There’s a new Beetlejuice movie coming out this year, and it looks like a typical, hollow, opportunistic, cash grab reboot piece of shit.
It looks like the exact same story as the first Beetlejuice film, the only difference being now Winona Ryder is the adult while Gen Z hot goth queen Jenna Ortega is the angsty youth. SNORE.
And of course, it brings back all the big names from the old cast (minus the one actor who was busted for child porn) — Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara — so all the old turds who grew up loving the original film can lean hard on the nostalgia, but adding one of the biggest current young stars who also happens to be super cute is a shrewd move because Ortega is this film’s ticket to both the younger market and the horny dude market. Very business-savvy casting.
Having Tim Burton direct Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is smart too of course. He made the first one so there’s more nostalgia there, plus even though he hasn’t made anything good (in my opinion) since 1996, he has made lots of big/successful flicks so his name will surely get the Hollywood sycophants all excited.
I’m so fucking sick of this kind of soulless, shameless, empty nostalgia reboot horseshit. I just know that each of the returning cast is going to be given their big closeup shot or fun zany “remember THIS guy??” reintroduction scene. That stuff drives me up the fucking wall. Stranger Things does it in the first episode of each season and I’m sure Jenn is quite sick of me moaning, rolling my eyes, pointing out the tired pageantry, flopping about on the floor screaming and kicking my feet and pounding my fists. But I can’t help it, my loathing is that strong.
But guess what. I admit I might see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. After all this complaining, I really hope I don’t, but I can see myself wanting a fun Halloween-y movie this fall. And that, folks, is probably the most depressing aspect of this entire thing. Now to slit my wrists.
Several weeks back, Kate recommended the Dahmer series on Netflix. I was worried it was going to be overly dramatized, really full of over-emoting and shit, but we started it and I actually like most of it so far. We’re six episodes in now, I think.
Then today I was texting with my pal Steph about it and she mentioned the controversy around the fact that the creators of the series never spoke to any of Dahmer’s surviving victims, or the families of the victims, and they also never volunteered any kind of payment to those people. I hda been blissfully unaware of this so I looked it up and found myself quickly annoyed by numerous aspects of the situation.
Wtf is wrong with the creators of the show? Why wouldn’t they reach out to the people directly involved with the story they are telling? Probably because they’re inhuman Hollywood scum who’d rather ask forgiveness after making a lot of money on a show instead of asking people for permission and risk being told “no,” or have lots of restrictions placed on the shit they want to make. So the show’s creators suck, right out of the gate.
On the other hand, I saw the sister of one of Dahmer’s victims suggested the show should have given some money to the children of the victims, and I think this is kind of fucked too. I agree that it makes some sense and I think that’s the instinctive reaction most of us would have but when I really think about it, it’s so fucking offensive that anyone would want to profit off the murder of their family, period. It would be like, “I traded my relative’s life for this cash,” you know? I doubt many people would see it this way but I can’t stop thinking about it.
On top of that, now there is a lot of criticism being leveled at the true crime genre as a whole, with opinion articles suggesting that the genre needs to change its ways if it’s going to survive. But wtf is different now from 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago? Dateline and Hard Copy were doing this shit way back then, why the outrage now? Did millenials need to compulsively consume true crime for a decade before it occurred to them that the genre is incredibly exploitative? I mean, every show since the dawn of time has been like “we’re doing this for the survivors, we’re doing this to educate people so we can avoid similar tragedies,” but that’s all obviously horseshit that anyone who gave it an ounce of thought should have seen through. The only reason anyone does anything, ESPECIALLY in Hollywood, is money, recognition, accolades, etc. If suddenly you took that stuff out of the equation, if all true crime shows and podcasts suddenly had to be done anonymously and were not allowed to earn any income from them, do you think they would continue doing their work as charity for the survivors, for the general public? Not on your life. It’s easy to talk big about your philanthropic endeavors when you’re making bank on them. So don’t give me any of that do-gooder shit. We live in a gratuitously capitalist society that is trying harder and harder to whitewash that fact, but it will always be the driving factor in why we do anything. I think believing anything else is naively idealistic. So why now, why are people only decrying true crime en masse after decades of happily suckling at true crime’s tit? And is there some happy medium, where true crime can be both made more ethically, and consumed more ethically? Sure, but I doubt that will happen. It’s a business, and people making money off it aren’t going to willingly take less for it. And the vast majority of consumers don’t give a fuck about this stuff, they just wanna binge watch trash on Netflix, so nothing will change in that regard.
I’m fully down with talking to the families of victims before going ahead with making shows about the shit, but at the same time I can see the argument for not bothering. I mean, history is history, and that’s free to anyone and everyone: like, if you want to do a documentary or something about the Franco-German war, should you need to consult the offspring of those who died in it? If so, how many generations? All of them? What do you do if some say yay while others say nay? I know that’s a silly example and most people would probably agree it’s not necessary for something like that, but what’s the difference with Dahmer? Is it because it’s newer and fresher? If so, who decides how much time needs to pass before you’re allowed to make content about shit without asking for permission from the affected families? This is murky territory in my opinion so I feel like it’s a case by case thing but I really don’t know. I think it’s worth consideration though.
One of the criticisms I’m seeing about Dahmer is how it’s portraying Dahmer himself, and his victims. Some people feel like the show makes Dahmer too attractive, or humanizes him too much, or doesn’t give enough of the victims perspectives. This is all obviously up to personal taste, and I think it’s important to hear what other people have to say on topics like these, but to also think critically about those criticisms and if after some thought you think those criticisms are wack, know that it’s ok to disagree with those criticisms. I say this because I definitely do disagree with them — while it’s done pretty poorly in the show, I do like that it is illustrating the ambivalence of the police towards Dahmer and his crimes. It’s like the OJ series I watched a few years ago that tied the politics and racial tensions of the time into the story of OJ — I loved that because in that context, you have a better understanding of why people were doing what they did at the time. As far as Dahmer’s looks, I don’t know how anyone could be like “wow what a hottie” — the actor actually looks just as weird and nerdy as Dahmer — but I agree there are a lot of gratuitous shots of his insanely lean, muscular build. So I guess I can agree with that criticism, especially when you consider that women make up the vast majority of the true crime audience. I certainly don’t think it humanizes him though. Watch real interviews with him and you’ll see that the actor in the show really nailed the way Dahmer speaks, and how he speaks about his actions to the police — it’s an accurate portrayal in that regard so I don’t see how anyone could have a problem with that.
So what’s my conclusion? Should true crime content creators start doing it for free and donate all proceeds to the families of the victims they are covering? What about just a portion of it? Should true crime shit center more on the victims than on the killers, or would that kill (tee hee) what makes the genre so appealing in the first place? Should true crime shows only use ugly and out of shape actors? I don’t know. I’m currently paralyzed by a lot of these questions. I just wanted to write this all down as a starting point to figuring out how I feel about this shit. It’s a complex topic that leads a lot of questions about things far bigger than true crime entertainment, and will surely lead me back to loathing humanity as a whole, just like everything always does.
I’m watching Millie Bobby Brown’s interview on Hot ones…
…and I’m sickened at what a little monster she clearly is. I’ve bitched plenty about stars, and child stars in particular, and how how stardom warps them. I think MBB is, sadly, a perfect example of this. She is only 18 but she has learned so many gross Hollywood-isms, ways of acting cute-sy and sincere and affable that are, at least to me, completely transparent. She is faking all these things, she is so ‘on’ throughout this Hot Ones interview that I couldn’t even make it through it.
To make it worse, just look at how many views the video has. It’s got almost 18 million views after being up for 6 weeks. This video is a big hit. Now look at the comments. Everyone loves her, thinks MBB is charming and funny and cute and the greatest. So not only is it horrific what stardom has done to MBB, it’s horrific that most of us can’t recognize how fucked up and narcissistic she is.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m expecting too much. Maybe some guests treat this show as regular media that they have to be ‘on’ for. Just because I would want to approach interviews from an honest and genuine place doesn’t mean everyone else would. And I guess most interviewers are weird vampires anyway, just as fucked up as most stars, so stars need to put up a front to sort of guard themselves against those interviewers — I’m sure that if everyone suddenly wanted me on their shows, I’d either be too open and honest and end up in some hot water, or I’d hate the phony interviewers and walk out on them. I guess stars need defenses so they don’t end up in those situations. Maybe mature guests can see that Sean from Hot Ones is not a vampire, but MBB is too young and immature and maybe still enjoys being ‘on’ and lapping up the spotlight.
Ok, so I still think MBB comes off as a typically twisted child star and that’s really sad and gross, but I also can imagine why stars would come at interviews from a different place than I would. That’s giving them a lot of credit, it assumes they are extremely self-aware and I doubt most of them are but there must be at least a few. And I stand by my take on how the comments on this video illustrate our unhealthy relationship with stardom, the kind of fucked up star behaviour that we see as cute, charming, endearing, etc.
*Spoiler alert*: this post is regarding an old flick called Mysterious Skin. I don’t want to ruin it for anyone (Ben) who hasn’t seen it yet so stop here if you’re thinking about seeing it (it’s good).
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I watched Mysterious Skin last week. There were a few small details that bugged me but overall I really liked it. It deals with child abuse and the ways that children process it, how it affects them later in life, that kind of thing. I think the film did a good job of dealing with heavy subject matter in a way that was credible and believable.
After watching it, I read a bit about the film and learned that none of the child actors knew what the film was about because their scenes were filmed without context or whatever. I can’t think of a better way to make a heavy film with kids in it but I still don’t find this approach to be totally satisfactory. I mean, ok, you’ve shielded the kid from something potentially scarring during the creation process but if I were a child actor and just took part in a flick, I’d want to watch it right away. What would the parents of those child actors say, “sorry Jimmy, that’s actually a really fucked up flick you just took part in so I’m not gonna let you see the result of your work for another decade or so”? That doesn’t seem feasible to me. I’m not saying “let the kids watch Mysterious Skin,” I’m just saying that NOT letting them watch the film they just made would probably feel pretty strange to the kids, and they would probably just sneak off to see it on their own then anyway.
But there’s another aspect of this that furrows my brow. Of course I applaud the makers of the film for addressing a topic that needs to be discussed candidly, but at the same time I wonder if making any film, regardless of its gravity or value, is worth the potential damage it causes to the kids involved in the film — what if the kids somehow watch the film and are like “oh fuck, I didn’t realize THAT’S what would be implied I was doing, how could my parents sign me up for this shit, and ew that movie really fucked me up, etc”? Is that the price society is ok with paying for films about this stuff? I realize that you can’t protect kids from the real world forever, and I agree it’s best to teach them about shit early on, so maybe this falls into that category but it’s still a bit of a grey area to me. Or what if they child actors actually do wait until they are adults to see the films but are still fucked up by it then? There’s no guarantee that they will ever reach a point in their lives when they are ok with having been mislead into making a film that is difficult for most to watch.
Also worthy of note: parents of child actors are big red flags to me. Who signs their kid up for that world full of phony balonies, sycophants, and predators? Then again, I guess I feel like all humans across the board are generally scum, so are Hollywood types any worse than anyone else? Hmmm. Ok well Hollywood is probably on par with global businesses, heavy industries, government, and the dregs of society in terms high concentration of people lacking strong ethics, so yeah getting your kid involved with little league baseball is probably a safer bet than child acting. Ok I can stand behind the “parents of child actors are red flags” comment. Even if my kid really really wanted to get into acting, I would have serious reservations about it.
Conclusions:
I don’t know where I stand on kids wanting to be actors.
I am definitely leary of parents of child actors.
I love good films and think the makers of Mysterious Skin did a good job of protecting the child actors in the film, but I still think kids in disturbing flicks a tricky thing to navigate. This is one of those grey areas where I feel trapped in the middle of multiple viewpoints.
Jeez, think about the kid in Serbian Film. Imagine watching that at ANY point in your life and realizing what your parents signed up for. I wonder how that kid is doing now.
Jenn and I watched the documentary Kid90 a few days ago. It wasn’t great. It was certainly an interesting look into the lives of young stars in the 90’s, just as awful and damaging as I imagined growing up in the Hollywood mire would be. I liked that aspect, and the (short) parts where former mega stars like Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Brian Austin Green talked about how grim it was to go from being a teen idol heartthrob to a wash-up before even age 20.
That’s not what I want to talk about though. What I want to talk about is how completely fucked I think the maker of the documentary, Solell Moon Frye, is. There were just too many massive red flags about her to ignore.
Yeah, she was obviously decades ahead of the self-obsessed “document everything in my life and post it publicly” trend but just being ahead of an unhealthy trend doesn’t make it any less unhealthy.
Any time people cry on camera, I don’t trust them. It always feels so performative. I feel it’s virtually impossible for any sane person to properly process that level of grief while in front of a camera, being conscious of how you look while you’re crying, what angle the camera is getting, etc. Crocodile tears.
98% of the documentary revolved around boys, both then and now. Besides herself, there was very little airtime given to women. Reeked of ‘seeking affirmation from the opposite sex,’ both as a teen and now as a middle-aged woman.
Frye is still weirdly flirty with all her old crushes. Sitting on Brian Austin Green’s bed cross-legged, crying, asking him if what they had was “real”…such weird teenage behaviour from a middle-aged woman. He seemed so fucking uncomfortable in that scene, like he had been happy to talk about their experiences up until that point but once she started crying and saying asinine things, he thought to himself jeez I’d forgotten how weird this chick is — “uh, there, there, it’s all good, Solell.” Same thing with reconnecting with the dude from House of Pain, when she hops up on the planter box so they’re the same height and facing each other and it feels like they might kiss, and he’s obviously a little uncomfortable with how intense and flirty she’s being.
If not for the other things listed here, the clip of Frye giving birth would have been fine. But considering her obsession with being in front of the camera at even the most intimate and personal times, this was the ‘jumping the shark’ moment for me. It was like, “look how much of myself I’m baring to you here — teen plastic surgery, teen suicide, drug use, losing my virginity as a teen to a 29-yr old Charlie Sheen, and now for the cherry on top, here’s me birthing a child.” Just so absurdly performative, attention-seeking.
The crazy thing is, I know all of these behaviours well because I dated a woman very similar to Frye. Right from our first date, she was oversharing, crying in front of me, making me sit on her couch while she sang karaoke-style for me, showing me home movies of herself as a teenager doing embarrassing things, asking me to give her massages in front of her co-workers just so they could see what a great guy I was and what a great relationship we had (despite never giving her a massage any other time and absolutely hating doing it, especially in public), obsessing over me for the next 10 years despite having only dated for three months, etc. I only noticed faint similarities between my ex-gf and Frye until the childbirth scene, and then I was like “whoah, this is 100% [my ex],” and that’s when I realized that Frye is definitely nuts.
My ex wasn’t a child star so it just goes to show you that anyone can be nuts, but I’m still quite sure that being a child star can ruin even the sanest person.
Anyway, I’m just surprised more people aren’t talking about this aspect of Kid90 because for me, it’s the single biggest takeaway: Solell Moon Frye is a very strange cat.
Jenn’s been watching a lot of Modern Family lately. Take a wild guess how I feel about that show.
I think the things that bothers me most about sitcoms are the feel-good formula 99% of them follow, and the way the characters’ entire world consists of maybe half a dozen individuals who all share the same space.
I think Seinfeld is the only show I’m aware of that didn’t do the feel-good formula — even the crude shows like Family Guy do it, virtually without fail. What I’m talking about is that each episode is comprised of a fight or misunderstanding between a few of the characters, some zany mayhem ensues, and in the last two minutes everyone apologizes, a lame joke or two is made and hoo-ray, we’re all left feeling rosy.
Except for those of us that despise feeling rosy.
As far as the tiny worlds go, I think virtually any sitcom (besides Seinfeld, of course) is a perfect example — Modern Family, Three’s Company, Family Ties, The Office, whatever. You have a small group of people who either live or work together, and they don’t have lives outside of that group of people or location. Everyone is basically all, “I live in a home/work in an office with these crazy kooks, and that’s it!” I hate that. It’s so fucking unrealistic that I can’t suspend my disbelief because all I can think of is, don’t these people ever go home/go to work/go to school/hang out with friends/DO ANYTHING AT ALL THAT DOESN’T INCLUDE THE REST OF THEIR FAMILY/CO-WORKERS? I can’t get past it.
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Today while Jenn was watching Modern Family, there was a reference to Tawny Kitaen. She was a model in the 80’s who appeared in Whitesnake’s terrible rock music video, Here I Go Again. She was a real ‘it’ girl for a year or whatever back then. I wondered what she was up to these days so I looked her up and holy hell, she is a monster now. She has had so much plastic surgery that she, well, looks like every other out-of-touch Hollywood freak. I suppose she isn’t a unique story but it just reminded me of how
a) stars lose touch with reality, b) people who have made their living on being a beautiful young person have a very difficult time with aging, c) women are the primary victims of this ‘cult of youth and beauty’ culture and it’s horribly sad that we do this to them, d) Jenn has talked about how we really should pity the beautiful ‘it’ girls, like all the current Instagram influencer babes, because they’re encouraged to go this route, to sell themselves short and focus 100% on their beauty, regardless of its ephemeral nature. They are not aware that they will likely end up as fucked up as Tawny Kitaen and every other woman who was taught they didn’t need anything else — these girls and women are ignorant of and ill-prepared for the harsh reality that looms in their near future, so as annoying and as entitled as they may seem now, you have to look a few years down the road and feel bad for them.
Think about how mentally and emotionally damaged someone has to be to do this to themselves. That’s the grossest part to me.
I wanted to write this almost a month ago, right after I’d finished watching the I’ll Be Gone in the Dark series. But summer has been fun and busy so the idea to write this sat until just now, when I saw a news article about the Golden State Killer, and now it’s on my mind so here we go. I hope I haven’t forgotten some of the shit I wanted to say. I’m also watching some crappy Bellator fights right now though so I’m a little distracted. Man, I want to like Bellator more but it really is a poor man’s UFC. These fighters are either obviously on steroids or pudgy and out of shape, and they just wing sloppy, wild punches. Very disappointing.
Anyway, right from the start of the IBGitD series, I didn’t like Patton Oswalt. His gushing and fawning over his late wife, Michelle McNamara, was so over the top that it felt disingenuous. Throughout the show, the supposed texts Oswalt and McNamara sent back and forth were shown on the screen, but I don’t buy that the messages shown were accurate. I don’t believe that anyone is as perfectly understanding as Oswalt seemed to be, that anyone can respond to a consistently annoying, flaky, needy, obsessive person with nothing but sweetness and gentle encouragement. Maybe I’m just showing how impatient and unkind I am but the way IBGitD showed it, Oswalt was flawless — the perfect parter, and I don’t buy it.
Oswalt also seemed way too chipper in his numerous interviews throughout the show when talking about McNamara. The words he was using implied that she was dead (this was before that detail was revealed) but his tone made me think that she couldn’t be. The only time he appeared upset was in a scene that seemed carefully orchestrated — he was unshaven, sitting in his kitchen in pajamas, and it was raining hard outside the windows. IIRC, at one point Oswalt had to stop the interview in one of those “I can’t do this, shut the camera off” things people on reality shows always do. It was way too obviously manufactured and typical to be authentic, especially when considered in contrast to his usual happy, smiling, laughing scenes talking about McNamara. So I don’t buy his mourning, either.
I also thought it was weird that he was autographing McNamara’s book, which was published posthumously. That seems absurd, and self-important to me. I mean, if she was still alive and he signed it, I feel like people would say, “why would you sign the book when you didn’t have anything to do with it? You’re taking credit for something you didn’t do.” I think that still applies when the author is dead. I know that if I were in Oswalt’s position, I would feel like a real snake, riding the coattails of my dead wife. I would feel like I was debasing her greatest work. Very greasy, in my opinion.
I was surprised that Patton wasn’t keeping a closer eye on McNamara toward the end of her life, considering her prescription drug abuse. It sounded like he was well aware of her drug problem so I don’t understand why he didn’t do more besides send her “you’ve got this, babe” texts while she stayed in a hotel room, alone, popping a cocktail of pills. The way he talked about it in the show, it sounded like he was blindsided and shocked by her death, like he never saw it coming, and I think that’s nuts. I can’t imagine any good partner — especially the perfect partner — missing the months and months of warning signs, and doing nothing about it. If I were Oswalt, I would probably blame myself for McNamara’s death but it didn’t sound like he feels this way.
These things all got me wondering if Oswalt was behind the IBGitD series, if he was an executive producer who could exert careful control on how he was portrayed. Wasn’t I shocked to see that my guess was correct. I wonder how much he personally made off the series, further milking his wife’s achievement and death, and if he feels any guilt or shame about that.
On top of my suspicions about Oswalt, I thought IBGitD wasn’t even very good. I really liked the crime aspect but everything about McNamara and her family was boring fluff that wasted about half of each episode. Plus all the dramatic readings of stuff McNamara had written were terrible. Talk about overacting, sheesh. I guess Oswalt was trying to cut costs wherever he could to increase his take home, which lead to them hiring some real B-rate voice actors. Oh, and there was a sequence where they reenacted McNamara and one of her investigator friends picking up boxes of evidence from a police department, and the filmmakers tried to make the sequence feel like something out of a heist movie, making it ‘cool’ and ‘badass.’ Good grief, was that stupid. Shows like Family Guy and Rick & Morty (and countless others, I’m sure) have already made fun of the lame heist schtick for years so I think it was pretty lame and out-of-touch of IBGitD to go with it.
In conclusion: I liked half of IBGitD, hated the other half, and think Patton Oswalt is an extremely questionable character (not surprising, what Hollywood star isn’t). 5/10. Here’s some Rick & Morty.
Addendum: I just read that Oswalt became engaged to another woman just over a year after McNamara’s death. Wow, yet another massive red flag. He didn’t waste any time with that silly grief stuff. That’s now seven red flags I see about this guy — too much. I don’t like him.
Every now and then, Jenn picks a movie for us to watch and I’m not allowed to complain about it. It’s a rare treat for her. Last night she picked La La Land. I had never heard of it before but it sounded perfectly stupid. I kept my big yap shut and watched it dutifully, despite finding it insipid, typical, vanilla, safe, limp, uninspired, uninteresting. There was the same old romantic story that’s been used for ONE HUNDRED FUCKING YEARS NOW — that’s not even a joke or an exaggeration: young unlikely couple meet and fall in love, everything is great, they have a stupid fight/misunderstanding, they work out it. Yeah ok all you Hollywood sycophants gnashing your teeth at me, the ending had a twist but it was a lame one that still delivered a happy ending after all, so don’t give me any “La La Land was groundbreaking” bullshit.
I will say that I was really impressed by Gosling’s piano-playing (I figured he had played since childhood but turns out he learned if just for this role), and Emma Stone was great at everything she did — she’s talented, for sure. The rest of the film sucked though. Even Jenn was underwhelmed by it, and she likes musicals and ‘light cinema.’
Throughout the film, I kept thinking, “this seems like a real Hollywood darling flick” — it had that perfect balance of being just vanilla-artsy enough to satisfy the pretentious wannabe artist/award ceremony crowd, and all the boring standard ingredients to satisfy bonehead mainstream audiences. I looked it up today and what a surprise, it received all sorts of nominations and awards back in 2016. I’ve really developed a knack for sensing this shit. I’m on to their formula, big time.
There’s not much point in me raging on about this topic since I’ve raged about it many times already. But rest assured, even if I scale back my beating of dead horses, the intensity of my disgust never wanes: La La Land, and the forces that both birthed it and then revered it, are fecal in nature.
jenn is watching a tv series right now that takes place in new york, and the characters on the show talk about NY in such a familiar everyone knows and loves NY-way that really annoys me. today, they were joking about how people who live in NY hate taking the train to philadelphia or “the suburbs” or whatever. i don’t know how close i am to having that right, and i don’t care. i don’t live in NY or anywhere close to it and i’ve never been, so why would i have any idea how manhattan, staten island, philadelphia, or any of the other neighbourhoods there compare with each other? if i had a tv show and made a joke about how shawnigan lake compares to mill bay, no one in NY would get it, so i wouldn’t make that joke. it would have a limited target audience. so why do hollywood writers act like the world revolves around NYC?
i bet it’s because a lot of them live there, and they want to impress their lame buddies with lame regional jokes. like, “you know how people are in manhattan, right?? am i right??” [cue uproarious laughter.] pathetic.
(note: i just learned that colloquial does not mean ‘particular to a certain area.’ i love/hate learning these things. i’m glad to be corrected, but i’m embarrassed to have used a word or phrase wrong for all these years.)
i also hate how so many movies and tv shows portray NYC as a wondrous place where dreams and romance and ANYTHING AT ALL is possible. how many shows i have seen where the star meets some fantastic, beautiful person on a dark NYC street and they hop in a cab together and venture off into the night to see what wondrous pearls their oyster of a city shall offer up to them on that dreamy evening? answer: too many. i also hate the overused images of snow in NY. and shopping in NY. and art shows in NY. and the park in NY. and coffee shops in NY. NY, NY, NY. hollywood would have you believe that everything is so much better there.
fuck that. i’m sure NY is just fine as far as cities go but i doubt very much that i would find it magical, or even very different from any other metropolitan city, and i bet most people who live there feel the same way. real life is not a fucking fairy tale.
swarms of people, traffic congestion, endless concrete…sounds like paradise.
jenn and i finished watching the documentary series, OJ: made in america, last night. it was really good. i can’t stop thinking about a lot of different aspects of OJ and his story so i want to write them down here.
i think the biggest underlying issue and cause of most of OJ’s problems is that he has been completely warped by his celebrity status, similar to other mega stars like michael jackson and britney spears. when you’re a massive star and everyone loves you and kisses your ass for most of your life, it eventually gives you a skewed perception of what the real world is like, what is acceptable, what is normal, and that typically leads to big problems.
that aside, OJ sure is one corny, phony dude. at every stage of his life, he comes across as a total weirdo and sociopath whenever he speaks. i can’t believe anyone ever trusted him.
i am incredulous that OJ was found not guilty in criminal court of killing nicole simpson and ron goldman. i also think it was despicable that despite being found guilty in civil court, OJ found ways to avoid paying the $33 million he was ordered to by the court. however, i find it no less appalling that OJ was sentenced to 33 years in prison for the armed robbery and ‘kidnapping’ (which is a real stretch to call it) that occurred in vegas in 2007 that no one else would be given such a stiff sentence for. the judge basically said, “i don’t think you were punished enough back then so i’m going overboard on punishing you now,” and that’s not how the justice system is supposed to work. the judge should have respected the outcomes of those other trials and only punished him accordingly for the charges at hand. it’s a case of a judge holding a grudge, which is terrifying since it equates to institutionalized powertripping.
in a sense though, the whole debacle is so perfectly hollywood. if someone wrote the same story as fiction it would seem silly and unrealistic, so the fact it really occurred speaks volumes to me about how fucked up hollywood, star culture, the media, and the justice system are. and if all those things are fucked up, it’s inherent and deserving that they end up with a fucked up result. what more can anyone expect? shit in, shit out. so it doesn’t really matter whether OJ is acquitted of murder or gets hammered for a relatively minor incident. it’s all absurd theater, created for and by absurd people. people with any sense should only view it from a safe distance.
the goldman family basically became obsessed with OJ and doing everything in their power to totally destroy him after their son’s murder. i can understand wishing offhandedly for that sort of thing but to dedicate your life to it is another thing. that’s a massive investment in hatred and negativity, and it’s more than even i can stomach. so they’re super fucked up too.
i hate how OJ constantly says that he has always been kind and generous to other people so he wishes people would show him the same respect and courtesy — as if being polite means everyone should look the other way when he does something heinous and horrible, like beating his wife, murdering her and another person, never admitting it, joking about it, refusing to follow court orders, etc.
the path OJ’s life took from start till now is insane. it’s so full of crazy highs and lows. kid from the projects –> excels at football, makes it big –> expands his popularity and moves into other other forms of entertainment –> largely abandons black culture/is embraced by white culture –> becomes violent at home with his wife, eventually kills her –> avoids jail time but is on the hook for $33 million –> falls from grace, loses home, moves to florida and makes a living signing autographs like the sad old wash-up he is –> starts hanging out with dubious characters and getting really seedy –> gets busted in vegas trying to steal OJ memorabilia from a dealer, does a terrible job in court of pretending he is remorseful and didn’t realize he was breaking the law, and finally ends up in jail.
OJ is a real living american freak show. i bet his first wife is glad as all hell they split when they did. she got out just before he started to self-destruct.
crimson highway 