Movies.

Yesterday, I woke up at 7:30 and watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, because I just read the book and needed to know. First of all, didn't realize it was Johnny Depp until the hat came off. Secondly, was kind of surprised it was directed by Terry Gilliam, whose latest offering was a steaming pile of self-congratulatory slag known as The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which also had Johnny Depp in it, for just a little bit.

Then, as I scanned through the Netflix, I saw Babes in Toyland, which I had faint memories of watching when I was a kid. At least, I thought I did. When I called my mom halfway through this cinematic atrocity to demand and explanation, she said she didn't remember it at all, so maybe I made my memory up because the Babes in Toyland music is so famous. At first, I wasn't going to watch it...until I noticed it was starring Keanu Reeves. And Drew Barrymore, right at the age when she began snorting cocaine and drinking tequila. You know, 13. So I watched it, and now I know why Drew Barrymore started snorting cocaine and drinking tequila at that age. There are lots of scenes where people are close-talking to her face (for some reason, probably because the director didn't know how to frame a shot) and I kept thinking, "Can't you smell it on her breath? By her own admission she was smoking a pack a day when she was 13. Was there a behind the scenes Babes in Toyland Barrymore intervention? It's the only thing that would excuse this movie for being so, so, so very shitty, is if everyone was more concerned about Drew Barrymore's 13 year old intervention than they were making sets.

But man, Keanu Reeves. I know I have seen this movie, I know it. Way back in my toddler brain, this movie registered. And I wonder if my teenager brain, in the primitive part, remembered that I'd seen Keanu in Babes in Toyland when I saw him in The Matrix. I think I might have. Because all through The Matrix I remember feeling that he was a little off, like he was hiding something in his eyes. And it wasn't the whole Morpheus speech about "all your life, you've felt that things were not as they should be" and excellent work on the directors' parts to make the audience feel it. No, it's something much more primitive that I think we all feel when we watch Keanu act. It seems that he, more so than any other actor, is unable to separate his past from what he's doing at the moment, so all the bad movies he's made are haunting HIM, instead of US. We can forgive. We want to forgive. But Keanu....he can't forget.

Then we (WE, not I) watched (*choke*) 6 episodes of Denise Richards: It's Complicated.

Then I watched the second Matrix, which did not suck as badly as I thought it did when I first saw it! In fact, it was great. It made sense this time, It flowed from the first one...because I really hated this thing when I first saw it. I don't even think I've seen the third, that's how much I hated it. Maybe because it's been about 8 years since I saw it and computer programs are no longer such a mystery to me, and all that blahsy-blah about back doors and exiled programs and keymakers and shit were way too elevated back then. Of course, Keanu seems way too...present in each scene, like he's saying his lines, but his eyes are saying, "Ok, now I'm reaching into Trinity's body and pulling out the bullet, which is so much cooler than that time I drove a little purple decoupaged go-kart around Toyland to help save Georgie Porgie and the Cookie Factory. SO much cooler. I hope everybody remembers THIS, as I EXTRACT THIS BULLET WITH MY BARE HANDS IN MY BITCHIN BLACK LEATHER TRENCHCOAT, and not THAT, when I was locked in a jail cell by the evil Barnaby Barnacle, scourge of Toyland, and I sang that song at the top of my lungs about Cinncinnati Ohio being the best city in the world so I wouldn't turn into an evil minion by breathing in the evil smoke he sprayed everywhere."

Fact-check me, I triple-dog dare you.

What a big, open Sunday I have before me. I have little stepping stones of stuff to do, like clean the kitty box and wash my bras, but I could do anything I wanted today, provided it's free. So that's pretty much movies and books, which is what I did yesterday. But I have another Matrix to watch and the other half of Alice in Wonderland to read, and another whole season of Denise Richards.