Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now

Disclaimer: If you haven’t seen the film The Departed, first off, you are an idiot and you must see it at once and secondly, I describe, in great lengths, the ending of said film in the essay below. If you wish not to know the ending of the film, please skip the first paragraph of the essay. Also, a hearty thanks to Sir Justin Dudley (whose century is his) for the bit of punch-up he gave to this article.


Remember the last twenty minutes of The Departed? Billy Costigan had finally caught the rat inside the State Troopers in the form of Frank Costello’s lapdog, Colin Sullivan. Costigan is inside an elevator to bring Sullivan to justice at long last. There is a moment in which he breaks down and pleads with Billy to just kill him, in which Costigan replies, “I am killing you”. The ride ends, the door opens, a shot rings out, and the brains of Billy Costigan are now painting the back wall of the elevator. The bullet that crushed the hearts of thousands of love-struck Leo-lovers (including me, I’m not ashamed to say) came from the gun of another Massachusetts state trooper. Immediately following, the chubby black guy whom Costigan attended the police academy with comes running down the steps, met with the gruesome visual. A beat is followed by another gunshot resulting in the death of the token “fucked” black guy in Boston. It’s then shockingly discovered that this no-named, red-shirted* trooper was yet another mole put into the department by Costello. And Sullivan, being the dirty, no good motherfucker that he is, splatters THAT guy’s brains as well in a wonderful orgy of gratuitous, cerebrum smashing that only our Lord Scorsese can deliver. Of course, Sullivan gets away and lies his way through the funerals and gets his life back on track. Cut to his apartment, who is standing there with gun in hand? Marky-fucking-Mark Whalberg, who takes one shot and one shot only. Long story short, everybody gets a bullet save for Marky.


This is in a nutshell, how my day went on January 15th, 2008. Single handedly, the worst single day of my life, for now. What follows is a short hand account of the day’s events from the time I wake up to the time I rested my weary head. Enjoy my pain.


I wake up and get ready and attend my first class. All in all, the day didn’t seem that bad from the start, everything just seemed kind of stagnant and that was totally ok with me. So, I noticed that I was not on the role for my first two classes…this concerned me, so I walk over to the Office of the Registrars to inquire about what in the blue fuck is going on. I talk to them and I am told that I am unenrolled from every single one of my classes and that I was sent a letter telling me that I would have to update my schedule, according to what they need me to do. I am the only one around my household that checks the mail and I never received such letter, when I relay this to the wonderful woman behind the counter (at this point, I didn’t want to kill everything), I am told nothing…the only answer to this was a shrug of the shoulders. Fuck.


I am also told that I have to totally redo my class schedule. So, I walk out of the Hardin Building, with head still held high, to redo it. Oh, did I mention that my advisor wasn’t fucking there, at school? Yeah, so after about a wait of thirty minutes (it is now about 11:30), my advisor rolls in, we do the damn thing, and I am off to the Academic Advisement thingy that I have to go to on campus. I sign in, sit for a bit, and think quietly to myself, “Buck up, Kiddo! There is no way that things can get any worse!” I forget that these are words that are said before every real disaster in history. The people who work there are going to lunch and will not be back until about 2:30, I have to pick up my sisters in Iowa Park by three. Good Lord. So, I talk her into a meeting at two, which should give me ample time for the kid fetching.



Cut to two, after a brief nap and lunch for myself. I am back at the AA building and sitting in the waiting room. I am called back. I start to explain my situation and the advisor appointed to me nods and starts to work it all out with me. She gets me all signed up and enrolled. For the first time, during the day, I am happy and things seem to be looking up, but then I take a look at my classes. Every other class is wrong. I am just waiting for a bus. I interrupt a meeting and tell her what has happened. It seems that my actual major’s advisor has written down the wrong call numbers for my majors classes. It is during the correction of this mistake that I come to realize that Midwestern State University is the Wichita Falls equal to the Bush Administration. No one knows what the hell is going on with the students, the staff is in shambles, and MSU has absolutely no exit strategy.


I leave the red tape covered institute of learning, enrolled and wanting to get some things right today. I pick the girls up with no incident, but I realize I need gas. I get money and proceed to the North Texas Rehab Center. It is at this lull in the narrative, that I will introduce a sub-plot that will come to play later, tonight is the starting auditions for the show this semester: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. I leave the girls with my mom and start toward a gas station, only to promptly run out on an access road. I curse my family’s name and start making phone calls to be rescued. Remember that sub-plot? Here is comes, I had been on the fence about auditions anyway and had finally decided to do it, so I called my mom to break the news, with the school of thought that if you are a theatre major, you need to do shows. I had called the director, who had assured me that the rehearsals would not be as time-consuming as my first show, The Importance of Being Earnest. I call my mother, who does not take the news well. She is still under the impression that I am still, at best, a high school sophomore, and plays are still a thing that is second…it’s not like I can make a career of it or fucking anything. It really boils down to me not being able to work as much and the complete disgust my parents have for helping me out from time to time with money issues. At some point in my family’s history, one of our women fucked a Jew and so began the line.


So, I, feeling cornered, start to lash out and the conversation is ended and I am saved by Dearest Stephanie Burris and Cutesy Daisy. I have to go BACK to the NTRC and buy my dad a fucking hat…I can’t make something like that up. I walk into my mom’s office and my dad is there. He asks me if I have gotten an estimate for the fender bender I got into the previous weekend. I reply no and start to explain my day. Now, one thing you have to understand about my mom is that her method of making a point is that she really just belittles you until you crack, which is immediately what happened. She is trying to hammer home the point that I was lazy last semester, failed a class, and have to repeat. She did this over and over and over until…

“I AM NOT GOING TO BE IN THE FUCKING SHOW!”

Yeah…I was going to tell her I wasn’t going to anyway…but yeah…

So, my mom kicks me out of her office and I get a stern taking to by my dad, which I really thought was going to end in a public flogging. Then I attend a Majors and Minors meeting and have to tell everyone that I can’t audition and have to endure all of the shit that came with that.

All in all, I lived a twenty-four hour Smiths song. The only thing that could have made things any worse was if I would have gotten a random blood test and the results being that I had AIDS, Sickacell, and Rickets all at the same time. Enough of this! This is the last pity post! Well, until something else bad happens…Be looking out for a Cloverfield review and a music article soon.

Good Night and Good Luck,
-J.Partridge, The Enemy

* It would be safe to assume that many of you do not know what the term “red-shirted” means. It would also be safe to assume that many of you are clueless motherfuckers who only care about pop-culture history starting in the year of our lord 1999. Well, my hapless friends, to be red-shirted means to be killed… Star Trek style. In the original series, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy would usually be accompanied on away missions to ‘strange new worlds’ by two or three security guys dressed in red Star Fleet uniforms. And 9 out of 10 times, these guys would be phasered to death, crushed by falling boulders, left on the planet to freeze to death, or poisoned by strange alien flowers spraying hazy death pollen… likely a form of 23rd century “insta-AIDS”.

So there ya go. Enjoy your random irrelevant 60’s pop culture reference of the day. You’re welcome. Hang on, If you haven’t seen The Departed and do not get the red shirt thing, you really don’t need to be reading this blog…or breathing…ever…

2 comments:

JuneBug said...

Well hell Partridge, I feel for you during your MSU/Bush administration ordeal. That was one of my major complaints! That fact that I had to walk up to one window, get handed a peice of paper, had to walk two feet to the next window to have it signed/initialed and then two feet back again to the first window to have it looked over again...all the while waiting in a 15-20 line of people each time! No communication at all and a severe case of no department intergration (what computers can do that now?). As far as The Departed goes, excellent movie, who the hell saw that coming, and I love love love the red shirt reference. In fact there are several films, especially suspense or mystery, where I will point out "oh he's wearing a red shirt, he's as good as dead".

JPartridge said...

I know! Its almost scary just how painfually incompetent people can be and still think that everything is running smoothly. No article, in my opinion which is worth it's weight in gold, is complete without a Trek reference.

 

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