I just saw the most appallingly bad movie.

Don’t think I’m going to hit you with the big reversal now, and tell you how much I liked this godawful piece of really wretched and toxic tripe despite the fact that it was so relentlessly horrible. Oh no. When I say this thing was appalling, I mean it. A pall ING.

I borrowed it from Paul’s next door neighbor, Jeff. It’s this Keaneau Reeves/Charlize Theron thing called SWEET NOVEMBER. And on the surface, it’s not really that bad, it’s just, you know, trite and nonsensical and mediocre… a by the numbers formulaic romance in which every single character and every single plot evolution is absolutely predictable, nothing every remotely surprises you, and you end up at the end of the film with no more real feeling for anyone in it, or anything you’ve seen depicted therein, than you had two minutes before you put the DVD in and hit PLAY.

All of which should simply make it a pretty straightforward and forgettable soap opera romance with a little turgid cancer drama tossed in to make it seem serious. But what I found completely dreadful and obnoxious about this film is that it seems that, at least on some level, the film makers apparently believe it has something important and meaningful to say about life.

“Live for the moment” seems to be the message here. Or “love is spiffy” may be it. At one point, one of the characters, a worldly wise Yoda figure with an Irish, or maybe Scottish, accent who happens to be a brilliant advertising executive as well as a transvestite, opines quite seriously to Charlize Theron that “the only thing I know is that you should have the people who love you around you as much as you can”. This fellow seems to think, and I perceived that the filmmakers agreed with him, that he was imparting some really startling wisdom with that particularly lugubrious bit of dialogue, and that, more than anything else, is why I found this film so utterly obnoxious.

Look. First, “love is spiffy”… yeah, well, that seems pretty inarguable. I’ll give you that one, but I don’t think there’s a great deal of wisdom in the observation. Few people would go out on a limb and say “love is actually kinda yucky, ewww”. And certainly, very few big budget Hollywood romances get made featuring more or less A list stars like Keaneau and Charlize which do not, in fact, try to make the point that love is really a nifty gig.

As to the Scottish transvestite’s observation about having the people who love you around you as much of the time as possible, this strikes me as being somewhat problematic. It’s very possible, for example, that the people who love you are seriously annoying. Perhaps they love you because they’re really stupid, or have no taste, or fine, discerning judgement. Or maybe their love for you is the only good thing in otherwise lamentably lousy, obnoxious, mean spirited and shallow personas. Perhaps the people who love you spend all day watching Jerry Springer and eating pie filling right out of the can. Or maybe they’re just, you know, folks with a congenital body odor problem. Whatever the case, the notion that “the only thing I know is that you should have the people who love you around you as much as possible” is a vast oversimplification.

But now we come to the Hollywood wisdom that, propounded within the context of this film, really and truly annoyed me: “Live for the moment”. Or, as those crazy old Romans once put it, “Seize the day”. This is fabulous advice, and absolutely everyone should take it. Yes, we should all ‘live in the moment’, forgetting our past and ignoring the future. Just revel around in the fleeting present, seizing the hell out of every passing second and squeezing it dry of every last scintilla of pleasurable sensation. We should throw aside our careers and ignore our old friends so we can walk dogs on beaches and become a father figure to cute and oddly endearing 9 year olds who live across the street. We should stop and smell the roses, count our blessings, run between the raindrops, walk on sunshine, because all that glitters is gold, and only shooting stars break the mold.

Now, I’m not saying that ‘carpe diem’ has no value or validity. We should, I suppose, all live at least a little bit more in the moment than most of us do. We should, indeed, seize the day, or the second, at least slightly more than we generally bother to. It’s very valid that most of us spend so much time dwelling on the past or worrying about the future that we don’t notice the present sliding right on by. I hear that, and I don’t reject it out of hand.

What I object to, however, is being beaten over the head with this aggravating pop culture neo-Zen horseshit in a movie that features Charlize Theron attempting to teach Keaneau Reeves the value of the simple life lived entirely for momentary pleasure. Because, dig it:

Most of us (meaning, as I nearly always do, me) do not look like Keaneau Reeves. Most of us (again, read that as ‘I’) are never going to have anyone as hot as Charlize Theron invite us to move in to her apartment and have wild monkey sex with her for a month in order to ‘lift the lid’ off the box that our life has become and ‘let some light in’. And, hell, when I say most of us, meaning I, let’s go back and scratch out ‘most of us’ and ‘I’ and substitute ‘ANY of us’ or ‘ALL of us’, because, honestly, this shit simply doesn’t happen in real life to anyone… not even Keaneau Reeves or Charlize Theron.

Furthermore. I have lived in the real world equivalent of the inexpensive, colorful neighborhood that Charlize Theron’s free spirited dippy New Age type chick lives in in this movie. Here on Planet Earth, we call those neighborhoods ‘slums’ or ‘ghettos’, and yes, they have many colorful characters in them, most of whom have severe personal hygiene issues and nearly all of whom are pretty goddam surly, especially if you try to interrupt their personal cocktail hour, which occurs any time they happen to have a bottle of Ripple, or for that matter Robitussin DM, to their name. The oddly endearing kid from across the street will steal your car or throw a rock through your window if you attempt to become a paternal figure to him, and if there actually happens to be a transvestite couple living in the apartment underneath you at any time you live in any of these colorful neighborhoods, I guarantee you that neither of them will remotely resemble a big league advertising guru packed to the gills with sage and avuncular wisdom and a deep, shining love for all mankind.

What I am trying to say here is that it is easy to ‘seize the day’ and ‘live in the moment’ when you have these amazingly huge apartments and no landlords with a pad of overdue notices in their hip pockets, when the local utility company isn’t coming around to shut off your power or your water because you haven’t paid the bill this month, when you can shop for groceries and buy expensive medication without any apparent source of income, and when everyone who lives within a mile of you on every side is colorful but lovable, utterly trustworthy, and apparently completely overjoyed to just give you shit for free because you’re so damned cool.

Yes. Give me Charlize Theron’s apartment, neighborhood, effortless income, lifestyle, and neighbors, and I will damned well live in the moment too. Throw in Charlize Theron her damn self climbing into a bubble bath with me and trust me, the day is not the only thing that will immediately and relentlessly be seized and squeezed of its every last pleasurable sensation. Oh MY no.

Unfortunately, however, here in the real world, groceries cost money, at least some of the people living around us aren’t very nice and a few are just plain darned hostile, landlords come around asking for rent reasonably often, nearly all of us need to have jobs of some sort, and bubble baths with Charlize Theron are in astonishingly short supply.

Live in the moment my ass.

I got your seize the day right down here, buddy.

FORGETTABLE

On a considerably mopier and more self pitying note (yes indeed, I am about to start whining again, and I don’t recollect anyone putting a gun to your head and making you read one word of this either, there, scooter) there was one thing that Charlize Theron said to Keaneau Reeves early on in the movie, when she was trying to convince him to move in with her and do the whole Mr. November thing that struck a chord with me.

It wasn’t great dialogue or anything. In fact, it was an utter cliché, something the scriptwriter probably tossed off without paying any attention to it, and Charlize herself no doubt delivered with a similar lack of reflection or notice. It should have gone right on by me, too… it’s the sort of thing that gets said in fluffy shiny romances all the time. But for some reason it lodged in my craw.

What she said was “I can’t stop thinking about you”.

See? Something you read or hear in nearly every piece of mass media froth, and our culture produces a lot of pieces of mass media froth. Shouldn’t have even noticed it going by, and yet…

When, I wonder, was the last time someone couldn’t stop thinking about me?

I’ve certainly been on the other end. In a romantic context, there have been quite a few women I’ve been smitten with over the course of my life, that I ‘haven’t been able to stop thinking about’. And I go back through them (the ones I can remember; I’m sure a lot of relatively short lived but intense crushes I’ve forgotten about completely by now) and, well… no, no, it’s pretty obvious none of them had that issue with me. In fact, I’d say of those that immediately spring to mind, not only did they have no real difficulty not thinking about me, it was actually something of an effort for them to focus on me and remain aware of my existence when they were actually engaged in conversations with me.

One in particular, it seems to me, actually probably had trouble, from one second to the next, actually remembering that I was sitting a few feet away from her conversing with her, on such occasions she found herself immersed in said event/context.

Yes. I am, apparently, someone that no one anywhere has any difficulty at all getting out of their minds. People apparently not only can stop thinking about me, but they do, with style and panache, with skill and aplomb, with dash and verve and vigor.

You get this far in the chain of self pity and you start to understand the whole stalker mentality. Because what’s a stalker doing, but demanding attention, in however minor or pointless or aggravating a fashion they are reduced to doing so, from someone they need it from, who absolutely in no way wants to give them any?

Ah, what must it be like, to have Charlize Theron, or someone even remotely attractive and desirable, call you up or send you a note and say “I can’t stop thinking of you”.

Of course, I shouldn’t get too upset. In Keaneau Reeves’ case, the hottie who looked like Charlize Theron couldn’t stop thinking of him, but she was dying of cancer. Kind of a bummer.

On the other hand, that’s probably better than finding out she raises pythons and likes to wear them around the house as a personal fashion accessory, or something.

SOMETHING’S LOST AND SOMETHING’S GAINED

Nothing exciting in real world news to report, although I’m typing this offline, and who knows… a life altering email may await me when I get online to post this. (Or I may find my AOL account has finally been shut down, in which case, it will be somewhat later than currently planned before any of you read this.)

As things stand at the moment, there isn’t a whole lot to say. I called TECO in Tampa today to see if there was any of my $190 deposit, which I gave them in 1997 to get utilities, left. But no, according to them, I owe them $44 and some odd cents, which means that my last month’s utility bill was for $234.

Uh huh.

This, for an apartment that, when I ran the AC all day every day, I got a monthly bill around $150.

It shouldn’t surprise me. Nearly every capitalist’s policy is “you give us money, we do NOT give it back”. That’s why I was so eager and happy to get the hell out of my apartment as early as possible, once they posted that notice (at the last possible legal second they could get away with) that they weren’t renewing my lease. I knew for a fact I’d never see my security deposit again, so handing them another month’s rent when they were, effectively, evicting me struck me as nonsensical. So, no, I’m not surprised to find that somehow, there is not only nothing left out of my $190 deposit, but in fact, TECO seems to think I owe them money. But they’re fundamentally nuts if they think they’re going to GET that lousy $44… at least, assuming I don’t ever move back to Tampa and need them to hook me up with electricity again.

Beyond that, email today has been nothing (so far) but a great deal of notices of new comments on this blog, which was lovely, until I went in and discovered that six of them were the same comment over and over again. Hey, nothing like a big hit of ‘wow, I got a LOT of attention here’ followed by crushing disappointment to start the day out, I always say.

I shouldn’t be surly and pissy. The fellow who did that apologized profusely in the comment threads for doing it. But honestly. I’ve stuttered on a posting link and put up a message twice. Everyone does that once in a while. But SIX TIMES??? That’s cruel and unusual punishment for an affection/attention starved Geek of the Week like me.

Jonathan, the Australian editor, finally responded to one of my many emails asking about money for the two issues of TMIS I haven’t been paid for yet. He says that circulation of TMIS has been so low that no payments have been generated, but if his distributor ever gives him anything, he’ll be kind enough to send me $50. I still don’t understand why he has to wait for his distributor before he sends me $50… if he owes me the money, then he owes me the money, and I doubt fifty bucks is going to send him into Chapter Eleven. (Whereas here it would at least stabilize my checking account for a while and get it vaguely positive again.) But I just don’t understand high finance, I guess.

I kept the TV off all day, and it’s pretty much all 9/11 programming tonight so I’ll keep it off all night, too. I did turn it on around six to make sure Al Qaeda hadn’t blown up anything else today, as the Feds always seem to insist they’re going to, and since apparently they haven’t, well… not much to say there, either.

Oh, I should note, I guess, that a while back… last week, I think… I decided to hook my DVD player directly into the TV, since there were access jacks back there. I had had it piggy backed to the VCR. I wouldn’t say this way works any better than the other way, but oddly enough, the DVD image now plays on channel 91, instead of on 4 with the VCR stuff. I suppose this means that I can have a DVD and a videotape both playing at once, and use the remote’s ‘go back’ feature to flip between them a lot. If, you know, I’d ever really want to.

RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, “Wow, I didn’t recognize you in men’s clothing”. According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I’m reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I’d take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here’s The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people’s blogs, you MUST NOT:

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin’s Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron’s blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don’t really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren’t related to me by marriage, I’d most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I’ve learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don’t care if you:

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I’d get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don’t Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.