All the dead celebrities

This past week has just been ridiculous with the numerous celebrity deaths. It got me thinking about my own mortality and how I could fight off death. My solution: Web MD bitches. The Internet is great for finding answers to all sorts of questions, why not trust it to tell me what is wrong with me and my body?? I'm bound to save not only time but thousands, if not millions of dollars by not actually going to a doctor.

Web MD has this nifty tool that let's users enter symptoms and it can come back and till them what is the matter with them. It's simply amazing. Over the past couple of days it has told me that I have a case of hysterical pregnancy, mild rabies, and erectile dysfunction. I knew I was feeling a bit off but I really had no idea until Web MD told me. Now if only it could dispense prescriptions my life would be set.

Bloody True

I have recently been turned on to the HBO series True Blood.  My initial feelings for the series was that it was an obvious rip off the budding Twilight vampire craze thats hitting America.  I grew up watching the Buffy The Vampire Slayer series so I've been exposed to this tough girls in a dangerous world story line for almost as long as I can remember.  Frankly I was kind of annoyed by HBO for even thinking that going with the flow was a good idea.  HBO has been known for its original productions but this seemed a little lacking of its famous spark. 

When the series was first advertised they added that it was from the creators who gave us Six Feet Under, which I really enjoyed.  So, reluctantly I gave it a shot.  I watched the first three episodes and was quite frankly surprised.  The first episode has more twists, turns, and plot points, then that silly Twilight movie.  The content was also very mature.  Sex, drugs, and violence fill each of the the hour long episodes.  The characters were instantly likable.  The childish innocence of the main character, Sookie Stackhouse, is very believable.  Her name is also fun to say in a souther accent, and she can read minds.  Bill, the boy-toy vampire is actually played by a british actor, and his accent and body language is more than believable as a souther gentlemen.  The other characters are fun and also believable.  One character that I have enjoyed in particular is Lafayette, a gay black drug-dealing prostitute who hates inbreed hicks.  His interactions with the local trailer trash give a perfect bite of humor in some of the darker episodes.  

I completed all of season one and caught myself itching for more.  After what seems like almost a year, season 2 has arrived.  The first two episodes were simply phenomenal and I hope the winning streak continues.  You can rent first season of True Blood on DVD and second season is now airing Sunday nights at 9:00 on HBO.  If you like vampires, sex, drugs, and black male prostitutes check out True Blood.  

P.S.  Stephanie Meyer released her Twilight series 2 years after Charlaine Harris released the first 2 books of her Sookie Stackhouse series.  Take your Twilight series and F*** off you Mormon bitch!

I give True Blood 4.5 naked Anna Paquins out of 5.

Surveillance

One of the great things about having an HD cable subscriptions is that there are some really cool channels that are not available in other subscription packages. One of those channels is HDNet. HDnet is pretty much why HD was invented, there are lots of documenteries about far off places, HD concerts, and HD movies.

HDNet does something that no other channel does, which is play one interesting indie movie every month that has not yet come out in theaters. I find that incredible, but when you have spent a lot of money on an HD TV there had better be a reason to own it other than "it looks pretty". Which brings me to the movie I watched Wednesday night; Surveillance.

Surveillance has been heavily promoted on HDNet the past month and I was really excited to see it. It has everything you could want in a movie. Violence. Check. A murder mystery. Check. Bill Pullman. Double check. It was even written and directed by Jessica Lynch and produced by her father David Lynch. That should have been my first warning about this movie.

Surveillance begins with two masked intruders, breaking into the home of a good looking middle age couple in the middle of the night. The intruders then begin to brutally beat the husband with a machete while the wife watches in horror. She manages to escape only to be run down by the killer's white van. That's pretty much where the movie stops being interesting.

In the next scene we are introduced to the FBI agents (Bill Pullman and Julia Ormon) who are being sent to investigate the carnage that happened at the home as well as another incident. Immediately the movie dives into the typical cliches including and not limited to: cops who don't like FBI, dumb redneck cops, dumb yet sexy drug addicts, a kid that tries to warn everyone but no one listen to, and a twist in the plot that any one who has ever watched a movie can spot a mile away. I don't want to give too much away but I was left feeling very underwhelmed.

I truly went into Surveillance thinking I was going to be wowed but I just left feeling a little bit pissed off because the movie made me feel like I was dumb and would find brilliance in its mediocrity, but what do you expect from David Lynch's daughter?

I give Surveillance 2 machete chops to the neck out of five.

Andy'll Try It

I was hoping Andy Richter would become more of a presence on Conan than just the announcer.I love the results:



Another one:

Watch me change from a man to a man who hates himself.

Last night I found myself cruising through the empty streets of downtown.  Alone with my thoughts, I decided that I should find some entertainment.  I always enjoyed a good brain nap on a Wednesday night, so I continued down the main strip of the town until I arrived at the small paper mache theatre.  The title above the twin glass doors read Cine-4.  The 4 stands for the number of auditoriums.  My shoulders slumped when I scanned across the options.  Imagine That, starring Eddie Murphey(no thanks).  The Proposal, starring Ryan Reynolds and the chick from Speed(gay).  Up, starring cartoons(already have seen it, but very good).  Last but not least, Transformers 2, starring giant plastic toys from the 80's.  

I knew what I was going to do, even though I knew it was wrong.  I purchased my ticket for Transformers 2.  As I slipped my wallet into my pocket my brain screamed over and over again, "What are you doing!"  My body walked to a podium where a shaggy haired teen tore my ticket.  "You can still go back!" I screamed at myself.  I walked past the boy toward the theatre door.  I reached for the door and suddenly paused.  A tidal wave of shame suddenly splashed over me.  I had just paid to see a Michael Bay film.  Even worse, I had just paid to see a sequel to a terrible Michael Bay film.  

"Are you going to go in?" A large woman asked from behind me.

"Oh, uh... yes," I relied with great guilt.  I stepped into the theatre and took the seat closest to the door.  Sitting in front of me a women cradled a baby her arms.  A look of disgust slipped across my face.  "Who the hell brings a baby to see Transformers?" I asked myself.  As the audience settled, a fat teenage boy waddled to the front of the auditorium.  He lifted his pudgy fingers to the sides of his mouth and announced that cell phones were not welcome.  He put his hands down and started to leave when he suddenly spotted the women with the baby in front of me.  He lifted his hands back up and shouted that crying babies were not welcome either.  A smile swept across my face.  I wanted to hug him.  The theater dimmed and the trailers started.  This is where I get into the review of Transformers 2.  It has spoilers so deal with it as you may.  

I'm not going to go through the whole film but I will hit the parts that I feel are important. Michael Bay(the director) does not give a shit about anything except explosions.  The entire movie was basically plotless until an old transformer with a cane did us all a favor and filled us in, and that wasn't until halfway through the movie.  Heres the the first half of the movie.  Sam goes to college.  Sam has visions.  Bad guys want visions.  Sam runs.  Of course, lets not forget Megan Fox.  Her beauty is overplayed within the first five minutes of the movie.  The first shot you see of her, she has her legs spread on a motor cycle.  She reeks of slut immediately.  In a recent Entertainment Weekly article Megan Fox explains that a Michael Bay movie has nothing to do with acting, and she wasn't lying.  It's apparent that she wasn't putting much effort forward.  Nobody in the movie was.  This brings up the question, if acting's not important, then why are there actors?  I don't know what the director is thinking, but he's obviously not thinking enough.  This is how I imagine an audition with Michael Bay.

MB:It says here that you haven't been in many movies.

Actor:Nope

MB:Can you act?

Actor:Nope

MB:Okay, can you run on a treadmill for more than 15 minutes?

Actor:Yep

MB:Your hired.

The last half of the movie goes as follows.  Robots fight.  Racist robots show up.  Bad robots want to eat the sun.  More robots fight.  Humans fight robots.  Sam runs.  Good guys win.  Megatron gets away.  Seriously...      thats it.  Now, the action is phenomenal.  But you quickly get bored and just what to see Megan Fox naked.   Two thirds through the film I was hoping my cellphone would suddenly transform into a gun and shoot me in the face.

Overall I give this movie one shot in the face out of five.      

  

Harold Ramis

Thanks to my friend Rob for this tip. Harold Ramis was on Jimmy Fallon and I missed it!!

The Next Tyler Perry/Spike Lee

I have an idea for a movie and I'm dead serious about making it. First I should explain myself.

I have an odd fascination with sassy black women, you know the type, they go get their hair and nails did, usually work at customer service jobs that they are terrible at, and of course have a baby daddy. I find them hilarious. I know, I know I would be exploiting a stereotype, but whatever Tyler Perry can get away with it, why can't I?

So my movie would be two and half hours of sassy black women debating hot topics of our day like abortion, the economy, and the war in Iraq all while doing the following:



I can sum this movie up in one word: provocative.

The Midnight Meat Train

The Midnight Meat Train is not a gay gang bang, it's a gorfest starring Bradly Cooper, Vinny Jones, and the guy from Hostel 2 who got his manparts cut off with a rusty pair of scissors.  The story is based off a short story from the same author who penned Hellraiser.  I originally had no hopes for the Vinny Jones slasher but of course, I was pleasantly surprised.  The movie was simply over-the-top with the gore.  Lets just say, there's a scene where Sam Raimi's brother gets hit in the  back of the head with a massive meat tenderizer causing an insanely bloody digital eyeball to pop out of its socket.  Blood then sprays in the face of the man's fellow passengers.  Things just get crazy from there including a giant meat hook to the crotch and a women getting her head beaten off her shoulders.  The gore continues but the story is what makes the movie interesting.    A photographer(Pre-Hangover Bradly Cooper) is looking for darker subject matter for his art.  His search leads him into the subway.  He suddenly finds a connection in his photos.  People who get on the midnight train with this creepy quiet guy(Post-Juggernaut Vinny Jones) suddenly disappear.   So of course instead of letting murderous dogs lie he investigates further leading him into a hellish spiral and a sick and twisted finale.  

The movie is frankly mediocre but it took me to a familiar place.  Classic horror.  It had the same vibes as The Ninth Gate, Event Horizon, or The Crow.  The kind of childish terror you feel when a character you like is spiraling into a hell you know he's not going to be able to get out of.  The close of the film took me back to middle school where film innocence was still present.  The film to me was all about that feeling of nostalgia.  

Overall I give the film 3.5 dead naked bitches out of 5.  

The Collaborator

Hello, I am the collaborator.  JT asked that I contribute to his blog.  So I'm doing it.  Here it is, my contribution.  Months back he tells me he wants to start a blog.  The first thought I had was that this could be potentially retarded, or amazing.  So...   here we go.

Ghostbusters - The Video Game

It's like it's 1991 again and I'm reliving my childhood, but this time daddy isn't drunk!

I'm a huge Ghostbusters fan and have been waiting for this game since I heard it was in development a few years ago. It went though a few rough patches and at one time it was cancelled, thankfully Atari brought it back to life.

The game takes place two years after the events in the second movie and introduces a new, mute character simply named the 'Rookie'. All other the other Ghostbusters are back too with the original actors doing the voices. It's a lot of fun seeing a skinny Harlod Ramis and a somewhat thinner Dan Aykroyd, both of which wrote the script for the game. I don't want to reveal a lot about the story but it revolves around an evil architect only briefly mentioned in the first movie.

As for the game play, think Resident Evil 4 meets Gears of War. There is a lot of running and shooting with a lot of dark, creepy tunnel exploration. In many of the mission you work along side of the Ghostbusters, but there are several where you go off on your own to earn your stripes.One thing I wasn't expecting were all the boss fights. Most of them were really good but there were a couple that get a bit too chaotic and ended in really cheap deaths.

Overall, I found the game to be a lot of fun and pretty to look at even though it was short and had some control issues(catching a ghost is awkward the first time). The game is a great tribute to fans and should checked out by anyone interested in seeing the Ghostbusters in their full glory.

I give the game 4 punches to the crotch out of five.

Hugs

Here is where I am going to go off the deep end. I read an article or watched some show on TV, I can't remember due to all the alcohol abuse, but what ever it was, it was about how an elementary school wanted to ban hugging. The thought behind it being that if kids didn't touch each other so much they would not be as violent or aggressive. I laughed at how dumb of an idea this was. Kids should be allowed to hug. Hugs are amazing. If I woke up everyday and got a hug my life would be awesome. Think if other people had the same experience. There would be a lot less people on depression medication. Anyway, this was just something I wanted to bring up. Fuck, now I need a hug...or some drugs.

The Beginning

I should preface this blog with what I am doing on here...well I've got things to say and everyone is going to here about them. I have many interests and I want to share my thoughts and feelings about them with the world. Those interests include and are not limited to: music, movies, video games, and the ridiculous things people do on a day to day basis.I warn you now that at times I might sound angry or bitter, but I mean no harm I just want to get a lot off my chest.

I won't be the only one posting on here so I hope that will keep it from getting boring. I have enlisted the help of a long time chum in helping me write. He has more issues than I do so things might get a little bit a weird, maybe a even a little bit gay, who knows.