CHRISTIAN STELLA'S INTERNEXTUAL WEBULATING DIGITAZOODLE AS SEEN ON PERSONAL FUTURE SCREENS

Let me start off by saying that this is both an addition and a second take on my friend Jeremy's Paranormal Activity experience that he posted here.

There can be no doubt that seeing it was an experience, as the studio has painstakingly gone out of their way to ensure. For me, this experience was unnecessarily frustrating and in the end, entirely disappointing.

The marketing campaign for the movie has been a smart move, no doubt, but at some point you need to cut the shit. I completely understand that such a small movie can't get full distribution. The amount of buzz the studio generated was impressive, but with only 18 theaters on board, I don't find the midnight-only showings very cute. While Orlando is lucky to have a theater showing it all, because of this midnight limitation, our theater will only show it 2 nights a week... and even after putting it into 2 theaters, things are still a sold out clusterfuck.

Last week, they turned hordes of people away after overbooking their free advance screening, just in time for them to realize that tickets for the only 2 paid showings that week were already sold out. People went from having a ticket to not even being able to buy one... just because 8 or 10 at night isn't as scary as midnight in a light sealed theater.

Coincidentally, these midnight showings at Universal Studios' theater are perfectly timed to let out in the perfect storm of traffic bullshit that I would never put myself in under any normal circumstances. What I am referring to is the 2am closing time of the multitude of Universal Citywalk's clubs and bars and the letting out of the theme park's massive Halloween Horror Nights... all of which share the same parking garage as the theater. I would like to call that particular parking garage at 2am, The Center of the Drunk Driving Universe.

Any somewhat responsible person that has exited Halloween Horror Nights at that time will know that, technically, I risked my life to see Paranormal Activity.

Now, having purchased our tickets over a week in advance, we arrived at the theater 30 minutes early to save our seats... at which point we are shown to the ticket taking line that is 200 people deep. Specifically, this is the ticket taking line for Paranormal Activity and all other ticket holders can walk right in without waiting. By the time our ticket is taken, it's been 30 minutes and the movie should be starting.

We go up the escalator and to the correct theater and there is another guy who checks our tickets and asks, "Did you save your seats?" I am entirely confused by this. Seeing as how there were about another 100 people in line behind us by the time we got in, I don't see what the problem could be. He says, "Only seats left are in the front row if you haven't saved your seats."

I say, "We were in line!" And he replies, "But you saved your seats first, right?"

"We were outside, in line to get into the theater for 30 minutes, how could we save our seats?"

So let me say that, strategically selling out every single showing by limiting said showings is made all the more annoying when the movie you are selling it almost entirely unwatchable from the front rows.

There is no excuse for the cinematography in this movie. Quite simply, it should not be shown in a movie theater. Technology has come a heck of a long way since Blair Witch, and opened a whole lot of doors for amateur filmmakers, but none of this was apparent in Paranormal Activity.

Obviously the movie wouldn't make very much sense if it weren't amateur, but the video quality and camera work was so bad that it actually made me somewhat dislike the character of Micah. Here he was, a geeky gadget loving guy that was reacting similarly to the way I would in the situation, but he can't even halfway operate this camera that is supposedly his baby. What I'm saying is, you've got a character bragging about all the money he spent on a camera... it wouldn't be out of line for the camera to be a little bit better and operated with a touch more finesse. Just because the movie gives us an excuse for it to look like shit, it shouldn't get a free pass... it's far shittier than it had to be.

All of that aside, it really isn't a good movie. The fact that there is actually a writer/director, separate from either of the actors is astonishing to me. I guess he did his job in the context of the movie, because I certainly didn't feel like anything interesting was written or directed. I will definitely give credit to the acting, as it was surprisingly great for a video shot movie.

To think that the movie was originally bought to be remade does not make any sense to me, as the movie does not have any original ideas contained within it. There are no twists or turns in the plot and what little attempt they made at adding a mythology to the "demon" didn't even try to make sense. Worse yet, I found the editing to ruin all of the scares, as the movie quite literally fast forwards straight to them. Spoiler Alert: All 20 times that it's the middle of the night and they are sleeping, a scare is coming! Even more disappointing still is that the preview shows so many of these scares, all the way down to the last shot of the movie.

But hey, at least seeing it at midnight in a packed theater really set the mood... actually, the audience was not nearly into it as I thought they would be. The reaction wasn't bad by any means, but it certainly wasn't worth limiting the showings and revenue stream. From what I heard on the way out, I don't think this thing will have the legs they think it does. The consensus was, it was more entertaining than Blair Witch... but that isn't much of a compliment.

Personally, I think the whole thing would have played (and certainly looked) 10 times better as a midnight pay-per-view event. It'd be far scarier in your own home than a crowded theater.

Of course, it still wouldn't take the title of scariest film of the year. It wouldn't even take the title of scariest film of the year about a young woman being followed and tortured by a demon spirit... that most certainly goes to Drag Me to Hell. Sure, Paranormal Activity could never compete with that kind of budget, but from a writing standpoint, it could have had at least 1/10th of Hell's cohesiveness. You knew what the demon was, you knew what it intended on doing, you knew where it came from and you were still shocked throughout.

Cool, it's so gigantic that half of the photograph is getting cut off by my sidebar, but I like it anyway. You can click on it to see the full size without getting cut off. And by full size, I should mention, that even this is only 25% of the real full size photo on my computer.

The first printing of the cookbook is done (and almost already sold out).

Nearly a year of learning how to take food photographs, learning how to format a book and here it is...

From Good Carb Cookbook Arrives

Doesn't look like it in the pictures, but it's huge. More than a foot tall.

From Good Carb Cookbook Arrives

From Good Carb Cookbook Arrives

Next up, I'm working on a photo book of our recent trip to Italy. Took over a thousand pictures in the full quality RAW format I took for the cookbook. Got it down to 600 at the moment and gotta keep cutting until I can edit them without going insane.

Then, I'll be participating in the writer's workshop over at Chuck Palahniuk's site in hopes of getting into an anthology Chuck plans on releasing. Was in final consideration for their first attempt at an anthology but the whole project fell through back then. This time, Chuck has vowed to release it himself. I'll be writing a dirty teleportation story.

Then I'll most likely write that whole lioness screenplay I keep talking about.

Right now, the cookbook is exclusively available here.

Hey, there is this company called Blik that makes wall decals, some of them from Threadless designs. Right now, Elise's 217 Finicky Fish is in contention to become a set of wall decals to decorate your wall and or face.

You can vote for them to "Blik" her design at http://whatisblik.com/threadless/vote.html

I don't know if they actually pay her to sell these decals, or if that's just part of the Threadless contract, but it would be cool to see nonetheless!

Also, the shirt version of said design is pretty much sold out in case you fit into what's left and don't want to miss out. I guess the demand was pretty good for it, as it never got discounted to $10 or $5 in the major sale Threadless has been doing for the past couple weeks.

Also, we quit our jobs and I'll be writing a book or two next year after all.

We won first place at our work's costume contest, for my Michael Jackson and Elise's Little Boy costume. I chased her around the party with a bag of Skittles.

From Halloween 2008

From Halloween 2008

From Halloween 2008

Then we left the party and I puked into a bag the whole ride home. Then, it turned out that the bag had a hole in it and it was leaking my puke all over the $100 prize money that we won.

It's been a good week.

I finished work on the cookbook I've been doing for the past six months. (That's where I've been.) I'll have to see how much I'm allowed to say about that, because I would love to explain the process of designing a cookbook, why it was the batshit craziest amount of work I've ever agreed to and why I went nearly half a year past deadline.

In the midst of finishing up the book, I picked a good week to jump into the stock market. This was Monday, mind you, and I'm thinking that the market's already crashed so this would be a good time to jump in. Then five consecutive days of crashing and I get out $350 down. In the scheme of things, I'm insanely lucky for being so insanely stupid. It was Sirius XM Satellite Radio stock and I'll probably jump right back on that shit on Monday if I have another stupid streak. Sirius is trading for around 40 cents a share right now if you have the balls to sit and watch your money slowly disappear until the world can either fix itself or crumble back to sea shell currency. They have the second most subscribers of any entertainment service in the country, right behind Comcast cable, yet they're still completely in the dumps.

This was also the week that I called the police for the first time. Coincidentally, it was also the first week that Elise and I stood behind two police officers as they pushed into the apartment across from us with two guns drawn. The abandoned apartment's door was open two inches, despite being vacant and foreclosed upon (gee, I wonder if it was a good week to jump into the stock market?) for over a year. In the end, there was no sign that anyone had ever been inside. But it was cool nonetheless. I found it strange that the police officer let us stand right out in the open even though it was a situation that required them to draw guns. We just stood there, five feet away, watching. They drew their guns and raised them to the open door, then one of them said, "Did you hear that OJ was found guilty?" Then they lowered their guns and spoke about OJ for a minute. Then they raised their guns and someone came over the walkie talkie, "Did you hear about OJ?" Then they lowered their guns again and told the person on the walkie talkie that they had to do a search.

Later that night, one of the stray cats outside was jumping up and grabbing that apartment's doorknob. Batting at it. Grabbing it. The stray cat most definitely opened the door.