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.
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| From Italy 2009 |
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| From Italy 2009 |
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| From Italy 2009 |
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| From Italy 2009 |
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| From Italy 2009 |
Nearly a year of learning how to take food photographs, learning how to format a book and here it is...
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| From Good Carb Cookbook Arrives |
Doesn't look like it in the pictures, but it's huge. More than a foot tall.
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| From Good Carb Cookbook Arrives |
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| 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.
]]>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.
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| From Halloween 2008 |
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| From Halloween 2008 |
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| 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.
]]>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.
Thank you to everyone that voted! Elise's 217 Finicky Fish shirt was printed over at Threadless today! It's on sale for $12 if you're a girl too.
Up for voting soon...
WIZARDS HITTING ON MERMAIDS
Designs are only open for voting for seven days.
When voting, you can click on "I'd buy it... as a tee" and then give it a 5 (if you want to be awesome)! Elise could win $2000 if one of her designs is printed.
Thanks everybody!
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* * *
My friend, this waiter, he works in a restaurant not unlike the place that I work. Food on a plate, John Denver playing low and that's about it. Save for sixteen miles between the two restaurants, you'd swear they were the same. Sandwich and salad fare with entrees on the menu just to look all grown up.
My friend, the waiter, he swears the entree quality at his restaurant is somewhere in between dog vomit and The Cheesecake Factory, but leaning more toward one than the other. Everything is "made from scratch" except everything that isn't. The extra virgin olive oil is ninety percent soybean oil. The butter is ninety percent soybean oil. The fresh ground sirloin burgers are made from the cheapest ground beef money can buy.
Him and I, we share a lot of the same views on our jobs, on waiting tables and which guests deserve to be served a cup of coffee so old it smells like burnt pencils. We talk work. We blow off steam. We do this because we have to, my friend, the waiter and I. We do this because we are one and the same. We're serving the same crummy food to the same and sometime insane regulars, with the same co-workers and the same problems. To tell these stories in a bar where there are just as many packs of cigarettes on the table as drinks is inevitable. There are thousands and thousands of these stories in the sixteen miles between our two restaurants and I'm quite certain that they're all the same.
Thing is, I can tell his. My friend, the waiter, I can tell his stories because they are not my own. I can tell them without hearing about it the next day at work. I can tell them without giving away any deep dark dirty secret of my restaurant. Besides... his stories are better.
* * *
The Grim Reaper was staring out from behind the fenced in parking lot of the Golden Corral buffet. There was no mistaking it, except, my friend was mistaken. As he drove closer and eventually past the Golden Corral, he could see the Grim Reaper for what he really was; a fifty gallon black garbage bag stuck to the fence, a long broom standing upright beside it.
On the way to a restaurant job, everything means something about your tips to come. If it looks like rain, you're gearing up for a night of squatters that want the dry seat with the roof over their head, but only want to tip $2 an hour. Food, they don't order much of that.
If it looks like a hurricane--your restaurant's patio chairs flying down the street--anybody that walks in the door is to be considered reckless and batshit crazy and Batshit Crazies aren't known for their tipping either. The Batshit Crazies are saving all of their money to will to their dog when they drive their car into a tornado.
The other day, the Hefty bag and the upright broom--The Grim Reaper of Golden Corral--it probably didn't mean a thing at all. Sure, somebody was fired that morning before my friend came in, and sure this person was supposedly dying, actually dying, but things really weren't out of the ordinary in the restaurant. A woman found a safety pin in her catfish sandwich, but she didn't choke on it or anything. The manager on duty told the table that it was a fish hook that the fish must have swallowed, as if the fish they serve are even caught one hook at a time and as if their fillets are contaminated with their stomach contents before serving and it was funny that both the manager and the guest seemed to believe this story, but it was just another day.
Then the next day, the tips died. All of the tips. They all died. Like a switch that flipped when gas went over four a gallon, tips went from $4 to $15 a table to $1 to $8 a table overnight. Desserts are off the table. Waters all around. Extra lemons. Lots of lemons. Let's make lemonade. Free lemonade.
The Grim Reaper of Golden Corral, today we've decided he was saying, "This is what you'll be making now. This is all you'll get. Buffet tips."
The safety pins are all you can eat.
]]>The redesign is still a work in progress, but my goal this go around is to clean things up a bit. Sadly, that required the purging of all comments that have ever been made. My outdated version of the Movable Type platform left me more than a little bit vulnerable to spammers. In the past year, I racked up an astounding 81,000 bullshit comments, mostly in the archives.
A while ago, I remember someone high up at AOL proposing an e-mail tax. A penny to send an e-mail, any e-mail. Still forty-one cents cheaper than a stamp! The reasoning was pretty sound--spammers won't be able to afford it!
Sadly, when you want to encourage a talkback on a blip of a website like my own, you need the comment engine to be as easy for people to use as possible. Otherwise, the interest wanes and we all move on to Gizmodo or some other gadget porn website. (Certainly it isn't just me.) The easy commenting lets the robots walk all over it and some stupid ringtone website just got a slightly higher ranking in Google thanks to it's new link from my blog. So you see, it's all Google's fault that all of your comments are deleted. If you'd like to let them know how you feel about it, climb onto your roof and organize the tiles into a message for their satellite to photograph.
Also, get naked. You'll be three pixels high and famous one day.
That aside, I've finally introduced categories to my blog in a bid to catch up with 2002. Soon, I'll be posting scary food news in the Food Truths category as well as some interesting stories from My Friend, the Waiter in his. Both of these were ideas that I wanted to start as separate blogs, but never got around to. Now, they'll be something to post here! Something I'm allowed to post here, unlike the current project that I am working on.
Finally, the site should be more compatible than ever. Reading better on them fancy new devices, the iPhone and most importantly the Kindle. If a blog is all one big ego stroke, it might as well look the best on my device of choice.
]]>At first, it was a Sony mini-disc player back when you had to physically record music onto the discs in 1/1 (real) time. Then it was a chunky, clunky Archos Jukebox MP3 player with hacked firmware if only to make it a few more features closer to the iPod I should have purchased in the first place. Without iTunes compatibility, I was still just ripping copies of real-life discs.
There was comfort in that. That I could still make use of the trendy CD sleeve wallpaper plastering my walls. I didn't quite get that after the CD was in the computer, wallpaper was the ONLY thing it was good for.
When I finally realized that the most complete music collection I owned was in my computer, not thumbtacked to my walls, I broke down and purchased an iPod.
Though one day I may regret all of the DRMed music I've purchased from iTunes (where were you Amazon?), the iPod didn't just change the way I listened to music, it changed my quality of life. I was listening to a whole heck of a lot more music than ever before, discovering more artists and enjoying them in more places.
Apple has not been able to add anything substantial (for me) to the experience since, but today I have to wonder what kept me so attached to the physical "product" for so long?
Last week, I had to remind myself of this attachment to the physical and make one big jump. There would be no baby steps this time around--just my bookshelves that I love so much to this--
It's easy enough to say that the Amazon Kindle is changing the way I read books, but I think it's so much more than that. The Kindle is on the verge of changing my life and not just the quality of it.
There have been scores of failed e-readers in the past. Even e-ink e-readers like the Sony Reader, but Amazon has done what no one else has been able to do--connect us to all of the information in the world in a very practical way.
If you're an avid reader, or even just wish to be one, Sony's Reader can't provide a wide enough variety of books to seal the deal. While Amazon isn't 100% there either, they're far closer with far loftier goals to one day sell every book in and out of print.
This is why I thought this device was for me. To read more books without having to bend the spine from closing on me, without the words slinking into the gutter, without craning my neck to read the left side of the page, without the weight of a 500 page Dave Eggers hardcover. To pay $7.99 to $9.99 for books that I was paying $12.99 to $28.99 for in the past.
I didn't expect that there was an even smaller demographic that this device was even more suited to.
If you really love to read, buy a Kindle. If you really love to learn, you should really, really buy this thing.
The Kindle is changing the way I receive information. It's always online through Sprint's high speed cell phone network and without any monthly bills. It searches Wikipedia, for free, from anywhere in the country and it does it faster than an iPhone, with a bigger, easier to read, sharp as paper screen.
Its internet browser, limited by the 4 color greyscale of the e-ink isn't the full internet experience, but it IS perfectly suited for information heavy content like news and blogs.
Here it is, viewing my blog...
I'm pretty accustomed to carrying a book with me wherever I go, only now that book just got a whole lot lighter, thinner and connected to encyclopedias, blogs and the entire internet.
Did I mention that I'm getting Time Magazine beamed to it every week for only $1.49 a month? Or that I get The New York Times every morning at 4am without having to "sync" anything.
So, when I'm not reading 100 pages of a book in one sitting, I'm reading Time, or The New York Times or the digestive habits of fish (long story) on Wikipedia or a little bit of Waiter Rant. I'm reading anything and everything and fuck the price tag, it was worth every penny. When people talked about the internet being all of the world's information at your fingertips, this is what they were talking about. Not a laptop, not the iPhone--the Kindle.
Right now, I'm finally finishing Dave Eggers' What is the What. The version I'm reading is sitting atop the printed copy in this photo...
I'm reading mostly on my back in bed without killing my wrists. It's fantastic.
It's going to be a lot easier to detach myself from the physical look and feel (and smell!) of books than I ever thought before.
I sold my old camera to offset 3/4ths of the $400 pricetag, but now that I've played with it I would have definitely purchased it outright. It'll pay itself off in savings 30-50 books from now, but it's also paying itself off in the $20 a month internet access (that barely worked) I canceled on my phone. Oh and it'll save me $50 on another bookshelf 30-50 books from now as well.
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