Thursday, October 05, 2006

This is good!

Signs that you have watched Pride and Prejudice too many times when...

  • Six hours no longer seems like a long time.
  • You begin to wonder why all movies are not six episodes long.
  • You have memorized where the commercial breaks come as well as the order of the commercials in each break.
  • You watch the movie all the way through non-stop - then rewind it and start all over again.
  • The movie just keeps on getting better every time you watch it.
  • On a recent visit to a local lake, you were inspired to dive in and go swimming fully clothed.
  • Your relatives and friends no longer think that you are strange for asking them to call you "Lizzy".
  • You sing along with the background music.
  • You find ways to quote Pride and Prejudice in daily life: "That shirt is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me."
  • After hours of studying the dance scenes, you held a party and forced all your friends to learn the dance steps so that you could pretend to be Lizzy at the Netherfield Ball.
  • You are saving up money to go to England to visit the filming locations.
  • You made a special trip to England last year just to visit the filming locations.
  • Your itinerary includes a special trip to Pemberley where you plan to stand at the window and say, "Of all this I might have been mistress" - and you are devasted when you find out that this is not possible since the Pemberley interiors and exteriors were filmed in separate locations.
  • You think of time in terms of the number of Pride and Prejudice episodes you could watch in that amount of time. For example: "I’ll see you in four episodes" = "I’ll see you in four hours."
  • You have pets and stuffed toys named Lizzy and Darcy.
  • You name your first two children Lizzy and Darcy.
  • Right after you splurged and bought the P&P video boxed set, you made two copies of it. The original videotapes are now in your display case (along with all your other precious objects and silverware), one copy is at your relative's house in case of a fire, and the third copy is for your daily viewing.
  • Others refuse to watch P&P with you because they find your habit of reciting the whole movie in unison with the actors annoying.
  • Even though you have never lived in Britain, you now regularly speak with a British accent.
  • You find yourself often saying that you are "excessively diverted", "quite put out" or "most seriously displeased".
  • You dance along with Lizzy and Darcy every time you watch the Netherfield Ball scene.
  • You have played the whole movie in slow motion to prolong the ecstasy of watching the movie. (Unfortunately, the music and the sound doesn't work on slow motion so you don't do this very often.)
  • You commonly use the "frame-by-frame" advance function on your VCR so that you don't miss any miniscule detail of your favourite scenes.
  • Upon discovering that some characters wear their costumes more than once in different parts of the movie, you were inspired to draw up a large table in order to search for possible correlations between the costume worn and the mood of the character.
  • You have drawn maps and layout plans of the rooms and the buildings in the movie.
  • You special ordered a CD so you can listen to "Mr. Beveridge's Maggot" (over and over again) even when not watching the Netherfield Ball scene (eg. in the car, on the bus, while washing dishes, on the airplane, while taking a walk, while going for a jog, while vacuuming the house, while painting a fence....)
  • You own two copies of Pride and Prejudice - one for the bedside, and one for downstairs reading.
  • You own three copies of The Making of Pride and Prejudice - one for the bedside, one for downstairs reading, and an extra copy in case either of them gets lost.
  • You giggle whenever you see Mrs. Bennet or Mr. Collins, before they even open their mouths.
  • You find yourself constantly quoting your favorite lines from P&P and you feel sorry for your family and friends when they give you confused looks since they have only watched P&P once (horrors!) and can't recall the lines.
  • You start thinking of excuses to wear muslin dresses in the Regency style so you can look like Lizzy and Jane.
  • You spent the past five months researching Regency fashions so that the "Netherfield Ball" dress that you will be wearing to the next formal occasion is historically accurate.
  • You no longer need an excuse to wear Regency style clothing - you now wear it everyday as your own personal fashion statement and as a indication of your progressive sense of style!
  • Your family and friends put a limit on when and where you can talk about P&P because, unbelievably, they are just so sick of it. (For example, Tuesdays and Thursdays are designated P&P-free days.)
  • The above happens and you resort to saying lines that you hope they won't notice are from the movie (such as: "no, no, the green one.")
  • You searched everywhere for a script of the movie and finally wrote your own (by studying each scene in detail) when you couldn't find one. With your new script in hand, you often recruit all your friends and force them to be a part of your P&P play while you simultaneously star as Lizzy (or Darcy) and direct it so that it matches the movie exactly.
  • You have a complete list of all the differences between the book and the movie.
  • Your list of differences is cross-referenced to the script of the movie that you wrote earlier.
  • Every time you open "The Making of P&P" book, you immediately have to start watching the videos all over again!
  • Saturday night finds you and your best friend putting your hair in buns and curling your bangs into ringlets in an attempt to imitate Regency hairstyles.
  • You start referring to your ex and his new ditzy girlfriend as Wickham and Lydia.
  • You realize everyone in your life fits a character in P&P, and you start desperately asking your "Colonel Fitzwilliam" if he has any cousins.
  • When your friend declares a dislike for P&P, you seriously consider and re-evaluate the basis of your friendship.
  • You have written your own stories to conclude the lives of the other characters in the movie.
  • You are very proud of your most recent story, called P&P: The Next Generation.
  • You tape a picture of Lizzy (or Darcy) to your ceiling so it's the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning.
  • You download pictures of the movie from the internet to put in picture frames in your living room.
  • As an excuse to watch P&P more often, you contact every friend and acquaintance you can think of and offer to loan them the P&P tapes (the backup ones, of course) with the understanding that you need to be there for the viewing.
  • You can relate to most or all of the signs mentioned above!

No, I am not so obsessed!

8 comments:

kali marie said...

You know, I have never seen 'Pride and Predjudice'! If it's really that good, I might just have to find some time for it!

guardian said...

Thats just disturbing. Jacob and I need a list of those for a real movie, Braveheart.

kali marie said...

Or what about Lord of the Rings? :) That's much better than Braveheart.

Laura said...

Y'all can just come up with a list for your "real" movies! I think P&P is a perfectly good movie for a girl, and for real men (like my father).

That was just something I found a while back, and we all had a good laugh over it! None of us here relate to even most of them (though perhaps to some).

guardian said...

I'm sure its fine for likers of the genre, of which group I am not.

I knew the list did not apply to you, I was teasing.

By the way, Kaliste, no offense, but you haven't ever seen Braveheart, so how can you say for sure its worse than LOTR?

kali marie said...

Because nothing can be better than Lord of the Rings!

Claire B. said...

Dearest Kaliste,
Your last comment proved even more that you truly do need to see P&P! Darling! How could you be so long in understanding that Pride and Prejudice is the best movie yet!

Dearest Sister,
I confess that I do relate to some of the above list. But, really, I haven't sung along with the backround music in a long time(only because we haven't watched P&P in a long time)! Though, I will say I have sung it or tried to play it without the movie going.
#9 of the list only sometimes describes me. Lately it's been more Veggietales songs and quotes (LOL).

kali marie said...

Alright, well maybe P&P can be second best! :)