Monthly Archive for July, 2007

The Simpsons

Published on July 29, 2007 in ..The Dude and Reviews. 2 Comments

A generation finally has its film. Promised us for a good bulk of the 17 years the show has been on the air The Simpsons finally hits the big screen.

Is it worth the wait or too little too late?

Well neither exactly in my opinion. But it was a damn good little big time cartoon that certainly brings much more to the table than the show has in recent years. That may in large part be due to them bringing back some of the old heyday talent for the movie. It still has its over the top silly gags and mindless easy laughs that has come to define the latter years but for the most part there was some intelligence back in the mix with a bit of social commentary and pathos thrown in to really remind me what made this little cartoon about a strange yellow family so special at one time.

Back in the 90′s The Simpsons could not only make me laugh but could also make me cry just a tiny bit and there is a moment in the scene with the tape where that happens again. We get some nice little moments of satire as well though they don’t get too far beyond the family story here. The church/Moe’s moment is one of my favorites in a long time and has that sly insight packed into a couple of seconds the show used to do so often.

There’s alot of other nice stuff though it is true as many reviews have stated that the laughs slow a bit after 20 minutes or so and you do feel that post 90′s Simpsons vibe set in. But the look of the movie which manages to be cartoony enough to let you escape this world (which some animation doesn’t do anymore due to becoming too lifelike) has a scope to the animation that really fits the big screen and kept my interest.

The movie could have used more Burns and Smithers for sure as well as more on the post apocalyptic Lord Of The Flies element taking over Springfield that we glimpse near the end. But all in all Groening and Co came through and didn’t make me regret the decision to do a movie this late in the game. It’s actually been a long time since I heard so much audience applause at the end of a movie. That made it worth seeing it opening weekend. When a movie like this lives up to the hype, being there with a full crowd who have that collective moment is nice. It’s a safe bet Spiderpig is leaving America more satisfied than Spiderman 3 did.

America Grows To 75% Sentience Rate As The Death Toll Mounts.

Published on July 24, 2007 in ..The Dude and Politics. 3 Comments

Bush’s approval rating is down to 25% according to a recent poll. HUffington Post. A recent South Park asserted that 1 out of 4 people are retarded. Kyle used Cartman’s presence amongst Stan, Kenny and himself to prove this in light of Cartman’s 9-11 conspiracy theories. This new poll on Bush now offers us another way to measure just who these 1 out of 4 retarded people are.

Not including real clinically diagnosed retarded people of course who have an excuse.

Of course many of the people being added to the list of Bush naysayers are still pretty stupid for needing a bandwagon to hop on after over a half decade of such in your face incompetence, arrogance, and disdain for the democratic system that even some retarded people I know don’t trust him. Never has such selfish intent and criminal activity been so clearly telegraphed by an administration that doesn’t have a Capo or Don in it. There may have been some presidential administrations that are in the ballpark of this one but never in an age where so much information is available to us to have so clearly seen it coming, watched it unfold, and understand exactly how and why it was happening.

When I hear some of these Democratic clowns claiming how fooled they were it makes me want to scream. These retards had access to all the information people like I had. I knew there were no WMD’s or Al Quada-Iraq connection long before we went in there. I knew of the long standing agenda to do exactly what they have done and could clearly see what maneuvers like the special defense department group set up under Douglas Feith were all about. This wasn’t because I had special insight, greater intelligence, or clairvoyance. It’s because the evidence was out there, I read it, compared it to the other evidence and its sources and drew an informed conclusion.

Kerry, Clinton and co just were either too lazy to work at it or too gutless to question in the heat of war fervor. And more people die everyday in a foreign occupation that never had anymore of a chance to succeed than any other. Imagine Bush and Cheney bringing democracy to anybody. And debates go on about how to end it from a bunch of mediocre disgraces that have no right to ask that question now. There are no winning moves now. There are no non-catastrophic alternatives left to us. This is because the time to make a winning decision has past and the decision was clearly to not invade a country who is not threatening you. That’s why careful consideration of things like this is so important before the fact.

That was the great frustration of watching the whole thing unfold. The complete and utter helplessness of watching a train wreck you can see coming a mile away but are powerless to do anything about. These half-assed debates to save face and gain advantage were easy to predict years ago. As was the uselessness of them. Meanwhile every new death is on all their hands to some extent. As well as on the hands and consciences of many of those 75% who needed to actually see mounting death tolls, incompetent management from a crony infested administration, and more and more indictments of their party to answer no to a poll that measured their satisfaction.

Of course much of that dissatisfaction could also be because of the market place too. In that case the 25% or so who came over to the disapproving side can suck my ass.

Apparently it doesn’t take much to satisfy these people and a nightmare of ongoing illegality and death to dissatisfy them. This is still retarded though they’ve raised themselves to some kind of savant, merely idiot like level of classification.

Congratulations!

I wonder how many of them had kids with lives on the line in Iraq? Or that other 25% who still approve? But then retards shouldn’t reproduce anyway. For all our sakes.

Spanning The World (And Avoiding Life In Kingston)

Published on July 22, 2007 in ..The Dude. 2 Comments

More on Kingston plus some other little mentions from around the globe concerning the president with a small p’s ass (no not Dick Cheney), Bob Boblaw, Star Trek, Potter mania, and another hypocrite bites the dust.

Kingston sucks. I’m being driven insane in my new living conditions by the city and my father. Perhaps myself as well. I wandered the streets in my car tonight just to not go home. It’s a nice place and all but it’s not really suitable for my situation. I’m not going to go all personal and soul searching on a defenseless internet but I really feel like I can’t live this way even though I don’t necessarily want to go back to the situation I came from. But this has me wanting to take a demotion at work so I can at least eliminate stress at work since I no longer have any place to escape to. And yet I want to get back to work in a week so I can escape this place a bit longer and gain some distance and privacy.

Bit I did manage to have at least one laugh this week. And I mean 1. It came from a post circulating around the net from some dude. It was reposted on The Movie Blog. It’s about Star Trek and 10 reasons why this guy sort of hates it. Here it is:

10: Noisy doors.
You can’t walk three feet in a starship without some door whooshing or screeching at you. My office building has automatic sliding doors. They’re dead silent. If those doors went “wheet!” every time a person walked through them, about once a month some guy in accounting would snap and go on a shooting rampage. Sorry Scotty, the IEEE has revoked your membership until you learn to master WD-40

9. The Federation.
This organization creeps me out. A planet-wide government that runs everything, and that has abolished money. A veritable planetary DMV. Oh sure, it looks like a cool place when you’re rocketing around in a Federation Starship, but I wonder how the guy driving a Federation dump truck feels about it?

And everyone has to wear those spandex uniforms. Here’s an important fact: Most people, you don’t want to see them in spandex. You’d pay good money to not have to see them. If money hadn’t been abolished, that is. So you’re screwed.

8. Reversing the Polarity.
For cripes sake Giordi, stop reversing the polarity of everything! It might work once in a while, but usually it just screws things up. I have it on good authority that the technicians at Starbase 12 HATE that. Every time the Enterprise comes in for its 10,000 hour checkup, they’ve gotta go through the whole damned ship fixing stuff. “What happened to the toilet in Stateroom 3?” “Well, the plumbing backed up, and Giordi thought he could fix it by reversing the polarity.”

Between Scotty’s poor lubrication habits and Geordi’s damned polarity reversing trick, it’s a wonder the Enterprise doesn’t just spontaneously explode whenever they put the juice to it.

7. Seatbelts.
Yeah, I know this one is overdone, but you’d think that the first time an explosion caused the guy at the nav station to fly over the captain’s head with a good 8 feet of clearance, someone would say, “You know, we might think of inventing some furutistic restraining device to prevent that from happening.” So of course, they did make something like that for the second Enterprise (the first one blew up due to poor lubrication), but what was it? A hard plastic thing that’s locked over your thighs. Oh, I’ll bet THAT feels good in the corners. “Hey look! The leg-bars worked as advertised! There goes Kirk’s torso!”

6. No fuses.
Every time there’s a power surge on the Enterprise the various stations and consoles explode in a shower of sparks and throw their seatbelt-less operators over Picard’s head. If we could get Giordi to stop reversing the polarity for a minute, we could get him to go shopping at the nearest Starship parts store and pick up a few fuses. And while he’s shopping, he could stop at an intergalactic IKEA and pick up a few chairs for the bridge personnel. If you’re going to put me in front of a fuseless exploding console all day, the least you could do is let me sit down.

5. Rule by committee.
Here’s the difference between Star Trek and the best SF show on TV last year:

Star Trek:

Picard: “Arm photon torpedoes!”
Riker: “Captain! Are you sure that’s wise?”
Troi: “Captain! I’m picking up conflicting feelings about this! And, it appears that you’re a ‘fraidy cat.”
Wesley: “Captain, I’m just an annoying punk, but I thought I should say something.”
Worf: “Captain, can I push the button? This is giving me a big Klingon warrior chubby.”
Giordi: “Captain, I think we should reverse the polarity on them first.”
Picard: “I’m so confused. I’m going to go to my stateroom and look
pensive.”

Firefly:

Captain: “Let’s shoot them.”
Crewman: “Are you sure that’s wise?”
Captain: “Do you know what the chain of command is? It’s the chain I’ll BEAT YOU WITH until you realize who’s in command.”
Crewman: “Aye Aye, sir!”

4. A Star Trek quiz:
Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and ‘Ensign Gomez’ beam down to a planet. Which one isn’t coming back?

3. Technobabble.
The other night, I couldn’t get my car to start. I solved the problem by reversing the polarity of the car battery, and routing the power through my satellite dish. The resulting subspace plasma caused a rift in the space-time continuum, which created a quantum tunnelling effect that charged the protons in the engine core, thus starting my car. Child’s play, really. As a happy side-effect, I also now get the Spice Channel for free.

2. The Holodeck.
I mean, it’s cool and all. But do you really believe that people would use it to re-create Sherlock Holmes mysteries and old-west saloons? Come on, we all know what the holodeck would be used for. And we also know what the worst job on the Enterprise would be: Having to squeegie the holodeck clean.

1. The Prime Directive.
How stupid is this? Remember when Marvin the Martian was going to blow up the Earth, because it obstructed his view of Venus? And how Bugs Bunny stopped him by stealing the Illudium Q36 Space Modulator? Well, in the Star Trek universe, Bugs would be doing time. Probably in a room filled with Roseanne lookalikes wearing spandex uniforms, walking through doors going WHEET! all day. It would be heck. At least until the Kaboom. The Earth-shattering Kaboom.

_______
Bush had a Colonoscopy today. Cheney was President while W was out. News people have reported this without irony. I do not understand this kind of restraint. You have to at least give me an arched eyebrow or a slight smirk just to let me know you’re not dead behind the eyes or working for Fox.

I hear after the procedure Bush had a headache.
________
I watched the new Scott Baio reality show on VH1.

I admit this to you and ask for your acceptance if not forgiveness because what I have to tell you gets worse.

Much worse.

I liked it.

THis is about Baio being 45 and still single. A life coach sets him on a path of discovery to find out why. He starts by getting in touch with ex’s like in High Fidelity. Turns out his first sex partner was Erin Moran. That’s right, Joannie of Joannie Loves Chachi fame. Baio has a nice sense of self and awareness that made me like him. THe whole thing was amusing in a generation X self-consuming mixed with self-loathing kind of way. Things actually get a bit deep too.

Scott Baio really did have quite the run of ladies, starletts included. He’s got a lifelong buddy who is trying to sabotage this whole self-discovery quest because he doesn’t want Scott to be able to commit to a woman and get married. This is because he knows he’ll never get laid anymore if he’s not Scott Baio’s wingman.

Awesome stuff.

I haven’t gotten to see the Brett Michael’s show yet but I eagerly await watching my first DVR’d episode.

That’s right. I’ve fallen that far in my need to escape my reality that I am DVR’ing Scott Baio and Brett Michael’s psuedo-realities.

Fuck you.

I want the 80′s back and will continue to do so in an obstinate, curmudgeonly way unless I have something cool and hopeful happen in this or the next decade.

If it does not I will lock myself in a school library with John Hughes where we will watch Ferris Bueller until one of us dies or Phoebe Cates agrees to be my wife.

If Hughes goes first and my leverage is gone I will kill myself by watering my Gremlin after midnight until it kills me.

If you know what I mean.
_________

Tammy Fae is dead. She had this to say shortly before she died.

“I believe when I leave this Earth because I love the Lord, I am going straight to heaven.”

Yep it’s just that easy for them people.

Nothing personal. Sorry she had to suffer. But it’s funny how belief always overrides things like using your ministry’s tax exempt status to seed an opulent and garish lifestyle (as the Bakers are known to have done), in the eyes of their conveniently muted god.

Not to mention bringing Jessica Hahn into the national consciousness and Sam Kinnison videos.

In referencing the big Televangelist in the sky she also stated,
“He is the same yesterday, today and forever. He never changes. That is what the Bible says and God’s word does not lie ever.”

I don’t suppose this could be part of his problem?

Anyway after Falwell it appears god is asleep at the wheel. Don’t you think so Pat Robertson? Huh you sick bastard? Where is the divine cause and effect when its your guys taking the hits you degenerate scum bloated windbag of stupidity?

_________

Barnes & Noble in Kingston was a mad house last night with the whole Harry Potter thing. It was like a a Rocky Horror concert. People running around in costumes, chasing each other with wands, and just generally being loud both inside and out. I think I even saw someone getting spanked.

Even at 11 the place was overflowing. The parking lot was full up until the womens clothes stores and Applebee’s a good row of spaces away.

Part of me wanted to run though the store shouting out spoilers but even if I had seen them online I felt a bit of respect for these people and their strange attachment and fervor for this quaint little series that quite frankly seems rather mundane and less than original to me.

But I haven’t read more than a few pages and though the movies were ok if uninspiring I know I can’t judge the books by them. I like a good series devotion to get lost in and on some levels I envied them their anticipation. It’s been a while since I awaited a book, album, or movie in quite that same way. It occurred to me last night that I may never do so again. I hope I’m wrong and that even this far from my youth something will still capture me in that way because I wanted to be one of them last night. I wanted to have read and enjoyed the books and eagerly salivate over the next and last. I wanted that brotherhood and sense of shared spirit with those people.

Instead I felt I had to get out of there which I did after a few minutes. Just didn’t really belong there and there was way too long of a line for a scone.

I guess there was a little of this type of thing for me over the Lord Of The Rings movies somewhat recently. But even there I knew the story so there was no mystery. I haven’t done a midnight line for an album since either G&R’s Illusions or Metallica’s Black Album. Possibly In Utero; I have a hazy memory of lining up for that at Tower Records in Manhattan but it seems sort of like pieces of memories.

There have been some midnight movies in recent years including the recent Star Wars prequels but the feeling just wasn’t the same.

So is the age of wonder over for me? When I am up every night past midnight am I doomed to never again have a line to wait on at that heady and exclusive hour?

I doubt Richard Dawkins will be on hand for a midnight signing and selling of his next book on evolution and atheism. Not exactly a shared communal experience to be had there.

Sure I’m looking forward to The Dark Knight next Summer. I may even get some hopes up for the next Metallica album. But will it ever be magical again? It certainly seems very unlikely there will be another novelized series that creates this much fanfare with either the public or myself.

Possibly this is the last hurrah for books ever. I hope it signals the opposite but if I had to bet I’d say we’re going in the other direction and the Potter books will be looked at as an aberration in the slow decline of the printed word. I know the book market has been rather healthy but in a country with so much stuff and so little time I’m not sure they will fit our future.

I do miss the feeling those bastards of all ages had last night though whether this was worthy series or not.

So let’s do the timewarp again.

Moving On

Published on July 18, 2007 in ..The Dude and Life. 1 Comment

Well I live in Kingston NY, can hear trains regularly throughout the day and night, have Time Warner cable as well as problems getting hot water. I have creepy neighbors below me, my privacy feels limited, I can’t sleep well or cook here for some reason, I’m spending too much money, can’t watch my TV when I want, am 40 and single and I’m middle management.

So what the fuck happened?

As you may have read below (or is it beside now?) Bob and I have moved. Tomorrow is Bob’s birthday. Wish him well won’t you. They feel like Deathday’s to me now. Actually many days are feeling that was lately. Not that I don’t like the new digs. I do and I don’t. I’m not sure. I’d gotten set in my ways i guess. I didn’t move from Yonkers/Bronx to live in the Ulster County version. It’s like reading Batman comics my whole young life and then having to move into the Tim Burton version as an adult.

A pale version indeed.

Well luckily we got Christopher Nolan to redeem that franchise on film. Hopefully there will be a Nolan of Kingston.

Or maybe I just won’t be here long. I don’t know. Moving was rough but will be a bit easier with the elimination of a monument of a desk and an ancient weightlifting machine that I spent hours sawing through. Not that I want to do it again. Bob, Brandonicus, and Shelly really came through and were a huge help but I wouldn’t want to ask it of them again too soon.

I’m on vacation until next Thursday when I’ll be returning to take some of my boys to a Mets game.

The Mets are not that good.

Let me just get that out of the way right now. But I do have SNY in hi def now as well as YES which I didn’t have at all. So now I can see the Mets be sucky that much more clearly and I’ll report all that I see to anyone interested. I may watch some Yankees too just to hate with clarity.

Cable hi def doesn’t look as good though. I think they’re compressing the signal or something. All that On Demand stuff is kind of cool though. They have 80′s videos available at touch of a button.

Bangles take me away!

Anyway it’s amazing how much more lonely and desolate sirens, horns, trains, and dump trucks can be as opposed to the edge of the woods in Woodstock. All state of mind I guess. At least I’ll have just a 3-5 minute ride to Barnes & Noble when I head over there in an hour or two.

Hey now, hey now don’t dream it’s over.

I hear the sirens in the distance again. Must be Crack time in the hood. At least I’m 15 minutes closer to Manhattan.

I have that going for me.

Which is nice.