Julie, Julia, and the Twilight Zone

What blogger couldn't weigh in on the movie of the book of the blog, Julie & Julia, about the woman who was already an awesome cook and writer but was stuck working at the Freedom Hole hotline because no one can just do what they love and be happy without money, until one day Julia Child appears in her cupboard and possesses her, making her chop up all the haters, sparing the too-good-to-be-true husbands and amazingly well-trained cat?

ME! I saw the movie a while back, with Nan and Mum--who loved it, because they love food, and I can't critique the movie, because for a movie about women bonding over food it wasn't bad and I don't like picking apart other people's work because that's fucking lame, so I thought I'd fire off a list of things I learned about myself from the movie.

One, I am apparently a man. A man who hates food. An anorexic man, even, because after two hours of watching people have orgasms over food--and yeah, Julia Child made out with her husband, I just...you need to know that, not that I had a problem with that, or Adam Lambert's AMA performance for that matter--I was just feeling a bit like I'd had a really bad migraine.

Maybe that's because I had a migraine. See, I had just gotten into playing Café World on Facebook, not because I like food or anything, but...it's Facebook, you understand, and I use Facebook ironically, and I have migraines, and doing anything online for more than the minute it takes to play Bejeweled Blitz makes me start acting like all those people in The Happening just before they step in front of a combine harvester. I smell in algebra!

Anyway, I'd been doing fine serving bacon cheeseburgers--and I'm a vegetarian, remember (not many people do, because I don't shove it down everyone's throat)--but I'd staggered off to take Excedrin and my caramel apples went bad before I could serve them and my rating tanked and all the computer people weren't giving me coins anymore and after that maybe I didn't want to see two hours of a Nora Ephron film about food. Although the occasional up yours to Sen. McCarthy was beautiful. The killing of the lobster might have negated that, had I been in the room, but I walked out. I came back, I always do. I didn't walk out on Orphan, mind you. Orphan kicks ass. See it. You'll know when to look away.

Afterwards, The Trade-Ins episode of The Twilight Zone was on, and I couldn't stop staring at the old dude's powdered eyelashes, so maybe I was just being '80s-level picky that night.

This is not a reflection at all on the movie or the blog or the books or food in general, really. There was a meme on Facebook, again I don't know why I did it, and it told me I was a spork because I chose Julia Child as the person I'd most want to sit and listen to. Sinatra was on the list, loads of people were on the list, but I figured Julia Child would have good stories and not be all that dangerous and/or likely to make me want to hang myself afterward. I've since read Julie Powell's blog too and it's fabulous. So I guess I just get diabetes from Nora Ephron films, that's all. Sure. It's me. Me, me, me.

OH YEAH, speaking of me, blogs didn't have pop-up windows like, "YOU HAVE A COMMENT!" in 2002 and they still don't (thank god). Call me picky, but War Games prevented me from getting a modem until I was 16. I had a modem, in the house, when I was 12, and it had to go back to Games 'n' Gadgets, unopened, because of its untapped lethalness. So yes, I have an issue about movies misrepresenting the common everyday computer.

But you know what? That whole Julie/Julia story is an up yours to fear and that I can get behind 100%.

Even if I can't look directly at cream sauce without puking. Or aspic. Or raw poultry. Or fish. Or--okay, I'm physically incapable of puking in real life due to my hernia, so don't worry that I'm off puking somewhere. Anorexia's nothing to make fun of. But puke jokes always amused me, because as I've pointed out earlier in this post, I seem to be a very weird boy.

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Nevermind that, Hey Pais has a much better take on Julie & Julia.

Julie, Julia, and the Twilight Zone

The Racket: A Letter I Ought To Have Sent Myself

Congratulations, you got born. Odds are you won't find that or the next few months half as interesting as anything else ever, but be assured you began to cost your family money from the second your cells began dividing.

After the thousands spent to keep you from from starving or staining the furniture, you'll get shipped off to a place where you will instantly learn you're not all that. Seriously, there's billions of things just like you milling around this planet and at this point you'll be no better or worse than any other, so be nice and focus on learning to read and write and add because beyond that there really is nothing you can't learn on your own. Sure, it helps to have someone to tell you what the hell nuclear fusion is about, but for the most part if you're capable of thinking for yourself you'll figure it out eventually.

Don't bother trying to start out being some fancy thing that won't make you loads of money, because the first thing potential mates will ever care about is whether you're going to need them to pay for things like bandages or cereal. After you've made your money then you can go be as weird as you want and people will love you.

Don't get injured or otherwise sick. No one cares. Unless you have money to put into the healthcare system, then it will take all of that money to figure out just what the hell is wrong with you. Nine times out of ten no one will ever know what the hell is wrong with you.

You probably can't live in a tent, someone will kill you or you'll freeze. But they're much cheaper than those things that stand on land and tend to be eaten away by insects and the elements.

As you get older, make sure you have interests of your own, because your friends are going to get annoying and your children--if you've managed to pull off that part of the game--will be off oiling the cogs of the great machine in ways they think you didn't. If you're lucky you'll have someone you can stand that can also stand you and you can make fun of everyone else together. If not, animal shelters are busting at the seams with instant love on legs.

Don't waste time thinking about death. You'll get there eventually and it doesn't matter how. The important thing is that you manage to make everyone incredibly sad when you go and one way to do that is to be awesome. Not loaded with money, because money is not being awesome. Have some interesting stories to tell, know something worth passing on, if it's really good they'll remember it. Unless you've chosen the wrong people to tell your stories to, but that's just a general failure of judgment on everyone's part. Some people don't belong together, and it's better to recognize that before the stabbings.



Use well what you learn.

The Racket: A Letter I Ought To Have Sent Myself