Liberal Arts

Drink : One shot of moonshine


     I only watched about half of this movie, the kitchen was a mess and I was in the middle of cleaning it after a failed experiment where I try to figure out how to make an omelet that has more than 3 eggs in it.  Making a nice, hefty omelet always leads to burnt eggs and runny insides.  The only solution I came up with was to make 2 omelets.  Lots of egg and cooked onions gave their lives to my kitchen walls that day....
     The parts of this movie I did see were pretty neutral.  A story about a mid thirties dude who feels old while actual old people tell him he's not that old and how crappy everyone feels about aging is nothing new.  The characters spend a lot of time discussing books, which was amusing to me because I was just thinking about how I had gotten out of the habit of reading books before bed.  This movie makes me reluctant to take it back up.  Books are great, but if you  read them with even partial intent of telling others about how it made you feel, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Unlike movies, books play only in your mind and that version of the book cannot be seen by anyone else. It would be like watching The Dark Knight Rises, and then discussing it with someone who had seen Batman Forever and trying to find common ground.
     At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the main female character was really annoying.  Her never ending sarcasm and one-upping got old fast. Her sarcasm face was a blend of pained eyes with a puckered trying-not-to-laugh mouth. Women of the world: don't be like this chick. Girls that are constantly sarcastic are not cute, they are not fun, they are not ever going to find a boyfriend.  Guys do not want to be around a girl that, if they got a bad haircut and passed gas more, could be their little brother.  Less sass, more class, ladies.
    I never thought I'd say this, but Zach Efron saves this film.  He plays a somewhat cliche stoner/type guy who is always sitting on a park bench giving sage advice to the neurotic main character.  It works though.  And while watching, I discovered a very simple, very large difference between men and women.  Women are the selfish ones!  The girl spends the whole movie obsessing about herself and what her boyfriend thinks of her, while the boyfriend leaves to save a friend who calls and says he just swallowed a lot of pills.  While he's gone, she obsesses about what his absence means in relation to her. She yells at him for being selfish.  He wanders off, finds Zach Efron sipping water at his bench, and they discuss life and caterpillars and butterflies and how freaking incredible they are and how if something like that can happen, life can't really be all that bad. They are living in the moment, appreciating the universe. He goes back, and she is extra pissed because all she's been doing is thinking about herself and her little lame world.
    I think if women just stopped and thought about what an amazing planet they live on and how their feelings are a minute droplet in the bucket of the universe, their husbands/boyfriends would be a lot happier, and in return they would clean up the house more and make more money and put the toilet seat down.  Just a theory.
     However, if there is a woman out there, sarcastic, cool, greedy, whatever, that can make a six egg omelet, gimme a call.

Parental Guidance

Movie: Parental Guidance
Drink: Whatever was still in my system from New Year party



Never in my right mind would I see a movie like this in a theater, so you can imagine how awesome I felt as I lay on the carpet of my brother's house, slowly dripping 7UP into my mouth while dreaming of the #1 Extra Value meal at McDonald's, which cures everything. 
     As many of you know, the winter sun makes me want to pour acid on my eyes and then scribble the scabs black with a Sharpie before blindfolding myself while sitting in the basement, so when my brother suggested we go see a movie, all I heard was "popcorn and darkness".
     We were bringing the kids, so the only appropriate movie, yes I said appropriate ( I'm talking to you, dude who brought his 4 year old daughter to Terminator Salvation, disturbing me not with her crying at the blood and dismembering, but her giggling at them) was Parental Guidance.  And this is why we should all embrace our hangovers.  Normally I would've scoffed at the idea of paying money for what surely was a crap show, but in my mentally weakened state, I agreed to go. 
     Kids are great. I think we can all agree that babies totally suck, but once they pupate into a kid, they are like having a really funny, dweeby friend that thinks everything is cool.  I when I saw the pure joy in my niece's eyes as she pressed the red button that sprayed butter all over our popcorn I could relate.  What a fantastic invention!  When the movie got lame, it was no trouble at all to find a willing participant to go out to the lobby with me to get more pop and play the toy grabber machine.  People that usually glance warily at a grown man dumping quarters into a slot in an attempt to snag a greasy, star spangled dog/bear thing now came up to me and my nieces and smiled and cheered us on. When the movie got even more boring, I sat back and watched the secondary show of my brother trying to catch his daughter who just up and ran off.
      So all you parents, stop being so stressed and lame and take your kids to the movies. It doesn't even have to be animated.  Just make sure you drink heavily the night before.
     As for the movie itself, all I can say is not since "The Bride of Chucky" have I so badly wanted to see an ugly red headed brat get his ass kicked.

This is 40

The movie: This Is 40

The Drink: Agavales 100% agave tequila. In a flask I got for free from a giant gift pack of vodka

This is a great movie to see if you are single. It was not really that great, but it was highly informative. It was like a well done documentary on the earth's most boring animals. Now, I am not sure if all you married people with children are really constantly on edge, balanced precariously on tipping point between fights about really lame stuff, but it makes for good T.V.

The main characters were sad. Paul Rudd's usual charming dorkiness was replaced by middle class stress and emasculation. His wife is so incredibly annoying and obviously blazed on prescription meds, which is the only reason I can come up with to explain her slurred speech and slow, painfully confused way in which she goes about life.

After seeing this film, I totally understand the preoccupation that society has with post-apocalyptic scenarios. With scene after scene of people applying earth shattering importance to their mundane diets and arguing about having to sell their house while talking about who should cater their 40^th birthday party, I admit I was hoping for a meteor to land on the mansion, um, er, “house” or maybe the earth to open up to swallow the BMW and Lexus in the drive way so that maybe they could think about being 40 is better than being a pile of smoking hamburger under a meteor. When one of the daughters is having a freak out about having to play outside and not use the Wi-Fi anymore, it would've been pretty sweet if a zombie had shuffled out of the bushes to chew on her neck or maybe on the mom's annoying face. Seriously, her face looks like she is constantly sucking on a mildly electrified lemon. There is something about a scene where a man is at the end of his rope and rides off in a blaze of anger, but remembers to put on his expensive helmet that makes me feel like a bad ass for doing pretty much nothing. 

     I actually liked this movie, sort of.  It was like watching a documentary about Hurricane Katrina or the Japanese earthquake.  Horrible to behold, but you walk away glad it wasn't you.