True confessions: I bawled like a baby at the end of Titanic.

I'm often shocked at how easily I slip into tears, or at least choking up, at movies, and even dumb TV. Every once in awhile I suspect it's to do with losing my mom young, but that just seems so pat.

I don't remember if I was like this in HS.

Count me in for #1. I lost it at "Gentlemen, it has been a pleasure playing with you tonight."

I devoured Pat Conroy novels in high school until a camp counselor convinced me they were "high-class trash."

Whenever I cry at movies, it's almost guaranteed that I'll have my period the day after. Opera, I'll cry any time.

Whenever I cry at movies, it's almost guaranteed that I'll have my period the day after.

Is it weird that you always get your period the Monday after Thanksgiving*?

* They usually show It's a Wonderful Life** the Sunday after Turkey Day.

** Shut up, B.

Certain kinds of loudness in movies make me cry inconsolably, especially if loudness is followed by softness, and then loudness again later. Like, I can't stop crying, can't see, can't talk, for hours. It's only happened a few times, and I'm a bit better at sensing it coming and concentrating on something else.

especially if loudness is followed by softness, and then loudness again later

Wow, when I was about 7, there was a priest who used this dynamic in his sermons - not quite hellfire and brimstone, but very theatrical, and I remember bursting into tears over it.

It's funny, because I like it when the Pixies do it.

Put me in the tears-up-at-everything camp. Like episodes of Roseanne, long-distance phone company commercials, whatever. But I've never broken down into real sobs from a movie, I don't think. That would be really intense.

That would be really intense.

Especially when, between sobs, you're gasping to yourself, "And I think this movie kinda sucks, this is bullshit!" Um, yeah.

especially if loudness is followed by softness, and then loudness again later

I know you're an eighteenth-centuryist, but that bit of Burke's Enquiry really doesn't make any sense.

1) I teared up about Beutler today. I cry or choke up easily.

2) Duvall is not a violent man, probably doesn't understand it, and I always felt he was putting it on in Santini. DeNiro was great in Raging Bull, but not so good in the movie with DeCaprio. There is always an element of playacting, playing a part, in violence as in most other human activities We can more completely lose complete control in a fight than in bed...or retain control while letting the rage of intimacy work itself out. When you can, you turn pro. This is too long. The beating of Joe Pesci in Raging Bull.

3) Alcohol sucks. Good for nothing.

4) The clip was very dark. Was that a black man as a victim of violence at the beginning? Very interesting. Who are you Stanley, and do you live in DC?

I was very surprised to find myself crying in the museum at Manzanar after I rounded a turn and was confronted with a wall with the names of everyone who'd been imprisoned there.

Part of the museum's exhibit consisted of newspaper clippings from the early 1900s up to not long after the bombing of Pearl Harbor; one of them was a light-hearted column from after the bombing by a man (McHenry, maybe?) professing confusion as to why we let these Japs wander about free which could easily have been written by Lileks.

Was that a black man as a victim of violence at the beginning?

Yes. After moving to the South, Santini's son befriends a local black kid who's kind of an outcast for his stutter and social awkwardness. The son goes to defend him against some bullies, against his dad's wishes. (Spoilers; sorry.)

Who are you Stanley, and do you live in DC?

I'm not sure how to answer that first part, but I do not live in DC.

I've never broken down into real sobs from a movie, I don't think. That would be really intense.

All the time. The Lives of Others. Knocked Up One of the last times I spent in a theatre was the second time thru Paris Texas. Everybody stared at me.

Movies aren't a social activity for me. If I can't relax, well, it ain't the fuck about the person sitting next to me, anymore than a book. I cry with books, also.

13:Never mind, it doesn't matter.

I think I remember crying at that scene the first time I saw it, too, Stanley. I was pretty young at the time, but I remember having this weird cathartic thing about the possibilities of kids convincing their parents that they really are bullies and they really have to stop hurting their families. I don't think the abusive parent ever confronts the effects of abuse like he does in the movie, though. That "My God, what have I done!" moment never comes.

Totally off-topic, but I French-braided my hair today for the first time in my life. It looks stupid, but what a good idea! My hair is not annoying and sweaty! And I have pigtails!

Nice work, Bear!

2: I'm often shocked at how easily I slip into tears, or at least choking up, at movies, and even dumb TV.

Yes. But I choke up at really great folk life festivals of a certain sort -- the fest in DC -- or at plays, or at children's performances at the local schools.

I tear up pretty often, believe it or not, but more often ate really stupid stuff. If I could arrange to tear up at really good stuff, I'd tell you what it was.

I did not tear up at The Titanic. I ridiculed the movie throughout, not knowing that the person with whom I was watching the movie, a body builder and leather boy, was mentally ill, very sentimental, and filled with anger.

I compared the interminable ending to shuffleboard. I suggested a sequel: "Eaten by Crabs". I as lucky to escape with my life.

I'm not that much of a movie-crier, but any even remotely good live music will make me cry. It's kind of embarrassing.

Mostly I think I just weep for the fact that I basically gave up on music very long ago (relative to the length of my life thus far) and will likely never seriously take it up again. I know, I know, I can do it if I want to. But sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and accept reality, you know?

||

God help me, but I posted a comment at Yggles'. Now some asshole is bugging me, but at least it got me off my ass and led to a post at my maybe-not-moribund blog.

But jeebus, do they suck over there.

|>

It sometimes doesn't even have to be live if it's on a good stereo. The first time I listened to In Rainbows comes to mind.

any even remotely good live music will make me cry

Either you've told us that before, or you have a partner-in-tears here somewhere.

I'm in the process of (re)reading the Harry Potter books to my older boy. And even the second time through, I cry during all of the emotional scenes. My son, who's about to turn six, usually puts up with me. But sometimes he asks, "Daddy, why are you crying?" And I explain that I'm setting a good example. Of course, when Hedwig died, he was inconsolable. And I was a rock. Fucking owl had it coming.

Duvall played mean or evil for much of the early part of his career. I had forgotten things like the the heavy in True Grit. I'll have to think about this.

I probably went thru 5-10 years of shit like this as a kid, although rarely physically violent it was vicious & cruel in every other way. Dad was a pro-level boxer, a constant cheater spending the grocery money on his girlfriends...but never a drinker. Just a hard & cruel man.

But jeebus, do they suck over there.

I'd rather live the rest of my days trapped in the comments section at R/edstate than spend another hour with the trolls who frequent Yglesias's comments.

I compared the interminable ending to shuffleboard.

You heartless bastard, that's actually quite funny.

I broke down sobbing while reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. My 6-year old son was quite concerned, and ran down the hall to the bathroom to get me some Kleenex. What a profoundly and gratuitously manipulative book. I deeply resent the author for making me cry.

25 and previous: I am very glad to hear people saying these things. For lo, I have heard that crying is a bad thing, that it suggests excessive sentimentality or some such, and no room for outdated notions of strong emotion in our age of steel. Deprecated, is what they say. But I tell you what, that is an alien place.

Tears and glory go hand in hand at times. I doubt that applies to the film Stanley referred to, or to Harry Potter (I don't know it), but live music?

27: The frustrating thing is that the thread as a whole was fine - or I wouldn't have bothered leaving my first comment - and the guy wasn't being an utter troll. He's just an ignorant dick, and proud of it.

Gah.

22, 27: While I don't go there often, my "stronger than dirt" argumentation tactics are a necessary resource when I do wander by Yggy's place, or Drum's.

Heidi.

Fucking Heidi* got to me last Sunday morning. I think I held up through the first scene - in which you see Heidi's parents killed by a falling tree - but I was hair-trigger for the rest.

And stupid Peter Pan** the night before. "I'm all grown up, Peter." Damn you, Wendy.

* 1993 version, with Jason Robards

** Live, with Cathy "Born in '52" Rigby. Unbelievable.

or to Harry Potter (I don't know it)

I think this is the new "I don't even own a television."

I think it's closer to "I admit never hearing any songs by those mop-tops, but you'll forgive me for preferring good old Rachmaninoff".

Pat Conroy books rip me up. I love them, but man they rip me up.

I think I held up through the first scene - in which you see Heidi's parents killed by a falling tree -

What?! Heidi's parents were killed by a falling tree? I must have read that book at least ten times, and I completely missed this. Wait. You do mean the Heidi Heidi, and not some other Heidi like, oh, I dunno, Heidi Fleiss...?

The death of Matthew Cuthbert in Anne of Green Gables. So sad.

I have told the stories before, I broke down sobbing over the Wittgenstein Tractatus and that famous opening paragraph of Kierkegaard's. I doubt anyone can top that. James Ambassadors. Name it.

Mostly I cry at beauty, love, joy. I don't grieve or suffer well. The thing about Beutler today was about his friends.

33, 34: Think so? Should l read them? I can just pretend. Or is it a question of cultural literacy.

I think I broke down at the exact same point in Titanic as Wrongshore. The end of Apur Sansar destroys me. I'm actually afraid to watch it now that I'm a father myself.

I cried at the dénouement of the "Fleur discovers unfogged" story.

30: Agreed. That commenter in particular is so very, very annoying.

Genghis cried when his family's loyal supporter was murdered by an enemy clan. feact. He talked to him as he was dying.

He never cried again. They lived to rue the day.

I almost cried during Wall-E.

I almost cried during comment 43.

I sort of liked the steaming up the glass part of "Titianic", but come on, guys.

When did he become "Yggles" or "Yggy" as opposed to the claerly correct "saiselgY"?

46: Dude. Since it's all snuggly.

When did he become "Yggles" or "Yggy" as opposed to the claerly correct "saiselgY"?

When his arrival was announced with the famous message "The Yggles has landed"

40: Who among us did not shed a tear at the heartwarming conclusion to that dramatic episode?

Sausagely. We refer to him on his site according to his real name or a nickname derived therefrom, but when he comments here, or when he was being referred to as a flesh and blood person, we used euphemisms. Others include "the trust fund kid", "the Dalton boy", etc.

I think PK has seen me cry once, and he was totally freaked because "Mama, you never cry!"

Which isn't strictly true; I do cry, a little, at the ends of some kinds of movies and books. I'm trying to think of which ones and what the trigger is. I think that in movies it's much the same trigger as in real life: someone (irl, me) having to express deep feeling, especially if it contains both regret/apology and love. The Iron Giant made me cry, I know. I think the farmer dancing scene in Babe did too, at least the first time (and maybe since then).

The end of Apur Sansar destroys me.

Dude. I was just now looking for some previous thread in which I confessed to the same (and I believe you did too). Good God, just thinking about that scene chokes me up.

Since other, braver people spoke up to share my shame, I can find the courage to admit that #1 was me.

Also, The Dancing Cats of Applesap made me cry like fountain when I was about seven. My parents were baffled, since I basically never cried as a child.

Movies I have cried at:

- The Little Mermaid (fear)
- Spanking the Monkey (self-pity)
- A Prairie Home Companion (my grandparents will die soon and I will miss them)

I think that's it.

I don't know if I've ever cried in other situations except in self-pity. Except when my grandfather died. And when my fiancee's cat died.

Just this week, I cried at The Last Picture Show. Not when the kid gets killed, but when Cloris Leachman goes apeshit with the coffee maker. Good God, I have longed for the opportunity to do that.

I nearly broke down when I saw this part of the memorial at Dachau. And although I rarely cry at movies, I was in tears by the end of Sunshine (the one with Ralph Fiennes, not the one with Cillian Murphy).

55: The very scene!

Some tapped colleague showed up in comments here years ago and passed on the Yggles nickname.

51: You don't cry when you're simply deeply moved?

No need to answer that. I think I didn't used to, but started to at some point. At a Folk Life festival in DC a number of years ago, at several performances by people reproducing, at one point, slavery-era slap-dancing (?) -- a slapping of hands on knees and elbows and so on -- and later at some other group performance, likely including a cappella harmonies. That's the first time I found myself tearing up involuntarily, just witnessing.

Rhythm seems to move me.

58: And we all wept with delight. Tell the whole story washy. It's okay.

I don't cry.

But if I did, it would be a single, ever so manly tear. Artfully cross-lit with a pan-zoom.

Or maybe blood.

Pan zoom? Real men cry with a rack focus and jump cuts, with the single tear being the first hint of color in an otherwise black and white world.

I see I'm at cross-purposes with comments regarding atrocities. And with the movie-related ones. I do apologize.

The last one I remember doing this at was a neighborhood showing of "The Game Plan." You know, starring "The Rock." Worse still, when it was over and I was noticeably red and puffy, and one of the moms goes, "Oh, that must have been really tough. You know, because of [decrease volume] your situation." Gah. My "situation," per 4, was mostly impending menstruation. But, okay. Also, I cry at the drop of a hat in the past few years. My therapist assures me this is healthy.

As for crying at Titanic, close, i guess. Based entirely on drinking a 48 ounce soda at the beginning and then, wow, all that water, for like another 90 minutes when you were sure it was nearly at an end.

Hey, Stanley! Good post!

Thanks, parsimon!

The Dachau image in 56 makes me think "what an unfortunate choice of typeface." I must be inhuman.

On the other hand, I seem to tear up more easily all the time. Probably because I spend a lot more time being completely exhausted than I used to.

I annoyingly find myself welling up at one of the most predictable tropes in movies. The bike race in Breaking Away is the prototypical example, sometimes I think I must have a doppelgänger employed by the movie industry as a "victory over odds" scene tester.

However, Titanic was the exact opposite, holy shit, it took all I (and my wife) could do to keep me from shouting out Marco! during the floating scene when we saw it in the theater.

As I've mentioned before, it doesn't take much to make me cry, but the absolute number one trigger is immigrants. Sometimes, I'm not kidding at all, I simply happen to think of the title The Last Letter Home and I start tearing up. I rarely cry watching weepies though. Like, what's sad about All That Heaven Allows? The main thing I was sad about was that the two ungrateful kids didn't get a smack in the mouth when they were being so evil to their mother. Melodrama infuriates me.

I'm pretty sure we had a what-movie-scene-makes-you-cry thread before, but I'll say it again: Randy Quaid sacrificing himself to take out the alien mothership in Independence Day (starting at 8:45 here) gets me every time:

"Do me a favor. Tell my children I love them very much." And then off into oblivion, saving the world in the process.

The thing that pissed me off about the Titanic was the fine lady falling in love with the starving artist part. Everything after that would have been ruined because of that, though it didn't need it because it was auto-ruined anyway by the shuffleboard scene.

I wanted to shout: "No! Rose DeWitt! Don't marry Jack! That's a sentimental cliche! The Imaginary! It never works out! Look what happened to Jenny Marx! Marry the shitty rich guy and get a good settlement! Live in the real world!"

The dumbest thing about Titanic (and that's saying a lot) is that if Rose had got her ass on the damn lifeboat like Jack told her to, there would have been room for Jack on that piece of flotsam at the end and he would have lived. Instead, she insisted on making a show of sticking with Jack to the end, but then hogging the driftwood for herself after the boat sank, leaving Jack to freeze to death in the ocean. How nice of her.

Of course, dumb movies can still make you cry. Like in Independence Day, after Randy Quaid destroys the mothership, it should have fallen onto the US military base below it, killing everyone inside. Instead, it somehow falls way,way off on the horizon, despite the fact that it was directly over the base when it was about to fire its main weapon.

I laughed throughout Titanic, but I regret that the movie's corpulent three and a half hours exhausted me by the time I got to Dicaprio's inevitable drowning scene. I'd really wanted to summon up a big belly laugh, but all I could manage at that point was a chuckle.

I didn't know about Brian Beutler until I read Bob's comment in 11. Damn, that kind of shit freaks me out. Beutler is one of the better ones, too.

I very often completely suspend disbelief in movies. It's good because I can end up enjoying movies other people find crappy, even if I do well up in situations that are objectively silly. On the other hand, I absolutely cannot go to horror movies.

Rhythm seems to move me.

Me too, but in an embarrassingly idosyncratic way. Poetry makes me cry - not so much because it's really emotionally affecting, but literally something about reading poetry with a strong singsongy rhythm brings tears close to the surface, and then if there's anything even a little sentimental, I tear up. To make it clear how weird this is, Kipling's poetry works really well: it's honestly just some weird reaction to the meter.

The final episode of Angel Specifically the "would you like me to lie to you now" scene always makes me cry.

I'm amazed at how many of you have actually watched Titanic. It came on TV a couple of times, and I couldn't sit through it. And I'm willing to watch a lot of crap that just happens to be on TV.

For me it was an inadvertent social occasion resulting from borrowing a tool from a neighbor who turned out to be dangerously mentally ill. I was lucky to escape with my life; the guy eventually left town to avoid prosecution. In general, "Titanic"-lovers should be assumed to be homicidal or assaultive.

But jeebus, do they suck over there.

Karma has chosen to give Yglesias the snottiest commenters on the internet.

79: In my defense, I never would've seen it if I hadn't thought it was going to bomb.

Drum's used to be just as bad. So did Crooked Timber's. Political moderation plus unmoderated comment threads inevitably bring that about. Drum and CT seem to be moderating now.

"Prosecution for something else" I should have said, not for assaulting me.

Political moderation plus unmoderated comment threads inevitably bring that about.

This is what I mean by "karma."

I cried at the dénouement of the "Fleur discovers unfogged" story.

This comment made me laugh out loud.

I am a big sap when it comes to movies. I get tears in my eyes easily at movies or even just when talking about my kids. (Like gb, Independence Day made me cry.)

I can land do isten to heartbreak, misery, pain, betrayal, death, cruelty all day long with no problem.

But, ask me about my kids, and I get misty.

Oh, Loudon Wainwright's songs Daughter and the Swimming Song make me cry too. So does Bob Dylan's song, If Not For You.

I used to be a stoic, but after having had a child, I am now a crying fool. Almost anything will set me off. I initially thought this was just post-pregnancy hormones, but since the child in question in 3yo, I think I will just have to accept that I will cry for almost any reason now--case in point, an episode of the Golden Girls that reminded me of Stella Dallas. Also, the song "You are my sunshine," various country music songs, vaguely sad movies (Out of Africa, AI, anything that involves a child or animal in peril), pretty much anything.

I cried at the dénouement of the "Fleur discovers unfogged" story.

I cried throughout that one, friends.

The only two times I can remember crying in a movie theater (as an adult, that is; I might have shed a tear during The Fox and the Hound or something) were: (1) the village massacre scene in Platoon where a marine crushes the skull of an innocent villager with the butt of his rifle; and (2) the scene in Stalingrad where the young Wehrmacht private watches another German soldier crush the skull of a Russian P.O.W. with the butt of his rifle. I conclude from this that I am utterly unsentimental about cinematic depictions of love and loss, but terrible sensitive to cinematic depictions of gratuitous physical cruelty.

Note to self: crush no skulls in Knecht's presence, lest he embarrass the assembly with gratuitous emo.

I used to be a stoic, but after having had a child, I am now a crying fool.

Just wait till the child reaches school age and you find yourself tearing up at the school music performance. "[sniff] They can read music already... Look, little munchkin is playing the xylophone..." I suspect it continues for the rest of their little munchkin lives.

I expect a pretty emotional day when my daughter graduates from college this year. "Little Munchkin" lasts a long while.

Lost love combined with having to suck it up and go on with life is what gets me. I cried on the plane when I first read Brokeback Mountain in the New Yorker, and then went to see the movie by myself in the front row so I wouldn't feel the need to hold back, and cried like a maniac. I mean, the guy was still sitting alone in his trailer sniffing the shirt all those years later, and it was his own damn fault. Come on.
Also, lost innocence of youth. Mock if you like, but I did get misty during the dancing-plastic-bag scene in American Beauty.
And then there's lost love PLUS lost innocence of youth; I could hardly talk an hour after the wintery beach scene at the end of Presque Rien.

Last night I had a little lost-innocence-of-youth, nostalgia-for-a-time-gone-by cry listening to Joao Gilberto while I cleaned the kitchen, and during one well-known song, he drops out, and you can hear the whole audience singing along.

Oh, Jesus, graduations. If I ever make it through all the flaming hoops to an academic position, I'm going to have to find a way to skip the graduation ceremonies, lest they become an annual exercise in humiliation. It's the granddads in coat and tie right there next to the little brothers running around in their little clip-ons that really get to me.

I mean, the guy was still sitting alone in his trailer sniffing the shirt all those years later, and it was his own damn fault. Come on.

This scene made me cry, too, though I otherwise really kind of hated that movie. It is also the scene that prompted UNG to announce that he could really relate to that character and wondered if that meant he was gay. At least I think that's the scene that prompted the comment.

Of course, sometimes kids themselves are not so sentimental. Among my brood, a favorite line is a sarcastic "Gee thanks, Dad"*, which one of them apparently blurted out after Randy Quaid's son was informed that his father had died a hero (scene description from them, I don't recall it myself).

Anything associated with the kids moving on in their lives can choke me up. For some reason I associate this Gary Jules video of "Mad World" (most folks probably know it from Donnie Darko) with my daughter leaving for college and it gets me every time.

*And of course I continually provide them setups for their use of this line.

As I've aged, I tear up more easily. There are episodes of The Simpsons that'll get to me now.

kind of hated that movie

Blaspheme not.

I don't know who UNG is, but if he's a straight man in your life who couldn't tell the difference between the experience of empathy and being gay, well that's completely adorable/hilarious in a way that I get to enjoy because he's not MY boyfriend.

Also, it has me wondering how I can arrange to watch more sad movies with hot straight guys, who might need some help working through their feelings afterward.

93 -- One of the more public displays of emotion I've attended in my adult life was swearing in to the Montana Bar. You get individually moved in by a member, in front of the full Supreme Court. The federal judge in Helena stepped up to move for the admission of his daughter. He started to cry. The justices -- everyone's known each other professionally for years, if not decades -- started to cry. Those of us waiting to be sworn started to cry. Family members started to cry.

Then the very next one was another father moving in his daughter.

No mothers moved anyone in my year, but I suppose it will become more common. Now there's something to look forward to, Elbee and Di.

Also, it has me wondering how I can arrange to watch more sad Frank Miller movies with hot straight guys, who might need some help working through their feelings afterward.

Oh, I've got one. Menfolk of Unfogged: how long could you watch your father cry before the tears would start for you? Measure the latency in milliseconds.

98: Just about every Fourth of July the newscasts show a segment about immigrants taking the oath of citizenship in a simple, but festive ceremony.

I always get kind of choked up when I watch those. And not just because I always think "every last one of them is statistically seven tenths of a Democrat."

How long could you watch your father cry before the tears would start for you? Measure the latency in milliseconds.

That's a good question, but alas purely hypothetical in my case.

For that matter, I think I've only seen my mother cry once in my life, which is fully half as often as I have heard her swear (one "damn", one "hell").

It is odd how it happens sometimes.

I read the Gettysburg Address with my son the other day and felt my voice crack a bit.

I also agree with Napi. Some of the swearing in ceremonies are touching. Heck, I've often felt the need to cry in court. Mostly, after the judge's rulings.

101 -- I got an email earlier this week from a former client, who'd just become a citizen. In the same courthouse in which I'd won her asylum case 10 or 12 years ago. I'd tell you all more about the price she paid for participation in Togo's pro-democracy movement -- and for declining an invitation to become a special friend of the President for Life -- but I'm afraid it would reduce the men around here to a blubbering mass.

Buck up guys, our nation in one person the richer.

I agree with 102.1. British stiff-upper-lip training is in full effect in my father, so I'm pretty sure I've never seen a tear and may well never see one.

As for 102.2, it seems to come from a mysterious land several decades in the past. My mother called Bush a fuck-up just last week.

Mostly, after the judge's rulings.

What, you're waiting for a denial?

I don't think I've ever seen my father even close to tears. I think seeing him cry would terrify me.

I laughed throughout Titanic

One must have a heart of stone, etc., etc. I can't watch The Fellowship of the Ring without tearing up at some point. Partly, it's the melancholy nature of the story; partly, the strong associations I have between that movie and the fall of 2001.

But one night not long ago I was surprised when I started crying at the MASH episode where only the feverish Klinger can see the ghost of a dead soldier who's wandering around the camp.

I don't think I've ever seen my father even close to tears. I think seeing him cry would terrify me.

I only saw my father cry once, at his father's casket, and he broke down in such wracking sobs that I ran out of the room. That memory still scares me a little.

cerebrocrat--UNG is Ugly Naked Guy, Di's ex-husband, with whom she was forced to share a house during their long drawn-out divorce proceedings.

My father broke down after watching About a Boy. It was scary to watch. I didn't think that a comedy could be so overwhelming, but the suicidally depressed hippy mother reminded him too much of his own mother who was in no way a hippy, but did spend huge chunks of his childhood very depressed.

My father may have cried at his father's funeral, but since he worked really hard at discouraging any of us kids from coming, I didn't see it. ("Oh, it's not going to be very fun, a lot of unpleasant business, really, and it costs so durn much, and no, I don't see any reason to fly up, and oh gosh, it's gotta be 30 below up there nowabouts, no reason to fly into that.")

101, 104: I just got an e-mail from a friend who did voter registration at one of the mass-naturalization ceremonies this week and said she was getting all choked up as people checked off the "Yes, I am a US citizen" box on the forms. Yay America!

(And contra KR, when I've done voter registration for new citizens it's always been 40/30/30 Dem/Repub/Independent split. Even right before the primary when you explain to people that they can't vote in the primary as in independent, they still register that way.)

I conclude from this that I am utterly unsentimental about cinematic depictions of love and loss, but terrible sensitive to cinematic depictions of gratuitous physical cruelty crushing skulls with the butt of a rifle.

Let's not overgeneralize wildly here, KR!

Will, I forget, are you admitted to the S. Ct.? If not, come up when they're back, and I'll move you. They give you a script, so it's kind of like being a Shakespearean actor (or more like Orson Welles weatherman routine from Laugh-In) to add emotion.

97: Hilarious, yes. Adorable, no. He had/has a genuine problem with empathy, so I suppose there is hope to be found for him in the fact that he did, in that scene, in fact experience some, however disorientingly unfamiliar an experience that was for him.

As for the rest of your comment, I'd gladly give you his number. He's not quite as hot as he thinks he is, but he's not actually half bad looking -- if you don't know anything about his personality, that is.

Thanks Napi. I havent yet. I almost did before my dad's case, but didnt for some reason.

Wow, I guess my dads (father & stepfather) are big weepy girlies compared to the other stony patriarchs around here. Actually, that's not really true. I've never seen my father cry once ever, but when I left after nursing him through bypass recover, I heard his voice crack when he thanked me for coming, and I was so stunned that I was all the way to the airport before I had a spontaneous 30-second blubber.

My stepfather was always a big manly-man, so it was seeing him get red-eyed at a friend's funeral when I was a teenager that actually made me think of my question; I was not close to the dead guy, but just seeing my stepdad get teary turned the faucet on for me. I was a misanthropic, utterly unsentimental little shit as a teenager, so my tears were kind of a surprise, too. As he's gotten older, my stepdad has gotten quite sentimental and cries at least once per holiday visit, which always kind of wrings me out.

109: Oh dear, sorry Di. That's what I get for not keeping up with the comments for so long. If it's not too late, I'd like to retract the "adorable" from my comment, add a derisive tone to my "hilarious," and allow myself to enjoy the image only because he's neither my boyfriend nor your problem any longer. Also, "Ugly Naked Guy" is an awesome nickname for an ex. I have a friend who's been sharing an apartment with an ex for something like 3 years now (rent control makes people do crazy things). The friend was the dumpee, the ex is an unrepentant slut, and let's just say the psychological repercussions have not been healthy. My sympathies for your trials, in other words.

My dad wept pretty freely at his dad's funeral. I keep wanting to say there was some other time, like after dropping a bag of hammers on his toe or something, but I don't remember it. He's one of those obnoxiously repressed people.

For the first time in awhile, I choked up at Iris Dement's "Our Town" this morning - while cutting the grass, of all things.

The first time I ever heard that song, I was lying in bed on a Saturday morning, all innocent. Then comes this utterly devastating song on the radio. It's a miracle I ever got up again.

yes. Our Town is another one of those bad, bad songs.

I cried at the dénouement of the "Fleur discovers unfogged" story.

This comment made me laugh out loud.

Of course, Will also teared up when it turned out that Fleur was keeping Knecht, but that was purely professional.

There is the old personal injury lawyer conversation:

Client: I was in a horrible accident!

Lawyer: Really!!! {excitedly}

Client: Fortunately, I wasnt hurt badly.

Lawyer: Awww, that is too bad.

One time, I was at the gym on the elliptical and Angela Desveaux's version of "Wanderin' Eyes" came on and I started bawling. Couldn't stop. It came during one of those periods when I was dating Max and everything seemed really easy for a while, but I was sort of miserable anyway.

contra KR, when I've done voter registration for new citizens it's always been 40/30/30 Dem/Repub/Independent split.

My bad for the imprecise wording. What I meant was "seven tenths of a vote for the Democrats in national elections", which, excepting lower rates of voter turnout, is approximately the case IIRC.

116 -- Maybe we can get Di to come, and it'll be a party.

If the three of us, and Elbee too, started a law firm under our real names, you know what the abbreviation would be? SWPL.

My dad made it one sentence into his eulogy for my mom before losing it utterly (and that sentence was a little joke). In a made-for-TV cross-generational moment, I stepped up and ad-libbed a eulogy that was, IMHO, quite good - although of course I only recall the first couple sentences.

I don't think that was the first time I saw him cry, but it wasn't often. Mostly what I remember is when his dad died and he was somber but practical, scheduling his flight and so forth.

I don't think Iris has yet learned to recognize when I choke up - the reunion of Penelope and Odysseus does it to me every time. The reunion of Mei and Satsuki, too.

The reunion of Penelope and Odysseus does it to me every time.

Whereas Knecht would be impassive, no skulls being crushed during the massacre.

125: That would be awesome. Both the swearing-in meet-up idea and the Unfogged Law Firm.

117.3: Retroactive edits hereby recognized. My sympathies to your friend -- three years would, almost without a doubt, have killed me. Rent control is one thing, but I have got to think you friend is going to wind up spending every penny this is saving him/her on rent on future therapy bills.

The reunion of Penelope and Odysseus does it to me every time.

I fall apart in Book VI of the Iliad, when Hector and Andromache are saying their farewells, and Hector -- forgetting he is wearing his helmet --goes to pick up little Astyanax. The baby bursts into tears and his parents laugh. Fucking kills me. I choke up reading it aloud in class.

(Oh, and of course the Marseillaise scene in Casablanca, but everything makes me cry. I am crying reading about what makes all of you cry.)

Among other times, I have cried when when they shot Two-Socks; when remembering Jim Henson; when listening to a priest defend Catholicism from bishops pushing the "no communion for liberals" bullshit; and when listening to Casimir Pulaski Day.

Donnie Darko tapped into the exact mix of power fantasies and invisibility I felt in middle school. I gave in during the final montage.

OT: There are workers renovating the apartment adjacent to mine in the next building. (There's a shared wall and then a six-foot span between the parallel kitchens.) Not only does this mean I'm listening to hammering and sawing from 8am to 6pm, but the guys spend ALL DAY screaming and whistling at each other. Well, one guy whistles tunelessly at the top of his breath and the other screams "MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW!" etc.

I am currently working at home, and have a very narrow window in which to write my dissertation. Ought I take it for granted that no one is allowed to work at home and go take up unproductive residence at a coffeeshop? Should I call 311 and put in a noise complaint? Should I just wear earplugs?

WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE WHO SCREAM IN TINY APARTMENT BUILDINGS ALL DAY? Between them and the guy whose girlfriend screams at him till 4am every night, not a lot of sleep or work is getting done.

I am a huge, huge sucker for moving moments in movies, books, music, poems, oh god, anything.

(That said, guys, Independence Day and American Beauty? I guess my capacity for irritation is even more powerful than my capacity for sap, after all!)

I remember crying at the cemetery epilogue of Saving Private Ryan. Pathetic, I know.

133: I'm not quite smart enough to hate things like American Beauty in real time, so it's not a problem.

Whoa... I don't think I've cried for a couple years. Back in high school/college it was the usual suspects: going through a rough breakup, carrying the casket of a close friend, hearing that Flava Flav is going to be on a reality show, etc.

In the past few years, I really just haven't gotten the urge, except once, when I was going through the 2nd breakup with a girl I really loved and had dated for 4 years (non-continuously. we were trying the distance thing and it was just not working). Went down to the beach near my place on an abandoned night with The Wrens song "Boy You Won't" playing, and really worked up a good dose of self-pity. I could feel it welling up inside, and I was just about to have a great cathartic breakthrough, when I noticed a frolicking happy couple just about 40 yards up the beach from me out of the corner of my eye. No problem, just a small distraction. In fact, I can use this! Yes! This will make my heartache all the more poignant! So I looked back, and they were humping on the beach.

No way I could cry when the universe was being that fucking funny, so I just switched songs to something happy and went home.

Fleur has something to say here.

Well, one guy whistles tunelessly at the top of his breath and the other screams "MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW!" etc.

This is what involuntary commitment is for.

AB used to work across the hall from a woman who would "tunelessly hum" all day. I never quite understood what that meant - thank god.

132: Do you have a good friend who would let you take over a desk or kitchen table at their place? Just give you the keys and let you make a little office?

I also cry when the farmer dances in Babe. I cry when Maria returns to the Von Trapp home and is reunited with the children. One image I can't get out of my head that makes me cry/cringe is the scene in Saving Private Ryan, where the German soldier whispers soothingly to the American soldier as he lays on top of him, slowly stabbing him to death.

I was so afraid that Harry Potter would die in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, that I burst into tears when I opened the book for the first time.

I cried at the end of the book, when his friends are there to fight alongside him. Aw man.

136 is funny, PoMo. I love how misery can turn absurd. It's the best way I know of dealing with it when it's unbearable.

139: I have a couple of people whose places I could go to. I guess I'm reluctant because at home I can wear scant clothing and have access to my library. But I suppose you're right. Working at home is not a renter's God-given right.

I fall apart in Book VI of the Iliad, when Hector and Andromache are saying their farewells

Priam's pleas for Hector's body always does it for me.

142.2: I'm sure good friends would be okay with you wearing scant clothing at their kitchen table, too.

Come over, AWB! We can nekkid dissertate together!

(Webcam access requires a credit card up front.)

144, 145: Unfogged: where even the straight women want AWB naked.

My dad only cries when he talks about Jesus, and that only once a year, usually.

I cry easily at movies (Titanic, even though I hated it; Brokeback left me dehydrated). But what really gets me are inspiring sports stories. Someone overcoming cancer or a bad childhood or whatever and then winning the 110m hurdles. I watch the Olympics for the cheap catharsis.

Yeah, seriously on the sports moments. Like that guy who's quad popped in the Olympics sprint, and his dad came down to help him limp to the finish line.

Webcam access requires a credit card up front

Jeez, I pony up for a VIP subscription to oudemiacam.com and you throw up another paywall to see the nekkid dissertating? This is a ripoff. Just see if I ever participate in "Live Naughty Chat About Latin Poetry" again!

I cry at everything. Books especially, though those tears are pleasantly self-indulgent (on preview, same thing as Bave's "cheap catharsis"). It's much more difficult to control my tears since I gave up smoking - that's the one thing I really miss.

My father cried pretty freely in his lifetime, more often for happiness than sorrow. We're a weepy, hugging family.

149: Fine, KR. No Golden Ass for you!

We're a weepy, hugging family

But you're Irish, so that's kind of obligatory, right?

I watched my dad cry at his second wife's nervous breakdown and script drug overdose. It was a horrible small-business bankruptcy in a middling size town, losing both their pensions in their late 50s. Worse than bankruptcy, dad the salesman politician charmer took half the town down with him, like the municipal officials who had overlooked five years of unpaid electric bills and property taxes.

If I had the art or motivation, I could write some kind of novel. There were the three pretty 20-something daughters of dad's 2nd family:eldest cold, middle dependent, youngest rebellious. I was living with them, but nobody shared with me and I was busy reading Finnegan's Wake and Chaucer and smoking sense. So there was a lot of mysterious screaming and crying; oblique comments ("You know your dad is irresponsible, don't you" "Uhh, ok?"); friends and neighbours looking sad & angry at lives destroyed but not saying anything. My dad was looking back at his life, remembering his deceased mother a lot.

But for me, they could all have been speaking Urdu. I was useless and harmless and the least of their concerns. Weird, a regression to watching the slow motion divorce of my childhood, not understanding anything and not really wanting to.

145: Seriously, we could quit teaching altogether. I'll just be over here leafing through The Human Condition in my short-shorts.

The house got auctioned off and they moved into an apartment. Dad became a bartender and stepmom returned to grocery checkout. Losing 50 pounds in two years, dad died of a heart attack at 54.

Awwwww.....

154: Hey and I'm reading "The Ilioupersis at Athens" in a tank top and underwear. Hit our paypal button if you want oudemia and AWB* to switch books.

*our real names work better!

156: Could you, like, maybe read the same book at the same time? And one of you could slowly translate into English, while the other diagrams the sentences? Oh God, is this making me hot.

w-lfs-n, buddy, you can stop trying to hack the paywall. I'm getting it all on MPEG. Oudemia, can you turn the lights up a little? I'm having trouble making out the highlighted portions of the text

oudemia's tease is just a trojan horse. Once we pay, we are going to find out that she is wearing long underwear. It is a trick from the woman whose favorite story is about women withholding sex.

148: I made it through that part, but when they shot him I started bawling.

Napi:

Oh, so you get to use your last name, but we have to use first names??

The things I tear up are only the most shamelessly manipulative ones (well, not "The Titanic"), which is why I don't talk about it. Especially involving little kids. I also will sometimes tear up reading children's stories to my nieces and nephews.

This is an obsolete cliche, but I do sympathize with Holden Caulfield's wish that kids would never grow up.

Way up at 77, LB, who is probably not still around:

Rhythm seems to move me.

Me too, but in an embarrassingly idosyncratic way.

You should go to a drumming festival, if they have those sorts of things in New York. Not that it makes one to cry, but the rhythm deep in your bones is stilling.*

Returning you now to the webcam.

*Since Ben's absent, I can slaughter my grammar any which way.

You should go to a drumming festival, if they have those sorts of things in New York.

So often the sublimity gets lost, daily in my park.

The first time I found myself in a NYC drum circle was on Brighton Beach at sunset, where there was a group dancing and singing and drumming in memory of the Africans who died aboard slave ships. It was pretty moving.

That sounds amazing, White Bear.

You are America's Greatest Living Hippie, parsimon.

The first movie I remember crying at was the end of Old Yeller when I was a kid. I was shocked that a movie could have that kind of power over me. The people who made that movie are worse than Hitler.

But you're Irish, so that's kind of obligatory, right?

Even then we're on the sentimental end of the local range. (Hmm, sounds like a geographical or climate feature. "And to the south-west, you can see how the prevailing storms of emotion shed tears on these slopes during both lows and highs". I can practically see the charts with the the isoniobes, or something. )

166: I try not to lose my touch. But in fact I'm one of the straightest people in the room when among hippies. Comes from hanging out with you all.

i usually don't cry watching movies, but i remember crying when i read The gadfly when the cardinal meets his son for the first time in the dungeon and still couldn't save him and when i read the biography of Richard Zorge from the JZL series books, when his wife was also executed in the siberian gulag shortly after his execution, so so tragic, they both were destined to perish on the both sides of history
also i remember i cried watching the swimming competition during the last Olympics, the swimmer from one Afrikan country swam all alone being the last one to finish, cried not from pity from something else i couldn't describe maybe human spirit

I have never cried. What do tears feel like? I imagine it's like blowing your nose.

171: Is that a challenge, Brock?

Be careful if you do eventually cry, Brock, to have a tin can of oil nearby. Tears can rust your joints.

Priam's pleas for Hector's body always does it for me.

Me too.

Bob's 153 is making me sad and makes a whole lot of things make sense.

during the last Olympics, the swimmer from one Afrikan country swam all alone being the last one to finish, cried not from pity from something else i couldn't describe maybe human spirit

O lord, do you remember Mary Decker Tabb (sp?)?

I want triumph and spectacle in my Olympics, not human frailty and pathos!

also i remember i cried watching the swimming competition during the last Olympics, the swimmer from one Afrikan country swam all alone being the last one to finish, cried not from pity from something else i couldn't describe maybe human spirit

Eric Moussambani, subject of the worst government ever

I can see how Equatorial Guinea would be a little embarrassed in that situation. You have to have a lot of national spunk to accept your place as the little nation that fails with heart.

Last summer I was told a lot of Teo/do/ro Ob/ia/ng gossip by someone very recently in his employ. Golly!

He just learned to swim a few months before! Jesus, EG, show some love.

You know, stories like that are the only part of the olympics worth the bother.

You know, stories like that are the only part of the olympics worth the bother.

Also, front-runners who did drugs to be harder/better/faster/stronger.

Whoops, catching up. How the fuck can you not think The Great Santini is a great fucking movie? Jebus.

P.S. I cry at all sorts of shit in movies (including the Great Santini). I cried when Sam Waterston read the Gettsyburg Address in Ken Burns' Civil War, for god's sake.

Ooh, ooh, I've got another one: When Forrest Gump and Jenny rush to meet each other in the water in the middle of the mall in Washington DC, as everyone watches them.

@ 20
John Emerson, I rarely believe anything you say [though I accept you have no teeth] but you do make me laugh.

I cry more as I get older. I fall for all the cheap tricks. I don't think I actually cried during Forrest Gump, but I do remember feeling resentful about how my heartstrings ached from all the abuse.

148: Like that guy who's quad popped in the Olympics sprint, and his dad came down to help him limp to the finish line.

Absolutely right, oh righteous one. In fact I had a brief fullness in the throat just thinking about it after reading your comment .... and then I found the video. I challenge Brock to watch that and remain dry-eyed.

187: Good God. I'm a mess. Does NSFW also mean "Will make you embarrassingly teary?" Not that I'm at work.

watch that and remain dry-eyed

Tear-inducing effect partially counteracted by the wtf?-factor of dad's "Have you hugged your foot today?" t-shirt.

How the fuck can you not think The Great Santini is a great fucking movie?

In my defense, I watched it very late. I may have missed the greatness. It seemed sort of tired, but I've seen lots of Cold War movies, and this seemed a bit too steeped in all those tropes. It may have been the bias of hindsight. That is, in its day, I imagine it was more compelling than what I see it for watching it now.

I don't know, I have always been vaguely disappointed with Conroy. He just doesn't observe closely enough, or think hard enough, or add enough art to his stuff to be more than a middlebrow sentimental tv-movie level writer. Like Stuart Woods or Nelson Demille. Okay reads, but no more than that.

I think bob and I are going to get along. And then the whole blog will break. Sweet.

In movies, it's heroic deaths, or people taking a brave stand, all that best-of-humanity shit, always brings a lump to my throat, sometimes a tear or two. Stupid shit, even. Lando Calrissian saying "we've got to give Han more time!" near the end of Return of the Jedi? Lump.

I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but I saw Dancer In The Dark the weekend after 9/11, had no emotional defenses left, and cried like a little bitch at the end of it.

183: ZOMG. I sob at the reading of pretty much any of the foundational documents of this great republic of ours.
(USA! USA!)

and cried like a little bitch at the end of it.

You know, w-lfs-n's on hiatus* right now, so maybe you should just leave him out of it.

*I almost wrote "on a hiatus" so that it would be hiatus!

189: the wtf?-factor of dad's "Have you hugged your foot today?" t-shirt.

Close observation is the enemy of the sentimental.

re: 187

Derek Redmond.

Each year on July 4th, the Boston Globe runs the Declaration of Independence in lieu of editorials. Every year I read it I get choked up before the end of the 1st paragraph.

The National Archives in Kew has two copies of the first printing done by Dunlap on the 4th. One is in the Colonial Office's records and the other is in the Admiralty's files. So I guess it was delivered to the Crown.

I cry at the drop of a hat, though weeping during commercials usually requires PMS.

You know what really kills me, though? The montages they show during the Super Bowl of previous victories and other tear-jerking stuff. That, and the Tim McGraw song "Don't take the girl." Emotionally manipulative as all-get-out.