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Turkish folk songs & instrumental music |
So I have these daytime hallucinations sometimes and I tease myself by pretending I just caught a fleeting glimpse of an uncollapsed probability wave. I repond to myself by proclaiming, aloud, that I saw nothing at all, and then immediately deciding this is an unhealthy attitude; how will I ever see these things if I don't believe I do, any negative attitude could stifle progress. And then I declare that, in the future, I will not deny these things I see which are probably just little microscopic crawlies on my eyelids catching the light.
Except that one time I saw a dog in projection booth. That was interesting.
At least I'm not standing around the French countryside in my dainty skinny girl battered wife outfits saying, "If I get to that road before there is oxygen touching that road, then my emo boyfriend will be dead! OH NO!" No, no; probability waves are much nerdier.
This reminds me of a bit that Patton Oswalt does about how women like Sex In The City, but they always qualify it by saying how stupid it is, they know, they know it's all bullshit, but in actuality they secretly wish their lives were like that, that they could be these rapidly aging women in the city fucking young studly acrobats. And Patton goes on saying that he doesn't walk out of the movies going, "WOW, I WISH ZOMBIES WERE REAL" deep down inside. No, he says, "It would be NICE if zombies were real" and then tangents from there. But he doesn't WISH that they were real, because he's a reasonable guy, and expending the energy requird to cover that extra ground in the WISH arena just isn't worth the heartbreak when suddenly, "Oh, no, the zombies aren't real. Damn. Oh, no, we're actually just rapidly aging women in the city whose ovaries are about two steps from the ends of their lives and despite all of our expensive attempts to lure in temporary bedroom partners who feel no emotional attachment to us whatsoever, the best we've been able to do is that Stuttering John guy from the Howard Stern show. Damn, what a bucket of suck this is."
Every time I see Garden State or Closer on anyone's "Best Films of 2004" list, it just occurs to me that these people are probably parallel to the sad Sex In The City devotees. The girls usually just go butt-fucking nuts when thrust before a film that swings a heavy "emotional" bat, and the guys all really want to just suddenly have this cute, eccentric, intelligent, but also vaguely hollow and two-dimensional instant girlfriend character to drop into their laps. And the clincher is that she even listens to SHINS, as the film very overtly points out. "What are you listening to?" "OH MY GOD THE SHINS THEY'RE LIKE THE BEST BAND EVER THE SHINS THE SHINS THE SHINS BUY THEIR ALBUMS THEY RULE HAVE YOU HEARD THEM THE SHINS I LOVE THE SHINS IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE SHINS YOU CAN'T GET INTO MY PANTS!" She hands over the headphones and he listens and of course the music just fits like a spring rain for the emotional landscape that has been established for that particular moment, and the audience goes, "whoah," and then throngs of male saps actually go out and buy and like The Shins. (We're just going to ignore that I, too, enjoy The Shins, but, OMG, I was totally into them before the movie (Pfft, yeah right).) I always wondered what the old people who saw the film thought about at that scene. Did they think this was beautiful music like all the indie rock teenagers and trendy girls pretending to be indie rock teenagers did, or did they think it was cheap and worthless like everything else that "kids" listen to, or what? What went through their minds?
And girls just like Closer because they have an addiction to retarded melodrama and they're all secretly emotional masochists who want to be thrust into a situation where they're justified in feeling, like, totally damaged. I know, okay, because I've researched this extensively.
House of Flying Daggers was like that too. Just, "oh pretty" and boys in the audience gasping and weeping, "Wow, I wish..." Which is why Hero was a better movie, even if the message comes across about as subtle as goatse.cx.
Anyway, here are some films I really liked in 2004:
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...And Spring The Incredibles Shaun of the Dead Spartan Fog of War Coffee and Cigarettes Maria Full Of Grace Intimate Strangers The Door in the Floor Touching the Void Collateral Sideways Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle The Aviator
And some really, really terrible films I suffered through for the good of mankind: Alien vs. Predator Connie & Carla A Very Long Engagement
And two major disappointments: Ray I, Robot
In the Iraq elections I voted for the brown guy. Who did you vote for? I gave strong consideration to the neapolitan guy, and the orange guy definitely had some high pros, but it was the brown guy that really delivered.
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