I may not have a job, but I now have a commute. I’ve been managing two households since Saturday – well M.B. is really managing our place as far as pet care etc. goes – I am in the world of two monster dogs and fourteen-year-old concerns over pizza and long phone calls to his new girlfriend. Last night this resulted in me watching Euro-trip (don’t blame me, he owns a copy), a teen angst film often both dull and oddly transgressive.

For example, the main character’s “girlfriend’s” German younger brother inks a Hitler mustache onto his upper lip and goosesteps through the background of a scene for no apparent reason. There are many such WTF moments in the style of the Farley Brothers – There’s Something About Mary. One of the outtakes at the end is the director teaching this child to salute like der Fuhrer which is coded as “isn’t this director funny”. Yeah, I’m thinking not so much. You can laugh with films like this but you also have to keep your thinking cap on and be critically vigilant about the pap you’re getting served.

Lucy Lawless, of Xena fame, as the anal probe toting dominatrix in the Amsterdam brothel was something of a casting and plot turn surprise, as was Buffy’s younger sister engaging in “watersports” as part of a hitchhiking routine. She also French kisses her twin brother at length while drunk on Absinth. The watersports moment was only presented in the closing credits of this version of the film, but I still have to wonder how that played over at Disney what with her film Ice Princes poised for the big family draw. Pissing to hitch doesn’t seem to fit Disney’s draw.

I understand there are several versions of Euro-trip marketed like American Pie was with un-rated, super-un-rated, and director’s cuts. One time, at band camp I learned repetitive marketing strategies that encourage repurchasing while at the same time reducing human sexuality to the level of the fart joke and ignoring all risk/consequence of pregnancy/disease at the same time reinforcing sexist gender stereotypes. Rhetorically a conservative gesture masked as the “dangerous” result of extreme liberalism.

It’s no more transgressive than Revenge of the Nerds was. In both flicks the transgressions serve to reinforce rather than complicate conservative norms. I thought that the constant homosexual panic was fairly disturbing, with a recurring vaguely Italian male predator trying to get the boys whenever their train enters a dark tunnel – sometimes a cigar is... at the same time ubiquitous lesbian make-out scenes sanction that version of homosexuality as long as it’s re-sexualized by being subjected to the heterosexual male gaze.

The most positive and salient feature was the reminder that America’s puritanical hangover has resulted in a culture of intense repressive prudery. Yet the film does more to reinforce that prudery than cut against it, giving the bloodhound gang cast experiential reasons to return to America with many myths intact, though not their virginity, as all the major and minor characters do get laid, including a bald Mat Damon, who has been “banging Scotty’s girlfriend in his van every Sunday after she lied and told him she was going to church” – which is an enactment of the lyrics to the popular title song which predates the filming script. This is quite the bizarre little cultural artifact.

Taylor and I have had some interesting conversations about film. I think it’s almost all good if you can learn from it. He wanted to watch the Truman Show yesterday and while it was on he began to talk about the ethics of forced utopia and draw comparisons to The Matrix, all unprompted. This is a very bright kid. He also wanted to talk about how it seems like more and more Christians are reconciling with the unavoidable truths of evolution, finding some midpoint of reason and faith – again he started that one.

I took he and a friend to garage and estate sales on Saturday (they wanted to go to the library to use the computer and because the DVD rentals are free - I saw a few sale signs in route so we detoured). He kept explaining to his friend how shallow he thought many of the kids at school were with regard to money and how happy he was that he was learning that the deal mattered more than the bragging rights of brand name. Even with crap like Euro Trip in his collection he’s going to turn out ok.

“How does an estate sale differ from a garage sale? I don’t think I’ve ever been to an estate sale.”

“Well, generally there has either been a bankruptcy or a death. I would say that the slightly catatonic old man, who was watching the TV that was for sale, is either going to go live with one of the children who was ignoring him or be put in a home. I imagine his wife recently died and she was his primary care giver.”