Is this really the best we can do? I know that this movie isn't aspiring to high art or anything, but have we hit the creative wall that hard already? Maybe we should just turn the lights out and call it a night.
Oh, and to answer what I'm sure you are all wondering, yes I will see this movie. I haven't seen Zombie Strippers yet, but I think it is in my Netflix que.
I don't really like to lead with that kind of title, but really, I have no choice. Apparently, Jay Mohr, a reasonably funny comedian, is adding his wife's maiden name to his, leaving him something like Jay Mohr Cox. Is he going to start competing with Peter North now? This stuff writes itself.
Actually, Jay should really be spending his time working to keep his wife's head from deflating, I'm sure that's a full time job now.
This past year has been interesting. I’m not sure it was a great year or just a good one, but I can tell you this, 2009 is shaping up to be fantastic. Here are some random thoughts for the end of the year.
1. The Beautiful Metaphor – can do wonders when describing something, but they are actually at their most wonderful when they are used to insult something. Like when Pulitzer Prize winning writer Roger Ebert describes a movie’s characterization thusly: To call the characters cardboard is to insult a useful packing material. This came from a review of the movie The Spirit, which apparently is so bad that even the high levels of eye-candy cannot overcome the amateurish writing, directing, and acting. Maybe this will stem the tide of shitty graphic novel adaptations. Well, probably not, but we can hope.
2. Band of Brothers – The power of art is in its ability to move and inspire. So few motion pictures or television shows actually aspire to the levels of art that when you come across one it should be savored like a fine meal. The miniseries Band of Brothers is something like that. Even though I know what happens in this series, I watched it yesterday (yes, all day, I have no life), the episode titled “Why We Fight” still got me from an emotional sense. The actors beautifully portrayed the horror those soldiers must have felt when they came across those camps. Great stuff, which I will be watching on Blu-Ray in January.
3. Crazy Mexican – Beauty queens. A Miss Shit from Shinola or something or other in Guadalajara was arrested last week for drug and weapon possession or something like that. A fun story, as apparently drug lords in Latin American countries take beauty pagents very seriously. I know that we should here, as the prettier someone is, the more important they are. Which is why I am proclaiming myself Emperor of Arizona.
4. New Ads – I am not waiting for the Super Bowl to identify the greatest commercials of the season. There are two contenders, the Sonic Hearing quasi-bluetooth device that allows people to eavesdrop on conversations and the slim clip thing that is some sort of revolutionary money clip. Wait, you mean that you could put any money clip in a blender? Oh, well then the Sonic hearing thing is the winner, and not to mention bad-ass. The only thing that would be better is one of those parabolic microphones. I’m shocked that the CIA doesn’t issue these little things to all of their new recruits.
5. Sweatpants and Handguns – What is it with East Coast playas packing heat in their sweats? First Plexico goes strip clubbing with sweats and a glock, then this guy goes to the movies packing in his sweats. Really? This is the new thing? I mean I know that we’ve all fantasized about shooting the loud bastard in the movie theater, but who actually does it? If you are going to be carrying a concealed weapon, at least wear some damned pants.
1. Chuck – needs to sack up and stop acting like a whiner with a sandy vag. Oh, my fake girlfriend killed a guy that wanted to kill me. Boo Hoo! I enjoy the show, but at some point, doesn’t Chuck have to act like this isn’t the first time at the rodeo?
2. Hitler’s Birthday – apparently there is a little ‘un whose wise and astute parents named Adolf Hitler Campbell. Now, the local Shop-Rite refuses to personalize a cake for the little racist, and the parents are bewildered. Really? What was their first clue there might be a problem? I’m sure that the boy’s best friends Pol-Pot and Stalin are accepting, but the parents here really need to be neutered or put down themselves. For the rest of us. Seriously.
3. MONSTER!!!! What the hell happened to Goldie Hawn??? She has never been attractive, but it looks like her face is collapsing in on itself. I’m just glad that it isn’t Halloween or she might get staked before anyone realized that she isn’t a zombie or vampire or something.
4. Freaks - I'll close with part of an article I read off of cnn.com. People say that men are strange and perverted. Hopefully this can add some balance to the conversation. Where do they find these people?
Nearly half of the women questioned by Harris Interactive said they'd be willing to forgo sex for two weeks, rather than give up their Internet access, according to a study released Monday by Intel, which commissioned the survey.
While 46 percent of the women surveyed were willing to engage in abstinence versus losing their Internet, only 30 percent of the men surveyed were willing to do likewise.
The U.S. survey, which queried 2,119 adults last month, found that the gap grew even wider for both men and woman who were 18 to 34 years old. For woman, the percentage of those willing to skip the sheets in favor of the Web rose to 49 percent, while it climbed to 39 percent for men. And for women 35 to 44 years old, the figure jumped to 52 percent.
So today I’m reading about the myths of Theseus and the origins of Athens and I see that King Minos was cursed by his jealous wife so that when he would consummate his relationship with his mistresses, he did not ejaculate semen, but rather spiders and scorpions that would eat the genitals of his mistresses. That is a kick-ass curse and a handy bit of knowledge. It would certainly dissuade the young maidens of the kingdom, don't you think? Who said learning about ancient civilizations and mythologies was boring? No word on whether or not King Minos penned the bitchin' tune "Blackout."
Well, it’s been a couple of weeks, and I’ve got all of this pent up bitchiness, so here goes:
1. Guns and Roses – is suing Dr. Pepper for ruining their good name when Dr. Pepper’s web servers were overloaded last week giving out free Dr. Pepper coupons. For ruining Guns and Roses good name. Really?? I would have thought that firing everyone in the band, replacing them with less talented guys, canceling gigs, stealing $15 million from David Geffen and whoever was stupid enough to buy his company, and recording the same 15 shitty songs over and over again might have had a little bit to do with that. That’s just me. Oh, yeah, in case there’s any doubt: Fuck Axl Rose, where's my soda?
2. Beautiful Children – is a book that attempts to weave the lives of several disparate characters together into some sort of haunting tale about a missing kid. Well isn’t that special, a feel-good MFA project. Too bad the missing kid character is a monumental shithead and when he goes off running into the Las Vegas desert, the reader has wasted 400 pages of reading that could have been better used by reading the used newspaper that lines hampster cages. Sometimes MFA writers produce good work, like The Historian, other times we get 400 pages of word barf by a pretentious jackass.
3. Gas Prices – are going down and now we are hearing about how dwindling oil profits are a bad thing. Seeing as how the oil industry has been raping the public for the last few years, I’ll just have to choke down giving them less money. Maybe they could come out with some more ‘humanizing’ commercials showing how they are tightening their belts. The only belt tightening I want to see out of the oil industry is the one around their neck while they swing gently from the shower curtain rod.
4. The Arrested Development – movie seems to be on track, which scares the crap out of me. I’m still not sure if this is a good thing or bad thing. In theory, this could be fantastic, just like in theory, Van Halen bringing David Lee Roth back would be good, but then you get that last Van Halen tour and ouch. I don’t know if I want to find out who is going to be the Arrested Development movie’s Wolfgang.
5. Kick-ass 80’s Song of the week – is going with Whitesnake. These guys remind me so much of Spinal Tap’s interview with Marti DiBergi where they talk about why their audience is primarily teenage males. I heard an interview with David Cloverdale back in the day where he was asked nearly the same question, with hilarious results.
6. Bonus Song – I just felt like listening to this song. It reminds me of football practice and being 15, which was too damn long ago.
7. Amare Stoudamire – needs to shut the hell up and learn to play basketball without the bal in his hands. He’s got ridiculous game, but he can’t play d, doesn’t rebound, and keeps talking about how he needs to be the man. Hey Amare, be a man, shut up and play. Either that or enjoy playing in Sacramento, the armpit of California.
8. Plaxico – on to another petulant little bitch, let’s talk about Plaxico Burress, the New York wide receiver who cannot make meetings or other team events, but then holds out for more money. The same guy who last week went to a club and New York and shot himself in the leg when his .40 Glock went off “accidentally.” Sorry, I have to call bullshit. Anyone who has ever shot a Glock can tell you they don’t just go off. This isn’t some television writer’s dream of being gun crazy, a Glock takes deliberate, conscious effort to fire, Plax was just being a dumb ass. Either way, he needs to go away, as people like him are the reason the average human has so much contempt for professional athletes. My favorite part of the story was his clubbin' sweatpants that he was wearing. Classy. Just watch yourself Plax, where you are likely headed next, you might just bunk up with a killer or kidnapper, which brings us to…
9. The Juice – sometime today Orenthal Simpson was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Tragically, the two people he killed are not the reason for his incarceration, rather he is going to jail due to even more stupidity. There is a generation of Americans who only know Simpson as a murderer, which is lucky for them, as they didn’t have to see an athlete fall from grace harder than anyone else, ever. I’m just glad that he’s going away finally. Let’s take a moment to mourn for the true victims of OJ’s latest crime: the strippers, hookers, and pathetic lonely women in LA/Vegas/Miami who can no longer use OJ to fame whore for five or six minutes.
10. Jaime Spears – is threatening to sue for some reason or other. Is there a good reason why I know this young lady’s name? I didn’t think so. Hey Jaime and Lynn Spears, have a nice glass of STFU.
