ASS THE WORLD TURNS

Opening Friday in Scottsdale:

My Old Ass--18-year-old Elliot lives on an idyllic Canadian cranberry farm, but can't wait to head to college and start her life. She confesses her feelings, successfully, to her summer-long crush, and then she and her friends camp out on an island and take 'shrooms.

Under this fungal influence, Elliot, played by Maisy Stella, finds herself sitting next to the Old Ass of the title, her 39-year-old self, played by Aubrey Plaza. Younger Elliot is eager to hear dish and glamour about her future, but Older Elliot is cagey; she just advises her to avoid anybody named Chad. Soon after, Younger Elliot meets a nice young man while swimming. Guess what his name is.

The wish to go back and offer guidance and comfort to your younger self is a human perennial, perfectly expressed in the Faces anthem "Ooh La La." My Old Ass, written and directed by Megan Park, works the premise ingeniously by taking it, one might say, ass-backwards. Thus we see the story from the younger heroine's point of view; that is, from the version of her who, being young, knows everything and is unlikely to consciously accept an older person's counsel. Yet we also see Older Elliot's healthy influence on her behavior.

Stella carries the movie sweetly as Younger Elliot, with a suggestion that she's trying to present as more daring and sardonic and above-it-all than she really is. Her supposed mortification at her provincial circumstances is a less than convincing pose. In the much smaller role of Older Elliot, Plaza's guarded, pained manner complements Stella's performance amusingly, and credibly.

Percy Hynes White, as the amiable Chad, is the other standout of the small cast. The settings--the film was shot in Muskoka Lakes, Ontario--are breathtaking, and the movie glides very agreeably through its brief running time. There's one sequence, involving a Justin Bieber song, that's truly hilarious, but otherwise My Old Ass feels, really, a little mild and undemanding.

This, paradoxically, may be what's most striking about it. Elliot identifies as gay, you see; the crush with whom she makes out early on is a (slightly) older woman. Park doesn't make a big deal about this, and she's almost equally nonchalant when Elliot finds herself attracted to Chad and begins to question her long-held assumptions about her own sexuality.

In the real world, of course, and in this day and age, this probably really does reflect normal teen development. But I couldn't help thinking about the tizzy that this would have stirred up from a teen flick even ten years ago, much less twenty. Like 2018's Love Simon, the sunny, breezy My Old Ass may be most remarkable for how unremarkable it is.

CANUCK OF THE NORTH

RIP to kickass folksinger and cranky Canadian cultural nationalist Stompin' Tom Connors, passed on at 77.

Here is his classic "Hockey Song." Since, as every civilized person ought to know, the Good Ole Baseball Game is the best game you can name, I can't really agree with its central premise, but it's still a great song.

A BRONZE IN MEN’S SONNETEERING

The Winter Olympics, one of the few sporting events in which I take the slightest interest, kicked off last night in Vancouver with the usual kitschy pageantry—although it was pretty kick-ass to hear k.d. lang sing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

The Games proper commence today. The Wife is a Winter Games fanatic, & will likely be parked in front of the TV for many hours.

This was not the case in 2002, however—that year, I dragged her up to Salt Lake City to experience the Games live. She had often said that she’d always wanted to go, & I doubted that they’d ever be geographically closer to us. I managed to score tickets for exactly one event: Women’s Freestyle Skiing.

We had been out here in Arizona for more than a decade by that time, so long that we had forgotten how much winter can suck—we had to buy winter coats for the trip. But we remembered it fast as we hiked up the snowy mountain to the venue in Deer Valley, froze our asses off in the bleachers while we watched the lovely Australian Alisa Camplin sail to the Gold Medal...

...& then trudged our way back down to the shuttle buses.

That same day, on the sidewalk in front of the lodge, I saw Mitt Romney dancing to the music of a Dixieland band. This was the most Caucasian sight I ever expect to behold.

That night, back in our hotel in Salt Lake, while The exhausted Wife slept, I wrote this sonnet:

Though she despises snow, and might not wear,
To save her life, a pair of skates or skis,
She pulled a tasseled hat over her hair
And wrapped herself in vinyl and fake fleece.
Then, pluming silver steam out of her smile,
She rode on trains and buses, and her feet,
On shifting snow, that dizzy, final mile,
To take, at last, her own Olympic seat.
And shivering in authenticity,
She took her role as spectator with grace,
Subject, like the skiers, to gravity,
And likewise eager for her downhill race.
Four hours hence, back in her hotel bed,
She'd had it with Olympics--so she said.