a fruit I dislike and why

I can’t think of one. Hold on a sec while I Google “list of fruits.”

Okay, I can safely say that I like all fruit I’ve ever tried. So this post will not be very exciting. Unless I change it to memorable fruit depictions in film. Let me Google that.

Can I just say that my plan was to cycle through a bunch of crazy fruit ideas, each of which would reach a dead end, so I could close this post with “I give up"? I was thinking that would be funny. But I underestimated my first crazy idea. OF COURSE there are bunches of fruit depictions in film! (Bunches. Tee hee. Snort.) Why wouldn’t there be? Heck, there’s a whole list with just apples!

There’s that warm apple pie in American Pie. There’s the poisoned apple in Snow White. And Hollywood loves to have cocky dudes chomp down on an apple while they’re saying something cocky. Did one of these guys just pop into your head? Malvoy in Harry Potter. Jack Sparrow (Captain Jack Sparrow) in Pirates of the Caribbean. Or James T. Kirk (as a young man) in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek? And how many hogs on a platter have you seen with apples in their mouths?

But what about the orange? In The Godfather, Marlon Brando has a piece of orange peel in his mouth as he chases his grandson around the garden, just before his demise. Apparently, the appearance of an orange is often a presage of impending death. The Godfather movies are littered with oranges. And other directors have paid homage to director Francis Ford Coppola by using oranges in their films, usually just prior to something awful happening: Requiem For a Dream; Point Break; and Children of Men. Even television directors use the orange=death/disaster trope. Breaking Bad; Big Love and The Wire. Even Family Guy gets the orange treatment. All I can say is if you’re watching a movie or TV and somebody breaks out an orange, hold on to your hats!

Other fruits are not as ubiquitous. Dates almost poison Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Arc. A banana is plugged into a car’s exhaust pipe in Beverly Hills Cop. Charles Bronson gets pretty darn mad when someone messes with his watermelons in Mr. Majestyc.

Even movie titles are full of fruit. Clockwork Orange. (That’s one of the few movies I wish I’d never seen. Aha! We found a fruit I don’t like!) Under the Cherry Moon. The Grapes of Wrath. Bananas. James and the Giant Peach. The Lemon Sisters. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Pineapple Express. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? The Apple Dumpling Gang.

Some of those were adapted from books. How about other fruity books? The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (Yesterday, a coworker at the library showed me a book entitled Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim, another classic being given a zombie twist. I suppose it was inevitable after the success of the Jane Austen zombie mashups.) Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café. (Towanda!!!!) A Raisin in the Sun. And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.

Well, I think that’s enough about fruit. Just remember this quote by I don’t know who: Knowledge is knowing that tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.