Rules of Attraction

Rules of Attraction is a parody, I think, about wayward college-age kids. I say I think it's a parody because in order to parodize something, the makers have to give some hint of what's being parodied. But, here, I have no idea. This movie is so fucking foreign and fantasized that I have no fucking clue who it's for.

In Rules of Attraction, a bunch of self-absorbed, pretty assholes wear their nihilism about as fashionably as Members Only jackets. They have a lot of sex, take a lot of drugs and act all miserable and sad. What they really want is love, but who cares? Whose college life is this poking fun at? It's the perpetuation of the Hollywood frat boys fantasy of college: pointless meandering punctuated by tits, sex, drugs, self-absorption and superficiality. Of course, those grassfuckers didn't actually see any action in school. That's why they joined frats; so they could play make-believe with other insecure guys.

I went to college. It's not something I brag about because I get beat up plenty already. When I brag I'd rather do it about how my dogs lick their asses. I don't need people thinking I'm some four-eyed poindexter and punch me in the head to see if big words start pouring out my ears. Besides, it only took me six days of Red Rocks Community College to cure me of any aspirations for higher education. I can't even know what our mascot was. Based on the number of posters on campus, I guess it was chlamydia.

Here's what I remember: I remember a shitload of guys just out of high school who still were as comfortable talking to girls as they were shoving hot pokers in their eyes. I thought the difference between high school and college was that in college the girls came up and talked to the guys, and maybe grabbed our wieners or something. I just sort of hoped that in those three months since high school, they would have become horny ladies.

We never had a "Dress to Get Screwed" party like they do in Rules of Attraction, but we had "Enchantment Under the Sea" in the cafeteria until I leaned against and broke the aquarium and flooded the dance floor with feeder goldfish. It didn't matter; the students weren't dancing. They were too busy avoiding eye contact.

I remember walking into every classroom and getting the willies from the bright fluorescent lights. Every room I walked into was full of kids with better clothes than me, who looked better prepared, and who actually understood what the teachers were saying. I knew I was the dumbest guy in every class.

Red Rocks wasn't set up to help me succeed. It was set up to help the obnoxious kids who already knew they were going to succeed. They'd get the plum dental hygienist, machine shop and bookkeeping jobs, and the rest of us would be sent to a career counselor whose qualification for the job was that he couldn't get any better job. I thought in college someone would tell me what to do, or that there would be some test that would discover I was some sort of genius who liked

ing, but had no aptitude for high-school-level math, history, English, chemistry, biology or Spanish.

College was just another high school except that you didn't have to go to class if you didn't want to. Oh, and they had a bowl of condoms in the student health office.

More than an education, though, I wanted to find someone like me, and who would like me. Every day, I staked out a table in the corner of the cafeteria, reading back issues of Reader's Digest and Hustler. I wanted the girls to think I was a bad boy (Hustler) with a tender side (Reader's Digest). I would never sit with other kids; they would come to me. And soon I would have the coolest table at lunchtime. But nobody else ever showed up.

In high school they told us that we better learn how to follow instructions, get our assignments in on time and write coherently because in college they'd flunk us out. And then I remember in college how the professors said we better learn how to follow instructions, and get our assignments in on time and write coherently, because in the real world employers would fire us. All of that was bullshit. When I got to the real world I found employers put up with all kinds of shit. And your boss looks pretty stupid saying "You better get your act together because they don't put up with this kind of shit in the Afterlife."

After a week of classes, I was pretty low. I didn't like the classes, and I hated that weirdo in the wheelchair who didn't really go to school there but who came by every day hoping to get a sympathy fuck. On that Friday, I was sort of drunk when I went to my chemistry lab and burned off my eyelashes while imitating Doctor Bunsen Honeydew for this pretty girl. And when she shoved me, I caught my pants on a cupboard and tore off the button.

I went to Hancock Fabrics to get another new button, but I didn't know how to put it on. That's where I met a young Mrs. Filthy. She didn't laugh at me for having no eyebrows. She only laughed at me a little bit when I asked what kind of glue to use to put the button on. She was plus-sized and lovely. Her muu-muu swished like a polyester-blend waterfall when she walked. She had the sort of confidence I expected to find in college; she'd look me in the eyes, answered questions directly and smelled like lilacs and pepperoni. She got a needle and thread and took me into the employee break room to sew on my button. She had a boyfriend, too, some bigshot who managed the Little Caesars in the K-Mart and could get all the free pizza he wanted. That explained her alluring scent.

I didn't think I could compete with a guy managing a pizza shop, but after I got drunk, I reconsidered. I busted all the buttons off my shirt and told her I did it helping the cops catch bank robbers. Mrs. Filthy patiently sewed on new buttons, gave me a 15% discount and told me that she was thinking about leaving her boyfriend. I was falling in love. She was so pretty and so nice, and unlike the career counselors, she liked helping me.

Needless to say, the next day I was back after tearing the button and fly out of my jeans. It was her day off, though, so I had to walk around like that all day and I thought my balls were going to flop out. But the next day, she was back, and she double-stitched in a new heavy-duty fly. And we went to lunch at Subway where I showed how I could stuff a whole meatball sandwich in my mouth. She bought me a Look candy bar at the Family Dollar and told me to drink less. My confidence was soaring. I tore the buttons off all my clothes and she sewed them on. I stopped going to that stupid college. Finally, one day, while she was putting a new YKK zipper in my windbreaker, she asked me to go the flea market with her that weekend. It would be our first non-sewing date.

We fell in love between the booth selling tube socks and the one with the mute selling Zippos, and we were married eight months later. The rest is history. I never regretted dropping out of college or not pretending I was getting laid for the sake of some frat brothers.

Oh, yeah, Rules of Attraction. It fucking blows.