Saturday, June 27, 2009

Hollywood Update #421

Cameron Diaz and Nick Cassavetes

It's official--Cameron Diaz is a total alien freak.

Is she going to start turning black and looking like a man soon? Is she the anti-Michael Jackson the universe has been waiting for? Will her increasing creepiness bring an end to the global warming caused by Michael's?

Or maybe she's just afraid of aging and making all the wrong moves.



Also official:

John Cassavetes has risen from the dead intending to hunt and slaughter his own son like only a zombie can. Nick is half his fault, after all...


Oh, and how could they honestly give Cameron Diaz a star? Really? Who came next, Alf? Have we really run so low on icons?

Sadly, yes.

_

Friday, June 26, 2009

You Are Now Alone


In the midst of all the cocksucking of, and kowtowing to, the recently deceased King of Pop the past couple days, I feel as though some pertinent information has been conveniently brushed under the rug.

Namely, has everybody forgotten that he was a complete creep who was accused of sexual abuse against children more than once? And that's only a fraction of this guy's darkness.

Please clasp hands and join me for a long-winded but interesting tour through the stranger side of Michael Jackson...


For starters, here is a brief description of the first child abuse charge, courtesy of wikipedia:

Jackson was accused of child sexual abuse by a 13-year-old child named Jordan Chandler and his father Evan Chandler. The friendship between Jackson and Evan Chandler broke down. Sometime afterwards, Evan Chandler was tape-recorded saying amongst other things, "If I go through with this, I win big-time. There's no way I lose. I will get everything I want and they will be destroyed forever...Michael's career will be over". A year after they had met, under the influence of a controversial sedative Jordan Chandler told his father that Jackson had touched his penis. Evan Chandler and Jackson, represented by their legal teams, then engaged in unsuccessful negotiations to resolve the issue in a financial settlement; the negotiations were initiated by Chandler but Jackson did make several counter offers. Jordan Chandler then told a psychiatrist and later police that he and Jackson had engaged in acts of kissing, masturbation and oral sex, as well as giving a detailed description of what he alleged were the singer's genitals.

An official investigation began, with Jordan Chandler's mother adamant that there was no wrongdoing on Jackson's part. Neverland Ranch was searched; multiple children and family members denied that he was a pedophile. Jackson's image took a further turn for the worse when his older sister LaToya Jackson accused him of being a pedophile, a statement she later retracted. Jackson agreed to a 25-minute strip search conducted at his ranch. The search was required to see if a description provided by Jordan Chandler was accurate. Doctors concluded that there were some strong similarities, but it was not a definitive match. Jackson made an emotional public statement on the events; he proclaimed his innocence, criticized what he perceived as biased media coverage and told of his strip search.

Can you imagine that scene playing out?
"Uh, sir, uh, Mr. Jackson, uh--I need to see what your penis looks like."
"Really, why?"
"Because I need to see if the description your 13 year-old friend gave us is accurate."
"Oh, okay...enjoy!"
Was this police officer some kind of crack penisologist or something? Is every penis like a fingerprint to him? I mean, what sort of description he was working from?
"Well, it was light green, like the Incredible Hulk's skin, with white stripes swirling down the sides, kind of like a peppermint candy. It was friendly looking, nice and thin, long enough but not too long, and it had a smiley face tatooed on the tip--oh, and it smelled like chocolate."
Hey, if you're sculpting your face every year, chasing some distorted notion of perfection, why not also make your weird-looking dick as enticing as possible to a curious and otherwise frightened child, if pedophilia's your bag? Right? Right?


Has everybody forgotten his strange friendships with Corey Feldman and his staunchest defender, Elizabeth Taylor, who is a kooky enough bird in her own right that I wouldn't be surprised to hear she was complicit in Jacko's underage boy escapades.

During the trial/settlement-negotiation process, Michael became more white than ever when he found himself addicted to multiple dangerous-but-legal suburban drugs--Valium, Xanax, and Ativan. [He later added Morphine and Demerol during his second child abuse trial.]


Meanwhile, amidst all this pedophilia and drug addiction hubbub, the daughter of Elvis Presley was falling in love:
"In May of 1994, Jackson married singer-songwriter Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of Elvis Presley. They had first met in 1975 during one of Jackson's family engagements at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino and were reconnected through a mutual friend in early 1993. They stayed in contact every day over the telephone. As child molestation accusations became public, Jackson became dependent on Lisa Marie for emotional support; she was concerned about his faltering health and addiction to drugs.

Lisa Marie explained, "I believed he didn't do anything wrong and that he was wrongly accused and yes I started falling for him. I wanted to save him. I felt that I could do it." In a phone call he made to her, she described him as high, incoherent and delusional. Shortly afterwards, she tried to persuade Jackson to settle the allegations out of court and go into rehabilitation to recover — he subsequently did both. Jackson proposed to Lisa Marie over the telephone towards the fall of 1993, saying, "If I asked you to marry me, would you do it?".

Presley and Jackson married in the Dominican Republic in secrecy; the parties denied they had been married for nearly two months. The marriage was, in her words, "a married couple's life ... that was sexually active". At the time, the tabloid media speculated that the wedding was a ploy to prop up Jackson's public image in light of prior sexual abuse allegations. Jackson and Presley divorced less than two years later, remaining friendly."
(courtesy wikipedia.org)
With such a romantic proposal from that delicious dreamboat--how could the lady say no?



Michael Joseph Jackson has three children--the first two with his dermatology nurse, Deborah Rowe, and the third with an undisclosed woman whom he admits was artificially inseminated.

The names of his three children are:
1. Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr. (also known as Prince)
2. Paris Michael Katherine Jackson
3. Prince Michael Jackson II (also known as Blanket)

Did he have some kind of shady agreement with George Foreman or something? Is he a deranged asshole for calling his child 'Blanket?'

Much like his first marriage, Michael and Ms. Rowe divorced after a mere two years, with alleged pedophile Mr. Jackson receiving sole custody of their children. Huh? Wha?


Michael, dubbed "Big Nose" by his father as a child, had a longstanding obsession with plastic surgery that began at the tender age of 26.

Here is a partial list of the procedures he underwent:

- at least eight nose jobs
- cheekbone restructuring
- a cleft put in his chin (in an attempt to appear more masculine)
- his jaw squared-off
- an implant to make his chin wider
- an implant to make his chin longer
- hair grafted onto his chin to create a goatee
- several different 'eyebrow looks'
- countless facelifts


For fascinating and gruesome photos of the plastic surgery results, click here.



Michael's pet chimpanzee--Bubbles--sat in on the recording of Bad (along with Michael's pet snake), had his own agent, and, according to Quincy Jones, "is more fun than a lot of people I know. I saw Bubbles at a wedding in a tux. He has great table manners."

Bubbles was sent away when he began acting up and is still alive, outliving his owner/friend/father(?).


Michael himself intentionally leaked at least two crazy stories to the media:
1. He sleeps in a hyperbaric chamber every night, in order to slow the aging process
2. He bought the remains of The Elephant Man
Meanwhile, here are some crazy stories that actually happened, courtesy of wikipedia:
1. "In his trip to the Ivory Coast, Jackson was crowned "King Sani" by a tribal chief. He then thanked the dignitaries in French and English, signed official documents formalizing his kingship and sat on a golden throne while presiding over ceremonial dances."

2. "In early 1996, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued a press release charging Jackson with antisemitism regarding lyrics in the song "They Don't Care About Us", the fourth single from HIStory. The song had originally been recorded with lyrics that included the phrase "Jew me, sue me", and "Kick me, kike me". The ADL complained and Jackson responded by saying he would re-record the lyrics before the album went into production. However the ADL's press release charged that Jackson had performed the song live and included the lyrics in question during the live performance. The dispute over the lyrics upset long-time Jackson friend Steven Spielberg, who considered the song anti-semitic."

3. Martin Scorsese directed an 18-minute music video for MJ's single "Bad."

4. For his music video "Smooth Criminal", Jackson experimented with an innovative "anti-gravity lean" in his performances, for which he was granted US Patent No. 5,255,452

5. While filming a commercial for Pepsi, Michael's hair famously caught on fire; in light of the incident, Pepsi was forced to pay Michael $1.5 million, which he used to start the Michael Jackson Burn Center. The finished commercial can be found here.
And now he is dead.

What now?

Await the fallout, which has already begun:

- Larry Charles, the director of the movie Bruno, is snipping a long scene that centered on a Michael Jackson joke. Also, everybody associated with the film got a lot of shit yesterday for having their red carpet covering Michael Jackson's star on the Walk of Fame during the movie's Hollywood premiere (which oddly occurred over two weeks before the movie opens...)

- Everybody has immediately forgotten the real man/thing and speaks of him/it as if he/it were a god, remembering the good, conveniently forgetting the bad.

"Jackson's death caused a large-scale outpouring of grief among fans, as they gathered outside the UCLA Medical Center and his Holmby Hills home. Fans also gathered in New York outside the Appollo Theater and in Detroit outside Hitsville, USA, the old Motown headquarters – now the Motown Museum – where fans created a shrine. A small crowd which included the city's mayor also gathered outside of Jackson's childhood home in Gary.

In the House of Congress, Congressmen Diane Watson and Jesse Jackson, Jr. spoke before the House about Michael Jackson, before asking members to observe a moment of silence in his honour. In the United Kingdom, writers for the BBC soap opera EastEnders added a last-minute scene for the June 26 episode of the show where Denise Wicks tells Patrick Trueman of Jackson's death. A spokesperson claimed the last-minute scene was added to "reflect to some extent the impact Michael Jackson's death has had".

News of Jackson's death spread quickly online, causing many websites to experience technical difficulties following the unanticipated swell of users. Google announced technical difficulties after a sudden increase in searches for "Michael Jackson" led the company to believe it was under attack from hackers, while social networking site Twitter reported a crash after record numbers of users used the site to spread the news of Jackson's death. AIM, an instant messaging service operated by America Online, collapsed for forty minutes. The company called it a "seminal moment in Internet history" and added "We've never seen anything like it in terms of scope or depth." Wikipedia also experienced technical difficulties, and crashed at 3:15 PDT, reportedly due to excessive edits and user overload.

In the hours following Jackson's death, his record sales increased dramatically. His album Thriller climbed to number one on the American iTunes music chart, while another eight have made it into the top 40. In the UK, where Jackson would have performed in less than three weeks, his albums occupied 14 of the top 20 places on the Amazon.co.uk sales chart with Off The Wall topping the chart. Nine of his albums were featured on the American iTunes Top 10 chart, including Thriller, Bad, Dangerous, and three compilations. In the UK iTunes store on June 26, thirty-nine of Jackson's songs were in the Top 100 best selling songs list, in addition to four Jackson 5 songs. Eight of his albums took over the top ten downloaded albums and the top five video downloads were all Michael Jackson videos. Along with this he also entered into the top top ten single downloads with "Man in the Mirror".

Less than four months before Jackson's death, one of his biographers, Ian Halperin, revealed that Jackson had a secret library of over 100 unreleased songs which he planned to release after his death to support his children."


Much like it was with Elvis, it seems death was the best career move Michael Jackson could have made. He will now be remembered more fondly, he is unable to fuck things up anymore, the world is spared more of his late-career shitty music (save those magical 100 songs, I suppose...), and his fucked-up children (who gets custody of them? Angelina?) will now stand a chance of getting out of debt and having enough personal wealth to become a trio of modern-day Caligulas.

Before we go, let us reflect on a quote from the Klueless King himself--it only seems fair he should be allowed to say something, too.

"Why not just tell people I'm an alien from Mars. Tell them I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight. They'll believe anything you say, because you're a reporter. But if I, Michael Jackson, were to say, 'I'm an alien from Mars and I eat live chickens and do a voodoo dance at midnight,' people would say, 'Oh, man, that Michael Jackson is nuts. He's cracked up. You can't believe a damn word that comes out of his mouth.'"

Michael Jackson


To quote deceased Phil Hartman quoting also-recently-deceased Ed McMahon, "Huh, huh, huh--you are correct, sir!"


Oh yeah, and Farrah Fawcett died yesterday, too. Of anal cancer. She was the one with the hair.

_

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Let's Hope His Name Is Misleading...


Or methinky Bryan Rapey is going to jaily.

Hmmmmm...I wonder what his ancestors did for a trade...

Cooper
Sawyer
Miller
Smith
Rapey?

_

Saturday, June 20, 2009

If These Jowls Could Talk...

Millionaire John Bogle, founder of The Vanguard Group

“I’m not King Solomon. I’m not telling them to believe what I believe,” he says. “I’m just a guy who’s been around a long time and has a strong idea that this is a great country that has lost its way."
_

"I think you won--let me just make a phone call to find out."


Not that I care all that much about the sanctity and entertainment value of collegiate athletics, but this is pretty depressing:
At Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., the women’s swim team held a “virtual swim meet” with Bryn Mawr College, in Pennsylvania, about 112 miles away. Each team swam in its home pool, then compared times to determine the winners. (“We probably saved $900 on bus travel,” said William G. Durden, Dickinson’s president.)
(courtesy nytimes.com)

$900.00? First of all, y'all gotta look into a different bus company. Or just drive yourselves:
Bryn Mawr and Dickinson are 112 miles apart; that's 6 gallons of gas per car x 5 cars x $3/gallon x 2 (round trip)= $180.00.
But that's all beside the point--it only took $900.00 to degrade competitive swimming to a mere time trial? Why bother having the 'meet' in the first place? Why not just swim each race 5000 times over the course of a year and turn in your best score and buy yourself a used trophy on eBay?

I cringe for the future.

_

Happy Birthday, Death


The fact that John Goodman's jowls have officially swallowed his face at the age of 57 is fascinating but irrelevant, as is his ghostly pallor.
Question: How has a man who clearly believes in limitless indulgence cheated death by coronary thrombosis/diabetes/stomach explosion/gout for this long?

Answer: He has embraced the dark side. He will live forever, growing increasingly more grotesque--yet mirthful--with each passing day. He is unstoppable. He might eat you just for fun and present his children with a clever brain-stimulating puzzle made from your mangled bones.
If you are curious as to what he will look like on his 60th, look no further than this image I recently obtained from the future:



Perhaps George Lucas can somehow seize this fertile opportunity to make another billion dollars for no good reason? Reinvigorate the flaccid franchise while saving millions on special effects?

If he and Spielberg are done ruining the Indiana Jones series, that is...

_

Friday, June 19, 2009

What is in a name?


Name of the year?


My favorite part of that link is this:


Oh, shit, no--I was looking for a different Consance Coco Winegardner McCallum. It must be so frustrating having such a common name...
_

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Why Movies Suck Volume XV


All the people in charge are so busy trying to get their own shitty ideas off the ground that there is no room for original, intriguing material from outside the bubble.

I can hear that bitch cackling now, between hacking pack-a-day coughs, "Tweens will love it! They love everything!"
_

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Overheard at the Office Today


Three of my favorite things overheard at the office today:

1. "I can't wait to be a grandma--I just want to skip all the middle parts and go straight to being a grandma." - said by a 26 year-old woman

2. "I begged my parents to send me to boarding school."

3. "I begged my parents to get divorced!"

_

"Arrrr, matey, make haste! Throw the blighty bastard off the poop deck before the accursed pox spreads to the whole ship--he's got The Gout!"


It looks like The Gout is thumbing its nose at all those ignorant souls clueless as to what its curse entails and if it's not exactly bringing millions of landlubbers to a watery grave, the unlucky gluttons are at least experiencing their fair share of discomfort.


"But how does this affect me, an arrogant, relatively healthy--or at least non-gouty--person, in my day-to-day life?"

Well, Mr. Ponce, imagine for a moment that you were to sit down for a delicious meal in an upscale restaurant--Bennigan's, for example--and are served your food by some guy with a mysterious white fluid oozing out of his hands:
"In the early stages of the disease, gout attacks, which can last several days and are excruciating, occur only rarely. But over time, the frequency increases and people can develop disfiguring and disabling lumps of the chalky white crystals, called tophi. Michael Clayton of Atlanta, who has severe gout, said he had to quit a job as general manager of a restaurant after customers complained about the tophi on his hands, which sometimes oozed liquid resembling Wite-Out."
(courtesy nytimes.com)
Yeah--gross. So, you know, get wise--fear the gout. It is everywhere.

"Holy shit! What do I do?!!"

Well, Dr. Goodtime recommends that you try to avoid any interaction whatsoever with those persons afflicted with this 'gout,' in the off-chance the pharmaceutical reps--I mean 'doctors'-- are lying to us out of their own self-interest and the disease is actually contagious.

As if you needed another reason to avoid making out with fat people! LOL!!!!!!!!! OMG!! ROTFL!!!!!!! JMFC!!!! HELP!!!

(btw, shunning is always the shrewdest option, if you ask me, when it comes to other people)

If you are unsure as to how to recognize a sufferer of gout, they usually look like this:



There you have it, people of the Internet. You have the knowledge, you have the will to live--now get back out into that big fat scary world and live in fear--I mean 'be safe!'

_

Friday, June 12, 2009

I Know Now Why You Cry


I saw Terminator Salvation this past weekend.

Let us forget Christian Bale's distractingly-awful growl-speak. Let us forget his widely-disseminated tirade against the movie's director of photography. Let us forget McG's atrocious track record. Let us forget the previous installment in the Terminator franchise.

I went to see the movie, despite the onboard warning siren--and on one of my two days off in the last three weeks, no less--because I am kind of in love with the mythology of the Terminator story.

Man v. Machine. Good v. Evil. Time travel. Robots. Judgment Day. Penance. Indomitable will. Chosen Ones.


The Terminator movies--the first two, anyway--are great action movies with endearing-yet-effective special effects and strong characters; they are also as close to the Bible (as far as story goes) as you can get in the movie business, in this day and age, and not doom yourself to the pseudo hell that is a Red-State Netflix shipping center.

This engrossing grander-than-thou-yet-you-are-still-somehow-integral-to-the-solution myth that both the Bible and the Terminator series propagate, this seemingly instinctive moral/emotional core of socialized humanity, this 'our fate is what we make it' life-lesson, has recently been ignorantly devoured, shat out, and finger-painted across the big screen by a vapid faux-fanboy who goes by McG, King of the Douchebags.

There is a joke in the film industry that goes like this:

"We'll fix it in post."

It is the easiest way to pass the buck and let somebody else fix your mistakes so you can just keep chugging along. Well, Mr. McG, there is at least one thing that is IMPOSSIBLE to fix in post--story. Busted!

The franchise, sadly, has now been sullied beyond redemption and I genuinely hope the powers that be choose to halt pre-production on the already-in-the-works fifth installment (again with McG at the helm, despite atrocious reviews and lackluster box-office receipts) for whatever reason they choose--financial prudence, artistic integrity, boredom, death, distraction by images of Meghan Fox...choose your poison, gentlemen--I'll be right there to guide it down your gullet, if you could just sign this pesky legal document first...


It was bad enough that in Terminator and T2--easily the best of the four Terminator movies--the time travel gimmick (among other things) never really held any water:
So let's see...John Connor sent someone back in time to fuck his mother and be his own father...but how did he exist if he hadn't yet sent somebody back in time? Are we in the middle of an endless circle? If it's an endless circle...then who cares what happens?

And then Mr. Connor had to send back a hijacked Terminator to protect himself from a better Terminator...why didn't he just send back the whole army and destroy SkyNet?

Why didn't SkyNet simply send an army of T1000s to eliminate the young John Connor, instead of just one?

Why did none of these uber-advanced Terminators have onboard weaponry? Laser beams? Guns? Did the computers not realize this would help?

How could humanity ever actually hope to survive against ruthless, computer-accurate, relentless killing machines in control of the infrastructure of the entire globe, even if they really wanted it real bad-like?


As an audience, we forgave these gray areas, these troubling questions, because, ultimately, the movies were so fucking kick-ass it didn't matter; you didn't think about such things in the theater--you only thought about them later on, lying awake at night, alone with your thoughts, your mind racing, trying to make sense of it all, trying to work out the proof.

T2, as it played, simply became a battle between two robots--one good, one evil--over the fate of the prodigal son, the savior and future heart and soul of humanity--John Connor.

As such, the otherwise-high concepts became accessibly low-tech--fistfights, car chases, gunshots, metal-fisted punches, etc. It was not all that different from Die Hard or Rambo, which shared the unbelievability factor--you knew no man alive could live through such an affair, survive such blows, such wounds; no enemy alive would be so inaccurate with a gun, etc. You just didn't care.

Terminator Salvation has sadly blown the lid off such audience concessions.

This movie was like the worst combination of Terminator, Back to the Future, Empire Strikes Back, Road Warrior, and Total Recall imaginable--there was not a single scene in this movie that did not make me either cringe or voice objection on a matter of complete factual idiocy or glaring internalized plot/character contradiction.


But let's not jump to conclusions here, folks. Maybe I'm just an idiot. Maybe there is a rational explanation for the rampant flaws in this movie.

I put it to you, McG--


Ten concerns of mine with which you must deal:
1. Okay, so, the machines are so fucking bloodthirsty and vicious and invincible that there's only like a hundred people left in the United States and they don't venture out at night, live in caves underneath abandoned 7-11s, avoid playing the radio, etc, but John Connor can shoot flares into the sky and engage in a prolonged hail-of-gunfire-and-explosives firefight with Marcus Wright and NOT ONE Terminator or drone or enemy aircraft or anything will even come by to sniff around or drop an atomic bomb? Beyond that, NOT ONE character involved in this affair even voices concern about giving away the position of their resistance unit's headquarters? That is just too ridiculous.

2. How does everyone have batteries to listen to radios? Did the computers/robots program their nuclear bombs to avoid destroying all the battery warehouses / convenience stores? Come to think of it, how are there cars and gasoline trucks and airplane hangars and entire Air Force fleets left? Was there a total fucking nuclear holocaust or not?

3. The Terminators are nearly invincible. SkyNet manufactures easily a dozen a day in their Silicon Valley factory, and yet we see less than a dozen in the entire movie. Why is their headquarters not crawling with them? Why do they not roam the plains of our fair nation? Why are they so easily beaten by children? Why do they never follow their primary target when he needs a breather? (ie, the scene toward the end, when the Arnold Terminator, sans skin, fails to follow John Connor through the hole in the wall for a good ten minutes of really shitty exposition)

4. So, the obligatory Sexy Asian Chick Who Kind-of Kicks Ass But Ultimately Needs a Man/Robot to Save Her from Being Gang-Raped has somehow managed to thus far avoid her otherwise immediately-post-holocaust fate of becoming a brutalized sex slave to all the dudes left on Earth. Okay, I'm with you, maybe she got lucky, but...after we witness one in what I can only imagine to be a series of close calls...she immediately falls in love with her savior/half-Terminator Sam Worthington and makes the cheesiest move on him ("I'm cold...") and then actually utters this line: "It's so hard to find a good man these days..."???
Gag me with a Terminator dick and blow my head off, Regis!

5. Why does the Arnold Terminator not melt in the molten metal flow that envelops him in the Terminator assembly room? It was enough to eliminate him and the T1000 in T2, yet the clunky, Bret Rattner-esque 'homage' of lava and liquid nitrogen both fail to destroy the Arnold in this one? Does not compute.

6. Why is this movie so much like Empire Strikes Back? The new Star Trek stole a lot from Star Wars, now Terminator Salvation borrows heavily from the second installment in the trilogy. Darth Vader leads Luke into a trap, letting him get into the Death Star too easily; SkyNet leads John Connor into a trap, letting him get into their headquarters too easily. In both, 'Our Hero' escapes, but barely. In Empire, it is believable; in Terminator Salvation, it is ridiculous.

7. John Connor knows the Terminators well--he's known them since he was a kid, after all. He knows that they can be good, if programmed properly. Yet he cannot understand that Marcus Wright could be good, could be unaware, could be a human half-transformed? He doesn't even think to ask about his earlier human existence? No time! More action scenes!
Mr. Connor also knows that punching a Terminator would do nothing but break your hand--and yet he must punch a Terminator's face at least three times in this movie. Not only does his hand never break, but Mr. Connor never seems to learn the lesson he already knew--a fucking BULLET, a fucking MISSILE, a fucking LAVA FLOW, and, yes, also a punch, will not stop this futuristic killer robot. And yet he tries, instead of searching quickly for a better weapon, instead of running away a bit sooner...

8. Apparently, nothing will stop John Connor, either. Not vicious robotic snakes in the river that greatly outnumber him, not multiple Terminators throwing him against metal walls, not bullets to the torso, not a metal pole as wide as his heart puncturing said heart... Really?

9. And enough with the goddamn confused Christ analogies already. How many resurrections must we witness? How many times must these robots die for our sins? Does every movie have to end with a robot giving his 'life' for mankind? Spare me.

Also, who above the age of 4 doesn't realize that a heart transplant is not an easy thing to do, especially with one doctor--of questionable skill/education, of questionable identity (who is she, other than a pregnant woman who kisses John Connor? Why should I give a shit about her when she moons for the camera?), who may or may not be pregnant with somebody's baby or a robot or a snake or something--who is forced to perform the surgery off-the-cuff in the middle of a DESERT?!!
Oh, but don't worry, Mr. Hissy-Fit, Mr. Picky-with-the-Details--the Terminators can't find humans if they're underneath a desert-camouflage net and it doesn't matter what blood type a heart-donor is and of course a self-aware computer trying to eliminate the human race with nuclear bombs would fail to destroy extravagant heart-transplant machinery only found in major hospitals in the largest cities...these things don't matter in McG's world! All that matters is the half-robot man gives his life for John Connor--isn't it awesome?! Jesus is saved! Humanity is saved! Carry on! Buy the DVD, too!

10. The opening sequence in the prison, between Sam Worthington and Helena Bonham Carter, was the worst fucking piece of trash I've seen on the silver screen in a looooooong time. For those of you who haven't seen it, I will summarize:

Sam Worthington: "I won't sign that paper. Because of me people died--I must be destroyed. Wait--I change my mind--I'll do it for a cancer-soaked kiss. Hmm--so that's what death tastes like. Let's move! Huh, now it's the future and I am suddenly in a position to redeem my entire existence..."

Helena Bonham Carter: "Do it. Please. It will be good for stuff. No? Shit. Yes? Great. I will return later on in the movie, to tell you what a fool you were to trust me--look how scary and untrustworthy I looked! Btw, I died of cancer, which is totally irrelevant. Anyway, back to the stupid action sequence where it took Arnold ten minutes to find Christian Bale after he climbed through a hole in the wall..."
Okay, enough bitching for now--I'm bringing myself down.

Let's just raise a glass to the gods of culture, entertainment, and knowledge, and hope one of McG's assistants (poor souls) has the courage to respond in his honor.

Until then, stay cool, Planet Earth!


_

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Y'all Better Recognize


This place exists---

The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance

So, you know, go ahead and have that third pint of Chunky Monkey as you flip through those Grishams on the loveseat-for-two occupied by one. You'll be okay--you've got people.

OR

Your neighbors might not even know you exist and you die there after intrepid, underpaid emergency crews brave the stench to spend six-hours extracting you and your couch from your home and doctors fail in their attempt to surgically remove your skin from the fabric of the couch.

Roll the dice, baby! Life's a gamble, right? Right?!

_

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

This Just Takes the Goddamn Cake


Can you imagine asking someone the following question?
"Can you photocopy the documents I am holding in my hand and FedEx them to me?"
That is, in not so many words, what a friend of mine was just asked to do as part of his duties on a Sears commercial today.

Yes, that is right--now my friend, in Los Angeles, must photocopy his back-up photocopies and spend $20 to overnight them to Hoffman Estates, Illinois. All so that the woman at Sears doesn't need to go through the trouble of having one of her assistants photocopy the original documents she has on her desk.

What a fucking BITCH.

And you wonder why everything is so fucking expensive these days...

_

To Paraphrase Captain Renault in Casablanca:


"I am shocked--SHOCKED--to find that murder and subterfuge are going on in the international petroleum cartel."

But, apparently, it is.

Before you get too mad about it though, please take solace in the fact that Shell Oil was coerced into paying 1/5 of their daily profits-- $15.5million*--to avoid messy details getting brought up in court.

Now let's all just go back to our instinctive daily ritual of ignoring Nigeria...


*2008 annual profit=$34.1billion, a record

_

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

What Recession?


It's nice to know that no matter how tight international funds may be, there's always room in somebody's budget not only to pay a man who is not even a painter to paint pictures he never intends to sell (and might even throw away), but also to rent a beautiful building in Venice for him to do it in (and fly him and his subject there, put them up, feed them...).

Now, don't get me wrong--I think it's a somewhat fascinating project and might even result in some good art, if by accident. If somebody were doing it in his or apartment, garage, or studio and had an intended purpose for the resulting paintings, I'd be all for it.

But this is ridiculous.

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Suicide: Carradine-Style


I can't believe I've been so busy lately (sorry, fans) that I have been unable to comment on the fact that David Carradine hanged himself by his balls in a hotel room in Thailand. My apologies.

Was it suicide? Was it poorly-executed autoerotic asphyxiation? Does it matter?

How many other celebrities have stuck their loved ones in this embarrassing situation? I can only think of one--Michael Hutchence, former lead singer of INXS.

Can you think of any others?

For more information on the "David Carradine Sex or Death 2009" news tornado, please tune in here.

Meanwhile, it's time for another Reader Poll:

What is the most embarrassing way you can imagine being found dead?

My submission:
Lying on the floor of my parents' bedroom, in an ankle-deep pool of dried blood and excrement, a murderous hamster gnawing his way out of my ass. Whoops--sorry mom and dad!

Interesting Tidbit: While researching celebrity suicides, I found this gem:
Ray Combs - talk show host (Family Feud)
1996 --- hanged himself on the night of June 2, 1996, with bed sheets in his hospital room at Glendale Adventist Hospital while on a 72-hour "suicide watch."
Happy Tuesday, Planet Earth! Be careful with those ropes!

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