Monday, September 03, 2007

Games People Play (with Danes)

I was thrilled to learn of a game played by a Dane friend of ours. Her family has a merle Dane, and they play I-spy with the dappling on his coat. Not being artistically inclined, I have tried this game, and to date, the only thing I have located on our merle boy, Emmett’s, coat has been an upside down version of the little logo guy for the monster.com website.

I was thrilled to learn of this game, because it seemed to validate any of a variety of the games we find ourselves applying to our babies.

We started one such game the other morning, when for some reason, I asked K out of the blue, “If Azure were a character in a movie, what character would she be?”

Among our quirky differences, K and I don’t share a common background with, interest in or exposure to: movies. K’s tastes run toward Disney, mine toward Tarantino. K has a large part of her life where movies are almost altogether missing, which pre-dates the several years in mine where movies were missing, so there is an additional temporal disconnect that amplifies generational and personality differences.

By way of example, we saw a preview for the movie, “While You Were Sleeping” on a friend’s television the other day. K’s response was, “Aw, that was such a romantic movie.” Having actually seen this one on video, my response was, “Yipes that movie was creepy. Who wants some person who doesn’t know who you are to be duped into marrying you?!” Now, I know they don’t get married in the end, but I like my goofy clueless fiancĂ©es to be the Moonstruck version, not the Million Dollar Baby version.

The game, as it turns out, is actually quite fun and illuminating. Through it, we are able to learn about one another’s life experiences through movies, what we liked and what we didn’t like, what attracted us about different characters, and how we perceive the dogs. Of course no one character captures all aspects of any one of the dogs, so the conversation continues, pulling different aspects of different characters and movies into the dialogue, respectfully listening, offering counterpoints, and compiling lists that we sometimes forget as soon as they are completed.

So, here is an initial iteration of our list:

Christian Slater in True Romance. (Emmett)

Forrest Whittaker in The Crying Game. (Coffee)

Cher in Mask; actually, Cher in just about any role. (Mercy)

Goldie Hawn in Overboard; Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta’ Give. (Skeeter)

Pipi Longstocking; Angelia Jolie in Girl, Interrupted; Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys (I was particularly pleased with the whole “Brangalina” angle with those last two selections). (Azure)

Lilo from Lilo and Stich. (Trinity)

Any guesses who selected which movies and characters?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh my goodness these are fun! Ahhh the dane-games people play!

I posed the question to D here at majordanes and he replied... "Can I take a long time to answer this?" I said sure, but he couldn't stop there, he just started in and said "If they were characters in plays, Noel Coward's- Private Lives applies... Amanda and Elyot respectfully".

We discussed characters from Barfly, (both Faye and Mickey) and The Dream Team, marking schizophrenia as the biggest draw next to the alcoholic eyes. But Ava is also Peppermint Patty from the Peanuts and Luna is Michael Meyers in "So I Married an Axe Murderer?"...

Our conversation will continue as well!
Next I will ask the boy!
Great Fun Misfits! Thanks:) Ev.

Misfit Farms said...

The Peanuts reference is choice. As a spin-off to the game, we actually had a session discussing which Peanuts character would each of the dogs be.
Coffee: Charlie Brown
Mercy: Lucy
Emmett: Linus
Skeeter: Sally
Trinity: Peppermint Patty
Azure: Snoopy (at least insofar as sleeping on TOP of doghouses and sheds is a character trait)

Anonymous said...

Oh, for heaven's sake. Ya'll have entirely too much time on your hands!

But Boris is definitely Charlie Brown and Nina Lucy.

Or Eeyore and Owl.

Or . . .

~K