Guy Meets Girl: A Rant...

i just got done watching How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, a romantic comedy. why did i rent this movie, you ask? because it has simon pegg in it, and if you've read my blog before, you know that i'll watch anything that guy is in. as far as romantic comedies go, the movie was fine. it had some sappy crap for the ladies to get all choked up over, and it had some pretty funny moments to help the guys suffer through it. also, the movie has megan fox in it, and we all know that she may be one of the hottest women on earth. if you don't know who megan fox is, google her, or just watch Transformers. in this movie, though, she reaches a new level of hotness. behold...

she will be mine. oh yes, she will be mine...

the movie also has kirsten dunst. i used to have a giant crush on her due to such gems as Bring it On and the rain scene from Spider-Man. now, i'm pretty much over her due to her stinginess with onscreen nudity and her weird little teeth. she does fine in this movie, but is definitely second fiddle hotness wise to megan fox.

one more time, just for the hell of it...

if you want to see this movie, go ahead. there are worse ways to spend an afternoon with a significant other, and you'll definitely crack up at the stripper scene. yes, that's right, there's a stripper scene that had me laughing for a few minutes. simon pegg must've thrown that one in to keep people interested. there's also a sweet scene involving the death-by-crushing of a chihuaha (the steve buscemi of the animal kingdom), and if you like british humor, you'll like the rest of the comedy. the movie is pretty standard though, and definitely nothing groundbreaking. the reason i write about it, then, is to address a serious problem in hollywood's portrayal of relationships. how many times have you seen this scenario unfold in a movie?

Act One:
guy meets girl. they clash at first, but eventually start becoming friends/coworkers/zombie-hunters (only in my dreams), and soon start to realize that, shockingly enough, they have a lot in common. her favorite movie is some piece of black and white trash from the 30's that people only say they like to sound intelligent; he just happens to find the soundtrack to the movie at a used record store on vinyl, and he gives it to her as a present "just because." things look good at this point...


Act Two:
guy is about to make a move on girl, because he realizes that they should be together and make lots of babies. just as guy is about to proclaim his love for girl, girl breaks the news that she's getting back together with her boyfriend. enter boyfriend, who is inherently the douchiest motherfucker known to man, usually wearing something straight out of GQ. it is a scientific fact that this fucker will cheat on the girl, talk down to her, and generally treat her like shit. for some reason, girl puts up with this and goes back with guy because apparently deep down, boyfriend is a really sweet guy (ie, he's rich, attractive, and a nice status symbol for the girl because she is inherently a dirty dirty tramp). guy cannot proclaim his love for girl because boyfriend has conveniently (for the plot, not for guy) stepped in just before guy makes it awkward for everyone. guy retreats to his sanctuary, realizes that he needs to move on with his life, and decides to try to put his unmatched love behind him...


Act Three:
guy becomes successful. he gets a big break in his job in which he was previously struggling, he starts making a bunch of friends in high places, he rakes in all sorts of sweet poon. things are looking up for guy. he's living the fucking high life, and girl is stuck with the douchebag boyfriend who she shouldn't have been with in the first place if she wasn't a complete fucking cunt moron. douchebag boyfriend does something to fuck up the relationship, usually involving cheating on the girl or calling her life's dream retarded. girl hates life. all is well in the universe...


Act Four:
girl decides to "drop in" on guy to see how he's doing, catch up, seek out that long lost love that she fucking well knew was there but never did a goddamn thing about because she was too fucking stupid to see what was right in front of her cunt-tastic eyes. girl inevitably catches guy being awesome, ie, immediately pre- or post-coitus, usually with some tramp that is way hotter than girl anyway. girl makes guy feel guilty in that subtle feminine way: "oh, you're busy, that's... cool... i'll see you later... i guess... (grimace/tears in eyes/anger)" guy feels like shit...


Act Five:
guy realizes that his awesome life is not so awesome because he was missing girl all along, and was trying to fill the void left by her absence with money, clubbing, sex with models, drugs, alcohol, and general merriment with his coolest guy friends. guy goes back to girl, tells her he loves her all along and was wrong to ever let her get out of his sight. girl feigns ignorance and plays a little hard to get, but the two quickly work it out, usually with the guy admitting that his life of awesomeness was a stupid decision. guy and girl kiss, and the two end up happily ever after. yay...


fuck you hollywood. seriously. fuck you right in your giant bleeding vagina. any man who fucking writes scripts like this deserves to have his cock and balls removed and crushed before his eyes. i mean come on, are your harpy wives hanging over you day and night as you write the script, or are you just placating the masses of single 20-somethings that want to have their own spineless jellyfish of a man that will chase them around and do everything for them? whichever one's the case, check your artistic talent at the door, you are officially a fucking hack. you are no better than the writers who say "there's trouble in the middle east right now, let's make a taut political thriller that involves a bunch of arabs planning to blow shit up." how come it's always the guy that has to feel guilty? how come it's always his fault that he wasn't available when the girl comes knocking on his door, months after she made it clear that he has no chance in hell? what the fuck was he supposed to do, sit there and wait for her while she got her jollies off with the douchebag boyfriend? fuck no, he's gonna go out there and get some ass. it's her own damn fault if she didn't take the opportunity when it was staring her in the face...

once, just once, i'd like to see a bit of cynicism in the movies. and by cynicism i mean realism. i'm sure every person out there has had that unrequited love, that one crush that they fell for so hard and got completely and utterly burned by. every girl has had the guy who they would die for, yet doesn't even know the girl exists. every guy has listened to a girl bitch about her boyfriend and said to himself (and often her) "if you were with me, i'd treat you like a queen" only to have her say that she loves you like a brother/it would ruin the friendship. and you know what, that's fine. people need that heartbreak to keep them grounded. sure, it sucks balls, but it makes you realize that significant others are not some god/goddess to be put on a pedestal. they're a human being, and they have their faults. we need those experiences to teach us how to move on in life, how to put bad times behind us so that we can keep our sanity.

so hollywood, just once, have the guy actually move on. have him enjoy his newfound life. have him realize that he regretted not getting with the girl, but that he's doing just fine now. have him not leave his amazing success in order to prostrate himself before the girl that was A) too blind to realize the good thing staring her in the face, and B) too stupid to realize that the guy she was with before was a giant fucking tool who would fuck her over. when she shows up just as he's running around in a robe chasing a half-naked girl around his apartment, have him say "hey, i'm busy, show back up in 30, no, make it 45 minutes..."

or better yet, have the guy take a little joy in realizing that the ball is in his court now. have him rub her nose in it. when she shows up at his apartment, have him tell her that she had her chance but went with captain dickhole, so now she has to live with her decision. slam door, roll credits. if that seems like too quick of an ending, have him spitefuck her. that's right, i said it. have the guy get back with the girl, rail the everloving shit out of her, and then tell her that's what she's been missing, and she's never going to get it again. let's have some sweet sweet sexual revenge. or maybe he can use his newfound position of relationship power to get her to do all sorts of stuff, like clean his apartment, buy him things, or anal. the possibilities are endless, really...

yes, all of that may sound pretty misogynistic, but really, what do you expect? life doesn't give you many second chances. that girl you desperately loved in high school but never got with? yeah, you're never going to get that chance again. that girl in college that you were best friends with but fucked your roommate? yeah, she's gone too. odds are, you're better off anyway. i know you've all checked out your past crushes online to see what's going on in their lives. facebook is great for showing us just how shitty people's lives have turned out, and it's fucking sweet. there's nothing like seeing the girl that was too good for you in high school end up marrying some balding redneck, popping out a few half-retarded children, and winding up stuck in some dead-end job. if you don't get a secret sense of joy from that, you're a fucking liar. so instead of having people spend those miracle second chances making a sweet lasting relationship with the girl, let's have the people realistically get that shit out of their system. it should go a little something like this:

girl: oh my god, it's been so long since i've seen you! you look great! what have you been up to?
guy: well, i moved away, went to college for 4 amazing years, got a sweet job, have a bunch of awesome friends, and generally just have the time of my life. you?
girl: that's so cool. i married my boyfriend from high school, you remember him, right? we have a kid now. he has special needs, but that's ok... i'm ok with it... *sniffle*
guy: aww, that's gotta be tough...
girl: yeah... you know, i always kinda had a thing for you in school...
guy: really? cause i asked you out like 168 times, and you always told me we were just friends.
girl: well, i was young then, but i know better now.
-cut to an hour later after they've had rough sex-
girl: that was amazing...
guy: i've had better. there's cab fare on the dresser. have fun with your retarded kid...
-guy leaves, checking one major regret off of his list. girl cries, realizing the life she could've had if she hadn't been a complete fucking moron-

i'd definitely pay $10 to see that scene in a movie. girls in the audience would boo, men everywhere would stand up and cheer. all would be right in the universe...

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People: perpetuating the stereotype that it's somehow always the guy's fault. at least the stripper scene was funny...

Simon Pegg: I want to have your babies, in a metaphorical sense...

so it's been awhile since i've posted anything. winter break (when i didn't have any work to put off) and then starting an internship (when i had work to put off, but actually couldn't put it off) kinda hamper blogging. i should get one of those jobs where you just sit in an office all day and don't do anything, but still get paid over 5ok. now who has one of those jobs that i know, but yet still bitches about it every day... hmm... oh yes, the Girlfriend!

anyway, what better way to spend my obligatory office hours period than blogging about stuff. it's not like any of my students ever show up anyway (fuckers). so as a way to jump back into the swing of things, i'm going to take a different approach than my previous posts. this one isn't going to review a movie, it's going to discuss a person. that person, you may have guessed, is simon pegg.

this guy is seriously one of the funniest people i've ever seen. i never got the chance to see shaun of the dead in theaters. i think i rented the movie sometime and just watched it by myself, laughing my ass off the entire time. it is, by far, the greatest zombie movie ever made. after seeing that movie, i was hooked. next up was hot fuzz, which isn't quite as good, but only because the awesomeness of shaun of the dead can never be met. hot fuzz is a fantastic movie. it has a decent amount of funny parts in the first 3/4 of the movie, and then it sortof shifts...

how does it shift, you say?

it shifts by becoming a completely badass action movie, and it kicks off the action with simon pegg jump kicking an 80 yr old woman in the face. i'm serious. i saw this one in theaters, and i nearly peed my fucking pants. the next 20 minutes of the movie are a blur of a gunfight where simon pegg and nick frost take on the residents of a sleepy english village. those residents, with their harmless-seeming english accents, are all packing heat. when the elderly priest whips two .45's from his sleeves, i fucking lost it. i tried to watch this movie last night, but my copy of it is scratched. gonna have to remedy that right quick...

after hot fuzz, pegg has done some american movies, namely how to lose friends and alienate people. i haven't seen this yet, but i'm not expecting great things. he needs nick frost and edgar wright to really shine.

speaking of nick frost and edgar wright, i finally picked up Spaced, the tv show where that trio started off. it's a bbc tv show that ran back around the turn of the millenium, and it recently got released to american dvd audiences. thank fucking god it did. the only thing wrong with this show is that it was only on for 2 seasons, and those seasons are only 7 episodes each.

so why is Spaced so great? well, first off, there's the music. completely awesome. i've already picked up about 10 songs from the show, and i love them. there's a few out there that are really hard to find, and i'm still working on it. so the music helps, but what makes it really great is that pegg is just like me. he wants to be a graphic artist for a comic book company (what i wanted to do when i was really young, before i got jaded and became a lawyer), he loves science fiction, fantasy, and comic books, he smokes weed and drinks beer, he plays a lot of video games, he has a best friend who he does all of this stuff with (Brad, Brett, Curtis, Jerad, Mark, Bly, Pat, etc.), and he generally just doesn't want to grow up. oh, and he hates The Phantom Menace. seriously. it's a recurring theme in the entire second season...

along that line, there are a lot of references in the show to awesome movies that i happen to really like, such as the matrix, one flew over the cuckoo's nest, the first star wars trilogy, fight club, and pulp fiction. some of these references are subtle, some are not. they're not like family guy, though, where there's one every 30 seconds, and it's a complete departure from all plot. no, this stuff is just worked in, and it pays off. i'm sure Aaron heard me laughing like a maniac in my room while watching the first season. most of these references are why...

so yeah, go out and rent pegg's stuff. you won't be disappointed. simon, if you ever read this, i want to be your best friend. seriously. i just want to hang out with you and nick frost, get loaded, and have a blast. i'd die a happy man if that ever happened...

oh, and for those of you who may wonder what an episode of Spaced is actually about, here's a preview: in one episode, pegg took a bunch of cheap speed and spends most of the day playing resident evil 2 on playstation. he then goes to a friend's art show under extreme duress, and a solid amount of the episode revolves around how fucking stupid modern art is. pegg then flips out, thinks everyone are zombies, punches a painted up tranny in the face (seriously), and rescues his friends from the shittiness of the art show after-party.

yeah.

just drink that in.

and now, to tide you over, here are some quotes from Spaced:
(tim is pegg, daisy is his roommate,

Tim: You're scared of mice and spiders, but oh-so-much greater is your fear that one day the two species will cross-breed to form an all-powerful race of mice-spiders, who will immobilize human beings in giant webs in order to steal cheese.
Daisy: I never said that.
Tim: Yeah, but it'd be good though, wouldn't it?

Daisy: Right, I'm going to the shops. D'you want anything?
Tim: Porn.
Daisy: Tim, I'm not going to buy you porn. You can get it from railway sidings like everybody else.
Tim: I can't, I'm an adult. I'm supposed to leave it there.

Tim: [On Resident Evil] It's a subtle blend of lateral thinking and extreme violence.