Getting ID'd at the Movies

Attention theatre patrons: Be advised that our 16 year emo kid popcorn jockeys will need to see ID if you are to gain admission to see Halloween II. Despite the fact that you might be in your late twenties, our staff wishes to remain vigilant. While you may have gotten into dozens of R rated movies in the past, this one has boobies and stuff. Heaven forbid someone under 18 should wander into this Sunday matinee showing and be scarred for life. Thank you for your co-operation.

Rating: I feel old %

(Image from www.ofrb.gov.on.ca)

Pedi-Egg

I felt like an idiot buying this (from CVS, not tv), but damn, my feet are smooth. The only problem was that the dead skin bits did not stay all nice and confined inside they egg the way they do on tv. They actually kind of flew all over my couch, which sucked. It was totally worth it, tho.

Rating: 90%

Also, check out this great clip featuring the Pedi-Egg.

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

Kit Marlowe was the Brian Wilson of Elizabethan drama. Doctor Faustus features scads of demons, pyrotechnics, a painstakingly detailed cosmology, a would-be pope crossing continents on flying horseback, Helen of Troy rising from the grave, and plenty of gore and erudite ambition, but I couldn't find a single captivating, sexy or sympathetic character in the entire play. Unless, of course, you count Marlowe himself: Cambridge graduate, dramaturgist, poet, member of the School of Night, secret agent, tavern brawler, sodomite, and rabid tobacco enthusiast.

Ah, dead shepherd, they don't make 'em like they used to.

RATING: Better than I'll ever be, but still no Shakespeare%

(Image from www.history.neu.edu.)

Arrogant Bastard Ale

Drinking Stone's Arrogant Bastard Ale is like getting raped in the mouth by a bear made of hops--you keep telling yourself it shouldn't be physically possible, but it's happening just the same. When you're done weeping in a fetal position, you should get yourself a six pack of their excellent IPA and leave this stuff to the freaks with tattoos on their faces.

RATING: 50% (it comes in a quart, OK?)

(Image from www.slosar.com.)

Game Theory

Before you play a game it can either be a good game in theory or a bad game in theory. Then when you play it, game theory ends and you know for a fact if it is good or bad. Many magazines exist that try to employ game theory to determine if games are good or bad, like Game Informer and Electronic Gaming Monthly, but in the end each of you must figure out the theory of the game by yourself.

RATING: 49%

Automated Phone Systems

In 1998, you'd call a customer service hotline and get some moron in a call center who couldn't pass a GED test. In 2003, you'd call the same hotline and get some moron in a call center in India who couldn't pass an English test. In the Year of Our Lord 2009, you get a piece-of-shit automated system that couldn't pass a Turing test, replete with piece-of-shit voice recognition software written by the idiot from 2003. Save us, Christian Bale.

RATING: Brave new world%

(Image from www.pcdistrict.com.)

IMDB's Message Board

Internet message boards are rarely forums for civil discourse, but there is a special place in hell for those who lurk on the Internet Movie Database's message boards. What should be a place for film discussion is instead a haven for racist/sexist/elitist/moronic/illiterate fanboy rhetoric. No one wants to hear about your sexual fantasies regarding Hollywood starlets and your claims that George Lucas raped your childhood. Keep that shit to yourself.

Rating: I feel dirty %

(Image from mushon.com)

Inglourious Basterds/The Hurt Locker

I rarely feel as American as when I get a chance to see two war movies in the theater in one week. Inglourious Basterds is fun, but is utlimately stopped from being a great movie by obviously terrible choices (#1 being Brad Pitt and his costar, Brad Pitt's Ridiculous Accent). On the other hand The Hurt Locker is pretty tense and moving, but after watching it you'll probably just want to hug something for a few hours. So in conclusion war movies say a lot about the human condition, Oscars all around, etc etc.

Inglourious Basterds RATING: 61%
The Hurt Locker RATING: 85%

Brno

"Well now, gentlemen," said Bilibin, "Bolkonsky is my guest in this house and in Brünn itself. I want to entertain him as far as I can, with all the pleasures of life here. If we were in Vienna it would be easy, but here, in this wretched Moravian hole, it is more difficult, and I beg you all to help me. Brünn's attractions must be shown him. You can undertake the theatre, I society, and you, Hippolyte, of course the women."

RATING: Cabbage%

(Image from czech-transport.com.)

My Black Boyfriend

I really want to tell you about my boyfriend! And not just because he's black (which he is). Actually, he never told me he was black, but the people he works for have been telling him he's black for years. His boss at Kroger wanted to put him on the Management Track because he was such a smart young black man. At his new job he's black too, which is kind of a relief because I'd gotten used to his being black and if I found out he wasn't, I would have to reassess the whole relationship. Having a black boyfriend has taught me so much about other peoples' cultures' histories. I think I understand my boyfriend's blackness very well because I am a woman, and once upon a time in history, neither one of us would have been able to vote. Well, he would have been allowed to vote like 55 years before me, so I'd say females are just a little bit more oppressed (not that it's a contest or anything!). And now the president is black, and the almost-president was a woman, so look at how far we've come, Abraham Lincoln.

Rating: blackandwhitecookie%

A Month of Boring Things - Day Nineteen: Orientation

I won't comment on the assholishness of bureaucracy or how much I hate Powerpoint or even what a farce the American health/life insurance realm proves to be when you actually pay attention (so I can pay .65 on every $100 to make sure my expenses are covered in the case of quote-unquote accidental death and/or dismemberment, and this policy will allow for my dismembered parts to be reattached prior to a funeral but only if I use a mortuary who accepts my HMO?). The truth is this: the worst aspect of academic orientations are the academics in the audience. Anytime you have more than three professors in the same room, a vicious game of penis-swords breaks out, and these awful little worms talk just to hear themselves talk. Look, guy: I don't care what she said about the ergonomically correct way to talk on the phone. Sure, she's full of shit and doesn't have a master's in a field nobody cares about, like you, but Jesus: I gotta smoke, and I want to get home and sit nude on my sofa and watch something ridiculously stupid on TV. I filled out my 44th I-9 form. Can I leave?


Rating: 1%
Slightly better thanThe Turner Diaries.

Fat Chicks

The stereotype that fat chicks are lazier than skinny chicks is not necessarily true, but they do tend to eat more than their share of the corn. On the other hand, they're robust in times of material scarcity, and they're awfully cute.

RATING: A whopping 80%

(Image from commons.wikimedia.org.)

A Month of Boring Things - Day Eighteen: The Turner Diaries

If you have to write a novel about the need for Aryans to destroy all other races and overthrow the federal government, can you at least give it a name that doesn't sound like a terrible WB sitcom?







Rating: 0%

Read it here, folks!

The Matrix Trilogy

Breathe easy, gothtards. The Wachowski brothers say Baudrillard says Keanu Reeves will die for your sins.

RATING: The Matrix 68%
Matrix Reloaded 70%
Matrix Revolutions 60%

(Image from www.visualjokes.com.)

Comic Three-In-One

Amazing Spider-man: Revelations

Aunt May finds out about Peter Parker's secret identity, and also terrorists fly airplanes into the World Trade Center killing thousands.

RATING: 72%




New X-Men Vol. 2: Imperial

Professor X's twin sister is born as a cloud of psychic ability and then grows up to be a mean old lady who takes over a space empire. I'll take six of whatever Grant Morrison's having.

RATING: 79%


X-Force Vol. 2: The Final Chapter

Obviously not as surprising as the first volume, this one is still pretty good and funny as it follows the most conceited team in comicdom, and that includes a team that calls itself "The Fantastic Four."

RATING: 69%

The MS Paint Drawing I Did For MyReview Of "Space Games"

I've done a lot of drawings for R3 in the past year, but probably the "Space Games" review drawing was the best. If you'll look closely, you'll realize that the image is an astronomically correct depiction of the Arcturus mini-cluster. Usually this sort of painstaking attention to detail is overlooked in my drawings, so I felt that I'd draw everybody's attention to it, just this once. Sure, my genius is frequently ignored and my work callously skimmed over on this site, but adding this little amount of effort to everything I do at R3 is just the kind of guy I am.

RATING: 99%

Space Games

Space games are probably the best games. There's Metroid, R-Type, Commander Keen, X-Wing, Asteroids, Star Trek: Voyager - The Arcade Game, Megaman 5 (Star Man's level), Starfox. Space games have a lot in common with each other, but one thing they also have in common is they take place in space or on a planet somewhere in space that isn't Earth. I like in a space game when you meet up with a wisecracking robot or gruff alien type who turns out to be your friend, and also having lasers. The other kind of a game besides a space game is a planet Earth game, and those are pretty good too I must admit.

RATING: 85%

Potato Salad

Potato salad is the most unpretentious food there is. The chunks of egg. The contrast of paprika with mayonnaise. Like a country girl's breast milk, it's hideously nourishing. Love it or hate it, you really can't adopt a reflexively ironic "cool" pose while eating it:

AUSTINITE 1: This potato salad is sooo good [rolls eyes].

AUSTINITE 2: [smirking] I'm having a terrible time at this picnic.

See? It's impossible.

RATING: With mayo 78%
With ass-whip 2%

(Image from Extraordinary Moms Network.)

The Onion: Our Dumb World

The Onion's "Our Dumb World" is an online map of the world on which users can scroll around and read satirical factoids located at various points on the map. When a country is "featured" for the week (or month, or whatever) the blurbs proliferate within its borders. The problem with "Our Dumb World" is similar to the problems with The Simpsons' "Africa" episode or Hostel's handling of its Slovakian setting: it tries to pass off the writers' utter ignorance of the subject matter as a satirical critique of America's ignorance of the rest of the world. This week's featured country is Romania, and the various jokes include a spooky castle, a spooky path, a picture of Nicolae Ceauşescu dressed as Count Chocula on a box of cereal, a used coffin dealership (bored with the vampire schtick yet?), a gymnast in a Bride of Frankenstein fright wig, and some 11 other jokes about mad scientists, werewolves, vampire bats and reanimated corpses. What is conspicuously absent is evidence of any research whatsoever concerning Romania past or present, despite an abundance of such information on websites an 8-year-old could use. The Ceauşescus, for example, were killed in their dotage by assault rifles on Christmas Day. Or a one-step Google search for "Romanian jokes" yields this communist-era gem:

Q: What's big, black, noisy, makes a lot of smoke and cuts carrots in five?
A: The Romanian machine for cutting carrots in four.

Good satire is supposed to critique ignorance and injustice, not celebrate them. The worst of it is, The Onion's writers (like too many other North Americans) aren't even "dumb"-- they're just too lazy and complacent to care.

RATING: 5% (at least they found it on the map.)

(Image from www.swingingpuss.com.)

People Who Refer To "Star Wars" as "Episode IV" or "A New Hope"

You think I'd willingly see a movie called "A New Hope?" It sounds like it should star Kirk Cameron and detail how all the ways I enjoy life are leading me to Hell. I'm not sure when the shift from Star Wars to Episode IV happened exactly, but I'm 99% sure that it wasn't until George Lucas started adding digital fart jokes into his movies as he always intended back in 1997, so we can probably call a moratorium on that garbaggio now, s'il vous plait.

RATING: 31%

Sperms

Sperms are what we call male reproductive cells. They're shaped like tadpoles so they can whip their way over, around or through any obstacle to make you feel nauseous for at least three months. If you're lucky, sperms come from breaking a futon in your in-laws' basement while you half-watch Clint Eastwood threaten minority youngsters with guns. Sperms can make your tummy grow and grow, and help you retain water for 9 months until you feel the most excruciating pain and then meet the coolest person you feel like you've met already. In terms of accomplishing fertilization, some people's sperms are pretty damn good for not even trying.

RATING: 92%--I've only been pregnant twice in 6 years.

(Image from www.adrants.com.)

Marlboro Snus

Snus is a little teabag-shaped, tobacco-filled object that goes between your upper lip and gums in order to give you oral cancer along with the lung cancer you're already going to get because you can't stop smoking cigarettes. It's a must-have for men who want to not be able to breathe through a toothless mouth in 10-50 years. Unlike Swedish snus, which exudes the manly flavours of smoked fish and pain, Marlboro snus is cloyingly sweet, offering testimony to the perpetual adolescence of American taste.

RATING: An unsurprisingly addictive 20%

(Image from http://klotband.files.wordpress.com.)

IUD

An IUD, or intra-uterine device, is a little T-shaped object that goes in your hoo-hoo in order to make things more complicated when you get pregnant anyway. It's a must-have for women who want to have a baby but also enjoy uterine irritation and extra trips to the hospital.

RATING: Cute but useless%


(Image from http://www.mydochub.com.)

Star Trek: Voyager - Season 1 Disc 3

"Emanations" - Harry Kim gets transported to a world that sends their dead to a rock in space thinking it's heaven or some garbage.

RATING: 40%

"Prime Factors" - Voyager goes to a pleasure world and EVERYBODY TURNS DOWN GETTING LAID. I hate this show.

RATING: 13%

"State Of Flux" - Turns out this minor character was a Cardassian spy, wowzers.

RATING: 3%

"Heroes And Demons" - The ship breaks I guess and in order to save it they have to go fight Grendel in holodeck Beowulf.

RATING: 21%

Kids These Days

In my day we didn't need $350 cell phones to not pay attention in class, we just took drugs. And why the fuck are young women out in pyjamas at 3:00 in the afternoon? If you had time to put on makeup, you had time to put on pants.

RATING: Hell in a hand basket%

(Image from bloguemacabre.blogspot.com.)

Scrubs

Well you had better like it, since it's on every channel all the time.

RATING: 57%

Spider-man: Web Of Shadows

This game features the whiniest Spider-man in history, and since we're already talking about Spider-man that's a serious achievement. The plot is some Venom symbiotes take over the city and you've gotta stop them or join them, your call. It's a lot of fun to websling around and beat up people or cars, but it's only about a 10 hour game start to finish. Also, no Chrysler Building, so points off for execution.

RATING: 62%

American Gangster

American Gangster by Ridley Scott is a toneless, directionless 3 hour mess. It follows a gangster from America named Frank Lucas who becomes rich by controlling heroin in NYC, and also this one cop named Russel Crowe who is trying to stop him. I mean, all of the actors are fine, but I never cared about anybody, and the movie didn't even know if it wanted to be a shitty Serpico, a shitty Godfather, a shitty Clockers, or a shitty Heat. Also at the end SPOILERS it becomes like a shitty Odd Couple when Frank Lucas and Detective Russel Crowe become best friends and share insightful looks about how much rap music sucks or something 15 years later.

RATING: 41%

More To Love (TV Series)

In this "Bachelorette for Big Girls" series, FOX has managed to strike the perfect balance between sweetly pandering to large women and leaving room for thin women to make fun of the fatties. So you've got the whole "finding my one true love on TV" concept, exploitation and mocking of overweight people, AND normalization and promotion of obesity all rolled into one. So wrong it's right? Nope, it's just wrong.

Rating: FLABbergasted%

Mamma Mia!

As part of the ongoing effort to reconcile our tastes in what to watch on television (I like good things and she likes crap), my sister and I somehow ended up trying to watch Mamma Mia! Unfortunately, it was so fucking boring and the music so fucking terrible that we only made it about 15 mins in. Boo.

Rating (the 15 mins I could stand to watch): 10%
Rating (the rest of the movie): illjustassumethatsuckstoo%

Skinny Bitch

Smug, superficial, foul-mouthed, and ill-informed. A bottle of diet pills is cheaper and won't give you a lecture full of cuss words about how fish have feelings. Fuck.

RATING: *gag*%

(Image from womaneatscity.files.wordpress.com.)

The Founding Fathers (Vision; Application)

On the news this morning I saw a woman shouting at Arlen Specter and asking him why he wasn't upholding the vision of the founding fathers. The debate centered on healthcare, and this particular fellow citizen was worried about our nation becoming quote-unquote Communist Russia. Hey, babe: as brilliant as the founding fathers were, it's important to keep in mind that they wiped their asses with corn husks.

PS - Remember how George Washington's non-communist physician treated his case of pneumonia?


Rating (woman): 3%
Rating (founding fathers): kindalikethebible%
Rating (Arlen Specter): 51% (plurality)

Epiphone Embassy Standard V

THE GOOD: The 10 lb, 8 oz solid swamp ash body could kill a hobo with one whack. It also looks futuristic yet retro, like an SR-71 Blackbird. The bolt-on maple neck is a bit beefy for my chubby little fingers but the intonation is nearly perfect. Best of all, at $399 it's cheaper than an 8-ball and a Craig's List whore, and probably has a tighter bottom end.

THE BAD: The Embassy's passive humbucking pickups are more "Polack on horseback" than "Panzer division," and are easily overpowered by a distorted electric guitar. Fussy owners may want to invest in some EMG's or at least a good equalizer. The low B is fairly clear for a 34-inch neck, but the low B is fairly clear for a 34-inch neck.

THE BOTTOM LINE: This beast won the 2006 Bass Player Magazine Editor's Choice Award and it's not hard to see why. I normally hate Gibson basses, especially Epiphones, but at the end of the night, the price is right.

RATING: 79% (that's a B+ in a real school.)

(Image from long-mcquade.com.)

Being Out Of Town

When you're out of town, you're away from all your stuff and responsibilities, but, news flash, you could be in another town or city, so you're not really out of all towns everywhere. Sometimes being out of town is fun because you can see people you know or new scenery like trees etc, but I guess being out of town can also be bad like if you're kidnapped or if Elliot Ness wants you to stand trial for robbing a bank in a different state. Most people spend most of their time in town wishing they were out of town, and most of their time out of town wishing they were in town, but you just can't please humans so don't bother trying.

RATING: 65%

The Twenty-third Amendment

Everybody who lives in Washington, DC is always like "Waa waa, I pay taxes but I don't get any particular person to represent my anger about those taxes to a governing body of some sort." Well, I guess in 1960 they either felt sorry for those people or wanted to shut them up for like two seconds because this amendment at least gives people in the District of Columbia the right to select electors for presidential elections. The one state to be a big dick and try to reject this amendment? You guessed it.

RATING: 61%

Man's Hospital Gown

You can call it a "johnny shirt" if you want to, Johnny, but you're still gonna die in a dress.

RATING: 2%





(Image from http://2.bp.blogspot.com.)