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The Bitching

Jill

Taking a cue from Amanda, tell us all about what you are just not grateful for this weekend.

The Bitching, Movies:

I Am Sam – Could have lasted 30 minutes, and instead it dragged on for almost two hours. Painful.

John Q – Terrible and contrived. Yes, the healthcare system is fucked up. This movie felt like a lecture about it.

The Village – Just… bad. Although the image of the monsters still freaks me out.

Grease 2 – I think we can all agree on this one.

Battlefield Earth – Yes, I actually watched this movie. The whole thing. Never again.

Braveheart – Never got through the first 20 minutes. Hated, hated, hated it.

Lord of the Rings – All of ’em. And you know what? I didn’t even watch them. I just know they’re that bad.

The Bitching, Personal Stuff:

School – I should just drop out. Finals are in three weeks, and I need to get my ass in gear. Fuck.

My Bathroom – I generally like my apartment — until today, when my mom (who has not been here more than 24 hours) managed to clog our toilet, something that hasn’t happened at all in my three months of living here. Awesome.

The weather – It’s fucking freezing here. Apparently New York decided to skip all of autumn, and go straight from sunny and 70 to freezing-ass cold, windy and rainy. Plus, my room mate’s window won’t shut all the way and our kitchen window has the AC unit in it, so cold air comes in like crazy.

Boys, boys, boys – They’re always a problem, aren’t they? Is it really that hard to just be nice to me?

The Bitching, Politics:

Exhaustion – I’m tired of politics. There’s too much wrong. There’s nothing I can do about it. The Democrats suck, and the Republicans suck a lot harder. It’s just the same old thing, and I can’t even get angry about it anymore. Moving on.

The Bitching, Fashion (I’m adding my own category):

Uggs: People, please. They’ve been out of style for three years now, and they were ugly then, too. The worst is when I see girls walking around in November in denim mini-skirts and Uggs. It’s cold, and even huge hideous boots won’t keep you warm. STOP WEARING THEM, for the love of God.

Furry Boots: Again, completely and totally out. And ugly.

Cowboy Boots: Yes, we all wore them this summer with our peasant skirts and demin, inspired by Jessica Simpson and Dukes of Hazard (and when I say “we,” I do not include myself). They’re played out. Stop, now.

Greek Clothing: So you were in a frat, and you want to wear your TKE sweatshirt every day. Or, it’s really important that when you go to the gym, your sorority letters are emblazoned across your ass on brightly-colored short-shorts. I have nothing against the Greek system (here, I’m lying), but when you wear the clothing, it makes the rest of us think you’re probably stupid. Mean and judgmental? Certainly. But that’s my thing.

Abercrombie & Fitch: If you’re over the age of 20, you have absolutely no reason to be wearing this clothing. Particularly if you’re in graduate school. Ditto with cargo shorts. Grow up, kids.

Insipid T-Shirts: No one cares if you think you’re Mrs. Timberlake, or if you did Ashton. Double hatred for t-shirts that say things like “Princess,” “Spoiled” or “Pimp Daddy.”

Small Backpacks: Even if it is made by Prada, it’s still ugly.

Signature Purses: At this point, the LV bags are just old, old, old. Ditto for the various knock-offs by Dooney & Burke, xoxo, Guess, and just about every other mall retailer.

The Polo shirs with the giant horse: We get it, you’re wearing Polo. We saw the horse when it was small. Why does it have to take up a quarter of the shirt now?

The Bitching, Culture:

Tourists Who Go Gape at the WTC Site: I hate you, I really do. You’re assholes, with your fanny packs and “I Heart NY” t-shirts and “9-11: Never Forget” hats and your huge cameras, stopping by what’s basically a mass gravesite to take smiling pictures in between your visit to the Empire State Building and standing in line for Rent tickets. It’s not a tourist attraction, and walking around grinning and laughing and going, “oh, wow” really isn’t the way to show respect.

Times Square: Perhaps the worst place on earth. Neon signs, a giant Cup o’ Noodles, MTV… and again with the tourists. Could there possibly be more American Eagle in one place?

TomKat: I stole this one from Amanda, but damn if it isn’t true. Katie, we know the Church of Scientology is paying you millions of dollars, but it’s just not worth it!

Nicole Richie, Author: And this.

The DaVinci Code: It’s still on the NYT Bestseller List. And that’s fine. I’m glad people are reading, and it’s not the worst book in the world. But it’s not exactly high literature, folks. If I have to hear one more crappy art history lecture from some idiot who has read one book in the past four years, I might shoot myself.

Ruining Perfectly Good Books with Movies: Last I heard, they’re making a movie out of A Confederacy of Dunces, a book that I particularly like. Except who’s playing Ignatius? Will fucking Ferrell. Idiots. They’re also movie-izing The Namesake, and casting Kumar (from Harold and Kumar) as Gogol. I guess we’ll see how that turns out.

As the day wears on and I get increasingly pissed off (holidays have a way of doing that to me), I’m sure we’ll be adding more. Share your own.

53 thoughts on The Bitching

  1. THANK YOU!

    so right. but particularly the Da Vinci Code.

    it’s nothing but a retroactive movie novelization.

  2. Ditto Bitch on NYC cold and tourist and can we add the goddamn price of a box the size of a small uhaul that is mislabled as rent for an apartment?

  3. Will Ferrell as Ignatius?

    What makes Ignatius so funny is his tremendous, misapplied intellect. Ferrell made his career by playing idiots — hardly the same thing.

    Whose making it? I heard Steven Soderbergh had the rights to it, but if he’s making it, I’d have to say that casting Ferrell calls his judgment into serious doubt.

  4. Oh, the casting of Ignatius is just so, so wrong. He’s too old for the part now, but I could see Oliver Platt doing it.

    It’s fucking freezing here. Apparently New York decided to skip all of autumn, and go straight from sunny and 70 to freezing-ass cold, windy and rainy.

    Mixed rain and snow tomorrow morning! Yay!

    The heat in my apartment is either on full-eyeball-shriveling-blast or off. So my nights usually begin with the windows closed and all the covers on, then sometime during the night the heat kicks in, I kick off the covers and/or open a window. Before dawn, the heat goes off again, but by that time, the dog has moved onto the comforter, forcing me to dislodge her before I can get warm again.

    I don’t sleep so well in the winter.

  5. Don’t freak out too much about law school. It’s that time of year for a 1L. you’ll be fine. Seriously. I know it all seems daunting at this point trying to organize everything you’ve learned in every class, but it gets done. Try not to stress. Didn’t believe it would happen to you didya?

  6. Oh, the casting of Ignatius is just so, so wrong. He’s too old for the part now, but I could see Oliver Platt doing it.

    See, I can picture Philip Seymour Hoffman.

  8. I haven’t read the book, but having nearly done so a few times, I can agree on both counts….. Oliver Platt’s a bit less… Loveable? Than Philip Seymour Hoffman, so he might be even better.

    Word on the DVinci Code. It’s like Foucault’s Pendulum (Umberto Eco) for moron, while missing out completely on the parody and satire.

  9. They’re also movie-izing The Namesake, and casting Kumar (from Harold and Kumar) as Gogol. I guess we’ll see how that turns out.

    WTF???

    They could have gone forever without making a movie based on Lahiri’s books and that would have been long enough for me. Her work is too brilliant and too vivid to need movie-ing. Not to mention her prose is Chekhovian in its simplicity—can people really not manage reading it?

  10. I haven’t read the book, but having nearly done so a few times, I can agree on both counts….. Oliver Platt’s a bit less… Loveable? Than Philip Seymour Hoffman, so he might be even better.

    He can pull off the imperiousness and the billowing.

    I saw notices in my ‘hood last year for a casting call for The Namesake (there are a lot of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis here).

  11. I can see Philip Seymour Hoffman as Ignatius J. Reilly. Will Ferrell… not so much. I like him just fine for what he does, but really, unless he has skills and powers heretofore unseen, he’s got no business within one hundred yards of Dunces.

    Now, Myrna… who could play Myrna? Parker Posey maybe?

  14. Funny, Jill, I was thinking Philip Seymore Hoffman, too. Or possibly, Tim Curry in a fat suit.

    The problem with Will Ferrell is that he can be a little too endearing. He’s not nearly prickly enough.

  15. Jill:

    If Thankstaking does this to you, I can’t wait to read your posts a couple days before Christmas.

  16. Hey, there’s no longer an imdb listing for A Confederacy of Dunces. I wanted to see who was cast as Myrna (I remembered Mos Def and Drew Barrymore were in it), and it’s gone.

    Yay!

  17. So now I’m of the age where bands are now doing covers of the music of my youth and not my parents’. Nice.

    By the way, Ra’s cover of “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” is not that good.

    Jill:

    Ditto on Abercrombie & Fitch. The only thing I still have from that store is a water-resistant anorak I bought years ago and doesn’t look too young for me.

    Which leads me to another bitch: not being fashionable, wanting to be fashionable, and then feeling guilty about wanting to be fashionable.

    I don’t have the cash for it anyway.

  18. Braveheart – Never got through the first 20 minutes. Hated, hated, hated it.

    I hear that. Rob Roy is ten times the movie Braveheart is, plus the swordfight at the end was actually done correctly (this is nothing short of miraculous for Hollywood).

    Lord of the Rings – All of ‘em. And you know what? I didn’t even watch them. I just know they’re that bad.

    What?! Dammit woman, you need to be slapped. They’re that damn good. There’s even prodigious manmeat and mushy romance (and you’d love how the Witch King dies).

    Uggs: People, please. They’ve been out of style for three years now, and they were ugly then, too.

    I don’t even know what an Ugg is. Sounds like I should give thanks for that.

    Tourists Who Go Gape at the WTC Site:

    I have no intention of ever doing that. In fact, the only thing that could drag me up to that squalid den of iniquity you make your home in, would be to see the shrapnel marks left on the NYSE building by the first carbombing in US history.

  20. More fashion advice, please 🙂

    How am I supposed to know that American Eagle is nauseating? How about jeans and t-shirts, both faded and tattered? That’s what everyone around me wears.

  21. I don’t even know what an Ugg is. Sounds like I should give thanks for that.

    These are Uggs. Not really one of my favorite trends.

  22. 1. Dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Mississippi plus frequent red tides at other Gulf-Coast locations;
    2. Ugly smog layer today in Houston spoiling a perfect, Indian-summer day as the temperature reaches toward 80;
    3. Religious Right wackjob wingnuts;
    4. Uncontrolled development of the Katy Prairie west and NW of Houston;
    5. The US Tax Code;
    6. SUV purchasers;
    7. Schlock homebuilders who throw together a house in a few days full of defects large and small (I litigate these matters under the builder-friendly Residential Construction Liability Act/Residential Construction Commission Act);
    8. The lack of any legal limit on campaign contributions to Texas legislators;
    9. Nicholas Cage (“Con Air” would have been so much better without his martyr character);
    10. Ken Follett’s recent books;
    11. Increasing advertising on NPR Morning Edition and All Things Considered;
    12. The “Houston Business News” segment on KUHF’s local portion of Morning Edition (stultifying; boring; endless Chamber-of-Commerce style press releases presented in true, rip-‘n’-read fashion);
    13. Jihads (actually an invention of the ancient Hebrews according to the recently-published history of Monotheism titled GOD AGAINST THE GODS);
    14. Santa Claus (how dare he not exist?);
    15. Hidden agendas;
    16. Any angry male god in the sky;
    17. Intelligent Design zealots wherever they may be found;
    18. Insurance agents/salesmen;
    19. The Protestant Ethic;
    20. Modern agricultural practices that turn Thanksgiving turkeys into chem labs.

  23. Ul, Chris, don’t you mean west of the Mississippi? The Ohio divides Ohio and Indiana (among others) from Kentucky, etc.

  25. I feel the same way about the Lord of the Rings movies. Liked the books as a child but Christ, the movies just aren’t that good. It’s the new Star Track. Every nerd has to memorize every fact about the Lord of the Rings empire.

  26. I’m gonna have to jump in on the cowboy boots thing. I agree with you, Jill, that anyone who wears them with shorts or a miniskirt after seeing Jessica Simpson wear them with shorts in order to get a little bit of the Texas Hottie fallout should be drug out behind the barn and shot to put us out of our misery. (With a watergun, of course.) But I’m calling down Texas rights to wear my Tony Lamas with my 501s. It’s not a trend for us, but instead something that has an air of perpetual cool, like blue jeans or black turtlenecks.

  28. Uh oh. Hugo owns way too much Abercrombie and Fitch. Not the polo shirts, but I like the jeans and I have a pair of cargo shorts that are very nice after a long run; I put them on over my running shorts.

    I’m with you on ALL the other fashion comments. Let me add that I’m distressed to see boys going back to flipping up the collars on their polos (at least here in L.A.); it reminds me way too much of 1982 and the “preppy handbook.” Here are my “bitchings” (and isn’t there a special pleasure, from a feminist perspective, in using that word?)

    Movies:

    1. Chicago. Bewildered me and bored me all at once.
    2. Dances with Wolves. My loathing for Costner is profound.
    3. Forrest Gump (I’m with Amanda).

    Personal Stuff:

    1. Bank of America. How many times do I need to tell you I have closed that account?
    2. Colleagues. Yes, I want to teach gay and lesbian history. Again. No, I don’t want to hear your opinion.
    3. Mom.. Yes, I’m in my fourth marriage. When, exactly, are you going to take down the pictures of my third wife?

    Political:

    1. I’m with Jill, moving on.

    Culture:

    1. YES, YES, YES to including the f-ing “Da Vinci Code.” If I — as a professor with a Ph.D. in Christian history — don’t stop getting asked “But isn’t this book really true?”, I’ll put out my own fatwa on Dan Browne.

  29. Is it tourists at the WTC, period, that bothers you or the fact that many of them are disrespectful?

    Also, I’m not too worried about the Will Ferrell/Confederacy thing. Hollywood has been trying to make a movie out of that book for so long, and it always burns in development hell. There have been so many actors and directors attached to it. For awhile, David Gordon Green (director of All the Real Girls) was attached to direct, which might’ve made for an okay movie.

    The fact that there is no longer an IMDb listing might be a positive sign.

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  32. 2. Dances with Wolves. My loathing for Costner is profound.

    Though one should give credit where credit is due: he did a good job in that most excellent movie Bull Durham.

  33. l, Chris, don’t you mean west of the Mississippi? The Ohio divides Ohio and Indiana (among others) from Kentucky, etc.

    I know.

    But “west of the Mississippi” excludes Tennessee.

  34. OK, OK, I know “west of the Ohio” also excludes Tennessee. I should have said “west of the broad, low, northeast-southwest-trending mountain ranges generally referred to as the Appalachians and Alleghenies.” So sue me.

  35. You could have simply said “west of Richmond” and been done with it.

    Short Pump: west of Richmond
    Farmville: west of Richmond
    Roanoke: west of Richmond
    Ohio: west of Richmond
    California: west of Richmond
    China: west of Richmond

  37. Oh, the casting of Ignatius is just so, so wrong. He’s too old for the part now, but I could see Oliver Platt doing it.

    Hey, there’s no longer an imdb listing for A Confederacy of Dunces. I wanted to see who was cast as Myrna (I remembered Mos Def and Drew Barrymore were in it), and it’s gone.

    Yay!

    I am going to be thankful this weekend, because I agree with zuzu for a change.^^

  42. Oh, I forgot to add that I hate — HATE — Garden State. What a terrible, over-rated movie. And I love Natalie Portman, but jesus, what an annoying character she played in that movie.

  44. Ooh, one more major bitch: Starbucks celebrating Christmas a month and a half early. I walked out of the subway at Astor Place last week, and there was snow on the ground around Astor Place Starbucks. I walked inside and all the employees were wearing Santa hats. They had a group of carol singers. It really ruined my morning.

  46. Jill, at my house growing up, the Christmas season began on December 1st, and not a day before. And woe unto he who so much as whistles a Christmas song out of season. Mom was _very_ strict about that, and as such I have an intense emotional reaction (commonly known as “blinding rage”) when I see Christmas stuff before December 1st.

  47. Canned nerd comeback. I win.

    oh yeah?

    why should we believe you? you’re Hitler!

    Double Reverse Godwin shots forever!

  48. Not thankful for insipid punditry

    MoDo was just on the post Letterman show and said that things relationship-wise are a litle bit trickier then we thought at the dawn of feminism because we thought it was going to be all 1940’s movies and bantering;

    that in the beginning it was hard to talk about all the things we love: cute guys, families, high heels, and shopping, so women drew away, and the word feminism has lost meaning;

    that the early feminist movement was about protecting women from being seen as sex objects (yeah that and, you know, a few other things, say like discrimination, legal protection and the Ivy League not being fully co-ed until the late 70’s);

    that the feminist movement went too far and needs to pull back because in the beginning we were just supposed to imitate men, dress like men, work like men, have orgasms like men (luckily at this point the host went off on that and time ran out before she could share any more brilliant insights)

    Giving her the benefit of intentional irony is a lot easier when she’s in print, with less hair flipping. When you see and hear her, it seems like she actually means what she says and she really is that shallow. I feel like sending her the cliff notes of a Brief History of Feminism for Dummies, cleverly disguised as a CosmoGirl or Teen People or Wannabe Ingenue so she’ll actually read it before her next interview.

  49. I generally despise the fantasy genre, but The Lord of the Rings, particularly the first installment, are among the best movies I have ever seen.

    How can you say you hate movies you’ve never seen? That makes no sense to me. I can’t even say I hate Gigli — I’ve never seen it.

    That’s soft-headed thinking.

  51. Exhaustion – I’m tired of politics. There’s too much wrong. There’s nothing I can do about it. The Democrats suck, and the Republicans suck a lot harder. It’s just the same old thing, and I can’t even get angry about it anymore. Moving on.

    Thanks for finally realizing that the world wasn’t going to change via an Internet soapbox or the MeetUps at local bars.

    I am just glad the activism game is over now– I was running out of sharpies and poster board! Now I can go back to my consumer culture, turn on the TV, and zone out with some Taco Bell. God Bless America!

    PS Did anyone see that Isaac Mizrahi Cashmere Turtleneck at Target? I just have to have one!

  52. Redneck feminist,

    I’m from Iowa. Is the grunge thing still hot there? Big bangs? I wholeheartedly agree that there is a cultural lapse. I think 5 years is about right.

    And LV bags are terrible. Such insipid montstosities. Might as well have a bag with dollar signs on it rather than the stupid LVs. And is it a requirement to wear a tight Bebe t-shirt if you have a LV bag?

  53. And is it a requirement to wear a tight Bebe t-shirt if you have a LV bag?

    No, but I think it is a requirement to date a guy who wears a tight Armani Exchange shirt.

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