ID Flavored Lubes

Some people view lube as a purely functional item, and to that I say, that's too bad, because there are lubes out there that are made to taste like all sorts of fruit and tropical Tiki beverages. I know we're in a recession and all, but can you really come up with an excuse not to have a sampler pack of ten different flavored lubes? Our parents could only dream of a time when lube came in flavors like Wild Cherry, Passion Fruit, Watermelon, and Bubblegum; it's a sin for these lubes to exist and for us to spit in the face of product evolution by not using them. Flavored lube is a great introductory item for your goodie drawer; if you produce a huge purple dong on the first date, your date might scream and run (unless you mention the dong specifically on your Cragislist ad, in which case, kudos to you for your foresight). If you take out some Pina Colada flavored lube, though, who's going to be offended? The picture to the right makes it look like a chapstick. And apparently ID has evolved itself to include a pump top -- genius. Just brilliant. It's time everyone learned what the girls and gays have known for a long, long, time.

(Photo courtesy of cheaplubes.com. Yes, that's a real site. Thank me later.)

RATING: 91% (deductions for the glycerin, which may or may not be a problem)

Cocaine

Cocaine is responsible for Escape from L.A., "Chair Model", The Tommyknockers and the Columbian necktie. When the cops came to my school they told us it's really expensive and only kind of fun. Plus, it's super addictive and if you get caught with it you go to jail for like forever so don't do drugs, kids.

RATING: How the fuck should I know%

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

Doom Patrol: The Painting That Ate Paris

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Grant Morrison is a great writer/psychopath. A good idea for comic book companies is to let Grant Morrison write comics, because he comes up with some great shit, but to never ever let him anywhere near mainstream continuity (Final Crisis). Doom Patrol is Morrison's playground, and probably the best place he could showcase his talents. In this volume, the Doom Patrol, a bizarre set of reject heroes, goes up against the Brotherhood Of Dada, who have obtained a painting capable of swallowing cities. Richard Case gets a great chance to demonstrate his artistic prowess as our heroes navigate the painting's various art movements, and later gets to make up all kinds of bizarre creatures when AntiGod is destroying the world. It's a lot of fun and probably the weirdest book to ever feature a love tryst between a giant superintelligent French gorilla and a disembodied brain.

RATING: 91%

Camaros

The reason we all love and admire Camaro drivers is because they serve as totems for our own pasts: we fondly remember the days when we too were as fast as the wind, six-cylinders roaring and rock-hard erections bulging from our acid wash jeans. (I’m assuming no female has ever owned or operated a Camaro.) Also, the Camaro transcends regional differences: simply change out the music genre blasting at a vulgar level from the tape deck. Lynyrd Skynyrd in the South and honky-tonk in Texas. Grunge out West and whatever bullshit music they listen to up North. Jazz, I’m guessing. Your cousin Anthony probably drove a Camaro before he went to prison.

Rating: 95%*

*There is a slight chance I accidentally reviewed Firebirds and not Camaros. If this is true then I say FUCK CAMAROS FIREBIRDS KICK ASS!

(Image from www.thirdgen.org. This review written by Viking Andrew.)

Smash by The Offspring

This was one of the first CDs I ever owned, but then I inexplicably sold it. Maybe it was because it was so damned popular, and I was under the impression at the time that if something is popular that means it is bad, which is totally not true (all the time). Well, I got it on Amazon the other day for like ninety cents, and it's a pretty good album as I'm sure you all remember. The lyrical content is laughable, but Jesus, what do you want, Leonard Cohen? Listening to this album after more than ten years makes me realize how much of my own shitty high school poetry/songwriting was inspired by lines like

"Superpowers flex their wings
hold the world on puppet strings
egos will feed
while citizens bleed"

Gross!

RATING: 68%

Senorita (EP) by Superdrag

Senorita is (chronologically) the second "important" Superdrag EP (behind The Fabulous 8-Track Sound of Superdrag). Five tracks, and, to be honest, the only one that matters at all is the first song and title track, which is a great song. The rest of the EP feels a little more like filler...generally speaking, all of the tracks run a little formulaic, and Nothing Good Is Real, well, was better as an album track, when it grows up a little. But while (the song) Senorita is total classic good John Davis songcraft the EP loses points on both quality and quantity.

On an aside, I really wish I could figure out how to add the tilde-n on this blog thing. Technology sux.

RATING: 48% (which is better than Arkansas, but worse than pizza)

Hamlet 2

Hamlet 2 is an attempt to spoof the "inspiriational teacher" genre of film. It stars Steve Coogan (who was pretty good in A Cock and Bull Story) as a drama teacher who writes a sequel to Hamlet in which Jesus and Hamlet Jr. use a time machine to prevent the tragic events of the original play. Said play is performed by a predominantly hispanic drama class against the wishes of the school administration and the community at large, who (SPOILER ALERT!) are surprised and delighted with the result. This film is far too stupid to actually satirize anything, and is only saved from being pure garbage (à la Meet the Spartans) by the play-within-a-movie's bizarre premise and the montage of its performance near the movie's end. With 20+ I.Q. points and the tiniest bit of research into what drama and education are actually like, Hamlet 2 probably could have amounted to more than a clichéd Hollywood depiction of more Hollywood clichés, executed with stupidity and bad taste. Oh well.

RATING: Hamlet 2: 40%
Catherine Keener: Hot%

(Image from www.impawards.com.)

Terror Twilight by Pavement

Pavement's fifth and final studio album is one of my favorite and least favorite Pavement albums because its' strengths and weaknesses are rooted in the same place. The downside is their tendency to skew more towards Malkmus' improved technical ability on the guitar. It's only heightened by the fact that it was the first time they had ever recorded on 24 tracks, and utilized OK Computer's producer Nigel Goodrich. So we end up with longer jams, better vocals, and more musical clarity across the board. It's far from the fuzz and distortion of Slanted and Enchanted, but at the same time it's the strength of the album because it, as Pitchfork (I know, I know, but they aren't always off base) said, "allows for the full fruition of some of the band's more adventuresome tendencies". I've got to agree with that statement, and so while there's certainly no comparison in terms of their sonic shift from Slanted and Enchanted to Terror Twilight, their signature slacker ethos is still evident. In the end, it's a band that hasn't swayed from the indie rock roots they started, but the sign of a band that's grown up. Grown so much it was inevitable they'd have to break up. And they did. Man was I right about that one.

RATING: 90%

Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV

I don't know what to say about this movie. It was singlehandedly one of the worst movies, one of the dumbest movies, and one of the most offensive movies I've ever seen, but it was trying to be all of those things. I mean, if you want to see a movie that opens with a gang called the Diaper Mafia shooting up a special ed classroom then getting ripped apart and crapped all over by a hero, or a movie with a superhero called Master Bater who ejaculates on everything, a movie with a talking monster penis, or a movie featuring a fight scene between two unborn fetuses in the womb, then I guess this is for you. I really haven't ever seen so much blood, gore, urine, feces, and semen in a movie before. Also Ron Jeremy plays the mayor.

RATING: 10%

The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling

I regarded the Harry Potter series as the Cabbage Patch Kids of the literary world for several years, heaping scorn upon J.K. Rowling and her fans, until I actually read the books and realized how excellent they are. Rowling combines no-nonsense prose, vivid characters and addictive plots with enough escapist fantasy to make it fun, and sociopolitical themes (e.g. the persecution of werewolves, the racist pseudoscience of the "pure bloods" and the quislingism of the Ministry of Magic) of sufficient relevance and sophistication to keep Harry Potter a few steps ahead of the derivative pulp that has been riding on its coattails, so to speak, for the past decade or so.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a collection of 5 fairy tales in the style of the Brothers Grimm with a magical twist, interspersed with M.H. Abrams-style literary commentary supposedly written by Albus Dumbledore in. I like fairy tales, and I liked these stories. However, I think the notes basically act as filler rather than adding much to the story, and in my opinion Beedle is short to the point of laziness--it could have been good instead of quaint if Rowling had put more work into it. I have no problem paying CDN $14.50 for a hardcover book from an author I like. I'd rather not pay the same for 1/4 of a book, thank you very much.

RATING: 65%

(Image from mg.dailymail.co.uk.)

Dead Rising

This is precisely the kind of game that you'd think I'd love. Basically, you are stuck in a mall filled with zombies, and you can use practically every single object in the game as a weapon, from toy swords to loaves of bread to battle axes. It's as close to a video game of Dawn of the Dead that we'll ever get. In fact, on the cover there is a disclaimer that says it has nothing to do with the movie Dawn of the Dead, which in my opinion is practically an invitation for a lawsuit (which they eventually got). Anyway, the point is, the game just became boring to me after a while, probably because of the strict time limit for every goddamn mission. The game is in real time, and it assigns you several missions at once, but I don't think there's any real way you can complete them all before you run out of time, and that's really frustrating. I want to do more than just the core missions, but I always miss out. It's pretty fun I guess, but when a zombies-in-a-mall game bores me, you have to think it has problems.

RATING: 63%

Pizza

Pizza is a circular bread sort of thing that is covered in tomato sauce, cheese, and various other toppings such as anchovies or pepperonis. It was invented in America by Americans for Americans, and it is accordingly delicious. You can have it for lunch or dinner piping hot, or you can eat it for breakfast cold. Even though we often can't agree who ought to be inhabiting what useless piece of desert rubble in Palestine/Israel, at least everybody everywhere can agree that America's #1 invention pizza is the best, even ahead of America's other inventions like airplanes, cars, computers, the Internet, photography, television, movies, controlled electricity, and doing it doggy style.

RATING: 95%

Having Almost 900 Reviews

Sure, a cursory search of our topics would have easily shown me that Chris already reviewed milk months ago, but where's the fun in that?

RATING: Mea Culpa%

Milk

Milk is a drink that comes out of the boobies of mammals. Most mammals stick to drinking milk their mothers produce when they are babies, but human beings decided one day in history to drink milk for always except not from humans from other animals. Milk is good as an ingredient, on cereal, or surrounding a cookie that one is about to eat. Milk is bad because most adults are actually lactose intolerant, but whatevs, you want me to drink Silk like a socialist hippie or something? Go back to France!

RATING: 72%

Milk

Milk is a movie about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in America. It is fine, but I think that everybody is giving it a lot more credit as a great movie because of its subject matter, what I like to refer to as Guess Who's Coming To Dinner syndrome. Sure, the GLBT movement needs as much support now as ever, but that doesn't automatically elevate this movie into the annals of film history. The acting is great from pretty much everybody involved, from Sean Pean to Emile Hirsch to Josh Brolin to James Franco, but it's chock full of cliches (Harvey Milk and his friends repeatedly joke about him NOT MAKING IT TO FIFTY foreshadowing get it), and it's often fakely sentimental. It's a good film about an important figure in American history, but I think it's a mistake to count it among the best films of 2008.

RATING: 67%

Sandman Vol. 3: Dream Country

Sandman, as I'm sure you all know, is one of the greatest comic series of all time, depicting the god of dreams, Dream, and his conflicts that usually involve an encyclopedic array of various mythological characters and elements. If you've never read it before, you really, really should. Unfortunately, you shouldn't start with this volume which is just four one off stories that only barely feature Dream and his posse at all. They're good, but they're just filler. The best story in this collection in my opinion is one involving a writer who has kidnapped one of the muses to use as his own personal sex slave/inspiration. The best story in this collection according to everybody else on Earth is one involving William Shakespeare being commissioned by Dream to write and perform A Midsummer Night's Dream. Anyway, start with Season of Mists but this is fine I guess.

RATING: 63%

Tombstone

This is a movie that tells the story of Wyatt Earp and some people shooting each other in the Wild West (tm). Although it is an entertaining western I suppose, it seems as though nobody involved in Tombstone had the same end product in mind. The movie is ostensibly "dark," and is clearly a post-Unforgiven western, but while there are a lot of moments of graphic violence and/or uses of the word "fuckin'," Kurt Russell is hamming it up as Earp as though it's a kiddie movie and Bruce Broughton's generic bombastic score sounds like it's straight out of The Rocketeer. There's a huge ensemble cast, but the best part about this movie is Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday. Man, he's a great actor. I mean, he's made some serious missteps in his acting career, but he takes a lot of great roles, too. I think he's really underrated, but then again if I made The Saint I wouldn't expect people to think too highly of me, either. The lesson here is that the 90s were the worst decade for film.

RATING: 53%

Natural American Spirit Cigarettes

Natural American Spirit cigarettes supposedly have no additives. I doubt this makes them any better for you in the long run, but it certainly helps with hangovers. I smoke when I drink (usually about 5-15 cigarettes), and I used to get horrible hangovers, but I after I switched to this brand I noticed next-day headaches and nausea became about 70% less harsh. I've heard people say that cigarette smoke contributes equally or more to a bad hangover than booze itself (research suggests that both vices produce scary levels of acetaldehyde in the human body), and I believe it. Be that as it may, there's something about these cigarettes, even if they don't actually taste so great. If you like to drink and you're dumb enough to smoke you should give them a try, or just quit altogether before you get cancer or arteriosclerosis.

RATING: 90% if you're going to smoke anyway, 0% if you aren't.

(Image from www.ethicalshopping.com.)

Ultimate Spider-man Vol. 3: Double Trouble

I just don't think it can be said enough times how consistently fun this series is. Bendis is terrific at capturing all the awkwardness and drama that is high school life while still managing to inject great superhero antics in as well. Peter Parker just feels like your average dorky kid, albeit with the proportionate strength and abilities of a spider. To think that this series has been going so strong for 129 issues now is amazing. And for the first hundred or so, Mark Bagley's blend of cartooniness and detail matched the writing style exactly. Perhaps part of the reason this book has seemed so effortless is that Bendis doesn't exactly have to create characters, but instead works from the groundwork laid by Stan Lee. This particular volume centers around Doc Ock trying to get revenge on some billionaire biological research dude while also Kraven the Hunter, an Australian reality TV host, decides to come to New York and hunt Spider-man for ratings. And scene.

RATING: 89%

The Post-Christmas Gut

As far as I'm concerned, the birth of Jesus, the pagan Solstice and the New Year are all celebrated the same way: by eating 5 meals a day and getting frequently and thoroughly drunk so I can stand--*cough* I mean, enjoy--the company of my extended family and in-laws. I tend to get into the festive mood around mid-December, and become serious again after January 17th (my birthday), which gives me just enough time to make a habit of living like a fucking pig. This year, I put the brakes on a little earlier due to the practical necessity of being able to fit into my clothes, but it's still gonna be a long, sweaty spring.

RATING: Turkey sandwiches: 90%
Peanut butter balls: 88%
Stolichnaya on the rocks: 80%
A good mud-wallow: 75%
Teacher's Highland Cream Blended Scotch Whiskey: 69%
Jogging pants: 43%
$9 pitchers of Moose Green: 34%
Sore hips from elliptical trainer: middle-aged woman%

(Image from www.utilitarianism.com.)

Foo Fighters by Foo Fighters

Foo Fighters' debut album was the first album I bought on the day it came out. After this album came out it was really popular so it was therefore no longer cool to like them according to the grunge douchebags at my school, but I was a dork so whatevs is what I said. I remember I had a Foo Fighters shirt that I spilled ink all over, but I still wore it until I lost it convincing myself that the ink made it look cool somehow. Oh, right, the content of the album itself. I guess it's pretty good - Grohl has some interesting chord constructions that deviate from standard radio power chord fare, even if he moved away from that almost immediately, not that I don't like the extremely poppy follow up album for its own reasons. Forsooth!

RATING: 76%

DuckTales

Basically, Donald Duck decides to join the Navy and leaves his nephews; Huey, Dewey and Louie, in the care of Scrooge McDuck (#2 on Fortune's Top 15 Fictional Characters of 2008). Basically the Beagle Boys (as in the dog breed) run around and try to scheme new ways to rob Scrooge of his money, while Magica DeSpell just tries to take Scrooge's "Number One Dime" (as in a $.10 piece of currency). Throw in Gyro and Launchpad with some other fools and you've got a pretty lame ass show that I used to love as a kid. I do give strong points for the theme song. However, I just found out the show was intended to be an allegory about the fall of communism. That doesn't make it any better, but remember, kids, Disney was right and the Russians lost. Rumor is he was a huge supporter of Reagan and supply side economics, and that's all hearsay, but I don't doubt it.

RATING: 41%

Duck, You Sucker!

If you like western films, boy have I got a movie for you! It's called "Duck, You Sucker!" or "A Fistful of Dynamite" or "Whatever Gibberish Is On That Poster Picture, I Don't Speak Europe Talk." Made in 1971, this was western-master Sergio Leone's follow up to "Once Upon A Time In The West," the second or first best western ever made, depending on my mood. "Duck, You Sucker!" follows a Mexican bandit, played by Rod Steiger, and an Irish revolutionary, played by James Coburn, as they accidentally get caught up in the Mexican Revolution. Leone is great at mixing the personal with the grand in scope, and the landscapes are stunning as in all of his films. I feel there are some serious pacing missteps, but since the special restored edition I watched was cobbled together from countless different edits there's no real way of telling what Leone wanted. Anyway, this film kicks seven ass-units of ass, but don't take my word for it - dadun dun!

RATING: 76%

Marvel 1985

This limited comic series just ended a couple months ago, so that makes this like the newest comic I've ever reviewed here or some such nonsense. The plot involves a kid in a small town in "our world" in 1985 whose parents are divorced. He collects comics, I guess to escape (who am I, Freud?), and then one day all of the Marvel supervillains come into his universe and start wreaking havoc on his town. Mark Millar writes a pretty convincing kid, and a lot of the tone of this book feels similar to 1980s era kids movies, so it's fun and also dark. I have complaints about Millar's composition that can probably be applied to every book he writes - he uses way too many splash panels. I mean, any six issue arc he does could be done by any other writer in three or four issues, tops. Other than that, it's a good book, and Tommy Lee Edwards' has a neat, choppy art style I liked so if you want you can come over and borrow it sometime yours truly Glenn.

RATING: 70%

Fingernails

Fingernails are great. You can claw your enemies' eyes out, read a scratch and sniff book, or open cans with tabs on them. On the other hand, fingernails are not so great because you can't play guitar easily if your chord hand has long fingernails, and also because they can get dirty. Also maybe you might catch a fingernail on something and then it gets ripped off which would suck I bet but maybe not as much as never having them to begin with.

RATING: 68%

Shaolin Soccer

I never saw this movie when it came out because somebody told me it was about "Shaolin monks playing soccer," and two of the three key terms in that phrase sound hella boring. Anyway, a friend lent this to me a couple weeks ago and it turns out it was funny and there wasn't too much about pure living or religion, but mainly a bunch of slapstick humor. The movie is pretty predictable as far as the plot goes (underdog sports team versus evil sports team, hero falls for plain looking girl who doesn't trust him, old coach atoning for past failures, etc), but the movie makes fun of those standards while employing them so it's ok. Oh yeah, the plot - basically this team of underdogs enters this huge national soccer competition except they use kung fu to beat everybody (spoilers). If you like to laugh in these trying times then check it out I say.

RATING: 61%

Bloom's Taxonomy of R3

Most teachers are functionally illiterate, which is what you call it when you don't ever read, except maybe comic books on the toilet or poetry. Because of this, they need lots of diagrams and pictures to make sense of anything, so this guy Benjamin Bloom decided to draw this pyramid way back in 1956 that's supposed to explain how people learn or something and now schools all over the country have to use it. Whatever, Poindexter, all you need to worry about is that "evaluation" is at the top of the pile, which proves R3 is way smarter than you and your mom.

RATING: Bloom's Taxonomy: Psychobabble%
R3: 1000%

(Image from www.officeport.com. All joking aside, the tendency of elementary and high school teachers to read Bloom's taxonomy as a kind of "pecking order" of learning rather than a nested, concentric hierarchy is one of a dozen or so reasons why North American schools are among the worst in the civilized world.)

That Fucking Bowflex Ad

I was watching the New Year's Day Corner Gas-athon and this advertisement ran about 300 times. It's the one in which the fake-tanned, rat-faced douchebag who recently lost 75 lbs poses shirtless indoors with a surfboard and sunglasses and says contemptuously, "I gave all my fat clothes to my fat friends."

I bet they really appreciated that, you smug piece of shit.

Also, "Be strong, be fit, be Bowflex" is a really stupid slogan. Wouldn't "Get strong, get fit, get Bowflex" make a little more ontological sense?

RATING: Bowflex: I don't know because my fat ass has never used one%
That guy: should be shot in the stomach and buried alive%

(Image from www.courier-journal.com.)

Summer Heights High

Being bored at your parents' house is often made bearable by a fully-loaded cable package featuring all premium channels and On-Demand. After watching the entire Season Whatever of Entourage and crying because I rewatched Brokeback Mountain, I needed something new. I wound up watching the entire (and sadly, only) season of this show and loved it. It's an office-like mockumentary set at an Australian High School, and the writer Chris Lilley plays three roles -- a drama teacher, a Polynesian boy with behavioral problems, and rich transfer student Ja'mie (pictured). The drama teacher turns a school tragedy into a full-scale musical production featuring songs with titles like "Naughty Girl" and "She's a Slut" (which are all stuck in my head simultaneously). The Polynesian boy hasbreakdancing wars with the small blonde children in the year below him. Ja'mie dates a 12-year-old and seamlessly insults everyone while overusing the word "random." And it all took less than four hours to watch. Give us some more, Mr. Lilley!

(Disclaimer: apparently this show is to people who've taught middle school what The Office is to people who've worked in an office -- mostly funny, but sometimes purely tragic.)

RATING: 92%

Arkansas

Have you ever been to Arkansas? Arkansas is a state in the country of USA, a place Americans tend to live. I'm not really an expert on Arkansas or anything, but it seems fucking filthy and every time I go there people look at me like I'm about to crash a crop duster into their treasured landmark the twin grain towers. Last month when I was driving through Arkansas I stopped to use the restroom at a gas station. These two country-looking white folk were using the urinals, and when I walked in one looked at me, then said to the other one "Remember the good ole days?" Then the one who didn't say anything walked away from the urinal and I noticed he was peeing into a coffee pot. I'm not making this up, so in conclusion Arkansas is a state that you should probably avoid and also the birthplace of Bill Clinton.

RATING: 11%

The Infinity Gauntlet

The Infinity Gauntlet was a comic book miniseries from the early 90s, and the first "event" book I ever got into. The plot involves this crazy dude Thanos who gets all this power from the titular glove so that Lady Death will go out with him on a date or something. To impress her he kills half of all life in the universe, usually I just say a joke or put my coat on a puddle but whatever. Anyway, spoilers, lots of superheroes die like Spider-man and Iron Man and Captain America Man, but it turns out to be a glorified What If? book when at the end this one broad undoes everything Thanos did the whole story long. In conclusion it is fun and the art is pretty but probably not worth $25 for the trade paperback.

RATING: 58%