American Dreamzzz

Yesterday Matt and I discovered that finally we had a few hours in which we were both not working, and could spend together for once this week. We hardly knew what to do with ourselves. To the record store, we say!!

We headed down to Easy Street, a favorite of ours in Queen Anne. Big enough to carry the good stuff, hip enough to be messy and chaotic.

We both packed our long lists of financially unobtainable records, written up our arms like test answers, ink obscuring perfectly readable names like Belle & Sebastion into "Belle & what? Belle & and SLAYER? Who wrote that?! Well ok then..." due to the sweaty anxiousness of anticipation. It's been a long overdue album binge. itunes just doesn't have the same appeal of holding a freshly printed sleeve, with yes, all 20 songs, rather than that singular one you purchased but will never listen to because when you're in the mood for, say, Mr. Roboto, you really don't want to have to play it on repeat as you walk away to get ready for work.

The store was jammed up with about a million people, wrapped up around the corners of the store, all waiting in line to get something signed by some dull looking guy with bad bleachy hair and a tacky trucker hat. "Who's everyone waiting for?" "Dude from Grandaddy" "hmm. Performing?" "nah, signing." "hmm." (What's funny is I actually did just look them up to see which was sitting there; he really does have terrible bleachy hair (ok, maybe natural, but bad nonetheless) and a bad trucker hat in every photo; the J.L. himself)

My only complaint about Easy Street is the blaring volume of their music, which makes me feel 2 things; 1. Like I'm in that terrible movie Empire Records from the 90's with all the snobby employees who think is awesomely pretentious to blast their "hipper than you" record to prove it, and 2. That it is possible I am getting really old--"Turn it down! Turn it down! I can't hear myself trying to ponder who's sound is more authentic--Green Day or Angels and Airwaves, Green Day or...turn it down!! Too loud!" To which the male employee in tight women's jeans flippantly tosses his hair at.

Anyhow, Matt swiped the new Danielson album, and I skittishly raced around trying to find something Jamaican of which I am ashamed to publicly name. But it was too hard for me to think with all the clamor, and my anxiety level and public tolerance waxed and waned respectively. This ended up coming out something like "What the hell is up with 'Danielson'? First its the Danielson Family, Danielson Famile, or whatever, how the hell are you supposed to say it?, and then brother Danielson, and now just Danielson, what the hell is he trying to do? Does he want us to buy his CD's or what!" At this climax I practically threw the cd I was unsuccessfully trying to re-file into the overcrowded rack.

That's when Matt takes my hand, shush's me gently, and leads me out of the store and directly to a reclusive table at paggliacis. One or the other of us ends up having some sort of mental breakdown over our inability to deal with crowds and public spaces every time we go out. So its nice that at least one of us ends up maintaing sanity enough to address the issue before being arrested.

Oh ya, wasn't I going to talk about American Dreamz? That's where we headed after pizza. This movie came highly recommended to us by, save for a few torturous nights of He Man the movie starring Courtney Cox, and Evil Dead, a pretty reliable source.

definitely fun. We laughed a lot, which is good for us and the comedy genre, given kind of massed produced comedies from a few years ago that seem to clutter the Blockbuster shelves disappointing us every time, causing us to lose all hope in hollywood humor (was there much to begin with?).

Though it is pretty easy to make fun of Bush, America, Iraq, terrorists, American Idol, Bo Bice, Hugh Grant, and Hillary Duff--doing it at the same time is surely commendable. Nevertheless, though working with easy targets doesn't get my vote for a huge cinematic, comedic accomplishment, easy targets are always funny for really good stereotypical reasons, thus causing you to laugh everytime. And it's about damn time somebody made fun of this out of control American virus known only as American idol. Geez, about time. Stupid.

But, all in all, our highlight of the night was our parking attendant. As we pull up to pay (damn seattle), the guy opens the door to take our card and a giant cloud of pot smoke pours out into our car, causing us to think for a minute that we were in a black-lit basement listening to Led Zeppelin. "Good movie, man?" "Ya man, good, how about you?" "Oh ya, doing real good, real good."