Friday, June 22, 2012

My Drunk Blog: Carly Rae

Who needs to grapple with writer's block when this gem was festering in my unpublished folder?  Indeed, time and time again I stumble upon one of these hidden away from nights where I got home and decided the most sensible activity to spend my intoxicated time on is blogger; at least I have the sensibility to not publish when I finish writing, otherwise - you'd miss out on this very sober preface.  This post is from Saturday night written at around 3am because I suppose that's when I got home.  For a summer where I've not gone out to bars, Saturday was fairly successful - not one but three whole stops throughout the day interspersed with bands down at Sound of Music, especially Carly Rae Jepsen.  Such a prolonged day of drinking then leads to 1. a weeping wallet (I have since checked how much I spent and jesus christ) and 2. a very drunk Matt.  Oh, and 3. this fantastic piece of craftsmanship.


Do you know how much money I spent today?  I don't even know, but I remember to double space after every period because that's what my momma taught me.  No, there's literally five dollars in my wallet right now, and considering I withdrew money from atms three whole times today, this is a bad sight.  I'm afraid to check the balance in my bank account, so that will be for tomorrow.

Consdering Im front Burlington the Sound of Music festival is essentially the greatest joy in my meager life.  On Thursday night I saw the Arkells play who were really great, but I saw a girl with a leg brace crowd surf which was even better, and she had a pretty hard fall so I hope she isn't crippled for life, that'd suck but it'd kinda be funny.  Then i went to the Poacher and I got drunk.  On Friday I went down to the lake with no band in mind and then there was these old men playing on the main stage so we left and went to the Poacher again and I got drunk again, but more than the night before, and then I walked home which absofuckinglutely sucked.  I wanted death the entire way.  An hour nd a half walking if you were wondering.  Also when I was walking up my street a car came up onto the sidewalk and started chasing me, and I shit you not.  It chased me up my street until I ran across the street in panic and then a taxi came in the opposite direction so the chasing car couldn't follow me into my house.  Seriously, I can't make this story up.  I was also holding beer and an ipod speaker so I probably looked hotter than I usually do every day just like I am now, seriously.

Today I met my wife, Carly Rae Jepsen, only she didn't meet me.  Hidden away in the beer tent my three friends and I waited pateintly for this goddamn girl to take the stage, and when she did, eight count em eight girls stood up on a collapsible plastic table to see better.  They blocked my view entirely but my satisfaction came in knowing the table buckled like hell, and gods I wish that table collapsed and I wish I witnessed a pile of girls happen on the ground screeching in pain.  After a while the security made them get down and I was able to then fully see my lovely Carly Rae who I must say 1. is one year older than Lady Gaga which is fucking weird cause you'd think Gaga would be much much more mature given that she's a crazy hussy and 2. she was acting fucking stoned as shit.  "I'm gonna sing about angels now!" she said and then I was probs uninterested but the song didn't have to do with angels you idiot.  She sang this song about a guitar string wedding ring which was sickeningly adorbs and Carly, I don't play guitar so I can't give you said wedding ring, so I'll give you a ring made up of my luscious curls.  Call Me Maybe was off the hook.  Then, we went to a restaraunt where my friend serves at, and I drank a beer and fish.  Then we saw some other band and bounced off to another restaraunt where I ate another damn entree and drank three more damn beers.  From there my friend and I went on to another friend's birthday where I drank I don't know, enough to make me not know how I got home right now considering I don't know how the hell I got home.  Drinks galore, I" got drunk, the birthday girl was cut off after an hour and a half or so, and I was proud.  I kept drinking and apparently spent a hundred dollars, then I somehow got home some way, and here I am.  It's like 3am and I probably don't have a liver no mo.

I haven't had much fun this summer but it's cool because then days like thishappen where I drink a fuck ton and I'm like, true.  I should be barred from writing while drunk, but I tried writing a few essays drunk this year at school and no word of a lie I didn't proof read them and I still got 80s.  Holla, I'm a drunk genius, you bitty.  I like the word bitty, and now I'm listening to Metric who I also like, a lot.  If you took a piece of guitar string, I would wear it like it's a wedding ring!  Angels.  I'm not really done to be honest.  Drinking, I mean.

Land of dreams, land of dreams, come and find your land of dreams, only America sucks and that commercial really does not make America look like America, I would've filmed fat people rolling in and out of a McDonald's location and that is the American Dream.  I hate how everything I experience while drunk is fast forwarded because.  Last time I wrote when I was drinking I thought there was a killer in my house and to be honest I'm not convinced there isn't one in my house currently, that's how paranoid and Criminal Minds I am.  My mom is afraid someone will use a univeral garage door opener like some dude killer on Criminal Minds and enter my house to kill us all while we sleeps so now I'm afraid and damnit I'm running up to my room right now with my computer.  Okay I'm back, I'm now in my room and I'm in bed with my computer, my one true girlfriend.  At least I'm safe from the Criminal Minds unsubs, but I'm not sure.  I could die.  If this is never published, I'm sorry.  There are eyelashes stuck in my eyes, good night.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

The war won't stop for the love of god

My summer has thus far been entirely uneventful.  I've spent more time at work than I have at home, I drink more with my family than I do out at bars, and I've seen eight movies in theaters in the past month - eight, and not unique.  Regardless, I'm thankful I'm not in class for the time being - and yet, my summer already seems as though it's dwindling, mainly because I'm going to Florida for two weeks rolling into August, and I have about a week at home before I move back to commence my don training.  Despite my mundane few months being home and school free, I had a noteworthy weekend, and while it might seem like this post will take a turn for the worse, rest assured that it won't.

On Friday, I saw Prometheus, so allow me to offer a semi-review: whaaaat did I just see?  I initially wasn't looking forward to the movie at all, mainly because I've never considered myself a fan of the sort of science fiction that involves aliens.  I'll hand it to the marking, then, for winning me over and making it one of my must-sees this summer; that alarm noise from the commercials haunts my dreams, and the stellar (pun?) cast didn't hurt.  To prepare, I sped through the entire Alien series in three days, the first two being some of those movies that I always meant to see, the third, just good, and the fourth which I'll pretend doesn't even exist.  I fully understand how iconic the character of Ripley is now, and she's a badass.

Prometheus, I'd heard, is some sort of semi-prequel to the franchise, though now that I've seen it nothing extends past a handful of references here and there and a surprise appearance at the very end.  (was that a spoiler? Meh)  To be honest, I kept expecting the movie to shift into the formula that Alien itself followed, what with the discovery of a planet (check) with strange ruins and weird eggs (check) leading to the second half 'there's an alien on the loose!' horror that never actually happened in Prometheus; and therefore by the time the plot wrapped up I couldn't even believe it was already over.  What happened instead, though, was a sequence of events so bizarre and seemingly farfetched that it would sound even ludicrous to try to explain.  I will say that the movie has one of the most disgusting scenes I've ever witnessed - surgery, technology, aliens within - and I can't strike the images from my mind.  The special effects were astounding - I wish I'd seen it in 3D, so I guess I'll have to go see it again! - and the acting, especially Michael Fassbender, was rather good.  Fassbender was literally incredible as an android, but he's always incredible, so I'm not surprised.  I'd recommend the movie to anyone who's a fan of Alien or aliens or spaceships with chest-bursting aliens and androids and self-surgeries and goddamnit is Charlize Theron a robot or not?, but the gore and heavy-handed mythology might be too much for some.

On Sunday I went to Canada's Wonderland for the first time in a long time but the way in which things transpired was less than favourable: I've discovered that I'm not as used to rides as I used to be, and that, combined with sweltering heat and a neglecting of hydration, leads to one vomiting in one's mouth while on The Bat.  (too much information?) The obvious first stop of the day was the new roller coaster, Leviathan, which, after an hour and a half wait, was a blast, but it was hardly nice to my hair.  I felt it then, the light-headedness, but I'd remembered that almost all rides now make me dizzy once coming off of them and the long line-ups would provide enough time for me to recuperate before doing it all again.  And yet, apparently, riding Leviathan twice in a row wasn't beneficial to my dizziness, and as the day carried on the sun beat hotter and my shirt got progressively wetter from sweat.  When we got to The Bat, I knew something was off - it's worth mentioning that The Bat and rides like it usually get me queasy as it is, but I'm usually able to ride it anyways - and by the time the car climbed up the inversions backwards, whatever was in my stomach (nothing, as I stupidly didn't eat before I left) came up.  I blame The Bat and the sun for then ruining the rest of my day because I couldn't bring myself to ride many other rides; things like Top Gun (what the hell is it called now anyways) or Behemoth had to be skipped because I knew they'd do me in, and with every ride came about a half an hour's down time between them while chugging water to compensate for the dehydration I know I had.  I don't know if I'm really unable to ride amusement park rides anymore or if it's just because the day was so hot and I was mindless about drinking water, but you could imagine how much of a task riding something as tame as Windseeker would be.  Nevertheless I still had a good time.

On Monday I accompanied a friend to a free Metric concert in Toronto.  I guess I've always been a casual fan of Metric - I know their songs, I have a fair amount of them on my iTunes, but I've never been a die-hard, so I was initially resistant to going.  I've never actually gone to a legitimate outdoor concert before - truthfully, I actually haven't been to a concert aside from the three Lady Gaga outings I've gone to - so I was excited to an extent.  We got there around three, five hours before the concert was to start, and we were the third and fourth people there.  The sun was as hot as it was when I was in Wonderland but it didn't seem it considering I spent the entire day sitting down against the front barricades to ensure standing at the front of the crowd, but I came away from this weekend with a nice tan.  The rain came with the slow crowd of people forming around us, and come eight o'clock we were pressed against the very front of the stage by the hoard behind us.  I'd vowed to never do another general admission concert again after my horror story that was the first Gaga concert I went to - sweating and Latey Gaga (by three hours) and fistfights! - but, even in the sheets of rain and the water pouring down my back because of the umbrella held directly behind me, everything was worth it to be at the very front.  And Metric, they were fantastic.  The only played seven songs - I didn't expect much, as it was a free concert on a fairly small scale stage - but they're phenomenal live and the lead singer Emily Haines looking directly at me with crazy eyes while singing Monster Hospital has sent me into this crazy rabid fandom in the past few days where I'm now confident enough to say yeah, I'm a pretty big fan of them.  They played six songs from their new album Synthetica (which I 'studied' before going) as well as the aforementioned closing song, and I know now I crave a full length concert where I'd hear Stadium Love played live.

To be honest my proofread of this post completely bored me; either way I haven't posted in a short while and I'm not about to delete the past hour's worth of writing and, well, should you come to this sentence, bravo.  I should hope the past few days of excitement might be a precursor to more fun I'm to have this summer!

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Cheers

A few weeks ago at a family dinner the idea of teenagers (and young people in general) and drinking.  The conversation rose from knowing that my younger sister, seventeen, is now getting in to the whole party sort of 'scene' (if that's what you can call it?) and is, to my parents' knowledge and discretion, drinking; and when I say this, I don't mean to discredit her whatsoever, because she's very sensible and can only have two or three coolers before deciding she doesn't need to press on.  While I can only offer my opinion, it's limited in the sense that, truthfully, I never had that experience when I was in high school - oh, yes, I drank, but I was never in big situations at big houses with big amounts of people, and the only time that I came close to partaking in this mystical party scene became probably the most embarrassing drinking night of my life and ended in despair.  Instead, my friends and I largely kept to ourselves - by choice, or because we weren't superbly popular? - and nights involving drinking were confined to basements where dance parties and life chats ensued, or if we were feeling especially deviant, in public parks on jungle gyms.

Indeed, we never went through the whole 'party scene,' a term I've used enough as a loose foundation for my concept through this post so far that I'm just coining it as a phrase.  What I mean by said 'party scene' is the social life I never had as a grade eleven or twelve student who drank - no doubt a result of not being the social elite of the school, and there's no use in even denying that this sort of cliche, stock hierarchy didn't exist at my high school, because it did.  You were an athlete, or you were in the school musical; it's easy to see the sorts of division, but I'm not resentful about it in the sense that, had my high school not been like those stereotypical high schools in the media, I might've felt cheated from my experience.  What I largely assume of this other group of people is that they were the ones to party every weekend at house parties here and there, and there's no use in continuing to paint this sort of picture without worry of somehow offending someone or embarrassing myself from my lack of knowing for sure.  Considering my tight group of friends weren't that untouchable popular - I'd say we were middle ground, really; knew a lot of people, were friends with a lot of people, and I'm at ease with that - we never carted around to these sorts of parties, so my knowledge of what might transpire at this big high school house party is limited to my assumption.

I don't mean to exploit my sister whatsoever, but she has begun to drink casually at these parties - parties, I need to add, that I drove her to, only the coolest older brother in the front seat.  As I said, my parents have elected to buy her alcohol, maintaining that they're more comfortable with controlling what she drinks, how much, and ensuring that it isn't from that obvious grade twelve date raper.  I believe my sister owes me thanks for paving the way for her in this fashion as I revealed to my parents over a year ago that I was, in fact, lying to them and running off and drinking when I was seventeen.  They were pissed off at first - a testament to their obliviousness?  You have a teenager; they will fundamentally drink illegally (an idea I'll return to) - but now it's a big joke.  Regardless, my sister has been given the okay.

When my uncle asked me what I thought about the idea of binge drinking, I couldn't promote or defend it.  I do it.  We all do it.  High school kids do it at this party scene; university kids do it and wake up somewhere else in the morning with their pride missing as much as the money in their wallet from the night before.  Why do we drink until we're fall-over drunk?  I really do not have an answer; really, it can borderline dangerous if you don't know your limit, and a state of inebriation might lead to reckless behaviour.  There is truthfully nothing to reap from getting smashed.  You might say - as I did during this conversation with my family - that it's to have fun, but the obvious counterpoint is that you don't need alcohol to have fun.  That's certainly true; so does this idea of binge drinking come down entirely to peer pressure, this peer pressure that everyone denies ever being subjected to?  You see your friends pounding back beers around a table when playing beer pong and you need to catch up to them to have as good a time as they are tonight; isn't the idea of being in a sober state of mind entertaining to you, being able to kick back and watch your friends be idiots?  I can say that I usually get uncomfortable when I know I'm beyond sober when the people around me are beyond drunk - peer pressure, and that's it.  You can certainly have fun without alcohol - why, I have fun watching movies by myself - but we've seemingly separated the 'alcohol fun' from the 'sober fun' and confined them to these separate spheres of concept.  Why stay in on a Friday night when you know the other people your age are out at a bar and having fun?

I can say that I've gotten to the point where I look at alcohol in a different light.  High school drinking in these basements or parks involved building your tolerance up enough so that when you trail off to university, hey, you're a seasoned drinker.  (I need to mention - I look back at this aforementioned most embarrassing drunken night of my life and can recall only drinking a quarter of a bottle of vodka.  I've far surpassed that now.  Silly grade twelver) Today, I can drink a beer after work because I feel like it, and not because I'm drinking for payoff.  I used to drink for result - any alcohol ingested without a drunken high is wasted alcohol - but I'm now able to drink casually with friends over an extended period of time just because, and I can fully stop with only a good buzz.  Gone is this serious compulsion to drink until I slur, but that isn't to say that I don't enjoy doing that from time to time.

In a somewhat similar sense I've been thankful that I have a good enough memory that I've never blacked out from drinking - that is, I can wake up the next day (sickness varying) and can recall everything that happened the night before.  My only weakness is remembering the conversations I had to fill up the timeline, but I will know everything worth knowing, anything I did that made enough waves, anything with serious gravity that might henceforth affect my sober life.  I would feel that blacking out is a scary thing; I can't imagine waking up and not knowing what the hell I did last night, and I would never find that fun at all.  To black out is to tread past the line of moderation; hell, it's almost a slap in the face to yourself - why would one disservice their own credibility so much so that they're willing to drink past the point of memory and let this intoxicated system of consciousness take over their will and make them look like an idiot?  That is never fun, and I do believe we've come full circle: this is just another addition to the 'cons' list of binge drinking.

It really doesn't even seem lucrative to do it, does it?  And that's why people older than our generation will continue to be perplexed at this idea of drinking like a fish; why, I'm twenty-one, and I can't even fully defend the things I've done.  Worth mentioning is binge drinking isn't the same for everyone.  As I've said, I've learned my limit, I know how much I need and know when I'll cross into this embarrassing state of no control - and, if I ever do, it's because I decided to, and not because I let myself get too messed up because I couldn't stop myself.  So then, again in opposition to this concept, why drink like that at all?  Why not instantly jump to the sort of maturity about drinking I think I have now and just have a few drinks, enough to feel it, and just have a good time?

I'd say that drinking underage has this sexy quality to it, meaning that it's illustrious to do it because you're not allowed to.  Thinking back to my teenage mentality, as I'd previously mentioned, to drink without result is useless, especially when considering how hard it is for underage kids to get their hands on it - almost like an offense to the bottle itself.  Throw in the idea of the popular kids drinking in a large social setting and you have this constant pressure of refilling your cup with a greater ratio of more alcohol to less mix (or mix at all?  Kudos to you shot takers, but lord knows I can't stomach them) to get as trashed as the people all around you who are all obviously having a better time than you are.  This high school party scene is a bit of an enigma, and for as long as the legal drinking age in Ontario will be nineteen, teens will always drink behind closed doors and their parents' backs because the idea of doing something they shouldn't is as intoxicating as the alcohol itself.

The high school binge drinking mentality is just a phase we all go through, and I should hope everyone is able to easily find this balance and maturity with drinking as I was able to.  I know people who haven't, but I guess that just comes with the untouchable sense of freedom one experiences as a young adult with the world in their hands.  As Drake or idiot teenagers might say, YOLO, but I despise that phrase.  Honestly, and as I said to my family, it's up to a person's own discretion; if you're like me, be proud in knowing you know what you can handle, and drink up should you feel like it.

Friday, June 1, 2012

Grunt, mumble, bite lip, repeat

I like Kristen Stewart.

There's something, simply, bizarre about her: apathetic more often than not, this girl is simply weird.  She grumbles, she seldom forms complete sentences, she cracks a smile less frequently than a corpse.  I would wager that she isn't used to the sort of fame and rabid fandom that came from and is the Twilight saga, but I could never blame her, because my impression too is that she was never overly invested in it to begin with and I can't imagine what it would be like to build your life up around something that you don't wholeheartedly love yourself.  Then again, I could be completely off base - for all we know she could be the biggest Twilight fan there is and she fangirls when she's by herself because she gets to play opposite (and date in real life!) Rob Pattinson - but I just don't see that.  All that being said, though, I've noticed recently that she's been more expressive and, really, funny, but she's still fundamentally just bizarre.

To say that I like Kristen Stewart then seems like a left field claim to make considering I've likened her habits and personality to something of an oaf, but I truly do like her for some reason; back when the first Twilight came out - I loathed it like any other sensible human being - I remember saying I loved her as a sort of mockery, though I can remember then look back to her filmography with a sense of being somewhat impressed as easily as I would now.  It certainly helps her case that the last Twilight movie is to be released in November (thank god), and that she's been popping up in other movies, much easier even, I would argue, than any of the Harry Potter kids.  Something still just doesn't sit right about seeing Daniel Radcliffe as a widower with a four year old child in The Woman in Black - he's still Harry Potter and sadly might always be (I can foresee a great career regardless), but I digress.  Also in her favour is that brightness that is slowly emerging about her as I've already mentioned, and I mean that in the sense that she doesn't crumple into a jagged ball of skeleton when on a red carpet or at an award show like she used to, or that she seems a lot more comfortable in interviews or whatnot (see: her and her Snow White castmates reading raunchy exerpts from Fifty Shades of Grey), or that she's able to smile and, dare I even say with absolute conviction, look attractive.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, is Kristen Stewart the fairest of them all?  The funny thing about when Snow White and the Huntsman was announced with her in the titular, fairest role, I disagreed.  I know for a fact this movie might suffer because of some peoples' absolute disdain for the girl, or that envisioning her as this fabled beauty is hard for some, but I find that unfortunate considering this thing looks visually beautiful - if nothing else, as reviews might indicate.  Yes, when in contrast to Charlize Theron, she might pail in comparison, but even the biggest hater needs to look directly at her face and agree: she is attractive.  She might not be classically beautiful and her persona or characteristics might be off putting to some, but she is a good looking girl.  That is to say, when she isn't hunched over, trapped in the disgusting blue filter that is Twilight.

That's it: Twilight.  That is the only reason she has a bad reputation.  I hate that franchise as much as everyone else, and I hate that someone as talentless as Stephenie Meyer has constricted a staple in horror mythology with one tightening of her fist, but to needlessly bash something with any merit as many people do would be doing so for the sake of doing so - and therefore it isn't my target.  As I mentioned before, I would say that Kristen Stewart's career has at least been above average - she has done much better than, say, Megan Fox (although she was just fine in Friends with Kids), but she comes nowhere close to Meryl Streep or Kate Winslet - and that her work in this past movies is actually good.  Her Bella Swan-awkward carries over into Adventureland, a movie which benefits from the comedy of a fellow Kristen, Wiig, and Bill Hader, but she doesn't destroy the movie at all; if you feel like ripping on her, I'd ask you to watch Panic Room, or Into the Wild; maybe not The Runaways only because it was bad (she wasn't that bad, though), and I've heard very good things about Welcome to the Rileys where we find her as a prostitute.  Point is: she is a talented young actress, but I'm afraid that Twilight will always leave a dark stain on her career, a stain she'll never beat.

Twilight is the easiest vehicle to hate on her.  (I need to step aside to say that this really seems like a defense of her; I'm not that crazy about her, I just feel like the hate she gets is unwarranted) Yes, the movies are absolute abominations, and she simply is awful in them - but everyone in that movie is bloody awful.  You can't look at any of the films and pinpoint a strong acting performance - that's how inherently bad being a part of something like them would be on your reputation.  Had she never been Bella Swan, I don't believe looking at her in Snow White as 'the fairest of them all' would be an issue; instead, we see Bella Swan in a medieval dress, we see Bella Swan riding a horse in armor, and we see Bella Swan attempting to usurp this mad queen.  We've seen Bella Swan be an amusement park worker, the object of Jesse Eisenberg's affections; as Joan Jett, or as a prostitute.  That is how poignant the character is on her - much like how I referenced Dan Rad as forever being the wizard under the stairs - but what works as a detriment to her favour is that Bella Swan and Twilight are embarrassments.  Not to mention I don't think something like a movie centered around sparkling vampires would be a good showcase of talent.

So, yeah, I've come to like her a lot.  I don't know what it is; she has something that's likable about her, to me at least.  But that's because I can excuse Twilight as a misstep, and that I can realize that there is a reason why she's booked these huge roles and has become as famous as she is - remember, it wasn't her first movie job, so something had to have been there to establish her name enough to become this 'beloved' character.  Regardless, I know the hatred will never stop; I know that a portion of Snow White and the Huntsman's audience will be affected by this stigma surrounding her.

I don't care.  I'm excited to see the movie in an hour, anyways, and I'm fully invested as her being the fairest of them all - in this universe of fiction, at the very least.