The movie begins with a quote by one Lord Humungus. If you don't know who that is, there's a Mel Gibson movie that you desperately need to see first.

My first instinct is to say this movie is DARK. But really, what that means is it explores a darker reality of AWALT and alpha behavior. It starts out decent enough. Some friends meets some other friends in a happenstance way in a dive bar in North Hollywood - anyone who has actually been to Hollywood knows what a shithole that place is. And everyone has roommates, and they live like college students. And they're all drunk and stoned most of the time.

Well, two of them start dating. And you can see where this is going right away. She tells him she won't be his girlfriend because she'll hurt him. And he persists. I've been in precisely that situation before

Well, some shit goes down, and the main character changes. A lot. There's a lot of jumping around, and it's hard to follow time, and the ending has a sort of Arnold-Total-Recall uncertainty to it. But basically, his change, as socially unacceptable as it would probably be, brings out the AWALT in 2 different women, in the form of 2 different extremes.

Watch it. The critics gave it a comparison to "Fight Club". They were referring to the overall mood of the movie, not the plot, but even that's a stretch. So just don't pay attention to that.

Basically, over the course of the film, the main character (Woodrow - yeah, that's his name) goes from a fairly common American not-quite-beta-but-definitely-not-alpha to a real post-Apocalyptic alpha in behavior. My take away is that being an alpha means accepting the full extent of my human masculinity, and not being afraid of it. Every feeling and urge that my male mind experiences is useful. It is not to be ignored, or tamped down, but nor should it be indulged mindlessly. My feelings and urges must be used.

It's a perspective shift for me. And one that will take some time to embrace.

Watch Bellflower, if you haven't already. And if you haven't seen Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, what the fuck have you been doing with your life?

Also, I watched Closer last week. I didn't post about it because it wasn't anything spectacular. It was just one big AWALT show. But it can demonstrate how alpha and beta behaviors aren't necessarily distinct from one another. Once again, it comes down to mindset and self-image.