Review of "Pleasantville"

Review of "Pleasantville"

You remember the critique I did of Waking Ned Devine? To recap, I'll just tell you that it was a fairly boring movie with a really cool ending confusing the lesser-intelligented people that it was a good movie. At least on their way out of the theater. Well, this movie is the exact opposite. Quite possibly in only that way, but you get the point. It was an excellent film on so many levels tainted by the "random grasp at an artsy ending" ending that it had. At the end. This guy in Pleasantville that had gone from good to sorta bad and back to good at the very end of the film was getting back together with his wife, and all of a sudden he turns into Jeff Daniels. I don't know how I would have ended the film, but I don't think that would have been it.

Now for the other 2 hours. This movie was incredible. It was great on so many levels, I probably didn't even get to fully enjoy it on all of them. And I fancy myself a pretty intelligent fella. Handsome too. It starts out by Don Knotts sending these two 90s kids to go back into this black and white 50s sitcom where everything is perfect and... well, pleasant. We don't know why he did this, what his plan was, and certainly how he did it. Whatever. It gets the movie started. Now these kids slowly corrupt this place little by little. People in this ideal town have never had sex before. Even the parents. Well, these kids come in and mix it up a little bit. They start boinking these people of Pleasantville, and this corruption makes them turn into color. Talk about a scarlet letter! Just like that chick with the red from Schindler's List. But in a completely opposite way I guess. But it's not just the sex that makes them change colors. It's the acceptance of change. Or something. I don't want to ruin it completely for you, because I require of all of you that you go see it. Eventually, the traditional folk riot the "coloreds" and put up signs that say "no coloreds allowed." Lots of literary and historically social references in this film. To Kill A Mockingbird, the aforementioned Scarlet Letter, Quantum Leap, Do the Right Thing, and this really cool Twilight Zone episode where monsters come down from another planet but don't really do anything except let the people tear themselves apart, to name a few. And the effects are incredible too. People walk around a world half in color and half in black and white. I can't believe I hadn't heard of this movie yet. It is very underrated on so many levels. Possibly because of the ending, but that might just be my own lack of tolerance for cheese in such matters. I'm giving this movie an unprecedented 9 1/2 bugs. I wanted to give it 10, but the ending is a real stumbling block I just can't get over. Maybe I'll sit down one day and think about it until I can convince myself it makes sense. I'm stupid enough to fall for that. But until then, I take 1/2 a bug away from it's perfect record.

Quote. Quote... Now I have to think of something funny somebody said. I got it!! Here's something good, but it's a real visual joke. And it makes fun of Russ, which is doubly awesome. Russ and a bunch of other coordinated people were playing a softball game today. There was a relatively close play at home in which Russ was directly involved, being the runner in question. Anyway, there were about 8 people all around yelling at him to slide. He does. But not really. He doesn't really stick one leg out and fold the other one underneath him like you're traditionally supposed to. Instead, he sort of timidly leaps both feet outward and in the air sticking in front of him and catches himself with his hands and sort of shimmies along until he finally gets to home plate. This looked like how most kids go on a slip and slide, but he did it on hard dirt. That's the best way I can describe this so-called-slide. But Derrick was able to describe it very loudly in a much better way...

Quote Of the Day 4/30/99

"What the hell was that Russ? You looked like a bear scratching his ass on the ground."

-FaTKiD groupie,

Cptn D.

You should see his crossover. He looks like a monkey scratching his nuts.

Setting bear traps on the basepath,

Poaching Cricket.


Still Standing Right Here...

Fraidy-Cat

Fraidy-Cat

I don't think I told you guys this as a big collective group yet, but we now have a kitten. My roommate's girlfriend's parents decided it was a good idea to burden me with wildlife at this point in my life. This thing is wild too! It's traditionally really good about not clawing people's skin, but if it tries to jump up on your leg and starts to fall, it's no holds barred. Every cat for themselves. It's fallen from the height of my leg many times before, I don't know what it's scared of. Hell, I've thrown it at least 10 feet in the air across the room against the wall before and it didn't even limp. Hell, it didn't even move. And it did, even after impact, land on its feet. You know, they say that cats always land on their feet when they fall or when you throw them. Well, I figured out that so do dogs. And gerbils. And fish. It's just that we see cats land on their feet more often because it is necessary to throw cats around, whereas dogs, gerbils, and fish will listen to you. All you have to do is hit the dog once and say "NO!!" real loud and he'll get the idea from then on not to do whatever it was he did. He also learns what the word "no" means really fast. Not cats. He needs to jump on my lap to try to help eat my cereal, and he still does it every freakin day. And everyday, I punt him across the room into the wall. Damn thing doesn't learn. I'll bet modern psychology would turn 180 degrees if Pavlov had cats instead. People say dogs are dumb, but this kitten refuses to learn this stuff, despite it's many flights across the dining room against her will. And it comes right back for more. This dude has no fear. I don't know why there are so many terms associated with cats being scared. Fraidy-cat... Scaredy-cat... Pussy.

I'm going back to Spring Break for this quote that I almost forgot about. I almost got my ass kicked in Jacksonville for freaking some girl that was apparently already taken. I told Meawad I couldn't see. I was just happy to not be freaking a guy. Anyway, I went out there with Meawad, and I told Tony that he needed to start coming into the fire with us more often. There was a girl checking him out and I told him a good icebreaker is asking her to dance with him (this was before I used that same technique to almost get my ass kicked)...

Quote of the Day 4/29/99

"It sounds like a good idea, but I can't dance. I might as well go up and ask her to knit or something, because I can't do that either."

-Monotone-Def


"Hey baby. Howz about you and me go back to my place and I show you the antitrust & regulation of my macroeconomics, if you know what I mean." If that's the kind of stuff I was good at, I'd risk looking like a fool by gyrating randomly around the wood floor. Or shoving random needles into cotton.

"Playing" with the kitten,

Dustin.


Still Standing Right Here...

Guest QOTD: Jacy

Hey all! I have exciting news! SGA finally transferred the funds that Jacy sent me for the quote of the day application. He passed the comedy background check and everything. Now that the paperwork has gone through, here's Jacy's quote of the day for 4/28/99 (though it happened a while ago)...

---

First of all, I'd like to apologize for not being Dustin, but he wasn't there, and I feel that the world can benefit from the humor implicit in the quote he missed. I found this quote funny because it was about sex, and anybody with any sense of intelligence at all will agree with me. The real world sucks. Stay in school for as long as you can.

Since I graduated in May, I have been teaching six- year- olds at McDonogh School. One day in class, we were discussing what we wanted to be when we grew up. The kids came up with stuff like "lawyer", "doctor", "skunk repairman", etc. One child, Dana (who is six) came up with the following gem:

Quote Of the Day 4/28/99

"I'm going to be a hooker when I grow up."
-Dana


Well, if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything!

Russ, I'll give you her number when she achieves her goal,

The kids call me "Mr. D."


...and fixin skunks is all I do.

---

Not bad for a start. I think I may need to work out a few kinks in my application though. Well, anyway, thanks Jacy. Less work for me is always a plus. And in case you've misplaced yours, I'm sending everybody another copy of the Application for Quote Of the Day after this message. Use it wisely, please. I only have so many of them left.

Funny every other day,

The kids call me "Mr. Whistlehead."


Still Standing Right Here...

Designated Drink Designator

Designated Drink Designator

Call me a homosexual if you guys want to, but I don't really like Shania Twain. I think she's a sell-out. And not just because she stopped singing country music and started singing crap. Well, actually, that's exactly why. She was doing really well with Any Man of Mine and Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under, then she has to go and suck it up with her latest crap. Still the One is borderline, but I can't stand the rest of it. It's like a big "look at my body and listen to me wail random notes in 4 different unintelligible octaves" fest. Don't get me wrong. I think she's alright... (bad pun not included)

This quote comes from a little post-Sugar Ray get together I was in attendance at in the apartment of a few people I'd wager to say most of you don't know. It was a hell of a time though, I'll tell you that! One of the best parties I've ever been at. Any party that has Stryker, Harris, and me playing the same drinking game is bound to have an unfair advantage though. Especially when there are several young attractive ladies shouting "Lick me, lick me, Zoomie Zoomie" at me. Anyway, Michelle Christiansen was there. She doesn't drink and won't cuss either (thus declaring her exempt from the game we were playing two-fold), but she likes to try to fit in anyway. So whenever I would screw up, she'd be off in the distance somewhere shouting at me to drink more. So with this, I turned to Stryker and asked him who the hell she thought she was, to which he replied...

Quote Of the Day 4/27/99

"She's the designated drink designator."

-Strike me, Strike me.


I made him have to remind me of that, and we both forgot about it until 4 days later.

OK. So you're a rocket scientist,
Lick me. Lick me.

Still Standing Right Here...

Looking at Girls

Looking at Girls

Hey everybody. It's been a while since I really talked to you all out there. In fact, since the last quote, I have lost my keys (but thankfully has a spare set), lost my wallet (but only for an hour), and (my favorite) locked my friend's keys in his car with the radio still on. That one's gonna be a tough one to beat. But I have confidence in my incompetence.

Well, not like I've been quoting here with regularity, but I'm not going to be checking my e-mail from Thursday until Sunday this week. I'll be away in Omaha, Nebraska with the bowling team. Another "perk" of my job. It's not the most exciting of places, and bowlers aren't the most exciting of people, but I get to go on a plane. I hope. Maybe next year I'll get to go to Topeka. Or beautiful sunny Minnesota. A man can dream...

This quote came from a guy who threw up a lot at a party I was at Friday night. He goes by the name "Clint," but also answers to "Dipshit," "Weasel Breath" and "Hey you, over there, with the deformity growing out of your neck!" We were talking about the girls volleyball team and how good looking they are individually. We got to one particular girl, and this is what he had to say about her...

Quote Of the Day 4/26/99

"She's alright if you look at her for a while."

-Clint "puts it how it is" Trice


But if you look at her for too long, she starts to call the cops.

Everyone I know has been so good to me,

Sugar Dustin.

Still Standing Right Here...

User Error

User Error

You guys want to know what just happened? This got me REALLY pissed off. I was already finished a quote of the day about my new apartment and I had postponed it so I could send another message to somebody on the list first. When I opened it back up to send it, I missed the [ctrl]-x command to send it and accidentally hit the [ctrl]-c key to cancel the message. So all the work I did with the quote about my new apartment went down the figurative electronic drain. Now everybody look down at your keyboard. How #@$!~*@ stupid is that? Putting the cancel command and the send command right next to each other?!? I can't believe I haven't done this yet in my 6 years of using this program. You're all lucky you're not here, because I'd give whoever it was a swift kick in the preverbal nuts.

That reminds me of a funny story from years back. I was typing a 15 page paper my freshman year and I had gotten to about 11 pages at 4 in the morning. I was becoming tired, cranky, and very sick of this paper. So I took the mouse, highlighted the entire document, and started playing with the margins, the fonts, the font sizes, the line spacing, and whatever I could think of to make an 11 page paper into a 15 page paper. Well, I don't know if it was an attack of morality or a bowl of Smack Ramen noodles, but I got a second wind. I decided to try to sit down and finish the paper legitimately. So I wanted things to go back to the way they were. In my delirious awakenness, I somehow thought that the backspace key would do that. (Keep in mind again that the entire document is currently highlighted.) So the entire document disappeared. I reached out to grab it as it disappeared, like I was going to pull it back out of the monitor like Coach did in Poltergeist. Only with a kid, not a UNIX document. Hey, no problem, right? There's an undo function in Word Perfect, even in the 3.1 version (this was back in 93). Anybody know what the keyboard command was for undo? Well, it was also [ctrl]-x. I'm a keyboard kind of guy, I don't need to use the mouse to go all the way up there and hit "Edit" and go to "Undo." So I went to undo it and accidentally hit the key right above the x (Look down)... Anybody know what [ctrl]-s is on WP for 3.1? It's save, just like it is on every other word processing program ever. So, in case you've gotten lost in the last paragraph, I've now saved a blank document overtop of an 11 page paper trying to masquerade as a 15 page paper. There is absolutely nothing I can do from here, trust me. Game Over!! Dustin Loses!! On top of having just lost my entire paper, I was out $250 to replace Doug's monitor. My knuckles healed on their own.

Conversation overheard at volleyball practice last week:

Quote of the Day 4/11/99

After a hard hit...

Michelle: "Mielke! Did you just hit that with your tongue out? That's so Michel Jordan!"
Me: "Well Bart hits it with his pants down."
Clint: "That's more like Michael Jackson."

Tony hits like Michael Stipes. He complains about the lack of government action to stop the environmental decay of the universe while he's up in the air.

Hitting like George Michael,

Wussy Cricket.


Still Standing Right Here...

Review of "The Matrix"

Alright, I'm gonna do this backwards for a reason. Tony, Drew and I were walking back from volleyball practice one night and we started talking about The Matrix. This was back before everybody had seen it already. I asked if it was supposed to be good or not. Drew said that a lot of people were saying that because of this movie, Star Wars was going to have a tough time being considered the best movie of the year. To this, Tony replied...

Quote Of the Day 4/2/99

"Really? But it's got Keanu Reeves in it."

-White Tony

That it does, and Tony, Drew, and I went to see it that very night. It was awesome!! Now, like any Keanu Reeves movie, all critiques of it must start with him. Just how bad was he in this movie? He was actually tolerable. And here's why: He wasn't actually required to act. He just had to pose. And he posed good. Like a dog looking at an algebra problem. Now onto the effects: They're like nothing you've seen before. Unless you've seen a Gap ad. But this time, they're not used to show a bunch of sickeningly cute people dancing. They're used to blow things up. Pretty cool. And this movie had no scantily clothed damsel in distress. Depending on what kind of a mood I'm in, that's generally a plus for me. It's a movie that's willing to stand alone on it's science fiction worth, which is generally not a risk one should be willing to take. But it got lucky. Sci-Fi fans, rest assured that you will love this film. It's trippy. It asks some really cool questions. It looks very pretty. And if you don't have time to watch TV like me, you can probably avoid seeing the entire thing in the previews. However, if you average sitting through 3 sitcoms a week, you've probably already seen the entire thing. And during the middle, when they're trying to explain everything to you, it actually sorta drags. If you can pretend you're actually really interested in it, you can tolerate the middle. That's how I got through most of my art history lectures. I mean, I guess it's important and everything to the plot, but it's sorta boring. That's maybe when I coulda used that scantily dressed damsel chick. Denise Richards would have been a good choice. All things considered, I'm giving it 8 1/2 bugs. I'm just glad it wasn't about algebra. It would have lost some serious buggage.

Love, broccoli bites, and volleyballs,

Dustin.


Still Standing Right Here...

We Will Get Fooled Again

Hey everybody. April Fools Day came and went once again, and this year, I didn't even get to do anything cool at all. This is the first year that yours truly, fun-loving somewhat mental prankster that I am, hasn't done anything at all. I have here a summation of everything I've done in the past 24 years of my life:

4/1/75 Pretended I had poop in my diaper, but I really didn't.
4/1/76 Loosened a few screws in the stairwell so my mom would fall through it to the basement.
4/1/77 Hid my newborn sister in he attic for 3 days.
4/1/78 Got my uncle to do calculus problems and convinced Miss Cherry I did them myself.
4/1/79 Convinced my dad that I got my girlfriend pregnant.
4/1/80 Threw a rock through my parent's window with a note attached saying "we have your son" and hid for a week.
4/1/81 Wrecked the car and blamed it on Uncle Mark.
4/1/82 Filled our water bottle in the fridge with hydrochloric acid.
3/31/83 Tried to convince everybody it was April first.
4/1/84 Pretended I had poop in my pants, but I really didn't.
4/1/85 Made a toy Delorian and went back to 1955.
4/1/86 Unscrewed the lid of the saltshaker.
4/1/87 Freed 167 cows into the wild.
4/1/88 Left a note telling my parents I was moving to Reno with my bookie and hid in the car in a parking lot up the street for three days.
4/1/89 Shot my English teacher in the leg with a rifle.
4/1/90 Shoved some tissues in a bra and told everybody I had a sex change (that one went over surprisingly well).
4/1/91 Showed my dad fake pictures of my mom cheating on him.
4/1/92 Put glue on everybody's seat in French class and set fire to the room.
4/1/93 Got David Copperfield to make our entire high school disappear.
4/2/94 Got him to make it appear again.
4/1/95 Drugged my roommate, stripped him naked, borrowed my friend's hamster, took some pictures, and put them on the internet.
4/1/96 Started dating Suzanne (guess the joke's on me (just kidding Suz))
5/13/97 Duct taped Billy to the bed during the night (and boy did I catch him off guard!).
4/1/98 Disassembled all the parts of my suitemate's car and reassembled them in his dorm room.
4/1/99 Threatened with not having anything to do, I kicked Russ in the nuts in his sleep.

So this year was a rather disappointing one for the prankster in me. There's only so much joy one can get from kicking Russ in the nuts that many times. And to top it all off, it took me about a whole week to think of all those things. So now I'm late. Oh well. Here's the quote:

Quote Of the Day 4/1/99

"A friend gave me your email address. I don't know much about you. Dude, I gotta tell ya, I think your fuckin hot. And I'm guy. It's cool, I'm into guys and girls. And I don't know if you are at all into guys..."

-anadmirer@nightmail.com <mailto:-anadmirer@nightmail.com>

Now this message, I'm not kidding about. And I wish I were. I sincerely hope this was one of you having fun with a fake e-mail address. I've already ruled out Evil Joe because all the words make sense when read one after another. He went on to tell me how "damn good-looking" I am, which was somewhat flattering, but I still hope it was a joke from somebody. I wrote him back and asked if he had an older sister.

Straight and not at all kidding,

adisgustedheterosexual@nightmail.com


Still Standing Right Here...