Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold. And then something completely different.

 

Dave's favorite poem.

Dave's favorite new show.



Part one:



Part two:



Part three:



This is my life. This is how me and my friends talk, and the bare pettiness of it all, well the Seinfeld comparisons, they fit.

(continued...)

Weekly Wideo Woundup.

So it’s time for another music video post, in what is going to be a coming feature installment as we here at INLY try to create a schedule for publishing, (read: a reason for people other than our friends to check this site out) and realignment of what we here at the site will do.

As it stands with Dave, Monday’s will be for movies.

Wednesday’s will be Videos, but to be punny it’s called Wideos, and while you must surely have noted that it’s Thursday, Dave is on GY time, which means that he tends to post the day after. And Friday, if it tops 2500 words.

Saturdays will be for sports, and at the end of the month, we’ll do a roundup with the viral video of the month. As for the rest, it’s blogtastic, with us writing what we want, when we want, and occasionally updating the INLY dictionary.

First off.

The new Beyonce and Jay – Z collabo, Déjà vu, which I believe our good friend James over at Green Pea-ness covered, but as soon as I saw Beyonce in the title, I flipped over to ESPN. Why, because it’s far more interesting to watch Beyonce than to listen to Beyonce.


There is an online petition from a bunch of (searching for the word to preface devoted that includes idiotic, misguided, likely racially motivated, and to the wrong altar for R&B, which in this case stands for Rap & Beyonce because in reality, Beyonce is one of the first singing rap artists, as much of DC’s catalogue sound more like rap songs in structure than they do R&B, they just fooled people by having Beyonce record a 2nd through 15th vocal track and lay it over around the ¾ mark. Compare the affirmed style of delivery of a Survivor or Say My Name to a Toni Braxton (older) Ne-Yo (new) or The Supremes track (their forerunners, in every way down to the lead singers career and personality). Now compare them to a rap song. Which group does it belong in?)) fans who want a second video shot as this one seems to destroy the legacy of Beyonce’s dancing style, calling it herky-jerky and erratic.

First-off, Beyonce was NEVER a good dancer. People overlooked this because of four reasons, two of which look exactly the same, and are measured in both numbers and letters, one was her ass, and the last was the end sum of these three, which is that she’s totally fucking hot. Even if she’s not doing it for you in one area, you’d be hard pressed to find a man who wouldn’t want a girl with a bod like hers.

You want proof?

Here you go.

the dumbest impetus for a song in their career, Survivor. Really, when a person compares your group to a TV show because the lead singer’s father keeps kicking people out of the band, don’t make a song about it.

Crazy in Love Here’s some proof, all she does in terms of dancing is wiggle her ass and walk back and forth.

Baby Boy I was strongly in favor of adding all Beyonce videos to the FMBT* canon, but this one, even with B in a silver dress with tons of stomach cleavage, is one of those boggling moments which should be so hawt, but is not because of the distraction factor.

Sure, white people can’t dance, and those who are dorky enough to laugh at this sterotype and also name their band after a Simpsons character (who NOBODY LIKES) even make crappy videos about it, tiled Dance, Dance.

The flip of this is like an SAT test question:

White people cannot dance. Many black people can. Does this mean that all black people are great dancers.

A. Absolutely
B. Without a doubt.
C. Are you joking, sure they can’t swim, but they can dance, about that I am totally sure.
D. Racial stereotypes, which are always harmful but often derived from fact, are almost always not true, with the exception that all Irish Catholics are mean, fighting drunks.

Sure, she’s got some rhythm and bounce in her step, but I wouldn’t call her a great dancer. Or even a good dancer. Or even a competent one. It’s like watching a kid on DDR, sure they have all the steps to get a great score, but in the end, it doesn’t mean that they can dance in real life.

Beyonce’s body is like a DDR console for that skinny kid at your local arcade; it’s enough of a cover to convince people she can dance, even though all we want to see is her twins jiggle.

Here’s the video. And props to Jay for dropping Juan Pierre, the CF for the Cubbies who keeps breaking my heart and underperforming. Side note, hey, Jim Hendry and the Tribune tards running the Cubbies, couldn’t you have gotten this guy in the trade which gave the Cubs Alfono Alfonseca and the Marlins Dontrelle Wills (hold on, my word auto spell checker is about to have a meltdown), it didn’t cost us a world series appearance or anything. Oh, wait it did. *%*^#&#@@ 2003 all over again.

Anyway, here’s the vid.



Sucks don’t it. As an avid drinker, I’d like to note that changing up your drink can lead to seriously catastrophic results. This may be your fault Jigga.

++++

So, is there a single Houston rapper that can say “no” to a song appearance? (Scarface excluded).

Paul Wall: Hey, Mike Jones, it’s me Paul Wall, baby, what he do… you there? Did I get the wrong number? Maybe my igloo watch caused my hands to dial a wrong number… who
Mike Jones: MIKE JONES!!!
Paul Wall: Who!
Mike Jones: MIKE JONES!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Paul Wall: Thought I dialed the wrong number.
Mike Jones: I got people calling my number all day long man. Got a lot of haters and a lot of phonies.
Paul Wall: Anyway, I got a song coming up, you in?
Mike Jones: Got a lot of haters and a lot of phonies. MIKE JONES!!!!
Paul Wall: So we recording tomorrow, you want a verse, the song is called, get this, I’m George Foreman with grillz, but grills is spelled with a Z, so you know it’s hot. Hotter than this city, but the Ice Age could cool it down.
Mike Jones: MIKE JONES is in. I’ll see you at three.
Paul Wall: This track’ll be shining like a disco ball. Yo, remember that guy from two years ago who didn’t want to rap with us because H-town wadn’t big?
Mike Jones: Back then, they didn’t want me, now I’m hot they all on me.
Paul Wall: He’s in. See you at three.
Mike Jones: I said, Back then they didn’t want me, now I’m hot, they all on me. MIKE JONES out.

(I had more fun writing that than anything I have had that doesn't inolve porn or Badmition playing T-Rex's in a while)

So Houston is the city of the moment, even passing Atlanta for the number of acts coming out in mass play. But you get the feeling this is going to be short lived as they keep selling the same product instead of getting into the actual artists, pushing the culture before the product, which by all means for longevity, should happen in reverse. I can forgive them for trying to make it big and putting H-town on the map, but at least give us something. I’m waiting for the first Houston act to make the great rap song of 2006, but all we are getting is the appetizer sampler, a lot of everything, no specialties. And sure it’s a good thing for happy hours and introductions, but the main course is twhat makes people come back after the initial buzz dies down.

Well in the case of this post, we get another instance of a up and comer riding the red hot coattails of established (not successful, as only the Geto Boys and Scarface are there, and well, with UGK, they set their own fate) artist to come in. What do we get to lead off the track, Paul Wall reciting a bunch of lines about how his Jewelry is not to be confused with frozen water, and the most hilariously idiotic idiomatic phrase of the (or any) city thus far.

Chunk up the deuce.



Decent setting for a video, an interrogation room which allows the underplay of needless cop profiling with rappers, who “claim” to be not with the bad side. It’s something that actually I agree with for a good setup.

But then there’s the chopped and screwed chorus, which is slang for throwing a peace sign to show love.

One couldn’t find two better similes for “Peace sign” and “Raise up” than deuce and chunk, respectively.

I think I just chunked in my pants. I chunked up a deuce, to be accurate.

When all that comes to mind is:



You got a big problem if you are Lil’ Keke.

++++

When thinking about how low Britney has fallen, to the point where this morning I could think of nothing more than how I am going to avoid dating a woman named Britney because it’s going to mean she is white trash, I…have lost track of where I was going.



Umm, even if this is a major hit, I still think Mrs. Federline wins. We’re still taking about her, and you look way too caked (not coked, but it’s a possibility) up miss X-tina.

Three cheers for Britney.

Only because of this, this, golden, golden oldie.



Sure it’s the school girl, but it’s the little details that made it FMBT* (not Man’ha’ann Beach) fodder, such as the pink ribbons and the fluffy scrunchies in her pigtails. By the way, I truly can claim to be the first of my friends to see this, as it was leased to Best Buy and Circuit City in video form to play on the TV’s about a month before Britney was even on the cultural radar. In those days, I was working in High School, which meant I had an unreal amount of spendable income and liked to buy CD’s. I went into buy a CD and saw the video on one of the big TV’s. For biological reasons, I couldn’t move after eyeful one, and I told everyone about how this was the hottest thing ever. 7 years on, it just may be the best porn/not-porn media ever made. And that’s why I’m linking this again below.

Hachi, machi, Side note, turn down the volume.



+++++

With the last bit with TI into the camera aside, this is a great video, and I admit it, I think it’s a pretty good song.

The song has a great down beat and slow pacing which makes the slow(ish) draw of TI all the more potent, (which may be the best way to bring out the better of the Dipset crew, whose beats I like because of the old school heaviness, but they do not correspond with the slow paced 5 words and staccato end to a sentence delivery of a Cam’ron or Juelz Santana, I just don’t think it meshes with the beat style as it should.) and even though it’s aggressive, one has to roll with the nuances of the mode sometimes.

So what if this is video is redoing Pleasantville’s B&W into color thing, this does it well. And the Chris Robinson shots of the Steam Clouds over the water are absolutely great. Or at least National Geographic program where I am stoned and watching the beauty of the Earth, man kind of great, Luxurious, full framed shots of the volcanic islands… for a video without much bling, that’s the money shot. I wish more were like this.



++++

Robin Thicke wrote a couple of Usher songs and a couple of other hits for R&B songs is getting needlessly heavy airplay at MTV. This means that he is either signed by a Viacom company, or he has pictures of Usher with Lance Bass. Either scenario is equally likely.

In the world of music now, couldn’t he of come up with a moniker that didn’t remind us of “Growing Pains?” I tried on Youtube to find this clip before I substituted Robin for Alan. My bad, but it’s his fault.



But this video with Lil Wayne is pretty damn good. It’s a duet, something I usually can’t stand, but this one gets the essential dual play of a duet right, it gets the most out of those involved, and it plays them off one another, and the video puts them in that frame of mind.

I like the video, I like the song.

Well done. (I may change my mind on this later, and reserve the right to do so.)

++++

So, I have done a lot of R&B and Rap videos for today, but the close is something different.

Thinking about the “In the Air Tonight” remix for the Miami Vice commercials, I got a warm feeling thinking about the 80’s. If I was 10 years older in the 80’s, I’m sure I would have listened to the Clash, The Mats, the Smiths, and that’s about it. It was a bad time for music for teenagers with a bunch of fire or sense of loneliness, well at least compared to the 90’s with grunge, and today, with (shudder) emo.

But being a kid, it was kind of nice, because outside of Hair Metal and the early days of hip-hop, the airwaves were filled with Adult artists, like Phil Collins, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, etc. With the exception of Boy and War, U2 were aged when they hit it really big with the Joshua Tree. Maybe it’s a sweeping statement, but most of the stuff on the radio and on MTV were songs that were marketed to the mass audience, compared to the completely splintered genres now where Myspace will help bands based on the music tastes section find you, the lowest common denominator was the marketing strategy. Getting a crossover hit these days is uncommon, but it’s not like getting a mainstream hit, which is becoming ever rarer. This is why Oldies channels continue to draw big ratings in the era of niche marketing, people can share their enjoyment with others in a communal history.

Hey Ya, Feel Good Inc, Crazy. All three share two things in common, they were beaten to death in radio play, and they were played on multiple radio genre stations.

In an era when the bands get younger and younger, and it’s not just your aging that makes it feel more so, it’s a shame, because in one way or another, we’re all starting to sound like Indie music snobs, but without the pretension, when one asks “You haven’t heard it!” It’s just how it’s going to be from now on. This is the evolution of the internet and 400 cable channels.

I think it’s sad, because when Thriller hit, people remember seeing the video for the first time. People remember where they were when Smells Like Teen Spirit first came on in late 1991. People Remember how eerie it was that Hypnotize came out on the album Life after Death just days after Biggie was killed. Britney’s Baby, one more time may have been the last song to do so, I am struggling to think of one after, but I can’t.

Songs can always tie someone to a time and a place, but when you can share that moment with others who weren’t there, it’s a smaller world, and in a good way, because it makes life a little bit more universal. This is why we love movies and, until everyone had cable, TV shows.

But in the last 3 months we have had a few songs that while not genuine smashes, are pretty big hits. Other than Crazy, which is right there with The Gorillaz “feel good inc.” camp of hits by an artist’s side project that I can’t stand anymore because it’s being played to death and it wasn’t that good in the first place.

The other two, Beautiful by James Blunt and Bad Day by Daniel Powter. Both are lame, but they are lame in the, god these are actually good songs and I find myself singing them when I’m at work at I haven’t heard them in 3 days kind of way. We need more of this non-threatening middle ground stuff because it serves as a palette cleanser for personal tastes, as it is inviting enough to listen to, but it’s not thrilling enough to make you go out and buy the album (unless you are an average girl, who will go out and buy this stuff to play before putting on J-Tim’s new CD for your slumber party dance off). We can make fun of this stuff at work, singing it in silly voices to make coworkers annoyed but not angry, because we’re not assailing their personal tastes, we’re making fun of the fact we all kind of like this dumb song.

And when we are really down, and too depressed to listen to albums and tracks that make us happy, we’ll find ourselves groveling to songs like “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls or “Picture” by Filter, we want to let ourselves feel worse for empathizing with this guy who is hitting the basest level. Instead of make you crawl up in fetal position songs like Sinatra’s “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” we’ll cry longingly for a girl while chanting “All By Myself” by Eric Carmen or Everything I do (I do it for you) by Bryan Adams. Or the entire catalogue of Journey.

We need base songs like this, it makes the world a little bit smaller and a little bit easier to deal with.

And then there are those times when a song is able to hit a person on this raw, dumb emotional level and also be a classic song that is great in it’s own right, meaning you can love it outside of the pangs of heartbreak, and the crème-de-la-crème of this is the Beach Boys “God Only Knows” which I can cry just thinking about.

So here is the video for Bad Day, which pretty much does everything it needs to do and more, and features the lovely Samaire Armstrong formerly of the OC, which almost makes it guaranteed to show up on INLY anyway.

Enjoy. And sing it in your best bad voice over the weekend when it comes on in the pubs when you are out on Saturday. Below this post is another in Dave's top 25 music videos ever made. Enojy that as well.



+++++

*Furious Masturbation Theater.

(continued...)

Post 184: Best videos of all time, #10

It’s a Beatles song that is better than the original. That’s something I can only say about Joe Cocker and Otis Redding in historical value. Fiona Apple nails this song.

The video, directed by the once Wunderkind Paul Thomas Anderson (well, he did Boogie Nights, that’s gotta count for something)

Let me note two things. This is a perfect example of when to cover a song for a movie. It’s not treading on old waters, like the new “in the air” remix on the Miami Vice (2006) promos, and it’s a better version of the song that that would have felt out of place on one of her albums.

There are two straight on camera to mirrors shots. The camera is going to reflect in a mirror if one shoots a sliver of film in front of a camera. PTA found a way to digitalize this out, and it’s one of the first instances in cinema where someone does it. It’s a wonderful technique that no one will ever get the same mileage out of.

And the video, even if the song is a cover, is endlessly rewatchable, it’s probably the main reason I didn’t sell the Pleasantville DVD which it was on during my poor years after college.



That little bit where she's completely upside-down and almost cracks a smile, makes me love her all the more. Ahh, 1998 and 1999, I miss you somedays.

(continued...)

Soapy Squeeky Clean

Lauren Bosworth: How far are you and Stephen away from each other?
Lauren Conrad: Like, five minutes.
Lauren Bosworth: Really?
Lauren Bosworth: I think you guys are gonna get married.
Lauren Conrad: I think we're gonna be best friends.
Lauren Bosworth: That stuff happens, though, you know, like.
Lauren Conrad: I don't wanna marry Stephen.
Lauren Bosworth: Why? He's cute, you'd have pretty babies.
Jen: You would have pretty babies, your babies would be like the popular people at school.
Lauren Conrad: That's sweet.
Jen: They would.

Lo's Mom: Lo it's not a fashion show...
Lauren Bosworth: Every day's a fashion show mom.

Stephen Coletti: [to Kristin] What am I suppose to be? Happy to see you?!

Kristin Cavalleri: Jessica, he's cheating on you! Take it from someone who used to cheat on her boyfriend. Those are signs of him cheating!

(continued...)

We’d be remiss here if we didn’t link to this.

Ok. So this is the real world equivalent of linking to something someone else has done in blogging, but at the same time, well, it’s juggling to the end of Abbey Road, done with 5 balls instead of three.

First off.

The Beatles are the greatest thing. Ever. To. Happen. To Mankind.

I’d take the Beatles over Sex, Star Wars, and the Simpsons any day unless I am a Jedi sleeping with Jordan Capri (circa 2003) and writing for the Simpsons, but only if I am a Jedi Knight and I am paid over 50,000. Maybe then, if she's into FFM anal.



So it’s the new twist on an old thing. But damnit, who cares.

Second thing. Steaze, have you seen the remote control?

(continued...)

A Bitch, three ways.

(continued...)

Post 180: Mapother, Shampother.

I always liked Tom Cruise. I still like Tom Cruise. He’s rated as one of the coldest celebrities in the city, but you know what, I never went to movies because of actors anyway. Except for maybe the other Tom, Mr. Hanks.

But really, are we all that bitter at Tom Cruise because of his 2005. Are we Americans all just willing to turn on anyone who goes a little nuts? He’s been around for 20+ years, and the first time he does something we don’t like, we are just foaming at the mouth to jump on him. We also seem to be doing this with Madonna as well, which means I think that it’s all blowback as everyone is sick of “Loving the 80’s.”

So he’s part of a cult.

So he’s probably gay.

So he jumped up and down on a couch and wooed Katie Holmes.

I can forgive the first two. Not the third one, but hey, he’s an actor, they are all a little wacko. You’ve got people telling you are great and beautiful all day long so they can make money off of you. Of course that’s going to mess with someone’s head.

But this guy was “the” star of the 80’s and 90’s. He had 5 movies in a row top 100 million back in the days when movies averaged 55 million. For most of the people my age, we grew up with this guy; he was in at least three movies that everyone has seen at least 5 times.

We forgave Brando’s eccentricities under the guise he was a “great artist” but all of a sudden, Tom goes weird and he’s a pariah. Part of me says shame on you America, but hell, it’s easier to laugh about Tom Cruise than read about the horrors of the Middle East war we’re in.

Anyway, how about a list.

Dave’s top ten Tom Cruise movies. Ranked not just in quality of the film, but also ranked in part to cultural significance, the essence of Tom Cruise, and the re-watchability.

10. Jerry Maguire. Honestly, this was the reason I went to film school. Hell, it plays a big part in my first script I ever wrote. When I first saw this movie, it hit me on the level that Star Wars did. It’s about sports, it’s about male friendship, and it’s about finding love, any of which I will go to see a movie for. I find the film almost unwatchable now, partly because I’m a different person than who I was 10 years ago, and I really don’t buy the whole ending anymore. Whatever, I loved it at the time.

This is probably Tom’s best role (but not quite his best acting performance), as Cameron Crowe suited it to play off his public persona and it was tailored to Tom’s biggest strengths:

1. His ability to get empathy in a redemption/discovery plot (also see Top Gun and Rain Man)

2. His ability to feign boiling distress, as if something is billowing underneath that has the potential to crack his perfectly engineered life. (see Eyes Wide Shut and Minority Report) This works both in his comedy and his romance, in his Show me the Money and his office breakdown, as well as his “you complete me” finale.

3 Tom running ( seriously, check this out He runs better than any actor ever. Just something about the way he does it sells the potency of his purpose. The stride, the way his arms move at 90 degree angles, and the way his clothing seems to float around him. This is a gift. The link is dynamite on it’s own to boot, a perfect compilation and spoof of the Nike commercials and paced exactly with the music. Crowe had Cruise running in both of the films he did with him (Maguire and Vanilla Sky) and did so at key plot points; he knows how to direct Cruise better than any other helmer.

4. He plays off a kid, and does the whole father thing. Maybe it’s his boyish charm, but he’s a master at this, because he’s able to flash those million dollar gams. (also see Rain Man and War of the Worlds).

5. He’s given a male his age to play off of. Sure, make your own gay joke, but Cruise is at his best when he is playing against another male character, whether it’s arguing, flying planes, talking about world issues, or breaking into CIA headquarters, he’s able to play a guy’s guy with guys better than he does anything but run. (go ahead and read that last sentence and replace the u’s with a’s. It’s that easy) He was able to bring out the best in Cuba to a point that it won Gooding the Oscar and got Cruise his 2nd nomination. Here he gets the “help me help you” speech and we see Jerry figure out his life through an equally stubborn male character. This movie doesn’t work nearly as well with another actor as Jerry Maguire.

The only Tom Cruise skill that isn’t in this movie is his yelling. He is able to do that angry, indignant yell as well as anybody (which is kind of sad, because most actors will underplay anger). It’s a trademark of his, with the whole “I want the TRUTH.”

9. Days of Thunder. Another one of those 80’s movies that would seem ridiculous if you made it straight today (and why Talladega Nights will be a huge hit. Really, this decade’s film production is filled with a schaddenfruede that we as audiences seem to lap up, whether it’s in the form of Scary Movie or Date Movie, it’s like we want to be in on the joke, and it pisses me off, because we’re better people than assholes who laugh at the past). It’s a mediocre movie as a whole, but it’s watchable because of Cruise, who plays the arrogant, reckless type he was best at in the 80’s, who slowly has to figure out that he can’t do it all on his own.

Rowdy Burns: You run good.
Cole Trickle: Thank you.
Rowdy Burns: Now go get your own car and we'll see how you do in a crowd.

See, it’s the running thing. Plus we’re given a great car chase as he and his rival tear through a city in rental cars. Great premise, equal execution.

8. Born on the 4th of July. This was when Tom was trying to become a crossover to a serious actor, and to his credit, he’s pretty decent in his attempt. One of the better “films” in his career, but it works on the same level as his performance was, it was meant to show that Tom Cruise can act, and the fact that his persona disappears when Kovic gets paralyzed, is about how the film goes, it's about watching someone we admired have to redisconver their purpose in life. It’s also lower on the list because 17 years later, watching a Vietnam anti-war film borders on torture, regardless of the message, I would rather watch paint dry. We got our own problems here.

7. Mission Impossible 1 & 2. The first one gets on the list for the famous break-in scene, which was one of those moments that was so good and so preposterous it had to be parodied over and over again. Even if it’s a muddled plot, it’s still surprisingly fun. The second one is a better film, even if it seems to have the exact plot of Final Fantasy 8, right down to the scar on his face.

6. I was thinking of putting up Magnolia, but it’s one of my least favorite films, having the opposite effect as Boogie Nights, as I dislike it more every time I see it. But it is kind of interesting performance wise, not because Tom is against character, but because he chooses to turn 35 in front of the audience by growing his hair long. When men turn 35/40 they either grow their hair out or they grow a goatee. It’s one of the two and it’s an epidemic of lameness for white males. It pisses me off how good he looks in this movie, almost as much as the ridiculous frogs from the sky is, and how brilliant some of the film school kids I attended with thought it wasn’t a terrible Deus ex Machina. So let’s go with Collateral, one of the best buddy/ non-buddy movies in a while. Like Magnolia, Cruise is playing drastically off persona as a hitman who comes to LA to kill off a bunch of people. Part of the appeal for me comes from its LA backdrop, capturing the essence of the city, and it’s fun to watch the film with a “hey, I’ve been there” eye. Cruise is merely ok in this film, and I feel the same way about Foxx (why he got an Oscar nomination is beyond me) and most of the film’s enjoyment is due to the directing job Michael Mann does. The scene in the Korean nightclub is one of the more tautly controlled murder scenes and I’ll watch that scene every time it’s on. Pre-meltdown, this was a rather interesting performance by Cruise, as he commands the lines with a dark, matter of factness that we had never seen in him (the Magnolia is a façade, this is a real bastard character), and it was mesmerizing to see him deliver it, and even more terrifying to see him talk to Matt Lauer about the history of psychiatry in the same fashion. One last digression, Cruise got a lot of flack for his accent in Far and Away (far and away my least favorite of his films… I’m sorry) which actually was rather accurate and decent. But he got so much flack, he hasn’t tried an accent since. If there ever was a film where he could have used an accent it’s Collateral. Can you imagine the role if he had a vaguely threatening Eastern European twang to him? I think he would have made the role all the more interesting.

5. Cocktail. Now we’re getting into his 80’s canon. It’s one of the decade’s more ridiculous films, right down to the Elizabeth Shue being rich third act, but it’s done with an air of what the hell breeziness and paced in the exact 3 act style screenplay books teach (Tom tries to be a business world guy, becomes a bartender, succeeds as a barkeep (end of act 1) bar owner and him move to the tropics and aim for rich cougars, falls in love, loses girl (end of act 2) guy cleans up life, gets girl, film over). While it’s not even in the same league in terms of enjoyment, it does belong in the same genre as Road House, two goofy 80’s movies that take place in the bar subculture that are remarkably mindless yet overpoweringly simple to get into when they come on TNT or TBS on a Sat afternoon.

4. Minority Report. After Jerry Maguire, I don’t know if Tom Cruise has been in a role where the character wasn’t deeply flawed in one sense or another (the Mission: Impossible sequels halfway excluded). It’s almost like he is trying to prove that he wasn’t the brash boyish character that made him famous. That trend continues here, as he plays John Anderton, a high level cop with an addiction to some new kind of drug. He’s driven and he’s good at his job, but like most of the roles he has been in the last 10 years, Cruise/the character doesn’t do much to win the audience’s favor. He has become more of a vessel actor, just letting the director mold his character, and letting Tom perform as non-threatening as possible. It kind of goes back to the running thing, as he works as a finely polished machine making the rounds for the day. In Minority Report, he has two things working for him. #1 He runs. A lot. #2. He is directed by Spielberg doing action mode movie and not letting his religion, views on divorce, or belief that kids save all into the picture too much, going back to the Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark style of storytelling and not of the Color Purple or Amistad hit or miss artiste. And it’s one of Spielberg’s best jobs and highly entertaining, taking a 30 page Phillip Dick novel and turning into an action vehicle with a morality message underpinning that doesn’t come off as didactic. The end result is a movie that gets the most out of it’s two biggest stars, having them do what they do best. The chase in the mall where Cruise is carrying the pre-cog is one of the most joyfully cinematic moments of the decade, as Spielberg plays with the a psychic character and uses her gifts in the way we want to see a psychic guide a guy on the run, having her tell him to wait, to run, drop change, or grabbing a random woman and telling her “Don’t go home, he knows.”

3. Rain Man. Hoffman won the Oscar, but almost 20 years on, I find Cruise’s work to be far more impressive. He takes a truly selfish character and slowly turns him into a decent and likable person, and is forced to do so with one of the best actors of the last 50 years playing a blank character, meaning he doesn’t act off of him, Cruise is forced to craft a redemption tale while talking to a wall. The film itself is one of the almost-classics, a movie that’s very, very good, but not a masterpiece, and it could have been a disaster if the casting was off. Hoffman got the showy piece and is mesmerizing at times, but it’s Cruise who controls the plot of the film, and he does a heck of a job, slowly coming to love and understand his brother, and does so as the proxy for the audience.

2. Top Gun. I don’t like this movie, it glorifies the Navy as reckless, cowboy heroes (that’s really not an anti-military statement), and is a better recruiting tool for the service than any promo film could ever be. It also so homoerotic, it should be listed in the gay/lesbian section at blockbuster. But as much as I don’t agree with this film, goddamnit, do I respect it. It’s mesmerizing in it’s timing, precisely and masterfully set up, and it is filled with great lines, action scenes, and even pulls of the whole singing in the bar scenario to boot. By all notions a 20 year old film about Air Force pilots would be long forgotten, but between the classic one liners and Tom Cruise hitting the apex of celebrity appeal in his career with a role suited for him and only him, it gets to the same level of Brando in On the Waterfront, Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life, or William Shatner as James Kirk. That’s what we will remember them for, even if they go on to make better films. Cruise OWNS this role, and it’s his legacy film, as long as he’s still around, people will remember Top Gun when they think of him.

1. Risky Business. In a decade filled with teenage classics, Risky Business remains at the top of the 80’s heap, both in it’s gleeful charm appeal and unlike some of the other films, this one still holds up and barely feels dated (unlike my other favorite, Better Off Dead, which is so surreal and goofy it only could have been made in the 80’s). Perhaps the main difference here is that Cruise is not playing a brash or cocksure male, but a wide eyed B-b-boy who is terrified of his parents and essentially of women.

Hell, as male teenager films go, this one has it all. The sweet, beautiful woman who educates the man, the friends who stick by the lead character, a clear cut bad guy, a sure set dilemma about parents (both him getting into Princeton and that glass egg), and a finite timeframe for him to achieve his goals (the parents are away for only so many days).

We also get

+ A killer car chase, Porsche vs. Pimp-mobile.

+ We get Curtis Armstrong in his greatest non-Booger role, as miles, the genius friend who is totally crude and loyal. Armstrong was in three of the best 80’s films, Better Off Dead, Revenge of the Nerds, and Risky Business. All three are classics. This isn’t a coincidence. His killer line:

Miles: Joel, you wanna know something? Every now and then say, "What the fuck." "What the fuck" gives you freedom. Freedom brings opportunity. Opportunity makes your future. Say "what the fuck."... If you can't say it, you can't do it.

+ A house party… where the house is a brothel.

+_The “whose the u-boat commander line.” When I watched this the first time, my father came in at this moment and quoted the line. I have said before, my father wouldn’t know the name of this website if you asked him, but he remembers this line.

Joel Goodson (get it?) is a kid in need of guidance and confidence, and he finds it through a woman. Who just happens to be a woman of the night. In the beginning, he’s a kid without an impulse, by the end he’s a kid who is ready to be a man. To boot, the scene when he actually “becomes a man” is one of the top 3 love scenes ever made, from the opening shot of Dimornay with her blouse floating in the wind, to the pan across the pictures of Joel’s childhood, and then to the American flag on the TV screen in the waning hours of broadcast programming,

I can go on about the film, and how it’s probably the finest teen film ever made. It’s endlessly watchable, it has a trademark scene.



Sure the tighty whities are a bit much (then and now) but goddamnit, that initial slide couldn’t be more flawlessly timed, executed, or cued to the music.

I’ve watched this film some twenty times, and it never fails to make me feel happy. A perfect teenage dreamers movie both dark, edgy, and funny, even if The Girl Next Door took it one step further, Risky Business still kills it every viewing.

Lana: So, how're we doin'?
Joel Goodson: Looks like University of Illinois!

This was how I felt when I was at my teenage best, if I’m going down in flames, I’m going down my way. That’s freedom, that’s being 18. That’s Risky Business.

My humble advice for Tom Tom? Do one of two things:

1. Disappear for 3 years. Just bide time and wait for the best script to come along and find the perfect director. By then, the bitterness will have died down, at the comeback will overwhelm the naysayers, who for all intents, were just trying to make fun of a guy who made it.

2. Do a Katherine Hepburn in The Philadephia Story. In 1940, audiences had grown weary of her and were starting to turn until she played with type of her persona, as a high strung, narcissistic, mean spirited woman who finally gets what’s coming to her. If Cruise actually takes a chance and acts in a comedy, where he is the doofus who realizes his past follies, the audience would eat it up. He has the comic timing, he has the track record to get people to see him do something different, and if he wants to act past 50, it’d be the smart move. He needs to stop playing the 40 something wanderer and branch to more adult roles. Along the lines of the Hepburn, he has to allow other actors to share the spotlight. Every movie (save Magnolia) has been a Tom Cruise vehicle, it’d be nice to see him take smaller parts that suit his acting, not his persona better.

Here’s hoping we don’t turn on an icon we created. We loved him and turned on him for being what he is… somehow, I feel the comeback is inevitable, here’s hoping for a Newman like second half of his career. If not, I’ll always have Risky Business.

(continued...)

In the news

From IMDB.com

A Sunset-Strip movie company, headed by the granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin, was actually a money-laundering front for an international drug-smuggling operation, according to federal authorities. The alleged criminal activities of Limelight Films were reported today (Thursday) in the Los Angeles Times, which said that Limelight principals Bruno D'Esclavelles and Alexandre De Basseville were arrested during a sting operation in Arlington, VA last month. In a brochure, the company described itself as having "a desire to promote worldwide talented individuals who treasure cinema and cherish the creative spirit of Charlie Chaplin." Kiera Chaplin, the 23-year-old granddaughter of Charlie, who was once engaged to De Basseville, was serving as president of the company. She has not been charged.

Yeah. I worked there from Oct 2003 to Jul 2004. Looks like its going off the resume.

And yeah, there were some very shady rumors in the halls.

(continued...)

Bully in a china shop (re-edited the 21st)

One of my favorite quotes that Bill Simmons ever wrote was from last year, when the Colts were 12-0 and many were calling Tony Dungy the best coach in the game.

It was something like this: “I think Dungy’s demeanor is a little strange, as he’s top of the heap and he still seems quiet and nonchalant. Can you imagine if Brian Billick was 12-0. He’d be in a bomber jacket, smoking a cigar and demanding that people call him “Ace.””

To his credit, Billick won a Super Bowl, but it was against one of the worst teams (The Doug (actually it's Kerry, the hair is the confusion) Collins led New York Giants, who were rumored to be stealing signals and calls, and also rumored to have been forced to lay down in the SB to avoid punishment) and did so by having one of the greatest defenses in history, while he considers himself an offensive genius (he was behind the Cunningham, Moss, and Carter offense of the 98 Vikings that went 15-1and then crapped the bed against the dirty bird falcons, denying us what would have been the best Super Bowl match up ever against the 14-2 defending champ Broncos), the 2000 Ravens had trouble scoring on offense, but that’s the nature of a guy like Billick, to take credit when it comes his way.

He still swaggers with abnormal confidence, even as his team fails to make the playoffs two years in a row, and still hasn’t gotten anything out of their QB of the Future time and time again.

This is a guy that needs to be taken down a few pegs. And taken down often.

Seeing as I watch the NFL network about as much as I watch MTV’s video channels, it’s hard to miss the collective arrogance in most of Hip Hop today.

It’s bordering on suffocating, as each new rapper that hits with a single suddenly acts like he’s the Don of all Dons, referring to themselves in Gotti-esque terms and appearing in videos and shoots in Tony Montana style.

Side note, can we please address the Tony Montana fascination. I get it, he comes from the Street and makes his millions. But along the way, he kills his best friend, tries to sleep with his sister, argues for 20 minutes about money laundering, and then dies. What part of that translates from the Streets? At least in Godfather 1 and 2 Michael lives.

You gotta wonder, what the end game is for most Rappers?

Pac, Biggie, Jam Master J – dead.

Shyne, C-Murder, possibly Cassidy – in Jail.

Jay Z can’t stay retired, even though he is worth +300 mil.

Run wants to stay in the light, and takes the reality outlet.

Eminem quits, only to remarry and re-divorce, but I guess, he is likely to stay gone.

Unlike their Rock forerunners who stayed rich and busy by touring to the now wealthy and desperate-to-feel-young boomers, most rappers either suck live (so that’s out) or plan on making money off clothing lines. It may be out of a lack of information on my part, but is there any rap group out there that has that road-warrior tour mentality of a Metallica, Springsteen, or Pearl Jam. I can think of the Roots, maybe, but is there a Grateful Dead or Phish of the hip-hop world? Sure it's totally lame to be putting out album's like David Gilmore's On an Island or making songs for Jaguar when you used to be in The Police, and of course to be touring to women who have popped out kids who find your music totally hilarious, but it's better than an office job.

I guess it’s something we will find out soon enough, as Jay Z heads into the 40/40 club for his 40th Birthday in 3 years.

The rise of the prominence of Elder Statesman in rap is something I’m actually looking forward to, as it may be the time some of them are forced to open up their writing to new topics. It could be downright hilarious or it could be the shot in the arm that progresses the medium to another evolution. It may be a huge factor in the What’s Next for hip hop in the coming five years.

And it could very well spell the end of hip-hop as we know it, as each new wave of talent will struggle to get dominance, only to cede the throne 2 years later. Jay – Z was around for 10 plus years, which seems like an eternity compared to his contemporaries. Only LL has been around longer and in a high level of fame, but also was able to stay big because he actually made the leap to film and TV (anyone else remember In Da House, yeah I thought not). Change is coming, and it might involve the lack of former stars. Can you imagine an artist like Young Jeezy turning 35/getting married? Who is going to take care of his entourage? MTV needs, no must, film moments like this. Shit, DMX has some 70 or so in his click, how much longer can he keep them around before the well dries up for him. Dumb as they were, Motley Crue got the notion of having girls instead of guys around; all they had to pay for was booze and prophylactics for one or two girls.

Back to Billick for a bit, as I see a lot of him in Rick Ross; the way both of them interview is not so much a Q&A style, but a Q& Testify mode of conversation, where they present answers as fact, they don’t fail because of their product, they fail because of others (if they fail). I’ll also note here that Rick Ross takes his handle from the man who purportedly introduced Crack to LA, which is the rap equivalent of Franz Ferdinand calling themselves Joseph Stalin instead.

Rick Ross is in this month’s Vice Magazine talking about Cops and his life as a Boss. Part of it is interesting as he does actually have a real background in this (opposed to Tupac, who did the whole Gansgta act in reverse), and he does drop some MIA lingo about deals, but for most of the article, he preaches about the issue of the Conspiracy law, and how it punishes people who didn’t actually commit crimes, they only talk about it. (Attempted murder, what is that. Do they give Nobel Prizes for Attempted Science – Sideshow Bob)

The interviewer brings up Shyne and Lil Kim, as two stars who went to jail instead of implicating others, and Ross runs with it for a bit. He’s a big fan of the Stop Snitching movement, which bothers me more than any of the other trends in hip hop today. While it made him an ever bigger star in the hood, it severely hurt Carmello’s rep to Madison Ave and to the League Officials (he was just as much a force for the dress code as AI was because of the video).

The Stop Snitching idea is terribly damaging as it only serves to keep the criminals and thug mindset in power, and it also tacitly promotes the lifestyle by preventing checks and balances against it.

And I go back to Rick Ross and the Scarface thought, because I don’t see where he or other rappers are going to go in 10 years when their career window closes. In Out Of Sight, Clooney asks Ving Rhames: “Have you ever heard of a guy who actually got the last big score?” The way Rick Ross talks and acts, I get the notion he has no intention of changing, he’ll stay on the other side of the law as long as he can, possibly to his death.

And the biggest corollary I can think of is that of a bully on the schoolyard. Bullies are bigger and stronger, and smart or not, they do not tend to be academic types. Eschewing book smarts for street smarts, they succeed by intimidation and thrive on fear. The practice of Stop Snitching is just another way to keep the bully in power, by tying their safety to a notion of cultural identity, making one not just a rat for doing so, but going against your own if you want a better life for your community. A bully can only get so far in life on their own, they have to depend on others to keep them in power. Kim Jong is doing it through torture and oppression; dealers do it by claiming they are part of the fabric of where they deal. Rick Ross is doing it by pushing his criminality as a part of his ethnic roots. Musicality be damned, as long as the moneys coming in for a hustler, the art seems to fall by the wayside.

Bullies always fall from power in the end. They never stay at the top because eventually people turn away, or someone removes them from power. The former course has been eliminated by logic along the “Don’t hate the player, hate the game” philosophy, but the latter option has a near equal success ratio, as it’s going to take a Nirvana vs. Hair Metal-esque revolution to get rid of the Bling Heavy rap world, and it’s got to come from within hip-hop. I don’t see this as a likely occurrence, not because of the artists themselves, but because of the delivery system (the labels) and the increasingly splintered music world.

As little as 8 years ago, people didn’t download music. Individuals did, but people didn’t. It’s all part of the Culture of Choice, and Klosterman may have nailed Hey Ya as the closest thing to a universal single since Napster, and also noting that 50 people he knew had never heard of the song or the artist. When you notice that High School Musical is atop the Billboard list and yet I know 99% of the people I work with haven’t heard of it, it’s easy to note that there are so many places to get music these days, the odds of meeting people here in the States who even know of an artist you like is going to diminish every year. The hipster’s are going to go nuts, because no one will have heard of anything.

Odds are that by the time Rick Ross makes two more albums, he’ll be irrelevant to the music scene. Not on talent, but on the simple shelf life of all music acts.

And if you the reader are wondering why I am once again writing about Hip Hop, the short answer is because I like to write about it, I find the whole world fascinating, mainly because it’s the most dominating force in the music world today, or at least the most heavily covered/broadcast.

The longer answer involves me wondering why the hell rock music isn’t as prominent, or in another way, why are so many of the major American acts so feminine. Why the hell are Panic! At the Disco and Fallout Boy going against Yung Joc and Rick Ross. Can’t we at least put Wolfmother or the Rakes up there? And why do we as rock fans turn on our bands and yet rap fans barely do? I mean is there a Non-Union equivalent of INLY somewhere who hates on Cam’ron like I do Tom DeLounge?

And I came upon the starting point for all of this. Or at least I am going to pin the blame on this one person, truth be damned.

Listening to Alanis Morrisette today, I came to the conclusion. This was the flashpoint. I think her raw anger and feistiness scared the living shit out of every white male. We knew that we couldn’t keep being the same type of male, and we tried to turn sensitive because the 80’s movies we watched told us the nice guys finished first and the fear of getting the revenge treatment from an Alanis spurred us on.

This whole shift might have been laid in the groundwork of grunge, but at least that rocked, something you can’t say about… most every band since 1997. Radiohead doesn’t rock, The Strokes are almost anti-rock, The Rapture, The Firey Furnaces, and Arcade Fire are intellectual sad bastard music, even if they rock in moments. We’re left with The Darkness, Tenacious D, and Andrew WK, which means we are almost laughing with them as we rock. Wolfmother is close, but they need to get a single beyond Woman to start going. Back to the Culture of Choice thing, maybe it’s just the numbers playing out, it’s harder to sell to the widely split 70% than it is the united 13%. We have more nerds like me than their community does.

Whatever. We’ve got bullies on one side and AV geeks on another. Can’t anyone evolve? I am pretty sure Alanis isn’t going to date Dave Coulier again and write another album about her breakup.

Where does this end and, once again why do I care.

I think this sums it up.



Actually that was supposed to be a clip of the older, Black Tri Lams coming to the aid of their nerd fraternal brothers at the end of Revenge of the Nerds. The Link has changed. That moment in the film is essential to my growth and views. but you know what, that clip works abot 50% and I'll keep it in. Ending be damed.

(continued...)

The end sum of 10 years.

The list of the accomplishments I have achieved in the last 10 years that I the most proud of, which are, for the most part, non-sexual.

In no particular order .


1. In the first week of my freshman year in High School, I was asked to leave the room in 7 of the 9 classes I took.

Including gym.

I had grown close to half a foot between the end of 8th and the beginning of 9th. Meaning I was full in the throws of puberty, and when I came to high school, I was still in the loose summer attitude, and came in guns blazing. My first class was Spanish. When roll call came around, she announced “David Turner?” I shouted OLÉ. Brought down the house. It wasn’t this that did it, it was two days later, when I put on the giant Mexican hat in the back of the class, pulled down the brim of the hat so it looked like an oversize rice-picker, and did the “doo-doo-do-do-dum-dum-dum” Chinese melody from Looney Tunes. The teacher had enough.

I got kicked out of math for flipping paper clips with a ruler, theater for shouting Band Nerds to the band class from outside their window, Non Western Civ for an ethnic slur, Speech for moving that we dedicate a class to talking about the movies we saw over the summer instead, Health for laughing too hard during the Anorexia/ Bulimia film, and in gym, for spiking the ball at full power at a short girl.

2. Body slamming a girl at a college party, which caused her to seriously injure her arm to the point it prevented her from fooling around with my friend. (A year later, we fooled around for a bit, that was interesting)

3. Telling Harvey Weinstein that The Talented Mr. Ripley sucked after a sneak preview.

4. Hitting a full court shot in basketball (probably the best moment of my life)

5. Having sex with a girl within 25 minutes of meeting her. (Today, it’d be 50/50 if I could pick her out of a line up, and she was very attractive)

6. Scoring a jumping header as a Sophomore against Heritage Christian, which tied the game.

7. Setup: At my last job, I was both doorman and occasional bellman at the hotel. When it was slow, we used to do voices and play games a la Super Troopers. I would occasionally do the Charles Bronson voice. So one day, I started with the standard Bronson esque:

“Can I help you?”
“Is there self parking”
“No dice.”
“So, valet only?”
“Only if you want to keep the car.”

Usually, I would hand the guest off to another worker, but seeing as he just left, I had to check them in myself. Which meant I had to continue with the voice. As I am unloading the bags, I am still going with the pitter-patter, “This bag needs a fixin’ ” and “Those shoes must hurt.” Eventually, the woman started to giggle about my voice, guessing it was fake. She asked, what kind of accent did I have. I came up with:

“My father was from Fargo. He hated the accent, and came up with this, I guess I picked it up from him.”

Honest to God, I went on like this for close to 10 minutes.

8. Getting an A+ in a 400 level class in College. I always thought that was unattainable, especially at a university. (I’ll post it one of these days)

9. Making out with a woman from the Denmark Olympian crew team.

10. Walking into a class my Junior year where I had hooked up with 6 of the 14 girls over the course of my 3 years at school. Just awkward for all.

11. Getting caught peeing on a girls house, only to respond with “I was punched in the kidney’s earlier tonight” to get her off my back.

12. Pitching not one, but two perfect games in Beer Pong. (One solo, one with Drewz)

13. Finishing a game of Windows Solitaire in 55 seconds (Vegas Rules, three card draw) and topping 50 million in windows pinball (I could have gotten more, but I had to leave work)

14. Killing a full keg with 6 other friends in one night. We were hugging it out at the end.

15. Telling a girl who was yelling loudly at a party that “Short, loud, annoying girls are POISON for parties.”

(continued...)

Goldeneye, take 2

Attempt #2 at the Goldeneye, My Generation bit, which is undergoing a name change when I can think of something better. Comments are on for this one, and I am likely to re-edit it further.

But enjoy.

Golden-Eye. N64. 1997.

Goldeneye was developed by Rare Studios, one of the best and more innovative game labs in the world. Rare have made some of the top games off all time (GoldenEye and it’s follow up Perfect Dark,) as well as some of the most ground-breaking (Donkey Kong Country, Blast Corps, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Banjo-Kazooie). They also are some of the most temperamental and notoriously behind schedule. They started as a second party developer for Nintendo, (in-house but not under the big N) and after birthing a legacy of great gaming, they became almost teenagerish, and split for Microsoft.

The game is, of course, based off the 95 movie of the same name, and was released only months before the next film in the series (Tomorrow Never Knows) came out. It is an act of incredible arrogance to release a film on such a schedule, but as the saying goes, “it ain’t cocky if you can back it up.” All sayings aside, this was worth waiting for.

The film itself is one of the top three Bond films ever made, the other two being Goldfinger and Thunderball (which in adjusted figures made around 850 million at the box office) the ranking is questionable, so too is not including OHMSS or From Russia With Love, but that’s why there are debates.

In an era when Bond films have turned into a corporation (under billionaire tyrants like the Broccoli family) and become as predictable and dumb as Bruckheimer films, Goldeneye (the film) was almost an anomaly. It’s the first of the series to actually question the morals of the protagonist: “Do all of the martini’s you drink help you forget the memories of all those lost.” Quoted by the film’s baddie, 006. The story didn’t center around a S.P.E.C.T.E.R. henchman, but a former Bond associate who could see through all of the lines and BS that Bond always gives. It is, and probably will be, the only film in the collection that is actually postmodern in its world setting and treatment of the idea of “James Bond.”

To boot, the film is also a blast to watch. While many of the series are B level action films with an Icon as the lead character, Goldeneye is a thinking man’s action movie, like Die Hard, Hunt for Red October, or The Incredibles. This means that it’s clearly a movie where the lead character kills “bad” people, but there is a measure taken in the filmmaking to actually rationalize the killings, both pulling the viewer in under a specter of rationale, as well as making the ass-kicking seem “smart.” The plot has a semi-feasible (not Tom Clancy feasible, but more believable then sending oil drillers into space to blow up an asteroid) idea of a rogue general seizing control of a cold war era weapon, but what gives the film a touch of depth is 006’s connection as a Cossack and his hatred for the racial wars that still scar parts of Eastern Europe. Maybe it’s the lack of shark-infested pools, rocket packs, or idio-centric, hat throwing / or steel jawed henchman, Goldeneye feels more like an action/spy hybrid instead of a swinging spy action film.

Bond films are famous for their stunts and gadgets, for the action, and the one man against an army plots. Why it took until 1997 to make a game out of the series is beyond me.

To this date, I can’t remember why I bought this game. When I bought it, I heard it was a James Bond game for the 64, and I heard it was going to be OK.

The day I bought it, I also bought the Special Edition VHS set of the Star Wars Trilogy. Maybe why I bring this up is nothing more than memory, but it also seems like something of a kismet. At that time I had never spent as much time on one thing (other than school and other things of actual life) than Star Wars. I bought it because I thought it would be a cool game to play. I had mild expectations (mind you this was before the real boom of the net where everyone was shouting about new things 60/60/24).

So the end of this flashback comes to an end with this last recollection.

Me, Will, and Mike had been getting together the last weekends of the 97 summer to play Mario Kart 64. We were playing every Friday and Saturday before we went out. That night came and we were going to watch Star Wars, when we decided to play the multiplayer feature of Golden Eye.

We went to bed at 3 am.

We started at 6 pm.

There are few games that will ever cause a hush when you mention the title around people who play videogames. It’s something of a rare air that is like the reaction to art pieces in the canon to literati. They cause an awed silence, and if provoked, the people will give a long, unfocused diatribe about what they feel about the piece. It’s not quite a review, because it’s so gushing. It’s the critical response of having sex for the first time; it’s an experience you have so much joy, love, and sheer unprepared awe that when put into words, the spoken analysis is going to be both gushing and unfamiliar. You can try, but you can’t replicate the experience in words even with hyperbole.

I can think of few games that have done this.

The list:

Super Mario Brother 3: It’s all summed up with someone telling you “Mario can FLY. NOT ONLY THAT, he can become a frog.

Tetris: You can’t stop playing, even though it consists of fitting 6 blocks into a trench.

Grand Theft Auto 3: You can do ANYTHING. And playing it changed your temporary mindset so much that you kind of believed you could steal a car.

These games bring that hush. They evoke the same feeling of falling in love for the first time. You know you will be forever linked to something else.

I had an argument with a guy who designs games for a living. We talked about the best games of all time. We talked about Mario 3 and World, Super Metroid and Castelvainia SOTN, Final Fantasies 6 and 7 (I still love Tactics best of all), Tetris, River City Ransom, Halo, Doom, Tie Fighter, Metal Gear, and so on. But we both agreed, if given a game, on the most modern of all systems, we’d like to have the ability to play Goldeneye for the first time again.

Goldeneye was not the first FPS (first person shooter), that title usually goes to Castle Wolfenstien, and was not the first FPS to become a massive hit (that would be Doom), but it was perhaps the first major console FPS that was done well enough to convert PC gamers over to a joystick. PC’s have buttons to spare when it comes to any kind of game, and the movement range provided by a mouse allows a 3-d perspective a single joystick can’t compare to. The limited number of buttons is the biggest drawback for any complex console game, and before the advent of the Playstation’s dual shock controller, all motion and view was limited to one stick and one thumb. Goldeneye was the first game to streamline the gameplay to a controller yet not limit the action by mapping the buttons and d-pads in a natural and effective fashion, allowing players to strafe by using the relatively pointless C-buttons of the 64 controller, and also managed to allow precise aiming from the D-stick by assigning dual use with the R button. It took what was the consoles biggest weakness for FPS games and turned into one of it’s strongest suits, people could learn the controls within minutes.

Goldeneye forever changed the FPS simply by fleshing out the gameplay. Most people saw FPS as 3-d fighting games, they were dumb, relatively mindless, and violent. Levels in the early games like of the genre, merely required finding Key Cards, getting bigger guns, and killing waves of enemies (usually either hellspawn or Nazi’s). Goldeneye featured puzzles that were best solved by stealth and not brute force, and it also created a truly interactive environment, which was effected by the characters action. Random gunfire could cause a radio to explode and end a mission, civilians could no longer be shot at without consequence, and in some missions, keeping a character alive was more important than killing your attackers.

The locations of the film led to very detailed and lush atmospheres to start upon, and some of the levels are 64 bit replicas with minutia to drive the inner geek in people wild. The second level starts in a ventilator shaft and forces the player to come out into a bathroom stall, just as Brosnan did in the film. While the witty banter of the film is sadly removed, this was the one of the first moments that took videogames closer to being a virtual, first person experience that was until such a moment, merely science fiction. The only other games I can think of are:

Shadow of the Empire (N64, 1996) which recreated the opening battle on Hoth from Empire Strikes Back. Taken down a few notches because the game didn’t go anywhere worthwhile after the first level, and has been a mandated level in any Star Wars game since.

Sports Games, which until the next gen systems seemed like an updated electronic football game. When Madden 2001 hit on the PS2, it was a jaw dropping experience, as passerbys thought they were was a real game on the TV

The movie adaptation games before and 3 years after Goldeneye: While it’s easy to say that all of them sucked (Total Recall (NES), Goonies I and II (NES), some of the SNES movie licensed games were decent. But then again, E.T. is also the worst game ever made, and if one is so inclined to find proof, look for the landfill in New Mexico where 3 million or so of the cartridges lay to this date, slowly living a non bio-degratable life. (Insert own blowing dust joke here, and if you are witty enough, add a Kansas (the band) joke).

Such details are one thing that is always worth including in a video game; they create a new ability to compare the real world to the world that is essentially now yours. But any programmer can copy the floor plan of The Brady Bunch home given enough time and enough snnnnniifffff. I mean flowers, flowers so expensive and filled with remorse. Goldeneye succeeds because it fills in gaps in the source text with a bravura that Melville would adore.

Playing the game the first time is nothing short of a rush. Until one sees that a new mission is available, and that there are three more levels to play. The addition of alternate (for this game, they were Agent, Secret Agent, and 00 Agent) difficulties was not a new feature to Goldeneye, but it was the first game since The Legend of Zelda to make playing the game a second time as good as the first.

The first level on of the game on Agent was simple. Kill people, open a few doors, and then get to the spot to launch the bond jumping off a dam. Play it on 00 agent, and the level goes from a 2 minute intro to the game into a full fledged espionage thriller where a player has to set up bombs, take out security, and kill many more people (all three are a total gas).

Playing the game without playing on 00 agent is like a one night stand. It’s memorable, but there isn’t too much depth. When one is able to go through the game on the most difficult level, it’s doesn’t just force the player to be more aware, it introduces a new game, with a very steep learning curve.

Traversing through the game a second time is a gaming and learning experience, as the game was designed to remove the blast em all strategy that dominated the still young genre. Playing through the game a second or third time didn’t just take you deeper, it actually forced you to become a better player. There was a marked difference between the players who owned the game and those who just played at their friends house. So much so that people bought the system just to keep up.

It’s no doubt that the system was successful because of this ONE game. In the same way the Playstation was big because of Resident Evil, the X-box because of Halo, (and systems like the Saturn, Dreamcast, Gamecube, and the 360 are seen as less big) the 64 will always be tied to Goldeneye. It was the one game that was enough for people to buy the system. The 64 was one of my favorite systems, and has three of my top 10 games (Goldeneye, Mairo 64, and Zelda (Majora’s and Ocarina) and arguably had a higher great to lousy game ratio than any system since or before it, but it was at best a mild success because it lacked the kind of games that bring in outside, casual gamers, while it’s rival, Playstation was full of games like Madden, Gameday, Twisted Metal, and Tekken.

While the 64 was a system built with four controller outputs, it didn’t have many games that utilized it, and as shown with the GameCube’s reluctance to go online in favor of utilizing GBA hookups and focusing on single player and party type games, they continue to lose the ever aging base which grew up on the brand. Part of it saddens me, because Nintendo has stronger roots in both game design and loyalty than any other company out there, but as they continue to aim for the kids and the kid in all of us, they keep missing the mainstream. Nintendo is planning to include the ability to download the classics of past systems on the Wii, but it only serves to prove that the house which Mario built is still trying to recreate the past instead of adapting like they used to.

1997 was a revolutionary year for videogames. Two systems (PS and N64) just beginning to hit their strides, a year when ownership of systems in households hit an (then) all time high, and a year with an arsenal of games that pushed the barrier and finally started to challenge the view that videogames were “just for kids.” The other major game of 1997 was Final Fantasy VII. A lush 50+ hour adventure that introduced GCI cut scenes that were nothing short of awe-inspiring at the time, and like Resident Evil before it, a game that felt less like a game than it did a cinematic experience. Final Fantasy VII is an RPG (role playing game, which means it is a videogame extension of Dungeons and Dragons), and regardless of quality, it would be labeled a “nerd” game. Gaming would have undoubtedly evolved along the technology curve to a point where it is now. But to understand the impact of a game like Goldeneye is like looking at an alternate universe. Console games would likely be of only four genres:

1. Platform/adventures games (Mario Brothers)
2. Fighting Games (Street Fighter, wrestling games)
3. Jock games (sim-sports, including racing)
4. RPG’s.

And I have talked about it a little, but Goldeneye was one of the most influential and successful games ever because of its own killer feature.

Multiplayer mode.

Goldeneye was so huge in terms of sales it started a shift to what gaming would become, and this was helped by the emergence of online play as well, as games were being made with more than one player in mind. Games since have integrated multiplayer modes, from co-op modes in games like Halo, to something as trivial as the Multiplayer modes in GTA: San Andreas, designers realized that the market was not just for single players, but people liked playing with friends just as much as they did by themselves.

For better or worse, the top sellers in the industry are multi player.

The follow-up game was Perfect Dark, a game that was in many ways better than Goldeneye. It had better level design, a deeper multiplayer mode that allowed for computer controlled players, and a slew of mini-games which added to the playing experience. But it lacks one thing, James Bond.

Kismet it was, as the success of the game was due to the ease to picking it up, the huge world which laid in it for the single player and his friends as well, but it still owes so much to the lore of Bond. The game did right by the legacy, perfectly translating the cinematic to the digital and honoring the legacy by including films like Moonraker and the Man With the Golden Gun in bonus levels.

But it goes back to Bond, because Goldeneye delivers on the Bond, James Bond experience and does so with a game that puts the player there. Games like Halo improved on the idea of the FPS, but all things being equal, I’d rather play Goldeneye. Part of it is nostalgia, but most of it is due to the game itself, as it provides the very essence of what videogames are about, transportation to virtual interactive dreamscapes where one gets to be everything they want to be.

(continued...)

Mash Ya Face!

Okay... I played myself. I was into mashups for a minute... maybe a long minute. I had like thousands of them - some well done, some sounded like a kid was holding a tape recorder to the radio to make the jam. They were hot for a second though... but that second was in like, 2001! By the time Danger Mouse hit, the shit was already played out, and the nyc trendy kids were already sporting their lil sister's jeans to idiotrock concerts and snorting rails of kosher sheep's blood by the time Pat O'Brien and Barbara Walters were telling your moms and dads about some crazy disc jockey named danger mouse who plays one record over another to create a whole new sound! Whoooa!

So the kid mashed the Grey Album and it wasn't garabge... "even better than the original!" Sean dot Carter is a faggot ass MC and kicking his record up a click is like squirting apricot jelly in a chick's asshole - yeah, it tastes a lil less like shit. i've got a dozen BLACK album mashups

• The Brown Album - Old skool hip hop
  
• The Blue Album - Blue Note jazz
  
• Black On Black - Metallica's Black
  
• The Zen Album - Ninjatunes beats
  
• The Gold Album - SDK's movie scores

etceteras etceteras... Some of them were hot but the Grey Album got mad dap because the shit was quaint - Soccer moms and Baby boomers could feel hip for a minute because they remember when The Beatles were making their panties wet back in the day so this shit was even more hardcore to them than buying those little black panties at Victoria Secret in the mall and getting all BDS&M on date night when the kids are away at camp. The shit's like an urban safari - I've seen it happen! "Hey Martha! I read an article in the Wall Street Journal that says black people will listen to two cds at the same time! Crazy, I tell ya! I was skeptical, but the download of the week on my AOL Portal Page was some Jazz Mouse or Z Cavaricci or something. It was wild! We had a good chuckle at the office over it!"

The shit's a joke - it's like RIZE! A rich, white, gay new yorker who got fame blowing Andy Warhol takes a break from directing 13 year olds in music videos to take on the plight of black gangs in comtpon, california?! What THE FUCK!? There are like seven motherfucking people in this state that krump, but homeboy puts out this video and kids in like Nebraska think see these MTV colours and broadway costumes and shit and think they're gonna come down to Watts and shit looks like Wally World or something! Like you're gonna roll down Avalon & 103rd Street and some big black clown is gonna be standing there, cooning for you, waiving you onto the block! The shit's a trip because some tiny lil thing that's happening somewhere blows up on the cover or TIME or something and people take it as gospel Trends are always invented i guess, but my damage with this shit is that they take someone like 3000 miles from the eye of the storm and make him like the godfather of hip hop...

Back to Mash ups! They suck... all of them suck. You rip out the chorus of a song, rip out the four bar hook that everyone knows, drop on some MTV2 acapella you downloaded and the shit's done. It's primary read - it's like a Greg Crewdson photo! Or some Bill VIola bullshit video - "Yo I taped this shit in slow motion, the shit's like art! Give me a fellowship!" or "Hey! So i got some C-List tv show stars to stand on a movie set - they dropped some science on my "art" in Entertainment Weekly, so my shit's on lock!" Kids have no creativity in them - they don't make new shit, they just drop old shit on a trucker hat and call it fly. Homocide @ 160kbps! It's like trendy x trendy! The shit's about as street as Sarah Jessica Parker. Qbert, Logic, Radar, Swift, Rhett - they make music with a turntable - they are artists. Some kid who plays some classic rock jam on top of BLACK(face) EYED PEAS or whatevs are not Marcel Duchamp - they're clowns... Maybe David LaChapelle can make a movie about them.

(continued...)

Best of it’s kind / End of an era.

Cinematic mashup highlight / The beauty-truth thing.

First off:

They have been around for about 4 years, best I can tell, but mashups are one of the after effects of the Electronica era of the late 90’s.

Some of my favorite albums of the late 90’s/Early 00’s were sans guitars. Albums like

You’ve come a long way baby – Fatboy Slim

Mezzanine – Massive Attack (not a huge Blue Lines fan)

Surrender – Chemical Brothers

Analogue Bubble bath – Aphex Twin

Pysence Ficton – U.N.K.L.E

Decksadndrumsandrockandroll – Propellerheads

Homework and Discovery – Daft Punk

Since I left you – The Avalanches.

I tie this in partly because of Thom Yorke’s Eraser (maybe the first major electronica-ish album in 3 years) and I bought the special edition of Endtroducing yesterday.

Post Since I left you, I don’t know if I bought an album of the genre after it. I just didn’t care or didn’t hear anything about a great release since.

It was an essential Napster album, one whose success was due largely due to the mass piracy and file sharing. Fitting, as it’s an album made from 500 or so samples, and nothing else.

Maybe it was the natural evolution, and the next leap forward caused the extinction of the primitive forms, as hearing two or more familiar songs played off each other was, in most cases, instantly gratifying.

Some mashup’s like the Strokes vs. Christina Aguilera “Stoke of genius” are great because they connect two artists who usually don’t belong together. Others like Blvd. of Broken Songs take a base song and fade it others, filling gaps in the original with more inspired harmonies. And then there are the goofy ones, like Wipeout Taffy, which mixes D4L’s Laffy Taffy with The Animals “Wipeout” which are so juvenile it’s hard to switch off.

So then came Brokeback spoofs, Brokeback to the Future etc, Viral videos which were nothing more than the output of bored kids making cheap laughs by tinkering with a format.

Here’s the best I have seen.




In the end, it’s only shallow, funny, a touch of resonance, but nothing more than a cover with no performance.

But you are left with a pleasant memory of what once was.

++++

So I guess I had my heart broken in a totally juvenile way yesterday, as I saw a viral video of a (semi)-famous (to me) teenage internet model.

Sometime around 2003 or so, a new trend came out for teenage girls, to pose on the net, but to still wear clothes, calling themselves Non-nude models. Some would think this a tease, but it worked on the level of catching a flash of panties of a girl in a skirt back in 8th grade. Before Britney lowered the bar for girls giving it up from 17 or on prom night to… 13, 14? This was like 3rd base in my day.

Like all good foreplay it took skill, a sense of fearlessness, and a bit of luck; if you got caught making a bad move, the odds increased 10 fold against it happening for you again.

The girls wanted to feel sexy, and we were happy to obige, but they didn’t want to seem like total sluts, and so they remained some level of dignity. It worked because unlike the voyeuristic nature of most porn, it retained an atmosphere of adolescent adventure, as if this was your first girlfriend, not some easy lay.

The most popular girl was Next Door Nikki, a young giggly, adorable gal with huge tracts of land who liked to pose in front of the camera, and turned the interest into a website.

While others eventually stopped covering up in hopes of making more money, Nikki stayed to her guns. And to this date, there hasn’t been but a blurry shot of her without some form of cover.

Until about a week or two ago, a video of her showed up with here nude. And not nude in the “tasteful” playboy mode, but in the polar opposite: on Jerry Springer.

Clearly she was paid, but I can’t see it being more than a grand.

It’s heartbreaking on so many levels. It was if she was promising to wait until prom, but one night at a jock party, she has too many shots and blows the phys Ed teacher in front of the Hockey Team.

Of course it’s wrong to lump in all women with this one incident, but couldn’t have seemed less doomed, less likely to end in failure like most everything else.

Did she have to break the barrier on such a low forum? Couldn’t there have been a private session, with some romance and buildup? Did she have to have such a mannish, WT voice to boot?

I remember a long conversation I had back in 2003 with the Kris and his girlfriend where I pined that the problem with dating is that too often, women are too easy.

That if they wanted us to really care about them, they should stop sleeping with us.

Followed by Kris’s ex asking “So, do you think I’m a whore for sleeping with you on the first date?”

His perfect response: “Yes!”

“You’re all clear kid now let’s blow this thing and go home.”

It was never the same. It’s the next step forward, leaving us with only the traces of what we grew up on, reformatted, and remade by the onset of adulthood. Beauty is always skin deep, but sometimes, we aren't honest with ourselves to grasp the truth.

Two pic gallery links:

playing the sexy girlfriend in public illusion

the I’m home alone and back from Vickies fantasy

The flameout finish:

Nothing ever ends well, if it didn’t end badly, it’d never end – Road House

(continued...)

Tonight Led Zeppelin Closes With Bring it on Homer.

The state of modern music as framed by Later season Simpsons quotes (mostly 99 on)

Woodsman: I too got lost in these woods here. I wandered around and then eventually married a bear.
Woman: I’m not a bear! I’m a woman!
Woodsman: Ragh, ragh, ragh. No one understands you bear-woman.
Bart Vs. Lisa Vs. The Third Grade

To the continually unintelligible Missy Elliot.

Homer: Oh, I like food alright ... [Homer breaks into song] I like pizza, I like bagels, I like hot gods with mustard and beer
Editor: I get the picture
Homer: [continues, ignoring him] I'll eat eggplant, I could even eat a baby deer La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la! Who's that baby deer on the lawn there?

And

Homer: OOH pointless nostalgia.

Both from: Guess who’s coming to criticize dinner?

To Ray Cash for bumping my music. A long list of the music he listens to. It’s like an MP3 blog set to a Casio keyboard and with an 808. Just as boring as it gets.

But it does have the spit take line of the year, “Damn near cried when Rick James died/Nigga was cold blooded”

Nobody got more extra lives than Rick James. He had 2 or 3 hits minor hits, one anthem that is almost required to be on a shitty disco hits compilation (Super Freak), and then faded away. Then he was in the back of Eddie Murphy’s “classic” Party all the time video. Then Hammer took his beat for Can’t Touch This. And then, just when you think he is done, Charlie Murphy does his classic True Hollywood Story, which I am going to paste below instead of linking to.



This guy- a legendary asshole- got more chances than anyone but Charlie Sheen, also a legendary asshole.

What was I talking about, oh yeah, Ray Cash…

One more from that Episode:

Editor: [laughs]
Homer: Well, what do you think?
Editor: This is a joke, right? I mean this is the stupidest thing I've ever read! Homer: What's wrong with it?
Editor: You keep using words like "Pasghetti" and "Momatoes" You make numerous threatening references to the UN and at the end you repeat the words "Screw Flanders" over and over again.
Homer: Oh, it's so hard to get to 500 words.

To Wyclef Jean in Shakira’s Hips don’t lie. First off, Shakira cannot hit that high note. Just flubs it every time. But why does Wyclef have to constantly shout “Shakira! Shakira! during the chorus. It’s been 8 long years since the Carnival. Time to ease into producing entirely Clef.

That and the "Why the CIA want to watch us?" a threating reference to a group of people that don't care about them. Who am I kidding, if C Thomas Howell had a file after Soul Man, Wycelf's got one too.

This was one of the last episodes before the Simpsons went in the toilet for about 2 years, from the first episode of 2000 until Trilogy of Error there isn’t a standout in the run.

Father Sean: I understand, but can it wait till after Bingo?
Homer: Bingo, that's my favorite game. I just can't remember what to yell out when you win.
Father Sean: Bingo.
Homer: That's my favorite game. I just can't remember what to yell out when you win.
Father Sean: How bout you just say "Yaay I won!"
Homer: Bingo!

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Guest Star

To the ongoing trend of writers saying the same line, multiple times, right after another.

Whether it’s Rick Ross rhyming 22 with 22 five times in a row, whip it, whip it another 3 times, or I’m like Atlantic, I got stuff flying cross the Atlantic in Hustlin..

Or the 17 year old Boniqua girl Paula Denada shouting I got high self esteem in Doin too much.

Or Mike Jones, who can’t seem to stop saying the same 3 lines in every song.

Or Panic at the Disco, who will get their own treatment later, with I write sins and better if you did. ..

This has got to stop. A friend of mine once made a compelling argument that you can only truly rap if you rap in English. It’s a lot harder to rhyme if you can’t change a word’s masculinity to feminine or vice versa. Then Juveille hit with HA, which created a whole new rhyme scheme of rhyming lines by a common end word.

“Welcome to Fox News, your source for evil.”
Mr. Spritz goes to Washington.

To Puffy, whose Bad Boy south seems to bring out a new star with the same southern blandness every three months. First it was Young Jeezy, now it’s Yung Joc. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

On the same note,

Mick Jagger: And no matter where you are, you always say It's the wildest town in the whole damn world.
Wiggum: So when you said it in Springfield last year you didn't mean it?
Mick Jagger: Yeah sure I did, but only because Springfield really is the wildest town in the whole damn world.
How I Spent my Strummer Vacation

We get it, you’re either from Miami or Atlanta or Chicago or Houston. Now get back to writing.

Gibson: Homer is a brutally honest man. Completely tactless and insensitive.
Homer: Hee, hee. Guilty as charged.
Beyond Blunderdome.

I’ve already covered this before, but this goes to Yung Joc and Tom Delounge.

Joc for “Everybody loves me, I’m so cool”

And Tom, this is just your year man. Every time I see your video or hear your music, it’s like I’m hearing the sound of rock and roll being reinvented.

Millhouse: Then let's just say I don't care what people think of me anymore.
Bart: You mean up until now you did care? Then why did you wear that tutu to school last week.
Millhouse: What about all the times I didn't wear a tutu. Nobody ever brings those up.

Millhouse Doesn’t live here anymore

To AFI. Miss Murder, actually not that bad of a song. But it’s a little hard to take you seriously when you are out girling the ladies with you ridiculous hair and makeup. At least Kiss hid their horrible looks with makeup that made look more attractive to the ladies.

Homer: I wiped a booger on your shirt, I made a dog and a cat kiss, I swiped a bolted down tv from a holiday inn, I coveted the wife in Jaws 2, I lied to a waiter, I masturbated 8 billion times and I have no plans to stop masturbating in the future. Woohoo I'm clean! In your face lord!
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Guest Star

To Cassie’s Me & U video. Look for yourself, it’s not even near porn, it is porn. I have no plans to stop watching it in the future.



Between the dancing in front of the mirror, dousing herself in water, and kissing her reflection, we have a new entry into “Furious Masturbation Theater.”

While not tied to anything, I’ll link two of my favorite clips from musicians on the show.

50 Cent
Mick Jagger

Announcer: Can robots feel pain? If so, we are terrible people.
I-D’oh-bot.

To all of us watching and listening to Paris Hilton’s Stars are blind.

Kent: We've bought in an expert. Former underage defender Snake.
Snake: If they're smart, Kent, they'll stay off the main roads. It's all here in my book. Ten Habits Of Highly Sucessful Criminals.
Kent: Alright, I plugged your book, now put down the gun!
Snake: Tell them I'll be on Conan Thursday with Heather Locklear and Third Eye Blind.
The Wandering Juvie

To the man with warrants in every city except Houston, Chamillionaire, and his anthem to driving against the law “Ridin.”

Homer: Donkey Basketball? Now I've heard everything. Unlike YOU! Ahahah! Haha! Oh, everybody remember that for when his hearing comes back.
Bart Mangled Banner

From one of my favorite episodes ever, this one is for the inventors of the high pitch ringtone that adults can’t hear.

Homer: I think it’s despicable what you people are doing, playing with people’s lives and emotions for television sensationalism.
Carmen Electra: My face is up here, Homer.
Homer: (looking at Carmen's breasts) I've made my choice.
The Frying Game

To the Pussycat Dolls, started in one form or another by, that’s right, Carmen Electra. Truly dumb, utterly talentless, and being pushed on the stations like none others. I’ve made my choice.

Homer: Son, seeing sappy movies with a lady has certain payoffs.
Bart: Like what, they'll do something with you that they hate?
Homer: Exactly!
Catch ‘em if you can

To Mariah Carey, who tends to be the Spanish Fly for any woman under 30. And with an IQ less than 100. And likely self esteem issues.

(In Democrat prison)
Clinton: I called the Republican tax cuts unfair. And I stand by it, their unfair.
Random Guy: All I said is that imported wines are better than Napa Valley!
Guard: Why don’t you take a Napa *hits him over the head with club*
Elmo: Elmo go to wrong fundraiser.
Islamic prisoner: My only crime was driving a truckload of explosives over the US – Canadian border.
Marge: Why do they keep the joke ones next to the real ones.
Bart Mangled Banner

To Rhianna’s Unfaithful, in which she says she doesn’t want to be… a mur-der-er. In the land of thuggish rap, the only one who actually claims to feel like a killer is an 18 year old island girl.

Marge: This is the worst thing you've ever done!
Homer: You say that so much it's lost all meaning.
She of Little Faith

To Panic! At the Disco. I know someone makes a statement every year about some band being the worst ever, but I think we have a new benchmark of craplitude (note edited from crapulence, which I found out means hungover, thanks Simpsons) for a while.

It’s like listening to rock music from the four wrist-slashing Goth kids in your High School who hung out at the 7-11 and Andrew Lloyd Webber working together.

Here’s a better question, how did the lead singer find three or four more guys to join his band. Tis one thing to find enough people in a city who play music, and the type of music you also play. Really, are there four or five people in the entire country who all thought: “you know what kind of music I want to make? Overly dramatic, theater style vocals, with little or no sense of rhythm, but tons of harmony instead of melody, and because I want to be as feminine as possible without telling my parents I’m gay, I want to wear makeup.” There are enough of these people in the country to make a band? How did these people find each other?

So let’s give this a whirl.

The worst (hit) songs of the last ten years. Some get quotes, others don’t.

8. Good Charlotte - every song (except for the 20 seconds in Hold on which Dave thinks is pretty good). (their name is almost as hard to spell as it is to listen to)
7. Rollin – Limp Bizkit
6. LFO – Summer Girls
5. J-Lo. The repertoire. (Thank you NASA – New Kids)
4. Shaggy – It wasn’t me (You make a very adulterous point – Mr. Spritz)
3. Master P – Make em say unngggghhhh.
2. Puff Daddy – I’ll be missing you.

That’s right.

#1 is Panic at the Disco. Making Dashboard Confessional look like Led Zeppelin.


On the advice of our lawyers, we must insist we have never heard of a musical based on the life of Eva Peron.

Just for me. I would have done this format even if I didn’t read Bill Simmons where he does this twice a year with classic films like the Godfather and Caddyshack.

Comic Book Guy: Oh I have wasted my life.

(continued...)