A Bowl of Stupid

I find it fairly ironic, given my personal situation (abandoning the relatively quiet confines of my life as an attorney in Miami in favor of a vision quest to the South Pacific), that one of my favorite movies has been playing virtually nonstop on HBO ever since I got here to Phoenix — Joe Versus The Volcano.

If you’re not familiar with it, the movie is an existential comedy classic starring Tom Hanks, probably one of the best comedies ever after Groundhog Day.

As per Wikipedia:

Joe Banks (Tom Hanks) is a downtrodden everyman who finds no joy in his existence. Upon learning that he is chronically ill with a “brain cloud”, Joe is visited by an industrialist who offers him the opportunity to “live like a king, die like a man.” He will pay for whatever Joe wants, as long as he throws himself into a volcano afterwards. With nothing to lose, Joe agrees.

According to people close to the writer/director, John Patrick Shanley, the story is based on a near death experience Shanley had and is his attempt to describe and explain the altered outlook on life he adopted as a result.

Although I’ve not gone through a near death experience (well, not in the past few months, at least), I have obviously had something of an epiphany with respect to the time we all spend on Earth — it is definitely, definitely, definitely not meant to be spent behind a fucking desk shuffling paper.

Admittedly, I personally didn’t like the movie when I saw it in my early 20′s.

Indeed, I didn’t quite get it at the time, despite the fact that I already had questions about the validity of being a lifelong desk-jocky (which probably explains why I spent a year working on fishing and crabbing boats in Alaska between college and law school — yeah, I know, I’ll write about that later).

This is a compilation of some of the scenes of Joe at sea, on his way to the island of Waponi Wu to jump into the volcano. Strangely enough, they sorta resemble some scenes from his later film, Cast Away (another Hanks great).

Good shit, my friends. Good shit.

P.S. TK, even though I’m dead to you, I hope you feel better, bud.

P.P.S. If I find an island in Indo named Waponi Wu, or if I see anyone resembling Abe Vigoda, I’m on the next flight back to the States.