- At least I'm doing my best to kill it.
by E. Al Pants
The Twin Cities has long been a thriving advocate of its own potpourri of arts, from the unusual support of diverse theater to the nurturing of experimental graphic arts to the undying commitment to inclusive performance community encompassing, in addition to theatre and the visual arts, dance, symphony, spoken word and a modern music scene that is consistently ahead of its time and I've just about had enough of all this crap! At least Twin Cities radio has wised up and effectively gotten rid of anything creative or cutting edge and replaced it with endless pop drivel and "oldies" from the eighties so slackers can fondly remember the old days when they could sit around and do nothing while they currently sit around and do nothing. It's time to stop thinking and just relax into conformity like the rest of the country for pete's sake. Aren't you all exhausted? I know I am.
Theatre is good for two things. Getting laid and getting a tax write-off. At least that's why people create theatre. Why people go to theatre, I still haven't figured out. It's too expensive, somebody in the cast usually sucks and nobody gets naked anymore. And the last time I saw King Lear, some actor spit on me. Oh, sure sometimes somebody forgets their line, or drops something and that's pretty funny, but you can't always count on the entertaining fuck-up to liven up the seemingly endless art that's going on. So I'm not going anymore. Period.
So you must be wondering, what the heck is E. Al Pants going to bitch about if he's not bitching about theater? Listen, the only reason I ever started writing about theater was because TheatreHead.com was going to pay me a butt load of money to do it. I figured, why not, nobody's going to read it anyway (see my first column for the reasons), so I don't even have to be good at it. But those ass-pilots never paid me! I told them I wouldn't write another article until I got at least a chocolate pie and some beer, and this led to a two month standoff. Then I found out they got out of the business. Ha! Theatre people running a website. I should have known. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate theater people, they're incredibly creative and really good in bed, but they don't historically have any business savvy, unless they sell their souls and churn out crap for the masses, like certain theaters I won't mention. (okay, Guthrie, Chanhassen, Hey City Stooge�) So no more theatre for me. I'm going to do what the rest of this country does when it feels the need for artistic fulfillment. Head over to Hollywood Video.
From now on I'm going to review movies, but I'm not paying full price to sit in a theater and listen some melonhead talking on his cell phone. I'm going to wait until it's out on video. And I'll only do new releases if it's got some hottie in it, otherwise it's not worth it. New Releases are overrated anyway, people walk into the video store like there weren't any movies made before 1999. And don't tell me you've seen 'em all. Go rent Bad Lieutenant or Blood Simple, or if you want to start with something lighter, try the Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension or Russ Meyers' Up! (for Russ Meyer, you'll have to go to Discount Video on Hennepin, but it's worth the parking headache - and while you're there, you may as well grab his other masterpiece Beneath the Valley of the Ulravixens. They have the entire Bosomania collection.)
So look forward to my unique perspective on movies. And I may write other articles on current events, if I feel like bitching about it. But it'll mostly be video reviews - as long as they're cheap rentals. After all, I don't get paid for this crap. I do it because I have to. Maybe that's the real reason people keep doing theatre. Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. Pants has gotta bitch.
-E.A.P