Sneaking into AMC 30 and Fake Confidence

I walked up to the usher and flashed a ticket stub I'd found on the ground outside the theater.

“You want back in?” He asked.

“I just had a smoke,” Then I coughed, for effect. I figured they were really only looking for nervous teenagers and as long as I feigned confidence he'd never suspect me. I’ve been faking confidence for 20yrs now so this was an easy role. It worked.

Speaking of great acting, I stumbled into Doubt w/ Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. As the film started a baby in the next row starts crying. Holy Shit. You bring your 5-month-old kid to see a film about Catholic priests raping boys? You suck at life and I want to punch you. Do you also hire Michael Jackson to baby-sit?

Luckily the mom picked up the child and left. Not 5 mins later and this dickhole’s cell phone goes off to the tune of “The Macarena”. Now I haven’t heard “The Macarena” in like 7 yrs but it’s just as annoying now as in it’s heyday. Before I could even get out a, “Hey dickhole”, “DICKHOLE!” or even a “Stupid dickhole” 3 other people were already scolding this poor guy. He certainly deserved it, the dickhole.

Next there was this crying baby who was concomitantly talking on his iPhone, but I won’t get into that. Overall Doubt is a very good film. I can see how it might piss off Catholics, though. But hey, you don’t hear about Rabbis playing “Hide the Salami” w/ their Hebrew School class. It would have to be Kosher Salami, too.

The performances from Hoffman and Streep were amazing. This was no surprise. What was surprising were the strong supporting roles played by Amy Adams and Viola Davis. Doubt has a cool ending and certainly challenges its audience.

As the 2nd act ended an usher, complete w/ his $5 uniform and mini-flashlight, approached me. I thought, “Well, it was good while it lasted,” and reached for my wallet.

“Sir, you can’t eat those here,” and he pointed toward my bag of dried fruit.

“I’m…” and I immediately thought I'd say I was diabetic but figured he’d ask to see an insulin syringe or something so what came out was: “I have hereditary beta-galactosidase deficiency and I get hypoglycemic.”

“What?” the puzzled kid asked me.

“Beta-galactosidase deficiency. Look, I can go buy some Sour Patch Kids or something...”

“No, it’s cool.” Was his response. Faking confidence is impt. There can be no doubt.

Welcome to Costco, I Love You

That is the line chanted by a mindless, obese greeter at a Costco superstore in the dystopian future as described by Mike Judge in the 2006 film Idiocracy. Judge has appreciated past success with Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill and Office Space. But I bet you didn’t see Office Space at your local AMC 30. You probably rented it yrs after it had been made, just like me. Maybe you saw it on Comedy Central one of the 4 times it’s aired daily. The reason for this is that Office Space was marketed by a group of morons and was a commercial failure at the BO. But the DVD and cable release has shown that this film is truly brilliant, and that critical reception is congruent with my praise.

Similar acclaim was given to Idiocracy. This movie is about the dumbing down of culture and proliferation of morons in society who do little more than procreate. The world of 2505 is shown as a mass commercialized sea of zombies and incompetents. A few of the more memorable lines involves the changing of Carl’s Jr slogan from "Don't Bother Me. I'm Eating." to "Fuck You! I'm Eating!”, handjobs offered at Starbucks and a gigantic Costco that has a law school in it.

Part of the message here is admittedly hackneyed: People on average are very stupid. Show me someone with an IQ of 100, and I’ll show you a stupid, uniformed person. Mass consumerism and neglect of art/culture creates a hollow and not very worthwhile existence. It’s impossible not to sound like a pessimist if one expounds these viewpoints. They also happen to be true. I think that’s what really killed Idiocracy.

First, people don’t want to go to a movie that constantly reminds them of their own stupidity. Additionally the movie scolds people for being superficial, thoughtless puds. The problem there is that being a superficial, thoughtless pud is such a HUGE part of our culture now, so you’re only insulting your core audience here, Mr. Judge.

The second thing I can think is similar to the Office Space story. Just for Judge to get to that boardroom and sit down with the Hollywood execs he has to interact with a multitude of Idiocracy-like people. The Adam Brody character in Thank You for Smoking immediately comes to mind. The whole Hollywood system of screening audiences and test trailers is not tailored for a creative person like Judge. I bet he had to endure lectures from advertising “geniuses” 20 years his junior, and then have the expert at product placement at Fox Studios tell him that you can’t really make fun of a corporate sponsor. Especially when that corporate sponsor is owned by a larger, conglomerate monster corporation that will be paying for the film in the first place (again, 20th Century Fox).

The movie industry itself is filled with these Idiocrats and they continue to make movies for them. The same yr Idiocracy was finally released RV, Flyboys, Basic Instinct 2 and Date Movie were also sent to the theaters. I don’t think that Idiocracy was the best movie of 2006. But it certainly wasn’t the worst. And it definitely deserved better than what it got from Fox.

More Worthy of a Biopic than Biggie Smalls

Admittedly I’m not the hugest fan of rap music. I do dig some of the stuff from the 90’s when I was in high school and undergrad. Now there’s a new Biggie movie coming out called Notorious. I HAVE NOT seen this film and won’t review it here. But I couldn’t help but think that there are probably a lot of other interesting people more deserving of a biographical movie.

Note:If you were born in the last 100yrs and wear a crown not made at Burger King or as a part of a Halloween costume, you're probably a tool.

10.Lance Armstrong:The guy won 7 Tour de France races in a row. He banged Sheryl Crow, ½ of the Olsen twins and Kate Hudson. And he did all of this while being a one-nutted atheist. Makes you feel like a pussy, huh? Wait... did I just write, "Feel like pussy"?

9.Osama bin Laden:Villains are almost always more interesting than the protagonists. And if no one wants to do a straight up bio, they could always put him in some specialty “Gay Midget Bondage Clown” porn just to piss him off. He’s also a multi-millionaire 6’5 brown guy on dialysis w/ 24 siblings who lives in a fucking cave; which must be rare, right?

8.Roman Polanski:Survivor of the Nazi Holocaust. Oscar winning director. Wife and unborn child murdered by the Manson family. Exiled from the US for having sex w/ a 13 y/o girl. I would like to have just one of those things on my resume.

7.Scott Baio:For reasons yet made clear, Chachi has been able to slip it to:Pamela Anderson, Erika Eleniak, Denise Richards, Nicole Eggert, Heather Locklear, Beverly D’Angelo and countless Playboy playmates. He also slept w/ Jodie Foster and she's been eating at the "Y" ever since.

6.Doris Lessing:Nobel Prize winner for literature and author of some of the smartest books I’ve ever read. Rumor has it that she had a ménage w/ Watson and Crick of DNA fame (That's right! Look at her photo!! Look at it!!!). Her 2nd husband was murdered by Idi Amin in Uganda.

5.Einstein:On all of IMDB I couldn’t find a movie version of Albert that wasn’t played by Yahoo Serious. The guy completely changed science (and the world) and he can’t even get his own movie? This is why things like American Idol exist.

4.Jesse Jackson:I would love to make a Jesse Jackson movie that just shows 90 minutes of various animals squatting and then taking a shit. Parts of it could be slow motion or synched to some of his speeches and then cut to… a goat taking a shit. And then maybe a rhino taking a shit. You get the idea.

3.Kary Mullis:Nobel-prize winning scientist who developed PCR (bet you never heard of him). States that an alien in the form of a talking raccoon told him the initial concept of PCR. He is also heavily into hallucinogenic drugs and surfing. Oh, and he doesn’t believe that HIV causes AIDS.

2.Kurt Cobain:He seemed to have life by the balls and still he chose suicide. His was one of the strongest voices of a generation but he must've had his own demons. Turns out that life has some pretty serious sack, too.

And not to be outdone by Chachi…

1.My skee-ball sized Left testicle: Oh the places you have been, Lefty! To be a fly on the wall of your domicile (my pants) would provide enough material for at least a trilogy, and probably a tetralogy of movies. For more information regarding this selection, email me or inquire at the Venereal Disease and Research Laboratory wing of the CDC in Atlanta, GA.

Why I Like Depressing Movies

Everyone saw Dark Knight this summer. I saw it twice. It was pretty cool. I do enjoy these feel good movies with car chases and love triangles and the good guy gets the girl in the end... Ok, so Batman wasn’t exactly like that. Still it’s become a cliché to say that people like these movies b/c they provide an escape. This begs the question, an escape from what?

I’ll tell you, but please don’t take it personally. These “happy people” movies help you forget about your own miserable life and assuage the challenges of further contemplating the brutal realities of what it means to live in our society and time. It’s been pointed out, most notoriously by Kevin Smith, that The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars film for the very fact that it’s a series of down notes and that this sequence of events is so real and powerful that it captures life much better than the other movies.

It’s not popular to make such a statement but I’m not here to make friends or get your vote for the PTA. For a lot of people life is a never ending downer in the pursuit of happiness. One continuous losing streak, day after day after day. Working unsociable hours in a job you hate, getting so depressed even your friends hate you, having no love life, no one to comfort you or turn to, and waking up wishing that you hadn't. This is why Dark Knight will always be loved by more people than a biting discussion of nihilism set in a period piece (No Country For Old Men, my favorite movie last yr).

The other huge reason I have an affinity for this brand of cinema is that even if the movie makes you feel a little blue, at least it made you feel something. I watched Dark Knight, Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk this summer. Other than a temporary rise in testosterone, I felt nothing from all 3 of them. And those were actually decent movies. But if they don’t touch you, what’s the point? It’s kind of like having sex with someone who you don’t really like. It feels kind of good right when it happens, but it really doesn’t do anything meaningful for you. And in the long run, you’ll probably regret the experience (unless you sleep with me, of course).

And here is a short clip from the 1998 film Happiness, written and directed by Todd Solondz. They go a little overboard in the movie but it’s still really well done and the acting is remarkable at times.

SAT vocabulary time

What is a merkin? Betcha don’t know, despite your freakish SAT score. I didn’t know until a few months ago and even now I’m skeptical as to the accuracy of my knowledge. In short:a merkin a pubic prosthetic. It’s a toupee for your pubes. Why would someone need a wig for their pubes?

Harsh Chicago winters, perhaps?

First is the aesthetic purpose. In the past syphilis ran rampant throughout the Western world, much as it does on many college campuses today (check out my Nietzsche article if you don’t believe me). One of the supposed cures for syphilis was believed to be shaving off all of your pubes. For posterity’s sake the merkin was created to appease the self-conscious nature of the 17th century common day, syphilitic whore. Those marketing guys think of everything!

The other main use of the merkin was for theater and film. Period pieces have been particularly popular lately (There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men) and if there’s ever a scene that shows a character’s crotch a merkin can be used for full authenticity. For example a Hugh Hefner biopic is in the works for Hollywood. Much of Hef’s life and the development of Playboy took place in the 60’s and 70’s. I wasn’t alive for that time period but I don’t think it was routine for women to rim the hedges back then. Ergo, the merkin will help achieve a realness that would otherwise not be possible without extensive overgrowth. In a way it kind of cheating though. Like if De Niro had worn a fat suit in Raging Bull instead of gaining all that weight. And since we’re talking about the genuine article and striving for realness, I wonder what these merkins are made out of in the first place?