so i saw 'diary of the dead' this weekend. i was kind of looking forward to this in the first place, as i keep up with horror releases, but i never go to the movies anymore and i' on that self-omposed house arrest. yesterday, though, i had a visiting artist crit at school that shifted my focus momentarily.
one thing that is pretty awesome about my grad program is the visiting artist schedule they line it. it changed from month to moth, but sometimes it's really rigorous in a great way. anyhow, we all get half-hour chats with these people, and typically they really don't give a fuck about anything. it's fucking AMAZING. we've had a bunch of straight up weirdos come through here in the past 2 years, and they just LAY IT DOWN. rainer ganahl, austrian performance linguist for lack of a better description, ended a crit with me by smashing down my plans for an elaborate, pompeii-specific forgery project. he knew the area well enough ot mention the threat of the napoli mafia (probably not the first mafia i'd really wanna fuck with): 'they will decapitate you! they will decapitate you!' i abandoned the project, mainly because i work there as an archaeologist and i don't want to, you know, get banned or something. however, the crit struck a nerve: if even in an obtuse way, i might be able to create something that would possibly cause people to want to kill me (for technical reasons more so than personal, but still...), shit. maybe i shouldn't treat my foray into art school as just a phase.
yesterday was one of the more fun crits i've had; seibren versteeg, who does a lot of cool internet-and-programming work, checked out my thesis stuff and helped me out a lot. 'diary of the dead' came up, and he recommended it. i had just read a reaaaallly bad review but this dude seemed to be on a similar wavelength -- like how recently i realized that reigning in my oddities has done NOTHING for me in the way of other people thinking me to be normal for the most part, so why the fuck am i not just getting balls-to-the-wall strange? anyway, this is exactly what was suggested to me in this crit, and it made me super-aware that after all this time, i am busting at the seams with weird shit. it is what it is.
aaron and i entered the movie theater and for a while, it was completely empty. this was, like prime-time, friday night viewing so before it even began we knew it must be pretty shitty. after a bit, 2 douchebags entered; i hoped that the movie would just be the four of us, so i could get even more scared at the prospect of a zombie usher biting one of the douchebags and then that douchebag biting the other, and ultimately, we would be chased from the premises by two douchebag zombies until, of course, i ruined their skulls. this didn't happen, though, because one of the final crowds to arrive were also douchebags, and there were several of them, and they sat right behind up, telling bad jokes to the girls they were with and talking about the joys of being a downtown office drone. after the movie, aaron and i both acknowldged a little anxiety on both of our parts when we realized these new douches might be hecklers. generally, i don't mind a heckler -- hell, i even appreciate a good heckler, in most cases -- but there was something particularly annoying and -- dare i say -- douchey about their sort of humor. my game plan for addressing this was going to turn around and yell 'shut the fuck up' in a zombie voice.
but then, the movie started. look, i enjoy entertainment, even when it's shitty, so i did enjoy this estrogen-soaked bongwater. one line is...'it used to be us against us. now it's us against them...but they're us' or something.' the gore was generally on point; hospital scene featuring intestines dribbling out of a man's thoracic cavity and slurping onto the floor was a highlight, as was a videotape in which a zombie CLOWN showed up a little girls' birthday party, and her name was GINA. the girl's mother, on the video, says 'don't be scared of the clown, gina.' that was seriously like the story of my childhood! i know a lot of kids hate clowns, but like i said, my bar is low and i appreciated this as one would a cosmic shout-out. yeeaaaah.
however, i left that movie theater with a tinge of sadness. i haven't been so see a movie at union station since, shit, 2001 or something. i never thought i would miss that theater, but last night, i did. aaron and i both agreed that 'diary of the dead' would have been much, much better in a theater full of hecklers, so folks of washington, i suggest seeing this movie there. lesson learned, i guess. lesson learned.
