Nothin's Better than More!

Well…

Some o’ you said you liked the rambling, so…well, two of you said you like the rambling, so…

I had to work on Friday this week, but it just so happened that Sarah and I had a play-date on Saturday. (This is no knock on Sarah, God knows, but our times together are so devoid of stodgy, adult behavior that they do qualify as “play-dates.”)

We went to the Menello Folk Art Festival, and we both decided they should make the theme “Get Folked!”

From there, we found that they built a HUGE bicycle bridge across that teeny lake behind the Menello. On the other side of the bridge we found a house for sale. Well, the front door was locked, the gate was barred, and the back door was locked, but the side gate was open and the basement wasn’t locked, so we saw this as our message from God that we should tour the house from top to bottom. (Sometimes God needs a little help, so we did test every possible entrance…)

Nice place, but WOW, did it need work! Five smallishly small bedrooms (two in a mother-in-law), two kitchens (the mother-in-law down in the dank basement), four full baths, a pool, and lake access. Because it needed lots and lots of work, and it was very near industrial areas, I guessed the asking price at about a half million. Sarah called the realtors and found it was near a million.

Now, I’m so depressed I wanna kill myself.

It doesn’t help to find that one out of every nine rentable apartments in Orlando went condo this last year. The average price for 488 square feet? $103,000.

Then Sarah and I went to DEchoes, where they ask you when you enter if you want a drink. Also, they have “slightly used” cologne at the back. I spritz on a little Kenneth Cole New York. Back in the front, one of the sales clerks said one of us smelled terrific! I stammered, “Well…it might be me, and thank you!”

It’s bad when you feel guilty for stealing used cologne but not at all snaky for breaking a few trespassing laws.

Then we ran around some and ended up at Tuesday Morning. People, if you want to know how bath products or candles end up at places like Tuesday Morning, Steinmart, TJMaxx, Marshalls, Ross, and the like, take a few minutes to actually smell them! What olfactory idiot got paid to come up with these!?!?! I cannot describe how disgusting and funny this was. Sarah and I were laughing and gagging at the same time. One candle in particular reminded me of when college frat buddies got so drunk, they’d puke on the radiator. And yet, I had to smell it TWICE to verify that it was truly that vile!

Then David and Cathy joined us for dinner at White Wolf, before Sarah had to run off and get ready for Stripped.

Stripped.

So, David and I saw it. Yeah….hmmm…

Ryan Cimino and John Bateman were there…not together…yeah…hmmm…

OK, well, let me just make a few observations:

1) I didn’t find anything new or revealing in the play. Maybe I’m just jaded, but I pretty much well knew that drugs and bisexuality and body issues and self-esteem problems run rampant through the stripper subculture. Anyone else surprised by this?!? I didn’t think so…

2) We are led to believe that only one of the six strippers is currently using drugs (although another admits to steeling her nerve with alcohol). We are led to believe that we should find all six strippers basically good people. This brings up an interesting point:

3) Why is everything these strippers say about themselves accepted as truth by the writer/director? The “poor me” way these strippers represented themselves smacked of bullshit.

4) Oh, my favorite! They bitch A LOT that an unskilled, undereducated woman in America can either strip or only make $7.50 an hour. Gasp! At least they admit they are unskilled and undereducated… You tell me where a man with the same skills and education can make up to $900 a night taking off his clothes. This sort of dumbass expectation of gross entitlement pissed me off in so many ways! When I left college, I was skilled and educated, and the only job I could find was $8.50 an hour. Cry me a river, ladies.

5) And. Thank God that a couple of the actresses (Sarah being one of them) can actually do subtlety and subtext. This dreck is so simple-minded that the only way to make these characters interesting is through sly physicality and vocal nuances. Sadly, four of these actresses seem largely incapable, some worse than others.

6) In case you’re wondering what would have made a stripper play new and interesting for me: I’d have loved to see a play about how these characters create gimmicks or stage personas and about how they truly interact with each other backstage. I would’ve also liked to have seen some more complexity and honest-to-goodness conflict that we could watch a flawed, realistic character work through.

These things being said, if they every do this play again, I SO WANT to play one of the strippers!!!

Ironically, by stunt-casting these strippers as men, the play could possibly accidentally end up saying something significant.


I’ve realized that one of my dear friends works very very very hard at being cool! Because he wasn’t popular in high school, or something like that. I wanna shake him and scream, “Quit caring! There are SO MANY people who love you because you truly are and will always be a bit geeky!”


The Oscars

Crash.

Umm…

Since I seem to be numbering my responses:

1) I thought Jon Stewart was a fine host, but I also admit that most of the Hollywood elite did not seem amused…by anything…even Ben Stiller…

2) Wow, Mr. Clooney’s speech was lovely. Philip Seymour Hoffman could have taken a lesson from him. Or even from Reese Witherspoon. It’s not like Hoffman didn’t know he was going to win. All that fumbling and rubbing of the forehead!

3) Well, I had to go and read to see how they elected and voted on best song. Here’s the convoluted way they “judge a song as worthy":
http://oscarbeat.latimes.com/awards_oscar/2005/12/the_howsandwhys.html
And then, you have to be a member of the right committee anyway:
http://movies.about.com/od/awards/f/oscarmem122504.htm
The whole thing is pretty secretive and about as weird as a Mormon Temple Ritual. It smacks of politics.
It just upsets me that poor Dolly had to lose to that incredibly dull, pedestrian, uninspired hip-hop song.

4) And of course, I really dislike Crash. I thought the first forty minutes of the film SUCKED!!!! The dialogue was so heavy-handed I barely got to enjoying the great acting and plot twists that made up the rest of the film. I think critic Eric Lungaard said it best when he stated, "What is the big problem with race in the Los Angeles of Crash? That everyone enunciates every racial thought they have."
Still, I don’t dislike the film as much as, say, The English Patient, American Beauty, or Braveheart, all of which won Best Picture.

5) That being said, I think Crash won because:

a. It had over 100 LA actors cast in it, compared to the eleven SAG members in the cast of Brokeback.

b. A lot of the Oscars is about the ad campaigns and marketing machines. Remember, Shakespeare in Love beat out Saving Private Ryan (I still think SIL is a better film, though) based on an excellent pre-Oscar media blitz. There is a lot of talk about Brokeback “peaking too early,” and some more about how every SAG actor was given a free copy of the Crash DVD. Sad but true, a lot of this is about media and money...

c. Remember what I said about this being about money? More people get paid paid by films like Crash than by films like Brokeback Mountain. Hard, true fact.

d. Also, I will not totally discount that a bit of homophobia played into this. In a year when every journalist was telling Hollywood that they have lost touch with the rest of America, and where box offices are notably down, it does seem easier to vote for a racially tense film that doesn’t really challenge the audience members. It’s harder to sell a gay love story that forces the audience to choose how they feel about homosexuality. Audiences can watch Crash and dismiss their involvement by saying, “That’s not me; I’m not racist.” They can also feel tolerant by being "exposed" to such a film. They absolutely have to decide how they feel about gay relationships watching Brokeback Mountain. Wanting their customers back, Hollywood picks the less challenging of the two movies.

6) God bless Ang Lee and Larry McMurtry for being upset. McMurtry even cited possible homophobia: “Perhaps, America isn’t ready to accept that some cowboys are gay.” No one said change was every going to be easy, but it’s nice to know who we have in our corner. Though, one would still think Hollywood would be a eensy bit better at promoting equal rights for everyone…

7) And I reiterate, I don’t hate Crash. I just am disappointed that it couldn’t have been more subtle, subterfugal, and nefarious. The acting, directing, and editing were amazing. The plot was lovely in it’s complexity. The pieces were all there to make a film that would’ve caused me to admit: “OK, if Brokeback has to lose, this is a damn good film to lose to!” But instead, the dialogue was ham-fisted, ineloquent, and unbelievable. It could’ve been so much more, and I think that’s what upsets me the most.

8) And we still have to remember all the awards Brokeback Mountain has won:
The BAFTA, The Globe for Drama, Directors’ Guild, Writers’ Guild, Producers’ Guild, The Independent Spirit, Venice Film Festival, and scads and scads of critics’ awards. And those are the ones that just pop to mind!