1.1.08

1.

"An American near Billy wailed that he had excreted everything but his brains. Moments later he said, 'There they go, there they go.' He meant his brains. That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book." -Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five.

Well hell, it's 2008. Let's blog a bit, shall we?

I had a pretty shitty New Year's Eve. On New Year's Eve Eve, I ate a turkey dinner with the family, got a malt at Perkins with a certain Muslim acquaintance of mine, and went bowling with Sam Walker and Sam Walker's girlfriend and Sam Walker's sister.

Later I said goodbye to my guests with a slight quiver of nausea in my midsection. I tried to get to sleep, but my stomach was having none of it. I decided that this was one of those unfortunate situations where I just had to throw up, get whatever it was out of my system, and eat an extra meal the next day to make up for it. I was wrong.

I'll spare you the gory details. Let's just say I was up all night shitting and vomiting that by the next morning my body contained very little digestible material. By 7 a.m. I was all emptied out, but still feverish, achey, and not at all interested in food. In the past 36 or so hours, I've eaten 5 club crackers and a banana.

I've been told by some experienced sources that my symptoms are similar to those of food poisoning. My only question is, what could I have eaten that triggered this full-body flush-out? It wasn't the turkey dinner, as no other member of my family got sick. I didn't eat anything at the bowling alley. Really, the only unique thing I ate was that chocolate malt from Perkins. Can you get food poisoning from a malt?

Today I have outwitted my body by not putting anything in it for it to expel. Count it!

2. I saw I Am Legend the other day. I thought it was pretty good.

***SPIZOILER ALIZERT***

I have an odd relationship with zombie movies. Zombies scare me worse that pretty much anything (my boggart would definitely be someone I cared about as a zombie) so while I don't like to think about them all the time, they can be very effective when I want to get freaked out. Will Smith was ballin', of course, and there was a very good, heartwrenching "killing a zombie of a friend" scene, but the zombies themselves were disappointing, both visually (they were all rubbery and stretchy and shitty CGI-y) and conceptually. Half of the fear in any scary story comes from realism, from the idea that it could really happen. There is not a universally accepted archetype for zombies, as there is for vampires, for example (i.e. killed by sunlight or a stake through the heart, drink blood, etc.), so in every zombie story it is the creator's responsibility to establish plausible and consistent (and therefore more real and more terrifying) zombies.

I Am Legend fails on this count. The zombies are batshit crazy and cannot speak or use weapons, but they show signs of human-level intelligence. Also they're super strong for some reason? And as I said before, they look terrible, which does nothing to add to their credibility.

At least they got Will Smith. What a bankable SOB. $76 million in a weekend.

Fuckin' A, Will Smith.
Fuckin' A.