BREAKING NEWS...I'm slow at updates

59. Paul Mooney: Analyzing White America
Paul Mooney was first introduced to me on Chappelle's show and I was intrigued by his delivery and style of comedy. He's quite up front and confrontational about his perceived slights. This was a recording of his stand up routine. While he's not very animated, and spends the entire set sitting back in a chair, he is no less captivating or boring because of it. While some of his material is more social commentary than actual comedy, he still delivers some funny stuff and entertains throughout.

61. 27 Dresses
Adie enjoyed this one. It starred Katherine Heigel, who I used to enjoy on Grey's Anatomy and in Knocked Up but who has fallen out of grace with me after she publicly bashed Knocked Up and it's creators as being misogynistic and exploitative. Here's a quick thought. If you thought it was derogatory and a bad role for you, don't take it. Here's one more. Don't bash the people that launched your movie career only after you've made a few more films (read: money). Anyway, this was a "rom-com" centered around weddings and whatnot. I'm sure it resonated a bit more with Adie due to the pending nuptials. I watched it with her one night to pad the stats for this year. It was light on both the rom and the com and ended up being really boring to me. Feel free to skip this unless your body possess ovaries.

62. The Love Guru
Skip it. It's not funny. It's borderline offensive if you think you know what funny is. I equated this the other day to a friend to be "Mike Meyers did something funny that was funny in 1997. And he's never changed the jokes. Just the wording. But the jokes remain the same. And if you hear a joke now that you heard 11 years ago, it's not going to be funny anymore." I only laughed one time, and it was during a scene where Mike Meyers was no where to be found.

63. The Dark Knight
You may have noticed, intrepid reader that I skipped a number earlier. Or you may have not noticed at all, in which case, shame on your head. You must read every last character that I churn out here. For they are all my children and I love them equally. Anyway, I saw The Dark Knight twice in a week. Thus the skipping of order.
It was awesome.
Dark, violent, and well paced. I love that Nolan doesn't have to bow to any pressures from the studio to make it family friendly like the original sequels. There isn't the need for huge tie ins to every imaginable product that must be acceptable to everyone in the world. The studio let the people make an awesome movie, and they will end up making close to a billion dollars on the whole thing when it's said and done.
The Joker is the best villain Batman has, and they nailed it down in the film. He's presented just as he should be in this type of movie. He's just a crazed man not afraid of anything and ready to deal out mayhem at the drop of a card.
My one complaint is the completely overacted and distractingly funny way Bale decides to voice Batman. They explain why he does it in the movie, to hide his real identity, but it's just so cheesy and fake. But if that's my only complaint about the movie, then they kicked some major ass.

64. Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Tour
One dark and gloomy day I found myself at home alone. Faced with a dark cloud overhead and nothing else to distract me I turned to Netflix and their wonderful new "View it now" option. I ended up watching three comedies in hopes of boosting my mood.
The first was this Vince Vaughn project. Much like the Dane Cook Tourgasm from a few years ago, they filmed a group of lesser know comics on the road with a well known headliner. The four guys they picked for the show were funny at times, adequate the rest of the time. It was more a documentary about their travels as they put on 30 shows in 30 nights. They toured the hurricane damaged south and donated money to charity. They toured around and did whatever they wanted for 30 days.
Overall it was funny at times. If you like seeing the behind the scenes stuff that goes into a traveling concert tour, than this will appeal to you more. But if you think your just going to see two hours of comedy, than you would be disappointed.

65. The Comedians of Comedy: The Movie
This was a repeat for me, but I knew it would guarantee a laugh. I love the four comics that they used for this project. Much like the previous entry, they followed comics trying something different and documented not only the shows by the rest of their travels. Check it out. It's much better put together and features some truly alternative and subversive comedy that will entertain to no end.

66. Super High Me
A documentary featuring known pot head Doug Benson in his quest to see the effects on his body after not smoking weed for 3o days, and then smoking weed all the time for 30 days following. He went to numerous doctors and psychologists to test his memory, IQ, psychic ability, sperm count, and overall health while he was "clean" and then took the same tests during his month long high. Overall it didn't make a huge difference either way to any of the tests. His one major revelation was that he thought he would be sick of smoking after 30 days, and he wasn't. And when I say he was high for 30 days, I mean all fucking day. He would smoke as soon as he got up and continue throughout the day until he went to sleep. There wasn't a waking moment for him that month that he wasn't high.
And much like Dave Chappelle has admitted, random people will recognize him and just give him drugs. So he's never at a shortage for weed.
This also featured a sub plot about the licenced and legal distributors in California who provide weed and weed products to those prescribed it medically. I'm not saying that those people shouldn't be able to use the drug to dull their pain. But instead of focusing on the patients and their true need for it, they just focused more on how the DEA wants to shut them down and how stupid hippies in cali think that their rights are being infringed upon. They call for the local government and police to enforce the state law, which allows the medical sale of weed, over the governmental jurisdiction. The funny part is that anywhere else in America you could never do what they do there. And they are all up in arms when one dispensary gets shut down for like a week. But the movie makes a point of pointing out that the number of dispensaries is constantly on the rise, and that there were like 300 others in the LA area that they could go to during that ONE WEEK they couldn't go to their preferred weed dealer.

67) Blade 2
I re-watched this one morning instead of tuning into my regular morning dose of sportscenter. And it pretty much was what I remembered. I think it was the best of the three blade offerings. The first movie was pretty awesome, but they had to set up all the back story and whatnot which had a tendency to drag on. The second offering in the series already had the basics established. Right off the bat they introduce the main villain, who kicks alot of ass. A new breed of vampire that was genetically modified by the other vampires in hopes that their known weaknesses would be erased. But in doing so, they created a creature much stronger than anything else, and someone who is really pissed at being cast off. So instead of the vampires feasting on the humans, and Blade trying to save them, it's a Vampire turning other vampires into it's bitch. Of course eventually they would turn on the humans once they ran out, but this movie doesn't fall into that old trap.
The visuals are pretty cool, the fight scenes passable. It was pretty good I thought. Any horror movie that takes a oft-tread theme, such as vampires or zombies, and can create something new out of it I will typically be a fan regardless.

If I could choose
I would rather be a king
Like Elvis, not Henry
Same amount of women, much less guillotine costs.

If I could decide
I'd rather be a priest like Judas
Not Jesus
Groupies all around
and some won't crucify you

And if I could pick
between damnation and redemption
I would choose happiness over all

KCBS #1

In a few short minutes we are heading to Madison for a BBQ, Blues, and Hot Air Balloon festival. This will be my first opportunity to use my prowess as a official barbeque judge. Tomorrow I will be graced with 6 portions of Chicken, Beef Brisket, Ribs, and Pork Butt. Also on the menu is a sauce contest, an "Anything Butt" competition (i.e. more meat) and finally a banana themed dessert battle.

This will be a three and a half hour orgy of meat and bananas. I'm going to do my best to not throw up or have explosive diarrhea during the middle of the competition.

Hot Rod

The 58th entry into my quest this year was Hot Rod. This starred Andy Sandburg as a fledgeling stunt man trying to raise funds so that his step dad could get a transplant. And once the transplant happens, he plans on kicking his step dad's ass.

If you like the SNL digital shorts and wish you could see a whole bunch of them strung together with a semi-coherent plotline throughout them, then this is the film for you. There are some really funny stuff in here, but its also surrounded by alot of filler and then that is surrounded by some more stuff that is either attempting to tie the story together, or just isn't funny. It's like a turducken, but with comedy. A Turducken that's been overcooked so just the middle is any good. That metephor is a bit of a strech, but I think you get the point.

Water Polo

In my completely amateur observation of the sport, it seems like a combination of Toss It and Dunking. Both I excel at. Thus, I deem that I would rule at this sport. I decided.

I love being patriotic during the Olympics

There is a special something in the air these days. Like a little extra static charge being built up on the collective footie pajama feet of the world. It's Olympic fever time. NBC has been gracious enough to supply us with a constant feed halfway across the world to see the rise and fall of our great nation as we compete in realistic and somewhat ludicrous sports.

And I couldn't be filled with more pride for our country. Of course I fully recognize that it's mostly fluff patriotism that is not real and that will disapate following the conclusion of the Olympics, but I'm loving the good ol' US of A right about now.

And in following a pattern of mine whenever the Olympics are on, I fixate on some bizarre sport that doesn't get followed round these parts. The last winter Olympics it was Curling. This summer it is developing into water polo.

I made an attempt to get into the fencing, but it was just to fast to really understand what was going on. Then it was the rifling competitions, but they too were over to quick and hard to really understand the scoring system. I did try and watch some of the equestrian events, but even with the commentators attempting to explain why this was an event and what it all entailed, it just seemed like goofballs riding around on horses in bad costumes with no discernible skill or difficulty involved. Bull Riding I could get behind. I can easily recognize the risk and skill needed to be successful. Not so much with the regular boring horse riding. They weren't even jumping over anything.

On a seperate note, I have been lax in updating on the Movie front. I'm up to a full 69 in the bag, which is a little off pace for the year, but I should be able to shatter last years record of 87 quite easilly. I'm going to work on an update on that today and hopefully have that up either tonight or tomorrow.

And I've finished SATC. Including the movie, which was the 69th of the year. By complete coincidence. Though it is oddly fitting.

Super Soaked

I will admit that I am a major cliche at times. It is a widely accepted fact that men enjoy sports, and programing about sports is high on their list of things to watch. It is also a fact that most daytime television programming is not designed for the 20something male, but the 40something housewife. I can't stand any of the daytime talk shows. And ever since Passions got canceled I have no interest in a soap opera. If one decided that it was time to cast a talking marionette little person, I may tune in. And morning shows should all just fuck off and kill each other. So that leaves me with ESPN and their never changing rotation of 6 hours of sportscenter or DVR. Typically I will turn on Sportscenter and listen to it in the background as I make my morning ritualistic check of the same websites as yesterday. And once the hour is up and sportscenter restarts, I may or may not change it off. But usually I can't stand it after three hours.

But, with the TV constantly being tuned to ESPN during the days, coupled with the fact that I watch a lot of Reds baseball on FSN, I sometimes get the pleasure of seeing some bizarre choices in sports that are broadcast.

One of the most surreal and baffling experiences ever was at least 10 years ago when I was flipping through ESPN2. This was back towards it's inception and they were still attempting to show the non-traditional sports. The decided to dedicate an entire hour to filming and commenting on two geeks playing Magic: The Gathering. There was a huge set with lights and a specially designed table. There were two "experts" delivering the play by play. It was bizarre. I don't think anyone would watch it unless they themselves had some experience playing Magic. And I never saw it come on again, so perhaps this was a one time filler slot. But I wish I could find it now, just to marvel at the absurdity of it all.

There was also my short lived obsessions with watching competitive paintball, arm wrestling, domino's, and back when I was a child the competitive skeet shooting with the big scoring grid.

But the latest bizarre sport captured on film and presented to the masses came on late the other night on FSN. Competitive Yo Yo.

Just let that sink in a bit. It may take a while to fully grasp the concept.

Much like the Magic show that was on years ago, this was a fully produced competition with lighting and multiple camera angles and commentary. But none of this wizardry could cover up that it was a simple black stage set up in some kind of meeting room at the Radison in Kansas City, Kansas or some such wasteland. And I have to say the poor souls that were competing were actually very talented yo-yo artists. This was far more advanced than a simple "walking the dog" or "cat's cradle" In fact the commentators either were very knowledgeable about the sport, or were very adept at making shit up on the spot. They had names such as "a double monkey shines", "backwards goofy flip", and "inverted atomic jammer" I made all those up, but you get the point. It was like when back in the day when we would all go freestyle walking and make up the ridiculous names for the stunts we were pulling.

I couldn't really understand what made one guy any better than the other. None of them got their lines tangled up in a huge mess, and no one dropped their yo yo's. But some were criticized for not doing original or hard tricks. They all looked hard and original.

And this I think is where some of the more non conventional things that get put on TV lose people. While they are just a novelty act that most people can enjoy in short bursts, these productions try and create story lines and characters out of the people. They go into great length about people's backgrounds and their accomplishments in their sports. But because most of these type of shows only are on the air once or twice, mostly in the wee hours of the morning, you will never be able to see any progression or learn anything about these people. You only watch it for a half hour, and then forget about it. I can't remember any of the people that were on the show, just that they were doing crazy yo yo tricks in some ballroom. So why waste the time and energy trying to create stories about these people and just show the action. It leaves a far deeper impression than the five minute montage about someone.