Holy
crap in a Bundt pan...
Due to the
recent well-publicized shortage of
amateur websites produced by assholes who consider themselves to be
clever, I
have been called into action. My name is Jeff Kay, and I’m an
Ugly American living
on the cusp of a mid-life crisis, near Scranton, PA. And I’m here to
serve, baby.
The
State of My Fat Ass A journal of
sorts, updated every once in a while.
--
I'm sick today. I suspected that something wasn't right yesterday
afternoon and evening, and it turns out I was correct. My throat and
eyes(?!) hurt, I've got the snots, and my stomach is gurgling and
possibly fizzing. And the weirdest part of all: every time I sneeze or
blow my nose, a gag reflex kicks in. So it's ahhhchoo! followed
by an instant pre-puke humpback. And I don't like that.
So, I'll do the best I can here, but I wouldn't be expecting much. The
couch is calling my name, in a soft, seductive voice.
-- Last weekend I watched three movies that I thought were exceptional,
for a variety of reasons.
Since I pay Netflix eighteen bucks (or whatever) every month, I'm
required by common sense to watch an ungodly number of flicks. And while
I enjoy most of them, few stay with me. Let a month or two pass and I
often can't remember if I've seen a particular movie, and have to
consult with Toney to figure it out. But these three made an impression.
-- First was a documentary called Overnight,
about a grand wizard doucheteer who was handed the keys to Hollywood,
and screwed it all up via assholery. The dude was a bartender in Los
Angeles who wrote screenplays in his spare time, just like a million
other guys. But this one somehow captured the imagination of Miramax
big-shot Harvey Weinstein, who offered him $300,000 for his script, a
chance to direct the movie (The Boondock Saints), and half
ownership of the bar where he was working.
The bartender was instantly the toast of the town, and featured in every
entertainment magazine, and all over television. It was a rags-to-riches
tale, and the public ate it up.
Then the good part starts. The guy, over the next couple of years,
manages to fuck everything up by being an arrogant prick. He screams and
yells, insults people and reminds them that he is the new golden boy,
blah blah blah.
And this complete crash and burn is
captured on film by the documentary crew who'd been hired to document
the rise of Hollywood's new power player.
It's all highly entertaining, and satisfying as well. Sometimes people
really do get what they deserve.
-- On Saturday night Toney and I watched Saturday Night Fever. Go
figure. It was from the DVR, recorded off HBO, not a Netflix movie. But
I'd never seen it before, and Toney said it had been 25 years for her.
So we fired it up.
Hilarious! The opening shots where he's sashaying around Brooklyn in his
disco clothes and carrying a gallon of paint is funny as hell. And the
continuous argument with his Dad is classic as well. But it was the
dancing scenes that were the best....
At one point Travolta is dancing with a chick at the club, and insulting
her unmercifully. He tells her he hopes she fucks better than she
dances, or something along those lines. A bit harsh, I thought. Then
the song changes, and our hero cocks his head like a dog who senses a
UPS truck is near. He abandons the girl with a
shouted, "Forget this!" and makes his way to the main dance
floor with a look of intense purpose on his face (I was screaming with
laughter by now), and proceeds to get down.
All the other dancers had apparently seen him catch the fever before,
and immediately made room for him. They formed a circle around
Travolta and he started whipping his hands 'round and 'round, like #19 here, then launched into that pointing up/pointing down thing. By the
end he was scooting along the floor on his ass, like a horny dog. And I
was gasping for air and wiping away the tears in Scranton.
God, was that shit funny. I saw where Toney's brother (FBI --
Full Blooded Italian) picked up his habit of folding his pizza in half,
too.
The whole thing was simply two hours
well-spent.
It's gotta be a cult classic. Is it? As you may be aware, the subscription to the
hipster newsletter stops at the age of forty, so I don't know for sure.
But I have a feeling... Am I right?
-- And the third movie is one of my all-time favorites: Dawn of the
Dead. I've seen it five or six times by now, and it never gets old.
Many of the flicks that I thought were genius as a youngling seem kinda
lame today (like Close Encounters: two hours of people looking
up), but not this one. I had just as much fun watching it this past
weekend as I did in 1979, or whatever. A real classic.
You know the story: zombies are roaming the Earth and killing people who
instantly turn into even more zombies. The USA looks almost
post-apocalyptic because of all this, and the four main characters take
refuge in a shopping mall filled with the lumbering undead -- who look a
lot like normal shoppers on any given day.
The movie is chockfull of over-the-top gore, to the point where
it becomes a comedy of fucked-upness by the second half-hour. While some
of the most horrifying scenes play out, like intestines-eating and
whatnot, jaunty mall Muzak is playing in the background, and I just
think it's a true masterpiece.... At least as good as anything
Shakespeare ever managed.
Check out this website that chronicles the history of the mall where the
movie was shot. It's still open for business! Man, I need to go.
Years ago I took a girlfriend to see Dawn of the Dead at a
midnight movie. She'd never seen it, and I was eager to get her
reaction.
Yeah, it didn't really work out the way I'd hoped....
Within an hour she was sobbing uncontrollably and we had to leave. She
cried all the way home and I felt utterly shitty. The next day she
wasn't much better, and told me she didn't want to go to hell(!?).
And
for the next three months or so she went to church day-in and day-out,
and the best I could hope for was a friendly handshake at the end of the
night.
I'd made a tactical error of the highest order, and I still cringe when
I think about it. For many reasons.
-- And that's the question I'll leave you with today. Have you ever
known somebody to go completely off the deep end after seeing a movie or
reading a book or whatever? Maybe it was some crackpot self-help
scamulation, or a flick that made someone decide to turn over their life
to surfing or something?
I'm not sure how this one is going to go, but give me a break here; I'm
bubbling over with illness....
--
I'm sick today. I suspected that something wasn't right yesterday
afternoon and evening, and it turns out I was correct. My throat and
eyes(?!) hurt, I've got the snots, and my stomach is gurgling and
possibly fizzing. And the weirdest part of all: every time I sneeze or
blow my nose, a gag reflex kicks in. So it's ahhhchoo! followed
by an instant pre-puke humpback. And I don't like that.