Put your hands up
You can tell it's early September when I got out for a Friday double feature like Sorority Row followed by Whiteout; it's really more of a Sunday afternoon or Monday evening sort of pair. But as far as nights of third-tier genre junk goes, Sorority Row actually made it sort of worthwhile. It's not much more than a well-made slasher movie, and even the well-made stuff goes to its head a little; for example, the movie is more than 85 minutes long. But this year I've seen slasher movies where old material was revived without absolutely no sense of fun or style (Friday the 13th), where a once-enjoyable concept was bled dry (Final Destination 4), and where a talented director nevertheless steered his well-shot movie into kind of a dead end (Halloween II). So a slightly campy, slightly self-aware bit of suitably violent and occasionally naked collegesploitation with the chick from the similarly enjoyable Step Up 2 the Streets (not to mention a delightfully non performance from a chick from The Hills) pretty much hit the spot. It's not exactly Mean Girls with gore (I'm still holding out hope that Jennifer's Body fits that bill), but I felt surprisingly OK about having spent twelve bucks on it. It provided all of the cheap thrills I was hoping to derive from the surprisingly dull Whiteout, where Kate Beckinsale solves a murder in Antarctica. The movie isn't actively awful and even has some good pulpy stretches, but the indifference it leaves in its wake is pretty stunning. Nothing goes horribly wrong so much as the movie feels listless and half-assed; the dialogue isn't the worst expository crap I've heard, but it's straight boilerplate whenever it can afford to be, and a lot of the snowscaped stuff is done with bad greenscreen. For Beckinsdalesploitation, stick with the second Underworld movie or Van Helsing. By the way, this is the second movie in so many months, after G.I. Joe, to make me think fondly of Van Helsing. If anyone wants to argue that movies are getting worse, I think I've just provided a pretty decent case.
On Saturday night, Marisa and I decided to be lazy and have a non-party, sort of a telling-people-to-come-over-and-hang-out-if-they-want situation, like the Saturday nights of yore, before we lived in eventful places. Here's what usually happens when we do this: we suggest that we might play Scrabble or other board games, or watch movies or something, and then we proceed not to do any of those things, and pretty much sit around eating snacks and drinking and chatting, in this case about babies, the Beatles, and Diablo Cody, among other things. I should mention that we have pretty awesome friends, that so many people came over on a rainy night to basically do nothing. Also, Allison is back on the east coast, hooray!
Today I hit the Brooklyn Book Festival to work Table 27 with the good people of One Story magazine. Also, I ran into: Yuka (leaving the One Story table, but still, nowhere near said table), Kyla, Bayard, Val, Allison, Katie, Kate, and a dude from work. After my shift at the table, Marisa and Kyla and Amanda and I went to the main stage to see David Cross, Jonathan Ames, and Rakesh Satyal do readings and perform self-designed risks. Jonathan Coulton also performed some songs at the beginning and end. I know people love this dude, and his songs were sort of charming, but mostly he epitomizes everything I dislike about funny and nerdy music (yay!) that cares primarily about being funny and nerdy (boo!). I hope this criticism can be distinguished from the common complain that acts like They Might Be Giants or Ben Folds care too much about being clever, because most of those arguments are put forth by self-serious rock critics who, deep down, don't think songs should really have much of a sense of humor. I do like music to have a sense of humor. This is more like actually-funny versus "Broadway funny." Jonathan Coulton's song about IKEA is sort of amusing, but not really funny enough to make it as its own joke (the "joke" is that he's singing it), and certainly not interesting or observant enough to pass muster with TMBG, who very rarely do out-and-out joke songs. Also, he did that thing where a white dude does an acoustic cover of a rap song, in this case "Baby Got Back." This has been to the aughts as punk covers were to the nineties, and I think it needs to stop, preferably several years ago via time machine, but now will do, too.
Still, it was sort of neat to see this famous internet song guy. And I really enjoyed all of the other readings, especially Jonathan Ames, who made me want to buy his essay/fiction hybrid collection which, by the way, I think is a really cool idea at least in theory. Plus, Ames and Satyal made me feel a little less lame about the one Brooklyn Book Fest event I attended being the one with the comedian I knew from TV. Afterwards, Marisa and Amanda and I got ice cream in Cobble Hill, like probably the best ice cream sundae I've had in years.
I've gotten in the habit of checking in on the MTV VMAwards yearly, even though I usually haven't seen many of the ten videos that are repeatedly nominated across the five categories they actually bother to present during the 150-minute show. Observations from tonight's show that I wouldn't even deign to twitter:
--You know, Kanye West *did* sort of echo my thoughts exactly when Taylor Swift won, although I was thinking more about how with that Beyonce song and that Kelly Clarkson song, it could've easily been the best category of the night, but at the same time it's totally sad that Kanye thinks these awards are real, and that in a universe where these awards are real, "Best Video by a Lady" or whatever that category was is apparently more important than "Video of the Year," which Beyonce did win, and which made more sense for her to win, because that was really more of a "Video of the Year" considering how ubiquitous it was (example: I pretty much know that video but I don't know if I've actually seen it all the way through). Theory: Kanye West wants to marry Beyonce and he thought this would be a chivalrous gesture.
--That Taylor Swift performance, even though there's almost no way it was live, was pretty awesome. Even the song isn't as bad as the other Taylor Swift songs I've heard, although Marisa correctly pointed out that just about everything she does has a creepy "Stand By Your Man" vibe. I loved the subway-ride idea though and between that and following Jay-Z from the car to the stage, I wish the whole night had been transportation-themed performances. They could've had Green Day play on a city bus, or Cobra Starship play on a rocket bound for the sun.
--Speaking of which, when Mr. Cobra Starship and Pete Wentz came out, Marisa was like, "if you only had one bullet..." and I didn't know what to say when I was done laughing. But maybe I could line them up one behind the other and try to shoot them both in the leg?
--Again I ask why it's supposed to be cool or interesting that Lady Gaga is basically a bad parody of Madonna?
--That "exclusive" and "extended" trailer for New Moon was in fact so exclusive that it previously had only played for a select audience of the approximately 850,000 people who saw Sorority Row this weekend. It was so extended that it pushed the total running time of those four or five trailers to nearly nine to ten minutes.
--I love Beyonce and I loved her remixed performance of "Single Ladies," but if you're hyping up a musician/recording artist/whatever, it's probably not best to brag about how she played "over 70 concerts" during the past year. You don't say! More than one concert per week! Amazing!
--I haven't heard a Muse song all the way through in like eight years, but the music press has told me that they've become huge and epic and way way so much super-way crazy bigger than just a dumb man's version of The Bends-era Radiohead. This was not really reflected, though, in their performance of a song that sounded like a plodding version of "Call Me" by Blondie. I can go back to not paying attention to Muse, then? Sounds good.
And with that, bed.
On Saturday night, Marisa and I decided to be lazy and have a non-party, sort of a telling-people-to-come-over-and-hang-out-if-they-want situation, like the Saturday nights of yore, before we lived in eventful places. Here's what usually happens when we do this: we suggest that we might play Scrabble or other board games, or watch movies or something, and then we proceed not to do any of those things, and pretty much sit around eating snacks and drinking and chatting, in this case about babies, the Beatles, and Diablo Cody, among other things. I should mention that we have pretty awesome friends, that so many people came over on a rainy night to basically do nothing. Also, Allison is back on the east coast, hooray!
Today I hit the Brooklyn Book Festival to work Table 27 with the good people of One Story magazine. Also, I ran into: Yuka (leaving the One Story table, but still, nowhere near said table), Kyla, Bayard, Val, Allison, Katie, Kate, and a dude from work. After my shift at the table, Marisa and Kyla and Amanda and I went to the main stage to see David Cross, Jonathan Ames, and Rakesh Satyal do readings and perform self-designed risks. Jonathan Coulton also performed some songs at the beginning and end. I know people love this dude, and his songs were sort of charming, but mostly he epitomizes everything I dislike about funny and nerdy music (yay!) that cares primarily about being funny and nerdy (boo!). I hope this criticism can be distinguished from the common complain that acts like They Might Be Giants or Ben Folds care too much about being clever, because most of those arguments are put forth by self-serious rock critics who, deep down, don't think songs should really have much of a sense of humor. I do like music to have a sense of humor. This is more like actually-funny versus "Broadway funny." Jonathan Coulton's song about IKEA is sort of amusing, but not really funny enough to make it as its own joke (the "joke" is that he's singing it), and certainly not interesting or observant enough to pass muster with TMBG, who very rarely do out-and-out joke songs. Also, he did that thing where a white dude does an acoustic cover of a rap song, in this case "Baby Got Back." This has been to the aughts as punk covers were to the nineties, and I think it needs to stop, preferably several years ago via time machine, but now will do, too.
Still, it was sort of neat to see this famous internet song guy. And I really enjoyed all of the other readings, especially Jonathan Ames, who made me want to buy his essay/fiction hybrid collection which, by the way, I think is a really cool idea at least in theory. Plus, Ames and Satyal made me feel a little less lame about the one Brooklyn Book Fest event I attended being the one with the comedian I knew from TV. Afterwards, Marisa and Amanda and I got ice cream in Cobble Hill, like probably the best ice cream sundae I've had in years.
I've gotten in the habit of checking in on the MTV VMAwards yearly, even though I usually haven't seen many of the ten videos that are repeatedly nominated across the five categories they actually bother to present during the 150-minute show. Observations from tonight's show that I wouldn't even deign to twitter:
--You know, Kanye West *did* sort of echo my thoughts exactly when Taylor Swift won, although I was thinking more about how with that Beyonce song and that Kelly Clarkson song, it could've easily been the best category of the night, but at the same time it's totally sad that Kanye thinks these awards are real, and that in a universe where these awards are real, "Best Video by a Lady" or whatever that category was is apparently more important than "Video of the Year," which Beyonce did win, and which made more sense for her to win, because that was really more of a "Video of the Year" considering how ubiquitous it was (example: I pretty much know that video but I don't know if I've actually seen it all the way through). Theory: Kanye West wants to marry Beyonce and he thought this would be a chivalrous gesture.
--That Taylor Swift performance, even though there's almost no way it was live, was pretty awesome. Even the song isn't as bad as the other Taylor Swift songs I've heard, although Marisa correctly pointed out that just about everything she does has a creepy "Stand By Your Man" vibe. I loved the subway-ride idea though and between that and following Jay-Z from the car to the stage, I wish the whole night had been transportation-themed performances. They could've had Green Day play on a city bus, or Cobra Starship play on a rocket bound for the sun.
--Speaking of which, when Mr. Cobra Starship and Pete Wentz came out, Marisa was like, "if you only had one bullet..." and I didn't know what to say when I was done laughing. But maybe I could line them up one behind the other and try to shoot them both in the leg?
--Again I ask why it's supposed to be cool or interesting that Lady Gaga is basically a bad parody of Madonna?
--That "exclusive" and "extended" trailer for New Moon was in fact so exclusive that it previously had only played for a select audience of the approximately 850,000 people who saw Sorority Row this weekend. It was so extended that it pushed the total running time of those four or five trailers to nearly nine to ten minutes.
--I love Beyonce and I loved her remixed performance of "Single Ladies," but if you're hyping up a musician/recording artist/whatever, it's probably not best to brag about how she played "over 70 concerts" during the past year. You don't say! More than one concert per week! Amazing!
--I haven't heard a Muse song all the way through in like eight years, but the music press has told me that they've become huge and epic and way way so much super-way crazy bigger than just a dumb man's version of The Bends-era Radiohead. This was not really reflected, though, in their performance of a song that sounded like a plodding version of "Call Me" by Blondie. I can go back to not paying attention to Muse, then? Sounds good.
And with that, bed.