Bad Decisions Lead to Celluloid Catastrophy

Since I'm pretty much broke until my next paycheck (thank God that raise will be kicking in) my fun nights out have been turning into fun nights in. Friday night I spend 3 hours setting up Netflix on my Wii. Stop judging! I hadn't used my Wii in a long time and had a whole bunch of updates on top of the facts that A, I'm not good with any type technology and B, it just seems like anything that is suppose to be easy right now for me... not so much.

Last night my fun night in turned into a fun night in with Sarah. We decided to make dinner (i.e. I picked up chicken from HEB and she cooked the meal) and watch movies. Although, I brought over Congo which might be the best worst movie ever, we decided not to be total nerds and find something On Demand instead.

We first settled on Friends With Benefits. Now, I'm not going to lie or embellish the truth or throw Sarah under the bus. I totally was 50% of making this movie choice. I had a very mathematical reason to pick this movie. It went a little something like this...

Reasons for picking Friends With Benefits...
5% wanting to watch something I had never seen
3% wanting to watch something Sarah had never seen
17% remembering that the previews did make me kinda chuckle
29% knowing that I would probably get to see Justin Timberlake's butt
35% WOOD HARRELSON IS AWESOME
40% I have a giant girl crush on Mila Kunis

(I don't know if that adds up to 100, but hey, I was a liberal arts major.)

It was okay. There were parts where I laughed out loud and then there were parts that were totally predictable and made me remember why I don't like romantic comedies. But, on top of this I learned that maybe watching two beautiful people be all neurotic for 95 minutes only to end up all happily ever after is not a good idea when you just broke up with someone and you still remember what it feels like to be in love but you hate yourself for remembering and you kinda wish there was someone else to push those memories away and fuck Mila Kunis because you could spend 30 minutes doing your makeup and it still wouldn't look as good as her "I just woke up after screwing the hottest member of NSYNC all night" smokey eyes. FUCK! And my girl friends wonder why I've never seen The Notebook.

Then came our choices for movie number 2.



(Please note that it's "I Am Virgin" not "I Am A Virgin" so I'm thinking it must be about a holier that thou cave woman...)



That last one is a little hard to see. It was called "Walk a Mile In My Pradas" which I sure is the lesser know version of Walk The Line where June Carter goes to work under Meryl Streep, but uber bitch Anne Hathaway is fighting for her job and then Johnny Cash turns over in his grave and dies again.

But that's just a guess.

We decide on Drive. This is how we collectively came to this decision.

3% we had both never seen this movie
15% LOTS of people had said this movie was absolutely fantastic
163% it stars Ryan Gosling.

I'm pretty sure that one equals 100%...

So we watched Drive.

All of it.

And I'm super sad because I'll never get those two hours of my life back.

Wow! That movie was horrible! Like really horrible. Like what is wrong with humanity where some people think it's not only okay to make this movie but it's also okay to tell other people that it's good. I feel like this... There is a David Cross standup sketch where he's talking about how he's been an Atheist for a long time and he remembers being in synagog as a kid and hearing about God and angels and whatnot and looking around at all the other people there and being like, "Wait? You don't really believe all of this do you? God smiting the first borns... angels coming down... where are the unicorns?" That's exactly how I feel about Drive! Seriously? Did I watch the same movie everyone else watched? How did other people sit through that piece of shit and have the nerve to talk it up as one of the best movies of the year. I mean, I know people who were angry that it wasn't up for an Oscar. Also I know people who were angry that Ryan Gosling didn't get a Best Actor nod. Are you kidding me!?!?! He said all of 9 words the entire movie and for the other 2 hours and 13 minutes he was making this face...
Oh, making that face and wearing two jackets. The first was a classic straight out of 1987 slightly puffy, members only jacket with a scorpion on the back. And the second was a denim jacket so tight and so blue I'm convinced the costume designer picked it up from the girls department of Target. And then sometimes he wore them together... at the same time...

Things Sarah and I could have been doing for those two hours instead of watching the dumbest movie of the year?

1. Thinking up the best new invention of 2012 so we both could retire to the beach
2. Sleeping (seriously a better use of our time)
3. Going out to bars like normal human beings on a Saturday and meeting our future husbands. Sorry future Mr. Haygood I really wanted to meet the man of my dreams but instead I choose to watch Ryan Gosling smirk at me and drive around wearing a cowboy tuxedo for 2 hours.

FML

Scream... Proof Movies You Thought Were Awesome in Middle School, Not So Much...

Labor Day weekend was amazing. I know a lot of people may say this, but my family is honest to God the greatest ever. We have so much fun together just hanging out, playing cards, eating food, and chatting. I feel like all weekend I was saying to myself, “Oh, that story so needs to be a blog post.” But, of course I didn’t have pen glued to my hand and therefore didn’t write down any of those wonderful ideas. (Getting out of the pool and finding a pen inside would have been way to much work.) So, family member that are reading this, if you remember any of those ideas let me know.

As awesome as the weekend was last night might have been just as great. Driving back into town from the parental unit’s house in San Antonio, I stopped at my local used movie/CD store, Cheepos. I have been hitting up Cheepos weekly for about a month looking for the holy grail of entertainment de Middle School weekend sleepovers, Wes Craven’s Scream.

My first horror movie memory was climbing into my parent’s king size bed with my mom and sister and watching the movie Alien. My dad was out of town and my mother decided it would be fun to have a movie night watching one of her favorite movies with her two daughters. She got us all comfortable will pillows and blankets, and we each had a dish of popcorn. What could be more fun? Oh, and did I mention that I was in kindergarten and my sister was in 4th grade. Yeah, my mother (who don’t get me wrong is amazing) thought it would be a good idea to watch a movie where aliens pop out of people’s stomachs with her 6 year old and 10 year old. We only made it through about 30 minutes and never even saw one alien, and my sister still had nightmares and physically got sick to her stomach.

I started liking horror movies and scary shows when I was in 4th grade. We had just moved back to the States from England and I loved all the cool American TV shows that were creepy and spooky. I watched everything from X Files to Are You Afraid of the Dark on Nickelodeon. But, it wasn’t until 8th grade, when I saw the movie Scream, that I started my love affair with scary movies.

I watched Scream for the first time with my neighborhood friend, Mandy. I say I watched it for the first time, but I really I watched it for the first, second, third, and eighty-fourth time with Mandy. She and I would have sleepovers at each other’s houses every weekend and watch Scream at least twice. As soon as the sun came up over Stu’s blood soaked house and credits started to roll we would get up, rewind the VHS, and play it again. We could quote the whole movie. We did quote the whole movie… all the time. Mandy’s older brother thought we were stupid for liking such a dumb movie, and who knows what our parents thought, but we didn’t care. If it was Friday night we were either on my couch or her movie chairs watching Neve Campbell survive her thoroughly F-ed up boyfriend and his long tongued side kick.

So, I’ve been talking about wanting to watch Scream for over a month, and I finally found it on DVD yesterday. I was like a kid waiting for her parents to get up on Christmas morning. I got home with my prize DVD at 3PM and had to wait hours for it to get dark. (You can’t watch scary movies during the day.) Boyfriend wasn’t quiet as excited as me.

Boyfriend: “Scream?”

Me: “Yes, Scream!”

Boyfriend: “Scream?”

Me: “SCREAM!”

It finally got dark. I turned off all the lights, got me an orange Popsicle, and curled up on the couch with Boyfriend.

Boyfriend: “Hey, that annoying girl who looks like Davis Girl is in this movie.”

Me: “Drew Barrymore, and she doesn’t look anything like Davis Girl.”

(Boyfriend thinks any blonde in any movie or TV show looks like Davis Girl.)

Boyfriend: “Are a lot of people going to die? Who is in the car? Why is she stopping? Is the house going to burn down? I can’t believe she is still holding that phone.”

Me: “Yes, it’s a horror movie. People die. Her parents are in the car coming home. She stopped because she saw her boyfriend tied to a chair with his guts hanging out. I don’t know why she is holding the phone. Now, please hush and watch the movie.”

Boyfriend: “There is too much blood and death.”

Me: “It’s a horror movie and this is only the opening scene.”

The thing is, Scream does kinda suck. I mean I enjoyed watching it because it brought back memories, but I wasn’t scared like I used to be and I didn’t think it was as funny as it used to be. I know that we all grow out of things as we grow up, but this really hit me hard. I used to think Rose McGowan’s Tatum and Matthew Lillard’s Stu were absolutely hilarious. Yeah, not so much anymore. Rose just looks weird trying to be the sweet down to earth girl who wears cloud pajamas and sleeps with a teddy bear. I mean this is the women who went on to star in Jawbreaker and marry Marilyn Manson for crying out loud. And Stu! Stu really pissed me off last night. I remember cracking up to his lines. I remember one night we wrote them all down so we would remember them and have funny inside jokes the next day at school. (For some reason we thought we would be the only ones who had seen Scream.) Turns out his lines suck and all he did, all movie long was make faces and stick his tongue out really far.

When Tatum says, “Stupidity leak!” and hits Stu on the forehead with her lollypop I just thought how gross that is, not “wow high school kids are cool and funny in their relationships.” I mean I know Matthew Lillard didn’t have the greasy bangs Skeet Ulrich sported, but still… ick.

Also Stu’s light one liners like “Peer pressure. I’m far too sensitive.” and “Liver alone.” and “My mom and dad are going to be so mad at me.” ARE NOT FUNNY!

I’m sad. It’s a sad day when happy moments from your childhood die. I mean I watched The Last Unicorn in college and loved it just as much as when I watch it as a kid. I still love The Sandlot and Big Business, but it might be time to retire Scream. RIP.