Crappy year.
Most boring movie: Amazing Spider-Man - no energy, no new ideas, no discernible talent from any of the actors aside from Emma Stone. Garfield's Peter Parker is Cameron Fry if he stayed in bed instead of going out with Ferris Bueller. A witless 2 hours.
Most Inept Movie: The Dark Knight Rises - This movie just proves Nolan doesn't understand Batman at all. A bad, dumb, stupid movie which was obviously written backwards especially the eye-rolling climax (saving Gotham from a bomb is entirely dependent on Batman having a plane with a grappling hook).
Most Disappointing: Skyfall - It's a note by note pastiche of Nolan's Batman movies. The villains have mouth injuries and interrupt an official event by disguising themselves as police and its just note for note. The plot ideas weren't good the first time, they're even worse as leftovers.
Worst movie: Prometheus - to explain this one, let me swipe a part of something my friend wrote:
INT. GIANT HEAD TESTING ROOM
SHAW
Oh my God, I just realized: the H.R. Giger creature that so-fascinated generations of moviegoers isn't a creature at all but a giant man in a HELMET! Let's remove it and stick electricity in it.
GIANT HEAD
Waaaaaarg {explodes}
SHAW
Good science today, people.
And that about sums it up.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Amanda (Not Her Real Name), Part 1
It's been so long that the details are fuzzy. It's also been so long, I can't remember a time when the details were sharp or when I didn't know her.
I was in the midst of my early 20s asshole phase in 2003. The one all guys go through in college where they sleep with naive girls from parties who got drunk on cheap beer. I was hooking and catching and releasing women all the time; one point I had a woman for every different day of the week. Most of them were just sex, the others were just to make out with, others still were sisters of old girlfriends and I... still feel awful about that.
I was using OkCupid after being introduced to it by a friend. It was as useful as a sledgehammer while swimming: a lot of emails, no real life connections though. I think in ten years I only met three girls through it: two would be important friends for many years and the third was Amanda.
The only thing I remember about talking to her on there was that while I was checking her profile regularly, she was also checking mine. She was too crushingly shy to make the first move and I was interested but not sure how this stuff worked. I eventually bit the bullet and we sent some small, awkward messages back and forth (now forever lost to time).
After, I kid you not, *months* of this, we decide to meet at a bar a couple of towns over near Yale. I'm dressed more blue collar than anyone else in town but she introduces herself at the bar and she's a tiny, tiny girl. Like five foot one. Curly dark hair. Eyes as big as saucers behind Lisa Loeb glasses. Something about her physically defined "sexy nerd" in the way only Internet ads do. Like a super-cute librarian girl. Unrealistically too, given the job she was working in college was stacking books in a law library.
Awkwardly, she brought four of her friends (who does that?) and they immediately thought I was gay. I'm assuming it was my very stand-offish attitude but then again, I was on a blind date only to be surrounded and judged by this girl's circle of close friends. It was very off putting and though I sat next to Amanda, I didn't talk to her. I was quiet, but I also found the hairs on my arms standing up when I made eye contact with her. She fumbled for words, she was scared and her words were coming out in rat-a-tat-tats. Flustered would be the word another generation used.
After being dragged to the dance floor (always good for a laugh, as I do a mean impression of a fish out of water) and grinding against her while she looks at me with pleading eyes, we're back at the booth and I'm talking to her friend across from me since we both worked in liquor stores. Its the only thing I can talk to in this group and I'm trying to force myself into, you know, being a human fucking being for once. Trying to interact and reach out.
Amanda looks at me and talks into her chest "Do you... like her more? You're not talking to me."
From anyone else, I'd roll my eyes at that and brush it off as just a woman trying to play coy. But her voice dripped with unnatural earnest, a kind I've never come across before or since, and she was so gentle to the point of being sullen, I didn't think she wanted to talk to me. When I told her such, she shook her head and denied it and very much wanted to talk with me. She carefully eagle-clawed (as in hand position, not as in grip strength) my hand under the table and said she was slightly, no, very intimidated by me and how could I ever like her and so on and so forth.
Crammed into that sweaty booth in that crowded Irish bar during finals week of some November, a small, gentle woman wrapped her arm around my back and put her head on my shoulder.
Her friends were all assholes, but this one was okay.
When we go our separate ways she asks why I'm going back toward the city and I tell her I had to park about three blocks down. She emphatically demands her friends drop me off - any excuse to stay near me for a few more minutes - and once we're in the backseat, she's on me. She's drunk, a little bolder perhaps and makes the first move but let's me lead the dance. She kisses remarkably well, in hindsight one of the best in my life, and when we get to my car, she leaps out of the other door and stops traffic to kiss me again and again. Her tongue is full-on in my mouth now and there are cars five or six deep that are honking at us. For two minutes.
I tell her to text me and I'll likely see her tomorrow. We text most of the night.
Tomorrow morning at ten, she's at my door and maybe thirty minutes later, we're having sex on the couch. Good sex too. Not just screwing but passionate, thoughtful "this is fun and really connected" sort of sex. We're making jokes and smiling as one of us gyrates and the other moans. It was a very giving hour for both of us.
We're interrupted by a phone call from her mother. She takes it and immediately goes into a fetal position, naked, on the couch. The conversation is one-sided and full of accusations. Amanda's voice goes quieter as her mother gets louder: WHERE ARE YOU and WHO ARE YOU WITH and suddenly I realize why we're hitting it off. Our home life sucks and our mothers are insane and its ingrained on our personalities.
Two victims of the exact same suburban crime.
After she hangs up with the interrogator, we fool around more before I notice I have to be in work soon for my afternoon job at the liquor store. She asks to see me again, soon... because she's leaving for a job in Boston. She already paid her lease and security.
Fuck.
Well, actually, I wasn't truly attached to her despite the fact she was cute and humble and smart and the sex was unusually good. So it was more of an "aw shucks" than a real curse.
Despite talking on instant messenger and some phone sex, I don't see her again. Years later, she tells me that the night after we had sex, she tried to call me and all her friends - who disapproved of me - physically dog piled on her and tore the phone out of her hand when she was dialing my number.
We talk about my visiting her and it doesn't happen. Neither do plans of her coming down to here and us even just getting coffee. The phone calls thin out. I email her once in a blue moon and she smiles politely and says she doesn't believe I still try to talk. It's been two years now and she's had a couple of bad relationships. She thinks about me a lot, she says, but talking to me feels like "emotional cheating".
Eventually, we stop talking. I don't stop thinking about her though. No matter how good anything is I keep thinking it would've been better with her being part of it.
I'm thinking that as I type this, in fact.
I was in the midst of my early 20s asshole phase in 2003. The one all guys go through in college where they sleep with naive girls from parties who got drunk on cheap beer. I was hooking and catching and releasing women all the time; one point I had a woman for every different day of the week. Most of them were just sex, the others were just to make out with, others still were sisters of old girlfriends and I... still feel awful about that.
I was using OkCupid after being introduced to it by a friend. It was as useful as a sledgehammer while swimming: a lot of emails, no real life connections though. I think in ten years I only met three girls through it: two would be important friends for many years and the third was Amanda.
The only thing I remember about talking to her on there was that while I was checking her profile regularly, she was also checking mine. She was too crushingly shy to make the first move and I was interested but not sure how this stuff worked. I eventually bit the bullet and we sent some small, awkward messages back and forth (now forever lost to time).
After, I kid you not, *months* of this, we decide to meet at a bar a couple of towns over near Yale. I'm dressed more blue collar than anyone else in town but she introduces herself at the bar and she's a tiny, tiny girl. Like five foot one. Curly dark hair. Eyes as big as saucers behind Lisa Loeb glasses. Something about her physically defined "sexy nerd" in the way only Internet ads do. Like a super-cute librarian girl. Unrealistically too, given the job she was working in college was stacking books in a law library.
Awkwardly, she brought four of her friends (who does that?) and they immediately thought I was gay. I'm assuming it was my very stand-offish attitude but then again, I was on a blind date only to be surrounded and judged by this girl's circle of close friends. It was very off putting and though I sat next to Amanda, I didn't talk to her. I was quiet, but I also found the hairs on my arms standing up when I made eye contact with her. She fumbled for words, she was scared and her words were coming out in rat-a-tat-tats. Flustered would be the word another generation used.
After being dragged to the dance floor (always good for a laugh, as I do a mean impression of a fish out of water) and grinding against her while she looks at me with pleading eyes, we're back at the booth and I'm talking to her friend across from me since we both worked in liquor stores. Its the only thing I can talk to in this group and I'm trying to force myself into, you know, being a human fucking being for once. Trying to interact and reach out.
Amanda looks at me and talks into her chest "Do you... like her more? You're not talking to me."
From anyone else, I'd roll my eyes at that and brush it off as just a woman trying to play coy. But her voice dripped with unnatural earnest, a kind I've never come across before or since, and she was so gentle to the point of being sullen, I didn't think she wanted to talk to me. When I told her such, she shook her head and denied it and very much wanted to talk with me. She carefully eagle-clawed (as in hand position, not as in grip strength) my hand under the table and said she was slightly, no, very intimidated by me and how could I ever like her and so on and so forth.
Crammed into that sweaty booth in that crowded Irish bar during finals week of some November, a small, gentle woman wrapped her arm around my back and put her head on my shoulder.
Her friends were all assholes, but this one was okay.
When we go our separate ways she asks why I'm going back toward the city and I tell her I had to park about three blocks down. She emphatically demands her friends drop me off - any excuse to stay near me for a few more minutes - and once we're in the backseat, she's on me. She's drunk, a little bolder perhaps and makes the first move but let's me lead the dance. She kisses remarkably well, in hindsight one of the best in my life, and when we get to my car, she leaps out of the other door and stops traffic to kiss me again and again. Her tongue is full-on in my mouth now and there are cars five or six deep that are honking at us. For two minutes.
I tell her to text me and I'll likely see her tomorrow. We text most of the night.
Tomorrow morning at ten, she's at my door and maybe thirty minutes later, we're having sex on the couch. Good sex too. Not just screwing but passionate, thoughtful "this is fun and really connected" sort of sex. We're making jokes and smiling as one of us gyrates and the other moans. It was a very giving hour for both of us.
We're interrupted by a phone call from her mother. She takes it and immediately goes into a fetal position, naked, on the couch. The conversation is one-sided and full of accusations. Amanda's voice goes quieter as her mother gets louder: WHERE ARE YOU and WHO ARE YOU WITH and suddenly I realize why we're hitting it off. Our home life sucks and our mothers are insane and its ingrained on our personalities.
Two victims of the exact same suburban crime.
After she hangs up with the interrogator, we fool around more before I notice I have to be in work soon for my afternoon job at the liquor store. She asks to see me again, soon... because she's leaving for a job in Boston. She already paid her lease and security.
Fuck.
Well, actually, I wasn't truly attached to her despite the fact she was cute and humble and smart and the sex was unusually good. So it was more of an "aw shucks" than a real curse.
Despite talking on instant messenger and some phone sex, I don't see her again. Years later, she tells me that the night after we had sex, she tried to call me and all her friends - who disapproved of me - physically dog piled on her and tore the phone out of her hand when she was dialing my number.
We talk about my visiting her and it doesn't happen. Neither do plans of her coming down to here and us even just getting coffee. The phone calls thin out. I email her once in a blue moon and she smiles politely and says she doesn't believe I still try to talk. It's been two years now and she's had a couple of bad relationships. She thinks about me a lot, she says, but talking to me feels like "emotional cheating".
Eventually, we stop talking. I don't stop thinking about her though. No matter how good anything is I keep thinking it would've been better with her being part of it.
I'm thinking that as I type this, in fact.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Introductions - They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar
Instead of trying to sum up my person directly, here is a quote from an episode of Night Gallery:
"Wait a minute... listen to me... I can't stay here. I don't have any place here. I'm an antique... a has-been. I don't have any function here... I don't have any purpose. You leave me now and I'm marooned! I can't survive out there! Pop? Tim? They stacked the deck that way. They fix it so you get elbowed off the earth! You just don't understand what's going on now! The whole bloody world is coming apart at the seams. And I can't hack it! I swear to God ... I can't hack it!"
This is how I feel about my life since turning 28 (I'm now 31) and having a pair of beautiful and later soul destroying relationships with two perfect women.
"Wait a minute... listen to me... I can't stay here. I don't have any place here. I'm an antique... a has-been. I don't have any function here... I don't have any purpose. You leave me now and I'm marooned! I can't survive out there! Pop? Tim? They stacked the deck that way. They fix it so you get elbowed off the earth! You just don't understand what's going on now! The whole bloody world is coming apart at the seams. And I can't hack it! I swear to God ... I can't hack it!"
This is how I feel about my life since turning 28 (I'm now 31) and having a pair of beautiful and later soul destroying relationships with two perfect women.
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