Movie and music review

This film is a look at the dark side of celebrity worship here in the USA. Patton Oswalt stars as a mid 30's sad sack nebbish who still lives at home with his shrewish mother, works a dead end job, and has love for only two things, the New York Giants football team and calling in to a sports talk radio show. When he gets the chance to meet his football idol in a strip club he gets beat up and suffers some brain damage. And his love for his team clouds his judgment when he decides not to co-operate with the police investigation of the incident. When the inevitable mockery starts, he decides to redeem himself in one of the worst ways possible.

It's a sad kind of depressing story but it's brilliantly told and brilliantly acted. Oswalt is terrific as the deluded pathetic football nut and Kevin Corrigan is also great as his equally socially inept buddy. The two play off of each other really well and they capture the aging man child awkwardness so well it's almost scary.

The rest of the cast is a bunch of virtual unknowns, with the exception of independent film darling Michael Rapaport. Don't get me wrong, just because the rest of the cast is a bunch of virtual unknowns that doesn't mean they're bad, they aren't, in all cases they turn in great performances. But the best thing about them is that they all look real, they all look like they come from the Staten Island/NYC area. And the director doesn't shy away from making them look plain and or ugly, he lets them be who they are and that's a good thing.

This film could have been about any obsessed fan of football, hockey, European football, or baseball. It could have just as easily been about someone who idolizes a politician, a singer, an actor. The point is celebrity worship deprives of us being who we really are and it fills our lives with fake fulfillment. I know I've made this film sound bleak and depressing, and it is at times, but trust me, it's a darn good movie and it's well worth your time, even if you're not a sports fan.

For many years I resisted Tori Amos because she was, in my opinion, too obtuse and overly dramatic for my taste. But I relented a few years ago and I got Sparky one of her CD's for Christmas and I liked most all of it. So when I saw this CD
at one of my local libraries the other day, I checked it out and gave it a listen. I'm happy to report that she's still obtuse and overly dramatic but in this case, she knocked my socks off.

On this CD she deconstructs and mashes up traditional Christmas carols and then she stitches them back together to make entirely newish songs out of them. There's also a few new compositions on this CD as well but the stand out songs are the reinterpretations of the traditional Christmas music. Her musical arrangements are stellar and her voice never sounded better. And the photos of her dressed as seasonal goddesses, and yes I choose to interpret them in that way, are also something behold. Ms. Amos is a stunningly beautiful woman and this CD is a stunningly good piece of work. I like to think as modern medieval music for the masses. It's odd but engaging and I recommend it highly.

Here's a little something for your Aussie girlfriend:

G'day!

Last batch, I swear

I made tomato sauce from fresh locally grown Roma tomatoes again the other day. I worked up the entire box and I ended up with 15 pints and nearly one quart of sauce. I kept it simple this batch, it's just Romas, roasted red pepper, salt, and black pepper, with a tablespoon of lemon juice in each jar to boost acidity levels and to aid in preservation.

I have a message for the Democratic party

You idiots are beyond the pale. You don't repeal DADT, you don't repeal the parts of the Patriot Act that are clearly unpatriotic, you keep the wars of terror going forever, you caved on heatlh care reform, you keep the worst aspects of the Bush/Cheney secrecy policies going, you want to gut the FCC's ability to oversee net neutrality, and then you have the gall to tell us to stop whining?

Nah, fuck you. Tell you assholes what I will stop though, I'll stop voting for you, except for whoever runs against my local asshole Republican member of the House of Representatives.

Up yours Joe Biden, Henry Waxman, Nancy Pelosi, and especially you Mr. Mealy Mouth Milquetoast Harry Reid. Go away Barack Obama, when we needed FDR, you gave us Herbert Hoover. I repudiate anything good I ever said about you and I will not lift a finger to help you get re-elected. I'm voting for a real liberal in 2012 and you can go suck more corporate cock you betrayal artist you.

Biden keeps telling us that we have to vote Democrat because if we don't then the Republican Tea party will be worse than the Democrats ever were. Boy howdy, what a ringing endorsement of the way the Corporate Democratic Party has run things. Hey Democratic party leaders, I've got your 2010/2012 slogan ready: The Republicans will screw you over, and so will we but as Democrats, we're committed to using lube before we fuck you.

Go away. Or better yet, be more like actual Democrats, such as Alan Grayson, Dennis Kucinich, and Bernie Saunders.

TV Report

I'm really liking the new Hawaii 5-0 reboot on CBS.

It's a good mix of action and outlandish police procedural. And there's another reason why I really like this new show.

But it escapes me right now. Oh wait, it came to me. Now I remember the other reason why I like this new version so much...
...Grace Park is in it. Grace Park, hubba hubba.

It's time for another round of 'The Blame Game!'

This week's 'Blame Game!' question is: Who is to blame for the loss of manufacturing jobs in the USA?

First up is Zelda P. Crabby-twat,
"I blame the unions. Who the hell do they think they are asking for more money and benefits for their members? They ought to be ashamed for the way they've treated big business. It's like they want corporations to share profits with them or something. It's disgusting what they've done."

Donald T. Pantymight wants to weigh in,
"I blame technology, the internet, and the growth on my groin, the one that looks like the Jonas brothers, not the one that speaks to me late at night."

Ogg the caveman says,
"I blame the liberals who keep me dependent on government cheese, peanut butter, and powdered milk. Damn you Nancy Pelosi!"

Stacey Von Unctuous wanted to blame something but I refused to let her as long as she insisted on dressing so ridiculous.
And finally, Rev. Oral Syntax blamed the usual suspects,
"I blame atheists, Negroes, Chileans, the gayists, Unitarians, oh wait, I already said atheists didn't I, west coast hippies, vegans, fans of Bollywood films, devil worshipers, Communists, pointy headed intellectuals, insomniacs, sports lovers, infiltrators, masturbators, instigators, the Florida Gators, hip waiters, race traitors, and the Spice Girls. It's all in the Bible, look it up if you don't believe me."

A two fisted double movie review

Let's get one thing straight, Jessica Biel is one heck of a good looking woman. She's smokin' hot, seriously, she goes to 15 on the 1 to 10 hotness scale. She buries the needle in the red on the hotness meter.

But having said that, I'll say she's not the greatest actress in the world. I didn't think she was bad in this film, I just thought that she was out of her league. And I say that even after saying that Colin Firth needs to pay back what ever they paid him to do this movie. He was awful in it. He was supposed to be shell shocked, world weary, and jaded but he came off as brain damaged and petulant.

Over all this film is 'meh.' If you like pretty British women who are icy cold and remote, then this is your film. If you like staring at smokin' hot Jessica Biel, then this is your film. Otherwise, skip it.

I really liked this film until the final few minutes then I hated it.

Annette Benning, who never looked better on film, plays an aging actress who has to deal with a husband who sleeps around, a creepy business partner, a conniving young actress rival, and a young lover who may or may not be all he says he is. Benning plays her role as the world weary actress perfectly until the final moments.

I was rooting for Benning's character to win out in the end against her various rivals, and she did, but the way she did it ruined the whole thing for me. I come from a performance background, I did plays and worked in many kinds of theatre and I did improv comedy with a group of guys for many years and the one thing that is ingrained in me is to not humiliate cast members onstage. It's bush league and it's wrong to take out your personal issues with your fellow improv group members or fellow actors while on stage in front of an audience. And that's what Benning character did in this movie. She set up and humiliated her female rival, her husband, and her young male lover in front of her adoring audience. When I saw that that was going to be the big pay off and that her character was to be celebrated and feted for being an asshole and humiliating people in front of an audience my jaw dropped and all the good will I had towards Benning's character and the movie in general evaporated. I wanted to slap her character, the writer, and the director for ruining the film for me.

Despite Benning being great for 9/10th's of this film and despite the presence of the insanely cute Lucy Punch as Benning's female acting rival, I can't recommend this film at all. It seriously pissed me off.

Swede of the week

I stole this photo of Ann Margret from here.

The post White House years have not been kind to Laura Bush

Ah well, life marches on.

Your nuts...

...squirrel haz dem.

Barn of the week

And so it begins...

I put the first twenty five pages of my graphic novel Hip Deep, Mountain High up on the interwebs. If you click on the title to the project in the previous sentence then it will take you to the free sample blog where I posted it.

The first 25 pages are free, the rest of it will cost you a minimum donation of $15 to me directly or to my PayPal account. That's a one time donation and if you donate now you will not only get an invite to the invitation only blog where the rest will appear when it get it done, and that will probably be in late spring or early summer of next year if all goes well, you will get the chance to buy at a reduced rate the CD version of the project which will contains numerous extras.

As of right now I have no publisher so it will not be available in a 'book' format, so there will be no signed copies for anyone. I may, at a later date, go the self published route if no publisher is interested.

The story is a twisted criminal tale about a fictional county in the mountain south that's run by a crime lord and his henchmen. A young man finds himself unwillingly thrust into Jones County and along the way he crosses paths with a dirty sheriff, an unscrupulous televangelist, members of the Willis crime family, and some TV personalities who like to make his life even more crazy.

This project has been a huge collaborative effort between myself and my friends and their families who have served as models for the photos. So far photos from three countries and two states have been used in this project and there many more photos to be taken.

This project is stretching me creatively, which is what I wanted, and it's consuming a lot of my time. I hope you like what I've done as much as I like what I've come up with, and if you don't then that's fine too.

Here, take one of my cards:

Card courtesy of Blueberry, she's Austin's finest citizen.

Nailed it

It's like they're talking about me in those comic book panels.

Brunette of the week

Hilly Rose, space reporter.

Fashion tips of the week

The next baby based threat to the USA

Greetings my fellow Americans, I'm Cecil Clendennon founder of Christian Teabaggers of the Jesus States of America. And I'm here on this godless liberal blog to warn any God fearing, gun loving, freedom drenched conservatives who may have wandered over here by mistake, especially those who were lured here by false promises of nude photos of Archie Panjabi and Archie and Jughead. I'm here to warn my fellow teabaggin' friends about the newest baby based threat to America.

You've all heard about anchor babies and about terror babies. I bring you now news of a baby threat that is far more insidious than those two baby threats combined. This new baby threat comes from within our borders and it's of course brought to you by liberals. This new baby based threat to our great and Jesus lovin' nation is...ENTITLEMENT BABIES aka 'benefit babies.'

Friends, liberals are having babies for the express purpose of obtaining unconstitutional benefits for them. Once liberal 'families' have their Pelosi mandated quota of abortions, they swear an oath that the rest of the babies they have will grab the government money teat and they will suck at it until they bleed it dry. It starts with the babies getting free food and medical care that's paid for by you and me, then they graduate to using government run programs like the libraries and schools. Then these leeches steal all the unemployment benefits they can grab, college loans and Pell grants and then to top off their life of greed, they latch onto Social Security and Medicare and they ride it as long as they live. Friends, it seems that liberals finally found their reason for having babies, albeit a sick, twisted reason. They don't love these kids they're pushing out, they are only having them so they can abuse government handouts.

I urge you all to report any pregnant liberals to the FBI, the 700 Club, and to John Birch Society. We can't allow these liberal freeloading babies to ruin America for the rest of us. Report and abort all liberals who are having 'benefit babies.' We got to stop them now or else or government won't have enough money to fight the war against Muslims and gays. Do we want our tax dollars, which are too high anyways, to go to some thumb sucking baby so it can have a bottle of milk or do we want our money to go to keeping America safe from limp wristed Muslim hairdressers and Spanish talkin' tango dancin' pinkos from Chile?

We got to stop the liberal breeding menace now! Join me and we'll tea bag them all for Jesus, for our future, and for a Chilean free America!

In Jesus name we pray, amen.

Cooking (and canning) with Dr. Monkey

Today's episode, Fig Bomb Preserves!

It's fig time in Tennessee, that's right kids the figs on our tree are finally getting ripe and they're coming in faster than incumbent Democrats in Congress can sell out progressive voters. So I decided to make some fig preserves, with a twist.

I started off by picking, stemming, washing, and chopping up all the ripe figs I had. I ended up with four cups of ripe figs: And no, you don't ever want to peel figs. The whole thing, aside from the stem is edible and should be used when preserving or eating said figs.

After getting my figs ready for cooking, I put one half cup of sugar per cup of figs into my cooking pot. Then I added one quarter cup of water per cup of figs to the sugar and I cooked it up together:As soon as the sugar dissolved in the water I added half my figs and I let them cook down for about a half an hour. As the figs cooked down I stemmed and deseeded this many cherry bomb peppers:
Then I diced the peppers and I added half of them to the figs that were cooking and half to the uncooked figs. After the first half of the figs cooked, I added the other half of the figs and peppers and I let it cook for another half hour. I also added the zest and juice from two lemons to the fig pepper mixture.

As the figs cooked I sterilized my jars. And after the whole batch of figs and peppers had cooked down, I ladled them into my jars. After tightly sealing them I then placed my jars in the hot water to make sure they were sealed properly and to let them rest in the near boiling water. Once they had sat in the water bath for about a half hour I took then out and let them cool. And I ended up with five 8 oz jars of what I call Fig Bomb preserves.
They have a sweet taste to start but by the end of your bite you fell the heat of the peppers. It's not too hot and it's not too sweet, it's just right Goldilocks.

Tribute compliation CD of the week

Carlene Carter, June's daughter, does a version of Jackson with Ronnie Dunn on this CD that will knock you down. Yes, it will. And Elvis Costello's version of Ring of Fire is noteworthy as well.

Seltzer!

I've found a great alternative to soda. It's this:I personally haven't tried the lime flavor yet, I'm loving the pomegranate and raspberry lime flavors though.

For me what I love about soda is the carbonation and the flavors. I've always preferred my soda pop to have a fruit flavor and in Polar brand seltzer water I get the fruit flavor and the carbonation. It has no calories, no sugar, and no sodium. It's pure seltzer water with a little fruit flavor. I gave up soda that's been laced with High Fructose Corn Syrup, now known as Corn Sugar, and I'll have a sugar sweetened soda from time to time but these seltzer waters have been a boon to my soda desire.

If you're trying to give up HFCS (corn sugar) soda, or if you have a diabetic in your home who loved soda but can't have any now, try this seltzer.

Rest assured that I have not been paid by the makers of this product to endorse it. I don't take ads and I don't take money to endorse products.

Who's holding our Crunky now?

A two toned west side wanna be is holding our Crunky now. Would it be bad karma to wish for a drive by so we could take our Crunky from her cold dead hand?

Yes, he was a crook

It's kind of odd getting to the age where films are being made about events that I lived through and remember with crystal clear clarity.

I remember watching the David Frost Show when I was a kid in Detroit. I remember not getting all of the jokes but the ones I got made me laugh like crazy.

I remember the 1972 election, that was the first year I watched as much of the conventions as I could, it was also the last year that I could stomach watching the Republicans convene. I remember watching Watergate unfold and although I didn't fully understand what was happening, I remember knowing it was terribly important.

I remember vividly when Nixon resigned and left the White House in disgrace. And I remember thinking, "Good riddance," as he rode off to California. I knew even then that he was a small petty venal man with a persecution complex that was a mile wide. And everything I have read about him as I have gotten older has more than confirmed my youthful impressions of him. Yes, he was smart. Yes, he was a good international statesman, but the facts remain that he was a petty small venal man who did not hesitate to use his political power to lash out at his enemies, both real and perceived. The fear that he might strike out and arrest journalists, anti war demonstrators, or even ordinary citizens who disagreed with him was real and not unfounded.

I remember watching the interviews David Frost did with Nixon in 1977. It was fascinating to me to see Nixon desperately try to salvage himself from the scrap heap of history.

Last night we finally saw this film:
I had resisted seeing it because I didn't think the story was going to be compelling, I was wrong, it's very compelling. I also resisted it because I'm currently sick of Ron Howard and his schmaltzy movies, his brother Clint, and his uber pretentious daughter Bryce Howard. And really, you'd have to be a pretty bad director to fuck this story up and thankfully Howard didn't do that. But he did cast his creepy brother Clint and for that he deserves a bitch slap.

All the non interview stuff in the movie is fictional, so take it for what you will but they did a great job of recreating the interviews between Frost and Nixon.

Langella, who I had major reservations about, and Sheen are both very good in their roles. And this is probably the best work Sam Rockwell has done since his Chuck Barris bio of a few years back. Ron Howard did do one thing I find commendable and that's reigning in the usually bombastically over the top Oliver Platt.

Despite the presence of Clint Howard, the direction of Ron Howard, and the casting of Oliver Platt, I recommend this film because it shows you that Nixon was indeed a crook who deserved the disgrace and shame he brought on himself and his legacy. It's a shame that Gerald Ford pardoned him because he did commit crimes that were prosecution worthy. And when people say that all the Presidents are crooks but Nixon was the only one who got caught, punch them in the crotch for being stupid enough to say something so patently dumb.

Shake me up Judy!

We just finished watching the 2006 version of the BBC adaption of this Dickens classic:
Holy hell, it's fucking great. No shit, it's one of the best BBC costume dramas ever. For those not familiar with this Dickens story, in a nutshell it's about the insanity of the British legal system during the Victorian era and how social rank and economic class prevented many people from having a life that included love, liberty, and happiness.

The center of the story is Esther Summerson, played by my new imaginary British girlfriend Anna Maxwell Martin.
Ms. Martin radiates warmth and compassion and her portrayal of this selfless Dickens heroine would make even the coldest heart melt.

The most memorable character, a heartless businessman, who pretty much embodies modern business and corporate practices today, is Mr. Smallweed, who is portrayed by Phil Jones, who also starred as Archie in the BBC adaption of one of my favorite books, White Teeth, which co stars my original adopted actor Archie Panjabi.
Jones is Victorian business viciousness at it's worst, and that's what makes him the best.

Turning in a fine icy performance as Lady Dedlock, Gillian Anderson also shines in this miniseries.
Her character is trapped by societal mores and conventions and her longing to be rid of them is palpably portrayed. She's a victim and a beneficiary of circumstance and that conflict is writ large all over her portrayal of Lady Dedlock.

And finally, in a sea of great performances, which include those of current pixie 'It girl' of the moment in British film and TV, Carey Mulligan, and Johnny Vegas, the performance turned in by Burn Gorman as Mr. Guppy is a gem.He's all obsequiousness and cunning, like a great Dickens secondary character should be, and yet he's tragic, funny, and sad as well.

This mini series is 15 episodes long but the story flies by. I highly recommend it. It's hella great.

If you hate your family, serve them this:

"Oh, nom, nom, nom...yuck!"

Freggie-man sez:

"Eat me."

These jobs aren't coming back

Dude, you spelled 'Chink' wrong

"Point to where the Republican touched you Becky..."

______ of the week

Cock of the week:
Window of the week:
Sign of the week:

Sane reasonable people?

Saucy!

I made some roasted red pepper tomato sauce today from fresh local peppers and Roma tomatoes. I slow cooked it and canned it properly. It's fantastic. I almost wish it was the dead of winter now so I could open a jar and have it on some homemade pasta.

Well done teabaggers

By all means teabaggers, keep doing what you people are doing. Keep moving the Republican party to the right. It worked really great for your party in 1964 with Goldwater, it should work wonders in 2010 with nuts like Angle and that anti masturbation chick from Delaware.

Christians can't count

The Good News Quartet has six members.