guttentat myspacers,

When I was about 17 years old, ready to depart for college, I read Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and it really hit home for me.  Here was a book about young guy who ends up leaving his secure little home to become a great artist, but first must figure out what kind of man he wants to become.  Plus I seem to remember some complaints about his hair.  It was like Joyce was reading into my adolescent soul.

Because of that, I went on a Joyce kick, reading just about everything the guy ever wrote, which thankfully wasn't all that much.  Or so I thought.  I managed to get through Ulysees that summer and felt super smart.  I read almost all of Dubliners and even some of the plays and poems in my Viking Portable Joyce.  And then, of course, came Finnegan's Wake.  For those who didn't keep up with their modernist cranks, Finnegan's Wake was Joyce's last book, some kind of circular book without much in the way of punctuation and written in some kind of made up language that hybridizes English, Gaelic and nonsense.  I read about a hundred pages and decided to say fuck it, and decided to try smoking weed through a hole cut in the side of Pepsi can.  Ah, youth.

Reading some of the more recent posts for Andre on IMDB, I was struck by the late period Joycean tone of a recent, very negative, review.  First of all, I love bad reviews.  I know Andre isn't everybody's cup of tea and I am thoroughly confident in our ability to tell excellent boner jokes that I really don't give three shits about what some obscure IMDB poster or a Tampa, Florida based reviewer who pretends to have never heard of the film, all so he can pretend its not a hatchet job because we didn't let him do whatever it is he thinks he's entitled to do.  Anyway, negative and positive IMDB posts rock.  I love to hear opinions on our film, especially when it comes from the articulate minds of someone like shandrapuppy5348.  This poster comes on IMDB and has to share their revulsion toward our film thusly:

"man this movie sucked so bad i rented it and thought this was gonna be a good horror flick man this thing this sucked i saw it and everything is fake in it and what horror film has so much sex in it and it was this boring who ever likes this movie should be ashamed the director could have made it more better so i say i'm never getting a movie like this no more like dem indie films they are not so good it's like somebody faked evrything so if you agree with me then reply"

Note the Finneganesque lack of punctuation, the pure stream of consciousness that transcends language and form.  Note the searing observation that "dem indie films they are not so good."  Well played, shandrapuppy.

Andre seems to have its fair share of detractors and supporters and with an admittedly middling IMDB score, I'm guessing that the posts are pretty indicative of the film's reception as a whole.  Oh well, some people just don't like lesbian chili toe sucking.  I hear Bin Laden is against lesbian chili toe sucking.  I'm just sayin...

And now I leave you, on the eve of my 33rd birthday, with a final gift from the internet.  This from a poster named CigarettesandChocMilk, who says:

"I saw this at the premiere. It was a blast. James Hyde is a great guy and I wish he would make more movies too."

Amen to that!