But this complaint really revolves around movies in particular, especially in the theater. I hate that shit. Unless its a Pootie Tang sequel, a John Waters' piece or a film (preferably a documentary) about music, I don't want to sit in an air-conditioning-overloaded theater and watch it.
I don't get it, really. Why would someone pay money to be confined to a cold, dark public space for several hours just to watch something they could see on television or the internet later for a lot cheaper? It blows my mind that people do this at all, let alone gather groups of individuals together to do this in a place where you're not supposed to talk. That might be part of the problem for me too -- I can't talk in a movie theater, and I spend every waking hour yapping my mouth off to my family, friends and whatever poor barista is stationed in my mobile office for the day.
Hating movies also presents a challenge for me socially -- I miss obvious references and jokes pulled from movies on a daily basis because there is this huge, gaping hole in my knowledge of popular culture. The same could be said for literature, as I dislike reading anything that isn't a magazine, but I usually don't open that can of worms. If I do, it seems to give people feel reign to make me feel stupid for never having read Catcher in the Rye or whatever. My father was an English teacher and then a librarian, as was my uncle. But I still haven't read anything by Kurt Vonnegut.
Well, I take that back. I tried to once, to make a boy who gave me a copy of Cat's Cradle feel like I was into him. But I didn't have the heart to tell him that after falling asleep on page two for a week straight, the paperback ended up in the closet next to the dozens of gifted books from other dudes. For some reason, men like to give me books as presents. I politely accept, and then use them to make my bookshelves look full and intriguing and in turn, making me look smart. It is a vicious cycle of lies.
Because of this, there aren't many books I've read that have become favorites, unless you count Goodnight Moon or Our Band Could Be Your Life. Movies, however, I have found a handful of that I actually like. And with those films, I also become a four-year-old, in the sense that all I want to do is watch them over and over and over again. I actually saw Trainspotting in the theater twice in 1996, because I loved it (or a scary-skinny Ewan McGregor or the Iggy Pop references) so much. That has yet to ever happen again with another film.
Like the Teletubbies VHS I have worn out from watching so many times or the first two seasons of The Hills on DVD I've played to the point of almost-combustion, the few films I will never stop watching are not very deep or relevant to most people. But in case you were wondering, those films are Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Heathers, the above mentioned Pootie Tang, the entire John Waters' filmography (especially Hairspray, Mondo Trasho and Cry Baby), Uncle Buck, Sixteen Candles, The Blues Brothers and Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Other than that, movies can screw off.
