I actually really liked The Island. I hadn't seen enough of his movies for all the shiny surfaces to bug me. And anyway, the brilliant sterility of his style fits that movie.
I started watching this movie again a couple of years ago, for the first time since I was a kid. I knew the horse was gonna die and I knew that there was good stuff coming up after that scene but still, when the horse actually died, I was like, "screw you, movie, don't make me feel things," and turned it off.
I read the whole thing out of some sort of rubbernecking fascination and if you scroll to the bottom there's a picture of her when she was a young teenager. Now I am very sad.
This video combination works best if you imagine it as two halves of a whole: the explosives go off as soon as the first video ends and Gwyneth's balcony goes sliding into ruin with her on it, in spite of all her years of yoga and kelp and whatever the hell else. A meditation on the inevitability of death and the impermanence of all things. Aum.
On the topic of drunk purchases: a month ago I got it into my head to buy myself a couple of those Japanese headbands called hachimaki to wear when I'm writing, to show that I'm serious and to improve my focus. One of them is white and says "Charge!" on it in Japanese, the other is black and says "Determination to Win!" for when I'm super serious. When I got them in the mail, my first reaction was, "Hey, these are cool!" swiftly followed by, "You're a ridiculous man, Spidermonk." My opinion of the purchase has mellowed a bit since then and I've decided that I'm a Cool Buffoon. Haven't worn either of them yet but just the fact that I cared enough to buy them has helped improve my focus.
Fuck it. Life is short. I'ma put on the "Charge!" one.
Orderly queues! I felt like having a coffee yesterday and there was only one person ahead of me in line, so I figured, "I will stand in line (even though I hate it) behind this one person because it is only one person and surely I can be at least THAT patient?" But there was also only one person behind the counter, both taking the orders and operating all the spigots to create complicated coffee-based drinks, and it looked like she was rushing around to make whatever truly arcane caffeinated drinks the two people waiting at the other end of the counter were waiting for. So then I decided that, nope, I was not that patient. But then the girl in front of me wandered off, engaged in some kind of text-based conversation on her phone! Hurray!
About a minute of waiting passed. Then the girl who had once been in front of me wandered back and sorta stood next to me awkwardly. I looked her up and down. She was quite pretty, not that that's relevant.
"Are you in line here?" I asked.
"Uh... is that okay?"
"Of course it's okay!" I said with a smile.
And I growled, "Fucking people!" under my breath as I stomped off. I'm pretty sure she heard me. I know the people waiting for their complicated drinks did.
And I live in Canada! Are we not supposed to be one of the last sanctuaries of the orderly queue? If you are in line, stay in line! Suffer! That's how it fucking works! No exceptions! No matter how pretty you are! Grrarrgh!
This has been another installment in the Simon Spidermonk Is Kind Of An Asshole series.
Will you let us know when you're drunk, or do we have to keep asking?
Are you drunk right now? How about now? Now? Are you drunk yet? Are you? Now? Are you drunk yet?
...
Now?
I finally looked up the ages of these guys. I've been wondering for quite a while how creeped out I should be by all this flanny-related One Direction nonsense. I'm happy to report, not as creeped out as I was afraid of!
http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/2351/cn41.jpg
I just realized that the young woman was probably the old lady's granddaughter. She didn't seem too enthusiastic about being there, so probably her grandma dragged her along. Now I DO feel bad. Goddamn it, brain! Stop ruining everything!
This morning a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses knocked on the door. One was a tiny old lady who did all the talking and one was a girl in her late teens or early twenties. The old woman said she was happy they’d caught me at home, to which I replied, “Uh-huh…” in a not-quite-as-happy voice. She started talking about how there was all this turmoil in the world these days and I realized that she wasn’t going to tell me what they wanted from me if I didn’t ask, so I interrupted her.
“Who are you with?”
“Jehovah’s Witnesses-”
“Yeah, I’m really not interested,” I said, but she kept talking so I started to gently ease the door closed.
“If you’re interested you can find us online-”
“I’m not.” And then, with a lilting tone in my voice that communicated nothing but unmitigated joy, I said, “Good-byeee!” and shut the door in her face.
Wow, I thought to myself. What an asshole thing to do. I could hear the old lady talking on the other side of the door, probably saying whatever Jehovah’s Witnesses say instead of, “What a fucking asshole.” I examined my conscience to see how I felt about what I’d just done. Didn’t bother me at all. Still doesn’t. So I grinned and went about my day without a cloud in my psychological sky.
This DEFINITELY makes me asshole, I think.
People throwing around the name Richard Ayoade in this thread has made me a bit less excited than I was, because that would have been literally the best thing to ever happen in human history, but I'm still really liking the idea of Peter Capaldi as the next Doctor. And I don't get all the Moffat hate. This latest season was a let-down, and the season before that was a step down from the one preceding, but it's way too soon to write him off completely. He's human. He can learn from his missteps.
The one good thing about Richard Ayoade not being the Doctor is maybe he'll have time to make another movie now. I really liked Submarine.
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