Movie Convention #1

Movie convention #1 is where they’re playing tennis and a "friendly" game turns nasty, resulting in someone smacking the ball and hitting their adversary square in the noggin and knocking them down. The players are usually women.

Why this is preposterous: The adversary is almost always standing at the baseline, because tennis-joke writers don't know anything about rushing the net. But in truth tennis-joke writers don't know anything about tennis, period, because no one has enough power or accuracy for this situation to occur.



This happens in: The Witches of Eastwick and probably Wimbledon with Kirsten Dunst. If you can think of other movies this happens in or would like to recommend other movie conventions, please use the comments section.

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More Things That Annoy Me

So much annoys me! Grrrr!

1. People who complain about Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity being "angry."
Yeah, so were Susan B. Anthony and Malcolm X and and Upton Sinclair. If you feel strongly about something you're wont to get angry. It's not a flaw in itself.

2. People who complain about iTunes prices.
So recent-hit songs are now $1.29 instead of .99. Remember when you were a kid how cassingles were $3? That's a savings of like eight billion percent when adjusted for inflation. Further, downloading pop rap singles brings me more pleasure in life than anything I can write about on a family blog. Recently I snagged Flo Rida's "Suga" and Soulja Boy's "Kiss Me Thru The Phone." How much longer will I hold out until I use money I could have used to buy one-sixth of a well cocktail on Maino's "All The Above"? Probably about four seconds!

3. People who hate on auto-tune and T-Pain.

Auto-tune is clearly our generation's contribution to history. So what if it's going to date us worse than disco and bell bottoms squared and taken to the power of each other.

4. The movies of Kelly Reichardt.

I've already gotten flack for this opinion on Facebook. People can't understand why I don't like molasses-paced, insincere, patchouli-scented feature films full of existential mumbo jumbo. Well, I'll tell you why. I don't want to see movies about wealthy white people slumming it in Portland unless Gus Van Zandt is directing. I kept waiting for that poor guy in Old Joy -- who had to listen to Will Oldham babble for an hour and a half -- to bite his ear off Tyson-style. That would have gotten him to be quiet. Go see Wendy and Lucy just to know what it feels like to be stuck in a Myanmar prison.

5. Steve Phillips and Rick Suck-cliffe

Others have already explained why Steve-O, the former Mets' GM who tried to get rid of Jose Reyes, puts the "tool" in "too-tally un-tubular." But I'll forgive for a moment his criticism of Carlos Beltran, who is probably the best all-around player in the game short of Albert Pujols. Just tell me this: What's with the goatee, bra? Are you and Rick Suck-cliffe, the world's second worst announcer, going cruising for peg-legged trannies after the game? (Okay, fine, so Johan has a goatee, too. But since he is technically a diety and not a human he actually has no physical form and therefore no facial hair of any kind.)

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Things that annoy me

1. The phrase "last, best chance." So is it the last chance, or is it the best? The phrase reminds me of the Simpsons scene where Kearny requests some of Apu's "finest, cheapest cigars." (The full quote: "Furthermore to this beer, I would also like three of your finest, cheapest cigars. Here's my ID which confirms my adultivity.")

2. Guys at my gym who box. Bro, this isn't a boxing gym. It's the kind of gym where people read US Weekly while running four miles instead of three because they haven't been there in two months. So why are you over in the corner, punching the facility's sole bag like this is Rocky IV?

3. The Hoboken library's system for alerting me that my requested item is in. I love the Hoboken library, and they usually get me my books quickly. But though I always check the box that says "Email me" -- not the one that says "Call me" -- they invariably call me. (Recently I asked them to stop, and they said they would, but they didn't.) Then they ask, "Are you going to come in and pick it up?", as if I were planning to renege on the deal. And before I even come in they check the book out, meaning it's now just sitting there on the shelf, getting due-er.

4. How they make you watch the FBI warnings at the beginning of a DVD. You can't fast forward through that crap, even the French part! They don't make you listen to the copyright warning on a CD, so why should you have to watch it on a DVD?



5. Phil Shaap This guy has hosted jazz shows on Columbia University station WKCR for the better part of three decades, and is a total blowhard. I enjoy non-actively listening to jazz like everyone else who's not a middle-age balding weirdo, but this guy is constantly interrupting the music for 10 minutes at a time to drone on about what Charlie Parker's back-up session drummer ate for lunch in 1942. But my main beef with the guy is this: A few months ago I called the station and politely asked if they would consider reading my marriage proposal to my then-girlfriend over the air on a future program. Romantic, right? Except, Shaap didn't even hear me out. He got irritated, said he was busy and then hung up on me. (Don't worry, we still got engaged, but Phil Shaap is not invited to the wedding.)
Update: Tons of people hate him.
Another update: There's an entire New Yorker profile on him.

6. "I can't believe it's [day of the week/month/season] already!" The worst part about people who say this is they always look to you for confirmation. Like, it really shouldn't be Thursday, there's been a horrible mistake. Sorry, lady, but I just go by what the calendar says. Your being out of sync with the passing of time is of little interest to me. Ka-pow!

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"Yes Man" and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" are the same movie

Hollywood movies are so formulaic. Right?! But the formula has changed slightly. In the old days the male lead was made more sympathetic by the death of his wife, like in White Palace. But nowadays the male lead is made more sympathetic by getting his ass dumped!

How else are movies the same? Let's compare Yes Man to Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which I actually saw this time.

Yes Man After getting dumped by his girlfriend, Jim Carrey mopes around all day, watching movies from Blockbuster.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall After getting dumped by his girlfriend, Jason Segel mopes around all day and looks at old pictures of her.

Yes Man Carrey's friends say, "You need to get out of the house and get over it! Let's get drunk."

Forgetting Sarah Marshall Segel's friend goes out with him to get drunk. Meanwhile, his doctor says, "You also need to get laid." (This is very similar to The 40-year-old Virgin.)

Yes Man Carrey meets Zooey Deschanel and gets his mojo working.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall Segel meets Mila Kunis -- who my fiancee inexplicably thinks is hot -- and gets his mojo working.



Yes Man Carrey's ex Molly Simms sees that his mojo is now working and tries to get him in the sack.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall Segel's ex Kristen Bell sees that his mojo is now working and tries to give him a blowjob.

Yes Man Carrey heroically resists, setting the stage for him to walk into the sunset with Zooey Deschanel.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall Segel heroically resists, setting the stage for him to walk into the sunset with the midget Kunis.

Oh, and this may be yet another example of my whiteness (which pisses off Matos to his core), but product placement really bothers me. In Yes Man when Carrey talks about Red Bull for about a full minute I was ready to puke all over the Jersey City moviegoers in front of me. Then again, that could have been because they were talking throughout the film!

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Fuck fruitcake?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The unfair persecution of fruitcake needs to stop.

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Welcome to Nonsense

Maybe you've heard Kanye West's new album 808s & Heartbreak. It's really good, says I! But the lyrics to the song "Welcome to Heartbreak" are curious.

My friend showed me pictures of his kids,
And all I could show him was pictures of my cribs.

So, if you don't have any children, why do you need all those cribs?! Do you have cradles too! Ha ha.

He said his daughter got a brand-new report card,
And all I got was a brand-new sports car.

That's pretty weird. First of all, Kanye, you're 31. You're ten days younger than I am. I have no kids, but I'm not stressing about it. See, I will have kids when I'm older.

Dad cracked a joke, all the kids laughed,
But I couldn’t hear him all the way in first-class.

If you couldn't hear him how do you know he told the joke?



Chased the good life, all my life long,
Look back on my life, all my life gone

31!

My god sister getting married by the lake,
But I couldn’t figure out who I’d wanna take.

Maybe this is my whiteness showing through, but what the hell is a god sister?

Bad enough that I showed up late,
I had to leave before they even cut the cake.

Dude, you're probably the most famous rapper in the world. You've got shit to do. No one held it against you.

And my head keeps spinning,
Can’t stop having these visions,
I gotta keep with it.

What visions? Dude, you never told us about any visions. Unless you're saying you just imagined showing up for the wedding, and there's no such thing as a god sister. Next you're probably going to start comparing your exes to super-human cyborgs. Sheesh.

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Problems

Bring out the barf bag!

1. Fruitcake jokes. As Christmas approaches, the fruitcake jokes start to fly. Approximately 25,017 products' advertisements insist, "He'll like it better than fruitcake!"

There's even this, the fruitcake gag gift bag.

Gag Gift Items Needed:

1 Large giftbag imprinted with the words "Merry Christmas!"
(You can either buy one with these words already imprinted on the giftbag or you can write the words onto a plain red or green giftbag yourself.)
1 Fruitcake
1 Barfbag
1 Bottle of Pepto-Bismal
1 Set of boxing gloves
1 First-aid kit

"This is a Christmas gift that should only be given to the recipient face-to-face," the giftbag (sic) creators go on. Because it's hilarious!

2. Prejudice against winter caps. The other day I was walking around wearing my winter cap and someone was like, "Is it really that cold?" Yes! It's that cold. Why else would I be wearing it?!

3. MySpace. Everyone knows MySpace sucks. The search engine doesn't work, the pages take forever to load, and the interface is completely bogus. (Yesterday I tried to message someone; after clicking "message me," composing my message and typing eight impossible-to-read letters and numbers into their spam filter, I was informed the person didn't accept messages from non-friends. Then why did MySpace allow me type the note in the first place?!)

One awesome thing about MySpace is that it allows you to directly contact just about anyone in the entertainment industry, something that has aided my reporting over the years. Except now nobody checks MySpace anymore.



4. Hating on rich people. Along with southerners and Christians, it's completely acceptable to bash rich people. See, the way it works is, poor people = hard-working, legitimate human beings, and rich people = morally-dubious, lazy Republicans who don't know what life is really all about. If you're born with money, you should either lie and say you grew up poor, or compare your childhood home unfavorably with those in the neighborhood. "I may have lived in a fancy gated community, but we had one of the smallest houses in the gated community, and everyone made fun of me!" How about instead, if you grew up rich -- and most everyone reading this blog did -- don't lie about it or talk shit about others for their silver-spooned ways. All it means is that our parents had the wherewithal/ ingenuity/ luck/ smarts to put us in a good situation.

5. The Buffalo Bills' logo. It's a Buffalo! Most teams' logos are based on their nicknames, but Buffalo's is based on its city. Further, the nickname makes no sense. Bison hunter Buffalo Bill, for whom the team was named, had no connection to the area. But I don't have a problem with that so much as I do the logo. If they like the logo so much they should call the team the Buffalo Buffaloes.

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Hair metal in Jersey, a photo essay

I've lived in Hoboken for a year now, but last night was my Jersey baptism by fire. That phrase may not make a lot of sense, but driving to Clifton with Anna to see my childhood hair metal favorite White Lion made more sense than you can imagine. In anticipation of the show -- my first time seeing the band, whose line-up only contains only lead singer Mike Tramp of the original members -- I pitched coverage to every editor I could think of, but no one bit. (Do cock rock hits like "When The Children Cry," "Wait" and "Little Fighter" mean nothing to these people?)

So the jean-jacketed Anna and I each had to shell out 22 bucks at the club, which as you can see is called Dingbatz. The lovely she-devil at the top of this post graced one wall; below are some more scenes from the establishment. (The middle pic is 100 percent worth clicking on.)

Most everyone in attendance was some combination of metal/overweight/aging/awesome.

Some even dressed alike.

White Lion didn't come on until about 12:30. In the meantime we had to sit through three opening acts, two of which were cover bands. (Whitesnake and Def Leppard tracks were heard.) At least the hair was as awesome as promised. (Click it.)

So for three hours we had nothing to do except stare at the White Lion merch table and try to figure out why the band uses the Rebel flag in its logo. (Turns out "it means we're not following the rules, the Lion is breaking free from the cage," says Tramp, who is a Dane. [!])

In any case, the wait was well worth it. And by the wait I mean the 19 years since I began amassing White Lion tapes and winning their posters at the Minnesota State Fair. For starters, Mike looked pretty good. Pretty damn good. I'm serious -- not a lot of wrinkles, in good shape. These pics don't really do him justice, though check out his confederate belt buckle.

There was evident joy in his performance of the band's old songs, and he did the whole Axl Rose serpentine dance quite vigorously. I knew every song they played -- including "Dreams," an awesome new cut off their new one, Return of the Pride -- and they blew the roof off with "Tell Me" and "Broken Heart." (If you know those songs you are my new best friend.)

He was quite chatty. White Lion got its start recording in Staten Island and Brooklyn, he told us, and he lived in Jersey for about five years. "There's no better feeling in the world than driving on the New Jersey turnpike," he said. Preposterously awesome. He also talked about being a dad, reminded everyone that "no matter what time you get home tonight, your kids are getting up at 7," and mentioned that he refuses to let his tykes watch Hannah Montana. "We're not 26 anymore," he added, whimsically. Um, I suppose not.

The sad part of the night was when he pointed to the door leading back stage and noted it was open, in case the band's original guitarist Vito Bratta wanted to drop in. "He's got an open invitation to all our shows," Tramp said, "but he never comes."

Here's how the rest of the band looked.

Nice drum kit. In any case, the show surpassed even my middle school expectations. I remain White Lion's biggest fan. The only difference between then and now is that they probably weren't driving around in an RV back then, which I saw parked outside the club afterward.

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