Natalie Portman - who's that?

WHO'S THAT?

The following is the tale of a brief conversation I recently had to endure with one of our building's custodians. I hope you derive more enjoyment out of reading it than I did experiencing it.

Earlier this week, one of my co-workers developed an illness you refer to as a cold and left early to go home, presumably to rest and recuperate, but more likely to shoplift scarfs as the stores begin getting more crowded as the most commercial holidays of various religions approach. The custodian, who shall remain nameless for obvious privacy protection reasons, was about to enter her office to empty her trash, which typically on days of the week beginning with T, is filled with Bazooka Joe wrappers (the gum is all stuck to the underneath parts of her desk).


Due to my co-worker's office door being closed, Carlos proceeds to ask me... oops... ah, fuck it. Ever since Google stopped linking my profile pic to Google image searches for T. Rexes, I've got nary a hit a day, anyway. So, Carlos asks me 'hey T, is she in?' to which I responded 'no, she was sick and left for the day, so if I were you, I wouldn't go in there and start licking her keyboard or anything, might not be sanitary,' to which he laughed, of course.

After he came back out, he tried to make some kind of joke about how he prefers to lick monitors anyway, to which I replied with something along the lines of 'hey, that's cool. If I worked with Natalie Portman, you wouldn't want to know what I'd be doing in there,' which prompted, in successive order a) the comment 'Natalie Portman, who's that?' from coke-dealing Carlos and b) huge spikes in my brain's task manager for categories: anger, dumbfoundedness, and pity.


Who is Natalie Portman? Surely you jest, you big oaf? No; jesting, he was not. Not wanting to appear like some kind of Star Wars nerd (which I sorta am - not one of the dresses-up to watch the movies in the theatre-types like my ex's sister's ex-boyfriend, but more like I have all the movies and the Rogue Squandron games for Gamecube and when I walk up to automatic doors I pretend to do a little force-hand motion to get them to open - so I'm probably a 4/10 SW nerd, but I just don't want to appear as anything more than a 2) I figured the quickest way to end this poor man's suffering would be to bust out the prequel trilogy reference to jog his memory. Surprisingly, this failed to work, which was bizarre, because she might be the only prominent female character in Episodes 1 to 3, and he did ask me if I saw the last movie, because he thought it was awesome.

The rest of conversation (and afternoon) was a major downer. He asked if this Natalie Portman character was as hot as Jessica Biel, who I said was like an Orangutan in comparison, and then Jessica Alba, who I agreed was pretty hot and then went on about how I discovered her before everyone else when she was on Flipper on YTV, which none of these bandwagoneer 'fans' of her remember (speaking of discoveries, I really expected bigger things out of Tatyana Ali [Fresh Prince] and always wanted Christine Lakin [Al from Step-by-Step] to do well post-TGIF, which obviously hasn't happened. I wonder if she's resorted to soft-core, yet?).


Anyways, my last ditch efforts to get this bozo to recognize who she was were down to Closer, Garden State, and Home is Where the Heart is, which all proved wildly unsuccessful. I probably should have mentioned V for Vendetta, but then he'd be all 'was she the bald chick? Cutting off her hair like that was dumb' and then that'd have been straw that broke this camel's back, and I would have been forced to chomp him. if I did that though, I wouldn't have a connection for all that shitty gum I've been chewing and sticking under Maureen's desk anymore, so it's probably for the best that I didn't.

(Side note: I was going to make a 'Before' and 'After' joke with the 2 last pics in this post but I didn't want to give the impression that my feelings for Natalie Portman were so purely primal in nature, particularly given my brain's supposed 'unrefined' wiring, which is really only 2 steps below that of your average male homo sapien's wiring today. Plus I found it to be in somewhat poor taste as it was a little too vulgar in suggestion for such a classy lady. Thanks to my further rambling though, I feel justified in putting up one last Portman pic, which I doubt anyone will complain about.)


p.s. See comments section for a funny anecdote about the name Natalie.