Dude.

Look, I'm busy and sort of frightened. I made you a list and now I'm going to bed.

1. Oh my god Dude, wtf. I told you I needed to borrow 700 billion dollars. Why are you being such a dick about it? I know I was saying before I could handle this kind of shit on my own but come on, forget about what I said! God. I warned you, bitches. Something really baaad is going to happen. I don't know why you hate America.
- The Invisible Hand.

2. Working in an office is changing me. I think I'd like to start a re-occurring segment on this blog. I don't have all day to think of a great title for it now, but maybe something like People at my office who I don't know well/at all but I'm pretty sure suck and here's why. Why does this bitch named Alisa who I've never seen or talked to have to be such a bitch? She keeps sending out these mass emails complaining about people leaving food in the two refrigerators. An excerpt, paraphrased: The refrigerators are not for you to keep food in for the ENTIRE WEEK. They are there for you to keep your lunches cold for one day. From now on, everyone will have to write the date on anything in the refrigerators. If after ONE DAY the food is still there, I'm throwing it away. Who is this woman and why is she so insane? So far I have not seen one dated item, and for this civil disobedience I am glad, but last week, friends, on day 3 of its perilous life of accompanying my morning oatmeal, the bitch threw away my rice milk. Was the fridge jam packed? After three long days of taking up 12 inches of cubic space, was the rice milk curdling, fermenting, growing legs and crawling into her cubicle? Alisa, you're a fucking bitch.

3. Look at him. Just look at him! That's my golden boy. He's like a shining, black, secret muslim night light for when I'm scared of the dark.


4. -.777 ! What does it mean? I've listened to the Diane Rheme show every day for the last two weeks and I still don't understand.

5. The Faint's new album is really good.

On Not Writing.

I know I know I know I know I know I know. Someday we'll meet unexpectedly on a dusty road, and it will be as though we never parted.

Not today friends. Not today.

"You have serious problems."

Lest you think all I do is watch movies, talk about movies, watch tv, talk about tv, watch youtube videos featuring people on movies and tv and then talk about it, I'll have you know, friends, that I also read books. I just finished a novel called Zeroville. It's about a bald dude who's obsessed with the movies! So let's just put this rumor to rest. I just don't understand people who don't read.

Roger Ebert is not a hack. He's a wonderful writer, and especially in the days of Gene Siskel, Siskel & Ebert at the Movies was an intelligent and interesting show, and more important to me in my formative years than any bullshit sunday morning cartoons. It took films seriously. Check out Siskel in this review of The Last Temptation of Christ if you don't believe me. He looks like he's going to start crying if we don't see this movie. WHY DID HE HAVE TO DIE!?

The last 8 years with Roeper were bad enough, but I just had the misfortune of catching the first episode of the latest incarnation of the show. It has now become simply "At the Movies." It stars two young, handsome, movie illiterate douche bags on a set with sweeping graphics, complete with sound effects. I know that the world seems to think that young minds can't focus on anything for more than 7 seconds without seeing a swooping graphic + sound effect, but Christ. I'm only 26 and I feel like telling these "film critics" to turn down that damn music and get off my lawn.

Film critics are not supposed to be handsome. It's fucking bullshit. Sitting around and watching movies isn't a lifestyle. It's a skill that we cultivate to compensate for being misunderstood and not getting laid. This isn't an opinion, it's an iron clad law of physics, like gravity. Jim Morrison is handsome, and he SUCKS. Thom Yorke? Ugly as fuck and he rocks. Dan Brown, the handsome author of The Davinci Code? sucks. Bukowski's face made people vomit in the streets. It's about what's in our head and our hearts.

I can't talk about this anymore. I'm starting to take it really seriously.

Bob Saget Raped and Killed a Girl in 1990.

The video explains my emotional state this evening, the fourth in a row in which I will average less than 4 hours of sleep for no good reason. All play and no sleep makes Molly a gloomy Guss.

The title of the post is just cuz I want to attract to my blog the kind of people that would do a google search for said phrase.

The couple that hates middle America together stays together

I've been spending about.... 9+ hours a day absorbing news/politics, (NPR streaming in my ears at work = worst idea ever) so it may be that I have intelligent things to say about current affairs. BUT, since I've been using the internet for over 10 years and I just found out about screenshots, I'll just post bits of conversation Erik and I had while watching the Republican National Convention instead.





I meant to say calumnity, not fecundity. Although, given Palin's daughter, fecundity is also acceptable.
(dictionary.com)

Mollys gotta case of the tuesdays

So here's what happened: the old lady died or something. I don't know the details, but the original offer of hanging out and putting on old people makeup is off the table, so for the last week I've been doing the "data and image processing" job.

Going from having my days filled with NOTHING to suddenly having 9 hours of my life stolen from me has been something of a shock. It reminds me of how I felt as a little kid when I first learned about the holocaust. (I can't believe that millions of people go through this every day.) To review: it's a sporting goods company that consolidates products from hundreds of retailers and sells them on the internet. My job is to upload new inventory from databases, resize photos in photoshop, look up the specs for snowboards and shit in catalogues, copy, paste, copy paste, copy, paste.

When I first started attacking the data entry, I had this erroneous idea that there was some merit in rushing through the work, or even just working quickly and efficiently. I see now that this was based on the belief that there's an end to the work. The truth is that there is no end. It's like road construction. While one project is being completed, another strip of pavement cracks and erodes in the salty winters and the hot, constant sun. And what if I did get to the end of the data entering, what then? I would be out of a job. Good lord, it reminded me so very much of Albert Camus The Stranger:

I could see that the trouble with the Guillotine was that you had no chance at all, absolutely none. The fact was that it had been decided once and for all that the patient was to die. It was an open and shut case, a fixed arrangement, a tacit agreement that there was no question of going back on. If by some extraordinary chance the blade failed, they would just start over. So the thing that bothered me most was that the condemned man had to hope the machine would work the first time. And I say that's wrong.

It's not all bad. For one, since I consider the job entirely unimportant, there's no stress. The office is filled with nice computer nerds that totally and completely mind their own business. I can dress like a slob. In the room across the hall there's a kid with a spiderman lamp that he brought from home and a black kid that has apparently decided to forego his birthright of coolness in favor of linux. From what I've observed so far, they work hard until the afternoon, and then they talk about World of Warcraft.

Ooh ooh. There's a "little person." On the first day I didn't hear him talk, and he's not a dwarf or anything, he's totally proportionate, so I thought maybe he was a 12 year old boy genius, but would a 12 year old boy genius really be wasting his big brains in the design department of a shitty online sporting goods store? On that first day I was like "boy Genius, you outta be at NASA." But no, dude's just a little grown up, and god bless him, he's not going to go off to Hollywood to star in some indie film maker's low budget dream sequence. He's gonna grind it out like the rest of us. The first words I heard him say were thus: "That's right. I'm wearing a tie today bitches." It looked and sounded like a 9 year old sucked a helium balloon, wandered into an office wearing a shirt and tie, and said those words.

I haven't talked to him or anyone else in the office except for my boss and the two people that I share a room with. So far I just blog about them.

And look, I know I spent the whole summer complaining about not having a job, but Jesus, I didn't mean I wanted a job job. I want to be like a small child who wanders into a movie theater where Scorsese is incognito screening his latest picture for middle America, and I want him to suddenly turn to me and become entranced with the sense of my exploding talent, and I want him to ask me to get him a coffee, which we all know in the movie industry, leads to bigger things.

12 Movie Meme: Christ, Homos, other.

I wrote this post nearly a week ago but there were all these things that happened that prevented it's prompt delivery. Today, film, tomorrow, I'll tell you about work.

I should be telling you all about what came of my job debacle, and I will in good time, but right now I can't sleep, I've been tagged in my first blog meme adventure, and talk of film relaxes me. Erik opted for a list of 12 movies he himself would want to watch. I have tried to keep with that, but I've also chosen the kind of movies that I doubt many of you have seen, that when I meet people I say "you havent seen _______ ? Oh my GOD you need to see it." (And then I practically drive them to the video store. Have you ever tried being my friend? I know, it sucks.)

1. The Rapture 1991
This is a forgotten, overlooked film, and it marks the beginning of a theme throughout my favorite's - those dealing with religion, and specifically, Christ. Why? I have no idea. I wasn't raised religious, so maybe that means I can look at the question of faith academically, and without a lot of emotional baggage. This film follows the conversion of a woman from sinner to born again christian. The way it depicts events is both unconventional and I guess controversial (?) in the sense that everyone who watches it will have a completely different take on what they've seen. God bless you Les Brill of the Wayne State Film department for introducing me to this movie. David Duchovney gives an early, pretty bad, mulleted performance.

2. Joe Versus the Volcano 1990
An existential comedy that you may have either missed or failed to fully appreciate. The film exaggerates, first with an overly gloomy landscape of Joe's bleak office life, and then the exalted state he finds himself in later. He floats on luggage in the middle of the ocean, looks up at an impossibly huge moon on the brink of death and says "thank you for my life." It fucking makes you feel good, okay? God. I've been known to believe in magic.

3. Jesus' Son 1999
This film isn't actually about Christ, per se, (Velvet Underground anyone?) but a drug addict who wanders through life, acting like an asshole, making mistakes, and having beautiful hallucinations. Jack Black shows up, and he's hilarious as ever. I appreciate this film because it's the drug movie I always wanted to make during my more psychedellic youth. It plays with the idea of altered consciousness, the mistakes we make in that state, and the boring but necessary conclusion of sobriety. He winds up working in a home for people with mental and physical handicaps. "They made God look like a senseless maniac."

4. The Last Temptation of Christ 1988
Now this most certainly is entirely about Christ. It's famous and infamous for exploring the human side of JC, because without this, as Scorsese says, "where is the sacrifice?" More than that, I love the choices Scorsese made in a mostly american cast, speaking plain, common vernacular about the philosophical questions that the people of that time faced. Christ fumbles through his mission as its revealed to him by God, not all at once, but by a series of degrees. The relationship between Christ and Judas, I think, parallels the classic "buddy movie" genre, believe it or not, and the homoreotic undertones are worth the price of admission. I love love love love love Martin Scorsese, and I consider this his best movie.

5. Welcome to the Dollhouse 1995
This is a sentimental pick because I was obsessed with this movie in high school, and constantly analyzing it at that time corresponded perfectly with my emergence as an adolescent turned teenager turned conscious individual. The film is hilarious, heartbreaking, and honest in its portrayal of what it's like to be that kid in middle school that no one wants to sit with at lunch. I won't admit that I've been there, but lets just say, I've been there. There are not enough good, honest movies about young people, depicted by actors of the same age, and the same emotional level as real middle schoolers. Todd Solondz is a nutbar, but he's also brave and funny.

6. Rope 1948
I had to include a Hitchcock film because he's fucking Hitchcock. This movie is famous for having a story depicted in real time, with the illusion of a single take. The cuts are obvious for today's audience, but never mind that, because the gimmick has little to do with why I like the movie. I like it because the murdering college friends are gay, gay, gay, and the undercurrents of their relationship and the manipulation of the strong lover over the weaker one just slays me. One of them says "I don't like chicken" so explicitly he might as well just be saying "I like balls in my face."

7. Jesus Camp 2006
I wanted to include a documentary. Erroll Morris is obviously the best documentarian that ever was, but Erik already included one of his movies on his meme, and I'm in the business of variety. This also fulfills the "horror film" genre. The little Christian Army represented reminds me of Children of the Corn.

8. Mulhulland Drive 2001
Oh David Lynch, how could you. This movie is sexy, mysterious, and ridiculous. I think it takes all the great elements of some of his earlier work (most reminiscent of Blue Velvet, Lost Highway) and presents them with the most sophistication and creepiness. It's sexy and terrifying. He doesn't feel compelled to wrap everything up in a way that will be universally understood, and that takes courage. Also, the women are beautiful and they do beautiful things to each other. I'm sensing a theme here: Gays and Jesus.

9. The Killing 1956
I became ashamed there weren't more older films on my list, so I threw this one on because I just watched it again on TV, and I was reminded at how great all of its elements are. It's a classic heist picture, but the brilliance is in the characters created, and how they play on each other to almost get away with a brilliant crime. We want them to get away with it. It's Stanley Kubrick's first movie. I'm going for slightly obscure here, so I'll note, if you haven't seen 2001: A space Odyssey, by all means see that first.

10. All the Real Girls 2003
I was talking earlier about David Gordon Green, with his recent mainstream hit Pineapple Express. All the Real Girls is a simple, straightforward story about young people in a relationship. (Will it work out? No silly, nothing ever works out.) It takes place in rural Indiana I think(?) but it's a testament to the art direction that all of his locations in all of his films are stunning. His characters are real. They fumble through their words/lives.

11. In the Company of Men 1997
This is a weird choice. I don't particularly like watching Neil LaBute films. His characters are unlikable, they do horrible things, and they leave you with an overall eggh! impression, but I can't not recommend this film because I can honestly say it changed my life and my perceptions. It made me realize that it's possible people aren't what they seem, that I could love someone and then find out that everything they did and told me was a lie. This is his first movie. As a runner up, The Shape of Things is more polished, and I loved it a lot, but the initial Neil LaBute blow came to me with this one.

12. Disney's Robin Hood 1973 / Jesus Christ Superstar 1973
Because after this 12 days of horror, you deserve a juice box. The former is a hippy disney musical featuring bipedal animals overthrowing a tyrannical government. Roger Miller's Rooster music is Bob Dylan good. Jesus Christ Superstar is not a musical, it's a ROCK OPERA. Don't let your atheistic, intellectual "I hate Andrew Lloyd Weber" sensibilities prevent you from seeing this movie (all day ever day.) It must be fate that they both came out in 1973.

Thanks for reading my list! I tag your mom.