I�ve decided to stop reading my book. This is a monumental decision for me, actually, since I�ve historically taken great pride in my dedication to giving innumerable chances to TV shows, books, and movies that have long outstayed their welcome. For example, I resolutely watched each downwardly-mobile season of Dawson�s Creek, despite my own pronouncement of it being "harder to watch than a snuff film". I�m the guy who refused to stop reading the Garfield comic strip long after it just became a hollow shell of its formerly entertaining self, and started being sad and depressing rather than funny. I�m the guy who stolidly read every page of Patricia Cornwell�s bizarre and seemingly trans-dimensional "suspense(?)" novel, Isle of Dogs, even when a bucket of clams (!) pontificated on the merits of Global Positioning Satellites (and I am still unclear as to whether this was supposed to be satirical or what, because it sure as hell wasn�t reality). I�m also the guy who refused to walk out on The Wedding Planner, even though J.Lo kept opening her mouth and speaking throughout the entire picture. Admittedly I was on an airplane, but still. That�s dedication, right there.
In fact, I can only think of three instances off the top of my head where I walked out on a film or tossed a book aside without finishing it. I walked out on The Audition, a Japanese "horror" movie about a man who tricks a bunch of actresses into auditioning for the role of his real-life bride, only to pick one who turns out to be insane, and she ties him up and tortures him, or something. I don�t really know how it ended, because after an hour of absolutely no action or drama whatsoever, my friend insisted we leave. It was free, which made walking out that much easier.
Sadly, I had spent my own money on the rental of Sleepstalker: The Sandman�s Last Rites, which I turned off in disgust after twenty minutes of viewing displeasure. (I had rented the thing knowing that it would be bad, but expecting it to be entertainingly so -- unfortunately, it was just bad bad, and I couldn�t even face the prospect of Mystery Science Theater 3000-ing my way through the rest of it.) And I once checked a book, about which I knew nothing that wasn�t printed on the jacket, out of the library, hoping to discover a new author. What I discovered was an intense dislike of hatefully obnoxious main characters who are basically engendered as "perfect". I like me some flawed people, you know?
Anyway, those of you who pay attention to my periodic ramblings about what I�m reading know that I�ve been stumbling intermittently through a little book called Kissing in Manhattan by Roger Something Something. Or something. I can�t recall his name right now, nor do I care enough to go back and figure it out. I�ve done my best to keep up with it, and to give it One More Try every time it feels like I should just be done with it, but on Sunday afternoon it finally broke me.
The sad thing is that it isn�t even a "bad" book -- by which I mean, it isn�t poorly written, it isn�t centered around a seriously flawed plotline or faulty premise, and it isn�t even that it�s full of characters who are either dull and uninteresting or (conversely) too perfect and too "unique". The fact is that Roger Whoever is a talented writer, but his book is far more impressed with itself than I will ever be, and it�s also far more misogynistic -- in that post-modern, All Women Really Want A Big Strong Man To Dominate Them But Are Just Afraid To Admit It kind of way -- than I can stomach. Also, I don�t take kindly to books that are convinced that, by the end of chapter three, you�ll be so mesmerized by its charm and poetic images that it doesn�t have to keep making any damned sense. Stupid, arrogant book.
So anyway, I�m done with that bullshit. My life�s getting shorter every day, and I�m not wasting another minute slogging through some book that serves as little more than an incentive for me to work my eye-roll muscles.
Someone Got Here By Searching For: "sandra bullock" dancing drunk clip I�m Watching: Reruns of Arrested Development. I�m Reading: To the Nines, by Janet Evanovich. Finally, an author I trust!