Tag: school

video review : Mommie Dearest

video review : Mommie Dearest

I’m not sure why, but I get the feeling Joan Crawford might be mentally unstable. Perhaps it’s the way she reacts when she realizes her daughter’s dress is hanging on a, gasp, wire hanger. It’s one of the movie’s many examples of overacting but also its most iconic, and most hilarious, moment. All of Mommie Dearest’s best scenes, in fact, are ones in which she’s abusing her daughter.

To be fair, the plot is based on a book, a memoir, written by Crawford’s real-life adopted daughter, so we’re only getting one side of the story. When it comes to allegations of mistreatment, especially among dysfunctional families, the truth is often overdramatized for the sake of one’s own virtue. Her take is interesting though, even if barely enough to have been made into a Hollywood movie.

my rating : 3 of 5

1981

a dream I had about staying in a college dorm

My room was actually pretty nice. It was quite spacious, at least compared to my bedroom at home, with an exit/entrance door on each end and a TV and bed in the middle. That was the problem. There was just one normal-sized bed and everyone in the dorm was expected to have a roommate.

It seemed everyone else already did, but, perhaps because I was the newest arrival, I was placed in a room to myself until someone else came to be my roommate. There was a possibility I was the final tenant and I’d have the room to myself all semester long, but I knew that was unlikely.

It was even more unlikely that it would be an attractive (pretty/cute) girl, which I’d like almost as much as being alone; I actually heard the bed-bumping sounds of people having sex in other rooms when I awoke that morning; or a girl at all as roommates seemed to be matched by gender.

The thought of staying there with some dude was sickening. Sharing a bed, like two fags, would be nearly unbearable. Sure I could always go home if worse came to worst, but that would defeat the purpose of coming there to fully experience the college life, plus I’d already paid for the damn room.

My thoughts were interrupted when my friend Leanne, speaking of girls I wouldn’t mind rooming with, walked in. I’d left both doors open. She was already grinning before I started expressing aloud my concerns about living the gay life. She apparently had a female roommate and was fine with it.

I can’t remember what all we said, but I was telling her how I dreaded the thought of sharing a bed; I’d mentally prepared myself to share a room but not a bed; with a guy and she was laughing. It might’ve been her who said they’d probably bring in a second bed, which made me feel a lot better.

I don’t know if I was still dreaming or if I’d awaken when I thought of pushing a bed to either side of the room, literally against the walls, so that me and my roommate would be as far apart as possible. Us not being able to see the TV at a proper angle would be among the least of my concerns.

2021 [ December 18 ]

video review : Antlers

video review : Antlers

This is a horror flick based not on killer deer but the wendigo; a mythological creature that “devours mankind”. It’s a decent concept, but the plot, which reminds me of Stephen King’s Gray Matter, is riddled with cinematic clichés and implausibilities. It seems even the most horrendous villains have a weakness for protagonists.

The boy the man turned wendigo fathers is fine. It’s his nosey school teacher; the wendigo is less creepy; I was hoping he’d use as beast feed. Instead, while her cop brother, attacked and injured, lies conveniently out of commission, she ends up playing a heroine of sorts. The movie is about as silly as the folklore it encompasses.

my rating : 2 of 5

2021

a dream I had about watching My Girl in class

It must’ve been a short class as we watched My Girl; the Macaulay Culkin movie; for what seemed like the third day. It was playing on a TV on one of those rolling stands at the front of the classroom and we were apt to pay attention because the teacher would give us daily quizzes on it.

The movie seemed to be on a montage scene when I arrived relatively early that day to find that, much to my delight, the seats; we had black chairs as opposed to traditional school desks; farthest to the back and closest to the window were empty, which meant I got to sit in the very last one.

I liked not being surrounded by people. Like most of the time in life, I just wanted to be left alone. Besides, while it was sort of embarrassing watching a kid romance movie with a bunch of people; it was a fairly large class; it was vital that I paid attention and got good grades on the quizzes.

2021 [ September 25 ]

a dream I had about a girl interviewing me for school

She started out by asking me a question about “God”. She was reading off of a paper or the screen of her phone to put it in the exact words she’d prepared in advance, but she was reading it too fast and monotonously, which made her sound like a novice interviewer.

I guess she was. It seems she was doing the interview as part of a school; high school or college; assignment. There was no video that I was aware of, but she must’ve been recording audio of it as another girl about the same age as her watched us from a few feet away.

I interrupted to ask what God she was talking about. Her reply implied the Christian God. “So the God of Christianity,” I said. She confirmed, which was probably weird for her because she was apparently a Christian and Christians reject the possibility of other Gods.

She continued to read a verbose question that assumed the existence of God to which I replied by saying I don’t think there is; emphasis on the word “is”; a God. She didn’t reply back. She just went on to the next question, actually a set of questions, about war and morality.

I interrupted her again. “You’re asking me too many questions at once,” I might’ve worded my complaint; “I hate when people question-pile like that.” “Hate” would’ve been too strong of a word in real life and I doubt I would’ve used a gay term like “question-pile”, but it worked.

She summarized her questions down to one that got to the point. I don’t remember her exact words, but she was asking what I thought about innocent civilians dying in wars. “I don’t care,” I said as the two girls stared at me with blank expressions; “I mean it doesn’t matter.”

I said that, though I generally thought it was wrong, it didn’t matter in any objective sense because morality is subjective. I started to ask if she knows the difference between “objective” and “subjective” before telling her I’m not going to put her on the spot and explaining it myself.

2021 [ September 05 ]

a dream I had about living in an apartment in Detroit

Perhaps that was me who looked like a cross between YZ, a rapper from the 1990s, and Doug E Doug; a young man striving to be the best school teacher in the world. I was already a teacher, in fact; if indeed it was me whose face I saw in this pleasantly cryptic dream; perhaps just a happy substitute at the beginning of his illustrious career.

I lived in a Detroit apartment that went from cluttered and congested to relatively spacious in what seemed like hours. I remember looking around at all the furniture and knick-knacks I’d collected over the years in a state of pride. “My home actually looks like a home,” I thought, maybe in those exact words, instead of a college dorm.

My suite, at least the early tiny of version of it, was on one of the mid-level to higher floors in a complex scarily and dangerously close to an airport. I could literally see the wings of the airplanes, taking off and landing, a few feet from my window. Never mind the noise they made. Knowing me, that was my trade-off for cheap rent.

The owner of the building used to be somewhat famous. He was either a former NFL player or a character from an old TV show. I can’t remember which, but I remember seeing him on TV, at present time in the dream, walking around a low-lit and seemingly vacant section of the apartment in some kind of local news segment.

Eventually the dream switched to the kitchen of the house I grew-up in. Frank was visiting. His mother had just put something white, or made something white we put, in the cabinet I don’t remember whether or not was there in real life before she died. We talked about the significance of it in regard to its sentimental value.

2021 [ September 04 ]