Bad Lunchroom Meatloaf

Bad Lunchroom Meatloaf

Seattle has two newspapers, both of which dedicated almost the entire front page of the arts and leisure section to the opening of the new Mission Impossible piece of shit. How do I know that this movie is a complete piece of shit? Of course I haven’t seen it, nor do I plan on subjecting myself to its two hours of puerile doggerel, but I did watch part of the first one in this series so I feel that I am somewhat of an expert. This will be the third in the series; they call it MI III—as if it has some sort of biblical magnitude. But I’m not here to be a film critic (the lowest form of life on the entire planet).

I’m here to ask why two daily newspapers in America’s 10th largest metropolis feel obliged to treat a lousy action movie as if it were a news story. Both papers gave the film a less-than-favorable review but everyone knows that bad publicity is better than none at all. I’m sure that one of the pansies that review movies for the New Yorker will write about this turd of a movie, even though I can’t imagine anyone who reads that magazine would lower themselves to watch the third in a series of awful action films that insult the intelligence of anyone over the age of 11 and most of those under that age who aren’t severely retarded.

Someone needs to explain the creepy forces at work in our society that dictate that a shitty movie somehow turns into a news item. Someone needs to explain to me how a writer can be so desperate that he or she turns to reviewing movies to pay the rent. Isn’t there more dignity in manning a glory hole at the bus station? Doesn’t glory hole duty at the bus station toilet pay at least as much as movie reviewer? Of course, in the case of the New Yorker’s Anthony Lane, he probable reviews shitty movies and then works the glory hole just for fun. I suppose that everyone needs a hobby. Lord knows that going to the movies is a pretty fucking tedious hobby these days thanks to films like the one central to this essay.

Yes, I know what some of you are going to say that it is all about money. That seems to be the modern version of the Nuremberg defense. We all just go along because that’s where the money is. I suppose that I’m just being a whinny little sissy because I’m just not ready to have a couple of huge media conglomerates make every single decision for me when it comes to the arts. I’m surprised that the big media corporations haven’t tried to shut down libraries on some kind of copyright infringement. Who needs a library when you have a Barnes & Nobles? Entertainment choices for American consumers are already about as limited as menu items in a high school cafeteria and probably even less appealing. The problem is that the marketing juggernauts behind the big studio movie releases are spending tens of millions to tell us that the shitty lunchroom meatloaf is fine cuisine.

Of course I can choose not to go see MI III. I guess that not seeing this movie makes me some sort of fucking elite or something. I used to skip lunch in high school. I never thought that I was trying to be elitist back then; I was just trying to escape the unrelenting conformity and low standards of the lunchroom environment. You go see Mission Impossible III and I’ll go shoot baskets out in the parking lot.