ogres

for the past couple weeks, i've been going downtown to do promo work for the theater. this involves handing out fliers and telling people about whichever movie we're showing outside that weekend. it's a good deal because i get time and a half and the work is easy. it also provides a nice way for me to get the city under my feet. there is another benefit to doing promo work though which outweighs all the other perks.

that benefit is the company. the people i work with vary from week to week, but i am frequently paired up with lockheed martin. everyone else he works with (and i do mean everyone) hates him. in fact, the first time i went downtown, bad religion shirt ground his teeth for three hours straight. every time lockheed said or did something, he'd hiss "idiot" under his breath and i'd suppress a smile.

delightful.

anyway, this week i decided to see how long i could keep lockheed going. i started off by asking his opinion of the movie we were promoting this week, 300. he loved it of course, though he was shocked to learn that the battle of thermopylae actually occurred. he went on to declare that the spartans were the most humane, socially progressive society ever to exist (i know, i know). close behind the spartans in compassion were the egyptians, who it turns out did not work tens of thousands of slaves to death to build the pyramids. aliens built them, by the way. the egyptians lived together in harmony in a techno-utopia fashioned for them by the superscientist jesus. yes jesus, the inventor of the lightbulb, earliest proponent of string theory, and all around rad guy.

it was at this point that things began to get silly.

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new feature! *lockheedism of the week* new feature!

"why do people believe in dinosaurs but not ogres?"

if you said, "the fossil record," you (like me) have been suckered by the archeologists (i've got my eye on you, theo); yes, that secretive cabal of scientists who, for unknown but definitely sinister reasons, formed a global conspiracy to cover up the existence of supernatural beings. triceratops, for example, are actually ogres which scientists have cleverly disguised as dinosaurs by affixing horns to the skull. radiocarbon dating? a sham. did you know that if you pour graphite on grass, scientists will think it is millions of years old? hand to god.

king shit

ok so you're sitting around on a tuesday night trying to think of something to do. you are bored. your friends are bored. everyone is bored. but then, inspiration! "let's go to the movie theater!" you cry. "but instead of going inside and watching a movie, we should sit in the parking lot and get trashed on specifically terrible beer!"

your friends are staggered. never before have they heard such an appealing proposal. only just able to contain their excitement, they look at you with a respect bordering on awe. suddenly the strain becomes too much, and your female friends (who until now hadn't looked at you twice) hurl aside furniture in their haste to throw themselves at you. everyone else is trying to shake your hand.

you are king shit.

this scenario is actually quite common. given the number of beer bottles i see in the lot each morning, i'd estimate it happens at least five times a night. I'm not even going to speculate on the appeal of drinking in a parking lot (although obviously there is something to it), but as a public service i will now compile a list of places more suited to public drinking than a movie theater parking lot. unfortunately for you, the public, this service will take the remainder of my life to complete because there is no place in the entirety of the universe less suited to public drinking than a movie theater parking lot.

capitalism: a love story

capitalism is the new michael moore movie. as with every other movie i review here, i have not seen it. this review is based solely on bits i have seen and heard while delivering food (so i'm being about as stringent in my fact checking as moore). anyway, the movie is mainly concerned with informing people of the evils of the capitalist system (which, by the way, is the same system which has allowed moore to become so staggeringly wealthy).

this seeming confusion may be explained by the fact that moore (or at least his editor) doesn't seem to understand what capitalism is. in one of my favorite bits from the movie, moore interviews a woman who describes the bank bailouts as "pure capitalism." granted this woman isn't a financial expert (she is one of the jane everypersons that moore is so keen on defending), but surely someone on moore's editing staff should have pointed out that not only were the bailouts not "pure capitalism," they were an example of socialism, the antithesis of capitalism, and pulled that bit from the film. in a purely capitalist, free market system (which we don't have anyway), aig and the others would have tanked.

another of my favorite moments is the bit where moore describes the transition from carter to reagan. in that snide, condescending tone he uses to narrate his movies, moore explains that reagan was an evil, selfish man who took advantage of every opportunity that came his way. during this monologue, moore has chosen to include o fortuna (the first part of the first movement of the carmina burana) as backing music. you've certainly heard o fortuna before. it is often used as stock 'dramatic music' in action movies and commercials, and moore is clearly employing it similarly. if you'd like to hear it (and i do strongly encourage you to listen to it), here is a recording of a performance at uc davis (o fortuna occupies the first four minutes of the video). i do love the carmina burana - it is a stunningly beautiful peace of music - but it is delightfully relevant here because it is also unintentionally ironic. the carmina burana as a whole (the first movement in particular) is concerned with fortune. specifically, it is concerned with the fickleness of fortune and the utter necessity of taking advantage of every opportunity that comes your way.

along with these classic moments of self-clowning, moore throws in the usual lies and oversimplifications. for example, moore claims that "you are never going to be rich. the chance of that happening is about one in a million." if we follow moore's logic, we can confidently state that there are only about three hundred rich people in the us, and not say the three million people claimed by the 2008 world wealth report (bottom of page six). but hey, he's only off by four or five decimal places. of course, "rich" doesn't have to be defined as millionaire. moore could just mean that only the top three hundred are rich. in 2002, forbes reported there were 245 us billionaires, which is pretty close to 1 in a million. perhaps, moore believes anyone with less than a billion is in the struggling middle class. this would certainly be one way for him to justify claiming to be just another working guy.

and that's what really bothers me about michael moore. it isn't his eagerness to oversimplify and misrepresent facts. it isn't that he defends these misrepresentations by calling his movies "works of entertainment." it isn't even the fact that he chose to throw an opulent, hedonistic party to celebrate the premiere of his movie whose central purpose is to lambast opulence and hedonism. it's the fact that he portrays himself as a champion of the working class when he is in fact a multi-millionare who directly benefits from the evils he raves against.

all that said, the opening weekend gross was encouragingly low, so with luck it'll be gone in a couple of weeks and i won't have to hear that obnoxious, neckbeard having hypocrite's voice for the foreseeable future.

hey! free pizza!

ok, so today was a good day. it was a good day because i finally got to do something about one of the ridiculous fucking people who come to the theater and do just ridiculous fucking things inside. it was, i admit, a rather small something (perhaps even a petty something), but then, i am a rather small man. it made me happy and i definitely intend to let the consequent sense of authority go to my head.

i had brought a tray of food into one of the theaters, and taken several dishes to customers. upon returning, i found a woman bent over the tray, rearranging the remaining plates. rather than waving my arms around and being all, "what the fuck are you doing?" at her, i decided to play it cool. no emphasis, steady intonation: "excuse me ma'am what are you doing?" she jerked upright and scuttled past me into the theater. my interest piqued, i followed and noted where she sat before returning to the tray to investigate. it turns out that this lady had decided that we are a buffet service, made off with a slice of another person's pizza, then tried to hide it by covering the pizza with other food.

i got one of the managers, who made a thing about it and had her leave. the best part of all this was that the woman just happened to sit next to the people whose pizza she had grabbed, which meant i was able to personally embarrass her by explaining to the people exactly what had happened.

you rang?

i found out today that i have a nickname in the kitchens. it is lurch (as in the butler from the addams family), and the kitchen guys reportedly say the catchphrase whenever they see me coming towards the kitchen. i actually quite like the name. it's definitely better than what i get from the female bartenders, who usually call me "sweetheart" or "darling" when i talk to them. today, one of them started calling me "sweetcheeks" whenever i walked by. after the second time, i asked her to repeat herself just to confirm that my brain was not making up the situation.

is this just something that people do in the south or is she possibly interested in developing a more intimate relationship with my cheeks (which are admittedly pretty nice)?

new shorts

we have new shorts, and although this means i no longer have to listen to michael cera talk about how he hates reading, things haven't really improved. one of the new ones involves some guy talking about how he is thirty five years old and doesn't have a girlfriend before he goes on to demonstrate why he doesn't have a girlfriend. just after meeting a blind date: "i didn't bring protection, but i think i have some baggies in the kitchen." also for some reason, this short has spanish subtitles. i don't know who this guy thinks is watching his movie, but i am relatively certain that no spanish speaking person has been inside the theater at any point. on the plus side, i now know the spanish word for "queef" (or at least what this guy thinks it is).

then there's another short where some mafia dudes take a guy to a warehouse and he says, "don't fuckin kill me. please don't fuckin kill me" for three solid minutes before they fuckin kill him.

i frequently feel the urge to apologize to the customers and i am told that the servers often do.

christian music

the guys in the kitchen all love primus so i thought they might like shellac also. tonight i put on 1000 hurts and within seconds was confronted by this beefy dude who spends all of his time wearing a bad religion shirt. top serious. i can't figure out what he actually does. anyway, he threatened to fight me for "putting on christian music." confused, i gave him a blank look. after a few seconds, i figured out that he was being serious and so i continued to give him a blank look.

it's cute that someone who identifies as a "punk" doesn't know who steve albini is.

wormhole

ok let me start this off by saying that it constantly amazes me what people will do when the lights are off.

sure there are the standard pda makeout couples, but that's to be expected and totally unremarkable. even when it is remarkable (eg. the chunky couple in matching leather jackets or the lady giving her dude a handje) it's fun and relatively harmless. if people want to order food and then wrap themselves around each other before it arrives, i'm not gonna judge them. actually, i quite enjoy those people, because i get to make them feel uncomfortable. usually, i'll walk up straightfaced and announce what i've got for them, waiting until i am acknowledged before putting it down. if their hands are engaged when i show up, i wait for them to take the food from me instead of putting it down. the people are usually mortified; it's delightful.

it's the people who do inappropriate, selfish things without giving me an opportunity to embarrass them that piss me off.

the stashers, for example, are people who order our really expensive food and then instead of eating it, hide it (or bits of it) underneath or behind their seats. the groomers (who i first observed tonight) are people who trim their nails or tweeze nose hairs or floss in the theater instead of in the privacy of their homes. then there are the aptly named dickheads. these are the people who just dump whatever they don't like on the floor in front of them. sandwiches, beer bottles, condiment cups. you name it, they plop it down with a splat or a crash with nary a thought for who'll have to clean it up.


if there was any justice in the world, we'd have one of these set up in the floor:

robespierre

today i overheard the guy who exposed lockheed martin tell a coworker that maximilien robespierre (la dictateur sanguinaire himself) was one of his personal heroes. he also claimed that the frenchman invented democracy.

is robespierre the che guevara of the 18th century?

sorority row

here is another in what may or not become a series of reviews for movies i have not seen. this review will be slightly better informed than the last one because although i have again only seen a couple two minute chunks, i did talk with a coworker who watched the last thirty minutes. i don't know why she did this, she doesn't know why she did this, but it happened and we all need to come to terms with it.

ok. basic plot summary: as you might have gathered from the title, there are sorority girls. one of them gets cheated on by her boyfriend (as sorority girls in movies are wont to do) and her friends decide to play a prank on him. one of the friends seduces the perfidious boyfriend and simulates a seizure mid-coitus. the guy freaks out, and the sorority girls (who are all taking their friend's death very calmly) drive to the woods to dispose of the body. the girls let it go on too long and, not noticing that the guy is in a frenzy, suggest (again very calmly) dismembering the body. the decidedly not calm guy picks up a tire iron and well... she wakes up, there is lots of screaming, etc. because there is a big hole in her chest, she actually dies and her friends chuck her in a well. later on other people start to die. according to my coworker, there is a twist ending, but i didn't ask what it was. i am hoping the twist is that the director comes onscreen, apologizes for making the movie, and promises not to do it again.

well, this was more a plot summary than a review; but hey, there isn't much substance to analyze. in fact, there isn't really anything to say about this movie. it is no more offensive or mindless than the hundreds of other movies out there with the same plot and extremely similar characters. so i guess my biggest problem with the movie isn't so much that someone made it as it is that the theater decided to screen it (which means i have to see parts of it). it is heartening though that although tonight was opening night, the only people in the theater for the first dinner set were two elderly couples.

bafflement

one of the many glamorous responsibilities i have is keeping the parking lot clear of refuse. beer bottles, downed tree limbs - you name it, i pick it up. you get the idea. i am trusting that you get the idea.

anyway, yesterday while i was out there, i noticed a man sitting in a little red geo. this would be perfectly ordinary of course (sitting in one's car is a totally unremarkable activity) except for one thing, that thing being that instead of exiting his car upon arrival in the theater parking lot, he continued to sit in it. i was only outside for half an hour, but he sat there the entire time. he didn't have anything to read. he was not playing music. the windows were up and his motor was off, so the ac must've been as well.

at first i thought he might be waiting for a movie to start, but i discarded that because we have a cozy bar inside with chairs and couches and his car must have been extremely uncomfortable (it was 90 degrees and quite humid at the time). well, after i finished up and went inside, i mentioned there was a guy sitting in the parking lot to one of the servers and she described him down to the white reed richards wings in his hair. it seems this guy is there all the time. in fact, when i went out to clear the lot in the evening (people love dumping trash outside the theater), he was still there. stranger still, there were others: a lady in a green hatchback, a middle-aged guy sitting in his midlife crisis, both of them behaving just like the first man. all three stayed in their cars while i was cleaning, but were gone when i left at the end of the night.

no one at work seems to have an explanation for this behavior. so i call on you, my loyal reader(s), to explain these people's deal.

because it baffles the hell out of me.

rocky

all the food we serve has a cute movie-themed nickname. blts are fried green blts, the pizza with chicken and banana peppers is a chicken run, etc. most of the time when i bring people their food, i describe it rather than using the nickname because a lot of them seem random and people often know what they wanted but forget the dumb name the theater has chosen for it. sometimes though:

- hi. did you have the philly?
- uh uh.
- are you sure? you didn't have a philly cheese steak?
- no. i ordered the rocky.
- yeah that's the philly cheese steak.
- no, no. i had the rocky.

ad nauseum.

there are actual not-fake people out there who do not recognize thorough descriptions of the food that ten minutes prior they asked their server to bring to them. in fact, there are a lot of them. that particular not-fake person refused to believe that the food i had brought to her was the food she had ordered until i tracked down a menu and pointed out the bit on it that says "rocky" and the bit directly below that where it says philly cheese steak.

if chris farley were still alive, i'd give him a tack hammer and he'd just go to town on these people.

photo shoot

tomorrow, corporate headquarters is sending over a team of photographers to take photos for the company website. i'm not sure of the details, but i do know that we, the employees, will be shown both doing our jobs and posing as the public enjoying the movies. i guess corporate is hoping that people will just see hip, young people having a good, sexy time watching movies and hanging out at the bar, and not question why those people are all wearing the same shirt.

i will provide more details tomorrow night if anything interesting happens. oh. and when important people see photos of me and i become internet famous i promise we can still be friends (until i meet better people).

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nothing interesting happened.

we did get free drinks though which was nice. the lady from the corporate office wanted to showcase the variety of drinks we offer, so she said we could have beer. unsurprisingly, by allowing us to have beer she ensured that there would be no variety.

shorts

the theater shows short movies before and after showings to keep customers entertained and docile. the shorts, however, are uniformly terrible and i believe the only reason people put up with them is because they eliminate the need for conversation. if i was in charge of choosing the films, i'd show something good like werner herzog eats his shoe. unfortunately, this responsibility is one of many that i do not have, and so the theater screens garbage.

there's one where a girl talks about how transcendently wonderful post-it notes are. she must be angling for an endorsement deal because she says the phrase "post-it" 48 times in just under five minutes (i counted). the twist in the story is that one day she cannot remember where relevant post-its are and is mildly inconvenienced. in a different short, a woman is depressed on her birthday because she has turned thirty and works in a restaurant, but feels better when her mother calls and points out that she has a horse.

but my absolute favorite is the short entitled "snapshots from the american wasteland" (i am not joking with you even a little about this title 100% top serious). it is a montage of black and white photographs set to gloomy, brooding music. as you might expect, the photos display images of corruption and hubris, and are clearly meant to be provocative and meaningful (spoiler: they aren't). there are photos of the twin towers, barren fields and derailed trains, and a nice little juxtaposition between photos of impoverished children and laughing plutocrats.

the best part though is the soundtrack. the director has clearly found an older sibling's copy of f♯a♯∞ and decided to make a music video. the audio he uses is the spoken word intro from the first track of the album. so not only is he making a fake, dumb statement, he is making the same fake, dumb statement that a big group of canadian weirdos made fifteen years ago.

when he gets to ninth grade and reads the great gatsby, it's gonna blow his mind.

every person is a dick

i found out today that four coworkers with whom i regularly interact have names that are different from what i have been calling them. so i have been calling four people the wrong thing for nearly a month and no one said anything - not even the misnamed.

this happened because every person is a dick.

trachea

a guy found steel wool in his burger today. or more accurately, a paramedic found steel wool inside a guy’s trachea today. what the guy actually found was himself, on the floor, after a successful resuscitation attempt. he didn’t die, which is good. it would have been bad if he had died.

because hey, free pizza

tonight i brought a woman a pizza. i walked up to her and said, "hi, i've got a braveheart here." i receive a blank stare. undaunted, i forged ahead. "ma'am, did you have the braveheart?" glazed look. nonplussed, i took another stab. "it's a spinach pizza with garlic cloves and goat cheese and sun dried tomatoes." i concluded my utterance on a rising pitch contour in the hope that the woman might recognize this extremely common interrogative signal. instead, she shifted her shoulders and craned her neck to the left so that she could see past me to the screen. the girl two seats over gave me a sympathetic smile and a shrug.

now, i’m a pretty unassuming guy. i am reserved in social situations and i generally don’t attract a lot of attention to myself. that said, i don't think i've ever before been so totally ignored. the woman was not the least bit curious about why i was blocking her view of the screen; she simply recognized that her vision was obstructed and took the necessary steps to restore it. well, although i was confused by this odd behavior, i wasn’t terribly bothered by it because hey, free pizza.

the movie she was watching by the way was the ugly truth, a vomitous little film which for some reason continues to sell out despite its total lack of any positive qualities. seriously, the best thing about this movie is that it eventually ends.

the final destination

the new final destination movie started showing today, and although i've only seen a couple two minute chunks of it, i am hopelessly in love with it. as far as i can tell, it consists of three twenty-somethings wandering around asking each other if it is really safe to be where they are. the dude assures the two girls that it is and although he is always wrong the girls totally believe him every time. after making his assurances, he is proven incorrect (often immediately) when a passerby gets decapitated by a flying tire or a plane crashes nearby or one of them gets accidentally nailed to a wall near a fire and a spilled can of inflammable fuel.

it's like the director is aware of foreshadowing (at least on a theoretical level) but hasn't quite mastered its practical application. despite this and despite the terrible acting and crappy dialogue and the tediously repetitive nature of the plot, the theater was packed for each showing -

which isn't surprising, of course. if there is one thing i've learned at this job it's that it is impossible to underestimate the public. but still, i am left slightly bemused by this movie's popularity. this one is the fourth or fifth in the series, so presumably the people coming to see it have seen at least one of the others. i am having a really difficult time understanding why someone who has already seen at least one crappy iteration of this not-particularly-interesting plot would not only wish to see another crappy iteration of this not-particularly-interesting plot, but be willing to use money that they had spent time earning to pay for tickets.


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actually, i have just had a thought. maybe they aren't using money they spent time earning to pay for their tickets. maybe everyone who comes to see that movie does so immediately after holding up a bank or knocking over an armored car or mugging the pope.

i mean, a showing of the final destination (which, despite the definite article, will unfortunately probably not be the last one) is the perfect place to hole up after doing some crimes because no person with even a single functioning brain cell would go anywhere near one of those under any circumstances.

stuff

today a guy told me that lockheed martin faked the moon landing. tomorrow he is bringing me some "stuff i should read."