Sunday, April 29, 2007

Time I Can't Get Back

I saw Disturbia yesterday with Laura and John. For the life of me I cannot figure out why this movie is topping the box office because it was really trite and pretty freaking boring. I nearly fell asleep during parts of it. Maybe it just means that I'm dead inside because the group of girls behind us screamed at every little thing that happened in the movie, like, when the bad guy walked into a room. It's clearly billed as a scary movie, you really couldn't figure out that he was going to be sneaking up on a few people? Anyway, thanks to the Shrieky McPussykins clan, I was never able to actually fall asleep. Oh, and as part of the "scary", one of my countrymen took a baseball bat to the head. There were no black people in the movie so evidently Asians are next on the food chain while the white people run around screaming. Surprisingly enough he didn't die, but I'll give you three guesses as to which ethnicity did bite it, and the first two don't count.

So, that was two hours of my life I can't get back. Not nearly as bad as Jeepers Creepers, but very few things are. I was drifting off to sleep last night trying to think of movies and other occupations that were a bigger waste of time than Disturbia. I can't remember if I've already blogged on this type of subject, but if I have, tough tukkus.

Chunks of My Life I Can't Ever Get Back
  • Jeepers Creepers. This movie actually made me mad that I saw it for free on a movie network that I wasn't paying for while I lived in Chicago. You don't always pay for an experience in dollars. Sometimes you end up paying in bitter, bitter regret.
  • The Grudge. By the time the inspector brought the gasoline can at the end, I nearly yelled out "FINALLY. BURN THAT MOTHER DOWN AND END THIS STUPID MOVIE." The only reason I didn't was because I was watching it on an airplane and I would probably have been taken down by US Marshals. I would hope that I would have been anyway.
  • Ringu. It was touted as being sooooo much better than the American version. It wasn't. Having already seen the American version, it was a waste of time to watch the same movie with Japanese actors instead.
  • The time I spent reading the book Hannibal.
  • The time I spent watching the movie Hannibal. I clearly don't learn my lessons after one clubbing over the head. To my credit, I didn't watch the whole thing, but damn that 20-30 minutes sucked.
  • The MCAT. Yes, back in the day I was studying pre-med for about 15 minutes before I changed my mind. My dad talked me into taking the MCAT anyway - "just try it" was his reasoning. As though an eight-hour exam was something you can just taste and decide if you like it, like caviar on toast points. (Which I also don't like by the way) Time actually stopped in the Biological Sciences portion of the exam and I was stuck in that room for about 15 days. When I finally got home I got so unbelievably drunk that I thought I was sober again, and subsequently got into a shoving match with some guy at a bar. Yeah, trainwreck day from beginning to pathetic, liver-in-active-rebellion end,
  • Any time spent watching Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee on the Food Network, which happens to be what was on tv as I write up this post. I think her premise is something like teaching you how to kind of cook/kind of just tart up stuff you bought from the store. So, half-assed cooking. Which is ok really if the stuff turns out edible, but she just made bacon-wrapped hot dogs which she put in the oven, and when she took them out of the oven chirping about how deeeeeeeelicious they looked, the fact is that the bacon was still pale pink and mostly raw-looking. So, half-assed to no-assed cooking whatsoever.
This list could really go on forever, but it would be somewhat ironic for me to sit here writing about how I've wasted time as opposed to going and finding something valuable to do with my time today, especially since today's so freaking beautiful. Toodles all!

6 comments:

Laura said...

Yeah, the more I think of Disturbia, the worse it gets. I mean, I didn't think it was terrible. It's a cheesy sociopath killer movie. I thought the premise was interesting, and it could have been executed better - like, what purpose did the girl serve except gratuitious T&A? I think John's fascination with forensics shows has also killed my love of these movies because I find myself going - come on... ANYONE with a 1960s blue mustang in a small burb like that would have been hauled in for questionning if someone last saw the girl in that kind of car, regardless of whether some snotty kid reported it or not... but eh.

cillic said...

I pretty much despise the current horror genre. The last two movies that creeped me out were not movies that were really meant to do that: Pan's Labyrinth and Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within.

Regarding Cooking with Sandra Lee, my main man Anthony Bourdain recent spent some time ripping FoodTV:

I find myself riveted by its awfulness, like watching a multi-car accident in slow motion. Mesmerized at the ascent of the Ready-Made bobblehead personalities, and the not-so-subtle shunting aside of the Old School chefs, I find myself de-constructing the not-terrible shows, imagining behind the scenes struggles and frustrations, and obsessing unhealthily on the Truly Awful ones. Screaming out loud at Sandra Lee in disbelief as she massacres another dish, then sits grinning, her face stretched into a terrifying rictus of faux cheer for the final triumphant presentation. I mourn for Mario..and Alton...Bobby and yes--even Emeril, nobly holding the fort while the TV empire he helped build crumbles like undercooked Bundt cake into a goo of Cheez Wiz around him.

More in the whole blog post: Bourdain Guest Blog on blog.ruhlman.com

Donna said...

I loves me some Anthony Bourdain. You know who I miss on Food Network is Ming Tsai. He must have been too laidback and non-bobbleheady for Food Network to keep on. Or he just didn't have enough cleavage like the Everyday Italian chick.

Heathen said...

My vote is for Casino- I watched it even after I was told not to by several people, but, you know, I just had to go ahead and not learn from others' mistakes. It is bad enough when a movie sucks, but it is even worse when it is 4 hours long. However, I have a compulsion to finish everything I start. I read all 1200 of Ann Rice's the Mayfair Witches, even though only about 200 pages of a brief subplot was bearable. I wasted a week reading that stupid-ass book.

Check out PBS for Ming Tsai- He's got a show on PBS down here that plays on Saturday Afternoons.

CilliC and I figure thatEveryday Italian girl's boobs must be doing some of the cooking because of how much air time they get. And if she overpronounces another word of Italian origin I'm going to reach into the TV screen and smack her.

Anonymous said...

The Everyday Italian girl's cooking style is.....Sorry, what was I writing about? Oh, right. Her style. As I was ......damn those breasts! *laugh*

Laura said...

OOOh, Casino. Yeah that was bad. John rented that one night when I was out. I came back and sat down in the middle of it - no questions asked, and felt like I hadn't missed a thing. Sure sign of a bad movie.