Friday the 13th!
I felt like an idiot for blogging about locking my keys in my car while it was running, but all day yesterday people were sharing their stories of doing exactly that. At least I didn't leave $6,000 on the front seat of the car when I did it, as one friend did. ...
A'ight, then. Scoop Casey filed this report last night, so it doesn't address the fact that martial law has been declared in Cincinnati. But other than that, it's good.
Scoop Casey's News Roundup
No title this week — couldn't think of anything funny.
Apparently you can get that at Yahoo!
Speaking of Yahoo!, you can get that, too!
Mad cow ain't got nuthin' on this.
Extra, extra! The four people who watch the NBA on television can watch it on the Web now, too!
So let's see, when his kid hits 13, Willie will be ... 80?!?
Our mind-numbing reality-based TV show can kick your mind-numbing reality-based TV show's ass!
The commercials are better than the beer.
Scoop Casey is looking to get into to lucrative weblog market. Be on the lookout for his sports-oriented blog. It's fi'n'a blow up any day. ßßß
Dude, it's all good.
After parking at the BART station this morning, I did one of the dumbest things possible. Now don't get me wrong: People have done plenty dumber things, with profound and permanent consequences, but locking your keys in your car with the engine running is pretty freakin' stupid.
Luckily my guardian angel (AKA Tracy Miller, my lovely wife of 10 years — that's her age, folks. I'm going to jail. Bah-dum-ching! Sank you. I vill be here all ze veek.) arrived at the station just then, and she carries a spare key to my car. And disaster was narrowly averted.
When the most successful Internet portal site ever has to resort to selling porn to stay afloat, that's a pretty good indication the the portal business is totally fucked. Maybe NBCi shoulda tried it. Nah. They would've screwed it up somehow. Oh, and if Fucked Company is to be believed, kozmo.com is pulling the plug today. That tremendous "Awwwwww!" you're hearing is stoners everywhere expressing their total bum-out at the prospect of having to go get their own damn videos and munchies.
And the Giants fucking rock! Suck on that, NL West. One for eleven with runners in scoring position, and they still pull it out. No timely hitting, but a great outing from Shawn "Headcase" Estes, some amazing leatherwork in the outfield, and some error-plagued "defense" from the Fathers combined for another scrappy win. Go Giants. And God bless America. ßßß
Oh, the humanity.
Due to reader complaints (you know who you are) I have removed both the megnut webcam link and the horse-sperm pie link from the bottom 5 area. I apologize for any emotional distress suffered as a result of viewing either of these disasters.
Speaking of disasters, I'm still holding out hope that this Sonicnet story is a belated April Fool's gag. But I don't think so. Apparently Steven Seagal is in Jamaica right now recording a reggae album with Wyclef Jean and Toots Hibbert. That's just too strange to contemplate. Pudgy, ponytailed, washed-up Buddhist action non-hero records reggae album. I have no response to that.
I posted some ads on sfmusician.com offering my bass-playing services, and, as you might imagine, I'm getting responses from some real half-wits. The ad in question was pretty specific, but that hasn't stopped everyone from hessian rawkers to klezmer bands to folk hippies from emailing me. I guess bass players are hard to come by. If I get any real sweet rock 'n' roll emails I'll post 'em here. ßßß
Still standing. Or sitting.
Yesterday's Impending Doom headline was a veiled reference to layoffs at my dot-com. They were expected, and they arrived right on schedule. Saw some good people go, and I don't envy their task of finding good gigs in this climate. But after four rounds, I'm still hanging around. My guess is that my salary is so low that laying me off would cost more than continuing to pay me.
Movies to Avoid at All Costs
Been having a bad run with Netflix run lately, coupled with some poor cable viewing. The thing with Netflix is that as more and more people join, the pool of good, available movies has shrunk to almost nothing. Of the 37 DVDs in my rental queue, only 17 are actually in stock, and most of those suck. All the good ones are on endless backorder.
So that's why I'm forced to rent abject shit like Playing by Heart. Now before you think I've gone totally insane, the reason I got it was 'cuz Jon Stewart and Jay Mohr are both in it, and they're funny, right?
Tracy and I withstood the horror that is this movie for all of 10 minutes before I ejected it and threw it across the room. What a complete disaster. I repeat: Avoid this movie at all costs.
Mission to Mars is the last DePalma movie I will ever see. How the hell do you get normally talented people like Gary Sinise, Don Cheadle, and Tim Robbins to make a complete train wreck of a movie like this? Mission to Mars makes Contact look like 2001: A Space Odyssey, fercrissakes. Stay away. This movie is toxic. ßßß
Impending Doom
This just in: Tiger Woods is good.
Movie Reviews
My lovely wife Tracy watched Happy, Texas yesterday, and she said it blew. She's terribly forgiving when it comes to movies, so if she says it's bad, it's bad.
The Dish
Movie critics are cracked. No, I'm exempt from my own aspersion simply because no one has ever paid me to tell them what I think about a movie, so that just makes me opinionated, and not a critic.
Perfect example: The Dish. This movie has been universally celebrated by movie critics, so when our dinner date flaked out on us on Saturday night, we went to check it out. Bad move.
Maybe if I'd been more than 11 months old when those cats stepped on the moon I would've dug it, but to me The Dish was typical by-the-numbers feel-good foreign-film making. A foreign film for people who don't like foreign films, just like Billy Elliot. Ugh.
Instead of actually developing the characters in the film, director Rob Sitch gives them quirks. I found myself not giving a flying fuck about any of these guys, so when they screwed up and almost didn't broadcast Neil Armstrong's moon walk, my reaction was, "Who cares?" Two pentagrams only.
Blow
And most critics have panned Blow, which I thought was pretty good. Johnny Depp is good in everything he's ever in, and Franka Potente was breathtaking in her (way too) small role.
Ted Demme obviously just lifted Scorsese's GoodFellas outline and applied it to the life of Goerge Jung instead of Henry Hill. I don't know how smart it was to cast Ray Liotta as Jung's dad, as that only serves to make the inferior Blow seem inferiorer.
But all in all, the film is just too cool for its own good. Except for a couple of scenes, it never feels like anything's at stake. So even when consequences are meted out, it just doesn't seem all that bad.
But Paul "Pee-Wee" Reubens was solid, and Bobcat Goldthwait was amazing in his two minutes as the cocaine chemist. That scene alone was almost worth the price of admission. But bear in mind that it was a matinee.
"They have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics."
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Don't miss last week's brilliant insight.
