Monday, February 15, 2010
I'm Going Crackers!
I have to disagree a little there, dtro. The Giants season was not quite Metsian in that they actually made kind of an effort, and for a while deserved to be called one of the better teams in the league (shit, in Week Five [do we capitalize the weeks now? Is the NFL that important? I say yes] I would have told you they were the undisputed #1). Also, the Giants front office managed to get to work every morning without accidentally slitting their throats shaving. But looking closely, the parallels are obvious. Both teams seemed to expect success and then had absolutely no idea what to do when it didn't come. At the first sign of real resistance, both teams decided that they weren't at fault, but it was the cruel whims of fate that were punishing them and they simply needed the skies to open up and provide them with the winning performance they deserved. Now, I look at both teams from the point of their last great success. The Mets making the NLCS in 06, and the Giants' run in late 07 leading up to their Super Bowl win. These events were where this sense of "this is a winning team" came from. There is generally a consensus of who the better teams are, and thanks to ESPN's power rankings we can see this quantified every week. And for those moments, we saw our team at or near the top of the heap. All the time we saw the Patriots, Steelers or Yankees (teams we hate because we have hearts and brains) at the top makes it all the more sweet to see our team heading the list. It makes us happy, makes us more enthusiastic fans, and redeems the stress and frustration we put ourselves through watching millionaires play kid's games. The effects of this on the team themselves seem to manifest itself in catching breaks, getting lucky, and winning through sheer determination. Our guys are the best, ignore anybody who says otherwise. And why shouldn't we feel this way? It's a diversion, after all. Our lives are not so invested in this thing that we should worry about the pressure we put on them when we say theyre the best. They'll never hear us, anyway. That's the way it's always been, at least. But really, these guys don't work in a vacuum anymore. The interaction with the public goes much deeper than signing autographs before the game. Now Twitter and Facebook and such means we can stalk athletes better than ever before, and they can tweet funny pictures or recommend shitty comedians directly to their fans, but that's not really anything that'll effect their performance. The big effect of the media I would have to say is the nonstop analysis, and observation of their work, through the wonderful efforts of that Pravda of sports hegemony, ESPN. We are at the point where ESPN has almost become sports. It's the channel we instantly turn to when we even think of sports. Television, internet, even that terrible magazine, ESPN's dominance in sports media means what ESPN says, goes. Now, there are other forms of sports media, sure. Sports Illustrated was once the paragon of sports information, but we are now at the point where a weekly magazine cannot possibly cover everything we deem to be important, or at least worthy of our attention. And it's in the pages of SI, which manages to maintain some charm by simply being the printed word, that we see the most obvious sign of how these athletes are effected by media. In every issue, SI features a little info box with athletes sharing their favorite foods, music, what they think of trivial current events, and such. In these little nuggets of semi-information, we really get somewhat of an insight into how these athletes really think. Unshockingly, their tastes in music and movies gravitate toward what's popular at the time. Whatever. We don't expect them to be men of high culture, they play games for a living (except Adonal Foyle, a sports outlier to end all sports outliers). But whenever they are asked their favorite TV show, with the exception of the odd soccer or tennis player, every answer, down the line, is Sportscenter. The implications of this are big, and depressing. Sportscenter, as we all know, is the propaganda arm of ESPN, and by extension, the whole sports media. Stories' importance is decided literally by how much coverage they get on SC. And when they lump an inordinate amount of coverage on an issue, like Terrell Owens or Brett Favre, then that very saturation becomes the story. We're more self-aware as people right now than we ever were in history. We get nostalgic for things that happened less than a decade ago. Every minor event seems to require some kind of recognition. Now, pro athletes have a daily TV show that is completely about them and the little world they inhabit. SC has made fans out of the athletes themselves. Read any player's survey of who, say, they think will win the NBA title this year. They invariably will say Lakers or Celtics. Can we really pretend that this is trenchant insight, shared by the men who understand the game far deeper than we ever will? Or are they just parroting the hype of the media? When athletes become ESPN fans, their opinions are as worthless as that of the idiot at the end of any bar, parroting whatever Mark Schlereth said as statement of unvarnished fact. Which brings me back to the Giants and Mets. The Hawthorne Effect tells us that the act of observation by itself changes performance. These men are continually observing themselves, watching highlights of their games, seeing appraisals of their performance. When they are playing at their apex, they are lionized as the gold standard of the sport. When they begin to fail, to make mistakes, they are just as dumbfounded as we are! There's barely any gap between our assessment of their performance and their own (though we are of course much harsher). The Giants are the best team in the NFL, the media says, and the worst thing the Giants can do is begin to believe it. This goes for coaches, too. I had the pleasure of listening to Jerry Manuel repeat himself on WFAN after every single loss, every team failure. It was the same thing we were used to hearing from Willie Randolph as his team trended downward. "We need to get hot." "We need to start playing winning baseball." What the fuck kind of thing to say is that??? How does that even begin to address the problem? Now, I don't doubt that they were giving this line to the media as they attempted to really fix problems within the team. But what was the end result? They never "got hot," as they did in 06. The Giants of 09 sure "cut down on mistakes" but that didn't mean they could do a goddamn thing to stop DeSean Jackson. ESPN makes us treat these rote responses as the actual issue at hand, since that's all they have to work with. But when the line between athlete and fan as observer of the sport is blurred, they're just as ignorant as we are.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
The Year in Sports. Or how the Jets temporarily made me less depressed, part 1?
Well, Mr. Boyce did a bang-up job giving us a rundown of the best and worst of the best movies of the past year yesterday. I think he deserves a round of applause.../waits for applause/.../waits/...is anyone even here? Oh well. Anyway, he has inspired me to make one of my bi-seasonal posts and to break up the cinematic rote we seem to have fallen into here, I'll make it about sports. I suppose I could write about another topic: like maybe TV...but all I watch on TV are sporting events and movies.
To recap, I root for the Mets, Jets, Michigan football, and Georgetown basketball and probably in that order although I can't really say for sure. So what has been going on with these teams and where do they stand right now? I'm glad you asked.
Jason Bay dying inside
The Mets of New York Town
The 2009 New York Mets were cursed by the goddamn devil, who struck them down with a ridiculous number of injuries. This was not to prevent their winning baseball games but rather to mask the utter incompetence of the front office and allow Omar Minaya to keep his job as L'il Freddy Wilpon's trained monkey/fall guy for another offseason. And what did Señor Minaya do with his borrowed time to fix this roster? He signed poor Jason Bay in a thin attempt to hide the Wilpons' cynical contempt for Mets fans, who they consider so stupid as to believe that they are actually trying to field a championship-caliber baseball team. Here is the Wilpons' true goal: enough "meaningful" late-season games and a "big name" signing or two to trick us into packing into their beautiful little publicly-funded, TARP-sponsored restaurant emporium Dodger museum ballpark and lining their pockets (which incidentally were actually deepened by Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme, the fucking schmucks). Oh I can out-cynical you all day Fred and Jeff, so don't even try me.
Going into the offseason the Mets had as I see it: no MLB-caliber 1B, no MLB-caliber starting catcher, no MLB-caliber RF or LF, 2 reliable MLB-caliber starting pitchers--one of whom was recovering from surgery, while the other continued his life-long battle with the Yips--followed by a bunch of question marks (does anyone realize that the Mets' 3rd and 4th best starters right now are Jon Niese and Nelson Figueroa?!! And they won't even make the team out of Spring Training! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here!), a 2B with no knees, a bullpen that lost "star reliever" JJ Putz, and a continuing lack of MLB-ready depth behind key players. What were Omar's solutions to these numerous and variegated problems?
Alex Cora--$2 Mil with a vest. Had to lock him up before the bidding war ensued I guess.
Jeff Francoeur--$5 Mil. He might swing the bat so hard he hits himself in the back of the head, so there's that. What I'm saying is: his potential comedy value far exceeds his baseball value.
Jason Bay--4 years/$66 Mil with a goddmanmotherfucking vest. Just a wee bit of an overpay there, Omar.
Henry Blanco/Chris Coste/Omir Santos--Gotta catch 'em all! Crappy backups!
Kelvim Escobar/Ryota Igarashi/some other guys--I actually like the Escobar signing and it's always nice to have a Japanese guy on the team. I guess we'll see how the bullpen shakes out.
Fernando Tatis--whatever. He's a perfectly cromulent bench player.
Gary Matthews Jr.--fuck my life.
Nothing else. That's freakin' it! They might sign John Smoltz (or as Ron Darling would say, "John Schmoltz)for some pitching insurance, but he is, as you may recall, 73 years old. Seriously, the guy is six degrees of separation from Old Hoss Radbourn, who threw 678 innings(!) for the 1884 Providence Grays.
I could also get into the Beltran surgery fiasco (guess whose side I'm on) or the fact that JJ Putz was never given a physical last year and then allowed to pitch in the WBC, despite the fact that he had been injured the year before and the Mets had just traded a bazillion prospects for him, but that would just be piling on to my own misery. Suffice it to say, I am not very happy with the current state of the Mets nor am I particularly sanguine about their chances in 2010.
I was going to break down the other teams, but I clearly get long-winded when it comes to complaining about the Mets. We'll save the Jets, Wolverines, and Hoyas for a part 2. And perhaps Boyce will chime in with some thoughts on the Giants and their rather Metsian season.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
OSCAR NOMS TWO THOUSAND AND THEN TEN: A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE DISTRACTIONS
A Serious Man. Inglorious Basterds. The Hurt Locker. District 9. Up. An Education. Up In The Air. Precious. The Blind Side. Avatar. These are the Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, listed in the order in which their nomination makes me least want to kill myself. Keep in mind, these are what have been determined by the Academy, "a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures," to be the best of the 256 movies released in the US in 2009. Fair enough.
{FULL DISCLOSURE: I have only seen five of these movies. All opinions are based on my own prejudices and laser-sharp ability to understand movies based on their public perception, critical response, and how they are marketed. Following the rules of this blog, everything I say here is to be regarded as the unvarnished truth and is to be understood by the reader as the correct opinion. OK?} OK. Each year we learn the consensus of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as to what the "best" (most relevant? most resonant with audiences? most brilliantly adept at advancing the art and science of motion pictures? ok, that last one was a joke) movie released at the end of 2009 was. Pretty much just the end. Only Hurt Locker, District 9, Basterds, and the cartoon were released before the start of "awards season," where the movies that have been decided we as moviegoers will like the most are released. The fact that such a "season" exists tells you all you need to know about the Oscars. The "big" "shock" of this years Best Picture nominations was that Grandpa Clint's "Invictus" didn't get one. ||Now, there's another movie I didnt see, but i did hear it briefly summarized by a trusted fellow cineaste (he also works here, in this website) and wouldn't you know it, it sounded exactly like the commercials promised. But I digress. Boy, do I digress.|| If the point of these awards is to reward the best of American cinema, why do the movies that end up winning these awards all get released around the same time, by the same studios, with the same promotional campaigns? Miramax recently went under, minus Weinsteins, and every retrospective article had to make mention of all the oscars they managed to collect. Like seriously, fucking Shakespeare in Love? SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE?!??!??? These stupid statues lose their meaning when being the biggest, meanest Jews in LA means your company wins all of them. And wouldn't you know, the newly minted Weinstein Company's offerings lead the pack with 13 nods this year.
You were almost guaranteed Oscars if Miramax released your movie.
Unless you were MARTIN FUCKING SCORSESE
RESOLVED: The Oscar nominations are a result of pr campaigns in trade papers and machinations we will never see (unlike the ACTUAL GODDAMN MOVIES WHICH WE WILL PAY MUCH LOOT TO SEE).
I can hear you now: "Duh, Boyce! These studios are the ones who finance the movies, even the smaller ones! Obviously they hold all the power in the movie world! Just fuckin deal with it, you pussy!" First off, low blow. Second, if you're going to cede something so subjective as "Best Picture of the Year" to the economic engineering of giant conglomerates then why even try to make such a distinction? Just give a trophy to whoever makes the most money and call it a year!
Which brings me to Avatar. I don't think it's worth anyone's time for me to discuss the movie itself, we've all heard the talking points: it's simplistic, too much emphasis on special effects, the girl alien gave me a boner, blah, blah, blah. What's important about Avatar for my purposes is that this movie is going to win (yes it is going to win, this isn't a prediction piece, remember, I am just telling you the facts) Best Picture because it A) Had awesome special effects and B) cashed in bigger than the Red Cross. The fact that it made so much dolo is not the sole reason it's going to win, oh, no, it's a little more than that. Think back to the word we kept hearing on top of all the Avatar hype. That this movie was going to be "revolutionary." Yes, the revolution is here. Was it the plot? Anybody who's seen more than two movies can tell you it was a hackneyed concept, even before Costner won Best Picture (He did! Look it up!) for making it about Indians. Performances? LOLS! Was it the special effects? Yes, but not completely. Every year movies comes out that have amazing, jaw-dropping CGI. There are tons of people who will choose their viewing experience because it's some kind of special effects extravaganza. Shit, those Transformers movies made a shit-ton of moneys and they didn't even have actors or a script! Avatar was revolutionary for this one reason: It made movies more expensive. Not to make, to see. Avatar didn't break all the box office records because it caught the zeitgeist of this era and captivated audiences, or even wowed them with spectacular effects. Avatar broke those records because You Paid More To See It! That's your revolution! Those stupid fucking glasses! Yes, the 3D effects were cool but can you really see any filmmaker taking it beyond that? Is there another level of comprehension of films unknown to us in two dimensions? Of fucking course not! Now we can witness the revolution in full. Take a gander at any list of upcoming action movies for 2010-11. Realize that they are all in "3D." Take a second to consider whether these movies would have come out in 2D (or "regular D"). Then commit suicide. Or just don't see them. Whatevs.
"DUHHHHHH"
Now that I've gotten that out of my system, I don't really know what to say. None of those other movies are going to win. Sure, Hurt Locker has the next-best chance. But remember in the first place why there are ten nominees. The concern here is ratings for the Oscar telecast. Since the Dark Knight got completely fucking robbed of a nomination last year, and that probably cost ABC a good chunk of viewers, the Academy figured that their only key to continued legitimacy is TV ratings. And don't nobody wanna see some war movie with guys what they never heard of, where they kill Ralph Fiennes (SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE?!?!?!??) as soon as he gets on screen and there ain't no big battle at the end, win Best Picture. Sorry, Kathryn Bigelow. Cameron took your heart and stomped on it, and now he's taking your Oscar chances and doing the same. I really liked the Hurt Locker, too. Saw it twice, wasn't as good the second time. I won't watch Avatar again.
As a courtesy, here are the rest of your nominees with a little bitching about each. Except An Education. I don't even think the actors in that movie have heard of it.
Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
I'm not joking. Thats the whole name of the fucking movie. Good to see Dusty Rhodes' Saweeeeeeet Sapphire finally getting the recognition she deserves. Seriously though, this is one of the ones i didn't see. Saw the shit out of the trailer, though. And read most all the reviews. This whole movie smacks of poverty porn. I first heard that term in a review of "Born Into Brothels" and the same concept is at work here. Look at how shitty her life is! Isn't it terrible? Feel bad! Now watch worse things happen! Wasn't that terrible? Aren't your heartstrings getting worn out from all that tugging? Also, getting Mo'Nique to act as an angry bitch, I'm sorry, doesn't seem like a huge stretch. mmmmHM.
Pictured: Douchebag
Inset: Douchebag
Up In The Air
If I hadn't shot my load on Avatar hate, this post would be all about George Clooney. How an actor gets so far with what he has I'll never know. He must give a mean blowjob to be able to play his smug, smartassed/sincere charming "self" in every movie he appears in. He's got plenty of charisma, thats for sure. He's great in every Coens movie I've seen him in. Michael Clayton was alright, but definitely didnt break any ground. (Side-bitch: how did Tilda Swinton win Best Supporting for that movie? She was in two scenes! One of them was a shot of her sweating on a toilet!) I just don't want to live in a world where the "biggest" movie "star" we have plays himself as serious or himself as hilariously charming in everything he's in. I said it in my first post and I'll say it again: Go fuck yourself, Clooney.
Up
This movie has almost the same title as that last one, but don't take your kids to this one expecting Ed Asner fucking Vera Farmiga in a balloon! Or something. I don't see the point of nominating this for both Best Picture and Best Animated Picture. They only invented that animated category just so they wouldn't have to waste BP nominations on Pixar movies. It's the same reason The New York Times started a children's bestseller list; so their super-important List wouldn't get that stupid Harry Potter shit all over it. Up is going to win Best animated, thats for sure. Take that, Neil Gaiman!
The face of Jewish vengeance. I'm down.
Inglourious Basterds
I'm gonna put down my hate scepter for a hot second, cause this movie fucking ruled. The opening scene alone could be released on its own and Christoph Waltz would have won Best Actor instead of Best Supporting. It didn't even end up really being about the Basterds themselves and nobody cared. Call it alternative history, or a revenge fantasy, or just say it was a huge kick in the nuts (if getting kicked in the nuts was fun and exciting). Go ahead, I'm waiting. I can't really do this justice, since hatred is my medium, but if there was anything to hate about Inglourious Basterds, you only saw that because youre a stupid asshole who hates fun. Seriously. This movie made me jump when a guy ordered a glass of milk at a restaurant. That's great filmmaking.
It's like, the aliens are nie-blankes. And Humans are the blankes. That seriously how they differentiated the races in South Africa? White and Not White?
District 9
You know, I really liked this movie, too. It had characters we cared about, a coherent yet nuanced plot, and a relevant message about humanity. I just thought it completely blew all the goodwill from that with the third act, in which the protagonist, a timid and bullied bureaucrat, becomes John Rambo. I don't mind them dropping the documentary aspect (that was necessary to advance the plot), but don't transform the entire movie with half an hour to go. That said, this was a good one. 3/5*
Not pictured: Sass, spunk
The Blind Side
Sweet Jesus Lord. The fact that this even got nominated. I can't even finish that sentence. I'm sure Sandra Bullock was great in it, but come on. This is tripe. It was nominated solely because it made so much goddamn money. At least it didn't have blue cat-people. Then they'd rename the fucking awards after it. I'd be madder but it's not going to win. It's here so that people who wear sweatpants to church will watch the Oscars. On ABC!
A Serious Man
The only thing that would have made this movie better was if the tagline was "Let's Get Serious!" In all honesty, this was the best movie of the year. The Coens are just fucking amazing. They managed to make a movie about a miserable guy, who has terrible stuff happen to him nonstop for 100 minutes, one of the funniest of the year. See, this movie had an actual theme: the failure of religion and "understanding" to truly solve problems. At least that's how I saw it. That's the beauty of a movie that's actually good; it can be interpreted, considered. You probably have to see it more than once to fully grasp and appreciate it. What Cameron did took a shitload of talent and balls, I won't deny that. But disposable popcorn fare should not be the gold standard for cinema. And if you want to call it the Best Picture of the year, well, Go fuck yourself.
You were almost guaranteed Oscars if Miramax released your movie.Unless you were MARTIN FUCKING SCORSESE
I can hear you now: "Duh, Boyce! These studios are the ones who finance the movies, even the smaller ones! Obviously they hold all the power in the movie world! Just fuckin deal with it, you pussy!" First off, low blow. Second, if you're going to cede something so subjective as "Best Picture of the Year" to the economic engineering of giant conglomerates then why even try to make such a distinction? Just give a trophy to whoever makes the most money and call it a year!
Which brings me to Avatar. I don't think it's worth anyone's time for me to discuss the movie itself, we've all heard the talking points: it's simplistic, too much emphasis on special effects, the girl alien gave me a boner, blah, blah, blah. What's important about Avatar for my purposes is that this movie is going to win (yes it is going to win, this isn't a prediction piece, remember, I am just telling you the facts) Best Picture because it A) Had awesome special effects and B) cashed in bigger than the Red Cross. The fact that it made so much dolo is not the sole reason it's going to win, oh, no, it's a little more than that. Think back to the word we kept hearing on top of all the Avatar hype. That this movie was going to be "revolutionary." Yes, the revolution is here. Was it the plot? Anybody who's seen more than two movies can tell you it was a hackneyed concept, even before Costner won Best Picture (He did! Look it up!) for making it about Indians. Performances? LOLS! Was it the special effects? Yes, but not completely. Every year movies comes out that have amazing, jaw-dropping CGI. There are tons of people who will choose their viewing experience because it's some kind of special effects extravaganza. Shit, those Transformers movies made a shit-ton of moneys and they didn't even have actors or a script! Avatar was revolutionary for this one reason: It made movies more expensive. Not to make, to see. Avatar didn't break all the box office records because it caught the zeitgeist of this era and captivated audiences, or even wowed them with spectacular effects. Avatar broke those records because You Paid More To See It! That's your revolution! Those stupid fucking glasses! Yes, the 3D effects were cool but can you really see any filmmaker taking it beyond that? Is there another level of comprehension of films unknown to us in two dimensions? Of fucking course not! Now we can witness the revolution in full. Take a gander at any list of upcoming action movies for 2010-11. Realize that they are all in "3D." Take a second to consider whether these movies would have come out in 2D (or "regular D"). Then commit suicide. Or just don't see them. Whatevs.
"DUHHHHHH"As a courtesy, here are the rest of your nominees with a little bitching about each. Except An Education. I don't even think the actors in that movie have heard of it.
Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
I'm not joking. Thats the whole name of the fucking movie. Good to see Dusty Rhodes' Saweeeeeeet Sapphire finally getting the recognition she deserves. Seriously though, this is one of the ones i didn't see. Saw the shit out of the trailer, though. And read most all the reviews. This whole movie smacks of poverty porn. I first heard that term in a review of "Born Into Brothels" and the same concept is at work here. Look at how shitty her life is! Isn't it terrible? Feel bad! Now watch worse things happen! Wasn't that terrible? Aren't your heartstrings getting worn out from all that tugging? Also, getting Mo'Nique to act as an angry bitch, I'm sorry, doesn't seem like a huge stretch. mmmmHM.
Pictured: DouchebagInset: Douchebag
If I hadn't shot my load on Avatar hate, this post would be all about George Clooney. How an actor gets so far with what he has I'll never know. He must give a mean blowjob to be able to play his smug, smartassed/sincere charming "self" in every movie he appears in. He's got plenty of charisma, thats for sure. He's great in every Coens movie I've seen him in. Michael Clayton was alright, but definitely didnt break any ground. (Side-bitch: how did Tilda Swinton win Best Supporting for that movie? She was in two scenes! One of them was a shot of her sweating on a toilet!) I just don't want to live in a world where the "biggest" movie "star" we have plays himself as serious or himself as hilariously charming in everything he's in. I said it in my first post and I'll say it again: Go fuck yourself, Clooney.
UpThis movie has almost the same title as that last one, but don't take your kids to this one expecting Ed Asner fucking Vera Farmiga in a balloon! Or something. I don't see the point of nominating this for both Best Picture and Best Animated Picture. They only invented that animated category just so they wouldn't have to waste BP nominations on Pixar movies. It's the same reason The New York Times started a children's bestseller list; so their super-important List wouldn't get that stupid Harry Potter shit all over it. Up is going to win Best animated, thats for sure. Take that, Neil Gaiman!
The face of Jewish vengeance. I'm down.I'm gonna put down my hate scepter for a hot second, cause this movie fucking ruled. The opening scene alone could be released on its own and Christoph Waltz would have won Best Actor instead of Best Supporting. It didn't even end up really being about the Basterds themselves and nobody cared. Call it alternative history, or a revenge fantasy, or just say it was a huge kick in the nuts (if getting kicked in the nuts was fun and exciting). Go ahead, I'm waiting. I can't really do this justice, since hatred is my medium, but if there was anything to hate about Inglourious Basterds, you only saw that because youre a stupid asshole who hates fun. Seriously. This movie made me jump when a guy ordered a glass of milk at a restaurant. That's great filmmaking.
It's like, the aliens are nie-blankes. And Humans are the blankes. That seriously how they differentiated the races in South Africa? White and Not White?You know, I really liked this movie, too. It had characters we cared about, a coherent yet nuanced plot, and a relevant message about humanity. I just thought it completely blew all the goodwill from that with the third act, in which the protagonist, a timid and bullied bureaucrat, becomes John Rambo. I don't mind them dropping the documentary aspect (that was necessary to advance the plot), but don't transform the entire movie with half an hour to go. That said, this was a good one. 3/5*
Not pictured: Sass, spunkSweet Jesus Lord. The fact that this even got nominated. I can't even finish that sentence. I'm sure Sandra Bullock was great in it, but come on. This is tripe. It was nominated solely because it made so much goddamn money. At least it didn't have blue cat-people. Then they'd rename the fucking awards after it. I'd be madder but it's not going to win. It's here so that people who wear sweatpants to church will watch the Oscars. On ABC!
A Serious Man
The only thing that would have made this movie better was if the tagline was "Let's Get Serious!" In all honesty, this was the best movie of the year. The Coens are just fucking amazing. They managed to make a movie about a miserable guy, who has terrible stuff happen to him nonstop for 100 minutes, one of the funniest of the year. See, this movie had an actual theme: the failure of religion and "understanding" to truly solve problems. At least that's how I saw it. That's the beauty of a movie that's actually good; it can be interpreted, considered. You probably have to see it more than once to fully grasp and appreciate it. What Cameron did took a shitload of talent and balls, I won't deny that. But disposable popcorn fare should not be the gold standard for cinema. And if you want to call it the Best Picture of the year, well, Go fuck yourself.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
My reaction to the Tiger Woods cheating scandal
We're talking about a golfer here people! Who the fuck cares?!! Any Tiger Woods related news is inherently uninteresting because Tiger Woods and the game he plays are uninteresting. Good fucking Lord is there nothing else to be talk about on sports related websites/tv shows?
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Belated Movie Reviews of 2009, part 2
Well, here we are with a scheduled post. Pretty impressive, huh? And if you're still interested in reading my take on the movies I saw this year, well then you've come to the right place. So, let's get to it.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Review: My personal opinion of the Harry Potter movies is that they're better to see if you haven't read the books. Luckily, I only read the first 3 and even those I don't really remember, so I was going into this one well prepared. The reason these movies are better to see with no prior knowledge is that you can actually appreciate them as movies without constantly thinking about all the stuff they left out or changed from the book version. And so I thought this movie was ok. I don't really remember the details of the story, but I think it went something like: the evil Lord Voldemort is out to get Harry, but with help from his friends and professors and the discovery of some hidden magic secret, he is able to overcome the odds or something like that. I guess they're all pretty much the same, but still they're ok. Actually, I think this was the worst of the Harry Potter movies, because it spent a lot of time trying to prove that they were all teenagers and had hormones and experienced young love and all that shit. I think that stuff is better kept to Twilight movies, because at least in those you know they're going to suck and be completely lacking in plot. So yeah, this movie's actual story suffered as a result of the teenage expository stuff, which was pretty conventional and boring. Nonetheless the Harry Potter movies look cool and there was enough to keep me interested. Maybe I'm just cutting it some slack because LCT seemed to hate it and I like to disagree with him.
Bonus Points: I'm actually going to have to deduct points from this one, because I paid extra money and went to see it in 3-D and the 3-D wasn't that great and ended after the opening scene of like five minutes. Total fucking waste.
Final Score: A middling 3.0 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. Has some of the good elements of the other Harry Potter movies, but is hurt by too much focus on the characters' love lives. I came to see some crazy magic shit and I really don't care anything about the characters since they're played by terrible child actors with annoying British accents.
District 9
Review: I think the biggest beef I have with this movie is how ludicrously overhyped it was. I have other beefs, which I will soon outline, but this movie is currently #88 on IMDB's top 250 movies...of ALL TIME. C'mon now people, this was a pretty good movie but I just can't fathom why everyone is jizzing themselves just thinking about it. Is it the Peter Jackson connection? Because the Lord of the Rings movies were seriously overrated too. Maybe he just has that effect on people. Anyway, this movie is a twist on the classic alien movie, because it's about aliens coming to earth and actually being less powerful than humans. Apparently their spacecraft broke down in the sky above Johannesburg and all the ruling class died out, leaving the dregs of society to fend for themselves in a makeshift ghetto in South Africa. I have to admit, it's a pretty clever retelling of alien movies and it is pretty interesting through the first two-thirds or so when it's basically a "documentary" centering around the government employee who has to deal with the alien problem and their relocation. That part is pretty good with some minor flaws, one of which is that the faux-documentary thing has been done to death at this point. Christopher Guest movies, The Office, Parks and Recreation, etc. We fucking get it at this point and it's no longer an interesting way to tell a story, but more of a crutch that allows characterization through direct monologues to the camera. Also, in the earlier "good" part of District 9, I found the apartheid parallels pretty heavy handed. I'm all for a good allegory, but this was an obvi-gory that was smacking us in the face saying "Hey guys, remember how fucked up South Africa was and how it can happen to any society and how racism is bad?" Yeah, we fucking get it.
Even with those drawbacks the first 60% or so of the movie was clearly several notches above a typical alien sci-fi movie and quite good. And then the last part of the movie showed up and it all devolved into a typical Hollywood shoot em up, where the two guys who couldn't get along have to band together to take down the bad guys with crazy guns, a bunch of explosions, and a mech suit that would have looked really cool in 1996.
Bonus Points: for the random bursts of extreme violence in the early parts of the movie, when it was still in documentary mode. I find nothing funnier than a bureaucrat reasoning with a giant cockroach looking alien and the alien randomly kicking him 60 feet in the air and shattering his spine. The violence in the early part of the movie was understated and surprising, unlike the stylized garbage at the end.
Final Score: a pretty good 3.8 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. I gotta give it higher than Star Trek, because it took a lot more creativity to come up with, but it did not live up to either its potential or its hype.
Inglourious Basterds
Review: This movie was off the fucking chain. Seriously, I thought this movie was just completely awesome throughout and I'm definitely not some Tarantino fanboy. It's Quentin Tarantino completely reimagining World War II by having a bunch of Jewish soldiers going around killing and scalping Nazis and then coming up with a crazy plot to kill Hitler. It wasn't perfect: Eli Roth as the "Bear Jew" was pretty horrendous for his few lines and Brad Pitt (who I'm only starting to forgive for the terrible Benjamin Button) walked a fine line between funny and so one-note that it's annoying. Everything else was spot on. I've heard that people complained that Tarantino gets a little too wrapped up in the dialogue and the movie gets bogged down because of it, but in the two long sequences of talking--the showdown in the tavern and Landa's interrogation of the farmer--the dialogue was interesting and served to build up suspense to a high pitch. If you want to see Tarantino get wrapped up in dialogue, go watch the first hour of Death Proof. That dialogue is atrocious, but the dialogue in Basterds was good. Christoph Waltz, the guy who played the villain Hans Landa, was fucking superb throughout the movie being a smarmy, evil, charming dickhead Nazi and pulling it off in several languages. That guy needs to get an Oscar. I guess it was a little annoying when Tarantino winked at the audience a little with his Samuel Jackson voice-over and the big bright 70s letters introducing certain chapters of the movie, but it didn't detract from the film as a whole. The climactic scene in the theater was actually a bit of a let down after such awesome build up, but that's just because it's not quite as good as some of the earlier scenes (particularly the two dialogue-heavy ones mentioned above), but Brad Pitt's revenge on Hans Landa was a satisfying conclusion.
Bonus Points: for shooting Hitler's fucking face off with a machine gun. I think you're kind of wondering the whole time how Tarantino is going to deal with the question of Hitler and what really happened in WWII and then he just says fuck history and kills him in an awesomely gruesome way. Bravo, sir. It's unfortunate that some dumbass kids are going to think that's how WWII really went down, but fuck 'em; they're going to die poor and ignorant anyway.
Final Score: an unprecedented 4.5 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. I don't really feel like giving anything a perfect score, but this was without doubt the best movie I saw this year. Any faults I find are merely nitpicking, because on the whole it was totally excellent.
Capitalism: A Love Story
Review: Well, it's a Michael Moore movie so you kinda know what to expect at this point. Totally scattered thoughts and narrative at certain points, wildly draw conclusions from evidence that is lacking, and an attack on those goddamn fat cats told with a liberal bent. So Capitalism isn't perfect. In fact, it's almost certainly inferior to Sicko and Bowling for Columbine (and I presume, Roger and Me, which I've never seen) but it is certainly calmer, more focused, and less Moore-ish than Fahrenheit 9/11, which is a good thing. Basically, Moore is trying to say that America's blind adherence to capitalism to the subjugation even of democracy as our highest ideal, is not necessarily that great a thing. It's not that he wants us all to become pinkos or something, just that he wants us to realize what exactly the sick immoral disgusting bastards on Wall St. and in boardrooms did to fuck our economy in the ass and how equally evil and corrupt politicians in our nation's capital are only marginally interested in helping out the majority of the country. Along the way, Moore does bring up some very interesting points--like how Goldman Sachs is basically running this fucking country and how the bailout was maybe not as necessary as we thought and is not at all being overseen by government watchdogs. This stuff is pretty good: edifying and rabble-rousing at the same time.
The problem is when Moore tries to pull off his everyman act. Empty displays of anger and justice-seeking like being a dick outside Wall St. office buildings to make citizens arrests in the name of the American people is just a waste of his and our time. Also, the whole scene where he has the trader try to explain derivatives and such to explain how debt became a valued commodity in the American marketplace is just insulting. He asks the guy to explain some admittedly complicated financial stuff and then constantly interrupts him with these "Gee willickers, this sure is confusing and hard to understand for us regular folks on Main St." dickish questions. I get his point, i.e. how the hell did our economy move from manufacturing and service to becoming dependent on labyrinthine financial workings of the Ivy League super-elite. But treat the audience with a little more respect than that. At least TRY to explain some of it and don't act like you're too dumb (because you're not) and we're too dumb to possibly rap our little middle or lower class heads around this stuff.
Bonus Points: for including that economic and philosophical wizard Wallace Shawn, and finally giving him the platform to expound his opinions. Actually, I'm not sure if this is positive or negative points. It was just odd and confusing.
Final Score: a decent 3.7 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. It had its flaws but I walked out of the theater wanting to skin a bank executive alive after boiling him in a vat for several hours to make his skin more loose and pliant and therefore easier to remove from his muscular system. And that's a good thing.
The Hurt Locker
Review: I think this was my second favorite movie of the year. It's set a couple years ago and is basically just following three guys around Baghdad as they serve their tour as bomb defusers. It is not especially romanticized or even really dramatized with a ton of personal looks at the three main characters. There is one brief "I gotta get out of here" speech near the end, but it is muted and fitting with the events of the movie. Otherwise, for the most part I think it is an attempt to accurately depict what life is like for some soldiers over in Iraq and it definitely seems very realistic. What dramatizing there is in the movie happens from the innate drama of being in the middle of a fucking war and is not shoved into the movie in other ways. My only minor issues were that I found the little Iraqi kid that the main character takes a shine to quite annoying and, in fact, that whole relationship walks the line of feeling forced and sentimental but I think it works ok. Also, I prefer the conclusion of the movie, which is something like-the main character comes home to the US but is really anxious and bored and actually can't wait to get back to Iraq because he's basically a crazy-ass adrenaline junkie who doesn't really work as well in any other setting than the fucked up one that is Iraq. I certainly prefer this finale to the "soldier comes home, can't readjust, is haunted by war experiences, his life sucks at home" finish that has been covered adequately in numerous other war movies. But it still just reinforces my impression that a lot of people in the military are either stupid or insane or both and have joined for those reasons. Oh well, maybe that's just me.
Bonus Points: for immediately killing the only two actors who are really recognizable. Guy Pearce gets his head exploded inside of a bomb-defusing spaceman suit in the opening scene, and Ralph Fiennes gets shot in the neck a couple minutes after appearing as a British special forces guy. I liked that for some reason.
Final Score: A very good 4.25 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. Just a very good little movie. I don't know if it really got a lot of attention, because it didn't have any big stars, but it is definitely worth checking out.
Alright, folks, that's it. In summation, Inglourious Basterds was awesome, as was The Hurt Locker. District 9 is worth watching, just don't expect to see one of the greatest movies of all time. And...you know there's no point to summing it all up. It seems that I didn't give any of these movies a truly terrible review, which is disappointing, because bad reviews are much better than positive ones. It's always more fun (and especially so for a pessimistic hater like me) to rip on stuff than to praise it. And so I want to leave you with this: in the past two years there have been 10 movies nominated for the Academy Award for best picture. This is the award of awards for movies, and watch them or no (and whatever your take on the idea of deciding a "winner" in a field that is so overtly subjective) I still think they're a pretty big deal. 2 of those 10 movies, i.e. 20% of them, were Juno and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Now, I know I just said movie opinions were inherently a subjective and personal thing, but objectively speaking those 2 movies were the most wretched piles of festering dogshit committed to film in recent memory. Oh, and also Mad Money--worst movie ever.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood PrinceReview: My personal opinion of the Harry Potter movies is that they're better to see if you haven't read the books. Luckily, I only read the first 3 and even those I don't really remember, so I was going into this one well prepared. The reason these movies are better to see with no prior knowledge is that you can actually appreciate them as movies without constantly thinking about all the stuff they left out or changed from the book version. And so I thought this movie was ok. I don't really remember the details of the story, but I think it went something like: the evil Lord Voldemort is out to get Harry, but with help from his friends and professors and the discovery of some hidden magic secret, he is able to overcome the odds or something like that. I guess they're all pretty much the same, but still they're ok. Actually, I think this was the worst of the Harry Potter movies, because it spent a lot of time trying to prove that they were all teenagers and had hormones and experienced young love and all that shit. I think that stuff is better kept to Twilight movies, because at least in those you know they're going to suck and be completely lacking in plot. So yeah, this movie's actual story suffered as a result of the teenage expository stuff, which was pretty conventional and boring. Nonetheless the Harry Potter movies look cool and there was enough to keep me interested. Maybe I'm just cutting it some slack because LCT seemed to hate it and I like to disagree with him.
Bonus Points: I'm actually going to have to deduct points from this one, because I paid extra money and went to see it in 3-D and the 3-D wasn't that great and ended after the opening scene of like five minutes. Total fucking waste.
Final Score: A middling 3.0 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. Has some of the good elements of the other Harry Potter movies, but is hurt by too much focus on the characters' love lives. I came to see some crazy magic shit and I really don't care anything about the characters since they're played by terrible child actors with annoying British accents.
District 9
Review: I think the biggest beef I have with this movie is how ludicrously overhyped it was. I have other beefs, which I will soon outline, but this movie is currently #88 on IMDB's top 250 movies...of ALL TIME. C'mon now people, this was a pretty good movie but I just can't fathom why everyone is jizzing themselves just thinking about it. Is it the Peter Jackson connection? Because the Lord of the Rings movies were seriously overrated too. Maybe he just has that effect on people. Anyway, this movie is a twist on the classic alien movie, because it's about aliens coming to earth and actually being less powerful than humans. Apparently their spacecraft broke down in the sky above Johannesburg and all the ruling class died out, leaving the dregs of society to fend for themselves in a makeshift ghetto in South Africa. I have to admit, it's a pretty clever retelling of alien movies and it is pretty interesting through the first two-thirds or so when it's basically a "documentary" centering around the government employee who has to deal with the alien problem and their relocation. That part is pretty good with some minor flaws, one of which is that the faux-documentary thing has been done to death at this point. Christopher Guest movies, The Office, Parks and Recreation, etc. We fucking get it at this point and it's no longer an interesting way to tell a story, but more of a crutch that allows characterization through direct monologues to the camera. Also, in the earlier "good" part of District 9, I found the apartheid parallels pretty heavy handed. I'm all for a good allegory, but this was an obvi-gory that was smacking us in the face saying "Hey guys, remember how fucked up South Africa was and how it can happen to any society and how racism is bad?" Yeah, we fucking get it.
Even with those drawbacks the first 60% or so of the movie was clearly several notches above a typical alien sci-fi movie and quite good. And then the last part of the movie showed up and it all devolved into a typical Hollywood shoot em up, where the two guys who couldn't get along have to band together to take down the bad guys with crazy guns, a bunch of explosions, and a mech suit that would have looked really cool in 1996.
Bonus Points: for the random bursts of extreme violence in the early parts of the movie, when it was still in documentary mode. I find nothing funnier than a bureaucrat reasoning with a giant cockroach looking alien and the alien randomly kicking him 60 feet in the air and shattering his spine. The violence in the early part of the movie was understated and surprising, unlike the stylized garbage at the end.
Final Score: a pretty good 3.8 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. I gotta give it higher than Star Trek, because it took a lot more creativity to come up with, but it did not live up to either its potential or its hype.
Inglourious Basterds
Review: This movie was off the fucking chain. Seriously, I thought this movie was just completely awesome throughout and I'm definitely not some Tarantino fanboy. It's Quentin Tarantino completely reimagining World War II by having a bunch of Jewish soldiers going around killing and scalping Nazis and then coming up with a crazy plot to kill Hitler. It wasn't perfect: Eli Roth as the "Bear Jew" was pretty horrendous for his few lines and Brad Pitt (who I'm only starting to forgive for the terrible Benjamin Button) walked a fine line between funny and so one-note that it's annoying. Everything else was spot on. I've heard that people complained that Tarantino gets a little too wrapped up in the dialogue and the movie gets bogged down because of it, but in the two long sequences of talking--the showdown in the tavern and Landa's interrogation of the farmer--the dialogue was interesting and served to build up suspense to a high pitch. If you want to see Tarantino get wrapped up in dialogue, go watch the first hour of Death Proof. That dialogue is atrocious, but the dialogue in Basterds was good. Christoph Waltz, the guy who played the villain Hans Landa, was fucking superb throughout the movie being a smarmy, evil, charming dickhead Nazi and pulling it off in several languages. That guy needs to get an Oscar. I guess it was a little annoying when Tarantino winked at the audience a little with his Samuel Jackson voice-over and the big bright 70s letters introducing certain chapters of the movie, but it didn't detract from the film as a whole. The climactic scene in the theater was actually a bit of a let down after such awesome build up, but that's just because it's not quite as good as some of the earlier scenes (particularly the two dialogue-heavy ones mentioned above), but Brad Pitt's revenge on Hans Landa was a satisfying conclusion.
Bonus Points: for shooting Hitler's fucking face off with a machine gun. I think you're kind of wondering the whole time how Tarantino is going to deal with the question of Hitler and what really happened in WWII and then he just says fuck history and kills him in an awesomely gruesome way. Bravo, sir. It's unfortunate that some dumbass kids are going to think that's how WWII really went down, but fuck 'em; they're going to die poor and ignorant anyway.
Final Score: an unprecedented 4.5 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. I don't really feel like giving anything a perfect score, but this was without doubt the best movie I saw this year. Any faults I find are merely nitpicking, because on the whole it was totally excellent.
Capitalism: A Love Story
Review: Well, it's a Michael Moore movie so you kinda know what to expect at this point. Totally scattered thoughts and narrative at certain points, wildly draw conclusions from evidence that is lacking, and an attack on those goddamn fat cats told with a liberal bent. So Capitalism isn't perfect. In fact, it's almost certainly inferior to Sicko and Bowling for Columbine (and I presume, Roger and Me, which I've never seen) but it is certainly calmer, more focused, and less Moore-ish than Fahrenheit 9/11, which is a good thing. Basically, Moore is trying to say that America's blind adherence to capitalism to the subjugation even of democracy as our highest ideal, is not necessarily that great a thing. It's not that he wants us all to become pinkos or something, just that he wants us to realize what exactly the sick immoral disgusting bastards on Wall St. and in boardrooms did to fuck our economy in the ass and how equally evil and corrupt politicians in our nation's capital are only marginally interested in helping out the majority of the country. Along the way, Moore does bring up some very interesting points--like how Goldman Sachs is basically running this fucking country and how the bailout was maybe not as necessary as we thought and is not at all being overseen by government watchdogs. This stuff is pretty good: edifying and rabble-rousing at the same time.
The problem is when Moore tries to pull off his everyman act. Empty displays of anger and justice-seeking like being a dick outside Wall St. office buildings to make citizens arrests in the name of the American people is just a waste of his and our time. Also, the whole scene where he has the trader try to explain derivatives and such to explain how debt became a valued commodity in the American marketplace is just insulting. He asks the guy to explain some admittedly complicated financial stuff and then constantly interrupts him with these "Gee willickers, this sure is confusing and hard to understand for us regular folks on Main St." dickish questions. I get his point, i.e. how the hell did our economy move from manufacturing and service to becoming dependent on labyrinthine financial workings of the Ivy League super-elite. But treat the audience with a little more respect than that. At least TRY to explain some of it and don't act like you're too dumb (because you're not) and we're too dumb to possibly rap our little middle or lower class heads around this stuff.
Bonus Points: for including that economic and philosophical wizard Wallace Shawn, and finally giving him the platform to expound his opinions. Actually, I'm not sure if this is positive or negative points. It was just odd and confusing.
Final Score: a decent 3.7 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. It had its flaws but I walked out of the theater wanting to skin a bank executive alive after boiling him in a vat for several hours to make his skin more loose and pliant and therefore easier to remove from his muscular system. And that's a good thing.
The Hurt Locker
Review: I think this was my second favorite movie of the year. It's set a couple years ago and is basically just following three guys around Baghdad as they serve their tour as bomb defusers. It is not especially romanticized or even really dramatized with a ton of personal looks at the three main characters. There is one brief "I gotta get out of here" speech near the end, but it is muted and fitting with the events of the movie. Otherwise, for the most part I think it is an attempt to accurately depict what life is like for some soldiers over in Iraq and it definitely seems very realistic. What dramatizing there is in the movie happens from the innate drama of being in the middle of a fucking war and is not shoved into the movie in other ways. My only minor issues were that I found the little Iraqi kid that the main character takes a shine to quite annoying and, in fact, that whole relationship walks the line of feeling forced and sentimental but I think it works ok. Also, I prefer the conclusion of the movie, which is something like-the main character comes home to the US but is really anxious and bored and actually can't wait to get back to Iraq because he's basically a crazy-ass adrenaline junkie who doesn't really work as well in any other setting than the fucked up one that is Iraq. I certainly prefer this finale to the "soldier comes home, can't readjust, is haunted by war experiences, his life sucks at home" finish that has been covered adequately in numerous other war movies. But it still just reinforces my impression that a lot of people in the military are either stupid or insane or both and have joined for those reasons. Oh well, maybe that's just me.
Bonus Points: for immediately killing the only two actors who are really recognizable. Guy Pearce gets his head exploded inside of a bomb-defusing spaceman suit in the opening scene, and Ralph Fiennes gets shot in the neck a couple minutes after appearing as a British special forces guy. I liked that for some reason.
Final Score: A very good 4.25 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. Just a very good little movie. I don't know if it really got a lot of attention, because it didn't have any big stars, but it is definitely worth checking out.
Alright, folks, that's it. In summation, Inglourious Basterds was awesome, as was The Hurt Locker. District 9 is worth watching, just don't expect to see one of the greatest movies of all time. And...you know there's no point to summing it all up. It seems that I didn't give any of these movies a truly terrible review, which is disappointing, because bad reviews are much better than positive ones. It's always more fun (and especially so for a pessimistic hater like me) to rip on stuff than to praise it. And so I want to leave you with this: in the past two years there have been 10 movies nominated for the Academy Award for best picture. This is the award of awards for movies, and watch them or no (and whatever your take on the idea of deciding a "winner" in a field that is so overtly subjective) I still think they're a pretty big deal. 2 of those 10 movies, i.e. 20% of them, were Juno and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Now, I know I just said movie opinions were inherently a subjective and personal thing, but objectively speaking those 2 movies were the most wretched piles of festering dogshit committed to film in recent memory. Oh, and also Mad Money--worst movie ever.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Belated Movie Reviews of 2009, part 1
Well in my laziness of not updating this blog for months on end I have neglected to keep you, dear reader, fully informed of my opinions on movies that I went to see in the theater this year. By my reckoning, I went to see 9 movies since I last did a movie review post. Now since I know you have all been clamoring to hear my personal take on a select group of movies I actually went to see in the theater this year, most of which I only vaguely remember, I have decided to condense these 9 movies down into one small megapost. And away we go:
Star Trek
Review:This was a pretty good movie. A bit run-of-the-mill action thillerish, but at the high end of that spectrum. The effects and action in this movie were first rate, the acting was Oscar-worthy (jk lolz), and there were even some shout outs to the true Trekkies out there. Wait, on second thought, I didn't like that at all. This was the Star Trek movie that was supposed to be a mainstream hit and it was, and still the producers/director felt they had to make some sort of homage to old Star Trek shit with a Leonard Nimoy cameo (and frankly the only Nimoy cameo that was worth a damn was on The Springfield Files). They didn't have to do that. The reason this movie was a hit was because it wasn't a boring pile of space nerdery like everything else Star Trek and those who took extreme interest in Star Trek (those eponymous Trekkies of douchefag fame) prior to this film deserve to be ostracized and shunned from society--not pandered to. Also, I think the plot was a bit jumbled up and relied on time travel and had some holes, but I can't really remember that at this point.
Bonus Points: for a Simon Pegg appearance. That guy is a legend based on Hot Fuzz alone.
Final Score: A solid 3.7 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. It was about all you could ask for in a summer blockbuster type movie.
Angels & Demons
Review: This movie was meh. I don't think it's quite as terrible as people make it out to be and I think the same is true of The DaVinci Code. The problem with these movies is that Dan Brown is such a good story plotter and such a mediocre prose writer that these books were read by everybody. Now when stupid people read their first book since 7th grade they have a tendency to believe "THis is the bestest book evar!!1!" And so, because the general populace is generally worse at judging the quality of books than the quality of movies (because people see way more movies than read books), they get all upset when a mediocre movie is made from a book they considered to be awesome. Those Dan Brown books (and I've only actually read A&D) were ok, but they took on some sort of cultural significance far beyond their actual literary merit. Also, they very much relied on omniscient narration of a character's thoughts, which you can only do in a movie if Morgan Freeman has time to lend his voice.
Anyway, the movie had a solid hour long stretch in the middle that was paced quickly with enough suspense and action to keep me well entertained. Unfortunately, the movie was well over 2 hours and droned on and on about "science vs. faith" which is a pretty uninteresting argument. Science one that argument a long time ago in my book by using "facts" and "reality." Maybe that debate plays better in the heartland, I don't know.
Bonus Points: for Tom Hanks cutting his hair a bit and being a little less creepy, but it was really only a very little less creepy so not a ton of bonus points.
Final Score: A meh 2.7 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. Some good parts in the middle, but it really is a tough type of book to make a movie out of and the science/faith stuff was heavy-handed and unnecessary. Also, I think I dislike Ewan McGregor, but I'm not sure. Have to get back to you on that one.
The Hangover
Review: Pretty standard party/drinking/road trip type movie made a little more interesting by being told backwards linearly, i.e. 3 guys have to figure out what happened to their soon to be married friend who is lost in Vegas by piecing together clues from a night they can' really remember. That sounds pretty cheesy right? Well it is, but there are still enough funny parts to keep you interested through pretty much the whole thing. I'm not sure why this turned out to be such a massively popular comedy; maybe it was for lack of competition, because it really wasn't that funny. But like I said, there were some funny parts and enough Zach Galifianakis to make it worth checking out. I gotta say though, Andy Bernard was not funny, but actually annoying as hell throughout this entire movie. Also, the setup is unbelievably unimaginative: it's like Bachelor Party meets Road Trip!--this is actually my guess for how it was pitched to the studio.
Bonus Points: for Zach Galifianakis, who really carries the movie and is just generally hilarious anyway. Also, for the pictures at the end and particularly the one of Zach G. getting a beej from a really old looking whore.
Final Score: A middling 3.1 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. Ok, not great.
Up
Review: This was the widely praised pixar release of the year, because apparently those guys can do no wrong. Well, this fucker sure as shit wasn't WALL-E but it was still pretty decent. It's about a grumpy old man who always wanted to travel with his wife and finally gets a chance to do so after she dies by tying a bunch of balloons to his house and floating to South America. Along the way he is accompanied by a grating little boy scout, who perfectly captures the spirit of America with his obesity and desire for rewards without accomplishment. Anyway, it's a pretty good concept for a movie and I can't knock the pixar guys for lack of imagination, but there are some problems. For one, that "girl" at the beginning is clearly a little boy meaning either that the Ed Asner character is gay or his dead "wife" was somewhere in the T part of the LGBTQ scale. Either way, seems a bit risque for a kids movie. Also, the movie was really just audaciously ridiculous at times, none of which I can recall now but which made me shake my head in the theater. And then I realized that me and mamatro were the only people there who weren't either little kids or their parents and I had to shake my head at myself.
Bonus Points: for the talking dog collar thingies, which were actually very funny and a good way of dealing with the concept of talking animals while still letting the movie exist in a certain realm of believability (although, c'mon, he floated to South America in a house so talking animals wouldn't be a huge stretch).
Final Score: A solid if unspectacular 3.6 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. It was very creative and had some funny moments, but was hampered by ridiculousness (gotta keep the kids guessing) and one-note characters (b/c kids do not get the idea of complex personalities). Not bad at all for a childrens movie, but well short of Pixar's best in my opinion.
Ok, well I was gonna do one big post but I'm tired and this is taking too long. Tomorrow, in part 2, I review the Harry Potter movie, District 9, Inglourious Basterds, Michael Moore's Capitalism, and The Hurt Locker. That post will feature my 2 favorite movies of the year (among those I saw in the theater at least). As a hint, they weren't Harry Potter, Michael Moore or District 9.
Star Trek
Review:This was a pretty good movie. A bit run-of-the-mill action thillerish, but at the high end of that spectrum. The effects and action in this movie were first rate, the acting was Oscar-worthy (jk lolz), and there were even some shout outs to the true Trekkies out there. Wait, on second thought, I didn't like that at all. This was the Star Trek movie that was supposed to be a mainstream hit and it was, and still the producers/director felt they had to make some sort of homage to old Star Trek shit with a Leonard Nimoy cameo (and frankly the only Nimoy cameo that was worth a damn was on The Springfield Files). They didn't have to do that. The reason this movie was a hit was because it wasn't a boring pile of space nerdery like everything else Star Trek and those who took extreme interest in Star Trek (those eponymous Trekkies of douchefag fame) prior to this film deserve to be ostracized and shunned from society--not pandered to. Also, I think the plot was a bit jumbled up and relied on time travel and had some holes, but I can't really remember that at this point.
Bonus Points: for a Simon Pegg appearance. That guy is a legend based on Hot Fuzz alone.
Final Score: A solid 3.7 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. It was about all you could ask for in a summer blockbuster type movie.
Angels & Demons
Review: This movie was meh. I don't think it's quite as terrible as people make it out to be and I think the same is true of The DaVinci Code. The problem with these movies is that Dan Brown is such a good story plotter and such a mediocre prose writer that these books were read by everybody. Now when stupid people read their first book since 7th grade they have a tendency to believe "THis is the bestest book evar!!1!" And so, because the general populace is generally worse at judging the quality of books than the quality of movies (because people see way more movies than read books), they get all upset when a mediocre movie is made from a book they considered to be awesome. Those Dan Brown books (and I've only actually read A&D) were ok, but they took on some sort of cultural significance far beyond their actual literary merit. Also, they very much relied on omniscient narration of a character's thoughts, which you can only do in a movie if Morgan Freeman has time to lend his voice.
Anyway, the movie had a solid hour long stretch in the middle that was paced quickly with enough suspense and action to keep me well entertained. Unfortunately, the movie was well over 2 hours and droned on and on about "science vs. faith" which is a pretty uninteresting argument. Science one that argument a long time ago in my book by using "facts" and "reality." Maybe that debate plays better in the heartland, I don't know.
Bonus Points: for Tom Hanks cutting his hair a bit and being a little less creepy, but it was really only a very little less creepy so not a ton of bonus points.
Final Score: A meh 2.7 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. Some good parts in the middle, but it really is a tough type of book to make a movie out of and the science/faith stuff was heavy-handed and unnecessary. Also, I think I dislike Ewan McGregor, but I'm not sure. Have to get back to you on that one.
The Hangover
Review: Pretty standard party/drinking/road trip type movie made a little more interesting by being told backwards linearly, i.e. 3 guys have to figure out what happened to their soon to be married friend who is lost in Vegas by piecing together clues from a night they can' really remember. That sounds pretty cheesy right? Well it is, but there are still enough funny parts to keep you interested through pretty much the whole thing. I'm not sure why this turned out to be such a massively popular comedy; maybe it was for lack of competition, because it really wasn't that funny. But like I said, there were some funny parts and enough Zach Galifianakis to make it worth checking out. I gotta say though, Andy Bernard was not funny, but actually annoying as hell throughout this entire movie. Also, the setup is unbelievably unimaginative: it's like Bachelor Party meets Road Trip!--this is actually my guess for how it was pitched to the studio.
Bonus Points: for Zach Galifianakis, who really carries the movie and is just generally hilarious anyway. Also, for the pictures at the end and particularly the one of Zach G. getting a beej from a really old looking whore.
Final Score: A middling 3.1 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. Ok, not great.
Up
Review: This was the widely praised pixar release of the year, because apparently those guys can do no wrong. Well, this fucker sure as shit wasn't WALL-E but it was still pretty decent. It's about a grumpy old man who always wanted to travel with his wife and finally gets a chance to do so after she dies by tying a bunch of balloons to his house and floating to South America. Along the way he is accompanied by a grating little boy scout, who perfectly captures the spirit of America with his obesity and desire for rewards without accomplishment. Anyway, it's a pretty good concept for a movie and I can't knock the pixar guys for lack of imagination, but there are some problems. For one, that "girl" at the beginning is clearly a little boy meaning either that the Ed Asner character is gay or his dead "wife" was somewhere in the T part of the LGBTQ scale. Either way, seems a bit risque for a kids movie. Also, the movie was really just audaciously ridiculous at times, none of which I can recall now but which made me shake my head in the theater. And then I realized that me and mamatro were the only people there who weren't either little kids or their parents and I had to shake my head at myself.
Bonus Points: for the talking dog collar thingies, which were actually very funny and a good way of dealing with the concept of talking animals while still letting the movie exist in a certain realm of believability (although, c'mon, he floated to South America in a house so talking animals wouldn't be a huge stretch).
Final Score: A solid if unspectacular 3.6 out of 4.7 on the dtro goodness scale. It was very creative and had some funny moments, but was hampered by ridiculousness (gotta keep the kids guessing) and one-note characters (b/c kids do not get the idea of complex personalities). Not bad at all for a childrens movie, but well short of Pixar's best in my opinion.
Ok, well I was gonna do one big post but I'm tired and this is taking too long. Tomorrow, in part 2, I review the Harry Potter movie, District 9, Inglourious Basterds, Michael Moore's Capitalism, and The Hurt Locker. That post will feature my 2 favorite movies of the year (among those I saw in the theater at least). As a hint, they weren't Harry Potter, Michael Moore or District 9.
These people hate our way of life...
...and so the best way to show them that we as democratic freedom loving Americans cannot be effected by them is to hold secret military tribunals and then execute them without due process.
So says Rudolph Q. Giuliani, self-proclaimed King of 9/11.
Rudy just go get the 09 patch sewn on to your Yankees2627-Time World Champs! jacket and shut the fuck up.
So says Rudolph Q. Giuliani, self-proclaimed King of 9/11.
Rudy just go get the 09 patch sewn on to your Yankees
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Refueling on Sportswriter Hate
Today I will be hating on Bill Simmons--ESPN's "Sports Guy," which is undoubtedly one of the most clever nicknames ever devised for a sportswriter. Here's the thing about Simmons: you know what you're going to get with him. Too many pop culture references aimed at people in their 30s that he seems to think are hilarious but which just get grating and gimmicky after a while. Sycophantic "mailbags" where his legions of mindless fans send him emails with the general outline of 'question about sports thinly veiled as annoying praise of Simmons and an attempt to get him to like me if only in a pseudo-internety kind of liking way, phrased exactly how he would phrase a paragraph in his own column.' Boston shit. Stuff just reminds him of the 86 Celtics all the time and he will randomly just throw away column space on the Patriots at times. Podcasts that are occasionally interesting and funny, unless he calls his buddy Jacko the Yankee fan--having listened to a couple of these Jacko podcasts I can safely say that my personal hell, if there is a hell to which I shall be relegated at the time of my dying, is listening to a Red Sox and a Yankee fan, neither of whom have any knowledge of baseball beyond shit that Dan Shaughnessy or Mike Lupica would write, debate who is more worried about their ridiculously wealthy well-run teams that are virtual locks for playoff spots year-in and year-out.
But the thing is--Simmons is not that bad. He's a decent writer and he genuinely has some interesting insights about sports sometimes (but not baseball, he should just ignore baseball at this point) and he's kinda funny. And so, despite the reservations about him that I have listed above, I do check out Simmons' page at ESPN on a fairly regular basis.
And then he goes and writes a steaming pile of shit like this. In case you don't want to click through, his column is called "Running on sports-hate empty"; hence the title of my post here. It's basically a post about how 3 of the athletes he hates the most--Kobe Bryant, A-Rod, and Peyton Manning have earned his begrudging respect and forced him to reconsider his "hate" for them. Fine, whatever. Pretty trite, but they can't all be doozies. The real problem here, though, is not the idea, but the content. E.G.:
"If you're not familiar with the term, "sports hate" is an underrated part of fandom. Everyone has guys they don't like, and more importantly, guys they enjoy not liking. The reasons are unique to us. There doesn't have to be anything rational about it. Sports hate can be triggered by one incident, one slight, one game gone wrong, anything."
If I'm not familiar with the term? Huh? As if this is a term in common parlance or is regularly used by a certain group of individuals here. I think it's pretty self-motherfucking-evident what you're talking about so don't treat me like I'm stupid and don't try to make "sports hate" seem like a "term" that you or someone else has coined because it's not. It's two words that mean what they say: hate related to the realm of sports. God, don't be such a douche Simmons.
Anyway, he then proceeds to talk about A-Rod finally being clutch in the postseason this year, because like many "stupid fans" he doesn't understand the concept of small sample sizes and randomness that influence any human endeavor, but in particular the sport of baseball. If you're not familiar with the term, "stupid fans" they are an unfortunate part of fandom. Everyone knows fans that are clearly less intelligent than them when it comes to thinking, writing, or talking about sports. You may even enjoy being smarter than them about sports, but it certainly is frustrating when they have a huge national platform. But yeah, "stupid fans:" I'm trademarking that shit. Just coined it here on the spot.
Our friend Billy then talks about how Peyton Manning's continued goodness at football proves that he's really good at football and Kobe Bryant won the basketballing championship of the national association or some such thing--not sure what sports league he's talking about there. And then he drops this gem:
"Read those previous three paragraphs again. (Actually, read them for me. I am covered in smoke because my flesh is on fire. I can't see my laptop. [ed. note: jokes, ha!]) Imagine you're me. You have a sports column. You're a passionate guy. You care a little too much about sports. You're all about the Boston teams. You love getting riled up about players who you feel are either selfish, overrated, attention hogs, bad teammates, transparent or whatever. You always believed that Manning would choke when it mattered, that A-Rod was a fraud, that Kobe's selfishness would trump his talents. These realities are no longer true.
Do I feel empty inside? Yeah, a little."
And bam I stopped reading. Literally haven't gotten any farther than that sentence, because it just shows when you give a Boston sports fan a national column. Boston sports fans have been blessed with a string of very successful teams over the last decade, and so to a certain extent the appeal that Simmons' writing probably originally had as the voice of the lovable loser, who approaches sports with some hope but a healthy amount of pessimism, is now irrelevant. There is no more claims to years of suffering to be offered up by the people in New England, and they probably miss that a bit. But what they miss, and what Simmons misses (if I may put on my armchair psychologist's cap for a minute) is not the suffering per se. It is the ability to Lord that suffering over everyone else. If you're arrogant and obnoxious (and Massholes can't really help that--it is stamped into the very fiber of their beings) when your teams are good then you're just a huge fucking dickhead. That is what Boston fans are at this point, and why they have surpassed fans of my own native city in national detestability. But if you are arrogant and obnoxious when your teams are bad, and are specifically arrogant about the badness of said teams, well then you get to feel superior to others while not being directly hate-able since your dickishness is tinged with a bit of sympathy for your suffering. The problem of course is that I really think Simmons and others of his brood actually think that their suffering is more deeply felt or more important than that of other people.
And so no, Bill Simmons, I will not imagine I'm you. I will not try to put myself in your shoes and feel your "sports suffering" (another gem I just came up with; refer to my glossary if you are not familiar with this term). I have my own thank you very much and it is not better or worse than yours; it just is. So don't lay some Bostony guilt trip on me about how you feel empty inside. I already knew you were empty inside, because you see, sir, you have no soul.
But the thing is--Simmons is not that bad. He's a decent writer and he genuinely has some interesting insights about sports sometimes (but not baseball, he should just ignore baseball at this point) and he's kinda funny. And so, despite the reservations about him that I have listed above, I do check out Simmons' page at ESPN on a fairly regular basis.
And then he goes and writes a steaming pile of shit like this. In case you don't want to click through, his column is called "Running on sports-hate empty"; hence the title of my post here. It's basically a post about how 3 of the athletes he hates the most--Kobe Bryant, A-Rod, and Peyton Manning have earned his begrudging respect and forced him to reconsider his "hate" for them. Fine, whatever. Pretty trite, but they can't all be doozies. The real problem here, though, is not the idea, but the content. E.G.:
"If you're not familiar with the term, "sports hate" is an underrated part of fandom. Everyone has guys they don't like, and more importantly, guys they enjoy not liking. The reasons are unique to us. There doesn't have to be anything rational about it. Sports hate can be triggered by one incident, one slight, one game gone wrong, anything."
If I'm not familiar with the term? Huh? As if this is a term in common parlance or is regularly used by a certain group of individuals here. I think it's pretty self-motherfucking-evident what you're talking about so don't treat me like I'm stupid and don't try to make "sports hate" seem like a "term" that you or someone else has coined because it's not. It's two words that mean what they say: hate related to the realm of sports. God, don't be such a douche Simmons.
Anyway, he then proceeds to talk about A-Rod finally being clutch in the postseason this year, because like many "stupid fans" he doesn't understand the concept of small sample sizes and randomness that influence any human endeavor, but in particular the sport of baseball. If you're not familiar with the term, "stupid fans" they are an unfortunate part of fandom. Everyone knows fans that are clearly less intelligent than them when it comes to thinking, writing, or talking about sports. You may even enjoy being smarter than them about sports, but it certainly is frustrating when they have a huge national platform. But yeah, "stupid fans:" I'm trademarking that shit. Just coined it here on the spot.
Our friend Billy then talks about how Peyton Manning's continued goodness at football proves that he's really good at football and Kobe Bryant won the basketballing championship of the national association or some such thing--not sure what sports league he's talking about there. And then he drops this gem:
"Read those previous three paragraphs again. (Actually, read them for me. I am covered in smoke because my flesh is on fire. I can't see my laptop. [ed. note: jokes, ha!]) Imagine you're me. You have a sports column. You're a passionate guy. You care a little too much about sports. You're all about the Boston teams. You love getting riled up about players who you feel are either selfish, overrated, attention hogs, bad teammates, transparent or whatever. You always believed that Manning would choke when it mattered, that A-Rod was a fraud, that Kobe's selfishness would trump his talents. These realities are no longer true.
Do I feel empty inside? Yeah, a little."
And bam I stopped reading. Literally haven't gotten any farther than that sentence, because it just shows when you give a Boston sports fan a national column. Boston sports fans have been blessed with a string of very successful teams over the last decade, and so to a certain extent the appeal that Simmons' writing probably originally had as the voice of the lovable loser, who approaches sports with some hope but a healthy amount of pessimism, is now irrelevant. There is no more claims to years of suffering to be offered up by the people in New England, and they probably miss that a bit. But what they miss, and what Simmons misses (if I may put on my armchair psychologist's cap for a minute) is not the suffering per se. It is the ability to Lord that suffering over everyone else. If you're arrogant and obnoxious (and Massholes can't really help that--it is stamped into the very fiber of their beings) when your teams are good then you're just a huge fucking dickhead. That is what Boston fans are at this point, and why they have surpassed fans of my own native city in national detestability. But if you are arrogant and obnoxious when your teams are bad, and are specifically arrogant about the badness of said teams, well then you get to feel superior to others while not being directly hate-able since your dickishness is tinged with a bit of sympathy for your suffering. The problem of course is that I really think Simmons and others of his brood actually think that their suffering is more deeply felt or more important than that of other people.
And so no, Bill Simmons, I will not imagine I'm you. I will not try to put myself in your shoes and feel your "sports suffering" (another gem I just came up with; refer to my glossary if you are not familiar with this term). I have my own thank you very much and it is not better or worse than yours; it just is. So don't lay some Bostony guilt trip on me about how you feel empty inside. I already knew you were empty inside, because you see, sir, you have no soul.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The Inner Circle of Baseball Hell
That is where Mets fans are currently residing, myself among them. Clearly God hates the Mets and their fans and has shown this to them by injuring everybody on their roster, presenting them with a succession of Steve Phillips, Jim Duquette, and Omar Minaya, by giving us a Braves-Yankees WS in 1999, and lastly by allowing the abortion that is this year's World Series. This isn't a "Oh, woe is us!" bullshit-Red Sox thing: that happened because of their city's and organization's racism. The Mets are cursed for no good goddamn reason and it has all led to us having to make a choice about rooting for the Yankees or Phillies in the classic matchup of mystique vs. grit.
Now there are those who say we should root for the Yankees. After all, we all know Yankees fans and many of us have friends who root for the Yankees. However, I must explain to you that any Yankee fan friends that you know are decent people are the exception to the rule. Yankees fans are obnoxious loudmouths with a ridiculous sense of entitlement and such a dearth of knowledge about baseball that they immortalize people like Scott Brosius while vilifying Alex Rodriguez. We Mets fans, despite the best attempts of the Wilpons to eradicate it, must not forget our heritage. And that heritage means hating and rooting against the Yankees with every fiber of our being. Paul O'Neill, Chuck Knoblauch, Roger Clemens, Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, A-Rod etc.--don't you just fucking hate these guys. I know I do and deep down you do too. We must not root for the Yankees. The Yankees are not our crosstown brethren, they are our crosstown fucking rivals, and if I didn't root for the Yankees after 9/11 when New York "needed " and "deserved" a World Series, then I'm sure as shit not rooting for them now. The Yankees deserve nothing.
"Well, then dtro," you might say, "I guess that means we have to root for the Phillies." To which I say FUCK NO! While it is important not to lose sight of our hate past in the presence of the nouveau-douchiness of the Phillies, let's not pretend that this team and fanbase are not ridiculously detestable. Phillies fans are drunken mongoloids with no loyalty to anyone but the Eagles. They are violent and despicable people who seek out confrontation with other fanbases and others within their own fanbase, because frankly there's nothing better to do in a shithole like Philadelphia but get drunk and fight and then go complain about the best QB in your franchise's history. Philadelphians harbor a pitiful yet grating inferiority complex regarding the city of New York (and well they should) and lack the class, sense of history, integrity, or creativity to come up with their own rallying cries. The Phillies themselves have a roster of fuckfaced fucks. Jimmy Rollins is a douche, who likes to make big claims and shush Mets fans in the CitiField crowd while putting up a .296 OBP. He is probably the second most overrated player in the NL, trailing only Ryan Howard. Cole Hamels likes to call our boys choke artists? Choke on my dick. Chase Utley looks like he should start up a barbershop quartet with Wes Welker where they can sing about their hair parted perfectly down the middle (not to mention he leans into about 15 pitches a year). And Shane Victorino is a special kind of douche, my hatred of whom cannot be expressed in words. We may be in the inner circle of baseball hell right now, but rest assured there is a special place reserved in baseball hell for Shane Dicktorino after his fatal stabbing a couple of months from now. Just kidding...but I seriously wouldn't mind if he got stabbed and slowly bled to death.
That's right Mets fans, our best bet is to ignore this whole fucking thing. This is an opportunity to spend time with family and friends and not think about baseball until we're welcoming Matt Holliday with open arms and preparing for a 2010 Mets team that will exorcise all of our demons. And if you still feel bad about baseball right now, there's always this to cheer you up:
Saturday, October 24, 2009
The New Manifesto*
*By which I won't swear at all.
Based on some texts exchanged with Boyce on this fine drunken friday night, yours truly will try to post some more shit on this blog. Shit about how Steve Phillips' banging a busted-ass psychopath showed poorer judgment about fat people than the Mo Vaughn signing.
Shit about how Mother Teresa was a dirty fucking sham artist, who was more interested in death bed conversions than actually helping the poor, sick and needy (this according to G Wilko--although I tend to believe him,cynical as I am).
Boyce says hes in it for the lulz, but not me. I'm in it for the loot. Every time you log in to this page I make the potential for future income in the tens of dollars a year based on google ad revenue. I mean if a woman walks up to you who might be homeless, but a high-class respectable homeless, and offers to buy a cigarette off you for some nickels and pennies proffered in her outstretched AIDS-poisoned (assumption on my part) hand explaining that you "might could buy a soda" with it--and you seriously consider her offer: well then for fucking fuck's sake you need some loot.
And so I beg of all of you who read this: do not judge me (us) harshly for my (our) absence. Consider instead giving me some money so that I can get drunk and write some similar shit again. Clearly, the next time it might be about the clear lack of judgment on the part of a family that entrusts the majority of its money to Bernie Madoff and Omar Minaya, but I digress.
A man once said to me, "There are lots of people moving everywhere in this hustle and bustle we call life. But you," (and by this he meant ME), " you can see everything clearly, because you take the time to stop and look and consider everyone. You look at everything all around you, and for that you are blessed. Can I get a couple bucks for the train so I can get to..." blah, blah, blah: the fucking homeless bum. Dude smelled of piss-soaked potatoes and guilt-forced me into a MetroCard swipe at High St. (because when your in the Heights you feel like you can afford an extra fare or two, what with the deliciously wealthy smell of wood-burning fireplaces).
Fuck it I'm DAAAAAAARUNK!
Based on some texts exchanged with Boyce on this fine drunken friday night, yours truly will try to post some more shit on this blog. Shit about how Steve Phillips' banging a busted-ass psychopath showed poorer judgment about fat people than the Mo Vaughn signing.
Shit about how Mother Teresa was a dirty fucking sham artist, who was more interested in death bed conversions than actually helping the poor, sick and needy (this according to G Wilko--although I tend to believe him,cynical as I am).
Boyce says hes in it for the lulz, but not me. I'm in it for the loot. Every time you log in to this page I make the potential for future income in the tens of dollars a year based on google ad revenue. I mean if a woman walks up to you who might be homeless, but a high-class respectable homeless, and offers to buy a cigarette off you for some nickels and pennies proffered in her outstretched AIDS-poisoned (assumption on my part) hand explaining that you "might could buy a soda" with it--and you seriously consider her offer: well then for fucking fuck's sake you need some loot.
And so I beg of all of you who read this: do not judge me (us) harshly for my (our) absence. Consider instead giving me some money so that I can get drunk and write some similar shit again. Clearly, the next time it might be about the clear lack of judgment on the part of a family that entrusts the majority of its money to Bernie Madoff and Omar Minaya, but I digress.
A man once said to me, "There are lots of people moving everywhere in this hustle and bustle we call life. But you," (and by this he meant ME), " you can see everything clearly, because you take the time to stop and look and consider everyone. You look at everything all around you, and for that you are blessed. Can I get a couple bucks for the train so I can get to..." blah, blah, blah: the fucking homeless bum. Dude smelled of piss-soaked potatoes and guilt-forced me into a MetroCard swipe at High St. (because when your in the Heights you feel like you can afford an extra fare or two, what with the deliciously wealthy smell of wood-burning fireplaces).
Fuck it I'm DAAAAAAARUNK!
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