As Catherine mentioned, last night we watched Van Helsing. It was surprisingly bad in the same way that getting hit in the groin is surprisingly uncomfortable: even if you know exactly what's coming, your expectation can't truly convey how unpleasant the experience will be.

I was ready to like this movie. There are two reasons for this. First, I love Halloween, and the Van Helsing universe is a pretty obvious attempt to capitalize on the holiday. Second, I have terrible, terrible taste in movies.

It's not that I can't recognize quality in films, or at least echoes of quality. It's just that I find the idea of emotional investment in a film completely exhausting and discouraging. Thinking about how I felt when I walked out of the theater after Requiem for a Dream... yeesh. I can't muster up the mental stamina for that very often. Put me on a couch, hand me a beer and start up Under Siege for the dozenth time. Check back with me in 90 minutes, or when you hear the sound of the bad guy's head getting shoved into that radar screen at the end.

So Van Helsing seemed like it might satisfy my perverse movie watching habits, even though the presence of radar screens for purposes of head-smashing seemed unlikely in a movie set in the Victorian era.

The plot is completely incomprehensible. There's a bit about Dracula needing Frankenstein to electrically bring his stillborn vampire children to life. Then there are werewolves, who serve Dracula, but are also the only thing that can kill him. Fortunately, though, Dracula has a special lycanthropy-curing serum that he can use to change a werewolf back to human, should one ever turn on him. Except of course werewolves are mentally enslaved to him after the final stroke of midnight on the first full moon after they're bitten. But they only become werewolves for the first time at the first stroke of midnight, providing a seconds-long Dracula-Killing/Lycanthropy-Curing window that the movie agonizingly explains, then completely ignores. And I haven't even gotten to our hero yet. He works for the Pope.

I can only imagine the circumstances under which the writers came up with this shit. It's late, in a nondescript LA conference room: the air stinks of whiteboard markers and half-smoked joints, and the table is a mess of coke residue and spilled candycorn. Finally somebody says for the one-too-many-th time that he doesn't understand something about the tragedy of notecards taped to the wall. He's fired and everyone goes home. Eight months later a movie pops out.

On the upside, the monster per capita ratio is hard to beat, and Kate Beckinsale appears in a number of outfits that Catherine assures me would be not at all practical for slaying the undead.

The worst part, though, happens immediately after the final shot. First, an obviously fussed-over graphic proudly declares: "WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY STEPHEN SOMMERS" (screenwriter for Deep Rising and The Mummy Returns, both of which I am ashamed to say I have seen).

And then, the buzzkill -- a dedication to his late dad. Well, shit. Suddenly my snarky putdowns of a disposable action movie make me a bad person, instead of just a boring one. Thanks a lot, Stephen Sommers. I'll be going into your next awful movie with a grudge.

oh god. i just scheduled my first interview for the grad school application process. i am terrible at interviews. i make a terrible first impression. i come off as a bitch. i really do. well, i mean, that is mostly what i am, but still. i'm lovable, really. but people who like me really only end up liking me after they are forced, by whatever cruel circumstances that god puts upon them, to spend a lot of time around me. and i'm not even sure if they really actually like me. they might just be pretending so i don't punch them in the mouth.

does anyone have any good grad school interview tips? will dressing in that slightly slutty v-neck sweater get me in? or should i go all-out puritan and wear a black suit with a collared button-down and my Very Serious Glasses with my hair in a bun so i look like someone who might someday be a real journalist? should i be chummy and giggly, or straight-faced and intellectual? personal and friendly, or cool and collected? DRUNK OR SOBER?

i have a 50/50 track record with admissions interviews, both of which were during college applications, both with fairly prestigious schools. one, the school i ended up getting into, was perhaps the best interview experience of my life. i somehow morphed unexpectedly into Witty Catherine. at 18, i was wowing the married couple who interviewed me in their posh home in mclean. i was amazing, intelligent, rattling off people i admired and serious goals i had in life. i was funny, kind, a tad sarcastic (but in the good way), self-depecrating, and determined. i hardly knew myself.

the other interview was with a school where i was eventually wait-listed. it took place over a cup of coffee at the amphora diner in vienna, which is perhaps the most atmosphereless place to talk to a person you have never met before and who is about to judge you mercilessly and then make a decision that could affect the rest of your life.

i did everything badly. i spilled sugar. i sloshed coffee. the dull, mousy man "interviewing" me barely did any talking, so i got extremely nervous and overcompensated by blabbering on for the better part of an hour. he only showed any sign of interest when i talked about my experiences as tennis team captain, and even then, i'm fairly sure it was because he was a gross fat lecherous person, not that he was inspired by my leadership.

anyway, seriously, if you do have interview tips, please let me know them. i can't write, i have a lackluster academic record, and short of sexual favors, an interview is my one great chance to convince these people that i'm worth a shot.

last night i was drinking some pumpkin ale, as i am wont to do, and sitting around chatting with charles and tommy, as i am wont to do, and we were thinking about watching "van helsing," as we eventually did, and i hope we are never wont to do again. i had been reading a book i picked up at olsson's yesterday called love in idleness, which i'd bought mostly for the fact that i had intended to buy jonathan strange and mr. norrell, because it is the hot blogger book to be reading, but then i looked at the price and it was $30, and i put it quickly away, and my eyes went to the next shelf down, and love in idleness immediately popped out at me because it had cypress trees on the cover, and i knew it was a fluff book about italy, and i couldn't resist.

anyway, i was complaining that this particular italy fluff book was not all that great (a bit too fluffy, apparently), and charles asked why i didn't read any of his collection of books. i gave them the once-over and declared i didn't like any of them either, because they were mostly philosophy and biographies, and i'm not a fan of those.

well, what do you like then, asked charles.

well, nothing, really, i responded. i mean, have you even read my blog? i hate art, i hate philosophy, i hate the GOP, i hate bush, i hate whole foods, i hate video games, i hate merriweather post pavilion, i hate trains, i disparage my job, my friends, my city, scientologists, everything! i hate everything!

i have realized that my blog is a den of festering hate.

so now has come to decide what to do this problem. i figure i can either channel my widespread hatred of everything into something positive and productive (ie, aiming to become a columnist who writes about stuff she hates, and people can read it and feel superior because they're not as bitter as i am and can rejoice in that sentiment, and thus i make the world a better place), or i can start a blog positivity campaign, wherein i only write about puppies, fluffy bunnies, flowers, my elitist europhile tendencies that i love to indulge in, food, alcohol, and only glowing reviews of books, music, and movies.

i'll have to think if i'm going to be on a descent towards all hatred, all the time, or revamping my outlook to be sunny and shiny and happy.

i hate thinking.