I'm slowly dying. A paper due on Tuesday, one on Thursday, and then two exams on the 16th that I HAVE to get A's on or else I may feasibly get lower than a C and have to re-take a course which means I'll be here for another semester that I don't have money for and... Gah.

I'm not going to think about that now. Instead, I'm going to tell you a story.

Patrick and Matt both insisted that everyone go see a movie with them. I, of course, outright refused to see this particular movie, because I think the books are terrible in every way a book can be terrible, and the movie looked just as terrible, if not more so.

But then Patrick bought me a fifth of vodka, and Matt bought my ticket. So I ended up going. I considered it was a fair trade. And it was a good move to pump me full of alcohol before we went. I straight out told Patrick that I needed to be WASTED in order to see the damn thing, or else we'd get kicked out in the first ten minutes. Turns out, I had enough trouble restraining myself even then.

We packed up a couple vans full of homosexuals, and we went to see Twilight.

Quite honestly, we all found it wonderfully amusing and actually enjoyed the experience. If you're a fan of Twilight, you probably found it amusing and enjoyed the experience as well. The difference is that our amusement stems from two completely different places.

Like that sign I saw on the highway advertising a church- It had a photo of a cross, and carved into it was the phrase "Who's Your Daddy?" A Christian would find that sign amusing because they'd think, "Awww, isn't that NICE, using hip slang and American vernacular to get the youth excited about celebrating Jesus Christ?" and I found it amusing because I thought, "That is the most trashy, poorly thought out, RIDICULOUS fucking thing I've seen in my entire life. It alternately makes me want to laugh hysterically and punch someone."

Needless to say, if you're a fan of Twilight, I wouldn't read what's under the cut, because it'll probably just offend you. If you're a fan of Twilight and you STILL read under the cut and try to argue in the comments against me about why it's actually a good story, my respect for you will go down 30-50 percent. You have been warned.


When we first got there, I was sadly only a little tipsy. Patrick and I went to buy a giant tub of buttery popcorn while the rest of the gang found us seats. While I was doing so, a group of probably 20 middle school students walks up to the counter and all of them buy tickets to the same showing we're going to. Patrick starts to whimper in dismay. I shovel a handful of popcorn in my mouth and mutter, "It's going to be a fucking massacre." Patrick laughs nervously.

We get into the theatre and find it to be fairly crowded. Kolby is cackling maniacally already. Matt asks how I'm handling the prospect of watching the movie so far. I tell him to reach into my jacket pocket.

"That's not an erection," Matt says before practically falling over laughing.

It was, in fact, a 20 ounce of coke that was more than half filled with pomegranate vodka. I had decided I was in this for the long haul.

The lights go down and there's a short altercation when it's revealed that Patrick and Matt have already seen the movie, but made us all go anyway.

"Are you KIDDING me?!" Bobby shrieks. "You saw this damn thing already and you STILL made us come!?"

Everyone calms down when Bella's poorly acted, prophetic voice filters through the speakers while a deer flits through the forest, running from a human form.

"Christ," I mutter exasperatedly. I lost count of how many times I did this throughout the movie.

Luckily, the whole row in front of us was full of people who seemed to be there for the same reason we were. They started giggling at the ridiculousness almost immediately.

We tried to contain ourselves. We really did. But by the time Billy the Handicapped Native American rolls himself on screen, I can't take it anymore.

"Enter Racial Stereotype Number 1," I say. Jacob, Billy's supposedly Native American son makes an appearance.

"That actor's not even Native American," Bobby says to my right. "He's Latino." Matt, who is 3/4 Native American himself, makes a strangled, offended sound.

The evening rapidly goes downhill from there. Gloves are off. I begin sipping from my "coke" bottle desperately.

Bella is so beautiful that EVERYONE in school immediately loves her. They even want to do a feature in the newspaper about her, and all the boys want to bone her. Big-boobed bimbo and disaffected ethnic hottie become her new best friends. There's an emo Asian boy and a jock who's waaaaaay too pretty and skinny to play any type of sport.

Patrick mutters, "Oh, this is gonna be bad," right before Bella walks into the biology lab. Her hair gets blown dramatically, in slow motion, by some fan behind her. Edward promptly startles like a deer in headlights, then grimaces and puts a hand over his mouth and acts like he's going to throw up. Everyone in our row and the row in front of us starts laughing. Kolby does his little hiccup "Ha...a-ha...HAHAHAHA!" laugh he does when he's trying really hard to stay quiet.

The other people in the audience start to glare at us.

When Bella gets saved from almost certain death (darn it) by Edward, she starts to suspect something is up. I wonder why no one did before when Edward's foster father, Carlisle, is introduced, because Edward and him look to be exactly the same age. No one in the movie seems to think this is weird and/or creepy.

So Bella starts doing some research, like any sadly misunderstood teenager does when faced with a problem (right? RIGHT??!) and finds out that she has to go get this book on local myths after Latino kid rapes Native American culture and uses a characature of it as a tenuous plot device to point Bella in the right direction. On her way back from the bookstore, she walks at night down the ONE shady looking alley in the ENTIRE 3000 population town and runs into some hooligans.

Every one of these guys is carrying a six-pack of beer around with them, because THANK YOU, prop department, we needed the VISUAL AID to tell us they were drunk because the poorly acted slurring and stumbling didn't spell it out for us. I would have been more impressed by the allusions to their bad-assery if they'd been openly carrying around heroin needles and knives. As Matt said later, it was like a play put on by a church youth group to illustrate the evils of alcohol. Which makes sense, because it was written by a cloistered Mormon bitch who has no ACTUAL real life experience, and instead uses stereotypes from television to inform her writing. What the hell. 

At this point, our laughing and whispered comments are getting quite a few shush's and "shut-up"s. We ignore it of course. I think Bobby was just waiting for them to try to kick us out, because he would have ripped into them with a hurricane of legalese about, "We paid for our tickets like everyone else, we can LAUGH if we want to, and if you kick us out it must be because we're GAY and this girl is a hot mess. *points to me* If you would like a LAW SUIT on your hands, I suggest you continue." I kind of wished it had happened that way. It would have been awesome. 

Edward zooms up in a nice car to save Bella from her dreadful fate, and she doesn't even find the fact that he was STALKING her scary at all and just gets into the car, then goes out to dinner with him. They stop really quickly to tell Bella's friends who she was shopping with that she's still alive, and Edward says he'll take her home to which big-boobed bimbo says," That's thoughtful," ethnic smartie girl says, "That's so thoughtful," Kolby says, "Yeah, SUPER thoughtful," in a really gay voice.

At dinner, Edward reveals he can read everyone's mind but he can't read hers, because she's so MYSTERIOUS and SPECIAL and AMAZING. I resist the urge to bang my head repeatedly against the chair in front of me.

Bella's dad and her go to a diner the next day where he, as the sheriff of the town, openly divulges information about an ongoing murder investigation. I make indignant whispered comments about how this is unprofessional and he would get fired IMMEDIATELY. Bobby points out the fat, pasty girl in the diner who looks like she could be Bella minus a few pounds and less-saggy, uncentered eyes. Apparently it's Stephanie Meyer. 

Bella is the Mary Sue of the century. I think Stephanie really out-did herself. Well, I guess that's what the point of a Mary Sue is, in the first place, anyway.

Bella, by this point, has FINALLY figured out that omg, Edward is a vampire. She leads him into the woods to confront him about it. He goes into the whole emo, "This is why I can't be with you, I'm a monster *tear*" cliche speech of stupidity. Everyone groans. Then he flips her on his back to take her up the mountain into the sunlight where he can reveal his true self.

He steps into the sunlight and starts to glitter like a club-boy covered in body jewels. "This is what I really am," he says sorrowfully.

"Jesus, you're a faggot?!" Kolby asks. Everyone in our two rows starts laughing uproariously. A few more people tell us to shut up.

After an emotional speech, Bella and Edward have the scene of STUPIDITY (this is the big one, folks!), where they lay in a field of flowers in slow-mo and gaze longingly into each others' eyes. Personally, I think it looks like Edward's somewhere between constipated and smelling something bad, but that seems to be his default setting. We're all laughing at how ridiculous this moment is when someone shouts, "It's NOT FUNNY!"

"Yes it IS!" I shout back. She doesn't respond because she's probably a 15 year old whiner.

Afterwards, Edward is explaining to Bella what it's like to be a vampire, and how you're never fully satisfied, like a "vegetarian living off of tofu."

"I LOVE tofu!" Kolby says, affronted.

Edward takes Bella home to meet his family. The only good part in this scene is when fierce blonde bitch breaks a salad bowl and steps on the glass with studded rhinestone pumps. All the gays mutter variations on, "Fabulous," under their breaths.

When Edward gives Bella the tour of his room, Bella says, "You don't have a bed?" Edward replies that he doesn't because he doesn't need to sleep.

"Awww!" Kolby moans. "But we were going to have SEX on it!" A girl in the row in front of us helpfully points out that they can always use the couch.

Bella goes to see what's playing in Edward's stereo. It turns out to be Clair de Lune. 

"That's one of the song douche-bags list as their favorite when they want to sound cultured," I say to Bobby. "Like when people list the Great Gatsby as one of their favorite novels on facebook."

Then Edward puts Bella on his back again, says, "Hold on tight, spider monkey," (WTF) and takes her to the top of a giant douglas fir. "This is UNREAL!" Bella says, amazed.

"It's a fucking TREE!" I say. "Jesus, you're easily impressed." 

The next night, Edward shows up in Bella's room while she's talking to her mom on the phone. For some reason, crazy teenage girls everywhere seem to find this romantic instead of breaking and entering. Edward says he's been doing this for two months.

"I like watching you sleep," Edward says. "I find it...fascinating."

"I find it CREEPY," I say.

Later on, Bella's dad is down in the kitchen cleaning a shot gun while he's drinking beer.

"That's a REALLY good idea to do that while you're drinking!" Kolby says.

At this point, I was pretty pickled, so I zoned out for a while and took a trip to the bathroom. When I got back, the movie was nearly over.

Bella almost gets killed by an evil vampire. He poisons her with a bite before Edward and the others get there to save her. The only way to stop the venom is to suck it out, and all the stupid MORONS think it's a good idea to have Edward (the only one who can barely resist Bella's tasty, tasty blood) to try to do it. Commence yet another superfluously emo scene.

When Bella comes to, she's in the hospital. Her mother tells her that Edward and the others brought her in. The cover story is that she fell down a flight of stairs and into a glass window. SERIOUSLY? A group of old, wise, supposedly intelligent immortals couldn't come up with a better explanation than one that's used by abusive husbands? And why the hell would anyone believe it? Reality does not impinge upon the world of Twilight, it seems.

Edward then tells Bella that he has to leave her because he'll only end up hurting her. Bella ends that completely healthy, good idea by babbling, "But, I, it, and the thing, and you can't, it was, there were, no NO, just NO!" in a completely contrived manner.

"Oscar moment!" Kolby asserts, then leans over and tells me the movie should have been finished two minutes ago. We sigh sadly.

Edward takes Bella to her prom while she's wearing a cast and a bad dress. She tells him while they're dancing on the romantically lit gazebo that she wants him to turn her because she is SO DONE with living.

"Sweetie," Kolby says, "that's just high school."

And FINALLY, after evil dead-wolf wearing vampire has a dramatic moment, the movie is over.

As we're leaving we notice people going to complain to management AFTER THE FACT (have some balls, seriously). I realize we were kind of jerks, but anyone who goes to Twilight because they seriously like it has it coming. I'm allowed to laugh in a public movie-theatre, thank you. If I want to laugh at a stupid moment that's trying to be serious, that's my prerogative.

It was a really ridiculous night, a terrible movie, but it was funny as hell, and I got drunk. I'm not sure if it was a win or a fail.

General List of the Stupid Things About Twilight
1. Bella is the biggest Mary Sue in the world who reinforces negative social standards. Let's keep women out of the workplace, marry them off right out of high school, and teach them that the greatest goal in life is to find a man who will claim you as a possession, because honestly, as a girl you have no worth on your own.
2. Edward is a whiney emo bitch who is also creepy and a stalker. Why does he get so much play? It worries me that for young girls all over the nation, HE is the embodiment of the ideal.
3. All of the characters (and I mean ALL) are completely one-dimensional.
4. The social and ethnic stereotypes are disgusting and badly done. I mean, the big-boobed bimbo gets with the jock, the ethnic smartie pants gets with the OTHER ethnic smartie pants, the Native Americans are played by Latinos, it's implied that when a man gets drunk he is incapable of NOT RAPING someone... need I go on?
5. The dialogue is poorly written and unrealistic.
6. The plot is cliche and tenuous at best.

Honestly, there are NO GOOD THINGS about this movie besides how it's so over-the-top that you can at least laugh at it. But the fact that it's taken SERIOUSLY by the majority...*sigh*

After I'm done laughing, I think I'll cry for a while.