I saw the Barbie movie with my droogs the other day. Naturally, I had assumed the movie was a PG family fun adventure, so I was pretty shocked when all these jokes about genitalia happened. Turns out, the movie is rated PG-13. It’s not that I wasn’t expecting any adult humor, but I figured it would be more subtle so the kids wouldn’t know. But Barbie straight up says “penis” and “vagina” in the movie. I was pretty shocked when I heard that. For the most part I found the movie pretty dang funny, especially the scenes with Ken in them. It’s like Marvel humor, but actually funny. There are jokes that I think are too on the nose, like the part where all the Kens are saying that they’ll “beach” each other off, but for the most part, the jokes land. As a comedy movie, I highly recommend it.
As for the plot. The plot sure is something. Basically, after Barbie slowly gains humanlike symptoms, she has to leave Barbieland for the real world to find her owner, cheer her up, and become a normal toy again. So, Barbie and Ken head to LA where Barbie is immediately sexually harassed by every man in the city and Ken becomes enamored with the patriarchal society of LA, which is vastly different from the matriarchal Barbieland he is used to. Yes, this is real, this is in fact the Barbie movie. Hijinks ensue, Ken goes back to Barbieland to establish the patriarchy there. Meanwhile, Barbie finds her owner, a secretary at the Mattel, as well as her annoying as hell bratty teen daughter. There’s this really dumb scene where Barbie tries to talk to the little brat and the teen calls Barbie a fascist and an enemy of feminism. Yes, this is real, this is in fact, still the Barbie movie I am discussing. Anyhow, Barbie and her two new pals head back to Barbieland. Except, it has been turned into Kenland, because Ken has turned all of the Barbies into brainwashed slaves and now Kens rule the whole town. This makes Barbie very depressed and she falls into a catatonic state. Then, Barbie’s owner and the annoying little brat are leaving Barbieland when Michael Cera pops up into the back of their car because he wants to flee Barbieland as well, HOWEVER, the Kens are building a wall to stop them from leaving, HOWEVER, the Kens don’t know how to build sideways and can only build their wall straight up, HOWEVER, the Kens stop building the wall to stop the trio from leaving, HOWEVER, MICHAEL CERA KNOWS MARTIAL ARTS AND BEATS THE CRAP OUT OF THE KENS SINGLEHANDEDLY AND THIS INSPIRES BARBIE’S OWNER AND HER LITTLE TURD TO HEAD BACK TO BARBIELAND AND STOP THE PATRIARCHY. YES, THIS IS REAL, THIS IS IN FACT THE BARBIE MOVIE PRESENTED TO YOU BY MATTEL.
Anyway. Barbie’s owner meets up with the resistance group of discontinued Barbies who are trying to find a way to rebel against the Kens. Then, Barbie’s owner goes on an unhinged rant about society’s expectations of women and how she feels oppressed, and it turns out that this can cure brainwashed Barbies. So Barbie is shaken out of her coma and the resistance group starts kidnapping all of the other Barbies to cure them of their brainwashing, which basically is just them shoving them in a van and subjecting them to feminist propaganda. They have to be fast however, because an election is coming up where all the Kens are going to vote to change the constitution to officially turn Barbieland into a patriarchal society. The resistance group’s solution to this is to of course, take away the Kens’ ability to vote. So all the Barbies are cured, they nudge the Kens into waging a civil war against each other, and while the Kens are distracted the Barbies vote to not be a patriarchy. Thus, the Kens become the second-class citizens once more, Barbieland is restored, Barbie becomes a human, all is well. It sure is something. I liked the part where all the Kens were dancing.
Honestly, I thought the ending was going to be the Barbies and Kens learning that not one gender should have power over the other, but it just ends with the Barbies regaining total control of the government. They do sort of imply that things might eventually change, but they don’t show anything actually changing. It’s feels very off-kilter and hypocritical to the movie’s central theme to have it end in such a way. But I’m not going to go on a Ben Shapiro rant about it because I’m not unhinged. So that’s really all I have to say.
School is starting up again soon which sucks because I really hate school. I also have to take AP Psychology because I didn’t have enough room to fit Debate and Creative Writing into my schedule, so it was either Psych or something dumb like Ceramics or Art. I’m taking four AP classes this year which is pretty daunting, because I got burnt out from taking just AP World last year. And AP Physics is supposed to be the hardest exam, so that’s not very comforting. To my surprise, there seems to be a whole culture of AP students who have their own online community dedicating to studying the AP material and ranking the AP exams by difficulty. I’m not a nerd so I don’t really want to join up with those sorts, but I’ve been checking out their up on their difficulty tier list, and the results are not looking good. And according to a lot of people, junior year is the toughest year grades-wise. So I’ll have to deal with four AP exams as well as the SAT or ACT or whatever it is I’m supposed to be taking. School sucks balls. I’d rather be working the fields as an uneducated son of a farmer back in the 1800s. Send me to the coal mines or something.
AP exams are hell. If they were purely multiple choice and a few short response questions, I wouldn’t really care. But timed essays. I really hate timed essays. I remember my hand being sore as hell, the clock was ticking and every second spent thinking of what to write was time not well spent. I’m the kind of guy who likes to think thoroughly about what I’m writing before I actually put pen to paper, not just diving straight in with no idea. But this isn’t encouraged in the AP exam because they give you hardly any time to write anything at all, so I spent the first few minutes thinking by the final minute I was on fire trying to cram stuff down. You have an hour to read several documents and write an essay about them. I was making a lot of stuff up in my essay, I will say that much. There was a question about how Chinese culture had affected Asian societies other than Korea, and there was probably something about Confucianism or something, but I blanked and just said that the architecture in Japan’s capital was very reminiscent of Chinese architecture. I knew it was flimsy, but time was running out and I couldn’t think of anything else. Now that I’ve searched it up, this is sort of correct, but I wasn’t really specific on how Japan and China had similar architecture. One thing the AP scorers really like is when you’re specific, because it makes it look like you know a lot. My best work revolved around France because I take French, and I was really hamming it up and quoting stuff in French instead of English because that probably made it look more professional. “Liberte, egalite, et fraternite, which translates into Liberty, equality, and brotherhood,” I wrote, which must have really impressed the scorers.
Aside from the a few panic attacks, I did pretty well on the exam. Funny thing is, if I take it again now, I would definitely fail. I can’t recall anything I did last year. Just looking at the released AP questions now has me scratching my head, making me wonder how I even answered these questions in May. I am fully convinced that school only tests memorization, and does not actually teach anything.
In seventh grade I had to write a personal essay on what my room looked like. I couldn’t really say much except “This is where I sleep and change my clothes.” You know, all of my classmates had wild stuff in their room, beanbags, whole desks to study on, Lego X-Wings displayed on shelves, a giant bed, some even had a TV. And I don’t have crap, save for a drawer with half of the compartments nonfunctional. I’ve been thinking about it, how could I ever invite a girl into my room? “Make yourself comfortable,” I’d say, and gesture towards the sports themed walls and the toy cars glued to my bed and the Snoopy bedsheets and the illustrations of footballs on my blanket.
If I had it my way, I would have a whole desk and bookshelf in my room, maybe a beanbag too. You know, bookshelves with stuff like The Grapes of Wrath on it scream “I’m an intellectual,” which is definitely the vibe I’d like to give off. Funny story, I actually have two copies of The Grapes of Wrath. Well, not very funny, and not really a story either, so never mind. Anyhow, I’d display all of my video game cases and books the same way people display their sports trophies or their Lego sculptures. It’d really showcase my very quirky and intellectual persona. Maybe I’d even hang a Green Day poster up or something to make it seem like I actually care that much about music. “What band is that?” my visitors would ask, and I’d respond pompously, “Why, my unlearned friend, that is the much renowned pop punk band, Green Day. Yes, my taste is much more exquisite than yours.” And then I’d whip out my American Idiot record and start blasting it on a gramophone. And then I’d go, “Say, have you fellas ever heard of Weezer?” And then we’d start imitating the lick from Buddy Holly.
My fingertips are tough and raisinlike from playing the guitar. And I didn’t even know this, but turns out that I’d been playing a classical guitar at Cape Coral, not an acoustic guitar. I didn’t even know that there was such thing as a classical guitar. Here in Ohio, there’s also only a classical, no acoustic. Still, I can’t really hear the difference between classical and acoustic. So really the only difference is that using a pick on a classical kind of sucks, and now I just use my hand. And barre chords are a lot easier on classical, which makes me wonder how bad my barre chords are going to be when I play an acoustic after being used to classical. Still, it feels sort of a waste to get an acoustic when the classical is so similar. Still, I’ve been thinking about asking my mom for an electric for Christmas, purely because electric is cool as hell. I don’t know how much mileage I’d get out of an electric, if I’d prefer it to the more natural sound of the classical, or if I could even figure out all the technical stuff I’d have to do with it. And I still don’t know if playing guitar is something I’m dedicated to, or just a passing hobby I picked up so I can play Green Day songs. But electric guitar makes me look cool. I’d have it set up in the corner of my room and people would say, “Wow, you play guitar? Can you play the Weezer lick?” You know, it wouldn’t be like those pansy acoustic strumming country rednecks playing outside in the college campus singing Country Roads all the damn time.
I guess the main drawback of an electric compared to acoustic is that it doesn’t really sound great as a solo performance; I’d need a whole band to sound nice. And then I’d have to learn a bunch of music theory, which I don’t want to do. Also, I find musicians to be annoying. Those dang band kids, they act like a bunch of lunatics. I hate band kids.