Respect Authority

Blast from the past, children of yesteryear.

I don’t know how “they” (those mysterious and ominous powers that be) ever managed to convince us that drinking beer is cooler than this.

Come to think of it, if they (again: mysterious, ominous) were able to come up with some way to infuse beer within these vile and noxious potions of prepubescent glee I think I’d finally be able to give up my lasting resentment over not being allowed to have recess anymore. Of course, they, being all… um, you know, mysterious and ominous and shit, would probably just end up making it illegal anyway, just like all the best toys. First cap guns that look like real guns, then candy cigarettes… what’s next? Robitussin? It’s fucking unacceptable.

BILLY MAYS Even though Billy Mays is no longer with us, the infomercial guru lives on in our hearts—and a little on TV. Reports surfaced today that Mays’ last two commercials (somehow that statement affords a bit less nostalgia than Michael Jackson’s last dance, or Heath Ledger’s last creepy performance) will still make it on air. So, consumers, get ready to open your wallets for Mighty Tape and Mighty Putty Super Pak. If you won’t do it for Billy, do it for the love of all things adhesive.

SPAIN: Some kid dies on a shoddily constructed Tilt-A-Whirl, and Americana goes up in arms; rides are shut down, amusement parks censured, parents chastised. But in good old España, where leisure activities include both “siesta” and “being chased by wild bulls,” there’s no such emphasis on coddling risk takers. During Friday’s San Fermin festival, otherwise known as the Running of the Bulls, a charging bull gored a young man to death. But even though the festival doesn’t end until Tuesday, Spain has no plans to cancel its remaining bull runs. I imagine no one could argue they didn’t know the risks.

STATEN ISLAND: Well Wile E. Coyote should feel better about himself today. A Staten Island teenager trying to walk and text-message at the same time fell into an open sewer manhole, something I heretofore thought only happened to cartoon characters and the occasional blind person. Although city officials are busy trying to figure out why the manhole was left uncovered, the real embarrassment should go to 15-year-old Alexa Longueira, for whom I believe the technical term is “fucking idiot.”

MONKEYS: A new study released this week showed that monkeys on “calorie-restricted” diets, whose meals contained all the normal healthy ingredients but 30% fewer calories, lived longer than regular old food-happy monkeys. Further, mice kept on the same diet from birth lived up to 40% longer than comparison mice fed normally (but were reportedly meaner). Scientists are eagerly researching drugs that might mimic the effects of caloric restriction. Because in the human world, “eating less” is obviously not an option.

OMAR BIN LADEN: Osama Bin Laden’s son, who looks like the lead singer of some System of a Down cover band, opened up about his experiences with his father, including the time when Dad took away his dogs and gassed them in a chemical warfare experiment—seriously, I couldn’t make this shit up. Bin Laden Jr.’s book, Growing Up Bin Laden, is probably full of awful and enlightening details of the family’s dysfunction, but all I keep thinking is someone should buy the TV rights.

DAVID ARQUETTE: The Scream actor—seriously, I tried to think of other relevant things he’s been in, but that’s really it—is living in a box above the Madison Square Garden marquee for two days next week to raise money for hunger. Arquette will only stay in the box for about eight hours each day, and plans to raise $250,000, which leads me to believe David Blaine could have probably solved world hunger.

The video clears things up a little, but I still think he was taking a gander.

“Relief” is not a word I’d typically associate with washed-up alterna-rockers Papa Roach having a “latest album.” Rather, I would use words like “unnecessary,” or “seriously, unnecessary.” Add to that the fact that the band’s most recent work was inspired by the economy and we have ourselves a real recipe for disaster. Disaster with drums and post-adolescent male screaming. And here I thought they’d already used up their last resort. (Get it? Papa Roach joke!)

“Going home and seeing foreclosure signs popping up all over my neighborhood where I was living … and seeing people get laid off and then people living off of credit cards and going into debt—that hopelessness and that desperation fueled the lyrics,” said PR lead singer Jacoby Shaddix in an interview.

In fact, one need not pore over insipid Papa Roach lyrics to discover the band’s empathy for the country’s plight. PR, which just wrapped up a tour with Buckcherry and Avenge Sevenfold—a time machine of some sort must have been involved; I find it hard to believe anyone would pay to see this tour in the year 2009—offered cheaper ticket prices to appease concert-goers. For a mere $40, fans were able to witness this trifecta of outdated music, a deal that apparently “packed houses,” according to Shaddix.

The band, whose Metamorphosis came out this year (did you know Papa Roach has produced six albums? SIX!), is now touring with Nickelback, which means some serious hair rivalry. PR hopes to reduce its ticket prices even further in the future.

“We know money ain’t falling from the sky at all,” said Shaddix. “We want to provide something for people to get down and have fun, because that’s what people need to do, especially in hard times.”

Worry not, Papa Roach. The time will come, far sooner than you may think, when fans pay a mere $3 to watch you perform, with a T-shirt and unlimited Bud Light thrown in for good measure.

Today, Greenpeace, (a.k.a. “goddamn tree-huggers”) shrouded the blank area next to President Lincoln’s face on Mt. Rushmore with a huge freaking banner that says “America honors leaders not politicians: Stop Global Warming” with Obama’s face as the background.

So as I understand it, Greenpeace is attempting to bribe the Leader of the Free World with a prime spot on Creepy Face Mountain in exchange for solving the world’s pollution problem. A lofty promise, indeed: is Obama to believe that Greenpeace’s members have the right or power to speak for all other American people in matters of national iconography? And if our idols are to be honored, should what some may call a defacement of a national monument be considered honorable? In 2012, will Greenpeace offer to convert Abraham Lincoln’s face into Sarah Palin’s in exchange for the end of off-shore drilling?

I’d like to be the first to suggest the Greenpeace people, especially the street-walking volunteers, be locked up for attempting to bribe the American President and interrupting the monotonous flow of the people on their lunch break.

These sorts of challenges are the reason The Fashion Show will never be as good as Project Runway.

When Megan Fox pouted that Michael Bay’s movies, particularly recent release Transformers 2, don’t give actors a chance to showcase their skills, I admit I scoffed. In part because I think this is a conclusion one might draw by simply watching Michael Bay movies, but also because I have little sympathy for the “Look at me, I’m so pretty and all anyone ever notices is how pretty I am” line of defense. That said, and having received numerous assurances that T2 is pretty fucking shitty, I was willing to give newbie Fox the benefit of the doubt.

So then what the fuck is this? Granted, Jennifer’s Body is Cody Diablo’s much-anticipated follow-up to snark fest Juno, but I find myself a little underwhelmed with the premise, and rather reluctant to believe Cody’s writing, without the wunderkind delivery of Ellen Page, will be anything except a throwback to 1990s horror movies, with 21st century nudity.

Then again, who knows? I think you’re a glorified blow-up doll, Megan Fox, but with the Academy  putting a whopping ten films up for best picture this year, maybe your latest softcore porn will get a nod.

See a better quality trailer here.

"I'm serious Todd, I'm out. I can't do this. Do you know I haven't been hunting in three weeks? Three weeks! I haven't wanted to shoot something this bad since McCain wet his Depends."

My first thought after reading about Sarah Palin’s resignation was that this all just seems a bit too easy. It’s not that Obama doesn’t have his fair share of critics, or that there aren’t plenty of crazies out there just waiting to get their hands on a shotgun and clear line of sight. But with the Republican party undergoing this domino effect of leadership failure, it feels like the future of America is being handed to Democrats on a silver platter; like liberal thinkers are rebuilding the country while a series of GOP lemmings follow one another off a cliff.

So either we should be thanking our lucky stars and stripes or making sure our fallout shelters are well-stocked; if this is all part of some massive underground neo-conservative plan to take the country by storm, then color me distracted (and optimistic) enough to not see it coming. For now I’ll just consider Palin’s July 26 departure date a fairly awesome birthday present to me.

Though Palin’s resignation—and the sad fact that geriatric John McCain withstood more political firebombing than the gun-toting Alaska native—is surely a blow to the country’s leadership-less conservatives, worry not Dems: there was some scandal in your neck of the woods too this July 4. Former Washington D.C. mayor Marion Barry was arrested this weekend and charged with stalking a female acquaintance.

Now, Barry is the same former mayor who during his third term was captured on film smoking crack in a hotel room. But in a fate I suspect Sarah Palin won’t share, Barry, who is also currently on probation in a federal tax evasion case, was reelected four years after the whole “That’s not my crack!” thing. Here’s the key GOP: Don’t campaign on family values, and no one will blame you if you don’t have them.