Really Frodo form

I have been meaning to write more, seriously, but then I got Google Earth and spent 4 hours marking all of the places I worked in LA.

Short musings.


I don’t know of anything on Earth that has a higher fun quotient than Guacamole.

It’s fun to say.

It’s fun to make.

It’s fun to eat.

It’s fun to mispronounce. Calling it gawk or guac, or moley, whatever.

It’s fun to substitute as a swear word: Holy Guac-a-mol-e!

It makes things more fun when combined. Sure you have a sandwich or a burger, add some guacamole and you are suddenly more interested. It’s even fun to apply.

You can call it Mexican Mayonnaise, Mexican Mayo, Mex Mayo, South of the Border Substitute Lard

The only thing stopping it from being the most fun thing on Earth is that it doesn’t come in different colors (naturally). But if you want blue guac, you could probably use food coloring, and I bet it would be fun.

Sex can lead to bad happenings, like having to kick her out with “yeah, that was cool, but now you got to leave.” It can also lead to marriage, which is the opposite of fun. NOT LIKE GUACAMOLE. NOT LIKE GUACAMOLE AT ALL.

++++

I really think there should be an age limit for boob jobs. I think you have to be at least 20. And while were on it, you can’t get your first boob job after 49. You can get them modified if you already have them, but not a fresh set.

When you are a teenager, you don’t need bigger boobs. There is still tread on the tires, the odds are you haven’t been morally bankrupted yet, and the odds are also good that you aren’t a complete slut yet. You are still able to get away with your overall charm without breasts.

After you turn 20, and everything begins to go downhill then get the implants. It will only make the downward spiral less difficult. Charm only goes so far in a strip club, you know. Well, that’s harsh, but to be fair, sugar daddy’s like big cans too. They are only human.

The 18 or 19 year old can get away in the Halloween Costume made out of duct tape and used beer cans by giggling and prancing around. We know the 20 year old has done blow of someone’s shlong.

Take a look at Southern Kalee. She doesn’t need the boobs yet, and I don’t need to see the scars on the bottom of her jammers.

This is also clearly another left wing rant on the necessity of stem cell research.

++++

The designated driver is something of a mixed blessing. They are wonderful humans for doing so. But unless they are in AA, they take a turn for the worse when you return for the bar, as they want to drink with you and they keep making you do shots. At least that’s what it’s like in LA, where cabs are an arm and a leg and everyone’s a complete lush.

+++++

This is why I can’t leave LA

http://www.thecobrasnake.com/partyphotos/arivingatlax/IMG_0385.html

++++

I have said it before, but The Simpsons is at a point where it’s really good again. This years “The Italian Job” was among the best of the decade. The single joke writing is as good as it’s ever been, and even though the stories aren’t as good, they are getting back the rythym of string jokes of the great years.

Homer: Oh my god, I’ve killed that horrible bug!
Homer’s Devil: Bury it, no on will know.
Homer’s Angel: OOOH, I’m gonna tell!
Homer’s Devil: The hell you will. *kills the angel with a Trident*
Homer’s Devil: Now we’re in this together.
Homer and his Devil high five and then: Yeah!

+++++

http://www.bradelterman.com/6.html

Take a look at his belt. That’s when you know you are the shit.

http://www.bradelterman.com/10.html

In 1978 the Eighties started, mainly because of Animal House and Star Wars effect on culture. I can go on about this, but really, this picture of the greatest punk band ever in these clothes would be my closing argument to a post you don’t need to read.

http://www.bradelterman.com/17.html

From Sex God to radio god in a mere 25 years. I love you Indie 103.1 and I love you more Steve Jones.

++++

Daft Punk is

Playing in my house

++++

As much as Dvorak has ruled my Itunes the last year, I think that the best singles of last year have to come down to:

5. Hate it or Love it: The Game and 50
4. Since You Been Gone: Kelly Clarkson
3. Hung Up: Madonna. I still want to sleep with her
2. Do you want to: Franz Ferdinand
1. Amerie: 1 thing. I still want to sleep with her.


And that’s about it.

(continued...)

Videos and "classic" films

As John Madden once said:

John Madden: I love to see a fat guy score.
Pat Summerall: Why?
John Madden: Because first you get a fat guy spike, then you get the fat guy dance. –

The Replacements

And a quote from what is probably the WORST DVD in my library. Some people would look and point out that Out Cold and Eurotrip are just as bad, to which I say you are an idiot.

Out Cold was nudity and more screen time for Zach:
( I wanna be in the most independent indie film of all time. *in background* Patton Oswald: Nice Balls! Brian Posehn: You again? Check ya laterrr.)
Galafinakis from being a classic comedy. I still watch it about twice a year, in a hammered cold room with friends debating about moving to Vancouver.

Eurotrip was in the top five of films for that year, behind The Incredibles, Sideways, Before Sunset, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And if you don’t agree, then you have never seen that movie completely happy and drunk.

Even with the ridiculous “I will survive” dance scene that seems lifted from the School of Dancing around a table in chick flick school (and if you get that reference, kudos), The Replacements stands as a bad sports movie with tremendous rewatchability. I probably watched it in various lengths around 10 times on cable.

Around this time is about the same time I started to drift from most of my film school friends to more accessible fare and gave up trying to debate the next great American film vs. watching films for the value of being entertained.

But this brings us to:

Dave’s top videos

#24: Since I left you – The Avalanches

Thanks to technology I can finally link to videos.
(Steazie note: Thanks to roommates, you can link them correctly!)

As you have probably clicked and watched by now, I hope you have come back to read my review, instead of clicking on other links.

The video is essentially a single gimmick, watching this big miner dance and release some of the joy pent up in his drab life. And that’s about it. But there are three moments that give some depth to this.

First, the intro of the two miners sitting deep in a hole in black and white before they hear faint music coming from above, and when they open the hatch the world turns to Technicolor. Sure, this isn’t Wizard of Oz, but the changeover is earned and is coherent with the plot.

Second is the moment when the bigger miner looks at where he is. He doesn’t hesitate, or wander around looking at the world. He knows exactly what to do, and he chooses to DANCE, DANCE, DANCE! The fact that he doesn’t wait makes this work, as he realizes exactly what this opportunity is. Add to the fact that he actually can move, and it’s usually not over the top comedic adds a lasting charm instead of playing it totally for laughs.

Finally, there is the little coda at the end, when we see the second miner fade back to black and white and then wind up in his chair withered and old. It’s almost a cheap blow emotionally, but if you buy the video, it comes satisfyingly as an end to the idyllic dream world of the video.

And the blonde is smoking hot in her dancer way, and only is marginally overshined by her miner dancing partner.

In the end, it’s a simplistic and one note video, but one done with an honest approach that makes it less of a commercial tool for the band, like Fallout Boy’s Dance, Dance or anything by Bowling for Soup. In contrast to these and many, many others you see that while often shallow and self serving, videos like this can be made within a systematic genre format and still feel fresh and interesting.

I would be remiss not to mention the other great video from The Avalanches album frontier psychiatrist which once again is rather gimmicky, but clever enough on it’s own to warrant watching multiple times. These videos could be interchangeable, I just like the Since I left you video more for it’s cohesion in storytelling.

(continued...)

Let’s attack pop culture.

So with my anger out of the way:

Movies:

The Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor Award for the Worst film idea of the year (tie):

Remaking “Yours, Mine, and Ours” and making a sequel to Cheaper By the Dozen.

If there were shootings following Get Rich or Die Tryin’ how come people men are keeping women off the pill.

The Ja Rule singer that shouldn’t be in movies award:

The easy winner here would be 50, but he was playing himself. That he struggled is one thing, but it’s still second to this years winner: Usher.

Namely for playing a straight male.

The Katie Holmes in The Gift award for a normally clothed actress who suddenly shows breasts to the audiences complete surprise:

Carla Gugino in “Sin City”

The Bruce Dickenson, yes the Bruce Dickenson award for best Christopher Walken moment:

Him coming in one Vince Vaughn hog tied to the bed In Wedding Crashers.

The Hunt For Red October Award for movie I am probably going to watch the most when it comes to cable.

Comedies usually win this, but because of the terrible third act and the fact that you rarely stumble on to movies that are 45 minutes in on cable, the award goes to Sin City over Wedding Crashers and 40 Year Old Virgin.

Speaking of:

The Hook, good god get me an editor for this film:

Wedding Crashers.

The South Park already did it award:

Since The Ringer actually was allegedly in development before the South Park episode ever aired, lets go back to season two, when at the film fest Cartman deemed all indie films a “Bunch of Gay Cowboys eating pudding.”

Cowboy #1: Well I’ve finished my pudding, what should we do?

Cowboy #2: Let’s experiment with our sexuality.

Now I haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain, but I am sure it’s almost exactly like that.

The Dune, you know what, this book is just inadaptable award:

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I mean, what the hell happened. What the hell was with the gorgons looking closer to senior citizens than aliens thing? And the dolphins song. It looked like we might get a good movie with the trailer, but nope.

The maybe the whole thing wasn’t so good after all award:

The receipts for Serenity might make this point with Firefly. Just some pretty uninspired storytelling.

On the other hand we get the:

The Incredibles I can’t believe how good the storytelling in this film.

Batman Begins. Few movies ever have done exposition this well, it’s another thing for a comic book movie to do this and include the origin story as well. And now we have a clear cut winner for the best comic book movie ever made.

The Remington Steele/ James Bond Award.

When Remington Steele was on the air and Roger Daltry stepped down from the Bond franchise, they found their replacement in Pierce Brosnan. But this was in the mid 80’s when Remington Steele was still on the air. The word got out and the network used this knowledge to get bigger ratings and trap Brosnan to the show and not to the Bond throne. The show struggled and then failed. But there was thing where Brosnan and the show became completely compelling because you knew that Brosnan suddenly was able to utter the words, “Bond, James Bond” and woo everyone in the room, woman and man. Before you didn’t buy him completely, because he didn’t have that swagger. Why I think Brosnan is as good as Connery is because he lived as Bond for close to a decade before doing GoldenEye. He knew who Bond was as good as any because he was given that swagger but not the chance to prove it.

So this year’s award goes to Daniel Craig in Layer Cake / Munich.

In Layer Cake we see a suave guy playing a mobster, and it’s somewhat there, but not completely. When you watch him in Munich, you see a guy who looks like James Bond. I don’t want to sound shallow, or gay, but he just wasn’t all there in Layer Cake, at least in presence for me. In Munich, he steals your attention because you can’t stop thinking, “THAT’S JAMES BOND!!!!” I mean, it’s like turning a Ramona into Angelina Jolie or Pam Anderson (pick your flavor). They suddenly go from being ok to someone who knows for a fact they can fuck anyone in the room.

Watching Munich, you see an entirely different actor. It’s almost uncanny.

The Love Actually award for chick flicks David is going to love even though it’s detrimental to his mental stability:

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Ice Princess
Brokeback Mountain.

The Yahoo Serious award for distractingly bad hair

Paul Reiser in “The Aristocrats”

And now to the shortened best of the year:

I once again didn’t see all that many movies.

But the top five in no order

Sin City
Munich
The 40 year old Virgin (you know how I know you are gay, you put this in your list)
Batman Begins
King Kong

Just off:

Good Night and Good Luck, minus 10 minutes from the film and you have the best made for classrooms film ever made. A great story with great acting, but there is not quite enough in the story to call it a great movie.

The Aristocrats: Funny, but not deep enough, and the division hurts the movie, though the South Park joke is genius.

(continued...)

The year 2005 in review. All bets are off this best of.

Best of the worst:

How else to put it, I can’t imagine a worse year than 2005. Let’s include what happened after X mas during 04.

That little wave that destroyed a good lot of people. Sure the quarter of a million dead is like a drop in the bucket of the population there, but I mean I don’t even think we can fathom it. I mean a quarter of a million dead in less than 24 hours. Honestly, I don’t even think most of us could even process that damage. Well, at least we weren’t able until September.

I had a good year, technically. No one I know died, and I didn’t have any crippling injuries (like 2000) and I didn’t have a massive heartbreak. I barely dated, I stayed at home far too many nights (Steaze will back that one up), and in short got to do little outside of my job.

In context, I was pretty much devoted to my job. Yet, I was tremendously underpaid for the work or commitment I gave, and factor in that I was 23/24 for this year, it’s almost a complete waste of a year in your twenties, especially if it is in a field you have no care about whatsoever.

I certainly had some good moments in-between. The one thing about the service industry in LA (or retail or low level for that matter) is that the people who are under 30 are usually a blast to work with. Going to work was usually fun as long as some of the guys are involved.

My year was filled with the sort of work-a-day, minimal fun in the off time that married people are supposed to live. Married people over 50. And I am not even rich!!!

For god’s sake I stopped listening to music in the car and turned on NPR. That’s how old I make my self feel these days.

Maybe that whole “may you live in interesting times” doesn’t apply to people who lived in 1968 or 2001 or 2005.

Dave’s review of the year.

Late Dec. and Jan. Lets skip the tsunami for now.

March, April, and May

The TV networks give up on covering the war in Iraq as the death toll in the country reaches 30,000 or so for DEATHBED COVERAGE!!! For about two months, we were forced to watch deathbed footage. If you think that people are terrible for watching Paris Hilton retrospectives on VH1 yet you followed this without jumping at people, then you are no better. I think Peter Jennings is probably happy to have passed, because I don’t see him not getting fired as Greta Van Sustren keeps looking for a blonde in Aruba.

July

Terrorist bombings in London. Just when you think you can forget. So what if it was a minor attack by terrorists that the “War on Terror” doesn’t have on it’s radar (actually that’s probably a really big deal). Thankfully the death toll was rather low. But I remember hearing the news and just wanting to puke. The same feelings I had on 9/11 of just thinking “this is our world now, and I don’t know how to deal with it in any rational way.”

August

http://ineverlovedyou.blogspot.com/2005/09/4-days-7-minutes-99-and-one-tuesday.html

I think we all know how I feel on this one.

September to December:

We finally saw the bubble pop around the Bush white house. It wasn’t a great sweep, but at least we saw some admittance of mistakes, and maybe, just maybe someone will have the proof to get Rove out of the West Wing.

But I’ll go back to the 23rd of January when Johnny Carson died.

I am putting this up even though it’s a half link. I read the magazine, and you can probably find the whole article if you look for it, but this is a Klosterman article all about the cultural ramifications of Johnny dying.

https://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/Esquire/2005/05/01/805173?extID=10026

In the end, he is able to prove that Carson dying was not the end of an icon, but the end of an era. We are now left with nothing but endless choices and different paths, and this combination will lead to most of us having less in common with our neighbors than we ever did. (that was his view, the following is mine)

We are a society that is divided as there ever has been. On the surface there is two divisions, blue and red states.

The biggest reason why the blue states can’t win is that they keep splintering into little bits. There seem to be 15 different major groups that make up this party, from the environmentalists, to the gay equality, to the animal cruelty people, to the people who just don’t like Bush and so on. The only thing they can agree on is that the repubs aren’t doing a good job. Anywhere.

Meanwhile, the red states keep attacking and getting people behind them. From turning the Schiavo case into a case against tacitly about abortion, to claiming there is a war on Christmas (a side step from the unsuccessful war on Christianity that popped up after 2002), and somehow the morals of the world are decaying. (I personally fall in the middle on this one, I mean it’s ridiculous to cancel a manger display in a town with a few non-Christians, but it’s another thing to say that it’s demeaning the truth of the matter, especially since all evidence seems to point that Jesus wasn’t actually born on the 25th of December).

The red / blue war is terrible for this country, because it’s basically the parties fighting against two figureheads and all of the rest gets lost in between.

Republicans are fighting against everything in California they don’t like. (promiscuous teens, gay marriage, loose morals, or Paris Hilton, Brokeback Mountain, and marijuana dealers vs. churches)

The Dems are just bitching about Bush and everything he seems to do wrong in their eyes. (Iraq, Katrina, this fictional war on terror or Fox News, Fox News, and Fox News vs. the facts)

Here is the difference, one side is fighting and moving, the other side is just whining.

The problem is that most Americans do have common ground, but they are being ripped from the common ground because our parties are fighting each other instead of working for a decent future. Do I have an answer? Maybe a third party or a fourth (lets separate Neo – Cons from Republicans, one lot is absolutely evil, the other used to be the party of Lincoln, Nixon pre-1973 and smaller government). Other than that, it’s about time Americans looked for common ground for tomorrow, and I think that starts with making sure we are better educated.

And if I learned anything this year, it’s that there are too many dumb people running things in this country.

And for each one in control, there are a hundred more arguing they are doing the best job possible.

Now, posted later tonight is my fun year wrap. I just couldn’t do this without a rant.

(continued...)

Auld Lang Syne

so me and Dr. Brody are celebrating New years at home.

Thats the fitting end to the worst year I have ever seen. I blame the red states.

more so i blame the blue states. Well, I blame them both equally. I think this is god's revenge for reality television and Paris Hilton.

Second verse, same as the first, a little bit faster and a whole lot worse.

I'll give some awards out tommorow, but I'll let you in on the surprise. This years big winnner was mother nature.

(continued...)