What's so scary about a little kiss?

So I finally watched Y Tu Mama Tambien. People always assume I've seen it and when it came out, all my friends saw it. But I've put off seeing it. I didn't intentionally avoid it in the theater, but I miss most things in the theater unless Ben drags me there. Not that I don't like going to see movies, I do; but it just usually isn't what I'll chose to do unless someone else tips the decision that direction.

I have intentionally avoided it on video, however. Not that I haven't wanted to see it and on multiple occasions would have rented it except that I had read how most rental copies of it are edited and what is the point of seeing a movie that is famous for being a love story fantasy if it has been edited? Of course they will cut the best bits! Actually, who in hell wants to watch any edited movie? It is like reading an abridged book. Not that there are no stories out their which might benefit from well placed pruning, but books are abridged to make them shorter and easier to digest and movies are edited to make them tamer (and, if it is for tv, to make room for commercials). I knew that this cut was to make it less offensive and if I wanted a less offensive movie, I'd have picked one. So anyway, I've refused to watch this movie multiple times because I couldn't be sure to get the unedited version.

I remember now that I had refused to watch Ben's copy because a little questioning revealed it to be one of the chop shop versions, but I forgot this. I suppose I am glad I did forget, because I enjoyed watching it and otherwise would have continued my silent protest.

I was worried at the beginning of the movie when the quick disclaimer flashed by that it had been "edited for content and language". Yuck. And even with my poor language skills I was able to tell some of the language had been blurred, but it seemed more just for simplicity than prudishness. The cuss words were generalized or not completely literally translated (of course the cuss words are always the most familiar vocabulary for one like myself who only knows a little of a language), but who cares? They didn't blur the message and didn't really sanitize the story in that area. And at first I supposed they hadn't really edited the content that much. The movie opens with two naked people in bed and before the scene changes you see -soft, of course- a pecker, which is usually the first thing edited out of a movie. Male genitals are so terribly distressing to the idiots who rate movies. This isn't the last of the nudity either, male or female, and sexual acts are also shown, though rather as a side note that anything titillating.

Actually, the only way that I know this is a chopped version, even if it isn't a fully block-bustered bastard, is that the one thing which got so many panties in a wad and made the movie such an intriguing success was the one thing they cut out! The whole damn movie builds up to this love scene with both the boys and the woman. It builds and builds and then we get there, the crucial moment, during which the two guys kiss... except they don't. Here, they get back to the room, the chick begins making out with one of them... and cut! The morning after! The boys wake up looking at each other, but other than that we are left to just guess what has made them so awkward towards each other.

When this movie came out, the shared affair with the older woman wasn't the scandal but that the two male leads' friendship tipped over into the romantic at the climax with her. Every stupid interview with the actors asked them moronic questions about how awkward it must have been to kiss the other guy, which to their credit, they generally just brushed off. Two guys kissing shouldn't be a big fucking deal, but apparently it was and it got this movie tons of publicity and, truth be told, peaked my interest too. When it comes time to trim the movie down, for whatever fucking stupid reason they have, the kiss is the first thing to go. So we see the three leads naked, we see them urinate, we see at least partial sexual acts, but the two guys kissing is a shade too far. It is so fucking irritating.

Dean always complained that even in gay themed movies directed at gay audiences that you are more likely to see two men having sex than see them kiss. He got completely flustered and angry when we watched... damn, I can't remember the name of the movie. It is from Argentina and featured two bank robber lovers in their violent and sexual downward spiral. Completely out of character, I had suggested the movie when we went to pick something to watch. I can't remember the movie, but I remember the night because it was (at least before the movie) one of the most fun and silly nights ever with my friends. I was back in Charleston and rambling about with Dean, Michael, and Preot. We've all been friends for years but hadn't really all been together like that in a long time and all sort of queened out when we found a potted plant that someone had thrown out. It was actually pretty healthy, a very tall Diffenbachia with a few ratty leaves in a gallon pot and descending upon it, we started pruning leaves and propping it up and talking to it and about it like we were giving a make-over and as we walked away (carrying our new plant, I can't remember what we named it, Sheena maybe?) suddenly realized we had never been gayer in our whole lives. So we decided to keep the ball rolling and go pick out a gay movie and pop some gay popcorn and have a slumber party.

Burnt Money, that was the name of the movie. I had read something about it and I think it was the only gay movie that none of us had seen and it had gotten good reviews. I think Y Tu Mama Tambien had been suggested even though it wasn't a gay movie because of the dudes kissing, but also passed over because we had heard that scene was edited out in lots of rental copies. I totally loved Burnt Money, which was surprising because I am usually the one who complains that movies are too gorey or violent and this one was violent. Something about it I really liked, but it killed the fun mood for everyone else and at some point Dean pointed out how much sex there had been but no kissing. I think that the guys finally got their kiss towards the end of the movie and I think I argued just to be contrary, but he had a point. Tonight at least, he is right. More than sex between men, affection terrifies.

More Nashville: the if-we-were-who-would-we-be edition

Most of what I've heard about this movie before is from Kearney, because he is from Nashville and has talked about loving it and growing up with people talking about it and knowing people who were extras in it. He recently told me of being confronted with his early perceptions being a little askew. When he had seen it before, he had associated most closely with Opal, the journalist from the BBC. It was his hometown and he saw the locals as he experienced it: lots of backwardassness and self important people full of shit. Not that different from how many of us judged our hometowns as teenagers back when we knew everything, but perhaps carrying more of his projection than how the movie itself presented the characters. He then saw Opal as this sophisticated outsider moving around through all these local morons. Sharing this with friends, having not seen the movie in years, someone finally pointed out to him that in the movie she is the small-minded idiot, more bitch buffoon than any of the locals. So he rewatched it, and realized that they were right, she was a horrible person. He has been telling people for years that he was this character and only now realizes that he's been self identifying with a jackass the whole time. I of course love shit like this.

This also encouraged me to play the if-we-were-who-would-we-be game. I was already running though my mind, "Well, if he isn't the journalist, then which character is he?" so it was a short leap to trying to peg other friends as other characters. Actually, I really just look forward to telling Kearney that he is the waitress that can't sing. Traditionally, this game was played with me, Mason, Liz, Lisa, and John back in college. We would then suck in anyone around us, and in the heyday usually drew in Dean, Michael, Preot, Vanessa, Brock, and anyone else close enough to tease. According to tradition, John and I were always assigned two polar opposite characters, usually friendly rivals. Which in this case would make me Barbara Jean and him Connie White. Actually, at this point everyone else objects and points out that I have it backwards because I like Barbara Jean more. Which is true. Of these two, I'd be Connie, because I'm always the hussier of the two options and I'd look good in that red dress and be more likely to sing on a stage in a hotel bar with a post in the center of the stage, and it is remarkably easy to imagine him in that white dress (looking at photos friends seem to have dredged up recently to post on Facebook, perhaps i could sport the white dress. Speaking of these terrible pictures, there is actually one of me in red which would complete the set, which thankfully has yet to surface) with ribbons in his hair and he would definitely sing on a stage made to look like the back of a river boat. And I'm the one who would have to ask who that was after being introduced to a famous actress. And he's more likely to be widely beloved and meaninglessly assassinated beneath a giant American flag in front of classical architecture.

All of this is wrong though. John would actually be the sassy Pearl, the older redheaded lady who gets all emotional talking about the Kennedy assassinations. She doesn't have a natural foil, and J. and I aren't really all that much of personal foils anymore, so I'm free to pick someone else. I still don't get to be Barbara Jean. We all know she goes to Mason: lovable sweetheart singer who has just recovered from an accident involving a flaming baton. Which unfortunately makes Kat her husband, who isn't the best character, but the comparison stands only because of the brightly colored bow tie which he wears untied around his neck the whole time. He's at least got flair. Actually, screw that. I can't give Kat a comb-over even if his bowtie is great. She gets to be the blonde chick who runs from her husband who drives the red pickup around. That chick has style (and can fix a truck).

Liz is the British journalist. Why? Not personality reasons, but I could totally see her wearing that hat and probably that dress too. And I can totally see her getting out of a painful conversation by saying, "Oooo, Elliot Gould!" and just getting up and walking away. This means that Stan is the son of the singer who shows her around everywhere.

L.A. Joan is Dean. Outfits, hair, facial expressions. No debate. He is always Shelly Duvall.

I'm always accused of picking people for me just because they are my favorites and trying to twist them into who I would be. This is true (but I am good at it). So of course I want to be Linnea, Lily Tomlin's character. Not exactly classically beautiful but strangely attractive and sporting an odd yet flattering haircut? Most likely to attend a black church and sing in a gospel choir? Ok, so actually Lisa is Linnea. Lisa would also be Lily Tomlin in 9 to 5 (Michael is Jane Fonda, I get to be Dolly Parton. Don't argue with me on this one; not up for debate. John is the boss's nosy assistant who they send to France.).

I was going to do a whole thing with me as Linnea and Ben as Tom (Keith Carradine's character), which was going to cause trouble since they are doomed lovers, but, in my defense, the two with the most chemistry in the film, and Ben is a tall hot blonde dude that always has people throwing themselves at him. But Lisa is Linnea, so I don't know who Tom is. Once upon a time he was Brock (not to Lisa's Linnea, just in general. I mean this as a compliment, not a criticism), but now Brock is the guy running around arranging the big concert for the politician (also a compliment, not a criticism). Or it could be Michael: everyone wants him but no one ever gets as much of him as they want. But it isn't Michael. He is Jeff Goldblum's character, in funky glasses riding around on a giant tricycle, although I'm tempted to make him Linnea's deaf daughter just to give him that mullet.

Well, if Ben and I aren't Linnea and Tom, then I suppose we are Sheila and Patty, The Smokey Mountain Laurels who sing "Oh These Troubled Times". I'm the short bossy one who asks for beers as soon as we finish singing.

Nashville!

I just watched Robert Altman's Nashville. Ok, so everyone else on the planet has seen this movie already, but I have a special knack for not having seen all the things that everyone else has seen. I'm slowly catching up on my quota of pop cultural touchstone movies in my time in floating prisons.

Prior to this, the only Altman movie that I know I've seen (I'm sure somewhere along the way I've seen some others but just don't remember or recognize as his; I'm that kind of opposite of a movie buff) was Prairie Home Companion. I've heard a few people pan that movie; they are morons. Perhaps I could be kinder and say perhaps they didn't get it because they weren't familiar with the radio show the movie was based on. Some of the characters like Guy Noir only really make sense if you know the show, but even if elements of it play better to a familiar audience, the over-all feel of the movie was heart breaking (in a good way). I totally cried when the old fellow died. That movie along with Mean Girls totally forgives anything stupid Lindsay Lohan does for a long time coming. Her interactions with Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin were spot on.

I like Lily Tomlin in anything. How could you not? Out of a cast of 24 characters followed throughout the film, you'd think she could get lost in there somehow, but during the scene where she goes to the club to see Keith Carradine the entire movie becomes about her. She doesn't say a word, but when he sang and she looks on everyone else is knocked out of the picture. He's the hot (and how!) rock star womanizer, singing out to a crowd including at least three other women he's been sleeping with who all to some degree think his song is about them, and I'm sure it was intentionally meant to be ambiguous and in that way not to any of them any more than all of them and every other girl he's chased but watching her, it isn't just about any girl. If it wasn't meant to be before he started singing it, it becomes Lily's character's song in that moment. It becomes their movie, a love story.

And then she breaks his heart. Which we (they) knew would happen. He might have thought it would be the other way around, as he used up and pushed away all the other girls throwing themselves at him (except Shelly Duvall's character, L.A. Joan, who was rude as hell but absolutely unflappable), but he's finally found a woman he can love: one who can't be with him and won't and leaves before he can want her to.

Forget Cheech and Chong: a drug movie for a new generation, The Last Mimzy

Just got finished watching The Last Mimzy. Not to give too much away, but the movie is basically about a couple of kids who do drugs. Their parents freak out, then their science teacher and his girlfriend start doing drugs too, but they can't really handle the shit like the kids. Their parents finally start tripping, but by this time the kids have stolen a van and started hitchhiking so they take a ride in a helicopter with Ving Rhames and he gets high. He takes off to find something to eat and the parents and the kids and the teacher and his babe go in the beach house to keep tripping and talk about the future where scientists hug stuffed bunny rabbits and aliens peel their skin off and are horny tweens underneath and kids go to class in fields of flowers wearing jelly shoes.

Then teach and his lady friend go buy lottery tickets.


(You think I am kidding; I am not.)

It's the little things...

I'm always blabbing about how the movie selection at sea is completely nonsensical. Which, of course, is not a complaint. Today one of the crew was letting me look through a collection of dvd's that he had with him and he explained that he had watched most of his dvd's a thousand times so he had borrowed his kids' collection. I thought this was great, since I'm a total sucker for kid's movies and can't wait to watch Chicken Little and Open Season sometime, but today I settled on Zoom: Academy for Superheroes.

Why not? I really didn't know anything about it except that it was big budget, so it should have good special effects and it has Tim Allen in it, so it shouldn't take itself too seriously. And I like super hero flicks and kids-kicking-ass movies are always the best. If you don't expect too much and just want to be entertained, this kind of thing can be perfect.

And really, based on the criteria that I just laid out, it was perfect. Special effects were spot on, the visual presentation was great, the story silly but you could roll with it, the movie made fun of itself and was slap-stick goofy. I really wanted to just like it, just enjoy the schlocky comic-ness of it, but a couple of things stuck in my craw and just ruined the whole damn thing (ok, didn't ruin it all, I still enjoyed it, but pissed me off enough that I'm sitting here tapping away about it).

It is always the little details that fuck things up. Just a couple of slightly different changes and it wouldn't have left any bad taste in my mouth. The one that was the tipping point is a stupid one; I'll concede that right here at the beginning. The whole schtick of the movie is there are these sort of weirdo outcast kids who have special powers who are brought together by the military to turn into this super team. One of the team members is the requisite hot redhead with psychic powers. You'd think I'm getting in a huff because this is such a blatant Jean Grey rip-off, but no, I just let that go. Cheesy "let's throw together a super team" movies are always ripping off classic comic heroes. It happens. But to introduce her to us, they show a scene in high school where the cheerleaders are treating her like shit and she makes the cafeteria food attack them, so all in all a completely satisfying scene. For the record, I don't hate cheerleaders, kind of actually love that they exist and plan on watching the Bring It On sequel that is in this same movie collection, but we all knew some cheerleaders who were straight-up bitches and who deserved more than anything to have cafeteria food explode all over them. So anyway, I like this girl from the start. The actress playing her is so unbelievably beautiful, but in a quiet kind of way and she plays the character well.

So everything goes great and they win (suprise!) and they have a stupid back to their daily life sequence. This was painful and idiotic enough as these things inherently are, but, aside from the little princess girl's bit which was kind of cute and didn't make you hate the director, the rest of them were nothing except cringe-inducing. Part of what made them so obnoxious is how they were obviously supposed to show how these outcast kids were now socialized and included and celebrated by their families and peers. Don't they get that we liked the kids because they were outcasts and weirdos? Show that they've learned to deal with their differences, but don't put the fat kid on a soccer team and DON'T DON'T DON'T turn the hot redheaded outcast into a fucking cheerleader!!!! Again, I have nothing against cheerleaders as a whole though I will concede that as a rule teenage girls who become cheerleaders tend towards the dark side. But high school is a dark time, we all tended towards the dark side in our own little ways back then. I just don't want my cheesy fun movies to feed up evil cheerleader nightmare bitches as the foil to the cool outcast that they treat like dirt and then after showing me how likable and fun she is and giving her super powers to show me an after-the-adventure sequence about how she is now using her superpowers as a cheerleader!!!! Let her and her hot super boyfriend be all cute and obnoxious teen-lovebirdy but don't turn her into the evil thing you started out pitting her as different from. Look, she'll show those bitches; oh look, now she is one. Good job, geniuses.

So I warned you that this was something stupid to get pissed off about, but I'm blogging about it. Blogging is all about petty rages over things that are too stupid to actually discuss in real life (though had I watched this movie with my friends instead of here in solitary confinement, I'd be having this conversation in realtime, but we can pretend like I am socially savvy enough to not waste actual quality time on such petty complaints). The second major complaint is perhaps a little more cogent.

So they assembled this super team and they bring them in and decide to have this stupid try-out bit. The whole try-out thing was dumb to start with since they had already shown us little a-day-in-the-life sequences for each of the ones who would be picked so it wasn't like we didn't already know who the super heroes were going to be. Still, it was kind of funny so I can't really hate on it being in the movie. I can hate on their casting for it. I'm not Mr. Super-PC. I get exhausted by political correctness as much as the next guy, but you can pull your head out of your ass and show a little bit of sense when you cast for shit like this. I don't care that the whole team was white kids. Big fucking deal, not the only superhero movie and every silly film doesn't have to be an equal opportunity event, but if you are going to have a team of lily white kids, do you have to have the casting sequence where every person not picked for the team isn't white and has lame-ass super powers? I mean, come on. So you want to have a little American Idol moment so Tim Allen can play Simon to Courtney Cox's Paula (and Chevy Chase's Randy Jackson), fine. Ha ha, get some laughs with it. And you want to have a team that is all white kids, again, I don't care. Fine, do it, I liked the kids they cast for the parts. Just make all the lame kids white too. Or most of the lame kids white... or even one of them! Because when you make all the lame kids black/hispanic/asian/mixed and all the super kids white, I can't just enjoy my cheesy damn movie and instead have to think about racial politics and if that is really what I wanted to be doing I'd have been watching The Color Purple (ok, so if they had The Color Purple on this boat, I would so be watching it instead but you know what I mean). This isn't a real super hero movie, leave the racial metaphors for the X-Men, just make your Tim Allen feel-good family fun flick. Having lot's of people of color for extras doesn't make the movie racially sensitive, it makes it racially distracting. It doesn't make me furious or troubled, it just makes me think whoever did the casting for the extras is an idiot.

So anyway, should you watch the movie? If you are stuck on a boat in the middle of the pacific ocean, completely cut off from society and facing a limited number of movie options like moi, then I heartily recommend it. You'll love it and it will be a nice break from Steven Segal flicks. If you are in a movie store and could pick anything you want? You could do worse and if you have the stomach for kid action movies, you'll probably enjoy it. It is worth watching just for the little blonde girl with super strength's outfits and temper tantrums.

Who needs sad songs when you have sad movies?

Today is the third day in a row we've had nothing to do because we are waiting for the moon to come back before fishing again (you don't catch many swordfish during a new moon), and my roommate has been tearing through his formidable movie collection. He is watching a movie when I get up in the morning, and pretty much watches one after another til on into the night. Some days I like his selection and watch along, other days... not so much. This afternoon, he put in Saw II. I hate hack 'em up flicks. I can do scary and don't mind some gore if the story comes first and the gore is secondary, but... whatev'. Saw II was about as far from anything I would chose to watch as you can possibly get.

I've said before that the movie libraries on these boats are completely without rhyme or reason, but perhaps nothing better illustrates this than his choice of movie to follow-up Saw II, which would be Steel Magnolias.

At then end when all the sad shit is happening, I'm up in my bunk trying to not sniffle loudly enough for my roommate to hear me. This is a fishing boat. You can't be all weepy in an ultra-macho male work environment, right? Well, actually I suppose you can if you are watching Steel Magnolias because after he turned off the movie and there was no longer the noise from the movie to hide it, I could hear him sniffling in his bunk.

This is one of those great movies for playing if-we-were-who-would-we-be? I've always supposed that if we were characters from Steel Magnolias that I would want to be Truvy, mostly just because I like Dolly Parton, but I've always been sure that I would instead be Clairee. One, she is a likeable character, but more than that, amongst my friends from college who I usually play this with, there was always a dichotomy between my friend John and I, so that whenever there was a diametrically opposed pair of friends amongst the characters we each had to be one of them. And in this cast, John would be Ouiser so I would be Clairee. This was mostly fun to say because John would then huff and argue and make everyone agree that he was in fact Ouiser.

Watching it this time, I've changed my mind. I want to be Ouiser. She is the best ever. I can't wait to be cranky and old and grumpy like that. Actually, I guess I already am. I was realizing while I was home at Christmas, I'm already the grumpy guy in the family. Amongst my friends, I might be Claire, but at home I am totally and completely Ouiser. I'm the one that storms in and bluntly asks questions that no one else does and the one who voices complaints that no one else will say and the one who gripes about being dragged along to things that everyone else is being cheerful about. And I like it that way. Someone has to be grumpy and why not me?

Maybe I should start wearing funny hats, too.

"You complete me.": a few thoughts on Lego Love (the treatment of individuals as building material rather than autonomous beings)

I wouldn't never choose to watch a sports movie. I just don't. Same as I normally would never choose to sit down and watch sports on tv. This isn't to say that I don't sometimes enjoy both. I remember loving The Natural and Rudy (though I couldn't now tell you anything about either except which sport each involved) and the Boise State/Oklahoma game at last year's Fiesta Bowl was one of the most exciting things I've ever seen. But still, most of the time I just don't get into them, so I stuck in my headphones and started playing spider solitaire when my bunkmate put in Jerry McGuire. If anything sounds more boring to me than a sports movie, it is a movie about a sports agent.

I remember when it came out and everyone was talking about it and how great it was and all these irritating lines from the movie were being quoted. It annoyed the hell out of me and while I never doubted that it was actually probably a good movie, I never really wanted to see it. Oddly enough, the one cheesy line which was quoted over and over again which didn't get on my nerves was, "You had me from 'hello'." Ok, I know that is one of the the sappiest lines in all movie history and easily the most obnoxious from a movie full of obnoxious sound bites. How do I like that one and still grump at all the rest? Well, I'm just like that. Kenny Chesney irritates the holy hell out of me, but I still like the song titled after and based on that line. (Honestly, I do like that song, and reflecting on that I kind of feel bad about some of the rougher opinions I've expressed about K-Che.)

Why am I writing about this now, since I've just declared that I chose headphones and spider solitaire to spare me from this movie? Because spider solitaire only lasts so long and I ended up watching bits of the movie, most importantly the last chunk. The movie is engaging enough and I probably would have just stored that in the back of my head and not really thought about it again except there is the moment which is supposed to be touching when Jerry McGuire comes running back to find his wife and win her back. He comes in to the house to find her in what appears to be a divorce support group and... I started to type 'declares his love for her' but that isn't what he does. He tells her how incomplete the victory was without her to share it with, how much he missed what he shared with her, and all this built up to his big line: "You complete me."

Which made me throw up just a little bit in my mouth. "You complete me," may be the most repellent line I have ever heard. Why? Because he didn't come back and declare his love for her at all, he came back and told her he wasn't letting her get rid of him and declared how much he had missed the role she performed in his life. He didn't say a damn thing about loving her or missing her; he listed out what was missing when someone, who seemingly just happened to be her, wasn't there to perform that role. He didn't miss her, he missed his Wife.

It really fucking got under my skin. I was actually kind of letting myself get into the emotion of the movie and was looking forward to their reconciliation and hearing her say, "You had me from hello." I still like that line, perhaps all the more for how it stands in such stark contrast to this "You complete me," bullshit. One speaks to a spark between two people, being instantly taken by this new person and completely swept away by them; the other speaks to ownership and the sublimation of one individual by another.

The scene was all the creepier given Tom Cruise's recent interactions with the media. He's seemed more and more calculated as time goes on, with his marriage coming across as calculated to look perfect. It may in fact be truly perfect and they may be happy as clams, but it sure as hell looked like he was getting married and having a child for the sake of achieving these appropriate milestones and filling out a fairytale life. Which is exactly what Jerry was doing in the movie and the reason that his wife initially intends on them separating: he is using her to fill a family shaped void in his life but doesn't truly love her. When he comes back, it isn't because he has had an epiphany and found that he did truly love her, he just doesn't want this formulaic facsimile to break up and leave his perfect world with unfulfilled roles. Maybe I'm just being cynical, but there wasn't really anything in his speech to her to suggest otherwise. He said it more emphatically, but emphasis does not change the meaning here and to my mind at least made it even more offensive.

(Bunkmate is now watching some whitewater rafting movie with Alan Alda, Peter Gallagher, and the dad from Alf.)

I'm certainly showing personal prejudice here (isn't that what a blog is for?); I don't like the idea of people looking to other people as solutions to problems or to fill the empty spaces. I'm not a fixer-upper and don't care to date one either. I want a partnership not a supporting role in someone else's life (or someone else taking a supporting role in mine). There is nothing more depressing that realizing that someone isn't actually in love with you so much as in love with the function you fulfill in their life. I've always had a sharp aversion to titles like 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend', not so much because being one or having someone who I consider as such bothers me, but much of the time I feel like the title is meant to stake a claim of ownership rather than to confer affection. I'll happily claim a boyfriend as an indication of how I feel about him, but in situations where it could be taken as my staking a claim of ownership, I cringe, not at the thought of claiming him, but at the idea of introducing this person not as their own person but as their role in my life. This is coming across poorly (granted, these days I feel that coming across poorly just might be my superhero power), and there is a fine line in it all and more than a few times I have certainly raised the ire of a significant other for not wanting to 'claim' them the way they expected me to claim them.

But this moment in Jerry McGuire perfectly illustrated the worst of this kind of instinct to eclipse the individual with the role: when he returns, he addresses the room of women with a demand for his Wife and as he lists off what he missed and who he missed, it was his Wife and the role she fulfilled for him which he cites, not the woman who is his wife.

I can understand missing the role a loved one plays in your life; that is only human and practically, we do play roles in each other's lives. But missing the fulfillment of that roll and missing how that particular individual makes you feel when they are there to fulfill that role are two very different things. He didn't want to share it with (name I can't remember), he wanted to share it with his Wife. A Wife was an integral part of a perfect life and he didn't want to lose that formulaic perfection he was so close to completing. She was just one more shiny plastic piece that he had to have to to complete his perfect Lego marriage as the crowning component for his perfect, shiny Lego life. He didn't love her, he loved how she fit in the appropriate space.

Monsters, real and imagined (no, this is not about politics)

Steven Segal is playing guitar with Marty Stewart. He is an EPA agent trying to stop evil casino tycoon Kris Kristofferson from polluting the river and killing a bunch of hicks, all the while charming and falling in love with the sassy redhead from CSI. She is not sassy in this movie. Apparently all of Nashville has decided to cameo in this movie as well, so in addition to Marty and Kris, we've got Randy Travis (who is a bad guy and gets shot by Segal in a truckstop diner) and Travis Tritt, who just performs at the casino. The one thing Marty Stuart and Steven Segal and Travis Tritt have in common is having improbably horrible haircuts and they've all sported these same damn horrible haircuts for more than twenty years in public life now. Maybe they could at least trade bad hair cuts with each other (if I had access to the internet right now, I would so spend the rest of the night photoshopping their hairdo's on each other and any of my friends I could find old photos of).

Everyday I tell myself I am not going to comment on the things my roommate chooses to watch on his tv and then day after day I am confronted with something out of the darkest depths of videotaped hell. How many thousand movies has Steven Segal made? Seriously. He and Jean Claude Van Damn could completely fill the rotation of a cable network and never show the same film twice in two years. I thought taking a job out at sea would bring me adventure and excitement and leave me with a greater appreciation for the wonders of our planet. Instead it has left me with informed opinions about the filmography of Segal and Van Damn. One day (probably later tonight) I'm going to break down and do a side by side comparison of these two ass-kicking fools, but first I have more important things to comment on: aliens and squids.

There is no better place to watch space flicks than lying in your bunk on a boat in the middle of the ocean. You are kind of lurching around and the feeling of being isolated inside a ship is real for you so it makes the flick all the more believable. I'm about to admit something which a person of my age shouldn't be able to admit: prior to tonight, I'd never watched the original Alien. Now I've seen bits and pieces on cable, and I remember when it first came out I read the spoof of it in Mad Magazine, but I never saw it. But this just made it more awesome to watch it this time in this isolated ship-bound seclusion.

Of course when you aren't in a movie theater, there always seems to be some kind of interruption right at a crucial moment. This is usually unwelcome and totally ruins it for you, but sometimes it is perfect. So tonight, at the end during the self-destruct sequence when Ripley is running for the shuttle and rounds the corner to face the critter, my roommate opens the door and asks me if I have seen one of the big squids yet. He had just caught a really big one, so I paused the movie and jumped out of bed and ran out on deck to see this beast. The bastard was a fucking Humboldt (I think) squid that was damn near three feet long! There is this monstrous thing sitting there, flashing angry colors and staring at me. I was down close taking pictures and it moved unexpectedly and I had a sudden flashing image of the Alien attacking me.




I've heard these are pretty mean little monsters. All squid have little mean hooked beaks, as I have on occasion been reminded when trying to get photos of the beautiful little flying squid that sometimes land on deck. Three inches long, but they will twist themselves into a knot to bite your fingers. Now there was no way in hell that I was going to get anywhere near the beak in this giant thing, but in addition to having the big version of the terrifying mouth all cephalopods have, I'd heard that these guys also have claws on their suckers. Of course the scientist in me conspired with the idiot in me to reach out and touch a sucker and see if it is true.

It is true, and they can move surprisingly quickly and are pretty strong. Thankfully he didn't get a good grip on me. Those are some serious fucking claws.

While inspecting this one, my friend got another on his hook and I got to help him pull it in. I could see other squids swimming about it, glowing white in the light like they do most of the time at night, while the one on the hook flashed all manner of angry colors. As it broke the surface it blasted this rich brown ink everywhere and tried blasting us with water from its siphons. My pal gaffed it and we brought it on board. I got some more pictures and another of the crew came out and chopped the two long tentacles off to microwave as a snack (they were delicious). I'm generally more of a take-em-alive kind of guy, but I work on a fishing boat and I'd never get to inspect these things up close if someone wasn't catching them for food so I again made peace with my pangs of guilt and went back to geeking out about how cool they are (and snacking on their tentacles).



A few more pictures and I traded one slimy monster for another and went back to my movie. Which of course was awesome and the perfect way to round out my night. This would actually be the perfect night at sea, exactly the kind of thing I came out here for. I say 'would' because the creepy fake monster/creepy real monster synergy was book-ended by a Lifetime original movie starring Melissa Gilbert and the aforementioned Steven Segal movie, which would make it instead a typical night at sea.

(It is worth noting that during the Segal movie that had apparently been taped off TV, they kept showing commercials for Aliens III and one of the hillbilly characters in the movie was the same actor who had played Brett in Alien.)

best movie ever!

Ok, two pretty different candidates for the best film of all time are currently neck and neck for my vote. This is of course based only on what I've enjoyed lately and absolutely no higher esoteric reasons. I'm not someone who likes to watch movies over and over. I normally just don't. If I've seen it, I've seen it and squirm like a worm if someone tries to get me to watch it again, but for some reason I just watched Shortbus again for maybe the 8th time.

I managed to miss it in theaters when I was still in New York. I don't know why, just kind of had been hearing about it for so long and folks there that were in the know and had been all about it through its creation were suddenly over it and kind of panned it, so even though I still wanted to see it, it wasn't at the top of my list and no one else was dragging me off to watch it. Maybe I wouldn't have fallen in love with it there, but my first viewing came in Alabama. Over New Year's Brian had it downloaded on his computer and there was something kind of perfect watching it on a laptop in my cramped room with a friend who I hadn't seen in forever who had also recently left the city and my brother who had moved up there with me. Home was getting on my nerves enough that I couldn't roll my eyes at any of the silliness and could just eat up the familiarity of it all.

Then it was showing at a movie theater when I was in San Francisco, so I finally got to see it on the big screen. It is one of those movies that is fun to see with a crowd so you can watch how people react to different parts. It was still good the second time.

In Hawaii, movie and book recommendations are a way of life for us boat people, so I found myself recommending it to my coworkers and thinking about it, so I got it. Originally I got it just to make them watch it, but then a little too much extra time and no desire to watch again any of the Van Damn movies that the crew has, I watched it again. And again. So now I've found myself sucked into the "Fifth Element trap": oh I love that scene, let's watch it real quick. Yeah right. You set out just to watch the blue chick sing and Mila Jovavich kick alien ass and suddenly watch the rest of the movie and start it over again and rewatch it from the beginning. Or you just want to the Asian chick beat up the arguing Jamie^2 acolytes then wig out and smash the egg vibrator with a manakin leg, but as the movie starts, you tell yourself you are just going to listen to the first song and... too late, you are watching the whole damn thing again.

I think it is the music which does it to you. If you have a semi-musical element to the movie then you can lie to yourself and say you are just going to watch that one, self-contained chunk and then be done with it. But as you learn from getting sucked into old MTV, small chunk just make it easier to dive in somewhere other than the official beginning; getting out is another matter. Perhaps getting out is then even more difficult because you tell yourself that you are going to watch just this one more scene/video/whatev and then be done, but of course it is one more after that and after that....

So now I watch Shortbus over and over again and am not feeling guilty about it. The second candidate for best movie ever is the aforementioned The Fifth Element. I'm really not joking. I don't know anyone who didn't like it and have yet to spot it without either 1) someone else suggesting that we watch the whole movie or just that scene with the blue chick or 2) me suggesting we watch just that scene with the whole movie, and in either scenario, I've yet to encounter anyone who doesn't want to. In the middle of a party, you can turn that on in a bedroom and before you know it, the whole party is in there watching it and won't let you turn it off until the end and then someone will put it in and start the whole damn thing over.

God was happy with me on my last trip and it was included amongst the inexplicable movie selection of the boat, so of course I ended up watching it again. And then I watched the scene with the blue chick which turned into watching the rest of the movie. And then i recognized extra supermodels amongst the cast members besides Mila, so i watched it again trying to recognize the supermodels. The sick part is I still want to see it again. I'm probably going to go out and buy to have on the boats with me.

Again, I think with it the music part helps with the repeatability of it. Ridiculous action and aliens helps too. What else could I watch over and over again?

I am so going home and buying a box set of old Benny Hill episodes and the Muppet Show.