Looking for work, a home, & money

So I’ve been job hunting. I currently have about a dozen applications out for State and local college jobs. The whole experience is highly demoralizing. Everyone keeps telling me that a job will come, and no doubt it will, but this interim time sucks.

I can only stay here at my aunt’s place for a total of three months. That period comes to an end a month from now. I have been looking for a place to live here in Salem. I had hoped to have a job before deciding where to live but I’m running out of time. I have been accepted to move into an apartment just south of downtown Salem. All things considered, I think it will be good. But I need to give the landlord some money soon.

However, money is in short, short supply. I didn’t receive my unemployment check this week. When I called to inquire about it, the woman told me that I hadn’t filled out the claim form correctly and a new one was being sent out. So at this point I’m hoping to get that check only 6 days late. Until I receive it, I have $0. Good times.

Transformers 3, dethroned!

Tonight I saw not only the worst movie I’ve seen this year, but probably the worst movie I’ve ever seen. As part of the 13 Days of Halloween and the Salem Film Festival, I went to go see The Oregonian. I’d love to provide a synopsis, but there really wasn’t a story. Or perhaps it’s up to the viewer to imagine what the story may have been.

I’ve seen some bad movies. Last year alone I saw several movies that were bad in various ways. Biutiful was so, SO depressing. Winter’s Bone was as bleak as they come. Dogtooth was pure, concentrated awful. And this year’s Transformers 3 was crap on a screen.

Think back to Evil Dead. Evil Dead was a pretty bad movie imo, but there were hints of good film making to come; it just felt like a student project (and maybe it was). But it did have a story; a beginning, middle, and end. You got the feeling that Sam Raimi was working out some ideas, but for a horror genre picture, it holds together.

This movie? Imagine Sam Raimi never went to film school and made a movie while high on a combination of acid and psychedelic mushrooms. Imagine further that he was extremely passive-aggressive and secretly wanted his movie to be a big F you! to anybody who unwisely went to see it. This movie is supposed to be a horror (I think), but none of it was coherent or made sense in any way whatsoever. It was just one disjointed scene after another. The only way I can think to explain it all is to imagine that it was like a series of thoughts/images that might go through a person’s mind at the instant of a traumatic death. At no point can I say with any confidence that what we were seeing was a bit of “reality” (the real world in the film that is) or if it was, beginning to end, in someone’s mind, or if it was just all an excuse to try out different camera angles, lighting setups, scene ideas, or makeup techniques on film.

I almost feel bad judging this movie. It is inconceivable that the writer/director intended for anyone to take the movie seriously. There’s no plot, no character development, no story! The movie ends, but I couldn’t tell you what happened or if any of the characters were real or imagined or what.

So, my advice. See this movie if you want the absolute low mark by which to compare every other movie you ever see. After this one, nothing will seem nearly as bad as it might have otherwise.