Lost in the Movies

Ben and I watched Lost in La Mancha last night, a documentary about the attempt and failure of Terry Gilliam to bring an adaptation of Don Quixote to the screen. It was worth seeing, in that excrutiatingly uncomfortable After Hours/(Jack Lemmon/Sandy Dennis version) Out of Towners kind of way where you just desperately want them to get where they're going, in this case to beat the odds and make the damn movie, and you need to take a Tums after a while of people coming down with diseases, force majeure, and general lack of direction. It looks like it could have been a really great movie and that Gilliam is still trying, but it doesn't look likely.

So Close

I am mere degrees from Owen Wilson. Does he not read his own press? Probably not.

Finally

I wrote an essay a while back for Todd Dills’ 2ndhand Reader: All Hands On , about one of the guys from the original Average Joe, which I think I’m going to have to revise. Watched the finale of the latest Average Joe and was shocked and pleased to see that the girl actually picked the Joe, Nathan, this time. Nathan’s chances seemed bleak – to begin with, she’d rejected him a few episodes earlier, and he was one of a few of the Joes who’d gotten makeovers who came back for a second chance. I figured he didn’t have much chance if she’d already rejected him, plus she obviously liked making out with the Rocky, aspiring model/actor way better, but Rocky was weak on conversation at best. They showed a lot of his long pauses to illustrate this and I have to admit I had some acid flashbacks (ok, I never did acid, I was just being dramatic) to excruciating dates of years past where the conversation did not flow. Anyhoo, so she picked the Average Joe but I was forced to imagine the discussion between her and the producers, because it really seemed like she was going to pick Rocky. “I’m really attracted to you,” she said breathily, with her “but” not really explaining anything much, leading me to fill in “but none of the other women have picked a Joe yet, and the producers really need a Joe to win this time.” And her speech to Nathan wasn’t much better. “I choose you to stay in Tahiti with me,” she said breathily again, “but I’m not making any promises. I just want to get to know you better and see what happens. The producers have promised me that I can still call Rocky if I change my mind. Just letting you know.”

I’m a romantic, I swear, but the odds of anyone meeting their soul mate on reality TV seem slim. Oh, except for Brigitte Nielsen and the guy with the clock, of course.

Dang!

I have to direct you over to Tod's blog right now because he has discovered my freaky likeness to a certain rock star.

I'm cuter of course, but whatever. I have to concede the resemblance.

This is my own fault

I canceled my longstanding subscription to TV Guide a few months ago because, well, I have a magazine problem and I needed to cut back. It's been a difficult time. I miss shows regularly. I have to rely on my... memory. Which was never good, not even for celebrity trivia, in spite of what it may seem. A year from now, I will say, Lindsay Who?

As a result, TV Guide is reformatting, going from digest size to regular size, and featuring listings only for the east and west coasts (proving once and for all that people in entertainment believe nothing exists inbetween), with more focus on I don't know what really. They are saying it's supposedly because TV Guide is obsolete with all the cable channels that have listings and such. Note to TV Guide: we don't all have cable. But whatever, I lost my chance to complain. I hoped to resubscribe at some point. My father will be inconsolable, I'm sure.

Anyway, I know the real reason. It's because of me.

I Love My Face

There’s a big article in the Science section of today’s Times about the possibility of face transplants at some point in the future for burn victims, severely disfigured people, people with birth defects, etc. My first thought was, Oh, noooo, because of course Hollywood came to mind, and the possibility of people changing faces the same way they add boobs or subtract whatever they don’t like. Reading the article, that seems extremely unlikely for a number of reasons (skin transplants are among the most likely to be rejected, for one), so once I was relieved of that horrible Face/Off imagery, I started to think that if it could be perfected, there would probably be a lot of people who would be really grateful for this sort of thing. The article raises the issue of whether or not the victim would come to resemble the donor at all, which was something I wondered about, but it seems unlikely unless the musculature of the donor were included. It would certainly seem like a LOT of counseling would be required, regardless. But I’m sure you’d need a lot of counseling if you suffered severe burns as well. Needless to say, this led me to immense gratitude for my forty-four year-old face, which continues to function quite well, and to continue to wonder why anyone would mess with a fully-functioning face. I’m as vain as the next guy, but not vain enough yet to get poked and cut unless it is absolutely necessary to my, you know, seeing and eating and breathing.

I Love My Job

Because I get to rent movies like “Say Anything” and “Some Kind of Wonderful” and call it research.

All Kinds of Wrong

I’m all about whatever floats your boat romantically, unless it’s a man over twice your age. That chick from Charmed who used to go out with Marilyn Manson? The one who once wore that dress that wasn’t much of a dress that was made out of beads or something that showed her whole butt and everything else? She’s dating Al Pacino.

Dear Kelly Preston

Um, actually, Mrs. Travolta, there are tests for mental illness, and I’m pretty sure the American Psychiatric Association will back me up on this. Can you pass the word on to Kirstie Alley and Dharma and that lady from JAG?

That 70s Blonde

I once loved That 70s Show. Goofy as it is, that was my era and they have it down. I swear to god I have seen both Donna and Jackie in outfits that could only have come from my closet, and frankly it disturbs me that the costumers had access to these items without my knowledge. But ever since Donna became a blonde, I have not been able to watch. I’m not sure I have any kind of reasonable explanation except for it hits me in the gut as being so wrong as to be unwatchable.