Tree trimmings, scrap wire and hidden artistic talents.

I’ve never considered myself crafty, but our door called for a wreath. So I wreathed.

It always seems a bit early to begin Advent in November. But here we are, once again. Waiting.

We (singularly, collectively, culture in general) are so busy, so full of data and to do lists, that waiting is a lost art. The moment I’m stuck in line, out comes the iPhone. If I’m on hold, I answer work emails. Maybe that’s why I generally don’t bother with an iPod on walks or runs… a last bastion of in-between time that forces me to stew in my own thoughts.

Waiting makes space. It increases the likelihood that I might be still enough to hear from God instead of yet another Kohl’s ad or CNN.com.

Last night, we rearranged furniture and cleared space to make room for the Christmas tree we’ll pick out this afternoon. If we were true to tradition, we’d wait for the tree – just as we await Christmas itself – until Christmas Eve. Chop it down out in the pine forest and haul it in on a sleigh, setting it up with hot cocoa and candles to welcome the coming of the Savior that night.

But we didn’t chop down a cedar and haul it from southern Indiana, and the Georgia tree lots will be thinned out by the 24th.

So we’ll make room for Advent today.

It would take a lot to make me break blog silence at this point, but fall in Georgia has done it. After five miserable months of unbroken 90s with smothering humidity, we’ve finally hit a run of crisp, sunny days in the 60s with nights dipping below 40.

If Georgia could just give us, oh, say three months of this, we promise we’d quit threatening to move north every other week.

But within a month, we’ll drop down into the 40s and maintain a gray, damp chill through March. Where the White Witch made it always winter but never Christmas in Narnia, those of us in the peach state are consigned to endless, monotonous winter without the solace of snow.

Just for these few weeks, though… I’ll call myself a Georgian.

I suppose we are technically beyond advent, this day past Christmas. But waiting is such an inherent part of our lives in the grand scheme of things that I’ve grown to like living in anticipation. No matter what’s moving, something else is on hold, sitting on the back burner, simmering.

I’m particularly fond on this image of Nina at my parent’s door. Her waiting is not particularly patient, but it’s always eager. In this case, she’s yearning after my mother’s kitties who have permanently taken cover in the wood shed for the week. Nina wants a kitty for Christmas. Very Badly.

All fall, I have less than graciously been demanding that God provide snow for Christmas. We were excited a week ago to see that snow was predicted for Christmas Eve. Then the radar went fickle and we dropped into deepest despair. Finally, Christmas Eve at dinnertime, snow began sifting down. Within a few hours, we had several inches. I can’t recall a single Christmas where we’ve ended up with such a beautiful fall of snow so perfectly timed. God even dropped an inch on Atlanta while He was at it!

There’s another family waiting. Near midnight on Christmas Eve, David and I hiked back through the woods and down to the field near my old high school, Nina frolicking through the white stuff and collecting a feathery white sweater. A graveyard edges on the field, and as we approached, green and red lights glittered faintly from one headstone. An inch of snow dusted over the headstone:

CONNER
“Conman”
February 29, 2008 – March 9, 2010

… a handful of wrapped packages, a tiny basketball and hoop, blinking Christmas lights, and music box Christmas carols.

Somewhere, near, a family’s hearts are shattered as they wait for mending. I don’t know whether they wait in hope or despair. “Hark the herald angels sing…” the tune was plaintive.

…Born that man no more may die
Born to raise the sons of earth
Born to give them second birth…

I hope they know what they’re waiting for.

As David etched in the snow, “May Christ be with you.”

[Editor's warning: this got ... a bit ... long...]

Six months out
A friend mentions that a friend of a friend is putting together a team of 12 runners to do a 200-mile relay race in October. Your friend is a 6:30 miler. You are not. By a long shot. You’re intrigued enough to look up the web site and discover that it’s The Inaugural Southern Relay Odyssey, starting in Athens, circling up through the north George mountains and ending in Roswell. It looks fascinating, complicated—and mildly insane. You are a firm proponent of “normal is boring,” so you write your $50 check to some guy you’ve never heard of and friend another guy on Facebook who’s supposed to be organizing. There’s some kind of race meeting you can’t attend because you’re out of town. You promptly forget about the whole thing.

Three months out
You get a Facebook message regarding the race. Oh, right! This thing … whatever it is … is still happening. And, um, you should be amping up that training. In July. In Georgia. In 95 degrees and 99% humidity. Why did you leave the Midwest? Why did you think running 1/12th of 200 miles in 24 hours was a good idea? You hit the trail. It hits you back.

One month out
You check Facebook again and discover that your team has a name: Hills for Breakfast. Usually the hills have you for breakfast, but this is a new era, right? You finally have a chance to attend a team meeting at 7 a.m. on a Saturday, but only about half the team is there. It’s a little disheartening to see that on the run schedule, you’ve been listed as the slowest runner in the group, based on your half marathon times, and put down for the shortest legs. You know this is probably a good thing, but that competitive nature you keep trying to banish from your running life rears its ugly head. As you’ve finally worked up to a 14-mile long run a mere 36-hours ago, you plan to do a short 3-mile jog with your 6:30-miler friend. You get disoriented on the trail and end up doing nine painful miles with your merciful friend, who slows down to a mere crawl so as not to leave you in the dust.

Three weeks out
Still stung by your bottom-of-the-heap time, you decide to actually time yourself on a 5K and 10K distance and discover you can cut a good :60+ seconds off your mile pace. You are encouraged. And panicked. Because now that you know this, you know you know you can never go back to that untimed, leisurely pace. You were planning to use the old shoes, but you jump online and order that new pair of Asics after all.

One week out
You finally meet the rest of the team and are relieved to discover that not everyone can run a 6:30 mile. You try—and fail—to remember the names of your teammates.

The night before
One of your teammates provides a fabulous carb-up dinner for a final team meeting. Your team leader (fearless of inaugural race courses and spandex alike) is already in Athens to deal with last minute details, but the rest of the crew is there. One of your van-mates and his wife have organized the food, gear and vans to the nth degree, not to mention having driven the course already. You are incredibly grateful to be relieved of tracking down headlamps, icy hot and class 3 safety vests. But you are less than thrilled to be gleefully greeted with the news that your 6 a.m. race leg is in the pitch black on a gravel road that goes through bear territory. Oh, and past the home where that man murdered his wife and drug her out through the woods. You eat enough spaghetti and chocolate chip cookies to carb up for a marathon, and then recall you’re only doing 15 miles.

Race day: 5 a.m.
Jittery, you haul yourself out of bed and pray that you’ve crammed enough running gear into your duffle to cover all contingencies. Coffee may dehydrate, but you stop by the QT and grab a large one anyway on your trek to the meet up. You’re in Van 1 which is a generally positive thing because a) you get to run early and b) it’s mostly women, and though you like guys (hey, you’re married to one, after all), the atmosphere in the van is likely to be a little less ripe than that of Van 2. On the downside, Van 1 is courtesy of a Christian school and has so many years to its name that it boasts lots of vibrations and no CD player.

Race day: Pre-race
In Athens, you all pile out of the vans at the hotel where your fearless leader stayed last night and have a final gathering in his hotel room, which has apparently been furnished by IKEA. You’ve been hydrating like crazy and beeline for the bathroom. He hands you a flashlight. Bathroom light FAIL. You all pile into the vans once again (and realize you will be doing this a lot over the next 36 hours) to drive the few blocks to the start. Your stomach starts a series of loop de loops as you realize you’ll be hitting the pavement as runner 2 in less than an hour. But the start is oddly anti-climactic as the staggered start times (slated to bring all teams in around 3 p.m. the next day, regardless of pace) mean that only five or six other teams are starting with you at 10:30 a.m. The greatest rush of adrenaline comes from crossing the street at a crosswalk where there’s no light and the “walk” button is apparently a signal for drivers to speed up and target pedestrians.

Race day: first leg
The first exchange point, where you’ll pick up, is at a church. You’ll find this is the case throughout the day. Later, the race director will tell you that without all those little country churches, this race would be impossible. They’re out there where nothing else is. And when you consider it, you decide this is a very good thing. You bounce back and forth, forcing yourself to breathe, as you wait for the first runner to come in. It hits you: this the very first race you’ve run where other people are counting on your time. As soon as runner 1 arrives, you snatch the team armband and take off (as you’re later told: like an Energizer bunny) with shouts of “Sprint! Sprint!” and “run like the wind” in your ears. You start off too fast, dodging across a crowded intersection without waiting for the light.

You will discover that everyone, all twelve runners, will start off too fast, too. It is apparently the unwritten law of the first leg. About a mile in, you realize that this beautiful fall weather is actually verging on Indian summer. Make that … summer. It’s before noon, and the direct sun blazes down on your straight shot out of town along the railroad tracks. You also realize that with no watch and no knowledge of the route, you have no clue how far you’ve come. A mile? Two? Five? All you know is that you end with a long, nasty climb. When you finally hit the climb, pushing with every ounce you’ve got and trying to forget that you’ll be doing this twice more today, you keep your eyes peeled for the sign that will signal your turn off and the end of your leg. And then, the driver of Van 2 pops out to cheer you on! You’re close! And there’s 6:30-mile girl, ready and waiting for the hand off. You give it your last, breathless push uphill, gasping, legs burning, heart pounding out of your chest … only to discover that … it isn’t her. It’s some random biker girl waiting in the middle of the road for some inexplicable reason. You will never understand this. You only know that the finish line just bumped another ¼ mile uphill. Still, you finish under your anticipated pace. Even if you crash and burn on the next two legs, you have still managed to cling to one small shred of competitive pride.

For the next few hours, you cheer the other runners in your van through gorgeous rolling north Georgia countryside. You also gain close, personal knowledge of many country church bathrooms. They have a definite advantage over port-a-pots, but they do have their own quirks. You find the ruffley bathroom with two shallow stalls and no stall doors especially perturbing. Of course you want to be close to your teammates. Just not … that … close. Perhaps this is how men feel about urinals?

When you reach the state park for the van exchange at the end of Leg 6, your van stays behind for some R&R while Van 2 becomes the active van. You trade your Asics for flip flops and lounge on the grass by a waterfall, talking and dozing. Ahh… But as the sun lowers, you suddenly realize that your second leg is creeping closer.

Race leg: second leg
You meet up briefly with Van 2 a few legs before the next exchange point and realize that your team is already being passed up by faster teams that started later. You glower internally and vow to smoke them. Well, not you exactly. But you’ll pit Hills for Breakfast’s best runners against theirs any day! Your van also busts out the class 3 safety vest for night running. It’s so big it falls off you when you take a quick jog. You switch to the lighter safety vest and hope the White county sheriff doesn’t catch you in the act.

At the next van exchange, your stomach resumes its aerobic workout and a migraine threatens. You resort to drugs. As runner 1 heads out again, your crew loads up to head for your exchange point. On the way, you scrabble for vest, headlamp, blinking lights, map, phone … which is pointless out here as TMobile apparently hasn’t discovered the existence of the northern ¼ of the state. You’re oddly comforted to find that your second leg begins at Babyland General, birthplace of all genuine Cabbage Patch Dolls. You stand in the parking lot, geared up, bouncing once again as you watch the dark vista of hills and mists and the occasional light … one of which is runner 1, heading your way.

You grab the wristband and take off into the night. It’s exhilarating, this plunge down into the darkness. The night is clear, but moonless. A thousand points of light blaze overhead. There’s no sound but the soft, insistent “thok, thok” of your shoes on the asphalt, little light but the eerie bounce of your headlamp and the comforting red taillights of the van far ahead. Your breath mists faintly in the glow. Inhale, two, three. Exhale, two three… You fly downhill, loving every moment, knowing in the back of your mind you will pay for it in a mile or so. You do pay. The second half of your leg is a long, slow climb. A mile up the grade, you wonder if there is an unwritten rule that all of runner 2’s legs must end in long, nasty uphill climbs. You tell yourself that this is the mountains and you’ve got a 50/50 chance. But you still think conspiracy. You survive the climb in decent shape, but are bummed to discover you were two minutes over pace.

As it turns out, everyone loves their night runs. And there’s the illicit added bonus of showers at the next van exchange, which happens to be on the campus of your co-pilot’s university (she’s off on fall break). You sneak into the dorms en masse. The RA discovers you and nearly throws you out—but you wheedle 45 minutes for showers.

Momentarily clean and cozy, you head for the next van exchange at Amicalola Falls, arriving at 3 a.m. with no sleep for nearly 24 hours. You debate routing out dinner or possibly setting up tents so you can stretch out—but are so exhausted that you simply fall asleep in your seats. You awake in shock at 5 a.m. to discover that Van 2 has arrived and their last runner is already completing his leg, a devilish 3-mile vertical stretch up and down the falls road. Which means your van has 20 minutes to scramble for food, bathrooms, gear and map directions before:

Race day: third leg
As the van crawls along, spotting runner 1 who’s had little time to upload his directions, you recall that this is your gravel-bears-murderers leg. It is also your longest leg, with only seven hours since your last run. And it is still quite dark. You stand shivering at yet another tiny little country church, opting for a tank in the chill since you won’t be able to remove long sleeves from under the safety vest. You take the hand off and start up a short, sharp grade on gravel. Immediately you discover an important fact: your calf muscles are shot. They have disappeared, decamped, gone on vacation, left the building. You assess the situation. Surely, calves are overrated? Perhaps they are merely on strike, and you can come to some kind of terms with them. Get them back on the job, at least for the next 55 minutes. As you doggedly pound the gravel, keeping an eye out for unstable hillbillies, you argue with your calf muscles. They make outrageous requests like rest, hydration, bananas. You know perfectly well that giving in to bullies is never a good idea, so you ignore them. You plow up wave after wave of hills, watching your time creep up in your mind’s eye. You hit what you sincerely hope is that final .7-mile vertical grade (See? Conspiracy!), but for all you know, there may still be two miles to go as you clear the final curve … and there’s the church! You’re saved! As you pass off the band, and learn that you were actually a minute under projected time, you mentally thumb your nose at your recalcitrant calves. Take that.

You and your van mates watch the sun rise in a long glow of gold over stretches of mountain meadow. You also watch 6:30-mile girl do an insane 9.8-mile leg of mountain grades at a crazy pace, picking off four other runners in the process. You all cheer.

As the rest of your runners hit the pavement in the increasing heat, you realize that you lucked out with an early spot that gave you a morning run and two night runs. You avoided the midday and afternoon misery that’s killing your teammates. The bull horn comes out for a final round of encouragement.

Race day: the finish
You may be finished now … and your van may be done … but Van 2 still has six grueling legs. Your van takes a leisurely breakfast and then loads up a final time in search of sweet tea and coffee now that you’re back in civilization. You arrive at the finish site in a busy shopping area parking lot before mid-afternoon. The finish doesn’t really match the race, but you know the race directors had to scramble on the final legs after a scenic park bailed out. It is, after all, a miracle that all the moving pieces came together in the first place! As Van 2 sends out its final three runners in the brutal afternoon sun, you crash on a median near the exchange point and converse with one of the race directors, lobbying for the race to take on Kennesaw Mountain and end at the Marietta Square next year. Your teammates finish up the bag of oatmeal raisin cookies as other runners marvel at your team leader’s Hawaiian print yellow and pink running shorts.

Your final runner is misdirected by a volunteer and ends up running extra miles in his last leg as you all wait near the finish to run in together. At this point, though, no one cares about the time. Families congregate. Blisters are examined. Plans for showers and sleep are formulated. And as your final runner appears down the sidewalk, you all cheer and pick up your pace and … ouch! You back it down to a hobble and jog across the finish line. Your team crowds together under the banner, grinning, for a last round of photos. You—yes, you—have just been an integral part of 200 miles on foot in 29 hours.

Race day: after
You shower. You crawl into bed. You sleep solid from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.

The rosy glow of accomplishment is already clouding the agony to which you’ve subjected your body. Will you do it again next year?

Of course.

So today was interesting. One of those average, hum-drum vacation weekends at a beautiful mountain cabin (yes we know, stolidly dull) turned wholly exciting come laundry time this afternoon. Let’s just say the heat setting we chose on the dryer had an extra dose we were not expecting.

The cabin belongs to my employer and she graciously allows us to use it from time to time to get away. After the last few frazzled weeks spent in pre-production and production, we looked forward to a very even-tempered, non-life-threatening escape from “normal” life. But hey, we can’t all live our lives without the onset of fiery tragedies, can we?

What should have tipped us off were those first showers the other morning, when we buried our faces into clean towels and smelled… smoke? We brushed it off as the last guests not having properly washed the linens, but had I used a bit more of my “Sherlock Holmes” intuition, perhaps I could have inferred this one before the danger struck. In any event, here’s how it went down…

Liz had just started the first items drying in the dryer about noon today. I dropped off a few clothing items to add to the wash and went back upstairs. But when I looked out the windows and saw plumes of smoke billowing from the side of the house, I thought: “that’s a little heavy for dryer steam.” I bolted onto the deck, peered over the railing, and sure enough – it was not the pleasant aroma of dryer sheets that met my nostrils. At first I thought maybe it was the air conditioner, because I had just notched the thermostat down a degree. So I raced inside and turned it off. I raced back out. Smoke continued to billow. I rushed around to the side and clambered under the deck. Smoke was definitely flowing from the dryer vent. Panic set in and I flew downstairs, where Liz was still setting up the wash, oblivious to the danger. I opened the dryer, yanked out the clothing and saw flames–yes flames–licking up behind the small grate in the back of the dryer. Terror! “We have a fire!, we have a fire!” I yelled. And all I saw in my head was this beautiful cabin igniting in flames.

But I remembered also seeing three fire extinguishers in the garage yesterday, so heart racing, I flew to the garage, fingers fumbling for the right key. I rushed in, grabbed the first extinguisher I saw and ran back to the basement. Liz had tossed some water into the dryer by now, so it was smoldering, thick white smoke filling the space. I pulled the pin on the extinguisher, aimed and–

Nothing. It was empty. Gaahh!

I couldn’t see past the smoke clouds, so I blew them away, which only made the flames shoot up again! I blasted out the back door and raced to the garage again, hyperventilating, legs rubbery with fear. I grabbed the next fire extinguisher, pulled the pin!–Nada. I grabbed the third with a prayer, pulled the pin… and Yes! I flew back to the basement, smoke choking the air, alarms blaring everywhere. I stuck the nozzle into the drum and blasted the flames. It was out. We then rushed outside and blasted the vent under the porch.

The house phone rang, with the fire department on the other end. I had to bustle outside again to hear over the shrill beeping of the alarms, cordless phone signal crackling out of range. I told them we had the fire out, but it was best to send a truck just to be sure. Things had mostly calmed by now and the next several moments were comprised of missed calls, dropped calls, the owner calling the neighbor after getting the alerts on her phone (while in Texas!), the neighbor and I hauling the dryer to the porch, and finally the arrival of the Fire Department – three trucks and the captain, no less! They checked for heat in the walls and began airing out the basement. Aside from the horrible smell, reports all looked good. We had averted a major crisis. That only left the dryer. We were still unsure if it was something we had caused.

The fire department unscrewed the back, pulled off the venting and what you see in Exhibit A spilled out onto the cement. A massive clump of charred dog food. The Captain said it was likely a rat, from somewhere in the house: “an inside job,” if you will. The little scoundrel had been stowing away for a big winter. For the record, Natural Choice brand dog food burns fast and burns smelly!

There’s no telling how long this situation existed. I’m almost certain the last folks to use the dryer did have a small fire in there (the smelly towels) and it simply subsided when the load was done, thankfully contained in metal housing. Still, those flames could have easily ignited something else. If I’m not mistaken, the dog food was practically sitting on the heat coils.

After some further investigation, we found the supply in question across the hall in the basement pantry. A rather ambitious little varmint for sure, making his way up over (or under) the house from one side to the other, crawling into the dryer and hiding his secret stash. But that’s what you get living out in the woods, as we can attest to back home. Nature has a way of foiling your best attempts at peaceful living.

Ask us about the possum carcass underneath our porch two weeks ago, cooking up in the 95 degree summer weather. mmm.

Generations back, the women in my family prepared massive quantities of food for their hungry husbands and sons returning from the fields or for the influx of families after church on a Sunday afternoon.

My variation was feeding a cast and crew of nearly 30 on a film set — three meals a day for five days. For the most part, I enjoyed the process. It was the least we could do for people volunteering 16-hour days in an over-heated house under blazing lights. It saved us considerable cost (I did the entire thing for under $900, thank you very much) and David could rest assured knowing that everyone would be well fed. We decided early on that this was a preferable option to me stressing him out as a second-crunching production manager.

We’re coming off nearly three weeks of 5-6 hours of sleep a night. But there’s been no time to crash as we both jumped immediately back into catch up with work and freelance. I found myself more tired after the night I got 7 hours than after waking up on 6 once again. Perhaps my body has gone into a lower-performance mode for efficiency’s sake. My brain may be too muddled to acknowledge this.

But overall, we couldn’t have asked for a better cast and crew. The cast was the easy part, and our leads came through the talent development company for which David works. We broke the cardinal rule–never work with kids or animals–by casting an 11-year-old lead (plus his 9-year-old brother as a body double) and a 6-year-old supporting actress … not to mention the guinea pig. Those kids had a work ethic more solid than most adults I know. Long days in debilitating heat, and still going strong. (The sugar our AD doled out may have helped.) The parents were fantastic, too. Patient and supportive in lending their kids and their time to allow us to get what we needed, finishing up late Sunday evening when the boys were set to begin school Monday morning!

Our crew was a challenge. We started two months out with only one or two roles filled, and no idea where the rest would come from. By God’s grace–worked out through SCAD job boards, mandy.com and craigslist, we landed an entire crew of professionals and experienced students willing to give us five days and more of their lives on the basis of David’s script and his portfolio on our web site.

From the start, we knew this project was far greater than we could handle alone, and that drove us to prayer. The results showed. Our production wasn’t perfect, but so many people commented that the atmosphere and spirit of the set. No grousing or grumbling, despite the hours. People treating each other decently and professionally. Apologies when tempers ran thin. I am especially proud of my husband, who kept a level head and stayed 100% focused to steer the entire project — even during day 2 of 5 when it appeared there was no way we would make it through the entire schedule.

Saturday evening, I concocted spaghetti and garlic bread and such. The entire cast and crew sprawled out around the downstairs lounge area, chatting, dreaming, considering. People who never would have connected without this project.

This film took all the energy and focus and grit and manpower of a good old-fashioned barn raising, and more. It’s not done yet. So much work for David in the editing suite. Some final close ups to shoot. A film composer to find. Festivals to research.

But nonetheless, it’s in the can.

And it was good.

Yes, I’m a LOST geek. It’s the only television show I’ve ever watched from start to finish (picking up in Season 2). Though it’s been far from perfect, I believe the show found its salvation in setting a finish date and working the last three seasons with an end game in mind.

Lost has espoused and explored some fascinating threads of philosophy and theology—but it’s never purported to be a Christian show, no matter how many sermon illustrations are drawn from it or how much time our Wednesday night small group spent hashing out the implications of the previous night’s episode.

Still, the finale moved me in a way that only a few other story endings have:

• The Last Battle (the final book of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles; and this despite the fact it’s one of my least favorite stories in the sequence)
• The film endings of The Two Towers and The Return of the King
• The final chapters of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (holding my breath to see if the film will pull it off)

A pat “Christian” ending to Lost would not have been effective or believable—the show wasn’t set up that way, and to twist it that direction at the end would have been cheating and ultimately unsatisfying. But the choices made in the final episode created, in my view, the most profound sense of and longing for heaven that I’ve seen on television.

In the Lost-world, the characters are able to get to their heaven through any path of choices or faiths. Clearly, that’s not the Gospel. But the essence of the heaven created on the show got some things right:

• Time lines as we understand them on this earth mean nothing in the big picture
• The people and relationships in which we choose to invest mean more than anything else we will ever do; career, possessions, position, you name it; these are the gold that will last rather than the dross that will burn away
• We are each created and placed here for a purpose, and fulfilling that calling is vital to who we are in an eternal perspective
• Death for the believer is a beautiful thing

Of course, I’m placing my Christ-centered worldview on the episode. Most won’t. But I can’t help believing that, as is the case with well-crafted stories, people will be mulling over this, asking questions.

The last 30 minutes of the episode haunted my dreams last night, have stayed with me since waking. I suspect they will be haunting many.

“He has also set eternity in the hearts of men…” (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

We’ll close out our series of movie poster ripoff artistry with a look known as the “Sears Portrait Studio.” I can’t claim coinership on the phrase (although I can claim the word “coinership”), but it is fitting. There may be no better sublime hilarity than Steve Carell capturing the beautiful tragedy that is the portrait studio photo; the world of yearbooks, Christmas cards and church directories, where normal people live quiescently frozen in a state of grotesquery. The problem is that once wasn’t enough. Judd Apatow apparently thinks it’s a golden goose of a design, since most of these films are his handiwork. Or maybe it’s NBC comedians. There’s some connection there. Still, it looks like we’ve had enough of these to fit us for a while.

Nothing says sweet love like a good romantic comedy, and apparently nothing says “romantic comedy” like people in boxes. This seems to be a trend of late and it’s a curiosity. Maybe it means in spite of our best efforts at love, we’re still hopelessly boxed in by our own self-interests. Or maybe it means there are just too many protagonists and the only other option was to line people up in a Scream actor stack. It’s also apparently a fun trend to give your movie a completely non-descriptive name like Love Happens or perhaps… This One Time, Whadd’ya Know?, or Can’t Beat That!

Jim Carrey, Call Your Agent

Something strange has happened to Jim Carrey. As least, something strange has happened to his movie posters. There must be a clause somewhere in his contract that states: “When Mr. Carrey, or his likeness, appears in films which are labeled FANTASY (appealing to, but not limited by a fantastical tone of time, location or character), and as such his character is that of a ghoulish nature, (i.e. being villainous or scoundrelly), the likeness of such a character will henceforth be rendered on all movie posters and associated key art in a three-quarter side pose with outstretched arms, raked fingers and a devilish grin or scowl.”