Failure Bread

I don’t have enough material* for a full article today, so I thought I’d just get a few short things off my chest in the form of highly-cathartic unsent letters.  Enjoy!

——————–

Dear Jamie,

I didn’t watch Repo Man even though I had a perfect opportunity tonight, because I left it at home instead of in my car.  I promise I will soon.  Please don’t send me a letterbomb or anything.

Love,

V

——————–

Dear Pants-On-Head Retarded** Burger King Employee,

Take a chicken cutlet.  Now take a chicken sandwich bun.  Hold them side by side.  Notice anything?  Like, oh, say, that they are the same shape?  Now think back, way back to when you were just a very tiny disappointment to your worried parents, learning to stack blocks.  Did the tower stand up better when you stacked blocks of the same shape on top of each other?  It did?  Imagine that!  Now I know you probably already hate your life, but allow me to introduce more misery by pointing out that today when you made my sandwich, you failed a skill that most functionally intelligent people learn at age three!  The fucking chicken fits perfectly onto the bun, and yet instead of stacking them neatly, you handed me a literally half-unwrapped bun with a perpendicular chicken shoved into it!  Garnished with a green tomato!

Congratulations, mouth-breather.  My dinner was subpar.  I hope you know who you’ve pissed off.

Fuck Off And Die Cuz You’re A Lazy Moron,

V

——————–

Dear Sean and Megan,

I less-than-three you both.  Please stop calling while I’m carnally engaged.

Love,

V

——————–

Dear Adult Swim,

Bring back Space Ghost, okay?

V

——————–

Dear Today.com,

Please stop reformatting my paragraphs.  I took out the horizontal rules that confused you so much, what more do you want?  Fuckers.

V

———-

*Snerk.

**It’s a link, Lenny.  Go back and click the stars and I’ll give you a pet mouse.  A soft one.

When I heard several different usually reputable sources say that Drag Me To Hell was a pretty good horror movie, I, in my infinite gullibility, took that to mean that it was, how do you say, a pretty good fucking horror movie.  That’s how I interpret that particular phrase.

Apparently, the rest of the world has a different working definition of ‘pretty good,’ cuz the shit that I saw made me want to hunt down the Raimis and beat them with Joxer’s colander hat till it stopped being fun.

It would take too long for me to list all the things that were wrong with this movie, so I’ll just give a quick synopsis and then hit the highlights till they puke in your mouth, because apparently, that’s the scariest thing that could ever happen to you ever ever.

Drag Me To Hell, contrary to what the trailers would have you believe, is a shitstorm of a movie centering on a blond girl who pisses off a gypsy and gets cursed.*  Why does a gypsy curse her?  Because all gypsies ever do is run around cursing people, natch.  I don’t know if there’s like a Gypsies For Equal Treatment In Films Association out there or anything, but if I were a gypsy, I’d be pretty pissed off about the way movies portrayed my entire people.

But I digress.  Anyway, blond girl gets cursed, and finds out that she has three days before a goat-demon called a Lamia drags her formerly fat ass into hell.  However, in those three days, the Lamia will also visit her at home several times to throw her into walls because he’s apparently just a real dick that way, and the now-dead gypsy who cursed her will pop in occasionally to vomit gross things into her mouth.  The girl gets a couple of psychics and a random Mexican to hold a seance for her, which doesn’t work, and she dies.  The end.

Are we all caught up?  Good, here comes the List O’Reasons I Cried “Fuck Me, I Paid Money For This?”

1)  Lamia is not a goat god bound to do gypsy bidding.  Lamia is actually an ancient Greek myth that has something to do with being a baby-eating witch.**  The Greeks had a goat god, but he was more about partying with nymphs and getting drunk than sending people to the underworld.  The creature in this movie is actually a lot more like Baphomet, if Baphomet had nothing better to do than chase after bank tellers just because a senile old gypsy told him to.

2)  What the hell was with all the mouth nastiness?  Every time I stopped snorting into my Dr. Pepper, I’d look up to the screen and there’d be the old gypsy drooling in Blonde Girl’s mouth, or vomiting into it, or puking worms into it, or punching her dirty old gypsy hand into it.  Bitch, close your fucking mouth and maybe nasty demon shit would stop getting into it!  This girl had vileness in her mouth so many different times throughout the movie, I literally lost count.

3)  Why was Justin Long in this flick?  I don’t get it.  I mean, somebody had to play the skeptical but well-meaning boyfriend and it might as well be someone good-looking, but why was the character even there?  So that he could pick up the tab for Miss Cleo’s light show and look sad at the end?  Pointless.  I thought maybe he’d get invited to the seance and could look scared and probably yell “What the fuck?” a couple times, but no, he wasn’t invited, even though anyone who’s seen even one seance movie can tell you four looks better at the table than three.  Which brings me to number four.

4)  Who the fuck was the Hispanic dude at the seance?  The character literally showed up five seconds before they all sat down to summon Mr. Tumnus.  Who was he?!  It was like the old psychic said, “Oh, you sent your boyfriend away?  But we need four for a seance, everyone knows that!  Oh, well.  Token Indian Guy, would you go fetch the gardener, he’ll do.”  So the gardener comes in and gets possessed (shortly after a goat calls Blonde Girl a whore - I am not making this shit up).

While I did spend the entire movie laughing my ass off at the cheesy effects (OMG, goat feet!  Under my door!   AHHHHHH!) and repetitive scare tactics (violins, violins, violins, SHIT OLD LADY IS VOMITING RUN OH NO THE DOOR CLOSED BY ITSELF YET AGAIN!!!), I definitely felt dirty for having suggested to my sister that we see this movie.  I award it no points and may God have mercy on its soul.

*Incidentally, how does the gypsy curse scale work?  Cuz sending a goat demon after someone for refusing them a loan seems pretty harsh.  I mean, the dude from Thinner fucking ran over someone and all he got was a tapeworm.

**Was I surprised that Neil Gaiman knew this, but not the Raimi brothers?  Not even a little.

I’m back!  Get excited!

Sorry about the long absence, but circumstances being what they are, you know, I was quite busy with some things, with the possibility of extending my mutuals to full-time etc.  Look, it’s all very technical…

Anyshit, here I am, ready and willing to entertain you with joy and cynicism.

First off, everyone say hi to Kirby, my new laptop.  Because I now own Kirby, I have even fewer excuses for not updating,** but I like him anyway cuz he runs Linux so I get to see adorable penguins pretty frequently.  Also, Kirby has a tiny condensed keyboard, so if you notice typos, they’re his fault, not mine.

Before you ask, yes, I do have a topic for this post other than ‘I’m a slothy bitch with a new computer.’  In fact, it’s pretty much the only topic worth buzzing about lately.  Yes, you guessed it.****  It’s frickin’ Star Trek.*****

For all you non-Trekkies, or those of you who only wear your Spock ears on special occasions, I’ll keep it simple.  The topic today is Zachary Quinto being so made of win that he wins the first ever Failure Bread Awesome Sauce Award.

The Failure Bread Awesome Sauce Award: presented to those individuals or things that garnish the sandwich of your otherwise miserable life with the mayo of extreme coolness, the Russian dressing of undeniable greatness, the oil and vinegar of total and complete Awesomeness.

Zach wins this award for several reasons: first, commitment to the job.  He shaved his eyebrows off to play Spock and if you’ve ever seen his eyebrows, you know this is no small, quick feat.  Secondly, being sexy even with shaved eyebrows.  I don’t know if it’s the sexy monochrome Star Fleet uniforms or just the fact that I prefer my men emotionally unavailable and free of troublesome in-laws, but I harbored several vivid dreams about lightsabering Uhura, stealing her wicked little skirt, and doing some beaming-up of my own.  Third, because never in my life have I heard someone make the phrase “Live long and prosper” sound so very much like “Fuck you.”  And finally, for inspiring this great little moment:

Me:  You know, I heard Zachary Quinto can’t do the Vulcan hand thing.  JJ Abrams had to glue his fingers together.

Rob:  Lots of people can’t.  It’s genetic.

Me:  Really?  That’s awesome; I am genetically superior to Zachary Quinto.

Rob:  You better be careful.  Now you have a power he wants…

Am I the only one who thinks a ‘Heroes’/'Star Trek’ crossover where Spock and Sylar duke it out and glare at each other would be the frickfracking bomb?!******

*Hi, Jamie!  This means you won’t kill me now, right?

**Leaving me with only “I’m lazy,” “But ‘Heroes’ is on tonight!”*** and my personal favorite, “I just hate all your faces.”

***Goddamn summer break!!!

****We both know you didn’t, but I’ll cover for you.

*****I almost titled this post “Live Long and Prosper… In Mah Pants,” before I remembered I was not my brother.

******If it weren’t totally the lamest thing ever?

Rob:  Who the fuck is Hawkdude?

Me:  You know, Hawkdude.  The geeky guy?

Rob:  You mean Nightowl?

Me:  Is that his name?  He’s supposed to be an owl?

Rob:  Yeah; hence the name Nightowl.

Me:  Are we thinking of the same guy?  This is the guy with the ass, who was giving it to that chick inside the giant ow-  Oh.

Rob:  Yeah.

Me:  I’m a jackass, aren’t I?

Rob:  Yeah.

“Hello, suckers!  Welcome back.”*

Of my three siblings and I, only one of us liked Watchmen.  Guess which one?**  It was me, but that’s really beside the point.  The point of today’s article is that the guy who played Hawkdude*** was not, as I had previously thought, a total unknown.  Turns out, he was in another blockbuster that disappointed thousands, Phantom of the Opera.****

There was a moment of deja vu when my sister informed me that Hawkdude had played Raoul, the Viscount of BadWigLand, otherwise known as Whiny Starlet’s useless suitor.  Oh, how we had laughed at him.  Much in the way that I had laughed and gagged at Gerard Butler’s performance, only to discover later that he had actually done decent work in his lifetime.  And the way I laughed at Miranda Richardson, “Ha, this is what’s become of your career!”

All three of these actors has done passably good acting at one point in their careers.  So what is the single uniting factor in their suckage?

Yes.  You guessed it right.  IT’S JOEL FUCKING SCHUMACHER!

I can just imagine what it’s like at a production meeting with this hack.  You got Joel, wearing a Keifer Sutherland t-shirt, and you got a person whose job it is to bring Joel good ideas to jump on.

Good Idea Person:  Here’s a cool-looking project.  Why don’t you try directing a Batman movie?

Joel:  Like, oh my God, I’ve always wanted to be Tim Burton only horrible!!!

Alfonso Cuaron:  Back off, man, that’s my title.

Joel:  Oh, sorry, Fonsy, I guess you’re right.  Okay, how about instead of using a formula that actually appeals to people, we throw in cornier dialogue, neon facepaint, and floppy icicles?  Anyone know what Ahnold’s up to these days, cuz I so see him as the tortured soul that is Dr. Freeze.  Also, can we get a smug, smiley Batman?

Good Idea Person:  Um…  Actually, you know what, how about something else?  Here’s a script called Phonebooth we could look into…

Joel:  Sold on title alone!

Good Idea Person:  Okay, but it might need some fleshing out.

Joel:  Nah, it’s fine as is.  We’ll just make sure we stretch thirty minutes of content into a full-length movie.  I’ve always felt that market was ripe for cornering.

Good Idea Person:  If you say so.

Joel:  Oh, and after my big musical debut with Fantasm of the Opera House, I’m thinking of branching into suspense-

Good Idea Person:  That’s actually called Phantom of the Opera-

Joel:  Whatev, I am speaking!  God, rude much?  As I was saying, suspense!  You know what’s really scary?  Numbers!  And you know what the scariest number is?  TWENTY-THREE!!!

Good Idea Person:  …  I…  I quit…

Joel:  Who’s more brilliant than me?  Okay, gotta cut this meeting short, babe, I have to go fellate myself.

Wow.  That was an intensely fun and cathartic exercise.

*I don’t hate you guys; I just really love Velma Kelly.

**Research shows that only 25% of snarky movie-going siblings will enjoy Watchmen, indicating either superior or inferior intelligence, or that 25% of snarky movie-going siblings is actually the forgotten lovechild of Stan Lee and Arlene Sorkin.  Mommy?  Daddy?  WHY DIDN’T YOU LOVE ME?!

***Or whatever his name was.  You know.  The guy with the ass.

****See this article for my thoughts on that cinema hacksterpiece.

Hello, loyal and patient readers.  I stand before you today a humbled writer; today I must do that which I had hoped I would never have to do.  I must apologize for a mistake.

I told myself when I got into this crazy business that I wouldn’t be one of those, “Meh, good enough,” bloggers.  My posts might not be the most eloquent.  They might not be about the most intellectually stirring subject matter.  But at least I would strive for accuracy and sense.

Well, apparently, I suck at that.  As my sister pointed out to me,* there’s a mistake in my ‘Twilight’ rant.  Apparently, there is a reason Vampy McWhinesalot cannot read his cardboard lover’s vapid mind.**   As my sister explains it, “You know how some of the vampires have powers?  Well, their powers are like a super version of how they acted before they were vampires.  Turns out that Bella also has a power - she has like, this shield thing, which explains not only why Edward can’t read her mind, but also why Jane can’t do her pain-inflicting thing to her.  Once she goes all vampy in the last book, she ends up shielding other people too since it becomes more powerful all vamped up.”***

The reason I didn’t know this is because I got fed up with the series after the first three books failed to be the key to Nirvana, as my friends had assured me it would.  I never read the fourth one, but I went out on a limb and assumed that the writing and storytelling would be just as subpar in that volume as it had been in all the others.

So yeah.  All snarkiness aside, I fucked up.  I’ll try to do better from now on.****

Anyshit, with all that out of the way, I can tell you about my real topic for this evening: Michael Phelps, and how if I cared any less about his Deadhead ways, it would create a black hole of apathy, into which we would all be sucked, where we would quickly suffocate and die, much like I wish most of the sensationalizing asshole members of the news media would do.

Why does everybody care about Michael Phelps toking up?  Why is this a big deal?  Is this really the most important thing we have to talk about, with all the shit going on in the world?  WHY IS THIS AN ISSUE?!

Dude.  Michael Phelps?  Yeah, he’s a college student.  And guess what?  Olympiad or not, sometimes college students experiment with drugs.  Why?  Cuz they’re there.  Cuz they’re fun.*****  Cuz who the fuck cares why, it’s been a fact of life since pot came to this country (by our founding fathers, if I remember right, who grew it as a multifunctional cash crop for ages before it was outlawed).

For one thing, without the intention of turning this into a pro-ganja manifesto, it’s total bureaucratic nonsense that marijuana is illegal in a country where both alcohol and cigarettes are legal.  For another, why do all these middle-aged assholes think they have the right to judge a kid for doing something they all did themselves back before they sold their souls to The Man and started wearing ugly suits everyday?

And don’t give me that bullshit about Michael Phelps being a role model for children.  That’s just stupid.  Seriously, even if he was a total straight edge, do you want this goofy bastard being the one your kids look up to?

God, he’s dumb-looking guy.  What do you want your idiot kids to look up to this guy for?

On a serious note, parents and other self-righteous watchdogs need to stop forcing the “role model” tag on every person in the public eye.  “Role model” is just an acceptable way to say, “I’m too lazy to teach my kids how to act myself, so I’ll make everyone else responsible for it.”  To paraphrase the great George Carlin, if your kid’s got a role model and you aren’t it, you’ve got some serious problems.  Stop making your children’s shitty behavior everyone else’s fault.  Maybe if you stopped treating your kids like every day is Christmas, they would learn some boundaries and life lessons from you, not some vague Speedo-wearing figure on the television.  Raise your own kids, you lazy mouthbreathers!

And even if using some popular face as a scapegoat for your own shitty parenting weren’t a completely heinous (and ever overlooked) form of neglect, why in the name of everything holy would you want your kids to emulate some dumbass athlete?  “I want little Jimmy to be just like Michael Phelps because he swims fast?”  Are you kidding me?!  What the hell good is that going to do little Jimmy out in the real world?  If you’re going to force your kids to be something they’re not because you’re too busy being their bestest buddy to actually teach them how to behave like a human being of worth, why not encourage them to be like someone with a talent that’s useful more than once every four years?  Why not point them in the direction of a mathemetician, so they know how to handle money and balance a checkbook?  Why not point them toward scientists, humanitarians, volunteer workers, teachers?  Celebrities are the dumbest, most useless, and least functional percentage of the human population, and yet they’re all our children should aspire to be?  That’s messed up.

Let’s review.  If you are really and truly hurt by the fact that Michael Phelps got caught hitting a bong, and especially if you feel he should be punished more severely than your own kid would because he’s a so-called “example to our youth,” then you are a God damned moron.  Please choke on your tongue and remove yourself from the gene pool.

*To her infinite credit, in a very not “I told you so” tone.

**She’s an X-Man.

***Sounds semi-reasonable, although I still have a hard time buying that Bella’s piddly human ability is still able to thwart Edward’s supersonic vamp ability.  Sorry.

****But no, I will not be reading the fourth ‘Twilight’ book.  I’m not that committed to excellence.

*****Drugs are bad, mkay?  I don’t advocate the doing of drugs anywhere you might get caught and arrested.

Hi, everyone.  With another weekend of slacking behind me, I returned to work today and promptly decided to check my personal e-mail during business hours (sorry, Donna).

Imagine my delight when I found concrete proof that not only does someone actually read this blog, but actually enjoys it enough to commission my wrathful services.  From Stephie:

“I just realized the actor who plays Edward Cullen, Robert Pattinson, played Cedric Diggory in the movie of Harry Potter book 4.

Robert Pattinson might be a good actor, I can’t really remember him in ‘Harry Potter’, but he was TERRIBLE in ‘Twilight’.  I feel like he’s contaminating Harry Potter but his association with it.

WHAT WAS WRONG WITH HIS HAIR IN ‘TWILIGHT’?!??!

Please, please, please, rant about this.  His hair in ‘Twilight’ was ridiculous, and he was not attractive in it.  Massive retro 80s hair will not save a bad plot, bad script, and bad acting.  there isn’t enough hair spray or gel in the world that would have saved ‘Twilight.’

ALTHOUGH there are pics of him on imdb…. probably from the premiere of ‘Twilight’… and his hair looks WORSE.

I kid you not: http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2999555328/nm1500155

Enjoy.”

Let’s all thank Stephie for sharing.  Yay!

After my first couple of posts on this blog, I told my boyfriend that I had a great idea for a short story I could post, which I planned to title, “Vamps Anonymous,” and would feature Edward Cullen showing up for his first vampire support group meeting.  Dracula, a Chinese hopping vampire with one nostril, Spike and Angel from ‘Buffy,’ and even LeStat, would all be there and eventually end up telling Edward what a fag he is, even by mopey-ass whiny vampire standards.

Why did I not grace your eyes with this literary masterpiece?  Because Rob pointed out that I was running the risk of turning into an anti-Twilight blog.  My first two posts and my ‘About’ page all have anti-Twilight sentiments, so I decided to hold off and pick on poor old Britney Spears instead.

But it’s okay now, because someone asked me to bitch about Stephanie Meyer’s fucking travesty!  So big thanks, Steph, you have given me a perfect excuse to issue my venom upon that which I hate almost more than anything ever!

Stephie did an admirable job of summing it up pretty well in her e-mail, but I do have a few things to add.

First of all, I should come right out and say that I didn’t see the movie ‘Twilight.’  I did not see the movie because everyone told me it was just like the books, and reading the first three books was only slightly less uncomfortable than a virulent yeast infection.  So yeah.  I didn’t witness the spectacle that was Robert Pattinson’s idiotic hair in full motion.  I did see enough publicity shots and cardboard cutouts to know that it looks like Wolverine stuck his head into a fucking blender.

But it’s not just his hair; the whole look the makeup crew went for in that movie was ridiculous.  I understand that he’s the undead, but does he have to look like someone beat him in the face with a shovel?  He doesn’t look dead, he looks like a gangbang victim.  And why is Bella just as pale as all the vampires?  I’m not sure if anyone on the makeup crew realizes it, but there’s a big difference between naturally pale and not having been in the sun for the whole of your unnatural existance.  No way should a normal human be the same hue as a vampire.  Oh, but I forgot.  She’s not normal; she’s special.  Gag.

The hair’s the worst though.  What does looking like you combed your hair with a rake have to do with being seductive and pulseless?  The thing that really gets me about his hair is that I saw him on ‘Ellen’ a few months ago and he was sporting the same tooly ‘do.  And he had the nerve to say, “Oh yeah, it just looks like this when I wake up, it’s no big deal.”

Oh, really?  It just miraculously looks gelled, blowdried, sprayed, and tousled (in that order) when you wake up in the morning?  That’s a pretty fucking big pill to swallow.  I almost could have forgiven him for ‘Twilight’*, but oh no, he had to buy into the hype and lie to me, Ellen, and the whole world.

It’s not such a terrible thing to admit that you took pains to look the way you do.  Granted, you look like a God damned fruit loop, but if that’s what you want to do, then at least own up to it, you pussy!

There.  I’ve said all I can say about his hair.  I feel better now.

HOWEVER, I have lots more to say about ‘Twilight.’  Allow me to provide it for you in an easy-to-read list form.

1)  Uptight Mormons should not write pseudo-erotic teen idiot porn.

2)  “You smell good” is no basis for a stable relationship.  Nor is “I want to eat you more than anyone else” the new definition of romance.  The relationship between two characters who are supposedly in love should not boil down to the same relationship I have with my fucking Junior Whopper.

3)  The main character is a fuckwitted moron.  Really?  Your boyfriend dumps you and you go catatonic for three months?  THREE MONTHS?!  At least.  I mean, I remember when my last boyfriend left me to go kill himself in the vampire Vatican (no, I’m not making that up), I was a wreck, but I was only COMPLETELY NONFUNCTIONAL AND EVEN MORE UNINTERESTING THAN USUAL for like two weeks, tops.  Then I realized that I can exist without a man I hardly know and hooked up with the cute werewolf.   Granted, his breath smells more like carrion than a bouquet of baby’s breath and dew-covered meadows**, but you take what you can get, right, ladies?

4)  Why does everyone love Bella when she has the personality of a scratching post?  Everyone wants a piece of this bitch.  I gotta know her secret…  Oh, wait, I remember the trick: she’s an obvious self-insertion fantasy by an author who was most likely very unpopular in high school and (gasp) just smelled like a person instead of Life’s Great Mystery.

5)  Vampires versus werewolves is so done, and if you have nothing new to add to the idea, skip it.

6)  Why can’t Edward read Bella’s mind?  I don’t know.  And you don’t either, BECAUSE IT’S NEVER EXPLAINED.  Possibly because Meyer realized no one cared by book four; they were just holding out for the vampire sex they knew was to come if only they just kept reading one plotless page after the next…

and lastly, but also most importantly,

7)  Vampires.  Don’t.  Sparkle.  They just don’t.  End.  Of.  Story.

*I can’t begrudge a young actor the opportunity to do a movie that will have him drowning in barely-legal furr.  I’m nice like that.

**Seriously, why does Edward have hypnotic sugar breath?  What the fuck does that have to do with GORGING UPON LIVING FLESH?!

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.

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.