Respect Authority

Major developments are in the air. In previews for tonight’s season finale of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, there’s a fight! A big ole Jersey-style screaming match that I’m really hoping devolves into arguments over whose jeans are the most stone-washed and maybe the pulling of some big-ass hair. But in the meantime, until the lovely hour of 10 p.m. Eastern Time rolls around, we’ll have to amuse ourselves with actual news. Well, “actual.”

FOLLOWING THE TREND set forth by Al Gore, John Kerry has apparently asked the Senate ethics panel if he can use $300,000 from his (pointless) campaign funds to invest in a documentary about injured Iraq war veterans. Because “documentary filmmaker” is apparently every presidential hopeful’s second choice of career.

SPEAKING OF PRESIDENTIAL hopefuls, everything about this headline struck me as wrong. Not only should John McCain probably not be driving (at least not without Solar Shield sunglasses) but he definitely shouldn’t be tweeting. Luckily, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” is less than 140 characters.

PROCTER & GAMBLE’S TAMPAX is reportedly behind a new series of viral videos about a boy who wakes up one morning to find his “boy parts” are gone, replaced by lady ones. …No commentary necessary.

A&E FINALLY CANCELED Patrick Swayze crime show The Beast. I’m more upset that I can’t in good conscience make fun of the show’s cancellation than that it was actually canceled.

IN A HOPELESS case of short-sighted thinking, the Detroit City Council is expected to consider a crackdown that would ban alcohol at clubs that offer topless dancing. Because if there’s one thing more depressing than watching topless dancing at a strip club in Detroit, it’s doing it sober.

Larry Page is kind of what I imagine a Vulcan would look like after centuries of familial cross-breeding with humans. And if he were retarded. Because it stands to reason that a retarded Vulcan would still be capable of founding Google.

Yahoo! Answers continues to grow as the world’s liveliest community of the dumbest human kind has to offer. Yes, it’s even beating Twitter.

Ironically, the original poster of the question just unknowingly took the “How Can I Test If I’m A Fucking Idiot?” Test. Congratulations, you passed with flying colors, World’s Greatest Dad.

"What's my line?"

Oh, how wrong I was. Now, three days later, I find myself still trying to figure out what exactly happened in 88 Minutes, Pacino’s 2007 thriller about a forensic psychologist who gets a death threat from someone he presumes to be affiliated with a serial killer whose conviction was by no small measure secured through his expert testimony. Sounds complicated, right? You have no idea. Granted, I was in a medicinal daze and probably by no means qualified to decipher complex movie plots (I’m reminded of the time Aaron I tried to watch Kiss Kiss Bang Bang high and gave up after at least three attempts, each of which ended after the first five minutes with one of us going “Wait, what’s happening?”). That said, 88 Minutes didn’t need to be complicated.

The idea was simple enough. Pacino puts bad guy away, bad guy has large following of soft-hearted Americans who believe he didn’t really do it, Pacino’s credibility is called into question, another murder happens whilst the presumed serial killer is in jail, Pacino receives death threat, and an hour and 50 minutes of “action” ensues in which Pacino and a revolving door of females in supporting roles try to get to the bottom of things. Of course, throw in an almost obnoxiously large cast of red herrings, as identified for the audience through a series of “Oooh, creepy music, maybe this one’s the killer!” moments; along with Pacino’s character’s background (his younger sister was killed by a crazed murderer, who took guess how long to torture her), which in the end has very little to do with anything, and the long list of young women he appears to have slept with, each of them yet another “lady with a possible grudge” viewers are meant to remember.

Ultimately the writer got entirely too bogged down in what I imagine he thought was “character development” - when the reality is Al Pacino hasn’t played anyone other than himself in years. By the time the actual twist rolled around, I couldn’t have cared less who killed whom, so long as someone delivered a few choice moments of torture to the movie’s producers. Read More ›

This must have been the worst-smelling explosion ever.

My high school career aligned perfectly with the height of Fast/Furious-inspired, Walmart-muffler-enabled Honda Civic mania. So make no mistake, I’ve seen some pretty weird shit done to cars. Seriously, one young man went so far as to paint the hood of his Eagle Talon with primer in the hopes of fooling people that it was actually made of carbon fiber and not merely a composite of recycled Diet Coke cans. And, seriously, people believed him.

All of this might not sound so strange considering high school is a pretty bizarre alternate reality in the first place. This is probably also why when I look at Vans’ 1974 bus West Coast Customs is currently working its otherworldly witchcraft on, all I can think about is how fucking awesome it is and not the fact that skating the mini ramp inside it would almost definitely lead to some kind of most unfortunate injury. Read More ›

Conan’s new set designer is a genius, whether this was intentional or not.

The real history being made with the Tonight Show is not the long-discussed change of hosts so much as the fact that it’s now being broadcast live from the fucking Mushroom Kingdom.

However, there is no word yet on whether the house band will be replaced by a ragtag group of guitar-playing Goombas. More as this develops.

The blogodome’s coverage of Thrasher’s Wallenberg contest held last weekend continues to pulsate, but today it’s more akin to the throbbing of a split knee or sprained ankle. To appreciate the level of difficulty inherent in skating the steps to Beezlebub’s throne, one first must witness the falls that provided the broken backs for the eventual victors to land upon. If that’s too Advanced English Composition and Rhetoric for most of you skate rats out there, let’s just put it a bit more simply: people falling is, and will always be, entertaining on some visceral level between masochism and sadism.

But more importantly, you’d need more than a few Monster Energy Drinks simmering in your stomach to send yourself hurtling down the famed Wallenberg four. Although I have to imagine these guys would have had an easier time landing their tricks if Thrasher’s feared helmsmen Jake Phelps wasn’t barking in their face with a megaphone the entire time. I guess it’s all part of the challenge. Then again… it’s probably just more of that sadism thing I was talking about.

Some people wear ball gags and get whipped by their girlfriends. Other people pick up skateboarding. That’s the best part about living in America — we all get to choose our sickness.

When the skateboarding community isn’t abuzz with illegal substances, it typically opts for something… well, skateboarding related. This week has been all about Thrasher Magazine’s Back to the ‘Berg contest, the 4th annual assault on the legendary steps of Wallenberg. And like the stairs it was founded upon, the contest was appropriately huge. Of course, not all the best skateboarding has to be on the epic scale of the Wallenberg four, nor does it surround itself with the type of media fanfare Thrasher editor Jake Phelps would have probably made fun of just a few years ago.

While the Wallenberg news may be hard to avoid, sometimes the best of skateboarding has a way of slipping past us… particularly if it happens in Europe. The industry across the Atlantic has been consistently growing over the past decade, and with its own assortment of companies and magazines, it’s becoming increasingly easy for American skaters to feel a bit left out. How the tables have turned — at least we’ve got YouTube. How else would we be privy to this raw, blistering section featuring Dennis Busenitz in a display of street skating at its purest? Short of backpacking across the old world like so many of our J. Crew sporting, recent college graduate counterparts… we wouldn’t be.

Seriously… you know you’re good at this shit when you put an ollie at the end of your part and nobody even complains.

Years before the current age of global media infestation, skateboarding was but a facet of American dreaming for poor, dejected European skaters — just like Taco Bell, cheerleaders, and actually getting arrested for smoking marijuana. But they hardly need to dream now, especially with Euro-centric magazines like Kingpin giving away free copies of Adidas’ European skateboarding video Diagonal with its latest issue. Like I said, at least we’ve got YouTube.

Just in case you thought all CEOs were spa-attending ladymen, here’s a nice dose of man’s man reality. DirectTV CEO Chase Carey, who’s reportedly in talks to join the Rupert Murdoch team over at News Corp., has one of the most phenomenal mustaches in corporate history.

"Thank God they're paying me."

Worry not, dear readers. We’re not dead. It’s just that, you know, bloggers need vacations too — vacations from…sitting in front of our computers…writing snarky commentary on topics about which we already care way too much. That shit is hard!

Speaking of which, it’s taken me two days, but I finally managed to get through this year’s MTV Movie Awards, which are about as relevant to the art of filmmaking as winning the fifth grade science fair is to one’s adult career. I don’t know why I chose to watch this year, except perhaps for three reasons: 1. I watch a lot of movies. 2. It came on right after The Hills, and the remote control was probably out of reach, and 3. I may or may not have been roped in by promises of an exclusive sneak peak at Twilight sequel New Moon. 

Having now sat through the show in its entirety (I tapped out after two hours on Sunday and had to DVR the rest) I have a couple of observations to make, the first of which is that despite its numerous attempts to revamp the show in a more audience/humor/trend-friendly way, MTV continues to miss the mark, instead serving up four hours or so of exceedingly awkward live interaction. This year’s issues: Read More ›