Rules of
Attraction
is a parody, I think, about wayward college-age kids. I say I think
it's a parody because in order to parodize something, the makers
have to give some hint of what's being parodied. But, here, I have
no idea. This movie is so fucking foreign and fantasized that I
have no fucking clue who it's for.
In Rules
of Attraction, a bunch of self-absorbed, pretty assholes wear
their nihilism about as fashionably as Members Only jackets. They
have a lot of sex, take a lot of drugs and act all miserable and
sad. What they really want is love, but who cares? Whose college
life is this poking fun at? It's the perpetuation of the Hollywood
frat boys fantasy of college: pointless meandering punctuated by
tits, sex, drugs, self-absorption and superficiality. Of course,
those grassfuckers didn't actually see any action in school. That's
why they joined frats; so they could play make-believe with other
insecure guys.
I went to college.
It's not something I brag about because I get beat up plenty already.
When I brag I'd rather do it about how my dogs lick their asses.
I don't need people thinking I'm some four-eyed poindexter and punch
me in the head to see if big words start pouring out my ears. Besides,
it only took me six days of Red Rocks Community College to cure
me of any aspirations for higher education. I can't even know what
our mascot was. Based on the number of posters on campus, I guess
it was chlamydia.
Here's what
I remember: I remember a shitload of guys just out of high school
who still were as comfortable talking to girls as they were shoving
hot pokers in their eyes. I thought the difference between high
school and college was that in college the girls came up and talked
to the guys, and maybe grabbed our wieners or something. I just
sort of hoped that in those three months since high school, they
would have become horny ladies.
We never had
a "Dress to Get Screwed" party like they do in Rules
of Attraction, but we had "Enchantment Under the Sea"
in the cafeteria until I leaned against and broke the aquarium and
flooded the dance floor with feeder goldfish. It didn't matter;
the students weren't dancing. They were too busy avoiding eye contact.
I remember walking
into every classroom and getting the willies from the bright fluorescent
lights. Every room I walked into was full of kids with better clothes
than me, who looked better prepared, and who actually understood
what the teachers were saying. I knew I was the dumbest guy in every
class.
Red Rocks wasn't
set up to help me succeed. It was set up to help the obnoxious kids
who already knew they were going to succeed. They'd get the plum
dental hygienist, machine shop and bookkeeping jobs, and the rest
of us would be sent to a career counselor whose qualification for
the job was that he couldn't get any better job. I thought in college
someone would tell me what to do, or that there would be some test
that would discover I was some sort of genius who liked
ing, but had
no aptitude for high-school-level math, history, English, chemistry,
biology or Spanish.
College was
just another high school except that you didn't have to go to class
if you didn't want to. Oh, and they had a bowl of condoms in the
student health office.
More than an
education, though, I wanted to find someone like me, and who would
like me. Every day, I staked out a table in the corner of the cafeteria,
reading back issues of Reader's Digest and Hustler.
I wanted the girls to think I was a bad boy (Hustler) with
a tender side (Reader's Digest). I would never sit with other
kids; they would come to me. And soon I would have the coolest table
at lunchtime. But nobody else ever showed up.
In high school
they told us that we better learn how to follow instructions, get
our assignments in on time and write coherently because in college
they'd flunk us out. And then I remember in college how the professors
said we better learn how to follow instructions, and get our assignments
in on time and write coherently, because in the real world employers
would fire us. All of that was bullshit. When I got to the real
world I found employers put up with all kinds of shit. And your
boss looks pretty stupid saying "You better get your act together
because they don't put up with this kind of shit in the Afterlife."
After a week
of classes, I was pretty low. I didn't like the classes, and I hated
that weirdo in the wheelchair who didn't really go to school there
but who came by every day hoping to get a sympathy fuck. On that
Friday, I was sort of drunk when I went to my chemistry lab and
burned off my eyelashes while imitating Doctor Bunsen Honeydew for
this pretty girl. And when she shoved me, I caught my pants on a
cupboard and tore off the button.
I went to Hancock
Fabrics to get another new button, but I didn't know how to put
it on. That's where I met a young Mrs. Filthy. She didn't laugh
at me for having no eyebrows. She only laughed at me a little bit
when I asked what kind of glue to use to put the button on. She
was plus-sized and lovely. Her muu-muu swished like a polyester-blend
waterfall when she walked. She had the sort of confidence I expected
to find in college; she'd look me in the eyes, answered questions
directly and smelled like lilacs and pepperoni. She got a needle
and thread and took me into the employee break room to sew on my
button. She had a boyfriend, too, some bigshot who managed the Little
Caesars in the K-Mart and could get all the free pizza he wanted.
That explained her alluring scent.
I didn't think
I could compete with a guy managing a pizza shop, but after I got
drunk, I reconsidered. I busted all the buttons off my shirt and
told her I did it helping the cops catch bank robbers. Mrs. Filthy
patiently sewed on new buttons, gave me a 15% discount and told
me that she was thinking about leaving her boyfriend. I was falling
in love. She was so pretty and so nice, and unlike the career counselors,
she liked helping me.
Needless to
say, the next day I was back after tearing the button and fly out
of my jeans. It was her day off, though, so I had to walk around
like that all day and I thought my balls were going to flop out.
But the next day, she was back, and she double-stitched in a new
heavy-duty fly. And we went to lunch at Subway where I showed how
I could stuff a whole meatball sandwich in my mouth. She bought
me a Look candy bar at the Family Dollar and told me to drink less.
My confidence was soaring. I tore the buttons off all my clothes
and she sewed them on. I stopped going to that stupid college. Finally,
one day, while she was putting a new YKK zipper in my windbreaker,
she asked me to go the flea market with her that weekend. It would
be our first non-sewing date.
We fell in love
between the booth selling tube socks and the one with the mute selling
Zippos, and we were married eight months later. The rest is history.
I never regretted dropping out of college or not pretending I was
getting laid for the sake of some frat brothers.
Oh, yeah, Rules
of Attraction. It fucking blows.
Want
to tell Filthy Something?
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