Sunday, October 31, 2010

Jake Watch Posts That Never Were - HAPPY HALLOWEEN EDITION!

10/28/2006

BPB to PG:  I was thinking of a Halloween Sunday Project but then I couldn't think of anything. Should we do a 'How to throw your own JW Halloween party'?? I'll need your help on the pics!! I want Jake as Casper the Friendly Ghost.

PG:  Heh.  Jake as Casper the Friendly Ghost!  I'll see what I can come up with.  What else were you thinking?  Snacks?  Decorations?  Guests?

BPB:  I'm not sure where I was actually going with my party idea - guests are a good idea. We need to draw up the fully-approved JW party guest list that covers the entire party spectrum. Erm, Jake gingerbread men or cakes or something? Song list....erm....what else?

PG:  Slight problem.  The media section of IHJ is down.  I wound up just sticking a Casper mask on Jake because the logistics of making him look like a cartoon/computer-generated ghost was more than I could do without some serious time to work on it.  I also did one of trying to make him look ghost-like, which might actually work since The Gilded Moose killed him off in the last post.  Neither is my best work but it was all I could come up with.  I like the second one better.


10/29/2006:

BPB:  Something about Casper's head on Jake's body is funny - can you try it the other way around - Jake's head on Casper's body? I'm imagining it already and it's sweet.

PG:  How's that?  Totally ridiculous, I know, but it is, indeed, Jake's head on Casper's body.  Casper is so oddly proportioned. 

BPB:  Casper - I forgot he had little ghost legs, he's so damn cute.

After a discussion in which britpopbaby decided she would be going as a pirate to our party and I decided to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer from the episode "Prophecy Girl"...

BPB:  Do you remember when Seth Green was in Buffy (obviously you do!!) I had THE biggest crush on him and then found out he was only 5 ft 4 and went off him.

PG:  Heh.  Yes, I remember when Seth Green was on Buffy.  I have Oz action figures.  You don't need to spread that around.  He is disappointingly short, though.  I was always a Spike girl myself and had a similar letdown when I found out he was 40, and not 28 as he'd been telling everyone.  Creepy.

BPB:  I also forgot how damn cute Sarah Michelle Gellar is. I have no idea where I'm going with this Halloween post - it might help if Jake had ever made a scary movie. Damn him!

PG:  I feel like this should have been easier and yet it seemed at every turn something was hindering the process.  Maybe God was trying to tell us something.

10/30/2006

BPB:  I'll give some serious thought to the Halloween post tonight - I might go with Ghost Jake although some people may misinterpret it and think we're saying he's dead.

***

After all that, the post that britpopbaby wound up publishing on Jake Watch for Halloween had absolutely nothing to do with anything we talked about, and is HERE.

And that's why Jake Watch wore us out.

(THIS is the post I put up the following year.)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, EVERYONE!!! 

E-mail quotes above represent about one-third of our Halloween discussion.  We also discussed (at length), IHJ's seeming deferral to Stevey G, creating our own picture gallery with Coppermine (which neither of us could figure out), the idiots at WFT, why Jake is "just another person," why Cantara had never responded to my e-mail (yes, readers of the book, that e-mail; quote from me:  "I just can't help but feel like a fucking useless doormat here"), reader reaction the Gilded Moose interview, the movie script, Jake Weird, creating a LiveJournal account for Jake Watch, the Ted Casablanca parody that wouldn't be posted until nearly a month later, whether or not Brokeback Mountain was boring, how hard it was to keep up with the blog now that we both had full-time jobs, and Naomi.  That was a pretty typical three-day run for us... 

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Friday, October 29, 2010

Stephen Gyllenhaal Wants Nothing to Do with this I'm Stalking Jake! Business

(Everyone will no doubt be back to talking about Tayswift on Monday when her appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres Show airs...but in the meantime we're going to take a breather and switch Gyllenhaals.)

When Stephen Gyllenhaal started blogging a year or so ago, I was dumbfounded.

I was further dumbfounded when he wound up being a fairly good blogger, "good" meaning he updated regularly, he responded to comments, and he wrote very emo entries about the meaning of life and corruption in the U.S. government.  And let's not forget the YouTube videos of him reading poetry.  If he'd been a generation younger, he would have been the textbook model for the ideal blogger.

Blogger Extraordinaire
And I kinda got where he was coming from.  I thought he was full of crap a lot of the time, what with his insistence on writing about how he was such a lowly commoner, a rabble-rouser, if you will, with nothing but a computer and a general anger about his life...

As someone who actually is a lowly commoner with nothing but a computer, and as someone who has been coldly looked down upon for being a commoner with a computer by Stephen Gyllenhaal, I thought all of this was a little ironic.  All his anger toward President Obama and no mention that his son has enough clout to finagle a private audience with him.  All his rage toward the political establishment and no hint that he used to summer in Martha's Vineyard with his personal friends, the Clintons.  All his working class words about creating something from nothing and having to earn it all the hard way and no admitting that he knows half of Hollywood, that he has an entire body of work behind him to stand on, that whether he likes it or not, his last name is a golden ticket and he's not fooling anyone by suggesting he's having as hard a time of it as some of the rest of us.

But I understood his anger.  I have that same type of anger.  And he brought up interesting points.  He talked about things that I like to talk about.  I used to leave him comments, which he always responded to...about healthcare and the Beatles and me losing my job earlier this year.  I even e-mailed him once over an entry where he had a grand revelation about no one being better than anyone else.  It was specifically in relation to us, his audience of fellow commoners, and it struck me as so thoughtful and yet so utterly un-self-aware that I was compelled to tell him privately how much I hoped he truly meant what he had written.

And then I found out that he communicates privately with several of his readers.  People I know.  He follows half of the people who read this blog on Twitter.  I mean this in the nicest way possible, but a lot of you are crazier than I am, so all of this gave me this ridiculous and completely misplaced idea that maybe, after all this time, Stephen Gyllenhaal could like me.  He liked my comments, he liked the people I wrote for, maybe he could like me.  At the very least, maybe he could see me as a fellow human being and not just a caricatured hanger-on.

And I thought, 'I'll send him a copy of my book!  Because maybe he'll read it, and maybe, at long last, I'll get to tell my side of the story as an equal...'

"Oh, Stephen!" my sycophantic e-mail read (not really, I'm dramatizing this).  "I wrote a book and I want you to read it please tell me where to send it!"

He took his time getting back to me and didn't want to give me his address (I would like to state, for the record, that even Just Jared trusts me enough to give me his address) but an electronic copy would be fine...

So I was getting ready to leave for Kansas to go to my best friend's funeral, and I was on the phone with the publisher, explaining to them that I needed an electronic copy of my book because someone I wanted to give it to had specifically requested it, and like smack on the head, I suddenly thought, 'OH MY GOD WHY AM I DOING ALL OF THIS FOR STEPHEN GYLLENHAAL.'  Stephen Gyllenhaal!  Whose entire family has never been anything but dismissive toward me.  Who was personally responsible for dashing my youthful hopes of success at the tender age of 24.  Who has, for as long as I've known of him, been a dismal judge of character and yet I weirdly continue to look past that and take it personally when he ignores me...

He can buy his own damned copy of the book.

When I got home, I wrote him again to (nicely) say he could buy his own damned copy of the book.  I signed it, "Thanks and good luck with everything..."

All he wrote back was, "Yes, and good luck with you too."

The fact that he wrote me back at all leads me to believe that on some level something really has changed between now and that fateful October night almost exactly four years ago.  But I've changed too.  And when I really thought about it, I couldn't come up with a good reason why I wanted him to "like" me anyway.

If he doesn't want to read the book (which I'd say he doesn't), that's most definitely his loss...but it's most definitely my loss if I'm wasting my time trying to "prove" to him that I'm on his level.  There are some things you just have to let go of...  And I need to let go of wanting his approval just because there was a time in my life when he didn't give it to me.

All of which is to say, that's probably the last time I'll ever write to Stephen Gyllenhaal.

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Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Let's Talk Taylor Swift

Jake Gyllenhaal and Taylor Swift MAY OR MAY NOT maybe be allegedly dating.  Maybe.

On a scale of 1 - 10...

The level to which I find this believable:  2

The level to which the two of them as a couple makes sense:  5  (See below.)

The level to which I care:  -4  (Calculated by dividing my negative interest in Taylor by my low- to mid-level interest in Jake, which is directly proportional to the public's interest in him at any given time and thus reflective of my own personal gain.)


WHY THIS COUPLE MAKES SENSE:

1.  Generally speaking, Taylor falls neatly within the limited range of Jake's Ideal Woman Specifications.  Blonde hair?  Check.  Blue eyes?  Check.  More famous than he is?  Double-check.

2.  Taylor is 20 years old.  All 20-year-old girls love Jake Gyllenhaal.

3.  Jake is about 9 months past due for a rebound and nothing says "I was burned by an older woman who told me she wasn't looking to get married and then turned around and immediately got engaged to some other random dude" like dating on the opposite end of the age spectrum.

WHY THIS COUPLE DOESN'T MAKE SENSE:

1.  IT'S JAKE GYLLENHAAL AND TAYLOR SWIFT.

IS THIS A PUBLICITY STUNT?

Obviously.  Her album dropped yesterday, he's kick-starting his Love & Other Drugs promotional tour as we speak.  They've been seen together (apple-picking!?  that's so lame it's worthy of me making it up as a parody) and photographed together (such things never happen accidentally).  And with Reese on the cover of US Weekly with her engagement news and Jake in need of something other than the Prince of Persia disaster for people to talk about while he does his Love & Other Drugs publicity rounds, this is stage-crafted perfection.

IS IT WORKING?

Maybe.  Since the story "broke" on Perez, the numbers for the (now estranged) Love & Other Drugs Facebook page have jumped.  The rumor has also spread faster and wider than the comparable Rachel Bilson and Isabel Lucas rumors from this summer.  The difference here is twofold:  not only are there are pictures (meaning both parties are complicit in spreading the story), but in this scenario, Jake is the lesser star.  Jake's modus operandi is to attach himself to higher profile celebrities and let the women steer the publicity campaign.  Jake can't even be bothered to pay someone else to run an official website for him, so it's always safe to assume that in terms of getting the news out, he's the one following and not leading.

And lucky him, Taylor's on fire right now.  This has already gotten Jake more press than he's had in months.  (Case in point, this week, it's him on the cover of US Weekly.)

IN CONCLUSION:

If this helps Love & Other Drugs' chances at the box office then...er...good job.  But I feel like I've watched this one one too many times before.  We already know how it ends (and it will end):  with him sulking and her writing a radio-ready fairy tale ballad.

Speaking as the target demographic here (for both the film and the two people we're talking about), the report from the ground level is that you're losing us on all counts, and this isn't doing you any favors...

Good luck with him, Taylor.
Taylor piccie from here.  Couple shot here.

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Monday, October 25, 2010

Dear Love & Other Drugs Facebook Page, Let's Chat (Again).

(I'm going to post about my weekend soon but I need some time to pull myself together and am desperately trying to distract myself by writing this entry.)

Once upon a time, there was a movie called Love & Other Drugs which looked so full of goodness that I, a jilted Jake Gyllenhaal fan with an agenda and a moderately popular blog, thought it would probably not be a burden to see it in the theater out of obligation.

The problem was that the movie starred Jake Gyllenhaal, and everyone knows movies are all about the viral marketing these days, and that's sad because doing anything Jake Gyllenhaal-related on the internet is a one way ticket to disaster and disappointment.

Case in point, the official Love & Other Drugs Facebook page.  Of course it sucked.  I wouldn't have expected any less of it.  Nonetheless, I felt compelled to point out its inadequacies on this very website.

The response to my exposé was so enthusiastic that I was talked into creating my own Love & Other Drugs Facebook page, which would be infinitely better, and which would be handily taken care of by Vanessa and Katie.

'HAHA,' I thought.  'These Fox people are so lame, they'll totally not pay attention to any of this and probably won't even notice that I stole their URL (facebook.com/loveandotherdrugs) out from under them.'

Eventually, though, the official people did notice our page.  I got a very nice message from the social media director for the movie asking if we might want to collaborate. 

"SURE THING," I wrote back.  "And because I'm an idiot, I'm going to graciously offer to take down my own page so our entire community can help you with yours."

The social media director was very thankful.  He (personally) "Liked" I'm Stalking Jake on Facebook and offered us swag and said, "Please, please help us get our Like numbers up and please send me things as you run across them."

So I sent him things.  Lots of things.  And I did what I could for the Like numbers.  I even sacrificed myself on the altar of dignity and asked my personal friends on my personal Facebook account to Like away.  I got my PARENTS to Like it.  I even convinced my BROTHER to Like it, and he would rather stick hot pokers in his eyeballs than have anything to do with Jake Gyllenhaal.

And then the social media guy never again responded to anything I ever sent him, nor did he use anything I sent him, leaving me utterly embarrassed that I had so enthusiastically tried to help him in the first place.  For my trouble, I lost my page, my swag (which I was going to give away anyway), and much of my pride.

Smile, Jake!  You're back to causing me problems, just like old times...
In an effort to restore some of my dignity, I un-Liked the official page and took it off I'm Stalking Jake's page "favorites."  And in response...the social media director has un-Liked I'm Stalking Jake on Facebook (apparently we're all being just a little petty about this).

In short, we no longer have an ISJ Love & Other Drugs page, but we've still managed to piss off Fox.

And I think the bigger problem here is that the experience has taken this movie, which I actually did want to see, and make me not even remotely excited about it.

Also, why does Jake always show up to these goddamned publicity events wearing wrinkled clothing?

That is all.

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Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Er, Fuck You, 2010.

This has been the worst year of my life.  It started out bad, it got worse the longer it went on, and now it's wrapping up in such a horrible way that I never would have been able to fathom it was possible.

I want this year to be over, I want to stop feeling like this, I want to stop working myself into the ground and having absolutely nothing to show for it...and I sure as hell want nothing to do with talking about Kara in the past tense.

When I'm upset or angry or sad, I write.  J.K. Rowling once said, "Sometimes I know what I believe because of what I have written."  I can't think of a better way to explain why I try to type out my emotions.  It's as if I lack the capacity to make sense of them otherwise.

I wrote two blog entries for Kara on Sunday, the day I got the phone call, with every intention of posting one or both before I left for the funeral.  But a trite memorial, no matter how heartfelt, is still a trite memorial.  How do you sum up anyone's whole life anyway?  Or what they meant to you?  Or the gap in your own life that they've left behind?

Instead, I thought I'd put up something that I posted on MySpace long ago, which was written at a happy time in my life (I write when I'm happy too).  Most of what I wrote about Kara was written during happier times, probably because our friendship was a happy one.  We always laughed more than we fought, and that we fought at all was a testament to how close we were.

You don't have to read it.  I'm leaving for Topeka, Kansas, early Thursday morning to go to the funeral and if I have time tomorrow, I may post more.  If not, it's okay.  I'm really just doing this for myself anyway.  And only because I want to.  And because Kara would have laughed at me if I'd gotten too sentimental.  Or too down.  Or too wrapped up self-pity.  "Buck up!" she would always tell me.  "And go pour yourself a drink!"  She said it more times than I can count and over things that seemed so tragic at the time...  Now I'd give anything for her to be here to tell me that again...


From the spring of 2004, on a trip to London.  The story is entitled, "I took a picture of her butt hanging out of the car!"

We stayed in a crappy (but cheap) hotel that Jamie found for us. We got up every morning around 7:30 or 8:00 and went non-stop until we crashed in bed at 10:30 or 11:00. We were often so delirious by the end of the day that we could barely control ourselves. I never remember laughing so much in my whole life.

As an example of the seriousness of our exhaustion, I bring up the example of a dream I had. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking that I had heard the alarm go off. Since I was the first up every morning, I went ahead and went to the bathroom and contemplated getting ready. Because neither Kara nor Jamie were moving, I decided to crawl back in bed. Once nestled back in my cocoon, I remembered that I had been dreaming before I woke up. As the details came back to me, I started laughing hysterically. I had dreamed that we were being attacked by a bad man. Peter Pan tried to come to our rescue and Jamie, attempting to stab the enemy, accidentally punctured poor Peter, and he deflated like a balloon, zipping around our heads as he shrank smaller and smaller. The more I thought of it, the funnier it became. I laid in bed and laughed for almost an hour before finally getting up and looking at my watch. Sadly, it was only 4:30 in the morning, and I had wasted a good hour of sleep time.

Jamie and Kara said that they didn't hear me giggling in the night, but for the rest of the week, all anyone had to say was, "Jamie killed Peter Pan!" and I would keel over. I still consider it one of the funniest images I've ever been exposed to, and it was all a creation of my messed-up brain. There were other times that we were awoken, however. Like the first night when the heater didn't work and Jamie asked the man at the front desk to come fix it. He turned on the light, waking up Kara and I from a dead sleep, and freaking us out since we had no idea who this dude was. It didn't help that the place was run by unhelpful Arabs who only watched the news in a language we couldn't understand and who were less than willing to help us out with things like giving us a line out to call home. Another time, Kara was cold and turned over only to see me right up in her face, sound asleep. I was always stealing the covers. It was just so damned cold.

But aside from all that, I need to write down the events of March 8, 2004, because that was one of the most exciting days of my life. It was Kara's 22nd birthday, International Women's Day, and, as we would later learn, the second anniversary of the Queen Mum's death. Jamie didn't want to pay the price of a train ticket, but Kara and I were determined to go to Windsor. So we left her for the day (for the first and only time), taking the train to Slough and then riding off to Windsor. When we got there, we were told to look up at the flag flying on the castle. It was not the Union Jack, meaning that the Queen was on the grounds. Kara and I were thrilled silly just to know that we were gracing the same ground as royalty.

We were there early in the morning and, as I said before, it was fucking cold. So we were pretty much by ourselves as we wandered the grounds. We went into the church and were quickly tracked down by a bobby, who told us that we needed to stand off to the side for a moment. Thinking that we had done something wrong, we did as told. We waited for about 5 minutes and he came back to get us. He told us that everything was OK, but we needed to leave. Seriously freaked, we skedaddled.

Once outside, a man who was delivering milk asked us if we knew what was going on. We said no, and he told us that the Queen was coming down. At first we didn't believe him, but he told us to stay put and have our cameras ready. Intrigued, we stuck around.

A few minutes later, a green car came rolling down the drive and as I looked to see who was in it, I noticed, with a shock, that Queen Elizabeth II was behind the wheel of the car (!). I stood there, paralyzed, as Kara tried to tell me that that couldn't be the Queen. I panicked, wondering if my photo opportunity had passed me by. But it didn't seem right that I could just snap her picture. I mean, it was just me, Kara, the Queen, and a couple of bobbies. How weird is that? I got my camera out and managed to snap two pictures before she disappeared into the building. Kara looked questioningly at the bobby who had told us to leave the church, and he nodded affirmatively: that was the Queen, alright.

We were beyond happy at that point, and trying to play it cool at the same time. We went back into the church, using a different entrance, and were again the only ones in the building. The section that linked the two parts of the church together was roped off, so we knew that Her Majesty was somewhere in the area we had just vacated. In some places, you could peek over the wall that divided the two sides, and as we did, we saw the top of her head, along with two companions. Seeing where she was standing, my brain clicked, and I remembered that spot to be the final resting place of the Queen Mum. I looked at Kara in awe and told her that. She told me that she was sure this was the anniversary of her death.

After peeping for a few more seconds, a couple came into the church and beelined to us, seeing what was what. Seeing that we were drawing unnecessary attention, one of the staff members asked us to leave. Once outside, the original bobby told us that she would be coming out momentarily, if we wanted to take more pictures. By the time the Queen emerged again, there were about 30 people waiting for her. She graciously gave us a wave and I took picture after picture. It wasn't as special as the first time, though. The second time, I was mainly seeing her through the lens of my camera, and the crowd was so large that we were much further back. We were all happy, though. The Queen didn't drive this time. She got in the back of the car, and quite ungracefully, I might say. As Kara proudly proclaimed, "I took a picture of her butt hanging out of the car!"




(At some point later, someone - I can't remember whom - said to me, "Well, anyone can see the queen!  That's not that special."  Whoever you are, shut the fuck up.  It was awesome!)

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Sunday, October 17, 2010

Jake REALLY FUCKING ANGRY About Having to Eat This Damned Apple



"This is the guy who went apeshit over that apple."

So angry was Jake that he stomped away from all the horrified children who surrounded him and went apeshit on Dill.  I think our Facial Hair Alert Level just dropped to Guarded.


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Friday, October 15, 2010

Potential Mate Pool for Jake Gyllenhaal Just Got a Little Smaller

To be precise, it has now been reduced by TWO (lest I be accused of making any judgments regarding Jake's sexual preferences).  Today (which is already Saturday in Australia!), our very own Sam is being married off to her sweetheart of many, many years, Mark!  (Who has [perhaps wisely] in the past expressed suspicion that I may be a creepy old dude posing as a lithe and winsome twentysomething on the internets.) 

Jake was given *ample* opportunity to show up on Sam's doorstep and claim her (or, hell, Mark) for his own, but he did not.

So look lively, stalkers.  I think the stock just rose a little for the rest of us...  *wink*wink*

CONGRATULATIONS SAM AND MARK!!!!

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Thursday, October 14, 2010

Words of Wisdom from Your Fearless Leader

I'm going to Nashville for the day.  So...

Dear Jake,
Please try to contain yourself for just this one day and don't do anything that requires a Twitter update, Christ.
Prophecy Grrrrrrl

In the Jake world, 5-year-old pictures of Jake propping himself awkwardly on a chair count as "newsworthy."

Last year I had rats living in the ceiling of my apartment.  I live above a garage behind an enormous house...the type of house that inspires people to gasp, "You live here?!" when they pull into the driveway.  And then they pull around the house to the garage.  And see where I live.  And the reaction becomes more, "Oh, this makes more sense."

The rats in the ceiling didn't bother me at first because a) they couldn't get inside the apartment itself, and b) I thought they were squirrels.  I would hear them at night running up and down the walls and considering the squirrel population around here, I rashly made an identification assumption.  Sometimes I would have people over and I would, with no shame whatsoever, say, "If you hear something weird, don't worry, it's just the squirrels living in the walls."

But then one day I mentioned the situation to my parents and my dad logically pointed out that rodents chew on things and if the squirrels were in the walls, they might be chewing up my electrical wires and there was a possibility I could die horribly in a fire one night while I slept.

So I contacted my landlords.  Who called the exterminators.  Who discovered they weren't squirrels, but rats, and yes they had been chewing on things, though mostly my landlord's beehives stored underneath my apartment.

A couple of weeks and a few dead rats around the yard later, no more crawling in the walls.

***

About a month ago, I woke up one morning to the sound of scratching, and not being the type to overreact to such things, my first peaceful thought of the day was, "Oh, the rats are back."

I tried to fall back asleep...but something about the noise just didn't say "rat" to me...so I opened my eyes and in the dim light of dawn I saw the biggest cockroach I have ever seen in my life running straight at my face across the pillow my head was on.

See, I also have a cockroach problem in my apartment.  The rats may have been fond of the beehives, but the cockroaches are fond of the piles of firewood that are stacked next to them.  Years of living here have hardened me, but even I can still be taken aback when one shows up in my bed.

I screamed an obscenity (which one is anyone's guess) and chased it down the entire length of my apartment but it WOULD NOT DIE.  I hit it and hit it and it WOULD NOT DIE.

"WHY WON'T YOU DIE?" I screamed.  "WHY."  *whack*  "WON'T."  *whack*  "YOU."  *whack*  "DIE." *whack*

Finally it died.

Since I was already up, I decided to go for a run, which was horrible.  And the next day, my legs were so sore I could hardly walk.  I think it was because of the adrenaline.

So I learned my lesson that you shouldn't try to run immediately after an adrenaline rush, and also that cockroaches and rats make very different noises when crawling around your room.

I am always full of useful information.

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Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Prophecy Girl Goes to Seattle and Thinks Deep Thoughts About Social Networking

Look who was waiting for me outside the theater when I saw The Social Network my first night in Seattle:

Who's stalking whom, Gyllenhaal?
(Note:  This entry isn't really funny or Jake-related.  Then again, neither is my life most of the time.)

It's no secret to anyone who has read my book/talked to me online/met me in real life for more than 5 seconds that I don't like Facebook.  I haven't liked it since I joined in mid-2005, at a time when its "exclusivity" was a major part of its appeal.  I had to wait three weeks before I was given permission to create a profile, and in the 5+ years since (my bookmark is so old that it actually reads "Welcome to the Facebook"), Facebook has done nothing but change all the things that made it unique to begin with.


We, the users, are not Facebook's customers.  We don't pay them to use their services.  We are a data mine.  Nothing we put on Facebook is safe from being culled and given to corporations and advertisers - not our pictures (which are entering a phase where faces can be recognized even when they haven't been tagged), not our private messages (check that privacy statement again; they're not private), and certainly not our list of "Likes" which is little more than a digitalized bastardization of "word-of-mouth" advertising (that said, please go "Like" the Official Love & Other Drugs page if you haven't already because ISJ's page will be taken down today as we begin to collaborate with the official people).

And yet (as the last set of parentheses illustrates) Facebook has positioned itself as a necessary evil.  It is so pervasive that to not participate is to miss out on a major part of our culture.  I've had serious misgivings about it for years, and yet my profile remains, I have three (soon to be two) separate "pages" to promote myself, and I fully acknowledge that what minor success I've had with this blog and my book so far has been greatly aided by the exposure that Facebook affords.

The question for me has always been "How did we get to this point?"  Why Facebook?  And when did a site designed for college kids become a site for advertisers to market to the masses (watch any television channel for half an hour and count the number of ads that tell you to find their company/movie/product on Facebook)?  And why do we all just go along with it?

And what must it be like to be the guy who created it?

That last question is at the center of The Social Network, the highly-anticipated if somewhat-ignored-by-the-Facebook-crowd movie that tells the (slightly fictionalized) behind-the-scenes story of the site's creation by Harvard undergrad Mark Zuckerberg.

Mark (whom I will refer to as "Zuck" for the duration of this entry) was recently quoted as saying he didn't really care what the film said about him.  He all but mocked it, as if a mere movie couldn't possibly have any impact in an era in which 1 out of every 14 people on Earth has a Facebook account.  Zuck is 26 years old and a jerk.  Anyone who's sat through 2 seconds of him on 60 Minutes or Oprah could tell you that.  Anyone who joined Facebook in 2005 and watched the rules change without warning could tell you that.  But what the movie makes clear is that he's not only a jerk, he's a socially inept one at that.

Socially inept and he created the world's foremost social networking site.

The larger question then becomes what Facebook says about us, as a society.  What does it mean that we spend our time trying to replicate real life on our computers - through the sharing of information and photos, through "friendships" with people we (likely for good reason) never talk to "in real life" - and do we even register that what we're doing on Facebook is not actual socializing, but subscribing to Zuck's idea of what socializing should be like?

This is not to say that Facebook is malicious, merely that in a lot of ways it's sad.

In fact, that almost identical thing was said in a different context in another Facebook movie that's out right now.   It's called Catfish, and it's documentary posing as a story of deception, full of Facebook profiles and even some phone calls thrown in for good measure (to make it seem like the story has greater scope than it does... "See?" the filmmakers seem to be telling us, "It's not just an online story!")

But isn't it just an online story?  The filmmakers (two hot twentysomethings) and the star (one really hot twentysomething) rush through the "deception" part of the movie and charge straight ahead to the big reveal, spending lots of time talking amongst themselves about how their Facebook interactions were lies.

But the movie misses its own point.  The point isn't that these guys were duped or that people on Facebook (or anywhere on the internet) aren't always who they say they are, it's that the filmmakers documented the entire thing to begin with.  Social networking sites are programming us to think that our every move is entertaining.  We change our Facebook statuses or Twitter feeds to say "going to the store" or "got a speeding ticket" or "I don't feel well" and other people respond, as if this is interesting.  It's not interesting.  It's life.  And like so much of life, these things aren't worthy of being broadcast.  Weird as the story of Catfish is, it's not very remarkable.  What is interesting is watching these guys think that it's interesting.

Zuck comments in The Social Network that Facebook is a way to put the entire college experience online.  But you can't put the entire college experience online.  You can't put any whole real life experience online, and beyond that, why would you want to?  What are you losing with that time you're spending documenting?  Or, maybe more importantly, what are you distracting yourself from?

Facebook is inescapable.  It's how people contact each other, how they advertise, how they network, but The Social Network and Catfish both make it very clear that it's not how they connect.  Connection is still saved for the real world.  And a common theme in both movies is that even after the illusion of connection online, the real life equivalent is an entirely different skill set.

The problem, I fear, is that we're losing sight of the fact that there's even a difference, especially in my generation, the generation of the Catfish guys and Zuck himself.  Both movies make strong, albeit very different, arguments for the return of self-awareness.  I left the theater uneasy after Catfish...not because I was offended by it.  But because I could see myself in similar situations.  (In fact, I wrote about a few in the book.) 

But the whole reason I wrote this was to say that everyone should see The Social Network.  It's a fantastic movie.

And if you have a few bucks left in your pocket afterward, eh, at least the Catfish guys are hot.

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Saturday, October 9, 2010

When He Shows Up, We Start Playing

Gently modified for the new era:


Flashback.

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Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Jake Looking Kind of Like Crap (But It's Jake, So the Scale is Skewed)

As noted in the previous post, I did not go to Jake's interview thingy in New York and instead gallivanted around Seattle all weekend.


SORRY JAKE.  Let's look at some more pictures from this event in which he looks all of 12 inches tall against this comically large backdrop:





I'm sure most of you have already caught up with the comprehensive news coverage of this event (thank you, Vanessa!) that has been posted in the forum.  There are also videos in the forum (thank you, Sophie!), including one where Jake can't think of one single thing he's scared of as an actor.  (I can think of lots of things he should be scared of, most of them involving us.  Clearly Jake has not yet read I'm Stalking Jake! by Becky Heineke, or he would have answered that question differently.)

Anyway, this is all old news to you guys anyway, so I'll leave it there and be back with a Seattle-themed post soon.

And if the headline has offended you then go on.  Argue with me.  Tell me that Dill is sexy and Jake is looking fantastic.  I am back, and I am ready to discuss...

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Friday, October 1, 2010

Jake Reemerges as Prophecy Girl Disappears

Little known Prophecy Girl trivia...Jake and I IM each other every single morning.  This is what we talked about today:

BubbleBOI1219: WASSSUP!!!

Stalker901: When r u coming out?

BubbleBOI1219: LOL did u not see Adam L at Perez? Get w/ it. LOL

Stalker901: Nerd, i meant out in public.

BubbleBOI1219: LOL this weekend. $35 to hear about my life.

Stalker901: People pay to hear about your life? SUCKAS.

BubbleBOI1219: ROTFLMFAO. u coming?

Stalker901: I'm in seattle WA this weeknd bro. We talked about this

BubbleBOI1219: Oh yeh.

BubbleBOI1219: Wait.

BubbleBOI1219: Seattle?

BubbleBOI1219: who is this?

Stalker901: ...

BubbleBOI1219: Damn shortie, I thought I blocked you. LOL

Stalker901: FAIL. You IMd me.

Stalker901: Seriously, stop thinking I'm Lance Armstrong.  We talk every single day

OH THAT JACOB.  He's always pretending to forget about my existence, for laughs.

But he really is going to be talking for money this weekend.  Talk all about it in the forum!  Do it for your poor leader, who will miss out and will be looking for a recap when she gets back...

And I really am going to Seattle early tomorrow morning and won't be back until Tuesday night.  For a while I was concerned that my trip would overlap Stephen's stay, since he was hanging out there FOR MONTHS making some movie or something.

But to the enormous relief of all parties involved (see book for the long and tortuous history between PG and the Gyllenparents), he found out in advance that I was coming and left the city weeks ago.  (Ours is a strained relationship.) 

HAPPY WEEKEND, stalkers.  And if you haven't already checked out the book discussion going on in the forum, that is your homework while I'm gone.  I will be back...

A picture of Jake Gyllenhaal unrelated to anything mentioned in this post.

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