Watched The Accountant which seemed like a superhero movie without superpowers in the generally accepted sense. I genuinely wonder what the Autistic community’s opinion of this film is, and I’d they had any input (or financial stake in it.) Liked it though, bang bang shoot em up type movie (or as my Mom described “A BUM BUM BUM,”) with a bit of brooding Ben Affleck Oscar bait-y drama, and a hard left veering happy ending that also favorably compares autistic children to proteges of Dr. Xavier. Like I said, we all thoroughly enjoyed it, but I do wonder how people with Autism feel about it, because I could see it going either way.
Also, Shane from The Walking Dead was in it and he transformed from sexy dickhead into childish bro dickhead just by growing out his hair and pitching his voice up a bit.
Last weekend we watched Money Monster and there must be some new trend in Hollywood of actually mixing things up a bit, because that one was good too. Blockbusters are so glossy and hyper real anyway, that when they try to depict and/or comment on themselves, they have to further hype up their style to just to distinguish it from their usual buffed out depiction of reality, and it always looks corny as hell. The example unfortunately burned into my mind being Gamer, that Gerard/Michael C. Hall film that was basically human The Sims and was the fugliest thing I ever saw.
Guy Ritchie wins for being the only person to typify both ends of a continuum (this being the the gritty “real”/glossy stupid spectrum.)
Somehow Money Monster managed to tip toe the present/former Guy Ritchie line really well, which was particularly astounding given the entire room was in agreement George Clooney and Julia Roberts are both terrible. But bless Money Monster, somehow it carved out a vessel for George Clooney and Julia Roberts that actually utilized the one range of emotion either of them have, and perhaps because two fake Hollywood types fit in this super-fake rendering of a superficial, fake form of media, a Hardball with Chris Matthews type of cable news finance program, their shitty acting transforms liability to strength. After containing the Roberts/Clooney threat, the film goes on to light, but actual legitimate commentary on mutualistic Wall Street/media relationship and threw in a few characters that didn’t have immediately predictable responses.
The moral of the story being set the bar slightly low, and when other people set the bar slightly high, everything is alright.
This was also super-timely because me and my sister had just gone to lunch with our Dad, and got berated for not investing in stocks. Yeah. I don’t have any savings and live at home, but let me conjure up several thousand dollars for that retirement fund you want me to start. This is not hyperbole, we had a damn near 2 hour conversation about a physical impossibility. We just went back and forth from “you need to put your money in an IRA” to “I don’t have any money and you know I don’t have any money” to “3% returns” to “I can’t get a 3% return on 0 dollars” until he decided to switch to social security and told me “you need to start thinking about how you have to work for 10 years if you want to collect social security” to “I’m 27, and I can’t collect it until I’m 60” to “I actually think it’s 62” to “that leaves me a window of 19 years.”
When we went home my Mom told me about all his bad investments throughout the course of their marriage.
Not enough people talk about the benefits of divorced parents.
To go back to lunch, we had great food, but the worst fucking waiter of my entire life. I had a slab of maple cornbread covered in spicy pulled pork with a fried egg on top which is a combination I can’t believe I’ve never thought of. But our waiter was like, unhinged. My sister and I were half an hour late, for reasons (zero time management skills combined with being a fucking mess) so my Dad and his girlfriend/whatever you want to call unmarried adults were waiting at the table. When me and my sister get there, the waiter says to our parents with his back to us, “they finally arrived” in an incredibly passive aggressive way, and proceeds to variously rip us a new asshole for being late the entire 2 hour lunch. It would be no more acceptable, but would at least kind of make sense, if the waiter was an older Dad type, but this motherfucker was my age. I would put money on him being younger than I am. Not only that, but my parents are fond of alcohol, of a variety of types, and always good vintages. Last I checked booze was the highest mark up in any restaurant, and by the time me and Allie got there, they had already taken down a bottle of Chardonnay. Our disrespect just made increased this fucker’s paycheck and all he had to do was pull a cork.
The restaurant was completely empty. There was maybe one other table in this guy’s section. This man’s time was not being taxed. He was still there when we left, so it’s not like he was waiting on us to end his shift, not that that is how waiting tables works anyway. Even if it was packed, and he had to throw a few extra glances in our table’s direction, I’m pretty sure that falls completely under the regular responsibilities of his job.
It didn’t even seem like he was trying to bond with my Dad with some sort of ill-advised “kids these days” kind of banter. He was just being a dick. Every time,
Refill a glass of water
“you were late”
Bring the food
“you were late”
Dropping off the check
“remember 2 hours ago when you were late”
WHY THE FUCK DOES HE CARE? Not only did I have to be slapped back and forth like a tennis ball between “why haven’t you found away to accrue interest on $0” from my Dad and “not being 30 minutes late to brunch is the 11th commandment Jesus forgot to write about” from a 23 year old dickhead (who probably also doesn’t have a Roth IRA,) I still don’t know why he even cared which is the part that bothers me most of all.
I was also violently ill this entire time, the day before I had been minding my own business when I started getting “brain zaps,” this stupidly named usual symptom of ratcheting down a medication dose too quickly, only I had done no such thing. I tried to drink water, thinking maybe I was dehydrated, but I was so nauseated I could barely swallow. So I alternated between chugging Gatorade and lying down and trying to find an angle to place my head that would make the room stop moving. My Mom took me to Panera and I couldn’t even finish my broccoli cheddar soup which is an 11/10 on the illness scale. My sister was in the living room watching Australian true crime, which is her new niche, and I was at the kitchen table, when all of a sudden I thought “I cannot be here.” I’m not even sure what I thought was happening, but my brain just went “NOPE” and I went upstairs and half-changed into sweatpants because I could only switch pants before my head was like “standing up has now become dangerous” so I crawled on top of my bed and tried to get into the rescue position and learned maximal air space is also maximal twisting of your bra. I left my door open and all the lights on because if I blacked out I wanted someone to find me and not just think I went to sleep, although my sister notices absolutely nothing, and my Mom sleeps through everything, so I was kind of screwed. So I put my FitBit in hopes there would be some sort of forensic fitness monitor analyst that could analyze my heart rate data post-mortem. All I could think of was my Mom walking past my open door, going downstairs, seeing the food on the table and being like “SHE WASTED $13 OF PANERA” while I was dying. My sister would still be watching Australian murderers and mini series on air disasters and be like “yeah, she didn’t even put it in the fridge.”
This is why Roth and Mr. Shithead, Child Waiter can suck my dick.
Though I obviously didn’t die, at least I don’t think so, part of me is always like, how would I even know. Maybe Zak Bagans is hearing this through an Ovulus right now and severely misinterpreting my life story.
What happened was I slept for approximately 40 minutes and put my sandwich in a Ziploc and then took my broccoli-cheddar soup and put them both in the refrigerator. Then I spent the rest of the night in bed, going back and forth between moments where I felt totally fine, and feeling like a demagnetized compass. I tried to maximize my good moments by drinking a fuck-ton of Crystal Light because there was no more Gatorade and watching Portlandia and this viral video of a dinner pig that became a pet and wore coats and just seemed very Grey Gardens and also trying to lipsync which was surprisingly hard.