1 Happy St

I watched the movie "Alpha Dog" last night on HBO. I remember when it first came out it made headlines because J.T. was in it (he may be Justin Timberlake to the novice, but he'll always be J.T. to me). I didn't see it when it first came out though because I don't see movies at the theater anymore (blame Jill), especially good one's that are worth seeing and have something important to say (more blame for Jill). But late last night I happened upon it and the very first scene drew me in. I thought to myself "hey, it's that J.T. movie from last year". Jill noticed what I was watching and she said out loud, "is this the movie with Justin Timberlake from last year?" Novice. But yes it was. And it started out pretty fast. A lot of young kids doing the drugs and partying and taking their clothes off and mouthing off to their parents and listening to the rap music and whatnot. You know, typical California stuff.

But then the movie started throwing me subtitles. Something along the lines of "witness # 1", followed by the next scene that said "witnesses #2-6". And I was thinking "wait a minute, is this a true story?" Turns out, yes it was. Now I was wicked intrigued. Because there's nothing quite like a movie telling me this really happened [sorta] that gets me even more pumped up.

Two hours later, the climactic scene was upon me. Thankfully I didn't know anything about the movie itself before I started watching it beyond "J.T. is in it", so how the final scene played out was still a surprise even though the story kind of holds the audience's hands and directs us to the outcome. If that makes sense [Editor's Note: It doesn't]. But afterwards, Jill had long since fell asleep and I was looking at the clock and it said midnight and I felt dirty. I also felt confused because who has a clock that says "midnight"? I gotta get that fixed. But more importantly, I felt dirty because this movie was dirty. The ending was dirty. These kids were dirty. And not dirrty with an extra 'R' like Christina Aguilera (I'm still not sure what that means). I mean dirty as in "I need to take a bath after watching this movie because I can't believe kids would actually do this." It shocks me that these events really happened. I even went on line afterwards to find out if the moron Hollywood producer took his typical "based on a true story but not really a true story at all because I'm a douche and I'm going to change around a story that's perfectly good on its own because I can" liberty. And it turns out that very few details were changed. All that was changed was the character's names and a few dates. Wow.

I guess what I'm saying is please see this movie. Then read up on the real characters that this movie was based on. And then tell me that people from California aren't crazy.

That poor kid.