5:28 p.m. - 2007-01-12
Holiday Roundup
The holidays were okay. We mostly hung around the house, enjoying food, drink and cheer. Also, videos. These are the videos we watched:
*"Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion". Miro Sorvino has one of the great dumb voices in cinema today. Also, it's full of horrible, great eighties music. Probably the only movie Alan Cumming was ever in that he didn't ruin.
*"Ghost World". Doesn't stand up well to repeated viewings due perhaps to the haphazard script. But still pretty entertaining, thanks to the potent one-two punch of Dan Clowes' misanthropy and Terry Zwigoff's misanthropy. Also, you never hear anything about Thora Birch any more, yet I thought she was good in this.
*That Show With Borat, but It Was On TV and Also Had the Other, Would-Be Hip-Hopper Character. Kind of strangely disappointing. Although I liked the Borat movie. Could it be that certain cultural phenomenae eventually lose some of their impact, due to media oversaturation and the essential limitations of the phenomenae themselves? Like how back in the seventies it was considered "cool" to point your thumb in the air and say "Aaaaayyyy" but now it's not?
*The American "The Office". Excruciating and addictive, like Pall Malls! Between Christmas and New Years we watched the entire seasons one and two. The American Ricky Gervais guy is good, but I thought the two love interests in the BBC show were better, written and acted. The handsome temp is as good on the American show as the BBC show, and in fact may be the same guy.
*"Strangers With Candy", the movie. Pretty good, not as good as the TV show. Matthew Broderick is in it, for some reason.
*"The Confederate States of America", I think it was called. This is a mockumentary that explores the idea that the south won the civil war how everything would be different today. Interesting idea, although the last few years have caused me to wonder if the south didn't win the civil war after the fact. Also, it wasn't all that well done; "Spinal Tap" retains it's Greatest Mockumentary status.
*Some crap faux-kids' show from MTV or something. Just crap.
So as you can see, we were well-diverted through the holidays. Other activities included:
*Gift giving! Kia gave me a groovy horizontal corduroy jacket and a TITANIUM SPORK! I not only have something made of titanium, but a non-disposable spork, just like they have in Japan! And I got Kia an accordian. It's red, and Kia looks and sounds great playing it.
DID YOU KNOW: There are no new accordians, and as far as I can tell there have NEVER been new accordians, at any time, anywhere. To secure Kia's accordian, I had to go to the basement of an older guy in town whose house is stuffed full of accordians. He showed me a bunch and it reminded me of the scene in "Taxi Driver" where Easy Eddie is showing Travis Bickle all the guns. My accordian guy said he only dealt Italian ones, none of that German crap. I picked the best one: a Scandalli. And plus, it totally has Henry Mancini's initials emblazoned on the front. HENRY MANCINI!
*Church! Just on Christmas Eve. I don't really do well in church. The less said about church the better.
*Family time! At Kia's mom's. This was fun, as we were granted a rare audience with Minneapolis Nephew. As well as his parents. Partway through I started feeling all sick, with stomachey sensations and vague pain and the like, which I fear made me kind of a drag. Still, it was nice, seeing everyone. Also, my dad and his wife Jo came to town, which is very very unusual and prompted us to clean our house. We went for steaks after showing off our clean clean house, save for the one room that was packed full of all the stuff we swept out of the rest of the house. Trying to describe "me, Me, Look at ME!!: A One Man Show" to Jo and my dad was a rare treat.
*And so much more!
NEXT: Lincoln's Birthday Rundown
