Bunnies, Pandas, and the Joy of Judging Movies I Refuse to See

Easter is my favorite time of year.  Bunnies are pretty much my favorite thing.  It's one of my favorite words (say "Bunny" and try not to smile) and they're nice pets (I had one named Sally growing up and she was a firecracker).  Last year Ian's mom found a nest of baby bunnies, less than 10 days old with their little eyes still shut, and I got to hold one and it was so teeny tiny that it fit in the palm of my hand.  I could have died from cuteness.

This Blog Takes Stuffed Bunny Donations

Stuffed bunnies are also awesome (I have a whole menagerie, including Pinko, my Peeps bunny, Nubbins, the clucking Cadbury Bunny I torture Ian with, Mr. Bunn, a skeleton bunny in a pink suit, Pwang, who is crocheted and a the big felt Max than Ian made me for Christmas a few years ago).  I had to actually remind myself that I was an adult and couldn't justify spending 30 bucks on a plush Oswald, no matter how cute he is.

Even my kitten Bosco agrees with this judgement, because every so often he will take one of the Bunny Menagerie and drop it on our heads if we don't get up early enough to feed him.  We call them Bunny Bombs, and it's hard not to be mad when you've got a bunny on your head.

Almost as good as bunnies is Cadbury Eggs.  I would eat Cadbury eggs every day if I could.  They're overly sweet and sticky and delicious and they make me feel like a kid again.  The fact that you can only get them a few months out of the year makes them that much more delicious.

But this Hop movie is ruining everything.

Everywhere I look is that stupid flannel-wearing rabbit.  He's all over the candy aisle.  He's on my Cadbury eggs.  And although the movie is getting awful reviews, I'm sure Nathan Rabin loved it because the titular rabbit is a slacker rabbit who's probably drawing a comic book or starting a rabbit band or something, because all slackers are really handsome geniuses at heart and never fat lazy slobs with pizza stains on their ironic teeshirts.

Aww . . . .



Here's what I don't get, and again, I didn't see the movie because I don't have children (one more reason to avoid parenthood).  So E.B (I had to look this up) is a teenage rabbit who doesn't want to take over his dad's role as the Easter Bunny . . . but if there's one thing anyone knows about rabbits, it's that they breed.  A lot.  He's not the Easter Panda--so E.B doesn't want to take over the family business, why doesn't Papa Rabbit just hand it over to one of the other 25+ children he has (those that didn't get eaten by stray cats). 

I come from a family of five girls and I can say that competition between siblings for parent's attention and affection is fierce.  And if you've ever heard a rabbit scream and fight, yeah, it's kind of like that.  So E.B wants to become a drummer, let him!  I'm sure one of his siblings, maybe one who went mostly unnoticed when they became Rabbit Class President or went to Rabbit College or got a Good Rabbit Job because E.B was the squeaky wheel who got all his parents affection despite being an utter ungrateful screw-up, would LOVE to be the Easter Bunny and deliver joy and Cadbury Eggs to all.  It's the Prodigal Son thing, I get it, but the truth is that I've always hated that story.

New Column: From the Vault

(The blog is going to be changing over the next few weeks (i.e. when I get around to it)  There's going to be more focus on writing, and I'm going to try and bring back some of the music stuff.  Less ranting, less swooning and more essays . . . but don't worry, as long is there is Train, there will be ranting, and as long as Walton Goggins lives and breathes, there will be swooning.

I think I have that same scarf!

I've never really liked Saturdays.  When I was a kid, this meant that I had to go to my dad's, and although I love my Dad more than anyone on the planet, he lived in the middle of nowhere and I was too young to drive anywhere and even if I could, it wasn't like I had any real friends to drive and see.  When I got older, I had to work Saturday nights, and even now, my boyfriend works Saturday nights, so I'm stuck here alone.  Other people, people with social lives and friends and cable have something to do, but I just hang out, write, listen to records and, occasionally, discover something I'd forgotten.

I have a vague recollection of adding Ryan Adams' "My Winding Wheel" to a country mix CD I was making bacj when I was living in Binghamton and obsessively collecting music.  I don't know why I downloaded it or if I ever listened to it, but a few weeks ago I pulled out the country CD and threw it on to try and work by.

I ended up skipping over most of it.  One of these days, I will develop a taste for country music, but despite being born in Oklahoma, it just never caught on.  I like Meryl Haggard and I do a version of Cracker's "Lonesome Johnny Blues" that'll knock your boots off, but for the most part, I tend to skip that station.

There was something about that Saturday that was particuarly lonely.  For some reason, my heart was a rock in the pit of my stomach.  I was missing a phantom piece of myself, something I had no recollection of ever posessing but knew I was sorely lacking.  And when I heard the strains of "My Winding Wheel," something just clicked.  Something felt right. 




Adams' raw, quaking voice and Springsteen-esq guitars give the song this beautiful, sad, hopeful dispair.  His suggestion that his girl "buy a pretty dress/wear it out tonight/for any boy you think could outdo me" is a challenge, and not necessarily a cruel one.  She has a choice.  He wants her to go with him, but he offers her a chance to go find someone, anyone, who will love her as much as he does, pretty dress and all.  It's a song for lovers separated by time and distance and the folds of life . . . and it's so simple and pure and pretty, and I listen to it over and over and dream.

The only downside is that I discovered it right as I was finishing up the first season of Justified, and for some reason whenever I hear it, I picture Ava.  And you all know how I feel about Ava.

I *heart* Oswald

I discovered two things on St. Patrick's Day.  One, no one, no matter how drunk, messes with you if you're wearing sunglasses and carrying a jagged chunk of brick. 

Two, and more importantly, I discovered Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

Because our downtown was swarmed with obnoxious drunk college students too stupid to do anything but drink and wreck a town they don't live in, we holed up inside with the Wii and picked up Rabbids Go Home and Epic Mickey.  Generally I'm not a Disney fan and even less of a Mickey Mouse fan, but the idea of a Disney wasteland and the return of Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks first character (who happens to be a bunny, my very favorite) was pretty enticing. And hey, what else were we going to do?

The game was fun at first and then quickly turned to irritating and carpel tunnel inducing.  We liked Rabbids better.  But we got far enough to unlock a full-length Oswald cartoon from 1928, Oh What a Knight.

Cool!

It's Impossible to Google "Team Rocket"
and NOT see pictures of hideous cosplayers

I have a passing fascination with animation as both an art and a storytelling medium.  When we think "cartoon" our minds generally leap to either full-length animation (especially when you say "Disney") or half-hour cartoon show--GI Joe, Pokemon, etc. 

We don't really think of cartoons as being the 5-10 minutes shorts they originally were, shown before the newsreel and in between a double feature.  I've always loved Tex Avery's sexy fairy tale shorts like "Red Hot Riding Hood" and although I tried to like the Fleischer Bros, the Betty Boop stuff was a little on the weird side (and by "weird" I mean "acid-trippy").  And cooler still, the music on the cartoon was lifted right out of the video game--that's not the cool part, actually, that's a really sucky part--but the cool part is that because the short was silent, the music we would have been hearing if it was 1928 was being played on an organ, live, at the front of the theater. 

So there we were, with our Wii and our couch and our chips, watching something that for decades had been locked somewhere in a vault, forgotten by everyone but pop culture historians.  It was a weird, wonderful, sweet little moment, a glimpse at history in the all-too-plush comforts of the present.  As tenchincally beautiful as Rango was, I'll take the rounded shapes, the soft lines and black-and-white scheme of vintage animation over CG or worse, the motion-capture carnival of souls that is the homophobic, misogynistic Mars Needs Moms.

I like Oswald.  I think he'd be a good sidekick for Max if Sam ever goes rouge.

Surprisingly, I Liked Rango

Most of my friends have stopped going to the movies with me, because I either A) Hate the movie and deconstruct why it sucked all the way home or B) Gush about what a babe Ewan McGregor/Jeff Goldblum/Walton Goggins/Whoever was.  I've stopped liking what theaters expect me to like, and of the Oscar nominated films last year, I saw 2 and I guess only liked one of them (fuck you, Inception, you're not fooling me!)  Of last year, I only enjoyed I Love You Phillip Morris, Morning Glory, the Last Exorcism and yes, Predators (I didn't say it was good). 

And this year, I'm only excited about Cowboys and Aliens because it combines three great things--Harrison Ford, Walton Goggins and Clancy Brown.  But mostly the first two.  It's like my 11 year old self and my 28 year old self are giving each other a high five.  And . . . yeah, that was the only movie I was planning to see.

POINT IS that I was certainly not planning to see Rango.  I gave up on Johnny Depp, officially, after Public Enemies.  I'd mostly written him off following Pirates of the Carribbean 2 and gave in, with regret, to Sweeney Todd.  I got tired of his shtick and missed the Johnny Depp I'd loved when all the other girls I knew were in love with Justin Timberlake--Depp's quiet, nuanced, subltle performances in Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood.  I didn't like his trademarked wackiness, which felt to me like a half-reheated Hot Pocket version of his Hunter S. Thompson gag.

Sad to say, Rango had a lot of that Johnny Depp-ness, including a cameo by Raul Duke himself (with an awesome homage to Ralph Steadman serving as Dr. Gonzo). 

And in spite of this, I really, really liked Rango.

For starters, the film doesn't cater to any demographic.  Movies are made, for the most part, to appeal at least two of these demographics: teenage males, teenage females, older men, older women, and stupid little kids.  This movie appealed to none of that.  Everyone (thing?) in this film is ugly and un-plush-able.  Johnny Depp is not awkwardly hot, he's a freakin' lizard.  There is a lot of grown-up humor in the film, but not enough for packs of adults to get a babysitter and go out on a Saturday night.  Films that don't appeal to any demographic appeal to the Me Demographic.  I don't like being labled and I don't like being pandered to.  Studios don't know me, because if they did, they wouldn't have taken so long to release I Love You Phillip Morris and Walton Goggins would be a leading man. 

This compared to the two previews which opened the film--the revolting-looking 3D CG crap-a-ganza Mars Needs Moms (it was fun with it lasted, Princess and the Frog) and the utterly generic Kung-Fu Panda 2 (I miss the offensive, loud Jack Black that I hated) two films which appear to prove that kids are stupid and their parents are also stupid.

Rango is dark.  It's very dark.  And weird.  There were moments where I felt a little awkward, like watching Rango flirt with a naked headless Barbie torso (three minutes in), or the presence of massive frog prostitute boobs.  There's a lot of western-y type stuff even I didn't catch onto at first and a body count that rivals Hardboiled.  There's talking roadkill.  Creepy walking cactuses.  Massive frog prostitute boobies.  The plot to Chinatown.  It's not not a kid's film in that kids can't handle this (after all, Who Framed Roger Rabbit is dark and weird and wonderful) it's not a kids film because they probably don't get it or care. 

And that's fine, because again, it wasn't trying to appeal to any demographic.  They made the film they wanted to make at a time when everything has to be based on a pre-existing franchise.  Gore Verbinski didn't get locked into how many toys he could sell or how many teen girls would buy Rango-inspired lipgloss sets at Claires.  He made the movie he wanted to make, and it STILL kicked the ass of vanity projects like Take Me Home Tonight .  . . . and that is the ultimate Hollywood Fuck You.

Fire in the Hole

Who is it out there that likes Train's "Hey Soul Sister?"  Damn it, even just writing the title gets it stuck in my head.  I hate this song.  This song is an act of terrorism.  It's a war crime.  I had to listen to Britney Spears' "Piece of Me" on the hour, every hour when I worked at FYE (I swear, she samples a chicken in opening bars) and I would take that in a heartbeat over "H-- S--- S----"

Gizmonics Institute Does Not Endorse Torture . . . or Train

The brain-numbingly awful lyrics make me pine for the days of "Meet Virginia."  No, Train, that probably isn't Mr. Mister on the radio (stereo) because it's 2011 and Mr. Mister hasn't been relevant since 1990. They put out an album last year and they still aren't relevant, and you just sound like an asshole for even mentioning them. 

As for the tune, well, maybe it's part of Train's evil plot to take over the world.  Much like Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank, Train must have some sort of plot to make people go weak and submit to anything, anything, just to not hear that song anymore.  Worse, it's an earworm that makes me wish I had a drill to stuff through my skull.  Once I even think about the title, it's stuck in my head for days.  Not even thinking the word "bunny" to the tune of The Commish theme makes it better.

Welcome Back

This song makes me want to set myself on fire.  It makes me want to kill people. It makes me want to toss a grenade into an orphanage.  It makes me want to fire a rocket launcher into a church.  So will somebody please, please, pass a consitutional amendment to ban this song from the airwaves?  I will vote for whatever Presidental candidate removes this song from the radio.  Obama, Palin, Lobsterman, I don't care.   Just please make it end.  Please make it stop.

Whatever Happened to "My Immortal"

On New Years Eve, when most people are out at parties drinking champagne, my friend Ari was giving me a full-scale performance reading of the horrible and hilarious Harry Potter fanfiction "My Immortal."  If you haven't read it, really, just look at the first few chapters (I ended after chapter four, where they "both smoked cigarettes and drugs")  and come back . . . I'll wait.

(la dee dee dum . . . Walton Goggins . . .  la dee dum)

Back?  Okay, good. 

So a couple of google searches for the infamous Tara Gilesbie turned up a twitter account and several fanpages, including links to her now-defunct myspace page (Ah, MySpace . . . for general losers, shitty bands, child molesters and cheating scumbags like my ex-stepdad.)  Whether any of these are really her is up for debate.  Whether she wrote the story as a joke or as an actual fanfiction from the deepest recesses of her black goffik Mary Sue heart, we will never know.

Oh Hi Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way

I wonder who she is and what she's doing.  Did she really slit her wrists because of all the trolls?  Did she go on to college, get her bachelors in creative writing and end up at Stonecoast MFA telling me I needed to work on my sentence structure?  Does she look back on this and find old pictures of herself in chalk makeup and Lip Service dresses and laugh her head off, or does she still turn out page after page of fanfiction, hidden away in a Mead notebook scrawled with anarchy symbols and upside-down pentagrams while My Chemical Romance blares from a stereo painted in white-out?  Does she admit that she is the one who wrote "My Immortal" and does she show it to people from time to time, pulling out the orignal notebooks with the math equations to prove it when they don't believe her?  Has she become the Tommy Wiseau of fanfiction, once so serious, now pretending it was all a joke?



Tom Servo Does Not Endorse Fanfiction

I ask this because, in my own stupid way, I was that girl.  I revile fanfiction as a rule, but if you go through my trunks you'll find tons of X-Files stories, complete with a Mary Sue named Gina and a lot of Scully hatin', all in spiral-bound Mead notebooks with Tom Servo drawn all over them.

I also have tons and tons and tons and tons and TONS of bad poetry, but I'll let you read my fanfiction before you read my poetry.  Yes, Morrissey, I wrote such bloody awful poetry.

And yes, I was a goth chick.  In my defense, I was a goth chick before it was cool, and only my finest dressed came from Hot Topic, because I was fifteen and I didn't have any money for an $80 lace dress when I could modify one from Salvation Army for $10.  My mom wouldn't let me dye my hair or wear makeup, so at least I was saved from that embarassment.  I listened to the Cure and the Smiths and Siouxsie and the Banshees, none of which were cool in Cobleskill, NY in 1998.  I watched Tim Burton movies before he was fashionable with the Claire's crowd, but, unbenownst to me and despite all this tragic hipness, I was just like every other idiot loser teenager.



The Author, Looking Goffik



I look back on those photos with a combination of embarassed laughter and envy.  Laughter because, well, I'm wearing Queen Amidala lipstick and a black lace dress with sleeves that drag when I walk.  Envy because I didn't care.  I wasn't a particuarly self-conscious girl; I didn't get hurt when people made fun of the way I dressed. I chose to dress that way, and I knew it had consequences.  I didn't care.  I miss those days.  I miss my striped tights and my long black dresses and my bad makeup.  I still have the dresses, and sometimes I put them on, but I look at myself and feel silly.  I'm not that girl anymore. Sure, I still have my Morrissey hoodie and I bought some skinny black jeans and sure, I've got a pair of striped tights that are really really warm, but I'm not Belladonna Ravenwood or whatever stupid name I probably called myself on whatever goth messageboard I frequented.  Despite what I told myself, it was a phase.  A long one, but a phase nonetheless.  I got to college, where I should have been "free" to "be myself" (already had that one covered) and was too lazy to go through the motions.  I didn't have a bus to ride, I had to hoof it to class and that's hard to do in 4-inch platform heels.  I realized myself had grown up and could move on to new fashion statements--the Tom Waits/Patti Smith/Jackie Boy inspired androgyny I went through when I lived in Brooklyn.  The Cyndi Lauper/New Wave phase I went through in grad school.  The Victoria Beckham skinny jeans and heels phase I like to pretend I'm in now (Victoria Beckam has heating oil and lives in California, so she can wear heels all the time).  Or the freedom to say, "fuck it, it's cold, I'm putting on my boyfriend's big wool sweater and I don't care."

And my writing changed, thank God.  But I look back on those with a sort of affection too.  Those were my first crime stories.  Writing those paved the way for the kind of writing that would help me make a name for myself.  Will I be sending them to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine?  Probably not.  (Then again, they've rejected everything else I've sent them, couldn't hurt, right?) But maybe one day I will resurrect Gina, my first assassin, and make a name for her without Mulder and Scully.

Tara, wherever you are, I hope you're well.  I hope you've learned to spell.  And I hope you've learned to laugh at yourself . . . and maybe gotten some better taste in music.  If you want, I'll make you a Siouxsie mix tape.

You're Dead to Me, Chaz

Charlie Sheen has been saying a lot of crazy things lately, among them "Thomas Jefferson is a pussy" and "Alcoholics Anonymous is a cult."  But nothing is as crazy as him calling Major League 3: Back to the Minors "an abortion."  Well, I guess that's something Charlie Sheen would know a lot about (you think the clinic gives him a discount punch card?) but in his coke-fueled ramblings, Charlie Sheen has failed to see the good things that Major League 3 has given us, things that Charlie Sheen is trying to take away from you.

1) Walton Goggins.  He'd mostly done TV up until Major League, and this movie gave America a chance to see his glorious ass in a tight baseball uniform.  America's favorite pastime ladies and gents . . . staring at nice asses on a big screen.

2) Kenny Johnson.  From a series of TV bit parts came this glorious hunk of a man, with his bowl cut and his six pack abs.  He and Walton Goggins were roommates on the set, and BFFs for life.




All Signs Point to HOT

 

3) Kenny Johnson in a leotard.  It took me awhile to decide whether this was sexy or not

Without Major League 3, there would be no Lemansky.  No heartbreaking season 5 finale of The Shield.  Charlie Sheen is trying to take that away from you.  You wouldn't let a coke addict break into your house and take your stereo, would you?  No, so are we going to let one come into our hearts and take away something so much more precious?