Music you should listen to...

...or else tomorrow, while leaving for work, you won’t pay attention to where you’re walking and step into an enormous pile of dog shit. While this is totally gross by itself, the situation will only be made worse when you realize that the dog whose poop you're standing in is none other than three-headed Cerberus, foul offspring of Echidna and Typhon and fearsome guardian to the Gates of Hades themselves. This means that in addition to ruining your shoes, you’ll also be transported to the fiery bowels of the Greek underworld. There, you’ll spend eternity being force-fed buckets of poisonous spiders while cackling demons laugh maniacally at your torment and poke you with pointy sticks. Seriously, it will suck. Those Greeks don't fuck around.

The music for today is "Oh Yeah", by The Subways. They're apparently pretty big in the UK, and I think they've played on Conan and Letterman a few times. Once again, the sound is just good wave-your-hands, shout-out-loud, rock/punk/whatever the kids are calling it these days. Oh, and the bass player is wicked rocker-chick hot, which is also a plus. I actually like their song "Mary" a little better, but the video they have for it is crappy. Enjoy.



I also think that they were on an episode of the "O.C." once, and it's sad that I'm actually embarrassed to type that. As I've said before, I really do hate the Catch-22 of seeing a band that I like play on a show that I despise; I mean, it's good exposure, why aren't I happy for them? For example, the other night Noel strapped me to the sofa and forced me to endure an episode of “The Hills” on MTV, no matter how loudly I screamed, and I was genuinely distressed when a Tokyo Police Club song started playing during one of the sweeping helicopter panoramas of downtown L.A. that seem to comprise 50% of the show’s running time. Does this make me a shitty fan, more concerned with their (and by association my) image rather than their success? Probably, but I'm comfortable with my elitism.

To go off on a brief tangent here (because I seem to be incapable of just writing anything short), I fucking hate “The Hills”. Like, with a passion that burns from within hotter than thousands of volcanoes filled with tiny suns and illegal Mexican fireworks. It’s awful. I can understand the original mentality that the producers must have had when pitching it; I mean, on paper, a show that’s basically about a bunch of true-life rich hot people and their glamorous lifestyles sounds fucking brilliant. But in reality, it turns out that their vapid lives really aren’t that interesting and so they’re forcibly thrown into improbably scripted situations, at which point all that’s left is the plot of a bad 90210 episode filled with people who can’t act and have less on-screen personality than a bag of especially boring and possibly retarded rocks. And that one kid, Spencer or Trevor or whatever the fuck his name is? He’s easily the most annoying person in the entire history of the world. I guess the producers realized that their glimpse into Hollywood’s fabulous teenage underground wasn’t enough to keep people invested in the show, so they decided to do their best to enrage viewers instead of enchanting them by inserting obnoxiously douchey guy characters to hate, but still. He beyond sucks. Every time he opens his mouth I just want to smash his enormous teeth through the back of his skull with whatever blunt object is nearby. So good for you, MTV. You’ve made me feel something, even if it’s homicidal bloodlust instead of delight, and isn’t that what good television is all about?

Moving on to other me-related news that doesn’t involve my hatred of crappy reality shows, I got accepted to portfolio school and will be starting classes next week. This is exciting, because I’m really looking forward to learning about advertising and think that it’s something I’ll really like; and terrifying, because I haven’t been to school in like five years and will be working full time until I graduate. I’m going to try and keep up the blog as much as I can, but we’ll see how feasible that will actually be. Oh, and if anyone has a decent Mac laptop or knows where I can get one for a price that’s not an equivalent value to a mid-sized luxury sedan, please let me know. I don’t actually need it for school, per se; but I’m told that if I don’t have one all of the other kids will laugh and call me names before beating me up and stealing my juicebox. It’ll be high school all over again.

Music you should listen to....

...or else you'll be brutally sodomized by a roving gang of baboon hooligans, who will videotape the encounter and then put it up on youtube.com. It will garner over 1,000 comments overnight, which will distress you, but most of them will either be advertisments for pornography websites or surly teenagers launching poorly-spelled attacks against America. So don't worry about it.

Just to wander off topic for a second, I noticed the other day that these little sentences describing what will happen to you if you don't listen to the music I recommend would make awesome fortune cookie inserts. Lately it seems to me that every single fortune cookie I've eaten has just contained some kind of retarded statement as opposed to an actual prediction of future events. I might be expecting a lot from the tiny Asian children who are chained to typewriters in cookie sweatshops for 23 hours out of their day making them, but come on. At least put some effort into it; trust me, your overseers will beat you less if you just tell the future and aren't as lazy. We were at a Chinese/Korean place a few weeks ago, and after finishing off an amazing meal consisting of at least 23 pounds of dumplings and noodles, I cracked open my fortune cookie in gleeful anticipation of gaining at least some small weapon against my inexorable march towards an unknown future. Instead, I read something like "The shirt you're wearing is nice", or "Your shoes are happy fun for all." What the fuck is that? That's not a fortune; that's a cookie trying to hit on me written by someone who doesn't speak my language. It's an embarassment to the Chinese people and their precognitive abilities everywhere. Maybe it's just me, but I think it would be more rewarding to open your desert and read something like this:

"You will be raped by monkeys sometime in the next week. Your lucky numbers are 16, 32, 12, and Ape Penis."

This way, I'd know not to go to the zoo or hang around with any of my friends who own monkeys. See? Everybody wins.

Moving on.

The music for today is "Superstar Tradesman", by The View. It's awesome British garage-punk, and this is seriously one of those songs that I sing at the top of my lungs whenever I'm driving even though I can't really understand the words. Even at stoplights, which totally sucks for my passengers. Lily Allen apparently told Pitchfork that she doesn't like the group, but she'll be dead from an alcohol/cocaine overdose long before her fathers connections make it possible for her to make another album, so no one really cares.
Enjoy.



In other news, I finally submitted my application to portfolio school on Friday. It took me about a week and a half to get together, but that's because I'm an idiot and spent far, far longer than I should have making sure all of the ads had accompanying illustrations drawn in Microsoft paint. I tried to just sketch them out by hand, I really did; but most of them ended up looking like I had smeared my lips with ink, closed my eyes, and then smashed my face repeatedly into the paper. Which is artsy, sure, but doesn't really help you when you're trying to sell things. Or maybe it does; what the fuck do I know about advertising? Anyway, here's an example of my stunning artistic talent:




You'll notice that it contains a basset hound; this is because I own one, and I'm seriously incapable of looking at him without laughing. This ad is actually part of an entire campaign that I made up, so it needs some explanation, but trust me, it's brilliant. Am I even legally allowed to post stuff like this? Not that I consider my blog to be particularly influential, but I could seriously see the stock at Milkbone going down if too many people this.

More later.

Music you should listen to.

Or otherwise, a street hobo named "Crazy McStabbington" will pee on your shoes. I know! With a name like that, I was totally thinking that he would stab you! But no, no. Just...gonna pee on your shoes.

Anyway, as evidenced in an earlier post, I believe that my taste in music is far superior to pretty much everyone else's. Well, except maybe for Ryans, but that's because his taste is enhanced stylistically whenever he wears a trendy hat. I can't compete with that.

So I'm taking a page from my friend Jet Leigh's book (blog? whatever.) and will start posting youtube.com videos of whichever band I happen to like during a particular week, and then tell you why you should like them too. This will occur on the regular schedule of whenever the hell I feel like it.

First up:
Margot and the Nuclear So & So's, playing Skeleton Key.




Please, give it a listen. They don't have an actual video for this song (what with being "indie" and all), but this live version is pretty good. If I could, I'd like to direct you to their myspace page so that you can lilsten to the studio version. It's a little faster, and at one point the cellist yells "WHOOO!" after the chorus. Looking back I realize that what I've typed doesn't look nearly as cool as how it actually sounds, but trust me. You'll get goose bumps.

Why Rock of Love is Hilarious Television, Featuring Brett Michael's Insatiable Penis

I’ve never been a fan of reality TV. The Real World, Joe Millionaire, Who Wants to Fuck a Baboon for Money; none of them have ever done much for me except make me want to change the channel. The one recent exception, however, has been VH1’s new show Rock of Love, starring Brett Michaels. Brett is best known for being the former lead singer of 80’s hair-metal band Poison, as well as for having a tape floating around on the internet featuring him and Pamela Anderson awkwardly screwing. I never really thought that Poison (or any other band with androgynous guys wearing lots of makeup and singing shitty rock ballads) was very good, and while having sex with Pamela Anderson on camera is cool, the video came out shortly after the world was treated to her nasty escapades with Tommy Lee and his absurdly oversized circus dong. This was horrible timing, because instead of everyone being wowed by the fact that Brett was banging the hot chick from Baywatch, he instead just gets remembered as that other band guy whose junk wasn’t as big as the drummer from Motley Crue. I don’t really know what he’s been doing ever since people stopped going to his concerts, but I’d imagine it involves drinking a lot and excitedly answering the phone when record executives call to tell him they want to put together a multi-million dollar Poison reunion tour, then being crushed when they hang up laughing. This situation sounds traumatic, but fortunately for Brett, being a washed-up rockstar in today’s world is nowhere near as depressing as it used to be. This is because if a celebrities star has faded to a completely pathetic degree, they can still exploit the fact that people will want to mock how far they’ve fallen by having their very own reality TV show! This is a horrible trend that started with The Osborne’s on MTV and was recently propelled to the height of absurdity with Flavor of Love on VH1, and the wild popularity of these farces really is an accurate gauge of how retarded the American populace is becoming. Personally, I never liked either of these shows; I just don’t understand the appeal of seeing a pill-addled geriatric who can’t form coherent words shamble around his house, and I certainly have no desire to watch trashy hood women fighting over a tiny wizened gnome wearing a Viking helmet. Although I will admit the part on Flavor of Love where one of the girls unabashedly took an enormous dump on the floor during an elimination thingie was pretty funny. But despite my general detest for these kinds of programs, I have to say that for some reason, I can’t stop watching Rock of Love. I don’t know why; and to be honest, my enthusiasm is starting to scare me a little. I guess the main reason I’m writing this is to hopefully convince other people to watch it too; this way I won’t be alone with my shame. To that end, here’s a brief overview to help you better understand why watching Brett Michaels attempting to put his dick inside as many women as possible on national television is so massively entertaining.

The show itself is fairly formulaic, as most reality TV featuring women prostituting themselves out to an aging maybe-celebrity usually are. The contestants all live in a huge tacky mansion replete with stripper poles, Jacuzzi tubs, and a seemingly endless supply of alcohol. Every few days Brett’s henchman/security gorilla “Big John” will lumber into the common room and gruntingly deliver an astonishingly shitty poem written by Brett that describes some kind of radical competitive challenge he’s devised to determine which of the ladies loves him the most. The winner (or two, or three) of the challenge is chosen by a complex mathematical formula that seemingly involves Bret’s penis and whichever girl he thinks is most likely to do totally awesome stuff to it. The winner and Brett then go on a special “date”, where he has the chance to really, y’know, get to know the girl. And then maybe to fuck her. At then end of the day, all of the contestants are gathered in a weird gameshow auditorium where they do their best to look sultry while awaiting Brett’s arrival. The man of the hour eventually strides into the room with a solemn look on his leathery face, usually wearing what appears to be the fabulous skin of a gay farm animal he’s killed and made into a kickass trenchcoat/cowboy hat combination. He calls each of the girls down from the stage they’re perched on, and tenderly looks into their eyes as he explains his reason for keeping them around in his televised harem. As they gaze adoringly at him, he gives them a “backstage pass”, and asks if they’ll be willing to stay and continue to “Rock his World.” They giggle out something retarded and then proceed to accept Brett’s insatiable tongue as it’s forced past their still-smiling lips. Seriously, he mouth-rapes every single girl at the dismissal gatherings. It’s hilarious. Those that aren’t chosen are shown out by Big John, usually after Brett delivers a touching soliloquy about how totally cool they are even though he no longer wants to have sex with them.

So now that you’ve got a fair idea of what the show consists of, I’m going to further my case about how great it is by trying to break down the first episode in detail. I watched it a couple of weeks ago and was distracted because I was literally laughing every five minutes, so I should warn you that this may not be a flawless recreation. But I think you’ll get the basic idea. The saga begins with Brett addressing his potential fuckbuddies outside of the gaudy L.A. mansion he calls home and having them say hello to Big John, who he explains will act as both enforcer and bodyguard. This is just like when they used to be on the road together, which was like all of the time because his band was really popular. It was called Poison; maybe you’ve heard of it? No? Nobody? Well, fuck. There are about 20 women who have traveled from around the country to vie for Brett’s affections, and each is wearing an outfit that best accents their fake plastic tits while they try incredibly hard to nonverbally convey just how happy it would make them to put Brett Michaels’ penis in their mouths. To set the classy tone for future episodes, Brett finishes introducing himself and his penchant for wearing ugly hats before having Big John promptly kick off five girls, who I guess weren’t slutty enough for his boss to bang on national television. On the surface, this looks like a totally rockstar move; I mean, the contestants now know that in the house of Brett Michaels, anything can happen, often to the Extreme and quite possibly to the Max. Rock N’ Roll, Bitches! Waaaahhh! But to the astute viewer, Brett’s intentions are betrayed as a cheap stunt even before Big John calls out the girl’s names and tells them to get the fuck off the lawn. See, while the camera panned around and got closeups of all of their desperate faces, it was painfully obvious that some of the women were far more unattractive than the others. And not just “Yeah, that blonde in the back has too many freckles” unattractive, but more “OH MY GOD! THE CREATURE HAS ESCAPED FROM DR. OPENHEIMERS LAB! KILL IT!! KILL IT BEFORE IT DESTROYS US ALL!!” unattractive. It was hard to watch; I mean, they all obviously had crippling self-esteem issues already; why else would they demean themselves by being on the show? It’s sad to think that most of them probably went home and killed themselves if they were smart enough to realize that they had been flown to California for the sole purpose of being the ugly chick Bret Michaels sends home during the first few minutes of his show to prove how much of a discerning sexual machine he is.

I really have no idea how many of the contestants were spared the terrible axe-blow of Big John’s cruel dismissal, because literally five of them had gigantic tits and retarded stripper names, which made them pretty much indistinguishable to someone who doesn’t understand the subtleties in telling one whore from another. I wasn’t about to take the time to learn how to tell “Brandi” and “Krystal” apart until they started fucking each other on the pool table or something, although to be honest, I probably wouldn’t care that much even then. The girls enter the house and giggle about how lucky they are that Brett chose them, and then proceed to start trying to make themselves more attractive by getting absolutely shitfaced. It’ll become apparent in later episodes that these women are drunk pretty much constantly, and in this regard you have to admire the brilliance of the producers. I mean, how do you make a show featuring attention starved harlots desperate to screw a middle-aged rocker even more hilarious? Why, by making sure their blood alcohol never falls below almost toxic levels, of course! After the girls have loosened up with a couple dozen shots apiece, Brett returns to announce that the first step in his grand plan to “get to know them better” involves lining them up so that he can take some sexy individual pictures. The first girl to try and look fuckable while Brett breathed heavily and snapped away with his camera was undoubtedly the luckiest, because at the end of each of their modeling sessions he demanded that they kiss him. And I’m not talking about a light peck on the cheek; every single one of them got a thorough probing from whatever dark and terrible creature lives inside Brett Michael’s mouth. These women all looked like there was a good chance they were the carriers of at least one type of VD already, and I’m surprised that the combination of their hooker saliva and whatever kind of unspeakable shit you get after being the lead singer of Poison for ten years didn’t cause the last chick in line’s head to explode in a massive shower of mutated hepatitis puss.

After his little photography session, which included a few of the girls interpreting the command to look “sexy” to mean “pull your tits out and grin vapidly”, Brett decides that he’s going to spend some time wandering around the house and getting to know his woman-stable a little more intimately. But while all of this hilarity is occurring, there’s trouble brewing outside of the House of Michaels! It seems that the ugliest of the contestants Big John booted earlier has returned and is banging loudly on the front door, apparently trying to destroy any lingering vestiges of her self-respect that somehow withstood her earlier humiliation and the fact that she wanted to be on the show in the first place. Big John steps out to see what she wants, and totally looks like he knows what he’s doing by crossing his arms and frowning while she delivers a rambling, semi-coherent plea to be given another chance at fucking Brett. I couldn’t decide if she was so hard to understand because her lips were swollen from Mexican botox or if it was due to the nine pounds of horse tranquilizers it looked like she’d taken, but she sounded pretty wrecked. Big John eventually shuts her up and tells her that she can come in, but sternly warns that she’ll have to sleep in the tub or something and will more than likely be forced to pleasure him sexually. While this implies that all you have to do to get past Brett Michael’s formidable rockstar security is to whine and ask a couple of times, I think the real lesson we learn here is that Big John’s nickname doesn’t come from his physical appearance….but, touchingly…. from the massive size of his heart.

The remainder of the episode is mostly given over to shorter segments showing Brett having quiet chats with one or two of the girls. This attempt at intimacy is so that he can begin the torturous mental process of deciding how he can know someone well enough to eliminate them from his show, despite the conundrum that he obviously can’t know them at all because he’s never put his penis inside them. But the touching insights into Brett’s horny mind are constantly interrupted by shots of the chick with swollen lips that Big John let back in getting totally, magnificently drunk and stumbling into things while screaming racial slurs at the black contestants. The saddest part is that at one point during her televised downward spiral of complete self-debasement, she mumbles something out about how she’s only on the show “for her son”. This is depressing because a drugged-out trainwreck like this should never be allowed to procreate, not to mention that it also means somebody was desperate enough to have sex with her in the first place. And what about the poor residents of whatever state she’s from? They actually end up suffering the most, because you know it’s going to be their hard-earned tax dollars that pay the salaries of the officers who finally take the kid away to an orphanage, and the subsequent years of required therapy he’ll have to go through to repress the images of his mom whoring herself out on national television probably aren’t going to be cheap either.

Anyway, while watching Brett wander around and try to learn about the girls he’s hoping to bang, one thing becomes very apparent: pretty much anything will make Brett Michaels horny. For example, he was talking to one of them, and it soon became obvious that while she was pretty hot, God had forgotten that beauty will eventually fade and neglected to give her the brain capacity to form simple sentences that she’ll probably need when she turns 30 and becomes ugly. Seriously, this chick could only smile and nod, and every time she tried to open her mouth and actually talk, a nonsensical mishmash of one-syllable words were all that came out. Far from being deterred by the fact that there was a distinct possibility that she was actually retarded, Brett said “Yeah, after talking to her, I got the impression that the lights were on but nobody was really home. And I’ll be honest, that kind of turned me on a little.” Or how about after being chased around the house by one of the big-titted stripper girls, who constantly kept talking about how her and Brett were totally dating and how much she’d love to have his babies? Instead of being freaked out that if he kept her around, she was inevitably going to stab another contestant with a broken beer bottle because she thought they were getting to close to her man, Brett just says “Yeah, she’s pretty nuts. But she’s got great tits; and I’m going to be honest, the fact that she’s insane kind of turns me on a little.” They really could have brought out a 90 year old albino woman with one leg and Brett would have happily gone on about how much pleasure he’d get from having nasty pale wheelchair sex with her. It’s amazing.

It’s the nearing end of the night and most of the girls are having difficulty staying conscious, so Brett decides that it’s time to wrap things up with some more eliminations. He kicks a bunch of the blonde stripper chicks off (because really, you only need like three for a good party), and makes sure to put his mouth all over the ones he’s decided to keep. The only surprise comes when he tells the shocked group that he’s letting the big-lipped drunk girl stay on even though there’s not a bed for her, something I’m sure his producers forced him to do because they know nothing says “high ratings” like watching someone abjectly humiliate themselves to such an insane degree on national television. She’s consumed enough liquor and pills by this point to barely be able to stand, so I don’t think it even really registered that even though she’s being allowed to hang around, she’s going to have to embarrass herself even further by crashing under the dining room table or something. The contestants all stagger out, each confident in their own minds that they and they alone will be the lucky girl who will eventually rock Brett’s world with their love. Or at least get to fuck him a couple of times. Whichever.

So yeah, this show is great. Besides the obvious entertainment derived from watching a faded “rockstar” trying to pork slutty women, the real joy comes from the seemingly endless amount of self-delusion that pours out of both the contestants and Brett himself. The girls all try their best to make it seem like they really want what’s best for the guy instead of the C-grade celebrity status they’re hoping to obtain from star-fucking him, and Brett, despite having to know that most of them weren’t even born when his band was popular, really seems to think these girls want to sleep with him just because he’s a hot musician. It’s sad, but boy is it fun to watch. Tune in and trust me, you might feel slightly dirty when the credits start to roll, but your stomach will hurt from laughing so hard.

Why I Have the Best Girlfriend Ever, Featuring Ninja Cakes

This is the cake that Noel got me for my birthday a couple of weeks ago. Despite Erin's racist assertion that it resembles a guy in blackface, it's obviously a kickass ninja, and it was as awesome as it looks. If asked to describe how it tasted, I would probably have to say that it was a delightful combination of chocolate chips, frosting, and silent shinobi death.

And this is why I have the Best Girlfriend Ever.

Why Harry Potter is Great, Featuring the Majesty of Neil Gaiman

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been bombarded by questions from my friends about whether or not I’ve read the new Harry Potter book yet. While this isn’t a surprising inquiry coming from those people who know me well and are aware that I’m almost compulsively drawn to any kind of fiction involving wizards and sorcery, I’ve been amazed by how many casual acquaintances have come up and asked “Hey, so that new Harry Potter book is pretty great, huh? Man, that part on page 267 was crazy! I didn’t really think she’d have the balls to kill off GLAAAKK!!” They never get to finish, because by this point I’ve thrust my hand into their chest and removed their still-beating heart for inadvertently attempting to ruin the plot for me, but still. I know that I have a fairly over-inflated sense of my own self-image, but do I really look like that much of a dork? I mean, I only wear my authentic Slytherin hat when I go see the movies, and I’m pretty sure everyone’s forgotten about that time I got drunk and jumped off the roof trying to ride a broomstick. Although I did dress like Harry a couple of years ago for Halloween, so maybe that’s where the association comes from:




I’ll go with that, and just assume it’s not because someone’s found out about my secret collection of online erotic Hermione fanfiction. And before you judge me, fuck off. She’s a hot chick who can do magic, and I think that wizards come of age at like 17. So she’s totally doable.

But anyway, the answer to the question is yes; I’m about three quarters of the way through The Deathly Hallows. My roommate pre-ordered it from Amazon, which was good because this way I didn’t have to drop $25 on a hardcover, but bad because I was forced to endure two weeks of Ian reading it on the couch and gasping dramatically whenever something cool happened. Just when I was considering bludgeoning him to death with the book while he slept, he finished and passed it on, and I have to say, it’s taking me a while to get through. Not because it’s dense or hard to read or anything, but because I simply don’t want it to end. I read pretty much constantly, and if a book is especially good, I’ve been known to stay up all night to finish it before going to work looking like I’ve been on a 24 hour coke/hooker bender and then passed out under a bridge. Which is what I tell people, because honestly, that makes me sound a lot cooler than explaining how tired I am because I just had to see if Harry and Ron could escape Voldemort’s nefarious clutches. But I’ve been resisting the temptation and trying to savor the new story as much as possible, although with the stuff that’s happening in the current chapter I don’t how long my resolve will last.

What I find the most interesting about the Harry Potter phenomenon is all of the hype surrounding it. It’s easy to see why there’s so much scrutiny; I mean, the latest book broke every single publishing record in the history of the world, with 10% of the entire British population buying it on the first day and an initial print run of 12 million copies for the U.S. alone. That’s fucking insane. Especially considering the entire saga was conceived by some random lady who wrote her first novel in a coffeshop during her spare time. By “random lady” I’m not trying to disparage J.K. Rowling at all; I have enormous respect for someone who went from living on welfare to having more money than the Queen of the country she lives in. I just think that what she’s accomplished is absolutely incredible.

And the funny thing is, she’s not even that great of a writer. I say that not to be a dick (I mean, she’s the creator of a literary phenomenon; I write a shitty blog that only my mom and like four of my friends read), but because I’ve read lots of books, the majority of which are in the same genre as Harry Potter. And there are authors out there who can paint a picture much more vividly and with a greater scope of beauty and wordplay than she can. This isn’t to say that she’s bad; not by any stretch of the imagination. I remember reading the third book (I’d initially skipped the first two because I’d already seen the movies) and thoroughly enjoying it, but making a concerted effort to pay attention to how she wrote. I would love to write a novel someday, and thought to myself “Okay, this lady has somehow written a book about child wizards that sells more copies than the Bible (Ha ha! Fuck you, Christianity!). How does she do it?” And the answer (or what I think is the answer, anyway) is that her writing itself is, at its essence, just functional. It gets the job done clearly, concisely, and with enough description so that the reader can get a clear picture of what’s transpiring. But there are authors out there who have ways of describing, say, a particular character’s facial expression that are so unique and interesting that I’ll go back and reread the same passage over and over again, marveling that there’s an imagination out there that’s able to think that creatively. J. K. Rowling isn’t one of these authors, and really, that doesn’t matter.

What really makes me (and the millions of other people out there who love the books) keep reading is the fictional world that she’s created. It’s well thought out, makes sense, and all ties together in a neat little package. But that’s not all. The best part is that the whole storyline is contemporary. There actually could be this whole secret underground world of magic and wizardry going on right beneath our noses. Kids love it because they get to believe there’s a chance, however small, that a loveable giant will come along and whisk them away to an enchanted school so they can learn witchcraft instead of being beaten by mommy’s new boyfriend, and adults like it because there’s enough creativity and depth that they can justify why they’re reading a children’s book when their friends laugh at them.

Given the meteoric success of the franchise, though, it was inevitable that some of the hype surrounding the books would be negative. The most ridiculous complaint, of course, comes from idiot right-wing Christians about how the novels are subversively promoting witchcraft and occult practices to our youth. How fucking retarded do you have to be to actually believe that? I mean, if you want to go the route that anything fantastic or supernatural is bad, why wasn’t anybody picketing the Spider-Man movies? Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive arachnid that mutated his DNA and gave him incredible superhuman abilities. This is obviously blasphemous, because if God had wanted our non-monkey DNA to incorporate attributes of carnivorous bugs, He would have shoved a tarantula leg or something into the pile of clay and ribs we were all created from. Spider-Man, therefore, must have received his powers from Satan and needs to be beaten with rocks until he’s no longer an affront to the Lord. Or how about the Matrix trilogy? The Wachowski brothers tried their best to cram as much religious iconography and allusion as they possibly could into the movies so that people would think they were deep and meaningful, and the result was an implied allegory between Keanu Reeves in tight leather and Jesus Christ. Why weren’t Christians pissed about that? I’m not even particularly religious and I find that offensive, but mainly because I personally think that Keanu Reeves is a harbinger for the apocalypse. It just comes down to the fact that most hillbilly evangelicals are terrified of anything that might cause their children to actually use their imagination. If that happens, it’s only a matter of time before one kid asks why they’re supposed to believe in a bathrobe-wearing hippie who can transmute water into wine but not think that it’s cool when a fictional teenager flies around on a broom.

The other drama that’s surrounded Rowling’s work has been the charges of plagiarism. This was bound to happen; whenever something becomes a cultural sensation people are going to come crawling out of the woodwork saying that they’re entitled to bags of free money because they totally told their friend Mark about this sweet idea they had years ago that’s just like whatever happens to be popular at the moment. The best example of this lunacy comes from onetime American author Nancy Stouffer. She sued Rowling and her publishers because, in 1986, she wrote a book called The Legend of Rah and the Muggles, and then followed up with a children’s activity book called Larry Potter and his Best Friend Lilly. Her claims would be fairly credible, except for the fact that neither one of these works have anything to do with magic, wizards or anything else remotely similar to the Harry Potter world. Her “muggles” were tiny midgets who lived in shoes and rode around on bugs or something, and “Larry Potter” was just some kid who was sad because he had to wear glasses. Oh, and if the books weren’t just for sale in the Eastern United States for one year between 1986 and 1987. And if she had actually sold any copies of them. And for the fact that Rowling didn’t visit the U.S. for the first time until 1998. And if it wasn’t discovered that she’d retroactively gone back and added a trademark symbol to the word “muggle” in the supposedly original work she gave the judge. All of these revelations came out during the subsequent lawsuit, and instead of gleefully accepting a huge bag of wizard gold from Rowling’s defeated team of high-powered elf attorneys, Stouffer was forced to pay Time Warner $50,000 in addition to the cost of their legal fees for wasting everyone’s time with her idiocy. How stupid do you have to be to actually think that this would work? Did she honestly think that Rowling had secretly flown to America in the late eighties and broken into her house to rifle through piles of shitty unsold coloring books looking for literary inspiration to put in a novel she wouldn’t write for another ten years? I mean, I drew an awesome picture of a personalized flying hoverchair on my trapper-keeper back in seventh grade that I called the “I-Pod”, but I don’t think that I’m entitled to half of Apple’s yearly revenue. Stouffer’s claims were ridiculous, and now in addition to being a bad writer she’s also probably financially destitute. I'm imagining that her books were printed on pretty cheap paper, though, so maybe she can gnaw on them when she's no longer able to afford food. I think that she got off lightly; she’s lucky that Rowling didn’t use her dark magic to turn her face inside out and fill her vagina with poisonous scorpions.

Another accusation of plagiarism was leveled in early 2001 by British tabloid The Daily Mail, claiming that Rowling had copied characters and elements from the comic book series The Books of Magic. You’ve probably never heard of it; it was published in 1990 by DC Comics, and was written by one of the greatest authors who has ever lived, Neil Gaiman. You know those writers that I was talking about earlier, the ones that can use words with such eloquence and beauty that the reader literally feels like they’re a part of the story? He’s one of those, but better. If you haven’t read any of his work, go buy one of his books right now. Anything. Or call me, and I’ll lend you one of mine. Seriously, you’re life will be better for having experienced something he’s written. I realize that it kind of sounds like I want to make out with Neil Gaiman, but honestly, if I had to create a list called “People I’d Love to Meet, But Would Probably Just Stand There and Stammer Awkwardly at if Actually Given the Opportunity”, he’d be at the top. He’s the author of The Sandman, probably the single greatest comic book series ever written, and a number of prose novels that are equally awesome. His literary style is somehow simultaneously humorous, terrifying, and, above all, thoroughly engrossing. He’s great.

So yeah, I’m a fan.

Anyway, the article claimed that Neil had told the fine journalists at The Daily Mail that he was pissed at J.K. Rowling for stealing his ideas. I’d originally read The Books of Magic probably a year or so before the first Harry Potter book came out, and there are some definite similarities between the two. The comic tells the story of Timothy Hunter, a young English boy who’s plucked from his troubled family life and told by four mysterious strangers that he has the potential to become the greatest magician the world has ever seen. He embarks upon a journey through the past, present and future of magic in the DC universe, and along the way even acquires a pet owl to assist him in his adventures. That’s not that bad, right? I mean, comparing the two because they both have a young protagonist who doesn’t know he’s a wizard and likes to hang around with nocturnal birds is like saying the Transformers ripped off Knight Rider because they both have talking cars. But then you see what Timothy Hunter looks like:



Hmm. Or how about a more obvious comparison?




It's like looking into a mirror, kind of! They’re almost identical, in the sense that they're both male, wear glasses, and have Beatles haircuts, but so do most of the annoying hipster kids that stand in the back of shows and nod morosely along with the music. It's really not much to go on, but it’s still a mark of how unbelievably cool Neil Gaiman is that as soon as the article was printed, he immediately started bashing The Daily Mail who, it turns out, had never actually bothered to call him and make sure he’d said everything they’d already made up and printed. His opinion was that sometimes when an author writes, they have a specific idea of how a character is supposed to look in their mind, and seeing as how there are only about four different human hair colors to choose from, the staggering coincidence that two fictional people both have dark hair really isn’t that big of a deal. He went on to say that if Rowling had truly meant to copy his work, she probably would have been smart enough to at least make Harry a blonde kid with an eyepatch and pet howler monkey or something. He also pointed out that having a young boy unaware of his magical heritage being tutored by a wise old mentor and being accompanied by an owl wasn’t really something that he had come up with himself; rather, it was the work of T. H. White in The Once and Future King. How awesome is that? I mean, I’m no expert on the law, but I’ll bet that if he had wanted to, he could have gotten some kind of settlement out of her and her publishing company. But he’s been nothing but supportive of Rowling and her work, saying “I love the Harry Potter thing, I think it’s wonderful.” I’m right there with you, Neil, and your unequivocal support of your fellow authors has made me want to have your babies even more.

Harry Potter is great, and I’m looking forward too/dreading finishing up the last book. But I guess there’s still a couple of movies to anticipate, and after those are done I’m sure it’ll only be a matter of time before the chick who plays Hermione is desperate for money and gets naked in Playboy or something. So I'll have that to keep thinking about when I'm done with the book at least.

Whew.

Okay, so I posted all of my old stuff from my Myspace.com profile. Since Blogspot code for making a word bold is apparently different from Myspace code, that took much longer than it should have and now I'm grumpy. But fortunatly, I found this website last week that pretty much makes me laugh whenever I go to it:

http://roxik.com/pictaps/

You basically draw a character, and then get to watch it dance around surrounded by about 100 identical images of whatever you happened to make. I have no idea why it's so addiciting, but God help me, I can't stop.





The best part is that it's actually a showcase for some graphic designer living in Japan, who's profile says the "website offers a happy digital toy!" I love the Japanese.

Why Spider-man 3 Sucks Donkey Balls, Featuring The Worst Dialogue Ever - 05/18/07

Okay, so I know that I'm supposed to be writing about my recent experiences attending an extravagant Hindu wedding in Daytona, but something happened the other night and I feel it would be remiss of me to not try to write at least a little about it before the memory fades.

I went and saw Spider-man 3 on Wednesday with Noel, who was kind enough to indulge my comic book-geekery and come along. I had told her that it was actually about a young girl who had to choose between two lovers in Victorian England before tragically succumbing to her tuberculosis, but I don't think she really believed me. I was pretty excited; the previews looked relatively cool, and it had a bunch of characters that I was interested to see adapted to the big screen. After sitting through 3 ½ hours of film, however, my opinion had drastically changed.

It's a shitty movie. The plot is nonsensical and cheesy, there are too many characters jammed in just for the sake of having more CGI effects, and all of the actors look like they're phoning in their performances as quickly as possible so that they can get back to their trailers and have gigantic money fights with the cash they've been paid. It's terrible. To show you why, I reconstructed the movie as best that I can, and the sad thing is that I don't even have to really be funny; I can just write down what actually happened and it will look ridiculous.

The movie begins with Peter Parker loving life. The city adores Spider-man, his girlfriend is singing on Broadway and has amazing tits, and even Aunt May has been less incontinent than usual. The only specter on the horizon is a chance encounter with his former best friend, Harry Osborn, who blames Spider-man for the death of his father, the villainous Green Goblin. Quickly brushing off Harry's grim insistence that he's going to kill him and that he knows his secret identity, Peter chooses to ignore this totally realistic threat and happily skips off to contemplate proposing marriage to Mary-Jane. Everything's great.

But across town, there's action afoot! It's two-bit criminal Flint Marko, played by that guy from Sideways! He's on the run from the law, and after briefly stopping to visit his sick daughter (complete with nighttime oxygen mask for maximum sympathy) to assure her that he'll get the money for her treatment no matter what, the audience is convinced enough that he's not really a bad guy to maybe feel sorry for him. Remember that! It kind of becomes a not very relevant plot point later on.

So it's the middle of the night, and Marko is slowly jogging away from the police officers chasing him. According to a radio transmission from the police chief, he's escaped to someplace called "the marshes", and while I'm not that familiar with New York City, I'm fairly sure there are no outlying swampland for criminals to hide in, unless you count New Jersey. He staggers up to a chainlink fence, and after pausing to catch one of the attack dogs that have been sent after him, he stares at it stupidly for a few moments before punching it in the face and hopping the fence. He takes a few steps, only to plunge down into a gigantic hole that he somehow missed directly in front of him. He hits the sand-covered ground with a thud, and then gets to his feet to gaze wonderingly around at the strange, enormous metal arms that he also somehow didn't notice suspended above him. The scene cuts to the inside of a scientific control center, where one important looking guy in a white coat asks another important looking guy in a white coat something about "the particle accelerator". Then a woman, who is far too hot to have anything at all to do with science, leans over to say something about the "molecular deconstructor", noting that the "silica target has increased in mass." Scientist #1 assures her that "it's only a bird", and will "fly away once we start it up." So the audience can now assume that this is the device that Marko is currently staring at, and that based on their dialogue and the fact that they want to test a machine that can destroy molecules at 3 in the morning, the people who are about to turn it on are insane.

The machine thrums to life, and the giant arms begin to slowly oscillate around him. His facial expressions during all of this kind of remind me of a cow chewing it's cud; he doesn't seem especially concerned that he's fallen into the middle of some kind of huge machine designed for obliterating sand particles and run by maniacs, and only makes a half-hearted attempt to jump out of it after the arms are moving around him so fast the human eye can't see them, which works about as well as you'd expect. Long story short, his body is destroyed and reconstituted as living sand the next day, with the added bonus that he's somehow able to perfectly recreate the color and consistency of the ridiculously ugly shirt he was wearing during his unfortunate accident. He then lumbers off to try and save his daughter by using his newfound powers in stupid ways to rob banks.

Meanwhile! Peter is zipping around town on his gay little motorscooter whistling about how rainbows make him happy or something when suddenly, out of nowhere, a mysterious stranger riding a flying snowboard swoops in and throws him into a wall! Wow! Peter looks up, his dazed eyes filled with confusion. Who could this mysterious stranger be? How could he know Peter Parker's barely kept secret identity of the amazing Spider-Man? Oh, right. It's Harry Osborn, that guy from like an hour ago who totally told Peter that he hated him and wanted to kill him, and had not only the means but also the motive and opportunity to do so! He even screams "You knew this was coming, Pete!!", because even though everyone in the audience knew about two movies ago that Harry would want revenge, the thought never seemed to occur to Peter. They battle around in the sky and across rooftops for a while, and I have to say, as bad as this movies dialogue and plot are, the special effects are awesome. The fight comes to an abrupt conclusion after Peter uses some of his spider-webbing to clothesline Harry and knock him off of his radically evil snowboard, and despite the fact that he had previously survived being punched face first through the glass plating of like sixteen buildings, the 100 foot fall seemed to really fuck him up. Peter freaks out and dashes over to his unmoving friend, tries to give him CPR, and the next thing you know, Harry's being loaded into an ambulance and taken to the hospital. After a few tense hours, the doctor comes out, and instead of asking Peter why his friend was knocked unconscious while dressed like some kind of techno-bondage freak, just explains that Harry will be fine and is only suffering from a minor case of amnesia; specifically the type of amnesia regarding the possible identities of any superheroes he happens to know and any involvement they might have had in the death of his father.

This is a stupid plot twist, because now everything can go back to being hunky-dory between Pete, MJ and Harry, but whatever. It actually happened in the comics on multiple occasions, so I'm willing to let it slide. What I couldn't stand, however, is the way that James Franco, the actor who plays Harry, decided to interpret the personality shift. For the next 45 minutes, every time he opened his mouth I wanted to jump into the screen and shove a pencil through his eye. He apparently took the direction "okay, act like you're friends with everybody again" to mean "act like you've had a stroke to the portion of your brain that doesn't cause you to talk like a lobotomy patient on ecstasy." This is an actual sample of his dialogue:

Peter: "Hey there, Harry, how are you feeling? That bump on your head getting better?"

Harry: "Gosh, buddy, you know what? It sure is! Boy, things sure are swell!"

Peter: "That's great."

Harry: "Hey, you know what else is great??"

Peter: "What's that?"

Harry: "PUPPIES! Yeah, they're so cute, I think that God himself must have made them out of sunbeams and happiness. Hey, you guys want to come back to my place? We can drink hot chocolate and wear fuzzy pajamas and have a smiling contest! I bet I'll win! Ha ha ha!"

Seriously, it was horrible. And things don't seem to be getting any better. First, Peter pisses off MJ by making out with hot new blonde love interest Gwen Stacy at a parade in Spider-man's honor before rushing off to get his ass handed to him by Flint Marko, who's been remaining inconspicuous by flying around the city in the form of a giant sandstorm cloud. Then, he gets shot down trying to propose in a hilariously unfunny scene in which he's apparently completely oblivious to the fact that MJ is jealous, although seeing as how he never seemed to even consider that Harry might want him dead, this is actually kind of believable. Finally, to cap it all off, he and Aunt May are called down to the police station to be informed that the guy the cops thought killed his Uncle Ben actually didn't. It was some other guy. Oops! Our bad! And who was that other guy, you ask? Why, Flint Marko, who Peter had just fought that very afternoon and was now running around as an unstoppable sand monster! What are the odds!

Peter goes back to his tiny apartment to brood and wait for Marko to strike again, but thoughts of burning revenge make him sleepy after about an hour and he decides to take a nap. While he's sleeping, the sinister black blob of space goo that hitched a ride on his moped at the beginning of the move crawls all over his body, and the next thing he knows he wakes up outside wearing a black version of his costume that seems to enhance his abilities. I didn't mention the space goo before because literally, that's how it got there. He was hanging out in the park with MJ, a comet fell from the sky, and then space goo crawled out of it and jumped onto his bike. That's it. That's all you get. Peter's surprisingly unconcerned about the fact that his costume is suddenly made out of alien semen and makes him black out, and just decides to investigate a suspicious trail of sand that's crawling of its own accord through a set a bank doors that have been torn from their hinges. I swear, that Spider-man has a deductive mind like a steel trap. On his way in, he's accosted by Eddie Brock, played by Topher Grace, a hotshot new photographer who's trying to take Peter's job at the Daily Bugle. Displaying the negative influence the black suit is already having on him, he throws Brocks camera into a wall and totally breaks it, before saying "Nyah!" and then swinging off.

He finally confronts Marko in the dank labyrinth of subway track and drainage pipes that apparently comprise the majority of New York City's underbelly. Despite the fact that he's supposed to be really good at science, Peter doesn't seem to realize that repeatedly punching a man completely made out of sand in the face really isn't going to accomplish much. Marko finally stumbles into a puddle of water, which, about 10 minutes later, gives Peter the brilliant idea to flood the room they're fighting in by breaking one of the conveniently placed hydro-tanks scattered around the subway. This turns his enemy into a shrieking pile of wet mud, and he's eventually sucked into a sewer drain. Peter then jubilantly goes to tell his Aunt that the guy who killed her husband is dead, and is surprised when it turns out she's not really that enthusiastic about murder. This causes him to worry enough about his fluctuating mental state that he goes to visit one of his science friends, who, despite the fact that he even admits that he's a physicist and knows nothing about alien slime biology, is very assertive when he says that it exhibits "characteristics of a symbiote." Of course, the scientific method he uses to back up this nonsensical claim consists of him sticking a small piece of the goo into a jar and then poking it with a stick, so it's easy to question the veracity of his conclusion.

This is the point in the film where director Sam Raimi was obviously too busy bathing in his gigantic bathtub full of money to care what direction the movie went in, and everything quickly turns even more unwatchable than it already was. MJ, still upset about Peter's insensitivity and uncaring attitude, as well as being a humongous whore, decides to call up Harry to find a shoulder to lean on. The two of them end up, and I swear I'm not lying here, cooking omelets while dancing around to "Twist and Shout" while giggling and staring into each others eyes. The flirting quickly turns into a passionless kiss, with both of them breaking it off at around the same time and profusely apologizing to one another while awkwardly staring at the ground. MJ leaves crying, and Harry, desperate to immerse himself back into the blissful world of magical unicorns and gumdrop fairies that he had previously inhabited, takes a swift gulp of brandy. For some reason, this has the exact opposite of the intended effect, causing all of his amnesia to go away and making him see a reflection of his father in a mirror that starts screaming at him to go kill Spider-man. The scene ends with Harry's face cracking into a sinister grin of pure evil, and the audience is left in rigid anticipation to see what kind of diabolical scheme he comes up with to enact his final revenge.

And so what does he do? Does he get Peter hopped up on ecstasy and then force him to have sex with Aunt May at gunpoint while MJ watches and pleasures herself? Does he dig up Uncle Ben's corpse and wear his skull like a hat before waking Peter up by peeing in his mouth? No! No, it's sooooo much gayer than that.

The first step in his nefarious plot involves capturing MJ and then forcing her to meet Peter in a park to break up with him, telling him that they're so over and that she's met another man. That's pretty rough, and Peter is understandably upset. But wait, it gets even more evil! Harry then meets Peter for coffee, and smugly tells him that, get this….he's the other guy! Oh shit!

Really, this is the best idea that he could come up with? That's his revenge plot? Making Peter think that he stole his girlfriend? That's not a plan worthy of a criminal mastermind, that's something I did in high school to get back at whatever football dick was dating the girl that I liked. Peter, seriously pissed off and wearing his black costume, shows up at Harry's house and then, fueled by alien slime-enhanced rage, proceeds to beat the living fuck out of him. Standing over the body of his broken foe, the true nature of his evil suit comes out and he says some really mean things about how Harry's dad totally didn't love him. Ouch. Harry, enraged at these lame taunts, summons the last of his energy and throws one of his pumpkin grenades at the back of Peters head as he walks away. Peter easily dodges the attack, and then sends the bomb hurtling back to explode right next to Harry's face.

As if the fact that Peter just attempted to murder one of his closest friends wasn't indicative enough of how much the alien suit had corrupted him, he spells it out for the slower members of the audience by brushing his formerly slicked-back hair down into his eyes, making him look not so much evil as like the keytaurist from 80's musical sensation A Flock of Seagulls. What follows is one of the worst montages that have ever been filmed in the entire history of movies. With annoying disco music blaring, Peter is shown walking down the streets of New York with his collar popped up to his ears, grinning nastily and making lewd gestures at any woman that he passes. Tobey Maguire obviously has no sense of rhythm whatsoever, so the whole thing looks like he's suffering from a mild seizure instead of anything remotely cool. He then goes into a hip clothing boutique, and emerges seconds later wearing some kind of awful swing outfit that I guess is supposed to signify how immoral he's become. As if this wasn't bad enough, he then stands in the doorway of the shop and proceeds to place his hands behind his head and furiously thrust his groin around like he's trying to dislodge a rabid wolverine that's intent on devouring his genitals. This goes on for far, far longer than it has any right to, and after the first 7 minutes or so the hilarity was starting to fade and I was just getting uncomfortable.

And then, as if the emo haircut, attempted murder, and pelvic thrusting weren't enough to convince you that Peter is heading down the dark path of iniquity, Raimi decides to hammer it in just a little bit more. Peter's science friend calls him up again to tell him that after more rigorous fake testing, he's discovered that the black goo seems to enhance certain feelings, particularly those of aggression. Thanks, Dr. Obvious. I hadn't caught on to that yet. But Raimi isn't convinced that his audience knows the black suit is evil. The American public is, after all, notorious for needing to be spoon fed even the most blatant of truths, so why not indulge their stupidity? To this end, the camera pans in for a closeup shot through a microscope, to show how the alien symbiote is acting at a molecular level. This consists of a large black dot, I guess representing one of the evil slime's cells, beating up all of the normal, small white cells around it. Thank you, Mr. Raimi. I finally understand that the costume is bad, as well as possibly racist.

Peter, however, still thinks it's great. He takes Gwen, the blonde tart he made out with earlier, to the jazz club where MJ is working as a waitress. To make MJ jealous, he hops onto the piano and plays a snazzy dance number before tapping across the bar, swinging off of a chandelier, and doing this weird little boyband routine with a chair in the middle of the dance floor. He then seductively wraps Gwen's legs around his waist and dips her slowly to the ground, all the while looking straight into a horrified MJ's eyes. Gwen, realizing she's being used like a common street whore, becomes mortified and storms out, prompting Peter to attempt a reconciliation with MJ. She, of course, is less than receptive, and an unhappy Peter takes out his aggression on one of the bouncers who tries to make him leave. As MJ attempts to pull him off of his victim, he turns around and punches her to the ground and then, horrified at what he's become, turns and runs out of the bar like a woman.

Peter finally realizes that while the suit might make it easier to talk to girls and stuff, it's really not worth it if you fly into an uncontrollable rage and beat them to a pulp before you get to have sex with them. He broods on top of a church for a while before going into the bell tower to try and remove the symbiote, but it really doesn't want to leave and fights him. Eventually, Peter is able to tear some of it off of when he accidentally stumbles into the bell, realizing that space clothing, like Chihuahuas, hate loud noises. Coincidentally, Eddie Brock is in the same church, and is praying to Jesus in the hopes He'll reach down His almighty hand and kill Peter after he revealed Brock was trying to pass off a photoshopped picture of Spider-man robbing a bank. Jesus works in mysterious ways, and responds to Brocks fervent supplication by dropping a bucketful of homicidal alien sperm onto his upturned face. Amen!

The movie's been running for a good two hours by now, and it's time for the final pointless showdown. Brock, now looking like a jacked black-suited Spider-man with a mouth full of slavering teeth, somehow finds Flint Marko and convinces him to help crush their mutually hated enemy. This, of course, makes no sense given Marko's previously misunderstood yet relatively altruistic behavior, unless he's still really pissed that Spider-man turned him into mud and flushed him down a sewer. I guess when you put it like that, it's believable. It doesn't get him any closer to curing his daughter, but I'm sure the sand that currently constitutes his body is made of at least 75% fecal matter, so I'd be angry too. They kidnap MJ and suspend the cab she's in high above the ground between two buildings, taunting Spider-man to come out and face them. Peter, despite seeing on the news that his girlfriend is in mortal peril, takes a while to actually go do anything about it. First, he pulls out his old costume and stares at it for about 10 minutes, maybe contemplating the addition of a cape. Then he goes over to Harry's house and pleads with him to help in the rescue attempt, banking on the fact that Harry will be willing to put aside their differences to rescue a girl they both love. Harry, however, turns slowly into the light, and reveals that the entire right side of his face has been horribly disfigured by Peter throwing a grenade into it earlier. Peter, once again displaying his stupidity, seems shocked by this, as if he had no idea that having an object explode right next to you could be harmful. Harry, understandably, is less than willing to help out the guy who blew off half of his face just because he tricked him into thinking he was sleeping with his girlfriend, and politely tells Peter to fuck off.

As Peter swings despondently away, nonsensical plot twist number 84 shuffles forward in the form of Harry's ancient manservant, Jeeves! I actually don't remember what his real name was, but it was typically butler-esque, like Wordsworth or Mr. Slappy or something. Jeeves then tells Harry that he's known all along that Peter had nothing to do with the death of Harry's father, because it was Jeeves himself who cleaned the late Mr. Osborn's wounds, and he was completely sure that they were caused by his own goblin flying thing! So Peter couldn't have done it, maybe! Whoa! Harry takes this shocking news surprisingly well; I know that if it had been me, the subsequent conversation would have been much different.

Me: "God, can you imagine the nerve of that guy? Coming over here and asking for my help to rescue his whore of a girlfriend? That fucker burned off half of my face! And he killed my dad! God, I hate him soooo much!"

Jeeves: "Young master, I need to tell you something."

Me: "What is it, Jeeves? Did you forget to take your pills and get trapped in the closet again?"

Jeeves: "Not today, but thank you for asking. I've seen many a strange thing in this house, sir, and I've kept my silence as a good servant should. But I wanted to tell you that I was there the night your father died. I cleaned his wounds after making out with his corpse a little, and I can tell you for a certainty that he died because he was impaled upon his own goblin glider."

Me: "Excuse me?"

Jeeves: "That's right, young master. Based on his gaping chest wounds hours after his death, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that your friend had nothing to do with it."

Me: "And you're just telling me this shit now? After the last two years of seeing me obsess over the fact that I thought my best friend killed my dad?! Jesus! You just sat there and didn't say anything while you watched me spend hours making a flying snowboard and grenades that look like pumpkins so that I could finally enact my revenge?! Oh, and hey, you know when else this information might have been useful? Right before I made Pete think that I stole his woman and he BLEW HALF OF MY FUCKING HEAD OFF!!! What the hell is wrong with you?!

Jeeves: "Master, I…"

Me: "Jeeves, you are so fired."

Man, that was a stupid scene. Anyway, Peter has gone off to fight the unstoppable sand mutant Marko and evil black Spider-man Brock, and is thoroughly getting his ass kicked. To be fair, the main reason that he's doing so poorly is that he constantly has to keep making sure that MJ doesn't plunge to her death, as it seems like every two seconds the webbing holding her up snaps, prompting her to scream loudly and fall a few more feet. When this movie comes out on DVD, I want to play a drinking game that involves taking a shot every time MJ shrieks during the last 45 minutes, but I'm afraid I might die of alcohol poisoning. Seriously, she doesn't stop. It's like nails grating on a chalkboard in Hell. Finally, Harry shows up in his goblin outfit, and he and Peter proceed to enact every single horrible buddy action-movie cliché in short order. Peter lovingly telling Harry that "It's good to see you, buddy" as they make up? Check. Harry telling Peter that he's "Kind of busy over here!" while facing down Marko by himself? Check. Linking arms and then swinging around to kick the opponent your friend was fighting a la Jackie Chan/Chris Tucker? Check. After about 15 minutes of flying around Marko, Harry finally remembers his Sand Monster Obliteration Missiles, which do their job and crumble Marko to dust. You might wonder why he didn't use them earlier, but don't. It'll only make your head hurt. Harry then turns to help Peter, who's being beaten like a red-headed stepchild by Brock. After a few more minutes of furious battling, Brock steals Harry's snowboard and prepares to deliver a fatal blow to Peter with its jagged edges. Things look grim for our intrepid hero, until Harry leaps out of nowhere and takes his own evil snowboard to the chest, saving Peter! Brock then unceremoniously throws Harry out of a window to crash into the ground 100 feet below them, but Peter, fueled by the rage over his friend's apparent death, gains the upper hand when he remembers that the alien slime hates loud noises. He traps Brock in a circle of steel bars, and then beats on them with another steel bar until the ringing noise is too much for the costume to bear. He pulls Brock out while the suit is going into space convulsions, and then throws a pumpkin grenade into it. Brock, not willing to lose the power and sweet revenge he was so close to obtaining, decides that his best course of action is to leap in after the bomb. This doesn't work out very well for him, and he winds up getting vaporized along with the black goo.

Whew. So, the climactic battle of good versus evil is over, with justice, as always, prevailing. Sure, there were casualties on both sides, but the important thing is that the tide of darkness that was two guys with lame vendettas against Spider-man has been averted. You'd think that the first thing Peter would do is go check on his friend who was impaled on sharp spikes and then thrown out of a building while saving his life, but no. Harry lies on the ground outside and slowly bleeds to death while Peter has a heartfelt conversation with a surprisingly un-obliterated Marko. Marko tells him that he's not really a bad guy, just misunderstood in a giant bank-robbing sand monster kind of way. Oh, and that he did shoot his uncle, but it was totally not on purpose. Peter forgives him, and Marko drifts away on the soft summer night's breeze.

So that's it. There are a few incidental mop-up events, like Harry's funeral and Peter and MJ getting back together, but the best part of the finale is when the credits start to roll. If you're a comic book fan, you'll have to see this movie just because it's Spider-man, but if you're not, I wouldn't really bother, unless you want to go and laugh at how bad it is.

Why Philadelphia Sucks, Featuring The Mystery Of Barry - 04/26/07

I was recently given the opportunity to go the wonderful city of Philadelphia on a business trip. When I say "business trip", I'm making this sound much more important than it actually was. I was flown there for two days so that I could learn how to use an instrument that measures lung capacity, which, on the surface, sounds perfectly reasonable, until I explain that the way this device works is by having the patient blow into it. That's all. That's all you do. I mean, sure, it's all computerized, and reports the data directly back to the company and maybe fries an egg or something just for fun, but that's still all there is to it. The patient takes a deep breath, then exhales. I wasn't about to turn down two days off from work to travel, so I wisely didn't point out the sheer stupidity of flying someone relatively far away and putting them up in a nice hotel just so you could show them how to blow into a tube, and I soon found myself in the middle of the City of Brotherly Love.

Philadelphia is a dirty city. I apologize to anyone reading this that's from there, or lives there, or simply appreciates it in a historical sense. But it's fucking filthy. And I don't mean it's dirty in the sense that there's trash everywhere, because there's surprisingly few cigarette butts, fast food wrappers, or any of the other usual debris you see rolling around the streets of a major metropolitan area. It just has this sense of underlying griminess, a sort of weird filmy substance that seems to coat everything. I know that it's old; really old, but I've never seen a city that's been around for hundreds of years actually look like it's been around for hundreds of years to such a great degree.

Due to the totally useless nature of my trip, I had a bunch of time to kill, so I decided to wander the streets to see what I could see. I'd been there in the past with my dad, but that was back when I was a lot younger, and at the time I was much more concerned with making sure my Optimus Prime action figure stopped Serpentor's diabolical plot of world domination than my father's earnest attempts to get me to appreciate my nations history. The hotel that I was staying at was on Market Street and literally a block over from City Hall, so I figured that such a central location would be an ideal place to start my adventures.

But when I got about halfway there, I realized that I didn't have any specific destination in mind to go next. The hazy recollections of my youth weren't going to help, and I had done absolutely no research whatsoever on potential tourist spots prior to boarding the plane. I seemed to recall that there was a large bell somewhere that was important, and I think the Declaration of Independence was transcribed here after a burning Englishman spoke to Ben Franklin or something. Oh, and I remembered that part in "Rocky" where Sylvester Stallone ran up a bunch of stairs and screamed something to the heavens about winning an arm-wrestling championship that was also somehow synonymous with his son's love. Or maybe I'm getting my movies mixed up, I don't know.

I also apparently had to, at some point, purchase and consume a cheesesteak.

Cheesesteaks are another reason I'm glad I don't live in Philadelphia. Can you imagine what it must be like to have a greasy sandwich be the most recognizable thing associated with your city? I know, I know. There's history here too. But that's actually the sad part. I can guarantee that if you walked up to a group of five random strangers anywhere else in America and said the word "PHILLY!" followed by an expectant pause, four out of five of them would respond (after the awkward silence brought on by having a stranger yell things at them) with the words "CHEESESTEAK!" And I guess you could argue that this is because most Americans are ignorant of their own history and more concerned with eating mass quantities of oily food, but still. I guess it's not entirely our retarded populaces' fault; the city itself doesn't do anything to dispel this perception. There's literally a cart on every single street corner selling "Authentic Philly Cheesesteaks". They're all over the place. I was in the bathroom at the airport washing my hands when all of a sudden, a surly man in an apron came out of nowhere and handed me a piping hot sandwich smothered in cheese and onions. I wasn't hungry, so I had to refuse, but then he looked like he'd get mad if I didn't tip, so I had to give him some money, but all I had was a five, and I didn't want him to have to get change out of his little basket by the sink, so I just gave him the whole five…. It was awkward. I suppose it could be worse; someone could run up and say "PHILLY!", to which everyone would immediately respond with "GOPHER FUCKING!", but it's still not something I'd want the world to immediately think of when someone mentions my city. And before anyone brings up the fact that when someone says "Atlanta", the first thing that comes to people's minds is "racist hillbillies", I've got two words for you: Fuck off. We have chicken and waffles too.

Oh, so yeah. I bought a cheesesteak from a vendor on my way down to Market Street. It was tasty. Not mind blowing or anything, but you know. Good. Sorry.

I got to City Hall, and began to take stock of my situation. I had no map, which was bad, but also had no real idea where I was going, which was good. This way, I rationalized, I couldn't get lost. Not that the map would have really helped. As anyone who's ever tried to go anywhere with me can attest, I suck with directions, possessing absolutely no internal compass whatsoever. For example, the first week I worked at Emory Hospital, one of the janitors found me underneath a staircase in the basement crying because I'd gotten lost for two days and couldn't find my way out. Which may sound ridiculous, but in my defense, it's a big hospital and I was new. I'd also eaten the bag of breadcrumbs I was planning to use as a trail marker for lunch, but you can't blame me for that. Breadcrumbs are delicious.

Despite this handicap, I still love exploring big cities; because while I may lack any sort of basic navigational skills, I make up for this deficiency by having absolutely no shame whatsoever in asking nearby strangers for directions. Seriously, it doesn't matter. Homeless people, old people, bus drivers, street mimes, whatever. Well, maybe not mimes. Clowns really freak me out, and a mime is basically a chalk-white clown wearing a beret that smiles insanely and doesn't speak while contorting their bodies to make it look like they're trapped in an invisible box, all of which is absurdly creepy. So usually when I see a mime, I've either screamed in terror and run away or reflexively bashed them in the face with a shovel before I can finish asking where a particular street is. Fucking mimes. In contrast, I find that homeless people, as long as you give them a dollar or some change or something first, are especially helpful. I mean, it makes sense; they've got nothing else to do besides wander around a city, so it's to be expected that they have an intimate knowledge of how to get from point A to point B. It does make me a little suspicious, though, when their directions include trips through dark alleys or stopovers at abandoned warehouses, but whatever. I'm inherently trusting, and those times that I've followed a hobo's directional advice and gotten mugged are probably just coincidences.

But thankfully, the city of Philadelphia is kind enough to have provisions set up for idiotic tourists such as myself. While I was throwing away the remains of my cheesesteak, I happened to notice something strange. Emblazoned on the top of the trash receptacle was what appeared to be a diagram of some sort. Intrigued, I looked closer, thinking maybe I'd been fortunate enough to stumble across directions that would lead me to a garbage pirate's hidden cache of gold and jewels. Sadly, it turned out to only be a map of the greater downtown area.

Trashcan Map



I'm kind of on the fence about the practical utilities of these trashcan maps. On the one hand, I suppose people are more likely to throw away whatever refuse they're holding as they come closer to figure out where they are, which helps keep the city clean. On the other hand, I was forced to spend an inordinate amount of my time wandering through Philadelphia pausing to stare at the tops of filthy garbage cans, which I'm sure looked to any passers-by like I was trying to carefully pick out the tastiest piece of trash before I reached in and grabbed it. Although if you think that's embarrassing, you should have seen the looks I got when I took out my camera and snapped a picture of one. Even the French tourists were pointing at me and laughing.

So after holding my breath and carefully perusing the helpful trashcan map, I decided on a few vague destinations. I'd go down to the Historic District and wander around until history got boring, and then if I had time, I'd try to find the stairs Rocky immortalized. I wasn't sure exactly where in the city that scene took place; but I figured that due to the massive number of posters and coffee mugs I'd seen plastered with Sylvester Stallone's stroke-victim face, Philadelphia was sufficiently proud enough the movie was shot there to put a gigantic neon walkway or something equally classy that would lead me straight to where I needed to go.

I won't bore you with a description of the Historic District; it was pretty much what you would expect it to be. All the places of note had enormous lines of screaming schoolchildren being chaperoned by surly adults or vacationing families trying to pretend that looking at an old bell was a totally awesome way to bond that I didn't feel like waiting around. I took a bunch of pictures, but these were the only ones that I thought were worth mentioning, and that's only because I have a weird imagination.

Tomb of Franklin! Danger: Mummies!



This is the solemn and distinguished resting place of famed inventor and statesman Ben Franklin. It was nice; it's tucked away in this quiet, unassuming little cemetery and is actually the only part of the entire city that isn't covered with huge statues of Ben holding a kite or inventing science or whatever. The one thing that did intrigue me, though, was that the whole gravesite was absolutely littered with pennies. I understand that it's symbolic and all because of his famous adage that "a penny saved is a penny earned", but he's also on the backside of the hundred, and I didn't see any of them fluttering around. I guess that we as Americans are willing to honor our forefathers by depositing monetary totems dedicated to their memories on their gravesites, but only as long as it's nothing too extravagant. The Egyptians would laugh at us. I threw a quarter down to remind him that even though he electrocuted himself in the name of scientific enlightenment, people still hate his useless little coin and think Washington was way better because he founded America and is worth 24 cents more. Slightly worried that his corpse might still be energized from his experimentation and angry enough to come back to life and try to eat my brains, I quickly dashed around the corner, only to be confronted with this:

Tranny Franklin


See what I mean? Franklin mania. He's everywhere. This one, though, is unique. Most of the statues differ only in what he's doing; the costume remains relatively unchanged: tasteful pantaloons, stylish doublet to hold in the paunch, maybe a tri-corner hat for the ladies. But it looks like this one was commissioned after he died, probably by someone who didn't like him very much and thought it would be funny to have Franklin commemorated in drag.

Next, on to Independence Hall. Once again, there was a long line even though the place was about to close, so I contented myself with wandering around the outside and taking pictures. And I'm glad I did, because I found what is, without a doubt, the best statue in all of Philadelphia. You would think that in front of a building of such importance there would be a statue of George Washington, or Thomas Jefferson, or maybe even Jesus or Santa Claus. But no. Standing proudly outside in the main courtyard, the site where our great nation came together to denounce the tyranny of the hated British and forever establish our democratic freedom, was a statue of "Barry". That's all it said. "Barry".

"Barry"



I was dumbfounded. I mean, this guy was obviously someone important; why else would anybody waste their time carving his likeness out of a huge piece of rock? My mind began to furiously scan through all of the old history lessons I never paid attention to in school, searching for some reference to "Barry". Unfortunately, I soon realized that my years of binge drinking had reduced my scholastic memories to nothing but vaguely stylized Fraggle Rock reruns, which while amusing, were less than helpful. I had to do something. Any minute now, some Japanese tourist was bound to walk up next to me and start asking questions that I would have no idea how to answer. Why wasn't there any more information included besides his first name? Did he win some kind of pre-revolution raffle, where they carved a statue of whatever townsperson hated the British the most? Was he the first person killed when the war started, and no one bothered to get his full demographics? Maybe he was George Washington's retarded brother-in-law, and Martha made her husband erect the statue so that Barry would stop hiding her powdered wigs and playing with George's wooden teeth. No, those were all stupid. Then, out of the corner of my eye, my worst fears were realized: a tiny Asian man with a huge camera and multiple children obediently trailing behind him was approaching. He had the determined look of someone who would be dissatisfied with anything less than a full explanation of Barry's life and role in the history of America, something I was obviously woefully unprepared to relate. Thinking quickly, I pointed behind him and screamed "LOOK OUT!! GODZILLA!!", to which he responded "GODZIRRA?! RO NO!! RUN FOR YOUR RIVES!!", before sprinting off in the opposite direction. It was a close call, but I was safe. I turned back around to ponder the inscrutable riddle that was "Barry". I looked at him from the left. I scratched my head, then looked at him from the right. Still nothing. Sighing in exasperation, I trudged around to the back of the statue, thinking that maybe his ass might hold the key to unraveling his historical mystery. And sure enough, there it was. A small plaque, on the completely wrong side of the statue. It turns out that "Barry" was actually "John Barry", the founder of the U.S. Navy. That was it. How fucking boring is that?

Thoroughly disgusted, I vowed to make my way to the final destination of my pilgrimage and turned my rage onto a middle-aged guy dressed like Paul Revere and waving a bell on one of the street corners:

Me: "Hey, jackass. I'm looking for that place the boxer with Down's Syndrome ran up a bunch of stairs in that movie about boxers. Also, I think Mr. T was there at some point. In the movie, not at the stairs. Am I going in the right direction?"

Fake Paul Revere: "Verily, young master, you are indeed nearly to your journey's end. Follow this thoroughfare over yonder hill, and then—"

Me: "Wait. Stop. God, you're making my ears bleed. Look at yourself. I mean, it's the middle of a Wednesday. So it's not like you're dressing up in a vinyl colonial outfit and prancing around out here because you like history and this is just your cute little hobby. This is actually your job. Does it bother you that your wife sleeps with other men solely due to the shame your profession brings her? Why haven't you killed yourself yet?"

Fake Paul Revere: (hangs head) "I'm already dead inside."

That cheered me up, so walked around until I found a hobo digging around inside one of the trashcan maps, and armed with not only a derelict to give me directions but a map on the back of a garbage bin to confirm it, I quickly found my way to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It was a long walk, but it was worth it. Directly outside of the museum is a huge statue that attempts to collectively display all of the excitement and wonder that took place during the founding of America.

Chick with sword


Here's a woman crouched over the body of what is presumably her husband, ready to take up his weapon to defend their freedom against the British tyranny.

I'm a shitty photographer


Next, we have a mounted colonial, possibly "Barry", bravely gesturing with his sword point towards the bright and democratic future his beloved country would soon enjoy.

Indian tits



Here we have a picture of some Indian tits, because I, like my forefathers before me, think tits are cool.

Mooseknuckle



This is a mooseknuckle.

And what lay just beyond this massive commemoration to our great nation's history? What else could possibly be included near so noble a monument to the majesty of America?

Adrianne! Yo! And stuff!



It's Rocky! Yay!
I know that the movie was shot here, and it's a great, classic movie and all, but come on. Do you really need to erect a statue of a retarded boxer outside of one of the most historic places in America? Why not just put up a huge sculpture of Will Smith and Bill Pullman in the front lawn of the White House so that we would always remember Independence Day? I tried to run up the steps, hoping that recreating the famous scene would lessen my scorn, but I passed out about halfway up. After regaining consciousness and smoking a cigarette, I slowly made my way to the top. They were doing a whole bunch of construction, so it was kind of hard to recreate the exact scene, but I swear to God there were still about eight idiot people smiling and dancing around with their fists raised while their embarrassed companions quickly took pictures of them. After laughing at a huge overweight woman pretending to be Rocky and almost falling over and breaking her ankle, I trudged back down the steps and began looking for a bum so I could ask directions back to my hotel.

Thus ended my adventures in the magical city of Philadelphia. It had been fun; I'd learned about my nation and now, whenever anybody stopped me on the street to ask me who founded the U.S. Navy, I could look them in the eyes and respond with confidence, "Barry did." So thank you, Philly. You're delicious greasy sandwiches and statues dedicated to both obscure historical figures and movie icons have touched me in a way that I'm sure I'll never feel again, at least until I go to a city that's slightly cleaner.