“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 674 (Sunday)

Today, movie time featured The Tender Bar on Prime Video, a Ben Affleck movie that included scenes shot in Fitchburg. I can take or leave Ben, but I was ready for the “is that Fitchburg” game, knowing there was shooting in the neighborhood where my great aunt Julia and great uncle Pat lived when I was a kid.

I wanted to love the movie. Scenes were shot in my hometown. It features a character who loves to read and wants to be a writer. Despite the built in bias to like the movie, there was one thing I had trouble reconciling.

Character J.R. in The Tender Bar.

The very young J.R. had dark hair, dark eyebrows, and dark eyes with long black, curly lashes, which were featured in many tight shots on his face during his scenes, making them  impossible to miss. They are the lashes featured in the selfies of hundreds (thousands!) of trendy young women on social media, including countless videos of the application of Thrive Causemetics brand mascara. The older J.R. has lighter hair, lighter eyebrows, and lighter blue-gray eyes with stumpy, nondescript, brownish lashes. This is the thing upon which I became fixated.

I fully recognize and acknowledge that hair and eye colors can naturally change. Mom went from Scandinavian blond to brown as she grew up. When my brother was young, his eyes were so dark the pupil often couldn’t be distinguished from the iris, and they lightened to a beautiful golden honey brown as he got older. It’s the lashes that are my problem. Can someone’s lashes go from long, black and curly to stumpy, light and straight? I’m not buying it. This was a stumbling block for me. With all the lash lengthening products available, this issue could have been easily solved in the makeup chair in mere minutes.

Maybe I’ve spent too much time poring over family photos studying changes through the lives of individual relatives and resemblances between family members.

Green bean casserole.

Beyond scrutinizing the movie, which was overall pretty good aside from the main character eyelashes, the rest of the day was mostly normal. Not that analyzing the actors playing the young and older versions of characters isn’t normal for me. Normal like a curse.

There was laundry. There was a green bean casserole made with ground pretend meat crumbles added in an attempt to make it less of a side dish and more of an entrée. Sadly, it wasn’t as great in the dining phase as imagined during the preparation phase. Lesson learned. Maybe chunks of chicken or turkey next time. If there is a next time.