Ahhh Roger Ebert I don't wanna die please make it stop

And I leave you for the New Year with a message of hope.

Hope that will make you want to shit your pants. Eventually, my blog will be determined to be redundant on account of a majority of my posts linking to Ebert's blog. Roger Ebert, you are a beautiful man whose writing manipulates me in a very Machiavellian way except I don't think you realize how much power you have over me so it cannot be Machiavellian. Unless that was part of your plan too, to make me think you don't realize this. The Roger Ebert works in mysterious ways. The wind was blowing like crazy the other night and it was 54 degrees at 1 in the morning. Was that you?

Cannibalism is now okay you guys

I had a dream last night that I met Robert Downey Jr. in the form of a cup of soup. He hated it when I called him adorable, but started to bubble lovingly when I changed the adjective to "wicked manly". Robert Soupy Jr., I love you. I think you know that though. Also, you were delicious! What kind of soup were you? You looked sort of like a potato tomato pesto sort of thing. You should let me know.

An open letter to awful

Dear Elliot Davis,

You are the worst. The absolute worst. I know you somehow continue to work in the line of work you've chosen, but that is probably just God fucking with you because you are absolutely the worst at what you do. I can say this with absolute certainty after viewing just one of your films: "Twilight". That movie/series/crazy girl fandom is terrible enough on its own without your awful awful cinematography thrown in. Circling shots cut together with other circling shots? No. Just...no. Most of the rest of this movie is blacked out from my memory as a natural response from my brain to its awfulness, but I remember those god damned circling shots, damn it. I understand this may have been the director's vision, and you are only the scapegoat for my wrath. If this is the case, I am not sorry and do not retract my previous statement because, though this may make you slightly less the worst, you are still the worst. You still chose to have your name associated with the camera work on this film, and that was completely up to you. No one was putting a gun to your head telling you to "make more circle-y shots! Yes! Yes more of those. Now, from a different angle! Yesssssssss oh yesssss oh man yes more more MORE!" If someone did do that, maybe you should have taken the bullet. You would have sacrificed yourself to uphold the forward march of film. Instead, you chose to let this movie be that much more terrible with your choices. Next time, I implore you, take the bullet.

Fitfully Yours,

Throwing up Violently in Colorado

Authors Note: I was originally going to post this on IMDB but my critique of this man's camera work grew into something of a monster and I could not in good conscience put this somewhere Elliot Davis checks regularly. I still thought it was entertaining enough to post here for my three readers. Though much vomit may have been spilled by me on behalf of this film, I still love you Elliot. I'm sure you're really great, aside from this circle bullshit. The possibility exists, I suppose, that Elliot is a regular reader of my stupid blog. The good Mama knows stranger people have been known to read it...

Happy Christmas!

I hope you all have warm snuggly days with popkins and kittens and marshmellows and sunshine and snow and all other sorts of nice things!



I love each and every one of you! (Except if you are Sara because you said many mean things about me last night. But I guess I did about you too, so I take that back, I love you most of all. But you still had sex with Satan, I'm not going back on that one.)

I'm listening to Girl Talk right now, so I'm going to call this post "sampling" rather than plagiarism...

"Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make. You can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce... And they say there's no fate, but there is, it's what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead, or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain wasting years for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right, but it never comes. Or it seems to, but it doesn't really. So you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along, something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel cherished, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is is, I feel so angry! And the truth is, I feel so fucking sad! And the truth is, I've felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long, I've been pretending I'm okay, just to get along! I don't know why. Maybe because...no one wants to hear about my misery...because they have their own. Well, fuck everybody. Amen."

I could add to this but really there is nothing to add. It is beautiful and real and the most haunting part of "Synecdoche, New York", a movie I am still (weeks later) recovering from and discussing and thinking about. It is a movie that needs to be properly digested. Like an anaconda eating a hippo. The hippo is too big for the anaconda to eat, and the anaconda knows this. But it tries anyway. It may have to spit it back up and start all over again, and the anaconda might fail to digest the hippo for a second time. The hippo may never be fully digested.

A Very Harry Neely Day

Today two wonderful things arrived in the mail for me: The Tales of Beedle the Bard, and 'We Are Wizards'. I read and watched and read and then I think I went to the bathroom and ate some potatoes and bought some shit.

The book was okay. I don't know. I liked it, but the magic has ceased to work for me. I need to find some new magic. It is really fucking pretty though. I got the fucking expensive version because fuck you. I will probably used the hollowed out husk of the book the actual book came in to store cats or some shit. Cats and whiskey.

The movie was alright I guess too. Most parts were vaguely boring because I wasn't really into what they were saying at all. There was, of course, one exception. That exception being Brad Neely, golden god of the funny. My mom was peeking over the couch at the movie (for some reason, I don't know. She is a couch peeker) and laughing her head off. We are going to be Neely groupies, my mom and me. I never want him to actually read the books. It is much much better this way. The best part about Wizard People, Dear Reader is how much better he makes the story by being so horribly wrong about everything.

"Every Harry Potter fan should record a commentary for Harry Potter two, which would be really easy 'cause that movie is really good. [laughs uncontrolably]"

Before he made Wizard People, Neely was also in these really shitty infomercials. In one he plays a wheelchair man who is obsessed with this chick's earwax. In an outtake from the documentary, he talks about her theories about earwax:

"There are little hands in there making pancakes and tossing it out"

"Fucking candle ears."

In another one of the outtakes he goes to the zoo and berates all the animals. He is the best thing to happen to things since the beginning of stuff.

"That's like a fashion possum. Hangin' out in some kind of ewok village."

(looking at a monkey): "This is what happens if like a guy has sex with a cat."

There is a commentary track of just Brad Neely, which I am going to watch right now. It is going to be pure gold. Gold with turds in it.

Wanderlust

I've got to go go go go go go go. This is the only thing I am sure of. The only certainty in my life. The certainty of knowing you need to go off into the world. When my wanderlust is at its worst, my feet ache to find worn shoes scattered with holes to house them for the journey. My fingers flail about in misery, searching for a steering wheel. Other times my wanderlust feels like a pair of tight wool pants: annoying and itchy but bearable, for now.

I have been plotting and planning and replanning, hatching and rehatching schemes and dreams in my head. A plane trip. A road trip. Train hobo. No, a road trip. For now, the most attainable. I'm inexperienced in this sort of thing. Untested. Adventureless. I brought it up with Nicole. She seemed into the idea. We could go far off places! India, Ireland, Russia, New Zealand. Too expensive. I brought up the idea of just road tripping the country. Hop in the car without a plan. No, we need a plan. A grand one, one that will test us and make us live, really live. Force the life out of us and into the world around us. All this life bottled up safe inside our bodies, it isn't doing anything there. The world needs our lives and our lives need the world.

This can't be just a road trip. My imagination thinks of campfires on the beach, sleeping on couches, in cars next to huge expanses of motorway, under trees on a bed of springy moss, in a lonely hammock near someone's house. All of this is set to a soundtrack that would make Wes Anderson weep openly. In my head. On paper, It won't be like that. But it is at least worth a go. My brain continues to plan. I discover the joys of couch surfing. The plan is crawling. Soon it will learn to walk.

NO, Obama for America. I WILL NOT ENJOY THIS HOLIDAY MUG.

Dear Obama for America,
I won't. I don't want your "holiday mug". Your things are things I do not want. Stop sending me these electronic mails telling me that I want them. I do not want them! God, I wish you would stop. You win. You got to be in charge of this awful mug-sipping country and its awful mug-sipping people. Do not push your mug propaganda on me. I don't want it. Any of it. I will drink my coffee out of a space cup like regular people, thankyouverymuch.
Put that in your mug and sip it,
Ruth Poliakon
Co-founder, Americans for a Mugless Future

Shaq be all sorts o crazy

I don't even want to remember how I found Shaquille O'Neil's Twitter. I don't think it matters. All you need to know is it is the best thing I have ever read. Someone should get Shaq a book deal. Try to decode what he is saying! It's hours of fun for the whole family! One part weird inspirational quotes. one part some strange language I don't understand, one part always referring to himself. Mix well. Enjoy.

Here are some of Shaq's most outstanding twitters (Twits? Tweets?):

"Startn 2morro if u c a homeless person, feedem, only if u can"

"How come i have the mr rogers neighborhhood theme song stuk n my head, iz he still alive"

"Tomorro depends on what we do today Shaquille oneal"

"Just landed in new orleans, how come it still looks like nothin has been done, whos in charge" is amazing when you consider what he posted right after: "Dam i smell louisiana gumbo and jumbalaya"

"Why do they call minneapolis, the twin cities, nobody here looks a like, waaa waaa waaaaaa" Oh Shaq, you are the BEST! (no homo)

"THOSE R NOT TYPOS, JUST SAVN MONEY, MORE U TYPE MORE U PAY, LOL"

"Did u c hit dat hit yan clark put on wes walker" This is probably the greatest thing ever written by mice or man. Just read through it a few times. It is mind blowing.