So I�ve got this thing about television -- namely, that I�m addicted to it. If I�m alone in my room? The TV is on. And it isn�t terribly important what�s playing, either. Well, to a certain extent it is -- I mean, I�m not about to watch Good Morning Miami or something assy like that -- but I�ve been known to get sucked into a marathon of shows on Food TV, The Biography Channel, Cartoon Network, or maybe MTV. This past weekend? I think I may have been successfully, and involuntarily, reconditioned.
Just to give you a little backstory, May Day and I had a soir�e on Saturday night. There was much celebration (read: drinking) and socializing (read: drinking), and although the party itself broke up around 2:00, we didn�t get to bed till around 6:00 because we were playing Drunken Catchphrase with some friends. The upshot of this is that when I woke up (against my will) at 11:00am, unable to get back to sleep, and feeling quite groggy and ever so slightly hung over (though not terribly), I needed something to occupy myself while I waited for everyone else to come around. So I turned on the television.
I opted for MTV this time, because, well, why not? I mean, I realize that the closest they get to playing music videos anymore is when they have a Nike commercial on at the station breaks, but even most of their original programming, with a few notable exceptions, is still a captivating look at the gradual self-destruction of the human species. Seriously. Have you guys seen this season�s The Real World?
Anyway, they were playing MTV�s answer to 60 Minutes, the introspective, almost-laudable True Life, in which they choose some kind of social niche (drag racers, drag queens, drag whatevers) and exploit the hell out of them for an hour. This particular episode was entitled True Life: I Have an Eating Disorder. Dear St. Francis, was this a horrifying show.
They spent something like ten days following this one girl around as she binged and purged everywhere all over the place. In a lot of ways, it was like watching a car crash in slow motion -- it was incredibly tragic, because this girl was destroying herself, and recognized it, but seemed unable to stop. I do have to give MTV at least a little credit, because after watching this show, I really feel that I have a better understanding of the machinations of bulimia.
Anyway, my admiration of MTV was short-lived, however, when this girl was describing her purging habits, and started talking about this giant Rubbermaid container she kept in her closet so she could hoarf into it at night without her parents catching her. And then? They opened it. They opened the barf box. ON CAMERA! It was the most disgusting thing I�ve ever seen in my whole entire life! For someone hung over on mudslides and strawberry margaritas, staring into a gigantic tub full of chunky-style vomit first thing in the morning was just too much to bear. And as if that wasn�t bad enough, every thirteen seconds they were showing someone hunched over a toilet, voluntarily yakking their guts out. Thank you MTV!
Now, on Saturday night, concurrent with our party, the Sci Fi Channel was airing this movie entitled Cube2: Hypercube, which I absolutely had to watch. See, it was the sequel to this movie I saw a few years ago called Cube, which had a brilliant concept, but shitty execution. I had to see if the sequel would take advantage of the concept in a way the original failed to do. I taped it and watched it last night, and the short answer is that no, it really, really didn�t.
In the tradition of the first film, Cube2: Hypercube had an ingenious concept -- a group of perfect strangers awaken to find themselves trapped in a 3D grid of high-tech, booby-trapped rooms, with no memory of how they got there, and no knowledge of why they were selected for this seeming experiment -- and also in the tradition of the original, it sucked. I mean, it sounds like a really fucking cool idea, doesn�t it? But the writing was crap, the acting was crap, the direction was crap�I think the only thing to recommend about either film would be set design.
Ultimately, the original was better. In that film, the strangers come to find that they each bear a specific skill that enables them to figure out the puzzle of the cube. In the second film, the strangers come to find that they�re each somehow connected to a big, creepy, weapons-manufacturing government sub-contractor, and on the way to this discovery, they bitch and moan. A lot.
And it�s populated with the most overwrought characters, too. There�s the Unrealistically Crazy-But-Predictably-Sharper-Than-She-First-Seems Senile Old Bag, the Paranoid Computer Nerd/Conspiracy Theorist, the Mysterious Blind Girl Who Has A Secret, and the Extremely Irritating Guy Who Won�t Shut The Fuck Up Ever. Fortunately, (spoiler!) he dies. A bunch of times. It�s quite satisfying, really. Ultimately, the One Character You Actually Don�t Hate solves the puzzle and escapes, which is where the original really screwed up if you ask me, but then, in the last five minutes, you find out that the One Character You Actually Don�t Hate was really (spoiler!) some kind of plant from the weapons-manufacturer, and then? THEY SHOOT HER IN THE HEAD! Stupid, stupid fucking movie.
Oh, also? I had this really odd dream where I was hanging out with Jessica, and I dropped some shit, and some guy tried to steal these concert tickets I had in my notebook, and I caught him and got in his face about it and was real confrontational. It was awesome.
