Someone named Kellie wrote me an e-mail with no subject line and no indication what, exactly, she was angry about. But her message was clear:
All of your comments are stupid you are an A-HOLE who do you think you are some big time movie director you say one line and make 1 hundred versions of it and call it a review you are an idiot and you should get a job at a donut shop you dumbass loser
The only part I take exception with is the implication that working at a doughnut shop would somehow be demeaning or undignified. On the contrary, what nobler profession is there than a purveyor of delicious doughnuts?!
Our other angry letter comes from a gal named Julia. She was so upset by my nine-year-old “Clash of the Titanic” column (which consists of a shortened, satirical script for the movie “Titanic”) that she didn’t even read the other angry letters already posted in which people said exactly the same things she wanted to say. She posted a comment on the page, and then sent me an e-mail directly:
you are heartless! so many people were killed! i am very into the titnaic, i read books on it. [Titnaic: of or relating to Titna, goddess of voluptuous women.] i loved that movie, and you are a sexist pig to say that women just watch it for Leonardo. [Yes, sweetie, that’s very cute.] Yes he is extremely hot, but it is a touching movie and i would watch it even if he were ugly. [I wish there were a way of proving that. I really do.] do you have any idea what that was like for those people? [For who, the actors? Probably kind of hard, but overall a fun experience, I guess.] they were on the ship, the lifeboats were gone and they knew they were going to die. [Oh, THOSE people.] they sat in there and froze to death. and now they are shaking in their graves [shivering?] knowing a freak named Eric is out there making fun of them! how could you think that is funny in the least?! I watch this movie every sunday night and cry every time. and if you don’t, i am quite sure you have no heart you bastard!
While I don’t disagree with the part about my being a heartless bastard, I do wonder what it’s like to watch the same movie every single Sunday. That’s gotta get old after a while. And she still cries EVERY TIME?! I would think you’d get over it eventually.
I wrote back to Julia as follows:
Thanks for your hilarious e-mail. I will put it with the others.
To address one of your points, though, if you’ll read the article very carefully, you’ll see that I am making fun of THE MOVIE, not the actual event. I wouldn’t make fun of people dying in freezing waters. [Full disclosure: Actually, I probably would. But I wasn’t in this case.] I would, however, make fun of a MOVIE about those events. Similarly, while I wouldn’t make fun of the Bible, I’d be OK with making fun of a cheesy movie based on the Bible. Do you see the difference?
If I were one of those dead Titanic people, I’d be shaking in my grave knowing that James Cameron had turned my death into a billion-dollar profit for himself. I’m just sayin’.
Julia was not pleased with this response. Not pleased at all! She writes:
that e-mail wasn’t supposed to be funny!!! i was serious! even though you were just making fun of the movie, it was rude. how would you like to be leo dicaprio and have someone make fun of your biggest success? [I would probably cry myself to sleep every night on a huge pile of money.] and i assure you that if you ever make fun of a bible movie, you will go to hell, with a first class ticket. [So I guess her answer to my question “Do you see the difference?” is “No.”] you hypocritical social retard! making fun of everyones favorite movie is no way to land a friend or a date!
She does make a salient point at the end, though I do question her assertion that “Titanic” is everyone’s favorite movie.
Seeing that there was no reasoning with her, I didn’t respond. But then I noticed something: A few hours after she posted a comment directly on the article’s page, someone else posted a similar comment — coming from the same IP address. Clearly, it was Julia again, trying to disguise herself. Here’s what she wrote — and the asterisks are hers, not mine, indicating she censored herself:
I have an idea, how about you go outside take a large tree and shove it up your a**!!
Thousands died and you make fun of it???
ONE OF THEM WAS MY GRANDPA YOU A******!!!!
MY GRANDMA AND MY UNCLE (my mom wasn’t born yet)
HAD TO SAIL AWAY AND WATCH HIM DIE!
my grandma tells me stories of that day so it’s like i was there, and i feel personaly attaked by this article. my granpa has a message for you: rot in h***!!!
love,
caiti
Now you can see why Julia/Caiti is so obsessed with the real Titanic victims: Her grandfather and uncle were among them. I can understand the personal connection, then.
But wait a second. The Titanic sank in 1912. Her grandmother and uncle (her mom’s brother) were on the ship but survived; her mother was not yet born. Now, our uncles and our moms are usually not too far apart in age, being siblings and all. At the very outside, there could be as much as 20 years separating them, but usually it’s much less. Let’s say Julia/Caiti’s mother was born 20 years later, in 1932. Then let’s say she didn’t have Julia/Caiti until very late in her own life — 40, let’s say. That would be 1972. Which means the girl writing me these e-mails is 35 at the youngest. Which means she is far too old to be watching “Titanic” and weeping every Sunday night as part of some kind of bizarre sacrament.
(An alternate scenario is that Caiti is not Julia herself, but Julia’s mother: They share a computer and thus have the same IP address. That would mean it was Julia’s great-grandmother on the ship, and Julia could logically be a young girl, not a 35-year-old. Of course, that would mean that it’s Caiti who’s somewhere between 35 and 60 years old, and the comment she posted doesn’t really point toward that.)
Finally, I’d like to mention that the Titanic sank 95 years ago, and those people would all be dead by now anyway. Thank you.
