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. 

Andrew's H8/LV 3/8/11

H8 #3: Graveyards


            The thing I can't figure out about graveyards is whether they are the most natural thing ever, or the most unnatural thing ever (because obviously there is no way they could be any thing in between). I suppose on the one hand, if we consider primitive man, death must have been a commonplace occurrence, but so was superstition and misunderstanding, so perhaps it is only natural that they would want to save the corpse of someone they knew who had died, and preserve it by hiding it beneath ground so predators couldn't desecrate the body. On the other hand, why would they make a plot of ground unusable in order to store a completely useless corpse inside? I'm not entirely sure of the origin of graveyards (and Google is way too far away for me to type it in) but they bother me. We all know we will never need any of those bodies again; we all know that the things that we loved about our loved ones who have died is not buried with their bodies, but gone off into whatever ether awaits us after death; we all know that we ourselves will die someday, and that our lifeless bodies won't care about whatever happens to it, and yet, graveyards continue to exist.
            In all honesty, I know when my loved ones die that they will be buried, and I imagine I'll visit their graves, and I think it's good to have a place to feel you can still connect with those who have died and speak to them in some way, but that doesn't change the way I feel. Personally, I don't want to be laid out in a row with other empty bodies that I never knew, in perfect grids so as to be aesthetically pleasing to the eye, and to pack as many bodies into a small space as possible. I don't feel like that will help me rest in any way, or help my family not miss me as much. Ideally, my body can be used in some way that benefits someone after I die, and then it would be nice if it could be buried under some old tree on the imaginary property that I own, quietly laid to rest like an old junker parked in a grove of trees, with a sapling growing up through the engine until it becomes a part of the landscape.

H8 #2: Cash


            I feel like money, while necessary, was the beginning of the end for civilization (although civilization didn't really exist yet) as it introduced the concepts of riches, poorness, hoarding, and the sorts of things that lead to basically every conflict in the history of the world. I understand the need for money, and I accept the fact that I live in a world where it is impossible to exist without it, but can't we all move on past using cash? Last week I went to pay a citation (infraction: "tire requirements." Yeah, I hadn't ever heard of it either, and neither had any of the workers at City Hall when I paid the ticket) with Clayton, and figured it would be a

USELESS!

quick trip. My ticket said that I could pay it online, but when I tried the county I needed to pay it through wasn't even listed on the website. Clayton and I waited in line, acted charming and dear to the beautiful women of color behind the counter (I won't say what color, but I will say that they had a Michael Vick Atlanta Falcons bobblehead on the desk), and then I whipped out my fat wallet and pulled out a debit card, upon which the woman recoiled in horror. "Oh no!....NO!...we can't take those here!" she said as she fell back against her desk, throwing her arms up in front of her face. "We aren't that high tech!"
            Ignoring the fact that I had just paid a locksmith with a credit card the day before, and that he had run my card will sitting in the back of his van and instantly printed me out a receipt, I accepted the fact that I was dealing with local government, and trotted outside, Clayton in tow, to walk to the bank. The bank had a long line, and no walk up ATM, so Clayton and I had to walk through the drive thru ATM, walk back to City Hall, throw the money on the counter (after which Clayton picked it up, straightened it all out, and turned every bill upside down, backwards, both, or neither, because he loves being annoying). The lady wrote us up a receipt, stapled it to my ticket, and we continued on our merry way.
            Really? Was any of that necessary? Why do we even need cash, except so we can be robbed or give it to hobos and those annoying kids that hold up their upside down batting helmets outside of the front doors of Wal-mart? Strippers? I'm sure we could work out some system where you press a, "TIP" button and some diode in front of you lights up so the stripper (I mean, exotic dancer) will know that you just tipped her, and instantly become very attracted to you (because, I mean, I know only suckers think that strippers actually like them, but they really do like me you know -  I mean, they have to like someone sometime. How do you know it isn't me?). I suppose cash is good for those people who don't want their purchases tracked (that is, conspiracy nuts and people buying stuff illegally) but we could also work out a system of universal gift cards that could be exchanged in the same way cash is for those times when it's absolutely imperative that no one know what our money is being spent on. Cash has become an inconvenience, and I don't know many people who use it anymore.
              And to those in charge down at City Hall, seriously, get it together. I feel relatively certain that just with the money I paid you for a made up crime last week, you could buy and set up a credit card machine and save everyone a lot of trouble. You won't though, because that requires actual work on your end, while if you do nothing it just causes extra work for everyone else.

H8 #1: Cell Phone Chargers


            I'm pretty sure this one is obvious, and much like making a joke about airline food (wow, remember the days when there was still airline food to joke about? No? Me neither.) but seriously folks, let's get it together. I've owned four or five cell phones in my life time and every. single. one. has had a different charger, even those manufactured by the same company. "No big deal," you might be thinking, "why shouldn't they all have different chargers?" BECAUSE THAT'S STUPID. There is no reason that every cell phone couldn't be charged by the same type of charger, if we simply made a universal jack on each cell phone. Imagine if each phone (or mp3 player) had a different sized headphone jack, so you could only use one particular set of headphones for each device. That would be ridiculous and everyone would pitch a fit (and well they should). Motorola has seemingly gotten with the program, and at one point I was even able to charge both my phone and my bluetooth head piece on the same charger (that was before I left my bluetooth receiver lying in my sister's yard for a few weeks). I hate cell phone chargers because it's one of those cases where the fix is so simple, but we had to go out of our way in order to make things more difficult for everyone. Before you make the argument, "Oh, so should you be able to power your Xbox with a Playstation 3 power cord?" let me say that first of all, yes, you should, and secondly, cell phones are devices that are designed to be carried with you at all times, to all locations, and are NOT designed to actually make it through a day of active use. Now, not only do I need to carry my phone with me, but I need to carry a charger as well, to make sure I have a way to get some power into the odd parallelogram hole on the side of my phone. I HATE IT.

My point exactly.

LV: Not Knowing What Time of Night it Is.


             Being a diurnal creature, I tend to think of night in terms of the day. For example, I think of the darkness as following the setting of the sun, rather than accompanying the rising of the moon. Part of being outside during the day is that I, even if only subconsciously, always have a sense of what time of day it is. This is mostly due to the sun, but probably also because I'm used to certain things happening at certain times of day - birds chirping in the morning, increased traffic around 5 p.m., a temperature drop in the evening. However, there is this marvelous feeling that normally happens somewhere between 2:30 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. when all time stops and our world is replaced with a different, unearthly, shadow version of our world. It has to be that late because before then people are still up playing World of Warcraft and beating their wives, and after 5 people are getting up to go to work (and, for the truly dedicated, to beat their wives). In these few hours nothing seems to change or move and, whether I'm inside or outside at this time of night, I have no clue what time it is. It's a heavenly, magical hour that makes me feel as if I'm having a dream where I'm in my own neighborhood but everything is off in some small unseen way, and I'm the only person among all the houses and streets and yards and trees. Usually some distant horn will sound, or I'll trigger my own motion sensor light and terrify myself out of my imagined utopia, but the time between night and morning is unlike any other part of the day.
                Saturday I got up at 4:30 a.m., worked for most of the day, drove an hour and a half with my wife and friend to see Clayton and go to a hockey game, drove an hour and a half back, played video games, watched movies, hung out and talked with my friend, and next thing I knew Margaret walked up behind me, after a night of sleep, to find me still awake and furiously writing on the back of an envelope at 6 o'clock on Sunday morning. One minute before she walked in and I would have guessed it was around 1:30 or 2 a.m. I love that, and I wish it could happen all the time.

Monday Placeholder

             Well, just when I was getting into the swing of things my laptop quit working again, so that slows down my blog-producing skills significantly. New ideas are percolating and developing, however, and it will only be a short matter of time before I'm churning this crap out like a mindless drone who is just typing for the pleasure of hearing the keys click. I'll be back tomorrow with my weekly H8/LV list, and we'll debut a new weekly column either this week or next week. However, as a placeholder for today (for the thousands of you who sit at the O'Dellicious blog and click refresh over and over again like Jesse Eisenberg at the end of The Social Network) I'll post an amazing video that I've watched about a dozen times over the past week. In fact, just yesterday, David and I pulled it up full screen on his laptop, placed our faces about a foot away and watched the video on repeat. It is amazing. Enjoy.

               http://vimeo.com/9970489

          I first saw this on the Badass Digest, which explains what the downhill bike race is, and where it is run. Their original posting is here:

               http://www.badassdigest.com/2011/03/03/incredible-pov-shot-of-crazy-downhill-bike-course

           Seriously, you have to watch this.

Friday's Movie of the Week

Friday's Movie of the Week
or "Prepare to Be Amazed. "


            Before we start with the real important, SUPER informative stuff, we have a little inside-baseball meta house cleaning to get out of the way.
A) I was just reading Clayton's H8/LV list for this week when I began to laugh out loud. My wife asked me, "Why dost thou laugh so heartily, oh dearheart?" "MAYBE YOU'D KNOW IF YOU READ MY BLOG!" I sang back sweetly. She sat down to read and, a moment later also laughed aloud. Which part? The part where Clayton hurriedly pushes back his always-glamorous hair. The same part I had laughed aloud at. In her own words, "It's funny because he really is constantly fixing his hair."
B) While I was just doing my in depth research of Googling, "upcoming movies" I had to ask my wife what year it was. I couldn't remember if it was 2011 or 2012.

Now, without further adieu, This. Week's. (movie)Releases.


This is still the dumping grounds of the year (at least until late August) and honestly, I won't be going to the theaters for at least a few more weeks, that is, until Zack Snyder's, Sucker Punch comes out (at which time I'll make it a point to go to the theater and see it, and plan to for about four days in a row, and then forget about it and rent it from Redbox when it comes out on DVD). We're dedicated though (when we remember to post) and so we're doing our due diligence with this week's new releases.

 Rango seems like a cute enough kid's movie. Really, it looks great (I saw a preview at some point but I don't remember when) and I love the fact that the Johnny Depp lizard character is wearing a Hawaiian shirt as I feel that it is a secret homage to his Hunter S. Thompson character in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas but whatever, you can't really expect me to have an opinion on this can you? I bet I watch it on DVD though.


The Adjustment Bureau makes me giggle. I guess the concept is some cabal of white men in suits has been running the world for a long time (must be a documentary, amirite? HARHARHAR) and have some sort of time-space bending magical powers and use these powers to freeze time and spray tan bald guys. Unfortunately for Matt Damon, he isn't bald and therefore his jealousy (after walking in on a very private boardroom spraytanning) drives him to run down alleyways while sharply dressed, dragging along Clayton's latest horrible choice in women to love - Miss Emily Blunt! Clayton has seen far worse movies for the lass, so I suspect this ridiculous looking cockamamie scrumnut will crawl across his eyeballs at some point. As the illustrious Mr. T once said, "Poor dear." (NOTE: after writing this article I searched for pictures for The Adjustment Bureau and the first one that popped up I placed below - I found it AFTER I wrote the above description of it)

Take Me Home Tonight also looks terrible, and makes me weep one tear, two times. A tear for thee, dear Topher Grace - I once modeled my life after Eric in That 70s Show (we were basically twins. We shared the trait of...being skinny, but not much else) but what has happened to your incredibly smarmy voice since then? I still held high hopes after Win A Date With Tad Hamilton and you even managed to get into Spider-man 3 Too Many Villains, but lately things have changed. A tear for thee.
And a tear for thee, my darling Anna Faris. You're probably legitimately the funniest woman alive, and yet you can never rise above B-star status. I love you, but I won't see your movie.

Beastly can be summed up in my quote from when I saw the TV spot for it last night: "They want to be the new Twilight but it won't work because that guy is way too goddamn ugly."


             After all of this horribly depressing news about what you pedophiles can expect to find in theaters this Friday you're probably feeling a bit depressed, right? You don't know how you'll fill those 60 odd hours of freedom that the "man" likes to call the weekend. Well chin up, buckaroos, because I have something for you!  It just so happens that while I was randomly browsing through Netflix trying to find something to watch, I stumbled upon what is possibly the greatest treasure trove found since Romancing the Stone. It's a movie I guarantee you have never before seen, because once you do it will stay in the forefront of your mind for as long as the neurons continue to fire - it's images will dance before your eyes both day and night, making you unfit to drive or play ping-pong. Basically, you'll never be the same. This exquisite blessed idol goes by the name of Shadow Dancers


Shadow Dancers is a movie that is a lot like a video of a burning log that you leave flickering on your television in the background during your delightfully tacky Christmas party. Some might even compare it to the mobile that spins and plays music about your child's head as they lay in their crib like a turtle on it's back, neglected and alone. Shadow Dancers features a great funky beat, garish Windows95 screensaver backgrounds, and yes, silhouettes of people dancing. Does this sound amazing to you? Well evidently it did to everyone else too, as there are now TEN Shadow Dancer movies. Let's run through them quickly.
Shadow Dancers 1: The original, un-themed Shadow Dancer.
Shadow Dancers 2: Let's Hear It For the Boys.
Shadow Dancers 3: Platinum Honeys of Hip Hop
Shadow Dancers 4: Mistress KiKi's Fetish Temptation (bondage dancing theme (whatever that means))
Shadow Dancers 5: Modern Day Lava Lamp (60's psychedelic theme)
Shadow Dancers 6: Nightlife Go-Go Girls (as in, the original go-go girls)
Shadow Dancers 7: Hypnotic, Slow, and Sexual
Shadow Dancers 8: Busty Babes (evidently about girls who like busting things)
Shadow Dancers 9: It's Wicked (pagan themed. WHAT?)
Shadow Dancers 10: Girls Who Like Girls (this one is about girls who are interested in dancing with other girls which, if you look like me and have been to a club in the past 8 years is EVERY. SINGLE. GIRL.)

Shadow Dancers 11: Las Vegas Party Girls


              You do not know how tempted I am to set up a bank of mirrors around my 50" television, turn off all the lights, open to sliding glass door to the deck and play these DVDs for an entire night. If The Shield Season 2 hadn't already shipped these would be my next rental from Netflix. They are the most amazingly horrible and embarrassing thing I've had the pleasure of discovering lately.

                So, ladies and gents my, nay our hearty recommendation for this week is, of course, Shadow Dancers 4.

Andrew's L8 H8/LV of the Week 3/2/11

H8 1: People Who Think Spoiling Children is Cute
           I am not a parent. There are those who feel that if one is not a parent, one is therefore unfit to comment on the raising of children. This is of course completely insane and is simply an excuse to not listen to the opinions of others. No one feels you can't have an opinion on sports unless you're an athlete, or an opinion on politics unless you're an elected politician, or an opinion on the behavior of another race unless you are a member of that race. At the same time, I won't babble on about my opinions too much as I don't want to look like a fool when I change them all upon knocking my wife up. That disclaimer aside, let's approach the modern travesty of being proud of spoiling one's own child from a purely linguistic point of view. According to whatever dictionary Google just pulled up when I typed, "definition of spoil" to spoil is to, "botch, make a mess of, destroy or ruin." There is a reason we call spoiled children spoiled, and that's because they are unfit for society, just as spoiled fruit is unfit to consume, or spoiled meat will make you sick. Parents, quit saying with pride and glee, "Yeah, my kid is so spoiled!" as if you're just such a great parent that you can't resist your cute little wretch of a child. When my refrigerator breaks down and my food spoils, my refrigerator doesn't beam with pride and say, "Aw look how spoiled your food is!" When I don't tend to my imaginary vegetable garden and the vegetables rot into the ground I don't give a tour and say, "I can't resist spoiling it!"
               Raise your kid however you want (not really) but at least use a little sense in your language - spoiling is not, and has never been, a positive thing. Make up a new set of words to describe what you're doing, such as, "Aw, I'm just attempting to make everyone's future interactions with my child as difficult as possible due to my kid's misguided view of his or her own self-importance!" or, "I'm ruining this kid forever!" Also to teenage/college/past-college-but-haven't-realized-it-yet females, guys really, really, don't find the, "Spoiled Brat!" "Spoiled Little Princess!" stuff cute or attractive in the least, but thank you for warning me in advance about how high maintenance you're going to be.

H8 2: Snakes
          I truly hate snakes. I feel it is the duty of every human being to hate snakes. First of all, just being a mammal you should naturally feel a deep, uncomfortable, "otherness" about reptiles, and their cold-blooded, scaly, slithery selves. Secondly, just watching how a snake moves, and the shape of it's body and lack of arms or legs should strike a knell of creepiness in the most primal centers of your brain. There is a reason why snakes are thought of as representations of evil in many cultures (and religions) throughout the world. Don't get me wrong, I'm not afraid of snakes, I just hate them. Even Professor Henry Jones Jr. hates snakes, and I could never profess to be a bolder man than he. I've held a boa constrictor around my neck when I was a mere child, back during the mystical years of youth (also known as Panama City Beach Spring Break) I danced around the campfire of a girl who wore naught on the beach but sunglasses, a bikini, and a giant snake  named Big Sexy on long ago half-forgotten nights, I've run across a rattlesnake in the woods and, along with my friends, shot it, beheaded it, milked out it's venom, skinned it, gutted it, cleaned it, cut it into pieces, cooked it over an open fire, and eaten it off the skewers (now that, Gwenyth Paltrow, is Country Strong). I've lost a snake in the cushions of a couch (and never found it) and helped my roommates get a rat snake out from under a bunk bed and throw it through the doorway. This isn't a list of the things I fear (or it would be much longer than this) but instead a list of the things I hate. Have you felt a snake? Seen it move? Seen those big heads? Those evil eyes? That forked tongue? Have you pulled a whole squirrel out of the stomach of a snake, or watched them distend their jaws to swallow something huge? Have you watched a snake strike? Snakes are the creepiest thing on the planet, and I hate them with a passion.

H8 3: Haircuts
                I am a stylishly disheveled young white boy who gets his hair cut twice a year. Basically, I cut it very short in early summer, and then trim it in early fall, and let it grow the rest of the time. This leads not only to a distinct lack of style, but, due to my revoltingly slow-growing hair, an easy avoidance of those hell holes known as...well, I was going to say "barber shops" but I haven't had my hair cut in one of those since I was about seven. Hair cutting establishments? Stylist groves? Havens for those who couldn't go to real college? Part of this complaint dovetails with my earlier criticism of talking dental hygienists - when getting a haircut I'm in a trapped environment with someone who can make whatever lame small talk they feel like making, and I'm expected to respond. The last time I got my hair cut at a, "professional" establishment was in March of 2010, and my stylist constantly asked me questions about myself, asked me if I was planning on coming back and using her again, asked me my plans for the upcoming week, and plenty of other things I had no interest in disclosing. Fortunately for her, I'm a magnanimous guy who sees the positive side of every life experience, so I humored her idiotic attempts at social connection and answered her fantastically trite questions with equal measures of grace and humility. However, in this contest of straw-throwing she came armed with a pitchfork and dug away heartily until she finally hit upon the not-so-proverbial, "last straw." She had the nerve to ask me what size razor she should use. Seriously? Cosmetology is the easiest degree one can possibly earn at a vocational college (I know this based on the people I've seen earn it). I don't know much about cutting hair, or the techniques or tricks but I feel that if I spent 14 months cutting wigs off of Styrofoam heads I would at least have some sort of concept of how to do my own job. Besides, I'm a guy. I'm paying you $20 for 8 minutes of work, I'm not asking you to feather my hair, or dye it, or style it, or anything like that, but to simply cut it. If I take my car to a mechanic and he (or, let's be modern here, she) asks me which tools he she use to fix it, I'm going to another mechanic. If my gardener (whose name is Mr. Hypothetical) knocks on my door and asks, "Should I use a mower or a weed-eater here?" I'm going to kick him in the nuts, knee him in the face, grab him by the ear and spin him around three times, and then throw him down my front porch steps (assuming I'm having a bad day). There's a reason I haven't been back to get my hair cut since, and that reason is because I H8 IT!

LV: Old Men In Hats
            Old men are fantastic. Sometimes I just look at them and think, "Wow, these people used to be humans too." It's amazing to look at a picture of a baby, then that baby as an adult, and then finally as an old person. Some features will remain the same, but it's almost difficult to believe all three photos belong to same species, much less the same person. I was watching, "The Last Station" the other day, which stars the amazingly hot Helen Mirren and the very old Christopher Plummer. I don't think Christopher Plummer should be executed or anything, but it's shocking to look at his wrinkled visage (eyes still a'twinkling) and realize that he's the handsome devil in what is possibly the greatest movie of all time, "The Sound of Music." Yesterday an old man tottering through a parking lot stopped me to compliment my legs (these gams are equal opportunity attractors) and tell me that he couldn't wait until it got a little warmer and he could put on his own shorts. He then pulled up his jeans to show me his legs (not sure why). We chatted for a few seconds and went on our merry ways (this is a random anecdote that has nothing to do with hats, in case you're wondering).
             I still see lots of old men who wear hats. By hats I mean, of course, not baseball caps but the type of hat officially known as the, "old man hat." This is understandable because hats were an integral part of the culture for all stylish men before the cultural revolution of the late 1960s (trust me, I've seen Mad Men). How great is it though that, here we are 50 years later and these men have still refused to change their style. That's amazing to me - either they haven't noticed that everyone else quit wearing hats, or they've noticed and think that's an unacceptable development so they're going to keep the trend alive. Think of all the fashion trends that have come and gone in my lifetime alone (I was born in 1984) and pick out one that lasted 15 years, much less 60 years, borne along entirely by one generation. The longest lasting fad I can think of is baggy low-riding pants on black guys, which has been around for 20 years now. For this analogy to work suddenly this fad would have to die, with the current generation continuing to sag their pants until they were 80, while all the generations yet to come wearing their pants normally. Old guys don't give a damn, and for that, I LV 'em.

Why Teenage Dream is the best song on pop radio.

I claim to have a wide and varied taste in music, but I do have quite a few prejuidices that color my opinion of certain genres. However, I try to remain open minded and realize that there is always at least something excellent in every subset of music. I hate country music, but I love Johnny Cash, I own a Merle Haggard album, and find something in the simple storytelling of that era to love. I can restrict my hatred to modern country, but then I have to find some way to allow for my giddy anticipation for the new Zac Brown Band album. Simply put, I find it possible to love some particular item, no matter how much I might disdain the category to which the item belongs (Which is why I love my wife yet remain a horrible misogynist).

Therefore, about every six to eight months I fall deeply, passionately, head-over-heels in love with a super, super, gay song. This isn't the sort of love where I merely appreciate the song for being catchy, or very danceable. My wife constantly replays Rihanna's new CD (that I regrettably bought her as a gift) and I find quite a few of those songs to be pleasant, and fun, and actually quite good, even though I am a straight white adult male. That's not the sort of love I'm talking about. I'm talking about this sort of love where I'm truly and deeply emotionally touched by the song and legitimately think it might be one of my top ten songs of all time. I unembarassedly adored Beyonce's, "Irreplaceable" and would hold forth at length on the incredible pairing of the lyrics (a strong, self-sufficient adult telling her no-good lover to get out) and the vocal work, (a truly heartbroken woman summoning the last of her strength to protect herself from further pain).

With this disclaimer firmly and defensively established, I now step from behind my mask of manliness and hereby proclaim Katy Perry's, "Teenage Dream" to be the best song currently on mainstream radio. Don't get me wrong, I loathe Katy Perry. I find her neither clever, cute, or funny. "Fireworks," is such a pathetically sappy song, and the video so astonishingly cliched and over-reaching that I honestly think that it's possible that the entire video is tongue-in-cheek, and parodying other over-earnest pieces of dreck. HOWEVER it's so bad that even if it is a joke, it's still not funny. "Teenage Dream," however is a masterpiece, and I'm about to prove it.

First of all, I love that whole, "falling in love" BS. I'm a huge fan of puppy love, and that stupid teenage love where you actually believe that you are the first couple to ever feel love this intensely. You reason that you have to be, or else there would be no unhappiness in the relationships of adults you've met, no marriages ever ending in divorce. I still completely idolize those late nights and long phone conversations where you're learning everything about a person and these newly developed hormones create a flood of blood to certain areas of your brain and actually gives you a chemical high and love literally becomes a drug (for the record, I hate Ke$ha). I think there's something so innocent, and yes, naieve, but sincerely beautiful about this time in someone's life, and though developed cynicism and the knowledge of how it all ended up colors our view from the present, there's nothing like balancing on the cusp of adulthood, fully stepping into who you are, while still retaining the invincibility of youth.

My heart stops when you look at me
Just one touch now baby I believe

This is what Teenage Dream is about. Katy Perry is singing to a guy about their memories, and back when they were falling in love and feeling like they were one another's only anchors in life, and that really, all you needed was love and everything would fall into place. She uses the verses to describe a few moments from their relationship, and the first part of the chorus (or maybe it's a bridge, I don't know anything about music) to recall the first time they had sex - not meaningless one night stand sex, but the connected, for real sex, of two people who are really falling for one another.

Let's go all the way tonight
No regrets, just love
We can dance until we die
You and I, will be young forever.

            This, coupled with the music, would be enough for me to like the song, but what really cranks it up to Better-Than-The-Beatles status is the final added layer. Katy Perry isn't a teenager, and Katy Perry is smarter than this. She knows that love doesn't make everything work out, and she knows that feelings change, and she knows that even if love lasts forever is changes and morphs and grows and mutates and that you only get that, "falling in love" feeling once, with whomever you are with (science says that the 'love as a drug' thing usually peters out at the 15 month mark, but I don't know). Katy Perry isn't a teenage dream to her lover anymore, it isn't that they are falling out of love, but their love has matured and steadied. But in this song she's reminding him of that original fiery passionate love they felt when they were teenagers and they were first feeling that crazy new love with whomever they were feeling that crazy new love with. She's telling him, 'Remember being a teenager in love? Well tonight we are those teenagers, and we're not going to let adulthood or wherever we are at this point in our lives distract us from that. I'm not going to wear some Sexy Nurse Outfit or a gimp suit, I'm going to be the me that you fell in love with, because that's who I still am."

Get your heart racing in my skin tight jeans
Be your teenage dream tonight
Put your hands on me in my skin tight jeans
Be your teenage dream tonight.

You might think that I'm bringing a ridiculous amount of baggage to the table before interpreting this song, and maybe I am. But I'm right, and if Katy Perry herself disagrees with me and intended a different meaning to this song entirely, she's wrong. Listen to this song with my interpretation, and see what you think. Sure, I'm semi-old (26) and I'm married (for 2.5 years now) but I've learned to embrace all moments in my life - even the moments when I felt (and still sometimes feel) intense shame - because I've learned from everything I've been through and those experiences have forced me into the person that I am. I will always love those moments of my childhood - the building of tree forts, the terribly long summer afternoons of kick ball and bicycle riding, and I will always love those moments of adolescence - the intense connection I felt with someone who understood me, or at least a part of me, in a way no one else did.

            By the way, Clayton disagrees with me about this entirely, and I'm pretty sure my wife does as well (that, or else she made the wise choice to ignore me when I explained this all to her. Her response: "Hmm. I never really thought about it." My reply: "Obviously you never get drunk and listen to Katy Perry.")

This is real
So take a chance
And don't ever look back
Don't ever look back

Friday's Movie of the Week

Friday is the day dedicated to complaining about the current state of Hollywood - especially in the early months of the year. January, February, and March are the months famous for being the dumping ground of Hollywood. Everyone has spent their money buying over-priced cheap plastic gifts for others for Christmas and need a few months to recover before spending their recently hard-earned cash on watching the Summer blockbusters. There remains one single bright spot on the movie landscape during these few months of famine and that is the O'Dellicious Live Oscar Webcast (as you may have noticed in the beautiful banner above). If you're reading this you are obviously a lonely nerd with no one to hang out with, so hang out with us, online, and experience unfunny commentary, massive amounts of liquor, live commercial reads, and probably some sort of physical altercation before the night ends. Sunday, February 27th. 


Friday's Movie of the Week


               Oh. Dear. God. I'm sure Clayton felt like he cornered the market in horrific movie releases last week with Just Go With (sh) It, and Gnomeo & Juliet but this week is more then determined to give last week a run for it's money (and by money, I mean a terrible score on Rotten Tomatoes). I know people will go to theaters this weekend, and I get it, sometimes you live in an incredibly small town where there is literally nothing to do. The only thing I can ask is this - pay to see another movie than whatever tripe you're actually going to see. If The King's Speech is playing, pay for that and sneak into a different theater. I don't care what you actually see, I just care what message you send to Hollywood. Everyone knows you don't pet your dog after he takes a dump on the dining room table.

             Liam Neeson has a new movie out this week called, Unknown. While I know practically nothing about this movie, I know that it's obviously terrible as it is being released in February. It looks to be one of those typical semi-supernatural thrillers along the lines of Stay where there's an unsatisfying and impossible-to-figure-out twist at the end that usually is something like, "He was really in a coma and imagining everything the entire time!" While I don't think there is anyone in the entire world that dislikes Liam Neeson, he doesn't have a reputation for having the most discerning of taste when it comes to movie roles. I thought this movie had come out like last August but evidently it hasn't. I saw the always lovely January Jones on The Daily Show the other night advertising this movie in the most awkward of ways. All she really said (without any conviction) was, "It's good, go see it." Which, of course, is Hollywood lingo for, "It's bad, don't go see it."

Chest hair is the new black.

              I Am Number Four is based on a young adult book about a guy known as Number Three. The success of the Harry Potter and Twilight series(es) birthed a spate of adaptations of young adult novels with a supernatural bent, like the succinctly titles Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.  (Sidenote: This title reveals a lot, because one would assume The Lightning Thief would be a perfectly good title, but the point of the movie is to cash in on Percy Jackson fans, not to make a good movie). I can't really be bothered to learn too much about this movie, as it feels disposal at best. DJ Caruso (the director) also made Disturbia (pretty entertaining) and Eagle Eye (astonishingly bad) and has one of those imminently punchable faces.


             Now, if we want to go head to head with last weeks movies for the reigning champ of Awful Excrement I think this week wins with the match ups of  I Am Number Four and Unknown vs. Gnomeo and Juliet, The Eagle, and Justin Bieber Never Ever Ever Says Never. I haven't seen any of those movies, of course (I value my sanity) but I have to assume last week's movies are better than this week's. However, as Adam Sandler is famous for making genuinely reprehensible movies, Hollywood really had to pull out all the stops to create a movie that could compete with Just Go With It. But I know my Hollywood, and I trust them to always come through when I need proof that the lowest of lows has not yet been reached. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the ring the latest offering of the always hilarious comedian Martin Lawrence, famous for such movies as Big Momma's House, Rebound, Big Momma's House 2, Black Knight, Wild Hogs, and the upcoming The Skank Robbers (I wish I were making that up) in this weeks biggest (HARHAR) release, Big Mommas: Like Father Like Son. Yes, that's right, Big Momma's House can now legitimately be considered a franchise.

Random picture from my immense porn collection.

                 I've long believed that people have a way of revealing themselves for who they are without even trying to do so. When a woman goes on stage and sings a solo with no music, you know she trusts her voice. When Lady Gaga dresses like she was molested by a Klingon at a young age and her daddy never loved her, you can pretty much assume she ain't got that much in the way of raw vocal talent. When Eddy Murphy makes The Nutty Professor and a sequel in which he plays multiple characters in different fat suits it doesn't take a genius to figure out that he's running out of ideas. When Martin Lawrence copies Eddy Murphy's worst ideas and stretches them out over three movies, you can assume that there is no semblance of fairness or reason on this big blue marble we call the Earth. I don't even want to criticize this movie because really, if I have to convince anyone reading this blog not to see this movie, then frankly, I don't want you reading this blog.

            Thankfully we live in an age of technology and instantaneous information and as such, we aren't restricted to watching only movies released in the theaters. Because of that (and the blessed service known as Netflix) here are the movies I've watched this week:

- The Deer Hunter
- Enter the Void
- Goodbye Solo
- Cypher
- Ken Burn's The Civil War (disc 1 & 2)
- Stalag 17


           All of these movies were interesting and worth watching (Enter the Void was particularly mind-blowing, while also managing to be disgusting and inconsequential) but the one I recommend is The Deer Hunter. I've heard a ton about it, and it won a ton of awards, but I've always avoided watching it as it seemed like a pretentious Vietnam war movie - yeah, we get it, that war sucked and we should have never been there. I finally watched it though, and it's a legitimately great movie. Not only is it awesome to see a young Robert DeNiro, Meryl Streep, and Christopher Walken, but the movie deals with the war by spending over half of the running time in small town Pennsylvania, showing the participants before and after the war. Personally I don't know that I could handle war, I really can't imagine going through something like that and, even if uninjured, ever really recovering. This movie's depiction of Vietnam, and the prison camps, and the knowledge that both of my grandfathers fought in that war (and my mom lived in Saigon as a baby before it fell) is pushing me dangerously close to getting obsessed with the Vietnam Conflict like I got obsessed with the Amazon basin for a few months last year after reading The Lost City of Z.

          Movies suck this week y'all. Catch up on Oscar picks or start watching Justified on FX (starring America's favorite bug-eyed handsome man, Timothy Olyphant!). Next week, however, things get good (not with movies, thanks Nic Cage) but with the Academy Awards - the movie nerd Super Bowl. Be sure to join us for the most underwhelming event of the year, also known as "something else we can bet on."

Watch This Now!

While the Onion Sports Network is horribly unfunny, this is simply hilarious (and thankfully, short). WATCH IT!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHc8WTBuYQo&feature=youtube_gdata

Andrew's H8/LV 2/15/11

Every week I love things. Every week I hate things. These are those things.



Thing I Hate #1: SHOES THAT DON'T FIT (GIRLS)
             Ladies, I love you. You're all beautiful in your own unique way (blahblahblah etc etc). Listen, I understand that life isn't fair and that men (that dastardly race of hairy maniacal beasts) force you into all sorts of strange and unnatural items of clothing in order to be more attractive. However, if you're going to wear heels (or pumps or flats or pegs or whatever else you call your shoes that I don't quite understand) wear heels that fit. There is nothing more unappealing than a little something that I like to call, "toe cleavage." It is when the shoe is just a little too big (or perhaps your toes have confused themselves and believe they are fingers, and are just a little too long) and showing above the toe portion of the shoe are the beginning of the splits between each toe. Right now stop what you are doing (which is reading this and swooning, I'm sure) and go to your closet and try on every pair of "those" types of shoes, to make sure they all fit accurately. I'm not trying to erect yet another hoop for you to all jump through - on the contrary I'm trying to save you some

This is why women don't have 10 tiny breasts

trouble. If you don't have the right sort of feet, or the right fit in your shoes, just wear open-toed shoes or sneakers or combat boots or something along those lines. Good looking shoes are designed to make your feet good looking, and when I can see your toe cleavage you A) Look like a little kid wearing your mom's shoes and B) Look like a monkey wearing a little kid's mom's shoes. It honestly makes me physically nauseous, and while I know most guys may not agree with me (and probably don't even notice, since they're too busy coming up with incredibly successful pick-up lines) you should realize that I am, of course, entirely right in this matter and I'm only mentioning this as a public service to both you, your feet, and my physical well being.

Thing I Hate #2: The State Farm Guy

            Unfortunately I'm not as original as I would like to be, as I just found out while searching for pictures for this article that there is a Facebook page called, "I hate the State Farm Guy." To be fair to me, there's a Facebook page about everything that has ever (or will ever) exist. I also found out that this guy is evidently Latino, which, of course, makes me hate him even more! Forrealz though, I hate this guy. I'm not calling him a bad actor, or saying he has done anything purposefully wrong, I just hate his stupid face. There's something so smug and patronizing about him that makes me violently hateful. Every time one of his commercials comes on I have to change the channel, leave the room, or cause an abortion. Really I can't blame the fellow, but rather myself, for the intense desire to punch him in the face the instant I see him. There are these types of people in life that rub us exactly the wrong way, through no fault of their own, just like there are people who rub us the exact right way (Milla Jovovich, I'm lookin' at you, kid). Sincerely though, I want to commit so many crimes whenever I see this fellow that I feel like he should be banned from television for the safety of America. It appears that State Farm has entered into a perverse contest with Geico and Progressive to have the worst insurance commercials imaginable, and have abandoned this guy for the new, "State Farm is there!" sing-song commercials that make absolutely no sense and are amazingly unfunny. My breakable furniture thanks you.

Things I Hate #3: Teenagers

            There was a time when I legitimately thought that teenagers were misunderstood and correct in their outlook on the world (hint: I was a teenager at this time). I know this is like shooting fish in a barrel, as everyone with common sense hates teenagers, but I'll admit - this is a bit personal. I went to a local bar tonight and there was a rowdy group of teenagers sitting in the back room by the pool table congregating to achieve the common goal of breaking the Guinness Book of World Records record for the most annoying and worthless wastes of fertilized eggs ever to slouch upon the face of the Earth. I attempted to ignore them as they sneaked alcohol from their 21+ friends, broke glasses, knocked over chairs, and then tried to sneak out without paying (only to be caught, told, "get your shit together" and then complained about being cursed at). I'm a congenial fellow, but I really thought I was going to get in a fight before I left tonight. I fully expected one of their dumb, sweatpant-ed, flat-brimmed capped, asses to say something to myself or my wife and after that, as Daniel Plainview once explained to me, "there will be blood." Teenagers are completely worthless and the only reason we put up with them is that we hope they'll turn into adults at some point. I've been around enough of their destructive, immature, idiotic, incapable selves (and I've been all of things at some point during the years in which I was a teenager) to know that every stereotype about teenagers isn't only true, it's giving them far too much credit. I understand we all have to go from children to adult and learning comes best through experience, but the fetishization of and catering to teenagers that is so predominant in America is a travesty that only serves to make dumb kids dumber. 

Thing I Love: BEEF JERKY
            There are two reasons to love beef jerky. One, there's absolutely nothing NOT to love about it and two, it's the greatest thing ever. Some people have, in the past, perhaps expressed the opinion that I am prone to exaggeration. To those people I say simply, "SHUT UP AND GIVE ME YOUR BEEF JERKY." Just stop for a moment and really think about beef jerky (something I do several times daily). It's dried beef. That's it, really. Just meat, dried and spiced and tough and chewy and delicious. You hold a piece up in your hand, maybe to the sun, maybe to your Maker, and then bring it to your mouth, biting down and pulling away with your hand, ripping a piece of the meat off like dinomeat from a brontosaurus drumstick. There are a lot of different snacks in the world - candy, snack cakes, chips, gum, etc., but rarely do you find a snack that is just pure unadulterated meat. Another thing that makes beef jerky so great is that it has been made since at least 246,000,000 BCE. It isn't an overprocessed sickly sweet piece of trash for your underdeveloped childlike taste buds to clamor over as if they have Bieber Fever - no, it's a piece of glory that your animalistic brain recognizes as having descended through the ages in the perfect form of life giving sustenance. In all seriousness, there were most likely people eating Mastodon Jerky thousands of years ago. That's just amazing.
        The only downside to beef jerky (and I say "beef" jerky, but any type of jerky is fine by me, unless it's like tomato jerky or something) is that it's so damn expensive. A small bag of it is like $5.99, and I can eat two of those bags before I even get home from the gas station. I've never killed any animal larger than an insect on purpose (except the world's largest snapping turtle, but that was to save a life (my own) and is a different story for a different time (and besides, I thought it was a rock)) but I've honestly considered hunting, just so I could kill something and make the entire whatever-I-kill into jerky. I've had beef jerky, buffalo jerky, alligator jerky, deer jerky, and once, during Spring Break in Papua New Guinea, human jerky. It's all marvelous, it's all wonderful, and it is the thing I love this, and every other, week.

THIS WEEK IN THUUUU NOOOOOOOSSSS!!!! (likewise I'm SHURE)

THIS WEEK IN THE NEWS To be completely honest, I have not read one word, or watched or listened to one second of "real" news this week. I meant to, but I played Cafe World on Facebook instead. However, in the spirit of a true American newscaster, I don't need much in the way of facts - I know how to run my mouth. Without further ado, here's what was interesting to me:
The Green Bay Packers defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl VL
            The Super Bowl went exactly how nearly everyone thought it would, and the Packers out-played the Steelers, winning the Super Bowl for the fourth time (though two of the four were Super Bowls I and II). It's hard to believe that anyone who wasn't already a dye-in-the-wool Steelers fan would have pulled for the Steelers during this Super Bowl. Not only have they gone to the Super Bowl one million times this decade, they've won three out of the past six (or something). On top of all of that, Ben Roethlisberger is a disgusting,

sweaty, shaggy dog of a rapist. Really think about that - he's so gross that he's a multi-millionaire celebrity with three Super Bowl rings and he has to rape drunk college girls. I'm a sober, normal, gorgeous man with absolutely no money and I've been trying to rape chicks for at least three years with no success (you can't rape the willing, amirite????) All drunk college girls do is make horrible mistakes in choice of sexual partners, and they still won't throw a bone his way. I know that I probably seem obsessed with his, "alleged" rape of this poor blonde southern honey, but that's because I AM. People go to jail from dumb stuff every single day, but he rapes his merry way through the south, General Sherman style, and is free and clear to go to the Super Bowl. Personally, I think the punishment for rapists is that they get held down and raped. I could devise some sort of instrument wherein a dildo is attached to the end of an axe handle, in place of the head, and then we just put the rapist in colonial style stocks, pull their pants down, and swing away like we're playing croquet. On national television. Rape would end overnight.

People in Indiana Mistakenly Think They're Funny http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BScrP-lW60E
             A sub-section of national news is the weird or bizarre news stories that are fodder for morning radio or silly little websites (such as our own, but ones that people read). There will be some story like, "Teens Break Into Home, Steal Urn Full of Cremated Remains, and Snort, Thinking They're Drugs!" (a real story that happened this week). One such story takes place in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where a vote was held to determine the name for a new city structure of some sort (a convention center or something, I can't be bothered to do any actual research). Voters chose to name it after a long serving mayor of Fort Wayne, Harry Baals. This is obviously hilarious because in the video the news reporters constantly refer to him as, "Hairy Balls." Oh, and because everyone in the world is evidently a 13 year old boy. This is the kind of story that really grinds my gears because it's just people trying so hard to be funny, as opposed to actually reporting news. There is already a street named after Harry Baals, his last name is pronounced, "BALES," and it isn't even spelled, "balls." This might be newsworthy if they actually named the place, "Hairy Balls Convention Center" but we're snickering under our breath while reporting a story about voters wanting to name a city building after Mayor Harold Baals? Really?

            This reminds me of when the Chilean miners were being rescued from their (you guessed it!) mine, and a constantly repeated story in American (real American, not Chilean American) news was that one miner was being waited for by both his wife and his mistress! Ruh-roh Shaggy! He might just want to stay down in that mine HARHARHAR! Of course everyone neglected to report the fact that it's a well accepted practice in Chile to have both a wife and a mistress, and in some cases even have more than one family. But that's boring, isn't it? We should all just go for the easy joke because that's the job of a news reporter, to be the world's unfunniest comedian.
Old People Should Be Banned From the Internet

           While I could actually write at least 25 blog posts with this same headline, I'm sure everyone agrees with me so it isn't a point I'm going to argue. Instead, I'll just inform you about it's latest illustration. Congressman Chris Lee, (Republican, New York) has resigned this week after being caught on Craigslist trying to set up a date with a woman (her criteria for the type of man she was looking for: "Emotionally and financially stable, and doesn't look like a toad"). He sent her shirtless photos of himself flexing, and included HIS FACE in the pictures. This is clearly the result of growing up in a world without the Internet, as any 14 year old sexter knows that you should only send neck-down n00dz to the guys in your Junior High. Look, I don't really have a problem with Congresspeople cheating on their spouses. I think it's wrong, sure, but I also think it falls into a totally different area than the job we ask them to perform. I'm sure Brad Pitt cheated on Jennifer Anniston with Angelina Jolie, but I don't really care. That's between the three of them - all I ask is that they put in a good performance in whatever movie I happen to see them in. Martin Luther King Jr. was a notorious philanderer, and I don't think that changes the good he did for this country one iota, nor makes his speeches any less powerful. No one should cheat, we all know that, but what I care about most is my relationship with you (I am, after all, notoriously self-centered). If you are my surgeon, I'm much more concerned about how good of a surgeon you are than about how good of a husband or wife you are. I'm not planning on marrying you, I'm planning on letting you operate on me.

            All of that being said, I still think this guy should resign because he's clearly an idiot. Let me reiterate - he sent shirtless photos of himself, including his face, to a stranger on the Internet that he was trying to date. If every single congressperson did this, I'm pretty sure the chances of getting away with it would be less than 1%. I don't want someone who shows so little grasp of the realities of this day and age, along with the inability to do any sort of risk assessment or think further than one step ahead. Am I saying that I wish he was better at cheating? No, I'm just saying that the part of his stupidity that has the greatest chance of affecting me is the ignorance he showed in the way he went about it.
           



            Now on to the most important news of the week. The other day I was in a parking lot when I saw an old dirty car (like a mid-90s Sebring or something) pull up and park in the Fire Lane No Parking zone, and watched as a skinny, meth-head looking leathery old wrinkle of a white trash woman stepped out of the driver's seat, sucking on a cigarette as if it contained the last traces of Oxycotin in the world. She flicked the cigarette onto the pavement and wafted through the front door of the store like a horrible smell floating on the wind. The vanity tag on the back of her car? 2SEXY69





 Sometimes I want to die.