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...

It Ain't Me, Babe...

Any openly honest self-respecting narcissist will admit to Googling their own name from time to time. Call it curiosity or whatever you'd like but I'm the kind of guy who likes to know what his doppelgangers are doing in other parts of the world and just how far off the radar he himself actually is.

Yesterday I punched in the username I use for most sites I subscribe to and the first thing that comes up is "Mike G. (mjgildea) on Twitter." This is not me! I freaked. I freaked the fuck out! The odds of this happening were apparently good enough, but this is not me!

I looked at this imposter's page and asked myself what is this shit? Seriously...

"Is it just me or does anyone else think the PS3 Slim looks way better than the PS3?"

"Farrah got Rittered!"

THIS IS NOT ME! I would never sign up for a twitter account and furthermore, I would never live in let alone go to Alaska. What's the point of Twitter? Facebook I can kind of see, but not Twitter! If you're a celebrity trying to avoid misinformed gossip/rumors or a musician who wants to put out some tour dates, fine. But for the other 98% of us typical random assholes its just another way to feed our collective overentitled sense of self. The thought, the concept, the idea of Twitter nauseates me. And people like Sarah Palin and any show on Fox News enouraging you to follow their... tweets (... violent retching...)

I'm completely aware that no one is particularly interested in what I'm doing at any given point of the day and if there's anyone who is I feel absolutely terrible for them. I mean, its bad enough for me because I have to be reminded of what I'm doing at any point in the day. Why would you want to?

Nice Ladies--Chapter Three: Tina Fey

Chapter Three: Tina Fey

I Want To Go To There...!

If my crush of the 90s was Winona Ryder (an upcoming chapter, I swear), my crush of this decade is Tina Fey. I'm generally a sucker (depending on the frames, of course) for girls in glasses and I'm even more of a sucker for funny women. Throw in a nice pair of legs and I'm done for. Fey has all three.

I was first enchanted by Fey during her Weekend Update run on Saturday Night Live during which time she was also (the first female) head writer. Her chemistry with Jimmy Fallon not withstanding, it was her scathing and painfully hysterical rants on whatever then-current event nonsense were sexier to me than a naked Faye Dunaway circa 1967 with a large deep dish pizza, a billion dollar tax-free cashier's check with my name on it and a look in her eyes that says it won't ever quit. Okay, I'm exaggerating but I'm sure you get the gist.

Then came the grossly underrated Mean Girls, which Fey not only co-starred in, but wrote. But it was a couple years later when Fey truly shined on 30 Rock, a show she created from her experiences on SNL. She plays Liz Lemon, an uneasy head writer of a late night comedy sketch show who spends her days putting out fires from her corporate boss/mentor and the show's crazy/neurotic stars. This explanation does the show no justice whatsoever but the 23 Emmy nominations the show just got do. That and despite a wobbly start the show consistently makes me laugh my ass off.

Then there's an SNL clip I saw where Fey showcased her classic wit but also openly admits to being a bitch. And this is fair enough seeing as how you're not going to get where she's gotten without being willing to crack a few skulls. But it was the January 2009 interview in Vanity Fair that started putting me off a tad. I started losing interest in Fey around this time, but my friend Diane put it in a nutshell for me--she's Tina Fey and not the lovable Liz Lemon.

Be that as it may, I'll continue to watch 30 Rock as long as Tina Fey doesn't get to... Feyey and also provided she doesn't talk down to her garden gnome of a husband for whom I know have some level of sympathy. But much more jealousy...

There Might Be a God After All...

A little something from notalwaysright.com

(By the way, Me is not actually me. Although I'd have given just about anything for this to happen to me.)

Me: “Can I help you, ma’am?”

Customer: “Yes. What are these?”

Me: “That is a fortune cookie, ma’am.”

Customer: “It doesn’t look like a cookie. Where are the chocolate chips?”

Me: “Ma’am, these are a different kind of cookie. You open them up and they tell your fortune on a piece of paper.”

Customer: “What kind of cookies have paper in them!?”
Me: “Fortune cookies, ma’am.”

Customer: “This is an outrage! Cookies are meant to be eaten, and paper isn’t EATABLE!”

Me: “Please, ma’am, the paper is–”

Customer: “Shut up! I’m leaving.”

(The customer begins to storm out but in her anger misses the door and walks right into the wall. When she finally stumbles out, I open up the fortune cookie and read its message: “Do not worry. You will get what is coming to you in life.”)

Thank you, Jeebus. I always knew you somehow cared...

The Truth Hurts But It Also Tastes Generically Good and Is Dirt Cheap.

One of my favorite things in this world is a trip to Taco Bell. I know what they serve has more to do with Civil War reenactments than it does Mexican food and I'm also aware that what Taco Bell serves is also likely spiced feces under the guise of Mexican food. Not to mention that the contents of their menu is an affront to all that Mexican people hold dear. But I enjoy it all the same.

I've snuck Taco Bell into the movies and I've ditched classes on occasion for those delightful double-decker tacos. Taco Bell is the culinary equivalent of the movie XXX for me--probably a little bit more than a guilty pleasure for me but both are cheap thrills that leave me with hollow regret once I'm done. Oh, and gas.

The following are two Onion podcasts which I'm sure are intended to poke fun at Taco Bell but with anything else The Onion puts out, has more than just a nugget of truth to it. And honestly, these just kind of makes me want Taco Bell when I watch them. Maybe not with a strap on bag, but still...

New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less




Taco Bell's New Green Menu Takes No Ingredients From Nature

Too Little, Too Late (My Top Ten Movies of 2008)

One of my first posts after I started this blog several months ago was my top albums of 2008. (My own) top whatever lists tend to annoy me (I enjoy those of others) because my perceptions change frequently and when I go back and meditate more upon them I tend to tweak the lists mentally while fighting the urge to go back and make amendments to them. Or I just later generally disagree with them and wonder what the hell I was thinking.

The top ten albums list was kind of easy for me to do because I work in a record store and music is a bit more available to me. Besides, its a lot easier to take in or absorb an album than it is a 2 hour movie. Also, I pretty much had my top albums picked out as I wrote that list up. With my top ten movies for 2008 I'd only seen 8 of the 10 by years end and had to think on it a bit more.

With this list I'll admit that most of the movies on it aren't exactly timeless classics. Hell, I only see maybe 3 or 4 of them standing the supposed test of time. But then again, 2008 didn't offer a hell of a lot in the arena of movies. The more I look at this list, the more I see some thrown-together, last minute-produced obligatory document on my part about the cultural offerings of a lackluster year. But still, it could be worse--we could be talking about 2009.

10) Pineapple Express

Well before this stoner action comedy came out I was fighting off a fierce case of Seth Rogen fatigue. In a stoke of genius he played the generally straight (well, as straight as a dope smoking summons server can be) character and the generally pretty boy James Franco went against type as Rogen's pot dealer in what will be a famous case of casting irony. (Okay, it was their collective idea to switch roles, but still...) Pineapple Express was hysterical and was generally lacking in dull and/or weak moments. Admittedly, this movie wasn't a cinematic masterpiece. It had a lot of funny moments and allowed me to unplug for a couple hours. And it had the line, "She is really proud of me, and I'm gonna become something, man! As soon as she dies, I'm gonna become a civil engineer. I'm gonna design septic tanks for playgrounds. Little kids can take shits! You idiot, what the hell do you do?"

9) In Bruges

Granted, In Bruges looked like some half-assed attempt at a Guy Ritchie movie with two hitmen hiding out in Belgium at the behest of their dickish boss. But while that element of the story was indeed entertaining with Ralph Fiennes stealing the show, there were so many other things going on. Like attempted suicides and little kids dying. In Bruges is a near perfect blend of black comedy and drama that keeps going to darker and darker places while Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson give great performances.

8) Iron Man

Admittedly, I'm really starting to burn out on comic book movies. But seeing the classically smart-assed Robert Downey, Jr. play Tony Stark was enough to get my ass in the seat. On opening weekend, no less. Jon Favreau stuck to the Iron Man legend pretty well while still managing to base the story in some level of reality and Downey's performance killed. The action was great and I didn't even mind Gwyneth Paltrow even if Jeff Bridges will forever be The Dude to me and I had some trouble buying his performance. The Avengers setup after the credits left me wanting more and overall Iron Man was much better than I expected it to be. Not quite Spider-Man but it beat the living hell out of Daredevil.

7) The Incredible Hulk

I'm one of about 3 dozen confirmed people on the planet who didn't mind and dare I say liked Ang Lee's 2003 version, simply titled Hulk. It was an incredibly beautiful and lyrical film, but unfortunately too cerebral for its own good. The last 20 minutes didn't help, either. When I heard that a follow up that was neither reboot nor sequel was being done by the director of Transporter 2 I kind of cringed. But Edward Norton as Bruce Banner more than made up for it. Combining all kinds of comic book elements and skillfully starting the story without having to set it up for the better part of an hour (they managed to do it all in the opening credits), The Incredible Hulk managed to get right into it. The acting was great (even from Liv Tyler!) and the action better. And best of all, The Incredible Hulk ended the way that Hulk should've ended--with a big, nasty fight between two monsters in a heavily-populated area. The second Avengers setup at the end doesn't hurt either.

6) Synechdote, New York

If you want to get the gist of the brilliant Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut Synechdote, New York there's very little you need to do. Just imagine David Lynch, today, going in a time machine and visiting Woody Allen in the mid to late 1970s. After a heartfelt plea, the threat of violence or a damn fine argument, Lynch convinces Allen to come back to the year 2008 to make a movie with him. And Synechdote, New York is what you'd likely end up with. Synechdote mixes Kaufman's signature oddball randomness (the movie takes place over nearly 2 decades in which a stage director makes a full-scale set of New York) with some of the most heartbreaking storytelling I've ever witnessed. There are parts of this movie that make the end of Old Yeller look like an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba. The death bed scene being a prime example where extreme sadness is laced with some of the funniest shit I've ever heard. In German subtitles, no less! You'll probably feel like you're losing your mind by the end of the two hours but its not a bad place to be...

5) Step Brothers

Will Farrell to me is two things. He's first a black-belt comic genius but he's also as inconsistent as an alcoholic father of the year. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy was hysterical, Bewitched was a complete and total mistake. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby was hilarious, Kicking and Screaming demanded a public apology on Farrell's part. I know I'm generalizing here and I'm also aware that Farrell's got a bit more to his credit, but to make my point I bring up Anchorman and Talladega Nights because they were directed by Adam McKay who also directed Step Brothers. See a pattern forming here? A Farrell/McKay collaboration has yet to fail and Step Brothers kept up that fine tradition but throwing John C. Reilly into the mix makes anything they're involved with infallable. Step Brothers is the story of 2 fortysomething... losers whose single parents marriage jump starts a priceless competition between the two. The sleepwalking scenes, the fancy sauce, the job interviews and pretty much everything else in this movie is comic gold.

4) Quantum of Solace

2006's James Bond reboot (hate the term but its very appropriate) Casino Royale was (and still is) easily my favorite Bond movie ever. It cut out the gadgets, the campiness and all the overall nonsense of pretty much every Bond movie before and got down to brass tacks. (Granted, all of that stuff was and still is to an extent entertaining but that new blood transfusion that Casino Royale gave felt so good...) When I walked out of the theater after seeing its official sequel and follow up Quantum of Solace I was overcome with a chilly wave of disappointment. And after a second viewing I can't even say or remember why. Only slightly less bad-ass than Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace was a sacrificial lamb of sorts for the reinvention of the 007 series. It was nearly as vicious as its predecessor but it also extablished Quantum as the new SPECTRE. Sometimes you've got to take a step back before you can take a few steps forward but I think here that step backward was barely noticable.

3) Burn After Reading

After cleaning house at the Oscars for No Country For Old Men earlier in the year, the Coen Brothers managed to put behind the unfortunateness by which they were plagued throughout this decade. (The Man Who Wasn't There, Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers) But it was Burn After Reading that proved that the Coens comeback wasn't a short-lived flash in the pan. With an impressive cast of George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand and the ever charming Tilda Swinton among others, the Coens offered a tapestry of idiots and a slew of pant-pissing moments that demanded a second viewing from Burn After Reading. Because you were likely to be laughing through the following scene and oftentimes missed out on what was happening. Especially when Clooney's character unveiled his... uh, contraption to a pie-eyed McDormand.

2) The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I've gushed in a previous posting about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. David Fincher's masterful direction, a brilliant script, impeccable performances and pretty much every aspect of exquisite filmmaking all vie for the spotlight. What happens instead is they all lovingly work together to create an epic tale of a man born elderly who ages backwards through the 20th century. For all of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button's genius it also has the ability to break your heart, make you thank it for doing so and make you a better person for it. At the risk of sounding like a pretentious Hollywood film industry schmuck who believes everything they say, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is what filmmaking is all about. So much to the point where you don't mind being reminded of how Brad Pitt keeps getting better looking.

1) The Dark Knight

I'm incredibly tempted to write the word duh and leave it at that, but doing so would be entirely too easy. A movie as exceptional as The Dark Knight deserves far more of an explanation. There are many reasons as to why this movie is deserving of this less than prestigious spot at the top of my movies of 2008 list (aside from it being a Batman movie.) Could it be that with a little tinkering The Dark Knight could've been a great movie without having anything to do with Batman and his villains? How about Heath Ledger's exceptionally frightening and Oscar-winning turn as The Joker? Christopher Nolan's grimly appropriate direction? The fact that The Dark Knight being a sequel surpassed its forerunner Batman Begins in practically every way? Forget the fact that The Dark Knight is a great comic book movie, it's great movie period. And at risk of sounding like an elitist fanboy turd, it is official--anyone who didn't like or can't appreciate this movie is completely retarded. And you can quote me on that. I insist you quote me on that...

*Honorable Mention: The Spirit

Pillar of the comic book community Frank Miller found his directorial sea legs when he co-directed the screen adaptation of his Sin City graphic novels with Robert Rodriguez in 2005. Miller eventually captained his own ship he took on the big screen adaptation of Will Eisner's The Spirit. And if you've ever read one of Miller's graphic novels, comic books, what have you, then saw his adaptation of The Spirit you'll know that all Miller really did was make another comic book. Instead of a flat page, pencils, inks and occasionally colors he used actors, cameras, occasional colors and every trick he could pick up from Rodriguez. Admittedly, The Spirit does look a lot like Sin City but I like to think of it more as Sin City's caffeinated little brother with less impulse control. Not the greatest movie, but one worth mentioning...