Guilty Pathos

[raybear]

Taken from thirdreel. Like for real -- this is an original entry of his that I snipped up and stole.

"Sometimes people ask me about my "guilty pleasures" in entertainment, and I'm always a little unsure how to answer. I mean, I have pleasures highbrow and lowbrow, and I don't really feel embarrassed about any of them. .... However, I have realized the opposite side: I am sometimes embarrassed to admit when I get a little choked up. Some things make me inexplicably misty-eyed, and it's hard to come out in the open with it. It's guilty pathos, is what it is.

That's why I ask for some solidarity. If you click the cut, please share at least one guilty pathos of your own. Hopefully yours will be more cringeworthy or bizarre than mine."

I have no problem admitting to many things that make me cry -- The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, even Medium. Movies get me a lot too. But I still have maybe 10% of things that I am embarassed about. I revealed this first one in Drew's journal, but I've added a few new ones too. And like him, if you're reading this list, I would like you comment and tell me what your "guilty pathos" is. And don't say some isht like "Terms of Endearment" or whatever that millions of people have cried to and its totally acceptable. I want the awkward, deep, uncool, real stuff!!


Guilty Pathos

- The Prince of Tides (the movie) (in contrast, I also cry during movies like Yentl or The Way We Were, but those are good movies. The Prince of Tides is kinda painful, but I will dig out my used vhs copy on occasion and pop it in and sob away.)

- the episode of Oprah last month where she reunited all these organ donor recipients with the family members of the dead organ donors. oh man, that killed me. tears were streaming down.

- Cher's "Song for the Lonely" (and yes, when I sang this at karaoke recently, there was a moment where my voice broke and it was not my lack of singing capabilities)

- the episode of Lost this season that was all about Juliet. I watched it alone on the computer at home and I can't tell you a damn thing about it now, but I remember I cried a lot. [This is a borderline answer, because Lost isn't a bad show, but its also not one that usually has people weeping either.]

- the Oscars. (that was for you, anjibobanji!)

- any Wimbledon montage

....and perhaps the deepest, wrongest, and my most embarassing of them all:
"An American Trilogy" by Elvis Presley.

Comments

[mintwaster.livejournal.com]

To go off "The Oscars"....Gwyneth Paltrow's speech for Shakespeare in Love. I was bawling. It was a career low for me.

[flitterkitten.livejournal.com]

Little house on the prairie reruns and all holiday hall mark commercials.

[gender-euphoric.livejournal.com]

i recently saw alien resurrection and that made me get a little teary for a few seconds. i really don't even know why.

frankly, snakes on a plane did too.
eta: the golden girls theme. most simon and garfunkel songs.

perhaps i'm not very in touch with my emotions.

[mintwaster.livejournal.com]

Any movie trailer with a violin soundtrack.

[thirdreel.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, movie trailers so often do it for me. Strangely, I totally forget what movie they're for and don't really plan to see the movie, but something about the trailers gets me weepy.

[ex-fish.livejournal.com]

uhm, this isn't really for entertainment, but during orientation at Wal-Mart, at the end, as part of the cultish ritual, you listen to a CD that is honestly 25 minutes of customer stories and one of them, about a woman who's house burned down, made me choke up... and I had to hide it from the rest of the people in orientation.

[mintwaster.livejournal.com]

That reminds me that at my job, during orientation, they also played a video, a reel of the commercials we've produced and I got severely choked up during a budweiser commercial. Like my chest started to hurt and I got an actual lump in my throat and possibly a tear or two formed. And there were only three other people in the room and the commercial didnt' have the same effect on them, so I had to look away and think of something else.

why I never fully get the hipster cred

[crafting-change.livejournal.com]

there... might be .. a pink song (written by the indigo girls no less) that is anti-war that chokes me up....

[anjibobanji.livejournal.com]

Yesterday I cried at a mention of Harriet Tubman. I sobbed at Janet Jackson's If video when I first saw it. Also cried hard at a documentary about Mark Morris.

And, famously, the 2008 Oscars!

[raybear.livejournal.com]

omg, the mention of the janet jackson video reminds me of many times i have inexplicably cried at some artistic production that i just found so amazing and/or exciting. like drag acts, dance pieces, or most any big group dance number in a musical, none of which were intending to pull at heart-strings at all.

i teared up during that Jay Smooth video i posted last week where he's reading MLK quotes.

[sinsense.livejournal.com]

Any triumphant sports movie ending ever, when Tilda Swinton won an Oscar, when a college-age kid looks scared but defiant, Fried Green Tomatoes, and Pollyanna. Yep, Pollyanna. I love that shit, at this point just the opening credits can do it to me.

[fuzzilla.livejournal.com]

No particular episode comes to mind, but I've often watched Oprah and thought "I could never do her job 'cuz I'd be bawling all over the place over this stuff..."

"Far From Heaven" had me bawling.

[cocolola.livejournal.com]

i cry during almost every episode of grey's anatomy. it gets me everytime, that cheezy tearjerker!!!!!! i also cried like a baby when steve carrell gave his acceptance speech for the golden globes a few years ago. NX kept saying, "coco, it is supposed to be a funny speech!" and it was, but it still made me cry. and i cry sometimes when i walk into a clothing store and the collection for the season is beautiful. i'm not crying b/c i can't afford it, i'm just crying because the clothes are so beautiful.

[unscrambled.livejournal.com]

Friday Night Lights!

And, the Wire, as relates to Bubbles.

[raybear.livejournal.com]

you are bad at this game. those don't count! they are good programs and its completely acceptable to cry during them.

c'mon, you know you've cried at CSI once.

this is unscrambled

[(Anonymous)]

That's probably true.

Teenage soap opera crying doesn't count as bad? I am bad at this.

[0595.livejournal.com]

I'm with you breaking down a little during Cher's "Song For The Lonely"

I get emotional sometimes over people's tax returns.

[redrider.livejournal.com]

there is an episode of nature that makes me cry every time i see it, it's about working dogs. also, there was a special about baby polar bears that made me cry, too.

the west wing makes me cry, especially episodes involving chief-of-staff leo mcgarry's past drug & alcohol abuse.

when abc's miracle workers was on the air, i totally cried (like big tears & snotty crying) during every episode & hated myself for it. the only reason i was watching it was to write a bad review of it, and still i crumbled in the face of sick and disabled people being "miraculously" healed on TV.

i cried a lot at the end of be kind, rewind.

and, for some reason i don't understand, civic parades with marching bands make me tear up, too.

[magdalene1.livejournal.com]

My So Called Life. Dude.

When they give Buffy the special award at the Prom.

[blondestallion.livejournal.com]

Bjork's 'all is full of love' video, where the robots kiss. yeah - that whole video makes me choked up. is that wrong?

and...sometimes that scene in the Incredibles when Mrs. Incredible and her kids (Dash & Violet) are on the plane and the missiles are coming in and she's screaming, "Abort! Abort! There are children on board" and then she grabs them and the plane explodes and they are falling towars the ocean...

yeah. a couple times that has brought tears to my eyes.

robots & cartoons. there might be something wrong w/me.