highly reflective

remember that movie Mask (not to be confused with The Mask starring Jim Carrey)? it's the one based on a true story where Eric Stoltz plays Rocky Dennis and Cher plays his mom and he has a rare disorder that causes his skull to grow at an abnormal rate and his face is disfigured so all the jerks at the middle school say mean things like, "why don't ya take your mask off?" and terrible things like that. maybe you remember watching it on t.v. as a little kid... i do.

well, about three months ago English started listening to Jens Leckman, a musician from Sweden who has a song called Rocky Dennis Farewellsong to the Blind Girl. it wasn't until we'd listened to it a few times that we recognized the lines about when Rocky tried to explain colors to his blind girlfriend: this is blue (frozen rock). this is green (refrigerated rock). this is red (hot rock). this is billowy (cotton balls). needless to say, our interest was re-sparked so to speak. we both knew we had to watch Mask again.

so we did - thanks to Netflix - and did you know that Sam Elliot plays one of Cher's boyfriends? he was great! one of the scenes that i remembered right as it was starting was the part where the motorcycle gang goes to the fun house at the carnival and Rocky looks into one of those crazy fun house mirrors and he sees what his face would look like if he didn't have the disorder.

anyway, i could go on some more about the movie but last week while visiting my sister in Chicago we went to see an installation/sculpture titled Cloud Gate and it was kind of like a fun house mirror, but no Rocky Dennis.