Jay has a look

My kids are into The Super Hero Squad. It’s entertaining. Yesterday’s episode featured a scene in which we discovered that all the super villains were planning their world domination on a social networking website called Maskbook, which looked just like Facebook. Funny.

. . . good movie called Highlander. Everything else about it has sucked. All sequels sucked. TeeVee show sucked. Etc. And I’m guessing its purported reimagining will too:

Swords are so last century. These new immortals use firearms as well as swords. At one point MacLeod attempts to take out his arch nemesis the Kurgan with a sniper rifle. Ramirez, as well, advises MacLeod to always learn the ways of the boom boom makers.

My bet is this thing is going to suck.

Update: Because I’ve not said suck enough, Matt in comments nails it:

y’know, I watched the original movie again a couple years ago, and the thing that struck me was this: The only good thing about that movie was the overall storyline. The acting sucked, the writing sucked, the special effects sucked, and the fight choreography sucked.

It’s a tribute to the story that I still remember the movie fondly. But it wouldn’t be hard to improve on, as long as they keep the story.

Indeed. Don’t monkey with the story.

ShitMyDadSays (the only good thing I’ve ever seen from twitter) will be the basis for a TeeVee show. And it will suck, like most adaptations of things made for TeeVee.

Greatest zombie movie ever.

About to start.

No, I’m not talking about the Obama administration. I’m talking about the TeeVee show V. I watched that show and had quite a few belly laughs over how it’s tied to some current events. Some spoilers so don’t read more if you don’t want to know.

But the leader of the aliens, Anna, is a charismatic speaker who people get really into. Some characters compared the devotion to the visitors to religion and messiah figures. Anna spoke of hope and change. The visitors offered universal health care to the people. And the press agreed to ask questions that would not portray the visitors in a negative light. I don’t know if the writers of the show did that on purpose but a lot of the things were rather similar to criticism of Obama and some things were definitely similar to Obama. I laughed.

Update and bump: Also, seriously, 29 spaceships enter the atmosphere and hover above major cities. And people don’t bug out? If giant space craft landed over Maryville, me, the wife, and the kids would be hitting the back forty with lots of guns, skinning bucks, running trot lines, and doing other things from Hank Jr. songs. I wouldn’t be hanging around to see what happened.

Update: From Bitter, similar thoughts at the Chicago Tribune.

You’d think by now people would learn not to do sex tapes.

Hollywood has been out of ideas for about ever. So, they reimagine, recreate, or steal ideas. Some are good. Some not. Battlestar Galactica was awesome. Now, the latest reimagining will be V. Looks decent and I have the DVR set to record it. I’ll miss Jane Badler, the total babe from the original series.

Musicians want to know which songs were used to torture prisoners at Guantanamo.

Pretty Hate Machine is 20 years old.

Bushmaster advertisement for AR-15s in issues of Maxim magazine:

From Gun Porn

Well, they do share the name of the inventor of the machine gun and sound suppressor. Also an ad for the Remington 870.

A few years back, I would never have imagined a men’s magazine catering to young men (some even say metrosexuals) would be advertising evil black rifles. Fantastic. Oh and go get your man card.

I think I’ve fallen back in love with Freedom Group.

So you know, Where The Wild Things Are was not good.

Congress looking to regulate the volume or TeeVee commercials.

Captain Lou Albano dies at 76

Trailer for the movie Where The Wild Things Are. The Mrs. is excited and wants to take the kids to see it. I wonder, though, how exactly the movie is going to work. The book is fairly short and how will they make a feature length movie out of it?

Lynyrd Skynyrd flip flops on guns?

TeeVee is different. Imagine if a kids’ show today did a bit with a confederate flag or a bit that featured whiskey, smoking, gambling and some dude dying.

Top Ten Conspiracy Theories.

As I’ve said before, I love conspiracy theories. Some of the most entertaining reading ever. I have to admit, the Paul McCartney one is new to me.

My kids are into songs by They Might Be Giants. My son really digs Particle Man. But we don’t know why Triangle Man is such a poopyhead.

Also, he’s into Peaches by POTUSA, which is the greatest rock video ever because everything is better with ninja fights:

I mentioned before that one cannot possibly keep up with all the genres and sub-genres of heavy-metal. Now, there’s a flowchart.

Living Colour!

A musical interlude:

One of my favorite movies: The Princess Bride.

A look at where they are now. I never realized who the guy that played Count Rugen was.

My wife got the movie Knowing from Netflix. It was decent flick until the end when it turned to a pile of crap. Seriously, what was that?

Mathematics of a Zombie Attack

A tribute from Billy Beck, who, frankly, doesn’t say a lot of nice things about any thing.

I have a Gibson Les Paul around here somewhere. I haven’t picked it up since probably 2003. Doesn’t even have strings on it. Sits in a closet next to two new packs of strings that I bought two years ago planning on picking the thing up again. I guess I should probably string it up soon.

Since kids, my movie watching has been slacking. Recently got at Netflix account. Love it. Some brief movie reviews:

Bubba Ho-Tep: LOL WUT. Elvis and JFK vs a mummy.

Hellboy: Good guy demon kicks unearthly booty.

Watchmen: MTV is on the air, Nixon is president, 99 Luftballons, a sociopath superhero, Vietnam surrenders, and it’s 1985

Shooter: Sans Funky Bunch, Marky Mark gets his gun porn on.

Times tough in the porn industry.

The new GI JOE stands for Globally Integrated Joint Operating Entity. And works for the UN. Weirdest thing to happen to GI Joe since he went from 12 inches to three.

LA Times:

L.A. guns to be crushed today, turned into steel rebar

That song wasn’t that bad.

An independent film made in East Tennessee. Via MKS.

R. Lee Ermey has a new show coming out called Lock N Load. As I said before, this is one of the reasons why we win.

The local paper has a piece on Whitechapel, a local metal band that has had some recent success. They call them death metal. I thought they were more metalcore. But who the Hell can possibly keep up with all the genres and sub-genres of heavy-metal?

TMZ:

We’ve learned Michael Jackson was not the biological father of any of his children. And Debbie Rowe is not the biological mother of the two kids she bore for Michael. All three children were conceived in vitro — outside the womb.

Nothing to add. Just the headline.

Brehd: One brave man steps forward and remembers Michael Jackson as the freak he was

A new Showtime series:

Showtime presents a new original reality series about guns, and the people who buy them.

With trailer. Wonder if it will continue the trend of cable TeeVee helping with pro-gun attitudes?

Farrah Fawcett, who was probably responsible for the first time men who are now my age took an interest in women, has died.

Guav: BrokeNCYDE is what happens when freaks and geeks don’t get beaten up in high school.

That was awful and I couldn’t make it past about 30 seconds.

I caught the Mythbusters episode this weekend wherein they test if you can bend the trajectory of a bullet after it was done in some Angelina Jolie flick. Seemed quite unsafe to me, even though they did take additional steps. But more importantly, Kari don’t go shooting when you’re six months pregnant. Lead, noise, and other things that likely aren’t good for baby.

A meme from Xrlq. The letter C and I picked stuff on my MP3 player since I doubt I could even find a CD now:

Cake
Captain and Tenille
Carrie Underwood
Cavalera Conspiracy
Candiria
Chess
Christmas Classics
Cindi Lauper
Clutch
Coal Chamber
Collective Soul
Coolio
Counting Crows
Cracker
Crash Test Dummies
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Cypress Hill
The Cardigans
The Clash
The Corrs
The Cult
The Cure

Apparently, David Carradine’s family alleges that he was killed by assassins, even though his death looks like he pulled a Hutchence. Sounds silly. But Squeaky points out that his hands were bound together. That would imply that he had some sort of helper. Or some ninja drew the really, really short straw and had to go kill the guy. Then tie a rope around his wiener. But if a ninja went through the trouble of tying up a dead guy’s Johnson, you’d think that the ninja would have remembered to unbind the hands so it didn’t look like ninjas did it. That, or somewhere the boss ninja is really pissed off. In some boardroom somewhere, I can picture the boss ninja saying Dammit, Larry, if you’d have just remembered to untie his hands, this would have been perfect. Now, we got the heat on us. Bad ninja. No ninja snacks.

A sequel to Heathers!

Marko started by posting Top Five Most Embarrassing Albums On My iPod Followed by Tam and Sebastian. I don’t actually have an iPod and use my Blackberry but I figured I could still play.

1- Jack’s Big Music Show Season #1: Yes, it’s for kids and I bought it for the kids. But the song Grumpy is catchy.

2 – The Biz Never Sleeps: Biz Markie. There are actually other songs on there that are not Just A Friend.

3 – Extreme II: Pornograffitti: Good songs. Well, one.

4 – Captain and Tennille’s Greatest Hits. Love Will Keep Us Together rocks. I don’t care what you say.

5 – Flashdance: Original Soundtrack. It rocks and you know it.

LabRat links up one of the funniest, most disturbing videos I’ve ever seen. My kids used to watch Lazytown all the time. The music from the show is pretty good. But Lil Jon never showed up.

Popular television shows inaccurately portray violent crime. Odd. Based on TeeVee, I always thought most murders in the country were committed by affluent white people for either insurance money or because of skeleton in the closet. Or a random serial killer. Turns out, not so much:

When researchers compared the shows to the CDC data, they discovered the strongest misrepresentations were related to alcohol use, relationships, and race among perpetrators and victims. Previous studies of actual statistics have shown that both perpetrator and victim were often under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs when the crime occurred, differing from what the shows portrayed. Also, CSI and CSI: Miami were more likely to have described the victim and the attacker as Caucasian, which is misrepresentative. Finally, according to the CDC data, homicide victims typically knew their assailant; however, the television series were more likely to have portrayed the perpetrator as a stranger.

So, the only sitcom worth watching on TeeVee (My Name is Earl) is being cancelled. I gathered that show was still popular.

And ABC is remaking V.

Ya know, Wanda Sykes is usually funny. I liked her shows. They were funny. Unfortunately, I was one of the only people who thought that. But the kidney and terrorist jokes were not funny.

And the truth in a joke: Most of you covered me; all of you voted for me.

While we’re discussing things easy to make fun of, I don’t understand why it’s a big deal for Obama to put Dijon mustard on a burger. Nor why people are getting bent out of shape for mocking the mustard.

The 101 Hottest Slave Princess Leia Bikini Photos

Clenched fist salute Guav.

So, Miss USA did not pass the liberal gay marriage test. Seriously: who thought it would be a good idea to have a gay man judging this?

And why is it a problem for Miss USA to have that opinion and, you know, not for the president and VP of the US: I didn’t hear the outrage when Joe Biden said that he and Barack Obama are against gay marriage. No incendiary language, no insults, no four letter obscenities. Can Miss USA actually impact policy?

The other day I caught Resident Evil: Extinction on cable. I figure since it had Milla Jovovich, guns and zombies it was win-win. In the movie, Milla carries two Para Ordinance LDA pistols.

This site and Kerby from Para confirmed. Other movies featuring ParaUSA firearms. In other news, there is actually a Wiki set up for firearms seen in movies.

Porn legend Marilyn Chambers has died.

Kelly Clarkson: Hardcore!

In the movie American Gangster, Detective Richie Roberts:

Judges, lawyers, cops, politicians. They stop bringing dope into this country, about a hundred thousand people are gonna be out of a job.

Where the Wild Things Are movie trailer:

Via Guav.

So, if I understand the ending of the show correctly, Bob Dylan is a Cylon?

Imposing high taxes on violent video games. To combat knife crime.

I like my AR but not that much.

More red states in top ten list of online porn users. Guav alleges hypocrisy. I don’t really see that. If we were entirely peopled with folks trying to ban porn, then maybe. But we’re not. Also, from the study, the measure is credit card receipts from major adult entertainment sites. Seriously. People still pay for online porn? It’s free. And, I read somewhere once, you’re always three clicks away from porn on the internets. I’m guess folks in the blue states are more likely to know that.

Faith No More reunion!

Wow. These pictures are amazing.

Heh: And in another scene, Echo (Dushku) is asked if she knows how to use a gun. “I have three brothers, and none of them Democrats,” she says as she racked the slide, finger carefully indexed along the frame.

Because, yes, I’m out of crap to say:

Update: Second tune from MP3 player, some local guys (and, frankly, it’s probably hard to work a word like Coprophagia into a song):

Boy, do my tastes vary.

So, are The Beastie Boys now The Beastie Forty Somethings? Are Boyz II Men now just Men? And Young MC, is he now Old MC? These are the thoughts that keep me up at night.

Anarchy in the Ukulele.

More ukulele boogaloo here.

I don’t watch many movies. For a while, there were a couple of reasons for this. One is that, with kids, it’s not easy to find a couple hours to watch one. And the other more important reason is that movies these days suck. Bad.

Now, there’s a third reason. I used to watch the occasional movie on pay per view. However, Dishnetwork now offers its pay per view movies as limited. Now, I have a DVR. So, I record my pay per views to it. What limited means is that I have 24 hours from the time I start the movie to finish the movie or it disappears. Now, at my house, with kids running amok and other such distractions, I never watch a movie in one sitting. It took me, for example, three days to watch the last pay per view I ordered (300, if you must know; and that works out to 100 per day). We discovered this ordering a pay per view for the kids a bit back. I don’t understand the logic here. I mean, why 24 hours? It makes no sense.

So, no problem, we say. We’ll just record it and put on a DVD thereby outsmarting their plan. But now the movies are also protected against being recorded. Now that protection, I can understand but the 24 hour thing is retarded.

So, Dishnetwork has ensured that I and my family will never, ever pay for their pay per view movies again.

Marko notes that since he no longer has a TeeVee, he’s suffering a near-complete pop culture disconnect. Tam is in the same boat.

I have recently became disconnected from pop culture for a very different reason. I got TiVo. See, now I only watch what I want, when I want to watch it, and without commercials. I’m not exposed to what’s hot. Generally, I have no idea what movies are out (this week is the exception in that I know Madagascar 2 is out because the kids at Junior’s school are into that). I generally have no idea who any of the people are that are mentioned in the Yahoo! entertainment blurb that pops up on the home page. I have no idea who the people on the cover of any magazine at the supermarket are. Marko suffered a disconnect from getting disconnected. I suffered the disconnect by upgrading technology.

I don’t miss it. Most TeeVee sucks. I watch very few shows. A list would include Mythbusters, Battlestar Galactica, Family Guy, The Daily Show (occasionally), My Name Is Earl, Mail Call, Southpark and The Simpsons. That’s really it, except the occasional sporting/poker event. Southpark and The Simpsons are probably coming off the list because lately they suck. Now, I also manage to watch a whole lot of Blues Clues, Spongebob, Dora, Diego, Back at the Barnyard, and Fairly Odd Parents as a function of having kids. But they’re not exactly piping pop culture into the house. Of course, I’ve mentioned before Junior’s utter shock at the discovery of commercials.

Another interesting trend is that, once again because of technology, I can’t name a Top 40 song. No idea. But, then, I’ve never been a big Top 40 guy either. I download my music and pick only what I want to listen to.

I guess you can disconnect or plug in more heavily and become disconnected from pop culture.

apparently there was some sort of ballgame last night?

This past weekend, The City (My The City) hosted the Foothills Fall Festival. We took the kids on Saturday and watched some live music featuring a bunch of country singers I’d never heard of and Billy Ray Cyrus, who I have heard of but only ever heard one song – and you know which one it is. It’s not that these weren’t big names it’s just that I don’t listen to country. It was a good time. Our kids’ first concert.

Then on Sunday, we left the kids with the in-laws and me and the Mrs. went at watched a bunch of country singers I’d never heard of and Kenny Rogers. At 70, that man is one Hell of an entertainer. And it helped that I’d actually heard some of his songs before.

And the food was awesome. Funnel cakes and big greasy burgers. Oh, and one place had ribbon fries that were to die for.

It was a good time.

A list of celebrities that lean to the right? Clearly, Hollywood needs diversity. And there’s a Baldwin?

Back later. Meanwhile, enjoy some hold music:

Robb:

You can watch all the old Buck Rogers episodes online!

Wilma is hot.

For the earworm.

That punk pulled a GLOCK 7 on me. You know what that is? It’s a porcelain gun made in Germany. It doesn’t show up on your airport X-ray machines, and it costs more than you make here in a month.

.99 caliber Rutgers.

Roy Batty isn’t what he used to be.

Heh.

Marko takes issue with a crappy song:

Which right is that–the right to be free? That’s not “given” to us by anyone, that’s our inherent inalienable right as humans, as noted by the Founding Fathers. This is questionable Constitutional scholarship. Our armed citizen soldiers may defend our freedom, but they’re not the source of it.

He’s probably also not a geologist or poker player.

Oopsie:

We should be led by Osama bin Laden,” he said, then quickly corrected himself. “I mean Obama and Biden.

Was there not a single political consultant type who sat back and said ya know, if you run these two names together real fast, the result is not flattering?

At the chow hall, they had a jukebox. It apparently only had one song on it because the three times it was playing, the song was Duality by Slipknot.

PGP: Needless to say, at the end Lewis Black (who’s pimped for the Brady Campaign in the past) overrules the audience’s vote at the end of the show and declares the NRA the greater evil.

I was quite excited when I heard Lewis Black had his own show. He’s hysterical. However, his show sucks. I TiVoed it twice and gave up on it. Stick to ranting, it’s a strength.

There comes a time in every man’s life, I think, when he must look back upon his home town, and be deeply ashamed.

Congrats to Straight Line Stitch, who has apparently scored a major record deal, in addition to a new female singer. It was odd seeing them on TeeVee the other day. Back in the day, a band I played in opened for them a couple of times.

Here’s a vid.

There were only three things from Chicago that I liked: Pizza, hot dogs, and Bernie Mac.

Bernie Mac has died at age 50.

Damn you, Tommy Tutone!

But kinda creepy.

Beats the 30 ft tall inflatable gorillas I keep seeing on Alcoa Highway.

Japanese kid playing Crazy Train on a guitar that is way too big for him.

Did you know that movie trailers can’t show a gun pointed at the audience?

Hadn’t seen that in years.

When Metallica is not busy sucking, they’re busy pissing off their fans. Ya know, the two they have left after being such douchebags. Via Aunt B.

George Carlin has died. That guy was seriously funny.

Heh:

In the film [V for Vendetta], the anarchist revolutionary V incites the population of Britain to don his mask and rise up against the government, because nothing captures the spirit of anarchy better than a mob of people in identical uniforms unquestioningly obeying one man.

Aunt B. is with me. She offers a guideline:

Say a Preacher is throwing a record burning or CD smashing. If, when he holds up an album by that group, you and your friends would have laughed and laughed and laughed that anyone could have thought that music was Satanic, it’s probably hard rock.

I dunno. Perhaps she should check out Demon Hunter, a Christian metalcore band. Here’s a tune. Kinda the opposite of Satanic but probably would cause convulsions in your average preacher.

Update: The outrage seems to be universal.

The 25 best heavy metal bands presented by someone who obviously doesn’t listen to metal.

Most of the bands on there are hard rock.

which wouldn’t really be a finale

Holy crap. Did not expect that.

I dig it:

That’s pretty good.

Bwahahaha.

Yes, I got it.

Well, I don’t know that for sure but there’s talk that they’re re-making the movie Red Dawn.

It may not sell a lot of product but it’s the basis for about 65% of all sitcoms.

Tom has a theory on music appreciation. If he is correct, I am definitely part of the same group he’s in.

I have a theory on music application. If a white person/band covers a song originally performed by a black person/band, they will speed it up (exhibit a)

If a black person/band covers a song originally performed by a white person/band, they will slow it down (exhibit b).

Discuss.