Happy Happy Joy Joy

July 3, 2009 | Comments (1) | Permalink

Last night we finally realized that we, who have no car, can actually just WALK to the movie theater which is technically in another city. It took 30 minutes! Big deal! I'm going to do it all the time, especially next year when I'm still just dissertating and the old man is taking a full course load and teaching. Boom!

We saw "The Hangover." It was funny, but not riotously so. A bit too needlessly hateful toward women and a bit too ready for the easy ethnic jokes, both of which honestly continue to surprise me, in this day and age. But: Zach Galifinakis is a brilliant professional genius who should win a Nobel Prize. Ed Helms conveys a surprising amount of pathos....I don't know why it's surprising, since Andy Bernard is such a tragic character, but there you go. Bradley Cooper, who I feel like is my "buddy" because I've been watching him in the janky Stella shorts and Wet Hot for so many years and who it surprises me beyond all measure to see on the cover of freaking VANITY FAIR, is so unbelievably foxy that I almost couldn't look at him. At once point I turned to my old man and said, "isn't Bradley Cooper so unbelievably foxy that you can't even believe it?" and he said "yes," so it's official. I kept thinking of him as a vampire, and I couldn't figure out why, until I finally realized I was thinking of the Stella short where he plays Satan ("He's a black-belt, David!").

But Zach Galifinakis. How can I live in a world where that man exists, and not love him? I have loved him for a long time, but it was amazing to see him stealing an entire feature-length film. I hope that man makes eleventy million dollars and becomes president. Thank God for putting me on this earth in time to see Zach Galifinakis in any format.

The movie made me think about the glut of "bachelor party gone horribly wrong" movies that are out there in the world. I wonder what they say about the anxieties of the mainstream American male? Scratch that--it's pretty obvious what they say about the anxieties of the mainstream American male. Basically, he just wants his mommy. Guys night out is scary. Who knows what a bunch of guys will do when no one's around to supervise them? Most likely, they will murder a prostitute, but there is also a wide range of other possibilities, from the most mundane (cheat on future wife) to the kookiest (accidentally take roofies and steal Mike Tyson's tiger). I'm sure I need not point out that there is not a similar glut of "bachelorette party gone horribly wrong" movies. Because ladies, as we all know, when they get together they just talk about their periods. And maybe exchange novelty penis-shaped gifts, such as bongs.

By Regarding @ 8:22 AM | Comments (1)

Personal Reward and Gratification

July 2, 2009 | Comments (0) | Permalink

My article was workshopped today in class. This is a harrowing experience under the best of circumstances, but it is made worse in this current instance by the fact that this is not a class in my own department, nor even at my own school, nor even in my own discipline, nor is anyone else IN the class in my own discipline. So, a bunch of strangers who have never heard of Berlioz workshopped my article because this is a class on narrative theory and we're all working somehow on narrative. It was really actually very helpful. It's always good to see which kinds of things that you take completely for granted are totally foreign (or debatable!) to outsiders. The lady who was my first responder did an amazing job and I am in awe of her genius. I'm now even more terrified of when I have to respond to HER paper.

But it's such a weird experience. It's terrifying, exhilarating, and totally deflating all at once. When it was over, I felt drained and shaky and disappointed and confused, my armpits soaked with sweat. Also I hadn't eaten yet today and I had had two cups of coffee. I was in bad shape, to say the least.

Whenever I feel this way, I go to the co-op and allow myself to buy whatever I want. So I went to the co-op and bought fancy wine, two boxes of crackers, the expensive vegan wieners we get for special occasions, two popsicles, and mineral water (a vice I am really trying to give up due to how ridiculous it is to waste so much fossil fuel shipping a stupid heavy glass bottle of water to me when my Brita does the job just fine (but is not carbonated, woe!), and which I sometimes rationalize by only buying domestic mineral water, which is totally stupid). And tonight I will make Andrew let me watch whatever I want (which is usually what happens anyway (see: "Seven")) and I will take a long-ass shower before bed.

Now I am happy(ier).

By Regarding @ 1:47 PM | Comments (0)

Lose The Name Of Action

July 2, 2009 | Comments (0) | Permalink

Washington Post op-ed advocates bombing Iran! WHAT A GOOD NEWSPAPER. Please tell me more about how poor people are too stupid to appreciate Bach!

Times like these, I swear.

Last night I lost a bet, and I was never so happy to lose a bet as I was to lose this one. My fiancée bet me I could fit all the leftovers into one tupperware, and I bet him I couldn't. Turns out I could. The bet? I had to take him out for dessert. We went to this town's only vegan restaurant, which is mediocre and overpriced but still nicer than most of the places in town. We got dessert--each his own, even, not just sharing a single one!--and I got a nice tempranillo and he got a nice strawberry wheat beer made locally. I got strawberry shortcake with cashew cream; he got lime-basil ice cream with amaretto sauce. I hate almond flavored things, so I did not enjoy his treat, but I will freely acknowledge that it was very classy. The shortcake was unbelievable. Furthermore, there was a man playing very smooth jazz guitar in the corner, and he even played some jazzy Led Zeppelin, or "jazzep." It was truly a smooth and classy evening, well worth my thirty bucks and my shame at not comprehending the dimensions of my own tupperware.

Then we came home and revisited David Fincher's "Se7en." This movie is famous to me because there was a time when it perfectly summed up my worldview, which I realize is completely shocking and abhorrent to admit. When it came out I saw it twice in the theater, bawling the entire time. I was like, OH GOD It's true! It's true what Kevin Spacey says about the world! I recorded a song based on Spacey's monologue in the back of the police car, for example. This fact is obviously extremely embarrassing to me now that I am older and presumably a bit more measured in my intense, hysterical judgmentalism about my fellow humans. Also now that I realize that Spacey's morality was based totally in the Bible, which somehow at the time kind of escaped me. In the interest of full disclosure, I told my old man about all this before we watched the movie, even bringing up the 30 page "manifesto" I wrote in college the thesis of which was my belief that every single thing any human has ever done is purely evil, and the central image of which was a description of people torturing an elephant to death, which I had just read about in the newspaper. As Ingmar Bergman is a real honest-to-god atheist, my adolescent self was 100% misanthrope, just a good old fashioned misanthropic son of a bitch.

Obviously watching the movie was embarrassing. From the opening titles (apparently praised at the time for being a tribute to Stan Brakhage, which is very pretentious and stupid if you re-watch them with this in mind) set to a remix of "Closer to God" by Nine Inch Nails (edgy!) to the moody/broody greens and grays and constant pouring rain the set the movie's tone, to Brad Pitt's truly terrible performance, to the movie's totally confusing moral message, to Kevin Spacey's weirdly-fey portrayal of "John Doe: Vigilante for the Lord," to the somewhat garbled tying-together of loose ends at the movie's conclusion (what exactly was Gwyneth Paltrow's sin? And it's not exactly fair, is it, that Kevin Spacey MADE Brad Pit into 'wrath,' is it?), the movie was, to say the least, not as deeply impacting as I remembered it being when I was 19.

What a hateful view of humanity! What a dark and spiteful message! What kind of sick pervert wrote that screenplay, and why did David Fincher direct it? Hilarious that the same man who made "Seven" would go on to make, thirteen years later, the repulsively bright and sparkling "Benjamin Button and his Descent into Alzheimers as a Baby," with its message that all you need is a positive attitude and everyone will love you so much and your life will just be so wonderful and full of adventure and we all learned a little something and O the beauty of the world, also black people are so musical and wise! Furthermore, "Seven" doesn't even make any sense! And is elitist! I grew so hot and ashamed of my earlier self. Why did I hate people so much? My parents are full of love and joie de vivre, as is my brother. Where did my spiteful, Old-Testament-God-style hatred of mankind come from? And how did I shed it?

Even watching "Seven" with "Fight Club" in mind was depressing. Fight Club is a thousand times the movie Seven is. Poor old Seven.

Good parts about Seven:
- awesome use of Bach, in the library where Morgan Freeman is photocopying Dante and stuff
- that one joke where the police chief picks up the phone and goes "this is not even my desk!" and slams it down
- the part at the end where the delivery guy goes, "Some guy paid me five hundred bucks to deliver this package!" which became a huge joke in my friend group for a long time and which I had forgotten about
- the part where Wise Black Man Morgan Freeman tells Gwyneth Paltrow to get an abortion

By Regarding @ 9:42 AM | Comments (0)