Failure Bread

Disclaimer:  A couple of days ago, I ranted about some nutty Christian janitor who works in my building.  Today I plan to rant about nutty pagans and how they’re fucking up everything, including reality TV.  But I PROMISE that this isn’t going to turn into a blog that focuses on religious discussion.  The only time I plan to bring the subject up after this post is if some other affiliated asshole decides to act so galactically stupid that I just can’t resist.

That being said, I heard on the radio today that a recently-voted-off contestant on ‘Britain’s Got Talent,’ responded to her being cut in a mature and not-at-all-moronic way: she cast a spell on the judges and told them they were all “doomed!”*  Apparently, the girl was a witch.

PAGANS OF THE WORLD!  IF YOU ARE AN UNSTABLE FUCKTARD, PLEASE STOP FORCING THE WORLD TO JUDGE OTHER PAGANS BY YOUR BEHAVIOR!

If you’re a real pagan, you’re probably pissed off to hear that yet another jabbering idiot has decided to desecrate all that is pagan by publicly shouting from the rooftops, “I AM A NOT-CHRISTIAN, FEAR ME AND MY MAD SPELL SKILLZ!  ALSO, BLAH BLAH BLAH SOMETHING INANELY STUPID BLAH BLAH BLAH INTOLERANT MORONISM, BLAH BLAH BLAH SOMEONE PAY ATTENTION TO ME, DID I MENTION I’M A WITCH?!”

Listen, Morgan LeFaker, or whatever bullshit new name you insist everyone call you by because you don’t answer to your “slave name.”  Do you not realize that when you are a pagan in the public eye, people are going to judge all other pagans in the world by what they think of you?  It’s not fair and it’s not a good friend-making policy, but that’s the way it is.  And if the only pagans they see in public have the intelligence and social aptitude of a bowl of New England clam chowder that ate paint chips as a kid, they are going to do the stupid human mind trick and assume that anyone who calls themselves pagan is a God damned jerkoff.

Incidentally, I’m not sure if it was mentioned in whatever “OMG, DO MAGIC WITH A K” book from whence you picked up your religious leanings, but it’s called karma.  Or sometimes the Rule of Three.  Or the Rede.  Look it the fuck up.  Cursing someone because they didn’t make all your pathetic dreams come true?  Wow.  So much good energy coming your way.  Stop blaming the fact that apparently you don’t got talent on other people.  Take some responsibility for your suckage.  Learn to accept defeat with at least some semblance of grace and adulthood.  STOP ACTING LIKE A TWATWAFFLE!

The only way that Wicca, shamanism, or any other form of paganism is EVER going to be accepted as a valid belief system, instead of the high school phase you insist on turning it into, you loud-mouthed attention whore, is if you start treating it as such.  If you only got into witchcraft because it totally pissed off your parents, fine.  Maybe that’s one way to learn about it.  And maybe you even grew to have a deeper understanding of what it actually means to call yourself a pagan and are now a tolerable human being.  That’s cool.  But if that’s not the case, and you’re still into witchcraft only because it pisses people off, then you’re a fucking moron and you’re ruining it for the rest of us.  Shut.  Up.

And for all you delusional “I hold the secrets to the universe, muahaha, mystical stuff is my forte” bastards, you need to shut up too.  I don’t care if you really and truly believe that you can doom a reality show host, fix lotto numbers with your mind, or levitate cheeseburgers over the fucking moon.  Just do it silently in the privacy of your own home.  Do the rest of us a favor and stop flapping your poser mouth for five seconds so that we normal people can get a sane word in edgewise.**

And speaking of sane pagans getting a word in edgewise, sane pagans, please speak up.  I beg you, if you’re pagan and not a moron, find it in yourself to overcome your fear of being lumped in with the riffraff, and tell someone you know.  That way they’ll start thinking, “Hey, I’ve known Mary forever and she’s just as nice as pie.  Maybe not everything I heard about those godless Devil worshippers is true,” and we might actually have a fighting chance at being accepted for what we are, not what people who watch too much ‘Buffy’ think we are.  I don’t know about you, but I would love for our way of life to become at least commonplace enough to not have to explain to people that a pentacle is not Satan’s hoofprint every five seconds.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go light some candles and bend the ENTIRE WORLD TO MY WILL.  There might also be some baby-eating and animal-sacrificing, if I’m really feeling crazy.***

*DOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED!

** And stop going on and on about how you were burned in Salem in your past life, because a) there is a subtle but definite difference between a religious holocaust and a class-struggle based, hysteria-fed land ownership disagreement, and b) no one was burned at Salem.  History, it is a lovely thing.  Learn some.

***I don’t recommend animal sacrifice to anyone who’s not well-practiced in the mystical art of getting entrails out of the carpet.

Subtitled:  Why ‘The Spirit’ wasn’t as good as ‘Sin City.’

Today, friends, I would like to announce a great psychological discovery.  The affliction I will soon describe has occurred throughout history, but I have finally taken the initiative to not only name it, but also to suggest treatment options.

It is called: “Review-Aggravated Waste Realization” or RAWR for short.

RAWR occurs shortly after an individual thoroughly enjoys an entertainment stimulus, such as a new album, novel, or movie.  And I don’t just mean kind of liked said entertainment, I mean really enjoyed the shit out of it.  Loved it like Tammy Faye loved hairspray, like St. Sergius loved St. Bacchus, like leprechauns love cardboard-and-marshmallow cereal, like Cary Elwes loves sucking at an American accent.

Anyway, after the initial pleasurable experience, the individual later reviews the awesomeness that they witnessed, either by talking it over with someone else, reading a review, or even just going it over in their own mind.  Slowly, the individual begins to realize that the movie, book, or album was actually…* not that good at all.

In extreme cases of RAWR, the individual may actually come to hate the entertainment stimulus and regret wasting their money on it, even though they fucking loved it the first time they experienced it.

Although no one specific factor has been determined as the sole cause of RAWR, several theories exist.  One such thoery is the opposite of “Good Review Syndrome,” a related disease which occurs when everyone you have ever met tells you great a movie is and you get so excited, thinking that seeing this movie will finally help you achieve that pesky Nirvana you’ve been after, and then you see it and you think, “Meh.  That was okay.  It didn’t live up to the hype, though.”  The opposite of “Good Review Syndrome” then, is when someone tells you how great a movie is and you get so excited that actually believe it must be the best shit ever, and you continue to labor under that false pretense while watching the movie and even for a short time after.

I shall present a case study:

Last summer, we started seeing posters and teasers for ‘The Spirit,’ the lastest comic-book-turned-movie event.  The artwork was cool, very ‘Sin City,’ and I’m sorry, I could not get enough of the tagline, “My city screams.”  What imagery!  What drama!  What a cool movie this will be!

My sister managed to see it before me, which was slightly surprising, because I am usually at the midnight premiere of most comic book movies.  She has nothing but good things to say about it.  What entertainment!  What abs!

So she went to see it again, this time with me, and I have to say I was digging it.  What’s not to like?  Superheroes, Samuel L. Jackson, costumes, kitties, romance, treasure, photocopied asses - all good things.  What humor!  What classic camp!  What the fuck did Sam just do to Muffin?  What a cool movie!

What a fucking disappointment.

A few days later, I was reviewing the movie in my head, and something wasn’t sitting right with me.  For one thing, only one scene stuck out in my mind as being truly memorable.**  This is bad.  A truly great movie should have many scenes over which I may later gush and go, “Remember when that really cool thing happen?  That was awesome.”  But really, upon further review, the rest of the movie was just an occasionally-ab-streaked blur of melodramatic dialogue and boring fight scenes.  What’s great about a fight scene between two people who can’t die?!***  It’s one thing if the two characters are equally matched opponents, but if there’s no chance that either one of them will ever kick off?  Sorry.  Futility is funny, but only for thirty seconds or so.

I really had it pounded into my head that this movie was going to be the next ‘Sin City,’ a true opus of ass-kickery if ever there was.  I should have known that only the next ‘Sin City’ will be the next ‘Sin City.’****   But after the glowing reviews from my sister, who normally has not-retarded judgement, I was dead convinced of its greatness.

But a week later, I was left with twenty fewer dollars in my bank account, no good movie memories, and a piece of popcorn STILL lodged between my gum and back tooth, despite numerous vigorous brushings.  Thanks a lot, ‘The Spirit.’

Classic RAWR!*****

*Dum dum DAAAA!!!

**A scene I like to call “What smells dental?”, during which the Spirit has been captured and the Octopus (evil genius) and Silken Floss (his sidekick, and possessor of the franchise’s stupidest name) explain their entire dastardly plan while dressed as Nazis and melting a kitten.  Yes.  I said melting.  Stephie, don’t see this movie.

***Unless they are Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush, who could make a three-hour chess game look interesting if they really had to.

****Damn it, film faster!

*****Remember how I said I was going to offer treament options?  Way back in the first paragraph?  Well, I lied.  There’s no way to avoid this phenomenon.  Just live with it, like I had to.

Hi, everyone!  Thanks for being so patient in waiting for updates.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had to have all four of my wisdom teeth removed, so I took a few days off.  Then the excisions became infected, leading to severe pain and sleeplessness, and I took a few more days off.  Then my sister and niece came to visit and I was distracted by all the cuteness and baby talk.  Yesterday I was too busy leveling my Draenei hunter.  But today, I’m back and hopefully will have the discipline and unyielding support network to keep on updating.*

Speaking of my wisdom teeth, today I received some interesting… insight, shall we say?  I was at work, and explaining to a guy who works in the building why I had been out sick so much last week.  I even told him that I had to go back to the dentist on my birthday.**  The guy looked at me and said, “You need to go to church more often.”

Now please don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is the first time I’ve had that opinion leveled at me, but this was the first time I really couldn’t see how it could even remotely apply to my problem.

Laughing, I said, “What?  How does that work?”

“If you go to church, He’ll take care of you, then you won’t be at the dentist on your birthday.”

Then the patient who was watching out exchange chimed in about the Healing Mass she frequents, which apparently involves standing on the altar while you listen to a TWO HOUR sermon.  Hey, whatever works, lady, but in my world we have hydrocodone.

Long story short, I stood there smiling half-heartedly while two people insisted that Christian religious fervor would have stopped four gaping wounds in my mouth (the orifice that gets the most action…  I’m talking about food, of course) from managing to find even one virus or bacterium  amidst the TRILLIONS that it is exposed to every day that could hang on for the long haul.  Jesus himself would have seen to it, I guess.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a Christian; however, anyone who knows me well would also know that I’m not one of those indignant non-Christians who get all uptight whenever someone mentions the Christian faith.  I have lived amongst Catholics and Protestants and one very cool Methodist for my entire life and the number of times I felt seriously religiously oppressed can be counted on one hand with enough fingers left to hold my Tom Collins.

I am not angered by the fact that religions with which I disagree exist around me.  I am not offended when someone says “God bless you,” and I am more amused than irritated when someone insists that I should consider abandoning my heathen ways and converting, because I understand that sort of concern is an integral part of the Christian faith, and I’m comfortable enough with myself that no one is going to make me feel stupid or dirty for choosing a non-Christian religion that makes sense to me.

(Interesting side story: a girl with whom I used to wait tables once had a post-church breakfast crowd splash the drinking water at her yelling, “Repent!  Repent!” and another co-worker once had a nutty zealot who sat in his section for five straight hours during an overnight shift, yelling, “Turn or burn!” everytime he walked by.  Truckstop restaurants bring out the best in people.)

The point is, despite my experience and usual laidbackedness,*** I honestly had no idea what to say to these people, so I made up some shit about how nice it is they found a church they liked in the area and quickly ran off under the guise of having to fax a prescription or some crap.

It’s not the “go to church” that stumped me.  It was the utter ridiculousness of the idea that the Lord and Savior of the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD was going to take the time to personally oversee not only my very minor dental procedure, but also my recovery.  You mean to tell me people who follow Christianity will be granted a clean soul, forgiveness of all sins, entrance into Heaven AND a hella good immune system?  It’s too good to be true; it’s the ShamWow of theology!!!

Seriously.  If I was a Christian, I’d be pretty angry with Jesus if he was all like, “So how’s your teeth?”  Firstly because of the poor grammar, but also because I would think he had more pressing issues to be tending.  If you’re Jesus and this is the most important thing you have to do with your time, I want my Sunday mornings back; either the guy’s already got all the problems of the world so well under control that he can afford to slack off and look at my yanked teeth with me, or he’s seriously not prioritizing well.  I’d be concerned.  I’d write a letter.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, fuck your dentist and pray those cavities away, children.

A real post will follow tomorrow, but I really had to rant about that.

*This of course refers to the e-mail I got stating: “Your lazy days are piling up!  Update already!”

**So he could poke my inflamed, raw injuries with a FUCKING IRON HOOK!!! and then say, “Hm, yeah, you might have an infection.”

***It’s a word, look it up.****

****It’s so not a word.

Gwen Stefani and Nelly Furtado are both giant sell-out whores to the R&B movement.  Even if I hadn’t just had four molars forcibly removed from my head, my teeth would still hurt from the enormous suckage that is Gwen and Nelly.

I am reminded of this fact almost constantly, because of Pandora.  If you don’t know what Pandora is, click the link and learn, cuz it’s a really cool tool for hearing music you like and discovering new music that you may like even more.  They did not pay me to say that, but I wish they would, cuz I say it pretty frequently.  Pandora rocks!

But despite how cool the website itself is, I have fallen victim to the two aforementioned skankerpoofs because of it.

I think we all knew in the back of our heads that someday Gwen Stefani was going to leave No Doubt and go out skeezing solo, so I wasn’t surprised when she did leave the band and release a solo album.  And I really wasn’t expecting her to be so successful, to tell you the truth.  When I heard Gwen’s solo stuff, I thought to myself, “Ha.  That bitch’ll think twice before she ruins a good thing next time.  Her career’s as dead as her over-bleached hair.”

Imagine my surprise when people starting lapping it up like Kool-Aid.  No accounting for taste, I suppose, but can’t you people listen to shitty music in private?  Do I really have to be assaulted by another one of Gwen Stefani’s skank anthems every time I turn on the radio?  How can anyone listen to the over-produced tripe she’s singing now and not rememeber the days of No Doubt?  The fact that I know she was once part of something that was the opposite of a pile of steaming suck makes it impossible to listen to her garbage now; it’s just too disappointing.  This girl used to play music that meant something and didn’t make your ears bleed.  Now she’s just another white girl jumping on the R&B bandwagon because that shit gets more radio play and probably makes more money than pop or rock nowadays.*

Now Nelly Furtado…  She’s even worse, for two reasons.  1) Her old good stuff was better than Gwen Stefani’s old good stuff and 2) she can’t even blame the change in the quality of her music on a heartbreaking band split.  She’s just a whore, plain and simple.  When I was in college, I got into Nelly Furtado because I have a hidden streak of folk-music lover in me.  I liked that Nelly Furtado’s first couple of albums were so different from everything else I heard on the radio.  Yeah, she has a nasal voice, but the music itself was cool.  It was part pop, part bohemian folk, and yes, part R&B.  There were elements of rap and R&B on her earlier albums, but they were woven in with the folk and acoustic guitar elements, which made for a really cool sound.

But something awful happened to her!  Some hideously-sequined demon has possessed her and whispered into her ears every night, “Dress like a whore and collaborate with Timbaland** and you will make some MAD money!  Take everything that was cool about you and dilute it, cover it up with glitz and Essence of Club Rat!  Do it and all your dreams will come true!”

And she did.  One morning, I was watching VH1 with my little stepsister and I saw that a new Nelly Furtado song was coming on.  “Pay attention to this chick,” I told my sister, “you’re going to like this.”***

Let me tell you, eating those words was hard, but after watching the entire “Promiscuous” video, I had to do it.  I tried to tell myself, “Well, anyone can have one bad song.  I bet the rest of the album is better.”

Then I heard “Maneater.”  Less than reassuring.  Then I heard ‘Say It Right,’ and I knew it was all over.  My Nelly was gone, replaced by an evil pod person with too-tight clothes and a head full of collagen.

NELLY, GODDAMNIT!!!  This must be what it’s like parenting a slacker genius.  I know she can do better than this because I’ve seen and heard it!  Why won’t she just apply herself instead of taking the easy way out like every other tart in the music industry?!

The reason I bring this all up is because of Pandora.  At Pandora, you make an account and then you type in bands or songs that you like and the website will play music with similar features.  You know, like Launchcast on Yahoo! only it doesn’t lick balls.  So one day I’m tooling around, listening to Emerald Rose and I think, “Man, you know who I miss?  Nelly Furtado.”

Thinking that they would have to play at least some of the Nelly I used to know and love, I created a Nelly Furtado radio station.  Now I spend half my time thumbs-downing Beyonce Knowles**** and Rhianna, because apparently there’s now more sucky rap Nelly music out there than there is old folky Nelly music.

Stupid music hooker sellouts.

*Sad fucking state of affairs.

**I hate Timbaland because he embraces ignorance like it’s a fucking life raft.  The man has a song called “The Way I Are.”  Need I say more?

***I am on a never-ending quest to expose my stepsister to good music and women who don’t dress like trollops, because I have seen what the rest of her generation is intent upon becoming: prosti-tots.  Prepubescent mindless whores who wear their thong straps over the waist of their too-tight jeans.  I blame Bratz, and I try at every opportunity to point out to my sister how awful those bitches look.

****The wagon-jumping last-name-dropper.  You’re not fucking Madonna.

Dear Readers,

Today, I underwent some pretty daunting maxillofacial surgery, so I may or may not be out of commission for a few days.  But since I don’t want to leave you hanging, I have prepared in advance today’s little tidbit.  Anyone who has frequented my previous webpage attempts (Mom) may recognize the next few posts as some of my older work, but hopefully I’ll be back to writing fresh, shiny, dryer-sheet scented new posts soon.

Until then, I leave you with a random moment of awesomeness from this week.  Enjoy!

Stephanie:  So I was surfing the internet the other day, and I found this website that had a grammar error, and I submitted a comment about it.  I felt like a total nerd.  It was a misused semicolon and it was just staring me in the face!  I had to do something.  But I gave my real email account, so I was scared that my account would be hacked or get a virus or something.  But the guy just emailed back and said thanks for pointing it out.

Me:  Well, good for you for trying to put a stop to the epidemic of semicolon abuse.  It’s cool he took it so well.  I guess someone who’s willing to use a semicolon is concerned enough about grammar to try and use it properly.  Do the same thing for me if you catch any; I’d be horrified to have my name on something like that!

Stephanie: Hehehehhe.  Nicely done.

Me:  …OMG  I didn’t even realize I did that!  I am a God among insects.

Stephanie:  Hahahahahahahahaha.

Me:  That was actually kind of priceless.

Stephanie:  Indeed, it was beautiful.

Yes.  It is true.  I am such an English geek that to me, unconscious, correct semicolon use is like unto the work of deity.  In a beautiful shining moment of rain-misted clouds and harp chords, I glimpsed grammar enlightenment.  I have reached punctuation Nirvana.

Tomorrow I’m having my wisdom teeth pulled.  I am underwhelmed by the idea, a phrase which here means, “OH MY GOD PLEASE DON’T KILL ME MR. DENTIST MAN I HAVE A FAMILY OH GOD OH GOD THE HORROR THE HORROR!”

…I’m a little nervous.

So, as a coping mechanism, I’ve spent most of my evening trying to think about funny things, which means I’ve been constantly singing ‘The Pirate Song,’ which of course means I’ve been thinking about pirates all day.  In order to continue denying my fear for another few minutes, allow me to list for you the Seven Pirates I Want On My Crew.  Yar.

7)  The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything

Don’t ask me why, but my college roommate had a weird VeggieTales fixation.  Normally, I’m not into being preached at by produce, but the Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything skit is actually pretty amusing in an ‘I wish I were stoned, this’d be PHENOMENAL’ kind of way.  So these guys would get invited onto my crew to entertain me.  Plus, if we got shipwrecked or scurvy or something, we’d all know what was on the menu.


6)  Gibbs

This guy is credited as Joshamee Gibbs by imdb.com, but I’m pretty sure that must be a typo, because his first name is OBVIOUSLY Exposition.  When all the other overpaid actors are running around the boat whining “But what’s my character’s motivation?” Exposition Gibbs is all too glad to sit them down and tell them not only their motivation, but also their past twenty years of backstory.  This would be a handy guy to have around when we end up selling the encyclopedia for rum money.


5)  Don Karnage*

Come on.  Do I even have to explain?


4)  Mack the Black

If your local video store doesn’t carry a copy of The Pirate, then your homework for today is to Tivo the Turner Classic Movie Channel nonstop until it comes on.  So what if you end with three hundred recorded hours of The Ghost and Mr. Chicken?  It’s a small price to pay for the chance to see the hotness that was once Gene Kelly play a pirate.  Well, actually he’s not a pirate, he’s a guy pretending to be a pirate.  Why, you ask?  To get laid.  Cuz that’s just how Gene Kelly rolls, bizatch.


3)  Captain Hook

Captain Hook gets to come because he’s fucking hardcore.  He takes no shit; he kills so many of his own men that he makes Stalin look like a wuss.  Do you know anyone else who’s made an entire career of slaughtering Indians and children?  Please report them to the police.


2)  Christopher Raine

At this point, only my old VeggieTales roommate will be saying, “Hells yeah, you have to have Chris Raine along,” because she’s the only other person I know who has read Jennifer Ashley’s The Care and Feeding of Pirates.  This is a silly romance novel whose one claim to fame is that it is the basis and inspiration for the aforementioned ‘Pirate Song.’  If you’ve never been drunk with me then you’ve never heard ‘The Pirate Song,’ but with lyrics like, “The Jolly Roger flew high as he plundered my booty,” how could it not be the greatest song ever?  Anyway, the hero of both song and book is Christopher Raine, a pirate who does all kind of piratical things, such as shagging virgins while imprisoned, escaping the gallows, stealing, freeing slaves, shagging not-virgins-anymore in the Captain’s Quarters, digging up buried treasure, and flouting authority while fucking it’s sister.  Yeah.  Plus, he’s a romance novel hero, so you know he’s got the talent AND the tools.  And that’s something I’ll need while I’m out on the ocean for months at a time.


1)  Johnny Jones

There’s a sweet-ass SNES game out there called ‘Mario RPG: Legen of the Seven Stars.’  If you have not played this game, you suck.  You suck at life.  Go get it right now!  Best.  Game.  EVER.  Anyway, there’s an underwater section of the game where Mario and his little creampuff sidekick are wandering around a sunken ship.  You didn’t know Mario could breathe underwater?  Ha!  No one is safe from Mario, not even bottom-dwellers!  Anyway, the captain of the sunken ship is Johnny Jones, whom Mario has to fight to gain a Star.  After you get the Star, Jones becomes you buddy and evem saves your ass later in the game.  But that’s not why he’s awesome.  THIS is why he’s awesome:

He’s a fucking SHARK with a fucking HARPOON!!!  What’s greater than that?  Nothing.  That’s what.








*Is Don Karnage a fox?  A hyena?  A Golden Retriever?  Thus is the key to his mysterious allure…

…In a short sentence, because I was very busy tonight watching The Usual Suspects for the first time, and coming to the following conclusions:

1)  Bryan Singer is Hollywood’s best-kept secret.

2)  Ignorance is bliss, because the mind-fuck of an ending would have been way cooler if I hadn’t already known about it.

3)  It is never a good idea to tell any Kevin Spacey character that you’re smarter than him.  Cuz you’re not.  And you just might end up finding your wife’s head in a shoebox.

Anyway, since I was short on time tonight (working late, frivolous entertainments), I’m just going to post one of my older movie reviews.   It was written a couple of years ago, almost directly after I had seen The Wicker Man (I say almost directly because I had to get into the shower as soon as I got back from the theater to scrub off the suck).  Why did I go see The Wicker Man in the first place, you ask?

Because I never learn.  Because I never.  Fucking.  Learn.  I should know by now not to trust Nicolas Cage.  I should know by now that remakes are like Mogwais*; if exposed to even one irresponsible fuck-up, they go completely evil, and the next thing you know, you’re scrubbing caked-on green entrails out of your microwave.  And most of all, I should have known, somewhere deep in my gut, that any remake that not only did not invite Christopher Lee to reprise his original role, but also recast that role as a woman, was going to be a hard-core eye-clawing fiesta.

So anyway.  Without further ado, my review of The Wicker Man.  Here’s a little spoiler: no thumbs up.

So, my Grandma came to visit for my Dad’s recent wedding, and being that she is a huge Nicolas Cage fan and that we don’t get to spend a lot of time together, we went to go see The Wicker Man.

Wow. Three words: BIG. FUCKING. MISTAKE.

In trying afterwards to describe to Rob, my mother, and my sister the horribleness of this movie, I found that words actually failed me. Which, given my loquacious nature, is a rather rare occurrence.

At first, I thought, “Holy Heaven. If I never have to think of or converse about this movie ever again, I’ll be a happy camper.” And then I realized that it was so horrible, I couldn’t just let it slide. Something had to be done. And thus, I give you my latest movie review. That’s right, Wicker Man, you re-opened my rage circuits and now V is back to break your legs, shove you into a giant piece of lawn furniture, and burn you alive in a way that defies all laws of nature!

When I sat down to write this, a few key phrases came to mind. ‘Hated it as if hating it was my job,’ for example. I realized that if I were a lazy person (tchyeah), I could simply take the review I wrote for that riveting frightfest Dark Water, change a few title and actor names, and call it a day. And since I happen to be a lazy person, I almost did just that.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that The Wicker Man was so much more than just another boring, not scary, pointless, poorly-paced, horribly-acted, make me want to stab my own eyes out bit of movie industry garbage. It was, in fact…

THE WORST MOVIE I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE!

That’s right, folks, you heard it here first. The Wicker Man is the worst movie ever made. Ever. Seriously, if you took every movie that was ever wrathfully loathed in the entire history of cinema and compared it to The Wicker Man it’d still look like fucking American Beauty. That’s how bad The Wicker Man is. It makes Starship Troopers, Wrong Turn, and Cutthroat Island look like Best Picture winners.**

Now, in a place like this, where movies are taken very seriously (more seriously than real life, oftentimes), there was no way I could just let my discovery of the Worst Movie Ever Made Seriously go by unannounced.

Now you may be asking, “But, V, why was it so bad?” Good God, I wish I knew. I can’t explain what was going on in the brains of the idiots who decided this was going to be their latest project. For one thing, remakes of British cult movies rarely end up being blockbusters. For another, the crazy-coven concept is way done. All I could think while I was watching that shit was, “Dude, these bitches should hang out with those girls from The Craft. Maybe’d they’d dress better. Oh wait… Never mind.”

So anyway, the premise of this movie is that Nicolas Cage is drug-addicted cop who’s on leave because there was a tragic accident, which could not even be bothered to explode in a cool fashion, while he was on the job. He gets a letter from some girl with only one facial expression, and she wants him to go to her nutty island commune home and find her missing daughter, who was apparently kidnapped by EVERY OTHER PERSON on the island. So he gets there and the place is bonkers, and everyone is named after a plant, and the men don’t talk, and the women are all crazy bitches, and the director decided there was no way he could possibly pound the ‘THIS ISLAND IS LIKE A HIVE OF BEES!!!’ analogy too far into my head. Yeah, I got it, dude, I took tenth grade English, thanks. Anyway, so Nicolas Cage wanders around doing nothing for a few days so he can get stung by massive amounts of bees and eventually be sacrificed to the island’s pagan gods to ensure a good harvest of honey next year.

Now, my own personal beliefs aside, I can easily see a bunch of protest-happy Pagans getting their hemp underwear all twisted up by this.  Normally, my feeling on that would amount to: get the fuck over it, it’s just a movie.  Normally.  This movie, however, includes a crying Jesus that was buried away by the island’s evil sinner inhabitants.  That’s pounding the ’see what you get for not going to church every Sunday’ nail pretty hard.  It’s still just a movie and definitely not cause for rioting in the street, but I can definitely see why some people might feel just a tad insulted by the portrayal of their non-Christian, nature-based faiths as a murderous cult of ugly women who don’t use conditioner.

About a half hour into this nonsensical suckfest, I peeked over at Grandma to see if she was going to hit me with her purse for picking this movie. Guess what? That wily woman was asleep! Lucky. She missed the piece de resistance where they stuck old Nicky up in this giant man made of wicker (the wicker man, get it?) and set fire to it. Here’s the thing: they lit the bottom first, where the wicker dude’s feet were. But of course, during the dramatic, poorly scored climax, the head falls off first instead of the thing collapsing from the bottom up, as is the natural order of things. Can’t they even make a giant straw man burn down properly? Come on, if you’re going to bullshit me, I want my seven bucks back.

*Seriously, if anyone knows the plural of Mogwai, let me know.  Is it simply more-than-one-Mogwai?

**V’s Best Picture winners, not that ass-licking Academy bullshit.

Today I heard Britney Spears’ new song, “Womanizer,” and it got me thinking.  It crossed my mind that an artist must have been in a dark place career-wise if something as crappy as “Womanizer” is touted as her big comeback.

(On a side note, you people out there reading better appreciate what I go through for you.  In order to research this article, I actually listened to the song the whole way through twice AND watched two versions of the music video.  Don’t ever say I never sacrificed anything for your entertainment.)

Even compared with the slew of R&B-inspired pop tripe that somehow passes for music these days that gets played alongside it, the song is weak.  For the love of God, it uses the word womanizer 34 times (not including the stuttered “woman” that’s haphazardly shoved into the chorus with all the grace of an unapologetic proctologist; that’s used 4 times) - and the song’s only 3 minutes and 46 seconds long!  That’s nine “womanizers” a minute, which is roughly one “womanizer” per every six seconds of music.*  That’s a lot of womanizers; the bar must be saturated in cheap cologne fumes.  Now, I’m not saying I expected genius songwriting from Britney Spears and her people, but really?  This is the best you could come up with?  Don’t you know that Southern girls can’t convincingly use the word “front” as a verb, even if they are writhing in baby oil stark naked under a gold lamp, looking for all the world like America’s most veneral-diseased KFC chicken special?!

Incidentally, if the shoddily thrown-together lyrics weren’t bad enough, the song is actually a pretty blatant “Happy Together” steal.  Don’t believe me?  Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ISBnx0xUss **  If I were the Turtles, I’d sue.  Except that the judge would probably just say, “Who are you again?” and it’d be pretty embarrassing.

At this point, some idiot reading this will be thinking, “Well, duh, she was in a career slump!  Don’t you remember she suddenly went crazy?”

No, I don’t remember that.  I don’t remember any “suddenly.”  What I remember is hearing “Lucky”** and thinking, “Oh, good, here we go.  The beginning of the end.”  As much as I hate songs about how hard it is to be rich and famous, I had to appreciate Britney giving me a heads-up about all the crazy shit that was to come.  There was no “suddenly.”  There was just a bunch of yahoos who were too busy staring at her gazongas to notice that she was a pretty damaged bit of property from the start.

I don’t understand how anyone could have been surprised that she went off the deep end; if I’d spent the last decade of my life being talentless wank material, I might get a little depressed too, especially if everyone I knew (even my own sainted mother) was selling me out to the paparazzi at every turn.  That’d be enough to stress out a smart, strong, legitimately talented woman; no wonder the poor little moron looks like she’s been run through a meat grinder and spackled back together!

It’s kind of funny that I now pity her, because I was a Britney-hater since the beginning, but I can’t help myself.  She’s like a retarded puppy who only knows one trick.  And she knows that trick makes her masters giggle, so she does it all the time, until it stops being cute and the masters start kicking her into the closet when company comes over.

That’s what will happen with this “Womanizer” business too.  She’ll release a few more singles and do a couple of high-profile performances, and everyone will think she’s back on top, ain’t life  grand?  Yay!  But then, slowly and inevitably, that carefully photoshopped veneer of capability will crack and it’ll be back to everyone saying, “There’s crazy Britney Spears at it again!  I’d feel bad for her, but ew, look how fat she got.”

Fucking US Weekly-reading dumbasses.




* Fun fact: The song “Blue” by Eiffel 65 uses the word “blue” 35 times in 3 minutes and 37 seconds, thus making it the only song in history to mathematically suck more than “Womanizer.”

** Incidentally, this is the version of “Womanizer” you’re going to put on your iPod.  Don’t be ashamed.  It’s okay to like the All-American Rejects, even if that dude’s pants are so obscenely tight that even a male figure skater wouldn’t wear them in public.

*** “She’s so lucky she’s a star, but she cry cry cries in her lonely heart.”  Nope!  Didn’t see that breakdown coming!

So something almost funny happened to me today.  I was sitting in the bathroom, minding my own business.  All of a sudden, I heard a God-awful noise.  It was nigh indescribable, but imagine if you crossed the sound of a turkey being strangled with the sound of Luciano Pavarotti singing Tiny Tim’s greatest hits while he has laryngitis.  It was kind of like that.

That’s right.  My housemate was watching The Phantom Of The Opera.  And because he’s like that, he was watching it LOUDLY.

There was no escape; all my long-since-repressed memories came flooding forth with staggering force, and I suddenly knew what I was going to write about today.

I remember seeing the first preview for this junk-heap of a movie; I distinctly remember thinking, “Huh, so they finally went and did it, well, I guess it could be okay if you’re into that sort of OH MY GOD, THEY PUT SCHUMACHER IN CHARGE?!”

As if a movie version of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s tribute to finally getting himself laid wasn’t going to be handicapped enough by it’s subpar source material, someone decided to cripple it completely by hiring Joel “Still-Coasting-Off-Of-My-Lost-Boys-Success” Schumacher to direct.  Nipples on the Batsuit aside, this was the guy who ran a perfectly good franchise into the ground by missing the days of Adam West just a little too much.  Tim Burton’s first two Batman movies were awesome, with just enough camp to keep them true to their comic book roots without being ridiculous.  By the time Schumacher got done with his two Batman movies, any self-respecting movie-goer would have rather sat through a six hour documentary about ringworm than watch them.

I wouldn’t trust Joel Schumacher to water my houseplants, but someone decided, “Meh.  Let’s give him another shot.  How bad could it be?”

That’s exactly what my sister and I said to each other before we rented Phantom: how bad could it be?

How bad indeed!

For starters, the girl playing Christine (one of the most useless female characters in the history of the written word, trumped only by Bella Swann) has only two facial expressions:

• awestruck
• awestruck with a tear in her eye

Now granted, her voice definitely beats Sarah Brightman’s banshee shriek and she is quite pretty, which is important if you’re playing a character whose only attributes are being a good singer and being beautiful, but she’s the most boring actress I’ve ever seen.  Bitch, raise your eyebrows!  Emote!  Do something to prove to the audience that you are not, in fact, a mannequin.

But even her wooden performance beats Gerard Butler’s.  This was the first movie I’d ever seen him in and it left such a bad taste in my mouth, I almost skipped 300.  When I saw him in other movies, I was blown away.  How can he be so good in these movies, I thought, when he was absolutely abysmal in Phantom?  The obvious answer is: poor direction.  And given the director, I’m willing to pin a lot of Butler’s shortcomings on that excuse.  But even that can’t hide the fact that Gerard?  Yeah, not the world’s best singer.

Now, I know that The Phantom Of The Opera is the most overrated musical of all time and that I shouldn’t take it too seriously, but for the love of God, shouldn’t the dude in the title role be able to oh, I don’t know, SING ON KEY?!  I wanted to reach through the screen and beat him to death with a pitch pipe.  Tune up or shut up!

Not to mention that Raoul looks and acts exactly like a Ken doll, everyone’s wig looks like an escapee from a taxidermy shop, and Meg walks out of a thigh-deep underground river with perfectly dry pants.  Nice.

The whole movie is laughable.  It wants to be dramatic and intense, but there wasn’t a single person involved with the whole film that did their job well enough to support it’s whiny pathos, and thus it became melodrama.  It is a suck sandwich on failure bread.  If I didn’t know ahead of time that it wasn’t a parody, I would have written Joel Schumaker a letter of congratulations.

In short, save your money.  If you really need to see a good Broadway-gone-Hollywood flick, go for Cabaret or Chicago or even Hairspray.  Better yet, just screw the songbirds and rent 300 instead.  More underwear models, less crying, and who can’t get behind that?

First posts, I find, are kind of like first dates.

You spend all day getting gussied up and giving yourself a passive-aggressive pep talk.  “Are they going to like me?  Of course they are!  Why wouldn’t they?  As long as I don’t tell any of my stupid jokes or get food on my face or do any of the myriad things that I often do to embarrass myself in public, I’ll be fine!  And hey, I’m interesting, right?  …Right?  I have stuff to say.  Y’know, stuff that people want to hear.  Not like my drunken karaoke, real ideas.  I have that, right?”

Then you pour another pre-date drink, crawl under the table, and mutter, “We can’t do it, Precious…” for about an hour before you get into your not-quite-slutty black dress that only just hints at desperation.

Yes.  First posts are like that.  Because as soon as I sat down at the keyboard, I thought, “Yes!  Finally, I can tell the WHOLE WORLD how I feel about movies!  And music!  And TV!  And books!*  And the whole glitter-slicked debacle that is the entertainment industry!!!  And everyone who reads it will LOVE me and I’ll get picked up by Entertainment Weekly as their new columnist and life will be GRAND!”

But the truth is that the first post is always disappointing, telling you nothing about the author or future content, and if you were to judge the caliber of this humble (ha!) blog by its maiden voyage, you’d be like, “Fire this bitch, has Maddox updated yet?”

Cut to me, under the table with my pre-date bottle o’ Bailey’s.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that the good stuff if yet to come, so please don’t begrudge me a less-than-entertaining ‘This Is Me’ intro post.

That being said, I will be your host for the foreseeable future.  My name is V.**  I plan to talk your ear off about stuff I like and rage incoherently about stuff I don’t.  If you came for the written equivalent of foaming at the mouth, check back when the next ‘Twilight’ movie is released.***

If at any time while reading you feel you really can’t contain yourself and must contribute to the madness, please feel free to comment below or e-mail me at: pentacookie@gmail.com

Till next time!

-V

*Yes, there will be books.  Start reading, you troglodytes.

**Not for vendetta.  And thanks to the genius of Terry Pratchett, I am completely obsessed with footnotes.

***Or book, depending on how money-hungry Stephanie Meyer gets as her success begins to flag…