Saturday, February 16, 2008

Bad movies, metal-laced lollipops and Mike Huckabee's musical faux paus

- Maybe I’m just being cynical here, but when you buy your Valentine’s Day treats from Dollar General, what do you expect? Among the world’s great candy emporiums, Dollar General usually fails to make the cut of the upper echelon for some reason. Heck, Wal-Mart’s candy selection thinks that the treat Dollar General offers are garbage. For that reason, I can’t say I’m all that surprised to hear that some elementary school students in Lakeland, Fla. received a little something extra in their lollipops on Thursday - small fragments of metal. The tainted lollipops came from a bag of Pokemon Valentine Cards and Pops, with at least 20 of the tainted treats found at the school. The products have been pulled from the shelves of Dollar General stores nationwide, but let’s be honest here. If you’re shopping for your kid’s Valentine’s candy at Dollar General, how much can you really care about them to begin with? So junior gets an extra dose of steel, aluminum or tin in his lollipop, what the big deal? Who doesn’t need more metal in their diet? On a serious note, how’s about we scrutinize these products a little better and institute a bit of quality control, makers of Pokemon Valentine Cards and Pops? Unless you start advertising your products as “Tiny Metal Shards Included,” you need to stop selling this crap.

- Well done, Iranian government. You wouldn’t want your citizens exposed to opposing viewpoints and different opinions than the propaganda you’re spouting in the month’s leading up to the country’s elections. In espousing that brain-dead spirit to the fullest possible extent, the Iranian government has dropped a ban on five websites commenting on current events for fear that those sites could be responsible for “poisoning” public opinion in the weeks leading up to Iran’s mid-March parliamentary elections. Let me decode that for you: in place of “poisoning” insert “informing and showing them that there’s a point of view other than the oppressive, restrictive, small-minded and dictatorial one promoted by their own government, all of whom wish to remain in power.” If you make that one small tweak, then it makes perfect sense. It’s times like these that I realize that, although we currently have the worst president in the history of the world leading our country, at least our system of government is strong enough and well-designed enough that with such an incompetent ignoramus leading us, our government is still far, far better than the one the have in a place like Iran.....

- Get a grip, Tom Sholz. The former lead singer of the band Boston is bent because doomed-for-defeat Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has been using the one song by Boston that anyone still remembers, More Than A Feeling, as a sort of theme song at various campaign stops. One of the former members of the band, Barry Goudreau, has been appearing with Huckabee at some of his campaign stops and playing the song with the Huck-ster’s band, the Capitol Offenses (yes, Huckabee has a band, a rockin’ convergence of the Stones and the Clash from what I hear, with a bit of Limp Bizkit mixed in). Of course, the fact that Huckabee is mathematically unable to win the Republican presidential nomination at this point doesn’t seem to deter Sholz one bit. Nor does the fact that no money is being made off the song’s usage. Sholz is pissed that Goudreau, who left the band 25 years ago after short three-year stint, is giving people the impression that Boston and its members all support the incredible Huck. “By using my song and my band’s name Boston, you have taken something of mine and used it to promote ideas to which I am opposed. In other words, I think I’ve been ripped off, dude!” Sholz whined. Bonus points for dropping “dude” in there, Sholz. Listen to me, loser. No one gives a crap about your corny, garbage ‘80s band. Be thankful anyone still thinks enough of your song to use it for anything and shut the heck up.

- I see where Aretha Franklin is pissed at Beyonce Knowles (sorry, B., but you’re not nearly important enough for me to dignify you with first-name-only recognition, even though you clearly think you are). My first inclination was that Knowles had stolen Franklin’s stash of Twinkies or breakfast burritos and Yoo-Hoo, but now I’m receiving information telling me that the rift has something to do with Knowles saluting over-the-hill, never-was, glorified pop-tart Tina Turner as “the queen” at the Grammy Awards last week. Franklin has been known as the “Queen of Soul” for a long time now, although “Queen of Lard” might be more apropos at this point, given the fact that Franklin looks like she’s pushing four hundy on the scales at this point. Franklin mused as to what she did to offend Knowles and incur the slight of Turner being called “the queen,’ but I wouldn’t worry, Aretha. A) Nobody who likes good, original, non-cookie-cutter music watched the Grammys or gives them any credence anyhow, and B) Turner is a glorified go-go dancer who’s never been nearly as good-looking as she thinks she is and has minimal musical talent, so regardless of what some poseur pop star like Beyonce Knowles says, you don’t need to be insulted. Now wolf down another pound of fudge, follow it with a Ring-Ding and Yoo-Hoo chaser and you’ll be just fine....

- You’ll never believe this, but Step Up 2, the unwanted, unnecessary sequel to 2006’s Step Up, a thoroughly bad movie in its own right, is a crappy film. I know, a movie with such an illustrious pedigree should be a slam dunk for an Oscar, what with the lame dialogue, sorry, predictable plot, terrible acting and all-around ineptitude. But somehow, some way. SU-2 manages to blow...even worse than the first time. Incredibly, all of these hip-hop/dance movies are following the same damn script to a “T” and no one is getting sued for plagiarism. Poor girl tries to make it big through dance and her new crew and school face down against her old one, with her caught in the middle. Whether it’s You Got Served or Stomp the Yard, all of these movies are the same and none of them are good. No decent, accomplished actor or actress wants anything to do with them and so we get subpar talent trying to breathe life into a movie that even the world’s greatest thespians couldn’t revive. Briana Evigan, Robert Hoffman and Cassie Ventura couldn’t carry a half-hour after-school special, let alone a 90-minute feature film. Thank the Lord this movie is only 1 hour, 38 minutes long, because that’s more than enough pain and suffering to inflict on an audience. Evigan is part of a dance crew and ends up leaving them for a hoity-toity dance academy, and the battle for her dance soul ensues. I could tell you more but I’m already bored, so let’s just forget about this joke of a movie and move on....

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