Thursday, 23 February 2012

Great Expectations

There's a girl that works in the same building as me, has done since just a few days less than I have, so nearly six years. For these six years, she has been in love with me. Now, I know that's a little presumptuous, I'm sure it's not been exactly that time, nor has it been every day, she's been in at least one serious, house-sharing relationship in that time.

But every couple of months in the last two years, we've clashed over our respective feelings. She has far too many of these feelings for me and I don't really have any for her. However, as someone who doesn't normally get these kinds of feelings from anyone, I have in the past succumbed in small ways to her advances, and this tends to make things worse. Much, much worse.

I can't blame her... well, maybe I can. Maybe I do. But she can't really help how she feels, despite the fact that I just can't return those feelings. And why can't I? Why can't I just shrug and think, if it's there, don't sniff at it. Because I just can't. Because deep down and higher up, I'm just not that interested in her. She kinda scares me, to be honest.

In the most recent months (right when I really, really didn't need it), this has been getting very intense. I made a mistake and got too close and I've been punished for it. A long time ago I was so afraid of her that I considered telling my boss that she was sexually harassing me at work, which would have been pretty accurate back then. Now it's, oddly, relationship drama, despite the fact that we don't have a relationship.

So what do I do?

I can't ignore her because she works in the same building as me. I can't just not talk to her because she won't let me. She chips and chips and doesn't let go with all her little message of concern and her essay length emails of why we should be together. I just can't take it anymore. She has a lot of expectations from me and I just can't live up to any of them, mainly beacuse I don't want to live up to any of them.

You wanna know why?

She didn't taste right.

THE DESCENDANTS.

I really got the feeling that George Clooney was trying to recapture the success of Up In The Air and that Alexander Payne was trying to recapture the success of Sideways, and that together they would try to make it all work together and come up with something new and yet reassuringly familiar.

It didn't work. As far as I was concerned this wasn't the career making performace of Clooney's career, as several other critics have been saying. That was, quite frankly, Up In The Air. It wasn't the crowning jewel in Payne's career. That was, quite frankly, Sideways. So it didn't work.

It wasn't bad, it was an okay story, but the pace of it was so slow, relaxed and typically Hawaiian that I don't think it actually went anywhere. The issues it tried to raise weren't all that life altering, no matter how serious the nature of the story. All in all, this wasn't a great movie.

Next time: J. Edgar.

Monday, 20 February 2012

Reverting To Previous Behaviour

You know, I had thought recently that it might have been possible for me to change. To become a slightly different person, whether that would be a better person, I don't know, but it would have been different and that was kind of exciting in its own right. I thought that I might have been able to be in a relationship and actually see what it is people do this thing for.

Turns out, that's not for me. Do I blame myself? Yeah, kinda. Do I blame her? That's the bigger question. I sent a text message that I know I should not have back in August, made a joke about lubricant and that was that. I had a girlfriend. We were happy together. We bitched and moaned and got on each other's nerves from time to time, but I at least thought I was happy for this.

Then on January 2nd she said that we should be 'just friends', because our goals are too different. And I accepted that at the time and thought 'well... maybe that could work as well.' But you know what? I always had a thought that when women say 'let's be friends' after a relationship has ended, they're forgetting what gender it is they are dealing with here.

Men aren't like that.

Once you're gone, that's it, you're gone. Staying friends with an ex is basically inviting trouble, heart-ache and jealousy all at the same time. Take this weekend for example. I really wanted to come down and see her for her 30th birthday, it's only been six weeks since we broke up and I was still holding that torch, I'll admit. So I went down to Brighton to see Laura and Martin (which was great, but another blog post all together), and then me and Laura went over to Worthing for the ageing celebration.

Now, to discover that the ugly, uninteresting circus oaf that was so utterly dull to hang around with (as most magicians are, all they can really think about is how awesome they are) that she was last seen in the presence of is now her most recently acquired man-friend... this kinda stung. Sleeping in the room next to the pair of them in the aftermath of the party... that was something else entirely. I packed up and left before everyone woke up. Why did I do this? Why did I act like a jealous coward?

Because I am a jealous coward. And that's something I've got to live with. Something I don't have to live with? The woman I love shacking up with Captain Spaulding from House of 1,000 frickin' Corpses while still being 'friends' with her.

So I'm reverting to previous behaviour. I'm giving up on being that different person. I'm not that person, I'm the person I was before I met her. And that's all I have to say, because I never want to touch, see or talk to her again.

CHRONICLE

Hells. Frickin'. Yes. I've been waiting for a movie like this for a long time and, quite frankly, it's been worth the wait. Someone who truly understands what a super-hero movie can be without the capes, the spandex and the overblown sense of Truth, Justice and the American Way. This is just people who probably shouldn't have these powers, slowly figuring out who they really are.

I loved this movie, there were a few flaws, but I'm really not going to let them get in the way of it. Some of the characters weren't really all that fleshed out, nor were they brilliantly acted, but at the same time, the story itself was just so powerful, compelling and detailed that none of that matters. Genuinely the best use of telekenisis that you will ever see, ever.

Highly recommended, go see it. Really hope Max Landis gets to make some more, or something else, because this really shows that he grew up with all this stuff (as he did) and took away all the right lessons from it.

Next review: The Descendants

Tuesday, 14 February 2012

The Big Heart-Shaped Day

I'm pretty sure you know my feelings on Valentines Day. If not, go look up last year's entry and see what I said. Then remind me, because I can't be arsed to look for myself. But all that is kind of overshadowed by the main events of the day. There's no woman in my life, so I had business instead.

As I have bitched, whined and moaned about before, Myself, Tim and Kerry were trying to put a business plan and presentation together to present to the Corn Exchange management team and try to win ourselves a franchise. We had to do a business catering event showing off both our lunchtime and canape menu.

We put a lot of work into this. We put our hearts and souls into it, trying our very best to impress and show that we actually had something to offer. We discovered afterwards that of the six or seven business plans submitted (some of them from professional caterers), only two were given an interview, which was ourselves and the other group.

The group that got the offer in the end.

Turns out that our food didn't quite measure up to theirs, what with them being a great deal fancier than we were. We made baguettes, bagels, pigs in blankets and some strawberries on eggy bread to be a Valentines Day themed canape. They made spinach and ristretto pancake pizza things and salmon roulade and omlette rolls and... yeah, we didn't really stand a chance.

While I know that I can't quite be impartial about this, since I'm on the losing side of this little contest, I don't think that this was the best move for the Corn Exchange. I mean, Me and Tim have been running the cafe for them already, we know who we get and we know what they like. These new folk... well, they don't know that building like I know it. They simply can't.

So that's me out on my bike for a day job.

THE ARTIST.

Given that this review is actually written after the Awards... I really don't see what all the fuss was with this film. I mean, really? It was cute and all, but it didn't really have anything that made it all that memorable. I get kinda riled up by stuff like this, I appreciate that it wants to be art rather than entertainment, but that it also tries to entertain just to cover its bases, and then it gets lauded simply because of that.

Yes, it's in black and white, yes it's silent (for the most part). Does that matter? No, not really. It's cute, as I said, but it's just a romantic comedy that has a funny dog. It's a cool dog. Other than that, I simply can't appeciate it as anything more than a pointless gesture backwards. There's only one moment I truly loved, and that was John Goodman portraying the little dollar signs in his eyes for the ending sequence.

See it if you will, it's not as special as everyone thinks it is.

Next time: CHRONICLE

Tuesday, 7 February 2012

Fairness and Seriousness

How seriously do we take life? I just spent the last four and a half hours playing Lord of the Rings Risk, ending at around 5am, instead of having a massively required business meeting, with my work starting at 1:15 tomorrow. That doesn't even give me 8 hours sleep, let alone the chance to actually do some of that meeting in the morning. Why do we do this to ourselves? How serious can this attempt at setting up our own business be?

Do I even want to do it?

I mean, everyone wants me to, because it's exciting for them. It's not exciting for me. It's fucking terrifying for me. Everyone says that I must be excited, right? No, I'm not. I'm dreading it, I have no confidence and I'm seriously considering quitting before I've even got it started. I'm not the person for this. I'm not cut out for this. I'm not even sure I want it to go ahead, even for the other two guys in my group's sake.

Is that very fair of me?

Of course it isn't. But I'll do my best to stick it out, because as Moina keeps pointing out, there's no such thing as fair and nobody gets what they deserve.

Which is just somewhat depressing in itself, since I'm really rather down at the moment about the whole woman thing. I genuinely feel like she got me addicted and then took away my supply, and I can't seem to find any other supply nearby. Yes, that means that I simply don't know what to do after not having a girlfriend for a month, despite the fact I was single for seven years before we got together.

And I kinda resent that.

I want to go back to being that lazy student who didn't really take anything seriously, only needed to work 10 hours a week and spent my entire time playing games and watching films.

It's not fair that we just can't take life seriously all the time. It's not fair that we just can't be the people other people want us to be all of the time. It's just... not fair.

WAR HORSE.

Beautiful. Poignant. Loved it. Not sure how it'll do at the Oscars but who really cares.

Was it just me or did Devon circa-1913 really feel remeniscent of Hobbiton?

Next up: THE ARTIST