Fear and Loathing In Missouri

I pride myself on my ability to turn even the worst of experiences into a funny story, but looking over my Christmas break in Missouri, I find it just can't be done. My family is in a complete shambles and having not seen it up close and personal, it was a complete shock. So much had been kept from me up to this point, but in a stunning two hour conversation with my sister on Christmas Eve, all the dirty laundry and skeletons were aired, and I realized I was born into a complete freak show.

I will share only one "amusing" antecdote that I can assure you seemed MUCH less funny at the time.

Christmas Eve was the dad's side of the family, Christmas Day the mom's. Christmas morning I woke up about noon at my mom's, dicked around for a while, then took my sister's car up to Blockbuster to rent a movie. She was still asleep so I figured who cares? This was at 12:30 PM.

AT 1:01 PM, my cell phone began ringing frantically. An endless cycle of calls from my mom, dad, and sister. I answered none of them, fearing I must be in trouble for something. I checked my messages, first was my dad demanding that I call him back IMMEDIATELY and tell him where I was. Next was my sister, telling me to come home right away.

My father had told her the night before (without my knowledge) that he would be coming by my mom's place at EXACTLY 1:00 PM with presents for my mom's side of the family. (Why he even got them presents, I don't know. Guilt, perhaps?) The plan was that he would put these sacks of presents into the trunk of my sister's car and leave unnoticed. He made her swear that the car would be there at 1:00, telling her how important it was, and how it was necessary to avoid tension and make Christmas go smoothly and so forth. And here I was strolling through the aisles of Blockbuster, dirty and hungover, the car in the lot.

I started to head home and I called my dad, who was out SEARCHING for me. He spotted me on the highway and essentially ran me off the road and into a Walgreen's parking lot. We pulled over, he shoved three huge bags into the trunk of the car, gave me a half-assed hug and all but squealed tires out of the lot.

I returned home, and as I approached the door of my mom's condo, I heard screaming inside. My mother was going off the handle. "He doesn't have the BALLS to come up and say hello to his ex-wife and daughter on Christmas Day!!!! On Christmas Day!!!! The BALLS!!!!!"

I pushed the door open. My sister was in a swivel chair being yelled at, and she turned, looked me in the eyes, and said coldly, "You son of a bitch."

Keep in mind, this is probably the happiest story I can relate to you. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

My mother would tell this story, using the exact same inflection ("the BALLS!") roughly 1,000 times throughout the course of the day.

The one truly great thing about my trip home was seeing all of my friends, friends who I am on the exact same wavelength with, friends with the exact same sense of humor, friends I have known for years and feel immediately comfortable with. I have more fun with these people sitting and watching MTV than I do at the wildest party here. I wish I had a Narnia-style portal in my apartment that would lead me to a world where we could all hang out, go to Denny's, and perhaps slay the evil White Witch together.

Speaking of Narnia, I did my annual Day After Christmas Movie Spectacular this year as well. The DACMS was started when I was 16 with my good friend Ben Amiri. In those days, we would hop the velvet rope, pretend to be on the payphone, dart into the bathroom, and then the theater was our playground. Every year (except one) since,  I have seen five movies for the price of none on the day after Christmas. In recent years, I have pussied out and opted to pay for the first one, but never more than that. Several more people have been added to the guest list, and usually they don't make it through all five. I plan it out each year the night before with a copy of the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, a pen and paper, and a compass. The key is to allow roughly fifteen minutes between each showing, allowing you time to stretch, hit the restroom, eat, and get in to the theater in time to take seats from paying customers. It's incredible, and arranging the day so the showtimes work is probably the most stressful thing I do all year.

Some years have better lineups than others. I still recall with horror the year that included Jack Frost (D+), The Prince Of Egypt (C+), Stepmom (D), and Patch Adams (D-). Shudder.

This year was pretty solid. We saw:

The Chronic (What?) cles of Narnia, which was fine. It was full of magic and witches and shit, which is never really my thing. It was entertaining, if a little too solemn and uptight for my taste. A lot of talking beavers, too. I give it a B-.

Wolf Creek, which I thought was OK. A lot has been made of how boring the first 45 minutes are and I disagree. I liked the characters OK, and I liked that some effort was put into making them sympathetic before they were tortured. Then comes the torture. Unrelenting, really unpleasant, miserable and hopeless. Again, though, it's not quite as rough as some are making it seem. Then a stupid horror movie ending and we're done. The actors were effective, particularly the guy who played the psycho, and the scene around the campfire where you start to realize trouble is afoot, followed by the "oh shit!" transition into said trouble is excellent. I give it a C+.

Fun With Dick and Jane, which was pretty funny, but FAR from memorable. A pretty generic time-filler, it's worth a rent, and does have some decent laughs. Jim Carrey is really mugging it up here, he's seemed really desperate on the talk-show circuit, and as a friend of mine remarked, it is just a matter of time before he becomes Robin Williams. Judd Apatow co-wrote the script on this, so it should have been a LOT better. Judd Apatow really likes awful scenes of people running after each other, doesn't he? I give it a B-.

Munich was really good, and all politics aside, it's a really sweet revenge story, no different from something like The Magnificent Seven (B+). It's almost got an Ocean's Eleven (B+) feel, exotic locales, a team of misfits on a mission to bring down the enemy, sweet gadgets. I thought it was really cool, I don't really get all the controversy, but that might just be because I don't know anything about this period in history. Or any period in history that isn't 1981 to the present. Everyone's good in it, the camerawork kicks ass, and it has a sex scene (albeit one of the least erotic sex scenes in recent memory). Sweet movie, I'll throw it an A-.

The Producers was, just like the supposedly mind-blowing stage show it came from and the supposedly hilarious movie THAT came from, a bit underwhelming. The first half hour is insanely awkward, they're all mugging shamelessly, looking for applause that is not going to come from a movie theater audience. I actually thought this did a worse job than Rent (B) in terms of making the transition from stage to screen, it didn't open things up at all. Strange, considering this was a movie first. Will Ferrell is very funny, Uma Thurman is VERY hot, Nathan Lane is...Nathan Lane, like he always is, and Matthew Broderick is bizarre and annoying, which is weird because I usually love him. The songs aren't memorable, but there are some laughs, and the whole thing is sort of fun. I'll throw it a B.

I saw that Family Stone last week as well, and I'll be damned if I didn't love it more than all of these. Maybe it was just the holiday mood, maybe it was the fact that I'm going through some family shit now too, but I thought this was really great, it never felt mawkish or overly sentimental, like, say the aforementioned snuff film Stepmom. The characters talk and act exactly like real people for once, and everyone involved is at their best. Why doesn't Craig T. Nelson work more? He kicked ass in Poltergeist (A+)  back in 1982, how didn't he become a big deal star? I guess it's because he looks like everyone's dad. Anyhoo, this movie is funny, it's touching, and it very rarely became obnoxiously syrupy, despite threatening to fairly often. Hell, A-.

I intend to do a big top ten list, but I'll wait until February because there's still a lot I have to see (believe it or not).

Boy, that New Year's Eve is a shitty holiday isn't it? I don't think I have ever had a good New Years. Every year I psych myself up, saying "This is gonna be the year! I've spent $80 on a party, how could it lose?!" or "A night hanging out with friends, what could go wrong!?" but I always wind up alone in my room, weeping and singing "A Long December" while masturbating, using my tears as a lubricant.

There's just something about the holiday that brings on depression. I started out the day walking on sunshine, but sure enough by midnight I was drunkenly moaning to my girlfriend about how "Every year I say this year is gonna be better, but then it's not. It's NOT!" I'll admit my 2004 was probably the jewel in the bad year crown, (and you'll hear about it when my biography continues on this site, which I assure you will be Monday at the latest), but it had good parts too. And so did 2005. OK, I was unemployed for a while. OK, I had trouble making my rent once. OK, I worked a string of temp jobs, including one where my only friend was a bald eagle lamp, seemingly from colonial times, and another where I developed black lung from hours spent using microfilm. OK, my parents don't love each other anymore. (All of these hilarious antecdotes are available in the archives of this blog).

I also eventually got a great job that I really enjoy and that pays well. I am in a long-term relationship that (and for once somebody can say this and mean it) has gotten infinitely better with time. I have learned to love again, after years of being a bitter and cruel assbag.  I have matured in many ways, I am not so angry and so critical and so prone to bouts of depression and rage. These are all great things.

Every year, I convince myself that New Year's Eve is just another stupid day and I shouldn't have to sit and reflect on the state of my life and so forth. And then five days later my birthday rolls around and makes me do it all over again. Yes, today is my birthday, the big 2-5. And that is pretty fucking old. Various people have various ideas about when you officially become an "Adult," but nobody's estimates go older than 25. I am a Grown Ass Man. Damn.

If you're in the New York area, won't you come to my birthday party tomorrow night? It's at 2nd on 2nd Karaoke Bar, it starts at 10, and if you mention NBC, you get $3 drafts from 10 to midnight. Come, sing me a song of love!

We'll close with today's song quote:

"Everybody put your best suit or dress on, let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once.  Lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn, as thirty dialogues bleed into one."

tags: movies  movie reviews  holidays  

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