| | Home Movie
Growing up in Honesdale, PA I'm already well aware of the saying, "It takes all kinds..." It's a saying usually reserved for life's weirdos and even then, it's bestowed only on the supremely happy ones. Typically followed by a flailing hand, a shrug of the shoulders, or a sigh of exasperation, it's a way of subtly criticizing somebody's life choices, but not necessarily their life.
You see, happy weirdos haven't just taken the road less traveled. They're the type who have taken their entire plane of existence and piloted it into a mountainside, correctly suspecting that afterwards, when they emerge physically unscathed from the crumpled cockpit, they'll somehow land on Xanadu. It's a method of living the rest of the screaming masses are incredibly uncomfortable with.
For some examples, take Chris Smith's Home Movie. The hour long documentary follows a handful of happy weirdos as they give tours of their outlandish homes: in one a couple has customized their house for their dozen cats. In another a former actress tours her custom built treehouse in Hawaii. Then there's the couple who converted an abandoned missile silo into a home.
How can you criticize them? Each family/couple/person is living out their dream life. Bill Tregle lives on a houseboat in the backwaters of the Louisiana bayou. He farms alligators. If he's hungry he eats, if he's tired he sleeps, and with that Gump-ish of an existence, I guarantee you he sleeps a helluva lot better than me. No taxes, no bills, no fucking people. Sure he shits over an open hole in a badly listing houseboat in part of the country where even a strong sneeze breaks a dike and washes him out to sea, but *shrug.* He's happy.
I wouldn't live in any of the houses profiled. Even the moldering treehouse in Hawaii with its own hydroelectric generator. I need my electricity and my outrageous $150 cable bill. I need my central air and I just couldn't live without my big windows that offer such lovely views of my neighbor's siding.
If Bill Tregle had a phone, I would call him and tell him I'll see him soon. |
| | Posted 3/6/2009 5:42 PM - 1 View - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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