gettin' Reiched-out

i. calling women "cumdumpsters" makes them irresistibly attracted to you







Cool, uh?


WHA WHA WHAAAAT???!!!




So, The Oscars.

Mickey Rourke got robbed. sean penn does not need 2 oscars.

danny boyle still has no penis.

SLUMDAWG BAUDRILLIANAIRE

I repeat what I just said about danny bowel. I will never forgive this idiot for making gay movies like "28 days/weeks later", "a life less ordinary", and "milions." The guy's a collossal poof. Did you even see his hair?

"Trainspotting" was ok, but it doesn't deserve the cult following. "Slumdog" was better, if only because it didn't seem like "typical boyle". I dunno. It was watchable for 2 whole hours, and I liked the main character. The "love story" aspect was cheezy, but I am a sucker for that kinda stuff sometimes. So some poor idiot liked some dumb girl. Good for him. He's a 20-million rupeeaire. Even better for him!

Did it deserve so many Oscars? No. Was it better than "The Wrestler"? No. Was it better than I expected? Yes.

I think I'm pretty safe as far as not getting fired, praise the lawd.

Politics of the workplace. It's a funny thing. Every place has their own perspective on "seniority", "promotions", and "qualifications." Sometimes education and no experience can trump ("pwn") years of demonstrated successful experience, if there's no diploma to back that experience. This is Stupid Raw-Rawng.

It's different everywhere you go, though. Still, I'm tempted to get the Easiest MBA just to use that as a damn bargaining chip. It's hard finding that happy medium between "Least Selective University" and "Str8-up Diploma Mill", though. I don't actually want to work for it. You think I actually CARE about business at ALL? I just care about making enough money to live'n'pull!

Yeah, I like talking about Politics and Economics, but my heart will always be closest to the Libidinal. That's just the way this kid was rigged.

Have you ever smelled like curry even though you haven't eaten curry in a week? Fucking Slumdog!

I like writing the SIBHoD. If someone held a gun to my head and said "stop writing the SIBHoD", I'd say "shoot me now. put me out of my misery." I write so goddam much because I like doing it, goddam it.

It can take a while for important realizations to dawn on us. Like: I'm one of those kids that was simply "rigged" not to be able to drink. Drinking absolutely KILLS any productiveness for me - even if it's just one Avg Bar Night per week. So I'd rather be stone-cold sober and angry and somewhat useful, than hungover and really angry and really useless. I'm always Angry. Get used to it. That's another reason I write the SIBHoD so goddam much.

"Why are you so angry, Classwar? You've got it MADE! You're not a goddam Slumdog! You're just another fat, privileged white amerikkkan who does nothing but bitch, bitch, bitch!"

See. This is why I don't even TALK to people.

You wouldn't be able to tell this from the SIBHoD, but when I do talk to people, I'm generally very friendly and agreeable. I don't talk about sex, money, religion, or politics exactly because I don't like arguing. That's yet another reason I write the SIBHoD so much. I'd rather have chillaxed, agreeable conversations than fucking arguments all the time. I save teh arguments 4 teh intranets.

It's been forever since I saw a good concert. I'd like to see Animal Collective in April (May?) but I wouldn't be surprised if it's already sold-out. Plus the place will be ABSOLUTELY TEEMING with EXCRUCIATING HIPSTERS. Of that there is no doubt. That's enough to make me not want to see Animal Collective.

I wouldn't be 100% against starting a band, but the people would HAVE to hate people AND hate bands/music as much as I do, and These are really tuff criteria for potential bandmates to fulfill. So I'm more than happy with the Solo Project setup, other than I can't play drums and guitar at the same time, and all the drum machines I've worked with are really annoying.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

I SHOULD TOTALLY CLONE MYSELF.

That would be the perfect solution for this die-hard narcissist. I'd Love to clone myself. I'd love to make a woman-version of myself and then marry myself. That would be My Ideal.

So some news piece was talking about how unemployment was gonna continue to increase throughout 2009. Big surprise, there. Commentary: This sucks. Even if your job totally sucks balls, being able to provide for yourself gives you a real sense of responsibility and accomplishment. Take that away, and you've got absolutely nothin'. You should just kill yourself.

People think Greg House M.D. is such a curmudgeon and a prickly pear. But the fact of the matter is, he's a world-renowned M.D. who makes $HITLOAD$ of MONAY. You can't take that away from him. If he were a real person who actually existed, I mean.

I don't know if this is a testimony to the generative nature of human language, or to the undying awesomeness of the human spirit (not guessing the latter), but it is amazing that humans have not exhausted their sense of humour. Many people manage to be Funny at least part of every day. Although, to be fair, they Are recycling a lot of jokes in there. But still. Recycled jokes are so much better than but-but-but "political" arguments and other verbal Jockeying.





ii. nelson muntz: "stop labeling yourself! stop labeling yourself!" WHACK! WHACK!

We've all seen 'em: those lame-ass, hand-wringing AFC/NGT's who call themselves "Hopeless Romantics." These guys need to go beat-off in the corner for the rest of their lives and die alone just like they've always feared. Idiots. Fucknecks. This is yet another example of things you really don't want to refer-to-yourself-as. Like "A feminist." or "AN artist". or "A social commentator". or "A Political blogger."

Labels are gay, and they don't magically become less gay when we "take the initiative" of applying them to our own selves.

iii. "i got a mean case of the ol' bloodfarts today"

VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA

I'm ashamed to say I was too lazy to see this at the theatre.

I think I gave it 1.6 thumbs up, adjusting for the face that I enjoy Woody Allen's movies more than other people's movies. It wasn't his Greatest Movie Ever, but it was absolutely much better than "Scoop". It reminded me, structurally and thematically, of Husbands and Wives, (which I liked better, of course), but more zany and "sunny". This was certainly aided by the Geographic Setting. I was pleasantly surprised at how well The Woody Aesthetic meshes with places other than New York City, and I did enjoy the Spain location better than the London location of his previous several movies.

You can go crazy finding similiarities between this one and his other works - the characters are very much "typical" Allen, but there is a Freshness and Spontaneity and Reaffirmation of Purpose here that I felt was lacking in some of his recent work. Allen is hit-or-miss, but you kinda have to be when you churn out a movie every single year. This one is definitely ahead of the curve, and proves that if sometimes Woody "loses" it, he always brings it back.

VCB was a "sheer delight", if I may say. If you try to take it seriously you're just gonna disappoint yourself, i.e., you shouldn't get all defensive and NGTish and expect a serious treatment of gender relations or polyamory. It's just a movie, chrissakes.

So if you take the "feminist perspective" here, you'll probably get a little angry. While it's good that Woody is one of the minority of filmmakers who strives to have centrally-placed, humanistic, intelligent, nuanced women-roles, he still - especially in VCB - shows the women as flighty, ruled by impulsive emotion, (ranging from impetuous to absolutely batshit insane like Cruz's character) who INEVITABLY will cheat on one with a handsome, roguish, mysterious, semi-badboy Spanish artist.

So just keep telling yourself there's exceptions to every "rule", and that it's just a movie. Have fun, for gods' sakes.

Javier Bardem was handsome and charming, though, and it was great to see his versatility in playing this role as convincingly as he did the menacing Anton Chigurh.

I thought Vicky was pretty. I was glad the movie introduced me to this actress Rebecca Hall. I hope Woody - or at least Someone - puts this lady in more pictures. Too much media attention has been lavished on Johanssen and Cruz re this movie!



I would totally see this movie again. High rewatchability factor.

Although the doubting thomas in me, well, doubts that Woody's next movie will be as enjoyable, but his career has proven that he always gets back to the real good stuff sooner or later. Hopefully as soon as possible because he's like 88 years old and I am gonna be heartbroken when he dies.

Finally, the "theme song" of the movie is both ridiculously catchy And it captures the spirit of the movie to a T.






The NYT has a blog called "Proof", in which ex-drinkers wax philosophical, romantic, and "literate" on their Drinking Days.

The blog has its haters - "Rename this blog to “Sobriety” or cancel it. It’s getting worse every week" - and it's not always good, but sometimes it's great, as in the two posts linked below. Some haters believe that the articles are too worshipful of drinking and do not set a good example for recovery; they may "trigger" people, and/or cause them to fall off the wagon. Which is irresponsible writing.

I dunno. Maybe. But anyone who has ever drank too much knows that there absolutely is something romantic about drinking. Drunks don't drink for no good reason.

This first article is about one drinker's fondness for drunk writers. The comments create a fine discussion, and prompted me to look for James Crumley in the publib. I.e., my interest in the Hard Boiled, Hard Drinking Detective was revived.

Writers make the best Drinkers, and, arguably, Drinkers make the best Writers. You can't deny there's some kind of connection between the two. I certainly can't. Both are contradictorily noble AND cowardly attempts to reign-in an overwhelmingly unreigninable Real World.

Yes, he mentions Bukowski, but not enough for my liking. I'm out of my "Bukowski Phase" now, but he's still one of my favourite people/writers. The reason I used to (obsessively) read Bukowski, and no-one else, was because I felt Buk was the only person I could really relate to. Reading anyone else was pointless and boring.

But since I like hard-boiled detectives now, I think I'm gonna delve into That world. So long as the author was a Known Heavy Drinker. I did get a Crumley book, and I rented the movie "The Big Sleep."

A few days ago, a young woman wrote another good proofblog. It's good to finally hear a woman's voice here, and I found myself nodding my head and smiling knowingly as I read her story:

"But the worst thing was I feared even those folks [sanctimonious non-drinkers/ "high-on-life" types / people who didn't "need to drink" ] were more interesting — if exasperatingly earnest — than I was sober.

"My favorite word was 'subversive' and my favorite humor was cruel. Every day was hard, but every night was Saturday.

“Don’t even for a minute think I’m vanilla because the truth is I am so hard core I had to quit. I drank so much it was a matter of life and death. I’m like a rock star compared with you."

Sometimes Proofblog is boring, other times it's a decent read. For me, it's eminently feedable all day long. At its best, it affirms that reformed/ing drinkers are not alone, and it gives non[problem]drinkers a glimpse of The Life. I would hope the blog would reduce some judgementalism.



WENDY AND LUCY

I saw Kelly Reichardt's "Old Joy" a while ago, drawn to it because of Will Oldham's starring role. I found the movie to be ultimately memorable, as in, I remembered it fondly, and it made me remember Reichardt's name. I found OJ to be rather beautiful and refreshing and "zen".

So I was happy to see that Reichardt had done a new film, and also that it was actually playing at the "Art Theatre", which I hadn't had a reason to go to since "Synecdoche NY" played there MONTHS ago.

W&L was ultimately pleasingly Reichardtian. Ms Reichardt specializes in the quiet and the mundane. Her style is minimalist, yet humanist. Her stuff is just about the antithesis of "hollywood movies", or even "independent-SPIRITed" movies: the lack of pretense and hype I welcome heartily.

In other words, she keeps it pretty damn Real, and that small dying "feminist" part of me is also glad that She's a Woman, because women auteurs are few and far between.



The former Mrs Ledger gives a pretty good performance. I could be an ass and say The Meat of the Role is just her wandering around and Looking Real Purty, but the role invokes the subtlety of being An Emotional Iceberg. I greatly appreciate how she is On Her Own, Isolated, Alienated, and Utterly, Utterly Alone. It's not too feel-good at all, is what I'm trying to say. As a person who is grappling with his own experience of Being A Loner, though, I found her character rather relatetotable. And certainly not the type of character/movie you see every day.

Reichardt has this kind of scheidt on Lock, and I hope she continues to make movies like this.

Yeah. The whole movie is "simply" Michelle Williams ("Wendy") having her car break-down and her losing her dog. I feel that it's bold to take such a boring-sounding subject and then to make something rather compelling out of it. I think it might open a few bourgeois collegeyes to the reality of the economic hardships that devours some small one-industry towns like blabla oregon, or detroit mich. Wendy drives a shitbox car and lives out of the car and washes herself in a gas station bathroom and shoplifts food and sleeps in the woods and hangs out with gutterpunks around a fire (one of which is the colourful Will Oldham again ftw).

None of it is really romanticized/sentimentalized Or sanitized. So it almost doesn't seem like you're even "watching" a "movie."

But all those silences and long shots are "poetic" and "pregnant with profundity", kinda like tarkovsky or malick or korine or early david gordon green. I KNOW SO MUCH ABOUT MOVIES

You might be annoyed at why Wendy doesn't ask for help: is she too proud? too scared? what the hell is the story of her life? But I enjoyed that these things were ambiguous. And You should too.

Because of the low-key nature of Reichardt's work, I don't think you could ever call it "mind-blowing", but she definitely sets a pretty unique mood. She's made her mark and I will continue to support her and seek out her movies. 1.55 thumbs up son!






iv. thong diaper

As one delves deeper into the feminist community, one learns that the issue of Male Feminists has certainly not gone unnoticed. Twisty @ I Blame The Patriarchy somewhat snarkily refers to the "Men and Feminism" issue with the acronym WATM - What About The Men?

I like Twisty exactly because she takes such a strong stance. Men, non-feminists, and semi-feminists might call her a "man-hater." She has said some stuff that has made me laugh in somewhat shocked disbelief that she said such a thing. GLOVES OFF, SON.

She's an even more verbose wrtr than myself, and much of her stuff is absolutely shit-hot. I fed that blog into my reader faster than I feed myself slices of pizza pie. She cuts right to the marrow and excoriates anyone who tries to give a "unique male perspective". Understandably, she (and many women feminists) is irked by men who claim to be Feminists. From her blog somehow I found some guidelines on how to spot a Fake Feminist, which were pretty right-on and painfully funny.

Again, I could definitely not say any of this better myself, so I'll leave it to the ladies.

And that's something I could say for much of my feminist talk, so I'm feelin' that I'm gonna be toning down here.

While I give myself a nice sanctimonious pat-on-the-back for realizing - like these Women Feminist Bloggers point out - that any man who vocally Claims to be "A Feminist" is most likely disingenuous, (not to mention horribly obnoxious) and actions speak 6,000,000,000 times louder than words (I think I noted all this many posts ago, haha) the Obvious Truth is dawning on me again a bit slowly: That to be a Real True Feminist, it really, really, really helps if you're a woman. To paraphrase Twisty, "Men's experiences are not commensurate with women's experiences." If you believe that Patriarchy exists, then it only follows that you also HAVE to believe that your experiences in life depend a LOT on what gender you were randomly born into.

It's a Little like White People being all about Black causes, or Bourgeois College Kids for Worker's Rights or something.

But It's not as easy as it is in the above two examples for the NON-oppressed group (i.e., men) to be effective allies of the oppressed group. Men going around saying they're feminists can actually be counterproductive. Or, a lot of men who say they're feminists are not truly feminists, they just say they are to get feminist Pussy.

Like there was some male "feminist" blogger who later got busted for inappropriately handling a young woman student in his charge (exposing her breast'n'taking a picture of it after escorting her shitdrunk person to her room; he was her Dorm Resident Advisor.). Women Feminists were of course disgusted, but not entirely surprised.

I don't think I'm THAT bad, yet I did feel as if I were being called-out by Twisty. And since I do have my Misogynistic Streak, I constantly call my own sense of "Feminism" into question.

It is uniquely annoying when MEN write Feminist Blogs and comment so confidently and "Authoritatively" on Being a Feminist, because all men, women-hating or "feminist", benefit from the Patriarchy just by being men. It would seem many of the Male Feminists lost practical sight of this.

So I hang my head for all the times I've gotten all "passionate" and (self)righteous with my feminist talk.

As Twisty says, it's probably best if Men just shut the hell up about feminism and did a lot more listening and reading. So now I'm on that kick.

And an Authentic Male Feminist would prove himself and Stand Up For Women when his masculinity is most at stake - when he is hanging out with Just The Boys.

So if you ever hear me SAY "I'm a Feminist", then PLEASE cut my fucking balls off.

Although I have been wondering: what would a Real Feminist say to A Woman who, for example, doesn't see Pornography as necessarily exploitative of women? For example, young women on Livejournal Sextips discussion forums who simply take it as a given that their sex partners enjoy jerking-off to porn? That people INEVITABLY will Like porn?

A responsible Male Feminist would just send them to Finally Feminism 101 rather than try to "explain" it himself, because that would SURRYOUSLY hurt his chances at Pulling. HA!




MILK

Finally. I'd been resisting seeing this for the longest time, and I'm not even sure why. I think I felt a little resentful towards Sean Penn for mysterious, unknown reasons. Especially weird, because I usually like Sean Penn. And I was a little "miffed" that he "stole" the oscar from Mickey Rourke.

But since I've been on my "Oscar kick" since the ceremony, and my Slumdawg viewing, and since Milk was the only good-looking movie at the theatre I hadn't seen yet, I decided to go see Milk.

I should have seen this a long time ago! It was really That good! Better than Slumdog, hell!

I think I was ambivalent about Gus van Sant, because I don't like his super-pretentious artsy movies.

So: Sean Penn was wonderful. He won me over. James Franco was also surprisingly good (and handsome!) This performance allows me to forgive him for appearing in "Pineapple Express." (Not talking about THAT one so much anymore ARE YA???!!)

And I'm pleasantly surprised this movie became so big; that it even got made. The movie is both VERY gay and VERY big, with tons of Gay Making-Out from beginning to end. If I were a Huge Homophobe, I would have been disgusted and walked-out. If I were a Typical Slightly-Homophobic Guy, I would have giggled immaturely throughout the whole thing.

Of course, it was presented as nothing other than tender and Humanistic, because van Sant is also a Huge Gay.

I was also in the mood to see an "underdog political activist struggle" type movie, and Penn certainly conveys a very palpable charisma. I got out of the movie wanting to start a revolution, or run for office. It's a pretty good feeling to catch once in a while.

I was a little upset that there weren't "enough" Women in the movie. There was one Lesbian, and she suspiciously smacked of "Token." This only occurred to me when Cleve was in the phone booth calling people, and they call 2 people etc etc and the screen filled up with a grid of like 100 people on the phone, and all of them were dudes. That was a little much. Yes, I know this is based off a true story, but I would like to think that Milk's Movement included a lot of Women - Dykes and otherwise - and not just a bunch of Cute Young Boys.

There was an older couple behind me who were talking obnoxiously loud the whole movie long. All the remarks were initiated by the man, who was obviously dragged to the movie by his wife, and his tone barely disguised his incredulity and, sometimes, his disgust. I suppose it'd be kinda like bringing a old-fashioned white racist to a spike lee movie. Either way, it's sad, and speaks to Milk's Struggle, that people would be so vocally disgusted by the gay making-out that they couldn't see the obvious humanity of the gays portrayed in the movie. It shows that Milk's work is far from done.

Bottom Line: I have to give this movie Big Kudos for being so damn Big, and so damn Gay. FTW4GE!!!






http://www.andrewzimmernatemyballs.com/

I'm not sure if "Ate My Balls" qualifies as a "meme". It's been around for years and always had a good ring to it. Leave it to the internets's favourite Humourist, Drew, to breath wicked new life into the concept.