The Goods

Saturday my buddy and me went movie hopping. "Isn't that something you do in high school?" Well, yea. Unless you live in Fresno and have nothing else going on.

It was fun though, reliving high school a little bit. It was great being afraid of getting caught when we darted in between theaters (they had a good bit of security too). I liked having authority to be afraid of instead of just being afraid of my own stupid actions.

We saw District 9. Eh. Inglourious Basterds. Great movie! Nothing to do with Fresno though.

But The Goods. Surprise surprise, it's got a Fresno joke! I wrote earlier about the astonishing number of movies which make fun of a city most people on the east coast have never heard of.

In fact, I took note of the lowest-common-denominator nature of most of the jokes in The Goods. Almost all of them were either racist, sexist, made fun of retarded people, or were simply about sex. If they weren't that then the humor depended on simple volume or the juxtaposition of a businessman wanting to be in a boy band (a.k.a. effeminate). Anyone from any era anywhere would get these jokes as we all know what Asians are and what sex is.

This makes the Fresno joke an anomaly, it's one of the most sophisticated and thought out jokes in the whole film! Why do they run this joke knowing it will be completely lost on more than half the people who see it (as the east coast has way more citizens than the west)?

I can just see that part of the film playing in a theater in my hometown. The whole audience would be silent.

It's an inside joke. And yet they still couldn't resist.

I wondered too about the other people watching the movie. Does it bother them that their hometown gets constantly lampooned by outsiders? Do they ever wonder if it really is better in the outside world? Do they think that maybe this many people just can't be wrong and that they need to do something about it?......

Nope, they don't.

Thirsty Thursdays

I sometimes get pangs of guilt about writing a negative blog, especially when the negativity of others gets to me. Instead, I like to think of this as an honest effort to keep people who don't know about the city from getting the wrong impression. If you're a conservative, family-oriented person who basically likes sitting around the house you'd probably like it here.

Reason I say all this is that I had a really good time last night at the Fresno Grizzlies game. Chukchansi Park is a great downtown venue. More importantly, Thirsty Thursdays is a great promotion where you can get trashed for cheap -- and boy did we.

Nice place, eh?

We had a hookup for free tickets so the beer was the only expense. No one had any idea what the score was, who we were playing, what sport was being played, or where the hell we were, but we enjoyed ourselves. By the end of the night we were singing random songs as a group and hoping nobody we knew was there. Yee Haw.

Caught a glimpse of Fresno Bee columnist Matt James. He was a lot shorter than I expected, and I wonder why he insists on the Mr. Clean look. I was hoping he'd write a column about the game but instead all we got was this. Hard to believe all that stuff happened!

There were negatives, namely that they made you wait in a big line to I.D. you and get you a reeeeeeeeeally tight wrist band and then checked your I.D. again EVERY SINGLE TIME you bought a beer. What gives?

We had a girl with us from France, complete with the heavy French accent and pit hair (seriously!... not really). They wouldn't accept her passport as an ID. She shrugged it off, saying they didn't deserve her money anyway, but I felt bad. Unfortunately that's more of an America thing than a Fresno thing.

It's funny though because France is so insanely lax about the subject. The girl told me she had been drunk, in a bar, at the age of 14 and nobody thought a damn thing of it. Vive le France!! Fucke le Fresno!... I mean,... yea.