Gamer Girls

 https://twitter.com/stillnewtwallen/status/1569814807108538368

In 94 I was in 5th grade. I read an article in the paper about a guy in a town 30 mins away who made a #movie and It blew my mind. And set me on the path. Anything is possible. No matter where you are from @ThatKevinSmith#clerks3 #NewJersey

WE KNOW, NEWT!  Why does he have to repeat himself so often?  We get it.  New Jersey.  Great.

Why would he think that New Jersey disadvantages him in any way?  I could see, for example, somebody from a rural coal mining town in West Virginia who has ten siblings and two unemployed parents thinking that they’re disadvantaged.

But now that I say that, I knew somebody from a poor West Virginia family like that.  She moved.  Moved to New England.  Worked the same fairly shitty job that I was doing.  But it wasn’t retail or fast food or dealing with food in any way.  

God, that woman had the biggest tits I’ve ever seen in my life.  No exaggeration.  She’s the all-time champion.  I’m never going to see tits bigger than those.  She was in her late 30s, I’d guess, and not a looker but they were like…there had to be a medical explanation for this.  Or maybe it’s from all of the inbreeding.  But just massive.  They nearly went down to her waist but they were also really out in front of her.  They had to custom make her uniform they were so huge.  There was nothing erotic about any of this, it was just interesting from a medical standpoint.  They must have weighed 15 or 20 pounds each.

Oh, the point of my story is that she said that when she was a child, she never felt that she was poor or couldn’t do whatever she wanted.  Even though she was poor.  But her parents never gave that impression to her.  

Or take somebody from the inner city.  Madam Fomo, for example.  One of the places that she claims to be from is New York, although she’s also said Florida.  For the purposes of this story, let’s go with New York.  And she said that she had a lot of siblings.  And my suspicion is that her mother was a prostitute and her father was her mother’s pimp.

I can see somebody in that situation saying, “Hey.  This is awful.  I’m never going to be able to achieve my dream of being a dentist” or whatever.  And unfortunately, in Madam Fomo’s case, she did just get into prostitution.

But New Jersey?  No.  There’s nothing especially terrible about New Jersey.  

I know that Newt’s mother was 16 when she had him, and that suggests an upbringing that probably wasn’t ideal, but that’s separate from living in New Jersey.  Everybody in New Jersey isn’t having children at 16.  

But Newt was really inspired by Kevin Smith and Clerks.  He saw it in the fifth grade, oddly. 

Why doesn’t he just rip off Clerks then?  It doesn’t have to be a direct rip off, as he’s so fond of doing, but something similar.  Do a movie about working in a movie theatre.  Write some snappy dialogue.  This is all you need.  Get PVC Bondage Girl to act in this and whatever other skanks you scrape up and you’re done.  You had the fucking job at the movie theatre.  You could have filmed there.  I’m sure that he still can.  He seems to be on good terms with the people at the cinema.

Here’s the problem: he can’t write snappy dialogue and he has no ideas.  All he knows is tits, gore, and plagiarism.  

But he’s right.  If you watch something like Clerks or Slacker or My Dinner with Andre, you realise that all you need to make a good movie is a good script.  You don’t need a huge budget and special effects and explosions and sexy ladies in bikinis.  Just take the time and write a good fucking script.  That’s all that you have to do.  

Newt refuses to do it.  Tits, gore, and plagiarism.  That’s his big plan.  That’s what he quit his job over.  This is what he thinks is going to make him a millionaire.  You know, because there are so many tits, gore, and plagiarism millionaires out there.

If Kevin Smith could write a good movie, why can’t Newt?  They’re both from New Jersey.  There seems to be some significance to this in Newt’s mind.  

Kevin Smith didn’t say, “I’m going to make a tits and gore plagiarised movie”.  He set out to do something new and original.  

What was I doing in 1994?  I was in the 10th grade.  I was slacking, as was the style at the time.  Didn’t care about school.  

The school let you pick what classes you wanted to take.  So even though I was in the “smart” track in grade school, I decided to take all remedial classes.  Basic math.  Business English.  Shit like this.  The people in these classes weren’t mentally retarded but they were pretty close.  Some of them had limited English abilities.

But I figured, what does it matter?  We’re all getting the same diploma.  Why take difficult classes when I can take easy classes?

I was dead on.  It’s kind of surprising that I figured this out so early and that I went through with it.  Because other people were concerned about their transcript and their grades and their extra-curricular activities and getting into a good college and whatnot.  But I didn’t give a shit about any of that.  I knew that it was all meaningless.

So I went to class with these remedial students.  Did the absolute bare minimum.  Passed most of my classes.  And that was that.  I got a diploma afterwards.  

Some of my classmates went to marginally better colleges than I did but not really.  Nothing that would make any difference.  Nobody went to Harvard or anything like that.  Nothing even close.  

And none of it mattered anyway.  I never had a job that required any education whatsoever.  Nobody ever asked to see any diploma or degree.  As a 13 year old, I knew that it was all a giant waste of time and I was proven right.

I took a lot of typing classes in high school.  I took a lot of these “business” classes.  It was just the re-named “remedial” shit.  That turned out to be a great decision.  I learned how to type really well.  I got a lot of jobs because of that.  

Everything else in high school was a waste of time.  How many times did my U-boat knowledge come in handy?  Or dividing fractions?  Or young adult novel I am the Cheese?  I haven’t used any of this shit even one time.

In 1994, there was a girl who liked me and would constantly flirt with me but I was like 15 years old.  I didn’t have a car or anything.  Are we going to hang out at my house and play Quest for Glory 2?  

So eventually she lost interest.  Then when she was 17, she got pregnant by some Mexican guy in his late 20s who quickly abandoned her.  Then she gained about 150 pounds.  She’s done a variety of low-paying jobs and still lives in that same ghetto.

I’d say that 90% of my former classmates still live in that ghetto.  How come?  Why am I the only who moved abroad?  

Pure moxie.  They’re not teaching that in the schools.  

Having a good plan also helps.  Take Newt, for example.  Newt’s plan is idiotic and doomed to failure.  It’s so stupid that he must intentionally be sabotaging his own life.  Plagiarised tits and gore movies made in his mother’s basement?  There is no conceivable chance of this ever working.

So New Jersey.  Newt is all about New Jersey.  That’s good because that’s where he’s going to stay.  This tits and gore shit is not his ticket out.  It’s his cursed guarantee of never getting out.