Ravis: February 2008 Archives

So, several months ago, I forsook (is that right?) filtered, prepackaged smokes in favor of rolling my own. I had several reasons for doing so, none of which had to do with affectation. (Tip for the kids, at my age, you don't look like the angry anti-corporate loner polluting your lungs with non-corporate carcinogens, you're just another old man at the bar with a weird pouch and a ritual.) Like that time on Friends when Joey had Chandler get into the box, my reasons were threefold:

Expense. Hey, I'm getting married in a bit, which means I need to squeeze every penny. (Read: My groomsmen might be paying for my flight to Vegas, but I'm going to have to lose my own money at the roulette table. Also, there are centerpieces to pay for, or something.) And a tin of tobacco lasts me twice as long as a carton of smokes, at half the price.

Flavor. Contrary to what visual logic and that time you had a Pall Mall might tell you, home-rolled tobacco is a smoother and lighter-tasting smoke than Marlboros. I don't know if it's the dreaded Big Tobacco additives or what, but an unfiltered Drum or Bali Shag smoke weighs less heavily on these veteran lungs than your average top-notch brand.

I'm going to quit, I swear. Smoking home-rolled cigs means smoking less. I'm not yet ready to quit altogether - though that's the goal - but I'm smoking, like, ten thin, delicious, retarded-looking coffin nails a day. And I'm splitting cigarettes up over the course of the day. It beats jogging.

There have been drawbacks, however. And they're really fucking irritating.

A year or so ago, I was laid up sick on the couch, watching Van Helsing, because nothing else was on and, let's face it, everyone I know expected me to. Not much was getting through the fever and medicine head beyond some really funny accents and unjustified plot developments - did they go through a mirror to the Ukraine for a Halloween party or something? - yet I was simultaneously disinterested in and vaguely angry at the whole thing. It seemed like a whole lot of money and some impossibly pretty faces wasted on nothing.

At some point, however, a very clear thought shot through the fog like a lightning bolt:

This is probably exactly how everybody else in the world felt while they were watching The Mummy.

Not me, though. I enjoyed director Stephen Sommers' first high-profile outing (Deep Rising shouldn't really count, should it? Shudder) both times I paid to see it in the theater. And the DVD regularly finds its way into my player when I'm in need of something to occasionally glance at while I'm doing something else, or I just plain can't sleep.

Why? Click through for the justification.

1. The Media Mirror: How We Sort of Want to Know About Smart Stuff, But Are Way, Way, Way More Interested in Drunken Titties and Who's Gay

2. I Spent The Best Years of My Life Drunk, Then Sobered Up and Learned Something Poignant, Or, This Is How I'm Going to Pay for Cocktails When Nobody Remembers I Wrote This Book

3. Now That Bush Can't Be Reelected, I'm Going to Tell You How Bad I Knew He Was The Whole Time He Was Hooking Me Up

4. Man, Wouldn't Everything Be OK If We Could Reelect Bush One More Time

5. If You Loved Reading My Blog for Free, You're Totally Going to Cream over Paying for It in Book Form  

I enjoy great film. Seriously, I really do - didn't you notice how I didn't make the "film" plural? That denotes inherent snootery.

But I also love shitty movies. Not shitty movies with absolutely no redeeming values, mind you; there's no room in my brain or DVD collection for the Rush Hour movies, or Delta Farce (if you enjoyed Delta Farce, I've got a garage and a custom-cut length of garden hose waiting for you, your car and your favorite mix tape), or any African-American comedian in a fat suit, or even Plan 9 From Outer Space, which deserves none of the campy, ironic accolades afforded it. Having said that, however, there are flicks in my entertainment center that no one will admit to enjoying except me. Lots of 'em, actually. But there are reasons why I like each and every one of them - mitigating circumstances, if you will, that I feel raise them above the the status of the merely Eszterhasian. They're bad movies, sure, but there's something about them that's interesting or engaging or hilarious enough to make them worth a second or seventh or thirty-third look; it's like a car wreck where there's all kinds of impressive damage, but nobody gets hurt.

So I'm going to champion these, erm, champion-less, differently abled motion pictures here at dirtytricks until I run out of movies, or my attention wanders, or Becks tells me that people are openly mocking her at work. Click through to read the first run-down, on about the ninety-second movie to put a "twist" on Jaws:

I wasn't sleeping. I wasn't out of town. (Well, I was out of town several times, but that wasn't the problem.) I haven't been drunk for two months.

We switched servers and domain registrars and did a whole bunch of other behind-the-scenes thingies, and it turned into a tedious fustercluck there for a while. We lost all my old entries and a bunch of template elements - not to mention all the comments, my apologies to those who were provoked sufficiently to be moved to response, all the good and bad and funny and hateful things you posted are gone. Post some more, please.

Now we're in the midst of a redesign, so bear with us for a few more days and everything will be jake.

Tons of thank yous to Forkboy and Miguel for all their hosting and help, and welcome Norcross to the group of people whose savvy and charitable natures I abuse in order to occasionally post to a blog I don't want to have to pay money to maintain.