Dearest, purest Marissa,

You can do a lot better love letter-wise than nonsense promises made by Steve Falk at the end of commentaries that he couldn’t stand doing even though they’re completely his own damn fault, but here goes.  (And this is the last one I’m doing, anyone else who insists on sending angry demands, sitting through the Bratz commentary in its entirety is really your fault, not mine.  And I’m tired of writing love letters.  I know this is only my second one, but don’t you understand?  I’m so very tired.)  I figure since you are such a Pigs fan, Marissa, and clearly the same kind of movie junkie that we are, the best kind of sweet nothings I can whisper in your innocent ears are warnings about lame movies you may not have yet seen.  (If you have, well, again not my fault.)

Firstly, sweet Marissa, I went to see a matinee of The X-Files: I Want to Believe, which I can’t say was disappointing because I was expecting exactly what I got, but it still made me sad for those first few seasons of the television show, you know, where creepy monsters and shiny aliens were waiting around every corner, and the spooky guy and the skeptic lady would follow them from sideshow freak carnivals to battleships stuck in wormholes.  In this new episode from the freak files, which I can only assume was supposed to be a movie because I saw it projected onto a large screen, Mulder and Scully follow Billy Connelly around to watch him dig in the snow.  Eventually, there is something about a modern day Frankenstein, which is supposed to be the scary part, I guess, which feels like a footnote to a movie that already feels like a footnote itself.  It played like one of those off weeks of the X-Files, where they didn’t have the sweeps week budget for a big monster, and the writers were way over-worked and couldn’t come up with a creative way to dance around the lack of funds.  It was a very snowy movie, however, and that I liked about it.  I like snow.  And I do like Billy Connelly, too, so I might follow him around and watch him dig in the snow myself, but I still don’t think there’s a movie in it.

So, lovely Marissa, since I felt slighted by the lack of any real cinematic experience with Frankenstein and Billy and Fox and everything else, I decided it was my right to sneak into another perfectly mediocre movie.  Step Brothers was about a third funny, I thought, which was actually a lot funnier than most Will Ferrell movies I’ve seen.  When the humor was tinged with anger and unshackled by Hollywood’s need for three-act structure and sentimentality, I was laughing.  Will Ferrell rubbed his balls on a drum.  It’s puerile, granted, but very funny.  Ultimately, though, I got tired and fussy as the movie went from no-holds-barred absurdist humor to a “touching” lesson about family and dreams (dreams. hold on to them. family. love. blah.)  Despite never having been too impressed with Ferrell’s comedy, I always wind up seeing his movies.  Why?  Well, sweet Marissa, it’s because I have these recurring dreams about hanging out with Will, and he is always so nice to me.  There are a million ways to interpret these dreams, all of them depressing and/or disturbing, so I just kind of take them on face value.  I want to like Will Ferrell.  And I suppose I’ll keep giving him chances until I really do.  Oh, my lord jesus h., this has stopped being a love letter to Marissa and is now a love letter to Will Ferrell.

Life is filled with fun twists and turns.

Forever yours, Todd.