If you’ve been reading the site for at least the last two weeks, you know I talk about Craigslist a lot. Which probably makes you suspect that I spend most of my days cruising the Missed Connections, trying to negotiate myself into being a “tattooed Filipina” or someone who has a reason to go to a bank.
Harsh realities aside, sometimes I’ll take a break and comb the writing gigs for something that suits me. I haven’t found any ads looking for someone who knows way too much about Blossom’s hat collection yet, but I have found this:
It’s brave to actually come out and admit – in caps lock – that you have a story so devoid of quality that you’re unanimously told that it needs to be on Lifetime. Unless they’ve left out “TEEN PREGNANCIES AND A CYBER STALKER” in between “HARDSHIP” and “FUN LAUGHTER,” I don’t see it taking off. But I’m probably just bitter because no one seems to want “Tall blonde with numerous ranch dressing stains.”
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen. The reason for this is because when that fucking desiccated tootsie roll RUSHED out of those corn fields like they were on fire, my four-year-old heart couldn’t take it and from that point on, I would only watch movies that guaranteed carbon based characters or ideally, plots entirely absent of science. For years, E.T. haunted me. Every dark hallway or stairwell was an invitation for him to come hurdling toward me. To do what, I’m not sure. The most diabolical thing he ever did in the movie was befriend a 10-year-old boy and dress in women’s clothes. And while that’s unsettling for some, it’s not necessarily scary.
Still, I was petrified of him. A few years later, however, I saw a behind the scenes special that revealed the means of locomotion for E.T. – wheels. Even at eight years old, where my world allowed a reality in which The Muppets were living beings, I knew what wheels were. I knew they weren’t scary and even though there was a screeching uterus with a nose attached to them, I was able to watch the movie and meet E.T.’s beady eyes without turning away until the Reese’s Pieces showed up.
Despite my victory over E.T., I was ruined for any future interest in the horror genre. Movies that depend almost entirely on the inevitability that something is going to be forcibly removed by a sharp object or vagina dentata are not something my anxiety has the aptitude to deal with. The only horror movies I watch, understandably, are ones so bad that they reveal their parlor tricks as they go along. Films starring wrestlers or Gary Busey, usually. From the beginning, they admit to the fact that they’re full of shit, instead of attempting to peddle the idea that corn syrup and red food coloring are worthy of soiling yourself or more importantly, real.
I’m not a fan of severity, which is why I’m struggling with the fact that in less than two weeks, I’ll be moving. Again. A little over six months ago, I moved from Florida to Oregon. It was my ‘fuck you Southeast I’m going to live in the Pacific Northwest and eat fresh sustainable fish not because I like fish since I really don’t but just because I can‘ tour. It’s been successful so far, but I’m realizing that more than anything, I was simply proving to myself that I could escape from the straight jacket that manifested itself from the familiarity of my former surroundings. Somehow, I did it. But the point is, I’ve done it and I need to move on.
It’s uncomfortable to stare into a future so fertile with doubt and the unavoidable truth that I will ingest Nyquil at least once to comfortably fall asleep before 9pm. But since I have a poor sense of impulse control and an insatiable need to challenge the limits of a rapidly dwindling savings account, I will be Danny Tanner-ing it into San Francisco before January ends.
The way I see it, if I can overcome that creep E.T., I can do just about anything. All I need is for the situation to reveal its wheels.
Remember when Mariah Carey went on TRL a few years ago and confirmed everyone’s suspicions that she was, in fact, completely insane? Well, she’s doing it again, but since TRL was canceled (go figure the one time I pray, I actually get results), she has to resort to using her new perfume ad as a conduit.
If I were still a fan I might let it slide that her wig is crooked and that the left side of her face could compete in the Special Olympics, but Mariah officially stopped caring once the 90s ended and for that, she will always be my Y2K.
I remember having her Butterfly album, playing it on my Sony CD Boom Box and then trying to figure out how to play “My All” on repeat so I could pretend that Ricky Martin would come in to my room, compliment my beanie baby collection and proceed to please me in all of the ways I never knew I needed. But, as Glitter taught us, dreams only really come true when they are based on the very loosest perception of reality and in this case, the idea of a non-gay Ricky Martin is fairly grounded by comparison.
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.
I know that’s it’s barely even Sunday at this point, but forgive me because lately, if Martin Lawrence were to play me in a movie about my life as a detective living in Miami with three children named Quincy, Megan, and James it would look a lot like this. In other words, I’ve been busy and now I can feel you rolling your eyes because you’re like, “Who is too busy to ejaculate into the ass of low-to-mid-range consumerist goods?”
So, when I say busy I mean that I have a queue of shit that I love that I’ve been methodically working on reviewing because I want to do it right instead of throwing out a low-brow dick joke and calling it a day. This also means that I avoid the task altogether and melt 4 chocolate bars down into an electric wok so that I can dip pretzel sticks into it and eat my feelings. This is called progress.
Speaking of eating my feelings, one time, I made cupcakes that looked like spaghetti and meatballs which is kind of gross but then really delicious once you realize it’s all made of candy. This gift of disgust followed by immediate delight is what I have to offer, now and forever:
