Vanilla Sky
I just saw Vanilla Sky, with Tom Cruise, Penelope Cruz and Cameron fucking Diaz. Let me just tell you that it’s one of the best movie’s I’ve ever seen, which means I’m going to talk about why it is one of the best movie’s I’ve seen, which means that I’m going to spoil the movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet. So if you haven’t seen the movie and plan to, you may not want to read beyond this point. 
Anyway, the story is basically what you think is Tom Cruise’s decent into insanity. You’re lead to believe that, when Cameron Diaz drives him off of a bridge, his face is disfigured and he therefore looses all self-esteem and takes a dive into chaos, meaning that he starts to drink himself into halucinations and stuff like that, until he eventually arrives in a mental hospital talking to a psychiatrist. Then he learns about “L.E,” or “Life Extension,” which is a company that preserves your body when you die, like cryogenics. When you’re frozen, they induce dreaming so that you can live a life while you are frozen. (They would thaw you when they had a cure for whatever killed you.) Tom eventually finds out that he’s dead and is in a dream himself. That’s a pant shitter. Just like The Sixth Sense, or the Matrix, except unfortunatly it’s not being held upto those standards by most of the public I’m afraid.
I actually thought that the movie sucked for the first half. Usually I’m in to psychothrillers, but I thought this was just moving too slow and was repetative, and was getting ready to get up and leave. But right when I was about to leave, they introduced “Ellie,” or L.E. I thought it was awesome how you thought Tom Cruise was going insane, but actually he was just having a bad dream. I thought this was one of the only movies that could say “it was all a dream” at the end, and actually pull it off without making the audience feel extremely disappointed. The only discrepency that I saw was how they kept calling what he was having a “lucid” dream, when it wasn’t actually lucid a lot of the time. By definition, Lucid Dreaming means dreaming while you are aware you are dreaming. He didn’t know he was dreaming.
Another thing I liked was how you were able to see when he actually did “die” and start dreaming. He went to sleep on the street because he was in such bad shape, and then when he woke up the sky was “vanilla,” like Monet’s painting. I knew then that something wasn’t right. Something else I noticed was that the World Trade Center was in the background of some of the New York skyline shots. This came out around Christmas time, and most movies that featured New York have altered the skyline to fit what it is now to keep with “current times.” I think that when Tom’s character died it was a while ago, because then once he found out he was dreaming they gave him the option to continue dreaming or wake up, and he chose wake up, and it was 150 years later.
I’d like to say more, but for fear of boring ya’ll I will let you see the movie yourself and draw your own conclusions. It’s one fo those movies you have to see twice or three times before you understand every little detail. If you watch it let me know so I can watch it with you.
Speaking of Cameron fucking Diaz, she’s on Saturday Night Live right now. She looks so out of place, she towers over the other cast members by, like, a foot. But it’s okay that she’s tall. I’m not complaining. They had this sketch where she was talking about her “smelly bearded clam.” I think that’s tainted my image of her for a while. Tee-hee. But she can drive me off a bridge anytime.
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Blow the Wind.
Check out this email I got from the “folks” at the NorthWind, NMU’s student newspaper.
Hey Adam,
I just wanted to tell you that I got your last email and your story. However, after the “higher ups” aka…T***** and C**** read your article, they made the decision that it shouldn’t run because we’ve been covering the laptop too much lately. I’m sorry that you had to do all that work and not get the story to actually run, but it was a good story on its last revision. Good luck with the rest of the semester.
Y*****
I “x”ed out the names, because I didn’t think it would be cool if I just posted this and put everyone’s name up there, but, anyway, the reason I did put it up for you to read is because I’m a little “p.o.”ed about it, as my mom would say. The story they’re talking about was the one I wrote about what exactly people are doing with the laptops around campus. So, the first draft I did they didn’t like. They sent it back and basically told me to redo the whole thing, making it more funnier and “meatier,” whatever the hell that meant. I did so, but when I sent the reply I told them, basically, “this is the last story I’m writing. I’m no longer happy writing for the NorthWind.” I wait three days for a reply, and this is what I get.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that they’re wrong or bad. I’m just saying it was a little unfair and a little irresponsible for them to tell me to do all these revisions when they know how many stories they “run” about the laptops, anyway. They could have told me this before I even started writing it. I seriously think it’s just for spite. I swear, if I see another laptop story come out, I’m going to have some words with the NorthWind folk.
