Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Cake for Cats, Bosses Are Evil, and Across the Universe Makes Me Happy

Some things make the day go by just a bit better. The Big Gay Interior Designer who rents the area down the hall from my “office” (read, big long room with other people in it) got himself a finicky Abyssinian cat. It’s a ginger short hair with unnaturally large ears, it looks and acts like the devil, and at least twice a day it escapes from the shop and zooms down the hall into our space and we all run around like jackasses shutting doors and dashing about in a futile attempt to catch the cat and return it to its flustered owner, who is by now having a Big Gay Freak Out. It breaks up the day. Also, the cat has a brand-new cunning green and tan combat vest outfit. I kid you not. We all had to admire it, and it is very fetching, I’ll grant you that.

[And now a note from our sponsor: Mistress Squidia is very gay friendly. The above comments are not to denegrate the Big Gay Interior Designer in any way, but to honor him. He goes out of his way to let us all know he's gay, so we're not squeamish about spreading the news. He's gay. Get over it. Plus he gives us bread sometimes, so we love him.]

Today Big Gay Interior Designer threw the cat a birthday party. We got champagne and carrot cake. I’m not sure what the cat got, but I’m pretty sure carrot cake was not what the cat was secretly hoping for. Liver cake, probably. Mouse cake, maybe. Vengeance over all mankind, almost certainly. Not carrot cake. He did seem to like the champagne though, and so did I. Being mildly tipsy at work is really the only way to go, if you ask me.

. . . .

Why are Employers Always Idiots? …and a Movie
The owner of my company has spent the last year opening new offices, starting new businesses, and generally trying to act like Mr. Big Shot Importer Guy. It kept things lively until the inevitable happened and we all had to take pay cuts to keep the company afloat. Now I have to look for a new job, which I hate more than almost anything else in life. That and moving house, which I also have to do some time in the next year. Pity me.

Last evening, after a workday both long, boring and filled with frustration, Girl Kid announced that we needed to go to a movie to prevent her from going postal on humanity. So, after the usual painful commute home, we all bundled off to the slightly less massive of the two multiplex-a-sauruses at the Alderwood Mall and saw Across the Universe in an almost completely empty theater, and it cheered me right up. One, seeing a movie on a huge screen in almost total privacy makes me feel like P. Diddy, only with better taste in…well, everything, and; two, the movie is fun on a big magic bun. Let me say right here, this movie is not for everyone, which may have contributed to the almost complete lack of an audience last night, but if you like The Beatles, and/or if you like dewy dreamy boys with Liverpool accents (god I’m old), then this might be just the ticket for you. If you hated Moulin Rouge, well, then we can’t be friends, and you should avoid ATU like the plague. It’s a very weird movie. You know…trippy in a big ol’ hippy musical kind of way. Like Hair, but for twenty-year old art school students. There’s a whole lotta singing, but it’s good signing, with cameos from Bono, Joe Cocker (yup, still old) and…wait for it…Salma Hayek and more. I’m not kidding about Salma Hayek. Bono proves he’s turning into Robin Williams (and not a good way, but then Robin himself now seems like a suicidal caricature of the old Mr. Williams), and Miss Salma proves yet again that she’s a succulent piece of boobalicious cheesecake with cream on top. Her performance is girl pudding in stereo, literally. And oh yeah, Evan Rachel Wood continues her freakishly ethereal domination of the world.

After all these years I’ve become fairly bored with Beatles music (I know where I was when John Lennon died, and Jim Henson too, for that matter), but this movie made me a fan again. It’s just too bad Michael Jackson had to get paid for the rights to the music for this movie. (God, remaining Beatles, what were you thinking when you let that happen?) Hearing other people singing those songs, and singing them really, really well, was a treat. And the director, Julie Taymor, uses the music and all sorts of references to the Beatles and random pop culture in a weird and wonderful way that can’t be missed. Highpoints: a beautifully choreographed football game, a David Lynchian Army Induction Center scene, and one hell of an artistic acid trip (kind of accurately depicted in some ways, if memory serves) featuring my Long Lost Husband, Eddie Izzard. Trust me, you really don’t want to see this movie stoned, because it’s stoned enough already. Breakout performances are to be had from two people I’ve never heard of before: Joe Anderson, who really must star in the definitive Kurt Cobain movie if it ever gets made (are you listening, Courtney Love?), and the luminous Dana Fuchs--she’s not quite Janis Joplin, but she could play her in the movie. What a voice. Why Don’t We Do It In The Road has never sounded quite so dirty. Plus, I want her hair.

Verdict
So, go see it, and take your best girl/boy/whatever, because in the end, like Hair, this movie makes you want to break into song, dance around a little bit, move to a commune, and snog someone on paisley sheets. Kind of nice, really.

Bye for now. Time to face the vast, painful and lonely ten-miles-per-hour commute up Aurora with all the other office drones. Maybe The Beatles will be on KZOK. Odds are good.