Time Out Of Mind

From high school softball team to adult beer drinking team, boring stories of glory days and all. Boyfriends acceptable.

My extended softball family at home. Parked next to the buffet and within easy reach of the champagne at Ai Wei's wedding.

Chi chick ball -- we bowl, too.

Sometimes we build human pyramids after a day-long tourney.

I watched "Se7en" when I was 18 in a theater in Sydney, Australia, when I was traveling without the authority of parents or school for the first time in my life. MP, Zoe and I spent four weeks with my uncle Robert, who lives there, and there was a great sense of liberation, not only because we got to do things we never have done before, like visit a strip club and drink liberally, but because at that time, I believed I saw the best movie ever made.

Of course "Seven" isn't the best movie ever made, but it's one of the best. Without blockbuster effects and any of the mainstream attractions like a cute, sassy kid in glasses too big for his face, it was a perfect modern film made in the old-fashioned way: strong, intelligent narration, solid performances, and mise-en-scene that often spoke louder and gave away more than the screenplay. As much about the film's morality tale, characters and conflicts were revealed in the setting, lighting and imagery -- if you knew where and how to look. Often, what you didn't see spoke as much about the story -- this was something Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock would have been proud of, less Lucas and Spielberg, more Capra and Hawks. Thus began my love affair for a guy who went from directing Madonna music videos to getting away with imitating -- no, paying tribute -- to the "North by Northwest" opening sequence in his fifth film, "Panic Room." No one criticized that bold, slightly egoistical, all-making-his-mark-on-celluloid flash of inspiration. Everyone knew that if Hitch was still making movies today, they would look like a David Fincher film.

Fincher is a whiz at details, and much like Welles, he's updated many modern techniques and created a few of his own. Rather than solving a technical conundrum with CGI, special effects or a solution procuded from Industrial Light & Magic, he works on camera angles and visual trickery. If you know how Hitchcock filmed the scene in which detective Milton Arbogast dies in "Psycho," you'll know what I mean. And what an eye -- freeze frame any of Fincher's movies, and each is a great photo image in itself, so richly he plays with colors, shades and scene structures. And the chills he sends through your anatomy with thrills -- this guy grabs your heart, wrenches it into the bottom of your gut, then sends it flying into the galaxy on a fuel-injected rocket before letting it all crash down into the center of the earth. Watch the basement scene in "Zodiac" and you'll understand (watching that for the first time and burrowed deep into my seat at the Webster theater, I still had to smile at the archetypal Fincher suspense moment).

I just saw "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," the film I had been most anticipating this Oscar season. It's Fincher's first major Oscar coup, although I can't understand why "Se7en" didn't get more accolades. I probably carried too many expectations into this one, because while I appreciate everything brilliant about the movie, I just didn't like it that much. The only other Fincher film I am not a big fan of is "Fight Club," for the same reasons -- great concepts, themes that make your brain tick and creative wizardry -- but they both feel unnervingly overwrought in ennui, in terms of the former, and in "Ben Button," it just felt like too much of a sprawling epic. Still, Fincher is a visual artist, so he manipulates time, innovates existence and creates life as your own very mise-en-scene. You fill it with the people and things and emotions you want, you put them in their rightful places, but others on the set come by and mess it up sometimes. You call the shots as director, but sometimes a Christian Bale fucks it up, or maybe you're fortunate enough to be crossed with the grace of a Clint Eastwood. It got me thinking about time and -- some people call it kismet -- but I call it karma.

You see, it's like this. I set out on a path and the road sign said to join the Brownies when I was in primary four (fourth grade). I went down to school on a Saturday, and had the most fun snapping the other girls' training bras. One of them snapped, she went crying to the teacher, and I was told never to return to the Brownies. Then I took a wrong turn to the right and decided to check out the orchestra, but when I showed up the following Saturday, practice was off and I didn't know. I got back to the crossroads and realized I'd sold my soul to the wrong guy -- I wanted it to go to the highest bidder with the booze. So, the next week at school, a scenic route opened up when our literature teacher, Miss Eunice Choo, announced that she was recruiting for the softball team and anyone interested should come try out. You know the rest of this story. But if I hadn't tried out and fallen in love with the sport, I would never have played it through high school and have a group of beer buddies home in Singapore. I would never have joined the Singapore Recreational Club and met some of the best people I know today, or learned how to play mahjong. Then I never would have played catch with LP in college and be as honored as to be a part of her wedding this summer. Then I never would have worked as a umpire for Sportsmonster after college (the worst league in Chicago, let it be said) and then recruited to play on the Usual Suspects, where I met Mari, Sonny and Mario and then got recruited to Team Mojo where I met Sas, Urs and Joe, and, and... ya know, playing ball three to four times a week became as much of my life as the same street you bike down everyday.

Not to simplify things, but I think a significant part of my life would be so different if I had been a good girl and held hands and sang songs during Brownies instead of letting my fingers wander behind other people's backs. I would not have completed marathons and triathlons (because goddamn it, that's the rage among my softball chicks right now). I would not be as privileged or have the audacity as to claim two different hometowns. I would not be a Cubs fan and my heart would still be full of wonder and hope. All it took was a ball of yarn, 108 stitches, 22 ounces of aluminium and a heart on the sleeve. And, a place in time that you claim as your very own because you called the right shot, just like Babe Ruth did in our ballpark in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series.