Insomnia...

Last night I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned in bed for more than an hour, trying to shut my brain down so I could relax and fall asleep, but it did not work so well. I noticed, while I was doing this, that I often have thought chains that end up in very odd places. For instance…last night I began by thinking about TV shows and ended up thinking about seals. Here’s how:

I was thinking about how so many of the shows Owen and I have been watching lately are over. Really good ones, like 30 Days, from Morgan Spurlock of Supersize Me fame. And also Project Greenlight, which ended several months ago, actually. But it was a really good, interesting show. In case you’re not familiar with it, it’s kind of a behind the scenes documentary of the making of an independent film by first-time directors and writers. The movie they were making this time was not an indie, though. It was their first genre film: a horror film. The movie is due out this fall. Owen and I will probably go see it, mostly because we so enjoyed Project Greenlight. It’s interesting how you can do that because, despite the fact that the show aired for weeks and documented this process from beginning almost to the end (nothing beyond the first few post-production edits), they never actually showed the monster in it’s full form. The guys in the creature shop are so interesting. They bring the monsters to life from concept drawings all the way through often times actually wearing the costumes and becoming the monsters themselves. The guy they had in Project Greenlight was fun to watch, as was his creative process. I bet making monsters up is kind of hard. Different things are scary for different people. When I was at the grocery store the other day, I heard the deli lady saying that she didn’t really like Skeleton Key. “Why not?” her meat-slicing compatriot had asked, “Too scary?” “No,” she had replied, “they can’t make them scary enough for me. They never scare me.” So it’s just interesting, how different things scare different people. I used to know this girl in college who was terrified of cotton balls. No kidding. She was annoying. Know what I think is just about the scariest thing out there? Not alligators or sharks or Bigfoot…I think seals look scary as hell. They have these beady black hollow eyes that make them look as though they have no souls. They look like deranged little old men with sharp, sharp teeth who could snarl at you and bite you at any second. Their heads are oddly round, as though they are derranged and deformed. Every time I see one, I get goose bumps and my skin crawls. They totally freak me out. Which is kind of funny (from many different aspects, actually). Baby seals are just about the cutest thing out there. But once they lose that sweet little puff of white fir, look out! They’re horror film material.

So you see? That’s a logical progression showing how you get from TV to seals, through a rather bizarre route. And you’d think all that thinking would wear me out or at least bore me to sleep but, no dice. So now I’m even more tired than usual today.