- When your movie is billed in promos as being from the guy who brought you Knocked Up, you’re starting the race with one major strike against you. In spite of that, everything I saw leading up to the release of Superbad had me excited to go see what looked like a genuinely funny, goofy movie. And no, it wasn’t residual good karma from one of the movie’s stars, Michael Cera (Evan) appearing in an episode of one of my all-time favorite TV shows, Veronica Mars. (I still HATE you for canceling it, Dawn Ostroff and the CW.) The best way to sum up Superbad is to say that it has all of the humor and laughs that good teen comedies have without the constant, lowest-common-denominator, bathroom humor that drags those same movies down into the mud. It’s a comedy with at least a modicum of intelligence, and for that reason it’s a really good movie. Ok, so there is a fair amount of that crude, crass humor throughout, but it’s never focused on to the detriment of the movie and the focus stays mainly on the ideas of love, relationships, friendship and being an outcast – basically, what it means to be a teenager. The plot centers on two geeks, Seth and Evan, endeavoring to move up the social ladder at their school and become the kind of guys that girls notice. Their quest for popularity leads them to volunteer to provide the beer for a party thrown by classmates, and the resulting night of theatrics, hijinks and pratfalls is at the core of the story. Without giving too much away, I’ll say that this movie proves that if you take the average elements of a teen comedy and mix in just a small amount of intelligence, creativity and sensitivity, you actually end up with a good movie.
- How apropos is it that the network promos for the CW’s (Crappy Watching) fall schedule features a theme song by one of the Pussycat Skanks? No, I’m not referring to the fact that the Skanks regularly have a new season of their series Search for the Next Skank on the CW, I’m referring to the fact that a slate chocked full of terrible shows has a theme song by one of the three worst artists in all of music right now. As this season prepares to kick off, the CW will feature all of one show I care to watch (Smallville) and one show returning at midseason that I watch but don’t love (One Tree Hill). Given the fact that just one or two years ago, the WB, one of the two networks that merged to create the CW, had seven shows I watched regularly, I’d say Dawn Ostroff and her cache of clowns (a.k.a. her advisors/underlings) are going in the wrong direction, programming-wise. Outside of the two shows I mentioned, the rest of the CW’s fall schedule is a giant pile of dog vomit and I can't think of better music to represent it than the Pussycat Skanks.
- I didn’t think I could be more repulsed by the Mick Vick story, but clearly I was wrong, my mistake. For the first time since this whole mess began several months ago, I found myself literally becoming nauseous as I listed to today’s developments in the case. Hearing about how Vick and two of his co-defendants reportedly murdered eight dogs back in April, hanging all eight dogs in the woods behind Vick’s Surrey County, Virginia property. Unfortunately, these three ass hats couldn’t even get this brutal act done quickly and effectively, so three of the dogs survived the attempted hanging. Vick and his two accomplices than took the surviving dogs and drowned them by submerging their heads in five-gallon buckets filled with water. Disgusting……just disgusting. Yes, these were dogs and not people, but to exhibit that type of brutal cruelty to any living thing shows a level of depravity that I am disheartened to even admit exists in any person. These tales of dog murdering are in statements of fact from Purnell Peace, one of Vick’s two co-defendants who agreed to plea bargains in hearings held today at the courthouse in Richmond, Va. The statements of fact are required in the plea deal and they address the various allegations that the defendant is entering a plea for. With Peace and Quanis Phillips formally agreeing to their plea deals, Vick is left alone to fight the case, although his attorneys are reportedly in negotiations with prosecutors for a plea as well.
- NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has spoken loudly and wielded a large disciplinary stick in his first year at the helm, so I’m hoping he can do something about a big problem facing the league’s biggest event, Super Bowl XXIII. The problem, quite frankly, is FOX and its decision to make the man-blouse-wearing, teeth-bleaching, über-effeminate, girly-man host of the world’s worst karaoke contest, Ryan Seacrest, the “host” of the Super Bowl. What this tool will do as host, I don’t know, but here are a few things I do know. First, there is no one (well, perhaps Clay Aiken) who is less masculine and manly than R. Seacrest, so he has no place anywhere near any football game or any other physical competition of any sort. Make him the host of the ice skating events at the next Winter Olympics, that’s a much better match. Second, this is a blatant, shameless case of cross-promotion for American Karaoke, and I don’t need one of my favorite sporting events linked with a bunch of talentless, hack karaoke-ers in any way, shape or form. Lastly, I don’t need Seacrest ruining the broadcast with any awkward, uncomfortable and forced banter with the announcers for the game. “Gee, Joe Buck, I’m here in the stands with my man blouse and frosted tips and I don’t have any idea what’s going on in the game, but Peyton Manning sure is my Super Bowl Idol, ha ha…..” Please, someone just go ahead and plant an ax in my forehead before I have to endure that.
- Those email scams about fortunes and wealth in an obscure African nation don’t really sucker anybody into responding, do they? Clearly the answer is yes, because Australian farmer Des Gregor bit on just such a scheme and ended up being held hostage in Mali for 12 days by a gang of men who had posed as an online love interest has urged others to be careful when seeking romance on the Internet. Gregor traveled to Mali to meet what he thought was his new bride and to collect a dowry of gold bars worth $85,000. However, when he arrived, the wheat and sheep farmer was abducted by a gang of armed bandits who bound him, beat him with a machete and stole his cash and credit cards. Gregor, who returned to his home state of South Australia with a police escort late Sunday, said the men told him they would hack his limbs off with a machete unless he paid them a $85,000 ransom. The scam was stopped when Australian and Malian police, alerted by Gregor's family in Australia, tricked the kidnappers into taking Gregor to the Canadian Embassy to collect the ransom money. “It's hard to explain what I thought,” he said. “I basically was wondering what the hell was going on and then they started demanding money — then I knew things were serious. I reckon another couple of days and I wouldn't have returned," he said. "Just be careful — make sure you check everything out 100 percent." Yeah, that and don’t fly to other continents to pick up some mail-order bride you’ve never met and claim a massive dowry in the process. Let’s hope that the rest of us aren’t as incredibly stupid as you are, Des, because if we are, the world is going to come to an end very, very soon.
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