2 Parties, 3 Movies

This weekend I was placed in close contact with a species of human being I have a lot of trouble dealing with since this is a polite society and whacking people in the head is not well thought of. There are those problems with the police and things.

Anyway at this party I got far too much contact with someone who had a severe case of “I’m the coolest person in the room if not new York” disease – you know one of those self absorbed folks who if they maybe weighed a little more would collapse into a black hole of self absorption – which would be nice cause that would mean the rest of us wouldn’t have to deal with him.

Just as an example – he was talking about the Metropolitan Opera (full disclosure – I am an opera fan) currently the Met is having a program where the weekday tickets in family circle – (which are the Met’s upper deck) he said he was getting his tickets from his wife (who worked there and they were orchestra). He then noted that the real hoi poloi are in the first level – to which I responded with “well I don’t care” At which point I realized it was time to go and play city of heroes with the enemy below since this was going nowhere. I presume I was supposed to be impressed by his connections or something.

He was, for some reason, trying to make himself the Alpha male – at a fricking party for god’s sake. Where people were coming to chat about mindless things, drink and eat snacks. I’m not very good at such things but it’s never struck me as a venue to try and prove your superiority over others. Not our friend however.

Now I presume I have as much capacity to be a jerk as anybody else and I have to assume, being human that under the right circumstances I too could start trying to be the alpha male in a group. Like some nit wit started talking with a woman I was interested in and we were on a desert island and she was the only woman – I suspect I would get a bit alpha but not at a party – especially not at a party without caviar (yes I happen to like the stuff – acquired taste and too expensive for me to indulge under normal circumstances – and hell so few people like it anyway that there is rarely any competition for it when it is available so probably not even then).

As the evening wore on, the self absorbed one’s voice grew louder with drink and started ranting about Astoria or Queens in general how it has nothing that could be its own except the beer garden. I didn’t want to join the conversation since I was trying to level up my technology blaster in city of heroes (geek yes and much more fun) but what I gathered was that he and his wife (and you wondered how he, his ego and her all fit in that one bed) were living somewhere pretty much rent free in queens or Astoria even but he loved Brooklyn better, he jabbered something about you could go to any bar in Brooklyn and find real character. Again I’m not sure what he wanted folks to feel about this – I go to a bar to drink beer not do some half assed anthropological stuff – but to each his own.

Actually if he loved Brooklyn as much as said he did he’d be living there. As he wasn’t it merely proved he was cheap.

Another thing about him was that he didn’t like cats – now that in as of itself isn’t especially bad – it’s not good, but I was leery of dogs for a while – I delivered papers as a kid and dogs bark like hell and worse when you drop the papers off – it wasn’t until later when my brother had two Golden Retrievers that I got more comfortable with dogs – so I can understand that people can be uncomfortable around cats. The problem was that he actually seemed proud of not liking cats; he acted like that was an achievement of his up there with scoring the seats at the Met. Which is a) unpleasant to be around and b) weird in a very creepy way.

I suspect the reason he doesn’t care much for cats is that cats can be very particular about who they chose to get comfortable with and don’t respond well to commands or bluster. For someone that has to be the coolest in the room at all times, that is intolerable.

Anyway the party broke up fairly early as things go – most of the guests leaving about 12 as did I, I can’t say that the other guests early departure was due to being in the same room with Self Impressed Man but I wouldn’t discount it as a motivation either. I’d have love to have stayed later myself and get his suggestions for making Astoria hipper and thus easier for him to deal with, but I had an appointment to have my eyes gouged out.

I did manage to get to watch some of Phantoms this weekend – late this weekend – reasons why after. I had forgotten how much I don’t care for Ben Affleck – I mean can this man act at all? Even a little bit? The only thing he seems to do is this stare that seems to mean anything from “I am deeply wounded” to “I want a doughnut”

Phantoms is about this Denver town were this lady doc lives and takes her sister who was living in LA with Lady doc’s hard living mother (drinking what not) to, to I assume dry out or something – only thing is there is nobody home when they get there – then they start finding bodies with strange bruises on them.

Then their luck gets really bad when they run into Ben Affleck and his deputies – I’m not sure I think Ben was supposed to be the sheriff of this little town but again it wasn’t clear. The first thing that Ben does is take charge – it turns out that he is supposed to have been an FBI agent who quit because of an incident where shot a kid during a raid cause the kid was holding a toy gun. It was obviously an attempt to give him a motivation for that weird stare of his. Didn’t work but that’s the least of the problems here –

When Ben arrives he promptly takes over and as a result his two deputies are killed one by some kind of dragon fly moth who eats his brain – the other deputy just vanishes.


Peter O’toole also shows up – and does a pretty good job – the whole thing isn’t awful but Ben kept putting me to sleep – for one thing he was way way way way too young looking to have been in the FBI – they only take college grads, they like them to have some prior police/D.A. service before joining up and then there is the training itself – hell Affleck doesn’t look old enough to have finished college never mind all the rest. And there is the fact he’s pretty stupid in the movie – everybody in the town has vanished expect for dead bodies, of the two survivors one is a doctor worried about biological contamination and he fucking insists of staying put cause he’s the sheriff. I’ll bet he gets orchestra seats at the met as well.

Had a better time last night watching Zombie or Zombie 2 or whatever with some folks (none of whom had a need to dominate the proceedings). An Italian film directed by Lucio Fulci that is just chock oh block with zombies, naked women and blood. The film makes no real sense but is more a succession of moments – there is an underwater battle between a shark and a zombie – a woman goes scuba diving wearing only a thong and a bathing cap (going Jacqueline Bisset’s wet t-shirt scuba scene in The Deep one better I guess – but the bathing cap is damn weird). Bad things happen to most of the cast and someone’s eye – a directorial lemotif I was told – massed zombies rise form the grave and eat folks on a tropical island and at the end there are zombies stumbling across the Brooklyn Bridge – with the traffic moving normally so New York I guess adapted to hordes of zombies better than say Camden would – it’s not quite clear why New York is over run by Zombies but it’s all okay.

Film I ended up watching over and over again was The Mask of Fu Manchu a 1932 wildly over the top horror melodrama where Boris Karl off plays a gleefully evil and twisted Fu Manchu who loves his work to death (Christopher Lee’s Fu was no where nearly as much fun – partially because Lee played him so stiff partially because the make up wouldn’t let him move his face much anyway) with Myrna Loy as his just a dangerous daughter. The movie features amazing sets done by MGM during their glory years, hordes of extras, lavish production values, a plot that makes not a lick of damn sense, very elaborate torture scenes – for example Nyland Smith on of the heroes, (played by the guy who played Andy Hardy’s father in all those movies) is tied to one end of a teeter tooter looking thing the other end holds sand and as the sand runs out he is lowered to the alligators below him; another is tied to a chair and two platforms with knives sticking out slowly move towards him another man is tied under a bell that keeps ringing and ringing and ringing. – I found myself thinking of the Austin Powers movies – Dad just shoot them I have a gun I can just shoot them – and over it all a racism so over the top (before folks started panicking about Muslims or Mexicans, Hordes of Asians were the racist’s nightmare of choice) that as a modern viewer you end up rooting for Fu. The whole thing is vastly entertaining over the top Chaos.

Many men smoke, but Fu Manchu.

Sorry – love that stupid joke.

Peace. Love, Boris.