I Think I Won't, Thank You

Okay, so longtime friends Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston have paired together for the first time (!!!) in a please-go-to-it-on-Valentine's-Day romantic comedy called Just Go With It.

Could that title be any more on-the-nose?

All you need to know, America, is that Jennifer Aniston, Adam Sandler, and some hot chick in a bikini are in a new movie where some schlub has to decide which sexy woman to marry. Just go with it, buy your tickets, and maybe you'll even enjoy a few parts of it!

"Help! The multinational corporate conglomerates running the studios need your support!" -Corporate Flunky #3102

It is interesting that recent-box-office-dud Adam Sandler (I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Funny People, Grown-Ups), who also exec-produced this turd, chose to align himself with an actress who has the same problem (Love Happens, The Bounty Hunter, The Switch) in what is apparently an effort to make a successful movie.

Or is that not even the goal anymore?

Maybe simply making a movie is enough for them these days, regardless of quality. I mean, they both got paid millions of dollars, right? They got to spend some time in Hawaii on somebody else's dime, eat some killer free food on-set, have a few laughs, feel like they're being productive...it's the little things in life that they are concerned about at their age, I guess.

"Haha--all you stupid people make us rich, America!"

 "There's always gonna be haters, Jen, so what the fuck? Let's just hang out in Hawaii for a while and wipe our asses with 35mm film." -Adam Sandler

"As long as I can bring my yoga instructor, hair-stylist/best-friend, a couple lap dogs, and my scrapbooking supplies I don't give a shit what we do there." -Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston craps shitty romantic comedies in her sleep and I guess just enough overweight women with cats watch them that her gravy train continues its incremental slide toward the fiery pits of hell. So, what does she care what anybody thinks about them? The 'elitist' critics will always hate on her; jealous women will always hate on her; men will always hate on her; she just needs to persevere and eventually some happy accident will redeem her in the end.

Right? Well, that's what she's hoping for, no doubt. Let us ruminate on what that happy accident may be, shall we?

Possible entertainment-rag quotes from the future:

At age 56, Jennifer Aniston has finally found her niche--and Oscar gold--as a bronzed, sultry, embittered Miss Havisham in Baz Luhrman's dramatic retelling of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. With a guaranteed 14-year contract on Broadway and a traveling ice-capade in the works, Miss Aniston finds it bittersweet that the secret to her happiness lies in the glorification of the loneliness that has dogged her for what seems like centuries.

Former actress Jennifer Aniston, 52, was spotted dining at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills over the weekend. As always, her characteristic printed-silk Gucci bandages obscured her entire head but there was no doubt in anybody's mind as to who was living it up with Jesse Eisenberg during a jovial four-hour martini-and-painkiller lunch. Was having acid thrown in her face by Angelina Jolie the best thing that ever happened to her? Probably. Her besties freely admit "we've never seen her happier."

After a marathon 14-day bidding-war cage-match atop the CAA Death Star, Jennifer Aniston, 68, has finally outlasted the competition and secured the rights to Angelina Jolie's unfinished autobiography. Who will play Hollywood's most notorious vixen, who took her own life as soon as she showed sign of aging? Why, Jennifer Aniston, of course. "I'm thinking no make-up on this one," the wrinkly old actress quipped.

Regardless of how things turn out for Jen in the end, one thing is certain: Just Go With It will suck and you should probably hang out at the mall next weekend to intimidate/eliminate anybody interested in purchasing a ticket. After all, a tragic opening weekend box office tally is the best way to ensure this sort of bunk won't tie-up our silver screens in the future.

_

My Second-Favorite Valentine's Day

As I drowned myself in rum and coconut milk in my favorite South Pacific watering hole the afternoon before last, waiting for something to happen, occasionally stealing glances at an emaciated Pauly Shore as he danced laconically in an unlit, dung-encrusted cage in the corner, next to the photo booth, my long-lost friend Pierre--now a drug runner for a band of Filipino pirates and a snazzy dresser for sure, with a god-given gift for accessorizing--sidled up alongside me at the bar, out of nowhere, and we got to talking.

At one point during our grand revelry, Pierre reminded me of an interesting incident from our past that had somehow wholly escaped my brain. He was a bit foggy on the details, as was I, but I had to have a go at it anyway, so please excuse any potential inaccuracies, people of Earth.

Here goes, from the beginning:

February 14, 2002. Chicago.

I was living in the then-sketchy Uptown neighborhood with a good friend from college, Pierre. We lived steps from Montrose Harbor, in a lake-view apartment. Pierre had his car broken into at least four times, once on consecutive nights. I worked as a freelance production assistant in the local film industry. Pierre worked as an exotic dancer. We were young, handsome, and fearless. We had a great time.

We were both single and without plans for Valentine's Day (oh, no!), so another friend of mine from college--Alice--invited us over to her apartment in nearby Wrigleyville for a party.

Now, Alice is very attractive and a very good friend of mine, but she is definitely on the straighter side of the coin--she grew up in Wheaton, went to church every Sunday during college, etc. I don't recall her having a drink until her junior or senior year, despite all her friends being your typical college bingers, and I don't think I ever saw her drunk.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it definitely has an impact on whether or not I want to go to a party, seeing as I'm the sort of guy who likes to tear it up and I prefer the company of others who feel the same way.

This being the case, Pierre and I were not exactly in a hurry to get to Alice's apartment, didn't want to be the first ones to get there and get stuck talking to the kind of people who show up exactly when a party starts, find ourselves under a microscope, etc.

You ken the score.

Instead, we hit up a cool little diner near her place around 8pm--the official start time of the party--and devoured gigantic cheeseburgers, killed some time, discussed strategy, etc.

After dinner, we smoked some weed in the car outside her place and, now that we had our heads on crooked, prepared to casually slip into the dance party, scare up a drink, and see what was what.

When Alice let us in, I immediately realized she was wasted. Her face was beet-red and her movements were sudden and excessively forceful. She was thrilled to see us and gave me a big hug.

But something was wrong--I couldn't hear any music and all the lights were on.

What the...I noticed three girls sitting around the dining room table drinking wine and glaring at Pierre and I. There were six unsullied place settings.

Gulp.

It turns out it was a dinner party and everybody had been waiting for us for over an hour, hadn't started eating yet. Even though Alice didn't seem to mind, the other guests were supremely irritated. I searched my mind and could find no recollection of dinner being involved in this affair, but that hardly mattered now.

Adding insult to injury, the only other guests were Claire the Bear, Claire the Scare, a kinda-boring-but-kinda-sexy girl named Maria, and us. I had struck out with Maria once already and Claire the Scare and I, to put it nicely, had a rocky opinion of each other. To make matters worse, Pierre had a 'thing' with Claire the Bear not too long ago--a thing which didn't end so well.

How's that for a hit ratio? This was going to be ugly.

Alice announced to the room that she was drunk, that she had been chugging wine as she cooked, and that she hoped the food wasn't too burnt, too cold, etc. The other girls all shared intense looks as Alice brought the food out from the kitchen and slammed the dishes onto the table, one by one.

She offered Pierre some food--gentlemen first, I guess--and it became immediately apparent that he had disengaged his brain at some point:

"No thanks--I'm not hungry. We just ate a huge dinner...we didn't realize it was a dinner party..."

Every single girl at the table--not big fans of us to begin with--glared at us as if Pierre had just called them the latest in a long line of fat, diseased whores with no fashion sense and I smiled sheepishly, wishing Pierre had kept his fucking mouth shut and just picked at his dinner like a five year-old boy confronting a meatloaf, as I had planned.

As if I thought it would somehow help our situation, I took a generous helping of food and began effortfully piling it on top of my burger and fries, feeling my belly distend like the fat guy in The Meaning of Life (watch the whole thing), hoping I wouldn't explode in a hurricane of vomit.

Alice sat down with a crash, declared that she wasn't even hungry, downed some more wine, and, thankfully--since this was the toughest audience I'd ever encountered--started talking.

It wasn't quite a toast, but more of a 'casual monologue.' The gist of it was that it was Valentine's Day and she was, very suddenly, alone. She revealed that the older, married(?) man she had been secretly seeing at work recently broke things off, on account of his being really fucked-up about his best friend's recent death.

His best friend was Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal journalist who was beheaded in Pakistan a mere 13 days before this dinner.

The room was as silent as a cemetery, yet throbbing with discomfort. Pierre and I swallowed this fascinating fact with great difficulty, completely unsure how to respond, suddenly hyperaware of every molecule in our body.

How does one react to such an admission?

Apparently by gulping down wine, as that is what everybody at the table did--even the girls, who no doubt already knew the score since they were all thick as thieves.

I tried to change the subject:

"Hey, whatever happened to that guy you were dating before, the long-distance guy who lived in Houston?"

"Well, it's funny you mention that. It turned out he was dating somebody else the whole time. He was dating her before I even met him."

Gulp.

"The worst part is, I even met her once, when I was visiting him for a football game in Houston. I had no idea. Neither did she. But she found out about it and called me up."

Double gulp.

"I mean...and to think I wanted to marry him..."

The heart breaks for this poor girl. Again, how does one react to such news?

Pierre and I couldn't hazard a guess, and left not long after this admission, a bit sad, a bit rattled, lucky to be alive.

I still can't decide whether it was a good or bad thing that we were stoned during the entire debacle, but I certainly would not like to go back in time and repeat the evening with a clear mind, so I guess it's irrelevant.

Anyway, how's that for an awkward evening?

_

The Next Three-Day Blockbuster Already in the Bag

Seeing as this movie not only stars Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler but has already undergone a transformation from Holiday in Hawaii to Pretend Wife to Just Go With It (Oooh, I hate it when they're right...eventually...), I don't have high hopes for this product.

By the way, we can go ahead and call this a product instead of a movie, right? I didn't think I'd hear any objections.

Let's looks at the evidence:

Production budget = $52 million
Advertising budget = $100 million (estimated)
Total budget = $152 million

"Yikes. This movie needs to make some money! Should we make it good or sugar-coat it for the masses?"

"Experience dictates a vote for the sugarcoat, sir."

"Carlson?"

"I'd have to agree. Under those terms, projections indicate $75 million for the four-day weekend, plus foreign take around...$30 million, a 70% drop in second-weekend sales, but still on enough screens to pile up some more B.O, plus a steady stream of rental income to catch the stragglers. I see a profit here, gentlemen."

"Alright--let's do this turd. Get me whoever wrote Valentine's Day on the horn right now. If we can't get him, we'll get that kid that did Lucas in Love. And the guy who directed Zohan. He's killer. Meanwhile, sign every actor and model you can think of who'll sell themselves out for some cash."

- overheard in an imaginary office somewhere

You know Jen is sweatin' this one. She's sweatin' that comparison photo, this sexier, younger version of herself. Do you see the fear in her eyes?

It's a tough life on top.

_

Hallmark v. India

"Eventually, more than 10 members of the Sena were arrested, only to be released on bail in a week. Since then, they have promised to campaign against Valentine’s Day, which they criticized as a foreign conspiracy to dilute Indian culture, and they said they did not disapprove of men drinking at bars."


My favorite quote from this article about some truly fascinating and unnecessarily-violent, sexist racists.

Valentine's Day? That is their bone of contention? Did they run out of better reasons to hate The West? It's like a father hating his daughter's prolicidic boyfriend because he has long hair.

My favorite part of the definition of 'proletary,' the root of 'prolicide':

Origin:
1570–80; < class="ital-inline">prōlētārius belonging to the lowest class of Roman citizens, i.e., those who contributed to the state only through their offspring, equiv. to prōlēt- (akin to prōlēs offspring; pro- pro- ¹ + -olēs (see adult )) + -ārius -ary

I can hear it now, clear as day, above the vibrant din of the Palazzo Farnese:

"Oh, hello there, peasant--just so you know, you are only valuable to me and mine because you replenish our supply of low-paid quasi-slaves. Here's a boot up your ass for no reason and be sure to have your freshly-washed, most-slender daughter sent up to my bedroom at midnight for a little procreation of my own."

Ouch.

_

My Favorite Valentine's Day Ever

The year was 1980. I was one year old and deeply in love with Susan Lucci... Kiding. The year was 2003. Boston. A cold and dreary winter. A lonely winter. I had just moved there in January with a good friend of mine, Angela, and her friend from college, Laura. We knew noone and, therefore, had decided to give ourselves til Valentine's Day to make enough friends to have a real party, figuring we'd all probably be single then anyway.

We lived in a huge three bedroom apartment on Hancock Street in Porter Square. After several weeks of impoverished laying-around-and-drinking-a-lot, I got the lowest-paying job possible ($19,000/yr!) as a travel agent for STA Travel, answering phones at the National Reservation Center off of Boston Common. Angela found a job as a receptionist at a hair salon AND as a dogwalker, as well as an internship at a local film production company. Laura ended up in childcare.

We invited our new friends who lived across the street, the three nurses that lived upstairs, people from work, random people we met in bars, and friends from school who lived nearby (New Hampshire and New Jersey). We bought a ton of alcohol. I dusted off my favorite records. We were set for the best party in Porter Square history. But it didn't quite end up that way...

Around 11pm, after much pre-partying with my roommates, my girlfriend, and our old friends from school, I noticed that nobody had arrived. Whatever. Between 11 and midnight, maybe a dozen people wandered in, none of whom I knew. They were all friends of people we invited, not those people themselves, who never bothered to show up. The most notable of these friends-of-friends was "Adele's Friend."

Now, I know he was Adele's friend because he was wearing a large homemade button that identified him as such. He was about 5'5", Indian, and wore a Mr. Rogers-ish sweater vest and bowtie combo. Not sure who Adele was, and painfully aware that this guy was a loser, I hesitated to let him inside when I answered the door. Angela came over and said Adele was a girl she interned with, who wasn't here yet, and that we should let him in.

"Why not? We need SOME people here..."

About half an hour later, I sat on the couch in the record room, in the dark, listening to Daft Punk, drunk, chatting with my friend JJ. Out of nowhere, Adele's Friend (whose name I never got, by the way), perched on the edge of a papasan chair as if in some kind of posture contest, interrupted.

"Excuse me, but...you know I can do parlor tricks."

"What? Like what? Billiards? Darts?"

"Like that game where you go like this..."

He then pantomimed rapidly moving a knife between his fingertips.

"Oh, mumblypeg?" [note: I only knew this name because of a video game from my childhood, about pirates, called "Monkey Island"]

"Yeah."

“Well, let’s fucking see it!”

I led a curious entourage out of the record room, down a narrow hallway, and into the kitchen. Now, the kitchen was a totally different scene from the record room--fluorescent lights on full-tilt, people standing around wrapped in shawls, drinking Diet Coke, talking about the differences between cats and dogs and stupid things like that. We marched in there and took over.

I reached into a cupboard and grabbed the biggest knife I had--a large chef's knife that may as well have been a meat cleaver, and presented it to Adele's friend. The cat-and-dog librarian set audibly hushed at the brandishing of said knife and watched this new, dangerous scene raptly.

“Oh, no...I can just use a pen...I wouldn’t want to...scratch your table.”

“JJ--grab a phone book.”

JJ plopped the 4-inch-thick Boston yellowpages on the table and we all stood back to observe. Would he actually do it?

Whether he wanted to or not, Adele's Friend hefted the knife, set down his hand, spread out his fingers, and went to work. He moved the knife with impressive speed, fearlessly plunging it toward his fingers time and time again, increasingly faster, until he suddenly dropped the knife and hid his hand behind his back. I saw a telltale drop of blood on the tip of the blade. The show was over. Adele's Friend turned to me sheepishly.

"Do you have any bandages?"

"I don't think so."

"Duct tape?"

"In the toolbox in the pantry, if I have it..."

The crowd began to melt away, their bloodlust sated. I turned to head back to the record room when my roommate, Laura, who had been holding court in the kitchen, sipping wine, grabbed me by the collar, her face flushed, her mind reeling.

"What...just...happened?!"

"Nothing. He was playing mumblypeg and he cut himself. It's not bad, though, or he'd say something. He'll be fine."

"He stabbed himself?"

"No--I wouldn't use that word. I think he just cut his thumb."

Laura looked shell-shocked. She released her hold on me and seemed to lose herself in her imagination. Was she perhaps thinking back to the only warning our landlord had given us when we informed her of the party?

"Do whatever you want, as long as nobody gets stabbed."

She actually said that. Turns out, when she and her husband lived in the apartment, before they moved downstairs, they threw a huge party the night before sending their son off to the Navy. At some point, in a haze of alcohol, swords were pulled from the wall and somebody accidentally got stabbed, the paramedics came, the police came, people were caught pissing off the balcony and drinking underage...so, no stabbing. Please. Sorry, landlady!

I retreated to the record room, sat back on the couch, and resumed talking to JJ. There was still almost nobody at the party, and very few people there were drinking or having any fun. After a time, Adele’s Friend appeared in the doorway, his thumb and first two fingers duct-taped together in a huge bulbous mass. He tried to make it look natural that he was intentionally keeping the wound above his heart at all times, to lessen the flow of blood.

I watched as he struck awkward pose after awkward pose, acting as if everything was perfectly normal, as if we hadn’t all watched him slice his hand in the kitchen. I turned to the three nurses who lived upstairs, who were somehow all sitting in the papasan chair at the same time--not drinking, of course. Luckily, I guess, since I had to put one of them to work.

“I think one of you should check him out and see if he needs to go to the hospital.”

One of them took him into the bathroom for inspection, and we all eagerly awaited her diagnosis.

A couple minutes later, the examining nurse returned and plopped down in the papasan without saying a word.

“Well? Does he need to go to the hospital?”

“Oh yeah.”

Adele’s Friend returned, holding his injured hand high above his head and using the other to flip through the phone book, looking for ambulance phone numbers. Obviously, I felt sorry for him, but I also knew he’d be alright, just a bit ego-bruised and perhaps superficially scarred. So I didn't feel too bad for laughing when I realized he was looking for help in the very same phonebook he stabbed himself on, just fifteen minutes prior. Something seemed fitting about that.

He said goodnight, apologized for not being better at Mumblypeg, and disappeared. None of us ever saw him again.

By the next morning, when it was painfully clear how lame the party had been the night before, because it never got any better in the wee hours, I had totally forgotten about Adele’s Friend. Suddenly, the memory came flooding back to me and I laughed the hardest I’ve ever laughed in my entire life. Granted, I was stoned, but I found the idea that he went “from zero to hero,” in a matter of an hour, hilarious. He was the biggest loser at a party full of losers; yet because he stabbed himself, he was the only fond memory I would ever have from that party. He was kind of a hero to me--the man that saved Valentine's Day.