Hello, I'm a consumer!
◊ My weekend in media:
Thursday: "Jersey Girl" (directed by Kevin Smith)
Dear Kevin,
I've been in love with you for almost ten years. I was taken with you from the beginning, ever since I noticed your witty dialogue, clever use of irony and character development. I'd had a thing for you ever since my brother and I rented Clerks and I saw those one-word title cards, but that night with Chasing Amy changed everything.
As I got to know you better, my feelings deepened into something much more real and lasting. Dogma was great, and I really liked your work with comic books. I was so proud for you when you got to interview Stan Lee. My friends all knew I was in love for real this time. I felt like you'd never, ever break my heart.
But I guess I was wrong. Kevin, I love you so much but I don't feel like I know who you are any more. When I caught you with Jersey Girl, I was stunned. How could you hurt me like that? You spent all these years making clever, thought-provoking movies with style and wit and grace, and you just threw that all away on some predictable, bloated trailer trash of a movie.
Jesus, Kevin, how could you? Didn't you know that any movie with the line "The kid's got a point!" in it can't possibly love you like I can? I know you think Ben Affleck and Liv Tyler can actually act, but you should've known the script was nothing but trouble. And the music — Kevin, baby, what happened to the music? I mean, Bruce Springsteen covering Tom Waits? That was just low.
We've been together for a long, long time and I think we deserve another chance. I think we should try to recapture the magic we used to have.
But if I ever, ever, ever catch you with another ho like Jersey Girl, I swear I'll cut your balls off.
Friday, "The Passion of the Christ"
When we went to see The Passion, Dean I and stepped into the theater expecting the washed-up audience dregs you usually get at the last showing of a movie that's been out over a month.
Boy howdy, were we wrong. The place was packed.
"Jesus," I said.
"Goddammit," said Dean.
I guess it wasn't just cynical ex-Catholics who went to see the Big Jesus Film on Good Friday. There place was seething with Christians.
As to the movie — well, whatever. It was either Jesus getting the beat-down of the millennium from shuffling, leering, ape-like Romans (all the sympathetic Romans were cute in a "red-hot centurions" kind of way, I should point out) or reenactments of the same Gospel bits that I've heard for years, with a remarkably hot Jim Caviezel as Head Sock Puppet, a.k.a. Jesus.
Box office note: After the Easter weekend, Jesus is back on top. In a "ticket revenue" way, not sexually, you pervs.
Saturday, The Raveonettes
I love, love, love the Raveonettes and never thought I'd get to see them at all, never mind see them at the Blank Club which is only like three times the size of my living room. Big guitar noise, sexy lyrics — they're like what you'd get if the girl gangs and biker gangs in bad 50s movies stole some guitars and started a band. I drank, I danced, I sweated, I stole a copy of the set list. Thank you, Raveonettes, for the first show I've been to that was as good as great sex.