True Story
It is always so wonderful when I get to display my wit, but always dissapointing when you’re with people who don’t get the joke you’re making.
Case in point: I ran into my friend, we’ll call him P, at a party this past weekend. P works at an abortion clinic in the IS department, setting up computers and managing that sort of techy stuff. Anyway he always tells me great stories about the weirdness of the place.
This time he told me about this lady who came into the clinic for an abortion. Pretty normal right? Well this lady was different because she was only 30 years old, and this was her 28th abortion. P told me how the doctors were trying to tell her not to have any more abortions and go on the birth control pill because having so many surgeries isn’t exactly healthy for the body.
Anyway, so he tells me that this lady was 30 and she’d had 28 abortions, so I go, “Wow, she’s like the Fassbinder of abortions.”
Now that shit is funny! But I guess not everyone knows about New German Cinema’s patron saint Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who was 36 when he died in 1982 after having made 41 films.
Anyway the point of all that is that A. I’m a witty motherfucker, and B. it’s a segueway to mention that I’m gearing up this week to watch Fassbinder’s classic Berlin Alexanderplatz, newly restored and premiering at the Museum of Modern Art next week. I’ve always had a hard time watching his films on home video and so I’m very excited to see the 16 hour tv miniseries on the big screen, along with some of his other classic films like Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven, and one of my favorites - Fear of Fear, starring skeletal Margit Carstensen as a bored housewife who starts to go bonkers and alcoholic after the birth of her child.
My favorite quote about Fassbinder comes from Andy Warhol who said, after hearing of his death, “… he was reeeaally strange. And when I say somebody’s strange, you know they’re strange.”
PS how hot does Rainer look in that picture above? The huge phallic camera? I love it! Oh and yeah, it’s pretty fucked up to have gotten 28 abortions when you’re only thirty, but whatever - I got to make that awesome joke!