo complex is so difficult to find. So, there go the rest of my personal hours, and tomorrow I'll be taking some vacation hours to get this finished up because some guy didn't know how to use his phone and call me for directions.

I decided to let off some steam at the park, then came home, showered, made two batches of cookies, made dinner, ran some more laundry, worked on finances, watched Fringe's premiere (we'll see how it pans out), uploaded music, and started uploading photos for the Nightmare eBay items.

But of course, in all of that time, I messed up a batch of cookies, ran out of vanilla on the second batch, tried to dry a blanket that lost a third of itself to the lint trap and a third on another blanket - and subsequently had to do 2 more runs with my sheets in the dryer to get the lint out of them, thought I popped a tire on the way to workout (but thankfully didn't), and had a few other mishaps besides. It was one of those days where I just wasn't in sync with everything I was trying to do.

But hey, if the worst of my problems is a few tasks not going according to plan, I guess life's not all that bad. There's always tomorrow.