The Picture Show

I went the movies yesterday. I had been sitting in the house all day again and I had major things that I needed to get done. So, I wanted a break from sitting in front of the computer and also knowing that I had to go to another doctor today made me anxious to move about away from my sleepy little suburb.

Add $60 dollars to today's visit, plus $75 dollars for some pills I bought a couple of days ago and an insulin co-pay that I anticipate to be about 10 dollars later today when I show up with my little RX card. I will probably have to drive back home in the middle of the night and call some guys in Kansas, Missouri, or Nebraska that have been hired to do the farmed out administrative work that the powers that be have deemed fit for the poor bastards who have been unlucky enough to come down with an ailment they can't fix and who don't work for Coca Cola Inc., or Exxon, or simply choose not to work for them, etc . . . The person on the other line will be either a completely overworked cynical single mom who is my age but sounds like one of the guest actresses on E.R. (you know the one who played the Alpha female careerist who checked in with a heroin addiction, and faked one disease to get the medicine to help her kick her habit over the weekend), or the guy fresh out of college or the mosh pit working this job in the evening while he waits for the third person in his 3 party relationship to move end so he can dump this gig and concentrate on what really matters. I have had both at this RX outsourced service location. The second guy was so, so, helpful . . . I am SO for real, no sarcasm. I am sure that I asked for his name. I will call him today if things get heavy with the people in the white coats this evening. And the night staff is much nicer than the people who work during the day. That is a good thing to know when you are partically on the dole and dependent on your local pharmacy in more ways than anyone should ever know.

OK. Enough self-pity!

So, last night, I got to the movie theater. I must admit that Brokeback Mountain is number 3 on my list. First is Munich and the second is The Hostel. Unfortunately, with the opening of Underworld: Evolution on Friday, Brokeback Mountain will stay in the number 2 position for just one day. It is up for an Oscar, so that movie ain't going anywhere. Now, Munich and Underworld 2 are running neck to neck, with Underworld falling into a hair's length second place .

When I got to the ticket counter, Munich was not playing for another 45 minutes, and The Hostel was just a 20 minute wait. So I choose The Hostel. After taking a whizz, getting some Sweet and Sour Skittels (I love the way the burn the skin off the inside of my mouth) and a gigantic diet coke I went into the theater. I was the first one. Next was a mother and either her daughter or son, and their girlfriend or boyfriend. I situated myself in the center and stuck the gigantic diet coke into the holder. The super large drink is the best value at $4.50. It is only .50 cent more than the large and it comes with free refills. Wonderful when going to the movies with kids. But the cup is also hard enough to take home and re-use. It is not hard plastic like the cups you could take home from McDonald's centuries back, but when you drink something out of it without ice, you really feel the vastness of that vessel. Like your whole nose goes into it. It feels like I am looking into a parking garage.

Just before the movie starts, I started to remember what a co-worker at work was telling. me They have carded people inside the actual movie. Like people really do come and look around reading the ID's of people. I thought it can't be that bad, just some ole' Tennessee madness. The movie theater never fills up. There are a couple of thugs life coloreds that come up behind me. One ghetto fabulous couple. Some of "the children" are down on the lower level. A small blond lady about mid-forties and her giant of a man are one row down to my left. He leaned forward to look closer at the movie with an attentiveness I found disturbing. Even more astounding was that his girth in silhouette made him a breathing optical illusion. You could not tell if he was sitting upright two rows down from me, or if his leaning body was connected to the seat next to the woman. At times you could not see the woman's body. Her hair was like a long blond mop. His back was a mass of black and at moments, your could admire his limberness, the way his torso positioned itself inclined with his arms folded on the chair in front of him.

So the movie is really good. Especially if you have lived overseas for a while. It captures all the American love and lust for a European hiking tour by way of Europe's various national railroad systems. It starts out in Amsterdam, with the two young adults and one looking to be in his late thirties drinking, smoking and fucking. Oh! The bathroom sex of it!

The Hostel gives Europe a realistic skin over the overtly stereotypical depiction of fast girls, free pot and hot clubs. It also shows male bonding in a way that I think most guys (straight of gay) will enjoy. All the horse play, pranks, meeting girls in the sauna, very public sex, etc . . ., are all found in the movie. Brought back memories I must say, and on top of that, I started to realize why people would be carded in this movie. From my new found Tennessee eyes it was sheer debauchery. Forget Brokeback mountain (where were the Christian Right during My Private Idaho and Making Love by the way?), send your children to this heterosexual blood feast if you want to corrupt them.

The girls in this movie were amazing. The two sirens really were that, hot Eastern European girls, and the woman at the check-out counter was not bad either. The guys less so. Except for the Icelandic 30 something, they were cute guys, talking about soon to be contemplated dissertations, Bar exams, and some future world in tones I vaguely remember in my own life. That fake machismo manner is a hallmark of a twenty something I think. There is no way you can know so much about the world. The idea that somehow your life is going to change when you get back from this 3 or 4 week excursion through Europe is somehow very American. We never force our coming of age, in all actually, coming of age forces us.

So, I won't say anymore about the film except that it is full of gore. And is not even the right word. In all actually, the real terror was my bladder splitting open after drinking that giant coke, and me not wanting to seem like a complete pansy getting up to use the bathroom for the second time. I had gone just before the movie, in the first have of the movie and now I gotta get up during the bloodletting. I know. I know. I know already, but I had thug and thug love surrounding me, and if I learned anything in NYC working with homeless kids in Time Square, you got to wear a mask or anything will jump on you (and I mean that in the Sethe's swollen feet running from Teacher in the Oprah Windfry movie production sense of the phrase). And I must say, that reflex was still in motion despite all the intellectual gender role games and Foucault jumping jack exercises of power and representation I can recite in my mind. Well that was a moment of honesty with the audience, a quick synaptic shock confessional wave of thought that keep my ass in my chair. I must also say I didn't want to whizz for the third time that evening because the movie was so good, but the bladder pressure was adding to the intensity I must say.

The silence I heard in the audience was identical to that in the Mel Gibson The Passion of the Christ movie. And there is a touch of Bob Guccione's Caligula in the film. It is not found in the grandeur (the is none) or the decadence (there is plenty), it is in the excess. This movie is gruesome to excess. One couple got up and walked out. Everyone else simply watched, knowing that more and more of this bodily harm was going to happen. I left the movie a little light headed. I drove to that massive big chain store that is swallowing America, picked up some shaving cream and a pack of razors (there needs to be a Congressional hearing on the price of men's razor refills, but cudos to Gillette. The Mach 3 Power is really superior to the Mach 3 Turbo refills, it is well worth the extra dollar.), then missed my turn off of Charlotte Pike and had to drive through TSU to get home.

But in the morning, I felt OK. Don't even remember that scary feeling.

Just started my day.

I had big project due at 8:30 am.

Finished and arrived right on time.