Life, the Universe, and Not Much Going On

If you have not seen these flicks yet, and if you can stomach violence, go see Children of Men and Pan’s Labyrinth. Children of Men’s use of sound and color to convey the struggle for hope and survival made it the most remarkable futuristic film I’ve seen since Blade Runner. The nightmarish, yet strangely beautiful, fantasy of Pan’s Labyrinth, interwoven with a brutal tale of the end of the Spanish Civil War, is simply stunning in its originality. Neither film insults its audience by neatly filling in the story; instead they challenge the audience to find the meaning. Mexican directors are making beautiful films these days.

Aside from that, not a hell of a lot is going on with me. I had lunch with my parents on Sunday. I was able to keep my it’s-cold-out-leave-me-the-hell-alone prickliness from getting the best of me, and we had a decent time. We went into a British imports store, and I found this shelf of goodies. Let it not be said that American food is the only thing worthy of a bit of mockery.

Mmmm. Sauce. Fruity Sauce. Tasty. Gimme some Marmite. I’ve spared everyone the tinned Spotted Dick on the top shelf.

This morning I woke up to this beautiful sight out my living room window. Finally, a bit of the white stuff.

Death, Random Holiday Photo, and Blog Whoring: Typical Wednesday Thoughts

Death
Good God! Go on a little holiday, and everyone dies. James Brown left this world on Christmas Day. That made me sad. Time was, all anyone needed for a party was to invite the Goddess Posse (my group of gal pals), clear some room, provide some drinks, and put on some James Brown. We’d do the rest. “Hot Pants!” and “Good God!” were common greetings among us. I know the man had his issues, but his music makes me happy.

Then I woke up this morning to hear that Gerald Ford died at the ripe old age of ninety-three. I’ll never understand why he pardoned Nixon (or forgive him for doing it), but I always look on him with pity. My mother used to say of him, “Oh, poor Gerald Ford. He fell a lot.” I thought of that this morning.

Here's a strange thing James Brown and Gerald Ford have in common: They were both lampooned on Saturday Night Live back when the show was worth watching. Not everyone can say that.

Random Holiday Photo
One of my closest friends was in town to see her family for Christmas, and I had a good time hanging out with her and her siblings. Her sister, it seems, is not much of a wine drinker. This was how the wine was opened at her house (the drill "bit" was a corkscrew. It got stuck in the plonky cork, and we had to wait for rescue).

Blog Whoring
When I checked my e-mail this morning, I read this message. Apparently someone read my post that mentioned The Shining as a pretext to show off my terrible typing skills. Based on that post, this person would like me to blog about the DVD release of The Illusionist. Here's what he wrote:

Hi,

I'm contacting you on behalf of Fox and M80 regarding the DVD release of The Illusionist starring Jessica Biel and Edward Norton. I found your The Shining blog entry http://sassysundry.blogspot.com/2006/11/shining-drunken-rodents.html and think you might be of some help to me. Since you blogged about The Shining, I was hoping you might find The Illusionist DVD release, contest or something related to it, blogworthy. I would be happy to send you The Illusionist DVD as a thank you for your help or for you to review.

If you’d like to help out, or would like more information, please let me know and I’ll be in touch soon!

Thanks!

I did in fact see The Illusionist with Ex-Boyfriend on his birthday. Edward Norton did some nifty illusions, but I can’t say as I think that the DVD release has me all hot and bothered. Besides, I’m not that kind of blogger.

Have any of you received these kinds of solicitations? What do you think? It strikes me as very unseemly.

All the King’s Jackasses: My Weekend at the Movies

Obviously some kind of bizarre vortex has sucked something out of the universe. Stephen Hawking must have an explanation, because I certainly cannot understand why a film based on one of the great novels of the twentieth century sucked pud, and a flick about a bunch of well, jackasses, worked. Wormholes. It’s the only answer.

In case you didn’t know, All the King’s Men is simply an amazing novel. Graduate school and I didn’t get along too terribly well, but I am so glad that I took a class in Southern history and literature, because I probably never would have read Robert Penn Warren’s story otherwise (I had already read Zora Neale Hurston, Flannery O'Connor, Richard Wright, and William Faulkner). History is not a field known for scintillating writing, and the novel was tonic to my story-starved soul. Curled up on my couch, the tale of southern politics, betrayal, and loss (aren’t they the same?), narrated by the world-weary Jack Burden, enthralled me. The story broke my heart, while giving me insight into the charisma of Huey Long. If you haven’t read All the King’s Men, you might want to consider putting it on your reading list. You won’t be sorry.

Do not, however, put the muddled Sean Penn snoozer on your must-see list. You will regret it. Ugh. The crap screenwriter-director who ruined Schindler’s List gutted All the King’s Men by reducing it to gauzy atmospherics and twitching. Honestly, I have nothing good to say about it. My poor boyfriend had no idea why on earth the Louisiana legislature wanted to impeach Penn’s herky jerky Willy Stark (a fictional Huey Long), or why Jude Law’s unconvincing Jack Burden needed to dig into the past of the man who raised him (Anthony Hopkins) in order to stop the impeachment from happening. In other words, he couldn’t see why the story mattered. If all I’d seen was that terrible movie, I wouldn’t know either. Talk about being conceived in sin and born in corruption, only to pass to the stench of the shroud. Sucked into a wormhole, All the King's Men was.

I was looking forward to All the King’s Men Friday night. I did not plan on seeing Jackass: Number Two ever. To my way of thinking, Jackass represented a wholly other kind of stench. Pranks involving dangerous levels of testosterone, shit, pubic hair, ass-branding (with a penis cookie cutter), and horse semen are frankly not my cup of tea. I like my IQ, thank you very much, or if I'm going to sacrifice it, I do it with shows like Grey's Anatomy (see below). I don’t know what to blame it on, the rainy day, disappointment in All the King’s Men, the desire to shock my boyfriend by agreeing to see it, or wormholes. It was either the vortex, or a combination of the other three that drove me to the multiplex. I've been bored and disappointed before, and I have other ways of shocking my boyfriend. So I'm praising the wormhole.

Jackass is hilarious. Side-splitting, gross-out, piss-yourself funny. I nearly threw up, not once, not twice, but three times, the third being a very close call (things that made me retch: eating horse shit, drinking horse semen, and a guy wearing a fart mask and throwing up in it). Hysterical, zany, and surprisingly joyous, the stunts and pranks performed by Johnny Knoxville's posse of grown men were like a giant middle finger (or a big, hairy moon) shoved into the face of maturity.

In the middle of the romp, John Waters performs a magical disappearing act. Perhaps it was his magic trick that caused the vortex? That could be, but I don't think so. We've had too much depressing reality of late. We know all about corrupt politicians. What the world needs now is Jackass, and that's why the vortex happened.

Or maybe I'm just full of horseshit. All I can say is that I didn’t stop laughing (except when I was retching) from the opening scene of Number Two to the closing credits (scored to “Treatment Bound” by the Replacements—my all-time favorite beautiful jackasses). My brain was sucked into a wormhole. It was great.

Tell Stephen Hawking I don’t care.