Unapologetically Mundane » there’s a difference between films and movies

I’ve Never Seen Star Wars

katie ett — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:00:14 +0000

Star Wars wallpaper by Super7

I’ve never seen Star Wars. I don’t know that what’s-his-name is Luke’s father, and I don’t know that Luke and Leia are brother and sister, and I couldn’t name that famous planet they’re all from right now if you had a gun to my head. I mean it.

What haven’t you seen?

Extremely Loud & Incredibly, Incredibly Close

plumpdumpling — Wed, 18 May 2011 16:00:24 +0000

I got to Kamran’s apartment after work yesterday to find these signs taped in front of his building:

I know it really steps on a lot of people’s toes to say things like this, but I really feel like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close means more to me than it does to anyone else.

Okay, maybe it means more to one other person. And maybe it means just as much to you. But it means a lot–a lot–to me.

I read it just after I started working at Barnes & Noble in December of 2005. I had lived here for just over five months and was, as I’ve previously embarrassingly admitted–crying all over the damned city. And of course the book is about walking all over the damned city. I missed my dead mom, and Oscar was trying to find a piece of his dead dad. I knew I was being manipulated by cutesy phrases like heavy boots, but I felt like my own boots were dragging me into the concrete, so I didn’t care.

My then-boyfriend kept asking me why I was reading this book that would make me cry two minutes after I sat down with it, but it was too beautiful to put aside. Ability to produce continual, pathetic tears or not, a well-written book still eases my mind. I haven’t been able to touch it since, and my copy sits on my bookshelf still tabbed with sticky notes on every other page to mark my favourite spots. And I’ll never forget the way the pages leading up to the end just fly by, building up to the climax so much that I felt like I could actually hear a trumpet fanfare in my head. Apparently this is something that happens to me with books I really, really love, because I remember it with my very favourite book, Dandelion Wine, and one of my other Top Fives, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

So it seems really meaningful somehow that the movie version of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is taping right outside of Kamran’s apartment tomorrow. I feel like I should take off work to watch. I feel like I should have desperately tried to become an extra. I feel like I should rush the set and try to talk about the book with Tom Hanks.

But I doubt it means as much to him as it does to me.

In your FACE, Hanks.

Kinetic Typography Collection

plumpdumpling — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 16:00:59 +0000

Weeks ago, my friend Eric Google Buzzed the latest Cee-Lo Green song, “F*** You”, and I thought the video for it was genius. The song is super-catchy to begin with, but when you present the lyrics in such a playful way, you’re begging people to watch and remember them.

I was showing the video to my friend Anthony yesterday, and he informed me that this is a whole video movement called kinetic typography, of which there are about 8 zillion examples on YouTube. Here are a few of my favourites:

Now find me some more or let me know what you like best!

The Best Thing About “Eclipse” (and the Most Annoying)

plumpdumpling — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 16:00:07 +0000

I was surprised to learn, upon reading them, that though the writing is as awful as I would’ve imagined, the plot of the Twilight series is actually pretty clever. Unlike, say, “Lost”, all of the loose ends eventually tie up, and the things you never thought would matter suddenly do. There are no red herrings nor MacGuffins in them.

Yet they still totally annoy me simply because their author, Stephenie Meyer, has to thank the band Muse in each of them. In all of the novels’ afterwords, right alongside appreciation of her editor and agent, she’ll say things like, “And thanks also to my favourite band, the very aptly named Muse, for providing a saga’s worth of inspiration.” And then I will claw her eyes out.

It’s not even that I don’t like Muse. I actually really liked them in NINETEEN-NINETY-NINE when I was listening to them. But I just can’t handle some kids’-book-writin’, middle-aged Mormon thinking she’s all cool for liking one pop-alt band. It’s like moviestars thinking anyone cares about their political activism. And you know she’s just doing it in some used-to-be-unpopular girl’s attempt to befriend the band she loves.

I went to see Eclipse last night with my friend Ash, though, and aside from a couple of actually-hilarious moments, what I was surprised by most was the soundtrack. It does not suck. In fact, it includes The Bravery, the amazing Ohio band The Black Keys, and my favourite band right now, Band of Horses. And the music is used really well. The first time you see, Jacob, for instance, the camera moves in on his face as a grinding bluesy song starts, and it’s this total moment. How annoying is that?

I can console myself with the fact that I know it wasn’t Stephenie Meyer choosing the music and how it’s used, but I can still continue to hate her for all of her Muse-suck-upping. Mostly because I know I’d do exactly the same thing if I was in her shoes.

Except with a better band.

An Education, and Why I’m Sad to Be a Grownup

plumpdumpling — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:00:53 +0000

Maybe it’s inappropriate to start off the new year with ruminations on pedophilia, but while I was in Ohio for Christmas, my best friend, Tracey, and her friend Kim were in the midst of seeing all of this year’s potentially-Oscar-nominated films, and I tagged along to see An Education with them almost as an afterthought. It’s mostly plotless–a sheltered 17-year-old girl loses more than her virginity to an older man when she’s dazzled by his worldliness–and it’s not for everyone, but it was entirely for me.

It was a great story and all, but for days afterward, it was still consuming my thoughts in a way that I didn’t think it should have. I found myself feeling detached from everything I did, because all I wanted to be doing was watching that film again. I finally decided it was because the girl in the film, Jenny, reminded me so much of myself. Growing up in smalltown Ohio, I wasn’t at all interested in most of the boys I went to school with, because I was way too smart for them, and I don’t mean that to sound narcissistic. Even the ones who could hold a conversation with me didn’t seem to appreciate me in the way I thought my awesomeness merited. I didn’t find things much different in college, so I “dated” first a 35-year-old and then a 41-year-old and just didn’t think anything wrong with it. Brains and humor have always made people more attractive to me than classic good looks alone, and men twice my age seemed so thoughtful and funny. They got why I was so interested in literature, and they listened to the right kinds of music, only they knew bands and read books I’d only heard of. They were so serious about politics, unlike the boys at school who were only Republicans because their parents were. And they both lived somewhere other than Ohio, which was really the most important thing.

The sad thing I realized after watching An Education is that the main reason I wanted to date older men no longer applies. Somewhere between 18 and now, I figured out that the guys I thought were so wise back then had really just accumulated the sort of life experience you do when you’ve had a job, had a wife, had some birthdays. They knew bands I’d only heard of because they’d been my age when those bands were making music, just like I know more bands than someone half my age does. My best friends now are just as literate, just as politically-conscious, and just as funny as any of those guys were. In fact, my current boyfriend, who’s only a couple of years older than I am, is smarter and funnier than probably anyone I know. It wasn’t that boys my age were necessarily not good enough for me but just that I hadn’t met the right one. Not that I regret any of it.

My even sadder realization is that I probably already ended my tenure as pedophile bait without even realizing it, and despite being wise enough now to recognize that older isn’t always better, I’m still going to miss the attention. Sure, I can date 80-year-old men for their money in my late 20s, but no one’s going to question that guy’s morals or mental health. If I’m not attractive simply for my ability to get someone arrested for touching me, what do I have to live for? What’s the point of being seen with an old codger if it doesn’t garner him disapproving glares and me worried glances? What’s the point if I’m not being taken advantage of?

Zombies v. Old Lady Genitals

plumpdumpling — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:45:22 +0000

I saw Zombieland, and like Adventureland, it was entirely meant to showcase how much better than Michael Cera Jesse Eisenberg is. Kamran was worried it was trying to be Shaun of the Dead, but in most ways–many of them involving the lack of puny British accents–it was better:

1) The rules for staying alive.
2) The slow-motion death scenes.
3) The non-lame love story that actually made me like that chick from Superbad.
4) Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson.
5) But mostly Jesse Eisenberg.

The heavy metal soundtrack was an added plus, as was the hilarious cameo by the superfamous actor, which I don’t want to ruin for you in case you, like me, didn’t know it was coming. Woody Harrelson never made me cringe from bad acting, and Abigail Breslin never made me cringe from teenage acne, but a lot of the zombie killings had me wincing. In a good way.

My friend Jack’s Romanian friends thought the movie was disgusting and were shocked that the rest of us liked it, but this was the same night we saw the woman peeing in the street, so maybe we’ve just been desensitized to these things. Go see it and decide which you think is grosser.

Who Wants an Eraserhead Larva Baby Replica? YOU DO!

plumpdumpling — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:20:23 +0000

I was under the impression that I pretty much knew David Lynch. I saw Mulholland Dr. in the theatre twice, watched The Elephant Man in a college class, saw Blue Velvet earlier this year with Kamran, DVRed The Straight Story the other day without even knowing it was a David Lynch film just because I wanted to watch a movie about a farmer, watched Lost Highway with Kamran a couple of years ago when he helped me paint the living room of my apartment bright pink, was forced to see bits of Wild at Heart on TV, and think I might have actually seen every episode of “Twin Peaks” at this point thanks to our cable horror channel, Chiller. So yeah, I thought I knew David Lynch.

But last night, Kamran made me watch Eraserhead. When the opening credits came on, I asked, “Is this in black and white?”, and he said, “Yes, and there’s very little dialogue.” I tried to have an open mind, but I was still veeeeeeeeery skeptical a half an hour in. There was little plot, little scene, no dialogue, and totally unlikeable characters. And then this happened:

And that basically sums up the film. If you’re in any way intrigued by that, rest assured that it only gets weirder. It’s probably my second-favourite David Lynch movie now, and I can’t wait for Kamran to start up his line of Eraserhead action figures so I can give everyone a larva baby for Christmas.

Benjamin Button Should’ve Been Called Benjamin Suckin’ OHHH!

plumpdumpling — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:00:52 +0000

Netflix delivered The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to Kamran’s apartment a good month ago. I’m the one who put it on our list, yet I’m the one who kept dragging my feet, because three hours of Brad Pitt doesn’t excite me like it does normal women.

I’m trying to catch Kamran up on five seasons of “Lost” so we’ll both be prepared for the final season when it airs in January, so we spent a few hours on Friday night and all morning Saturday watching episodes from season two. Kamran was getting too good at guessing exactly what was going to happen next (seriously, am I the only one who’s taken by surprise by every minute of the show?), so we stopped at one point and decided to finally watch Benjamin Button so we could send it back and stock up on Halloween movies to give us an excuse to eat loads of candy pumpkins.

It sucked. We didn’t care about any of the characters, though they were obviously intended to be intriguing in the way all of the characters in movies like Amélie or Fargo are. And the worst part was that it seemed like Benjamin’s getting younger really had no effect on anything. Aside from kissing a woman for the first time as an old man, any of it could have happened to someone who wasn’t aging backward. And the Hurricane Katrina stuff? CRAP, and obviously not from the Fitzgerald short story.

To be fair, there were two scenes I liked:

1) Benjamin leaves Daisy because he’s growing too young and doesn’t want her to have to take care of both him and their baby. As he’s walking out in the middle of the night, she opens her eyes, and they silently look at each other for a moment before he walks out the door.

2) Daisy’s grown daughter reads postcards written by Benjamin to her. They say totally vague and cheesy one-liners like “do the things you love”, but they still touched me somehow.

I just find it insane that this was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar the year after There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men were, especially when there were so many good films that year that The Diving Bell and the Butterfly wasn’t even nominated.

What did I miss in the movie that everyone else saw?

Eavesdropping on the Train: the Lonely Indie Girl Edition

plumpdumpling — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:00:54 +0000

In case you haven’t already heard, I sort of loved the movie 500 Days of Summer but also sort of hated it for its attempts at making me feel like my boyfriend doesn’t wear enough sweater vests and for my unexplainable secret desire to see the couple in it fail.

Other than the female lead being a coldhearted jerk, I couldn’t pinpoint anything specific that caused me to not feel much attachment to them, but this morning on the train, I realized that what made me roll my eyes about them was the elevator scene, shown here in the opening of the trailer:

The problem is that I’m jealous. This exact scene is the stuff of my emo, music-fanatic, high school dreams, and it’s never happened to me . . .

Read the rest here.

Nothing You Know About the World is Correct

plumpdumpling — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:44:10 +0000

My mom was an English teacher who had a special interest in mythology (something I know absolutely nothing about, go figure), so growing up, I watched a lot of Clash of the Titans (awesome!) and Labyrinth as my mom prepared her class lesson plans at home (usually the night before). She was known as fruitcake teacher, so finding films that were even casually related to her class subjects was de rigeur.

I didn’t know how important watching those movies as a kid was to me until I found out years later that my best friend, Tracey, was also a Labyrinth fan. We spent countless Friday nights in high school at her house, eating Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food, watching Labyrinth, and transcribing Bush lyrics from the closed captioning on taped episodes of “Saturday Night Live” because we didn’t know anyone who had the Internet and could look them up for us. Which probably explains why neither of us had boyfriends.

Later, I had a week-long love affair with a boy in Columbus simply because one of the approximately ten DVDs he had, Labyrinth was one of them. My ex-boyfriend Todd loved it, Kamran at least tolerates it, and my dear friend Bachelor Girl referenced it in a post just the other day. It’s probably important to you, too, which is why we’re such close blogfriends, right?

The other day, I read my friend Lorraine’s AOL Instant Messenger away message, and it said:

Hey, you remind me of a man.
What man?
Man with the power.
What power?
Power of hoodoo.
Hoodoo?
You do.
Do what?
Remind me of a man.

Which is, of course, from this scene in Labyrinth:

OR SO I THOUGHT. I IMed Lorraine basically to tell her that she’s an idiot and to quit jacking with my movie quotes, but she informed me (politely) that it’s actually from a Cary Grant movie called The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer:

Unbelievable, right?! What a massacre of everything I thought was true and right in the world. At least the David Bowie version is way better.

(500) Days of Summer is (95) Minutes of Me Wanting to Kill Myself (but in a sort of happy way)

plumpdumpling — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:12:53 +0000

I went to see (500) Days of Summer with Kamran and my friend Beth last weekend. It was beautiful. And really, really depressing.

I knew that I was going to see the movie when the preview included a scene where Zooey Deschanel makes Joseph Gordon-Levitt take off his headphones in an elevator to tell him that she loves The Smiths. On one hand, I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, who doesn’t love The Smiths?” Please try not to base your entire relationship on one song, folks.

It’s just like in Garden State when that bitch Natalie Portman is like, “You have to listen to this Shins song. It’ll change your life, I swear.” And I was like, “Sucka, I was listening to The Shins before you were born.” But Zach Braff is all taken by her, because guys like chicks with mental illness.

But on the other hand, I also understand it, because I based my entire love of Kamran on the fact that while I was working at a science museum in college, he and his dad visited on their way to move him into Princeton, and I’m entirely sure we spoke to each other that day and somehow found each other six years later.

So, I knew it was going to be overly-indie, but you know I’m into that. I just didn’t know it was going to be so sad. I thought about it for days afterward, and I can’t even figure out why. I mean, for god’s sake, the director’s other credits include a Jesse McCartney documentary and a 3 Doors Down music video!

Maybe it’s that I secretly think of Kamran and myself as the Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel of Manhattan. Except even more adorable when in IKEA.

In conclusion: the costumes were awesome, the chalkboard wall was awesome, and the soundtrack was awesome. Summer was a bitch, although I’m sure I’d see it differently if the movie was told from her point of view. The girl at the end sucked. Please see it so we can discuss.

Harold and Maude and Bryant Park

plumpdumpling — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:12:57 +0000

I saw Harold and Maude in Bryant Park on Monday night. And when I say I “saw” it, I mean it, because I heard exactly three lines in the movie:

1) “Sagging breasts and flabby buttocks.”
2) “Do you enjoy knives?”
3) “I love you.”

And actually, I didn’t even really hear the second line; Beth had to tell me what it said. See, I arrived at Bryant Park for this week’s installment of the Summer Film Festival a full hour and a half before the movie started, but when I met up with my co-worker Steve, he said the place had already been packed for a while. There was absolutely nowhere to sit in the grass, so Steve, Beth, Emily, Jeff, our new German intern Niko, and I ended up on the concrete stairs, miiiiiiiiiiiles away from the screen with our view partially blocked by the motorhome that the movie was being projected from.

I’ve never seen Harold and Maude, but even without being able to make out any of the dialogue, I thought I’d pieced the story together pretty well until I got back to Kamran’s apartment. It was then that he said, “Yeah, wasn’t it totally crazy how [that really important thing] happened?”, and I said, “Oh, I had no idea [that really important thing] happened.” And now the movie’s ruined for me. But not for you, because I save spoilers for the comments section. Love you!

From what I gathered, though, it’s a really lovely movie. Both because Harold is uber-hot in a pasty white boy way, and because Cat Stevens does the soundtrack. The audience was swooning all over the opening credits:

It felt sort of magical, I’ll admit, listening to Cat and watching Harold reject all of the college ladies who want him, surrounded by these giant buildings with the lights from Times Square reflecting off of them. The only problem I had was that there were homeless people there. I felt sort of weird for hating them, because I generally try pretty hard to keep my feelings toward the less fortunate in the neutral to hopeful range. And, like, the outdoors belong to these people, you know?, so it’s almost like I was watching my movie in their living room. But I pay my taxes and patronize summer film series sponsors, and therefore I deserve things like a decent seat away from the less hygienic, am I right?

All of This Umlauting Has Made Me Hungry for Schnitzel

plumpdumpling — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:32:04 +0000

My friend Beth and I went to see Brüno on Saturday afternoon. I won’t give anything away, but the movie can pretty much be summed up in the following question, uttered by the guy next to me:

Did that urethra just speak?

Basically, if you enjoy David Letterman’s Top 10 Reasons to See Brüno, you’ll find the movie ten thousand times funnier:

But if you thought Borat was offensive and belittling, you’ll find it ten thousand times worse.

Did anyone else see it/love it? Did you think it could be construed as offensive to The Gayz?

I Got Dragged to Drag Me to Hell

plumpdumpling — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:52:52 +0000

I was forced to see “Drag Me to Hell” on Saturday night because my friend Beth and my dear boyfriend both wanted to see it, and I couldn’t very well allow them to go without me and risk Beth pretending to be scared and jumping into Kamran’s lap at the first sight of some old lady puking embalming fluid into Alison Lohman’s mouth or something.

I, to say the very least, don’t choose to see horror movies. I was talked into seeing “The Mothman Prophecies” in college and still hear voices coming out of the sink. I was talked into seeing “The Strangers” last year and, um, basically can no longer function as a normal human being. And yet my last two boyfriends have been major horror freaks. Only the last one was kind enough to watch his movies while I was away at work, while the current one seems to delight in forcing me to watch “House of 1000 Corpses” over and over again.

So naturally, I spent most of “Drag Me to Hell” with my chin tucked into my chest to ensure that I wouldn’t accidentally see something horrific with my peripheral vision. After the opening scene in which I actually jumped and then laughed for five minutes straight out of nervousness, I thought it best for the other patrons that I not look during, say, the entire parking garage bit. The great thing for me–but maybe not for people who actually like to be scared–is that the music in the movie totally lets you know when something terrifying’s going to happen. And the one or two times when it doesn’t let you know, you’re left applauding the director for fooling you. And I was glad for those few times in the end, too, because it meant that I had to watch at least a little of the gore. When I did, I realized that the movie was mostly just shocking, gross, and over-the-top rather than pee-your-pants scary. I didn’t think the plot was bad at all, either, and there’s a lot to be said for that.

There’s also a lot to be said for the theatre where we saw the movie, Village East Cinema. It seemed to be fairly modern from the outside, but there were old-fashioned box seats on the sides like you’d see in an opera house, and this was on the ceiling:

Now if only ticket prices could harken back to that era.

Sorry, Trekkies, But Your Movie Has Been Co-opted by Regular Folk

plumpdumpling — Mon, 18 May 2009 17:44:48 +0000

I’ve never seen a single episode of “Star Trek” in my life, so I was a little reticent about paying $20.50 to see the new movie on IMAX. But twelve of my co-workers were going, and I’m nothing if not a sucker for peer pressure, so I paid my monies, and I joined everyone at the Lincoln Center theatre on Saturday afternoon. The theatre was ginormous, but Jack and Dean spotted me from the very top row as soon as I walked in the lower doors, and after spending $13 on concessions and having one of my bra straps pop off, I settled in for a totally exhilarating, way-less-nerdy-than-expected movie.

I didn’t get all of the jokes, and all of the time flexibility stuff would’ve freaked me out had I not been dating a physicist for a couple of years now, but overall, I thought it was pretty rad. My friend Emily grew up on “Star Trek” and informed me that actually wasn’t nearly as geeky as I had presumed, but I think she just forgot what it really used to be like when faced with a new ship full of hot, young actors with the incredible ability of pulling themselves up off of cliffs with one hand repeatedly. And I don’t blame her, really, because:

And you? Trekkie, newbie-who’s-interested-in-seeing-the-movie, or still bewildered by all of the good reviews?

“Adventureland” is the New “Juno” or Something

plumpdumpling — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:12:16 +0000

My friend Beth and I went to see Adventureland last night in its last night at the theatre near Union Square. It features Bill Hader, who I have totally seen twice while living in New York, but even without an appearance by one of my very best friends I’ve never actually spoken to, it was a seriously great movie: funny, beautiful, and very touching.

I’m not going to spoil anything for you, but I loved that New York–where I live now–was idling in the background while the characters lived out their lives in the Midwest, where I’m from. Everything they did felt so familiar to me, so college-y and carefree, and I got very nostalgic for those simpler days when I was all idealistic about what I’d make of myself. At the same time, the relationship in it felt so much like what I have now with the good doctor; all of the excitement and the closeness they felt was exactly what I feel with Kamran. There was a point when Kristen Stewart–who is totally great in this movie, for all of you who hated her after Twilight (which I didn’t see but heard horrible things about)–looks at Jesse Eisenberg and says something like, “You’re the coolest boy I’ve ever met. And the cutest.” And I totally made out with Beth at that moment and pretended it was Kamran, because that’s just what I think about him.

ANYWAY, did anyone else see this thing? Am I the only one who liked it?

I Didn’t See Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant Filming Their New Movie

plumpdumpling — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:44:37 +0000

I forgot to tell you that a couple of weeks ago, I was picking Dr. Boyfriend up from law school, and after a stop at the Whole Foods in Columbus Circle for dinner at the hot bar, we exited the Time Warner Center to find a movie being filmed.

We obviously think celebrity is lame, but we couldn’t help trying to get a look at the actors to see what the fuss was all about. The whole sidewalk was roped off, stage lights were set up all around, and limos were pulled up to every curb. It turned out that Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant were filming some new movie called Did You Hear About the Morgans?. Greeeeeat title, huh?

Of course, Sarah Jessica and Hugh weren’t actually anywhere in sight. It was merely their stand-ins rehearsing the scene while they likely sat in their limos–Sarah Jessica calling home to Ohio, Hugh wondering how he was going to get past kissing Sarah Jessica’s horsey face without losing his lunch. But the crowd, of course, was still totally enthralled.

I doubt I’ll add their stand-ins to my list of famous people I’ve seen while living in NYC, but if Kamran keeps running into Keanu Reeves and Eliot Spitzer, I might get desperate for something to talk about.

The Winter of Our Discontent

plumpdumpling — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 20:34:51 +0000

Things aren’t as joyous around here as I’m used to. I’m blaming the winter. I’m hoping it’s the winter.

On Saturday night, I went out for what was supposed to be a wild girls’ night involving all six of my closest NYC ladyfriends. One by one, though, they had to work or had delayed flights back from business trips or had to “pick something up in Brooklyn” (what?), so it ended up being just Emily, Sonya, and Jessica. We went to dinner at BonChon for chicken that is both “tasteful” and “nutritiously enriched”. I don’t know what either of those words mean, but it was a damned fine chicken wing they were serving. It was so weird, though–the place was on the second floor of an unmarked office building, yet it was crowded with greasy-fingered eaters. It’s funny how Asian people somehow convince white folk to sneak into secret rooms for designer knockoff purses and into elevators of seemingly empty offices for sesame-glazed drumsticks.

After not even finishing one plate of wings and rosemary French fries, we went to Karaoke Duet to sing our hearts out in a private room. Karaoke usually means Emily doing the humpty dance, Beth–the whitest person you know–somehow knowing all the words to every Kanye song, and me . . . okay, I always sing sad 90s songs. But this time, EVERYONE was singing sad 90s songs. We actually kept apologizing to each other for choosing them, but we couldn’t stop.

I stood up at one point to take a picture of the three of them leaning back against the mustard-colored vinyl couch, completely sullen, but as soon as they saw the camera, they all became totally fake-animated:

Look at this! Jessica went as far as pretending to sing into her closed fist.

The really depressing part of the night was that karaoke had been half price before 8 p.m., so we’d gone to dinner at 4 to give ourselves plenty of time to sing for cheap. Which meant that we were finished hanging out at 8:30. Sonya went off to see crappy Asian movies with her boyfriend, Jessica went to meet up with her similarly-German friends to eat some weiner schnitzel or something (wait, is that Austrian?), and Emily came back to Kamran’s with me to gel her hair before a hot date. I had really wanted to go dancing, but when we got to Kamran’s and found him already in bed with his pajamas on, I lost all energy.

On Saturday, we watched Brick, which I didn’t know was a neo-noir when I added it to my Netflix queue. Despite hearing good things, we were both set to hate it and had pretty well succeeded after ten minutes, but once the story started making sense, we found ourselves warming up. Halfway through, I said, “I don’t hate watching this movie,” and he agreed. And then we ended up liking it. I don’t quite think that Joseph Gordon-Levitt actually needed to impersonate Humphrey Bogart during the last ten minutes for us to get that it was supposed to be a noir, but the interesting–sometimes annoying, but always interesting–wordplay throughout the film made us forgive that. Still, total bummer.

On Sunday, we watched the John Cassavetes film A Woman Under the Influence, and I pretty much cried the entire way through it. I thought it weird when we paused it so Kamran could go to the bathroom and I found myself lying down on his couch and leaking a couple of tears into his red satin pillows, but by the time an hour had passed, I was in full-on sob mode and had to ask Kam to stop staring at me so I could concentrate on not killing myself. It was seriously the bleakest movie I’ve ever seen. It’s what Revolutionary Road was trying to be and totally failed at. You don’t know who to blame for everything that happens in it, and you want to give all of the characters a Valium. We debated abandoning it with thirty minutes lef but decided we had to know what happened. When we finished, I said, “Let’s watch it again with commentary!”, and Kamran said, “I’m not watching that again. EVER.”

On Monday afternoon, my Internet randomly went down at work–only mine, mind you–and that’s when I found out that my laptop had 13 viruses and had been banned from the network by my IT guy. I spent two entire days without access to my photos, my music, and my smut. I don’t check my blog visitor count every ten seconds like I used to, I don’t have the motivation to write for Examiner.com, and I find myself unable to listen to anything but super-poppy songs like this:

On the bright side, what had better be the last snow of the season just passed, and soon it’ll be warm enough for me to wear the PINK SATIN COAT my sister bought me for Christmas:

This is the only thing keeping me going.

You Haven’t Won Me Yet, Nick and Norah

plumpdumpling — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 22:35:15 +0000

I just want to mention that this movie Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is based on a teen novel that I used to flip through about eight times a week back when I worked in the kids section of Barnes & Noble. Because as a mix tape lover, the word playlist calls to me, and because it’s based in NYC.

But I won’t let your Michael Cera suck me in! I won’t buy your typical teen storylines! And I will not be so easily convinced by your indie film lighting and your characters in hoodies!

The Best Thing About “Eclipse” (and the Most Annoying) (15)
Someone Has Issues (17)
Bus Stop Line Jump (6)
I’ve Never Seen Star Wars (25)
“Big Brother” and the Inability to Accept Compliments (11)
Extremely Loud & Incredibly, Incredibly Close (23)
Cover Up That Caesarean Scar, Fatty (15)
I’m Certain All BFFs Are This Freaky (31)
Donut Hole Babies (25)
Brokelyn (12)

No, Wait, I’ve Actually Seen Way More Famous People

plumpdumpling — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:42:33 +0000

I could tell yesterday that you weren’t totally blown away by the celebrities I’ve rubbed elbows with, and early this morning, I realized why. I forgot to add the most important ones, the ones I was actually filmed with. And in Meryl’s case, the one that I actually ran into accidentally. So here are the additions to my List of All the Famous People I Can Remember Having Seen Whilst Living in NYC for you to ooh and ahh at:

Meryl Streep, who I filmed scenes with as an extra in the movie Julie and Julia.

Brooke Shields, who I stood 2 centimeters away from while filming scenes as an extra in “Lipstick Jungle“, where I also stood 2 centimeters away from

Andrew McCarthy

and Rosie Perez

and Kim Raver

and Lindsay Price.

Please note that I reserve the right to keeping posting this sort of jazz whenever I remember another one, because nothing else in my life has any meaning.

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