A Nightmare On Elm Street

#61 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List

This one is the creepiest and best of the series by far. I know a lot of people like to think that New Nightmare is really original because of how it broke formula, but the problem is that it broke a good formula and replaced it with a boring formula. All of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies are good for one reason or other (even Freddy's Dead. That's good for the 3-D part), but this one is trying to play it serious. Freddy is a legitimate threat here, not some ridiculous joker. For instance, does anybody remember in the later movies when Freddy is saying some shit about the power glove that this clown was a fucking child molester who got burned alive out of revenge by local parents? I guess you can't blame this actual good horror movie for that, though. Also, props to Johnny Depp's first movie role as a character named Glenn. Keeping it real for the rest of us, bud. By getting eaten by a bed.

RATING: 87%

Back To The Future I and II

#62 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List

Sorry to put three Spielberg related projects on here in a row. Obviously, everybody loves Back To The Future. But I consider part II to be equally great. Whenever a sequel gets made, people always complain that it's just a retread of the original. So what do they do in this one to combat that? They go back in time to the original movie and have the characters weave around their earlier selves. I think it's pretty genius. And I don't hate part III like I hate the Godfather part III. It's just that here part III seems just like a fun little coda that really doesn't do anything for the series as a whole. Also, the future stuff in part II is set in 2015, so only eight more years until flying cars, guys!

RATING: 89%

Close Encounters Of The Third Kind

#63 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List

One of the great things about this movie is how music is allowed to mold the shape of the film. Another great thing is the effects. Another great thing is how it really works as an early example of a "hyperlink" movie, which is a term I read about describing those multi-storied movies like Babel, Traffic, or Syriana, in which main characters only briefly intertwine and all work through their own dilemmas. Another great thing about this movie is the special effects. Another great thing about this movie is that I think there is a pretty cute seventies woman in it who wears a t-shirt with no bra on under it and that was hot if I do recall.

RATING: 88%

The Goonies

#64 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List

I guess it's weird what directors show up on this list multiple times. Richard Donner gets a couple of nods, but Eastwood just gets one? Anyway, speaking of movie theater experiences, one of the best I've had was seeing this at a midnight show in Orlando, and whenever Chunk and Sloth show up on top of the pirate ship at the end the whole theater shouted in unison "HEY YOU GUYS!" It was pretty sweet. But I guess from talking to people if you have never seen this movie before and you try to watch it now it will totally suck. Also, you had a bad childhood.

RATING: 87%

Soon I Will Be Invincible

Okay, so I finished this book (by Austin Grossman, no relation) this morning, and while I like it...the more and more that I think about it, the more and more I feel it is COMPLETELY INEXCUSABLE that the entire book did not focus on Doctor Impossible. The book contains two separate first-person narratives, one of Lex Luthor-esque supervillain Doctor Impossible, and another about a cyborg lady named Fatale.

Yeah, it's tough being a cyborg, but shut the fuck up about it.

Anyways, it's a good read for people who like comics, but doesn't pass the bar for good literary fiction. This book contains: some excellent sentences ("Welcome to my island, assholes."), simple uncomplicated prose, and an unfulfilled promise to turn all comic cliches on their ear.

RATING: 78% (This means that it is better than Saturday Night Live, but worse than The Meadowlands)

The Houston Pride Parade

This is the first pride parade I've ever been to (although I don't know how many there were in Lake City [yes I do, zero]), and I guess it was pretty fun. There were a hell of a lot of people being nice, a lot of diversity, and beads hitting me in the face all the time because I never pay attention when the people on the floats are throwing them. Anyway, the picture depicts my favorite float, some weird car thing somebody clearly built from scratch to look like a star. Also it depicts this mean cop who was yelling at people and dragged somebody away. There were cops with horses who kept running into people, too, but I can't draw a horse. Overall it was fun.

RATING: 80%

Airships (Blimps and Zeppelins)

I'm of the opinion that this technology should be given a second chance. When taken to steampunk extremes, I think they can be pretty awesome and enormous. And once in a while, they blow up pretty spectacularly. Impractical? Sure...but they are definitely majestic and inflatable, and that's gotta be worth something.

RATING: 68%

(image courtesy of flatrock.org)

Local News

I watch the national and world news every morning and during the weekends, but I usually get most of my updates via the front page of Yahoo! That may suck, but I've grown to hate local news more and more because of the manner in which they perpetuate, and even manufacture, stories of "interest". As if the world isn't already messed up enough that we need to know if JIF or Skippy is the best brand of peanut butter (it's obviously JIF). These assholes get people in a frenzy about things that will never happen and hype the most asinine stories every night. And people look at them like they're celebrities. Lame.

RATING: 17%

Mollejas (Sweetbreads)

I like me some offal, and sweetbreads have got to be my favorite organ meat. They've got a wonderfully silky texture and a fairly mild flavor. An insider told me to visit Taqueria Tacambaro (behind Canino's Farmer's Market on Airline) after I complained it was difficult to find sweetbreads in town. This taco truck serves the sweetbreads on two corn tortillas topped with onions, cilantro, avocado, and a dark, almost chocolaty looking (cascabel peppers?), salsa. The sweetbreads were lightly cooked on the grill, a few bits had just a tinge of crispiness on the edges creating a wonderful blend of textures. Sorry the picture blows, I need a new camera better than my phone.

RATING: 92%

Be Kind, Rewind

This movie is pretty darn funny at times, and not just when the two main characters are "sweding" the different movies...though it's definitely interesting to see the tricks which are used for special effects in their films. The relationship between the main characters is justifiably quirky. While Jack Black plays a variation on the Jack Black character, Mos Def is nice and squirrely. Gondry does a relatively awesome job with the special effects, both the subtle and unsubtle ones. A fun rental, if nothing else.

RATING: 77%

(image courtesy of wordpress.com)

For A Few Dollars More

This is the second of the so-called "Man With No Name" trilogy, a set of three westerns directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood as ostensibly the same character, who knows. Anyway, this one's plot has Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef play bounty hunters after this really bad guy named Indio, although maybe Van Cleef has more at stake. This one is a lot better than A Fistful Of Dollars, but it still isn't as great as The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, obviously. And we all consider The Man With No Name to be one of the most memorable characters in cinema, but to be fair he is always the least interesting - here Van Cleef's character has a lot more history, and even the bloodthirsty villain Indio seems wracked with guilt, and smokes drugs after every kill he makes because he feels so bad. It's a great western from the absolute master of spaghetti westerns, so check it out or something.

RATING: 84%

The Vegetable Sandwiches I've Been Making For The Past Few Days

These sandwiches have been pretty good, but as you can tell there's probably too much going on on them. I was eating the vegetable sandwiches from Target, but then I realized that even though they were cheap, there were distinct problems with them and I could probably make my own sandwiches for cheaper. But I didn't make a plan, and bought a bunch of vegetables at once, and since I was paranoid about them all going bad, I just put them all on the sandwich. It has provolone (from the provolone tree), mushrooms, spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, alfalfa sprouts, and guacamole. Next time I think I'll just pick three vegetables and go with that, but it was still delicious.

RATING: 81%

10 Canoes

10 Canoes is a movie about an Aboriginal Australian people, the Ganalbingu. The narrator speaks English, but dialogue is in the Ganalbingu language. The plot of the film is a narrative within a narrative: a group of Aboriginal hunters embark on a goose egg gathering trip, on which an older member of the group tells the youngest member of the group a story about a man whose wife disappears and the mayhem that results. It's supposedly a comedy, but the ending is very sad. The scenery and camera work are lovely, and the language, facial expressions and body language of the actors are like nothing I've ever seen or heard before.

RATING: 91%

(Image from charlottefilmsociety.org.)

Environmentalism

The thing is being eco-conscious makes us feel good, so you're not going to like it if someone tells you how grossly inefficient something like recycling can be. I'm not going to get into it because there's not a lot of use in arguing about something that most people put a lot of blind faith into without any solid background. I recommend anyone interested read a smart and funny article about environmentalism by Dr. Stephen Landsburg, economist and professor at the University of Rochester. He's my idol.

Why I Am Not An Environmentalist: The Science of Economics Versus The Religion of Ecology

RATING: 35%

new york city apartment brokers

There really is nothing worse in the whole world. Each one is full of concentrated evil. Seriously.

Rating: Am I allowed to give lower than 0%?

Photo: I found that photo at this website, http://carmenrealestate.com, and I swear that is the second photo that popped up when I typed in "broker" for a google image search, and boy doesn't he fit the description?

The Meadowlands by The Wrens

This is the best album I've bought in the last five years. Pitchfork (especially) and a bunch of other music review publications went bananas over it, but try not to hold that against it. I'd call it post-punk, but it's a little grunge or noise-y. The lyrics are appropriately vague and poetic (not quite mid-90's R.E.M., but subtle enough to not be over-sincere), and they match the tone of the music. Check out the songs "Boys, You Won't", "Hopeless", and "This Boy Is Exhausted" for good tracks from the album, and enjoy the sweet, sweet sounds of New Jersey.

RATING: 93%

(image courtesy of an awesome band)

Saturday Night Live

At some point, probably before I was born, SNL was some kind of cultural watershed. Or so I was told. Now, it's a collection of mostly unfunny or barely-smile-inducing sketches framed with musical performances by artists you very well may not care at all about. Ever so occasionally, there will be a bit of brilliance (on average once every three episodes) or a breakout star that will be remarkably funny until, eventually, overexposed.

RATING: 57%

(image courtesy of eveningtalk.com)

Trying to Roast Almonds in the Goddamn Toaster Oven

It just doesn't work. At 5:00 they haven't even started to cook, and by 5:01 they're a charred, smoking mess. What kind of world do we live in, where a man can't get a handful of hot, delicious nuts whenever he feels like it? Someone should build some kind of nut-roasting appliance. I'll throw money at him or her.

RATING: Burnt nuts - 4%
Homoerotic double entendre - 5%

(Image from www.nutsonline.com. Yes, I'm immature.)

The Last Bowl of The Box

I've been enjoying an increased consumption of cereal the past few months. From Frosted Mini Wheats to um, Frosted Flakes there's only one major issue I've got with cereal. With the level of technological innovation in the world today there's no reason why I shouldn't expect every bowl of cereal to be consistently delicious. Instead, the last bowl of cereal is the crushed bits of cereal and sugar at the bottom of the box. Why aren't we solving this problem instead of finding a new way to mix corn, peanut butter and chocolate so we can call it breakfast? This is the kind of shit that needs to stop. First, let's perfect the simple sugary corn flake.

RATING: 8%

Green Arrow: Quiver

For a while fanboy/filmmaker Kevin Smith (Clerks 2, Jersey Girl) was writing some pretty fucking decent comics--he had a great run on Daredevil (Guardian Devil), and he did a great first half of a Spider-Man story and then didn't finish it for three years. This relaunch of Green Arrow was one of his great works, and I don't even like Green Arrow. Smith resurrects the classic Green Arrow Oliver Queen, (a rich Bruce Wayne type with no powers who just happens to be good at shooting arrows, who had died in the mid 90s), and we watch the mystery of his resurrection unravel, as well as the side plot of some child murderer stalking Star City, which ends up being related surprise surprise. Smith brings in a lot of religion (which is sometimes ridiculous - Satanists? really?), but it's fun to read even if you don't know anything about Green Arrow like me. Smith also writes a decent Batman, but who doesn't, really?


RATING: 78%

Milk

A lot of us have issues with milk. For me it's because, like most people, I've developed some sort of lactose intolerance over time. That's normal, but it doesn't keep me from consuming dairy products (should it?). Other people argue that humans are the only animals to drink another animal's milk. Well, of course humans are the only other animals to build cities, speak multiple languages, and fly to space. So once cows learn to milk humans I'll reconsider my position. Otherwise, milk is good for cheese, cereal (ever try water instead?), ice cream, yogurt, butter...

RATING: 89%

Westing (By Musket and Sextant) by Pavement

Pre-Slanted and Enchanted Pavement, post-Slanted and Enchanted. This is some compilation from the folks at Drag City and it's filled with a lot of lo-fi noise tracks, sometimes bordering on unlistenable, but are still great fun anyway. For most people it's probably not worth buying, but if you're an early Pavement fan, or haven't bled from your ears at least once in your life, then check it out.

RATING: 81%

Kimchi

The poet and literary critic Fred Turner once observed that one culture's soul food, like breast milk, may be nauseating to another. Kimchi is spicy and sour, with the appearance of used bandages and the texture of a drowned man's flesh. It's also delicious, just like breast milk. Many Koreans think kimchi can cure the avian flu, but they also believe in fan death. Go, Koreans.

RATING: 87%

(Image from Wikipedia Commons.)

Waking Up Before 10am

Everybody knows this isn't a fun thing to do. Personally, I would like to have a job where I didn't have to wake up before 10am, and also maybe at this job they would give me free sandwiches. The worst part is waking up less than 10 minutes before your alarm though, so don't try to do that is my recommendation.

RATING: 19%

The Shape of Punk to Come: A Chimerical Bombination in 12 Bursts by Refused

When I first heard this album, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it, and I'm still not. It's like punk rock from the year 2045: it's got great production, and it incorporates diverse influences like electronica, jazz, and metal, making it unlike 99% of punk albums out there, including anything else by Refused. I hesitate to call it "important," or "seminal," because, as far as I can tell, no one has been able to touch this sound since, and its "revolutionary" posturing seems a little hokey in a world where Rage Against the Machine became fucking Audioslave. Whatever it is--abrasive, melodic, innovative, weird, and/or charmingly Scandinavian--it's definitely way ahead of its time. Here's a link to New Noise, which was the big single.

RATING: 90%

(Image from www.edtudiants.phy.ulaval.ca, which is pretty much the most Quebecois web address I've ever seen. French people love these guys, God bless 'em.)

Punch Drunk Love

#65 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List

I like this movie a lot more than Magnolia. So sue me. Anyway, it proves that the key to getting a great dramatic performance out of a comedic actor is to write some role that exactly mimics all of their faults, but don't put punchlines in. So Adam Sandler, playing the exact same role in this movie as every movie he's ever been in, ends up really being a pathetic presence, in the classic sense. When I saw this in the theater, it was the most people I have ever witnessed walk out in the middle of a movie ever. The sad thing was that I saw it alone, and this cute woman who was also alone sat next to me. So in my head I was like "man, I hope she's liking this movie as much as I am! I'll talk to her about it later and maybe then we can make out or something." But then she got exasperated and left I guess whenever she realized it wasn't The Waterboy Part 2. But who am I kidding? I never would have said anything to her anyway.

RATING: 88%

Elective Fertility

Tonight I accidentally turned on a show that had teenagers living in a house and wearing fake pregnancy tummies. Turns out this show was called "The Baby Borrowers,"and its tagline is "It's Not TV -- It's Birth Control." About five teen couples who I guess want babies live on a cul-de-sac and take classes, build cribs, and then take care of someone else's infant for three days. All the crying, whining, spitting and drooling was unbearable. The babies were pretty cute, though. It really made me wish that us American human females all had switches installed in us, and we could turn the switch only when we wanted to be fertile, but not before we were at least nineteen, OR had passed some sort of Common Sense and General Maturity test. One girl cried and locked herself in the bathroom and refused to wear her pregnancy tummy because she looked "fat." Homegirl, you gonna be fat for a LONG TIME if you get pregnant. Actually, forget being allowed to have kids -- based on what I witnessed on NBC this evening and on my own life experiences, I'm not even sure that teenagers should be allowed to date.

RATING: 29%

The Cotton Club

#66 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List

As a former trumpet player (and when I saw this for the first time I still thought I would always play) I think this movie is a great jazz/gangster movie. I am not a former gangster, though, so what do I know, since apparently it was a huge box office flop. Well, they can't all be winners.

RATING: 88%

Three Days Of The Condor

#67 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List

Some of the movies on this list have a slim grasp on their places. Some, like Thin Red Line, I have seen only once and a long time ago, but they have stuck with me ever since. If I saw them again, I might cut them from the running. I have seen Three Days of the Condor a couple of times, and it's a really great thriller. But I'm iffy about it being on this list for some reason. I was really sick the first time I saw it and didn't pay attention the second time. But I remember it being fucking great. So it stays. Check it out if you like spies and/or conspiracies. Robert Redford is terrific.

RATING: 87%

5 sentence reviews (in 5 sentences)

The original mission of this blog was to pass judgement on artifacts of the world at large in no more than 5 sentences composing 1 paragraph. This has obviously been compromised by people like me who either can't say what they need to in 5 sentences or simply like the sound of their own voices (I'm guilty on both counts). So what I want to know is this: should we return to the purity and elegance of the 5 sentence, one paragraph form--the golden age and original raison d'etre of Reviews, Reviews, Reviews, so to speak--or should we break the chains of oppression and consider a short review, say, anything that can fit on a normal monitor screen? I'm cool either way. I have another blog, although Glenn doesn't.

RATING: ??

(Image from libizblog.files.wordpress.com)

Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst is a British artist who's famous for installation pieces featuring dead animals floating in formaldehyde that sell for exorbitant amounts of money. He also does "spin paintings," which are created by someone (not Hirst himself, but one of his employees) dripping paint onto a flat, revolving surface. His piece For the Love of God, pictured here, was fashioned from a real human skull to which he affixed 8,601 diamonds. Whenever I think of Damien Hirst, I'm reminded of the painter Rabo Karabekian from Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, who "with his meaningless pictures had entered into a conspiracy with millionaires to make poor people feel stupid" (Vonnegut 214). Hirst doesn't even paint most of his own pictures, and I think the idea of the mastermind conceptual artist taking all the credit for merely signing his name on the work of others, especially as some sort of "ironic" critique of capitalism and mass production, was fraudulent and boring when Andy Warhol did it 40 years ago.

Damien Hirst's work is smug, nihilistic, and morally and aesthetically repulsive. Moreover, I think his exploitation of dead people and animals for his own financial gain is blasphemous on a level that any thinking, feeling creature should be able to understand. He's not an artist, he's an artiste, and celebrity bullshitters like him are one of the main reasons why average folks don't visit art galleries.

RATING: 9%

(Image from myartspace.com.)

wearing a suit in the summer

In summertime, almost all of the advantages of wearing a suit are offset by the fact that it is no fun to wear a jacket when it is balls hot outside and you have to walk around NYC in the damn sun and then risk passing out on a subway platform because you can't goddamn breath and you're sweating like a whore in church. Booo.

Rating: 10%

wearing a suit

Now that I'm a lawyer (more or less), I have to wear a suit to work every day. At first I was very resistant to this idea because I thought it would be uncomfortable and dyke-y looking (suit + short hair = dyke, or so my thinking went), but since I figured out how to femme it up (skirt + girly top + sexy high heels = femme) I love wearing suits. The best part is how other people react to the suit. I've noticed that people don't seem to question my motives or logic when I'm in a suit. It's amazing. So if you ever want to sneak into a courthouse or political fundraiser that you forgot to RSVP for, I'd recommend sporting one.

Rating: 75%

Salvia Divinorum

Drugs are bad, m'kay? But salvia is legal, so I hope I'm not besmirching the reputation of this blog too badly by reviewing it here. You can grow salvia in your garden if you want, and it's a hardy plant, but the leaves taste like ass if you smoke them, and they aren't strong enough to have a psychoactive effect. Concentrated salvia extract also tastes like ass, but it gets you higher than a midget handcuffed to a weather balloon.

The buzz is not a fun one. For me, it was characterized by extreme "out of body" disorientation, a loss of motor control, a sense of dismemberment (the top half of me got up and fell off the couch, while my legs remained sitting down), auditory hallucinations (voices said, "Should we take him with us?"), and a strong and pervasive sense of fear and malevolent weirdness. Also, everything kept rolling to the left, and my horizontal and vertical axes were all messed up. When I came down, after a period of approximately 10 minutes, I was disturbed and agitated for another half-hour or so.

I think some psychedelics, if used responsibly in a therapeutic or spiritually-oriented manner, can be quite beneficial to some people. Salvia, on the other hand, is like a Filipino drag queen knife fight in your head. I don't expect to ever try it again.

RATING: 12%

(Image from psychoactiveherbs.com)

Massacre Time

This is one of the first films of Lucio Fulci, eventual horror master(?) and director of such films as The Beyond, Zombi 2, and The Gates Of Hell. Well, this doesn't have any scenes involving somebody puking their guts up, getting a giant splinter in the eye, or having their face eaten by spiders, but it's still pretty good I guess. It's a typical spaghetti western, in which some dude must get revenge on some other dude and then does. It's not as beautiful or mysterious as Leone's westerns, and it definitely becomes soap opera-y near the end, but it's got some good moments of bad assery. I just wonder in my head what the Italians and Spanish thought of the western as a genre. American westerns tended to be varied in plot and tone, but every spaghetti western I've ever seen is bleak, violent, and an exercise in the fate of revenge more than anything else. But this one is fine I guess.

RATING: 57%

Palm Z22

I feel like a serious kind of tool reviewing a Palm Pilot, but I am in love and I cannot contain myself. I got this ittle thing a few weeks ago, after forgetting several appointments and deadlines that I'd written in my planner. I knew I needed something to beep at me, but I wasn't ready to go all Crackberry, where I'm available to check my email from anywhere. I didn't want to let go of the illusion that I check my email infrequently, that no, I hadn't gotten your message yet, I'll get back to you on that. But I did need something to tell me, in neat list-form, what I'm doing today, what I promised I'd get done today, and what I was doing tomorrow. My little unobstrusive Pilot is very easy to use, and when I plug it into my computer it puts all the stuff I put onto my computer onto the Pilot, and vice versa, thus quelching my fear that all of my informations will be lost to me when this is pickpocketed from my hangbag in front of Macy's on 34th street. There is a feature where you can list Tasks and prioritize them and then check off the tasks when they are done, which gives my disorganized heart a profound sense of accomplishment. I can put tiny pictures in my address book, can color-code events in my calender, and get reminded of birthdays a week in advance. There is even a game! On the darker side, I feel like this thing is sexistly geared towards women, as there's an application that is more than happy lecture me on low-carb meal options. Just read the sample screen up there: Lunch with Andrea? Yoga? Pick up kids? No thanks, Pilot! But keep those reminders coming.

RATING: 83%

Bad Santa

#68 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List

This movie is my new Christmas tradition. My old Christmas tradition was not having a movie for a Christmas tradition. But this one broke that trend. I quote this movie all the time in every day life, but nobody seems to get it. Like I always say "Well they can't all be winners," in reference to when the kid complains about getting a tylenol in his advent calendar. I just started laughing thinking about this movie, even though this blurb isn't very funny. Ah well! If you want to laugh, maybe you should go rent this or something. What am I, your own personal laugh machine?

RATING: 87%

Malcolm X

#69 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List

Spike Lee is one of my favorite filmmakers in all of history. Definitely top ten. Malcolm X is probably his best movie, but I'm putting it ahead of some other movies of his on this list because I thought of some things to say that I might forget. First, there was a month when I was a freshman in college right after I bought this on tape that I watched it five times. In a month. And this movie is like three hours long. I've only ever done that with Dawn of the Dead and 2001, and those are my two favorite movies of all time. But Malcolm X isn't breaking the top ten in my countdown partly because I think I wore it out, and mainly because the tape switch really messes up the movie. The first half of the movie is kind of a petty thief criminal movie, and then he gets arrested. Then you switch tapes, and it enters more definitely into the political realm and character evolution part of the movie. It creates a great overall project. But having to physically change tapes really emphasized the difference in tone between the two halves, and after a while I would just watch the first half of this movie for Delroy Lindo. So that's why this movie doesn't break my top ten. Eventually when I get it on DVD I guess this problem will work itself out. So maybe it will move up the list a bit. Also, does anybody from the south remember those fucking "You wear your 'X,' I'll wear mine" shirts with the confederate flag on them? That is the key argument in demonstrating that the confederate flag is definitely about hate, not heritage.

RATING: 88%

The Twenty-seventh Amendment

This amendment is pretty boring. Basically it says the government can't change the salary of senators or representatives until those senators or representatives vote on it. I guess it's good because one senator can't just suddenly say that everybody gets a million dollars, although I don't really know how having senators voting on it might stop that from happening.

RATING: 58%

Night Of The Living Dead

#70 on Glenn's Top 100 Movie List

This movie is really great because even though the premise is motherfucking zombies, the real meat of the movie is human interaction leading to the disintegration of society. Then that was the real meat of every George Romero movie for the next 40 years. This movie is kind of tame now, but I can't imagine how freaked out people must have been in 1968 to see zombies eating human intestines. Now I think they have a segment on Sesame Street where zombies show the letters of the alphabet by using intestines. Or maybe it's Elmo who does that.

RATING: 88%

My Car

Last February I made one of the best decisions in my life and purchased a Honda Civic Hybrid. It wasn't just a good decision because I get great gas mileage, but because I think it gives me the right to say whatever else I want when it comes to politics. It's the ultimate trump card. I mean, what are you actually doing to save America? Anyway, I also like this car because it looks like a regular Civic, which is great because then I'm not trying to show off in a Prius. That's just playing the trump card with no class. Yes, we all see how much of a martyr you are.

RATING: 89%

Foreshadowing Pregnancy

Since John Grisham has recently taught us about foreshadowing, many other artists are eager to use this cutting-edge device. Ideally, when foreshadowing, you want to drop clues subtle enough that the reader won't focus on them, but concrete enough that later, while the reader may be surprised, they don't feel duped. You can also foreshadow in film! But the problem with foreshadowing pregnancy is that when you drop clues, the audience immediately knows what's up because the symptoms of pregnancy have been broadcast to death. If a woman has had some kind of sex and all of a sudden has to pee lots, feels hungry, tired, or nauseous, pukes, craves pickle-and-mustard sandwiches, faints, doesn't fit into her favorite jeans, or wonders where her period's gone, we all immediately know she is pregs. I don't want to spoil the plot of this film I saw recently, so I'll just call the movie Rabie Llama -- in Rabie Llama, a woman does some of the things listed above and the audience collectively suffered with the obvious until the adoreable reveal. If anyone can think of a unique way to foreshadow pregnancy, I will tip my metaphorical hat to them.

RATING: 17%

Ex Machina Vol. 1: The First Hundred Days

Remember how the other day when I reviewed that comic about Joker running for governor there could have been so much political commentary made with it? Well, here's a comic that does that. Ex Machina is about this ex superhero who decides to run for mayor of New York City, and then wins. The first trade shows us glimpses of his heroic past, but mainly focuses on his first few weeks as mayor, during which somebody tries to lure him back into being a superhero and he has to deal with some offensive art that has people all riled up. It's a fun book written by Brian K. Vaughan, who was one of comics best writers until he decided he'd rather write for Lost. Whatevs. My copy is extra cool because my friend Jen got it signed for me for free.

RATING: 75%

Analog to Digital TV Warnings

If you're like me then you've been harassed non-stop during your favorite television shows about the switch from analog to digital TV in FEBRUARY OF 2009. At first I thought they were just a few friendly PSA's and on-air reminders of the coming change. Instead, its become something similar to living with my parents again. I got the message the first time I saw the commercial in January. Thanks FCC, but I think a couple months warning would have been sufficient enough.

RATING: 6%

Hank Williams, Jr.

Hank Williams, Jr. is obviously the center of the universe so why shouldn't he be wearing a snake skin vest while playing in center of the sun with his Gibson? Don't forget the symbol of freedom flying overhead if you have any doubt. Hank pretty much embodies everything right in the world/America: Monday Night Football, multiple marriages, hunting, and assaulting bad servers. Fuck yeah, America!

RATING: 84%

Jurassic Park

When Jurassic Park came out everyone was really into the special effects in the movie. I really don't remember anything about that because I was entirely fascinated with the plot of the movie and possibly extracting DNA from mosquitos trapped in amber. Of course, 15 years later we don't have dinosaurs and the special effects in this film are still awesome. My loss, but I was a stupid kid then. So it was good I got to watch it all over again today, because it's an awesome film, and there's Jeff Goldblum.

RATING: 91%

Planet of the Apes (2001)

I don't usually "nerd out", but damn this remake SUCKS! When I was a kid I watched both Planet of the Apes and Beneath the Planet of the Apes at least a million times. The original was extremely awesome! But Tim Burton came along and decided he would totally screw everything up. Instead of being an ironic and satirical story, it's only left as a straightforward story about escape. Now, I can't possibly go over everything that sucked about this film, but the stupidest thing is that every human in this flick can talk. What the hell?!

RATING: 11%

LDL Cholesterol

The delicious face of cholesterol is not that ugly. It's the inside that's fucked up. That's why I didn't post a photo of what your veins and arteries look like when the cholesterol hardens after years of neglect. Now I'm sure some people have a level higher than me, but for 160 pounds my cholesterol is way higher than it should be. Cholesterol sucks for a lot of us because it's hereditary and means we have to eat less red meat. I guess I've learned to balance my eating and exercise habits, but sometimes think I'd rather be dead if I had to give up meat forever. No wait, I would rather be dead if I had to give up meat. Luckily exercise works.

RATING: 5%

Man-titties

Man-tits don't make you look intimidating to other men, or attractive to women. The worst thing about man-tits might be how they jiggle up and down when your car goes over a bump, or it might be the fact that every time a woman puts your nipple in her mouth, you catch yourself wondering if she's some kind of lesbian. Before I hit puberty, I used to hope that my chest would look more macho when I could grow hair on it. Now that I can grow hair on it, I shave it off. So there you go.

In the words of Seth Rogen, "Fuck you, hormones."

RATING: 18%, only because being a dude with a pair of tits forces you to come to terms with your anima, which is spiritually very liberating.

(Image of Simon Cowell from Maggao Blog. He and I look almost nothing alike, excepting our pasty, sagging chests.)

Who's "Asia"?

So in honor of Houston Pride this weekend, I am going to continue to obsess over the blind items in Hiding in Hip Hop. In the fine chapter "Keep Moving On," Terrance goes to a club that has a "Ladies' Night," where he sees "Asia":

...a 1990s female R&B singer who had... a number of wildly successful ballads during that time. She started as a background singer, [but soon became] a solo artist. Her short body was topped with her huge, curly hair... her claim to fame was her rendition of a sexy remake of a song originally done by an 80s icon. (122)

...So am I overshooting, or could this be Whitney Houston? Too big? Think smaller? I don't know. What am I missing? Based on the clarity of this blind item:

RATING: 41%