@willradik purports, in his review of the film, that The Room was written by a schizophrenic adolescent, but I think the truth may be… anthropological. I believe that what we experience in this excruciating 99 minute picture, is modern life as seen through the eyes of a throwback. I purport that it is the biography of a caveman. Take, as evidence, this photograph of Tommy Wiseau: main character, writer, director, and executive producer of the film.

Gaze into his craggy face. Listen to his muddled voice. Realize that he does not actually understand all of the words he is saying. This is not a bad movie, it’s not a farce, it’s a documentary. A deep dive into the ocean of confusion that an unfrozen caveman might feel plunged into daily life in modern San Francisco.

Watch the film, and think about it. Who else would be so unclear on the uses of a sporting ball that they would put not one but FOUR scenes on a small roof top that are predicated on the idea that someone would just go up there with a football… to simply chill out? And listen to Tommy Wiseau’s voice. It’s not suited for language, it’s a yowl, not unlike that of a wild beast. It would be best served baying at the moon. The apparent randomness of the movie’s every day world, where children wander in and out of your home dozens of times a day, attempting to interrupt your coital aggressions, where strangers show up and drink bottled water with you, then hang around for 40 minutes of exposition.

I believe we may have found him. We may have found a true Man From Earth. But… he doesn’t bring us the teachings of Buddha or the love of Christ. His journey has brought him no peace. It has only brought him confusion, and pain.

A year ago, I felt so alone I thought I was going to shatter. My asexual life partner and best friend had stopped contributing to my life in any positive way, and suddenly I was left without anyone to talk to about my biggest problem. I tried a coworker, I tried some friends. But they didn’t understand me, they didn’t have a decade of history with me to know exactly what I mean. It was horrible, it was like… losing everything. I could see how I had constructed all of my life around a central lie, that I could live for someone else, that I could turn off my brain, and let my work ethic power someone else’s construct. When that was taken from me, I spent night after night, alone with my thoughts, realizing how long it had been since I worked on myself.

Alone is good. From time to time. Dan Savage drops this perfectly formed ball of wisdom in the middle of a “fat girls need love too, and if you can just hold out you’ll get it” speech: “We will all be alone for stretches of our lives, and we have to make sure that the way our single lives are built makes us happy.”

Alone is when I write. Alone is when I masturbate. Alone is when I plumb the depths of my head. It’s when I do my math. It’s when I hatch my plans. Alone is when I’m watching movies. Alone is when I’m reading. There’s a lot of good that comes from alone. I was alone when I first realized I wanted to write. I was alone when the first song ever moved me to tears. Alone is when you get your best drinking done. Nobody else to set the pace, just you and your drink. And you’re not trying to impress anybody either. If someone else is there, you’re gonna have to have that inevitable conversation. Yes, this is a two liter bottle of Mountain Dew, vermouth and cheap brandy. No, it doesn’t taste good. Yes, it’s probably a little early to be drinking like this. No, it seriously doesn’t taste good. Because, god damn it, there’s a fucking Eek the Cat marathon on and I’ll be mother fucked if I’m going to miss out on the Eekpocalypse Now episode just to go to the store and buy proper booze and mixers. You’re not the boss of me and no I did not knock that over when I was drunk, I knocked THAT over when I dropped the vermouth, and you can see it’s gone now, so that was a long time ago, thank you very much. Blah blah blah… You can see how annoying this gets. When you’re alone it’s just “More brandy or less brandy… more brandy or less brandy. ELKLIIIIIGHT EEELLLLKLIIIIIGHT!!!!” then you knock some shit over and lie about it to yourself. But you’re drunk so you believe it, in this horrible way. Then you think about the nature of humanity for a while. Maybe you prove scientific theories by running through logic games with yourself. Maybe sometimes you cry. But for the most part you just finish your cartoons and then suddenly you wake up at 2am feeling oily, rested, slightly nauseous, and vaguely embarrassed, just like every other day, only you have a five hour head start.

I forget what the point was there but being Eek the Cat is still pretty great, so much of it is on Youtube too.

But the next time you are alone. Notice it. Embrace it. Feel out the corners inside your skull. Maybe you’ll learn something about yourself.

I’ve had a lot of really strange, stupid, and/or disturbing dreams in my time, but this morning…

Well, I woke up. I got out of bed and I felt pretty good. And I was doing some stretches, and getting ready for my day. When I noticed I could touch my feet. I stopped. Straightened up, and did it again. At that moment, I knew… this was a dream. So in the dream, just before I woke up, I bent down, impossibly far… and put my big toe in my mouth.

Continued from Marblecake

The door to the house is neatly crossed corner to corner with yellow police tape, those five words “Police Line – Do Not Cross” explaining in no uncertain terms “this is where civilization failed”. The door is closed and locked, and the puddle of antifreeze out front is the only clue to what happened. Breaking into a crime scene isn’t a new thing for me, but I don’t like it. Besides the fact that if I get caught Ben may actually shoot me next time he sees me, a crime scene at the home of a guy I’m looking for is rarely good news. It means the guy I’m looking for is in jail, on the run from the cops, or in the morgue. All three of these things make it hard for me to get back to drinking beers in the park.

I decide against going in the front door. It’s too open, somebody is bound to see me, and I’m not particularly good at jimmying locks, so it’s gonna take some time. A sliding door around back, maybe. I listen quietly at the fence for the telltale sounds of a dog. Either Ricky wasn’t a canine lover, or there’s a perfectly trained attack dog waiting to jack me as soon as I get into the yard. I give a glance around, make sure nobody is looking, and vault the short fence into the back yard.

Somebody was a little housekeeper out here. The plants look neat as a pin, all the flowers in neat rows, the trees trimmed, the grass is green and thick as carpet. The fence is narrow pickets painted white, immaculate. The fully-made bed that’s under the tree in the corner is even immaculate looking, except for the few leaves that have fallen down onto the comforter.

Why can’t shit ever be normal?

Nobody with a dog has ever had a yard this nice looking. Nobody who was not batshit insane has ever had a bed on the ground under their tree. Thankfully the police tape PROBABLY means I’m not gonna walk in on a methed out drug mule scraping off his skin and trying to find some fingernail scissors to go trim the yard again, but I pull out my little pistol just in case.

I quietly, carefully step toward the door, the pistol held low. I’m staring through the sliding door, trying to figure out how hard it’s going to be to get inside. No bar in the door. I look over to see if there’s an alarm or anything. I don’t see anything. I don’t see any cameras, there’s no bars on the windows. This isn’t like any distribution hub I’ve ever seen, so apparently Ricky really lives here. I turn an eye back toward that crazy ass bed, in the yard, and imagine the black-and-white man in the pictures coming at me with a soldering iron and a beard of foamed spittle. I steel myself against it, and grab the door handle, to see how hard the lock is going to be to break.

As the door unexpectedly slides, effortlessly back, the hairs rise on the back of my neck. We’re there now, this is disturbing a crime scene. Even with Ben doing everything he can, if I get caught here, I’m going away for a while. No more beers in the park. No more breakfast for dinner. Adrenaline dumps and every nerve is on fire. I step forward onto the carpet, and before I can even get my body into the door, three sharp clacks sound off. I drop to the ground, pointing the gun right, left, right, and trying to figure out what I missed. What have I missed?

No noise. No voices. Nothing. The house is still. A warm, fetid smell roils out of the house, and I start to gag on the smell, backing out quickly to the patio, I kick something with my heel.

I sigh, and reach down to retrieve the tin magazine which fell from my pistol, and shove it hard and fast back up into the gun, smacking it with the butt of my hand angrily. I really should buy a good gun someday.

I breathe the now sweet-seeming air of the back yard, and turn back toward the screen door. I set my jaw, brace myself, and walk into the hot wet smell of something which has suffered long in the misery of decomposition.

I’ve been remiss in keeping my blog up to date with my acerbic ramblings and harsh judgment. So let us remedy this with a short blast of loathsome pop culture items.

1. Michael Jackson. Everyone acted surprised he died. Which is weird. Because the man has spent the past two decades having every unnecessary medical procedure in the book performed on his body so that he could look like an aging anorexic woman wearing a deflated sex-doll as a skin suit. Of course his body said “FUCK THIS SHIT” and checked out. Also, did everybody forgive him for being a mo-mo all of the sudden? Because whenever I bring up the fact that he fed little boys “jesus juice” and touched them in front of the elephant man’s skeleton, I get this look like it’s too soon. Yes. It was too soon. To touch those little boys. On their genitals. I did listen to his music all fucking day though.

2. Transformers 2 Revenge of The Fallen is not actually as nonlinear or nonsensical as it’s made out to be, but it is basically seven major action sequences with various trailing plot points reaching desperately for each other to gap the void between them. It feels like it’s about four hours long. It’s smeared down with enough campy cheese and vaguely oily feeling racial stereotypes to make your brain feel like County Fair nachos when it finally rolls out of the theater. Also Megan Fox’s boobs got more screen time than any robot, Shia, or any character except for the throwaway “college roommate” who for some reason fills the screen for 45 fucking minutes. This should tell you how much fat could have been ripped out, but for some reason was not. I’d like to see a “real director’s cut” where somebody takes a talented director and has them re-cut it into an actual one hour and fifty minute summer action flick.

3. This summer is kinda bullshit, weather wise. But yesterday made me want to find a way to fuck the air.

4. GI Joe looks like it’s gonna be horrible. FYI.

5. I think there might be some dried semen on my face.

I guess that doesn’t really have much to do with pop culture. But it’s raw and real, people. Get in touch with it.