The Wrong Girls and More Illustrations!

I grew up listening to a lot of comedy. Mostly stand-up, but comedy music, and comedy albums. The comedy album was a specific kind of thing. They were usually recorded in a studio rather than live in a performance like a stand-up album. National Lampoon put one or two out. Bob and Doug McKenzie put out their album. Even Adam Sandler's albums had their moments (That fucking Goat man) though it was mostly not my thing.

Cheech and Chong were in there as well. They did have a live show that toured, but their albums (or the ones I heard anyway) were studio albums. That was really my first exposure to drug humor as something lived in rather than abstract. Carlin talked about drugs, and certainly had that lived experience, but he was more examining them and picking the idea of drugs apart. Cheech and Chong were speaking to somewhat different audience. Where as Carlin intellectualized drugged, Cheech and Chong mostly did humor about being high. That was their thing.

I honestly didn't really get it. I liked the most famous bits, and I watched the movies and they were fine. The albums were fine, but a lot of it wasn't exactly designed for 12 year old me. So it went over my head.

Now, cut to 35 years later and I'm sitting in the theater for The Wrong Girls, and friends, I was high like an eagle– to the sea, and I'm watching what was, in my experience, the closest thing we've got to a modern Cheech and Chong movie.

Except, I was in exactly the right headspace to find it absolutely hilarious. From time to time I like to enjoy that sort of thing before a movie, and it made sense considering that this was very much a stoner movie.

And it was. It was a really well made, very silly, almost completely nonsensical, stoner movie. I loved it. I thought the two leads, Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat, elevated these characters from what could have been weak Harold and Kumar knock offs, into genuinely believable and sympathetic characters who you root for, even as they make really, really poor choices. Mostly motivated by their constant and intense need to smoke weed.

The really cool thing about this movie is that it never felt like anyone was being treated like they were stupid. The audience included. While these characters are certainly irresponsible in how they handle a lot of the difficult situations they find themselves in, they also aren't bumbling clowns either. They're just motivated by their own very specific and unorthodox needs. These characters do very silly, and very entertaining shit in this movie, and it all works in the way the characters are written and the parameters of story.

I need to really say again how friggin funny these two are. If you'd told me even five years ago that I was praising Kristen Stewart's sparkling charisma and movie star personality, not to mention sense of humor, I'd have lost my mind run mad into the woods. It probably would have been really uncomfortable if it had gone that way. So let's not bring it up again. Anyway, yeah, Kristen Stewart is becoming one of my very favorite actors.

Another thing this movie does really well is not judging its characters. A lot of stoner movies tend to tack on some shitty lesson about not smoking weed all the time. I'm looking at you Half Baked. Nope, it just says "These girls smoke a lot of weed and here's how they are" and it lets the audience either get on board with them or not.

Now, given how I've heard almost nothing about this movie, before or since I saw it the other night, I expect that it might be grower rather than a shower, but I'm hoping it finds its audience, because I really liked this movie.

It actually accomplished what Ethan Coen has been trying to do lately, which is capture female love without it feeling kinda icky. And it does it convincingly, and thoughtfully, while showing that love can be platonic, even when you really kinda want them to kiss. But that's just me. That's how my brain does.

I'm gonna give it three and a half stars. I wouldn't call it a four, just because a four is like, almost a five, and there's a ceiling on stoner comedies I think. No offensive to stoner comedies, but even the best of the best is probably not going to crack the four stars ceiling. Unless it's The Big Lebowski. Anyway.

Besides, like... I loved it, but there are choices I wouldn't have made and didn't think quite worked. It's all very small compared the incredible amount of choices that were perfect.

Dig it.

Okay, so here's what's going on with Charlie: Revised. I'm finished with the illustrations and I'm just waiting for my proofreading friend to finish doing his read of it... and then I'm going to draw illustrations and chapter headings for Jack and Danny. Danny will be easier, because I already drew chapter headings for that one. I'll probably redraw a few that I'm not super happy with, but otherwise, Danny will get illustrations. I wanna show you one I did for Jack today that I'm pretty happy with:

That's the first page of the book. I'm not going to revise or rewrite any of Jack or Danny. I feel like they're pretty well where I want them to be. That said, I'm still very excited to do these illustrations, and diving back into this story is already a lot of fun.

That's it for now. PEACE!