Art Imitating Life

I present my humble mashup to you without comment.

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I had a glass of Surly Darkness for the second time last night. I had had it once before and been truly unimpressed. But when our waitress came around and told us the non-”domestic” (don’t get me started) beer selection and we heard “Surly Darkness,” we all jumped and said “Yes! That one!” Including me. Even though I remember not caring for it.

And, once again, I had it and did not care for it. Because it is the Max Fischer of beers.

Surly Darkness could be good, but it tries to do too many things at once. I don’t even know what flavors I’m supposed to be looking for or experiencing. It has so many things going on that not one of them is done well by my tongue. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be a hopstravaganza, if it’s supposed to be like drinking a loaf of bread, or if it’s supposed to have fruity/woody/spiced overtones. And I’m pretty sure the reason I can’t tell is because it does all of these things at full tilt.

So, Max Fischer of beers, I’m not going to say you’re bad. I’m just going to say I don’t think you’re good enough for me. But there are plenty of Margaret Yangs out there.

Spoiler alert: I saw the new Star Trek movie.

I was at work when I refreshed Twitter. Right near the top of my feed I could see that @vita_mn had said

Vita.mn invites you to BOLDLY GO… tonight at its premiere party for STAR TREK. 2 pairs of tixx available now. Email christian@vita.mn!

And ten seconds later I was in gmail. I wrote

I want them! How do I get them?

and was subsequently informed that I had already done all that was necessary.

And that was it. I had tickets to an advanced screening of a movie I’ve been anticipating for approximately three years. But not just an advanced screening–eight days before it comes to theaters. Seven days before regular people who win tickets get to see the “advanced” screening. In fact, according to Vita.mn, I am a taste maker. And my taste says this movie was fuckin‘ boss.

Better than Iron Man. And, yes, Better than the Dark Knight. (Note: I will not compare individual performances. Heath Ledger’s Joker was a villain for the ages and was–somehow–way above the rest of that film.)

I will not bore you with spoilers. Suffice it to say the film stays close enough to the spirit of Star Trek to satiate this canon-aware fan. No, that’s not right. I’m not just canon aware, but canon expectant. Ok, fine, here’s a minor spoiler: this movie breaks canon. But if you really care you probably already knew that, right? I won’t bother reviewing something you haven’t seen past saying it was even more badass and fun to watch than the ads make it look. I dare say it nearly surpasses both Star Trek VI and Star Trek: First Contact. Nearly. If you wanted to determine which was the best of the three, you’d probably have to toss all of them in the air and see which one landed closest to the center of a target that denotes quality. That is how good this movie was.

I’m going to hold off on full-on analysis of the movie until I see it again next week (and when everyone else has seen it). However, I would like to note the demographic makeup of the crowd who saw this movie with me. This screening was made up of people who were in the know (plus me, Emily, and the other two people who were fast enough to get tickets from Twitter) about this movie, according to Christian. The rest, apparently, was made up of people who know Christian and their plus-ones. This made for an interesting mix of people, broken out approximately as such:

55% obvious nerds

40% obvious hipsters (Seriously. Skinny jeans? Still?)

5% indistinguishable/me and Emily

All in all I am really happy to have won tickets to see this movie. I am a little rueful that I was unable to share the devirginization of this rebirth with my best friend and collaborator Donavon. However, I believe it was worth potential perceptions of betrayal to see one of the best, most exciting films I’ve seen in years.

I have come up with the best idea for a total guy movie. It’s got everything a man needs in a movie: a monster and nudity. Here’s the premise:

A woman is infested with a parasite. After the paratite bursts out of the woman, nearly splitting her in two, she finds out that it has brainwashed her into feeding it and keeping it alive! And it will only eat… FROM HER BOOBS!

In the spirit of putting one more list on the internet, I figured I’d share with you a list of the top ten comedy movies.

AFI:
10. AIRPLANE!.
9. THE GRADUATE.
8. IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT.
7. M*A*S*H.
6. BLAZING SADDLES.
5. DUCK SOUP.
4. ANNIE HALL.
3. DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB.
2. TOOTSIE.
1. SOME LIKE IT HOT.

There are some interesting trends here. For example, all the lists include Blazing Saddles, but none of them include it in the top five. IGN and AFI both have at number six, while Bravo has it at eight. (Behind Wedding Singer. Really?) This seems like an obvious pan-list item, until you realize Dr. Strangelove, Airplane!, and Caddyshack only made two lists, and This Is Spinal Tap only made one.

This evidence supports my thesis, outlined below, with the question of Caddyshack left open for debate.

And now, I present to you, my list:

10. Airplane!
9. Wayne’s World
8. Doctor Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
7. Mystery Men
6. Rushmore
5. Monty Python’s Meaning of Life
4. The Big Lebowski
3. Blues Brothers
2. This Is Spinal Tap
1. Blazing Saddles

Post Script: Honorable Mentions

Then, there are some movies that aren’t exactly in the main stream. I would hesitate to even call them “movies,” per se. Two are commentaries and one is a documentary. But these easily rank as highly as the Top Ten, but they rank differently high. Consider these three as the top three (in no particular order) of a parallel list of feature-length hilarity.

Wizard People, Dear Reader [link]

MST3K/RiffTrax [link]

The Aristocrats [link]

A few days ago, I noted that my DVD collection tends to favor a specific genre. In that post I included a photo of my movies that were not either comedy or science fiction. It’s a stack of about 20 DVDs. So, in that context, here are my science fiction DVDs:

That’s over three feet of DVDs. And yes, you notice correctly: the complete Twilight Zone (five seasons) and the complete Star Trek: The Next Generation (seven seasons) are making the stack pretty tall. They are also making the stack quite awesome.

But that’s not even the best part. I went ahead and stacked all my comedy DVDs. The stack is so tall that I could not stack them without help from Lovely Assistant Emily:

I took these photos a few days ago when I was pretty drunk. That means most of these stacks were toppled in a depressing/hilarious drunken way.

File this one under “stacks provide unique insights.”

When I filed my taxes (actually, when I had my mom do it, because I’m a child), I discovered (my mother informed me) I am receiving $300 in stimulus money for some reason. I am a patriotic American, so I intend to use this money to its exact purpose: to stimulate the economy. Which means I’m going to buy some stuff.

But I’m no fool. I think before I spend. I present to you three options I am considering for my $300.

The Nerd Collection

Register www.punsultancy.com $10

Fill out my Led Zeppelin collection (all their albums except Houses of the Holy) $75

Battlestar Galactica seasons 1, 2, and 2.5 (I own three and four already, which give it a slightly more nerdy edge) $70 (on Amazon)

LOST seasons two, three, and four $125 (on Amazon)

Dark Knight $20

OR

The Comedy Collection

All My Stuff (George Carlin DVD box set of TV specials) or Seinfeld — the complete series $180

Let’s Get Small and A Wild and Crazy Guy (Steve Martin comedy albums) $15

Venture Brothers Season 3 (but only after March 24) $20

Andy Richter Controls the Universe — the complete series (but only after March 24) $30

Saturday Night Live season one — $50

OR

The Responsible Adult Collection

Membership to the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association $195

Microsponsorship of MinnPost $25

New business cards $20

Socks and underwear $40

Backorder www.artallen.com on Godaddy $20

And there you go. $300 smartly spent.

So what do you think? Which would you spend your $300 on?

Recently, I was going to watch a movie with Emily, so I started to narrow our movie options by genre. That’s when I realized the demographic makeup of my DVD collection. Let’s just say it’s a little lopsided.

These are the only movies in my collection that are not either comedy or science fiction:

(Missing from this photo are seasons 2 and 3 of Boston Legal, which are currently being lent to my mother’s boyfriend.)

Even within this collection, as you can probably see, there is a bit of a theme. There are a lot of old movies, historical fiction, and old historical fiction (westerns). Also, there even is a little overlap of comedy and science fiction in this collection. For example, Alice’s Restaurant isn’t a full-on comedy, but it has its funny moments. The Great Escape and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid both have truly funny moments sprinkled throughout. Man on the Moon is classified as a comedy in some movie stores, but I feel like that’s just because it was about the life of a funnyman; the movie itself has some very somber, touching moments (to the extent that a movie about Andy Kaufman can have a touching moment).

Hell, Boston Legal is a tongue-in-cheek legal drama that features a rotating cast of science fiction actors.

So, you may be thinking that looks like a bigish chunk of movies. Not outliers. Well, consider that the score or so DVDs featured above have come out of this collection:

My college buddy Leif listed ten movies he hasn’t seen but which he probably should have by now. (A note on Leif’s list: the only movies on that list that I’ve seen are Citizen Kane and the Shawshank Redemption–and the Shawshank Redemption involved a lot of 10th grade making out, so that one only sort of counts.)

Now, because I judge others and feel (very rightly) that others judge me almost exclusively on taste in media, I shall share with you my list of movies I haven’t seen that paint me as an uncultured cinema oaf.

1. The Indiana Jones movies
2. Mad Max
3. The Zombie genre
4. Some Like It Hot
5. Kill Bill (1 and 2)
6. Apocalypse Now
7. Annie Hall
8. The Terminator movies
9. The Pink Panther movies
10. Paul Blart: Mall Cop

Recently, I moved to a house in Uptown, just half a block out of the four-square block area called LynLake. I am two blocks from Pizza Lucé, half a block from an amazing-looking coffee shop (such charm can be seen from outside!), maybe four blocks from the VFW/Herkimer/everything else at the intersection of Lyndale and Lake, and a few more blocks away from Calhoun Square. Not to mention all my friends who live within four or five blocks.

Yeah, it’s all great. But the moving process has revealed a truth about me: I love books and movies. (Music too, but you’ll see why that was not physically demonstrated in the move.) When I packed up my books and DVDs, they took up eight boxes. And not small boxes. Look:

Sure, some boxes are smaller than others, but that’s an ass-ton of boxes. And books are heavy.

I am excited to unpack these boxes and organize my books and DVDs. I may let you know how it goes.

I find this all very interesting. You may not. But I don’t care, because this is my internet.