The Hurt Locker/burritos/etc

I saw the BEST movie recently: THE HURT LOCKER. I feel that many people will not go to see it because:

1) It does not star Michael Cera
2) It is set in Iraq and is about US soldiers
3) It has a sort of hard-to-grasp title
4) It appears to still be in limited release

But you know what – in spite of all of that, you should make an effort to seek it out. HERE ARE MY ARGUMENTS:

1) It is one of the best movies I have seen this year, and you know that I am not some kind of film snob but instead the kind of person who is like “…that explosion was AWESOME.”
2) It’s a movie built of a series of crazy set-pieces centering around the activities of a small team of bomb-disposal techs. Basically you’re talking all the good parts of Speed. I kept hyperventilating into my hands because watching someone defuse a car bomb is SUPER TENSE.
3) It’s funny. When the team is leaving the FOB, one of the guys points to the row of tanks they’re driving past and is all “Man, I’m sure glad we deployed with all these tanks. That’s going to be so useful in case the Russians attack and we end up in a pitched tank battle.” and his teammate is all “…”
4) Also, once someone comes back to a base and the guard is understandably suspicious of him just showing up, and the guy makes up an excuse and says “OKAY OKAY, I was out at a whorehouse” and the guard pauses and then says “If I let you in, you have to give me the exact location.”
5) The writing, the directing, the editing, the cinematography, the acting – just excellent.
6) I am a liberal young lady, but even I get really sick of stories about war (invariably brought to you by someone who KNOWS WHAT IT’S LIKE because this one time they heard this really loud backfire while they were driving on the 101) that take the “OH HOW AWFUL FOR YOU POOR IGNORANT REDNECKS THAT YOU GOT TRICKED INTO JOINING THE MILITARY!!!!!” approach (AHEMSTOPLOSSAHEM) – this movie is not like that at all. I fear that people are so sick of lame axe-grindy Iraq movies that they’ll hear “Set against the backdrop of the Iraq war” and go “Let’s go see that movie about action guinea pigs”. But it’s really not like that. It’s just a story about what some guys did and went through while deployed.
7) It has gun battles! It has explosions! It has mercenaries! It has snipers! It has heart! It expects the audience to stay up to speed!

I AM TELLING YOU.

YOU WILL LIKE IT SO MUCH!

I know – you’re probably still not going to see it. But really. It’s excellent. There was nothing I didn’t like about it. (Come on, go see it. COME ON.)

***

The other night Husband Guy and I tricked ourselves into getting Aerobic Exercise by punctuating a 4-mile loop with, um, a burrito. The burrito was one of those ARTERY BOMBS that is so, so delicious, because it’s a stack of PORK, LARD-SOAKED BEANS, CHEESE, AVOCADO, ETC wrapped up and finished with like a cup of sour cream.

Like (I hope) many people, I have this problem with burritos where I eat more than I actually want to. I think it’s because burritos are such a self-contained unit! If you’re eating a bowl of soup and you don’t want to finish it, no problem. Or a salad. Or if you’re eating some kind of stir-fry. But a burrito is a UNIT. SERVING SIZE: 1 NOM NOM NOM.

So then you get to the middle of the giant burrito and instead of being sensible and pushing your plate away, you try to finish. Which you regret for the next four hours as you waddle around, etc.

While eating this burrito, I felt the point of BURRITO DISMAY approaching. So I pushed the plate across the table and suggested that Husband Guy eat the rest (he is ordinarily pretty reliable in terms of being the person at the table who will Put It Away) but he declined, having slogged through his own ARTERY BOMB.

FINE. So we go back home (somewhat more slowly than on the way there) and everything is fine. Cut to two days later.

ME
Man…

HUSBAND GUY
What?

ME
Guess what I wish I had right now.

HUSBAND GUY
Is it “A dog”? Because I have noticed that the answer is almost always “A dog”.

ME
No! I wish I had the rest of that burrito.

HUSBAND GUY
…

ME
You know, from the other night–

HUSBAND GUY
Let me get this straight. You’re having genuine regret that you didn’t finish a burrito. That you ate two days ago.

ME
…

(It was a really good burrito.)

***

Here is a trailer for the Neill Blomkamp film DISTRICT 9:

I am so excited about this! I think it is going to be really outstanding.

***

Mayonnaise Bathtub is my friend Chaia’s thrilling new blog, where she reviews really terrible B movies. Recently she invited us over for a screening of DEAD MEN DON’T DANCE, a movie about- I don’t know. It was the kind of movie where five people got killed, but in the final scenes Ryan O’Neal and his father pushed six bodies overboard.

You should check it out! (Her blog, not necessarily DEAD MEN DON’T DANCE.)

WOLVERINES!!!!

So I was watching this documentary on, uh, The Military Channel, and it’s about this bunch of Marines in Iraq. And before you continue, you should know the following:

1) As previously stated, I am a pretty big military nerd.
2) I am something of a military apologist. Although I am a bleeding-heart liberal, I will almost always be On The Side Of The Troops (although I also object to cheesy things like FREEDOM ISN’T FREE stickers… but that’s because I’m a snide jerk.)

This documentary airs in three parts, and the first part is about how the Marines go on “knock and talk” missions in their area, where they walk the streets and go up to houses and are all “Hello. Do you have more than the one rifle per military-aged male you are allowed? Also, do you know any insurgents? Great – have a nice day, AND ENJOY YOUR CRAPPY, FALLING-APART PSEUDO-DEMOCRACY.”

Total hearts-and-minds stuff, etc.

Husband Guy sometimes points out to me, when I am grumpy about such things, that you can’t really train Marines to be stone-cold killers and then also expect them to be effective beat cops, diplomats, and grassroots nation-builders. And yet the way we currently invade countries* seems to require exactly those skills of them. So I get that there’s some tension there.

And I’m just rambling because I’m trying to set up that I am ordinarily SUPER ON THE SIDE OF THE DUDE KNOCKING ON THE DOOR ASKING ABOUT YOUR RIFLE. But man – by the end of this first hour of documentary, I was basically all

I ONLY CRY FOR THE VIETNAMESE!!!!

Which was weird.

There was this one platoon sergeant who you just know walked around flexing his jaw and saying things like “You have to DOMINATE the SITUATION, gents! Establish your territory!”, and who was the most startlingly ineffective Ugly American I have ever seen in action.

Like for instance! So he’s in this marketplace, and the shoe-seller guy who speaks about six words of English and is AFRAID OF HIM and who keeps doing this placating fear-grimace can’t or won’t tell him who keeps planting IEDs.

And the Marine starts to lose his temper, so he reaches out and puts his hand on the guy’s throat and FEELS HIS PULSE (…) and then is all snide all like “Wow, his pulse is kinda fast for a guy who’s not lying…”

(…or, you know, right on target for a guy who’s afraid of the heavily armed bully who showed up and started getting all in his FACE and then put his HAND ON HIS ACTUAL THROAT.)

The Marine did not seem able to make any kind of connection between his own behavior – which was repeatedly shown to be, uh, really emasculating and humiliating and fear-inducing and just RUDE (like when he barged into the lady’s house even though no adult male was around and kind of strutted around her little room, poking at her stuff, demanding to know where the family’s rifle was kept. Which is obviously a really terrific way to win hearts and minds in a majority Muslim country.) – and the fact that the people he talked to were unhelpful and kept declining to lead him to insurgent hideouts.

The best, though, and the one where you could really see that this guy had literally NO IDEA how he was getting the result he was getting, was when he kept losing his temper at this late-teens kid who was saying that his father had taken the family’s rifle – so, no, he couldn’t show it to him. When the finally dad showed up, SSG Dillweed started to berate him and his son in this kind of chest-bumping way- you know. I don’t really know how to put this. Just to say that I would not have been at all surprised if he had single-handedly taken a family who just wanted to handle their business to a family who were ardent supporters of their local DEATH TO AMERICA chapter.

Fabulously, the dad eventually produced the rifle, and the Marine kind of flipped out into an honest-to-God temper tantrum, yanking it out of his hands, stomping off to a nearby pond, and dramatically flinging the rifle into the water, SO THERE.

(The rifle, of course, was a Kalashnikov, a notoriously sturdy weapon that insurgents probably TOTALLY STORE AT THE BOTTOMS OF PONDS ALL THE TIME WITH NO PROBLEM. So… good job, sir. Way to show that dude who’s the boss.)

So while I find this guy annoying on a personal level, it’s kind of fascinating (TO ME, BECAUSE I AM A NERD) when you think about how the US is currently trying to control an insurgency in Iraq. Which is something that seems to me to hinge somewhat largely on your ability to create fewer Angry Young Men. And yet this Marine, the first line of offense against this problem, was unintentionally spreading bad mojo all over town.

I mean, if someone said to me “Hey! I’m thinking of invading a country, do you have any thoughts on conducting a successful occupation and suppressing insurgency?”

I would say things like “Man, you need to watch Red Dawn. Also, I personally would learn from the lessons of the second Iraq invasion. So you know, when you overrun a nation with your shock troops, you want to IMMEDIATELY take control of all the weapons caches you find, instead of relying on the honor system. (”Why would anyone want to take these mortars? That’s ridiculous.”) And you should instantly implement basic services, because basic services keep people docile and happy. And also, men need jobs. I mean – ladies need jobs too, obviously. But if women don’t have jobs, we grumble to other women and then have a snack and mope around. Whereas when men, especially young men, don’t have jobs, they tend to hang out on street corners. You don’t want young men hanging out in groups on street corners. That’s a really great way to foment yourself an insurgency. But! Even if you do nothing else, you really, really, really don’t want to have your military folks going around the country being emasculating dicks to the few people who are still relatively neutral to your cause. EVERY TIME YOU HUMILIATE A LATE-TEENS BOY, AN INSURGENT GETS HIS WINGS.”

Obviously, that Marine’s job is astoundingly hard. I, of course, could not do it. Very few people could do it even to the degree that he was able to do it, I’m sure. But it does make me think that maybe we need to (if we plan to keep invading countries, that is**) have two separate military forces. Like first you have your SHOCK TROOPS: your Marines, your Army guys with Ranger tabs and thousand-yard-stares. They come in and just wipe out the opposing force. And then RIGHT BEHIND THEM you have smooth operators selected for their skills in the areas of empathy, linguistics, organization, persuasiveness, and general interpersonal goodness. So instead of

1) SHOCK AND AWE SUCKERS
2) Um, we didn’t really have a plan for the next part
3) Shit.
4) Let’s hire KBR! THEY WILL FIX EVERYTHING!
5) Shit.

You would have more like

1) SHOCK AND AWE SUCKERS
2) Hello. My name is Stan. I’m with the First Diplomatic Division. We’re here to restore your water and power and survey the needs of your village. Can I invite you to step into the shade and join me for a cup of tea? Oh, and this must be your lovely wife. How nice.
3) Hearts and minds, small American flags on a stick for everyone, huzzah!

That’s all I’m saying. If President Obama decides to invade Iran or anything. This is a way I would consider going.

Here is the trailer for RED DAWN. Because it is awesome:

*I AM NOT ADVOCATING INVADING ANY ADDITIONAL COUNTRIES.
**So I guess maybe the simplest solution is to knock it off? Pffft.

Awkward.

I am a little bit of a military nerd. Like if you need someone to give you a vague and only somewhat accurate rundown of like Marine Corps rank structure, and you can’t find ANYBODY ELSE, you should totally ask me.

HOWEVER. I just had the most epic failure to understand what someone is talking about.

So earlier today I was sending someone a birthday email certificate thing. And I turned to Husband Guy and said “What’s her email address?” and he said: “Okay, it’s “ALPHA ROMEO FOXTROT 79@emailaddress.com”.” And I said “…really? What a weird email address.” and he said “…” and looked at me like I was being strange and so I went ahead and hit send.

And an hour or two later, the email came back undeliverable! OH NOES. And I sent it on Husband Guy, all “I must have written the email address down wrong! Help!” and like 40 seconds later, my phone rings.

And I pick up.

And Husband Guy is laughing at me.

“…what,” I say.

“It isn’t “AlphaRomeoFoxtrot79″, it’s “ARF79″. You know, their initials and birth year, and I was saying it in phonetic alphabet?”

“…”

“Are you there?”

MILITARY NERD FAIL.

***

Also, one of the best wedding gifts in the world arrived at our house. To whit, a subscription to MEAT PAPER: THE MAGAZINE ABOUT MEAT*. It’s pretty crazy. This issue is THE PIG ISSUE. And it comes in a plain brown wrapper, so now all the elderly ladies in our building probably think we’re huge porn fiends. GLORIOUS.

***

I went swimming at the Y today, and– okay, I can swim. I’m not going to drown or anything. And I’m not afraid of water. But I’m not a good swimmer.

(Person I am discussing going swimming with: “You don’t have SWIM GOGGLES???” Me: “Um, my face doesn’t really get wet…?”

I’m like… oh, you know that picture of Chairman Mao swimming in the river? THAT’S ME. My head bobs along just above the surface, and who knows what’s going on down below. FRANTIC PADDLING, probably.)

Anyway, I picked the SLOW lane, but there were two V. ELDERLY (seriously. 90+) folks in the lane, and at first I was all “Maybe I should pick a more rambunctious lane – are there unwritten YMCA rules about the whippersnappers staying out of the lane for our elders?” but then I realized that the elders were in fact going to be zipping by me at every turn, so that I’d have to wait politely at the end of the lap for them to pass me… sigh.

Embarrassing!

*Actually Meatpaper is a print magazine of art and ideas about meat. We like metaphors more than marinating tips. We are your journal of meat culture. – but I think that THE MAGAZINE ABOUT MEAT is better.

Stuff/Hike of doom

1) So as you may know, I got married. Except that recently we were all “I wonder how long it takes to get the certified copies of your marriage license so you can prove that you’re married!” and then The Husband asked the officiating body and they were all “…oh, uh, we’ll totally mail that off to the county today. But don’t worry, you have like a year to take care of it!” – and then we realized that perhaps we are not yet actually legally married. I figure this is my big chance to run away to South America! WHO’S WITH ME.

2) Speaking of running away to South America, I really liked Up. Mostly because it featured super-awesome talking dogs,who say basically the exact things I had always suspected dogs would say, like “I DO! I DO WANT TO CHASE THE BALL!”

3) I am not actually going to run away to South America, I promise. However, this does give me a chance to mention that on the rare occasion when my husband and I bicker, it is only ever about completely ridiculous things like:

*Israel and Palestine (…)
*How to monetize news on the internet (we had a fight about this. YES. And in the middle of it I said “WHY ARE WE FIGHTING ABOUT THIS?!?” and he said “I DON’T KNOW.”)
*Why he doesn’t get his own library card (”You don’t know, I could be like Jason Bourne, trying to stay off the grid and stuff.”)
*Why I routinely overbuy when it comes to fruit (”Because fruit is delicious! I’M SORRY IF YOU CAN’T SEE THAT.”)

4) We went to see TERMINATOR: SALVATION with our friends Matt and Mrs. Matt and afterward instead of being bothered by story problems or things like that Matt got very bothered by UNLIKELY HEAT CONVECTION PATTERNS and I got very bothered by the fact that after the apocalypse if you had like 6 remaining A-10s you wouldn’t tell your A-10 pilots to punch out when they got in trouble, you’d be all “YOU BETTER STAY IN THAT BIRD UNTIL IT PLOWS INTO THE DIRT, JERKFACE.”

My god, I am such a nerd. EVERYONE I KNOW IS SUCH A NERD. Do you ever get that?

5) Here is a video of people dressed like monks. With fire on their heads. ON SEGWAYS. Playing Philip Glass. It is The Best:

6) If you are interested in doing something fairly awesome, you could maybe consider joining the national bone marrow registry.

If you sign up at that link they’ll send you a kit so you can swab the inside of your cheeks (JUST LIKE ON CSI OR WHATEVER) and mail it back to them, get tissue-typed, added to the registry, etc. And if you sign up before June 22, it’s FREE.

I know, you may be reading this and going “Wait, wait, they want my bone marrow AND I normally have to pay for it?!?” – tissue-typing is expensive, and you are lucky enough to live in THE GREATEST AND BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD WHERE WE DON’T BELIEVE IN A BUNCH OF FRENCH CRAP LIKE SINGLE-PAYER PUBLIC HEALTH DEALIOS. But the point is, they have funding right now, so you can get into the registry for no money. And if you ever get matched, that person’s insurance pays for the actual procedure. Which is also not that big a deal and will not involve you dying or anything. And wouldn’t it be cool to be able to help someone who was really sick? OF COURSE IT WOULD. So you should think about signing up. You know… if you want.

7) Recently my husband was on the phone with Army and the guy asked what he was doing now, and he said “Well, right now I’m freelancing in the entertainment industry–” and there was a pause and then he said “But it’s not dirty or anything!” and naturally as soon as he got off the phone I asked what was up, and he said that the guy had paused and said “I hope it’s nothing that will impact your clearance” in serious, “Tell me you don’t work in porn, son” tones.

And then I told that story to my BFF and she said that when she recently left LA for a year, someone at her job had assumed that “Used to work in the entertainment industry” was code for “Used to work in the porns”.

Man! Is this a common thing? I DON’T WANT PEOPLE TO THINK I WORK IN PORN.

FINALLY: I went on a hike recently in a nature area. The park’s website described the path as:

Although it starts off steep, the wide easy trail meanders through chaparral, walnut woodland and coastal sage scrub, and is well-shaded.

Lies. DIRTY FILTHY LIES. For “steep” you should read “practically vertical” and for “starts off” you should read “continues on that way forever and ever, only briefly leveling out here and there to sucker you into a sense of false confidence before WHAMMO ANOTHER INCLINE”. And I don’t even know what “the wide easy trail meanders” is about. Man! There was an athletic lady with her friend on the trail ahead of us, and at one point the less-athletic friend stopped and gasped “I don’t think I can go on!” and the athletic lady said “It flattens out right up there!” and the less-athletic friend said “I believe you. But no.”

And because I am slightly more stubborn than I am lazy, we pushed ahead to the “top”, but I totally wanted to go find the less-athletic friend and be all “You were so right on, this trail DOESN’T FLATTEN OUT AT ALL, EVER, ALSO YOU GET TO THE TOP AND THEY START HAVING GIANT “BEWARE OF THE RATTLESNAKES” SIGNS”.

Another way to explain how terrible this hike was is that at the trailhead I saw a girl doing Serious Runner Stretches, and I was really impressed – wow, she was going to run up that whole hill? But then I realized that no, she was just walking.

And for like two minutes I felt smug in my head. HAH! She did Serious Hamstring Stretches before going for a light Sunday-afternoon hike? And then I came around yet another turn and saw yet another STEEP HILL.

PRIDE GOETH BEFORE THE FALL. THE STEEPASS UPHILL FALL.

I’m going to live in an RV

…so I can cart all my belongings around with me forever and ever and never have to move again.

OR I’m going to force THE HUSBAND OF THE PRESENT* to rejoin the military, where they send basically the Delta Force of movers over to your house to swarm all over it like a bunch of locusts (except they pack things instead of eating them.) and then they also unpack it at the other end. GLORIOUS. In fact this is such a great perk that I don’t understand why recruiting commercials don’t feature it heavily.

“STRONG. ARMY STRONG. ALSO WE’LL MOVE YOUR SHIT.”

“WE’LL MOVE YOU AND BUY YOU A PAIR OF PANTS WITH YOUR NAME ON THE BUTT. THE UNITED STATES NAVY: WHY THE HELL NOT?”

Etc.

I just moved (you know… so I could live in the same apartment as my HUSBAND OF THE PRESENT) and it was the worst. THE WORST. I won’t even detail how awful, because you’ve moved a few times in your life. YOU KNOW IT SUCKS.

To illustrate how terrible it was, here is a video of two camels in a small car. They are making angry noises. CAMELS ARE AWESOMELY GROUCHY:

Man… that makes me laugh. Can you imagine the process of cramming two cranky camels into a passenger car? THAT IS ONE BRAVE OR EXTREMELY FOOLHARDY BEDOUIN.

Anyway, moving. TERRIBLE.

*…we successfully got ourselves married off. I find it sort of awesome when people say “Congratulations!” as though it was some kind of tremendous feat like winning the California lottery or defeating polio.

Significant life changes

Ahhh, such a long blogging absence! I have excuses, of course:

1) My spec went out, and nobody bought it (BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE JERKS WHO DON’T WANT ME TO HAVE A DOG*) but I have been having many meetings. Meetings don’t seem like they should be tiring, obviously. You’re just sitting there talking to someone for thirty minutes to an hour. It’s not like you’re digging ditches, not even really shallow ditches. But after a while you get kind of tired. I could never ever be a development executive. Imagine having meetings all day every day for your entire working life! I would probably freak out and start wearing underpants on my head to liven things up a little bit. Or start pitching unsuspecting writers totally ridiculous ideas just to see how they’d react.

“So I have this idea, right, where this former fighter pilot lives under a bridge with a bunch of hobos, and he has this dream of becoming a puppeteer, but first he has to battle the Iranian air force… It’s going to be totally universal and relatable. Like Taken.”

Also, at one of the meetings the guy was all “Hey, tell your agent he’s a bitch-ass punk!” and I said “…” because you just never know with Hollywood people, and then he said that haha, he was just kidding, they were of course the best of friends… which I honestly found kind of disappointing, because how much more awesome would it be if he and Agent were locked in a HATFIELDS VS. MCCOYS-style fued and routinely used baby writers to deliver their slurs and insults!

2) I am getting married.

It turns out that I am not all that great at Being A Girl Who Is Getting Married. I was on the phone with Agent and Manager and the Young Man (”HUSBAND OF THE FUTURE”) was in the background, on the phone with Army, and at one point he said something kind of loudly and Agent and Manager were all “What was that?” and I said “Oh, that’s my boyfriend-” and there was this reproving pause and then they both said “Your fiance.” because one of them is married and the other one is engaged and they know how these things are supposed to work.

Also, my mom and my MOTHER IN LAW OF THE FUTURE are all “What are your COLORS? What kind of CAKE TOPPER do you want?” and the Young Man and I look at each other and feel embarrassed, because we’re having a backyard barbecue/wedding, and our colors are “Grilled meats”, and he’s changing out of his suit after the ceremony, and I’m only keeping my wedding dress on because I am so scandalized by how much wedding dresses cost that I’m determined to get my money’s worth (IT’S NOT LIKE I’LL BE WHIPPING THIS DRESS OUT TO WEAR LATER IN THE SUMMER, you know…)

Yesterday we had to go get our marriage license. You have to do that at a courthouse. We went to one out by the airport because it was the only one that was open and relatively close. It was in a vacant industrial park, and the line we had to stand in was for marriage licenses, birth certificates, and filing your small business paperwork. After you pay the fee (seventy dollars! I can only imagine this is some kind of marriage tax or something.) you go away for an hour and then eventually they give you your actual license. But when they gave us ours it was for the future Mr. and Mrs. Maximo Faust.

And there was a beat, and then we unwillingly said “…that’s not us.”

And then the bureaucrat said “Oh, it’s not?” and went off to find our real license, and then the Young Man and I felt tremendous regret, because GLORIOUS OPPORTUNITY HAD KNOCKED

AND WE HADN’T OPENED THE DOOR

BECAUSE JUST LIKE THAT WE COULD HAVE BEEN THE MAXIMO FAUSTS

Which is pretty much the best name in the world.

*Probably not actually their motivation.

All this natural magnificence makes me want to die

I saw Earth the other night. It’s narrated by James Earl Jones, who says a lot of things like:

“BEHOLD, THE CIRCLE OF LIFE AS THE CHEETAH EATS THE ADORABLE BABY GAZELLE ALIVE IN SLOW MOTION.”

When you go see a G-rated DisneyNature movie, you expect adorable fluffy things! Awe-inspiring vistas! Slightly dull yet inspiring things about how some animal makes an incredibly long trek to its breeding grounds!

Instead this movie is basically one super-long Darwinian tragedy. James Earl Jones might as well have intoned “EARTH, WHERE LIFE IS NASTY, BRUTISH AND SHORT. QUIT CRYING, KINDERGARTNERS. YOU BETTER TOUGHEN THE FUCK UP OR THE GIANTASS SHARK WE JUST SHOWED KILLING THINGS IS GONNA GET YOU.”

Do not take your babies to see this movie (unless they lack empathy or hate their parents or are like budding sociopaths). Anyone else is liable to wake up screaming every night for several weeks, because many of the death sequences are basically about how someone’s dad died or someone’s baby died or somebody got mauled by a lion because they playfully wandered away from the herd. Or because of global warming.

***

Speaking of DARWIN, I want to mention how much I dislike the trailer for I LOVE YOU BETH COOPER. It’s one of those “Dweeby nerd gets the ultra hot cheerleader” teen movies, but it just pushes the limits of the genre into some kind of bizarroverse porn parody (as in, I feel like EVEN PORN PRODUCERS would probably go “Wait a minute, would the ultra hot cheerleaders really invite the hideous nerd into the locker room and then show him their boobs for no reason? WHAT’S THEIR MOTIVATION HERE?”) that for some reason outrages my sense of fairness. In fact, every time I see the trailer, I grumble loudly and think about how I’m totally going to go home and write a reversal of this where the cool guy is our hero and the dweeby nerd is actually an evil loser who must be brought down. And I get all “YEAH! THAT WILL TOTALLY ROCK!”

(And then I remember that I write action movies.)

***

I also saw Star Trek, courtesy of my friend C. (fancy!) It is pretty good. If you like watching John Cho SWORDFIGHT on a space platform, this is probably something you will want to see. Also if you enjoy going WAIT A MINUTE. THAT’S ERIC BANA! WTF. I FEEL LIKE A MORON. THIS WHOLE TIME I THOUGHT IT WAS SOME GUY WITH A LUMPY FACE.

Also, if you enjoy eyebrows. This movie is all about the eyebrows. Chris Pine’s, Zachary Quinto’s, Eric Bana’s…

Here is a link to the surprisingly entertaining google image search for STAR TREK EYEBROWS. I am too lazy to actually steal any of the pictures and paste them here, but they contain such gems as a comparison of Barack Obama to a black Vulcan, a Star Trek corset, etc. ENJOY.

Epic religious mystery

Over at the Cake Wrecks blog, there’s a post about Easter (or possibly Passover) lamb cakes that are smoking cigarettes. (I mean, the lambs are obviously not LITERALLY smoking cigarettes, on account of how they’re made of CAKE. But they have a Parliament jammed in their little cake faces.)

Nobody knows the deal with the smoking-lamb cakes. I just read all 150 comments to see if anyone had The Answer. Instead, there were several main (misguided) theories:

1) This is the Passover lamb, whose blood was used to daub the thresholds of the Jews. The “cigarette” is actually a brush. And apparently he’s using his own blood.
Why this seems wrong: I’m pretty sure that cake isn’t kosher for Passover. Also, the “cigarette” is actually a CIGARETTE. AN ACTUAL PARLIAMENT.

2) The “cigarette” is actually a scroll and this is referencing the whole scroll-and-lamb bit from Revelation.
Why this seems wrong: The “cigarette” IS A CIGARETTE, PEOPLE. And the end is on fire. And this is an ordinary cake lamb, and I feel like the lamb from Revelation has like SEVEN EYES AND SEVEN HORNS (which would of course make a fairly awesome cake.)

3) Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who was sacrificed for mankind’s sins, and the cigarette is like when you get to light up before the firing squad.
Why this seems wrong: “Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em”-style theology unconfirmed by experts in the field.

4) Sometimes people give up smoking for Lent, so Easter is like the signal to light up.
Why this seems wrong: On the one hand, I didn’t realize that Easter was such a jokey holiday. But on the other hand, the lambs are smoking Parliaments, the official cigarette of tacky people and ironic hipsters, so this just might fit.

…?????

Curbside intervention

I forgot to mention! Last night I was taking a walk and there was a little knot of young people walking behind me, having what turned out to be basically a mobile intervention.

Three young men were trying to convince a young woman to seek help for her apparently heavy drinking. It involved a lot of oddly-charming exchanges like this:

YOUNG WOMAN
I am not an alcoholic!

YOUNG MEN
(mumbling)

YOUNG WOMAN
An alcoholic drinks EVERY DAY. I drink ON OCCASION.

YOUNG MEN
(mumbling)

YOUNG WOMAN
You smoke weed every day!

YOUNG MAN
That’s true, I do smoke weed every day.

OTHER YOUNG MAN
It’s true, you do.

YOUNG WOMAN
That is what I am SAYING.

YOUNG MEN
(mumbling in a kind of “Touche” way.)

FURIOUS ADVENTURELAND

This weekend I really wanted to see FAST & FURIOUS, but it was sold out. So I saw ADVENTURELAND instead. And I didn’t really want to see ADVENTURELAND, I thought it was going to be another one of those dull coming-of-age movies where “coming of age” always ends up meaning “A nerd gets laid by a really hot girl who has no real personality and who previously dated a fascist football jock, thus validating the nerd’s masculinity and proving once and for all that he is BETTER THAN THE FOOTBALL GUYS.”

But it wasn’t. It was funny and sharp and sweet and 100% spot-on accurate about that weird time when you’re out of school but not really an adult yet, and I loved it and I don’t understand why it didn’t make any money. COME ON PEOPLE.

(Also good about it was that the girls in the movie are real people, complex and sometimes unpleasant. In case you are one of the few people who cares about such things. But don’t worry, it wasn’t some kind of educational film or anything. It also contained lots of crotch-punching jokes.)

ADVENTURELAND is a story about growing up: by the end of the movie, the main character has left childish things behind and started to turn himself into a man. I know that all coming-of-age movies claim to do this, but that’s HORSEFEATHERS. Most of them are actually stories about how it’s totally cool for you to remain a little kid forever. (And about how cheerleaders definitely want to bone you.)

However, I still really want to see FAST & FURIOUS, because: EXPLOSIONS (almost certainly), VIN DIESEL (definitely), VIN DIESEL FLEXING THREATENINGLY AT SOMEONE (how could that not happen, come on), etc etc.

Here is a picture of Vin Diesel with some dogs! I thought I would add a hilarious Vin Diesel picture to the end of this post, but then I looked for such a thing and realized that Vin Diesel is INCAPABLE of taking a picture with his shirt on. Which alarmed me, because I am a Victorian Lady.

So. This is not hilarious, but does have DOGS:

And here is one that IS hilarious: a picture of Vin Diesel as Mona Lisa. V. good.