11.18.09
3:12 pm
See what I said about November disappearing? We're more than halfway through already.
She. It.
Things have been kind of fucked recently, but they're getting better, for me at least, even though I really have nothing to do with it, so, yeah.
Moving on...
On the subway I noticed the resurgence of those Remy Martin ads.
You know, the ones where you see shadow draped figures looking attractive in the way that only drinking Remy Martin can make you look attractive?
The tag line is "Things are getting interesting."
I know what the ad people are going for.
But, surprise surprise, I get a different vibe from these ads.
I feel that this "shadow party" is peopled solely by teenaged girls and football playing college students with rich parents and good family lawyers.
I feel that the football playing college students drink a lot and often, making them immune to a tot or two of delicious, interesting Remy Martin, whereas the teenaged girls are rather new to this whole "drinking" thing and are just being introduced to this interesting new liquor, pardon me, liqueur, at this aforementioned "shadow party".
I feel that one football playing college student has just spied one of the girls looking drowsy and another already passed out on the couch in the living room of the renovated farmhouse that he and his other football playing college student buddies occupy (the one a good seven miles from anything that isn't a tree); he turns to another one of his football playing college student buddies, hits him on the shoulder and raises his chin in the direction of the pair of girls, now both passed out on the couch, and says those magic, Remy Martin words: "Things are getting interesting", to which his football playing college student cohort replies, while grabbing his crotch and squeezing rhythmically, "Yeah. We're going to rape the shit out of these unconscious, teenaged girls."
Every time I see those ads, this scenario snaps through my head.
Thank you, Remy Martin.
You make me think of rape.
Next up, just recently, the year long exclusivity deal between Netflix and Microsoft has ended, meaning that I can now watch all the Instantly Streaming choices on Netflix on my TV via my PS3.
This denotes a pretty huge shift in the Xbox/PS3 war, but whatever.
It's weird and super vicarious, but it's like I feel some sort of connection with the Sony brand, at least as far as the PS3.
When they do something better than Xbox, I feel victorious and vice versa.
Then again, this is the case with people who like sports.
Of the 8 million plus people in New York, how many should feel pride with the Yankees' victory?
Probably about...twenty?
But I digress.
Christina and I watched "Synecdoche, New York" this weekend.
If you're not familiar with this, it's the most recent of Charlie "Mindfuck" Kaufman's mindfuck movies.
It was great and just...mindfucky, but with a theatre twist.
Crazy shit.
The next day we watched "Adaptation" (probably the best performance in Nicholas "I'm So Broke I Have To Sell My Bavarian Castle" Cage's shit-stained career), which neither of us had seen in years.
It was equally, yet differently, mindfucky, more accessible though, which I think was the reason "Synecdoche" wasn't as widely accepted and enjoyed.
I highly recommend both if you like having your brain spun around in your skull.
Good times.
And, speaking of mindfuckery: I watched (also utilizing the time sink Streaming Netflix (a phrase that always reminds me of Bruce McCulloch's "screaming numbers" from his "Hangover Chronicles") feature) Guy Richie's "Revolver".
First he did "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" with a bunch of British no-names (no-names here in the U.S., at least) and it was great.
Stylish, funny, over-the-top, well made etc.
Then he did "Snatch".
Pretty much the same movie with bigger stars (including Brad Pitt's brilliant and hilarious homage to Benicio Del Toro's Finster from "The Usual Suspects"), bigger characters and bigger everything else.
Then people started complaining about how he was a one trick pony, only able to do a flashy, big, well edited, Cockney gangster movie.
Why they would complain about this is anyone's guess, maybe because most people are assholes...anyway, Richie listened to this anal chorus, married/fucked/whatever Madonna and made "Swept Away".
I did not see this, but, from what I can tell, it is laughably disparate from both "Lock, Stock" and "Snatch".
Miserably so.
"Revolver" came next and, at first, it looked like he went back to what he was best at: the flashy, over-the-top gangster movie, and I'm fine with that genre, so I dug it.
Then, in the last quarter, things get a little...Fight Club-y.
Not in a bad way, really, just sort of in a weird, wasn't-expecting-this-and-I'm-not-100%-sure-this-works kind of way.
But good on him for trying to find a way to reinvent the thing he invented rather than tucking his dick between his legs and making a rom-com called "Special Delivery" about Madonna falling for a paperboy who hides love notes in her Sunday Times.
Stick with what you know and grow inside of your genre.
We can't all be Ang Lee.
Thank Christ.
Then he did "Rocknrolla" which was like his first two, but more realistic and very solid.
See? Tweak and prosper.
And speaking of tweeking...while reading Under The Dome, the excellent new King book, I learned that "tweek" is what crystal meth addicts do, while "tweak" is what Alessandro Cortini and Chris Vrenna do.
Also in Under The Dome, I ran across one of the worst similes in recent memory.
"It came down on her, like unpleasant presents from a poison piñata."
I get the consonance and the alliteration, and the cadence is great, but "poison piñata"?
Stephen King isn't allowed to have similes that bad, not after 60 plus published books and who knows how many hundred published shorts.
I called Phil to tell him of this literary misdemeanor, but he was unavailable.
Perhaps because he has AIDS.
I'm not sure.
This weekend I shall be in Taxachusetts (ZING!) at what might be the most erudite bachelor party of the century.
We shall read Chaucer, Proust and the long out-of-print works of Jean Forteaux, the 13th century French minstrel.
Tres drole?
You bet your fucking ass.
There will, however, be strippers.
They will come out wearing business suits, strip down to slightly more form-fitting business suits and then discuss the overarching effects of the G8 summit before doing our taxes and playing the harpsichord.
Did I mention they will all be down and out Yale graduates?
Yet again: good times.
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