|
|
|
|
The other night, I had the misfortune of sitting through Pitch Black. I'm not talking about some bizarre ceremony during which I suffered some religious pain by existing in darkness. I'm talking about the dreadfully awful movie starring nobody who is or will ever be famous. Don't turn around and tell me I could have walked out. I know. And don't tell me I'm the fool for paying to see it, because I snuck in for free after I paid to see The Beach. So if you need to ridicule me, ridicule me for that.
In fact, let's start with that. I
go into the theater. There's about twenty
people in this 400-seat
auditorium. It's the trailers. The following preview
has been rated blah
blah blah and that spooky smoky voice saying things like
"In a time before
language... In a world before humans... In a life like no
other..." blah
blah blah. That's all good. Then the screen goes dark. Now we
see the
dancing sodas and Butterfingers and whatnot, and it's time to start
the
picture. GREAT. Now the big "Paramount Pictures" logo (or whatever
company made
the film -- it doesn't matter) shows up. And suddenly, two of
the twenty
people, these two girls way far away from me (and yet,
strangely, they're close
enough for me to be bothered) start
screaming,
sigh... |
|
How stupid are these girls? There's twenty
people in the room. This is the
goddamn logo for the studio that produced
The Beach, which,
incidentally, is terrible. It's like Lord of the
Flies, except they're all
grown up, they all smoke a lot of dope, the bad
guys are these Thai farmers
with guns, and the cute French girl doesn't
even really get naked (on DVD,
there'll be like three frames where you can
get a nipple profile). All in all,
a waste of my money.
So how stupid am I? I try to make back what I lost on that gamble by seeing Pitch Black for free. What a piece of ass, that movie. There's a random assortment of meaningless space travellers: a co-pilot, a fake cop, a Hindu religious fanatic, his three sons (who are clearly sons by religion, not biology), a big mean ex-con who has silver eyes and can see things in the dark (except everything is all pink and purple), and a child who shaves its head in order to look like the big mean ex-con. All the makings of a blockbuster, huh? How about pathetic dialogue? How about totally wrong acting choices? How about that the evil creatures who inhabit this strange three-sun, one-ring planet all look like pickaxes with teeth? And how about that the ultimate message of the movie is basically if you go back to save someone who doesn't care about you, you die and they live. And to hell with you all if you're pissed that I ruined the ending. Because I felt more cinematically cheated after two films than I had after one. |
|
But this isn't a movie review. This is about how stupid the world
has become.
This theater was packed. Full. Completely. And everyone gasped
at the aliens.
And everyone breathed a sigh of relief when we thought the
good guys would
triumph. And everyone went, "ew!" when there was blood. And
everyone laughed
when some poor audience member sneezed during a quiet
scene.
This audience was full of the same people who, when I say "large coffe, two creams, no sugar," have to ask me, "what size?" and then, "how many sugars?" and then, "cream?" and then, "what size?" again before I finally get the beverage. These are the people who push their way onto the elevator car before the exiting patrons have left. These are the people who stop in the middle of the sidewalk to point at a pigeon. These are the people who call me three times a week offering me Bell Atlantic phone service when I already have Bell Atlantic phone service. How stupid has th e world gotten? We're at the point where ABC's substitute sitcom for an extra time slot is The Drew Carey Show, and it's always even the same episode. We, as a collective population, have accepted Monica Lewinsky as a national celebrity -- we cared enough about her story to pay attention. We, as a collective population, have turned the tragedy of an airplane crash into the drama that plagued the nation. We, as a collective population, like the Backstreet Boys. We let our children scream in public. We let our dogs crap on the sidewalk. We blare our horns if someone interferes with our speeding. We talk in the movies. We let our cell phones ring in the movies. We talk on our cell phones in the movies. We think the curb is as good a place for trash as any other. We push and shove and fight to ride a subway train that really doesn't have enough room for us. We voted Clinton, Reagan, and Carter as three of the five worst presidents of all time, as well as three of the five best presidents of all time. We once pretended that "ebonics" was actually a language. |
|
On New Year's Eve,
after all the European countries had fireworks and light
shows and exciting
displays of technological prowess, New York City threw trash
into the air.
Sure, they called it confetti, but eighty zillion people heaving
paper
projectiles upward results in nothing but a filthy Times Square. Also
in
New York City, Broadway musicals such as Footloose and
Saturday Night
Fever, both of which have useless stories, pop songs
with no merit of
story, and are inferior imitations of vaguely popular
films -- these are raking
in the dough! Yay for the actors and technicians
working on these projects. Boo
for the morons buying tickets to such
schlock. Hell, people play the lottery,
for crying out loud, where the odds
of winning are lower than the odds of being
hit by lightning.
There is so much hype over everything today. If whatever comes up isn't the biggest or the loudest or the most astonishing thing ever seen, it's not worth seeing. The last this of the last millennium. The first this of the next millennium. What used to be tabloid journalism is now everyday life. We got three inches of snow in New York City two weeks ago, and it was, according to all the news channels, The Storm Of The Millennium. It's a bit depressing, looking back on my college years, when I was more or less surrounded by people of a similar intelligence quotient (within a reasonable range, and with a slight margin of error, of course). Now, I find it difficult to locate someone I can converse with, let alone use my brain for something more than repeating ad nauseum how many goddamn creamers I want in my coffee. But at least Snow Day is beating Pitch Black and The Beach at the box office. |
|
