Steve Jobs Sucks Tuesday, January 15, 2008[ banter 2 ]
I just bought a $179 wireless router for my iMac, then dropped another $129 on a 500GB external hard drive so that I can back up my iMac using the bullshit Time Machine feature that doesn't work right on Leopard (the new Mac OS). Today Apple just introduced their new $299 wireless router that is ALSO a 500GB external drive specifically designed to work with Leopard. It's exactly what I needed... last week and $300 ago.
I hate Steve Jobs.
That said, I'm totally buying it when it comes out next month.
Another reason why I can't watch this woman more than 30 seconds.
Tyra, STOP THE MADNESS!
What I kills me the most about Tyra Banks is how she thinks we all just love these live shenanigans and respect her "candindness" and ability to poke fun at herself (i.e. show us things we don't really want to see from supermodels). It never really works, just kind of looks stupid. I mean, that first clip is clearly her parodying Oprah and it might actually be kind of funny if it wasn't really obvious that Tyra thinks she's being slapstick hilarious. All this does is remind me again why she isn't (and won't ever be) as ground-shattering as Mama O and how much she doesn't deserve all the comparisons.
Tyra please just stop this. If you wanna do the world some good go make a fat girl the Top Model. Also, maybe get rid of the platinum hair.
If one more person misuses the "care less" phrase I'm going to lose it. I will snap. We're talking me grabbing a gun and pistol-whipping total strangers. Even the elderly.
The phrase should go like this: "I couldn't care less." It means that at this present time, you care SO LITTLE about something that it would not be possible for you to care any less. Meaning you don't give a shit and there's no way to get there. Hey my boss is pissed at me? I couldn't care less.
Not like this: "I could care less about how you feel!" This means that you DO care but it's possible to not care even more. And this is what most people say and I hate it. How is it that damn near everyone in the world says it wrong? News anchors, politicians, magazine journalists, even characters on TV shows --- don't any of those people have advisors/editors/producers to keep them from making errors like this? It's like the public has become so used to saying it one way, we're just chucking the rules out the window and anything can fly. Miss Jodi knows what I'm talking about. If we don't do something about this now, Gen Z is going to be even dumber than we think they are. It's careless and lazy and I will not stand for it anymore.
I have sent an email to Grammar Girl, asking her to take this up on her next podcast. You're all gonna be sorry.
Hold the Bacon Tuesday, January 9, 2007[ banter 2 ]
Robin Williams has ruined my entire night.
I watched The People's Choice Awards tonight, cuz I'll watch anything featuring Queen Latifah and her boobs, and I just lovehate it when celebrities go into cheesy mode and start referring to their fans as "the people" (i.e. "This award means so much because it's coming from The People."). They cut to this backstage clip of Robin Williams being asked if people always expect him to be funny, and he said some woman recently came up to him @ the airport and said, "Be zany!" Then he goes, "It's kinda like going up to Ned Beatty and saying, 'You sure got a purdy mouth. Squeal like a pig! Go on! Wheeeeeee! Wheeeeee!'." He was being really funny and animated and everybody was laughing and I had no clue what he was talking about.
I know Ned Beatty as Otis in Superman and was in Purple People Eater and Back to School, stupid funny movies. So I google the "squeal like pig" phrase and find that it's a famous line from the movie Deliverance, which I never saw. Did a YouTube search for the movie and...
Oh God. My eyes. Trauma. I'm not even going to link you to the clip.
So apparently, the whole famous line comes from a scene in the movie where 2 crazy mountain men tie this guy to a tree and make him watch while they RAPE his buddy, poor Ned Beatty, like a prison bitch in the mud. That's where the "Squeal like pig!" line plays out... and it's NOT funny. They strip him naked and make him snort and grunt and squeal and oh my god I can't even type this out. How the hell was Robin Williams joking about that dialouge, with the pig noises and shit? The movie is 30-something years old but still, man. Rape and bestiality aren't that funny. Robin Williams, what the hell is the matter with you?
Ned Beatty, if you are reading this I just want you to know that I'm sorry. Just so sorry. I want to give you a hug and let you know that Robin does NOT speak for me. If I could turn back time, if I could find a way I'd take back those words that hurt you and you'd stay. Keep your head up, buddy. I was never a big fan of pork anyway.
I really wanted to love this movie. It's from John Cameron Mitchell who did Hedwig (which everyone should see if only just to marvel at how much Hedwig looks like Rachel Griffiths) and it's all about young attractive people in search of sex and lonliness and love in New York. For those reasons alone I went to theater excited and ready to be moved, and those are the reasons I think most people are going to say that they loved this movie b/c it spoke for them and the way they feel, the same way everyone jumped on the Garden State bandwagon. Garden State was a train of love I didn't jump on, by the way --- I liked it and yeah, of course I identified with it and connected with that whole "Home doesn't exist anymore" feeling, but shit, I had an issue believing that Zach Braff's character could leave the Natalie Portman so flippantly in the end. A plain, Average Joe lands this impossibely beautiful girl on a weekend trip home, and, once he gets her in bed, rides his afterglow "I bagged a hot girl" ego back to his L.A. life. Yeah a ton of other things were said and done but ultimately isn't that where it went? YES I KNOW he ended up coming right back but still, did you see how OUT of there he was? Wasn't anyone else sitting there watching the airport goodbye scene going, "Why is he leaving Natalie Portman? What, he's already over her? Why is she sitting there crying over this guy with big lips? A guy that gawky would NEVER get such a hot girl in real life." (And yes I know Zach Braff dates Mandy Moore in real life but that was post-Garden State, ok? Think about it). In the way Melissa can't sit through big action flicks w/o knowing in the back of her mind that it's just "adults pretending to fight", I can't sit and watch (and believe) romantic dramadies with ugly men dating hotass women and then trying to act like that's just how they roll. Whatever, I digress.
So a lot of people are going to say that they GOT Shortbus. I can meet them halfway on some of this shit. For instance, I loved the whole conversation about NYC being a place people come to be forgiven... and how for people who've been here a long time, it starts to feel like you can't be forgiven. I totally bought the gay couple having a real gay relationship crossroads: to threeway or not to threeway? One of them is The Hotter One With the Big Dick and his whims tend to direct the course of their relationship, while the Lesser Hot One With Nice Abs and the Weird Face is just easygoing and agrees to whatever makes him seem supportive (when it's really just him scared of losing his partner). We all know a couple like this. I loved LOVED Sook Yin Lee (I hate when ppl call her "the asian girl") and held my breath every moment she was onscreen, she seemed like a real person and never seemed like she trying to be pretty or witty or tough like most New York women. I just really believed her the whole time and dammit, her masturbating scenes were uncomfortable and funny and that's a fine line to walk. The music was amazing. I liked that gay actors played gay characters. I thought it was cool how power all over the city kept flickering up until the inevitable blackout, and how the blackout seemed to stop the madness. That's how I remember the real blackout back in 2003. I also liked that somebody actually said out loud what I think all the time, "What if I lose my apartment? New York is so EXPENSIVE, what if I can't afford to live here anymore?" and a little peice of me resented and appreciated when Justin Bond says that most of kids stay in New York despite the rent b/c "9/11 was the first REAL thing that happened to them". Wow.
My general gripe is that I wish there'd been a more fleshed out story, a bit more shape. It felt like the beginning had all these interesting angles, and I like how all the characters were introduced to us and each other... and then the story went blurry. I read that John Cameron Mitchell pretty much let the actors improvise almost everything, not just the characters backstories but most of their dialouge too, and that seems like such a bad idea. Although I love the fact that they spent 2 years casting, workshopping, and reworking this movie? I'm not a fan of actors being given all that storytelling power... cuz they tend to milk it and show off. Speaking as an (ex)actor, I know this to be true: there's a reason we're not directors, there's a reason we don't write. Actors should just act, bring life and colors to written parts. At the base core of an actor's soul, there's an innate instinct to SHOW and glow for a camera/audience/roomfull of people, which is why you can't give them full freedom to construct their own storyline. Sometimes a story needs to be subtle and sometimes the characters must be still, and only really REALLY sharp actors are smart enough to do this.
I didn't like the campire singalong ending. You know, it took me a long time to appreciate the obscure way that indie films storytell. The first time I saw Muriel's Wedding I was livid, when the credits rolled I simply needed to know more. What the FUCK happens next? Does Muriel succeed in life? What about her asshole Dad, is he finally going to be nice to his kids? Does the slutty best friend walk again? Implications and open-to-interpretations were not good enough, I needed clear resolution. Eventually I Got It and now of course I can appreciate that sometimes Nothing Happens and that's okay cuz it's real life... but shit, the Shortbus ending was just random. When you give me a group of emotionally/sexually-challenged people with special needs (hence, Short Bus) and make me watch them fuck and breakdown and be balls-the-wall REAL, you can't just slap an abstract artsy filmschool ending and expect that be good enough.
Also, I get the sure feeling that John Cameron Mitchell really hopes everyone will think that this is really a movie about his fabulous, underground uber-hip life. That he has all these secret wild polysexual parties in Brooklyn every week and only the cool people (all of his friends) are allowed in. Don't you wish your own life was hot like his?
Could I have any more goddamn opinions? Yeah, one more. I went to school with the guy who plays Jesse, the Trust Fund Hipster, the guy who likes being dominated. We weren't friends @ AMDA and fuck yeah, a tiny peice of my soul turned black and broke off when I heard he got cast in this movie. Anyway, there's a moment in the beginning when he's jerking off and he asks the dominatrix what her special power would be if she were a superhero --- her response, "The power to make you interesting" and then she slapped his chest with a whip. That little evil person who lives in my head? it was his favorite part of the movie.
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