PROMETHEUS DOWN

 

Okay.

I know you all have been holding your little breaths wondering what would lure me back into posting--some political brohahaery? A celebrity scandal? A deeply felt personal screed?

Nope.  It was a movie. And by movie, I mean "humungous gigantic cinematic event that nerds around the world have been jacking off to the mere idea of for the last decade and change." In other words, Ridley Scott was finally going to stop pretending that if he ignored Alien enough, the fanboy demands would go away. Yes, my freinds, I'm talking Prometheus.

Shakespeare Makes You Sorry...For A Huge Asshole

I went to see Ralph Feinnes' film of Coriolanus a few weeks ago, and it left a deep impression on me.

So deep, in fact, that I've decide to write a few posts about the movie and the play's themes. Because this could easily devolve into the kind of three hundred page treatise beloved of English majors and no one else, I'm breaking it up into parts--this post is about the movie and future ones will deal more with abstract concepts from the play itself. I'm sure all six of you are waiting with bated breath. Shut up.

Being a theater major should make me ashamed to admit this, but I haven't read Shakespeare's entire cannon. Oh, sure, the greatest hits--Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet--plus the sonnets to show I was intellectual. But except for skimming thorough the plays to find monologues that weren't Ophelia, Juliet or Hermoine, I was less then conversant with Shakespeare's later, more "cerebral" works. 

What-evs, wench.  Sell more oranges or I'll have your hide.

So it was with a blend of interest, self-embarrassment, and "wonder why he picked this one?" that I trotted off to the theater. I was especially curious because the tiny crumbs of information I had on Coriolanus implied that it was kind of Julius Caesar Lite--all of the pontificating in togas, none of the stabbery or dead rising from the graves visions related by loyal, thigh-wounding wives. 

Crazy and Stupid:The Twins

I work at Pizza Company, which I will not further identify so I don't get fired and never get another job ever again, and tonight was one of those nights--starts out nuts and just forges ahead into the truly unexplored Nutbag Territories. Here be dragons.

It started out before I even got there. I stroll in at noon and am promptly informed by my coworker, T, that the lunacy is laying thick on the ground. To wit: he had just taken an order from a customer who didn't want olives on their pizza because they were too Oriental.

Pause.

Okay, WHAT? Not only is that racist, but it doesn't even make any sense! As another coworker put it, that's like not wanting noodles because they're too Mexican. Jesus, seriously. That's taking racism, which is inherently stupid, and just working that dormant stupidity, shaping and honing and filing it into a fine point. Of STUPID.

But ah! That was only the beginning!

About half an hour later or so, I got a call from a woman who wanted a bunch of pizzas for a birthday party. Not so unusual, except she was not calling prior to the party. Not the day before, not the morning of, not twenty minutes before a half dozen wired six year olds appear. This brilliant young mother calls during the party.

And it's not she's rushed or apologetic at all. She is an Entitled Princess Bitch, who can't understand why it's taking more then thirty seconds for someone to enter seven large pies cut sixteen slices each. And then. She's got two coupons, one for a salad, one for breadsticks. I patiently explain that you can only use one coupon per order. She instantly says no problem, she'll just place two separate orders.

Okay, you're not allowed to do this, for this precise reason. Coupons are an extra, not a way for you to score as much free shit as possible in one go. But fuck it, I can tell this one's the type to argue for  fifteen minutes over saving seven dollars for a fucking salad and bread, plus she's keeping up the Patient But Aggravated Sighing about how long this is all taking and the kids, meanwhile, are running around and (hopefully) destroying all her overpriced Danish Modern or whatever the hell Bellevue Bitches stock their living rooms with, so FINE, TWO ORDERS.

But of course the damn computer kept trying to erase the order, so it took forever, and while I'm trying to get it straightened out she's PBASIGHING about trying to give me her Goddamn credit card number, and it takes FOR-FUCKING-EVER but I finally get the two orders straight and call the store to double check that they went through okay and tell them her henpecked and presumably secretly alcoholic spouse can just wait five fuck-sozzled minutes at the counter for the cooks to finish the pies  since it was HIS spectacularly ill-chosen mate who wanted to use TWO GODDAMN COUPONS, goodbye.

Well, that was annoying, but that should finish the Crazy for the day, right?

Oh, no. We have passed the isle of the Sirens, but Scylla and Caribdis lay dead ahead.

I didn't, thanks be to Jesus, get the first call from tonight's Gold medalist of crazy. That was poor newbie B, who I overheard pleading with our managers to talk to the following: a woman who, being disappointed that our previous seasonal special pie was no longer being made, was apparently demanding we make her not one, but two, of said NOT ON THE MENU ANYMORE pies.

Oh no, said my too-smart-to-touch-Madness bosses, who already realize that the simple facts of reality-- this pizza is no longer featured, we no longer have the ingredients, and thus the pie cannot be made--will not even penetrate the outer layer of this woman's version of how her life should be going at this moment. B (brave lad) gets back on the phone, then comes back to report that this woman is crying. Crying. And has not ceased her demands for these COMPLETELY UNAVAILABLE pies.

"Wow", I said as I headed back to my chair. "Sure am glad I didn't catch that call!"

Have you ever wondered if God's really listening to everything you say?

 He is.

Sure enough, fifteen minutes later this woman calls back and guess who is being taught a lesson in humility? Yes, moi.

This woman demanded to talk to a manager, ranted about how we "used to" carry this pizza in March but changed it to February as a plot to keep it from her, I guess, said she's been petitioning for it to be put on the regular menu and apparently was waiting for me to just write it in or something, and when I asked for her number so one of our manager could "call her back" (HA) snapped "get caller ID. It's technology!"

(We actually do have caller ID. I just asked to fuck with her. What? I am but flesh! She's an idiot!)

She signed off by warning that she "didn't have time to wait around for a call" (I'll bet) and she fully expected to recieve TWO Special Pies tomorrow. Gahhhhhh. That call should be gold.  Please, Jesus, let me have paid off my smugness debt already, please?

Seriously, I don't know what tipping point of lunacy was reached tonight. But may it take a long, long time for that point to be reached again. I've put up with the slow and steady erosion of all my youthful dreams and aspirations, but I really need my Disappointing But Let's Face The Real World job to just calm the fuck down for the next few weeks, okay? Okay.

Too Oriental. JESUS.

Odd Socks and Even Ends

So, after that last post, I was going to move on to my plans to read Petrarch and Virgil, but then I realized that makes me sound like a preening windbag. So here's some "been rattling 'round in there for a while" random things and bits instead.




                     DRIVE: Why Didn't it Get More Nominations?



Seriously, why? It got, like, Best Sound Editing. It's not even going to win for that,  I bet. And it should have been nominated for at least Best Screenplay and Best Supporting (for Albert Brooks.)

This movie is the Bomb. It is the Shit. It is Ryan Gosling in a white satin jacket. (Really. It really is that last one. ) It's stuffed with fabulous actors giving the right kind of performances in a genuinely brilliant '80s brainless action film reworked and stripped down into a post-20th century tone poem.

Gosling gives less a performance than a portrait of a man who is living quietly in the wake of what was clearly a psychotic break, who only feels that he exists when he's driving, and having that carefully balanced pyschosis run head on into another human being, or beings; Carey Mulligan's tender and fragile young mother and her little boy, whose absent father is in prison--less for any crime he may have committed and more as the natural end result of spending his bewildered life being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Gosling's character (he's known only as "The Driver" in the credits) somehow becomes a whacked-out Knight Errant for Mulligan's and is dragged, blank-faced, into dealings with  middle aged mobsters who make up for their lowly positions with an excess of grandiosity/bloodthirstiness. Brooks in particular does a great turn as a less-a-kingpin-then-an-old-courtier mobster who marches through acts of astonishing violence with sagging shoulders, weary eyes, and unerring stabbing ability. Ron Perlman (yippee!) is the mobster whose reach exceeds his grasp and discovers that's what hell is for, and Christina Hendricks shows up as a bad guy's gal who missed all her gangster's moll lessons and ended up in cheap boots and cheaper motel room.

This movie is amazing. It takes all the elements of a typical action flick--damaged man, vulnerable woman, cute kid, fast cars, bad guys, guns, money, neon pink credits--and reworks them into a flow of images that move around the main character without touching him, until that woman looks at him with those big, big eyes... there's even a scene at a strip club with boobs all over the place, but believe me, two minutes into that scene and you will forget they exist.

Best Sound Editing, pah! But it frankly should win for that. Check it out:








                         Diet Pepsi: The Drink of the Apocalypse



What? I said this was random.


One thing I've noticed in my illustrious career of taking pizza orders: when some customer or other asks for something odd, bizarre, or just plain weird, this apparently a signal for a huge cluster of future random customers to call up with the exact same weird request.


To wit: Diet Pepsi. We sell Coke products, always have. Nothing against the fine folks at the Pepsi-Cola Corporation, but we sell Coke products. But that hasn't kept at least twelve people, in the last few days, from requesting not only Pepsi, but Diet Pepsi.

Diet Pepsi? What is this, 1975? Who the hell still drinks Diet Pepsi? The Pepsi Generation has to be in their sixties at the very least! Are you calling me from the boardwalk in your Farrah hair and tight white pants, taking a break from rollerskating down the promenade to request this fizzy beverage? Did you just pass the Doublemint twins? Are you about to try on your new mood ring and giant hoop earrings? Because that was the last time Diet Pepsi was relevant in the pop culture landscape, people! The last time anyone cared about it it was setting Michael Jackson's hair on fire! Join the 21st century and go to Starbucks! Leave me alone!










         The Oscars: I'm Never Actually Home to Watch


I don't think I've seen the first hour and a half of the Oscars for the past six years at least. And everyone knows that's the part really worth watching: critiquing hair, dresses, various guys' horrifyingly misguided attempts to be "eye catching" (Guys, stop it. You are men. You wear a tux. A regular, bow tie, well fitted tux. Do not wear a colored shirt. Do not wear creative footwear. Don't do a Robert De Neiro that one time he cut his hair to look like Marilyn Quayle's. When in doubt, pretend to be George Clooney. Nice smile, tux, cute date. See how easy?) Wondering if this is the year that Joan Rivers is finally going to crumble into a pile of dust and silicon. Guessing who's already drunk. Guessing who's meeting who in the ladies' for some cocaine to take the edge off not eating for a week to fit into the designer gowns. It's not like you haven't guessed most of the winners by this point anyway.


And The Artist totally deserves to win, it's amazing. But it would be SO FUCKING COOL for Bridesmaids to win! Best Picture, not just Best Screenplay or whatever Pat the Lady On the Head award they have set aside for Wiig. (Wait, is Bridesmaids nominated for Best Picture? I can't remember. It fucking should be is my point.)

But I'll be at work, as usual, taking orders, hearing muffled cheering in the background and demanding of some random person to tell me who just won Best Whatever. Ah, the glamour of everyday life.


Well, that's it for now--Husband is home and listening to his Queen album and I'm getting distracted. Until next time remember: Drive, Tux, NO DIET PEPSI.