Monday's Poetry: "The Square Root of Three"

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

This week's selection falls under the general heading of cult poetry. It was featured in the movie Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo, which is easily the second best Harold and Kumar movie ever made. There is a scene near the end of the movie where Kumar (Kal Penn) is breaking up his ex-girlfriend's wedding (a la Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate and Bruce Willis in Blind Date), when the bride suddenly turns to him and complains that he never does anything spontaneous, or lame, or whatever. Kumar immediately rises to the challenge and begins stepping over furniture while reciting this poem - a poem that he was supposedly writing the day they first met in the university library, just minutes before they had sex in the university library. How sweet is that?

The Square Root of Three
by David Feinberg

I'm sure that I will always be
A lonely number like root three

The three is all that's good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath the vicious square root sign,
I wish instead I were a nine

For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic

I know I'll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality

When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of three

As quietly co-waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds
With the wave of magic wands

Our square root signs become unglued
Your love for me has been renewed

Kumar's recitation of this poem is the high point of the movie. He never misses a beat or a syllable as he climbs over furniture and steadily closes the distance between himself and his lady love. It is a very touching scene, one that even surpasses the bong-smoking incident in the airplane restroom, and the duo's inadvertent parachuting into George Bush's Crawford ranch house.

They just don't write movies like that anymore! And the poem ain't bad either!

Another Road Movie

Road movies have been a staple in the Hollywood plot formulary since Bob and Bing perfected the concept in the 1940's and 1950's. Two guys travelling to exotic locales and having comic misadventures along the way. Films like The Road to Morocco, The Road to Zanzibar, and The Road to Bali were funny and easy to enjoy. And, they were films that the whole family could watch.

And then there was Ishtar...

This weekend I watched the 21st century version of a road movie: Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo. The movie begins on the morning after the conclusion of their last cinematic adventure, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. In the first film the boys, righteously stoned, spend the entire night driving around New Jersey trying to get to a White Castle while encountering all kinds of obstacles to their quest: a college party, having their car stolen by Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Houser), going to jail, breaking out of jail, and hang gliding. Harold is also suffering from an unrequited love for a beautiful girl who lives in their apartment building. As the film ends, she is flying off to Amsterdam for three weeks.

The second movie begins the next day with Harold and Kumar preparing to follow their neighbor to Amsterdam. Unfortunately, they are pegged as terrorists during the flight, given a summary butt-chewing by a room full of Homeland Security types, and shipped off to Guantanamo where they manage to promptly escape. The remainder of the film focuses on their trek across the southern United States in search of a person who can "fix" their situation with the government. They again encounter Neil Patrick Harris who leads them into misadventures in a Texas whorehouse, and they manage to stay stoned for the majority of the film.

This, of course, isn't a film for children or uptight adults. But for anyone who ever wondered what it would be like to sit around the ranch at Crawford and smoke weed with the President (and who hasn't?), this movie, like the first, is a lot of fun!

Young at Heart

Every now and then when I get to feeling down, or worse yet, old, something will come along to lift my spirits. Tonight, after slogging away at retyping another installment of my old genealogy column - featured on my other blog - I plopped down in front of the television to veg awhile. And there, as if ordered from some cosmic menu for spiritual rejuvenation, was a double dose of Jay and Silent Bob: Dogma and Clerks II! I am revived and made well! (Just in time, too, because Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo opens in theatres this weekend.) You're only as old as the movies you watch!

Speaking of Harold and Kumar, there is a petition on the Internet to bring a White Castle to Phoenix. There are only eleven signatures. I tried to sign, but couldn't get it to accept me. But I remain serene and smiling, though, because I am headed to the movies this weekend!

Bring on that mind-numbing typing!