heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who.

2007-02-23 / 9:23 a.m.

On Tuesday afternoon the Brit had his citizenship interview, for which he spent the morning cramming. "This is a rad country," he declared, after reviewing our fine history. As he rattled off the constitutional amendments pertaining to voting rights, I told him, "Awww, you're just like a ninth grader!"

As you might be imagining, he was overprepared. In case you are thinking about becoming an American citizen, you will need to know the colors of the flag, the name of the President, and the number of governmental branches. Just the number, not even the names, though the Brit threw in the names to prove that, you know, he took test preparation seriously. Directly after the interview, he went to Wal-Mart and bought some Chunky Soup and Chef Boy-ar-dee Beef Ravioli. Then he became immediately disgusted with America, which is pretty much what happens when you go to Wal-Mart. I wish I were making this up, but the ravioli is still in the cupboard. And I have to admit that I think it's a pretty good anecdote. He asked whether I'd be changing his blog moniker to "Brank," but I think I'll stick with the original. Most people guess that he's from Australia, anyway. At some point he'll have to go pledge allegiance to the flag with a bunch of other new citizens, and at that point I plan to bake a cake decorated with "America, Fuck Yeah!" I am not joking. I will post pictures.

As for me, I am under the weather and a bit boring this week, and no one really needs to hear about my yucky mild cold. I do believe that tonight I will be going to a middle school musical for which my sister is the choreographer. It should be super-sweet and will rock the world of young Henry, who has already decided that his birthday party this year is going to be a "show" party, with everyone acting out scenes from musicals. After tonight's performance, for a complete shift, if I am not knackered by then, the Brit's band is playing. But I may just have to come home and lie down and watch whatever the Netflix queue has delivered up.

Let's talk about that queue for a moment. Sometimes it seems that the Brit goes through and adds movies willy-nilly. Because of this, I have watched The Lake House, which was just barfy. I can't say I didn't enjoy myself, though, because we made fun of it the entire time, e.g., "Did you see Keanu acting just now, with his face? Look at him act!" Then last night we watched Code 46, which I think was supposed to be deep and was quite good-looking and pretty interesting until the last, like, third of the movie. The characters all spoke a cool international patois, and could take viruses for almost anything, including perfect pitch. I dug that. Although can movies please get rid of the strobey pseudo-sexual falling in love at the dance club scenes? So boring.

Anyway--I'm sure I'm spoiling this for almost no one, because if you're a sci-fi or Winterbottom fan you've already seen this and if not you probably won't--the movie's a futuristic dystopian thing in which Code 46 states that people are forbidden to "procreate" (read: couple in any way) if they are 25, 50, or 100% genetically identical. Code 46 pregnancies are terminated; the woman's memories of the man, the sex act, and the pregnancy are removed; the woman gets a virus that will make her sexually fearful and repulsed by that man and will also cause her to report the violation, should it occur again.

Nothing happens to the man.

So where this movie lost me a bit was in the relationship between the main characters, played by Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton. It was kind of underdeveloped, and Robbins was oddly boring. And then the movie truly lost me when her character, Maria, begs his character, William, to force her to have sex with him. They've already violated Code 46 once, which she doesn't remember, and he's told her about the Code 46 virus she now has, you see. So he straps her down and we get to see a whole love-rape fantasy montage up close, shaved twat and all. This is where I truly threw up my hands and checked out.

The outcome, as you might expect, is not good. She gets up in the morning and reports the violation (another side effect of the virus). They take it on the run and get caught. She is exiled with her memories; he is decreed to have had lapsed judgment due to the empathy virus he takes for his job, and gets to go home to his wife and kid with the memory of Maria scrubbed from his brain. I guess it's not surprising that a futuristic dystopian government punishes a transgressive woman and lets an equally transgressive man go free, but my GOD don't we have enough of those narratives already?

Maybe I just need to watch some reruns of 90210. Talk about transgressive.

Take it on the run, baby,
Maven.

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