Andrew's H8/LV 3/15/11

You, you're so vain, you probably think this list is about you.


            H8 #3: Made Up Compound Words

FUNNIEST MEME EVER???

            While at a doctor's appointment this week I was unfortunately subjected to Fox News which was talking about how the recession has been affecting men more than women. I'm sure this is perfectly true, but for some reason they felt the need to title it a, "Man-cession." They went into the commercial break asking the question, "Is a woman-cession coming?" and playing (I swear to G), "I am woman, hear me roar, in numbers too big to ignore." I burst out laughing right there in the waiting room, and then shot myself. The first I remember of this horrible trend is when the tabloids, confronted with Oh! My! God! celebrity couples felt the need to come up with some oh so clever compound word formed of their names (i.e. Brangelina). This seems to be done with everything now, from labeling the fans of Twilight, "Twi-hards" to the aforementioned calling our recession a, "Man-cession." This drives me batty. It's the stupidest idea ever, and really doesn't save any time or accomplish anything except to make people seem idiotic. I thought 13 year old girls were the only people who made up words and thought themselves better for it. Besides folks, why not choose the more obvious, "He-cession" and, "She-cession"? Is it honestly that difficult to say, "The recession has had a bigger impact on men, than it has on women." without having to make up a new word? It reminds me of The Colbert Report when he is pointing at the camera belaboring some punchline and different phrases or words pop up next to him, to make the audience laugh. "Man-cession" really does seem like a joke, but I guess so does, "Scarjo." I hate them all.

            H8 #2: Owen Wilson


            It makes me sad to even write this, as I used to love Owen Wilson. I used to worship the man. I used to want to be the man. I fell in love back around Shanghai Noon, when the squeaky-voiced, shaggy-haired crooked-nosed lil' rascal was really hitting his stride. I knew he played basically the same character in every movie, but I liked the character, dammit! He had a peculiar charm that was especially adept at convincing women he was hot, when he was never more than roguishly charming. I adored him in Zoolander, and quoted him incessantly for years (to the chagrin of my friends) but then Owen Wilson began to become something of a joke. His movies got worse and he began devolving into the male version of Sandra Bullock - everyone loved him, but his movies were awful and he always just played himself. Obviously he knew this as well because, in a remarkable show of selflessness, he attempted suicide back in 2007. I don't mean to make light of someone slitting their wrists, but let's face it - people who are happy with themselves and with their work don't try and kill themselves. Well, perhaps poor Owen was prophetic about his future because ever since his old mortal coil swing and miss his movies have consistently gotten worse. While he seems to still be playing the same character, now everyone seems to sort of ignore the guy, and that's probably for the best. Here are the movies that Mr. Wilson has starred in since his suicide attempt:
Drillbit Taylor
Marley & Me
Night at the Museum 2
Marmaduke
How Do You Know
Little Fockers
Hall Pass


              I ain't sayin' he should've killed himself. I'm just sayin', you know?

            H8 #1: Guinness

            I know every single whitey in America claims to be of Irish descent, for some reason, but I am for real. My last name is O'Dell, and both sides of my family can be traced back to Ireland, and one to the actual county they lived in. I've decided that every physical trait I have can be traced back to the Irish or the Native Americans (Native Americans: my inability to grow a beard, my sexy tan, my desire to be barefoot at all times . Irish: my liver) so I suppose I can thank some Cherokee for my complete hatred of Guinness. To be fair, I've only had Guinness once on my  it's own, and a couple times in Irish Car Bombs (the worst shot ever invented - a shot glass full of Bailey's Irish Cream and Jameson's Irish Whiskey, dropped into a glass of Guinness and immediately chugged as I begins to curdle). Guinness is dark, flavorful, and absolutely disgusting. On top of that, some bottles of Guinness come with a small plastic tampon applicator looking item that supposedly leaps and gyrates inside of the bottle to keep things all bubbly and fresh, or something like that. In order to respect my pretend heritage I bought a 6 pack of Guinness for Saint Patrick's Day this year and attempted to choke it down by pretending it was bottled vomit, and not something as horrific as Guinness. I thought maybe the intervening years since I last tasted of it's vile, soiled nectar that perhaps my taste buds has matured. After all, I no longer drink solely party beer - that is the cheap light beers that are used for beer pong and flip cup, but I'll occasionally drink a darker brew of Sweetwater or Yuengling for a slow sipper. I brought my 6 pack home and cracked open the first one and (as you might have guessed from it's inclusion in the Hate, rather than the Love, column) Guinness is still terrible. I managed to finally get two bottles worth in me (pouring the last few drops of the second one in the sink and marveling at it's mud like color) and I don't know what I'm going to do with the last four - probably pour them in a dish outside to poison the neighborhood possums.

            LV: Shuffle Music on iPod


           I'm sure there is this feature on a lot of mp3 players or whatever you use to listen to your music, but I speak about what I know. I even had one on an old CD player, but that's different, because that just shuffles the 17 (or 10) songs on your CD. On my iPod I have 700+ songs (over 400 by the Beatles) and I love putting it on shuffle and just seeing what comes up, how the music flows together, and how it goes along with whatever I happen to be doing at the time. Today my iPod played Green Day, Green River Ordinance, "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" by Bob Dylan (my favorite Dylan song), Daft Punk, Kings of Leon, The Beatles, Cake, Lil Wayne, Gabriel Mann, and Jimmy Eat World all in a row. Where else can I get that experience? Certainly not on radio, I can promise you that much. That's what makes Shuffle so great - it's the music that you've personally approved but in a radio (albeit commercial free) format, where you don't know what the next song is going to be, you only know that you'll like it. Shuffle makes life more enjoyable, entertaining, and eventful, and I think anything that does that is worthy of love.

"We love shuffling!" 

The O'Dell Brothers Bracket Competition

          With football season over, and baseball season yet to begin, the truly desperate are forced to deal with the sport of basketball - and even worse, college basketball. The college basketball season is incredibly long and boring and no one pays much attention to it (including the players) until it gets to the playoffs. The playoffs include 64 teams so they're pretty much unimportant as well, but include the one good thing about the college basketball season - The Bracket. People fill out these brackets, betting on the outcome of a ridiculous amount of games, and if your team loses in the first round you are pretty much screwed all the way through. 

           I don't like basketball. It's creative in it's use of a tiny amount of space, but I don't find it entertaining to watch, nor fun to play (probably because I'm terrible at it). I've only done one good thing in regards to basketball in my entire life, and that was when my younger brother (who was like 9 at the time, but is 19 and in special forces training now) had a friend over and I boasted that I was, of course, the best basketball player of all time. He chose a spot from me to shoot from, and I took the ball, walked about ten paces further than the spot he picked, and hurled the ball with one hand over my head and directly into the basket. I knew this was a true O'Dellicious moment that could never be repeated and therefore wisely never played basketball again. 

          Anyway, while I may not like basketball, I love competition. Because of this, Clayton and I have decided to fill out our own brackets via a very scientific algorithm: the coin flip. It's simple really, we just each took a bracket and went through each match up - heads, the top team wins, tails, the bottom team wins. Fantastically enough, though we each did this at separate times, in separate towns, without telling one another our results, we both came up with George Mason as the winner of the entire tournament. We also both came up with the same winner for ever single game in the Southeast first round. 

             I know this is small, and therefore hard to read, but I'm posting it as proof before the games begin. When it's all over we'll see who won, and who is the better basketball predictor between the two of us.

            Coming next week! The O'Dellicious Celebrity Bracket 2011! 32 celebrities compete in a  daily head to head battle to see which is the most O'Dellicious of them all. Be sure to check back for amazing pictures of B-list celebrities! 

Andrew's Bracket

Clayton's Bracket

Killers, Brought To You by K-mart!

                  One of the horrible side effects of marriage is being forced to watch horrible movies. "Marriage?" You might ask, "Don't you mean dating?" Perhaps that applies if you're a sucker, but as I was a hardheaded and blunt individual, I simply refused to take girls to girl movies on dates. To this day I think I've only seen two romantic comedies in theaters, and I don't even remember what they are, I'm just saying that so I won't say "none" and sound like a liar. I have made it abundantly clear to my wife (in my always humble way), "I have far better taste in movies than you do - you're welcome to see whatever you like, but go see crappy girlie movies with your crappy girlie friends, and come see good movies with me." I have my guilty pleasures as well. For example, last year I saw both Piranha (worth it) and Machete (not worth it) in theaters, and didn't take her with me. Being married, however, means that we now live together, and worship together at the altar of my 50 inch flat screen, which means I occasionally see some truly terrible movies.

                Killers is one of those movies. This isn't a real review of the movie, as I have no idea who wrote it, or directed it, or anything like that, but I saw it last night and there are a few things I just have to comment on. First of all, when I saw The Ugly Truth I was completely shocked at how horrible it was. I had always assumed that these romantic comedies that chicks seem to dig were competently made movies, just not up my alley. Wrong! Ignoring the terrible writing, there was a scene that takes place in a hot air balloon at the end of the movie that made me think I had hit the zoom button on my DVD remote, because it was completely comprised of extreme close ups of the two lead actors faces. One of those lead actors was Katherine Heigl, some foul demon spawned from the regrettable and forgettable Grey's Anatomy who, since Knocked Up has become the new rom-com girl of the past few years. She's horrible, not terribly attractive, and I don't even think girls like her very much, but she is, of course, also the star of Killers.


                 I watched the movie with half a heart (like a good man does with all of his husbandly duties) and one eye, but I was soon drawn completely in by how terrible the movie ended up being. Let's ignore all the by now passe Katherine-Heigl-is-so-funny-because-of-her-extremely-mild-gross-out-humor, as I could write paragraphs on that, and just knock out a few of the particularly egregious moments before I move on to what I really want to talk about. First of all, this movie continues the female fantasy that a woman can be completely goofy and stupid and an extremely handsome man will fall madly in love with them. This is true in real life, but it only lasts until the guy has sex, and then he tires of them faster than I tired of this movie. At their first (and only?) date, Katherine Heigl says, for no apparent reason, "I am a dating robot. I am here to study your ways." in a robot voice. I had no clue what this was all about until I read the description on the Netflix envelope that she was, "a computer whiz." After this first date (which is dinner and a tour of the city on the day that they meet) Ashton Kutcher, a hired killer, feels so close to her that he confesses his profession. Yes, he's an undercover murderer who tells his secret to the first pretty girl he meets. His acting was so terrible in this scene that I honestly thought it was going to be a joke - like he says, "I need to tell you something... I kill people for a living... JUST KIDDING!" You know how in a movie whenever someone is supposed to be acting, or lying, it's really obvious? I thought that's what was going on here. The movie ends with a plot twist that I would love to spoil, but simply don't understand. I believe that Katherine Heigl's father is revealed to be an undercover (former?) government agent, and that he had hired a half dozen assassin's to be Ashton Kutcher's friends and neighbors for three years, because he didn't trust him. After a bit of confusion he tells them all to kill Ashton, which results in each of them dying in surprisingly grisly fashion.

            The one good thing about this movie was the gore. In the first fight Ashton knocks a guys teeth out, only to later flip his car over and impale him on re-bar. He kills a lady by running her through with an antler chandelier, causing her body to swing back and forth above him with bloody antlers sticking out of her side. Another assassin is run over, not once, but twice. One explodes, one is shot in the chest with a shotgun, and one is shot twice in the heart and once in the head. All of this is fantastic, as Katherine Heigl willingly goes along with it (after a few, "You better tell me what's going on soon!" protestations) because, as Ashton tells her, "I work for the Blah Blah Blah, and they've given me a license to Blah." I can tell that right now you're walking the thin line between shunning this movie forever or running out and purchasing every copy your local Wal-mart has (in the $5 bin) so let me help you decide by introducing the Killers Product Placement Drinking Game!

Scoot over! I can barely tell what kind of car it is!

  
           There is so much product placement in this movie that once I noticed it (at a party everyone conspicuously points the labels of their drinks toward the camera) I couldn't help but keep looking for more, and the movie never failed to disappoint. I didn't actually begin keeping count until about twenty minutes in, and after that I left the room several times in search of my sanity, so there may be some that I missed, but here is the list I wrote down on a napkin, which basically can work as a sketch outline for the entire movie:

"Do you not realize how wholesome this milk is, bro?"

               A happily married young couple throw a party at their house where they serve their guests Bud Lite Lime, and Jose Cuervo Especial. The next morning a guest who stayed the night asks for a glass of milk. The husband reaches into his refrigerator, past the Stella Artois, to grab some Stonyfield Farm Natural Organic Milk. Surprised when the guest tries to kill him, he steals a Cadillac Escalade and flees with his wife to his guest's home, where they search his Mac Book Pro for information while drinking Evian Spring Water. They make a quick detour by the local K-Mart where an entire scene takes place on the pregnancy test aisle, featuring musical star Usher as a K-Mart worker who recommends using First Response Pregnancy Tests. The wife, having those cuh-ray-zee pregnant woman cravings begins eating Doritos while calling her mother, who is making a bloody mary with Grey Goose vodka. After pulling her First Response Pregnancy Test out of her K-Mart bag and discovering she's pregnant, the wife narrowly rescues her husband from being run over by a brand new Ford Mustang and everyone lives happily ever after. 


              Now folks, these are just the ones I noticed, after beginning counting halfway through. I'm sure there are plenty more to aid in getting you drunk while playing the Killers Product Placement Drinking Game! (all rights reserved) brought to you by Captain Morgan's! 

Kmart bag on left, Evian on right, Mac Book Pro in the center. This is way more obvious in the actual movie. 

This Week in the News 3/13/11

              I've managed to continue my nearly six week saga of bliss (i.e. ignorance) by continuing to skip past the news networks on my television and proceed directly to Comedy Central to watch Tosh.0 or to, "The Bad Girls Club Channel" (I don't know what channel it is, but it's saved into my remote under, "<3"). The other day I was feeling pretty adventurous so I turned on the Atlanta evening news to hear about a few murders and a day care that was (allegedly, mind you) dumping it's trash into an empty lot next door! After thirty minutes of nonsense, I realized that my life would have been much more intrinsically enhanced by watching web videos of people hurting themselves in new and creative ways. That actually makes me feel good for humanity - at least these people are hurting themselves, not others, and there's always a chance they'll die, or at least be crippled beyond the ability to reproduce (speaking of which, if we could develop an injection that makes you sterile for 7 years would it be moral to hand out as a punishment to people? Ooh! Controversy!).

             Some news is unavoidable though, and so I know that at least three things happened in the wider world during this past week.

amiriteguys??

One - this Wisconsin Union vs. Governor epic battle rages on in the most boring of ways possible. This is a news story that really isn't sexy enough to take up too many headlines, and is just confusing enough that no one who isn't involved feels all that strongly about it, except for those on the extreme left and the extreme right (and by extreme I mean on the edge of sanity, not just the fringe, because it seems like a hell of a lot of those on the right are on the extreme right). It's one of those issues that is like abortion or gun control, where one isn't allowed to be sane and parse the difference, saying, "Okay yeah, you have a point, but so do these people, so why don't we put a few restrictions in place?" without being shouted down by both sides who claim that to give even the smallest bit of ground means that soon the rights of every single man, woman, and child, will be trampled upon and is that what you really want? Huh? Is it?! Conservatives have a long standing tradition of being against everything that we call progress and then, after having it forced upon them, the next generation agrees with it and says, "Well of course no one is saying black people shouldn't have equal rights! We're saying gays shouldn't!" Mark my words, the next generation of conservatives will be saying, "Of course the fags should have equal rights! Everyone knows that!" One generation ago conservatives loved unions, but now unions have outlived their usefulness and have to go. I lean towards the left on many issues, but really, after being deeply involved in politics throughout the two-year campaign leading up to the last Presidential election, I think I'm burned out on it for another 10 years. The fact is, until there is some violence up in Wisconsin, I ain't paying attention.

Two - The NFL Players Association decertifies.  I saw this headline on Friday evening while sitting at the bar in packed Mexican restaurant out of town. The sound was turned off so I didn't really know what it meant and - since my laptop isn't working and I don't watch the news at home, I still don't really know what it means. All I do know is that I better get my football this year. I'm sure the owners are both right and wrong, and that the players are both right and wrong (I tend to side with the players, from what I've read)  but I don't care either way because I know one group that is definitely in the right - the fans. We have made the NFL the most popular sports league in the nation, the Super Bowl the most watched event in television, and their profits are greater than they ever have been in the history of sports. I don't care how they work it out, but their responsibility is to get it worked out in time to give us a great season of football. We've done our part - we've dedicated our time, attention, and a large part of our disposable income to their product, their responsibility to us is to get this all worked out...or else. What? I ain't scared, I'll take em all on! We'll see how strong they are without their pads and helmets! More importantly, however, is the fact that the Mexican bar had a bottle of tequila shaped like (and the actual size of) a rifle, from which one of the Mexicans (who was barely taller than the bottle) was pouring shots. That's newsworthy, my friends.

Three - there was an earthquake in Japan  A TSUNAMI COULD HAVE ALMOST HIT HAWAII!!!                 
           By now you have no doubt heard about the incredibly large earthquake that struck in Japan (too bad it didn't happen in China, because they could have just jumped into the hole and ended up in America! HARHARHAR)  in the wee hours of Friday morning, killing an estimated 1,300 - 1,700 people, and, even more excitingly, causing two nuclear reactors to nearly melt down. I say excitingly because that's what I want to talk about here - our perverse obsession with tragedy. Whenever a tragedy strikes people want to know one thing - how they can in some way connect themselves to it. If someone has been to Japan and you start talking about this earthquake, trust me, they'll tell you, "It's hard to believe that three years ago I was in a town that was almost affected by this earthquake!" I understand that if you had a loved one in the towers on 9/11 (which was almost ten years ago, I just realized) then the tragedy affects you more than it does me, but that's not what I'm talking about. People want to seem connected to the tragedy in some way. It's the same thing when someone dies in high school - suddenly everyone has a story about the one time they talked to him/her, and how much it meant to them.

"Sorry Hawaii!"

         On the radio at 4:30 a.m. on Friday morning what I heard mostly was that a tsunami was racing across the ocean with it sights set on Hawaii and California, bring naught but devastation and destruction in it's wake. Why was this the lead in the story? Because it was American radio, and what really matters is how the earthquake will effect America. I immediately said to myself, "Ain't nothin gonna happen," and, as usual, I was right. This isn't my narcissistic, "I'm-always-right" BS (which I am) but rather this is a simple mathematical equation that can help you Always Be Right in such situations as well. See, we have a 24 hour news cycle that, in order to justify it's own existence, must constantly be reporting something newsworthy. This stretches the boundaries of what is considered newsworthy and often dives right off of the edge into hysteria, in order to generate viewers. I don't know what the actual percentage is, but I would estimate that at least 95% of the time a news story will overestimate when it comes to tragedy. Therefore, whenever a prediction is made about how many deaths, or how much damage, treat this as the line in a sports bet, and always take the under, never the over. A tsunami will hit Hawaii? The swine flue will kill tons of people? Mad cow disease will make beef inedible? More people are dying in the Twin Towers than died in all of Vietnam? A storm could leave us all without power for a week? The BP oil spill will render the Gulf beaches unusable for 20 years? The Y2K bug? A news station is never going to underplay a story, because there's nothing in that for them.
             Now, according to the law of percentages you will occasionally be wrong, but that's okay. No one is going to take the time, during an unprecedented tragedy, to say, "Hey, didn't Andrew say he didn't think that entire island would sink into the ocean?" And remember folks, that is what is most important when it comes to a tragedy - being right.

       This week features the debut of two new weekly columns!  Stay tuned to be underwhelmed! Also comment, or send us messages, telling us how horrible we are so we can post them all and angrily defend ourselves.