Overrated - The A-Rod story. Why is baseball so holier than thou when it comes to this crap. Baseball was in the tank, homeruns brought it back, but lets string up the hitter by their needles. If you wanted it fixed you'd test like the olympics do. End of story, your stats are bullshit, but the players shouldn't be on the hook for all of this.
Underrated - Lane Kiffin - Urban Meyer mud slinging. I hate Florida, I hate Tebow, and Meyer is a cold calculating SOB. Kiffin is shit talking, and taking the heat for his comment that Meyer cheated. Meyer didn't, but who cares, this is the alumni circuit. Get your fan based geeked up, truth is secondary at best. I want Kiffin to do well because everyone is throwing him under the bus, and if he beats UF next year the national title race will open up wide.
At 10pm exactly, in typical do-you-know-where-your-children-are fashion, ESPN informed me of a program alert: "Sportscenter will be coming on next. Sportscenter will be coming on next. Sportscenter will be coming on next."
Can't fault a company for telling its audience that it's moneymaker is about to hit the booty-do, but let's look at this a little more critically, shall we?
This wasn't just 10pm on a Monday, this was 10pm during the Border War basketball match-up that was tied with about 45 seconds remaining. If some sports fan turned on ESPN at that point in search of our beloved and beleaguered Sportscenter (in other words, highlights and news about sport and great sports games), I don't think they would have been distressed to find a great sports game happening in its stead.
And if they were, two things would have happened. One, they could have clicked off for a second to see what was coming on Nick-at-Nite, and then switch back 5 minutes later (if they really were interested in getting their highlight fix).
Or two, they would remember that this airing of Sportscenter would be exactly like the one airing at 6pm and marginally, if not unnoticeably, different than every Sportscenter for the last 2 days and for seemingly the next 5 weeks - - A-Rod, A-Roid, A-Fraud, and A-Hole. On and on, ad infinitum. What were you really updating me on? "The same thing will be continuing shortly. The same thing will be continuing shortly. The same thing will be continuing shortly."
A quick wrap up for the films out there worth watching. Nobody wants to read reviews quick snap shots are better.
Wrestler - If you love the anti-hero, it's for you.
Frost/Nixon - Historian will love this shit, great humanization of nixon.
Revolutionary Road - If you've ever felt trapped in life, this one could suffocate you.
Taken - If you've ever been like, one more thing goes wrong today I'm going on a rampage, then this 90 minute revenge porn is just for you.
The Wackness - Great 'make the best out of your shitty life situation' I've seen in a while, and they did the early 90s well...as i remember it.
Appaloosa - zzzzzzzzzz.
Zach and Miri Make A Porno - All the great things about Kevin Smith and the bad parts too. LT can't go back to his first few years and neither can Smith, sad.
Religulous - Religion is complete madness, but he takes us down the road to hell with a smile on his face.
Gran Torino - McCain meets Dirty Harry. With a lot of ethnic slurs. Surprisingly funny and fresh for an old director/actor.
In Bruges - Tip toed that funny/serious line with grace, who knew fucking Phone Booth could act?
Doubt - Only really enjoyable if you dealt with priests and nuns in school, they got every last detail down perfectly.
Role Models - I'd say they did the buddy comedy perfectly.
The Reader - It was like watching a great performance in a Clipper game, it was great but who cares?
Tropic Thunder - I'd say vastly overrated, but it has plenty of memorable moments.
Milk - A great cast, who actually delivered on their promise.
This is it. It's happening. This is not a drill people. First zombies in Texas, now raptors in Indiana. I haven't read the Bible in a long time, but I'm pretty sure that dinosaurs are the second sign of the Apocalypse.
We're being attacked from the North and the South! We can't fight a two front war against humans, let alone a two front war against zombies and clever-girl raptors! This is the end! And I never made to another Super Bowl that the Giants won after last year! Damnit!
To be honest, I see no hope. I live no the second floor of my apartment building, and I will be retreating there to barricade the stairwell, fortify my apartment, and camp out with Molotov cocktails, but it's only a matter of time.
The only foreseeable escape is if we can train the zombies from the South to hunt the raptors in the North, pitting foe against foe, and praying that the collateral damage from the Second Zombie Dinosaur war doesn't kill off the human race anyway.
Hug your loved ones and grab you ankles - - rapture is here.
I was not nearly as critical of the commercials as Gimpy is. I genuinely enjoyed the Pepsuber commercial (and the MacGruber skits that mind-birthed it are well worth a half hour on Hulu). The Cash4Gold.com commercial got some play on the DeadSpin live blog. But it deserves so much more than that; there is nothing funnier than people pointing out their failings, and you can't find many people who are swimming in more failings than Ed McMahon and MC Hammer.
You had your nut shots, your animals acting as people, your talking babies, and even a smattering of really awful local advertising out here in St. Louis. All pretty well-worn territory, but still enjoyable if only for one night annually.
But all of this discussion of commercials has inspired me to write a post I've been meaning to tackle for some time: those stupid fucking Burger King retarded whopper family ads.
They started out ok. "I wish I'd never been broiled" made me chuckle. The spare napkin/condom spot was done well enough to make me uncomfortable about similar past conversations. I think there were one or two more that were good enough not to draw my ire and mediocre enough to be largely ignored.
But then they got terrible in one fell swoop. With the house party. And Spicy Chicken.
Knowing that any of you who might be unfortunate enough to stumble upon this blog probably haven't been consumed by this commercial as much as I have, I'll bullet all of the brain-racking fallacies located therein below:
-We learn that Whopper Jr and Spicy have friends. Human friends. This just feels weird to me.
-We also learn that Whopper has a daughter. She's a human girl. This opens up a wealth of dilemmas. Is burger-dome the recessive gene? Is it sex-linked? Is the daughter adopted or is Whopper's wife a human burger-lover? If she's a burger, what adoption agency would allow two sandwiches to adopt a white girl? If she is a woman, how exactly does a Whopper impregnate a woman? You know what, I don't actually want to know the answer to that question. I just know that my girlfriend isn't allowed to eat Whoppers anymore.
-In perhaps the most infuriating move, Whopper discovers that little bastard Spicy putting the moves on his daughter. I would eat him if I were Whopper. Commensurate with that sentiment, Whopper charges at Spicy - - but he can't get through the fuckin door! What humor! A giant sandwich struggling to get through a door! But, wait a minute. This is his fucking house. That's his fucking door. He is the burger lord of his burger domain and he can't build a door that a burger can fit through? What the fuck?
-But then there's something even more wrong with that scene - - Spicy is already in the fucking room! What sort of black magic does a chicken sandwich possess that allows him to move through walls like Nightcrawler that a burger can't summon from the depths of the Underworld?
I don't know the answer to any of these challenges. I just know that I hate that I care so much.
Congratulations have to go out to the Steelers (and a hearty “fuck you” to the Cardinals) for winning last night. Obviously I watched the game, and have a couple thoughts I wanted to share.
First of all, yeah, the Eagles probably would have lost to the Steelers the way they played, so I can’t really get all that upset about things. It was pretty painful watching Roethlisberger lead the Steelers on a game winning drive in the last three minutes of the game when two weeks ago McNabb had the same opportunity and couldn’t get it done. Last night made it pretty clear why Roethlisberger has two Superbowl rings and I’m still hoping Donovan gets traded to the Bears.
I loved the roughing the holder penalty called against Arizona. That was definitely something I had never seen before, though I must admit that I would love to see more teams take runs at the holder on field goals and extra points. Football is getting boring; some unnecessary violence could reenergize it.
Santonio Holmes, during all that postgame stuff, had a great line that I think merits some attention. Channeling the ghost of Freddie Mitchell (he’s dead, right?), Holmes declared that he stepped up on that final drive because “I wanted to continue to be great.”
At the opposite end of the spectrum, Al Michaels said something that really pissed me off. I don’t remember the context, or when in the game it happened, it may have even been after the game, but anyway, Michaels declared that football was the national pastime. No, it’s not. Baseball is. I don’t care about ratings or revenues, football has nowhere near the place in American culture that baseball does. No one writes poems about football, NFL players aren’t in classic songs, there have been maybe three good football movies, none of which measure up to The Natural, Field of Dreams, or Pride of the Yankees. Football is just a sport; baseball is a part of American history.
Even though pretty much everyone watches the Superbowl, other stations still need to throw up something. ABC went with a shitload of Wipeout, which seems like just a more bland, American MXC. A bunch of other stations went with a different approach, showing nonsense like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, What Women Want, and the Devil Wears Prada. I wonder what demographic they were trying to lure away from NBC.
But the best Superbowl alternative, which was fortunately replayed like six times yesterday, was Puppy Bowl V. Basically, they threw a bunch of puppies in a pit that was decorated like a football field, threw in some stuffed animals, and let the dogs go nuts. Of course when Michael Vick did this he ended up in jail, but when Animal Planet does it PETA is silent. Whatever, fuck PETA. Anyway, there were a couple highlights from Puppy Bowl. First, the puppy named Eli got bitched around a lot, legitimately tackled by some other dogs. Another puppy, Griffey, got ejected for just beating the hell out of the other dogs. Hopefully Bad Newz Kennels had some scouts there. But the best part about Puppy Bowl was the commentary. Harry Kalas was doing play by play! And it was every bit as awesome as you would think. Seriously, it’s February, I’ll listen to Kalas call pretty much anything at this point. Pitchers and catchers still seems so far away.
And there were commercials. Meh. The Doritos crystal ball commercial seems to have gone over really well, winning The USA Today’s prize, but I was underwhelmed. Yeah, a guy got hit in the balls, but that’s hardly groundbreaking. Budweiser disappointed too; the horses were awesome when they were playing football; doing anything else is just mediocre. And can we stop with this Great American Lager nonsense? You’re owned by a Belgian company, and no one is being fooled. Pepsi also came up short: the Pepsuber one was awful, and the side by side generation one was only slightly better. Having Belushi and Jack Black side by side was pretty terrible; I’m pretty much a huge Jack Black fan, and I can’t say he’s anywhere near Belushi’s level. Also, fuck Carlos Boozer. He has time to be in an Overstock.com commercial, but not to actually play basketball and be a worthwhile second round pick for my fantasy team? What the hell?
Some other stuff happened this weekend independent of the Superbowl. Sarah Palin came to DC, but blessedly kept her mouth shut. Rush Limbaugh is still an idiot. Scientists cloned the extinct Pyrenean Ibex, but it died in seven minutes. Spaniards are close to cloning a fighting bull, hopefully they’ll have more success. Michael Phelps got caught smoking pot, and people were outraged. But fortunately nothing is going to happen to him, because NBC set Olympics ratings records when he was swimming. If he wants to, he’ll be back in London, WADA be damned. Seriously, all he did for the last four years was swim; if he wants to smoke every once in a while there’s no reason to stop him.
But the biggest thing coming out of this weekend is the first trailer for the GI Joe movie. Oh man, it’s going to be the coolest movie ever. Honestly, I probably would have bought a movie ticket just to watch the preview. Seriously, Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes going head to head, Duke and Ripcord blowing shit up, the trailer was incredible. And the movie is going to be even better, I just know it. Seriously, I’m so excited for this.
