Well, dear readers, there is no time for chit-chat and amusing bon mots or to tell you what I’m listening to (Henry Mancini’s haunting score to Me, Natalie) because I have to rid myself of the horrible taste in my mouth and brain from having just spent three hours and eight minutes watching one of the most disgusting and awful movies it’s ever been my displeasure to endure and that movie would be called Babylon, an eighty-million-dollar elephantine disaster from start to finish, a relentless assault on the senses, written and directed by someone I won’t bother to name because if I name him it will just cause me to rant for many pages – suffice it say, I will never sit through another puerile film by this guy. I’m one of the few, I guess, who wasn’t taken in by La La Land – as I said back then, if I want to watch a Jacques Demy film, I’ll watch a Jacques Demy film. Whiplash was okay but had a sledgehammer approach that finally became tiresome. But this thing? You know what you’re in for when in the first ten minutes you are treated to the sight of an elephant doing a number two all over someone – not a small number two, either – like everything else in this movie, it’s an over-the-top number two. And five or six minutes after that, at a hedonistic 1920s Hollywood party, filled with completely depraved people, we’re treated to the sight of a woman doing a number one on a big, fat pig who loves it. Yep, that’s what we all need to see. Yep, that’s entertainment. That party, which is so loud and obnoxious, seems to go on for days in viewing time. The music is terrible – not 1920s at all, but big-band music. As we wonder through the party, we’re treated to other lovely sights, too – every kind of sex imaginable, mounds of cocaine and other drugs, and on and on. And the point? Ya got me. As the movies approach the game-changing talkies, we spend time with characters we don’t like or care about, which is always great fun. The actors all seem game and they’re all fine. Three hours of this cesspool and then the director thinks that if he ends the film with his tribute to cinema by having the only halfway likeable character be in tears watching Singin’ in the Rain, well, sorry, you can’t have it all ways from Sunday, chum. Yes, the film looks good, the sets are nice, and the filming movies scenes are so ridiculous that you think you’re watching a Blake Edwards movie. If only. Oh, and of course the “highlight” of the movie is its big set piece vomit scene. That’s a corker. There are long scenes that are so irritating that I began yelling at the screen. It got mostly bad reviews, and yet there are the usual suspect critics who LOVED it, were moved by it (please), and found it one of the best of the year. Of course, given most of the tripe I’ve seen this year, that’s not saying much. Will it get for awards? Since it’s Oscar bait from start to finish, and since Hollywood loves to eat itself, probably. So, in case I have been too subtle here, I hated every frame of this noxious piece of number two – yes, what that elephant does in the opening minutes of the film is a metaphor for the entire film. I won’t go into all the rip-offs of much better directors, but they are there throughout the film. Highly, and I mean HIGHLY NOT recommended by the likes of me. I has spoken.
Now that I have somewhat have the bad taste out of my mouth but not the migraine it gave me, let us move along, as the final tracks of Me, Natalie make some beauty.
Yesterday was certainly a Monday. Not much else to say about it, really. I got seven hours of sleep, answered e-mails, and with the exception of three songs, got all our young people their sheet music and mp3s for their songs, so that’s a big load off. I also wrote everyone and told them the schedule and had them send their photos and bios to Doug Haverty so he can do his flyer and we can announce the show. I asked everyone how many people they had coming and got a good idea about how full will be. I don’t, at this point, see the need to add a show, as we’d have about twenty tickets left to fill the house for the Sunday show. But if our regulars want more than that then we might add the show. Everyone is free to do it, so we could if we needed to, and I think that all the parents would come to the added show, which automatically gives us twenty-five people. So, we’ll see.
For food, I had the remaining two tiny filets from Omaha Steaks – very good, but I’ve had enough steak for a while now. I also made two of their tiny little scalloped potato things – those were good, too. Those you don’t defrost – you just pop ‘em in the microwave for four minutes. I never left the house, actually and that was fine by me. Then I spent the three long hours watching Babble On, and then snoozed for about fifteen minutes.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, which is almost nothing – perhaps writing the first two or three pages of the new book, which would give me about fifteen pages done so I’m pretty into it on January 1 – then around three-thirty I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, then I’ll go to the bank, then come home. Not sure what food will be today, we’ll see how I’m feeling. And then I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow is more of the same, Thursday I’ll do the rest of the marketing for the Do – I actually have most of the stuff already – Friday night, I’ll do all the mincing, dicing, and slicing – the Human Chop-O-Matic – and make the tuna pasta salad – two big batches of it – and then on Saturday I make the infamous spaghetti sauce and then people begin arriving at six. As always, I have no idea who’s coming or how many there’ll be. And I’m jiggy with that. On Christmas Day, I should have the visit with the Darling Daughter.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, do whatever needs doing, write a bit of the new book, hopefully pick up packages, bank, eat, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What is the most vile and disgusting movie you’ve ever seen? Or the worst big-budget fiasco? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, where I shall hopefully forget all about Babble On.