You are entering another dimension. You are entering . . . The Black 80s!

My mood was substantially bettered by catching Coming to America on Encore this evening. I keep meaning to buy that movie each time I see it and somehow keep either forgetting to or wind up not being able to afford it, but this is one of those movies I need to own because no matter how many times I see it, it just amazes me. And it makes me giggle. A lot.

When you really think about it, that movie, paired with a substantial force-feeding of episodes of The Cosby Show, just perfectly encapsulates an almost forgotten and not historically noted era in human history. That era is The Black 80s. Big hair had a whooooooooole different spin on it on the darker side of the color line. Not to mention tight tasteless clothing than managed to capture two horrendous trends in one garment, these being floresence and animal prints. And of course, the movie hit the Jheri Curl problem da folk were having back in The Black 80s right on the head. Just let your Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooul Glow! hee hee hee.

Aside from it being a time capsule, the movie makes me happy in so many ways. The jokes are all silly, but they work, and you can definately see why the costume department nearly won an Oscar. And while the central love story is okay, the movie's supporting cast works really well. I love the chemistry between Arsenio Hall and Eddie Murphy, and the fact that they play about half of the bite sized speaking roles, up to and including Eddie Murphy playing an old white guy in the barber shop. And James Earl Jones and Madge Sinclair worked so well as the King and Queen of Zamunda that they were invited to play another royal couple years later: Simba's parents in The Lion King. I'd love to see them again in a movie sometime - something about that pair just works. And there are bitsy parts of the movie starring some black actors before they got big in the 90s, my favorites being a gun wielding Samuel L. Jackson and a bite sized Cuba Gooding Jr.

I kinda wished, after the movie was over, that they did something more with the fictional country of Zamunda. All you get to see of it is the Palace, but the costuming and the way the royal family are portrayed hints at a bigger story to be told. What kind of country would it be? Where did it get all of its money? Oil? Gold mines? It kinda looks like from the movie that it's an African version of Monaco or Bahrain or that teensy Indonesian country whose population consists seemingly of one disgustingly rich Sultan which I can't remember the name of currently - a place just big enough for its obscenely wealthy extended royal family, and then only after you've covered the space in all of it's money, after which you'd have to put the royal family on top of a one story, country wide pile of US hundred dollar bills. I think my favorite thing that hints at the bigger Zamundan story is when James Earl Jones gets out of his limosine in New York for the first time and he's got the complete skin of a lion draped over his coat, with obscenely large jewels set in the lion's eyes. Most people would think, hmm, complete animal pelt, hey I know, a rug! But a fashion accessory? How royally hardcore is that?

Maybe there's some fanfic or something out there? might have to go looking after posting this.

Ugh

Damn you trees, damn you, damn you! I realize that we need you to keep our planet nice and yummy for creatures of all sorts otherwise the world will turn into a barren wasteland a la Tank Girl, but considering what I have to go though whilst you propagate yourselves, that could be an alternative I could put up with. *sniffle*

I am amused by the randomness of last night's posts. I was dog/catsitting again and consuming, via laptop and large TV with fully loaded digital cable package, lots of senseless media to stave off the empty silence of the rather large house in which I was staying. It worked sort of, and now I've got quite a list of music to search for, though despite two trips to Sprawl-Fart today, no copy of Coming to America is yet in my possession. May be hitting half.com later.

The relief of coming home this morning to breakfast and homies was brutally shattered as it was revealed that we were not painting the front hallway as I thought, but heading over to the old stupid apartment to spackle. Which by itself is lame, but doable, but it seemed like everyone and their mamas had interesting insects felching around in their recti today which only made the ignominy worse. Luckily we did get the spackling done, plus made a comprehensive list of what was left to be done at the old place so that our maladjusted lint ball of a previous landlady can let us move on with our lives. I realized that I do better at doing truly lame things alone, as no one has to share my misery, nor am I leeching off of anyone else's. Which is why I'm looking forward to going back and doing some of the work by myself later this week. But that will be good - even though I will piss and moan about as much as I did today about having to do the work, a) no one will have to listen to me, and b) at least I will have mentally psyched myself to do so, unlike today, where I thought I would be doing one sorta lame thing and then winding up doing something totally different and if possible, more ignominious. Oh shit, that reminds me - I'm going to need to obtain some sort of large floor scrubbing type apparatus for when I come back and do some serious Cindernigga bullshit later on in the week. Anyway, I guess I was just torqued as I thought that I would be spending a day fixing up the current house so that I could enjoy being home after 24 hours. Hélas, non. *shrug* Tomorrow promises to be reasonably more low key, thank the gods.

We did come home after a while and after Monica fed us sandwiches, the rest of the Casita went out to attend to our yard, for there was mowing, raking, pruning and other stuff to do, but by then my mood and my allergies had me fully in their evil clutches so I rather selfishly avoided that whole jamboree, opting instead for a nap and a period of wallowing in my own allergic misery. Quite a few hours later, I'm feeling somewhat better, but not willing to rejoin society. I dunno. I guess while I was running around trying to fill up ten million screw holes I was thinking far too many nasty thoughts about everyone I was close to (and I do mean everyone - I was not in a happy place) and thinking about how I kind of wanted to run away to the woods and forget that there were six billion other human beings on this planet besides me, because all humans seemed to be good for were drooling, pooping themselves, and finding some reason to hate all over themselves and each other. Of course, then if I ran away and did that, I would have to deal with my own little voices that insist on hating all over me and everything I do. Case in point: to top things off today, towards the end of the spackling cha cha beatgoddess pointed out in a not-at-all-mean way that I had missed a couple of nail holes in a couple of places above my usual line of vision, and it felt like everything inside me kinda snapped, and every voice, both internal and external, that had ever criticized me about not doing something perfectly on the first shot all began yelling at me about how I was a slipshod failure that couldn't effectively follow through on anything. I filled the missed nail holes, but since then I haven't really made the effort for positive social interaction. Of course, without it, there is nothing really to distract me from the vast to-do lists I have to make for myself and somehow get done before I go to New York next Saturday for the belated Mother's Day thing the Clan is having. This upcoming week is going to suck, and I'm starting to wonder why I'm ever surprised by that observation. It seems like I always expect the next day/week/month/year to be better than the last, and it invariably just isn't, and that realization crushes my will to persevere that much more. That and I'm really sad that I never seem to have anything good to post here. I'd like something amazing and happy to happen to me, preferably soon,

Thank you for calling Death. Will this be pickup or delivery?

Delivery. Please.