So, against the prescriptions of dr. common sense and dr. jeff my former roommate, i went to go see the punisher this afternoon. why would i do something like that, when i had perfectly good movies to watch at home or a perfectly good indians bullpen collapse to watch? well, i have the following. they’re not excuses, but they are explanations:
1. i was already downtown and i didn’t want to go see 13 going on 30. OK, so i did want to see that, but i didn’t want to deal with the emotional consequences of seeing that. plus the old guy in front of me in line bought a ticket for that and i didnt want to be in a theater with him.
2. thomas jane deserves love for playing todd parker in boogie nights
3. i don’t know, i like comic books or something. i don’t have to apologize to you for anything.
so anyway, i went to see it and it was terrible but i enjoyed it because i was having a stressful afternoon and i needed a goddamn break, alright? so, some notes on “the punisher”:
1. nice to see the fat guy from the last episode of seinfeld getting some work. actually, i’m not sure if it is nice.
2. the girl who isn;t naomi watts from mulholland drive: yesshshsshth.
3. also worth mentioning is the guy who gets his lip rings ripped off. one, this has already been done in a shitty terrible action movie with a similar plot (payback starring mel “i glove jesus” gibson). ANYWAY, i have a theory that this kid (who got his lip rings ripped off) played the best friend in big (which would, incidentally, mean he is also the lead singer in the strokes). (pause) so i looked it up on IMDB. he’s not the best friend from Big. the best friend from big has not been in a movie or TV show since 1996 apparently. shitballs. well, somebody back me up: this guy looks like the friend from Big. then imagine him bleeding all over the place and voila you have saved yourself the trouble of seeing at least ten minutes of the punisher.
4. rebecca romaine-lettuce has apparently fully transitioned from model to model-actress to actress. the actual ramifications of this appear to be that she was allowed to gain 8 pounds by her handlers.
summa summatum, i went to go see the punisher and my life has not changed one bit, except i got a free comic book with my ticket. that is all. please go away.
i don’t think you can fairly criticize a movie when you havent seen the first half of it, but life’s not fair, so Kill Bill 2 sort of sucked. I don’t have the same hate as an ibogaine-frenzied david denby, and nowhere near as much as moacir but uh, yeah, i would venture a guess that the first part probably sucked too but for different reasons? i don’t know. i don’t have anything particularly or even marginally nice to say, so, as peter rabbit or my mom or someone would like to say, i shouldn’t be talking about it, now should i. it’s not very illustrative to point out that people either love or hate quentin tarantino. i don’t really get it. he’s only made 4.25 movies, i think, and arguably two of them are OK. here comes the science:
Even if kill bill one is a hilarious actionpacked tribute to chopsocky/whatever, the second half is bad enough that i feel safe saying it’s a bloated turd of a movie. i was bored to tears for stretches of part 2. mostly everything that wasn’t the old whitehaired guy. i don’t know that being insincere is a mortal sin (i hope it isn’t), but if it was, this movie and everyone in it has no hope of salvation. what’s especially frustrating is that this movie isn’t cynical, or nihilistic, it’s obnoxious. like “i put in a scene with an old mexican pimp just so i could strenuously clarify that this character, who is not at all relevant to the plot or anything else, is a big asshole who cuts women.” the only solace i can think of is that i dont think anyone ever put that much thought into any of this stuff, they probably just thought it would be cool. So, kill bill: the unabridged version is bad, according to me.
reservoir dogs is pretty much the font of a lot of the things people hate about kill bill (excessive violence to no particular moral message, gore, annoying dialogue, michal madsen). i loved it when i was 14 or so. i listened to the soundtrack while playing Super Contra after school for like the entirety of ninth grade. i have not seen this movie since then. i’m not going to hate because i definitely drank the kool aid on this movie but i was 14. just a kid. i didnt know what i was doing.
pulp fiction: see above. except no michael madsen. and i didn’t actually like pulp fiction to the extent of listening to the soundtrack. (as a matter of fact, i still dont get what people like about the scene where travolta and uma thurman dance. i think it’s retarded.) but i did love this movie because samuel l. jackson came out and swore a lot and there were guns and shit. and i maintain that the christopher walken scene is pretty much the only actually good stretch of tarantino has ever written. so it looks like the score again is world 2, me 0, quentin tarantino 0. i apologize for having bad taste when i was 14. pulp fiction i’ll briefly defend as the one time the trick with the snarky dialogue came closest to working for quentin.
jackie brown: see above, except minus the redemption, but with the line “she got on my nerves so i shot her” or whatever it is added back in as a bonus
four rooms: i dont even remember which part he made
on a more positive note, i made a tombstone pizza this afternoon. it feels so good to be creative again. does anyone want to watch touch of evil later.
bear
biscuit
now, don’t mistake me for a minor league baseball fanboy but i will point out that 1. mobile’s mascot is a seafaring bear of some description. based on the logo, he appears to share genetic material with baloo. also, point 2 of 2, the cartoon biscuit man has a pat of butter for a tongue.
what i am here today to talk about is how fucking stupid you apparently have to be to work at the photo counter at the two drugstores i went to today to try and get one goddamn measly passport photo taken. if i had to guesstimate how stupid that was, i would say (arms apart) ten times more stupid than as far apart as my arms can go. oh my dear lord these people are scum. for your edutainment, a loosely fact-based recounting of what happened at two familiar chain drugstores today.
me: can i get a passport photo taken?
lady: yes of course you can. (mumbles something unintelligble)
me: great. let me know when you’re ready.
(Ten minutes pass while she examines a digital camera in the way that a dinosaur or a yeti would examine something he or she doesn’t understand, for example a digital camera. Five more minutes pass)
lady: OK come over here.
me: OK.
(Five more minutes of fiddling. She takes a picture. It’s terrible.)
me: Can you take a better picture?
lady: let me get the guy.
guy: OK, let me do this.
(Five minutes of fiddling)
guy: OK, smile.
(Steps up to 3 inches from my face and takes picture. resultant picture is weird and fisheye looking. I suggest that i’ve had enough picture taking and try to weasel out of the situation. Lady takes the camera back and sticks the data card in the Kodak make your own prints machine. Machine is clearly not even turned on, or possibly even plugged in. She sticsk card in repeatedly for five minutes then announces that it might be broken)
me: i can come back later or something.
lady: (starts howling like jodie foster in nell) don’t leave until i talk to the guy again.
me: i won’t.
(I immediately leave and go the the other chain drugstore across the street)
me: do you take passport photos?
guy 2: (is holding film in both hands with a roll of film extend around his neck and standing in front of a shelf covered in unused film) we’re out of film.
me: (immediately start looking around for sharp object)
I have to actually do my job now but i will come back and elaborate on this later.
So i haven’t really accomplished anything recently other than getting to work either on time or slightly late (hey, if everyone else is even more late than me, then comparatively, i was on time. and no one knows i was late.) and watching shitty DVDs that netflix keeps mailing to me. they’re not that bad, they’re just not all that good. with the exception of blood simple, which was, well, simple, but kind of dope. the only news that i can offer to anyone is that i’m going to new york for most of the summer and possibly not ever coming back, or, depending on where you are, i wasn’t there to begin with so i can’t really come back. i only mention this as a set-up to going in for the kill, as i was taught at the muncie college of business administration: i have a cat (a wiry cat) that will need temporary shelter from roughly the middle of june until whenever i come back to take her to her new home. which would be sometime in august. so if anyone has a big heart with a small, angry cat-sized hole in it, i have one small angry cat for you to borrow. anyone? yeah this could be a tough sell.
in other news: i definitely got somewhat choked up reading the story about the iraqi war refugee dogs in today’s paper. i also went to the zoo and looked at monkeys and lions yesterday. it worked out, because there was some kind of street team handing out Skippy peanut butter snack bars which i then ate. and the elephants at the lincoln park zoo are AA-level players at best. orgizational filler.
today’s moral turpitude brought to you by the new and improved Shane MacGowan: now with more severe beatings. Look at his teeth, how do you do that to yourself.
Summary of what I accomplished today:
1. Thought about taking a walk
2. went and got sponges, milk, and soda
3. Ate lunch twice because i didn’t feel like taking dinner to work.
4. Watched 1.75 episodes of six feet under that i have already seen. the one where the dead vato teaches david not to be ashamed of his homosexuality is on deck.
5. picked out a shirt to wear to work
6. nothing at all
Anybody who knows anything about getting student loans at rates ranging from semi-extortionate to post-extortionate can go ahead and tell me what they know about that. debt is my friend.
Special “i saw the grossest goddamn thing in the history of the Universe” for today:
I rode the 6 bus north to downtown this afternoon around 4:30 pm and there was a family with a baby that i would guesstimate to be approximately 1.5 years old although i’ve been wrong about this before. anyway the baby was wearing non-swaddling clothes but still needed a stroller, which i think captures the situation about right. anyway, her parents weren’t really fulfilling their end of the social covenant at any rate, taking up about 9 seats on the bus by refusing to fold up their stroller and whatnot. not a felony but close? Anyway, the baby’s being rambunctious or whatever and climbing around which normally i frown on, but whatever, i guess it’s sort of cute although my new theory is that blond hair is ugly and dumb. anyway anyway, for some reason during the horseplay the baby loses her sandals or has them taken off. and then the baby climbs down from the seat on the floor of the CTA bus, which, if you’ve ever ridden on a CTA bus, is despite the best wishes of the CTA, not sanitary. i’m saying this with the understanding that the good men and women of the CTA would like for the floor to be clean but do not have time for it and would kindly suggest that until the floor is clean, you not put your shoeless baby on it (the floor). the parents did not give one shit about this and put the baby on the floor. where she proceeded to get very very dirty and i think even maybe she licked the floor. she definitely put her hand on the the floor and then put her hand in her mouth, which is a lot like licking the floor. the parent’s reaction: smiling at their daughter, who is just covered in the filthiest germs i have ever seen. this is slightly weird but i figure they’re just really laid back parents or just stoned or something. anyway, then the dad eventually picks up the baby and starts to tickle the baby to her delight. THEN, he puts her feet, which are covered with bus floor germs, IN HIS MOUTH. I almost lost it. I definitely wanted to take off my headphones and ask the people around me if they were as mortified as i was. goddamn that was gross.
I really want to go to sleep but God is forcing me to be awake. This was not such a big problem three hours ago but now I wish that He would stop poking me with this invisible stick in the back of the head everytime i get drowsy. Maybe God’s not the one to blame. Anyway, three hours ago I watched Capturing the Friedmans. please fill in the box marked “(pete) is afraid of you”. I’m totally never going to long island ever. sort of related note, if anyone is going to be in new york from june 21 to july 30 there is a significantly higher possiblity that you may see me although i wouldnt plan your trip there around it or anything, unless you live there in which case what the shit do you care, you’re going to be there either way right? also, if anyone in the reading group has ever had a pair of pants mended, or other simple alterations done, in the area in which i live (logan square) please tell me which cleaner i should go to get 2.5 pairs of pants sewed so that i do not have holes in my crotch or ass area, depending on which pair of pants i am wearing. also, i remember now that i wanted to share this with everyone, courtesy of my employer/wire servicezz:
White Sox pitcher Billy Koch apparently has at least one fan for life. Of course, Koch had to pay for it. Oft-tattooed Justin Miller, a pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays' Triple-A affiliate in Syracuse, agreed to demonstrate his attachment to the pitcher--in the form of a tattoo on his rear end that reads "I love Billy Koch." Koch paid Miller, whose back and arms also are covered with images, $1,000 to get the tattoo. Miller isn't the first player to pull this kind of stunt. Former major-league pitcher Rob Dibble had to ink Ichiro Suzuki's name in the same place after he bet that Suzuki wouldn't win the batting title in 2001. To see Miller's and Dibble's tattoos, go to http://espnradio.espn.go.com/espnradio/story toryId=1778243
Fortunately, that link does not actually include a photo of rob dibble’s ass because its a 404. i realized after clicking on it that i had seen a sign that said “are you looking for pictures of rob dibbles naked manbutt” and i responded in the affirmative WITHOUT HESITATION. where does that leave me? the intersection of gay street and weird moron historic route? i don’t know. i don’t know. also, somebody bring me some groceries and a beer. and some sunflower seeds. and about $6000 US dollars. i will make it worth your time?
weird craziness
I went to a sox game and got some sun, so it’s distinctly possible all this is some kind of bizarre hallucination-driven rant that i won’t even remember tomorrow, but it wouldn’t be the first time for that. i should also add that i read all of The Rum Diary while waiting to fall asleep and that probably has something to do with it as well. and now that i’ve fixed myself a sandwich for lunch, i realize i don’t feel as much of a rant coming on anymore. sorry for the let down. anyway, the sum total of what i was going to say was that i want to move to A) puerto rico B) new york or C) california. i feel like my inertia is creeping up my spinal column and slowly paralyzing me for a life spent in one place. i’m not sure that i can feel my toes anymore.
update on feelings of restlessness:
Better now. the rhythms of Asian literature has soothed my fears. now i can worry about important shit such as: my fantasee baseball team owns you. FEAR the nouveau americain dinner fare being slung by the Jake Peavy/Kip Wells/Ben Sheets/John Thomson kitchen.
also, Jim Caviezel’s next role: Bobby Jones
things consumed recently
The Grifters: I don’t get it. Was that the grift? Convince Annette Bening to follow you to Phoenix and try and kill you and then passing her body for yours and then coming to John Cusack’s house and stealing his money and then when he shows up, giving him a nice glass of ice water which you then smash into his face with a suitcase which causes him to die dramatically on top of the money, which you only steal like half of, even though that was what the whole motivation was. i guess it would have been a pain in the ass to roll over dead Cusack to get the money from underneath him. That was the scam? Or is supposed to be this big desparate conclusion that illustrates what the lack of steady honest employment does to the female psyche? Either way I don’t give a shit. I wasn’t a big fan of this movie. it was stylish, i guess, and the acting was great but it also had awful awful music and nothing much else going on to recommend it.
Permanent Midnight: I don’t know. I didn’t finish this movie because it’s sort of weird and made me feel uncomfortable. but i give everyone involved a A-minus for trying hard. “If i was percodan, where would i be?”
Sour cream and onion Tato Skins: DO NOT EAT THESE. THEY ARE POISON. I’m serious. i cant get the goddamn smell off my hands and I HAD TWO OF THEM. two chips and my entire life of not smelling like sour cream and onion is OVER.
Hellboy: I know I already said yeah whatever but, I have some extended thoughts on Hellboy. The principal thematic thrust of my inquiry into Hellboy is “I don’t get it” or, in simpler terms “what?”. What I thought the dealy was, going into Hellboy, was that i got some sort of crossbreeding of the sardonic mutant genre with side orders of absurdist humor and some of the perquisites of big budget dining, namely explosions and shit. i will allow that the movie was lovingly rendered and there is obviously some charm to the hellboy thing. but i dont get why instead of playing around with or subverting the tropes of actions movies, the movie is just a string of cliches. also, someone needs to explain to me how rasputin lives forever and whether or not the secret to living forever is just sleeping naked in a big puddle of ketchup.
anybody want to go splitsies
Hellboy: Yeah whatever. More cats less things that look exactly like the predator.
So, like any other person who uses yahoo e-mail, i can’t avoid the headlines on yahoo’s front page, which are always right below the link to my inbox. i think my worldview is slowly being broken by their total and stunning inability to write headlines.
Baghdad and parts of central Iraq chaotic
Because of the war? Or because of daylight savings or something?
Anger grows on Iraqi Governing Council
Because of the chaos?
9/11 panel member faults Clinton inaction
This resembles a real headline
NATO chief tries to ease Putin’s fears
It’s not gay if we don’t do it in a gay way
Study: S.F. area has most Wi-Fi hot spots
Or: Scientists: Thing with most things has most things
Quentin Tarantino planning third ‘Kill Bill’
This is obviously bad news. And this is the seventh most important thign in the world?
More on my boredom on this Good Friday later.
