Last week Wednesday, Jason and I celebrated Cthulhumas early, as he was flying to visit his family for the holidays. We did it up in proper style–I took him out to dinner, he took me out for drinks, and then we went home, opened gifts, and watched Sharktopus, because my man knows what I like. No one cried, so it wasn’t technically a holiday, but it was lovely nonetheless.
At first glance, Sharktopus appears to be about a half-shark, half octopus hybrid, which for some undiscernable reason has both whiskers on its face and bayonets on the tips of its tentacles, neither of which are found on either species in nature. Upon further reflection, I have decided that existence of Sharktopus is proof that Syfy loathes its target audience. The cancellation of Stargate Universe, the mere existence of Caprica–these things were evidence that Syfy kind of disliked the people to whom they cater, but Sharktopus is hard proof, a bayonetted-tentacle slap across the face that screams “OH GOD WE HATE YOU FUCKING NERDS SO FUCKING MUCH AND THIS IS HOW WE’RE GOING TO HURT YOU.”
Bad movies can be wonderfully fun, and given my intense love for trash culture, I enjoy a wide range of B movies, from the earnest-yet-inept to the self-aware. Sharktopus falls squarely into the self-aware category, however, the entire thing is done with a wink and a nod in a sort-of insulting way. “I bet you retards would like to see some dudes get yanked off the side of a boat while eating sandwiches. *WINK* Here ya go, assholes!” “Let’s see, I bet you shitstains would laugh if a stacked girl in a bikini found a gold coin on the beach and was so excited she started jumping up and down, jumbling her jubbly jiggly bits, and then BAM, sharktopus, all while some creepy dude watches and doesn’t help and then takes the coin she found. *WINK* There it is! We just gave you jerkoffs jackoff material for a month. By the way, the creepy dude and the pimpled teenager who shouts ‘AWESOME’ when he sees Sharktopus attack are both allegorical to what we think of you, our audience. Fucksticks.” Look, Syfy–if *I* can see what you’re really saying, it’s obvious. Maybe tone the hatred of your audience down a little? Or turn the production of your made-for-tv crapsterpieces over to someone who isn’t so bitterly resentful that he’s directing this instead of something like Black Swan that he infuses it with all of his loathing? Just a thought.
As far as the gift-giving went, Jason either genuinely liked all of the things I got for him, or he’s a far better actor than anyone in Sharktopus. I had done some snooping around on the internet and found his Amazon wishlist of two items, only one of which would make a suitable gift. He said that one was a genuine suprise, unlike the piles and piles of socks–athletic socks and support socks and squishy socks and fuzzy socks and moisture-wicking socks and god knows what other superpowers dude socks have. This is the thing about dude socks: I am used to purchasing lady socks, which are sold according to the laws of cuteness and softness–there really is no other standard that I have seen. Dude socks are all sold on the basis of performance enhancement, a concept with which I am unfamiliar in terms of socks. Arch support socks, cushion socks, odor-resistant socks, moisture-wicking socks, penis-enlarging socks, 50-yard-dash speed socks, bear-fighting socks, socks that will sneak out of the house at night and slay your enemies while you slumber peacefully…the list goes on and on. How am I supposed to know what sort of sock is the ideal sock? The World’s Greatest Sock? “To hell with it,” I muttered (truly, an embodiment of the holiday spirit), and bought some of each. Maybe we’ll need to hold some sort of sock endurance test, with graphs and charts.
He also said he’d like a t-shirt, maybe a matching t-shirt with me, which is not something I’m super-comfortable with because, hey, I’ve spent a long time building this obnoxious identity and it’s not going to go down without a fight. But I did find something that would make us both happy–the coordinating but not matching glow-in-the-dark Tron shirts at Threadless. I also got him some shower stuff that smells like apple pie, as he mentioned that apple pie is one of his favorite-ever smells–the best part about philosophy shower stuff (in my opinion) is that it smells amazing in the shower or while you’re taking a bath, but the scent doesn’t linger beyond the shower, so you don’t have to smell like apple pie or pumpkin spice muffin or gingerbread or peppermint bark or whatever for the rest of the day.
He got me a boxed copy of “Yo! Noid!” for the NES, a game (surprisingly) made by Capcom that’s essentially a big advertisement for Dominos pizza that I have a lot of nostalgia for that disappeared in the Great Game-Selling of Nineteen Ninety-Something, when my brother decided that the family NES was now his NES so he could pawn it for pennies to Funcoland and get a SNES. I’m not bitter or mad about this at all. Noooooo sir. Maybe a little. Anyhow, when I started working at Gamestop, I began to recollect these NES games, and I got my hands on most all of the titles that I remember playing as a drooling brace-faced child–pretty well all of them save “Yo! Noid!” which never showed up as a trade-in at the store. I had mentioned how bad games hold a special place in my collection and my heart to him in one of our earliest communications, and how it was missing “Yo! Noid!”…and he remembered, and it’s no longer missing.
He also got me this monstrosity:
Look at how huge it is compared to what I was using before (which was also a gift so I’m kind of loathe to get rid of it, though I have absolutely no idea what I’d use it for)! I hardly know what to do with so much screen real estate. Using Photoshop is going to be awesome now–no more toolbars piled upon toolbars which are piled upon yet more toolbars!
Best non-holiday ever.
