After a long day at work, I came home last night anticipating nothing more than a cold Fat Tire ale and a new episode of "The O.C." Instead, I got George W. Bush.
What a lousy trade, eh?
Seth and the gang of privileged miscreants were canceled for an hour-long discussion of Bush's doomed social security plan followed by a Q & A session that yielded very little noteworthy information.
One would think that the White House would check their TV Guide before scheduling a Presidential press conference. Why couldn't they have George talk on a night like Monday, which boasts no good television shows. Even Wednesday night would have worked this week because "Lost" was one of those lazy clips episodes.
But this decision to banish "The O.C." is just another black mark for Bush in my book, and I hope he learns a lesson from this sordid little episode; although I seriously doubt it.
-BDS
The summer movie season is almost here, and depending on your point of view, this either constitutes a rich and rewarding experience or it might feel like you're losing IQ points every time you sit inside a theater.
Regardless, the summer has to be better than the crop of putrid shitbombs that Hollywood has been unleasing on the public since January.
Something has to give because I'm ready to return to the theater and Vin Diesel in "The Pacifier" or anybody in a remake of a horror film will not get me there.
And with in mind, here's few of my picks that might be worth a look this summer judging from the magazines I've read and the previews I've seen.
THE GOOD
1) "War of the Worlds" - Tom Cruise and Steven Speilberg rarely put out bad movies and the trailer looks pretty cool. I also like the fact that these aliens would chop E.T. to pieces if he ever stuck his creepy fingers in their direction.
2) "The Wedding Crashers," - Owen Wilson and Vince Vaugn crash weddings and pick up girls in this comedy, which Wilson has cited as an ode to the comedy classics of the 80s. "R-rated movies - Stripes, Animal House, all those movies that I liked . . .," Wilson said. Even if "Animal House" wasn't made in the 80s, I like the way he thinks and I'm definitely hitting this wedding.
3) "Untitled Mike Judge Comedy" - "Office Space" was good (not great like a lot of people believe), but I still want to see Luke Wilson be cryogenically frozen and then wake up in the future to find that the rest of us are now a bunch of morons.
THE BAD
1) "Monster-in-Law" - Jane Fonda makes a comeback to the big screen with J Lo and Michael Vartan in this romantic piece of garbage that looks distinctly unfunny and somehow makes the Fockers look like comedy geniuses.
2) "Stealth" - This is one of those movies that was shot before a star hit big (Jaime Foxx) and then the studio tries to cash in on their newfound fame. In this case, the movie centers on a trio of elite naval pilots trying to stop a rampaging computerized jet - AND Jessica Biel plays one of the pilots. Let me repeat that for emphais, Jessica Biel plays an elite Naval pilot. Did I also mention that I'm a rocket scientist?
3) "Dark Water" Although the trailer looks kind of creepy, once you realize that everyone in the film seems to be running from WATER things change in a hurry. I'm sorry but taking a shower rarely scares me and it's been years since I was traumatized by a garden hose; I still don't want to talk about it.
THE UGLY (OR THE STRANGE)
1) "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" - I'm hoping this will be good because like most people I have a fond place in my heart for the original, which featured Gene Wilder and those dirty-looking Oompa Lompas (sp?). Anyway, at the very least this will be one weird ride through Mr. Wonka's house upon which dentistry is built.
2) "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" - I'll go see this one, but the production was in tabloid and re-shoot hell, which is rarely a good sign. On the plus side, Angela Jolie and Brad Pitt have enough good looks between them to render things like plot, pacing and dialogue almost obsolete.
3) "The Longest Yard," - Here's another remake, and from the preview, I can't say that it was a successful one. It doesn't appear to be even remotely funny (even with Chris Rock) and I don't buy Adam Sandler as an inmate or a quarterback. He might be the "Waterboy," but he's no Burt Reynolds, who also happens to be in this film.
-BDS
Last month I posted about a strange and intriguing personal ad that I discovered in my local Dallas Observor. It read:
Hot And Willing Oven
Burning for change. If I see another spaghetti dish, I will die. If you're raw, looking to get baked, and fancy yourself a break from the same old same old, then you're the dish for me. Especially interested in simple but delectable creations involving The Other White Meat. Call me at 515-223-2770. I'm already preheating.
I was obviously too obtuse to decipher the meaning of the message, but now this mysterious author has written a new ad reading:
Hunk of the Other White Meat
Seeking the perfect sauce. Think luscious. Must be adventuresome but simple to prepare. Open to experimentation. Will try any combination of soy, balsamic vinegar, fruit essence, and exotic syrup as long as it complements my unique flavor and delicate texture. Alfredo, marinara, tetrazini need not respond.
Call me at 515-223-2770
The saga continues as this creature has obviously not found what she is looking for in the first round of food-flavored weirdness. Again, I am assuming the author is female, but that is still uncertain.
This whole thing continues to baffle me, and I keep conjuring up horrible images involving some mutant scene from "9 1/2 Weeks" combined with "Sideways" if the author ever finds a suitable mate.
I can easily picture the hard-loving but extremely portly couple from "Sideways" covering themselves in all sorts of condiments and frolicking naked around their house; a thought which is far from sexy.
But like I said in my previous post, I might be entirely wrong about everything.
-BDS
Today marks the 50th anniversary of Albert Einstein's death, and so the wild-haired scientific genius gets another chance to make the rest of us feel stupid.
E=MC2 will forever be burned into our collective brains even if most of the world couldn't tell you what the individual components stand for much less what they mean as a whole.
If he were alive today, Einstein would probably laugh at our priorities as his accomplishments would undoubtably be buried behind hard news about Britney Spears pregnancy or the state of Nick and Jessica's marriage.
It's slightly depressing to me that I could tell you what real estate properties that Brad and Jen are haggling over, but would have no idea how to describe Einstein's theory of relativity.
He described it this way:
"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity."
Well, Einstein might trump me on science and analogies, but I am a member of his beer-drinking club. It's a little known fact that when Albert wasn't remaking science in his own image that he was pounding beers and ogling women and eating peanuts at pubs across the U.S.
Or maybe that was just me.
Regardless, I joined a local Austin chapter of the Einstein Pub Club at The Draught Horse when I was just 19-years-old. I was armed with only my wits and a bad fake ID when I consumed the 50 different beers necessary for inclusion and then passed a brutal written examination about the varying ales, lagers, stouts and porters.
I am still proud of my accomplishment and the special kinship that I share with Albert Einstein.
My only regret is that I was never able to sit down with the man himself for a few cold ones because I have always found that my intellect rises substantially after I've been drinking.
-BDS
The Cookie Monster has been castrated!
Well, that's a little severe, but the the big, blue furry creature on "Sesame Street" probably feels that way after it was recently announced that he would no longer be able to consume cookies in massive amounts.
For years, the Cookie Monster lived and breathed cookies. It was his mission in life, and viewed from any perspective, the man did his job well.
Too well.
It seems that the creators of "Sesame Street" now feel that the Cookie Monster's powerful lust for cookies is not suitable for young and impressionable minds. We must shield our children from the frenzy of cookie lust that is found whenever the Monster appears seems to be the show's new credo.
The next season of "Sesame Street" will emphasize children's health, and the Cookie Monster just didn't fit the new image. Instead of singing his long-standing anthem, "C is for Cookie and that's Good Enough for Me," the poor Monster will soon be forced to utter "A Cookie is Sometimes Food."
I can vividly picture the Cookie Monster locking himself in his trailer, and begging for someone to shoot him and put him out of his misery as I write this diatribe.
The man's one passion in life was cookies, but now he's being told that his life force is only "sometimes food."
This whole thing stinks of a public relations ploy. It's just another way to cater to parents whose kids are fat as hell and expanding every day. The reason can't fall to the parents themselves and the fact that they allow their kids to eat fast food and then park themselves in front of the TV or the computer for hours on end.
That makes no sense at all - the fault has to be with the Cookie Monster and his disgusting habits. It's obviously the only sane answer, but we're all a little bit worse off for it.
The Cookie Monster spoke to the inner junkie in all of us. He was that part of ourselves which knows we shouldn't drink too much or eat an entire pizza at 2:30 a.m. or drive too fast or have too much fun.
But we do it anyway because living life in moderation is not really living at all, and the Cookie Monster knows this fact better than most.
So raise a box of Girl Scout cookies aloft for the blue, googly-eyed Monster, scarf the entire contents down in one sitting and send a silent acknowledgement for a partner in crime who recently got blind-sided by a gang of jackasses.
-BDS
It took me roughly 5 minutes to buy "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and "Sideways" on DVD this week at my local Best Buy. Driving home took another 8 minutes and then walking from my detached garage to my front door added another 2 (because I stumbled slightly along the way).
Then it took me nearly 20 minutes, one hangnail and 4 raw fingers to finally open the movies I had just purchased.
These days I find opening a DVD akin to Chinese water torture and only slightly better than lighting myself on fire.
Whatever deviant and dirty bastard came up with the idea that every disc should contain an outer layer followed by three stickers along all entry points should be beaten with a meat whip and forced to open DVDs for hours on end until his hands are bleeding and his mind is jelly.
I don't begrudge stores for wanting to keep their merchandise from being stolen, however, I find it a bit silly when I bought "The Talented Mr. Ripley" for only $5.99, yet it still contained 3 stickers.
When will the madness end, and where can I find the innovator of this anti-theft technology?
Let's bring back some common sense to the world, and we can start with the packaging of DVDs. It's not much, but it's a start and if the manufacturer's won't listen to reason then I'm sure there's a discount to be had when buying meat whips in bulk.
And while we're meat-whipping these people into submission, I would also volunteer Tom Delay for the punishment, although for entirely different reasons.
-BDS
Well, I just got back from catching a mid-week viewing of "Sin City" and coming back to the real world was tough.
After nearly two hours of depravity, it was hard to leave the confines of Basin City (the actual town name) and come home to a place that didn't smell of cigarettes and a city where hookers don't rule the streets while wearing sexpot outfits that look they were bought with a deep discount at some sort of bondage vigilante superstore.
It also doesn't make it easier to leave when every female in the city looks like Jessica Alba or Rosario Dawson or Brittany Murphy.
The movie looks and is flat-out cool, and although the dialogue takes getting used to (it felt like a parody of hard-boiled banter for awhile) the experience was a good one.
It seems that everyone in Hollywood appeared in the film at some point or another, and most handled themselves quite well among the squalor of the city. Clive Owen, Bruce Willis, and surprisingly enough Elijah Wood all thrived in the film, but it was Mickey Rourke who dominated everyone.
Rourke was almost unrecognizable as his head looked like silly-putty that had been pounded with a meat hammer, but he held the screen for his entire section of the film and left an impression long after he was gone.
When he briefly re-appeared near the end I was hoping he would get back into the action, but I was pacified with a gyrating Jessica Alba, her trusty lasso and an extremely lucky pair of leather chaps.
My main problem with the movie was the way it bookended itself with Josh Hartnett.
For once, Hartnett didn't appear that he would start weeping uncontrollably at any given moment, but his smooth features looked out of place in the mean city and the contention that he would be a contract killer was laughable.
There's simply no room for actors like Hartnett in "Sin City" - it might be a place full of perverts and wineheads and killers but you have to draw the line somewhere.
-BDS
I spent April Fool's Day in Austin, and the joke was definitely on me as I found myself locked in on a self-imposed booze trip that found me pouring Shiner Boch and margaritas down my neck at an alarming rate of speed.
Ostensibly, I was down there to attend Jerry Jeff Walker's birthday concert with my Dad and my brother, but after a mediocre show that lasted a little over an hour, the only sensible solution seemed to be found at the bottom of many beer bottles.
Although the show was a disappointment, the bathroom at the concert venue provided me with many a laugh.
This is because the bathroom at the Broken Spoke on South Lamar is a pit that holds one large, rusted trough as well as a sink that doesn't work and the place is rounded out by an industrial-size trashcan that sits in the corner.
Three intoxicated men were usually crammed around the trough, which left room for two more people to stand behind the pissers and give advice while discussing the condition of the facilities.
It was during my second or third trip to the bathroom that an older man with long, grayish hair ended up standing behind me as he waited impatiently for a place at the trough to open.
Here's a transcript of the conversation he had with the three of us situated at the trough (despite the fact that none of us said a word throughout most of his monologue):
Man: Goddamn, this place is tiny and I've got to drain the lizard. Hurry up there boys. Son of a bitch you would have thought they would have put more places to piss in here for Christ's sake. I guess in a pinch you could always piss in the sink and shit in the trashcan over there. In fact that sounds like a good deal for everyone.
Pisser to my left: Except for the trashcan.
Man: Hey, we've all been there before buddy.
I quickly finished and left the bathroom laughing as I pictured this guy squatting down over some nasty trashcan in a dark alley somewhere in Austin. It was only later that I realized that I should have been angry with this sick bastard for lumping me in with him and his inability to shit in normal places.
When he spewed out that "we've all been there before" the implication was that I had also been down that road paved with garbage cans full of shit.
But I have not, and I have no plans to start.
What my plans do include, however, is a sharper focus on what people say and what it means in a broader sense. Quite simply, I've got enough problems that I create on my own without having other filthy degenerates putting me smack in the middle of their seedy bathroom issues.
Life is too short, and there's simply too many working toilets for that kind of shit.
-BDS
