Lessons from the Movies
#1 Most Likely to Be Struck By Lightning
K possesses the disturbing ability to find the porno-side to any story. We were watching Mel Gibson’s, The Passion of Christ, and K wondered out loud if Jesus was wearing any underwear beneath his robe when he ascended in front of all those people to heaven and if he wasn’t, does anyone know how big he was?
“I don’t think the Bible meant for ‘ascension’ to be interpreted literally, K.”
K already knew that. He was just fond of giving religion and religious figures the comic treatment. A staunch atheist, whose one dark spot in his spiritual career was the time when he was fooled into attending mass at church once, thinking that it was going to be a scientific discussion on UFOs. Instead, he was told that there are no extra-terrestrial life forms, only demons and if he repented now and accepted Jesus as his savior, he will be saved from the abyss of ignorance and darkness. K proceeded to do a comic impression of a man he saw at the service - body swaying manically from side to side, hands waving up in the air, in a manifestation of hysterical spirituality, like Sister Act on Speed. “He told me he was feeling Jesus, I was thinking, feeling up Jesus was more like it,” K wryly explained.
#2 Vampires Don’t Listen To Country
S.T and I were sitting in the living room, individually wrapped in crumpled sweatpants lightly flaked with crumbled Tim Tams, like a chocolate truffle meets flower bouquet gone horribly wrong. Another night in and we were watching some generic vampire movie called Octane starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Mischa Barton. Flailing bank account balances had put S.T and I off yet another late night out on town. Plus, a recent fainting spell had enlightened me to see the virtues of restful activities. And there I was, having my brain put to rest by a movie that required more tolerance than any significant amount of intelligence. The movie however, did allow for my brain and S.T’s to conclude and confirm some pretty profound truths. Here are some of the lessons we learned from the movie, Octane:
1. One way to tell if a movie is going to be good or crap is to find out if it has JRM dying in it. Octane, Vanity Fair, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead have all been critically denounced as crap and Jonathan Rhys Meyers dies in all of it. Velvet Goldmine received mixed reviews because it had Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ character faking his death. Match Point received great reviews and guess what, JRM didn’t die in it but earned brownie points by firing a shotgun into Scarlett Johansson.
2. No movie starring Mischa Barton can ever be scary. No movie starring Mischa Barton, in a flimsy white dress being unnecessarily doused with water in an unnecessarily stylish car wash is meant to be scary.
3. Mothers should not argue with their daughters lest they be kidnapped by a bunch of hot vampires and end up making out with Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Hence, daughters should argue with their mothers so they can be kidnapped by a bunch of hot vampires and end up making out with Jonathan Rhys Meyers. However, this might only work if you’re Mischa Barton.
4. Things that work for Mischa Barton might not necessarily work for you.
5. Since the 1980s, vampires have been the number one consumer of leather pants and hard-techno music around the world.
6. Vampires will often take you clubbing before they eat you.
7. The effects of vampirism can easily be mistaken for Ecstasy use – heightened appreciation of techno, sensitivity to daylight, manic energy and the desire to touch others, tendency to sink one’s teeth into anything that comes into contact with one’s mouth. So the next time you want to accuse your kids of doing drugs make sure that they’re not merely being vampires.
8. A vampire movie soundtrack with country music is like a vampire cookbook featuring garlic.
#3 The Perfect Man is Still Less than a Woman
I must have had my anti-chick flick-shield turned off when I got suckered into watching Imagine Me & You. Plus, it was a rainy day and they bribed me with cheesy cornmeal pancakes and hot chocolate. (‘They’: guilty parties who rented the movie in the first place – S.D, C.G and V, although I think V might have just been there to cook the pancakes.)
The story started off like a million other stories before. Girl meets boy. Girl marries boy. Boy turns out to be the perfect man.
“And they all live happily ever after….” S.T concluded rather prematurely.
Wrong. Girl meets boy. Girl marries boy. Boy turns out to be the perfect man. Girl meets hot chick. Girl leaves perfect man for hot chick.
