Song of the Day: "Rom Com Hacky Sack / Space Flex T-Skrrt"

A column about music, and about writing about music, or not. Today's author is Joe. See the previous songs HERE.

"Rom Com Hacky Sack / Space Flex T-Skrrt"

Origami Angel

from Origami Angel Broke Minecraft EP

2020

My editor, the BASTARD that he is, implores me to write a review. Threatens, more like it. I'm sittin' in the dark but I can just feel the cold steel of a gun against my temple as he leans down and whispers in my ear about needin' to review the damn kids' movie or else it's all kaplow and kablooey and splatter all on the fuckin' wall. Fucked up if you asked me. Ain't signed up for this. Can't just watch a dumb little movie with the kids, everything's gotta be IMPORTANT and MEANINGFUL, even the shitty Minecraft movie. He has big words to say about the bloggin' that he does seemingly every fuckin' day, how it brings meanin' to his life, I just don't get it, I don't want higher meanin', I just wanna relax in them fancy reclinin' chairs they got there in the theaters these days and I wanna let the bright colors and silly jokes wash over me and relax me and make me forget about them troubles for just a lil bit. Fuckin' bloggin', c'mon now, seriously?

"The best film reviews give excessive context for how and when and why you viewed the film" he says, all menacingly, like he's gonna end me if I don't talk about why we went to see the dumb movie. It was an attempt at good parentin', okay?! Their friends all got together on a Sunday but it was too much with the g-damn daddy (me) workin' on that day and so that daddy thinks that maybe it's a good idea to bring 'em on a Monday, after work, just sumtin nice to do, leave the darn baby at home, sneak some Aldi popcorn into the theater, teach the kiddos how to put the bags in their jackets so it don't look too conspicuous, pay an insane number of dollar bills for entrance to a show that'll feature Jack Black being the most Jack Black he's ever been. Cash that paycheck, brotha, get that money. I don't have any money myself. Spent it all at the theater.

My editor is watching me type this. I keep looking over at him in the corner, flopsweat dripping down into my face as I type and type about this thing that happened to me, this movie I saw, I don't know why he needs the words but he does. He's positively DEMANDING them. I don't want to stop typing or else the consequences'll be dire, he says. He's like well whatchya think of the movie, type that, and I'm like okay, okay, give me a second, I'm typin', fast as I can boss, not sure why ya need to know about this fuckin' kids' swill, it ain't like anyone's gonna be needin' to read a Minecraft Movie review, what the hell is this blog anyway, what is a blog even, I don't get it, what year is it—

Okay! Fuck. Um. It, uh, it was fine. It met expectations. I don't know one damn thing about that fuckin' Minecraft video game 'cept the kiddies love it, my kids don't play it but I guess their friends are squawk about it at school, don't matter 'cause I can speak from experience having watched the darn movie that is based on a thing I have no knowledge of, I think there are blocks you can build shit with, villagers who speak gibberish, zombies or wolves or some shit? I don't know, man. I don't know, I don't know. Maybe ya don't need ta know, is the point I'm makin' here.

Kinda funny, I says though my fingers are shakin' from that gun still being pointed hither, kinda funny that this was legitimately the first movie I seen in theaters in six full years. Nothin' is how I remembered. There're a lot more ads on that fuckin' screen now, commercials that pushed the start time of the Minecraft thing from 5:30 to well past 6. And the seats, holy HELL, the seats are big now and they go way back and I won't like I def fell asleep for a hot minute there when Jason Mamoa was boxing a zombie or something, I don't know, I—"WRITE ABOUT THE MOVIE" the editor screams, suddenly, terrifyingly, standing up with veins pulsin' on his forehead, gun cocked, and I'm like, I am, I am, I'm trying, ya told me to write, I'm just a fuckin' writin' here, I dunno what else ya want me to fuckin' say about this, it ain't meaningful, I can't make it meaningful, what do ya want from me—

—FUCK, okay, uh, I thought maybe the movie dropped the ball with its ostensible central thesis, something about being creative, lettin' yourself be creative, Minecraft being a game in which you can create, or whatever, and the little kid whose actor doesn't have a Wikipedia hyperlink is supposably creative, but he's told that he needs to be challenged, so that's why he leaves the Minecraft world, or something, I don't know, it felt very tacked on, like can't we just have a movie in which Jack Black does silly things, does it have to have deeper meanin'..... look, boss, didn't mean to imply anything about the blog here, I'm just sayin', not everything need nuance like that, sometimes you just wanna kill blockhead zombies. Okay! Fine, jaysus, yes, A Minecraft Movie could mean a lot to me if I tried to find meaning withing myself is that seriously what you want me to type here? Alright! I typed it!

Coolidge is in this one too. I tried to tell the kids that she's the waitress from Gravity Falls. I'd rather them think that this is the reason she has been very "in" in the past few years, and not because an extremely mid-tier zeitgeist-y TV show Peter Principle'd the shit out of her career. Once upon a time, I too wanted to bang Stifler's mom, and now, she's just the annoying credit card commercial woman who is on the big screen trying to have sex with a video game character and has sex with him so good that he gains the ability to speak and has the same voice as Matt Berry. Wait, did I mention yet that Napoleon Dynamite directed this fuckin' shit?

Editor dude's got his pudgy hands across his face and he's rockin' back and forth groanin' and moanin' because this ain't what he wanted, what he wanted was for me, his friend (though he's pushin' it in that regard by making me write this at gunpoint, ain't he), to find some deeper meanin' in the experience of watchin' this fuckin' stupid fuckin' dumb fuckin' children's fuckin' movie cash-in bullshit, and I tell him, holy SHIT bro, I says, there's a lightbulb moment here, because I found the answer, I really did, I'm BLOGGIN' ma I really am, holy SHIT is this what it's like, to make a connection, holy FUCKIN' shit, here we go, buckle in, I'm facing the screen and the fingers are flyin' across that keyboard and the editor he's got bulging eyes now when he realizes I'm locked in and I says:

I found the answer in the music. It always happens this way. The framework of this review required me to choose a song to display, and my mind reeled backward to a pandemic that caused indie rock heroes Origami Angel to move their concert into virtual reality. They played a short concert in Minecraft. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I can fill in some blanks. Main point here is that Origami Angel had an album with the name of the movie in its title, so that made for an easy song selection.

Except that the song starts with a quote from some esoteric meme or pop culture touchstone (as all Origami Angel songs must), and this one says: "I believe these words came from the Pokémon movie." And suddenly, I'm back in the waning days of my tenth year on this earth, and my own dad decides to bring me and my sister to see the first Pokémon movie. I remember I enjoyed it. And then, twenty years later, my own dad admits to me, adult-to-adult, that he thought that experience at the movie theater was absolute torture. 

I appreciate now that he brought us to the theater to see the movie, despite personal misgivings, and I appreciate even more how he kept his mouth shut about those criticisms for two decades. Because one of my strongest beliefs as a parent is that I should be sensitive to and supportive of my kids' own journeys through music and movies. I think that talking shit on a movie, even if it's a huge fucking piece of shit, can be detrimental to a child's upbringing. It damages their self-esteem, if we're being honest here. My two daughters wanted me to see A Minecraft Movie with them. They wanted me to share in their world in that particular way. Letting them know that I thought it was a terrible movie would be devestating to them. That would be akin to pushing them away. I don't want to push them away. I want to embrace everything that they embrace. I want to be a good parent.

—ACK what the fuck was that corny bullshit I ask, and my editor is just shakin' his head like he just licked the Mona Lisa or some shit, like this means anything, like this fuckin' makes up for the fact that he's makin' me fuckin' blog about some fuckin' bullshit I don't give a fuck about, what the hell am I even doing here. I don't like doing this. Just shoot me. Fuckin' shoot me, make it quick, bro, 'cause I ain't bloggin' for you no more. Ya hear me?! Stop makin' me do this, man. It's just a fuckin' blog. Relax.