Thursday February 25, 2010

Have to open at work again, so I, again, wake up around 4:15 AM to shower and get ready. Fortunately, I'm feeling much better than I was yesterday morning, so I'm not as pissed off about going. Don't get me wrong, I am still pissed that I have to go to work before the fucking sun even rises, I'm just not as pissed as yesterday. I get out of the shower, dry off, brush my teeth, put my polo and jeans on, rock a cup of coffee for the ride, and it's off to work. I get to go to work and witness people's demise as they stop at our place in preparation for their own work day. It's kind of a fucked up experience when you really stop to dissect it.

Work goes somewhat quick. I finish up around noon and head straight home to have a little something to eat and take a nap to catch up on the sleep that I didn't get last night. Much to my unpleasant, but not surprising discovery, we have next to no food at home, so I m forced to kind of skip that part. I had oatmeal at work earlier, so I'm not completely going on the Nicole Richie diet. I throw on my sweats and proceed to pass out while watching some of the behind-the-scenes featurettes from The Dark Knight Blu-Ray.

I wake up around 5:30 to a call from Justin asking if I wanted to chill tonight. I tell him I am down and he says that he and Stein are headed to Buffalo Wild Wings for some drinks and that I should meet them there. Still half-asleep, I hit the bathroom, fix myself up as best I can, throw on some clothes, and head out the door to meet the duo at the place I have grown to downright loathe.

We get inside and I feel obligated to say hello to everyone that is working, as they all know me through Tool. It's kind of cool to know people in places like that but sometimes I just want to be treated like a customer. The second a server sees that Tool's little brother is here, they feel like they don't have to treat me as well as the other customers. Not to say that they treat me like shit, but they know me and know that I won't complain if it takes a little longer for them to take my order than it is the family at the other table that they have to impress or else their tip money is at stake. I get it, I do the same thing at my job, but it still kind of sucks. This is why I tend to stay away from establishments that I have friends working at.

We order up some beers and I decide to try my hand at some boneless wings, as I hadn't eaten anything from B-Dubs in well over six-months. I got so sick of their food that I couldn't even fathom eating any more of it. But, it's been awhile, so I think I might be able to stomach it once again. Not the case. I order up twelve boneless wings: 6 honey bbq and 6 Asian zing. I get through about 4 of them before I feel sick and opt to take the rest home. I have one more beer, as they're the 23-ounce glasses, so 2 beers is actually close to 4 beers. We close out our tab and head back to my house.

Once back at my humble home, we crack open some more beers and chill out in front of the TV. Justin just got the movie Sling Blade through his Netflix and has been trying to get us to watch it for the last week or so. I saw the flick many years ago, probably around Jr. High, and I hated it with a passion, for reasons that are now unknown, as it was so long ago. I agree to check it out, as does Stein, so we pop the movie in and prepare ourselves for Billy Bob Thornton's opus about a simple man in a small town. Sound familiar?

The movie is almost two and a half hours long and, by the time it's finished, I am instantly reminded of why I hated that movie so goddamn much when I was younger: it's fucking BOOOORRRIIINNGGG!!! How this fucking movie was nominated for so many Oscars that year is just beyond me. Someone must have sold their souls to Satan to get the ratings up on this steaming pile of dog shit. The story goes nowhere. It's all about this simple-minded man named Karl (played by Billy Bob himself with unintentional humor) who killed his mother and her boyfriend when he was younger and was placed in a mental institution. He is freed at the beginning of the movie and proceeds to move in with a small family, consisting of a young boy and his mother, along with the mother's boyfriend, who also happens to be an alcoholic prick. Karl forms a friendship with the boy, which has no emotional spark whatsoever, and the movie just kind of drags for about 2 more hours after that. I won't ruin the "surprise" ending, just in case anyone hasn't seen it yet.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not a shallow movie-watcher. I don't need to watch a Michael Bay flick with loads of unnecessary explosions and an action scene every 5 minutes, in fact, I actually tend to HATE those kinds of movies. But, goddammit, I need to be at least mildly entertained. I love dialogue with a passion. I will watch a movie with nothing but dialogue and be totally caught up in it... if the actors and the story is right and keeps my interest. The fact that there are a lot of "talking scenes" in this movie does not bother me. What bothers me is the lack of "talking" in the "talking scenes." The discourse scenes between Karl and the boy show absolutely no emotional breakthrough or depth whatsoever. They just look like two people sitting on a park bench who don't know one another. The movie just drags, and drags, and fucking drags, until the final climax that we all saw coming 30 minutes into the movie.

The other problem I had with the flick is Billy Bob's performance, which was up for a Best Actor award, circa '96. His take on this simple-minded man is almost too over-acted to the point that you can't concentrate on the character, but only on the performance. The voice he uses is so hard to find comfort in that it ultimately makes it hard to listen to. That, and it's insanely humorous, and not in an intentional way. All I could think about when I saw Karl was Robert Downey Jr's speech to Ben Stiller in Tropic Thunder about how, as an actor, "you never go full-retard." And, fuckin' a, he was right. Billy Bob certainly went full-retard and it's hard to get past that. If you are going to play the role of a simple-minded human being (which, in itself, means they aren't completely mentally disabled, just slow), you have to have some sort of a line that you don't cross. You have to be able to allow your audience to not focus on the fact that you're "acting" and focus on the fact that the character seems real. Audiences will take notice and comment on acting abilities once the flick is over, it shouldn't be on their mind during the flick, because that means they're not able to approach the character as a "real person" through the duration of the movie, which is what you're ultimately supposed to do while checking out a film.

So, overall, I say this movie was fucking atrocious. So why did it gain so many Oscar nominations? Because it's not a controversial flick. The Academy eats this shit up all the time, as do critics. It's almost like they are auto-programmed to enjoy boring and unnecessarily long movies, no matter how terrible and tedious it may be. So that's why I should be a film critic. Because I tell it like it is and I don't just go along with what a critic is "supposed" to think.

Back to the evening... the movie ends and we spend the next half hour talking about how terrible it was, but how it did make us laugh our asses off at some parts. We then check out the latest Tosh.0 episode and shoot a call over to Martel to see if he wants to stop by for a bit. He winds up cruising over and we all channel surf for a bit, ultimately landing on the only movie that was on at the time, Pearl Harbor. As much as I dislike that movie, I am in need of some over-the-top explosions and shitty acting after the abomination I watched an hour earlier.

Everyone cruises around 2:00 AM or so, and I head into the bathroom to get ready for bed. I proceed to pass out while watching more of The Dark Knight on Blu-Ray (told you fuckers I would always make a point to address when I was watching a "Blu-Ray" flick, as it is so fucking brilliant that it needs proper mention)