but he’s cracked up like the road
QUERIES, CLARIFICATIONS, CORRECTIONS
Is “Monster” his last name? First name Cookie? Is his given name Cookie but “Monster” is an epithet, like Charles the Bald or Ivan the Terrible? Is there more than one being named “Cookie” but they are different species, so “Monster” is just a quick way to distinguish which Cookie one means?
Also, I know it’s a metaphor (and a pretty classic rap bar in the I’m Great/You’re Trash vein), but if you take it literally Lil’ Kim seems a little ungrateful with “I’m valedictorian/y’all in the audience.” Okay? I’m not graduating today? I’m here to watch you? If you’re going to act like that I might just leave and take my congratulations check with me, young lady.
CINEMA AND ITS DISCONTENTS
I have seen quite a few not-good movies lately! They were all not good in different ways!
The Shepherd (2021): a folk-horror thing with bleak, beautiful vistas that put me absolutely to sleep. Not enough horror nor enough folk.
Julia Misbehaves (1948): an absolute mess. Includes threatening suicide to secure a loan (!), a crush on a circus strongman, drunken acrobatics (literally) on a boat, and a memorable scene with a young Elizabeth Taylor practicing her golf swing while her father tells her to stop because she’ll “get muscles in all the wrong places.”
Slaxx (2020): this is a “bad” slasher movie but you can not really get too mad at it because it is about a pair of haunted pants that come to life and kill everybody. GO PANTS GO!
The Craft (1996): I had seen this before but Aaron had not. It is a bad movie but deserves its “culturally important” slot for Wiccan ‘90s style, I suppose. Extremely problematic attempted rape scene (a “love” spell causes a guy to attempt rape? also that she technically brought it on herself? ugh). Proof that it was really a different time: when all the girls are invoking the dark spirits and asking for their desires to come true, Fairuza Balk asks for “a smaller ass.”
The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957): He shrinks. A whole lot. Another “it was a different time” moment in this one is the presence of a very obviously un-neutered cat. Anxious masculinity, some fun props, cat testicles, and a weird (kind of hilarious, really) ending.
HONORARY MPH FOR ME, PLEASE
Every time I feed the cats now I think about tuberculosis. Murphy was lightly fat-shamed at the vet this last visit (he does not really need to lose, but he should not get much bigger) and although I did not admit it to the vet, I know where his extra calories were coming from—Rocko often abandons his plate a bit early in disinterested skinny-old-man fashion and Murphy is only too happy to save me the cleanup. So cat mealtimes have become a mandatory work break for me, as I sit and watch the cats eat their meals like I am administering directly observed therapy. I am the public health guardian of cat food consumption (ha ha ha consumption! See what I did there! Okay let’s move on).
This is short but at least it’s something? Or is it? Is it something? Who knows any more.
—the incredible shrinking mimi smartypants