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Tuesday, 9:57 am in Movies & TV

I swear to god I’m watching some documentary on nuclear energy in China and the background music is a piece of throbbing electronica I last heard in the background of Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines.

Anyway, I finally got around to watching Napoleon Dynamite the other day.  I have to admit, I didn’t get it.  An inane, dull movie about stereotypes.  I mean, I should really like this film; I’m one of those people who seems to (read: the ex-high school nerd), but I just didn’t connect to it at all.  I did, however, connect to this quote (care of Wiki):

[The election] also allows the film to score some unearned points by taking a stand against the inevitable, dull tyranny of the popular kids. If this didn’t seem so much like a film made to make those same kids bust a gut laughing at nerds, the plot might even have worked.

Quoted From: The  A.V. Club

I think that’s what got to me; this is a film about how nerds are supposed to be (or at least how they appear to outsiders), not necessarily how they are.  Then again, I’ve been told by at least two people that the reason I made no connect with this film was because I didn’t go to a yokel enough high school.  For a while I thought that the film was the first movie I’d ever encountered that didn’t cross-cultural boundaries between the US and here; I supposed in a way Dynamite is roughly the cultural equivalent of the legions of Aussie loser movies like Muriel’s Wedding (though stripped of a lot of the pathos).  Nevertheless, it bore absolutely no resemblance to my own high school experience.  We certainly were one of the misfit groups (admittedly not the misfit group; we might have played Magic and Werewolf but at least most of us were moderately attractive and well-groomed), but in our high school the ‘cool’ kids weren’t the equivalent of the violent, petty TV jock.  We did have jocks and scrags, but everyone knew these kids for what they were so on the odd times they did try and hassle us (generally the girls; the boys were all too busy beating up the basketball teams of opposing high schools) we could mostly just laugh them off.¹  By the time I got to college, the school I was in only had two types of people; emo-before-emo artsfags and extremely bright kids.  Not fitting in was the new fitting in.

Maybe there’s something in that; maybe I didn’t ‘get’ Dynamite simply because I’d never experienced it.  Maybe.  I still can’t shake the feeling conveyed by the quote above.  That the whole thing was a joke, just not on the people we like to think.

Oh, and I have to admit right now that I really, really hate Brechtian distancing-style techniques in films, and this one had it in spades.  I’m still not sure whether it was more or less enjoyable than Ghostrider, though.

My stuff from XtraX arrived yesterday.  For those who haven’t heard of them before, they’re kind of like the German equivalent of Hot Topic.  Aus-dollar to Euro conversion is shittacular, but I decided to order a couple of things off them a few weeks ago.  Order stuff online always has an element of potluck, so I took three random stabs in the dark.  The first thing I ordered was a kind of short brocade jacket, with lacing up the back and decorated hook-and-eyes around the cuffs.  After pulling it out of the box I was a bit dubious to discover it came from Tripp, who are generally really variable in the quality of their stuff.  I’ve got some bondage pants and a bag from them, both of which are kinda shitty quality, but after giving the jacket the eye over it seemed to actually be quite serviceable.  I’ve always had this sneaking suspicion that places like Hot Topic and Lip Service have a habit of sending out their slightly defective goods via international shipping, probably because of the difficulty of return.  But the jacket from XtraX was good, and ~Mat [h] even commented on it when it was lying on the bed waiting to get put away last night.

The second thing was a sleeveless, pinstriped button-down shirt with various safety pins and studs and whatnot.  I was a little disappointed to note that the fabric this one was made out of was a thin, cheap polyester.  The third thing was a hoody with various zips and stuff; this too was a little disappointing.  Mostly again because of the thin, cheap fabric.  It’s also ‘free-size’, which can be read as ‘really fucking small’, so it kinda ended up a bit like a bolero.  I’m not sure if I like it or not.  Like the shirt, it’s going to be a bitch to wash because of the safety pins.  Oh well.

I decided I like ordering things from Germany, though, because not only did I get a box full of clothes, but underneath all that were a couple of magazines, a zillion little promotional fliers, a catalogue and a XtraX notepad with a skull on it.  Free notepad, man, how awesome!  Take that, Hot Topic.

So anyway, I have to go out this afternoon to help some executive set up their Mobile 5 device so it’s ‘fancy dress’ day at work.  So I’m in my grey pinstripe slacks, my new Tripp jacket and my Kyo-tally veekay oversized skull-print bandito scarf.  Oh-ho-ho I’m so alternative.

… I really need to buy some new shoes, though.  The tattered black Sketchers just really aren’t doing it for me.

1. There was only really ever one girl who I had a problem with, and from memory I think her name was Jacinta.  She was short and hockey-player stocky, overly made-up with a too-tight ponytail and a vicious smattering of freckles that did nothing to soften her face.  She was in my P.E. class and would always take it on herself to make verbal jabs at me whenever the opportunity arose.  I had no fucking clue who she was, really (other than one of LeFan’s crew; LeFan was a huge girl with a massive rack… and everything else), so it always baffled me why she hated me so much.  It was more than just the general animosity that came from me being one of the geeky, crap-at-sport kids and her one of the more athletic wannabe girls.  She used to get especially vicious whenever I was goofing off, with witticisms like “You’re not as funny as you think, you know.”  In the end I think I decided that she must have had some kind of twisted jealously thing going on that I could be so unselfconscious.  I wasn’t like her; but I think she wanted to be like me. ^

• Tags » fashion, high school, movies, napoleon dynamite, reviews, xtrax
• Mood » more VK than you