Auld Lang Syne

Just before the ball dropped, some random generic talking-head newsbimbo was filling airtime spewing on to Carson Daly about how 2006 showed anything was possible for anyone, and spoke of the YouTube sale to Google that made the founders billionaires. I thought of good ol' K-Fed, a former unknown backup dancer who parlayed his marriage to a pantiless slut hack diva into to a, um, rap career-ish sort of non-career.

How can we truly have a "Rockin' New Year's" without K-Fed, symbol of 2006's empowerment of the common man, ringing it in with us? After all, as one of the 300 million people in America, he was Time Magazine's Man of the Year! He showed us that no matter how little talent you have, you can make yourself something if you just put as little effort as possible into it in this new era of talentlessness and undeserved fame and fortune. K-Fed should be front and center, threatening to go all Popozao on 2007's ass, screeching his inane lyrics over the Times Square PA system, reminding us that, no matter how much we deceive ourselves, it can get much, much worse.

Happy New Year. Word to your mother.

Touched by Eragon

We went to go see Eragon, despite our run of bad luck with dragon movies. We suffered through Reign of Fire a few years ago, the only good part of which was that it marked the beginning of the end of our association with a couple nutjobs we met on Livejournal. We rented Dungeons & Dragons, when we could have just gone to a friend's basement and experienced more whimsy and sorcery, and a much more coherent plot. Now... Eragon. Sigh.

Eragon is based on an unfinished trilogy of books written by then-teenage author Christopher Paolini. The screenplay and direction were apparently done by teenagers as well. The jury is still out as to whether they were severely mentally retarded or merely autistic. I found it telling that, when the movie started, there was no studio logo. It's like they didn't want to be associated with it.

Here's the plot. Some where in the land of Milk of Magnesia, or something like that, John Malkovich was in desperate need of a paycheck and became the villainous king of the realm. He killed off all of the dragons and those who rode them, saving everyone from falling dragon droppings that constantly bedeviled the townsfolk. Malkovich gets such winning lines as, "I suffer without my stone". But then our hero, Eragon, stumbles across the stone- a big blue Tylenol gelcap in the forest. Eragon is full of blandness, blondness, and a penchant for homoerotic wrestling with his cousin.

Of course, things go downhill from there. The big blue pill hatches into a dragon, various scenes are stolen in their entirety from Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Brokeback Mountain and Road House, of all films. Everyone thought our hero "would be bigger". Our bored, yearning, gay-wrestling farmhand watches the sun set, hoping he'll soon save a princess from a breathy villain and destroy the hated Empire. Stormtroopers come and kill off his uncle, looking for the pill. Eragon displays an uncanny knack for magic, and earns himself an oddly-shaped scar. He has to set out across a rugged landscape to recruit the help of elven folk.

And so, Eragon, a drunken Jeremy Irons (so desperately in need of a good dragon movie after his appearance in D&D) and the telepathic, perkily-voiced dragon head off to find the elves, who will train him to be a Jedi, or a dragon rider, or whatever. After about ten minutes of bad stage combat training, during which Irons and Eragon beat each other with wooden sticks, the movie decides he's ready to ditch the elves and take on the imperial army by himself. Luckily, there are only twenty guys in the army, not counting a bunch of obviously cut-and-pasted copies of them on the blue screen in the background.

Rather than listening to sound judgment, he goes off and does something rash (like make a movie out of Eragon?) He sets out to save the elf princess who sent him the dragon egg for safekeeping, and soon finds himself up against Robert Carlysle doing his worst impersonation of Rutger Hauer in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie. Saved by deus ex machina in the form of Emo Guy, who really identifies with Vincent Valentine when he plays Final Fantasy, he escapes with Princess Anorexia, whose really pointy cheekbones threaten all they've worked so hard for. Jeremy Irons dies a drunken, useless death. Princess Anorexia needs Elf Medicine(tm) to survive her poisoning.

They arrive at Elf City, and get Elf Medicine(tm). Emo Guy redeems himself a la Christian Slater in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, and the army of twenty pretty incompetent soldiers is driven off by the dragon's fire. They hadn't seen that coming... We did, forty-five minutes earlier. Eragon gets himself a new costume with very obvious sequins (costume credit should go to the Bedazzler), flirts with Princess Anorexia (avoiding her cheekbones) and sequels are strongly insinuated. Keep in mind this was all done back when sequels seemed likely. The possibility of sequels died when the cast snuck out of the premiere in shame.

And so. Eragon. I think I shall avoid dragon movies until someone goes and does a feature film version of Touched by Venom. It seems really easy to get your dragon-themed movie greenlighted in Hollywood these days. I could defecate on a piece of paper with the word "dragon" on it, and someone will buy the rights. And it would still be better than Eragon.

EDIT: I forgot the pointless cameo by Joss Stone as a fortuneteller! It's like she showed up on set one day and they just gave her a part. "Wear these white contacts, but leave the nose piercing in. It's like, all medievally and stuff. Duuuuuude."

Hatin' the Love

So tonight we continued our grand tour of Vegas Cirque du Soleil shows with Love, the Beatles tribute production at the Mirage. Let me be perfectly frank on this: It sucked ass.

I had a bad feeling almost from the start. After being directed into the theatre by a faux-Liverpudlian dressed as Sgt. Pepper, we waited around about 40 minutes for the show to begin. If you've ever been to a Cirque show, you know that to tide the audience over, eventually a clown is dispatched into the audience to amuse them during the last fifteen minutes or so of the wait. Usually he wants you to help open the lid to his jar of rainbows, or merely to molest you.

We got the Fool on the Hill character, who was about as whimsical as Andy Dick. As in, he was hyper and babbling incoherently, and you wanted to punch him immediately. He got a chilly reception from our section of the seating, and promptly left. I watched him roam the theatre, being rebuffed by each section.

I must say, this show got the least amount of applause or enthusiasm from its audience of any of the Cirque shows I've seen yet. The crowd was mostly MGM-Mirage employees there for a fund raising benefit, and skewed grey. During and afterwards, I heard mostly complaints from them about being bored. I don't think I clapped at all except at the end, out of politeness and relief.

The production itself was almost entirely devoid of circus performances. There were a lot of dancers, who didn't really do much of anything except stalk slowly across the stage in the trademark Cirque style, or bop in place to the music and then walk away. A couple times, people grabbed onto ropes and were hoisted up, but they didn't do anything once they got up in the air except hold on tight. Your average high-school gym class has more rope-climbing action than this show.

One thing missing from this Beatles show: The Beatles! While there were plenty of barely recognizable characters from their songs wandering around on stage (not really doing anything, just walking), it wasn't clear what they were supposed to represent. Okay, the guy in the military uniform? Sgt. Pepper. The girls dressed as go-go dancers? Hmm. The people in bathrobes walking around aimlessly while the WWII bombing footage plays on big screens? You got me there. The big screens showed lame Flash animations that tried to mask the fact that the cast wasn't doing anything interesting. They didn't sing, because the Beatles music was piped in. They didn't jump or perform acrobatics. They kind of danced, and by danced I mean flailed their arms around briefly before returning to walking aimlessly. Um, yeah. There was lots and lots of aimless walking, like you'd do in a postapocalyptic wasteland while waiting to compete at the Thunderdome. Weird. There were usually no less than thirty of these characters onstage walking around at any given moment, all in strange costumes, but none really memorable or outstanding. They were just there. The Beatles themselves were never represented onstage. We saw silhouettes of impersonators projected onto screens, and faceless dwarfs in plastic mop-tops, but no footage of the actual band.

The whole point of the production was to accompany a remixed soundtrack of classic Beatles music. It was supposed to be a mash-up of their most famous tunes, heard for the first time digitally remastered (the band has never released restored, CD-quality versions of their albums, just like they've never put their music online). The sound was good, but the "remixes" were barely different than the originals. Wherefore art thou, DJ Dangermouse?! All of the re-imagining was done by the band's original producer under the watchful eye of their estates. People close to the original music are the last people on earth you'd want charged with altering it, because they're not going to add anything new, and will be the most timid in sticking to the original versions they hold dear. So you hear a single chord from one song, and then it launches into another similar song which you then hear in its entirety, unaltered. You'd be better off just getting the original albums, if they're ever released in decent quality. I doubt they will be anytime soon, otherwise there'd be no reason to buy this soundtrack.

Overall, I think I could have done a better job of creating this show. And I say that as a person with no music inclinations at all, who can't even whistle, let alone play an instrument. But I had it all created in my mind before I went in, and that version was far, far superior to what I saw. This looks like it was all just thrown together to capitalize on the soundtrack album, and to get that onto the shelves quickly in time for Christmas and before some punk DJ tries to remix it all on their own again without permission. They didn't have time to choreograph anything decent, so everyone walks around. They couldn't convince the band to do anything fresh, so they did the bare minimum to call the songs mash-ups. Why and how is this a Cirque show? Why is it playing in Vegas, and not in a dinner theatre in Akron?

Why am I still writing this? I'm going to bed.

EDIT: Jenn has a point in her review, as well. The dancers weren't hot at all. What the fuck, Cirque? Did Quebec finally run out of good-looking people?!

The Horrors of the Preschool Music Scene

There was a time when, as a preschooler, you had very limited musical choices. You had Bert & Ernie, or Ozzy Osbourne, depending on the type of household you grew up in. Today's kids have choices that are much, much more frightening than Ozzy.

The kids bands of 2006 are divided into an east coast/west coast rivalry that's based on the network they're affiliated with. Disney has the Wiggles, the Doodlebops, and Dan Zanes. Noggin has Laurie Berkner, who serves as that station's house performer.

Let's explore all of these, and why each is scary.

You all know The Wiggles. Four middle-aged Australian men, apparently rejected from Thunder From Down Under, who now encourage your children to "wiggle" rhythmically. They're accompanied by a pirate with a tickling fetish, a stoned octopus, and a dog whose ever-changing cheap costume seems to be the font of all continuity errors. One of the Wiggles recently retired due to blood pressure problems, but it doesn't matter. As long as the new one wears a yellow shirt, no one will be the wiser.

The Wiggles' Monkees are the Doodlebops. Three twentysomethings in grotesque day-glo plastic costumes and face paint, they're driven around Canada by their white-rapper bus driver who stole his moves from Vanilla Ice. They are all incredibly gay. In the Canadian children's television tradition of You Can't Do That on Television, one of the characters gets water dumped on him in each and every episode. But trust me, you don't want to see each and every episode. Once is enough to understand why Canadians, each and every one, are mentally retarded.

Dan Zanes (and Friends) does not have his own show. Instead, he exists in the five-minute void at the end of each half-hour where commercials would air, if they were allowed during preschool programming. Dan's Friends are a band of hip young retrosexuals who allow him to live out his fantasy of fronting the Talking Heads. Dan's schtick is that he invades a Manhattan townhouse and holds a mini impromptu party for the kids there and then leaves. Locking your doors and not buzzing him in should prevent this.

Ralph, a newcomer to the scene, also has no show of his own. He pops out of a suitcase, flops his long hair around, and sings peppy but banal tunes while his tweenage daughter is forced to wear a "My Dad Rocks" T-shirt next to him. Ralph isn't too convincing as a children's act. It's like he got kicked off a college radio station at the ripe age of 40 and decided kids were the only market that wouldn't see through him. But they do anyway.

I've only seen these guys a couple times, but the Imagination Movers are a group of college-age guys in matching jumpsuits, who think they're much, much more entertaining to families than they actually are. During their videos, the camera pans out to the audience, and it's always half-empty. The few people who are there are visibly bored, not clapping, and sometimes yawning. I haven't seen enough of them to really get what makes them notable except for the jumpsuits, but I think the suits speak for themselves. And the tomatoes from the audience say things best not spoken in front of preschoolers.

Across the dial on Noggin is the Laurie Berkner Band. She may be Noggin's only catch (they lost Dan Zanes to Disney) but they certainly put her to use. Asides from forcing her to sing to puppets on Jack's Big Music Show, they also use her in all of their ads, specials, public events, and ice-capades. Laurie churns out dozens of identical music videos, which feature her, her husband, and their female friend bopping around a world of solid secondary colors. You just know they're having a threesome offscreen, because no couple who hangs out with their female friend that much isn't having sex with her. Laurie invariably wears really tight shirts, but she also invariably wears a bra, because come on, this is preschool.

So now you know. The best, nay, only choice for your children's sanity and well-being is to lock them up, away from all music (preferably in a small closet underneath the stairwell) and board up your windows lest Dan Zanes try to kick through and stage an uncalled-for beach party in your living room.

A Modest Proposal

The 2008 presidential campaign season is upon us, like... something upon... something else. Potential candidates are crawling out of the woodwork with newly-created exploratory committees to raise funds and test the theory, "Does anyone in Iowa know who the hell I am?"

Of course, not everyone can be president. Most of these people will wind up losing primaries, dropping out of the race, and starting the embarrassing process of begging to be a vice presidential choice.

My modest plan eliminates the need for this awkward, humiliating tradition whereby each losing candidates come to the winner and apologizes for suggesting in an attack ad that he or she may have run over babies with a riding mower. And then asks politely if they could be trusted by the winner to succeed them should any unfortunate accidents befall them. *cough* *shotgun to face* *cough*

My suggestion is that candidates campaign not alone, but in pairs right from the start. Already paired up, there's no need to scrape the bottom of the barrel for a running mate after the grueling primary season. And as a bonus, people are often more popular as half of a pair!

Take Hall and Oates, for example. Who knows who they are when they're apart?

Hall: "Hi. I'm Hall."
Random Person: "DIE, STRANGER!" *punches Hall in face*

Now, take this exchange.

Hall: "Hi, I'm Hall, from Hall and Oates."
Random Person: "I know you." *punches Hall in face*

Much better, no?

Imagine the harnessed power of a Hall and Oates '08 ticket! Hall would be president, because his name comes first. It ain't "Oates and Hall," after all. Oates would be veep, hanging out in the Undisclosed Location(tm) waiting for Hall to die. Hall would provide us with the string of hit singles our nation wants. Oates would provide us with the mustache we so desperately need.

Not that They Actually Did It

So OJ Simpson, noble chivalric knight that he is, is releasing a book that explains, if he had been guilty, how exactly he would have cut up his ex-girlfriend and her date almost fifteen years ago. How he would have gotten rid of the bloody gloves, what he would have told Kato on the couch, and how Johnnie Cochran would have gotten him acquitted. You know, if he were guilty. Which we all know he's not. Ahem.

This could begin a whole genre of "If I HAD Done It, Here's How" books. Enron execs would explain exactly how they would have bilked their investors, if they had really been capable of such acts. Florida election officials would compose tell-alls about how they would have rigged an election, and could very easily have gotten away with it, repeatedly, were not but for the grace of Katherine Harris and her good judgment. K-Fed would explain, in poor, misspelled scrawlings peppered with the word "yo", how he could have tarnished Britney's career ("Step 1: Take all her money") but chose not to.

Taking this to its logical extreme, we could finally find long-lost Hitler diaries, wherein he reveals his secret to pure evil. If he were into that sort of thing. Mel Gibson's dad would believe him.

Winds of Change

Britney finally realized K-Fed is a loser!

Alas, poor K-Fed, we hardly knew ye. Well, we knew that you sucked, that your new album was possibly the worst thing ever committed to recording since Vanilla Ice told us to send acknowledgments to our mothers, and that you were pulling poor Brit down into the black hole of career doom. But asides from that, you were a mystery. A riddle, wrapped in an enigma, covered by a sideways trucker hat that would have gotten you shot by most of the people you thought were your audience.

And now, I'd like to ask for a moment of silence in honor of K-Fed's short-lived marriage and career.

No, wait. Silence isn't enough to mourn this deep loss. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Elton John!

Goodbye Kevin Fed,
Though we never knew you at all
You had the nerve to put
Your hands in Britney's wallet (and on her goods).

And it seems to me, you lived your life
Like a no-good white trash poser
Never knowing how to sing
Or who to knock up next
And I would have liked to known you
And maybe straighten out your hat
Your money train ran out long before
Your Hollywood Squares appearances did.

Thanks, Elton. You really know how to capture a moment. Here's your fifty mil.

The March of Progress

You know those Breathe-Right nasal strips, the little rigid band-aids you apply to your nose to prevent snoring? Well, apparently that's not enough relief for some people, and so the good folks at Breathe-Right now offer a gargle that "lubricates your throat" to allow air to pass through more easily before bedtime.

Lubricated throats?! Oh brave new world, with such possibilities in it!

CSI: Whitman's Sampler Division

I want to see a crime show where the detective announces they're going to get samples from the suspect, then proceeds to pull chocolate after chocolate from the perp's mouth and match them to the shapes in a plastic mold.

"Yep, it's a match. Hazelnut."

My Friend Flica

(Jenn has discovered Survivor is a clip show this week due to baseball.)

Jenn: Nooooo!!!!
Me: That's the only way I could watch a whole episode of Survivor. If it was a Flica Flame clip show.
Jenn: Maybe they'll show clips of Flica.
Me: Yeah, but they'll probably insist on showing the other contestants, too. (Gets up and leaves.)

Pre-Election Jitters

Rush Limbaugh has accused Michael J. Fox of "faking" his Parkinson's disease to advance the cause of stem cell research.

"He is exaggerating the effects of the disease," Limbaugh told listeners today, encouraging them to go online to watch Fox's commercial, which first aired Oct. 21 in St. Louis during a World Series game. "He's moving all around and shaking and it's purely an act."

Having been through more than a couple bouts with unprescribed medication, Rush knows all about the shakes.

Commemorative Erection

I saw yet another ad for those 5th anniversary 9/11 commemorative coins. You know, the ones with the separating pop-up towers, that basically give your non-legal tender collectible the ability to sport an erection?

The ad boasts that the silver used in the coin came from vaults beneath the World Trade Center. If you don't act now, the limited supply of leftover plundered silver could run out, and then you'll have to settle for metals that haven't been dusted with burnt remains.

Question. Don't the original owners of the silver (or their heirs) still have a right to it? Just because the building it was in was destroyed, does the ownership of the silver automatically switch to the National Collector's Mint (not affiliated with, endorsed, or licensed by the U.S. Mint)? Or is finder's keepers, and whoever goes over it with a metal detector ("dad had one, but it wasn't like this"!) first can claim it?

What if the Starship Enterprise crashed? Would the metal from the hull belong to Starfleet, or would the Galactic Collector's Mint be able to scrap it for use in commemorative pewter models?

Triumph of the Freaks

Am I the only one who noticed that Dove is using a model with a tattoo for their latest lotion ad? As part of their Campaign for Real Beauty, they're supposedly using women who look more like everyday people made out of flesh and piercings. But is a chick with a simple, elegant Celtic tattoo centered square on her back really representative of the "freak" portion of the market?

Where are the women with those contact lenses that make your eyes look like a cat's? Where are the women with Darth Maul facial tattoos, or suspension marks on their backs? Where are the women with ornamental chains running through their labia? Do they not need moisturized? I will gladly volunteer to moisturize them should it help them break through the glass barrier of the television screen.

Question 7? What's the Question Again?

Question 7 on the Nevada ballot would legalize small amounts of marijuana for personal use. The proponents of the measure have finally cobbled together enough cash to put on a TV commercial. Unfortunately for them, they didn't bother to sober up before putting it together. Bummer!

For starters, being able to hear it would be nice. The volume is recorded so low that you can't even tell what it's about. I wouldn't have had an idea until I saw the ending, where words appeared on the screen. From what I can gather, their argument is that, um... well, there is an argument. Of that we can be somewhat sort of certain, kind of.

The first shot is of some state politician. I don't know who he is because I couldn't hear, and come on, nobody knows their state politicians. The shot is supposed to link him to Bush somehow, because in the background, about twenty feet behind the guy, is a blurry, ghostly President Bush caught in motion! Apparently this was the only shot of the two together that could be dug up. Be careful, citizens! This guy, presumably against the measure, once walked past Bush!

The second shot is a black and white photo of Osama bin Laden. The picture slowly zooms from a dot in the distance right up into your face. Agggh!!! He's totally after us! And dude, my hands are really weird looking in the black light! Remember, if you don't legalize pot, the terrorists will have won.

Next we see Yucca Mountain. We know it's Yucca Mountain because helpful text says, "Yucca Mountain". For those who don't know, Yucca is a giant slab of rock a couple hours northwest of Vegas, where the rest of the country wants to store its nuclear waste in underground caverns. Residents of Nevada tend to oppose this because they're convinced that their state would otherwise be habitable. They are wrong. Anyway, the commercial is trying to suggest that marijuana opponents should lighten up, smoke a bowl, and accept some nuclear waste while they're at it. I think. I'm not really clear on this one.

Finally, we see a cartoon checkmark and ominous text telling us to vote yes on 7 to "regulate marijuana". I looked this up, and that is indeed the way the ballot question is phrased. By "regulate", they actually mean "de-criminalize", which is tricky because I bet it would be really easy to get people opposed to it to accidentally vote for it, the same way Floridians voted for Pat Buchanan. But Floridians are pretty dumb, so I don't know if that trick will work here. Regardless, this is the first clue as to what the commercial is supposed to be about. Except it comes at the end, where the low-budget UHF station that they're airing it on can (and will) accidentally clip it off with a mis-timed Mork & Mindy promo. D'oh! This is really harshing their buzz!

I write this as someone who would actually probably vote for the measure, seeing as how ridiculous our existing drug laws are. But still, couldn't they find any competent creative people to put this together? I'd figure all the artists and writers out there would jump aboard pro-bono, just so they didn't have to venture into the ghetto and get shot buying a baggie.

"That was when I had the idea to attack 21st.com..."

I find myself more than a little bothered by the space-time continuum paradoxes I keep seeing in the ads for 21st.com. I'm not even sure what it is that 21st.com actually sells/does/claims, since I'm too angered by the lapses in logic I keep finding to notice, and I'm not about to go look it up. Let's just assume they kill kittens, okay?

Anyway, let me cite examples for you, gentle readers, so as to rile you up as well. First up, we have an ad that purports to show a guy in 1985, stranded on a desert highway where his car has broken down. Inbred, ass-raping hicks pull up and answer his pleas for assistance the only way they know how. Cut to the present, and our victim is explaining how that night gave him the idea for 21st.com. Except he's still freshly-bruised, injured, and in a cast. Are to understand that he was so severely beaten by the repressed homosexual thugs that 21 years of healing haven't helped? Is the "21st" in honor of the 21 years that it took for him to recover enough to star in a crappy flashback ad?

Here's another. A pregnant woman in 1986 has some sort of issue, and then we see her in 2006 explaining that she had the idea for 21st.com that day. Let's put aside the fact that Ass Rape Man(tm) says that he was the real founder of the company. Her child is still a tiny newborn when we see her in the present! Has she had more kids since then, and the current one stoked her memory of the first? Or has the child not experienced a singular cell division since its birth?

There's another I've only seen once, set in the relatively recent 1990's, wherein another woman says that she founded the company in 1996. But a simple trip through the Wayback Machine shows their site didn't exist back then, and the actual company was founded in 1958. LIES! ALL LIES!

Why does a flashback have to go back twenty years if the world of two decades ago looks exactly the same as the world of twenty minutes ago, down to the same, unaged characters?! Why are there at least three deluded individuals claiming they founded the company, apparently in parallel universes to our own?! Why are large ads for 21st.com visible on the walls in years when the internet as we know it didn't even exist yet?!

I feel dirty I'm even mentioning the company's site, because it's helping these idiots in some small manner through free publicity. Promise me you won't go look anything up or buy the dead kittens or whatever they're hocking. Can you do that for me?

Mystere

So last night we ventured out to see Mystere, one of about 368,000 Cirque du Soleil shows performing in town right now. The conceit of this one is that French-Canadian acrobats are re-enacting the dreams of a demented baby. Baby is played first by a cooing spotlight in a carriage, and later by a woman into infantilism.

As you can imagine, those French-Canadian circus babies have scary, frightening dreams involving giant inflatable snails on a turntable stage, muscular men sweating buckets while positioning their heads into each others' crotches, and trampline women dressed in rainbow-colored pregnancy suits replete with strap-on dildos.

Seated next to us by coincidence was one of my coworkers. Jenn thought he was drunk, but I later explained that he was quite in character, as I'd dealt with him earlier in the day, when he wore his clubwear into the office and disabled the ceiling fluorescents, opting instead for mood lighting he'd brought in. I can best describe the guy as a ladies' man of indeterminate Turkish-ish origins, drenched in bad cologne, shirt unbuttoned down to his navel, and hair piled high with gel to mimic what one would wear to a dance club circa 1997. He kept screaming, "NO WAY!" as a reaction to everything that happened onstage. Example: "The muscular guy lifted the other muscular guy with one arm while twisting himself into a ball, and then put his face in the other guy's crotch?! NO WAY!"

Apparently the muscle guys' act was lifted out of Zumanity, where it was deemed too erotic to exist in a musical about gay men having sex while being beaten by dominatrixes. Instead, Zumanity was changed so that muscle men instead fight each other in a cage and then make out, and Mystere got got the balancing act, only now the muscle guys wear pants instead of g-strings. Got that?

Oh, French Canada. Full of wonder, and whimsy, and colorful homoerotic infantilism. When will you declare your independence and set up your own nation dedicated to the quadruple ideals of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and Weirdness?

Tom vs. the Volcano, Part I

Tom vs. The Volcano
(With apologies to T.S. Eliot)

- I have seen with my own eyes Mr. Cruise hiding in the closet, and when his agent asked him, "What do you want?" He answered, "Show me the money."

I. THE MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

Xenu is the cruellest overlord, sending
Jet planes full of Thetans towards earth, zooming
Through the emptiness of the vast galaxy, careening
On a one-way trip to destruction.
The 80's kept us busy, watching
Hit after hit, coming
Until we thought he could do no wrong.
Scientology surprised us, coming out of the blue
With a wild-eyed rant; we stopped to stare at the wreck
And looked on in disbelief, on our couches
And shrugged, and laughed uncomfortably.
Hey Raymond, am I using you? Am I using you, Raymond?
And when we were children, sneaking into the theaters,
Loews, we watched him fly his jet plane,
And we cheered. He said, he felt the need,
The need for speed, and to hold tight. And down we went.
In the air, there you feel free.
It all seemed a little homosexual.

What eyes are wide shut now, what pre-crime
Do we await from this career? Mr. Mapother,
We cannot say, or guess, what you think
A heap of broken chat show couches lie in your wake,
And we've yet to see the baby, does she really exist,
And the tabloids have no blurry photos. Only
There is the shadow of the walk-in closet,
(Come out from inside the walk-in closet),
And I will show you something different from either,
Aliens attacking from outer space before you,
Or vampires prancing and mincing behind you,
I will show you abs in an obscenely tight shirt.

What's that, Nicole?
Don't wear the elevator shoes?
I need to, I'm not standing next to you otherwise,
How about you squat down instead?

'You gave us a few good men;
'They said you could not handle the truth.'
- Yet the truth you did handle, and you fucked with the wrong Marine,
Your veins bulging and your eyes bugging, we could see
You were acting very hard because you looked constipated, we were not
Sure that you were as good as Nicholson, but that's besides the point.
Act, and we will watch, we know nothing,
Looking into the glow of the warm flickering screen, the trailers.
Mission Impossible looks kind of good.

Anne Rice, famous gothic pornographer,
Has questionable skills, nevertheless
Is known to be the richest woman in New Orleans,
With a rack full of identical vampire books. Here, she said,
You'll dress in period garb and bite men.
(Those teeth are so perfect. Look!)
Here is Brad Pitt, he'll be big some day,
Stare at his ass longingly, but not too much so,
The ass that sold a thousand seats.
Here is a lawyer movie, and here is a NASCAR one,
Let us cover all of the bases of machismo. I do not find
Any chick flicks. Fear death at the box office.
I see crowds of people, exiting the theatre,
And wanting to have sex with you. If you see Tom,
Be sure to rip off a piece of his tight shirt.
Tell him to sign your boobs.
I've told him to smile as he does it.

Unreal Hollywood,
A land far and away,
A crowd formed on the studio walk, so many,
I had not thought they would stand in line, so many.
Cheers, occasional, when they thought they saw me,
Joan Rivers fixed her beady eyes upon my tuxedo.
The limos snaked around the Kodak Theater,
To where Mr. Blackwell criticized the cummerbunds,
With a tired forced effort to sell In Touch Weekly.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying, "Goose!"
'You who were with me in the vanilla sky over the sea!
'That corpse who died because I was the hero and could not,
'Has your career recovered? Will it bloom this year?
'Or will you always be the dead doctor from ER?
'Oh keep quiet, stop bothering me, o toothy hotshot,
'Or I will file that restraining order I threatened!
'You! You are not my wingman anymore,- mon frère!'

II. A DAY OF THUNDER

THE Chair Sumner sat in, it had a cool remote installed,
E! glowed on the hi-def screen, lit in plasma
Held up by shiny polished black plastic with inset controls
Along the bottom a news ticker scrolled along
(The picture-in-picture showed Fox)
The walls were of good quality mahogany
And the couches rich Corinthian leather
His dew-coated bottle of scotch slammed down on the table,
From the satin cushions of his Barcalounger he sighed;
And poured another shot of courage down his throat
Unstoppered, the bottle would last twenty minutes, tops.
Musky, smooth, or beechwood-aged, burny
It drowns the liver in liquid fire; on the rocks
Cruise appeared at his threshold, ascended on platforms
Sheepishly wondering what exactly this was all about,
Cigar smoke seeped into the velvet curtains,
And left tobacco stains on the ceiling.
Huge sculptures of peeing satyrs stared
Cast in marble, coloured with money,
Next to which sad Tom sat.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
Commissioned caricatures of studio has-beens,
The visage of Tootie, the joyful coed
So rudely unemployed now; there was Mapother
Asking questions about the intent of the meeting
And still he smiled, and still his teeth glistened,
'Polident' to blinded eyes.
Katie's waiting in the lobby
He told the withered stump; the old form
Leaned out, leaning, hushed his guest.
Asking what the hell his publicist was thinking.
Into the teethlight, under the brush, his hair
Eyes glowed out in fiery points
Tom sat frozen, then savagely still.

'Germany won't let me film there. Yes, bad. But people like me.
'Speak to me. Why engage in risky business? Is this a Hubbard thing?
'L. Ron? What's he got to do with it?
'You opened fourth behind a cartoon bee. Think.'

I think we are in Xenu's alley
I read that in a class, and it sounded nice.

'What is that noise?'
I didn't try to brainwash Keri Russell!
'What is that nonsense now? That distracts the public from your films?'
Well, it's not like she went along with it, anyway.
'Do
'You you read the papers? Do you watch the magazines? Do you know your
'Q-score?'
I remember
That people cannot resist my handsomeness.
'Are you here, or not? Is there nothing in your head?'
But
O O O O that Tabloidian Rag—
It's so voyeuristic
So fantastic
'What shall I do now? Who will show me the money?'
'You will not film for me again, you will hit the street
'With my hair down, so. What shall I do to-morrow?
'Write a tell-all and beg for forgiveness?'
Access Hollywood airs at ten.
And if you're lucky, people will forget in time.
And we shall play a game of public remorse,
The interviewers make company between celebrities
Pressing camera lenses and waiting for a faux-sincere confessional.

While Katie's husband got fired, she said—
She didn't mince her words, she said to herself,
HURRY UP PLEASE LET'S GO
Now Tom's coming back, buck up, pretend to smile.
He'll want to know if Suri has audited yet
And if I whitened her teeth. I did, she has two now.
She will have them all someday, Tom, and they'll gleam like yours,
I said, I swear, I'm not worthy to look at you.
Lamb to your lion, I said, and think of poor Mimi,
She's been gone for years, I don't want to go back to the Creek,
And if I don't give it to him, there's others that will, I said.
Oh there are. I ran in the marathon because loves me, I said.
I know who to thank for getting me in Batman.
HURRY UP PLEASE LET'S GO
Don't worry about Paramount, you can start your own studio, I said.
You can greenlight anything and cast me.
You haven't done a lawyer film in a while, it would be fun.
I can flash the goods, I said, I've done it in the past.
(And me only twenty-eight.)
You can't help it, I said, oh last of the samurai,
It's the world's fault, not yours, I said.
(South Park didn't help, you really should sue them.)
The doctor said not to, but I flushed the antidepressants.
Narconon will be so proud.
Well, Tom let's head home, to get started, I said,
Travolta made ten comebacks, why can't you?
HURRY UP PLEASE LET'S GO
United Artists is for sale, they were hot once,
Chaplin made them something, you can too—
HURRY UP PLEASE LET'S GO
HURRY UP PLEASE LET'S GO
Goonight Sumner. Goonight Brooke. Goonight Goose. Goonight.
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, sanity, good night, sweet thetans, good night, good night.

To be continued...

Completely Useless Movie Previews: Crank

Gentle readers, once more I, as a service for you, will offer all the information you need to know about a film I have absolutely no information about. And this time, that movie is Crank.

Crank, far from being the hip retrorevision of the classic "Crankshaft" comic strip, is instead the story of a poisoned man who must continue to keep his adrenaline up or die. It's Speed: The One-Man Show, fresh off of Broadway and now featuring less Keanu and more dark, muddy shots of partially-obscured tits like you find in every R-rated feature.

It starts that balding guy from those English gangster movies. You know, the one who casually waves a gun around and shouts things? Yeah, him. Also in the film is Dwight Yoakam, fading country music star turned Eurofilm second-fiddle. I bet he gets to do something in this movie, because really, why bother getting Dwight Yoakam if he's not on screen long enough for someone to ask the person next to them, "Didn't he used to be a singer?"

Anyway, I'm sure you're wondering how our hero manages to keep his adrenaline up for two hours of theatre time, plus ten minutes of trailers and another good fifteen minutes of those commercials disguised as "sneak peeks" that you have to watch if you want to get there early and find a good seat. And that's a darn good question, Sparky.

From what I gather, Baldy wants to get revenge on his poisoners and say goodbye to his girlfriend before stopping to keel over. You can only assume that "saying goodbye" means having muddy, dark, obscured sex with said girlfriend before immediately leaping off her and jumping out a window, or going hunting with Dick Cheney. Gotta keep that heartrate up, you know.

I'd imagine you have to keep your action varied, so you don't get bored with constant mortal danger. So expect him to do plenty of non-sequitous, disjointed things like boarding a snake full of planes and then getting off and pulling the hoods off some disgruntled Klansmen (are there ay other type?) Anything to keep it mixed up. Maybe after that, he can clamp scorpions onto his nipples and try to march in the St. Patrick's Day parade sporting rainbow assless chaps. It's extreme, to the max0r!!111!eleventy

What I don't have to wonder is how a film like this ends. Either he croaks and we're deprived of a sequel (unless Ice Cube is available), or he finds out it was all a hoax and his pals have had a bloody good joke on him. And then he kills them in a barrage of gunfire.

Then again, we don't need an official sequel, since every movie he makes has him playing the same character. He can die in this one, and then come back as a balding, tersely-scripted English gangster with nothing to live for in his next movie. It can be a one-man remake of Benji, and he can take revenge on humanity before succumbing to rabies. And boink a supermodel in a dark, muddy, partially-obscured topless scene.

In conclusion, on my patented scale of 1 to 88 stars, with 15 being passing and 15.1 being gratuitous, I give this movie two and a half "whoa"'s, a pint of lager, and a cracked pair of Matrix sunglasses.

Can we fix it? With the proper building code, we can!

So we're watching Bob the Builder, and I realize that one of the little clay workers Bob hangs with (asides from Token Black Girl, Butch Lesbian, and Anthropomorphic Backhoe) is a scarecrow. Huh. That's freakin' weird.

Given that the whole plot of every episode revolves around Bob building something for free, and the scarecrow screwing things up accidentally before everything works out for the best, I'm trying to decode the hidden Marxist dogma that's surely embedded between every other frame of jerky stop-motion action. After all, it airs on PBS, home of hardcore socialist propaganda like Antiques Roadshow.

Bob represents the worker. Got it. Token Black Girl represents the idealism of the united, colorblind Workforce of the People. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. Butch Lesbian is there to exhibit gender equality. Cool. The backhoe can talk because this is a cartoon and if Orko from Masters of the Universe isn't available, someone has to be the comic relief.

The scarecrow? Um... Help me out, people. If I were Bob, merrily building away without charging for my services or obtaining proper building permits, and this thing with a carrot nose and a bag for a head came up and started getting all Jar-Jar on me, what would I do? First, I'd ask if he was union and if not, tell him this is a closed shop. But second, I would run like hell and not turn back, because when undead scarecrows with carrot noses appear at your construction site, it's a good bet you're building on an Indian burial ground and the thing wants your fucking entrails for lunch.

Completely Useless Movie Previews: Snakes on a Plane

Our ongoing series of Completely Useless Movie Previews continues, with a look at the much-anticipated Snakes on a Plane. For a change, this preview (like all the others, based on the trailer alone) will be no more or less accurate than anyone else's, because the film was not screened for critics. Eat that, Ebert!

So. Snakes on a Plane. I wish I could tell you waht it's about. It's all rather vague. There's a plane, and Samuel L. Jackson is aboard. He plays Samuel L. Jackson, foul-mouthed actor full of rage and vengeance, probably over getting the gay purple lightsaber in Attack of the Clones. Sam has a problem. There may or may not be snakes on his airplane, and whatever the case, he most likely didn't get anything more than a little bag of four or five pretzels to eat on his trans-oceanic flight. That would piss me off, too.

Are the snakes flying the plane? Hard to say, but I for one welcome our new jet-piloting reptilian overlords. Do the snakes accumulate frequent-flier miles? Maybe, but they can't use them on weekends or holidays, that's for damn sure! Anyway, there's snakes, and they're on the plane, because you can bring venomous snakes in your carry-on, but not your iPod or a Slurpee. Sam apparently has some sort of problem with this, and poses the question, "Whither the snakes?"

Maybe the snakes will get off in St. Louis, having only boarded to make a transfer en route to Cincinnati. Maybe if Sam had only offered them a flower, like those Hare Krishnas you see hanging out at the airport in 70's airplane films, all of the violence could be avoided.

Yes, there is violence. Or it looks that way, at least. Sam versus the pilot? The stewardess versus the guy with the oversized bag? The pretzels versus the peanuts? Everyone versus the tiny pillows and overpriced headsets? And why is the airline-edit of Cheaper by the Dozen playing on the seatback video system?! You may as well challenge the passengers to mortal (k/c)ombat!

So. Will Snakes on a Plane be a hit? And more importantly, will it spawn Snakes on a Plane 2: Snakes on a Boat: Cruise Control? Let's ask my Magic 8-Ball, which has a 10% accuracy rate. And it says... "Ask again later."

Well! I guess we'll just have to wait and see. But you're not reading this because you want to wait. Oh no, you overanxious, hyperactive early-climaxers. You want answers now! Right or wrong! And so, on a scale of 1 to 88 stars, with 15 being passing and 16 being questionable, I give this film two turntables and a microphone. Because who wouldn't want that? Okay, maybe the movie really wanted a pony. But I'm not made of ponies, especially since I gave up pony meat.

We Be Jammin!

Is the word "jammin'" back? There's a commercial (one of those for the Philly cream cheese where you're not supposed to be creeped out by the fact that the hot chick angels in it are in fact dead- probably from heroin overdoses or something) where one clumsy angel drops her jelly-covered bagel onto another angel's cheese-covered bagel. Like peanut butter combined with chocolate, an unholy fornication results. The angel is probably banished from heaven later, but we don't see this. Instead, we cut to a narrator informing us that new "Jammin' Swirls" are now available.

Yes, the mixing of jelly and cream cheese in one convenient plastic bowl is enough to merit the adjective jammin'.

The only other time I've heard "jammin'" in popular usage is in the musical works of Bob Marley.

Marley: Hey, mon! You got commercial distribution in my traditional reggae!
Music Exec: Hey! You got traditional reggae in my commercial distribution!
Marley: Jammin'!

Completely Useless Movie Previews: World Trade Center

Once again, it's time for a Completely Useless Movie Preview. This time, I'll give you valuable information and an outside peek at World Trade Center.

This is a movie about some sort of disaster. I haven't really read any of the publicity materials, but it seems like maybe it could be about an earthquake, a volcano, an alien invasion, or Godzilla. The real point is, the World Trade Center is in danger, and only cops with bad Brooklyn accents and molester mustaches can help.

Enter Nicolas Cage, conveniently wearing an officer's hat so he doesn't have to wear a toupee. As a molestached New York cop, he leads a team of police who are very skilled in walking shoulder-first, in a 75-degree sideways sort of manner, into action.

This movie seems to have a lot of scenes of cops walking with their shoulders jutting out ahead of them, because this is a Very Brave Walk. Whether this walk will stand up to Godzilla, I can't say, having not seen the movie and having no intention to. If it is indeed about Godzilla, the only words I have to say are, "too soon." But there they are, walking sideways into the danger zone, their short, peach-fuzzy mustaches flapping ever-so-slightly in the Danger Breeze, which is a dramatic wind that comes from anything dangerous in movies. Sharks, killer bees, tornadoes- these are all sources of Danger Breeze. So the Gozdilla thing is just a guess- after all, he probably emits Danger Breeze, too.

We can only assume that one of the characters will die. This will add Meaning and Purpose, and allow the character to come back from the dead in any sequels. It'll probably be the enthusiastic Latin cop, and he'll appear magically in the shower in the next movie (World Trade Center II: Tokyo Drift) and reveal that it was all a dream. Then Godzilla will kill him for real. Because Godzilla is a fucking ironic son of a bitch like that.

Without seeing anything more than TV commercials, I give this film, on a scale of 1 to 88 stars, a final score of Disqualified, because those mustaches are really, really annoying. And so are all these damn 9/11 movies that keep rearing their ugly heads.

The Goodbye Show

So in the past, I've mentioned Melanie, the PBS babysitter character who hosts the network's evening cartoon lineup. Good ol' Mel was an "enchanted babysitter" of some sort, who always overenthused with gusto about whatever obscure British short was on its way, before launching into a terrifying dance about crafts and teaching us bad sign language. She scared me.



Melanie has been absent for several days, and I was finally curious enough to find out why. For the past few weeks her stock had been rising on the network, and she'd even been filming new segments (they recycle heavily), joined by a new freakish puppet named Star. Why would she vanish at the start of a new season of segments?

Mel, as it turns out, starred in a video called "Technical Virgin". Some sources describe it as a spoof PSA, others as a full-blown Melanie-Does-Dallas foray into the world of anal intrigue. Whatever the case (help me, Google, find me the screen caps!) Melanie is no more, and now the cartoons are unhosted. At least, as a by-product, Star the creepy puppet is gone, too. See ya in hell, Star!



I'd always suspected there was something pervy lurking behind Melanie's spastic facade. But then again, children's television is all about the couched metaphor. Yesterday, Noggin was showing the jumping-the-shark episode of Blue's Clues where Blue started becoming a talking puppet and ripping off Elmo's World. A fairy godmother came to Blue, now a puppy teenager, and told her of her "greatest gift" and to find a hole that her key would fit into. When Blue finally found the keyhole (quoth the key, "It's working! I'm turning!") Blue was enveloped in sparkly blue ecstacy and found her voice. She eventually had to return to 2-D, but was told that anytime she put the key into the hole she could come back.

Um, yeah. Melanie's antics have nothing on the font of filth that is post-Steve Blue's Clues.

Sell My House, Please

I remember a time when the A&E network was about old movies and Peter Graves narrating the biographies of people from old movies. Now, times have changed. People don't want to see old movies or Peter Graves, they want to watch gay designers suck the life out of homes while operating on an obscenely tight budget.

For some reason, we were watching Sell This House, one of about fifty shows to follow this cheapo home makeover theme. It's a show with a simple, yet exceedingly annoying concept. A homeowner is sitting on a half-million dollar home. It hasn't sold immediately in a flagging housing market. Obviously, it's because the doorknobs are out of date! And if you're going to plop down half a million dollars, $70 for new paint and doorknobs is out of the question. And as an owner, you're clearly too stupid to do it yourself! Only reality television can can save your sale.

Sell This House invites a busty hostess and her musclebound gay designer into the homes of the desperate, to remove any trace of evidence that anyone has ever lived there. Hidden cameras are set up to observe what potential buyers think of the place. Without fail, the would-be buyers complain about the color of the paint, age of the doorknobs, the amount of stuff the owners have collected over the years, the fact that there's dirt on the lawn, oxygen in the air, etc. This is all used as evidence to convince the sellers to let Chesty LaRue and Muscles McBearGroin destroy years of memories. Let the fun begin?

Chesty and Muscles strip out anything personal in a home, like an insatiable tag-team black hole of persona-suck. Bye-bye photos, collectibles, even furniture... In the episode we saw, Muscles said the dining room chairs were creating clutter, and removed them. Now the sellers have to stand to eat. Curtains are also a bad thing. It's always better to tear an old bedsheet apart and drape the remains up on an unadorned spray-painted rod. And who needs artwork when you can take sticks out of the lawn and put them into a crappy vase? Can't Muscles just do one single room without putting some sticks in a vase and calling it "design"? I have sincere doubts as to his gayness. Real gay men would slap the crap out of him for doing this to people, and aesthetics in general.

When the house is painted completely pastel (to "open it up") and all of the electronics, chairs, art and tables removed (to "open it up") and there's no soul left (to "open it up"), the work is done.

Total cost of tearing everything out and tossing it into a woodchipper? About $70. The cost of lost emotions, treasured souvenirs, and essentially the lives and humanity of the owners? Priceless.

God, this show makes me bitter.

Completely Useless Movie Previews: Pirates of the Caribbean 2

And now it's time to introduce an exciting new feature here on Improper Pronoun. I'm going to call it, "Completely Useless Movie Previews," and it will involve informing you, gentle readers, about upcoming movies based on my knowing absolutely nothing about them. The value you derive from them will be zilch.

You're welcome.

Our first preview is Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest, which I'll assume features the stars of the first Pirates movie. Or not, don't take that for granted. Gary Coleman could be the hero for all I know, and if you go to see it that's a risk you face. It may or may not also be a cartoon. Do you remember that cartoon Disney did a few years ago about pirates in space? No, me neither. I doubt this one involves space. They're smart enough not to do that again.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if you don't like pirates, you shouldn't see this movie. Although they're not really specific about the type of pirates, are they? They could be software pirates, or butt pirates. So if you're into warez and gay anal sex, then by all means, check it out, because this could be right up your alley. And I'd hate for you to miss out just on my saying not to.

Anyway, the plot. There's a dead man, and he has a chest. A chest of booty? Gay anal booty? Or a chest of money? Maybe he has man-boobs. At any rate, there's a chest, and the pirates want it. I think. I mean, why would they put it in a pirate movie if the pirates are just going to spend the whole film avoiding it, like that crazy aunt locked in the attic that no one mentions because then they'd have to acknowledge the odd silence and foul odor coming from up there for the past three weeks? I guess it could be Keira Knightley's chest, but she doesn't have much of one. Now abs, she's got those in spades. But I digress.

Word has it that they're already filming another sequel. Pirates of the Caribbean 3: Tokyo Drift, or something. Much of the above also applies to it, except that there will be different villains and probably a different plot. About continental drift? Likely. But don't hold it against me if it isn't. Maybe it's about Keira Knightley's chest. You can hold that against me.

All in all, on a sliding scale of 1 to 88 stars, with 15 being passing, I give PotC2:DMC two cups of pudding, a piece of lint, and a 1980 Carl Yastrzemski baseball card in excellent-mint condition. Should you go see it, I can guarantee one thing: You'll be seeing a movie. On that, you can bet.

Unless the power goes out, or you die on the way there.

Chained vs. Caged Heat

There's nothing on tonight. We're watching COPS. It's a special episode, "Bad Girls #2", a compilation of arrests featuring psychotic and/or stoned women.

This got me curious. See, the last time I checked, the Chained Heat series of women-in-prison movies was not available on DVD. This was a gaping hole in the medium, an inexcusable void in our cultural collective. At last, this has been rectified. Chained Heat 2, the second and best of the series (featuring a pre-Flav Brigitte Nielsen channeling Ilsa: She-Woman of the SS) is now out on the ubiquitous shiny discs. Rejoice!

Be warned, however. Never confuse the inferior Caged Heat movies with the Chained Heat series. The Chained Heat series ended with #2, but was later revived in the straight-to-video Bound Heat movies (also known as the Girl Camp series, as in the case of Girl Camp 2004: Lesbian Fleshpots and Bound Heat: Tears At Dawn, a.k.a. Girl Camp 2003: Chained Vengeance.)

You will be quizzed on this tomorrow.

Jumping the Shark

Having a toddler means spending actual discussion time debating the point where Dora the Explorer jumped the shark. Was it when Diego appeared? Or whey they finally got the budget to add two more stock animation poses to her repertoire?

Personally, I think it was the episode where she bought a motorcycle and leaped over the tank of sharks in the Arnold's parking lot.

Zumanity

So, yesterday was our fifth anniversary, and we went out to see Zumanity, or as it's also known, Porn: The Musical! Picture naked whip-wielding dominatrixes doing acrobatics hanging from silk sheets thirty feet in the air. Now make them dance, and interrupt every once in a while for cabaret/burlesque segments. That's pretty much the show.

Is it just that we're so jaded, or that we know a lot of other pervs, or is Vegas just astonishingly easy to shock? Most of the audience asides from us was repulsed by the simulated gay sex. And then there was the nudity, spankings, appearance onstage of large dildos, lesbian orgies. The poor woman behind us gasped and barely held back her rage at what she saw, even though the tickets clearly state it's an 18+ show with nudity and for "people with open minds only". She vocally complained to her boyfriend, who was no fan of the gay sex himself. People yelled out "Eww!" at various points and some got up and left.

After the show, there was polite applause, but mostly angry people storming out saying they couldn't recommend it to anyone they knew. We shrugged. Topless dommes? Men making out? Yawn. Do these people not even watch basic cable? We thought it was pretty tame. It was also short for a Cirque show (90 minutes, the maximum Vegas attention span). Next time we want to see that sort of thing, we can go to the fetish club. Maybe even bring a souvenir performer home.

Jenn absolutely adored our usher, a foul-mouthed pixie who told us we were in row "D for Dildo" and flirted with everyone as they came in (scaring the vast majority before the show even began). "Oh, B for Bondage!" she told one couple as she escorted them to their seats. They cringed, yelled back, "Bondage?!" like they'd heard this was something sickos in New York did but never imagined would infest such a wholesome community as Las Vegas, and looked at the door. The lucky ones in "A for Ass" were seated in love seats in the front row, where they were molested by the cast. At least a couple of the lothario clown characters bore much passing resemblance to my lecherous immigrant character Akmal.

What's more surprising still is that this show was at the New York-New York, a casino specifically aimed at LGBT vacationers and marketed mostly in gay magazines. How these people in the audience wound up there to be offended to begin with is a mystery.

Bowling for Colon-bine

I'm disturbed, deeply, by the new fad of mixing together everything on your menu in a bowl. When Taco Bell first came up with the idea, I cringed. But then I realized that everything they make is the same five ingredients recombined in different ratios. Doing away with the tortilla shell and just tossing everything together in a bowl seemed like a logical, if icky, next step. Besides, stoners don't care how it looks. They care if it tastes like cheese.

Now, corporate sister KFC has picked up on the idea. Witness their new commercial. Hungry stoner who's probably 30 and yet never held a real job walks into a KFC. He wants... everything on the menu. Together. At once. Luckily, the overeager woman at the counter is ready to give it to him. Barely able to hold back her moans of pleasure, she speaks of a bowl filled to the brim with artificial mashed potatoes, corn, popcorn chicken and cheese mixed together. She asks if he wants gravy poured over the whole thing. Somehow, she manages not to ask if he'd like to contribute his own semen before erupting into an orgasm of her own. Because we all know women everywhere are turned to jelly at the prospect of a go-nowhere loser with gravy-tainted fingers gorging himself at a miniature trough.

I was going to try to think of a potential future bowl development, which would take the idea to its absurd conclusion. But I think this is the absurd conclusion. It can't possibly get worse than gravy, cheese, watery canned corn, chicken soaked in eleven herbs and spices, and whatever the "potatoes" are really made of, all unified into an unholy shepherd's pie of angina.

Oh wait- it can. Have it served up by a woman so into the concept that she's visualizing the customer rubbing the gravy into his nipples.

Yep, it just got much, much worse.

The Build-Your-Own Dan Brown Religio-Historical Thriller Kit

So! You want to make your own supernovel turned summer blockbuster, and you want to do it in the style of Dan Brown (which is to say, you want to do it by the numbers)? Fear not, for no shred of originality is required. Now, the basic building blocks of a Dan Brown novel are included in this handy kit, free for you to reassemble in the order of your choosing to create the work that Brown himself only wishes he had re-written.

Kit Includes:
* Confused Eurofemme heroine
* Nasty cult from the bowels of pseudo-history
* Crazed outsider with desire to use cult to destroy the Catholic Church
* Robert Langdon (mullet optional)
* Plans for Wild Goose Chase, with Family Circus-style dashed line for illustration purposes
* Core plot lifted from someone else's work

You Provide:
* Creepy Mary-Sue inability to separate self from protagonist, especially when describing heroine's feelings for protagonist
* Historical trinket

Given these tools, you can tell the story of Robert Langdon, internationally-renowned symbologist, who, along with confused Eurofemme heroine _Chesty LaRue_, is the only person who can stop the dreaded cult of _AntiMasons_ from obtaining the _Solomon's Dentures_ and destroying the _Catholic Church_. Follow Langdon across Europe, solving riddles in English (the international language of ancient puzzles) and awkwardly describing his romantic feelings through inner monologue.

Will your creation top the best-seller list? Will it earn you the respect of the girl from high school who your heroine is blatantly modeled after? What goofy haircut will Tom Hanks sport in the movie? Find out for only $19.95, plus shipping and handling.

The DaVinci Code: Tokyo Drift

So last night we trekked out to Summerlin to catch The DaVinci Code. Why go to the extreme other end of the city? Well, we're apartment hunting now, and despite all its creepiness, Summerlin is home to tons of nice places. (It's also home to the sluttiest nine-year olds in the world, and they were in line in front of us at the theatre, blinged-out and yapping into their Razr phones. *shudder*)

So anyway, the movie. Ron Howard directed, and you can tell because everyone assumes the gestures, mannerisms, and poses of characters in Arrested Development. This means Tom Hanks channels Jason Bateman to play Robert Langdon, Indiana Jones' boring, mulleted cousin. Hanks has reverted to his Bosom Buddies-era hairdo, despite many reasons why he should not have looked back.

But I still haven't gotten to the movie.

I'm going to assume you've read the book. Because, like, everyone on earth has read the book. Except the woman next to me, who kept gasping in shock and awe at each revelation. "Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father?!" Sorry if I spoiled it for you. The audience was apparently also full of people who have never left America before. They laughed at the sight of fuel-efficient Citreon smart-cars, and were confused about the switching between London and Paris. Yes, yes, we get it. Europe is old. Shut up and eat your popcorn, sister.

So. An ancient order of watchdogs, headed by famous people, knows a secret: Jesus got it on with Mary Magdalene, and spawned a line of French royalty that, to my surprise, did not die out when Childeric III was deposed and sent to a monastery. Instead, the Merovingians fended for themselves, acting in Matrix films and trying not to be killed by Vatican extremists, who want to erase all evidence that Jesus got his groove on. The Holy Grail is the codename for this bloodline, and its last surviving member is Audrey Tautou, who's strangely hot in a pixie-sort-of-way, but also jarring to watch speaking English, especially when you can't separate her entirely from Amelie.

The movie takes liberties with the second half of the book. The sequence in space, the journey to the center of the earth, the simplification of the plot to cram it into 2.5 hours, etc. Ian McKellen is in the Gina Gershon role: that of the lone actor who knows the movie sucks and is reveling in its suckiness. "Yes, I am eccentic, old, and therefore evil. And I will bring you down, Tommy! Bwa ha ha ha ha!"

Side note: We saw the trailor for the Miami Vice remake, in which Colin Farrell has not learned his lesson to avoid blond roles. We also saw one for Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, so bad that Paul Walker even refused to return. I have a feeling that Tokyo Drift will go down in history as one of the worst sequel subtitles ever, along with Electric Boogaloo and The Quickening. They should have stuck to my idea for a name: 3's Fast, 4's Company.

Anyway, back to the movie at hand.

Removed is any hint of romantic feelings between Robert and Sofie. What we get in its place is a firm, hearty hug like you'd give your uncle at a birthday party after he gave you a tie. ("I get to spend the rest of my life on the run from church assassins? Yay. Just what I always wanted.") See, sex will get you an R rating, whereas self-flagellating monks coated in blood and lots of shootings will only get you a PG-13. Interesting that in a movie about the rediscovery of the sacred feminine, everyone dies by phallus.

Oh yes, the self-flagellating monk. Poor Silas is really the hero here- he tries to stop Hanks from explaining everything, and just kill him. Of origins hazily glossed-over in jittery flashbacks, Silas wants to do good for those who helped him escape his life of crime. And he also likes getting spanked. If only he'd been rescued by a dominatrix, he'd have been happy. Instead, he joins Opus Dei, an extreme Catholic splinter cult that will probably see an explosion in membership by albinos who need spankings after they see this film. No one in Opus Dei is happy. No one.

So how was the movie? Meh. I worked hard to memorize the book for a future Jeopardy! appearance, and they went and changed major portions just because. Opie goes out of his way to make sure no one can possibly be offended by changing Hanks' character into a skeptical voice of reason. A boring, long-winded voice of reason, who's going to quiz you after the film to make sure you got all his major talking points. Audrie Tautou isn't topless nearly as much in American cinema as she is in French. As in, any. And in 2.5 hours, you might just be able to read the book and get the full story. It looked nice, although the projector wasn't entirely focused so it looked fuzzy for me. The locations are authentic, except for Newton's tomb, which is out of place in Westminster Abbey, and clearly made of styrofoam. Kind of like Hanks' mullet.

Oh, and as to the secret of the Grail: Jesus and Mary weren't married. His last name was "Christ" and hers was "Magdalene". If they were really married, she'd have changed hers.

The Little Police

Last night, I came up with the concept of the Little Police. They'd be a special team of police midgets with one purpose: to chase down small criminals who squeeze through openings like Tom & Jerry-style mouse holes where the big police can't tread.

Come on, you know you wish you'd thought of it first. Especially when Little Police: The Motion Picture is optioned, with Gary Coleman playing the gruff sergeant with a heart of gold.

Everything I Needed to Know About Politics I Learned from Road House

The new White House chief of staff told employees that they had to either "re-engage" or that now was the time to quit. Somehow, this struck me as very much resembling Dalton's speech to the staff at the start of Road House, where he tells them that if anyone wants to quit, now's the time to do it, because it's "my way or the highway." I can see the new guy showing up in overly tight black clothes, chain-smoking, and laying down the rules- no dealing, no skimming from the till, and so on and so forth.

I wonder if this makes Iraq our "regular Saturday night thing"?

To Cheesfinity, and Beyond

At some point in the late 90's, "Nacho Cheese" Doritos weren't cutting it anymore. Our cheese-infusing technology had reached the point where we could squeeze more powdered-cheese flavor onto a tortilla chip than ever before, and yet we weren't taking advantage of this culinary windfall. And so, "Nacho Cheesier!" Doritos were born, and everything was good.

About ten years on now, do we really need to keep the "-ier!" part of the flavor naming? Does anyone even remember life or the chips before the extra cheese? Has "Cheesier!" grown stale and everyday enough to just become our new normal "cheese" flavor?

I posed this question to Doctor Werner von Fromage, of the Institute of Cheesiness Studies, and this is what he wrote to me.

Guten Tag, Herr Yuenger! You ask whether it is necessary to call the Doritos product "Nacho Cheesier!," when it is now simply what we all accept as the normal level of "Nacho Cheese". The same question could well be asked about "Cooler Ranch" Doritos, for are they still so infinately cooler as to need to be advertised as such?

Here at the Institute of Cheesiness Studies, we say, "Nein!" For you see, we are always striving to expand the bounds of cheese-flavor technology. We are always in the process of becoming cooler and ever-cheesier, and for us, we can never advise settlement with the cheese offerings of today. Would you have us freeze our technology at the vacuum-tube, never to move on to the transistor? Do not be foolish! Why should we stop in this primitive era of cheese flavorings, when we have only achieved powder densities per centimeter that would make a man of the future weep with hostility at our patheticness?

To us, the "Cheesier!" (complete with exclamation point) is an ever-shifting goal, an enticement to us to strive for that Platonic singular true form of Cheesy. Perhaps someday our taste buds will experience the epitome of cheese, and will not physically be able to process any more flavoring in a single bite. Your nervous system will collapse in cheese-induced shock, and you will drown in your own saliva. But we have not reached that time! And so, there is still work to be done.

Yours truly,
Dr. Werner von Fromage
Institute of Cheesiness Studies
Zurich, Switzerland

Whew! That explains it.