Stupidest Thing I Heard Today

7/31/07


Captain Obvious Coworker: “Yeah, well you know your whole body weight is supported on your feet.”

___________________________________________

Bonus: They Eat WHAT?!

Let it never be said that there is any food I wouldn’t be willing to try. Come to that, there are no foods that I actually hate, and pretty much anything is fair game to be shoved into my maw. But recently I heard about a Canadian comfort food that gave even one such as me pause. It’s called poutine and…dear gods…it is French fries sprinkled with cheese curds and then drowned in hot, brown gravy.

Doesn't that look nice?

I dunno; it just seems to me that this was invented by throwing darts at random ingredients. "Fuck it! Put 'em in a cup!" Also, there was booze involved. Jesus.

Film at 11

7/27/07


If you’ve ever worked in an office you are most likely intimately aware of two things: Food days and “Fun” days. They usually coincide. Food days are where everybody brings, well, food, and we get to listen to all the women over the age of 35 say “Oh, I’m going to be bad!” as they go back for that third piece of double chocolate cake. I like food days, not the least because I get to show off by cooking something that makes you orgasm when you eat it. Fun days are essentially an excuse not to work by pretending to enjoy whatever activity you’ve been forced into. Ever seen Office Space? Remember that part where Lumberg says you can wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans for Luau Day or something? Yeah, it’s rather like that. To be fair, our bosses really do try to schedule fun things that the majority of people will like. The only problem with that is I am not most people, and sort of generally loathe what normal humans find enjoyable. Honestly, most of the time I’d just rather be left to work, which is saying something, since I hate work like poison.

Normally we just go into the conference room and watch a movie, but we’ve also gone out to an actual movie theatre, attended a Springfield Cardinals game (this was decidedly the worst. I did get to read uninterrupted for about 3 hours until we were eventually released) and painted and fired ceramics. That last one was pretty cool, actually. But I have now decided that I am calling in sick on these days from now on, because our next day is another movie day and…well let me just show you the selection of movies we got to choose from:

Premonition
Code Name: The Cleaner
Wild Hogs

Fuck! Man…just…FUCK! By the way, the only one of these gems that cracked a double-digit approval percentage on RottenTomatoes.com was Wild Hogs, with whopping 16% positive reviews. In case you don’t know anything about these movies (you are a charmed person, if this is the case) I will enlighten you, dear readers.

Premonition: (PG-13) 1 hr 50 mins – Sandra Bullock, the female Keanu Reeves, plays some broad who keeps flashing forward and backward in time, centering around a car accident which kills her husband…who she finds out was cheating on her. PROS: While watching it you will no longer fear the sweet release that death would bring. CONS: Watching Bullock chew the scenery for a staggering 2 hours? I’d rather be anally-raped by an angry porcupine.

Code Name: The Cleaner: (PG-13) 84 mins – The inaccurately-named Cedric The Entertainer plays some douche with amnesia who is mistaken for a secret agent, and falls ass-backwards into some government conspiracy. I think I heard that as many as three people laughed at least once while watching this piece of shit. PROS: It’s short. CONS: Not short enough.

Wild Hogs: (PG-13) 1 hr 40 mins – Dear Jesus. I can only assume the producer of this film has pictures of William H. Macy strangling a tranny hooker because that’s the only legitimate excuse for this gifted actor to costar with John Travolta, Tim Allen and Martin-fucking-Lawrence as they play aging morons who, in a moment of stupidity and mid-life crisis, decide to dress in leather and ride around on motorcycles for awhile. You also get a soundtrack recycled from every motorcycle movie ever, and tired, hackneyed jokes laced with severe homophobia. For the kids! PROS: I’ll give you $1000 if you think of one. CONS: Fuck you, movie.

I abstained from voting for any movie out of principle. And which cinematic abortion did the fifteen-odd people on my team choose? Sigh. Wild Hogs. This is how office shootings start. “I dunno, officer, one minute we’re watching John Travolta in chaps and the next he just started blasting away!”

Thing 1 and Thing 2

7/26/07


A little something from the entertainment industry today, dear readers. If you were alive in the 80’s this is probably of interest, if only to gawk at the horror of it all. This Sunday A&E takes a break from forensic shows, (which I like) real estate shows, (which I also like) and reruns of CSI: Miami* (which is only preferable to watching strawberries mold by a few degrees) to bring you the next step in reality shows. I have no idea when this trend of ever-weirder, sadder and stupider “reality” television is going to end, but my thoughts on the genre rate just above how I feel about Michael Vick’s preferred entertainment.

This Sunday at 10 p.m. (9:00 Central!) A&E premiers The Two Coreys, a semi-reality program starring, as you’ve probably guessed, Corey Haim and Corey Feldman. I say “semi” reality because apparently the Coreys are portraying caricatures of themselves, but both former child stars contend that the feelings and conversations in the show are genuine. So…there’s that.

You may remember Haim and Feldman from such hits as The Lost Boys (1987), Lucas (’86), Dream a Little Dream (’89), and, sincerely my personal favorite License to Drive (’88). Oh, and severe drug abuse. To be fair, Feldman’s decline into drug abuse was mild, lasting two years, in comparison to Haim’s whirlwind love affair with smack, crack and, I dunno, mainlining Drano. The A&E show’s premise is this: Feldman is the straight-laced, got-his-act-together fellow who lives in a huge house with his loving wife Susie. Feldman is the goofy, emotional slob who refuses to grow up and comes to live with the Feldmans for several weeks. And wacky, ratings-boosting television ensues! I guess.

I’ve seen quite a few previews for this show and I have to tell you I could only make it through five of the seven-minute preview here on the A&E page. It’s just painful to watch. I surely wish the Coreys no ill-will—they have provided me with countless hours of 80’s entertainment—but I do not believe I will be watching an infinitely more embarrassing and even less funny version of You, Me and Dupree. There is something very wrong when you have Corey Feldman playing the calm voice of reason. There are plenty of moments that make one cringe with squishy pity especially for the clearly emotional Haim: The crying jag when he learns they will not be featured in the upcoming direct-to-video The Lost Boys II: The Tribe. Or the stream-of-consciousness rant about how he has been engaged only twice, despite the fact that he names four women when counting down the list. Or the clearly-coached bit where he insults Feldman and his wife for the vegetarian meal that they cooked him for dinner.

You may ask why, if this show is so heavy not reality, why the Coreys would wish to further denigrate themselves by whoring it up for America. Because it’s a win-win for both of them. The clearly self-obsessed Feldman gets to play the reformed, mature actor who pulled himself up by his bootstraps to star in not one, but two idiotic “reality” shows, and Haim is frankly just happy to be on TV whatever the context.

I dunno…it might something to flip to while Ice Road Truckers is on commercial or something.



*Seriously, why is this a show? Whether you’ve seen this pig-vomit of a program or not check out why David Caruso is perhaps the worst actor in this Universe or any other.

I’m A Homo, Apparently

7/24/07

I’ve been accused of being many things. “Homosexual” would be one of the illustrious list. In fact, it’s probably #1 with a bullet. I don’t know why, I mean, just because a 7th-grader walks around with a neon green fanny pack full of hair-care products and occasionally sports skin-tight biker shorts with a matching neon stripe down the side is no reason to go questioning which team he plays for, is it? And just because the closest a high-schooler gets to a date with the opposite sex involves three pride-swallowing debacles where the girls say, in effect, “oh…oh jeez…no thanks,” is that any reason to suspect he plays for the Pink team? And just because a fella likes to lay naked on top of another greased man wearing a Viking helmet is no reason to believe that man likes the taste of semen. Okay so that last one might be, but as far as you know that never happened. Twice.

At any rate, I did manage to burst out of my forced-celibacy at the ripe old age of 20, and I’ve done it a few more times since then. Thereby safely couched in my own sexuality it bothers me not at all to be called gay. Frankly, sometimes I act fairly gay. My propensity for showing off my own nudity regardless of the sex of my audience being a prime example. Which is why I guess I can understand the message I received in my MySpace inbox yesterday:

In case that's too small for you to read, it says, simply, "LOL - WHATTA HOMO!"

The only thing that bothers me about the message is that it’s not very specific. What about me struck this possibly nude man looking lustfully into the camera in his profile picture to not only think I’m homosexual, but find the possibility so hilarious as to actually email a complete stranger about it at 2:30 in the morning? Is it my nude profile picture? Is it the fact that I state I have the musical taste of either a 14 year old girl or a gay man? Is it because scarcely a blog goes by where I don’t mention cock in some form or another? In order to get the answer to these burning questions I send my new friend a response:

What an odd thing to randomly broadcast across cyberspace. What am I to do
with this information? What universal truths can I learn about not only
myself, but about you, an odd, shirtless, terminally hairless man such as
yourself shouting homoerotic things at me?

The question becomes,
are you merely sharing your opinion that I am, indeed, a homo? Or is this
perhaps an awkward, aggressive sort of flirting to which I should be
aware? If it is the latter, while I am flattered, I should inform you that
I am married and that has really cut down on my dating lunatics obsessed with
wrestling.

Thank you ever so much for your
correspondence.

Sincerely,
Ryan

To be fair, I don’t know that he is “obsessed with wrestling,” but one of the only five pictures in his “pics” area is of some clean-shorn wrestler, so I took a guess. Check it out, if you dare.

“Rick” did actually send me a response, and I would love to tell you that he went all ape-shit crazy on my ass, spouting rampant homophobia, but alas, Rick disappointed me in that department. His response was brief, un-argumentative and fairly impossible to make fun of:

How am I supposed to mock that? Other than the fact that he repeated himself and then used the incorrect "your" instead of "you're" this just doesn't give me much to work with. Just inconsiderate, is what it is. And then, this blog just sort of peters out…

I Guarantee You Have Never Seen This

7/20/07


My friend Kaci in the Pacific Northwest took the following picture and was so astounded by what she saw that she had to call me and tell me about it right that second. How she kept from screaming off the road and plowing into what must have been a huge crowd of gawkers I can’t imagine. Enjoy.

Your eyes do not deceive you, dear readers. That is, in fact, a mulleted, balding man wearing a wife-beater and Daisy Dukes, walking a ferret on a leash. That sound you just heard? That was your brain exploding with the awesomeness what you’ve just seen.

July’s Douchebag of the Month

7/18/07


I believe it was last year whenever I started doing “Douchebag of the Month,” and since have steadfastly refused to keep the promise in the title. No, I just generally prefer to forget all about the segment until some dripping nozzle of a human being comes to light, aching for me to slather him with the coveted moniker of “Douchebag.”

There are no shortage of douchebags in the sports world; guys who refer to themselves in the third person, fellas who like to pork 15 year old girls, whatever the bloody-blue-fuck is wrong with Barry Bonds, to name a few. But the great grand-daddy of ‘em all has to be Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick. This tower of douchebagery was indicted yesterday in a 19-page list of charges for owning and running a dogfighting operation on land in southeastern Virginia. Vick purchased this plot for $34,000 back in 2001 when he was a rookie in the NFL. Not only that, but this steaming specimen of human excrement has also been charged with taking part (along with ridiculously-named accomplices Purnell Peace, Tony Taylor and Quanis Phillips) in the killing of 8 dogs which didn’t perform well during “testing” for fights.

The execution of the dogs was allegedly performed by drowning, electrocution, hanging, and “slamming at least one dog’s body to the ground,” according to the indictment. Vick claims he had no knowledge of “Bad Newz Kennels,” as the ring was fucking called, saying he wasn’t around the place all that much. Yeah, I suppose I probably wouldn’t notice 60-some dogs, fighting equipment, blood-stained walls and the tens of thousands of dollars paid out on losing dogs whenever I visited for the weekend, either. But hold on, it’s not about the money. I mean, after all, Vick the second-highest paid player in the goddamn league. So he’s doing this for the love of torturing and killing innocent animals to satisfy the bloodlust of human garbage. Sixty-six dogs, most of them the much-put-upon pit bulls, were confiscated by the feds whenever they raided Vicks compound of iniquity this past April.

John Goodwin, a dogfighting expert with the Humane Society said, “there have been cases in Virginia where there have been convictions and people sent to prison with far less evidence…They can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that dogfighting took place on that property.”

In a written statement the NFL said, “We will continue to closely monitor developments in the case, and to cooperate with law enforcement authorities. The activities alleged are cruel, degrading and illegal…all concerned should allow the legal process to determine the facts.” Which is basically a flaccid way of saying, “Fuck! Why would that asshole do that?! Look, we had nothing to do with it, honest! What was that asshole thinking?!”

If convicted (cross your fingers, children!) Vick and his slimy compatriots face up to 6 years in federal prison and $350,000 in fines. He doesn’t have to be convicted to face disciplinary action from the NFL, either. New, stricter guidelines on player conduct allow NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to “reprimand” Vick before the case even goes to trial. What’s the going punishment for being a complete waste of oxygen? Suspension for one season? We’ll see.

Heretofore Vick has kept his nose pretty clean, at least as far as the prostitute-loose standards of professional sports go. Vick was fined $10,000 by the NFL last season and agreed to give another ten-grand to charity for making obscene gestures at fans, and settled out of court last year with a woman alleging that Vick the Prick knowingly gave her herpes. It almost makes me nostalgic for when I was a little boy, and wanted nothing more in the world than to grow up and become an ill-tempered, rich and famous ball-playing dog-murderer who assaulted people with my various STDs.

Say it with me kids: For all these reasons and probably more, Michael Vick is our

"Douchebag of the Month."

Man, seriously, fuck that guy.

Sources: The Chicago Tribune (Chicago Sports) – Dogfighting Indictment Puts Vick, NFL Under Gun
Washington Post – Falcons’ Vick Indicted in Dogfighting Case

Dear Micheal Bay,

I actually went to see the new Transformers movie the morning after it came out, but haven't had a chance to properly crystallize my thoughts until now. I submit to you, dear readers, my personal letter to Mr. Michael Bay in response to his “interpretation” of my childhood joy.

A formal critique of Mr. Bay’s abortion of a film may be forthcoming, but this was my knee-jerk reaction.