That ain't no etch-a-sketch

The poster for that hideous movie One Missed Call terrifies me. It's a creepy face with two screaming mouths where the eyes should be--but the noses above the mouths are also included, so it's even weirder and grosser and--blerg. I don't think I have to tell you I most definitely won't be seeing that one.

I did, however, finally see Juno with Allison last night, and I was shocked to find that there's, like, nothing for me to criticize about it. Juno herself doesn't act like any real sixteen-year-old anyone's ever met, but I figure that's the point, right? And Ellen Page is charming, so it worked for me. I did find myself laughing at the most random things, like when she says the girl at the clinic thought she was using a fake name, "like Gene Simmons or Mother Teresa." I don't know--I think I just enjoy shots at alleged holy people. And conjuring Mother Teresa at an abortion clinic: good work.

Juno and Bleeker had matching hamburger phones. I don't know why I fell for the cuteness this time around--there's never a rhyme or reason to what I find touching and what I find revolting--but it killed me.

Soundtrack was super good--as indie film soundtracks tend to be, I suppose. But whatever. I really liked the opening song, "All I Want Is You" by Barry Louis Polisar. I know this is the queerest of the queer, but it reminded me of The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown. Whatever. I loved it. I just bought it on iTunes five seconds ago.

Rainn Wilson is hilarious, too, for the five seconds he's in the movie, and now I wonder why I don't watch The Office. The lines he had could have been terrible in the hands of a different actor, but his delivery was just perfect, so I laughed instead of cringed.

I do not like it when Jason Bateman is skeevy--I only want him to be Michael Bluth, dammit. Like Michael Cera always seems to be some version of George Michael in his movies--an older, more vulgar version, maybe, but still stuttering and sweet and odd. I don't care if that's the only thing he can do; it's adorable. Anyway, I had a bad feeling about him from the beginning; it was clear Vanessa wanted the baby, and Mark was like, "Yeah...not so much," but he was too much of a pussy to say anything. Then when he told Juno he composed music for commercials, I was like, "Yeah, he's totally happy with his life, this aging sellout. Not." And then he said that thing about Vanessa's getting upset when he doesn't "contribute," and he's clearly trying to paint her as a controlling shrew or whatever, but Juno, to her credit, totally doesn't fall for it, because she gets to see just how badly Vanessa wants a baby, and Jennifer Garner was so perfect, playing that. That scene in the mall kind of killed me. I totally love her again. And I saw a picture of her own real kid recently, and she has got to be the cutest famous baby ever. She looks just like her mother.

Anyway! So when Mark tells Juno he's leaving Vanessa, and he's not ready to be a father, and she freaks out and says, "But you're, like, old!" and he says, "How do you see me?" I got so skeeved out. Clearly, Juno just admired his taste in music and movies, but he was, like, "Yeah, I still got it. Teenage girls waaaant me." Or something, you know? Like he could still be cool? And poor Juno had no idea--she just liked him, utterly innocently. And in that way, she was a total sixteen-year-old, naive to the way the world really works. Or whatever.

I've been thinking about how to rebut the "nobody talks like that" criticism, and I really think Juno's the only one who falls into that trap (and Rainn Wilson's gas station clerk, obviously), but isn't that the point? It's not quite a Dawson's Creek scenario, where the teenagers are so goddamned pretentious. I didn't find anything pretentious about Juno--she was just this odd combination of overly articulate or witty thoughts and bad teenage slang. I dug it, I dunno. Especially this: "I need to procure a hasty abortion," because, really, how hard must it be to be sixteen and to say that you need to terminate a pregnancy? Put some wit into it, and maybe it's easier to say. And of course it doesn't work--she tries to make it easy for her to say, and whoever's on the other line can't understand her, so she has to say it straight.

And, as always, Allison Janney is among the best things about a movie in which she's only a supporting character. Also! Sean from Degrassi was randomly some lame-o high school punk! That totally made my night.

Now to move on to something completely unrelated: I had the best New Year's Eve. Allison's family hosted a bonfire in their backyard, and we spent hours out in the snow, watching the fire and staring at the sky and drinking frosty beers. But the best part was that she and her brothers and her dad had constructed this snow tube run in the backyard, and it was, like, perfect. We went down that thing so many times, and it never got boring. We even went down with beers a few times, because who can bear to be separated from their alcoholic beverages? Not us. Shaking up the booze, though, made it flat, but whatever. Once the fire had died down, Allison lured me inside with 3o Rock DVDs, so I didn't get home until four. That's the latest I've stayed up in a while--and certainly the latest I've stayed up on New Year's Eve, which I usually ring in by watching some marathon or other on tv and falling asleep at 1 am. New Year's Eve is such an overrated holiday.

I can't believe I forgot this, but while I was at the Starbucks part of Barnes & Noble, I overheard these two 'mos talking about the Spice Girls, and they started discussing the various solo career attempts, and one of them waxed gay about Melanie C. and was all, "She was the only one who could really sing, anyway. And she's really big in Europe. Remember that song 'I Turn to You'? That whole record, Northern Star, was actually pretty good." And his friend was, like, agreeing, but it was clear that he didn't really care. But I loved every second of it.

I cannot even begin to tell you how much I hate Sugar Ray. I hate them. "Fly" just came on the radio at work, and I, like, started grinding my teeth without even realizing it. They are the worst.

And, hey! Ellen Page was Kitty Pryde in the bombtastic third X-Men film. I was not aware of that. I don't even remembering Kitty Pryde doing anything in the bombtastic third X-Men film, because I only saw it once, and it, you know, bombed, which was so sad because X2 was definitely the best comic book movie out of this glut of comic book movies. Although I didn't see the new Batman or the new Superman, because by the time they came out, Ryan wasn't around to drag me. Still, even though Superman has Parker Posey, Famke Janssen is so hot in X2, nothing will beat that movie.

I decided to keep track of how many times iTunes played a Brandi Carlile song while on shuffle. I shuffled through 5300 songs for approximately five hours, and it played nine different Brandi Carlile songs:
"Love Me Tender" (with Chris Isaak)
"Calling All Angels" (with Tiffany, live at the Higher Ground)
"The Story" (live from the WXPN All About the Music Festival)
"The Clock" (live at Central Washington University)
"Someday Never Comes" (live at the Triple Door)
"Hallelujah" (live at the Cutting Room)
"Fall Apart Again" (live at Easy Street Records)
"Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain" (live at the Cutting Room)
"Hallelujah" (KCRW.com)