Burger King Is One Cool Motherfucker

I have absolutely no story to go with this picture, other than I'm totally amazed that a picture exists of Burger King hanging out with Brooke Burke. This may be the stupidest thing I've ever seen.

You're No Chuck Norris

If you stay up late enough, every channel on cable reverts to infomercials. One infomercial that is always on is the one for the Total Gym. If you've ever seen it, you know that Chuck Norris is the spokesman for the Total Gym. Watching it, it made me think of something to add to The Chuck Norris Facts: The Total Gym will not make you be more like Chuck Norris, because it is humanly impossible to be like Chuck Norris.

You can try, but you'll just be wasting your time.

The WB + UPN = Even More Shit No One Will Watch

I watch a lot of TV, but I can honestly say I don't watch a lot of programming on The WB and UPN. (I don't watch anything on CBS, and that's the #1 network, so maybe I just have bad taste. But I don't think so.) I have watched a couple of shows on The WB and enjoyed them. As for UPN, the only show I can think of that was on UPN was Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and that's been off the air for two years. I'm not even sure if my TV gets a UPN station.

With that in mind, it comes as no surprise that The WB and UPN have decided to combine to form a new network called The CW, which stands for "Something." Apparently, their TV lineup will be an all-star selection of both networks' best and most popular shows. (It appears that UPN is pretty much bringing nothing but wrestling and Tyra Banks to the table, as, well, that's pretty much all that's on UPN. Oh, that and black sitcoms.)

Maybe it's just me, but this just does not seem like a good idea. Maybe CBS and Warner Brothers, UPN and The WB's respective parent companies, think that combining their networks will produce a combined Nielsen rating that puts them that much closer to fourth place. (UPN and The WB rank fifth and sixth among networks.) Maybe they thought it would be better if they competed for last place together instead of against each other. Maybe they're just stupid. Who knows. All I know is that there's going to be yet another network whose programming I'll entirely ignore.

I can't wait.

Kobe Goes Crazy

If you missed tonight's Lakers/Raptors game, you missed a piece of history. Kobe Bryant decided to take his reputation as a ballhog to the next level, and scored 81 points, the second most points ever scored by one player in a game. (Wilt Chamberlain, of course, holds the record with 100 points in one game.)

I guess this was inevitable, because for the past week or so, Kobe has pretty much been scoring all the Lakers' points. He's averaging a ridiculous 49 points a game in that stretch, which would be impressive if Bryant wasn't playing on such a shitty team.

A nice job anyway.

Yet Another Restructuring

Today, camera manufacturer Konica Minolta announced that it would be getting out of the camera business within the next year. Konica Minolta, while not having invented the 35mm camera, is famous for making the first autofocus one. And, a year from now, they won't make any. They will instead focus on their printer and copier business.

This is the third big business in as many years that has gotten out of the business that they basically created. (The other two were AT&T (for a while) and IBM, who both got out of the phone and PC businesses.)

Konica Minolta cites more competition in the marketplace as their reason for abandoning their camera business. This is probably true. Most people would blame bigger companies, like Sony or Kodak (which doesn't even make 35mm cameras anymore), putting them out of business. (Notice that Leica, which actually did invent the 35mm camera, has no problem staying in business, even though its cameras sell for thousands of dollars.) Me, not having a problem with "big business," I blame the upstarts.

Remember Dell, that little computer company? Have ya seen one of their catalogs recently? They sell everything now. (I'm pretty sure I saw a couple of pages dedicated to beauty products in their last catalog.) And, yes, they manufacture and sell cameras. It's companies like this, that suddenly jump into the marketplace with low-cost product, that fuck up established businesses. Sony and Kodak have been making camera forever. You know where they are in the marketplace. But then Dell, which has a huge fanbase of loyal consumers, comes in, and they have cameras now. And someone whose camera business was already lagging has to give up the ship.

Oh well. A shame, we'll all get over it.

Chuck Norris Is Coming To Kill You...RIGHT NOW

I know this has been bouncing around the web for some time, but, if you haven't seen it, check out the Chuck Norris Facts. Every fact on this list is the reason that Chuck Norris is Friend #1 on my MySpace Friends List. Pissing off Chuck is a bad deal.

And remember: If you're not looking directly at Chuck Norris RIGHT NOW, you may be seconds away from death.

People Google The Dumbest Things (And Find Them On This Blog)

So, the other day, because I was bored, I was looking through the site referrals in my Sitemeter profile. Most of them say "unknown"; some of them are from people hitting the "Next Blog" button at the top of some other Blogger page. The rest came as search results from Google: people searching for something that just happens to be on this blog. And people look for some stupid stuff.

In fact, if you google "stupidest place," my blog is the third result. If you google the phrases "'Everyone has AIDS'" and "'is not funny'," this blog is numero uno. (Mind you, you have to search for the phrases separately, because I would never say "'Everyone Has AIDS' is not funny," because it's fucking hilarious.) I'm only one of two people who noticed that the new nickel features only "half of Jefferson's head." And, apparently, no one has ever quoted from The 40-Year Old Virgin, because the phrase "lines from The 40-Year Old Virgin" is on this and one other site.

The odd thing about this is that people actually look for things that are on this blog. I "blog" for my own enjoyment, and put down whatever happens to be in my head at the time. The fact that there is at least one other person on this planet that happens to have the same things going through their head at any given time is scary. Time to start writing in coded messages, I guess.

Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Planet Of The Apes (But Were Afraid To Ask)

I usually don't feel the need to comment on DVD releases, but there's one coming out this spring that really does deserve some mention.

It's called Planet of the Apes: The Ultimate DVD Collection. It contains the five original Apes movies and the excellent documentary, Beyond the Planet of the Apes, that were included in Fox's previous Apes boxset, and Tim Burton's remake of Planet of the Apes.

Now, this may not seem like a big deal, as Fox just appears to have added a shitty movie to an existing boxset, but there's more. Also included is every episode of the Planet of the Apes TV series, as well as every episode of the Return to the Planet of the Apes cartoon series. The only thing not included is a copy of Pierre Boulle's original novel.

And, as if that wasn't enough, it all comes packaged in an incredibly scary bust of Caesar, the damn dirty ape that overthrew the humans in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. (And while I couldn't find a picture of the actual package, if you can imagine a life-size replica of the above picture of Caesar, you have some idea of the monstrosity that will be sitting on top of your TV.)

So, if you're a Planet of the Apes completist freak, it doesn't get any more complete than this.

Happy Birthday, Blog

It does not seem like I've been doing this thing for a year, but, I'll be damned if I haven't. I realize that over the past year that the quality has deteriorated greatly to where I'm just typing a bunch of letters, and I can only hope that the next year brings even worse.

Thanks for tuning in.

The Worst Movie Everyone Loves

Quentin Tarantino has terrible taste in movies. Actually, I stated that wrong: Tarantino has a taste for terrible movies. Everything he lists as his influences and the "sources" for all his movies would make most peoples' "Movies I Hated" Lists.

Now, I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Movies like Lady Snowblood and They Call Her One Eye (the "inspirations" behind Kill Bill) are completely enjoyable crap that have a surprisingly large cult following. But, they are just that: crap. Some people don't appreciate things like a samurai movie filled with sex and violence. And that's fine; they're not for everybody.

But Tarantino doesn't seem to get this. He seems to feel almost obligated to shove all the shit that he loves right in the public's face, to get them to love it too. He might say that he thinks Fulci's The Beyond is the Greatest Horror Movie Ever, and then people take his word on it, and go out and see it, and find out it's actually a piece of shit. (As a Fulci fan, I will say that The Beyond is probably Fulci's best film, but, yes, it is a piece of shit.) It's great that your influences are kinda offbeat, but they're so off the beaten path that they only appeal to a small sliver of the audience. (This is also the reason Kill Bill totally blew, because the only person that could enjoy everything crammed into it is Tarantino. It's the ultimate fanboy movie, but just for that one fanboy.) I didn't think the object of filmmaking was to alienate your audience, but I don't make movies, so I'm not an expert on the subject. (If Tarantino hadn't made Pulp Fiction, he wouldn't be worth wasting any time on.)

All that being said, it doesn't surprise me that Tarantino got his name attached to Hostel, Eli Roth's follow up to Cabin Fever, which, in some circles, was seen as the revival of the "R-rated" horror movie. (I thought that honor went to Scream, but I'm probably wrong on that, too.) Oh sure, Cabin Fever was R-rated, and bloody as hell, but it was also completely moronic. To say it saved the horror movie (and this is not my line, but I use it cuz it's hilarious) is like saying Nickelback saved rock-and-roll. (Ha ha. Nickelback.)

From what I've read, Tarantino was so enamored with Cabin Fever that he persuaded Roth into making a similarly gory follow-up, as opposed to the studio-recommended material he was considering making. And so, we ended up with Hostel. (And speaking of studios, when did the studio that released Hostel, Lion's Gate Films, once a very brave indie studio, become content with releasing nothing but ripoffs of SAW? Those dollar signs turned LGF into a bigger whore than Miramax.)

I'll just come right out and say it: I love gory exploitation films, and Hostel was a complete piece of trash. I hated it so much, I'm considering suing Roth and LGF to get my $3.00 admission and that hour and a half of my life back. (Yeah, I paid three bucks to see this movie, and I'm still pissed.) Oh, there's plenty of blood and guts to go around. The blood gets ladled out like watery soup down at the homeless shelter. No complaints there. But to call this a "movie" would imply that there is some sort of central idea, or "plot," as they call it in the biz, behind all this bloodshed. Nope. None. Any scene in this "movie" that doesn't involve tits (which are plentiful as well) or blood is basically just filler until the next scene that involves tits and blood. To use an earlier example, The Beyond has such a simple plot that the screenplay could have been written on a cocktail napkin, but it has a plot. The gore isn't the driving force in that movie; there just happens to be a ton of it that pops up from time to time. The only reason to watch Hostel is for the gore, because there isn't anything but gore (oh, and tits) to watch. I can sum up Hostel's "plot" in six words: Three morons enter Slovakia (Slovakia?? Who the fuck goes to Slovakia?!? Maybe they thought it was still part of the Czech Republic) and die. Add approximately 90 minutes worth of sex and violence to that, and that's Hostel.

It's tragic that people are actually paying money and going through the theatre-imposed hassles to see this movie. (Not only was I carded, I had to pass a security checkpoint to enter the actual theatre.) It will only encourage Roth to make more movies, and Tarantino to promote them, and both of these guys are about T-plus 20 minutes past their fame running out.

But, after all this bashing, I will say one thing about Hostel: It was better than the similarly-themed Wolf Creek, which was so bad that I kept hoping the characters would die faster, so that the movie would be over. So it's got that going for it.

Go see Munich instead. Best movie I've seen this year.

Giving People Waaay More Credit Than They Deserve

There's a commercial airing on national television for something called the Faraday Flashlight. It's pictured at right, and you can view the commercial here.

The commercial states that the flashlight works due to Faraday's Law of Induction, which deals with electromagnetic fields. They're also nice enough to give us the scientific equation for Faraday's Law,

just in case we thought they were bullshitting us.

Quick show of hands: Who here knows what Faraday's Law is? What, two? OK, here's an easier one: Who here knows who Michael Faraday is? That's about what I thought...

I think this commercial may be a little too technical for its own good. I've never seen any other product that states the scientific theory behind it. People don't give a shit what Field Theory makes this flashlight work; they just want to know that it works when you shake it, and that it doesn't need batteries. It's nice to see a company using the laws of physics to make a more efficient product, but we don't need the physics lesson. People don't care about the chemical equations pharmaceutical companies put in their drug commercials, and they don't care about the physics equations in this commercial. They just want to know that it works. You may as well say it's powered by magic. That's how little people care about that shit.

We appreciate the effort, but can ya dum it down a little next time?

Funniest Episode Ever

If you missed Monday's episode of Arrested Development, you missed probably the funniest half-hour of television ever. And, if you're not watching the show, you're contributing to the downfall of society, as this is the best show on TV, and not watching it only causes it to get canceled.

Seriously, start watching (Mondays at 8/7c), and buy the DVDs while you're at it. You're going to help keep this show on the air if it kills you.

Marquette's Big East Debut

As I've lamented before, Marquette joining the Big East always seemed like a big mistake to me. But, as it turns out, maybe it's not such a bad thing. Sure, Marquette can barely beat creampuffs like Oral Roberts and Winthrop, but they completely destroyed Connecticut, the #2 team in the nation, in their Big East debut. I guess if you're going to blow your load all at once, that's the way to do it. I suspect 0-15 for the rest of the season. Go Warri...uh, Golden Eagles!!