oh hey great

I like tacos and ‘71 cabernet. My favorite color is magenta.

I got Brooklyn frames with Berkeley lenses, baby. 

The downside of 40 (sorry).

No you’re not.

What’s mid-30s? Young? Mediums? Olds?

Dearest 99,

In re: this, I actually live in the East Bay. sac is a bit north.

Love, 

me

ninety9:

ohheygreat:

ninety9:

 ohheygreat replied to your post: I hate endless reblogs because I don’t like…

Yes, but what about Meatballs.

I’m oddly ambivalent about Meatballs. Which is discomforting, because I spend a lot of time being angry about how you can’t make a comedy these days without conveniently ignoring the economic reality of 85% of this country (quick, name a popular comedy released recently wherein key plot points weren’t established or resolved by access to money or people with money that is so far beyond the pale that you may as well as just have someone win the fucking lotto in every rom com). Meatballs may be one the last great working-class comedies. But (deep breath, all you youngs prepare): I haven’t seem Meatballs in at least 25 years. I never stopped thinking it was great, but I’m afraid to go back. And I like being unironically nostalgic for the 70s.

My love for Meatballs is almost entirely unironic. (I wish it were entirely, but I can’t guarantee an unironic lens anymore I don’t think. Are we post-irony? Post-post-irony? I can’t remember.) You know what I love almost more than anything in the movie? The fact that 98% of it is populated with fairly unattractive-to-average-looking people and they ALL have fun. Many of them even get laid (or close enough). So it’s a combination of what you say - the socioeconomic - with the sociocultural. Those visual cues we’re all hyperaware of. 

I was born in the mid-70s, I remember watching the progression of movies - particularly comedies - as actors became more and more standardized and inconceivably good-looking. Sure, there were always impossible beauties and heartbreakingly handsome heartthrobs, but I remember those teen movies in the early and mid-’80s as having an almost accessible look to them. You could see, especially among the “geeks,” where someone you knew actually exist. And the point of a Jake Ryan was that he was supposed to be THE MOST AMAZING LOOKING GUY EVER. Everyone else was nowhere near his league.

But I think Meatballs was the last time nearly the entire cast was a bunch of total goofballs. Not even a Molly Ringwald among them (okay, the blonde girl was pretty cute). 

Meatballs to me is the celebration of real people having a really fucking great time time. And Bill Murray is just wonderful, on top of it all. He’s not BILL MURRAY yet. He’s loose and unfettered and stupid, and it’s a stupid movie, and it doesn’t try to be anything more. 

Now I’m all nostalgic. 

Any reblog past two is hell on formatting, but I’m half in the bag. So! I don’t know which of the resident YM olds decided to chime in, but Andrew knows I will beat him in a white trash-off any day of the week, and sac is like, what, East Bay? He can’t even play.

I am mostly in agreement so I will use unnecessary exclamation points!! Again, my ambivalence is that I will go back and watch it and not have the same warm feeling I got from watching a movie populated with people like me all those (gulp) decades ago. But I encourage others to watch and enjoy it, as I still argue it’s one of the best comedies ever made. And someday I will share the story of how I introduced like half of YM to Valley Girl. In 2009.

One thing I will contest though, is that Meatballs was the end of ‘real people’ casting. I think only people who are roughly age appropriate really have a sense of what the prevailing convention of attractive and what casting is trying to hew to (or against). After all, you have Facts of Life and Square Pegs in the eighties. And as much as my fevered burgeoning into adolescence mind tried to find ‘hot’ in the likes of Blair (and she was definitely at the high end of the scale. Nancy McKeon as hot trashy girl just never worked for me), it never happened. I distinctly remember thinking Murray’s love interest was hot. Tastes just change.

I AM ONLY REBLOGGING SO I CAN SAY IN ALL CAPS THAT VALLEY GIRL IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE MOVIES OF ALL TIME

KELLYDEAL ARE YOU READING THIS

!!!!

(Also I don’t think it was the “end” of real people casting so much as maybe the peak, but maybe I didn’t make that clear.)

(ETA: My 98% was meant to include people like Murray’s love interest and others I might not have remembered, because it’s been a while since I’ve seen the movie. I need a copy. I also need a copy of Valley Girl because the only copy I’ve ever owned was on VHS, but I do have the full soundtrack.

I mean, I think of movies like Revenge of the Nerds, etc. and I remember how all those movies were distinctly “real” people. But to me, Meatballs has always stuck out as the ne plus ultra of such movies.)

the older I’ve gotten I really have figured something out (warning: sincere blogging ahead) which is that I finally - FINALLY - have a super ultra next-to-zero tolerance for bullshit. I mean, sure, I like assholes (and ass holes) a lot. Have always had and will always have a deep and abiding fondness for a real true asshole - the good kind, anyway. But as soon as I realize someone’s a dick, or an idiot, or a garden variety douchebag, it’s game over. It took me way longer to get to that point than I’d like to admit, but now that I’m here it feels delightful. I had an experience of this nature just this week. Oh, you want to behave like that? Sorry, take it somewhere else.

Life, especially after the last year of watching someone I love almost die and putting my own life on hold to take care of her, is really too short. Only screw around if it’s a beautiful day and you’ve got beer and your friends are laughing and you’ve got a happy feeling in your chest. Be true to yourself and be good. Don’t let the bullshit throw you too hard.

Mid-30s. Who knew.

There really is something to be said for valuing your cookies, y’know?

As YM as stated, all you need to know in life is in this movie. As YM has also stated, don’t listen to anything 99 says.

I think you should send me a commemorative YM version. Maybe decorated with some of Krucoff’s beard trimmings.

ninety9:

 ohheygreat replied to your post: I hate endless reblogs because I don’t like…

Yes, but what about Meatballs.

I’m oddly ambivalent about Meatballs. Which is discomforting, because I spend a lot of time being angry about how you can’t make a comedy these days without conveniently ignoring the economic reality of 85% of this country (quick, name a popular comedy released recently wherein key plot points weren’t established or resolved by access to money or people with money that is so far beyond the pale that you may as well as just have someone win the fucking lotto in every rom com). Meatballs may be one the last great working-class comedies. But (deep breath, all you youngs prepare): I haven’t seem Meatballs in at least 25 years. I never stopped thinking it was great, but I’m afraid to go back. And I like being unironically nostalgic for the 70s.

My love for Meatballs is almost entirely unironic. (I wish it were entirely, but I can’t guarantee an unironic lens anymore I don’t think. Are we post-irony? Post-post-irony? I can’t remember.) You know what I love almost more than anything in the movie? The fact that 98% of it is populated with fairly unattractive-to-average-looking people and they ALL have fun. Many of them even get laid (or close enough). So it’s a combination of what you say - the socioeconomic - with the sociocultural. Those visual cues we’re all hyperaware of. 

I was born in the mid-70s, I remember watching the progression of movies - particularly comedies - as actors became more and more standardized and inconceivably good-looking. Sure, there were always impossible beauties and heartbreakingly handsome heartthrobs, but I remember those teen movies in the early and mid-’80s as having an almost accessible look to them. You could see, especially among the “geeks,” where someone you knew actually exist. And the point of a Jake Ryan was that he was supposed to be THE MOST AMAZING LOOKING GUY EVER. Everyone else was nowhere near his league.

But I think Meatballs was the last time nearly the entire cast was a bunch of total goofballs. Not even a Molly Ringwald among them (okay, the blonde girl was pretty cute). 

Meatballs to me is the celebration of real people having a really fucking great time time. And Bill Murray is just wonderful, on top of it all. He’s not BILL MURRAY yet. He’s loose and unfettered and stupid, and it’s a stupid movie, and it doesn’t try to be anything more. 

Now I’m all nostalgic. 

I also had a minor panic attack.

about being mostly smart enough to get your PhD is being too goddamn stupid to make your academic citation software work correctly for more than 20 minutes at a time.

Also word processing software should not choose now to start giving me errors like “cannot save because there’s not enough memory even though that’s not true.” Seriously, not now.