The 40 Year-Old Virgin

I left work early today to go see a movie. I like to see a movie at the movie house on Tuesday because it is Budget Price Tuesday. These days I pay eight bucks to see a movie when every other day of the week it is fifteen bucks fifty. Does $15.50 sound like a lot of money to pay to see a movie to you? It does to me. I have never paid $15.50 to see a movie and can't see it ever happening. It's funny because I'm not a person who is obsessed with getting a bargain price on everything. I don't listen to somebody tell me they bought some pants for fifty bucks and laugh and say well my pants were on special they only cost twenty bucks. I don't live my life worrying about that stuff. I like to throw the money around if I got it. Who cares. It's only money. Oh yeah, you say, only money. It's only money when you got it hey, but when you ain't got it, it ain't only money. You got a point there, I'll admit it. But I didn't always have money. I've had my share of nights eating chilli sauce on toast and it wasn't fun that's for sure. But this is going off the track a bit. What I was going to say was that even though I am not obsessed with getting a bargain for every damn thing, I will only go and see a movie on Bargain Price Tuesday. Maybe it is an obsession.
Anyway, the movie I went and saw was called The 40 Year-Old Virgin.
When I walked into the theatre and found a seat in a perfect position, right in the middle with my eyes about level with the vertical middle of the screen, I sat down with my vanilla choc-top. I used to always buy the coffee choc-tops but since that episode with the collapsing cone I have been getting vanilla choc-tops. I think what it was was that not many people buy those coffee choc-tops so they get old there in the freezer and the cone loses its structural integrity. I seem to be terrified now of buying another coffee choc-top to find the damn cone all floppy.
Well, I sat down with my vanilla choc-top and a funny thing happened. I heard people giggling all over the place. I thought yes for sure I am about to see a comedy movie, everybody is already giggling like schoolgirls and the movie hasn't even begun yet. These were obviously hardcore comedy fans, people who laugh all the time about God knows what, but everything is funny. I got a big smile. I thought it was pretty funny myself, this crowd. They were all laughing at God knows what, but it seemed to be funny as hell. Maybe they had heard about my coffee choc-top phobia.
Oh yeah, the movie. I guess anybody who was reading this for the movie review is long gone, so here it is for my hardcore readers. God bless you!
The movie is about a guy called Andy (Steve Carell who I saw recently in another funny movie called The Anchorman) and he is 40 years old and has never had sex with a woman. Most people probably have sex by the time they are 13 these days so Andy's case must seem pretty bizarre to most people. Andy works in an electronics store, like a Dick Smith Powerhouse here in Australia. He lives by himself and collects action figures that he never removes from the box, plus he reads comics. Not only all that, but he also rides a bicycle to work! Yes, he lives in Los Angeles (it must be Los Angeles because every American movie is made in LA) where if you don't have a car you are a bum or a nerdy bicycle rider like Andy.
When the other guys at work find they are a man short for a poker game they reluctantly ask him if he wants to join them. During the poker game they are all telling stories about sex experiences when it gets around to Andy's turn. The more he says, the more the other guys stare in amazement at the nutty things he is saying. Then he compares a woman's boobs to bags of sand, so that's when they know he is still a virgin. So they take it on themselves to get Andy laid.
I'm about to pass out so I'll wrap this up as fast as I can. This movie was very good. The cast was excellent, every one. It was very funny and even though there were gross-out gags - like Andy getting up every morning with a boner, then one morning sitting down to take a dump sits down with that boner and starts pissing up into his own face - the movie had a lot of heart, to put it in a corny way. All the characters were very likeable and funny. There were a lot of big laughs in the movie, it was very funny. It was so good that I am looking forward to seeing it again. I could watch it again next week and be excited about seeing it again.
It was a good movie, and very funny.

Gantz

Today at work I took a break from my dedicated activity to check out the upcoming DVD releases for November. I always do that at the end of the month. It usually takes me a million years to get around to things, but I'm pretty good at this DVD pre-order biz.
Anyway, scrolling down the list I saw something called Gantz, a Japanese anime and it was rated R. There aren't many animes with an R rating. In fact I don't think I've seen one since Legend of the Overfiend, and since I can't help these occasional surges of *prurient interest*, as they call it, I felt a strong urge to check this Gantz out. I called my video store and the girl told me they had the first four parts (It is a 26-episode series with four episodes on each disc.) I got the bus home jumped off early near the video store went in and rented the first volume.
I just finished watching the first four episodes. This shit is wild.
It starts off with a shoolboy Kei and he is daydreaming in class. He pictures the female teacher and students all naked and gets a boner. Other kids in class notice this and torment him about it. He gets embarassed. Then after school he goes to the train station to get a train home. All the while we hear his thoughts and he is thinking things like man she is hot I wouldn't mind giving it to her, and goddam that stinking bum why don't ya go and have a bath and get a job.
At the train station that bum he saw wanders up smelling bad then stumbles and falls down onto the tracks. Nobody on the platform goes to help, instead we hear their thoughts, making excuses why they can't help, and even some looking forward to seeing the train run over the poor guy.
Kei has noticed another guy, he used to go to school with this guy, his name is Masaro. Well, Masaro jumps down onto the tracks to help the bum. Oh my God, somebody actually does something to help this guy. It's unheard of. But there is Masaro down on the tracks yet he can't lift the guy by himself, and that's when he sees Kei. Naturally he asks Kei to come down and help him, but Kei is going aw man, why did he have to notice me, I don't wanna go down there, we might get hit by the damn train, and all that jazz. But he is shamed into going down eventually.
They manage to get the bum back on the platform before the train comes. The problem is they can't get back up there in time and they get hit by the train. Heads fly off and blood spurts. The end.
No, not the end. They reappear in a room with a big black sphere in the middle of it. It looks like a big wrecking ball. There are also some other people in the room. There's a goofy schoolteacher, two Yakuza guys, a loud guy with long blond hair and a strange sinister looking dude sitting in the corner, and a dog.
Where are they? Are they dead? They can't get out of the room. There's a force field or something preventing them from opening the door or getting out to the balcony.
Suddenly a girl (Kishimoto) begins to appear - a laser transports her into the room gradually so you see the inside of her body as she is being recreated. She arrives naked and groggy and one of the Yakuza guys, a big brute of a bastard, takes her off to rape her. We hear her screaming. Kei does nothing but Masaro rushes in to save her and there's a big showdown between him and the nasty Yakuza. Masaro succeeds in saving her but as she is sitting sobbing against the wall, the dog comes up and starts molesting her with its tongue. What a crazy show!
Anyway, back in the main room some text appears on the big black sphere saying, basically: I OWN YOU ALL NOW AND YOU WILL DO WHATEVER I SAY. What the hell?
The sphere splits open to reveal all kinds of hardcore-looking guns and a uniform for each person. They all get transported down to what seems like a regular suburban town with an order to kill a Green Onion Alien. Built into their suits is a radar so they find the Green Onion Alien pretty fast. This little green guy, all he wants to do is eat his green onions. Why do they have to kill this poor little guy? What kind of rotten cruel horror have these supposed dead folks been placed in?
But it's the Yakuza guys who shoot the little Green Onion Alien. Masaro is horrified and disgusted and sick, starts crying and wailing what have you done! But then an enormous guy comes along and he is obviously a relative of the little Green Onion guy. He rips the Yakuza guys to pieces, also the schoolteacher who tried to shoot him.
Well, in the end it's only the three of them who survive - Kei, Masaro and the girl, Kishimoto. That weird sinister dude who was sitting in the corner appears and it turns out that he has been there for a long time. In the room, that is. He has seen dozens of people come through and die on these missions. So he seems to know about this Gantz sphere, did I say the sphere is called Gantz? Well that's what Gantz is. That's where the name comes from. And there's a guy in the sphere, a sick green guy with his eyes closed and he is plugged into the sphere. It's all wild and crazy man. It's violent and gory and there's nudity. I guess this was made for teenage Japanese boys. So why do I like it? Have I not grown up yet? Have I not progressed to the next level or something? Oh well. But there's more than just sex and violence going on here, you know. And this is only 4 episodes out of 26, after all.
The theme songs are excellent as well. The opening theme is a fast drum'n'bass/breaks type of tune Japanese style ('Super Shooter' by Rip Slyme) and the closing theme is a Japanese power ballad ('Last Kiss' by Bonnie Pink).
Gantz has really sunk a big hook in me and I will be zooming off to the video store for the next four-episode disc very soon.

No Damn Subtitles

A funny thing happened when I was watching the special features on The Grudge DVD yesterday. You know The Grudge. It was a Japanese horror movie (originally called Ju-on: The Grudge)written and directed by Takashi Shimizu. Sam Raimi saw it and thought it was so damn awesome that he wanted to remake it. He knew that the only way Americans would watch it would be if it was remade with American actors. But he got Shimizu to direct this new American version starring Sarah Michelle Geller and Bill Pullman.
So what was the funny thing that happened? It's coming up, I promise.
I was watching the 'making of' featurette (A Powerful Rage) and they spent a lot of time talking about how tricky the language problem was. They were shooting in Tokyo with a Japanese director and crew, so everybody needed translators. Also, when they made notes and changes to the script, these had to be translated back and forth between English and Japanese. So you see, language translation was a big deal with this movie, you could say one of the BIGGEST deals.
Which gets us at last to this funny thing that happened. In this making of thingo, the director Takashi Shimizu and the Japanese guy who plays the detective, were talking away in Japanese, but there were no subtitles, and there was no person doing a voiceover translation of what they were saying. So unless you knew Japanese, you couldn't understand what they were saying. This was pretty frustrating because I wanted to know what they were saying, but it was amazing because it was such a big deal with this movie, the language translation. They really made a big deal about it, and it must have been quite tricky, but how tricky would it have been to subtitle these short little speeches by the director and the actor?
Anyway, in the commentary they were also saying that a Director's Cut would be coming out sometime because the censors made them cut out a bunch of stuff so they could get a PG13 rating, so hopefully they will sort it out for that.
If anybody reading this has The Grudge on DVD, could you tell me if yours is the same?

Conversation

It just ain't working. Nothing happening, not working. Why is it not working? I don't know but it is neither happening nor working for some reason. For some mysterious reason nothing is working and I do not know why. Scratching my head does no good so try something different, maybe that will work, but no that don't work either. Things are getting desperate! Shake and spin head, spin whole body around on chair and kick legs out. Try anything. Why not? Look at ceiling. Look at bookshelves. Piece of paper in pocket. Yet none of those seem to help either. Is there an answer? Of course there must be an answer somewhere, maybe I am looking in the wrong place. Let's look under the table. Nothing but layers of dust. Look in the kitchen drawer. Plastic bags and knives. They won't help. When did plastic bags and knives ever help anyway? What? Chair started squeaking but just as suddenly stopped. Was it the chair squeaking? I wasn't squeaking. Something was squeaking and it sounded like the chair. Man on radio talking but I don't hear what he says. What was that, radio man? Says you! ... I didn't hear what he said anyway. Now woman starts talking. They seem to be having a conversation. I sometimes have a conversation! It's all coming back. Sometimes I talk to some one and they say something back, and it goes along for a little while like that until one of us walks away. Then the other walks away, goes about his or her business. That's the way of a conversation - the mechanics of it, or the nuts and bolts of it, to put it another way. Well how about a conversation? OK let's try that, why not:

Me: Where is Boss? Did she go out?
Colleague: Yes, I think she went out, but I don't know where.
Me: Did she say anything?
Colleague: No, she didn't say anything just went out.
Me: So she just went out without saying anything?
Colleague: Yes, just like that.
Me: Well. How about that.
Colleague: Yes.
Me: I guess she is the Boss after all and doesn't have to tell us where she is going whenever she leaves the room.
Colleague: No, but we have to.
Me: Well I don't. Not always.
Colleague: You are a rebel.
Me: Yep. Sometimes I'll just walk out without even saying anything.
Colleague: Then Boss's head spins around wondering who walked in or out.
Me: Yeah and she sees nobody there but then notices that I am not there anymore, and thinks goddam it he just walked out without saying anything!
Colleague: You think you're pretty tough doing that do you?
Me: Yep. I'm a tough customer. I'll just walk out and not even say anything. I don't care.
Colleague: Oh you're a real tough customer.
Me: You better believe it.

Night Watch

I was very glad I had a half day today. It was a big relief to get the heck out of that damn office at midday today, I tell you. Why was that? Well, what else could it be but something to do with my insane Boss? Nothing else. Yes, it was something to do with my insane Boss. This is a new stunt she pulled today, never pulled that one before. She is full of horrible surprises. What happened was, when she got in she was coughing and spluttering. Me and Colleague both expressed genuine concern yet she snapped at us, informing us that it was nothing but a cold. It was only a cold, nothing more, she barked. Well! Colleague and I looked at each other, rolling our eyeballs dramatically, around and around. But all morning Boss was coughing and hacking away. What a racket she was making! Yes, it could even have shaken our concentration on the task at hand, which was opening letters and stamping them, but we are professionals and our concentration is unshakeable. Still, we could hear Boss coughing away all morning all the while screaming that it was nothing more than a goddam cold.
Midday approached at long last, and I said to myself, Boss can go to hell! I will go to the movie house! So off I went. Free of coughing madwoman! Free at last!
The movie I chose to see was called Nightwatch, a movie I was really looking forward to. I may have revved myself up too much because I'll be damned if it wasn't a big disappointment.
This was a Russian movie based on a series of books, a trilogy I think, and this is the first movie of that trilogy.
The story is that a thousand years ago there was a big battle between two groups of superhuman type characters called Others. One side was the Dark side, the other the Light. The battle was so savage that everybody was sure to be killed so one of the generals quickly called a halt to the battle and he made a truce with the other general.
Now in present day, there are still Others around but they keep a low profile. Both sides are vampires so they need blood to survive, but the Dark Others kill people for it while the Light Others get it from a butcher shop or blood bank or something. It was pretty confusing. I may have this upside down.
There is also a legend that a child will be born, one of these Others, and when it grows up a bit it will have to choose between Dark and Light, then there will be a big final battle between the Dark and the Light Others.
I don't know if there is any point going on with this review, I really think I missed something. It was very confusing. Since it is based on a trilogy of books, it may be a case of having to read the books before you watch the movie(s). Nevertheless, halfway through the movie I regretted not being in one of the other theatres seeing The Devil's Rejects or The 40 Year Old Virgin - two other movies I want to see. But really what I am looking forward to seeing is The Exorcism of Emily Rose. God Almighty I am almost exploding with mad anticipation for that one!
The most interesting part of the experience was before the movie began. The lights were still on, the previews had not started, but there were two young Ninjas up at the back with a PSP, or some kind of electronic device anyway, playing something, it sounded like a movie or something, but the sound was loud and tinny, like from a tiny tinny transistor radio. Everybody was annoyed and angry about it, but nobody said or did anything. There was a big Russian-looking dude in front of me and he looked around a couple of times, with a real mean killer look, but even he neither said nor did anything. How depressing. Even the big killer-looking dudes don't have anything for these horrible young gadget robots in this modern world. It is terribly depressing.
But one cool thing was that about half the audience were reading books. I was reading my Turgenev book ['Spring Torrents'] and I imagined that those other people were all reading Russian novels too. It made me happy to think that could be the case, and gave me a good feeling about the anticipated Russian movie. Yet, it was a disappointment! Yet could it be that it went over my head? A depressing thought!
Oh life!
[Thanks to Kapreles for the Nightwatch image - they are hard to find!]

Clarence

Today I had to spend two hours on the information desk. Everybody has to do it. There is a roster, and today it was my turn again.
I had only been sitting there for ten minutes and nobody had come up to ask me a question, like where were the toilets. But then Clarence came up to say hello. He is a Gallery Officer and his job is to walk around the museum making sure kids don't touch or climb on the objects, make sure people don't try to steal objects, or hit them with sledgehammers. Visitors also ask him questions and he is very good at answering them. Clarence always gets glowing reviews from visitors. I know about that because I process the visitor comments. Clarence likes to talk to people and he is very good at it. He is very friendly and because he enjoys talking to the visitors and helping them, they write nice things about him on the visitor comments forms. Clarence is a large man and carries himself with an air of magnanimity. If it weren't for his uniform, he could be mistaken for a visiting dignitary, or some great benefactor.
Anyway, he came up to say hello as I sat at the information desk.
I mentioned to him that he was very popular with the visitors. I processed the visitor comments and I saw them all. He sure was popular. The visitors thought he was a good egg.
It wasn't the first time I told Clarence about his fans, and he reacted in his usual way. He took it very well, in a relaxed manner, as though it were no big deal. But it was obvious he enjoyed the subject and was flattered. He was pleased in his subtle way. He was magnanimous; one of those likeable, magnanimous fellows.
A woman visitor came up and asked where something was. I said I didn't know. As soon as I said it I knew it was not a very good answer. Luckily Clarence was there.
'Politicians know that there are three things you never say: No, Yes, or I don't know. What you do is just talk, about anything, and feel free to even change the subject,' Clarence said.
The woman liked that answer, and she seemed instantly charmed. She made some comments on the evasiveness of politicians, then walked away smiling.
'Another thing with you, Clarence,' I said, 'is that you are on one side of the coin, while a couple of your colleagues are on the other side of the coin. You are a good egg; these others are bad eggs. They always get negative comments.'
'Don't tell me ... Holland and Fernandez.'
'Yep. What is it with them?'
Clarence rolled his eyes up and gave a tremendous sigh.
'I'll tell you what. When they come anywhere near me, I am off. I get to the other side of the museum. You know the poles? Like a magnet? Opposite sides. They can't be together, they have to be on opposite sides. That's me and them.'
'You know, one of the complaints, a girl went up to Fernandez and asked him if she could go outside and have a cigarette then come back in. Guess what he said to her?'
Clarence closed his eyes.
'He laughed and said, 'Sure. Go out and get cancer, you little bitch. I don't care.' That's pretty cold, isn't it?'
Clarence got a big painful grimace that spread out over his face. These were HIS people, these visitors. He really liked them all, and it was too much, this, the thought that some of his colleagues were treating them bad.
'You know, if I had any say in the matter, I wouldn't keep these people on the floor. Why do the managers keep these people on the floor, dealing with the public? It's quite beyond me, it really is.'
'You are a good egg, Clarence,' I said.

Boss Throws Another Fit

Boss went berserk again this morning. She had been awfully decent for so long I guess it was about time.
What happened was, Colleague rang up and said her kid was sick, and that not only would she not be in today but she would not be in tomorrow either. That was enough. That really did it all right. The funny part was I heard Boss on the phone and she was nice to Colleague.
'Yes yes, that's OK. Oh well. Never mind. It's OK. Them's the breaks and all that jazz. See you next week then.'
But she slammed the phone down like she does. POW! Really hard. She really SLAMS that phone down. She's like a baseball pitcher. She winds up, then SLAM!
I was sitting there in front of the pigeonholes, already sorted the mail to open, waiting for Boss to come around from her cubicle. Around she came at high speed, vibrating with awesome rage, at a very high pitch of furious anger. She plonked herself down next to me picked up the date stamp opened a letter and brought the stamp down. POW! I jumped. The table shook. A miracle the thing didn't explode in a shower of tiny splinters.
Then she got down to it. Of course her plans would all go to hell. Why was everything she tried to do sabotaged? It wasn't fair. Also, employees didn't have to obey orders anymore. Back in her day you did what the boss said. Not today. Oh no. In fact, everybody is against managers.
'Everybody? Who is?' I said.
'Oh, just everybody!'
Then she got to this mail business.
'What other organisation has somebody like ME opening the mail? A MANAGER! With a DEGREE!' she shouted. 'It is so DEMEANING!'
Is it really so demeaning? I don't mind doing the mail at all. In fact I like doing the mail. But I dare not tell Boss that, especially at a time like this, when she is in berserk mode. I might get a letter opener in the neck.
But I'm not a manager, so maybe it is natural that it is not demeaning to me. I'm really a junior burger in the great organisational scheme of things, after all. Of course it doesn't matter if somebody comes in and sees me doing the mail. But for her, for Boss, who is a manager, maybe it really is demeaning! What do those people think if they come in and see her doing the mail? Sitting there with me (the *Mail Boy*), both of us holding a date stamp and a letter opener in front of all those stupid pigeonholes? And her the Manager! Oh the humiliation!
On and on she rages, slamming the date stamp down and flinging letters in my direction, letters for the pigeonholes on my side, actually throwing them. It seems insane. But what do I know? Maybe she has a point after all. Maybe I, the true and unashamed mail spazz, am simply too dull-witted to grasp it.