Angry Letters: ‘Clash of the Titanic,’ ????
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.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:36 am
I love it!!! Nine years later and that column is still producing hillarious angry letters.
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:05 am
“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.”
My first (and terribly irreverent) thought on this statement was “Isn’t that just like going to church in a singles ward? Watching the same thing every Sunday . . . weepy (often for no reason) women, some of whom come only because of the very handsome boy who never talks directly to them . . . ”
Like Eric, I am certain I will end up with a first-class ticket to hell. But hey, it will be the first time I’ve been in first class, so it won’t be all bad!
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:27 am
I like how Eric goes to the extent of writing out the possibilities of the age of the girl, and that he always focuses on the funniest points of the letters he receives.
I love reading Eric’s blog - he’s a guy who’s thinking what we’re all thinking, but is blessed with humorous snarkiness and isn’t afraid to use it. Being non-confronational in my own personal nature, I relish in watching someone take the poorly-written hate e-mail and breaking it down to expose it’s many flaws.
Thank you, Eric. Your writings are usually one of the high points of every day. Keep up the good work!
August 2nd, 2007 at 12:26 pm
If Caiti’s grandpa died when the Titanic sunk, then her grandmother was already pregnant with her then-unborn mother, and Caiti’s mother is about 94. Is there a single 94-year-old woman on the whole planet who named her daughter Caiti?
August 2nd, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Did Caiti put the asterisks in, in place of her swear words? Or was that Eric editing? Because really - it pretty much takes the sting out of an angry, profanity-laced email if you don’t even use the profanity.
And no comment about how Caiti’s name is spelled incorrectly? Those are some of my favorite columns.
August 2nd, 2007 at 12:50 pm
See, what I’d like to ask Julia/Caiti is, if it’s so mean and cruel to make fun of Leonardo, or even actual people who died back in 1912, isn’t it also mean and cruel to call my son names and tell him where to go? Because I think it is.
Her shaking ancestors are probably shocked and appalled at her language.
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:22 pm
How could her grandpa die before her mother was born? The only possibility is if her grandmother was pregnant when on the boat. Which means her mother could have been born no later than 1913. That would make her a lot older than your current calculations.
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Reading through Caiti’s comment, I could see a 40 or 50-something woman saying those things. She wouldn’t be high up on my list of tactful or educated people, but I’ve met folks like that. No shocker.
And the most obvious solution to the grandmother issue is that she remarried sometime after she watched her husband drown or fall to his death or whathaveyou. That would make her mother and uncle half-siblings (she likely just called her grandmother’s first husband her grandfather for heart-tugging’s sake).
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:06 pm
1) As mentioned, Julia/Caiti’s mother and uncle could have different fathers. Although that would mean the guy who died onboard was not her “grandfather” but rather “my grandmother’s first husband.”
2) The asterisks were in the original. I should have noted that, because it does make it funnier. I’ll edit that.
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Why is no one suggesting the most obvious answer? To me this is a sappy little girl who was MORTALLY offended Eric didn’t like her favorite movie (everyone’s I mean..) and subsequently wrote an angry, passion-driven letter to try to hurt him back. Upon learning that her anger was met with amusement she tried to make Eric feel bad through guilt by lying about made up relatives.
..wouldn’t be the first time..
Maybe this is so obvious the age discussion is all just tounge-in-cheek and I missed it
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:46 pm
I just want to point out that Caiti’s uncle didn’t die. He and her grandmother had to watch as the grandfather was left on the boat. Also, the grandmother was pregnant with Caiti’s mother, not Caiti.
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:48 pm
The relatives thing does seem like the sort of information you’d begin with if it were true, but only mention when running out of ideas if it were false.
That said, I do actually love Titanic. Sorry
August 2nd, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Personally, I think the only way to explain the timeline and the overall quality of the letters is Caiti’s real Grandfather is in fact, her uncle, and they call the guy who died on the boat her grandfather to make it sound less sorid.
August 2nd, 2007 at 3:57 pm
Titna: the goddess of voluptuous women - marvelous!
August 2nd, 2007 at 4:50 pm
If I had to watch Titanic every Sunday night, I think I would cry too…
And maybe the girl is really young and her grandmother and “uncle” are only saying that they were on the Titanic just to make themselves and their lives sound a bit more “glamorous” (if one can say that): “You know that movie you watch every Sunday because of that ugly actor whatshisface, well, we were ON THAT SHIP!”
August 2nd, 2007 at 5:32 pm
I’d also like to add, I’ve always loved that poster. If I were juuuust a tad more fanatical, I’d want to order it catalog-style and hang it above my bed.
August 2nd, 2007 at 5:59 pm
I’ve had the “I would like the movie even if [actor/actress] wasn’t hot” argument pulled on me in movie conversations as well. Eric’s response to this argument will now become my own in all future such conversations.
August 2nd, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Makes you wonder what Tomb Raider’s box office gross would have been if Kathy Griffin* had been Lara Croft.
*I love Kathy Griffin, but she is not what Hollywood consideres leading lady material.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:42 pm
“Graves”?
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:14 am
I almost feel as though we should have a vote as to how many people think that Titanic (or Titnaic as the case may be, how much could you love a movie if you can’t even spell its name right?) is their favorite movie. I’ve never even seen it, so I know it isn’t mine. Anyone else want to vote?
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:56 am
Not my favorite, and I’ve seen it.
I request a link from this blog to the Clash column.
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:10 pm
Thanks!
August 3rd, 2007 at 3:04 pm
That is horrifying. Every sunday? I couldn’t do it once. [Shudder.]
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Hey, hey, let’s settle down here. It’s not nice to mock someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
August 5th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
OCD, or diminished mental capacity. That would explain most of the bizarreness all around.
August 24th, 2007 at 5:38 am
*Sigh* Don’t you love it when people just can’t accept that not everybody loves the things they do? So they think that by getting really ANGRY and abusive, they’ll get their point across? Please, Caiti or Julia, or any others like them out there…PLEASE at least try to put forth your arguments in a calm, mature and open-minded fashion, rather than telling people to go to hell or stick trees up their butt. The only result is that NOBODY will ever take you seriously or listen to ANYTHING you have to say. Even though I suspect that they’re just trying to disguise the fact that they actually have NOTHING to say…
I’m amazed that people still care so much after all these years, sheesh…
August 6th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I love people who work at donut shops. I would enjoy if you worked at one you could tell me if the donut was worth eating so I wouldn’t waste my time of bad donuts. I’m sorry but the main characters NEVER EXCISED! so if I was Julia I would be complaining to the screen writers of titanic. They made up a fake wedding, nude picture, almost suicide, car sex only to make money off of a tradgity her family was a victim to. I can assure you Leonardo DiCcaprio has no issues with the cash he made he worked hard no a movie only for Julia to freak out over it. Calling someone a “social retard” is kind of sad. In all rights I’m retarded 4 real*fake gasp*she offended me*fake tears*. I would love to see Julia/Caiti’s Grandpa tell someone to go to H***.older people saying things like that makes me giggle. Making up a twisted story is worst then reviewing a movie. If this story about her family members was real then if she cries every Sunday and watches that movie not only does she lack a life needs to see some help but she should take the time to make sure that the story makes sense. I don’t think that watching one movie for the rest of your life will do much good for Julia/Caiti anyways. she’s ridiculous.
P.S. next time someone decides to make up a story put in the 1st e-mail not the last it makes it slightly believable