Wendy McClure

Author and Professional Obsessive.

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Trailer trashing!

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So Chris and I went to see Knocked Up this weekend (and we loved it, but more on that in a bit). And before the movie started we sat through the requisite commercials and videos and video-commercials and fake-movie-trailer-commercials, and then, finally, the actual trailers. One was for the new Hairspray movie, where they’ve replaced all the rare vintage R&B songs with self-important musical numbers and all the John Waters regulars with Scientologists. At least Tracy Turnblad is still fat in this version. As for the next two trailers—well, I’ll post links to them, but I feel compelled to describe them, too, since seeing them back to back was especially dismaying. Plus the huge prosthetic pimples don’t show up nearly as well on YouTube as they do on the big screen! So here we go:

Trailer 1: Dane Cook is the protagonist. We first see him at a wedding reception, where, during a toast, the bride calls him out as someone she dated before finally and triumphantly finding true love. Dane Cook has a reputation for being That Kind Of Guy, the one women sleep with just before meeting their husbands. But then he meets The Girl, and she is different. They stroll side-by-side down a scenic path, just about to kiss, when suddenly, BONK! she runs straight into a lamppost and falls the fuck over! Har har! True love ensues. Next comes the conflict and the gross-out parts: He has to sleep with a big fat girl with a mustache because he doesn’t want to be That Kind of Guy anymore and hopes he can break the patten by having sex with someone so ugly she’ll never get married. We see the fat girl’s huge prosthetic pimples and Dane Cook’s horrified expressions. But will he ever get with The Girl?

Trailer 2: Ben Stiller is the protagonist. We first see him at a wedding reception, where, during a toast, the bride calls him out as someone she dated before finally and triumphantly finding true love. Ben Stiller has a reputation for being That Kind Of Guy, the one who’s perpetually single and won’t ever commit. But then he meets The Girl. They ride bikes side-by-side down a scenic path, just about to kiss, when suddenly, BONK! she runs straight into a trash can and falls the fuck over! Har har! Marriage ensues. Next comes the conflict and the gross-out parts: On their honeymoon his new wife turns out to be weird and crazy and she farts loudly in the bathroom, but he puts up with it because he doesn’t want to be That Kind of Guy anymore. Then he meets The Other Girl, and she is different. We see the new wife’s huge prosthetic pimples and Ben Stiller’s horrified expressions. But will he ever get with The Other Girl?

From these you might conclude the following about men and women and love and relationships: Marriage is the ultimate goal for most women, who pursue it ruthlessly, though of course they have to be unoffensive enough to even deserve it in the first place! They are all hot, except when they’re disgusting! Running into stuff and falling down spectacularly are helpfully distracting things a woman can do any time a man is in imminent danger of expressing his feelings to her! And also, it’s funny! And…and I’m sure there’s more but that’s all I can stand to extrapolate from these, because I’m afraid that watching them too much will make my soul withered and small and sad.

But Knocked Up was nothing like this. I can sort of see how the trailer might indicate otherwise, with the childbirth scene serving as the women’s-bodies-are-scary joke and a of throwaway bit of dialogue used as the marriage-is-full-of-unsexy-bathroom-stuff joke. But those jokes have less to do with the movie itself than they do with the creepy latent phobias of the trailer editors and/or some horrible focus group somewhere. Really, the movie was terrific, though Chris and I own the Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared box sets so we’re probably biased.

And not for nothing, I read this article, and one of my favorite parts was where it mentioned all the stupid, totally puerile things that the guys in the cast do in real life. Because none of it seemed to involve laughing at fat women in bikinis, or pretty women falling flat on their faces, or any of the other thuggishly insecure little things that pass for funny in a lot of movies these days. No, it was mostly drinking games. And you know, I would rather watch a whole movie of Martin Starr playing Edward Fortyhands than one of these so-called “romantic comedies.” Hell, I would pay to just see the trailer.

Rain, rain

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I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow. I know it’s going to rain tonight, because the wind is blowing and the trees are thrashing around and the neighbors’ back porch windchimes are more urgently creepy, but I hope it’s over by morning. Chris says that he heard on the forecast there’d be morning showers but I keep checking my little weather widgets from two different sources and right now both of them still show little suns in the Friday box. Okay, so one little sun has wispy clouds around it, but hey, I’ll take wisps; wisps don’t get me wet. I can ride my bike through those. I want to ride my bike to work again.

I want to ride my bike because last week in New York I ate all of 23rd Street between Seventh and Eighth. I ate stuff from seven different places on that street, not even counting the deli where I got an apple and a Diet Coke or the muffins they had in the morning at the hotel. I ate some tacos and some paella and a cupcake and some tater tots and a falafel sandwich and a barbeque sandwich and THIS THING, which is so astounding I can’t believe it even existed in the world before I ate it. And now I’m back and I want to ride my bike. I also want to ride my bike because gas costs $3.59 a gallon here, which makes riding my bike seem very clever indeed. I already took the five dollars I was planning not to spend on gas tomorrow and I put it towards a fabulously expensive Whole Foods salad bar salad, one topped with grilled veggies and tempeh chunks and caviar and shiny nickels and gift cards. And it’s waiting in the work fridge and all I have to do is point my bike in the general direction of that fridge and ride. As long as it’s not raining then.

Update: No rain. I made it here to work. HOORAY.

Friday morning bike to work: an inventory

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Total distance, one way: 11.3 miles.

Distance traveled while using the wrong gear: approximately six miles.

Animal sightings: One deer; one chipmunk; countless squirrels; six dogs. Including one with a cone around its head.

Number of times I probably could have made it across the big scary street with many swift and vroomy cars zorching by, but totally chickened out instead: 4.

How difficult pedalling up the Oakton Bridge was this time, on a scale of one to ten: 6.

How much I’d like to sleep right now, on a scale of one to ten: Uh huh.

How much I deserve some coffee cake right now, on a scale of one to MRMFF NUM NUM NUM: Six point MRMFFF.

How much coffee three yeah what ha!111!11@ ok thankyou happy fridady

View from Earth

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We did the bike route on Sunday. We set out a little before noon and got to my office at around 1:00 pm. We stopped for water and I got on my computer to look at the map again, just to confirm that yes, we’d been at that turn, that crossing, that bridge—all the stuff I’d hovered above while playing with the Google maps satellite view, spying on Magical Bikeland for months. It really is beautiful on the trail, with winding creeks, patches of prairie, and deer staring creepily as you ride by. It felt good to be down among the trees. When we went fast it was maybe just a tiny tad like the speeder bike chase scene in Return of the Jedi (except without the Ewoks, and thank God for that).

The best part is the bridge. There’s a foot/bike bridge that goes over Oakton, one of the few places on the trail where you don’t have to dash across the road in terror. But the trade-off is that, of course, the bridge is an arc and to cross it you have to pedal uphill, though you can’t even call it a hill, just a wimpy little bunny slope. Still, when I tried this trail a couple years ago, the bunny stomped my ass. I mean I saw how easy it looked and I began to ride up the incline and it kept, you know, inclining, just as it was inclined to do, and my legs lurched on the pedals and the bike got stubborn and finally I just stopped and stumbled off the bike and walked it over. And I wasn’t surprised, because I was always finding new and exciting ways to discover my physical shortcomings, and I figured pedaling uphill was just an awesome new vista of inadequacy.

But then on Sunday we were just riding along and suddenly there was the bridge. So I downshifted and then pedalled fervently and with much grunting, and then, eventually, my ass was over that hump. And then on the way back I did it again. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised this time, since I’ve been doing weight training since the fall, but I am pleased. It was still a wobbly ride over the bridge, but Chris pointed out that the riders we passed there were wobbly, too. Maybe the only folks who can glide over that thing easily are the ones who ride around dressed like Olympic luge competitors.

But anyway, we did it. I think the total distance—round-trip, and with additional wandering around in search of lunch—was close to 25 miles.  Making the return trip in such a short time was pretty rough, but I think I can do it as a commute on Friday, which is what I’m planning on doing, weather permitting.

I like being on the map.

I've been meaning to get back to you about these things

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The New York and Boston thing: Oh jeez, so much fun, though what I saw of New York this trip was pretty much limited to Williamsburg and Midtown, and what I saw of Boston was limited to the Great Scott and the neighborhood thereabouts. But I did get to drive around the block once in Brooklyn, because Jami had double-parked her car to get coffee and while I was waiting a cop drove up. Don’t Wait Until the Cop Comes Up to Yell at You is an important driving rule around there, I believe, as well as Hasidic Dudes in Minivans Always Have Right of Way. But then I let Jami have the car again and she drove it up to Boston, where she and Janice and I read to a couple dozen people. And I didn’t throw up. (For a minute there I thought I would. Don’t ask why.) And then the three of us held a competitive read-off where we read snippets of the most lurid parts of our books. Obviously I lost, since I’m Not the New Me is not so much about the sex and drugs than it is about awkward makeouts and binging on white bread. But I did my best against Ms. Nerve.com Stories and Ms. Tales of Clubs and Cocaine, and I had a blast trying, at least.

The bike thing: Chris bought himself a bike a couple weeks ago, which means that we can ride together, which means that I can worry less about falling off my bike and breaking something and lying in a ditch all wounded and covered with ants for days and days. So on our first day out we headed up the North Shore Channel Trail, which goes through Lincolnwood and Skokie. We went as far as Dempster, which in my mind is so far north that it’s nothing but tundra and fur traders (but no, it’s Skokie), and then we got lunch and turned around. When we looked at the map later we realized the round trip was nearly twelve miles. Twelve miles, and we were not even remotely dead. Last night we went out again, but we could only do about seven miles before it got dark. This Sunday we’re going to try the work route.

This Thing thing: Oh, ho ho, I say, because the other night I had a big Argentinian steak after the wedding of some friends of ours, and that ponderous Steak Feeling is with me still, and it sits, like a giant cat, on the metaphorical keyboard of my good intentions. No, I tell it, you can’t has cheezburger. That’s just how it is at the moment.

Reading thing: Friday night I’ll be reading with Jami (again!) and Alpana Singh at the Book Cellar. You know that means there will be wine, right?

No Punchline

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One day in the fall of 1991 my friend Michael and I were in a lounge at the student union at University of Iowa. It was my junior year, and I spent an astonishing amount of it smoking cigarettes in the Wheelroom with Michael. It was a cold, shitty gray Friday; somehow we decided this was enough reason to ditch our afternoon classes. So we set out up the hill through campus and downtown; we stopped to rent a couple of movies, then continued up Washington Street another half mile or so to my place. There were flurries in the air. It was November 1st, which was way too early for snow.

I had never seen Female Trouble so Michael insisted we rent it. I can’t remember what else we rented. We sat around my living room on my yellow couch and watched Divine scream about cha-cha heels. Out the big drafty window we could see the flurries getting heavier. We were glad to be inside. We might have even ordered pizza or made popcorn. Near the end of the movie Divine jumped up and down on a trampoline, and then she took out a gun and started firing away at people. I’d seen Multiple Maniacs and this was even better.

At some point between movies I went into my room and turned on the radio for a moment. It was on KRUI, the campus station. The student deejay was saying something like just stay inside until we find out more. He spoke in that usual flat student deejay tone, so I didn’t think to wonder what it was besides the weather. I could see it was snowing steadily outside. Maybe it was worse than it looked. “Something weird’s going on with the weather,” I told Michael. But we weren’t planning on going anywhere for a while. I started playing a tape on my boom box, or else we watched the second movie, whatever it was, I don’t remember.

It must have been a couple of hours later when my roommate’s mom called. Yes, I told her, Kelly’s at work. No, I hadn’t heard what happened.
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