High maintenance

Said of a woman who requires an inordinate amount of attention.

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A high maintenance woman is a drama queen. Something or someone is always ruffling her feathers. Her emotions never seem to be centered. A low maintenance woman is the center of calm in any storm.

At a restaurant, a high maintenance woman complains about her food and sends back meals. A low maintenance woman will make a note never to come back to the restaurant again, but will continue to eat and make conversation as if nothing had happened.

If you're in bed, and she says, "Don't touch the hair," she's high maintenance.

If she doesn't want to kiss you because it might smudge her lipstick, she's high maintenance.

A low maintenance woman will walk over cobblestone streets in her high heels with the breathtaking surety of Swiss mountain goats. A high maintenance woman will hail a taxi to avoid them.

It is not true that women who spend a lot of time on makeup, hair care, nails, and dress are high maintenance. They only move into the high maintenance category if you pick them up at the agreed upon time and it still takes them an hour to get ready. When your schedule changes because of her eyeliner, she's high maintenance.

A high maintenance woman will call you just to complain about something. A low maintenance woman will call and ask how your day is going. A high maintenance woman will begin bellyaching the minute you set foot in the door. A low maintenance woman will pour you a glass of wine first.

A low maintenance woman can pack for a trip in an hour, no matter how long the trip. She will not need to buy anything. If you have X hours before you simply must leave for the airport, a high maintenance woman will take X + 1 hours to pack and will require a significant wardrobe budget.

The bedroom of a low maintenance woman will look immaculate when you leave. The bedroom of a high maintenance woman will look like a neutron bomb went off.

A high maintenance woman can never find what she's looking for in her purse. A low maintenance woman does not need a purse. She has you, silly. What more does she need? (This is the woman you should marry.)

A low maintenance woman is fundamentally happy with life. She doesn't need you. If you're there, that's nice, but if you're not, no biggie, she has plenty of girlfriends to hang out with.

A high maintenance woman needs you 24-7. Why aren't you there? Why aren't you picking up the phone? Why don't you answer?

A high maintenance woman is one who will not sit in a dirty Ford F-150 truck on her way to a date. A low maintenance woman is one who'd sit shotgun in the back. (An ultra low maintenance one would be willing to sit outside on the bed with your hound dawg. This is the woman you should marry.)

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Most men love low maintenance women. Low maintenance women are like Honda Accords, always reliable, always on time. They may not be sexy (although many times they are), but they are dependable and steady and you never ever have to worry about them.

Some men love high maintenance women. High maintenance women are like Ferraris: thrilling when they work, but they need a lot of garage time.

icicle believes this term first came into common usage after the 1989 movie, When Harry Met Sally, starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. She has also gone on record as denying that she herself is high maintenance.

"High Maintenance" is a 2006 short film, written by Simon Biggs, directed by Phillip Van and starred Nicollette Krebitz and Wanja Mues. It is a combined German/English production, and while being filmed in Germany, it is an English language film. It won several different awards for short films, including at the Sundance Film Festival and at the Berlin International Film Festival. The film is nine minutes long, meaning it is very easy to watch.

The film is a near future science-fiction story, with both comedic and dramatic element. Whether a viewer would find comedy or drama as the predominant element in the story is an interesting question. The film has some slight suggestive humor and adult themes, but has no content that would be considered explicit, although it may be mildly disturbing.

The film can be found at the director's official page, http://www.phillipvan.com/filter/NARRATIVE/HIGH-MAINTENANCE, and can also be found on youtube, although I don't know if it is on there officially. The imdb page can be found at:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0783732/

(WARNING: SPOILERS)

Tender asparagus is an aphrodisiac? Three blinding candles and listening to the sounds of people eating? A sterile table except for a basket of cut bread? A convenient ashtray right behind the woman who goes ballistic when the man lights up a cigarette in her house? It's their anniversary and she throws WATER in his face because she's unhappy? Break the wine bottle over his head to get his attention. I have watched far too many excellent short independent films, as well as been killed in a few, to be a tame critic.

I found the plot, if you could call it that, SO predictable. Brief social commentary on the possible future of online marriage and gender role reversal, ending with the new man seeming to be what she wants (although that was more than a five o'clock shadow on his face). The tip-off for me was his refusal to have a glass of wine with her, although he tricked her by massaging her shoulders, asking about her day, then "killing" her and going to watch TV with a remote in his hand?

Give me a break. I could care less if this won awards ON THE MOON. When a short film has an extremely long list of credits, it's using valuable time for actual content, and I'm the kind of film watcher who reads the credits. Plus her laptop was a Mac, two thumbs down from this extremely low maintenance woman. High maintenance was what my 14 year old grandson would call a bad vignette.

BQ14 256

I will need to discuss some spoilers here. You've been warned. This is what I thought while watching the film

When the robot/husband was turned off it immediately felt like a badly written Isaac Asimov story. Perhaps that was the intention. It immediately fell from "romance is dead" to "obsession over being loved". Asking for a new model only made it worse: "my partner must be adapted to me, not necessarily the other way around". When the second robot/husband comes in and the conversation is repeated with almost 100% accuracy, it became a mixture of "the problem didn't lie on the robot, then eh?" and "Asparagus as sexual innuendo is a step back in the evolution of both language and sex"

Moeyz is surely a better cinephile and critic than I am, but we both saw the ridiculousness of having an ashtray in a house where smoking is forbidden. Maybe it's only a story set in a world of robots where they try to emulate feelings but don't know how and experiment with constant programming and re-programming. I for one enjoyed more the overall human-becomes-machine-becomes-human story in Ayreon's The Human Equation and that was released 10 years ago.

BQ14: 249 words

The short film High Maintenance is very much a work of science fiction. While there isn't much in the way of exciting graphics, and certainly no aliens or zombies, the central technology of the film is well beyond anything we can do today. So I'm going to guess... 50-100 years in the future.

I was a bit surprised by some of the negative reviews here. I did not like the characters, the film was a bit too slow for my taste, and the first plot twist is not very original. However, this is an excellent work of SF, in large part due to the ending. But I'm not going to give any spoilers.

What does make this a very good film is that the final plot twist opens up a completely unexplored vista of a completely alien economic system and a highly stylized social system and aesthetic, but still gives us a clear idea of exactly what this world is like. You could easily write a novel based on the world presented. Or, you could let the audience think about it on their own.

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