Ever had a weekend where listening to Morrissey is the least depressing thing you do? This past weekend was filled with let downs and soul sucking sadness for me.
It all started with the World Cup. Am I the only one who’s a bit upset at an all European final four? So much for the beautiful game. Watching Brazil go down to France was akin to watching the Red Sox beat the Yankees; it just shouldn’t happen. Seriously, it looked like France had an extra 3 men on the pitch the whole match. (Note novice soccer fan making use of real soccer terms.) Meanwhile, the only other team I could really get behind was the English who suffered yet another humiliating penalty kick loss that will rank up there with the 432 other penalty kick losses they’ve choked away over the years. So now we’re left with a who’s who of the WWII axis powers in Germany, Italy, Vichy France, and well…ok I guess I don’t know what Portugal did in WWII but I’m sure it wasn’t good.
With my World Cup depression in full swing I joined up with some friends to partake in the largest fireworks display in the Midwest, Madison’s Rhythm and Booms. Every year this event occurs I am shocked to hear it’s the largest in the Midwest. You would think Minneapolis, Milwaukee or Chicago would host a bigger display but for whatever reason Madison claims the prize. One of my friends mentioned the fact that Madison is filled with a bunch of hicks who have nothing better to do then to drink beer and watch the sky to which I replied, “I resemble that remark.” Anyway, the five of us drove down to join 299,995 of our closest friends for the evenings activities. Rhythm and Booms bares some resemblance to a county fair. There are 80’s cover bands, beer tents, carnival rides that look completely unsafe, and a cornucopia of greasy food and strangely greasy drinks too. Just being around this kind of food is enough to drive me to depression. On one hand you know how good it will taste but on the other hand you literally feel your arteries harden just by looking at it. I decided to head straight into the heart of the beast and get an order of beer battered French fries with cheese sauce. To my horror they were out of cheese sauce so I was left with an order of cheese curds that just weren’t State Fair quality. As I contemplated which kind of giant milkshake to get the evening took another turn for the worse when we noticed people packing up their blankets. Some hullabaloo about a tornado in blah blah blah county was apparently enough to cancel the fireworks.
Now you’d think that was the low point of my Saturday but then you’d be leaving out the joy of dealing with post non-fireworks traffic. It was one of those situations where you had to laugh or otherwise you might hyperventilate and have a panic attack like one of my friends did in my backseat. Sitting on some non descript city street for 90 minutes opens you up to such thoughts as how many giant TV screens does one need in a Buick Skylark, and what was that grey fried thing mixed in with my cheese curds? Needless to say I had high hopes for a more upbeat Sunday.
Unfortunately my own judgment failed me on Sunday. I woke up at a reasonable hour and decided to watch a flick. Did I choose something light hearted like Wedding Crashers? Of course not; no instead I stuck in The Squid and the Whale which has been sitting in its Netflix sleeve getting dusty for almost a month. I thought this was an incredible film but good god the character’s are so messed up that I physically had to turn away from the screen a couple of times. Jeff Daniels particularly shines as the egotistical patriarchal ass of the family.
After watching the Whale, I continued my mostly down roller coaster by breaking my VCR, and locking myself out of my apartment. Finally some light was shined when I partook in a couple of mean games of Baggo (aka the bean bag toss game). After that my depression returned full swing watching Michele Wie just miss yet another major LPGA victory. I’m not a Wie basher but I wish she would win just so she could shut those folks up. Still it is amazing to watch a 16 year old compete on this level. Anyway after watching the LPGA which is in itself mildly depressing, I decided to follow up Squid and the Whale with yet another upper, Syriana. Usually when people tell me a movie is really confusing and hard to follow I get all smug and condescending and laugh them off because that’s the kind of ass I can be when it comes to film. Yet here in Syriana, I found a film that actually lived up to the confusing hype. Mostly I had a hard time keeping all the lawyers and Texas oilmen straight but that certainly did not distract from the film. Again it was a fine film but it also aided in continuing my self imposed depression trend. I knew this wouldn’t be an up with people type of movie but I also wasn’t quite prepared for a movie that left me with a message of: Give up, all hope is lost.
Like I said 95% of this depression was self imposed like tearing up during Andre Agassi’s Wimbledon departure. Still it was a weekend so it’s not like it was all tears and cursing just remember never schedule a triple feature of Squid and the Whale, Schindler’s List, and Syriana because you might not make it through the day.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment