...BUT IF IT'S FREE...


We make some shitty movies in America. I know this horse has been roundly beaten in a public forum, but I just want to get it out there that I'm paying attention, and we make a damned lot of movies that are not as interesting or clever or funny as most things one could experience staring at a dead shrub or standing perfectly stone still in the frozen food section at the grocery store.

I don't have cable- mainly because I don't earn enough money to pay for it, but also because everyone I know who has cable, especially those who pay extra for new movie channels ("new" excluding channels like TCM and such that play "classic" movies) seem to do nothing with their free time but flip through hundreds of channels only to say repeatedly "There's NEVER anything on- I wish I could just find SOMETHING to leave it on!" which seems more like self-inflicted punishment to me than something one would pay a premium for.

On a recent and rare hotel room stay, I found myself doing this exact thing. An abundance of "free" movie channels intrigued me- I hadn't had more than 8 viewing options in a good number of months. This also offered an opportunity to indulge the movie masochist within me.

Some part of me really enjoys terrible movies- obviously simple, old cheese is best. Looking back on a terrible movie from the past, one begins to ruminate on how far Hollywood has come. But this could not be further from the truth. If anything, as movies become yet another disposable product to consume and throw away, more and more studios, directors, actors, and especially writers seem to be sitting back with there legs kicked up, giving the world the collective finger and asking that it sit and spin. If you don't believe me, take a stroll through the used DVD section at your local Blockbuster. You'll be hard pressed to find a movie you remember existing, let alone something you want to buy and watch again and again. But you'll find lots of movies that look like they will suck humungous amounts of shitty, shitty ass.

But like a car wreck, I can't look away, and at times the curiosity is unbearable. I have to see what it's like: For the sake of my ego and my sanity, I have to watch and confirm everything I've thought privately and publicly about a steaming turdfilm.

Thus, on said hotel room excursion, I found myself watching "Mr. Woodcock" starring Billy Bob Thorton. Not for very long, mind you, but long enough to affirm all those bad thoughts I had watching commercials and trailers for it prior to its theatrical release. I'd imagined it was a brainless movie aimed at 6th graders with no hint of the violence or nudity that would make such a movie moderatly tolerable, with "jokes" mostly arranged around the "hilarious" last name of the titular character.

Ha. I said "titular."

The movie starts by asserting the premise that ol' Billy Bob is a ruthless gym teacher. If you think that sounds like a great idea for a movie, please stop reading this, stand up, walk to your kitchen, and repeatedly stab an olive fork into your ear.

We see Billy Bob circling a group of nerdy looking 8th graders holding a basketball. As each kid asks/answers a question, he either tells them to run laps, or chucks the basketball at them and then tells them to give it back to him.

That's about as far as I got. 20 minutes in, I'd yet to see anything that even vaguley resembled what a normal, intelligent person might consider "funny." As I'd expected, there weren't really jokes, so much as a string of mild things that happen, cushioned by wooden delivery of dry, uninteresting dialogue. I really hope ol' BBT was drunk as all fuck. Had *I* been drunk as all fuck, I'm still not sure I could've made it much past 1/2 hr or 45 minutes of the seeping leprosy sore that was Mr. Woodcock.

The next night I managed to stomach exactly 8 full minutes of one of those parody movies with "Movie" in the title (Scary Movie, Super Hero Movie, Not Even Barely Funny Movie, Shitty Movie, et al.) I have no idea which one it was, and it doesn't matter. In 8 minutes there was a Britney Spears "joke" that is already no longer current, a Michael Jackson "joke," and several other examples of dialogue that was the verbal equivalent of fully formed, piping hot poop logs sliding out of the actors mouths and flopping to the floor, which probably would've been a lot more entertaining. After 8 minutes, my seething red veil of dislike for anyone who might consider this "funny" forced me to decide whether it was worst bursting a blood vessel in my brain to continue watching.

But it was free.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, and I'm on a bus here in Chicago. Lo and behold, two young, knock-a-round Cubs fans sit having a frank and pithy discussion:

"Hey dude... have you seen Mr. Woodcock?"
"Ha... no, but that sounds awesome!"
"It is! Billy Bob Thorton plays this angry gym teacher"
"Oh man, that sounds cool!"

Seething red hate-veil do your thing...

OFFICE SUPPLIES OF THE DAMNED


Call me crazy, but I think Office Depot might be the most depressing place in the world.

Sure, there're a lot of sweat shops, gulags, and corpse-filled ditches out there vying for the "most depressing" top spot- an award it can proudly emblazon on the front of a sale-able sweat shirt- but no place else I've been in recent memory can match Office Depot's palpable stew of the forced hopefulness of embarking on a new and exciting career, and the smashed dreams of being fired and thrown off that career track as you slowly dissolve into spousal abuse and severe alchoholism.

I recently ventured into one, ironically to get some color copies made for this cheery poster...

...Now granted, getting copies made anywhere is an incredibly dull task (and there's really no way to change that until someone invents a copy shop that is also a topless whiskey bar) but walking into the deafening, cavernous silence of Office Depot on a rainy Tuesday night, joined only by three other disinterested shoppers and two detached, bored-off-their-tit teenage employees, where you've come only to get your job done for $.35 less per copy, is somehow as sad and shameful as waiting in line to buy porn at Walgreens.

Even with such a small group of lost souls sharing the shelter of Office Depot, there was still someone there shameless enough to argue with a 17 year old girl over a copy job. I didn't bother paying attention to what the guy was saying- the girl said she'd take care of me as soon the other guy was done fighting over a coupon for an additional three cents a copy off or some equal waste of time.

"If you could just hang out, it'll be a couple of minutes."

Hang out.

I really can't imagine a worse place to have to kill an indeterminate amount of time.

I managed to wander through the entire store- paper goods, "garage sale" signs advertising sales that haven't happened yet, fiber board office furniture, a display case featuring pens far too rare and priceless to be out on the floor for the public to experience first hand.

Everything in the place was completely foreign to me. Yes, I know people must get these things somewhere, but (like an auto parts store or some kind of bra shop) I've never needed any of this stuff.

I've had a lot of shitty Joe jobs in my life- bouncing from retail stores to kitchens to record shops, only recently managing to find a job where I even HAVE a desk. The idea that someone would need to go to a specific warehouse store to buy a magazine shelf, desk organizer, or overhead projector is kind of ludicrous to me. Every job where I've had my own specific chair-computer-and-flat-surface to work at, all that stuff has already been there. It never occured to me that an entire cottage industry for this dull shit could warrant not one, not two, but THREE giant nationwide warehouse store chains.

A bland vinyl banner overhead proclaims "CELEBRATING 25 YEARS OF MAKING THINGS EASIER." Really? We've been buying all this stupid office shit for 25 years? And making what things easier? Certainly not things like building hospitals and roads or pinpointing the struggle of human existence - those things are still pretty difficult. And until somebody starts "Science Depot," it's still going to be kinda rough to diagnose a degenerative brain disorder.

While wandering around, dumbfounded at the number of dry erase marker-and-board set ups a person could purchase, wondering if buying some correct combination could make me ultra-efficient ("well I BOUGHT the dry ERASE board...") I accidentally bumped into a table that held the saddest thing I'd ever seen in a retail establishment:

A sale on motivational posters.

Here was a pile of glossy, sharp-focus pictures of bald eagles poised mid flight, and one of a cheetah, deep-in-thought, whose picture was snapped in the split section before the noble creature bolted through the tall grass of the savannah, each emblazoned with slogans that seemed to cancel each other out, like "Leadership: It takes only one" and "Teamwork: It takes more than one."

All were framed; ready to hang and inspire confidence.

It nearly brought a tear to my eye- how bad must the economy be that we have to closeout at rock-bottom prices artwork intended to inspire the United States workingperson and make them think about their place in this big, crazy, patriotic cog that is the American work force?

Fortunately I didn't have to think about it long. The argumentative guy at the copy desk had moved along, and I high tailed it over there to get my business taken care of so I could get back to my life.

I got my copies and headed outside, breathing deep. This must be how political prisoners feel as they take their first steps of freedom, I thought.

Well- political prisoners, and people that work at Office Depot.