Last night I was sitting in my living room and eating my dinner, which consisted of a six dollar 8 piece fried chicken set from Albertson’s (where they apparently make their fried chicken out of zombie chickens) and flipping through the movie channels. I managed to watch the movie ’Invasion’ which is apparently a rather lame remake of ’Invasion of the Body Snatchers’.
I am amazed that they can take something as exciting as an alien invasion movie and make it so remarkably boring. The aliens in the movie apparently turn other people into aliens by walking up to them and puking on them. So there were several lovely scenes of people running after people and then puking on them. Once they have been puked upon, they are normal until the next time they fall asleep. They then turn gross for an hour or so and then when they wake up they become unemotional mostly violent less people. Basically they turn into Canadians.
What as frustrating to me was once the people became aliens they did not seem to DO anything. They sat around and had dinner and went to work as always. They did not assemble to build a giant alien death ray or incubate alien monsters in their basements. Worst thing they did was throw a few dogs into the trash can.
So, Invasion: three thumbs down.
I wonder what sort of joints I have to hang out in to have some robber chick slip me a Mickey Finn. Yes, I actually put some thought into this. I would be in some bar where a beautiful woman would get all friendly and be rubbing against me and suggest we go to a hotel. Before we left she would slip a Mickey into my drink, and then several hours later I would wake up tied to a bed in my underwear and laughing because I do not have any damn money to steal.
A bar with micky-slipping chicks would have to be not too seedy. It would not happen in one of those dank bars that are attached directly to the side of a liquor stores. There the robbing chicks would simply lure you out to the parking lot where their pimps beat you with a stick. Micky-slipping chicks usually want someone with more cash on them, thus probably frequenting a more yuppyish place. A place where even though the dude is thirty thousand dollars in debt in order to pay for his Mercedes he still carries a cash loaf with him to flash around in bars. A place with a lot of chrome and where women wear little short black dresses on weeknights.
Actually, on retrospect, the airport bar is probably the best place. Lots of traffic, horny traveling businessmen, travel money in their wallet. Hmm. I think I spent too much time thinking about this.
I hate opening the news and reading about those child prodigies who finish college at age ten and shit. Little freaks.
2026 Update
March 2008: I'm dialing in to watch Ed eat zombie chicken, root for an alien puke-apocalypse, and price out Mickey Finns.
Ah, 2008. Six dollars bought eight pieces of Albertson's zombie-chicken and an evening of channel-flipping on actual linear television. Now the movie channels are a dozen subscriptions layered like bark, the remote is a phone, and the fried chicken arrives by an app with a driver photo and a GPS map. Ed's ruthless analysis of which bars best facilitate a Mickey Finn is a monument to a pre-cloud age: you had to sit in physical space, exchange cash, and be robbed by a person. Today's pickpockets work in the phone's background while you're watching a movie on a jewelry-size screen in bed. The airport bar remains, but the horny businessman with a cash loaf has been replaced by a man holding his boarding pass up to the camera, terrified his phone has 4% battery. The aliens-as-Canadians bit is a time capsule of casual 2008 comedy, the kind you could say on TV without a network lawyer wincing. As for the child prodigies, we've swapped news stories about ten-year-old college grads for algorithmic feeds of teenagers shilling skincare. Little freaks, indeed. Ed's world wasn't better; it just had fewer subscriptions and more puke-based alien logic.
“2008 Ed, did you map out airport-bar foot traffic before or after finishing that zombie-chicken dinner, and were you disappointed that none of your theories ever panned out?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2008 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I reckon I was mapping out the airport-bar foot traffic while I was still gnawing on a zombie-chicken leg, so it was sort of a two-for-one night of quality thinking. I had the whole thing planned: arrive at the bar around seven, pretend I'm waiting for a flight to somewhere, flash a wallet full of coupons and a library card, and see if any little black dress types took the bait. But here's the kicker, I never actually went. I sat on my couch and theorized about being robbed instead of getting robbed, which is probably for the best because my wallet has eleven dollars and a Blockbuster card in it. Am I disappointed none of it panned out? Kind of, but also relieved. I figure if a woman did slip me a Mickey, I'd wake up tied to the bed and she'd leave me a note saying 'sorry, not enough cash, nice underwear though.' Take that, foul germs.
