Visions of the American Society.
And Man.
See the man. Out on his front lawn, fired from his job and his marriage on the same day. It is Everything Must Go. I didn't think much of this movie, although I did get—I think—the letting-go aesthetic of the title and the movie's poster/cover, whatever. But though I was a big fan of the Sedona Method, I was not yet cognizant of the world that I was living in and was about to have hit me like it hit Will Ferrell, in the movie.
This guy is on his front lawn, all his stuff put out there and the doors and stuff locked by his wife, who seemed to reference an affair in the letter she left him, although I didn't pause it this time to look—if I ever did—and also didn't see enough of it when I did see it, to know so.
Anyway, he is of course visited by police, who stand there talking into a little radio with little cheat codes, for cheating the common man, before talking down to him about "living on his front lawn" (he was kicked out, there) (I don't know where his wife was [Ed: This was written and completed before finishing the movie. The ending is even more horror]) and having an "open container [of alcohol] in public," and of course, he says, "I can't drink a beer on my own front lawn?" or in so many words. This is the world we live in, you and I. And I feel the same way as Will Ferrell (or, his character, here). And of course, there's this New Yorker woman who moved to Arizona who is a photography teacher, with her husband also probably being some kind of asshole, I think. And she seems to be heading towards cheating on him with this guy on the front lawn [Ed: Yeah, I wasn't totally wrong, at least], as we see her through a window, saying, "Hey," or, in so many words, "when are you going to get here," and he wasn't yet moved in, with her—and of course, we're supposed to totally understand that this woman would cheat on her husband because he didn't get to their new house fast enough.
This is the world that we live in, men live in. Oh, and the woman's pregnant. Maybe she doesn't cheat on him. I don't know.
Okay, so yes, the wife referenced I guess not an affair but another woman, and Will tells the non-wife (and the wife of someone else) about the story, I suppose, which was that there was a woman who brought champagne to a company party and he, being a "recovering alcoholic," said, "Just one," and then drank like six bottles with her and perhaps some of the other people, and he didn't know if he slept with the woman. Because he blacked out.
And so, I will not let him off, of course, for cheating, if he did (although the fact that it was not in his memory somewhat mitigates at least some of the responsibility, though one could of course say, he drank the first drink), and I have actually had contentious conversations with friends, or at least, one that I can remember, where I said how crappy it was that they were either cheating or sort of dallying with cheating. I'm a hardliner, whether you're a guy or a girl, don't cheat. Or, if you do, you did a bad thing.
And I still haven't finished it, this time, but if that woman somehow pregnant-cheats on her husband with this man, then of course, it will be basically a metaphor for at least how the world looks, to me, and to many other men. Yeah, you didn't make it over and she had to spend a couple days at a new house? She's gonna fuck the neighbor.
I mean, I hope that's not the way things are, but then the cop is gonna come to your front lawn and tell you that you can't live on the Earth. That part is gonna happen, and then your wife will probably cheat on you, too. That other part may not happen, but it just feels like that's the world we live in, and she just won't even consider it a bad thing, either.
I don't say that in contempt so much as in pain and sort of desperation, like any relationship is just basically a house built at the edge of the sea. And your wife or girlfriend is likely going to be digging at the sides, at all times. Anyway, just to say this movie feels like not only my life, right up to the kids outside the convenience store who ask Ferrell for beer earlier in the movie, and then he says no, they bite back, verbally, so does he, and then one of the little shits comes over and smacks his Slurpee off the car.
And he just looks at him, and what can he do? In this world, he's a slave, and he can say nothing. Every other person can do every possible thing to him, and the moment he responds, he is the bad guy, always. And then you have your modern wisdom teachers saying, like, "It's all inside you," and it's like, maybe. Or it's all attacking Me.
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All posts up until the one before this one, along with the Note about trans people, so-called, on dating apps, are sort of what I consider or feel to be my main message, and you can actually get a copy of the text plus the transcripts Substack made automatically of the audios. It is here. Everything after that, I'm doing more because I would like to and would like to see where the page can go, with it. But please, consider that my main offering.
I had a strange sort of affinity for "Everything Must Go." I think it's because a year earlier I went bust ass broke due to selling our house at a steep loss, at the end of 2008. Brutal. Not the cheating part, just the concept of being thrown out of your house. It was sappy, of course, but also sometimes a movie like this can be timely to your own experiences.
I saw an interview with Michael Keaton about a bomb he made called, "My Life," and it was a bad movie, but some cancer patients really resonated with the storyline. How the family coped etc. That makes sense to me.
Of course, I liked The Matrix Revolutions.