Poor, poor Chris Isaak

It was beautiful out today and I had a lovely day off! I had some work to do early on so I stayed in and answered emails and did the few things I could do from home, and then I left and walked around downtown and window shopped. I walked past the White House (its lawn is stunningly well-tended and healthy right now) and went to the Corcoran, since its exhibitions are free on Mondays. I saw this exhibition of abstract paintings and another one by a DC artist who does weird little dioramas inside cigar boxes, and collages out of postmarked envelopes. Then I went to the gift shop and wished I had a higher-paying job and could buy all the cool coffee table art books.

Then I left and bought a hot dog from a street vendor. (I know hot dogs are kind of artificial and scary but they're just so portable and cheap.) Inexplicably, I had received a free movie voucher in the mail a week ago so I walked up to Dupont, where I knew the thing was accepted. It's a really small theatre and they were only showing three movies, none of which I really knew anything about. There were posters though, and on a whim I decided to see A Dirty Shame, because I usually love John Waters's movies, and also I like Selma Blair and Chris Isaak a lot. (I know, weird combination of people, right?)

OH MY GOD. Until today, my all-time worst movie was Repo Man, which has held the title since I saw it at age 15. No longer! It has been bumped down to second! Because A Dirty Shame is now my Worst Movie Ever.

I wanted to like it. Honestly. It started out so nicely; it was weird and quirky and 60s-ish. Selma Blair had insanely big prostetic breasts. There was a family of gay men who called each other Daddy Bear and Mama Bear and growled at each other. And Tracy Ullman used the phrase "Axis of Evil" to describe her cooter. All good.

But then it just became ridiculous! Seriously ridiculous! Like, CGI squirrels were involved. A lot. And in one of the scenes they were having sex. And in the climactic town-orgy scene at the end, a CGI snake came out of Johnny Knoxville's pants zipper.

When it was all over, the man behind me said, "Ugh, I think I'm going to be sick."

Although I must say, I did pick up a lot of new slang. Especially in the scene where Tracy Ullman was trying to get Chris Isaak to, uh, go downtown, and she called it "whistling in the canyon." That was excellent.