B-movie Review: Teeth

Year: 2007

Starring: That girl from "Guiding Light" and That guy from "Nip / Tuck"

Favorite line in the movie: "I haven't even jerked off since Easter!"

Favorite prop made for the movie: A detailed sketch of a hairy vagina

"Teeth" opens with beautiful panoramic views of suburban America and an original soundtrack reminiscent of early Danny Elfman work. We see tree-lined streets with nice houses, kids on their bicycles and shiny new cars. Then, we see the cooling towers from the power plant in the background. I guess we can assume this is a nuclear power plant, although the key element required for such a thing (a large body of water) is absent. The black smoke tips us off, even though most of us know "smoke" from a cooling tower is actually steam and therefore white, but that's beside the point. We then see our hero and her brother as children. They are in an inflatable pool in the front yard of their home, parents chain-smoking and partaking in some good 'ol fashioned mid-day drinking behind them.

Within the first five minutes of the movie we see evidence of both child abuse and sexual assault between various family members. We then learn the two children are actually step-siblings (this is important for later plot points, so it is repeated a second time to make sure even the most idiotic viewers are sure to catch the hint).

Flash-forward to present day and we see Dawn (our hero) giving a speech about the importance of abstinence more cheesy than I ever thought possible. Much to my surprise (really), we learn that she is actually serious. Dawn is a pure soul with no intentions of being led astray by her peers and their impure desires. She doodles wedding dresses in the margins of her notebooks and has fantasy after fantasy of her wedding day and finally getting to do the nasty with the man of her dreams. She only watches G-rated movies and she's never kissed a boy.


Then we meet the other child from the pool scene, Brad (an actor I really enjoyed in the TV show Nip / Tuck [Matt] and he seems to have brought the same character with him). Brad is an asshole. He is a "type A" asshole that disrespects his girlfriend, plays metal music loud in his parents' house, has a rottweiler trained to kill, wears shirts with the sleeves cut off, and he has a tattoo of a dragon (yes, a dragon) in the middle of his chest.

Through some twists and turns of badly-written plot, Dawn finds herself a victim of date rape, which is where my *favorite line of the movie* comes into play. She fights the guy off of her but he is stronger and pins her down and forces himself inside of her. (The scene is more cheesy than anything else, but in text it seems disturbing, doesn't it?) So, there he is, doing his thing and then... crunch ... He screams like a little girl and tries to fight his way off of her. After a bit of a struggle, he finally breaks away (still screaming like a girl) and we see him standing over her. A dramatic zoom into his nether-regions reveals a bloody mess where his penis used to be. Oh, the horror!

Our hero doesn't know what happened to her forceful lover and decides to seek medical attention. After another similar experience at a gynecologist office, Dawn simply uses google to learn she has an "adaptation" as she calls it. A "toothed vagina," if you will. She finds some Greek mythology on the subject and learns that only her "hero" would be safe inside her, leading us into the classic "true love trumps all" plot line. Somewhere along the line, though, she decides to use her "gift" against those she hates... and any other guy that simply rubs her the wrong way (no pun intended).

Along with a sub-plot of Dawn's dying mother, a sexy cast of malicious young men, copious amounts of squirting blood and a hidden moral not unlike those found in teen television dramas, "Teeth" presents a new take on "the girl next door" sure to leave you rolling hysterically in the isles. Not only is the premise completely ridiculous, but the acting is almost good enough to make you believe this is an actual attempt at a horror movie. Even the ever-present nuclear cooling towers looming in the background of nearly every outdoor shot serve as a nice little reminder that you're watching a completely under-rated cult classic. I give this movie 3 out of five high-pitched screams.

"Teeth" is currently available for instant streaming on Netflix so feel free to check this gem out.

Cliché? Touché!

Oh, I never thought this post would come out of me, but here it is. My, how my life has changed.

I never wanted kids. They're messy and loud and you have to watch them 24/7 and sometimes they're even ... sticky. Gross. Who would want that?

Oh, but there was one fateful night in Orlando after many drinks and sing-a-longs that changed my kid-less future plans for me. [I'm not going to say that Pat O'Brien's causes babies to be made, but I think it helped.]

Two weeks later I got my period. Then it stopped an hour later. Then I started getting a little sick and my bra was suddenly painful. I found myself googling "period blood blocked?" because the thought of pregnancy was so distant in my mind. Another week later, I finally peed on a stick just to rule out pregnancy.

I didn't rule it out.

Positive.

Pregnant.

Shit.

I was very sad about it because this meant that I was actually going to have an abortion, and I was hoping never to do that. I really didn't want a baby though, so that was my only logical option. I was a complete mess at the time. Drunk every night, embarrassing myself on a regular basis, burning bridges faster than I could build them, living in a broken house with two other people both of them at least 5 years younger than me. I was living the life of a kid just out of their parent's house, but I had moved out of my mom's house 9 years before then. There was no way I could bring a baby into that, and what solidified that thought was the fact that I really didn't ever want to have children. They're sticky, remember?

The next day I went to work with swollen eyes from crying all night. I hadn't eaten in about 24 hours so I took my lunch break a little early and, being slightly disoriented, I bumped into the break room table, hitting my lower abdomen on the corner. I immediately and involuntarily grabbed my stomach in a panic as if to say "are you ok?" to the clump of cells inside me. I sat down and grasped what had just happened. I wanted to protect it. Whatever "it" was. I didn't want a baby, but I was protective of the first stages of one. Then, I could feel it. There was a life inside of me and it freaked me out, but what's more than that is the fact that I cared about it.

I changed my mind.

I'm going to have this baby.

Pregnancy was terrible, and I'm still suffering from the unplanned c-section (another blog with that whole story will be written one day). Not to mention the emotional and financial strain of an unplanned pregnancy and the eventual newborn baby that follows. Ugh, what a mess it was.

Kennedy Louise Kane was born at 1:16am on June 8th, 2010.

Kennedy has changed my life completely and she is the reason for everything I do. I love her more than I ever thought I could love anything on Earth. People told me certain things about this unconditional love when I was pregnant:

"You'll wonder what you did before having a baby"

"You will experience a completely new kind of love"

"You will enjoy getting up in the middle of the night to feed her"

"You will miss those sleepless nights with a newborn"

They are all true. I am so infatuated with this little thing. This tiny version of me that smiles every time she sees me. She laughs at my jokes, even though she doesn't even know they are jokes. Her smile and laugh melt my heart every day and when she does something for the first time I cry happy tears. This little thing I made in my body is growing and learning. I care so much about everything she does and it is all fascinating to me still.

As I rocked her to sleep tonight, I realized that there is no greater feeling in the world than having her head on my shoulder and her arms wrapped around my arm. I can hear her little baby breath and tiny baby moans right in my ear. The feeling of her little body cuddled up to mine, knowing that she feels safe in my arms, is incredible. That spot on my shoulder will always be there for her head to lay on when she needs it. After a long day at the park, after a bad day at school, the first time a boy breaks her heart, after her first car accident, when she comes home from college for Christmas, on her wedding day, when she has a baby... I can't wait to be there for all of it, and be the one person that she will always feel safe with.

I didn't think I would be this way. I am a walking cliché. I am a mom.

Weird.

Captain Obvious!

I see funny things on the internet that aren't so obvious, I guess. Either that or I'm just good at noticing the little things. Or maybe, I just have a simple mind that thinks most things are silly. I'm a firm believer that humor can be found in just about anything. (anything but flying spiders - that's just frightening)

Facebook is now recommending things it thinks I will like because the internet is getting way too smart. A lot of these recommendations are based on other pages that I've "liked" and the suggestions look a little bit like this:

No shit? People that like NPR also have a sense of humor? I also got one that said "Tom Waits - Many who like Man Man like this." For those of you that don't know, Tom Waits is a musical genius drunk uncle and Man Man is a band that seemed to copy his songs verbatim and somehow make them a little more hipster-y. (That picture isn't as funny, as it requires a description)

Facebook is also really good at making me feel pretty worthless by reminding me that I have no friends in Jacksonville.

Facebook is trying to be a good friend here and recommend things I might like, and let me know just how many *potential* friends I could make in Jacksonville. Facebook isn't very good at calming me. Facebook is a bad friend.

But, there's always Google. Google and I have been good friends for a long time. When I have a question about something life-threatening, something of little interest, or even something that will help me win a bet, Google is there for me. Google even tries to fill in the rest of the search bar when I look for something just to keep me from having to type it out. For example, when wondering how my baby was developing when I was 23 weeks pregnant, all I had to type in was "23" and Google finished it with "weeks pregnant." Brilliant! Sometimes, though, Google is either (a) wrong or (b) assuming I'm a sadistic fuck that blacks out in fits of fatal rage.


One of those things is not like the other.

The internet, in general, is in control of a lot more than we think. Do I think computers will take over after somehow gaining artificial intelligence? No.

Well.

At least not in my lifetime, anyway.

Here's a fine example of how the internet was trying to throw the last Presidential election through subliminal messages:

Notice the date there. Just two weeks before the election. Tisk tisk, internet.

I've saved the best one for last. My personal favorite example of how targeting you internet advertising market isn't working.