PC Thick Cut Ballpark Hot Dog Flavour Rippled Potato Chips: A Folk Shanty

♫ Oh, Maritime Canada's culture's the best,
We get married in church and make love by the sea,
But if you're a Catholic, your priest might molest
A rosy cheeked youngster or three.

Oh, in Nova Scotia we never get stressed,
We self-medicate liberally with THC.
We suck on cheap smokes like a babe at the breast,
And we'll drink all the booze if it's free.

Oh, Maritime Canada's people are blessed
With a stalwart no-name-brand that we call PC
Whose hot dog potato chips taste like "All Dressed"
With a little bit more MSG.♪

RATING: 60%

(Image from www.presidentschoice.ca.)

Reign In Blood by Slayer

The other day Quammy posted this video on the Facebook, and it reminded me that I haven't heard this album since high school. It's pretty good I guess, although basically everything about Slayer is what people make fun of about 80s metal bands-- obsession with Satanism, fast wailing licks, ridiculous hair, and vague neo-Nazism. Wait, that last one isn't a stereotype of 80s metal bands. Oh, right, that's why I could never really get into the band in the first place. Well, the music is still alright.

RATING: 61%

Iron Man 2

Part of what made 2008's Iron Man so enjoyable was the fact that Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark was generally happy to be a super hero. So many comic book movies weigh down their protagonists with the responsibility of their powers. In Iron Man 2, Tony Stark is slowly being poisoned by his own power supply while being attacked from all sides by a variety of enemies, but he still has time to race fast cars and chase hot women. No sad monologues, no emo hair cuts, and no turning his back on his super hero status. While the movie does come dangerously close to overloading itself with too many characters and enemies, it manages to maintain the refreshing spirit of its predecessor.

Rating: 80%

(Image from impawards.com)

God Of War III

A sprawling, gorgeous feat in the arena of the action platform game, this story sets you, a Spartan warrior widowed by the Gods, in the middle of an epic battle between the Greek Titans and the rest of the Pantheon. If you traveled back in time and showed somebody in the 80s that this is what computers would be able to do in 30 years, they would probably get on their knees and cry. Also, you can feel on some chick's titties while two other girls caress each other and watch AOOOOGA!

RATING: 71%

Skruf Cranberry Snus

Like a craisin dipped in salt. This is why Swedish people never smile with their eyes.

RATING: 20%


(Image from www.snustopia.com.)

Ted Leo's Cover of "Everybody Wants To Rule The World"

The A.V. Club, the semi-serious pop culture offshoot of the Onion, started their Undercover project a few months ago. Inviting bands into their office to play cover songs from a predetermined list of tracks. The first entry in the project, my favorite so far, was Ted Leo And The Pharmacists doing a cover of the Tears For Fears song "Everybody Wants To Rule The World." As corny as it sounds, Ted Leo's cover more or less redeemed the song in my mind. I recommend checking it out along with most of the other tracks from the Undercover project. There's even a Depeche Mode cover, if you're into that sort of thing.

Rating: 85%

(Image from adage.com)

The Karate Kid Remake

It's pointless these days to get upset about remakes of films from my childhood. As much as I enjoyed the original Karate Kid, it was only a matter of time before it got updated for today's youth market. But here's what I don't get: the movie is set in China and the kid learns kung fu from Jackie Chan. So, why isn't it called Kung Fu Kid? I'll tell you why. Apparently, in the remake, the Chinese antagonist to Will Smith Jr. calls him "the karate kid" mockingly because of his poor martial arts skills. And with that said, I've probably already devoted more time and consideration to this than anyone involved in the marketing campaign for the Karate Kid.

Rating: Sweep the leg Johnny%

(Image from wikipedia)

Matinee

Matinee is a comedic coming of age story set against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the glory days of the B movie. John Goodman plays Lawrence Woolsey, a stand-in for classic B movie mastermind William Castle, who shows up in town with his new monster movie, Mant, and a boatload of gimmicks. Matinee blends together a lot of elements from 1950's and 1960's American culture (cold war paranoia, juvenile deliquency, teen culture, etc.) which muddies up the time frame a bit, but doesn't distract from the movie as a whole. Matinee is Joe Dante's love letter to the bygone era of the B movie.

Rating: 90%

(Image from movieposter.com)

Midnight Movie

While I recognize that almost every movie requires some amount of suspension of disbelief in order to be enjoyed, Midnight Movie is the kind of movie that requires a frontal lobotomy. Even by horror movie standards, this movie is painfully stupid. It's the kind of shitty movie where you watch the cast watch a shitty movie. Sadly, it doesn't even get better when everyone starts getting killed off. Worst episode of Goosebumps ever.

Rating: 1%

(Image from celuloidemutante.com.ar)

Dallas

Whelp, that about does it for Dallas. Everyone who gets a chance should check out the Seaquarium, The Granada Theater and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Don't go to UTD, which is an an intellectual and social ghost town despite having some of the best faculty money can buy. Overall, I'd say Dallas is a nice place to visit but an uninspiring place to live--not bad, just not for me.

RATING: 70%

(Image from api.ning.com.)

Hang Grenade

Hang grenade can badly make the body to many piece, or cause to hurt the ear.

You say: “What is your name sir?”

He say: “You voice loudly please sir! For my ear’s drum rapture from hang grenade!”

TO RATE: 2%

(Image from www.clker.com)

Mediocre Movie Double Feature

Blood and Bone

I'm not sure if this makes sense, but Blood and Bone is essentially Yojimbo meets The Littlest Hobo. This guy Bone gets out of prison and rises the ranks of the illegal street fighting game so he can right some wrongs and get revenge on behalf of his dead prison buddy. The fight scenes are actually decent and not comprised from hundreds of one second shots. And Bone's sidekick, Pinball, is played by the guy who was Rufio in Hook.

Rating: 62%


Fighting

Southern tough guy with a heart of gold moves to the big, bad city. He gets caught up in the illegal street fighting game. His "manager" wants him to throw the big fight, will he or won't he? (He doesn't.) This movie tries to be very serious and dramatic, but it is very, very dumb. A lot of time is wasted on pointless back story and secret character connections. Also, I could never tell if Terrence Howard's character was supposed to be gay or retarded.

Rating: 45%

(Images from traileraddict.com and blogs.bet.com)

Waitress at The Fox and Hound

Yes, you have taut, coffee-coloured skin, the thick, straight, black hair of an Egyptian princess and you look great in a postage stamp-sized slutty Hallowe'en costume. But in 20 years you'll be covered in stretch marks and hairy moles like the rest of us, and no one will like you because you're mean to everybody. Perhaps I'm too judgmental and the real reason you're so rude is because you stayed up all last night reading Sense and Sensibility while caring for your ailing mother, but that still wouldn't explain your raging sense of entitlement.

RATING: 17%, because people who deal with drunks earn their tips.

(Image from rlv.zcache.com.)

Lazy Magnolia Southern Pecan

A Beer For Every State #5 - Mississippi

In honor of Lazy Magnolia, here's a lazy review:

The big selling point is that this beer is made with, and tastes like pecans.

This beer doesn't really taste like pecans.

Oil spill joke.

More fail from Mississippi!

RATING: 62% (it is beer!)

Cinco De Mayo

Cinco De Mayo is __________ _____ _ __________ Mexico _____ ____ __ __ ________ battle ____ __ France _____ then ___ _____. ___ __ _ ______ Americans ___ _ ____ __ ___ always ___ _ _____ __ ___ ____ supremacy___ __ __ ______ __ identity ___ _ _____ __. ___ __ ________ _ ___? __ _____ __ _____ _____ ___ _____ _ __ __ _______ ____. ___ ___ ____ __ ___ ____ ______ __ __ ______ _______ __ ___ __________ _ ____ ________. ___ _ __ ____ _________ ___ ___________ ___ __ ____ ____.

RATING __%

The Times Square Bomb

I'm glad nobody got hurt and everything, but let's stop playing up how bad "this could have been." It was some children's alarm clocks loosely connected to fireworks, gasoline, and nonflammable fertilizer. It was as if Faisal Shahzad heard the television describe a bomb once a long time ago and tried to wing it from memory. The guy was less terrorist mastermind and more Shreeky from the Care Bears cartoon. And, yeah, news channels, it "could have been much worse" if it was a working bomb, or if the fertilizer was the splodin' kind, but it also could have been much worse if it had a miniature black hole generator or zombie plague canister in it, too.

RATING: 100% (I guess it was the best kind of bomb, after all)

(PS - Don't do a Google image search for "Shreeky from Care Bears" with SafeSearch off, FYI.)

Yard Sales

I love yard sales. This past weekend was the annual "100 Mile Yard Sale," a semi-organized local event that attempts to encourage and co-ordinate yard sales in a number of neighboring communities. While I didn't find anything especially valuable or noteworthy (like you might see on Antiques Roadshow), I did pick up some movies, some vintage Atari schwag, and some cheap books (you can always find dirt cheap books at yard sales). But it's not just about what you come home with, it's also about the thrill of the hunt. Driving down the road, eyes peeled for neon bristle board with hastily scrawled lettering, rooting through cardboard boxes, half-listening to the bullshit stories that the sellers tell you about their goods/themselves, silently judging the crazy people/stuff (maybe that's just me). Occasionally I worry that I'll end up on a show like Hoarders some day, but if spending 75¢ on a Graham Greene novel is wrong, then I don't want to be right.

Rating: Would you take 90% for that?

(Image from billsbuddies.wordpress.com)

The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails

When I first bought this album, I hated it so much because it wasn't a bunch of songs identical to "The Perfect Drug." At the same time, nyc ghosts + flowers was my favorite Sonic Youth album. I don't know what was exactly wrong with me when I was a sophomore in college, but man was I dumb. The way Reznor weaves certain melodies and lyrics through both discs of the album makes it seem as though it is more like a symphony than a rock album, and this is now my favorite Nine Inch Nails record. Also, according to Wikipedia, Human Clay by Creed followed this as the number one album, so I guess I wasn't the only person whose head wasn't right about music in 1999.

RATING: 92%

Death At A Funeral

Everybody was so furious when this movie was coming out because it is a remake of some British movie from three years ago. Well, sorry to say, I had no interest at all in seeing the British movie, but this one looked ok and was also the only movie starting at the movie theater when we just drove there to see what was playing. It was pretty hilarious, I think. It's all about how this family's father dies, ha ha, get it? In conclusion America wins again.

RATING: 70%