"I did not hit her, it's not true! It's bullshit! I did not hit her- I did NOT! Oh, hi Mark"
-Johnny, The Room
OK, so if you have never seen The Room, I fully suggest you stop reading this post, and immediately find some way to watch it. Let me give you a brief synopsis: it's almost unanimously decreed to be the worst film ever made, and it's absolutely hilarious. Here's the trailer:
Towards the end, you can see there is a haphazard attempt to hastily re-brand this melodrama as a comedy-- you know, on account of how ridiculous it looks-- but rest assured it was made with every intention of being a serious, nuanced study of the psyche "with the passion of Tennessee Williams!"
The film is so bad/good that it's become something of a cult phenomenon-- a few months ago, Michael J. Saringer and I went to The Rio Theater to see a midnight screening, which was amazing-- people jeered, made loud jokes (some of which were choreographed, and actually performed in unison), and threw plastic spoons in the air every time a spoon was spotted onscreen (on a side note, this has completely ruined movie-going for me, as I now feel entitled to behave the same way when I see any crappy movie [you know, like Green Lantern, or The Hangover Part II], which pisses Dara off to no end).
Notice the guy with the serial-killer black hair and suit that is two sizes too big? That's Tommy Wiseau, writer/director/producer/cinematographer, and, of course, star of the film (not to mention inspirational cinematic icon!). So naturally, when Sarge and I saw that the laudable Mr. Wiseau was coming to Vancouver to perform a directing "Master's Workshop," (also at the Rio) we knew we had to see it.
 |
| Stoked. |
Here's how you knew this thing was going to be good: the organizers of the event put out an ad on Cragislist asking for scripts to be submitted, which Tommy would then cast and direct onstage over the course of an hour.
And go.
Very quickly, the "seminar" devolved into Wiseau yelling nonsensical, broken-English directions in his ambiguously European accent at a bewildered volunteer cast of cloyingly-drama-kid drama kids (quote of the day: Wiseau suggesting the line "Hey- you want me to punch your fucking ass?"). It was a little difficult to follow the Craigslist-solicited script, but from what I could gather, there are two guys talking (in a room-- I wonder whether it was an homage?), and the over-acting un-funny stout one shoots the one who's dressed as a hipster/ bootsmith from the Old West. Since the dialog was more-or-less entirely improvised, this could well be the only plot point in the entire script.
Obviously, though, I now have all the inspiration I will ever need to become a meteoric film director like Tommy Wiseau. It should be no time at all before you're all watching my soccer-virus thriller Field of Screams come to life (the title "Fever Pitch" was already taken by that terrible, masturbatory Jimmy Fallon/ Drew Barrymore tribute to the Red Sox)...
Fun Fact: I actually submitted Field of Screams to be produced by the USC 480 Short Film class, but I guess they didn't get it. Philistines.
And then came The Electric Owl...
The first time I went there was for the DJ Anjali show. Anjali basically combines Bollywood music with techno-- possibly my two least favorite genres of music-- but I was told she was quite good, and hoped that maybe her music was one of those "greater than the sum of its parts" deals (I'm an incurable optimist, what can I say?).
Of course, I suppose I could hope that a cauliflower-and-mayonnaise soup would be greater than the sum of its parts, but it probably wouldn't help, either. We gave it a shot, but Silverwood and I ended up leaving about 3 songs into her much-belated set. Personally, I was much more entertained by this hilarious series of photographs Silverwood took during the opening act, which illustrates me "stealthily" improving my 7up with a water bottle full of gin I had smuggled inside, with the subtlety of an office memo typed in all-caps--
God damn, I am smooth. And also still 18 years old, apparently-- why am I bringing water bottles of alcohol into bars, you ask? I can explain! It was an accident! When we left for the club, I had no place to leave my back pack! They let me into the club with a backpack! And, I mean, isn't that the truly criminal thing, here? Do they let just anyone walk in? This isn't sounding convincing, is it? I could explain, but it's a tedious, boring story, so just please stop judging me and take my word that this douchery was not pre-meditated...
The next time I came to the Electric Owl was with Saringer, Vanessa, and Rhianna for the Metronomy show. Sort of.
You see, Michael J. Saringer, professor of geography, master of electronics, cleric of bass guitar, had misread the tickets, and the show wasn't actually until the night after. When we got there, it was standup comedy night. It's incredible, the amount of influence that a minor time investment-- such as driving somewhere-- can have on your decision-making process. "Well, we drove all the way out here to the Chilliwack Roast Badger Festival, might as well have a bite..."
So, we decided to stay... and watch the single worst comedian I've ever seen. Apparently, this guy was the winner of the comedian contest at Ceili's, which made us all shudder to think who he had beaten out, as he was about as funny as African famine. His routine consisted mainly of jokes about how he looked like a leprechaun, and making deliberately outrageous and provocative statements like "Fuck Steve Jobs! He drank pee! Child slavery!" and other similarly impotent attempts at being "edgy." After about 5 minutes, we walked out (this is becoming a motif! This blog is so literary!), and I could hear him shrivelling in desperation to shit-talking the Canucks in a flaccid attempt to piss people off. Penis.
(For you viewing pleasure):
I'm having a bit of a crisis here. I mean, here I am, just shitting on this poor guy, who's trying to live out his dream of being a stand-up comic-- something I think we'd all be quick to admit is one of the most daunting artistic enterprises possible. People are petrified of simply speaking in public, now add to that the expectation of being funny and topical? And here I am, writing a blog-- putting a much smaller piece of myself out there than him, baring his Jack Black-ish soul to the world! Is he not a kindred spirit? A brother in the fraternity of artistic aspiration? (For what it's worth, I thought the animé joke was sort of funny...)
Who are any of us to presume to criticize someone else's art? For all I know, he's reading this right now, thinking, "This is awful! Tripe!" and preparing a scathing and borderline-racist joke about me to perform at the Electric Owl next week. Am I being an Olympic-class dick? I didn't even pay to watch him perform!
Meh, you be the judge.
The third time I came to the Electric Owl was the next night, of course, and we finally did see Metronomy.
(I didn't take any pictures of the show, but you can click here to see some pics that some other, much more professional person took with a not-iPhone!)
Tragically, I was battling a cold that week, and finally lost the struggle that evening, as my infirm alter-ego Sick Boy had reared his ugly head, and I felt myself descend further and further into the dizzying, delirious din of sickness and rampant alliteration as the show went on.
Tip: when a pharmacist recommends you try some brand of medication you've never heard of, and raves that it's way better than the stuff you usually use, just try to remember that they're not real doctors. Instead, defer to the eternal, immutable truth of Szentveri's Law:
I'd had enough of the Electric Owl for a while...
So, I traded dancing with hipsters for dancing with old people, as I went to my grandmother's 80th birthday at the Hungarian Cultural Club in Nanaimo! At one point, some 90-year old woman (non-hyperbole-- I think her greatest social distinction amongst the other guests was that she was the oldest person there) grabbed me by the hand and took me to the dance floor. Ever the obedient grandson, I decided to humor this sweet nonagenarian by obliging her a karaoke version of some generic 50's dance song. It was a tad awkward, what with her withered claw of a hand not relinquishing its vice-like grip of my supple, youthful one for one instant during what seemed like a 10-minute song (somewhat understandable; I moisturize...). You never truly know how utterly hopeless you are at dancing until a 90 year-old woman forces you to do the twist-- I don't think anyone had felt this out of place with 50's music since Marty McFly Van-Halen'ed the crowd at Hill Valley High.
Let me now shallowly attempt to deflect my own embarrassment by presenting this video, which shows my grandmother's Ms. Havisham-esque friend singing an inspired and eerily melodramatic rendition of Besame Mucho:
If you listen close enough, you can hear Mark tell me I'm going to hell for filming this.
In keeping with the jarring seismic shifts in tone that have characterized this post (it's called juxtaposition, folks! So literary!), we now move from dancing to Hungarian folk songs to a Skrillex concert with Silverwood and Aldora.
Imagine a giant crowd of hipsters, clad in two-tone raybans, deep-neck high-cut tank tops, glow rings, and gold pleather pants, copiously sweating like that gross underground dance scene in The Matrix Reloaded and drowning their ecstasy-thirst with bottles of Dasani while vigorously fist-pump dancing like a giant, teeming Jersey Shore audition with absolutely zero sense of irony (so basically every 80's night on frat row ever), and you've got an idea of what this concert looked like.
Here's what it sounded like:
Trashy cult-film workshops, Tuesday night standup, water bottles full of gin, twisting with Hungarian geriatrics, and Skrillex-- who am I?
In more life-y news, I got a job working as associate faculty at a high school, which means you can look forward to Facebook status updates like "OMYGOD. Soooo cute... Today, one of my little poopsiekins said, 'Mr. Szentveri, [in my imagination, they've all learned to pronounce my name perfectly], when a boy pees in a girl, she gets pregnant.'" Awwww. Of course, when you consider the fact that the kids I'm working with are in grade 7-9, if they say anything remotely like this, I think the fine points of urine-based reproduction would be the least of their worries...
Sadly, this means my stereotypical post-collegiate tour-de-Europe will have to wait. Alas! What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? No. Not in Vancouver, at least.
Congrats to the 0 people who got that reference. Perhaps it's not all bad, though-- I hear Europe's having a bit of a rough time right now. Anyways, my touristy tip of the entry is that The Marina Grill serves some of the best breakfast I've ever had. Seriously. You're probably all like, "O RLY? That seafood place under the bridge that I went to that one time for my Grandpa's birthday?" Yeah, that place. If with this post I can convince just one person to go there for breakfast, I can die knowing I've made a real difference.
In bloggy news, we recently hit 500 views of this blog! Yayyy. I don't know if that's actually a lot, but it sure sounds like a lot, doesn't it? Maybe? Bueller? Thank you all of you for reading, and for all of your feedback-- remember to feel free to use the comments section to promote free iPads and call Obama a Nazi. And don't worry-- despite accumulating all these hits, I have no intention of whorishly selling out my work to advertisers just to make a few pennies.
Also, I guess I miserably failed with my whole "brief weekly entries" mandate, instead taking over 4 weeks to write a multimedia-rich tome. You see, I just want to make sure everyone gets their money's worth. However, my next entry should be along shortly, because it's mostly about Halloween stuff and, you know, it would be super lame to be writing about that in December.
Stay good,
-Max
Twitter: @MaxSzentveri
This Week's Winners
People in this post:
Aldora Chong:
Her favorite band is WOMP WOMP.
Dale Chang:
Best known as Chang-San from The Exchange Student.
Dara Djafarian:
Thought Indiana Jones 4 was the best of the series.
Ms. Havisham:
You should hear her sing Teenage Dream...
Rhianna Iverson:
Is probably going to love this headshot.
Vanessa Iverson:
Is related to Rhianna.
Michael J. Saringer:
Can't read. So he probably won't complain about this bio.
Michael Silverwood:
Takes sweet photos (he took the Skrillex shots, too!)
And go.
 |
| Sleeveless shirt, leather pants, and sunglasses. Like Corey Hart if he was a child molester. |
Fun Fact: I actually submitted Field of Screams to be produced by the USC 480 Short Film class, but I guess they didn't get it. Philistines.
And then came The Electric Owl...
The Electric Owl
This sounds like it could be the chapter in a book where I describe a milk bar in which Kubrickian youths prepare themselves for "a touch of the old Ultra Violence," or some tech noir nightclub where Sarah Connor runs away while the Terminator manages to kill basically everyone in the club but her. However, The Electric Owl is neither of these things- it's just a bar with a cool name where some stuff happened.
 |
| "Do you want to dance?" |
The first time I went there was for the DJ Anjali show. Anjali basically combines Bollywood music with techno-- possibly my two least favorite genres of music-- but I was told she was quite good, and hoped that maybe her music was one of those "greater than the sum of its parts" deals (I'm an incurable optimist, what can I say?).
 |
| Anjali fellates the microphone |
Of course, I suppose I could hope that a cauliflower-and-mayonnaise soup would be greater than the sum of its parts, but it probably wouldn't help, either. We gave it a shot, but Silverwood and I ended up leaving about 3 songs into her much-belated set. Personally, I was much more entertained by this hilarious series of photographs Silverwood took during the opening act, which illustrates me "stealthily" improving my 7up with a water bottle full of gin I had smuggled inside, with the subtlety of an office memo typed in all-caps--
 |
| Look left... |
 |
| Look right... |
 |
| Oh, what's that you were saying, Dale? |
The next time I came to the Electric Owl was with Saringer, Vanessa, and Rhianna for the Metronomy show. Sort of.
You see, Michael J. Saringer, professor of geography, master of electronics, cleric of bass guitar, had misread the tickets, and the show wasn't actually until the night after. When we got there, it was standup comedy night. It's incredible, the amount of influence that a minor time investment-- such as driving somewhere-- can have on your decision-making process. "Well, we drove all the way out here to the Chilliwack Roast Badger Festival, might as well have a bite..."
 |
| Did you know badgers were this terrifying? |
So, we decided to stay... and watch the single worst comedian I've ever seen. Apparently, this guy was the winner of the comedian contest at Ceili's, which made us all shudder to think who he had beaten out, as he was about as funny as African famine. His routine consisted mainly of jokes about how he looked like a leprechaun, and making deliberately outrageous and provocative statements like "Fuck Steve Jobs! He drank pee! Child slavery!" and other similarly impotent attempts at being "edgy." After about 5 minutes, we walked out (this is becoming a motif! This blog is so literary!), and I could hear him shrivelling in desperation to shit-talking the Canucks in a flaccid attempt to piss people off. Penis.
(For you viewing pleasure):
I'm having a bit of a crisis here. I mean, here I am, just shitting on this poor guy, who's trying to live out his dream of being a stand-up comic-- something I think we'd all be quick to admit is one of the most daunting artistic enterprises possible. People are petrified of simply speaking in public, now add to that the expectation of being funny and topical? And here I am, writing a blog-- putting a much smaller piece of myself out there than him, baring his Jack Black-ish soul to the world! Is he not a kindred spirit? A brother in the fraternity of artistic aspiration? (For what it's worth, I thought the animé joke was sort of funny...)
Who are any of us to presume to criticize someone else's art? For all I know, he's reading this right now, thinking, "This is awful! Tripe!" and preparing a scathing and borderline-racist joke about me to perform at the Electric Owl next week. Am I being an Olympic-class dick? I didn't even pay to watch him perform!
Meh, you be the judge.
The third time I came to the Electric Owl was the next night, of course, and we finally did see Metronomy.
 |
| Fashionably disinterested. |
Tragically, I was battling a cold that week, and finally lost the struggle that evening, as my infirm alter-ego Sick Boy had reared his ugly head, and I felt myself descend further and further into the dizzying, delirious din of sickness and rampant alliteration as the show went on.
 |
| Not this Sick Boy |
 |
| Or this one |
Tip: when a pharmacist recommends you try some brand of medication you've never heard of, and raves that it's way better than the stuff you usually use, just try to remember that they're not real doctors. Instead, defer to the eternal, immutable truth of Szentveri's Law:
 |
| The basic equation of my life. |
So, I traded dancing with hipsters for dancing with old people, as I went to my grandmother's 80th birthday at the Hungarian Cultural Club in Nanaimo! At one point, some 90-year old woman (non-hyperbole-- I think her greatest social distinction amongst the other guests was that she was the oldest person there) grabbed me by the hand and took me to the dance floor. Ever the obedient grandson, I decided to humor this sweet nonagenarian by obliging her a karaoke version of some generic 50's dance song. It was a tad awkward, what with her withered claw of a hand not relinquishing its vice-like grip of my supple, youthful one for one instant during what seemed like a 10-minute song (somewhat understandable; I moisturize...). You never truly know how utterly hopeless you are at dancing until a 90 year-old woman forces you to do the twist-- I don't think anyone had felt this out of place with 50's music since Marty McFly Van-Halen'ed the crowd at Hill Valley High.
 |
| Awkward white-dancing. Your kids are gonna love it. |
Let me now shallowly attempt to deflect my own embarrassment by presenting this video, which shows my grandmother's Ms. Havisham-esque friend singing an inspired and eerily melodramatic rendition of Besame Mucho:
If you listen close enough, you can hear Mark tell me I'm going to hell for filming this.
In keeping with the jarring seismic shifts in tone that have characterized this post (it's called juxtaposition, folks! So literary!), we now move from dancing to Hungarian folk songs to a Skrillex concert with Silverwood and Aldora.
Imagine a giant crowd of hipsters, clad in two-tone raybans, deep-neck high-cut tank tops, glow rings, and gold pleather pants, copiously sweating like that gross underground dance scene in The Matrix Reloaded and drowning their ecstasy-thirst with bottles of Dasani while vigorously fist-pump dancing like a giant, teeming Jersey Shore audition with absolutely zero sense of irony (so basically every 80's night on frat row ever), and you've got an idea of what this concert looked like.
Here's what it sounded like:
Trashy cult-film workshops, Tuesday night standup, water bottles full of gin, twisting with Hungarian geriatrics, and Skrillex-- who am I?
In more life-y news, I got a job working as associate faculty at a high school, which means you can look forward to Facebook status updates like "OMYGOD. Soooo cute... Today, one of my little poopsiekins said, 'Mr. Szentveri, [in my imagination, they've all learned to pronounce my name perfectly], when a boy pees in a girl, she gets pregnant.'" Awwww. Of course, when you consider the fact that the kids I'm working with are in grade 7-9, if they say anything remotely like this, I think the fine points of urine-based reproduction would be the least of their worries...
Sadly, this means my stereotypical post-collegiate tour-de-Europe will have to wait. Alas! What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? No. Not in Vancouver, at least.
Congrats to the 0 people who got that reference. Perhaps it's not all bad, though-- I hear Europe's having a bit of a rough time right now. Anyways, my touristy tip of the entry is that The Marina Grill serves some of the best breakfast I've ever had. Seriously. You're probably all like, "O RLY? That seafood place under the bridge that I went to that one time for my Grandpa's birthday?" Yeah, that place. If with this post I can convince just one person to go there for breakfast, I can die knowing I've made a real difference.
In bloggy news, we recently hit 500 views of this blog! Yayyy. I don't know if that's actually a lot, but it sure sounds like a lot, doesn't it? Maybe? Bueller? Thank you all of you for reading, and for all of your feedback-- remember to feel free to use the comments section to promote free iPads and call Obama a Nazi. And don't worry-- despite accumulating all these hits, I have no intention of whorishly selling out my work to advertisers just to make a few pennies.
Also, I guess I miserably failed with my whole "brief weekly entries" mandate, instead taking over 4 weeks to write a multimedia-rich tome. You see, I just want to make sure everyone gets their money's worth. However, my next entry should be along shortly, because it's mostly about Halloween stuff and, you know, it would be super lame to be writing about that in December.
Stay good,
-Max
Twitter: @MaxSzentveri
This Week's Winners
People in this post:
Her favorite band is WOMP WOMP.
Best known as Chang-San from The Exchange Student.
Thought Indiana Jones 4 was the best of the series.
You should hear her sing Teenage Dream...
Is probably going to love this headshot.
Is related to Rhianna.
Can't read. So he probably won't complain about this bio.
Takes sweet photos (he took the Skrillex shots, too!)
