Cutting Class

Brad Pitt's first big movie gig was in Cutting Class, an uninspired slasher film from 1989. I'm willing to bet that he wishes nobody remembered this movie and that they would stop putting his face so prominently on the DVD cover. That's not to say he does an especially bad job in the flick, but its hard to shine when you're in a turd like Cutting Class. The movie is about a troubled teen named Brian (not Brad Pitt) who's just been released from a mental hospital. Brian falls in love with Paula (also not Brad Pitt), but she's got a douchey boyfriend named Dwight (aka Brad Pitt). Now, if I hadn't already said "mental hospital" in the plot synopsis, you'd probably have a hard time believing that I was talking about a horror movie. But rest assured fright fans, this movie contains a handful of kills, a pervy Roddy McDowall, and some bizarre comic relief scenes that involve Martin Mull getting shot with arrows.

Rating: Brian Was The Killer% (There, now you don't have to watch it.)

(Image from mispeliculas2.blogspot.com)

12 Days of Christmas Specials - #7: Frosty the Snowman

I know a lot of children's entertainment is supposed to be kinda dumb, but Frosty the Snowman is seriously retarded. It's a shame too, Frosty was made by Rankin/Bass, the same folks who made the Rudolph special. Only this time around, the special was made with traditional cel animation instead of stop motion animation. It's not even particularly good cel animation either. The voice dubbing is terrible as well, I've seen Godzilla movies with better dubbing. And why the hell does Frosty say "Happy Birthday!" whenever someone puts the magic hat on his head?

Rating: 6 Geese-a-Laying%

(Image from wolfpacktrees.com)

Pennies

If you're like me, you save all your pennies in a big ol' jar. Partly because you hate carrying them around in your pocket and partly because, even though they suck, they're still technically money. Cashing them in is lame too because you gotta roll them up first. Then you have to take those rolls to the bank because if you try to pawn them off at a store the clerk will look at you like you're the world's biggest asshole. Last weekend I rolled pennies for like two or three hours, and what did it get me? Twenty bucks and hands that stank like copper.

Rating: 0.01%

(Image from ephemerist.wordpress.com)

Bonus Question: I find a lot of American pennies in my spare change, do y'all Americans get Canadian pennies in your spare change?

Legion

When a movie has a trailer like this, I don't think it's unreasonable for me to expect the actual movie to have a substantial amount of action. Instead, Legion offers what feels like hours and hours of boring characters doing basically nothing. I knew I was in trouble when I texted a friend to tell him about one of the previews (this baffling remake of the fantastic 2007 British comedy of the same name) and he replied "oh yeah I saw that when I sent to see that piece of shit Legion." Piece of shit, indeed. I still can't figure out what the hell Dennis Quaid and Paul Bettany were doing in this movie.

Oh did you want a few words about the plot? God "loses faith" in humans and decides to destroy them. Instead of sending an army of his badass fightin angels (who are mysteriously controlled by shock collars rather than faith) to do the job (or just snapping his heavenly fingers because he is after all GOD) God decides to possess humans to make them twitchy and confusing. For unknown reasons some pregnant lady's baby is the only hope. Paul Bettnay is a fallen angel who decides to protect her. Very little fighting ensues, many characters die offscreen. Laurie's friend falls asleep for a while in the middle. The people yelling/laughing at the screen proves to be the best part of the movie.

Rating: Seriously, 0%

Candy Corn

A Month Of Halloweenie Reviews #23

I'd rather eat candy versions of any other vegetable, including Candy Cabbage. Gross.

RATING: 11%

The Empire Strikes Back on Spike TV

The Empire Strikes Back is a good movie, possibly the best entry in the original Star Wars trilogy. But if you ever find yourself flipping through the channels and you see that The Empire Strikes Back is playing on Spike TV, just keep flipping past it. Even if you're a huge Star Wars geek, it's not worth watching. Normally Empire is only a little over two hours long, but once Spike breaks it up with commercials for UFC and Axe Body Spray, it runs over three hours. That means, in order to see a good movie, you have to sit through at least an hour of commercials. Horrible, horrible, mind numbingly awful commercials.

Rating: Falling asleep with the TV on%

(Image from creativebrief.thoughtdistrict.com)

Observe And Report

Observation - done.

Report - retarded.

RATING: 12%

Insomnia

Insomnia is when you can't sleep even thought it is time for sleep and you desperately want to be sleeping (more or less, look it up on wikipedia if you want a "better" definition). And apparently, it is one of the many side effects of law school attendance. This probably has something to do with the stress, increased coffee/alcohol intake, long nights spent studying/writing etc., etc. Regardless of the cause, insomnia completely sucks, but I do occasionally get some extra work done when I can't sleep (which is good, because I have plenty to do). And maybe I'll even get to class on time today since I have been awake since 5:45am (but probably not).

Rating: 5%

(Photo courtesy of my macbook.)

Trojan Ice Mint Condoms

There's nothing sexier than having the woman you love violently shove you aside as she runs to the bathroom to frantically douse her burning nether regions with water and soap.

Also, I guess Trojan makes mint condoms or something. Who knew?

RATING: A cool 2%

(Image from aleegold.com. The sample I ended up with was in a variety pack purchased [and used] several years ago in the Czech Republic, but I can't imagine they've got much better since then.)

Sour Skittles

Sometimes when I'm spending a beautiful Spring Saturday writing a big ole paper about an esoteric court ruling on an esoteric part of the UCC* I decide that it's a good idea to eat some crap from a vending machine. This is almost always a mistake, and it's not until I'm halfway through a bag of Sour Skittles and find myself in a cold sweat with a sore stomach and that I realize exactly how bad an idea it was. I think I burned my tongue. Snacking fail. (Sadly I still ate the rest of the bag.)

Rating: 12%

*Note: My passion for the UCC is unmatched by many things. It's like, third on my list after rock music and cheeseburgers. This is more or less true. One of these days I will review it.

My flight to Houston - Layover and Second Leg

After the long first flight, the layover at DFW and second leg of my flight (DFW to Hobby) are a bit of a blur. I bought a big bottle of water, was disappointed but not surprised that the newsstand did not carry Yoga Journal, and had a hard time finding food at the airport that was not fried. And my flight was delayed by about 45 min because they were waiting on the flight crew to arrive (were they on another delayed flight or hungover and late for work? We'll never know!), but I was upgraded to an Exit row so that makes up for the delay, I suppose. But then the pitiful lady next to me on the plane did not have anything to read or an ipod (no Vedder for her), and kept looking at me like I was supposed to entertain her (I am not a clown, lady), so points off for that. But the flight was short so whatever. Oh, and I saw that spider on the wall in the airport.

Rating: 67%

My flight to Houston - First Leg

The first leg of my flight to Houston (LGA to DWF) was pretty okay. My ipod played lots of Bon Iver, Eddie Vedder, and Radiohead (the Holy Trinity, Vedder is Jesus), and I read this month's issue of O Magazine (a guilty pleasure). The woman next to me did not bother me and there were no crying babies (successful flight musts). And I flew over some mountains (picture at left) or something. But it was a really long flight, points off for that. Also points off for American Airlines not being JetBlue (where are my damn blue potato chips, AA?!).

Rating: 67%

Orville Redenbacher's Natural Buttery Garlic flavor popcorn

For some reason when I bought this I thought it was the Paul Newman brand, and I felt good about that because they give all of their profits to charity or something. But it turns out this popcorn is actually from Orville Redenbacher, a ConAgra brand. You might know ConAgra from their raping the earth, discriminating against cripples and black people, doing some pretty awful things to turkeys, totally fucking ruining peanut butter, and just being generally shitty. The problem is that this popcorn tastes fucking amazing. It is not garlic-y as the flavor description would lead you to believe, but is instead the perfect amount (that is to say, heavy but not too crazy) buttery and salty. And it comes in these tiny little bags that are great because they don't lead to me eating a huge bag of popcorn all by myself, but are also not enough if I want to do some serious popcorn eating (which is why I ate two bags while watching The Office and 30 Rock on Thursday). In conclusion, this tastes like popcorn perfection and it is a real shame that my liberal guilt will never allow me to buy it again.

Taste rating: 80%
Company rating: 0%
Overall rating: Confusedandguilty%
Laurie's ability to take the fun out of everything rating: 40%

Star Trek: Nemesis

Star Trek Nemesis is not only the worst Star Trek movie ever made, it is one of the worst products ever created by man in any medium. The plot is some ridiculous bullshit, I don't know, some clone of Captain Picard takes over the Romulans and then is going to destroy Earth but guess what, the Enterprise stops them. The dialogue is awful, and sounds like the juvenile fanfic. "Oh, remember when they mentioned Romulan Ale in the old Star Trek? Let's mention it 90 additional times here!" Also, at Riker and Troi's wedding, they have this awful band that sounds like public domain grocery store music. This is the kind of music the future holds? Jesus, somebody provoke China into starting World War III already and get it over with. And why does Worf, a space alien from 300 years in the future, know who Irving Berlin is? I barely know who Irving Berlin is and I was born in the same century and on the same planet as he was. Look, I could really complain about this movie for 20 more pages, but the lesson is it's awful and I'm glad they'll never make another TNG movie because they definitely don't deserve one after this piece of shit.

RATING: 2%

Magician: Apprentice

This is (so far) the worst book I've read this year and the worst high fantasy novel I've ever read. It's not like this book is deliberately offensive, or the like, but it's just not very good. There's no craft or style to the prose, the plot is dull, and the end of the book neither pays any attention to the main character, nor is it...uh...interesting. It's abjectly boring. I only finished it in the hopes that it would get better, and it didn't.

RATING: 16% (which means that it is better than Lake Erie, and worse than Lake Huron)

Real Pirates

Whereas fictional pirates are fun for kids and occasionally kind of sexy despite stupid facial hair and general dirtiness, real pirates are actual lame criminals who hold boats and people hostage and drive up the cost of shipping things. They are also a bit baffling, making the whole world question, why doesn't someone drive a lot of boats/submarines/stealth bombers over there to the Indian Ocean and blow their asses up? (Well, according to this handy Q&A they are hard to find or something.) In sum, if your citizens are in such dire straights that they start resorting to PIRACY you may need to think about cleaning up your damn country.

Rating: 5%
(Crappy, but still gets a bit of credit for making the newspeople talk about something other than Britany Spears.)

Chapstick

I don't understand chapstick. Everybody's always like "Oh man, I forgot my chapstick," or "Pass the chapstick, dude," or "Here try some chapstick," but I have tried them and basically it's like a cherry booger stick. What's it supposed to do, be stupid? Because if so, it's getting it right. I guess if you want a little flavor blast or something it's an ok thing, but as far as protecting your lips from wasps or spiders it gets an F-.

RATING: 23%

Olives

Olives are a kind of fruit I guess but you would never know because they are disgusting whereas most fruit are delicious, except kiwi, pineapple, and durian. They basically taste like gross soggy bunches of salt and oil, which is their molecular construction if I do remember my science and I think that I do. The only acceptable place to ever eat an olive is by accident on pizza because somebody else ordered it and you're totally hungry and forgot to pick all of them off. If you eat them for snacks or on a sandwich beware because you are headed for puke city, population you and me if I also ate an olive.

RATING: 7%

Needing A Haircut

Needing a haircut is a kind of thing everybody does once in a while even though it sucks. We basically have no choice in the matter unless we're bald, and that's not a choice, or if it is a choice that means that you had to cut your hair Colombo. Anyway, one main thing that sucks about needing a haircut is that you have to drive to some hair salon and then they charge you a lot and make you feel like you need to say a lot of useless chit chat. In sum, needing a haircut sucks.

RATING: 21%

Pomegranate Tootise Pop

Sometime long ago Americans began to refine their palate and the lame "foodie" explosion began. Now, there are a ton of people with blogs (lame) writing about food (losers) and "discovering" things folks (like you and me) knew long before. I mostly blame these assholes (possibly you) for the creation of things like the pomegranate tootsie pop. Really, pomegranate? Maybe I should place the blame on America's new reluctance to anything unhealthy (pomegranate is a superfruit, afterall). Despite my skepticism, the pomegranate tootsie pop is actually good. Sure it doesn't actually taste like pomegranate, but does watermelon candy ever taste like a watermelon? No, because if it did then I'd just eat the fruit instead. Plus, tootsie pops have that chocolate center or whatever.

RATING: 70%