Sunday, February 25, 2007

Live Oscar blogging beats the Apollo moon landing any day.

7:55 PM - I've been wearing an unwashed grey suit for over a month to support Borat's screenplay nomination. Tonight's where it pays off!

8:35 PM - Surprisingly, Errol Morris' opening interview montage did not include a Fred Leuchter appearance.

8:40 PM - Ellen's suit is the visual equivalent of "Oprah, Uma."

8:47 PM - Woo hoo, first award... What the FUCK! The Good Shepherd lost Best Art Direction?!? Fuck! This! Evening ruined. Kiss my ass, Hollywood. Is basketball on? Pacers vs. Kings... uh...

8:53 - Man, this Kings game is weird. Ron Artest just started singing about fighting Peter O'Toole. Wait, which show am I watching? Fuck, this is actually kinda hard.

9:07 PM - GUYS!!! IM sO DRUNK!!!1!

9:23 PM - OK IM BACK. SOMEone told me Tim and Eric r presenting later.

9:30 PM - guys yu think Jon Heder will evr win an oscar? ppl never tjought eddie murphey wld win one either and look what just happened.

9:32 PM - OH SHIT JAMES TAYLOR GUYS I LOV THIS SONG!!!

9:34 - Aand now its that convenient truths song. look yall i know its easy to be cynical abouit the oscars but ten billion people watch every year. ITS STILL REAL 2 ME DAMMIT!

9:37 PM - HEY ITS SORE LOSERMAN HA HA HA

9:40 - gUys Im sorry abt that sore loserman joke. this aint the half hour comedy hour on fox news, you dont come here for that sorta thing. Also, I just saw on yahoo eddie murphy didn't actully win. sorry.

9:56 - Shit, sorry again I was lookin for that gif of the cat jumpin out of the hedge and attacking the little kid bt i cant find it. I just thought it wouild be funny. i dont even know whats goin on on the oscars. I'm sorry... this blog sucks. im not fukin funny eitehr which is why i only have 2 readers.

10:01 - you know what the worst part of tonigt is, i got stuff i should be workin on for work but i keep puttin it off. WTF is wrong w/ me why am i so unmotivated. Plus im fukin drunk and i only had 1 beer.

10:03 FUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuck.

10:06 god i fuckin suck. i suck i suck i suck. Can you at least make friends on match.com or is it only for dating? Im lonely and i suck. i need to take this fukcin suit off, it stinks.

10 ? im going to bed early. i'll catch tim + erics bit on youtube tomorrow. sorry for sucking.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Plus, I'm Pretty Sure This Blog has Been Read as Many as 23 Times Since June!


Above: I didn't know Biohazard were still together, much less that they had an opening for a saxophonist


This weekend sees the release of The Number 23, which I believe stars Jim Carrey as an accident-prone fire marshall with bladder control issues who becomes obsessed with the alphabet or something. As hard as it is to believe that I could pass on the new Joel Schumacher movie, I think I'll be spending my $9.50 elsewhere this weekend. Nevertheless, this film has gotten me thinking about the significance the number 23 has played in my own life. For example:

-On my 23rd birthday I ate 23 pounds of macaroni and cheese over a period of 23 hours and subsequently shat 23 times, all while having 23 seperate crying fits.
-When I was a kid, I was a big fan of Michael Jordan (No. 23), but now I know there are at least 23 reasons to find him loathsome.
-There are at least 23 states in the US that I have no desire to ever visit, although I've heard the western part of the 23rd state, Maine, is pretty happening.
-I abide by the little-known comedy "rule of 23," in which the setup is established 22 times and then the 23rd time is the punchline. Unfortunately, the audience is usually hurling too much abuse by that point to hear the punchline, but that's what makes it edgy.
-It’s a little known fact that Spike Lee bought the rights to my 23rd novella, The 23rd Hour (which followed my previous efforts 22 Cigarettes and The 21st Jump Street) for $23,000 and adapted it into The 25th Hour. I just wish he hadn’t changed the original ending, in which Edward Norton’s character is mauled by 23 mutated lemurs.
-One day in high school – Dec 23, to be exact - I received 23 swirlies in the bathroom after I wore a pink t-shirt depicting 23 members of Menudo.
-I’m pretty sure I've masturbated to at least 23 different Sherilyn Fenn movies in my life. This eventually cost me 23 friends when a few of us got together to watch Of Mice and Men.
-In the early 70’s my uncle Tyrone “Donkey” Duncanhurst (23 letters!) was in a funk band called the Two Threes. They recorded a song called “The Funky 23 Corners" that was banned from 23 different radio stations due to the second and third verse, in which my uncle threatened to shoot Spiro Agnew 23 times in the face.

I could go on and on, but if you'll excuse me I have to go buy a cobb salad at Whole Foods for about... $23 bucks!

And it seems to me you awarded custody of the body like a candle in the wind

I really, really, REALLY didn't think I would care about any aspect of the Anna Nicole Smith debacle, but this crying judge is just off-the-charts bizarre. The video is easy to find elsewhere, of course. Sure, the world appears to be "melting like an ice cream cone," and the Bush administration is using its same old tricks to provoke conflict w/ Iran, but still, a crying judge! The only thing funnier would be if this character changed careers and handled the case. Enjoy the apeshittedness of 2007 before it just turns to regular shit.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

A Yellow-Trousered, Spritely Elf Playing a Musical Bottle of Ale

I can't help but recycle Andrew Earles' recent linkage to this Michael Anthony-led bass excursion/Sun Ra Arkestra audition from Van Hagar's 5150 tour. This follows news that the recently-announced Van Halen reunion tour is likely already kaput. It's just as well: Wolfgang VH may be a prodigy for all I know but let's see him run around after downing as much Jack as Anthony had in this clip -- all while pretending to tolerate the Red Rocker's onstage presence (did this tour have its own sweatpant coordinator or something?)

Monday, February 19, 2007

I take it back...

Jodorowsky is clearly a lightweight compared to this.

Meanwhile, Criterion finally releases Army of Shadows in May. And from elsewhere in their catalog, if you enjoyed Pan's Labyrinth, or maybe especially if you were turned off by certain aspects of it, this enigmatic film should be your next stop.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Did a gay guy besmirch the crossover dribble or something?

Former NBA star Tim Hardaway made some comments about gay people last night that seem to have gone COMPLETELY under the radar (or "on the down low" if you will). Actually, you've probably heard about it by now but this was what he saideth on a Miami radio station:

“You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don’t like gay people and I don’t like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world or in the United States…First of all, I wouldn’t want (a gay player) on my team. And second of all, if he was on my team, I would really distance myself from him because, uh, I don’t think that is right. I don’t think he should be in the locker room while we are in the locker room. But stuff like that is going on and there’s a lot of other people I hear that are like that and still in the closet and don’t want to come out of the closet, but you know I just leave that alone.'’

Eyewitnesses have just come forward w/ details about further remarks in the same vein that Hardaway made off the air:

"Gays are gayin' it up. So mad. So mad at teh gays.* It shouldn't happen in the universe or even in towns. When I am in one building, I want them to be in another building from me and also to, uh, not be gay there. I hereby declare it. When I go to teh movies with women and share a bag of popcorn with women I do not want gays driving cars near the building. I mean, the theater. Hate. Hate them. Hate them so much that... it... it... flam - flames. Flames, on the side of my face, heathing... breathle - , heating breaths. Heathing breath... "**


The blunt, simple-minded vehemence of Timmy's remarks - spurred of course by former NBA player John Amaechi recently coming out in a new book - reminded me of this classic, still-shocking Brass Eye exposé from 1997:




*According to one source, Hardaway was indeed so mad he was pronouncing words like "the" as typos, out loud.
** The same source did confirm that Hardaway regularly expresses himself by quoting the movie Clue, although he allegedly mutes all of Mr. Green's dialogue when watching the film at home.***

***Two "Clue" references already this year and we're not even through February yet. I kind of can't believe it myself.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

The Best Super Bowl Commercials

- MetLife's Glengarry Glen Ross parody w/ Tony Dungy in the Alec Baldwin role. Even with the bleeps, this was rough stuff.
- The one where the two mechanics eat the candy bar and accidentally kiss, then Peyton Manning attaches Christmas ornaments to their balls in follow-up spots throughout the night (that guy'll shill for anything).
- Bjork and Matthew Barney as married samurai taunted by a yodeling seal while stranded on a sinking iceberg for Bud Light.

Also, I didn't realize until today that the glorious Puppy Bowl takes place a couple of miles from me at the big Discovery Channel building in Silver Spring. I'm surprised College Park didn't take advantage of this close proximity to riot over the outcome.

Children of Men and Prog Rock's Ultimate Victory

This year's Oscar nominees for Best Picture look like such boring consensus picks that I may try to convince ABC to drop their coverage of the ceremony and instead run a live feed of me sitting in my apartment playing Bubble Shooter and sulking about my impending, sure-to-be-desolate birthday (which I'm hoping will be Sizemore-ically depressing enough to spin off into a VH1 series). I've only seen one of the nominees, The Departed, but while that's a well-executed genre flick its presence on the list must mean that Scorsese could release a gag reel of outtakes from that Kodak commercial he appeared in and get 9 nominations, just so voters could finally give him a useless gold statuette and restore balance to the universe's trivia lists.

A particularly egregious shutout in comparison would be Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men, which is also easily the best non-documentary film of 2006 I've seen so far (followed by United 93, a film which is nevertheless akin to mental torture at times), and I suspect it will probably stay that way. CoM is set in England in the year 2027, where the UK is the last industrial nation left standing after a series of calamities have thrown the rest of the world into chaos - information that the film subtly discloses through unobtrusive newspaper clippings and background advertisements rather than clumsy exposition. Worst of all, a wisely unexplained infertility plague has stricken humanity for 18 years, effectively crushing all hope for civilization's future until ex-activist-turned-burned-out-bureaucrat Clive Owen ends up having to escort a "miraculously" pregnant immigrant - who at one point jokingly tries to convince Owen she's a virgin, in a nod to the film's allegorical aspect - across the country. All the while the two of them are pursued by terrorists, as well as the occasional cute dog or cat, which tend to cling to Owen.

Regrettably, the quality of widely released films has degenerated to the point where opening the fucking Departed nationwide its first weekend is considered something of a bold move, which helps explain why Universal dumped this film into select theaters at Christmas. Clearly they had no idea what they had on their hands, since in addition to having a brain, Children of Men is a gripping sci-fi thriller that's almost Spielbergian in its hold on the audience; albeit also in its tendency to nearly undo a few scenes with heavy-handedness or ill-timed wisecracks. Cuarón stages two key, much-talked-about action sequences in long, amazingly choreographed, Steadicam shots, the second of which lasts roughly six minutes and finds Owen running through a warzone on a bad foot and dodging bullets... while also cat juggling (well, they might restore that part in the dvd anyway, as I suspect a more cynical populace will finally embrace the sport by 2027).

One of my favorite details in the film is that despite being set in the future, the music everyone frequently listens to is still dated pre-2006, implying that once young people stopped being born popular music crapped out entirely and the filmmakers didn't have to hire anyone to predict future trends ("How about... Haunted Electrohouse"). In one scene, a radio dj is overheard introducing a "classic" from 2003, a time, he says, when people still didn't comprehend the bleak future they were facing (the Shins evidentally fooled everyone). Meanwhile, Michael Caine's wealthy, hippie cartoonist lives with his near-comatose wife in an isolated cabin and gets down to such golden oldies as Roots Manuva and Aphex Twin in between the Beatles and Stones. Best of all, Owen at one point visits an obscenely rich art collector friend, played by Danny Huston, to ask for a crucial favor. Huston's character has bunkered down at a now progged-out Battersea Power Station along with his hopelessly game-obsessed, medicated son, with such works as Michelangelo's David (now sporting a prosthetic leg) and Picasso's Guernica providing the backdrop for their meals. He also blasts King Crimson throughout the building and has taken advantage of his locale by recreating the cover of Pink Floyd's Animals, complete with inflatable pig, in a permanent tableau outside his window, as seen below.



The Floyd reference is ironic and especially apt, not only because animals seem to pop up in every other scene but because Roger Waters' misanthropic worldview will be well-suited to any of the grimdystopian (hello, Cormac McCarthy, you're not the only hotshot who can randomly combine words) possible futures ahead of us. I guess it could be worse; just imagine if New York were the last city left standing: some zillionaire would no doubt try to recreate Supertramp's Breakfast in America album cover. I don't think any of us wants to imagine that.