The other day, I was looking for movies hoping to find something not directed by Judd Apatow, when I came across this:
Total jackpot and from the looks of it, more believable than the premise that Adam Sandler is funny. Despite being a poor man’s Gremlins, Hobgoblins is best known for being shown on MST3K (or, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 for those of you who don’t stay up late eating Taco Bell and wishing that your grandma would just go to sleep already so you can jerk off) and just being an overall terrible movie. Priding myself in being a connoisseur of awful movies in the vein of Santa’s Slay and The Gingerdead Man, I immediately thought, “I need to see this.” But I caught myself because I knew that my boyfriend would have something to say about how poor the production value is and that the goblins are totally not believable or scary and I would just get mad because that’s not the point, asshole.
I get frustrated a lot because my boyfriend isn’t into the same things as I am. It’s hard being a pop culture junkie when you’re with someone who believes that pop begins and ends with Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire.’ It’s not funny because I’m serious. But, I deal. Sometimes I think that maybe I shouldn’t have to adjust to his Lawrence Welk bullshit and find someone who will watch Bibleman with me without whining about how Jesus wouldn’t condone such a flashy display of Christianity.
Then I realize that relationships are fucking hard and maybe I should stop being such a cunt. Regardless, it took me a long time to come to that very basic conclusion. I mean, an embarrassing amount of time–even more embarrassing than the time when I couldn’t figure out the answer to those Suave commercials when they would ask the very obviously rhetorical question, “Which one of these women uses Suave?” So embarrassing that I would fervently try to search for clues, like what kind of shoes each woman was wearing or how white her teeth were, so I could finally figure it out. Then one day I got my answer: I’m a dumb ass.
But the point remains that it’s not easy for me to get along with another person, even if that person happens to be better than me at giving me an orgasm. I’m slowly realizing this about myself, which is painful because someone else is involved and that means a lot of conflict. This is made worse by the fact that we are both unemployed with purpose (freelancers) in an unfamiliar city with limited funds. At this point, the conflict that has gone on between us probably outnumbers Dolly Parton’s wig collection and while I wish I could pull out a particularly horrific example, I can’t. Either it’s not as bad as I think, or I’m learning to cope with the fact that for awhile, it became normal to see a smashed peanut butter and jelly sandwich sitting forlornly in its Ziploc bag, waiting to go on the picnic that never happened because I thought it was unnecessary to put peanut butter on each slice of bread since I was already sacrificing most of my principles by using chunky peanut butter anyway. Either way, to fight over something this irrelevant is more perplexing than the fact that someone actually sat down for an extended period of time and dedicated themselves to finishing Hobgoblins and then even more time and money was put into bringing it into production so I could one day use it as a source of resentment. But, eventually, I was able to discard my expectation that my boyfriend should have even poorer taste than I do and focus on what really matters.
Like when I break into The Charleston while singing Naughty By Nature’s ‘O.P.P’. and instead of looking at me and telling me to stop because people are staring, he tells me that he loves me and in that moment, I can be sure that everything will be alright and that the PB&J probably got what was coming to it anyway.
