Journeys of Jack Tripper

Of course, the movie employs as its chief medium a brand of humor that appeals to the most childish and vulgar in its viewers. At its core, however, “Borat” attempts an ironic commentary of “modern” American culture, contrasting the backwardness of its protagonist with the social ills that afflict supposedly sophisticated society. The movie challenges its viewers to confront not only the bizarre and offensive Borat character himself, but the equally bizarre and offensive reactions he elicits from “ordinary” Americans. Indeed, its message lies in that juxtaposition and the implicit accusation that “the time will come when it will disgust you to look in a mirror.”

From a literary review of Borat? Perhaps an academic journal article in the critical-cultural field?

nope.

From Judge Loretta Preska of the U.S. District Court for Manhattan, dismissing the lawsuit against 20th Century Fox from the guy who runs effeminately away from Baron Cohen's pursuits on the city streets of New York.

Glad to see SOMEBODY understood the point of the movie. Kudos, Judge Preska.

Posted by Timothy at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

CBS just showed an excellent 60 Minutes episode featuring Tuesday's primaries and the miserable state of American health care coverage. They followed it up with Big Brother. The juxtaposition was unexpected and severe. I am suffering intellectual whiplash.

The Grapefruit Gal informs me they do this every week. Please, if you know someone who watches CBS Sunday nights, take them for an EEG. They might be flatlining in the grey matter.

Posted by Timothy at 07:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Best actor: Day-Lewis in the best screaming-about-a-missing-son scene since Mel Gibson demanded, GIMME BACK MY SON! My pick: Johnny Depp.

Best supporting actor: Javier Bardem for just being... creepy. My pick: Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Best actress: Cate Blanchett. My pick: YOU KNOW IT'S ELLEN PAGE, SUCKAS

Best supporting actress: Tilda Swinton. My pick: Amy Ryan.

Cinematography: No Country For Old Men. My pick: ditto. Deakins manages to avoid splitting the vote and gets recognition as the greatest living camera's eye.

Director: Joel & Ethan Coen. This is the year they get their mainstream seal of approval. Let's hope they forget about it quickly. And yeah, they're my pick.

Documentary: Sicko. I didn't see the other four. But can't you wait to see what Moore has to say about Castro's retirement? Oh, man, I'm tense in the pants.

Editing: Bourne Ultimateum. They love Christopher Rouse, and he deserves it.

Music: Worst lineup here in decades. I don't care which song from "Enchanted" wins.

Best Picture: No Country For Old Men. I told you, they're going to lavish upon the Coens. My Pick: Juno.

Sound editing: Bourne. My pick: Ratatouille, and if you've seen it, watching and listening to what happens in the kitchen, you'll know.

Sound mixing: 3:10 to Yuma. Also my pick.

Visual effects: Transformers. My pick: I guess? That movie sucked though.

Adapted screenplay: No Country For Old Men. My pick: There Will Be Blood (what? Going against the Coens? Yes. Why? The Coens had an easy path laid for them by Cormac McCarthy, that's why. PTA adapted his from a book that was like 100 years old.)

Original screenplay: Juno. My pick: Duh. I can't wait to see what Diablo Cody has to say, and how many seconds of delay she'll need to avoid breaking any FCC regulations.

7:59, and I'm not editing a thing. Check your RSS feed if you don't believe me. Enjoy the show, kiddos.

Posted by Timothy at 07:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Andrew Siciliano, showing why Jim Rome's show actually improves when he guest-hosts:

"Soulja Boy" is officially the worst song to be played on the radio in ten years [...] musical stinkin' genius.

Posted by Timothy at 02:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I had a dream last night that I hooked up with Ellen Page. That part was pretty cool. Then I dreamed she got pregnant, which wasn't cool, but was also way too meta for my little dream-brain to handle. It's about that point I realized I was dreaming. That was cool, because it opened the door for some fantastic Lucid Dreaming action. Alas, it wasn't to be. I was so excited about my lucidity that my brain couldn't handle all the demands (and really, I was pretty content with Ellen Page anyway) and I woke up.

Juno is a strange movie. Every critic, even the ones I trust like Roger Ebert, classifies it as a comedy -- and almost apologetically so. How can a film that is a comedy be on the top of so many critics' "Best of 2007" lists, they wondered?

That answer, of course, is simple. Juno isn't a comedy. It's a drama that has funny moments -- LIKE ANY PROPER DRAMA. Today's dramas are so... dramatic that they forget they also have to be interesting. Humor has its place in any genre, but the genre itself is dependent upon what drives the plot. That's where No Country For Old Men fell through. The characteristic Coen Bros. sardonicism was missing (it was, of course, a tremendous film; I only laughed once, though.) Comedies can be easily recognized by the side trips characters take for the sake of laughs; Juno has none of these. Not a single shot in that film is unnecessary. Not a single lingering moment is extraneous.

Was it the best movie of 2007? Absolutely. (Was 2007 a lousy year in cinema? Definitely.) I would have utilized Michael Cera more, at the cost of his being permanently typecast for the rest of his very young career. Ellen Page has portrayed a pregnant teenager, a superhero, and a kidnapping victim. Michael Cera has portrayed an awkward nerd, an awkward nerd, and, in Juno, an awkward nerd-jock. (He's a runner. On second thought, considering I never knew a runner who wasn't more nerd than jock, I'll drop the qualifier.)

I'm sure he's more skilled than that, and I really do find him one of the more exciting young actors working today.

As for me, I'm going back to bed for a little Snooze time with Ellen.

Posted by Timothy at 09:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

1. I went to college with Siren. She was hot then. She is still hot now.

2. BROTHER BROTHER BROTHER BROTHER BROTHER Gladiators BROTHER BROTHER

3. American Gladiators should be lauded for helping smash false stereotypes. In the final women's round, we discovered that black women can swim extremely well, while former Marines can't (which may explain our current inability to win any wars).

Posted by Timothy at 04:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The following is a list of television shows of which I am reasonably sure I have seen every regular-season episode:

Sliders
Veronica Mars
The Simpsons
Futurama
Family Guy
Arrested Development
Seinfeld
Alias
Kyle XY
Boston Legal
Dawson's Creek
Saved By The Bell
Standoff
Numb3rs
Heroes
The West Wing
Studio 60 (like that was hard, it didn't even last a full season)
Out Of Control "CUT IT OUT!"
Parker Lewis Can't Lose
Beavis & Butt-head
ALF
Square One Television
Clarissa Explains It All
The John Larroquette Show
Ned and Stacey
Two Guys, A Girl, and A Pizza Place
South Park
Undergrads
Hack

Posted by Timothy at 04:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

He was no one. Then, hackers on steroids saw the lulz (a corruption of lol). It was a torrent of chocolate rain... but I cannot even come up with words to describe this.

I don't know if I want to stab myself or go on an /i/nvasion. The VH1 Summer Break thing was weird enough; Carson Daly's Rickrolling was weird enough. This is... troubling.

Hackers on steroids are not the Web's coolseekers. They are quite the opposite. Lest it be forgotten, kingmakers can also be revolutionaries, and I weep for the future of the Internet if this is how things are going.

If none of this made any sense to you, I apologize. I'm just in shock, and it's been 12 hours now.

Posted by Timothy at 08:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

John Scalzi is one of the best bloggers (and science fiction novelists) out there [disclaimer: the dude did send me an autographed copy of his book on writing] but this post on his visit to the Creation Museum in Kentucky is truly amazing -- or just skip to the annotated slideshow (I encourage you to maximize your browser and turn on the captions). It's funny and kind of scary.

I believe in God, sure, but Creationists are just crazy.

Posted by Timothy at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Two decades ago...

Wesley Snipes was a no-name .

Quincy Jones was a crippled drug dealer.

Martin Scorcese was directing music videos.

And Michael Jackson was Bad.

#1 song on the Billboard 100, October 31, 1987.

We need a new Michael.

Posted by Timothy at 01:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I enjoy Heroes. But how did you manage to get this far without anyone telling you that 400 years ago neither English nor Japanese were spoken the way they are today?

Hiro would be as misunderstood as someone speaking French to a group of Swahili-speakers.

Posted by Timothy at 06:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Grapefruit Gal and I were watching TV the other night -- barely paying attention, really -- when I recognized immediately a song that was playing during this Jeep ad:

Yes, that's Steve Poltz, with whom I've been interacting in some fashion for several years now. That's the first single from his album Chinese Vacation, by the way, and you should totally buy it.

So that was pretty amazing, and I hope Steve makes lots of money on the deal. But it gets better! The other night during The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, I caught this Volvo ad:

That is, of course, the unmistakable voice of Stephin Merritt, whom you might know from the Magnetic Fields or other projects.

The question, of course, that is raised regards whether these two gentlemen, whom I admire greatly, are "sellouts."

I don't feel that way, but others on the blogosphere disagree.

Posted by Timothy at 02:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've talked to a lot of people about my dreams, my screenplay ideas, and my pie-in-the-sky hopes of making a movie some day. So I had this idea for a scene, maybe from a Mocksession movie, where the camera is dollying across the sullen, empty faces of people sitting at a bar, first their faces, then their drinks, then their feet, curled up in the bar stools. Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" is playing, and then at the appropriate moment, all the people in the bar start playing the air drums.

I have told many people the details of this genius scene, and maybe I've told too many people.

My first response is "how have I not heard of a new show starring Jerry O'Connell?" My second is, THEY RIPPED ME OFF.

Damn you, ABC!!!!

Posted by Timothy at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Art Garfunkel, Charles Grodin, Alan Arkin, Martin Sheen, and John Voight. How, exactly, did they screw this movie up?

Posted by Timothy at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

So I edited together a video of Barry Bonds' 755th home run last night, as called by five different announcers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEO7XAP1Acg

Watch it! It's interesting. I think the most telling part I had to edit out because it came too late; the Padres radio announcer (who, you'll see, is clearly the most critical) says, once the game resumes, "And now to more important things, the game's tied at 1-1."

Posted by Timothy at 03:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So I attended the 12:01 showing of The Simpsons Movie because, well, I felt like being a part of something.

The AMC Theatre Oldsmar was packed -- a 500-seat sellout was in order, and the crowds ranged from parents with young kids to people my age, which is to say that it was all people my age or their kids. I was there early enough to secure a pretty decent seat, only to have the two seats next to me be occupied by an amazingly unattractive couple who spent the entire movie making out. Yes, they were making out during the Simpsons movie.

Anyway, I'd provide a better review of the movie except that it broke only a few minutes into the picture. It opens with the requisite Itchy & Scratchy picture, followed by an admonition of people who would pay money for something they can get on TV for free, and the lovely Lydian mode of Danny Elfman's "Simpsons Theme" which elicited a roar of applause from the crowd. A cameo by Green Day started the picture proper, and then the screen went black and the theatre lights came up.

Another roar ensued, this one of boos. The screen remained black and I started singing, loudly,

"DON'T STOPPPPPPPPP BELIEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIN'"

That got a laugh out of a lot of people. Fifteen minutes later, a full-scale riot was underway, with numerous red-hots being tossed at the screen, screaming, cursing, and lots of craning around backward to look at the projectionist's booth. Here I quote Duane Decker's 1947 book Good Field, No Hit (for the second time on this blog) where he speaks about hecklers at a baseball game:

They crane their necks to look for the heckler. They never see anything, but they always crane their necks.

Alas, there was nothing to see, and no usher or manager came out to explain what was happening to the crowd. After about twenty minutes the film resumed, to applause, though about 30 seconds past where the film had broke (and after what appeared to be the setup to a fairly large joke) leading the makeout couple next to me to yell, "rewind it!" and I turned to them and said "it's not a videotape, you can't rewind it" and I'd have said more except I realized the film was much quieter than when it had started, and this is a problem for comedy films, because the laughter covered up a lot of the lines of the film from this point on.

I was reminded of this moment from the series (click through if your RSS reader doesn't show YouTube clips:

So as far as I could tell, The Simpsons Movie was very funny, but I missed a lot of it for the aforementioned reasons, and I encourage you to see it, just make sure the theatre is loud and/or empty.

Posted by Timothy at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Thus in order to prove my point I will take us back seventeen years, to 1990. Specifically, to November 13th, 1990, the day Tim Berners-Lee wrote the world's first web page. George Bush was president (just like he is today!!! ZOMG) and the Virgin Mary was telling us the world had begun to end.

But this is not a post about the web or Tim Berners-Lee or George Bush or people high on peyote. It is a post about crappy music, and how in seventeen years, the nature of music has changed in a dangerous and creepy manner. I may be sounding like a curmudgeon, and I may be asking you to get off my lawn. But by looking at the #2 song on the Billboard Hot 100 on November 13th, 1990, compared to the #2 song on the Billboard Hot 100 on July 6th, 2007, we can learn a lot about where American culture has gone -- and where it's going. Oh, and if you're going to argue that 1990 was a particularly bad year for music, I point you to the top five songs for the year on the Hot 100 -- Wilson Phillips "Hold On," Roxette "It Must Have Been Love," Sinead O'Connor "Nothing Compares 2 U," Bell Biv Devoe "Poison," and Madonna "Vogue." You wouldn't skip a single one of them if they came up on your iPod shuffle. Admit it.

#2 song in 1990 : "Pray," by MC Hammer

#2 song today: "Party Like A Rock Star" by Shop Boys

First let's look at the similarities between the two songs:

* Title of song repeated ad nauseam (more than 100 times for "Pray," 49 times in "Party")
* Scantily-clad women
* "Rap"
* References to being down on one's knees
* Horrible lyrics

There are, however, significant differences. Let's look at a sample of the lyrics from "Pray."

Time and time and time and time again
I kept on knocking,but these people wouldn't let me in
I tried and tried and tried and tried to make a way
But nothing happened till that day I prayed

...and those from "Party Like A Rock Star."

bitches wanna marry me
they see me they just might panic
my ice make em go down quick
like the Titanic!

And, so, the differences:

* Titles of songs: Dichotomy of holy vs. sinful behavior
* Scantily clad women: Praying in one, stripping in the other

Listening to "Pray" today, it doesn't even sound like a pop song. It sounds like contemporary Christian music, except it WASN'T. It was a major hit single. It, and its remix, were on heavy rotation on MTV. It was a song about NOT SMOKING WEED. "Party Like A Rock Star" is about SMOKING AS MUCH WEED AS POSSIBLE. "Pray" was popular and it had a video ABOUT PRAYING and featured Hammer BREAKING UP A FIGHT (also popular in 1983). Huh?

Now, I am not a cannibiphobe by any means. I don't project this change in mores as the downfall of American morality or culture, and, frankly, I want to make it clear that I would never press for any sort of censorship by any means. But Christ, people! In one generation we've gone from "We got to pray just to make it today" to "Hoe don't you know I fuck wit fine dimonds" as the pinnacle of American music production.

If you can explain exactly how we got from there to here, I'd love to hear it.

Posted by Timothy at 04:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

"Have you seen [insert television show here]?"

While I watch a lot of television, and will defend that behavior, I probably think the show you're asking me about sucks, whether I've seen it or not. 90% of television sucks. The list of television that does not suck is short, and consists mainly of the following (this list is very short as most good television programs have been canceled):

You'd think that if there was a television show on a major network like ABC, I'd have heard about it. I would also tell you, having never seen it, that it sucks.

Somehow, a show named Kyle XY slipped under my radar for an entire year. It ran a full 10 episode summer season in 2006, and the 2007 season premiered a few weeks ago. I'm only on episode six so far (I found the damn thing on a site involving ninjas or Swedish pirates or something) and it's already breaking my head open and carving out pieces with a spork.

And that's a good thing.

The ABC website makes Kyle XY sound like a science-fiction program, as does the title (note to producers, we read words and phrases from the outside in, meaning at first glance, the title appears to refer to butt lubricant), but it is not science fiction, and that is why I think it does not suck.

Hello, I'm Matt Dallas, and I'm 24 years old. The actress who plays my love interest on the show is sixteen, but that's totally cool, because we film in Canada.

TA-DAAA!!! AN ETHNOGRAPHER!

Maybe Kyle XY is supposed to be science-fiction, or a drama about teens, but at its heart it's a show about ethnography. Kyle provides voiceovers (clearly long after the fact, as his voiceovers accompany the several episodes in which he has no use of verbal language) describing the strange world he's observing. Better yet, he does it on such a minute basis that he is a veritable Edmund Husserl -- yes, it's phenomenology in action!

Wait, no, it's episode six and now he's using a Ouija board.

Did I mention "young" Kyle has no navel? It's true. His stomach is quite literally flat. He can't swim, until he takes a swim lesson and becomes Mark Spitz. He doesn't know anything, until he reads the World Book in one afternoon. His sensory perception is amazing (which makes him a badass ethno-phenomenologist). Oh, and he knows Kung Fu. As in, Keanu Reeves, "I know Kung Fu." No, really, that's pretty much how it happened. But let's meet the rest of the family.

Hello, I'm April Matson, and I'm ugly.

I don't feel like describing the rest of the family. I do want to talk about the hot neighbor girl, whom is presented as Kyle's "love interest" of sorts (she instigates his first boner! Yes, this show takes on all sorts of teen issues! It's like an afterschool special where everyone drinks and has sex, without the awkward "ramifications" and "lessons" and "educational value"!)

Hello, I'm Kirsten Prout, and I'm hot. ERR, I mean, I'm sixteen.

Oh, snap. Episode seven, Kyle is the second coming of Peter Press Maravich. And now Amanda's boyfriend is recruiting him to join the star basketball team. (The basketball team is in the "finals." The high school year just started last week. I guess time goes faster during the abbreviated summer season.)

I'll check back in with you all after I'm caught up. Sorry for the TL, hope you didn't ;DR me. Oh, and tomorrow we'll look at Flight of the Conchords.

Posted by Timothy at 07:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I hate Myspace. I've never tried to hide that fact. I feel about Myspace similarly to how I feel about Barry Bonds: if I was big, and I saw Myspace on the street, I'd punch him in the face. Maybe I'd hit him in the face with a full can of mace. I'd definitely kick Myspace in the knees. Having a Myspace is almost a necessity, alas, and thus I have a personal myspace, a music Myspace, and a comedy Myspace. I might just get rid of my Myspaces, though, because I'm getting awfully tired of the constant spam. Don't believe me?

That was my Gmail inbox this morning. At least dealing with Myspace spammers, scammers, and porno..ers is easier now than it used to be. It used to be that when you received a friend request from a scammer, you had to go to their page and "report" them to Myspace. You had to write up a review, and there was the giant WARNING THIS DOES NOT GO TO TOM message and you felt like you were reporting on the party next door not because they were too loud but because you weren't invited. Now you can just click the friend request as "spam." Still, though, it's pretty much rendered using Myspace for anything useful, well, useless.

And now Facebook is becoming more and more like Myspace every day -- with good reason, as Zuckerberg needs to create a profitable enterprise so as to get the $2 billion he wants from Yahoo! to sell Facebook. Facebook blows, too, now, but at least the site works more often than not. Myspace is fundamentally broken, and is possibly the most popular disaster since the reign of Caligula.

Posted by Timothy at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Michael Moore's new documentary SiCKO opens next Friday, and as with all Moore features, it raises more questions than it answers. Questions like:

* Why are all the letters but "i" capitalized? (Brad has an idea.)
* Why are Americans living in France so happy? They don't have college football there.
* Why are French women so very very sexy?
* Why do we have $70 billion to blow up Iraq but nothing for health care?
* Why was Michael Moore allowed to make a film about health care when he is far from the pinnacle of health? Why not Marky Mark Wahlberg, who is a veritable Adonis (review on his recent Shooter coming soon)?

Note to self: do not Google Image Search for "sicko"

The New York Times review (use bugmenot) says that of Moore's films, it is the "funniest and the most tightly edited."

Most tightly edited, yes -- the two hours pass by as if they were thirty minutes. Funny? I'm not sure about that. Yes, there are a few belly laughs -- I nearly puked up my popcorn when the narrative turned to Fidel Castro's Cuba, though that might have been because I soaked each kernel in "butter flavored topping," which, if you haven't noticed yet, is actually fresh Mobil 1 Synthetic 5w50.

Instead, I cried. In Bowling for Columbine, I cried from laugher. In Fahrenheit 9/11, I cried because I was scared. In SiCKO, I cried because I was moved. You know, moved. Like I was in Miracle or Epic Movie or Pretty Cool Too. I won't ruin these moments for you. I want you to see the movie.

Will anything change as a result of Moore's rhetoric? Probably not. America is run by the corporations that elect our politicans and make up our 401(k) accounts. That won't change until the electorate changes and decides to start holding politicans to a test of reason and logic -- and that won't happen until we start educating children in a manner that encourages these principles.

I hope Moore's next movie is about how utterly embarassing education is in the United States. SiCKO discusses how far behind the rest of the developed world we are in medicine -- but the gap is even worse when it comes to education. You hearing me, fatty?

Posted by Timothy at 02:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For reasons unknown even to me, I watched the recent film Bridge to Terabithia today. Based on the 1977 book by Katherine Paterson, it stars a handful of young actors you'll likely never see again, and Zooey Deschanel who may or may not be hotter than her sister Emily, depending on the circumstances.

Maybe you read the book when you were younger. If you did, and have since forgotten, or if you didn't, which is even more likely, here is a breakdown of the plot. I will spoil the ending for you as a public service to provide you even less incentive to ever watch the film than you may have had already.

There is a boy who is in the fifth grade and like many fifth graders is teased for being poor and kind of a wuss. He gets beaten in a footrace by a girl, further enhancing his wussiness, though to his credit the girl (named Leslie) appears to be at least five years older than him.

She's only sevenTEEEEEEEEEEEEEN!

(Okay, fine. It's in Virginia. You don't need to know that, but if you read the book, you already know that.)

So the bullies in this redneck haven have a kink for watersports, as evidenced by the queen bee getting her rocks off by watching the little kids pee their pants. Meanwhile, our erstwhile hero is living the hard knocks of having parents who haven't discovered contraception or meaningful employment.

To combat these issues, the two kids get high on myriad drugs (perhaps Hillbilly Heroin, more likely LSD) and venture into the forest behind their houses, where they hallucinate about all sorts of fanciful creatures. More often than not, they end up "fighting" their illusory demons before coming down out of their drug-addled trances and returning home for supper.

Bad trip, man. Bad trip.

Of course, like any cautionary tale about drug abuse and rejecting God (Leslie openly professes being an atheist) there is tragedy, as the girl trips without her cruising buddy and drowns in a river, one she probably thought was frozen over or filled with plaid elephants. Jess lashes out, punching a kid in the face, and his teacher tells him to avoid the demons of the cursed, as little girls who go to Hell always come back to haunt the living.

The story ends with Jess introducing his baby sister to the world of drugs, crowning her "Princess of Terabithia" and building a bridge (of dubious quality, given both his lack of engineering prowress and the quality school systems found in the Appalachians) across the stream where his hippie friend lost her life.

Zooey Deschanel, whom I haven't mentioned again in this review due to her role being entirely meaningless, save for introducing the children to yet another drug-influenced artist (Steve Earle), is marginally hot in her role as a young, unmarried music teacher. We are led to believe she seduces young Jess, but as this is a PG-rated film that part is left to our imagination. Either way, the film could have done without her, and I'm pretty sure she's only here to give fathers something to look forward to during the children's escapades in the forest.

In all, you will be better served to simply take drugs yourself and go walking in the woods, as at least that way you have no one to blame but yourself for the bad trip that will inevitably result. Drugs are bad, mmkay?

Posted by Timothy at 05:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

We've been luxuriously pondering such things and semiotics (including a truly fabulous hazy-dream in which various advertising characters sit at a bar and discuss their symbolic, indexical, or iconic natures) and wondering about our own abilities to actually function. Here's what's been going on with the side project at Sticks of Fire:

USF ranks high in music piracy, but not as high as Ohio

Tampa sportstalk host Steve Duemig is a bigot

Florida enjoys botching executions

Posted by Timothy at 06:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Norbit opened with $33.7 million, easily beating the rest of the competition this weekend.

What the hell? Am I the only one who saw every TV trailer for this movie and thought, "F*ck, this movie looks damned stupid"?

I know I'm not, because 81 of 89 professional critics aggregated at Rotten Tomatoes panned the film. Who the hell went to go see this movie? IT LOOKS LIKE THE STUPIDEST THING IN HISTORY. I can see why kids might go see an even more critically-rejected film like Epic Movie because it is a "teen flick."

Norbit is not a teen flick. It is a stupid flick, that has absolutely nothing of interest in it save Thandie Newton, and even then that's a stretch. Yet it earned $33 million in one weekend? Huh?

Is America really that retarded?

Meanwhile, I was watching Mike Judge's Idiocracy. It would seem that, yes, we are that retarded. (Full review coming soon.)

Posted by Timothy at 08:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Ted Haggard announced Tuesday he'd been "cured" of his homosexuality after a three-week "intensive seminar."

That same night, the plot of ABC's Boston Legal featured recurring character Judge Brown (played by the tremendous actor Henry Gibson, of Laugh-In and Blues Brothers fame) seeking to cure his own homosexuality by attending a similar camp. (It doesn't work, and he seeks the help of Denny Crane in recovering damages from the "therapists.")

Three days later, NBC's Law & Order (sadly now moved to Friday nights opposite Numb3rs) highlighted a story nearly identical to that of Haggard's, only having his wife killing the meth-happy male prostitute.

(Incidentally, and I say this every week, the easiest job in show business is writing for Dick Wolf. Open up the Post and go from there. They don't even use the phrase "ripped from the headlines" anymore because it's just assumed at this point.)

I know season scheduling is planned months in advance... I think. So I suppose it's just convenient that two popular dramas had storylines revolving around a real-life development (and one that garnered a lot of its own attention from both the mainstream press and the late-night talking heads)?

For what it's worth, they were both excellent episodes, though I'm partial to Boston Legal myself, if only because Denny Crane is the best character on television since Hawkeye Pierce. Or perhaps...

TOP FIVE TV CHARACTERS SINCE 1980 (in no particular order)

Hawkeye Pierce
Denny Crane
Quinn Mallory (seasons one and two, Sliders)
Veronica Mars (season one)
Bill McNeal (Phil Hartman's character on NewsRadio)

Honorable Mention:

Jack Tripper (duh)
Alex P. Keaton
Magnum, P.I.
Dr. Craig (from St. Elsewhere)

As for that last item, I just realized that William Daniels is a month away from 80 years old. 80! Mr. Feeny, John Adams, the voice of KITT is 80. 80 YEARS OLD!

The dude played Dustin Hoffman's FATHER in The Graduate for crying out loud!

You know what's really awesome, though? He's one of the figure skating judges in the upcoming Blades of Glory.

HE'S SIX YEARS OLDER THAN HENRY GIBSON!!!

Henry Gibson:

William Daniels:

It's hot as hell in Philadelphia!

Posted by Timothy at 03:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I accidentally left the AC adapter to my Macbook at work Monday night. This left me with nothing to do Monday night, so I finally picked up a copy of Chuck Klosterman's brilliant Killing Yourself to Live loaned to me by one of my students. I didn't set it down until I'd finished it a few hours later.

Chuck Klosterman is probably the greatest living writer in America. He has aptly taken over for Hunter S. Thompson, despite having little in common with Thompson other than a penchant for road trips, drug abuse, and assignments from magazines to travel to odd places.

Hmm. So maybe they have a bit more in common than I thought. Yet Thompson was a true ethnographer, always capturing the very essence of what he experienced. Klosterman is a classic autoethnographer, and Killing Yourself is probably the greatest autoethnography written by a white, straight, middle-class (upbringing) Midwestern male in history.

Maybe I shouldn't have decided a white, straight, middle-class Midwestern male was incapable of writing good autoethnography. Maybe I coulda been a contendah.

ANYWAY, reading Klosterman makes a man (or woman, for that matter) realize two very important attributes about the people in their lives.

1. They make me much less happy than other people I could be spending time with.
2. They make me much less unhappy than other people I could be spending time with.

Note I did not say "one of two." I said two. Klosterman consistently makes me realize that bliss is nearly always accompanied by periods of misery, and to deprive one's self of both by engaging with individuals who take you to neither extreme is to deprive one's self of the emotional tension that's necessary to really interpret works of contemporary culture.

Klosterman generally leads me to the conclusion that everything I do is a waste of time, and I really ought to just spend more time listening to the Pixies by myself in my bedroom. And he's right, because he's always right.

BTW, if you're wondering how I typed this... i pulled the EW server out of the closet and installed X on it. It's never had X on it and I was quite content to keep things that way. Yet I really needed to check my email, as my phone doesn't work either. So I installed X.

Firefox 2.0 in Linux is the most gorgeous browser ever. Why can't it look like that on OS X? Or Windows, even?

Posted by Timothy at 01:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm not exactly in the 60 Minutes demographic. I do, however, watch the program on a weekly basis. I feel it's important; I feel it's part of being an American to watch the program.

I don't know if I'm going to watch the program anymore. Why? Tonight Steve Kroft brought me a story that was, in essence, a five-minute-long advertisement for Best Buy's Geek Squad, one of the most ludicrously unnecessary organizations in world history.

Let's go to the videotape. (Transcript can be read for yourself here.

Oh, and you'll need to click the jump since this is gonna be a bit long.

Continue reading "The Worst 60 Minutes Story in History (Worse than the Bush-ANG Hoax!)" »

Posted by Timothy at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today ABC News and myriad other sources are asking if Fox's American Idol is "too mean."

"You look like one of those creatures that live in the woods with those massive eyes," infamous judge Simon Cowell told one "Idol" hopeful.

That's not that mean. These people got their 15 seconds of fame -- what more were they expecting? "American Karaoke" is probably the most insipid program in the history of American television, and I'm only being somewhat facetious in saying that, as Fox has certainly lowered the bar on numerous occasions... but the fact that nearly a third of American televisions were tuned in to the show's season premiere leads me to a handful of conclusions.

1. Americans like smack talk.

Americans have consistently proven ourselves to be increasingly milquetoasty, letting their words speak for what used to be their fists. Americans love the smack. Need proof? Let's see how many blog postings have been covering the increasingly-ugly love affair between Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell:

10,370 according to Technorati. Yes, a human being at some point wrote up the smack being tossed between the two huge losers more then TEN THOUSAND TIMES.

Americans love smack. They love heckling, too, as I found out during my weekly Tuesday night performance at the Hangout.

I had just finished my paean to a divorced woman with kids, Kid Things.

"Are you done?" a drunk man asked from across the room.
"When's Darryl coming back," asked an even more drunk woman sitting near me. (Darryl being the guy who I sit in for when he takes a smoke break.)

I asked drunk man if he would like to play.

"I don't know how to play."
"They what makes you such a f*ckin' expert?" I retorted, and then improvised a song to impress the brunette Croatian girl whom I was hitting on despite her being on a date, with a guy, who was sitting right there. My song expounded upon how much greater Macedonia, my homeland, is compared to Croatia. I don't quite recall the lyrics, though I do remember saying something like:

"In Macedonia we roast our lamb in hot lard,
In Croatia you find Drazen Petrovic in your yard"

...or something similarly uncouth. Oh, I was making a point here.

2. Americans love to see people more pathetic than them.

I am not saying Americans are pathetic; rather, I think we happen to be freakin' awesome. However, I think that the American television-viewing public perceives themselves to be pathetic. Thus, being exposed to even bigger losers than we think ourselves to be is, by reference, a self-esteem boost. It's my assumption that people use programs in which other humans are degraded as a kind of visual Prozac, and perhaps a bit of coke or speed too. (Americans love drugs, remember? We invented all the cool ones.)

Seriously, it blows my mind why people would rot their brains with such tripe when they could simply go to their local club on karaoke night and see people equally-as-talented and equally-as-rotten go at it, and with a smoky room (except in Ohio) to boot! After all, no matter whether it's the opening week or the final round of Idol, you're never going to see anything as entertaining as a dude channeling Joe Cocker.

Yeeeeeeah, okay, that was pretty unwatchable. But, hey, it encapsulates of what my last night consisted.

Posted by Timothy at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Aside: SNL's Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, and Kristen Wiig just started the show with a kickass "Santa's My Boyfriend" bit. They sounded great, looked great (even without Hottest Woman Ever Tina Fey, the current cast of SNL is unbelievably hot female-wise) and it was the sort of thing they do on Studio 60 that I