Friday, June 13, 2014
Monday, February 24, 2014
1944 - 2014
Harold Ramis was a cornerstone of American (and Canadian) hilarity for over 40 years. True, I'm not overly familiar with his filmography after, say, the middle '90s -- but everyone should know that the man did a heroic amount of good work.
And I'm sorry to say that, like a lot of you, I probably underappreciated him.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Video Game Journalism Proves Itself Irrelevant (Again)
Holy Christ, I have a blog!
So, THIS is the Guardian's round-up of 2013's twenty-five best games (and the ones that "didn't quite make it")? Normally, I don't go in for video game journalism because I have a working pair of testicles and I've held onto at least 11% of the street cred I garnered after breaking David Carsch's glasses in seventh grade.
However, today's feature caught my eye because, well, it's a FUCKING DISPATCH FROM BIZARRO WORLD.
That's promotional art from Sony and Naughty Dog's The Last of Us I stole from the Internet, where everyone's got a song in their heart and no one ever gets litigious.
The Last of Us concerns the post-pandemic adventures of Joel and Ellie, who are pictured above in a pastoral image straight from the most inappropriate Little Golden Book ever published. TLoU is quite probably the most moving and dramatically-legit video game yet made. Plus, the character models are basically real people, and the voice-acting is unsurpassed, AND the music will break your heart and make you weep like an emotionally-damaged foster child.
Um, it's an essential title. And you've heard of it even if you don't own a PlayStation 3 or enjoy video games. In fact, if you have an Internet connection and aren't from Planet Choo-choo, you at least KNOW OF The Last of Us...
Please don't front. And do check yourself before you wreck yourself.
The Guardian, however, chose not to recognize the game IGN called, "The most candidly fucked-up, and boner-raising horror title since Mary Kate and Ashley's Chainsaw Sock Hop," and GameSpot referred to as, "A real hoot!"
The fact that neither of those quotes are real has nothing do with the legitimacy of my complaint -- and my complaint is: the Guardian's a bunch of cunts.
Is that even a complaint? I don't know, I failed Semantics. What I didn't fail is the KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A GOOD GAME AND A BAD GAME... CLASS.
I'm upset here, guys!
What freaks me out most is the fact that the game isn't even mentioned in the comments section. I mean, it IS possible that the authors overlooked The Last of Us when compiling their list -- hey, they're English video game writers; they have enough on their plates with the constant mockery, muggings, and bed-wettings. But for the FANS to shun what Francine McFadden of Time magazine called, "The blow job equivalent of electronic entertainment"? That sends me reeling!
To make matters even more fucked, the Guardian has locked the comments section on this particular article. I spent fifteen minutes trying to remember my log-in info only to find that I couldn't post my hilarious "HEY, DOCTOR WHO FAGZ -- GO HAVE A TEA PARTY WITH A QUEEN AND STOP WRITING ABOUT AWESOME SHIT YOU OBVIOUSLY HAVE NO GRASP OF, NOR LOVE FOR!! FUCK OFF, YOU MEDIEVAL CASTLE-ASS NIGGAAAZ!!!" comment.
ALAS! There's really nothing to be done about these kind of lapses in journalistic judgement, even if they're so FUCKING HEINOUS they rekindle my belief in God (Optimus Prime, Gandalf, Nell Carter, WHOEVER YOU PRAY TO) -- because no one else could have birthed a world in which The Best Console Game Ever Made is virtually excluded from a major paper's year-end list, and not one buck-toothed British nerd raises a cry of, "SYSTEM BIAS!" or "BUGGER OFF!"
Alright, I'm going to get back to Chainsaw Sock Hop -- I'm up to the part where Lord Gout explodes out of that basement furnace, and you have to douse a hospital fire before Grisly Gourmet finishes making the sauce for her famous "baby bourguignon". The batteries are running low on my puke green Casio Game-Tzar, anyway...
Happy Christmas, gang!
So, THIS is the Guardian's round-up of 2013's twenty-five best games (and the ones that "didn't quite make it")? Normally, I don't go in for video game journalism because I have a working pair of testicles and I've held onto at least 11% of the street cred I garnered after breaking David Carsch's glasses in seventh grade.
However, today's feature caught my eye because, well, it's a FUCKING DISPATCH FROM BIZARRO WORLD.
That's promotional art from Sony and Naughty Dog's The Last of Us I stole from the Internet, where everyone's got a song in their heart and no one ever gets litigious.
The Last of Us concerns the post-pandemic adventures of Joel and Ellie, who are pictured above in a pastoral image straight from the most inappropriate Little Golden Book ever published. TLoU is quite probably the most moving and dramatically-legit video game yet made. Plus, the character models are basically real people, and the voice-acting is unsurpassed, AND the music will break your heart and make you weep like an emotionally-damaged foster child.
Um, it's an essential title. And you've heard of it even if you don't own a PlayStation 3 or enjoy video games. In fact, if you have an Internet connection and aren't from Planet Choo-choo, you at least KNOW OF The Last of Us...
Please don't front. And do check yourself before you wreck yourself.
The Guardian, however, chose not to recognize the game IGN called, "The most candidly fucked-up, and boner-raising horror title since Mary Kate and Ashley's Chainsaw Sock Hop," and GameSpot referred to as, "A real hoot!"
The fact that neither of those quotes are real has nothing do with the legitimacy of my complaint -- and my complaint is: the Guardian's a bunch of cunts.
Is that even a complaint? I don't know, I failed Semantics. What I didn't fail is the KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A GOOD GAME AND A BAD GAME... CLASS.
I'm upset here, guys!
What freaks me out most is the fact that the game isn't even mentioned in the comments section. I mean, it IS possible that the authors overlooked The Last of Us when compiling their list -- hey, they're English video game writers; they have enough on their plates with the constant mockery, muggings, and bed-wettings. But for the FANS to shun what Francine McFadden of Time magazine called, "The blow job equivalent of electronic entertainment"? That sends me reeling!
To make matters even more fucked, the Guardian has locked the comments section on this particular article. I spent fifteen minutes trying to remember my log-in info only to find that I couldn't post my hilarious "HEY, DOCTOR WHO FAGZ -- GO HAVE A TEA PARTY WITH A QUEEN AND STOP WRITING ABOUT AWESOME SHIT YOU OBVIOUSLY HAVE NO GRASP OF, NOR LOVE FOR!! FUCK OFF, YOU MEDIEVAL CASTLE-ASS NIGGAAAZ!!!" comment.
ALAS! There's really nothing to be done about these kind of lapses in journalistic judgement, even if they're so FUCKING HEINOUS they rekindle my belief in God (Optimus Prime, Gandalf, Nell Carter, WHOEVER YOU PRAY TO) -- because no one else could have birthed a world in which The Best Console Game Ever Made is virtually excluded from a major paper's year-end list, and not one buck-toothed British nerd raises a cry of, "SYSTEM BIAS!" or "BUGGER OFF!"
Alright, I'm going to get back to Chainsaw Sock Hop -- I'm up to the part where Lord Gout explodes out of that basement furnace, and you have to douse a hospital fire before Grisly Gourmet finishes making the sauce for her famous "baby bourguignon". The batteries are running low on my puke green Casio Game-Tzar, anyway...
Happy Christmas, gang!
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Very Brief Thoughts: Man on the Moon (1999)
Question: Why did Hollywood pay tribute to the most famously subversive, arguably brilliant entertainer of the late 20th century with a maudlin and utterly spineless biopic?
Answer: No one involved understood (or cared) that Andy Kaufman was a media terrorist, and possibly the most dangerous comedian E-V-E-R to appear on national television. Hey, great.
Man on the Moon sucked.
Unless, of course, it was a posthumous prank. Which is possible. I assume Kaufman would get a perverse kick out of seeing his life turned into two hours of expensive, syrupy dogshit.
Watch this:
Way to go, Milos Forman! Did you quote the Bhagavad Gita, Oppenheimer-style, at the premiere? "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Probably!
Incidentally, reader, my sincere regards to your loved ones in the event that seeing a somber Courtney Love "d'aww" face forces you to hang yourself with the power adapter from an Atari Jaguar.
Just sayin'.
Answer: No one involved understood (or cared) that Andy Kaufman was a media terrorist, and possibly the most dangerous comedian E-V-E-R to appear on national television. Hey, great.
Man on the Moon sucked.
Unless, of course, it was a posthumous prank. Which is possible. I assume Kaufman would get a perverse kick out of seeing his life turned into two hours of expensive, syrupy dogshit.
Watch this:
Way to go, Milos Forman! Did you quote the Bhagavad Gita, Oppenheimer-style, at the premiere? "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Probably!
Incidentally, reader, my sincere regards to your loved ones in the event that seeing a somber Courtney Love "d'aww" face forces you to hang yourself with the power adapter from an Atari Jaguar.
Just sayin'.
Monday, December 31, 2012
2013: The Unluckiest Year
Just wanted to wish my three or four readers a very happy new year.
That video of Captain Kirk fighting the "Gorn" showed up when I searched "worst new year". So watch that, I guess. It's . . . festive.
Hasta luego.
That video of Captain Kirk fighting the "Gorn" showed up when I searched "worst new year". So watch that, I guess. It's . . . festive.
Hasta luego.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Playing with Fire
Gang! Here's a movie you should watch as soon as humanly possible, Brian Trenchard-Smith's Dead End Drive-In (1986)!
Dead End Drive-In? More like Dead End . . . I thought I had a joke for that, but I don't. Whoops!
The films of Brian Trenchard-Smith (BMX Bandits, Stunt Rock) were first brought to my attention by a great documentary called Not Quite Hollywood. Said film details the history of Australian cinema with a strong emphasis on genre pictures. Among the many strange and amazing-looking movies mentioned in Not Quite Hollywood was Trenchard-Smith's Dead End Drive-In, which Quentin Tarantino hailed as his favorite Aussie flick.
Actually, wait, my first experience with Trenchard-Smith's work was Leprechaun 3, which I once watched back-to-back with both Leprechaun and Leprechaun 2. I'm a d-d-daredevil.
My point is, Dead End Drive-In is a super-duper treat. It starts off as the (well-crafted) Australian equivalent of Escape from New York -- replace Manhattan with a post-apocalyptic drive-in movie theater pulling double duty as a prison camp for new wave hooligans -- and then morphs into a transparently allegorical parable on racial scapegoatting, police corruption, manipulative girlfriends who look sorta like Sheena Easton, social welfare, getting in fights with 7' tall freaks with danger-mullets and skin-tight silver Rod Stewart pants, oh! and fascism.
Fascism?!
Maybe. Dead End Drive-In does go deep, and it goes hard (!). The metaphor involved is probably kind of, uh, on a remedial level in the sense that even I picked up on it, and let's face it: I spent at least half of the film's 92 minutes daydreaming about Christmas leftovers and that girl from Billy Idol's "Cradle of Love" video. That's an exaggeration, but only a slight one. Oh, and (SPOILER ALERT) I don't know why our hero crashes through a neon sign that looks like a slightly-angled star of David at the film's climax. Maybe it was already there. Maybe it was Trenchard-Smith's way of saying, "Fuck you" to the Illuminati.
S'kiddin'.
But, hey, check this song out:
Cool, right?
Lisa Edwards' "Playing with Fire" rocks during the end credits, as (SPOILER ALERT) the film's hero makes his daring escape from the drudgery of ghetto existence, and speeds toward the horizon . . . and a better life. Look, I'm not saying I tied a wool sock around my head and started furiously Phil Manzanera-air-guitaring on a softball bat I had handy -- but that's exactly what happened.
I dare you not to listen to it at least four times in a row. I-FUCKIN'-DOUBLE-DOG-DARE-YOU.
According to Wikipedia, which is never wrong, Lisa Edwards was a back-up singer for Kylie Minogue in the early '90s and had an Australian Top 5 hit in 1992 with "Cry" -- a cover of a Godley and Creme song.
Godley and Creme were members of the weird-but-affable British pop-rock band 10cc, and then went on to direct music videos during the early years of MTV. And that's an amazing coincidence considering I literally JUST finished reading I Want My MTV by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum, which prominently features Godley and Creme.
Please forgive my sad adult ADD outburst/stream of consciousness retard-tangent. What's that? That's the thrust of my entire blog? Oh, snap. You're right.
I'm exhausted by my own stupidity, but that shouldn't stop YOU from marching over to your TV and adding Dead End Drive-In to your Netflix queue. Or you could do it on your computer, which you're presumably using right now. See what I mean about the stupidity? I'm insufferable even to myself!
Hasta luego and stuff.
(Worth noting: That guy on the poster has almost nothing to do with anything that actually happens in Dead End Drive-In . . . just a heads up.)
Dead End Drive-In? More like Dead End . . . I thought I had a joke for that, but I don't. Whoops!
The films of Brian Trenchard-Smith (BMX Bandits, Stunt Rock) were first brought to my attention by a great documentary called Not Quite Hollywood. Said film details the history of Australian cinema with a strong emphasis on genre pictures. Among the many strange and amazing-looking movies mentioned in Not Quite Hollywood was Trenchard-Smith's Dead End Drive-In, which Quentin Tarantino hailed as his favorite Aussie flick.
Actually, wait, my first experience with Trenchard-Smith's work was Leprechaun 3, which I once watched back-to-back with both Leprechaun and Leprechaun 2. I'm a d-d-daredevil.
My point is, Dead End Drive-In is a super-duper treat. It starts off as the (well-crafted) Australian equivalent of Escape from New York -- replace Manhattan with a post-apocalyptic drive-in movie theater pulling double duty as a prison camp for new wave hooligans -- and then morphs into a transparently allegorical parable on racial scapegoatting, police corruption, manipulative girlfriends who look sorta like Sheena Easton, social welfare, getting in fights with 7' tall freaks with danger-mullets and skin-tight silver Rod Stewart pants, oh! and fascism.
Fascism?!
Maybe. Dead End Drive-In does go deep, and it goes hard (!). The metaphor involved is probably kind of, uh, on a remedial level in the sense that even I picked up on it, and let's face it: I spent at least half of the film's 92 minutes daydreaming about Christmas leftovers and that girl from Billy Idol's "Cradle of Love" video. That's an exaggeration, but only a slight one. Oh, and (SPOILER ALERT) I don't know why our hero crashes through a neon sign that looks like a slightly-angled star of David at the film's climax. Maybe it was already there. Maybe it was Trenchard-Smith's way of saying, "Fuck you" to the Illuminati.
S'kiddin'.
But, hey, check this song out:
Cool, right?
Lisa Edwards' "Playing with Fire" rocks during the end credits, as (SPOILER ALERT) the film's hero makes his daring escape from the drudgery of ghetto existence, and speeds toward the horizon . . . and a better life. Look, I'm not saying I tied a wool sock around my head and started furiously Phil Manzanera-air-guitaring on a softball bat I had handy -- but that's exactly what happened.
I dare you not to listen to it at least four times in a row. I-FUCKIN'-DOUBLE-DOG-DARE-YOU.
According to Wikipedia, which is never wrong, Lisa Edwards was a back-up singer for Kylie Minogue in the early '90s and had an Australian Top 5 hit in 1992 with "Cry" -- a cover of a Godley and Creme song.Godley and Creme were members of the weird-but-affable British pop-rock band 10cc, and then went on to direct music videos during the early years of MTV. And that's an amazing coincidence considering I literally JUST finished reading I Want My MTV by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum, which prominently features Godley and Creme.
Please forgive my sad adult ADD outburst/stream of consciousness retard-tangent. What's that? That's the thrust of my entire blog? Oh, snap. You're right.
I'm exhausted by my own stupidity, but that shouldn't stop YOU from marching over to your TV and adding Dead End Drive-In to your Netflix queue. Or you could do it on your computer, which you're presumably using right now. See what I mean about the stupidity? I'm insufferable even to myself!
Hasta luego and stuff.
(Worth noting: That guy on the poster has almost nothing to do with anything that actually happens in Dead End Drive-In . . . just a heads up.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)