Day 300: 300 Words About 300

Holy shit, I made it. Day 300. That’s pretty fucking nuts to think that I’m still spitting out all this schlock and you are all still reading it. Thanks, Mom. To celebrate the occasion, I have to write about 300. Not about the number or the bowling score or the one time I went to take a picture of Joe at the 300 bowling alley and two random girls walked up and posed with him. Although, I should actually be writing about that, because it was awesome. This is something I’ve been meaning to do since the beginning. When Zach was on his 365 day writing journey, he wrote about falling asleep during the film 300 on day 300. I knew that I had to write a rebuttal, but I raised the stakes on myself. I decided that I would start a writing project myself, to rub in Zach’s face and Day 300 would be my 300 rebuttal. So finally, almost a year later, here is my own personal experience with 300:

I was so fucking excited to see the new Zack Snyder romp. After all, I was your generic mid-aughts 19 year old dude. I had a giant Pulp Fiction poster on my wall, most of the books I owned were by Hunter S Thompson, I had just discovered Tom Waits and I really wanted a fedora, but was too broke from chain smoking to buy one. So of course, a CGI-heavy, blood-soaked dude flick appealed to me.

We had tickets for opening night, but that was before the advent of assigned seating. So long story short, someone spent too much time rolling the blunt and by the time we got there, the only open seats were in the very front. I found it to be extremely difficult to watch, which I attributed to my stonedness and the fact that I could only see a portion of the screen (now that I’m married to someone with vision issues, I can’t imagine how she goes through life with the limited scope that I had that night). I ended up sleeping through most of it and was jolted awake by the end credits.

So I guess I had to see it again.

This time, I coughed up the extra dough for IMAX and went with people that generally smoked smaller amounts of weed. Finally, I could get a clear view of what I was sure was a masterpiece. And of course, I fell asleep again.

That was when I came to the conclusion that 300 is just a boring movie. If I wanted to watch a bunch of brooding, shirtless buff dudes duking it out, I’d watch post-Katie Vick wrestling. The plot is thin, the style is bland and I don’t understand why people still worship it. That’s the hill I’ll die on.

– TeeCoZee