MY MILKSHAKE AND IPOD ARE BETTER THAN YOURS

1. Fast and Furious/Universal Wknd/$ 72.5 Total/$ 72.5
2. Monsters Vs. Aliens/DreamW Wknd/$ 33.5 Total/$ 105.7
3. Haunting in Connecticut/LGF Wknd/$ 9.6 Total/$ 37.2
4. Knowing/Summit Wknd/$ 8.1 Total/$ 58.2
5. I Love You, Man/Paramount Wknd/$ 7.9 Total/$ 49.3
6. Adventureland/Miramax Wknd/$ 6.0 Total/$ 6.0
7.Duplicity/Universal Wknd/$ 4.3 Total/$ 32.4
8. Race To Witch Mountain/Disney Wknd/$ 3.4 Total/$ 58.4
9. 12 Rounds/Fox Wknd/$ 2.3 Total/$ 9.0
10.Sunshine Cleaning/Over Wknd/$ 1.9 Total/$ 4.8

SLOW AND RELAXED
Fast and Furious opens at number one and I have to give Universal some credit for not giving this some silly title and essentially using the same name as the original, only dropping “the” from the title. The four principles from the first movie are back and you know when they all declined to be in the various sequels they thought their careers would go to a place where they wouldn’t have to do something like this. Surprise! And you know they’re confused because it’s not like their other work is so much worse than this. Chronicles of Riddick was better. Into the Blue was even better (S.W.A.T. and D.E.B.S….not so much). But this is what worked, so pride got checked at the door. You know what didn’t return? Chiseled jawlines, because both Paul “Pretty Boy” Walker and Vin Diesel have a bit more softness under their chins. I’m sorry, but what’s the point in hiring beefcake if it’s going to be soft? You guys don’t work because they couldn’t get Daniel Day Lewis. You’re here to be toned meat and you can’t even do that? I guess this is why there’s not even one shirtless scene between the two of them. The funny thing about all these movies is that there’s not really a lot of actual racing going on. There are chases, but not much racing which is odd in a movie about, you know, racing. This time Diesel comes back for vengeance while Paul “Pretty Boy” Walker has somehow gone from being a cop in the first, to a fugitive in the second, to an FBI Agent here. Only in the movies, kids. They’re both after the same drug lord for different reasons and “go undercover” as street racers to work for him. And that’s it. I’m serious, that’s the total plot. That’s like an episode of your average TV cop show, only without the character depth. But you’re not really here for that anyway, are you? You just want to see pretty cars go pretty fast and that does happen, though arguably the best action scene is a foot chase. I guess you could say it’s fast and furious. And the lack of sex continues. This is car porn, not people porn. Beautiful girls abound, but they can’t compete with a fuel-injected V8. We see Vin Diesel and Paul Walker getting hot and heavy with their cars long before Walker notices the near perfect Jordana Brewster is around. The closest thing to non-automotive eroticism are the girl-on-girl make-outs that are apparently commonplace at street races according to these movies. This how you know while it may be a male movie, it’s not a man’s movie, because only boys see this and lose their shit. The rest of us roll our eyes and wonder when the race is going to start. I half expect the director to say that girls can only kiss girls because of cooties.

NUMBER THREE IS “JO” WHICH MY OTHER SISTER GOT
Monsters vs. Aliens is down to number two and starring as the voice of Ginormica is Reese Witherspoon and if you didn’t know she was a southern debutante, know that her name is Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon. Laura Jeanne!!! Let me put it this way, Britney’s middle name is Jean too. The only more clichéd southern middle name for a woman is “Lynn” which her sister got…and so did my mom…who then gave a version of it to my baby sister. It’s the south, y’all.

VACATIONS: GOOD FOR YOU, GOOD FOR THE VIEWING PUBLIC
The Haunting in Connecticut is down to number three, followed Knowing at number four and since 2004 Nicholas Cage has released eleven films (and technically been in 12)! He has kids. Doesn’t he miss them?

YOU KNOW WHAT I DID LAST SUMMER?
I Love You Man, is down to number five followed by Adventureland, opening at number six and this is a worthy entry into the coming of age genre and now I’m at the age where period coming of age films are now actually set when I was coming of age (just last year there was The Wackness, which was set in the early 90’s). This takes place in 1987 when Jesse Eisenberg has his plans to spend the summer after college in Europe derailed when his father is demoted and they have to move back to Pittsburgh. There he has to get a job at a cheesey, low-rent theme park by the name of Adventureland, where of course he finds romance, makes friends and takes a step on the road to manhood. Off-hand I’d say half this film’s budget went to the soundtrack and this actually uses the songs when appropriate, not just throwing them in willy nilly (yes, that’s an expression old people use). I consider it a minor miracle that “Boys Don’t Cry” isn’t set to a montage and the use of Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over” was affecting and had me singing it the theater. It also avoids the trap of winking knowingly at the modern viewer. When they play video games at the arcade, there’s no aside about how great it would be to have those quality graphics at home one day. There are no jokes about Regan or comments on then hot celebrities. And the clothes and hair strive for accuracy without being kitschy or becoming costumes. Like most coming of age films, virginity plays a part and this is no exception. The protagonist has managed to escape college with his virtue intact mainly because he keeps telling girls about it (it had me at that point---not that the exact same thing once happened to me, because it didn’t now shut up about it!). To remedy this problem there’s always the appearance of “The Girl” and she’s here too, but you can always tell your better coming of age films, because she’s not necessarily idealized and has a darker hue. Again, no exception here. There’s even the older, wiser mentor, complete with the modern twist of them not being as perfect as they appear to be (because why else would they be in this dump to begin with). Nothing is new in a coming of age film, so it’s all in the execution and this is well executed (one of my favorite coming of age films to incorporate all these things is the little-known Those Lips, Those Eyes, starring Frank Langella, with Tom Hulce as a pre-med student working in summer stock theater in Ohio in the 50’s). Needless to say, writer/director Greg Mottola worked at a theme park when he was young. For that matter, so did I, but the dark truth about these coming of age films is that rarely is there some beautiful girl who makes you a man or breaks your heart in real life. There was a girl when I worked at Six Flags. She was the 17-year-old mother of a 2-year-old. I took her to the prom because I was too afraid to ask the girl I really wanted to take, it was a disaster, I learned nothing, never got the other girl and never really saw her again outside of work. That’s how real geeks spend their adolescence (and their 20’s and their 30’s and…when will this shit end?) Now, would you pay to see that? Exactly. Next time we'll cover my summer in NYC after my sophomore year where I managed not to get laid despite the two willing girls I was spending my time with. Now that's comedy!

AND IF THEY AREN’T SOLVING MYSTERIES, WHO CARES?
Race To Witch Mountain is down to number eight, followed by 12 Rounds at number nine and Sunshine Cleaning enters into the top ten at number ten and if you think the story of a woman who cleans up after crime scenes sounds familiar, that’s because it was done before. Bruce Willis’s hot cab driver from Pulp Fiction was played by Angela Jones, who later made a Tarantino produced film called Curdled where she was a woman who, fascinated by murder, cleaned up after crime scenes. I know it’s unfair but because I didn’t like that I was less inclined to even give this a try. It doesn’t help that this just stinks of “indie precious.” This is from the people who brought you Little Miss Sunshine and I suppose they thought they were being clever to use “sunshine” in the title but it also serves to rub me the wrong way. One day Amy Adams will make a movie I want to see.

LOVE PLUS 100
Speaking music from the 80’s, of course I had to watch the Top 100 One Hit Wonders of the 80’s. Normally this leads to me filling gaps in my collection, but I actually have all of it. All of it. Yes, my iPod is both that sad and that awesome. Of course the rules of this are suspect. They define “one hit wonder” as someone who only breaks the top ten once. I think that’s cheating. Quarterflash had three Top 40 hits: “Harden My Heart” “Night Shift” and their best song, though not their most successful “Take Me To Heart.” Shannon had “Let The Music Play” and “Give Me the Night.” Nu Shooz had “Point of No Return” and “I Can’t Wait” and so on… But I loved the updates of all the artists, not to mention finding out myth breaking facts like “Turning Japanese” not being about masturbation and “I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight” being about having an orgasm (Cutting Crew also had a second hit with the better “I’ve Been In Love Before”). And trivia like Fergie and Jennifer Love Hewitt singing backup on Martika’s “Toy Soldiers” and finding out Michael Sembello was playing guitar for Stevie Wonder when he was 17, so you know he’s the shit (he also had a second hit with “Automatic Man” and yes, it’s on my iPod). But there were some things clearly overlooked, like how The New Bohemians tried to continue on without Edie Brickell (not on my iPod because I do have standards) or that Robbie Dupree’s “Steal Away” not only sounded just like “What A Fool Believes” but Michael McDonald sang on it. I also became a fan of Ben Lee, who said some of the funniest shit about these acts, especially his comment on Jack Wagner (who also had a second hit in “All The Way”). You can tell who had a drug problem and who didn’t by their ability to still hit the notes. And it’s amazing who’s still making music, ‘cause some of these cats were already in their 30’s then, though some need to stop (yes, Twisted Sister, I’m talking to you). I love how gay men are keeping so many of the artists alive. Let that be a lesson to you: make a decent dance song and you can play gay clubs until you die. And while a few were surprisingly grateful and humble about having just one hit (which is actually more fucking amazing and difficult than you’ll ever know), but then there were the people who were clearly bitter, and while some had every right to be after being cheated out of millions, “Black Velvet” shouldn’t have been a hit anyway, Alyannah Myles, so suck it up. Now, give me my One Hit Wonders of the 90’s!

IN THE WORDS OF HALLE BERRY “MAKE ME FEEL GOOD!”
In these times of strife we turn to TV more than ever to help us make it through, so I’ve come to depend on certain “comfort food” shows, which include The Mentalist, The Eleventh Hour and now Castle, a very lighted-hearted crime drama about a very successful murder mystery author who “teams up” with an unwilling homicide detective because he wants to write a book about her and everyone in New York City from the mayor on down loves him. As always, I’m a sucker for a show clearly filmed in NYC, which makes it look good. That it’s fun also helps. I also liked how they openly acknowledge that it’s unusual for an attractive, upper middle class white woman (from Manhattan, no less) to be a cop. That’s just real for such a frothy show. You’ve never even seen it mentioned on a show like Law & Order. One thing all these shows have in common is that the hero is such because he’s smart. These aren’t tough guys with guns. In fact on every show the “tough guy” is the female law enforcement officer by his side. This one is a tad more believable because she’s tall. The girl from The Craft ain’t scaring nobody, gun and badge be damned.

ARE THE STARS OUT TONIGHT
I tend to forget when I see celebs which is why I haven’t done this in awhile. I mean it was weeks ago I was walking home and saw Taylor Momsen (Little J from Gossip Girl) and Phillip Seymour Hoffman in just two blocks. But this Sunday’s sighting will not be overlooked: Taye Diggs at 5th and 23rd. Yeah, this is how we roll in the big city, bitches.

NEWS FROM MY ASS
Well, I can walk standing upright two weeks later, though I can’t take full strides, so I’m sure people wonder who that freak is doing quick baby steps along the streets of New York. I almost never use the painkillers any longer and so have reached the most dangerous part of recovering from any illness of injury: feeling well enough to do stupid things. Yes, I’m so tired of changing my maxi pad three times a day because I’m soaking my ass three times a day. I’m tired of having to prop up on all fours in front of a fan to dry my ass after a soak because I can’t touch the two-inch wound---which looks like someone took an ice cream scooper to the inside of my ass cheek (yes, I bend over naked in front of the mirror to see it)---with a towel. After which I then apply the cream known as Analpram (you wish I were kidding) directly to the wound. But I’ve gotten so good at that my finger no longer smells like ass after I do it. And yes, I smell it every time. I’m also sick of the Metamucil twice a day and the stool softner three times a day. I’m sick of fearing taking a dump as it ranges from mildly irritating to still surprisingly painful (and occasionally bloody). And what happened to me that getting a great deal on maxi-pads became an accomplishment? Sigh. I’m sick of all of this, but I know I can’t stop even though I feel relatively fine. I can’t imagine what I’d do if I had a real illness and had to deal with months of recovery and the resulting fatigue. I’ve been comforting myself with strawberry milkshakes. I literally make one every night before bed using strawberry ice cream and real strawberries (sometimes I’ll add a banana). What’s pathetic is that even with this diet and no working out, I’m still five pounds lighter than I was before this happened. Let’s hear it for weight loss through trauma, everybody!