John Mayer’s Battle Studies: A Reason to End A Committed Relationship

11 Jan

John Mayer is partly to blame for the end of a nearly two-and-a-half year relationship. Yes, I am speaking of my relationship with a man I will refer to as Bobert* from this point on.  I thought Bobert was a great man – I likely would have said yes if he had proposed marriage and we had discussed names for our children. Little did I know that Bobert was secretly unhappy and waiting for any little excuse to pull the plug on our relationship. That reason turned out to be directly related to John Mayer. I have been a serious John mayer fan for quite a while (nearly 9 years), and Bobert was well aware of this – we even attended a John Mayer show together in the summer of 2008, and only two weeks before our breakup, Bobert went Dutch with me on a set of third row tickets for a March Mayer show.

On a cold December evening, I called my Bobert for help with completing an email for a John Mayer contest. The prize: two tickets to a secret John Mayer/VH1 show to celebrate the release of his latest album, Battle Studies, at an undisclosed location in Brooklyn.  Just hours before this fateful phone call, Bobert had declared that he missed me, was excited to see me, etc. (This was a long distance relationship.) Yet it all came to a halt due to John Mayer. You see, Bobert got annoyed with me. So annoyed, in fact, that when he asked what exactly I needed help with (I wanted to know how to put a photo in an email), he said, “You’re wasting my time.” This did not sit well with me; in fact, I responded with a hearty “Fuck you!” and hung up the phone. The next day is when everything went to hell. I’ll leave out the gory details, but I will let you know that dear Bobert threatened to cancel my phone number and rescinded a promise to help me move 2,000 miles across the country only 15 days before it was set to happen. Yes, Bobert is a bad man.

Ironically, the last remnants of that relationship are two third row tickets to John Mayer’s Winter Tour at the Pepsi Center in March. I have not yet decided whether I will sell those tickets, but keeping them will be very bittersweet. A great thanks to John Mayer for revealing the true colors of Bobert. They are dark colors indeed. Goodbye, Bobert. Hello, southern California and the possibility of non-committal sex with John Mayer.

*Name has been changed to arbitrarily protect a moron.

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Newly Victimized by New Moon

28 Nov

Last night, after a successful though horrific day of Black Friday shopping, my friend Anna* dragged me (literally, by the belt loops of my jeans) to see the second installment of the Twilight saga, New Moon. I’ve been able to avoid reading the books due to my general lack of enthusiasm for everything that teenagers enjoy. Recently I have started to feel old in spite of being young by the standards of those who actually are older.  Last week when I watched the American Music Awards (which were terrible), I had no clue as to who some of the presenters were. I kept asking, “Who the F is that?”

When I was finally detained by the Twilight cult for two hours of what some people may call a movie, I was transported to a world of sparkles and nonchalant shoulder shrugs.  I am unsure of whether this is intentional, but the movie’s main protagonist, Bella Swan, seems to hate everyone and everything, except for Edward Cullen. And she even talks to him like he’s trash.  Each time Bella spoke, her words came out along with a large breath. This, combined with consistent mumbling, made it difficult for me to understand what the hell she was saying.

In spite of this annoyance, the film made up for it with fancy F/X scenes of giant wolves chasing vampires through vast stretches of forest so beautiful that they simply must be fake. Oh, and there was also a certain shirtless teenage boy, Taylor Lautner.  I do question how Taylor built up such muscles at such a young age. No one in my high school ever had a body like that; Lautner makes the boys I went to school with look like distant cousins of the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Most of the women in the theater were in their mid-twenties and older, and flashes of Lautner’s eight-pack set off all sorts of frightening reactions, some of which I would like to forget.

One thing that definitely annoyed me about New Moon were its deviations from standard vampire fare. I HATE that Edward and his family can stand outside in the sun and do nothing more than look like  a Mariah Carey stage costume. And why are vampires in movies always rich? Edward’s sister Alice drives a cute little Mercedes and his father is a successful doctor. (Other fare with rich vampires: Interview with the Vampire and True Blood.) I would like to see a vampire on welfare, just for diversity purposes.

The highlight of this movie came when two women began fighting in the back of the theater when one threw a bottle water at the other for talking. More blood appeared at this moment than throughout the entirety of New Moon. I was hoping to hate this movie as much as possible, but I can confirm it is not the worst movie I have ever seen (that still remains The Sweetest Thing with Cameron Diaz).  The story seems to lack a primary purpose; I did not care for scenes of Bella’s night terrors, spurred on by the absence of Edward. In many ways, this movie is just about a young girl having her heart broken, though not just by anyone: he’s the sparklingest, palest, most dreamy vampire EVER. And oh my, woe is me when I have to choose between him and my ripped half-werewolf best friend. Life is so hard for Bella Swan.

Grade: C

*Names have been changed to avoid pestering.

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Precious: Once Will Be Enough for Me

20 Nov

I went to see Precious with a close friend of mine.  When we got the chance to discuss what we had just seen, we agreed on a key point: we never want to see this movie again. The story of Clarice Precious Jones, an obese, black sixteen-year-old living in 1987 Harlem, is peppered with fetishisms of poverty.  Precious, though hopeful at its conclusion, often panders to those who like to gawk at abuse and impoverishment.

The film introduces us to Precious as a daydreaming 8th-grader with dreams of getting out of Harlem. Unfortunately for Precious, she has a horribly abusive mother (Mo’nique, who may very well receive an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress) and is pregnant with her second child by a disgusting rapist of a man, her own father.  When her school principal learns that she is pregnant, Precious is expelled and referred to an “alternative school.” There she meets kind Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), who seems as though she will stop at nothing to help Precious.

At first it was a bit difficult for me to feel any empathy for Precious. However, I did quickly realize that my life is beyond ideal when compared with that of Precious’. There are numerous scenes in which Precious does mean, horrible, stupid things: she steals a 10-piece bucket of chicken, she kicks a frying pan at her mother, only receiving more wrath in return, and refers to her first child as a mongoloid (the little girl has Down Syndrome).

The climactic scene in which Precious reveals a secret to her teacher and classmates oozed with sickly treacle; Ms. Rain continues to urge Precious to write, but realistically, who would ever want to write at such a low point? The forced histrionics of the scene made me cringe.

There are constant reminders of Precious’ poverty everywhere in the film. The food Precious is forced to cook for her mother is dripping in grease (in one scene Precious’ mother forces her to eat pig’s feet that she deems “too hairy”). Perhaps, most importantly, Precious is virtually illiterate. Intermittent fantasies Precious plays out in her mind show Gabby Sidibe dolled up in makeup and elegant gowns, a far cry from the uniform of a sweatshirt and Adidas that Precious dons. The escapism that Precious finds within her mind is the only reward she can conjure.  By the end of the film, Precious is living in a half-way house, reading at an 8th grade level, and trying to raise her children on her own. This may not seem an ideal situation, but for Precious, hope has finally surfaced in the doldrums of Harlem.

I am unsure of whether this film made an impact on my worldview; it did make me momentarily more conscious of the perils of physical and sexual abuse, but as soon as we exited the theater, my friend and I exchanged the same words: “Our lives are great compared to Precious.” If one can take something away from this film, it may as well be that the awareness that someone has it worse than you (no matter how bad things seem to get).

Other than granting me with a moment of selfless mental clarity, Precious is full of lively performances that are in definite need of recognition.  All of the hype over Mo’nique’s performance is well-warranted – she plays hateful, manipulative, and predatory all in one shot.  Gabby Sidibe was also great (in her film debut), and even Mariah Carey turned in some hard work as a plain Jane social worker. All that was Glitter may be soon forgotten.

If you are contemplating whether you should see this movie and you are lucky enough to live in a city with a theater playing it, do it already.  Everyone is talking about it anyway and at Oscar time you will have a better grasp on the nominees.

Grade: B+

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