acktuelle kamera

I was on a wrong number call several days ago at work and spoke to a guy who was very bored because he was on disability leave from his job. Why? He blew out a citronella candle and it EXPLODED IN HIS FACE. (Apparently you are supposed to snuff them out.) However, he was in excellent spirits about the whole thing and almost healed up. He even related this exchange from a recent check-up:
NURSE: Okay, any allergies?
CITRONELLA VICTIM: Yeah, I'm allergic to fire, it makes my face swell up.
NURSE: You're an asshole.
CITRONELLA VICTIM: Yes, I am.
Sometimes my job is awesome.

I have been renting a lot of movies. These are four of them:

Welcome to the Dollhouse
I can't remember the last time I stopped watching a movie partway through, except when I was falling asleep during Super Troopers, which was not that movie's fault. This time I got through half an hour before I snapped. I was really not in the mood for something unrelentingly bleak full of painfully dysfunctional characters with few to no likeable qualities, who inhabit a world free of redeeming moments. Maybe it's funnier if it doesn't have uncomfortably close parallels to your own adolescence. It was kind of like watching a kid pull the wings off a fly. I can't say it was an objectively bad movie (especially since I didn't even watch half of it) but I can say I want that half hour of my life back.

Lovely & Amazing
I put this in after aborting Welcome to the Dollhouse, which was a mistake because it sucked so I gave up and went for ice cream. By "sucked" I mean "it was difficult to relate to because I have not had a mid-life crisis, or even a quarterlife crisis, or experience with young children who have weight and race issues." Also, every main character keeps busy by making inexplicable and maddeningly terrible relationship decisions. Well, they might be maddening if I were able to identify with or relate to any of the characters, so instead it was simply irritating. The film may improve with time but after 25 minutes I started skipping through looking for the scenes with Jake Gyllenhaal in them. Generally Unpleasant & Disappointing, it did have a pretty great surprise statutory rape arrest scene that was almost worth it. And then the ice cream was really good.

DiG!
I don't really care about The Dandy Warhols or The Brian Jonestown Massacre. This documentary sounded interesting, though, which it sort of was, aside from the fact that you get the point after the first twenty minutes or so and then it's just reiterated over and over again. These are DiG!'s important lessons:
- STAY OFF THE DRUGS.
- Courtney Taylor is kind of a jerk.
- Avoid people who frequently claim to be leading a revolution.
- It's hard to storm off stage in a convincing huff when all you have to throw down is a pair of maracas.
- STAY OFF THE DRUGS.

Good Bye Lenin!
The best movie I've seen since Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle except with, like, more artistic merit. You've probably heard of this since it came out a couple of years ago and won all sorts of awards and was all cool and foreign. Anyway, the plot is more or less as follows: Alex's hardcore socialist mother has a heart attack when she sees him (really half-assedly) protesting the regime and falls into a coma. During her eight-month coma, the Berlin Wall falls, East and West Germany are united, et cetera. When she wakes up, her family is informed that any shock or excitement could kill her, so inside their apartment they create a tiny world where socialist East Germany rolled on, while outside they struggle to deal with a rapidly-changing Berlin. I spent a lot of time laughing really hard at an inappropriate hour in an apartment building full of old people. I also cried twice. You don't need to know anything about Germany to enjoy Good Bye Lenin! although I'm sure it enhances the experience considerably. However, even with minimal knowledge of its historical context, the writing is clever, careful, and well-paced, the acting is nearly pitch-perfect, and it's visually impressive (including some really beautiful lighting). And if you're all like "Fuck art, let's rock," it's hysterically funny, as long as you aren't just after dick and fart jokes -- in which case, I recommend Harold and Kumar.

I have to go to an emo show now, k bye.