Nice Ladies -- Chapter Four: Christina Hendricks

Chapter Four: Christina Hendricks

Insert Jerry Lewis-styled babblings here.

Yeah, yeah. I know. This is a fairly obvious one, but hear me out. In the two weeks shy of a year since my last piss poor posting (which didn't amount to more than a link talking about what a waste of energy Kate Gosselin is) my interests haven't quite grown by leaps and bounds but one of the things I did get into was my new favorite show, Mad Men. (Sorry, 30 Rock.)

When I watch a new show, I usually tend to gravitate to one aspect of the show. Sometimes its the writing or sharp dialogue, other times the characters pull me in, story arcs have also been known to keep my ass on the couch and every once in a while the overall atmosphere of a show is enough to do the trick.

While Mad Men is filthy with the finest of all these elements (not to mention the fact that it takes place in the early 60s), oddly enough it wasn't any of these (which I'm an absolute sucker for) that pulled me in.

It was Joan Holloway.

Asking you to picture Jessica Rabbit in human form would not only be a gross oversimplification, but an enourmous injustice. Admittedly, most of my adoration isn't for Joan Holloway so much as it is for the actress who plays her, Christina Hendricks.

Admittedly, my... appreciation for Hendricks begins and ultimately gravitates around and will likely end with Mad Men. I haven't seen the three (or any) episodes of Firefly in which she starred and the romantic comedyesque movies she's got coming down the pipeline aren't likely to get me off the Double-M train. And the more I think about it, it's always been Joan.

But as for Ms. Hendricks, here's what I find endearing. Her alabaster complexion and the fact that she used the word hijinks during a recent interview. Her teeth are somewhat jacked so that'll help with the intimidation factor when we never meet. She's a redhead, but not a natural one (she's apparently a natural blonde who's been dying her hair red since she was 10) that that doesn't automatically make her Satan.

Quick sidenote: Redheads, you're The Devil. You're absolute Satan. You start off sweet and you turn into Lucifer. You've all got tempers and the worst part is I'm drawn to natural redheads. You're all rotten, rotten creatures...!

But possibly like most about Christina Hendricks is the fact that she's married to this guy. His name's Geoffrey Arend and he was one of the three stoners in the car that got pulled over at the beginning of Super Troopers. ("I'm freaking out, man...!" Yeah, that guy.) But while the natural reaction to seeing a bombshell like Hendricks married to a... guy like this is to get angry, I have the completely opposite reaction. It makes me happy and the reason it makes me happy because if a doofus like this can score a woman of her magnificence? Then that gives me hope not only for every one of my geek and nerd bretheren, but for the world as a whole.

Actually, I Take It Back...

You're both chodes...

I Done Her Wrong...

Some months back I went off, on or about several female celebrities who I'd like to in certain terms give jelly donuts. (See the blog.) By and large, these women were and still are gaudy attention whores who, if there's any justice in this world, will be shoveling shit in hell. They're talentless skanks and I'd almost be willing to give my life if it meant sparing the rest of the world their particular brand of repugnance. But in that blog I said it was a work in progress and I'd be making additions to it at some point. But I didn't mention I'd be making subtractions or more to the point, retractions.

So which one of these classless swamp cows will enjoy one of the exceptionally rare occasions where I admit wrongdoing?

Ironically, it was the first one on my list--Kate Gosselin.

With each clip of Jon and Kate Plus 8 I saw on The Soup I hated this woman more and more. Her shrewish demeanor and eagerness to go after her given-up-on-life husband's nuts made me nearly go blind with rage every time I heard her name. Hell, I was even pulling for her poor bastard of a husband to get the fuck away from her.

But of course, you've got to be careful what you wish for. Or in my case, what you wouldn't mind seeing. Jon finally rallied the sack to break free of Broadzilla and at the time it seemed as if there was hope for the world.

Quick poll here: You're on a basic cable show with your 8 kids and a wife who emasculates you in front of a national audience on a weekly basis. Your pending divorce is announce through a slew of checkout line gossip rags and the cell door opens. What do you do? Go on a golf trip? Do some sightseeing? Take a mental health sabbatical? Go to Disneyworld?

No, you become a complete and total dipshit.

You start wearing Douchegear brand clothing, start smoking and get your ears pierced. But when displaying this level of winnerdom isn't enough, you start dipping into treasure trove of skanks that dwell in your hometown and bang them not only indiscriminately, but indiscreetly--all before the divorce papers are even drawn up. And just when you didn't think it was any more possible to make Kevin Federline look like George Hamilton you make Michael Lohan your unoffical hype man. You get some attention-scrounging barnacle blathering to E! about how he's trying to harangue and finagle some companies into getting you some weight loss deal. The highlight of this butt nugget's week is if his more famous daughter picks up the phone when he calls. And not because his daughter would actually talk to him, but because his press agent might actually pick up when he calls.

Stop the presses!!! Lindsay picked up!!!

To Kate I say, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry because you had to deal with that tumbling dickweed of a soon to be ex-husband for all those years. He looks like a doughy, fat snake with those fucked up eyes of his. You just want to fill in those fucked up little creases with silly putty or something and hope they don't look too bad. And I'm also sorry for all of this public muckraking you're currently going through which has your kids trapped in no man's land. (But then again, if you sign up to have a half-assed cable channel follow you around with an army of cameramen filming every little thing you do and millions of people watch every week, you've got to expect this kind of thing eventually.) I'm also sorry that Snake Face finds assclowndom (the same behavior which I'm presuming forced you to become a bitch on national TV in order to supress) to be synonymous with freedom and bother to think that all of your kids might catch wind of his activities and likely trigger years of therapy for them all. Times 8.

And yes, I'm sorry I said I wanted to give a jelly donut. I realize you're just a cheesy girl from the coin slot of Pennsylvania who wanted to get married and have lots of babies. I'd say I hope it was worth it, but being parent myself, I know that it was.

Over and Out: Kino September '09

As stated in my previous post, I've very recently quit writing for The BEAST. In that post I explained that my last submission was indeed submitted but never published. I also mentioned how I would be posting what would've been my final voyage for said publication. Here it is in all its final glory. My only regret is not knowing it would be my last (kind of) submission...

Gamer

"Say the Spartans weren't homos or I'll cut you, bitch...!"

It's a point of professional pride with me, even before I turned half-assed professional as a film trailer critic, that I've never walked out of a movie. Even the highest piles of shit I've stood downwind from haven't wafted fumes I've not been able to endure. Granted, most piles I've sidestepped and have avoided the aroma altogether but I've always thugged up in the face of the cinematic stenches I've lacked the savvy to circumvent.

Then I saw the trailer for Gamer. Oh, the stench! If this movie had knuckles it would drag them on the ground while hoping to God that no one notices the pink banana hammock its donning underneath its camouflaged blood-stained battle gear. Calling the trailer for this movie an exercise in style over substance would be giving it a certain credibility, if only by using a sentence I spent more than 11 seconds thinking up to describe it. The trailer is a fucking seizure, an extended and prolonged spasm. The trailer for Gamer is a fat girl who finally got laid after 2 and a half years and has to tell everyone about it. Jiggling, cellulite dimples, sweat-filled folds, cum-filled bellybutton and all.

Gamer's trailer is a bad mix CD given to you by that moron you made the mistake of talking to the first week of your first semester of college. Community College, no less. This mix promises a bad, incohesive jumble of Death Race, the music of Marilyn Manson, video games taken to the next level, rappers trying to act and Dexter doing his best evil Katharine Hepburn impression. What else would you expect from a movie about death row inmates being physically manipulated into video game characters.

Gerard Butler plays the superstar prisoner/puppet. I'm guessing by the yellow and black label dialogue in the trailer that he's falsely imprisoned for the crime for which he was convicted because he's got a picture of a daughter he gets misty over. I'm guessing that all the inmates/players/whatever find a way to bust free and go after the mint julep-drinking, slipper-wearing southern dandy who masterminded this whole thing. And no, I'm not talking about either the movie's producers or directors. I'm talking about the movie's fruity, fruity villain.

If all of the admittedly low-grade venom I've spewed throughout this trailer's review doesn't give you any indication of how bad Gamer looks, let me put it this way--this movie looks so bad I'm surprised that Jason Statham isn't in it.

Extract

Featuring J.K. Simmons as Smart-Assed Turtle Man

When Mike Judge pissed in the face and shit in the mouth of corporate America with his 2006 comic masterpiece Idiocracy it was pretty much assumed he'd never make another movie ever again and the future highlight of his career would entail being a talking head on VH-1's I Love the... Whatevers. Then came the trailer for Extract which boasted that not only was Judge alive and well, but thankfully still working.

This time out, Judge has Jason Bateman as the owner of an herbal remedy factory about to lose his shit because of a workplace full of dumbasses and a shrewish, yet passive-aggressive wife who won't put out. But fortunately there's a foxy new temp played by the annoying but hot chick from That 70s Show making things more interesting on the job and Bateman's wastecase buddy, played by an unrecognizable Ben Affleck is present and doling out bad advice.

Extract looks like everything you'd expect from a Mike Judge movie. It looks awesome to the point of taking what promises to be a hysterical Ben Affleck to and beyond the status of tolerable, but also making you forget he ever had anything to do with Jennifer Lopez and her overgrown ass of questionable heritage and origin. And I think its safe to day that everyone's looking for an excuse to forgive Affleck for Gigli. Or at least forget Gigli.

Carriers

"Yeah, yeah. I know. You're a doctor, not a... wait a minute!"

Anyone who reads this column with any regularity or consistency knows if there's one thing that makes my pants dance its a good post-apocalyptic freakshow. The more realistic the better. Zombies are preferrable, but if you can't pull the undead into it give me a fast and nasty virus. And that's what the trailer for Carriers seems to be offering. A 28 Days Later-esque biohazard filled, end of the world survival tale that seems to be turning into the next big thing. Post-apocalyptic movies seem to be to the last couple years what the word millennium was to the year 1999.

Carriers boasts the only thing more dangerous than the disease are the carriers as we see the decisive hardass who played Captain Kirk driving around with greasy, sweaty unkempt hipsters avoiding a gruesome pandemic. The trailer seems to offer the meticulous pacing drenched with suspense. It also throws in some of the horrific-looking infected that may not but likely will become zombies. But what's got me hooked about Carriers is the aspect of society crumbling. Or it could completely ditch this angle and remind you right out of the gate that PG-13 rated horror movies are more sorry than your dad after he blew your financial aid at OTB.

9

"I say we use this green-colored light to shamelessly market me."

9 is the kind of movie that's going to look awesome on my HD TV this time next year. With the ecomony in the crapper as it is, I don't know if I can bring myself to drop 10 duckets on a movie about a mad scientist's group of beat off socks who come (get it?) to life in barren wasteland after the machines wiped mankind off the face of the earth. If Toy Story went off its meds, completely neglected its pet turtle and let the voices in its head take over you're well on the road to 9.

9 is a cartoon produced by Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov so you know you're headed into some reasonably twisted territory but the trailer is definitely not without its ambiguity. For example, the movie looks grim as hell, but those little nut puppets look cute as all hell. Then there's that part toward the end of the trailer when whoever put it together decided to say fuck it and cram a bunch of images together after he or she realized there's no way to to make any sense out of this madness in less than 2 minutes. The power chords blaring during that part hint towards 9 being more adult-geared fare. Better bring your 5 year-old niece with you just in case. 9 also features the voices of Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Martin Landau and Crispin Glover. The good news is you won't have to look at any of those people for a couple hours. Jennifer Connelly also stars and the bad news is you don't get to look at her for a couple hours. Can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, kids...

Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself

"Hey y'all! Where my peeps at!?"

If by bad you mean sassy black generic comedy with a hackneyed sterotypical garganuan in drag that claims to take no mess while doling out yawn-inducing wisdom as life lessons are being taught through cheap laughs then yes, you can do bad all by yourself. And I think I speak for most of us when I say we'd like you to do it at home. Go do bad alone and by yourself.

Sorority Row

"That's hot..."

Did you see I Know What You Did Last Summer? You did? You're a dummy but you're making my job easier. By default you saw Sorority Row and you don't need me to explain the whole goddamned thing to you all over again. Swap out the two attractive couples from the former for a bunch of slam pig sorority sisters in the latter who set up a prank that goes hilariously awry after someone winds up dead and the nail's pretty much hit right on the head. Some mystery killer does in cast members sequentially and by using methods that are supposed to be more grisly than the one before.

Its the stuff that cookie cutter urban myths are made of and you're probably not going to get scared unless mom's picking you up in front of the mall 15 minutes before 9 on a weekend. Oh, and she's picking you up in the Chevy Windstar with the wood paneling and you are going to church tomorrow. Now go to your room...!

Love Happens

"Yeah... not the kind of head I had in mind."

There's this really odd thing that happens when I sit down behind my computer whenever I get home from work at an ungodly hour in the morning. My intention is usually just to tie up a few loose ends when my morbidly obese cat, without fail, drops a noxious and hateful deuce mere feet away from where I'm sitting. His ass end in the litter box while his front end droops out the front. Oh, and of course he's staring right at me while he does it.

And the way he looks at me always says something to me. Sometimes that look simply asks me how my day was. Sometimes it tells me that he was thinking of nothing but murder all day. And sometimes it tells me a story. His face once pitched me an idea for a movie where a successful self help guru who's great at dishing out advice to others but can't follow his own advice meets a zany and care-free flower shop owner who not only shows him how to live life again, but also how to love again. Oh, and of course they've only got a short amount of time together which complicates things. He suggested Aaron Eckhart as the self-help guy and Jennifer Aniston as the wackadoo.

So that's what movies are coming to. Ideas my fatty of a cat gets while taking nasty shits are making their way to the big screen. I showed my cat the trailer once he covered his leavings after I saw the trailer. The way he looked at me when the trailer was done suggested he would've done everything exactly the same except for the title. He said he would've gone with the title, for obvious reasons, Shit Happens. To which I replied, "I couldn't agree with you more, big guy. I couldn't agree more."

Jennifer's Body

The old "we ran out of gas" routine fails again.

Is anybody going to see Jennifer's Body for any reason other than to gawk at, drool over and eventually violently masturbate to Megan Fox? If I got an iron-clad guarantee from any given underpaid theater manager that I wouldn't have to listen to so much as a strained syllable of dialogue from this crapfest my ears might perk up. But since former (or maybe even current, who can say?) hooker and Juno scribe Diablo Cody wrote this... story of a demon-possessed cheerleader wreaking havoc and murdering the male students at her high school and knowing you're going to listen to a trainwreck that makes Cityspeak (Google it) sound like the Queen's English.

So aside from sounding completely unimaginative, it would seem that with Diablo Grody writing it's going to be filled with alleged pithiness, made-up words that will undoubtedly turn into overused catchphrases and when all's said and done, an unshakable feeling of emptiness and the knowledge that you've been cheated out of ten bucks or two hours of your life. Whichever is more important to you. I like to think I've accumulated some level of wisdom over the years and my instincts are telling me that walking out of the theater after seeing Jennifer's Body will give me the same feeling I've had after walking out of a Fort Erie strip club in my youth. I threw all that money at her and I still couldn't touch, I'll get blue balls and that walk of shame to the car will seem endless.

Surrogates

No comment whatsoever.

If you're looking for a Bruce Willis movie that acts as a metaphor for social networking sites and doesn't have him playing a burnt-out alcoholic cop, you're not only ambitious as shit but you're also a total pud. The gang behind the third Terminator movie brings us Surrogates, which takes place in a futuristic world where people have robotic versions of themselves they telepathically link up with and send out into the world instead of themselves so they can atrophy and get bed sores in an easy chair.

Things attempt to get interesting when somebody's robot kills someone else's robot. This is supposed to be odd because not having to really live your life and do it through a video game console is supposed to take the edge off and mellow everyone out. Then the person who was connected to the murdered robot died as his robot self died. This leads to the possibility that anybody (in this case everybody) who does this can die at home, thus defeating the purpose of doing the whole goddamned thing and opening the possibility of the extinction of the human race. I'd go on to explain how Willis has to disconnect from his robot with the bad (I'm talking Nicolas Cage bad) wig for the first time in years and he looks all jaundiced and shit like he did in 12 Monkeys but I don't really feel like it.

Whiteout

"My hotness will melt this entire continent..."

The people that put movie trailers together are apparently taking things in a new direction. They're possibly taking things down a less is more avenue by giving you no goddamned details about what the advertised movie is about. There's also the distinct possibility that putting these trailers together pains those who do it just as much if not more as it pains us who watch them.

While watching the trailer for Whiteout I saw nothing but the lovely Kate Beckinsale playing a US Marshall going to the brutal but beautifully CG-rendered landscape of Antarctica. She took a shower on the other side of some steamed up glass, some bodies start turning up, some shit explodes then a few seemingly natural disasters occur. And that's about it. Whiteout looks like a diet remake of The Thing with no aliens, some slightly better effects and a certainly better looking protagonist. Even if Kurt Russell had the sweetest beard ever. It also reminds me that winter is just a few months away, so thanks for that.

Fame

Shake That paskaa, voit skanky narttu!

Elokuvamaine on yleinen homoseksuaalisuuteen. Eikö tämä elokuva ollut tarpeeksi huonoa ensimmäistä kertaa ympäriinsä? Viisi tyhmää starstruckia lapset on liian laiska kokeilla amerikkalaiselle Idolille, niin ne menevät tärkeilevä ja avoimesti faggy suorittaminen taidekorkeakoulua. Tämä tekee penikseni surullinen ja weepy. Deathklok hallitsee fuckia sinusta häviäjät! Jos olet koskaan surullinen, ja yksinäisesti yöllä voit aina tehdä yltäkylläisyys voileipien koirasi peräaukolle. Muodit 1990EISTA palaavat. Ja suuremmissa luvuissa! Joka Sypressin Kukkula albumi heidän ensimmäiset kaksi lukuun ottamatta ovat vahingollinen, jos nielty.

Aikainen mies käveli pois, kun nykyaikainen mies otti valvonnan. Heidän mielensä eivät olleet kaikesta huolimatta, valloittaa olivat hänen iso tavoitteensa, Niin hän rakensi hänen suuren valtakuntansa ja teurasti hänen oman lajinsa, Sitten hän kuoli sekoitetun miehen, joka on tapettu hänen omalla mielellään. Mene!

Sinulla on en ajatusta, mikä helvetti joka minä puhun, eipö? Maine on tasaisen huonaamman elokuvan uusi filmatisointi, joka tuli ulos lähes kolmekymmentä vuotta sitten, joka myös kutsuttiin Maine. Ja jos tämä ei vakuuta sinua mätien laatujensa, televisioesitys perustettiin alkuperäiseltä pohjattomalta esityksestä. Premissi on toiveikkaista ja ilmeisesti lahjakkaista teineistä, missäään ilmeisesti lahjakkaat teinit kannustavat toinen toinenä pitämään jalkansa maassa ja pitää tähdille saavuttamista. Jos päätät katsoa ennakkoesitystä tai nähdä elokuvan mitä siihen tulee, teet ei. Ja lähetän kissani raiskata sinut. Kasvoissa!

Done, Son...!

From the summer of 2003 up until earlier yesterday evening I wrote for a rust belt paper called The BEAST (formerly known as The Buffalo Beast.) I started writing movie reviews for movies I rarely saw. My reviews were biased, scathing and sometimes humorous attacks of the latest crap that Tinseltown (has anyone even referred to Hollywood as "Tinseltown" after 1960?) had to offer. The reviews I wrote started with the best of journalistic intentions, but eventually and fairly quickly turned into something the wannabe bastard child of Hunter S. Thompson (the godfather of our humble rag) would've written. Gonzo film criticism.

More often than not I made up stories about the experience surrounding my ficticious viewing of any given movie as opposed to the film itself. These usually included fabricated versions of my friends and co-workers or anything having even the slightest possibility of being more interesting than 75% of what was coming down the cinematic pipeline. I always more interested in a more fun than informative read anyway.

And writing for the paper was fun for a while. It was sometimes a struggle to belt out something acceptable but that second wind would usually kick in just in time for any given deadline. Even if it involved using Belle and Sebastian liner notes instead of an actual review. And our short-lived WBNY Buff State show from which we got kicked off the air was an absolute fucking blast! (By the way, I don't recommend improvising on a radio show.) I wrote for the paper for free during the first 2 years in an unspoken/unwritten agreement in exchange for some legal work. Writing for the paper was fun and I didn't care about money. Then a rich Canadian Republican (if such a thing is even possible) started... financing us for what would later be unveiled as ulterior motives. The money left but I still got paid.

I started delivering the paper up and down Elmwood Ave and actually made more doing that than I did writing. It was fun and I kind of felt like I was part of something. Granted, I never went to the attempted staff meetings or had any kind of correspondence with either my editor or publisher outside of getting paid or finding out when the hell the next deadline was. Well, aside from a few parties at my publisher's house or the occasional failed BEAST bash.

Over the years the paper became less fun. Not so much working for the paper (which in itself became a drag) but I'm talking about the paper itself. Articles about trying to convince the mayor of Buffalo we were producers for The Sopranos to see how many appointments we could get him to blow off and goading Tom Cruise into suing us gave way to long, dull tirades about the most obscure leftist nonsense you've never heard of. The extent of my political awareness stops somewhere between SNL's Weekend Update and a Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert garden party so I may not be the most trusted voice on this matter, but I remember the paper had much more going on when I first started writing for it.

When 2007 came round The BEAST went from a free, bi-weekly toilet seat read to a $2, monthly toilet seat read. It went from a newspaper to a magazine format and at the last BEAST bash I attended, my editor and I decided I would start writing movie trailer reviews as opposed to actual alleged film reviews. It seemed easier to review a 2 1/2 minute trailer than it was to write up a 2-hour movie in theory but in practice it was a bitch much of the time.

Then we get to this year. Weeks of bugging my slovenly editor as to when the next deadline was only to get an e-mail maybe half a week before the deadline was kind of annoying. In the good old days, you'd get your shit in by Sunday night or Tuesday morning at the very latest, the new issue was ready to be picked up at the printer's on the following Thursday and you were paid by Friday at the latest. With this new... system, weeks went by before any checks were written or an issue hit the stands.

And that part I eventually got used to. The amount of time/work I put in didn't even amount to minimum wage but the checks I got had a way of showing up at incredibly opportune times. Getting a check that saves you from having to blow some dude down at the bus station men's room to pay a bill that was due 3 days ago has a way of keeping you coming back for more. That and I really like my publisher. Truth be told, I probably would've laid down in traffic for the guy.

Until the checks stop coming.

About a month ago, my lazy and unorganized editor shared his plan to make The BEAST a solely online publication (something he apparently never discussed with the publisher) and how I could send in as little as a single review at a time as he was going to do frequent updates. Sure, fine, whatever. Newspapers are dying out and it makes perfect sense that ours would go purely digital. The last online-only issue didn't have any of my reviews and since I didn't get the deadline and was under the impression the online thing would go off without a hitch weeks later. The last weekend of August I sent in my reviews for September which despite the voicemail from my editor, they have yet to make an appearance on the site.

I'd been calling my publisher for weeks and had yet to receive a reply. Whenever I'd call to get paid or find out when the next issue was coming out he'd at least pick up and give me a 15-second explanation or an ETA. Now, nothing. Apparently he and my editor had fallen into some twisted acrimonious professional relationship which involved sleeping in seperate bedrooms and watching the same television programs simultaneously in different rooms on opposite ends of the house.

And the kids are hungry.

If they can't take the time to put up the reviews I worked on over several hours or even call me back about them, then I'm not going to take the time to write them. And if there's a problem with them (I have to wonder if writing the review for the remake of Fame in Finnish was the final nail in the coffin) I wasn't told about it. I've been writing for that paper for almost 6 1/2 years. If I submitted something that really sucked I'd hope we were professionally at a point where I'd have been told about it.

And despite my leading anyone who reads this to believe that money was the only issue it wasn't. Granted, the money I made from this paper helped pay my bills and support my family, but I would've continued to write for free. Like I said before, I know that papers are taking a beating and I like my publisher so much that I would've gone back to writing for free if it would've helped him out. But because he can't communicate whatever the hell's going on and because my editor doesn't communicate with me about either the deadlines of the quality of my work, I must say goodbye to The BEAST.

P.S. Just so that last submission I made to The BEAST doesn't completely go to waste, I'll post it on this blog for anyone who A) knows about this blog, or B) cares. This one's on me, kids...

My Summer Book Report

At the tail end of June I outlined my plan for my TV viewing. I was working some weird hours that didn't really allow for my regular movie-a-day schedule and allow me to get enough sleep to deal with an energetic and mischievous toddler.

By the time the previous and inconvenient shift started coming to a close I managed to find the two hours I initially complained about not having to watch movies and switched my movie habit for my TV show habit.

In that blog posting I likened the whole thing to a summer high school book report and promised to state my progress at the end of summer.

The Twilight Zone (Season One)

At the time I last wrote about this matter, I was almost done with the first season of The Twilight Zone. I finished that season and never went back to it. I'm going to start the second season shortly. The nice thing about this show is that they're all standalone episodes that really have no bearing on one another and very few of the first season I've seen disappointed. It's a good show all around and I look forward to introducing it to future generations.

First season highlights: The Lonely, Time Enough at Last, The Hitch-Hiker, People Are Alike All Over and A Nice Place to Visit

First season rating: ****1/2

The Mighty Boosh (The Complete Series)

A couple months ago I also vowed to finish off The Mighty Boosh, a hysterical British comedy show. Sometimes surreal, often nonsensical, frequently referential but always funny, I can't recommend The Mighty Boosh enough. Lots of fun music, funny as shit characters, great make-up (even for Julian Barrat's Bryan Ferry which consists of a picture of Ferry's chin over Barratt's) and fantastic sets make The Mighty Boosh a true gem. With most any show, some episodes were better than others but none of the episodes were completely disappointing. That's the fun of being able to watch all the episodes of a TV show back to back--if one episode sucks you move onto the next one.

Series highlights: Bollo, Tundra, Hitcher, The Priest & the Beast, Nanageddon, The Legend of Old Gregg, The Nightmare of Milky Joe, Journey to the Centre of the Punk and The Strange Tale of the Crack Fox

Series rating: ****

Star Trek: The Original Series (Season One)

For me and just about anybody else who doesn't live in their parents' basement, the words Star Trek carry a certain stigma which screams fucking geek. Before J.J. Abrams' re-did the series earlier this summer and minus a few enjoyable moments I would've agreed. On top of making what might be my favorite movie of the year, Abrams also brought to our (by our I mean my) attention how great these characters are. So much so to the point of pushing us (by us I mean me) to re-examine the original series.

Before I cracked into the Season One box set I'd been exposed to maybe a dozen out of the original 79 episodes. Most of my knowledge of the show came from pop culture references and punchlines so I was half-expecting to get bored or just think the show merely alright and put the set back up on Amazon. This didn't happen and I was completely sucked in.

Admittedly, Star Trek wasn't without its campy and/or cheesy moments (the seizure-induced faces of Charlie X, the raving fuckedupedness of The Corbomite Maneuver's finale, a mint julep-drinking Dr. McCoy in This Side of Paradise and Shore Leave in general) but the redone effects add a great deal of credibility to the series without distracting from the actually great stories and bring the series out of mom's basement. Can wait for the other two seasons.

Season one highlights: Where No Man Has Gone Before, The Corbomite Maneuver, The Menagerie Parts One and Two, Balance of Terror, Space Seed, and The City on the Edge of Forever

Season rating: ****1/2

Spaced (The Complete Series)

Maybe it was all the underground or cult hype surrounding Spaced or my love of Hot Fuzz that pulled me towards the purchase of the Spaced box set but when all was said and done it wasn't all that. Don't get me wrong, I liked it. I just didn't love it. Spaced is seemingly based entirely on pop culture references and I managed to hold my own pretty damn well. My favorite references were the Pulp Fiction reference in Back or the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest-based Mettle. Unfortunately, Spaced would be lost on the average non-pop culture junkie but Hulu's got it for free right now so you wouldn't be wasting more than some spare time. Spaced isn't a bad series, it's just not great. Or as great as I was lead to believe.

Series highlights: Beginnings, Back, Mettle

Series rating: ***1/2

The State (The Complete Series)

Every so often I'll get excited about something I haven't seen in forever getting released on DVD. The hype and excitement will ferment slowly until the release date at which point the lid comes off the whole damn thing and 9 times out of 10 you'll get a vat of farty-smelling disappointment.

About 5 years ago the Spider-Man 67 collection was announced to come out on DVD. You remember the one, don't you? Catchiest theme song ever. Watercolor backgrounds that Spider-Man somehow managed to make his webs stick to. Ridiculous sound effects and webs being fashioned into anything from water skis to working pad locks. I hadn't seen the show in a good 15 years before I bought that box set at 8:09 AM at my neighborhood Target. And I'll tell you that show fucking sucked. I'm sure by 1967 standards it was awesome and before the character aged and was developed from a character standpoint over nearly 40 years between '67 and 2004 the '67 Spider-Man series it was a blast. But I'm just going to say that show didn't age well.

But back on Earth I was both anticipating the DVD release of The State and dreading it. I looked forward to such characters as Barry and Levon, Louie and Old-Fashioned Guy. I was also apprehensive out of fear of revisiting that unforgettable and uncomfortable disappointment which Spidey delivered half a decade before.

But that 9 out of 10 times with the stinky letdown I mentioned before? The State was that non-pungent remaining percentile.

The State was every bit as funny as I remember it. Anyone who's seen any of the offshoot shows that came from The State will tell you the show and its players have aged but seeing The State again proves said aging didn't go badly. My only complaints on this series were that by the time the fourth season rolls around you can tell the cast was ready to make what would be the ill-fated move to network TV. They're kind of just waiting for it to end and they kind of make you feel that way too. My other compaint is that for copyright infringement reasons none of the original music was used. The set actually comes with a note explaining the reasons. The replacement music does the job even if the picture quality looks like it was transferred over from someone's VHS collection they got off Ebay.

Series highlights: Pick one but you're better off sticking with seasons 1 and 2

Series rating: ****

The Venture Brothers (Season Three)

At the time I wrote the reading list, I was either halfway through the 3rd season of The Venture Brothers or hadn't started it yet. The 3rd season was a little bit of a dropoff though still riotously funny. The creators seemed to get into offshoot one-shot stories involving secondary characters and if I remember correctly a couple episodes didn't even feature the Ventures.

This was also the first season of The Venture Brothers where I didn't have the option to go on to the next episode. Upon the release of season 3 of the show everything was out on DVD and when I got to the end of this season I was all caught up. As a result, the cliffhanger at the end of the season stung a bit but that's what next season is for.

Season highlights: The Doctor is Sin, Dr. Quymn, Medicine Woman, What Goes Down Must Come Up, The Family That Slays Together Stays Together Parts 1 and 2

Season rating: ***1/2

Highway To Hell

I originally started this blog posting almost a month and a half ago when I was laid off from my part-time record store job. My exodus from that pillar of the retail community had nothing to do with my performance so much as the serious mismanagement of the company at large. Combine this with an apparently dying record industry and the prospect of buying an album somewhere other than a department store or a website gets that much harder.

I planned on waiting until I picked up another part-time job to write about this. Let the latent bitterness subside, regain some monetary breathing room and rattle on with a clear head. Unfortunately my limited work availability (about 10 hours a week over 2 specific mornings) doesn't really make me into the hottest potential entry-level candidate for Whatever, Inc. But I did get a few calls on the ads I did respond to, so that was good. But speaking of good, now's as good a time as any to put this matter to sleep.

A record store, an actual record store closing is like finding a dead unicorn on the side of the road in my universe. Pretentious employees (a crime of which I've found myself guilty from time to time) aside or sometimes even included, record stores are great. You may not necessarily be able to listen to the album before you buy it but you can hold it. You can look at the artwork and take full satisfaction in knowing that you're going to walk out of there and be able to listen to your bounty very soon. Not to mention the fact that record stores, good record stores have a selection that can nearly compete with nearly any online storefront. A good record store can also blow away any big box (i.e. Best Buy) or department store as far as selection goes. I've never found a copy of The Clash's Sandinista album at Wal-Mart, I've never seen a special edition Pavement re-issue at Target and I'm pretty sure Best Buy's not going to carry the new Califone when it comes out in October. Any of those purchases would need to be made online or at a record store.

As far as who's to blame for the dwindling record store numbers, I'm not sure anyone has enough hands with enough fingers to point at the guilty parties. The online merchants definitely get some recognition here. Amazon.com makes it incredibly easy to buy CDs and other various products pretty cheap and if you don't mind that sort of thing, used. Third party marketplace vendors usually have out-of-print items available as well, provided you're willing to pay enough for them.

iTunes and MP3 players are killing the art and enjoyment of buying a CD. I got an iPod over three years ago and every CD I've bought since has been ripped to my computer and put on my iPod. Aside from that 2 week span between my first iPod dying and the acquisition of my second I haven't really listened to any CDs in the past 3 1/2 years. When my CD player died a few years back from a case of terminal skipping I never bothered replacing it. iTunes took over. Again, I openly admit to being part of the problem.

Downloaders of pirated music are obvious instigators of the problem. And you can't blame them because when it comes down to it, what would you rather part with--X amount of hard drive space on your computer, a blank CD and a little time or anywhere from $15-20 bucks?

Downloading can be used for both good and evil. If I'm interested to hear an album before I pay an inordinate amount of money for it I have no problem with downloading it. Personally, I want to make sure I'm going to enjoy something before I drop some money on it. If you can get your hands on something a few weeks or months before its available to the rest of us poor assholes then good for you. But the bands themselves get hurt here too. Being in bands, playing live music and recording songs is how some people make their living. And when you download the new album by whoever you're stealing from them. For every album I haven't paid for I've felt some guilt, but it depends on the band. I feel band for having ripped off a band like Built To Spill. Only a select few have heard of them and they're probably not rich men. But ripping off Metallica? I won't think twice about it.

Record companies don't help much either. They make music completely disposable by signing crappy "artists" and shitty "bands." Then they pay radio stations to shove the same 12 songs down listeners throats for three months straight and when a new single by anybody gets released the whole thing starts all over again. Most record companies only seem to want to take advantage of what's big at moment and give no thought to any possible future catalog value of an album or song. I know these companies are trying to make money but try and plan ahead a little bit.

Bands themselves shouldn't get off Scot free either. I know I'm not the only one who's ever bought an album with one good song on it. And that song's always completely different from the rest of the album. And if an album has 2 versions of the album's big song you know you're in trouble. I know its not exactly fair to point the finger at the bands. They've probably got some suit who knows next to nothing about music sitting in the control booth while they're recording. I'll bet he's feverishly taking notes while his presence throws the band completely off. I'm also guessing when this record exec isn't trying to micromanage everyone in sight or using his efficiency expert superpowers to make some old white men that much more money, he's crawling up the band's ass for that radio hit this album better produce and constantly reminding them what will happen if they don't deliver. Or dick bands like AC/DC, The Eagles, Garth Brooks and Guns 'N' Roses will go for exclusive distribution deals with bigger stores. So if you want to get that new G'N'R album you've got to go to Best Buy.

Big box stores like Best Buy and Wal-Mart aren't making things easier for the little guy either. Ever wonder why a store like Best Buy will sell a CD $5 cheaper than an actual record store will? Chances are the big store will buy 10,000 copies of any given CD as opposed to the 100 the smaller store will. The warehouse/distributor will give usually give the big store a deal because they're buying so many. Then chances are that same distributor will lower the cost of each CD even further if that big store signs some kind of contract to distribute other things like plasma TVs and stereo systems. You know, stuff a record store's not going to ever sell.

I haven't bought a CD since the store closed. I know that even though I'm not part of the struggle to keep record stores open anymore that I should still fight to help the little guy. But at this point I don't have the money or the energy to give a fuck. Since I got my first iPod, music, what was once a driving force in my life has now turned to little more than data files on my computer. The sound and the music are still there but the overall experience is dying. As is a big part of my youth...