Monthly Archives: December 2003

Holiday malaise.

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I am no longer going to cel­e­brate Christmas.

2003 has been a long and con­fus­ing year, and there was a point when I was look­ing for­ward to this hol­i­day as some kind of release; per­haps maybe, just maybe, this would be the joy­ous occa­sion it's oft touted to be.

I may have been ask­ing for too much. Either that, or my let­ter to the North Pole got lost in the mail.

Instead, I found many peo­ple I care about in less-than-desirable sit­u­a­tions that just made me feel bad because there was noth­ing I could do for them. Mean­while, I returned from a day-long stint in the hos­pi­tal with a large bot­tle of pills to ease the bac­te­ria that spread through my body like a brush fire and landed squarely in my left ear. (As I write this, I still have no hear­ing in that one.)

There's sim­ply too much time and stress involved in this "fes­tive sea­son" to make it enjoy­able any­more. That didn't used to be in the case. Once upon a long, long time ago, I liked ven­tur­ing to the mall, tak­ing in the dec­o­ra­tions, the choir music, and going through each store, pick­ing out things for peo­ple that reminded me of them or that I thought they would like.

Now, something's just.…missing. Something's not the same. It could be me. I really don't know.

Shop­ping feels like a chore, a require­ment. And I've dis­cov­ered that that mind­set really tends to take the fun out of the experience.

Com­pounded on top of all this excite­ment, I've been told that I'm "dif­fi­cult" to shop for. I nor­mally take issue with this belief, but I also know that at times I can be very, very spe­cific about things and become so jaded that any­thing else is just unac­cept­able. That's my issue, I know, and it espe­cially comes out at Christ­mas­time; hence why, when asked by friends or fam­ily what I would like, I usu­ally reply with some­thing like, "A gift­card to $store."

Silly, really.

I sup­pose part of the rea­son­ing (or lack thereof) for my hol­i­day malaise is that I know there's only one thing that I really really want, one thing that would really make me happy.…and that's the only thing that I can't have. Because some­one else got the one I wanted, so instead I'm sit­ting here twid­dling my thumbs… Like I said, I'm occa­sion­ally very picky. And, unfor­tu­nately, noth­ing else will do. At least not now.

Santa, you bastard.

* * *

All of this has led me to pub­licly denounce Christ­mas. Instead, this year and for years on for­ward, I will per­son­ally cel­e­brate Christ­mas 2: Elec­tric Buga­loo, a new hol­i­day being spon­sored by the Mis­tress Domes­ti­cat and myself. Details are sketchy at this point, but so far, what we have come up with is the following:

Jan­u­ary 1. Mark your cal­en­dar. For every­one who has a crappy Christ­mas, can't go home, had to go home, or just didn't have the hol­i­day you wanted…January 1 is your day.Drink what you want. (South­ern Com­fort is an unof­fi­cial spon­sor of our cel­e­bra­tion.)
Wear what you want. (Cat paja­mas and giant Sylvester slip­pers.)
Only cel­e­brate it with peo­ple you like.

Like I said, more will be worked out at some point. But, hell, we needed some­thing. Fotos and reports from the first annual C2:EB will be forth­com­ing. For now, though, much nefar­i­ous planning.

"Eat that, you bastard!"

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[Arr, matey. There be slight spoil­ers ahead. Swipe to read.]

…I elated this amidst over three hun­dred tired, excited, sweaty geeks dur­ing last night's mid­nite screen­ing of The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King after the con­clu­sion of the scene with the giant fuck­ing spi­der.

Slightly before this par­tic­u­lar sequence, Jake leaned over to me and said, "There's some­thing com­ing up, and you may have a prob­lem with it." I became slightly con­cerned, but con­sid­er­ing this was halfway through the movie, I decided not to fol­low up and just watch the film.

As Shelob appeared on the forty-foot screen, I clenched my hands into fists until my knuck­les were white and I could feel my fin­ger­nails embed­ding them­selves into my palms, and I think that I vocally winced once or twice. When Topher glanced at me, with a slight look of con­cern, I felt more than a bit embarassed, and fig­ured at that point that I should keep my ter­ror to a low hum rather than a whiny screech.

* * *

That said, Return of the King was a breath­tak­ing expe­ri­ence. After I calmed down from that unfor­tu­nate scene, I found myself com­pletely spell­bound dur­ing the remain­der of the film.

And what a remain­der it was.

The bat­tle scenes were absolutely jaw-dropping, espe­cially when Aragorn sailed in with the Dead. Granted, some of the CG looked like, well, like CG. But I didn't care. It was stunning.

* * *

I must con­fess. I have never read any of Tolkien's books. As I explained to Ames ear­lier tonite, the fan­tasy genre as a whole has never really held much inter­est for me. So, two years ago, when every­one but me was froth­ing at the mouth in antic­i­pa­tion of the release of Fel­low­ship of the Ring, I pon­dered how I was going to spend my time while every­one else was busy stand­ing in line. Jake was one of these fanat­ics and had to drag me to see the flick on New Year's Eve 2001.

I was… impressed. The fact that I was able to even stay inter­ested in the story was enough to make me a fan. And with the release of The Two Tow­ers last year, I was jazzed. And so, ear­lier this month, when Jake told me of the oppor­tu­nity to catch the mid­nite screen­ing of RotK, I real­ized that things had come full cir­cle. I was now froth­ing at the mouth to see how it would all end.

The plan was to meet Jake and Topher at the the­atre at 10:30pm. We had advance tick­ets days ahead of time, a require­ment being that the show had sold out almost a week ahead. On my way to Cin­e­mark, I real­ized that there was no way I was going to get through a film that was over three hours in length with my low energy level. So I stopped off and got burg­ers and litres of Code Red for Jake and I. I fig­ured that if that didn't keep me awake, noth­ing would.

When I got to the the­atre, it was pan­de­mo­nium. Lines up and down every hall­way, dou­bled and even tripled over in some places. When I found Jake, he told me that the peo­ple at the head of the line had been there since 4pm. Sweet Jesus. Now I didn't feel bad for being fif­teen min­utes late. A few min­utes later, Topher arrived and our own lit­tle jour­ney offi­cially began.

We ended up stand­ing in line for about another hour before our the­atre opened up. Appar­ently Honey, and its whop­ping six atten­dees, was tak­ing its time in fin­ish­ing up.

The doors opened and the cir­cus of geeks wran­gled them­selves into the the­atre like cat­tle. And the movie started.

I must say, that the charm of three plus hours of sit­ting in the the­atre with 300 of your clos­est friends (and I mean that spa­tially) and no air con­di­tion­ing was start­ing to wain after about two hours. But we toughed it out. And it was so worth it.

All in all, Return of the King is eas­ily the best of the tril­ogy, and while I felt the epi­logue of the film could have been tight­ened a bit, I have no com­plaints. I left the the­atre at 3:41am, my legs heavy and my eyes glazed. But happy. Oh yes, quite happy. Peter Jack­son truly has proved him­self a film­maker of enor­mous tal­ent and vision, and no mat­ter what he does in the future, I will con­tinue to hold high respect for him.

I'd say that I can't wait for the extended DVD edi­tion of this film to come out next year, but the truth is that I think I prob­a­bly should. Need time to recu­per­ate, after all.