Hooray for Things!

Knowledge Degeneration

2009-04-20T17:43:00.000-07:00

If you're like me, you watch a lot of television late at night around 11PM-12AM. Hopefully you're not like me after 1AM -- it gets real depressing what with the crying and desperate texting to ex-girlfriends. But if you're like me with regard to the television-watching, you've undoubtedly seen the exciting, relentless, and not-annoying-at-all new ad campaign from the KGB, or "Knowledge Generation Bureau" during your favorite Adult Swim programs:

Pretty dramatic for what is basically a texting service. You send a question from your phone, any question, and they text you back with the answer and charge you a fee. Sounds too good to be true, right? I mean, how many times have you been at a party and you can't remember which actress replaced the younger sister in the final season of Charles In Charge? Finally, someone is looking out for me. What a great gift the geniuses behind the KGB have given us. If anything, we owe them.

I should add, though, that I have no idea what the internet is or how to use it. That's why the KGB is so convenient. I mean, what is the internet anyway? Some vast, interconnected repository of knowledge available for free at the public library and wi-fi hotspots? Who has even heard of it? I wouldn't even know how to use it if I saw it. It's all too frightening. In today's fast-paced MTV-and-diet soda world, I'd rather the KGB charge me money to find out what the name of Gargamel's cat from The Smurfs was. After all, they don't just have knowledge, they generate it. Fuck the "internet," whatever that is.

Maybe I'll change my tune when they figure out how to put the internet on my cell phone (Yeah right! Have you seen cell phones? They're tiny!) until then, I'm going to keep texting them with all my trivial bullshit questions, because I think I'm a special, premium kind of guy. Why shouldn't I pay "additional premium charges?"

Also, I'm too lazy to move to the desk and click a mouse. God bless America!

Christmas Gifts You Don't Need

2008-12-21T22:13:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of Christmas, I decided to stay up until the wee hours of the morning to check in on what the US Economy® is offering the poor and squalid children of the night this holiday season:

Snuggie, The Blanket With Sleeves!

The Pitch: "Blankets are okay, but they slip and slide. And when you need to reach for something, your hands are trapped inside!" So we give you a blanket with sleeves. Yay?

Why You Don't Need It: First of all, if you've ever been "trapped" by a blanket, someone needs to teach you how to use a blanket properly. Also, if it's a hassle to move a blanket out of the way slightly to answer a phone sitting six inches away from you, you need a hobby (and a job, perhaps). And take a quick minute and think about how you'd look wearing a blanket with sleeves around the house. Here's a hint: you'll look ridiculous.

Creepiest Moment From the Infomercial: The old man eating popcorn. His Snuggie makes him look like a post-apocalyptic Omega Man zombie.

HD Vision Wrap-Arounds!

The Pitch: "If you wear prescription glasses, protecting your eyes from the sun can be a real problem. Prescription sunglasses cost a fortune! Now there's a better solution!" The solution, apparently, is ordinary cataract glasses you wear on top of your regular glasses. I think the Goofy Meter just broke.

Why You Don't Need It: I don't personally wear prescription glasses, but I'm sure you would need this product if you've never heard of contact lenses, or have a deep-seated desire to look like Frank Miller's version of Robin:

Creepiest Moment From the Infomercial: The announcer's insinuation that somehow the same technology for high-definition television exists in the sunglasses -- let's see... HDTV resolution, 1080 pixels. Real world resolution, 9000 pixels. If anything, HD technology would make your vision much worse.

Loud N Clear Personal Sound Amplifier!

The Pitch: "What can you do when it's hard to hear and you don't want to miss a word?" Wear a sound amplifier that looks like a bluetooth headset, except it's not a bluetooth headset, so you are twice the douche.

Why You Don't Need It: If you're over 50, it's time to face facts and get a real-live hearing aid -- you know, the sound amplifier that is barely visible and leaves you with some dignity? If you're under 50, holding a plastic cone to your ear and yelling "Speak up!" to everyone would be less silly. Or you could always just say, "I didn't catch that. Could you talk a little louder, please?"

Creepiest Moment From the Infomercial: The guy at the fancy party listening to "attractive" women fawn over him through his Loud N Clear. Because we all know women love guys who show up to parties with headsets and stand alone in a corner all night chuckling to themselves. Aren't you supposed to actually talk to people at social gatherings? I'm just saying.

If you receive any of these gifts this Christmas, find the person who gifted it and give them an open-handed slap in the mouth. It will make Jesus happy.

Happy Holidays!

Did Noah Ever Have Animal Races?

2008-12-09T20:48:00.000-08:00

It's a legitimate question. While building The Ark, did Noah ever kick back and have the various animals at his disposal race each other for his own amusement? I don't know, but I'm sure there are plenty of overbearing Christian mothers who would like to force their kids to think so through those newfangled video machine games.

Well, according to the folks down at Cougar Interactive, that's exactly what happened. And Cougar Interactive knows quality video games -- they have the word "interactive" in their title.

I wouldn't bore you with some cookie-cutter-Christian Video Game. Zoo Race by Cougar Interactive is poised to take the world by storm.

Just take a look at this video clip. It's over eight minutes, but if you watch the whole thing, you won't be disappointed:

I love how Reuben, an older gentleman, pouts like a child about how books about science and history are boring before awkwardly changing into a miniature rhino. I want something with animals! Don't we all?

This game will be mandatory in all public schools by 2010.

The Baldwin Gene

2008-11-20T17:48:00.000-08:00

Alec "Papa" Baldwin has a couple of things he'd like to share with you:

Upon viewing this, you might be asking, what's wrong with Papa Baldwin? Did he go nutshit crazy? Don't worry. It's natural. The "Baldwin Gene" is kicking in.

Take into account the havoc wreaked by the Baldwin Gene on the lives of the other Brothers Baldwin:

Daniel "Party Time" Baldwin

After snagging roles in films like Born On The Fourth Of July (1989) (along with brothers Stephen and William) and Mulholland Falls (1996) it seemed that Daniel Baldwin's career was off to a great start. To sweeten the pot, in 1993 he landed a recurring role in the critically acclaimed TV series Homicide: Life on the Streets. It seemed that nothing could stop second-eldest Daniel's star from rising. Now all he had to do was not develop a cocaine addiction that would bankrupt him, cripple his career and leave him a laughingstock, but thanks to the Baldwin Gene that is exactly what happened.

After a failed stint in rehab he was arrested in 1998 for cocaine possession after running through the lobby of the Plaza Hotel in New York with his wiener hanging out. The judge ordered him back to rehab for three months. For a while it seemed like he was off the junk, until later in July 2006 he rammed his rental car into two parked cars while going 80 in a 35, only suffering minor injuries, surely coked out of his mind. As if that weren't enough for a year, the following November Daniel completed his initiation into Thug Life and made t hat GTA.

Daniel's irrelevance reached critical mass when he joined the cast of VH1's Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Dru (2008) to kick his ongoing cocaine addiction. He infamously quit the show mid-season after a "scandal" with former adult film actress and co-star Mary Carey. Baldwin -- whose newlywed wife had just given birth to their first child -- allegedly came on a little strong to the ex-porn star during the filming of the show. Came on a little strong a lot.

Since then he's sobered up and in his free time he tapes poorly planned interventions starring himself as the truth-talkin' Brotherman to the People.

William "Billy" Baldwin

The Baldwin Gene still lies dormant in the middle child William, the Baldwin With the Most Smooshed Face. William is the only Baldwin whose record is relatively untarnished. He never did drugs, has been happily married for 13 years to singer Cynthia Phillips of the briefly-popular group Wilson Phillips (she's the skinny one), he recently won acclaim for his role in Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale (2005), and currently co-stars with Donald Sutherland on ABC's Dirty, Sexy Money.

But he also did star in Fair Game (1995) and killed the boner of many a young teenager who paid money to see Cindy Crawford's boobies by giving us some of the most ridiculous action-movie sex ever captured on film:

Something tells me you're never going to see that in an Oscar montage.

Stephen "Ain't Misbehaphen'" Baldwin

Youngest brother Stephen was hit hard by the Baldwin Gene. After making a huge splash as the hothead McManus in the Oscar-winning The Usual Suspects (1995), The Gene doubled its efforts, quickly mutating his chromosomes. You guessed it! He got on the junk. However, like many celebrities, the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 changed his life forever and he promptly quit the blow and announced to the world in book form that he was a born-again Christian. Then what does this Jesus-For-A-Day do next? He becomes a spokesperson for Breakthrough Ministry, a Christian evangelical organization which involves "skateboarding and extreme sports, Christian rock concerts, laser light shows and fireworks," which is sort of like regular old boring Christianity, but you know, with a little bit of that Stephen Baldwin flavor for the kids. Tattoos, skateboards and shit. And don't forget the mindless public ramblings in front of confused onlookers.

Since then he's been dividing his time between campaigning for the McCain/Palin ticket last summer and pimping out Our Lord and Savior in front of any camera he can find. Nowadays he has the type of resume that could also pass for a suicide note: ABC's Celebrity Mole Challenge (2001), CMT's Celebrity Bullriding Challenge (2007) (where he broke his shoulder blade and rib, forcing him to exit early), and pretty much any other show that involved has-been celebrities challenging each other to pointless contests in an effort to remain relevant. Here, in Donald "The Don" Trump's depressing-to-say-out-loud Celebrity Apprentice, after successfully defeating the other team, Stephen gloats with douchey America's Got Talent judge Piers Anthony, then awkwardly attempts to convert him to Christ:

God watches Celebrity Apprentice? That is big, dude. Word.

But to be honest, I don't think any of my Baldwin Gene research will matter when the Baldwin Wars of 2046 happen.

5 Great Movies Completely Ruined By Their Endings

2008-11-18T18:54:00.000-08:00

When it comes to movies, the ending is everything. As the great screenwriting guru Bob McKee (played by Brian Cox) reminds us in Adaptation, "If you wow them in the end, that's all that matters." This list represents five films that started off promising, delivering the goods all the way through the beginning and middle, but for whatever reason fell apart in the third act. Films like these are the cinematic equivalent of a dry-hump: exciting at first, but ultimately unsatisfying, confusing, and sometimes ending in tears. Take, for example, number five on the list:

5) Frequency (2000)

Frequency is a modest, mid-budget movie that starts out as a very clever, smartly written sci-fi story about family, regret, and time travel. It follows the character of John Sullivan (Jim Caviezel), a cop whose father Frank (Dennis Quaid) died of lung cancer 30 years ago. One night while horsing around with a HAM radio, John manages (with the help of crazy-ass aurora borealis in the night sky) to contact his father 30 years in the past and commune with him through his HAM radio! Thus, John attempts to save his father's life so he can play catch with him in the future. The movie becomes very cool in the second act, when John and Frank must ellude a serial killer that's chasing them in both time periods. Throughout the film John is portrayed as a wounded soul, a man whose yearning to bring his father back to life has been consuming him as an adult. The ending finds them both under attack from the killer at the same time their respective time periods, frantically warning each other on their Time Radio. Just when the killer has John dead to rights, his graying-templed "New Dad" kicks the door in and blows the killer away. Turns out when John told his dad to quit smoking he did and never got cancer, thus had been alive the whole time and knew to rescue him (at the last second). Then they quite literally go play a game of catch. Sci-fi purists and science nerds like me will note that this ending violates the self-consistency theory, but more importantly it renders all the wonderfully written and acted drama before it impotent: John no longer has to learn to deal with his feelings of loss and regret for his dad, he gets his every wish fulfilled and doesn't grow one bit, and for all our patience and attention we're left with a cliched, saccharine image of father and son that is insulting and hollow, begging for resolution.

4) Die Hard With A Vengeance (AKA Die Hard 3) (1995)

The vaguely-titled Die Hard With A Vengeance had a lot of things going for it. It was released smack in the middle of the prosperous and heady Clinton era of the 90s, and if memory serves, may have been one of the first, if not the first film to have its own website. The franchise was healthy after two strong prequels, and the fact that it was helmed by John McTiernan, the director of the first Die Hard, got fanboys excited to see how John McClane was going to kick the shit out of terrorists next. They had even nabbed Samuel L. Jackson, fresh off his Oscar nod for Pulp Fiction, to play a supporting role. And for the first 2/3rds it was mid-90s action-movie bliss. But then the ending happened, and sperm counts across America went south.

Die Hard With A Vengeance's disappointing ending was doubly awful, since the franchise had become identified by its iconic, thrilling endings. No action fan can forget the image of John McClaine leaping from the roof of the Nakatomi Tower tied to a fire hose as the building explodes into a massive fireball around him in Die Hard (1988) or the ending of Die Hard 2 (1990). In Die Hard 3, bad guy Simon Gruber (Jeremy Irons) attempts to escape via helicopter. McClane takes a few shots with a wimpy pistol, the helicopter goes haywire, gets tangled in power lines, and wrecks rather anti-climactically on the pavement. You see it and kind of shrug. It's something you'd see at the end of a two-part Walker: Texas Ranger episode. Pretty underwhelming.

To be fair, this movie was notorious for having 11th-hour changes made to its ending by many interested parties. An alternate ending is available on the 2007 DVD release, and it is even more perplexing than the original:

I love how casually John McClane can bring a rocket launcher into a public bar. It's obvious as to why they didn't use this, because who would want to see John McClane murder a man in cold blood with a rocket launcher through some irrational game of chicken in some dim, musky European bar? That's not how you end a Die Hard movie. What they settled on was not much better.

Thankfully the brains behind the operation overcompensated for the next outing, Live Free Or Die Hard, and made John McClane fight a fucking fighter jet. Die Hard 3 box office: $100 million. Die Hard 4: $134 million. I rest my case.

3) Planet of the Apes (2001)

Planet of the Apes was Tim Burton's "reimagining" of the 1968 classic starring Charlton Heston. If you ask me, Tim Burton does far too much "reimagining" these days. The ending of the original Planet of the Apes had achieved legendary status. It was widely regarded as a seminal sci-fi moment, a perfect commentary of the times on the cost of aggression and intolerance during the Nuclear Age:

It was a bleak, uncompromising, and though-provoking ending to what up till then had been a goofy story about anthropomorphic apes torturing Charlton Heston.

In Burton's Planet of the Apes, however, our hapless explorer is played by Marky Mark from the Funky Bunch, best known for his Sega CD classic Make My Video game from the early 90s. In Burton's version Marky Mark actually makes it back to his own Earth, only to find that... oh my God! Monkeys are running the Earth! They dress like us! The Lincoln Memorial has a monkey face on it!!! That must mean... the monkeys had a president named Lincoln too? The ending is ludicrous to say the least and stoked the ire of us older losers who cherish the original. But the kids today with their cell-pagers and chocolate malts helped it pull in over $180 million at the box-office.

But if I were Tim Burton I would be more ashamed of this ridiculous Pepsi Ad.

2) The Sixth Sense (1999)

The ending of M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense is widely credited for its staggering box-office receipts: nearly $300 million. It was a phenomenon when it was released. Everyone who saw it was astonished by the shocking twist ending! And they told their friends, and so on, and so on... and M. Night Shyamalan's infamous career was born:

The ending sort of slaps the audience in the face and says, "Hey! Remember when you saw those scenes with Bruce Willis's wife and you thought there was actual drama happening there? Well, we were just messing with you. Bruce Willis was a ghost and he didn't know it and only you could see him." Bullshit! Here the audience participates in this interesting, seemingly complex estranged marriage and in the end we are duped by what amounts to a 2 1/2 hour camera trick. If we just would have looked for red items in the scene we would have known this lazy, contrived ending could work. The first viewing gives you a huge euphoria because you figured it out -- you and M. Night Shyamalan laugh and laugh at how clever it is. Any subsequent viewing and you begin to realize that Shyamalan is a lot like P.T. Barnum -- once he's shown you the elephant, that's pretty much all he's got in the ole bag of tricks. The ending only works if you don't know he's dead. If you've seen it already, watch it a second time and tell me how boring it is.

M. Night Shyamalan followed The Sixth Sense up with Unbreakable (2000), and from then on he's been touring the same beaten, weary circus elephant through increasingly vain and embarassing projects. He even tried to tap into the Marky Mark well a la Tim Burton with last summer's poorly received The Happening, but no such luck. What if M. Night Shyamalan were to make an actual good movie? Wouldn't that be a shocking twist? Zing!

1) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

After James Cameron's 194-minute epic Titanic (1997) earned more than the gross national product of Liberia at the box office, it relaxed Hollywood's former fears about running time -- the prevailing wisdom pre-Titanic was that three-hour epics were risky financial endeavors -- and paved the way for Peter Jackson to begin work on his expansive adaptation of Tolkien's classic Lord of the Rings series. That's when Jackson took the concept of running time to a whole new level in Return of the King and tortured us with not one but seemingly endless endings that teased your need to urinate after sitting through over three hours of movie. I remember them casting the ring into Mt. Doom, then after that it's a blur of bland, gooey melodrama. A lot of bland, gooey melodrama. The film finally settles on a vague and plodding farewell scene that gives you the feeling of a really unsatisfying lap dance, like maybe one where the stripper happens to have the same name as your mother. Filmmaker Kevin Smith famously pointed out that the ending would have been better if Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin) had sucked off Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood).

The problem, haters will point out, is that the film has too many endings. That it should have ended when the ring was thrown into Mt. Doom. Boosters will stand by Jackson for adding all the other clamorous endings, claiming he was only following the book as closely as he could (which he was). But what works in a book does not always work in a movie. There's a reason why movies don't have three endings: it's fucking annoying when movies do that. Just give us one good ending. It's all in the ending.

Honorable Mentions:

Spider-Man 3 (2007)
The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 (1974)
Reindeer Games (2000)

The Second Amendment Never Looked So Sexy

2008-11-18T05:32:00.000-08:00

This one is for the ladies...

Boy, and I thought my old Futon was bad!

The New Star Trek Trailer Will Steal Your Soul

2008-11-18T00:42:00.000-08:00

After Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull basically turned the iconic, beloved title character into a shill for Papa John's Pizza, Paramount Pictures has apparently decided to set its sights on winning the Oscar for Ruining Everything, according to the new Star Trek trailer that was released amid semi-hoopla last Friday:

First you find out that as a young boy Captain Kirk used to hurl himself out of moving cars -- just as they were sliding off of cliffs! What, he didn't pound a Mountain Dew afterward? And why was that sequence shot like something out of Mission Impossible 2? Your soul begins to slowly seep out of your pores as you are treated to the smoldering visage of the New Kirk -- "Casual Male" Chris Pine -- atop his motorcycle at dusk driving a metaphorical long, dusty road. It's kind of similar to a shot from that one shitty movie from the 80s about fighter pilots trying to become "Top Guns" in their field that everyone liked because Tom Cruise was in it but he wasn't crazy yet. I think it was called "Cocktail."

As you struggle to turn away from the lame, bleeding anus of yet another beloved franchise ruined you are shocked to discover the Enterprise was built on Earth in the middle of a cornfield. Since they have the technology, wouldn't it make more sense to build a colossal spaceship piece-by-piece in space like NASA is currently doing with our actual colossal spaceships? It would save a lot on fuel, and that's just for starters. I guess in the future stupid ideas make sense.

Then the bridge of the Enterprise looks like an IKEA model kitchen. Then you see Spock, the poised, intelligent Vulcan philosopher, drop an elbow on Kirk in the middle of the bridge for some reason. Then about thirty full seconds of bombastic space battles, people running, screaming, and shit blowing up. You can faintly smell the familiar burnt-hair scent of the oncoming corporate synergy-orgy, or as I call it, the "synorgy," when the film is released next Spring. You can see visions of second-rate action figures, mediocre video game iterations, and fast-food instant win games with catchphrases like "Beam me up!" By now your soul, along with mine, is owned by Viacom.

If Paramount was trying to give me a geek boner, they've failed. This trailer didn't even give me an actual boner (which was a disappointment because I haven't had one of those in years). They might as well have titled it, "J.J. Abrams Cashes His Check."

Oh well, there's always Transformers 2.