tv rat
thursday, august 9, 2001
they took away our cable channels. madness, i tell you, absolute madness. now what am i supposed to do all night when i'm trying to go to sleep? sigh. i am lost, 2 pbs channels and a dinky extra channel is not cutting it. no nightly sex and the city reruns, e.r. reruns, crazy tv movies, LETTERMAN AND LENO, what's a girl to do?
well. rent movies, obviously. since i get them for free (knock on wood.. baby), i'm now dragging three a day with me home. it's pathetic, is what it is. but, you know, geeky fun. finaly i can catch up with every thing i have ever wanted to see the past few years (it's a recent store so not a lot of older movies in stock) without worrying about wasting my money. i mean, i'm planning a triple feature rental tomorrow of baseketball, south park and orgazmo.. that must tell you something.
so.
last night i watched the adam sandler movie little nicky. oh, my poor friends who had to listen to me endlessly gush about adam sandler five years ago. i had it baaaad. and then, as obsessions tend to do, it just left me and i stopped feeling that i had to watch and buy any new sandler release immediately. inconveniently enough for me, i only started to feel that way right before little nicky was released, so i had already bought and seen everything up to that point.
it's tough when you are a former devotee and decide to watch something new by your former lovedoll, because you are suddenly judging things much harsher -- the stupidest non-jokes that normal people would just raise an eyebrow at would cause howls and tears and belly aches before just because they came from sandler. now that i have taken a step down, i wondered if i'd even crack a smile. (same thing happened with jim carrey, i used to laugh endlessly until one day i just didn't care anymore. i watched me, myself & irene a few nights ago and barely smiled twice, once at the doomed cow and once at the three black sons)
yeah, i sound like i join a cult when i fall for a new entertainer of any form. it can't be helped. anyways.
well. it was funny. it really was. at least funnier than ppl said it would be (i know, everyone else hates this one, whatever) - not 100% good movie, but sufficient, and lots of weird ppl doing cameos. mostly, i enjoyed sandler's vision of heaven and angels, and a certain .. er .. "bat man" .. so, if you are wiffling about and can't decide if you want to see it.. give it a try at maybe 3am or so, same time as mystery men should be viewed, by the way. :)
on swedish pbs i found a scary documentary on the european sex trade/prostition. insane. i can't fathom that these girls live in the same world as i do. all over europe, girls between like 12-30 (most die before 30) are sold like cattle, locked into rooms and violated. one girl told how she was sold to seven different owners within a few months, with no hope of ever making it back home again.
there are no words. the reporters secretly taped meetings with pimps to buy girls from. it was incredibly creepy to watch a rumanian lady in her sixties, white hair and all, pull out pictures of naked girls and offer them up for sale, saying she would only sell the "highest quality" girls. or the elderly rumanian man boasting that he had connections in most european countries and could easily offer up 60-70 girls at once should it be needed.
it's just so easy to forget how priviledged we are. i know i sound like a very tired clich� saying that, but that's what i intensely felt. i just don't get that these girls reality is occuring the same time as mine is. doesn't compute. sigh.
next followed a very cool 70s pennebaker documentary called "town bloody hall" about a session at a town hall with norman mailer "vs" germaine greer, diane something, jill johnston and, uh, one more feminist, can't remember who.
it was so insane! and it depressed me a bit to discover how eloquent, passionate and interested the people at the meeting were, as well as the speakers. of course, most entertaining were the outbreaks from the audience, shouting and cussing and patronizing each other as those on the podium. i just got depressed because people aren't like that anymore, at least not commonly.
today there's just no way a seemingly normal people would turn up in such numbers for a feminist discussion, ready to argue and listen. even so, people might turn up, but i seriously doubt anybody would share their thoughts and elaborate theories and questions during the Q&A like these ppl did. i mean, i'm hard-pressed to think of any sort of public forum i have attended where anybody had anything relevant to ask during the Q&A at all.
i see a lot of passion in sweden/europe right now, you wouldn't believe the riots going on all summer to protest politics, but it still feels like normal ppl just aren't interested in changing and wanting to understand anything anymore. or maybe we're tired of there being so many things to change, so many things to be passionate about, so many issues and questions and people to deal with.. i guess a lot of people are just tired and wait for other people to get to a consensus while life just bubbles on.
jill johnston was a RIOT. she read a really long stream of consciousness piece that had some really brilliant pieces in it (and a lot of mumbo jumbo) .. before being thrown off stage by mailer because she started to make out, heavily, with some happy lesbians. my favourite (and i do paraphrase):
"he said: i want your body
she said: sure, you can have it when i'm through using it"
lots of commotion and fun stuff. norman mailer is such a prick! i mean, he acted the part of a prick very well, and i'm sure more consciously than it seemed, but man.. sooo patronizing, and then when the audience would say that he was patronizing, he kept trying to cop out with the usual lame "it's a joke, you all have no sense of humour!" thing.. but still, amusing.
then, i watched enemy of the state with will smith because, well, i ignored it in theatres and really, it didn't do much for me now either. eh. i'm running out of things to rent. suggestions are welcome. instead i watched the very last, 2 hour episode of M.A.S.H. on the telly. you know. i think i still have a latent crush on hawk-eye. it made me so sad to watch him lose it in this last episode. sigh.
this morning i watched american psycho and was again blown away by christian bale's performance. absolutely outstanding! i just don't get how he can drain is face muscles of any humanity in some scenes, or switch from semi-normal to odd, forced body and face language. his face and eyes would just suddenly fix into a mask. in fact, i really think the movie overall was underrated. (that and fight club)
he really should have gotten lots of awards for that role. alright, done! ��18:48
