Smile 2 is upon us in the you don’t have to pay to see it aside from the normal subscriptions you already pay dearly for and this time the smile thing that takes over your body actually beams to you from your tv or tablet or phone or laptop or pedestal and monitor or that guy’s house you watched the thing projected on or any manner of other things you can see it on or about and now you get infected no matter what you do or think and pretty soon you’ll kill yourself gruesomely and pass it on to some other poor bastard who will also likely see something that has to do with dirty underwear and a giant demon looking thing that looked great the first time around but could have used some work in part 2 here. How was that for an opening sentence or are you really even reading this or just going prison shithouse crazy because you saw the movie and it’s worked its way into your brain and now you really can’t believe what’s real or not fuscally this second sentence. Did I misspell especially as fiscally or did you just imagine that and now it looks like fuscally? What’s going on are you questioning everything around you even that person who delivered your food the other day was that person real or fake and were they using your guilt and shame to eat away at you from the inside and now it’s finally getting to you and it’s really starting to freak you out come on now what’s real and what’s not? Oh my child let’s see if we can get through this together because together we can surmount anything. Or have we already?

Do you remember the first Smile, it’s been a minute. And I mean the movie Smile and not that time when you were coming out of the Sam’s store and that girl smiled at you and you were all hey I still got it and it turned out her and her flirting hair flipping ended up convincing you to buy that piggy bank with all funds going to charity of course and now you have a piggy bank in your office. No – the movie Smile which I actually really really liked. This is, of course, the sequel and I would like to draw attention to my use of commas there since, in general, I hate them, the anus of punctuation. Or is it anuses? So – Smile was so good and people loved it and they made a new one and ——- I thought it was pretty good too but there seemed to be more shit I could do without this time around. I could get nit picky and pick nits but let’s see what happened after we talk about the good stuff here for a little bit. Or is this all in your head and we’re really not even talking about anything because you haven’t even come by this post yet and you’re future projecting things because it’s getting close to Monday and I do my posts on Monday morning so your inner self is trying to brace you for another helping of my public shame and soon you’ll realize that it’s getting late in your day and oh shit that guy did a post this morning I wonder what he’s shaming himself about today and you look it up and it’s this movie and you’re all “holy shit!”

Let’s talk about our main character here. She’s definitely got the face acting down and the angry screaming and the crying and the hair ripping bits were well written but there’s one thing I couldn’t get over because my head gets stuck in things like this and it’s that I lived with this girlfriend for about a year back in the mid 90s who looked similar and had THE EXACT SAME HAIRDO so it was really distracting to me when I kept seeing name redacted walking around all over the place even though it wasn’t her because we broke up in 1998 or did we even ever date I don’t know what’s real any more. Also, author’s note: I’ve never been a part of the industry but there are a LOT of outfits with sequins in this movie; from sweaters and onesies to jackets and makeup. I really felt like it was too many sequins. Like, cool it with the sequins. P.S. how did you like that colon semicolon combo in one sentence? Or did you just think that happened?

What else was good here? I thought the cinematography was A+ and I really loved it when they would start flipping things over or turning them upside down I guess – I wonder if that was when they were trying to show us what is real or not. I think I’m on to something there but I’m too lazy to go read about it. Or am I and I already did and I’ve been telling you or even myself something that is or isn’t happening or more to the point already did happen and we’re both just now realizing it wasn’t real? I guess that’s something to keep in mind as we proceed if we’re really proceeding at all or just thinking we might have been.

You see, in this movie our main character is a super hot pop star who gets addicted to prescriptions and her own popularity and fame and one night gets into it with her boyfriend as they’re driving on a road along some sort of cliff and they fight and yell and she causes a wreck and he dies and she gets deeper into drugs and pulling her hair out but she dries up and tries to make things right again and get everything back on track but is it her guilt that’s eating her up from the inside and she just needs to smile to fake it and make it through or is she haunted by these demons and she just needs to gruesomely kill them and herself to get it all over with? I don’t totally remember everything about the first one but I think it had to do with deep guilt about her mom so I think there’s a theme here with these two things but I’m not sure because how can we be sure about anything. Should we ask our resident psychologist here who we last heard from in the White Paper published about Christmas Evil / You Better Watch Out back during Christmas? Let’s see.

“Greetings and thank you for having me back, consolantibus amicis, dominarum et iudices. The subconscious is a complicated matter, the subject of which I centered on in my 1976 treatise: “The Neonatal Sense of Grief: How The Great War Indoctrinated the Unborn Into Unwanted Obligation, 1976, Estes & Smith Quarterly, 1st Printing, &cetera &cetera“. In my studies i learned that the British, upon birth, are obligated to begin providing for their widowed mothers whose husbands perished either overseas or on the mainland in defense of the Royals: Those Whose Guidance and Ordinance Cannot Be Questioned, as passed down from Charlemagne himself. Thus, even before a child’s first celebration of birth, he or she is required to support the grieving mother in any fashion up and including dock and textile work. Whereas a male offspring can collect up to seven crates of lobst” –

OK. Enough of this guy again. Who keeps inviting him back?

Is that a picture of our gibberish spouting analysts here or a character from the movie who looks amazingly like his dad?

I just scrolled up an down on this post and realize it’s going long so let’s wrap this up before my own trauma monster comes to get me. Or did it already? I liked Smile 2 and would be happy to watch another one of these but I think I like the first one better. This one went a little too CGI-y for me at the end and I don’t want to put a picture of it out here but you can easily search it and see for yourself. I thought when they did it the first time around it seemed more realistic and had some oomph. Lead actress lady was great.

FILED UNDER: TOO MANY SEQUINS AND I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW JACK NICHOLSON HAD A KID OR DID I

Oh look someone just sent me a picture of this sonofabitch scholar we have on the payroll. Who know and it’s even stranger since I’m the boss. Maybe I’m imagining things.

I would also like to say that that we are celebrating a birthday around here. I recently upgraded Steve Loggins and he seems to be more I this time around with his AI. That picture above we made a month or so ago. Here’s the same prompt with a couple of new key words added. I love what’s in the bottom right foreground there, this pleases me.

Or did it?

Oh! I also wanted to say this is one of my favorite things he’s done: