Someone needs to tell Lawrence Dai you don't need to work so hard these days to get a blog-to-book deal.
As Tumblr teaches us, pretty much all you need is a theme, some photos — you don't even need to take them yourself, the Internet is full of them – and snarky captions. Then, quicker than you can say "Look at that f----ing hipster," you're signing paperbacks at the Barnes & Noble.
You certainly don't need to torture yourself by watching "Julie and Julia" every day for a year, thus torturing anyone on the Internet who happens upon your blog by writing about it.
"Julie Powell managed to cook her way through all 524 recipes in (Julia) Child's cookbook in a year, learning valuable life lessons along the way," writes the Northwestern student at the beginning of The Lawrence/Julie & Julia Project blog. "I hope to learn as much, if not more, by watching the film Julie & Julia every day for a year."
As Dai's blog entries note, people are happening upon it — a friend's post in Reddit brought traffic, and he showed up in a Huffington Post piece on websites for wasting time. Nine days into this one-joke journey, Dai is clearly cracking himself up, and dropping lots of NSFW F-bombs in his wake. What's not so clear is whether he actually likes "Julie and Julia," or at least, whether he liked it in the beginning. Not that it matters.
That Dai seems increasingly stir crazy so early in his Powell homage is unsurprising. A lack of Mark Ruffalo as Powell's husband is an issue. And Dai is already losing patience with the antics of Amy Adams (as Powell), as evidenced by his most recent entry on the poor man's "Annie Hall" lobster-cooking scene:
Even more ridiculous is the extent to which Amy Adams freaks out the entire time, as she can't seem to bring herself to end the life of a giant bug-eyed crustacean. Why did Nora Ephron make the narrative choice to make Julie sympathize with an uglya-- crayfish? I have no idea. Maybe because that makes her more likable or something? I mean, I suppose it does give an excuse for Not Mark Ruffalo's character to sing the lyrics "lobster killer" to the tune of "Psycho Killer" by the Talking Heads. That was sort of funny, I guess. Oh, did I mention that this movie is 2 hours long and this scene contributes nothing to progress the overall storyline? Because I should've mentioned that.
Will Dai get sick of "Julie & Julia before readers tire of The Lawrence/Julie & Julia Project? All we can do is wait.
