Jingus

The saddest part is all the hand-wringing about how this is some kind of dark omen about how Things Are Getting Worse. What? Getting stabbed in a bar fight is something new now? Just narrowing it down to actors being stabbed to death in a London pub, didn't Christopher Marlowe die that way over four hundred years ago?

I agree, Diary was easily the least of Romero's zombie flicks. Had absolutely nothing new to do or say with the undead, and he didn't utilize the first-person gimmick nearly as well as Blair Witch, Cloverfield, or hell even Reno 911. The acting was all bush league, and the incredibly pretentious narration was just terrible. That being said, it looked like a fucking masterpiece compared to the aforementioned Day of the Dead "remake". That was a goddamned worthless waste of time. Don't be fooled by Ving Rhames' name on the box, he's only in the movie for like two minutes.

I bitched about that too. I'm consistent in my endless negativity. I would've also bitched about that chick getting her head shaved on the WOW PPV, if I'd given a shit about anything in that promotion not named Jaquelyn Hyde. (Seriously, who was that girl? Lousy wrestler, but she nailed the gimmick of a bipolar dissociative schizophrenic.)

I heard DeMott on Deep South commentary once... arrgh, it burned. Actually made me glad I missed out on the announcing tryout I was once supposedly up for down there.

I'm not saying I don't like it. I've probably eaten a hundred meals at Taco Bell... which means I've spent a grand total of $17.39 there over the course of my life. The queasydillos are indeed yummy in a "we laced this with methadone so we know you're gonna come back" kind of way.

Well, it is worth bringing up. I love Whedon, Jeunet, the whole cast, and the Alien series, but whoa Jesus did they somehow combine into Shitty Voltron and make one fucking terrible movie. (But I covered why I would only assign Joss a small part of that blame.) Admittedly Whedon does way better on TV than on the big screen; as much as I liked Serenity, I still think it was missing some of the essence which made Firefly so great. Kinda like how now matter how good the better Star Trek movies were, they still never quite recaptured the flavor of the shows which made the fans like them so much.

There's a difference? I just kind of imagine them as different heads of the same hydra, talking into separate FNC cameras or AM microphones. I should mention that I generally view most political pundits as being a step below amateur gay porn stars, emo boy bands, and Uwe Boll on the evolutionary ladder.

What, not even a Taco Bell? Aw, you'll never get to experience the sensation of eating a taco which is comprised of equal portions of cocaine and feces. One accounts for the taste, and the other for the fact that even someone who has eaten there before will still return and consume more. I have a similar theory about White Castle too.

Apparently both the Nielsen families and the live fans at the PPV disagree with you. I knew from the instant they announced this head-shaving angle that there would be some "leaked" internet news about how the girl in question didn't mind or it was her idea or something similar. After the viciously negative reaction towards the angle by the crowd, such a leak became that much more certain. TNA is a company which feels like they've gotta spin negative press by any means possible, especially on the internet, which is of course an old Russo trademark. Also, the reason given for Nikki being okay with the shaving: supposedly her hair was stripped up by the purple dye. Not that she originally suggested the idea, but that they asked her if she'd do it, and she was happy because her hair was fucked up anyway. Funny thing: I recently popped in an old DVD of the indy show we both worked four years ago, where I first met her. Her hair was a rainbow of different colors, the most striking of which were several big fat streaks of purple. Nothing seemed wrong with the hair back then, nor the few other times I saw her over the years when it was dyed other colors. I suppose it's possible that her hair just suddenly became magically vulnerable to the indsidious effect of dye (which had never harmed it before) right around the same time that TNA asked her to go Sinead, but a quick slice of Occam's Razor suggests otherwise. If you're just talking about comparing two isolated shows with no context, then sure, you're right. But you can easily compare viewing patterns over a longer period of time and establish certain precedents. The Knockouts were consistently the highest-rated segments on the show. After the push of the Beautiful People and the shaving angle, that became no longer true. (Admittedly, this is being extrapolated from my own memories of online reports which were cribbed from the Observer, so if anyone has more specific numbers which either prove or disprove my theory, I'd love to know either way.) I know you have to beware logical fallacies of the post hoc ergo propter hoc variety, but in this case the causality and the result seem fairly straightforward.

What? No. And I'm certainly no lefty, but that's just wrong. Olbermann's nowhere near as overbearing as his right-wing opponents. When does he ever get as batshit crazy and confrontational as people like O'Reilly, Coulter, Savage, and the like? Or did I miss those episodes where he screamed at his guests, demanded their microphones be cut, claim that God is on his side, told blatant lies, and said that the other side is mounting a deliberate campaign to literally destroy America and all it stands for? His biggest sin is being a smug smartipants.

There is another difference which I alluded to: the Knockouts division seemingly jumping the shark. For the past several months, the ladies segments consistently won the highest ratings. Then it went from being about Awesome Kong beating the shit out of bitches to being about two blonde skanks shaving someone's head. Once they went in that direction, for the first time in months, the girls lost ratings. Might be a coincedence, but I doubt it. I think the whole reason people tuned into the Knockouts was because they were the anti-Divas, a division where women were pushed on the basis of talent and personality rather than willingness to pose for Playboy. And as soon as the Diva-esque Angelina and Velvet became the focus of the division and started doing Russoriffic shit like the shaving-on-a-pole match, that turned a lot of people off. How else would you explain the one episode where the TNA debuts of relative unknowns Daizee Haze and Cheerleader Melissa in a straight no-angle wrestling match did significantly better numbers than the segments featuring Gail Kim & ODB vs. the porn twins, which actually lost viewers? Seems like a fairly clear pattern to me.

The dialogue was his, yeah, and it didn't mix well with the Alien series. But the ideas, no. I've read his full original script (I'm a huge mark for the Alien series, and wanted to know what the FUCK went wrong with Resurrection) and believe me, it was quite different from the finished film. The action scenes were much larger and more elaborate, there were main characters which got cut out, and there were entire sequences of the film which were drastically changed for the worst. The biggest example was the ending; Joss did NOT come up with that godawful new alien which put the final nail in the movie's coffin. His version was some kind of critter which kept evolving, like the last boss in a Resident Evil game. The fight didn't end on the ship either, it got down to Earth and kept going. Literally half of the original script didn't make it into the movie. And finally, nothing Joss could've done about the fact that Jean-Pierre Jeunet had inexplicably been chosen to direct it. And I like Jeunet, who does some damn fine work in his homeland like City of Lost Children and Amelie. But he was absolutely the wrong choice for the job here. First of all, he didn't speak English, which easily explains why all the line readings in the movie is so terrible, even the ordinary non-Whedonesque lines are spoken badly. More importantly, Jeunet has a mischevious comic side to his work which badly clashed with the Alien material. While it's certainly possible to have funny scenes in these movies (think Bill Paxton or Yaphet Kotto), the funny stuff needs to be in the small minority while the primary focus of the film is playing it brutally straight and scaring the shit out of the audience. And the guy who made Amelie simply did not have that kind of sadism in him.

And where did I say that we should ban private schools? When did I rescind my twice-stated opinion of "it's the Fresh Prince's money and since this is America he can do what he wants with it"? I don't think there's anything especially wrong with the idea of rich people being able to buy better everything. But since, as stated this is America and we can do what we want, I'm free to voice my opinion that I think a lot of the reasoning people send their kids to private school for is bullshit. I think that the only legitimate reason to send a kid to private school is if the public school they're zoned for sucks and there's a massive disparity between the qualities of education. Anything else, like private school for religious reasons or just so you can brag about your kid having been to private school, is just plain old "guvmint ain't fit to tetch my kin" malarky. I'm not even sure what you're trying to argue here. Sure, you should think your kid is special. But I've seen way too many cases where someone went overboard with it and the kid ended up spoiled and arrogant because of it. Hell, I did to an extent. Sometimes people need to be reminded that they aren't inherently superior to everyday folks.

I know, but still, the Smiths probably live in a really, really nice neighborhood, right? And aren't really, really nice neighborhoods usually loaded up with good schools? It's possible that he somehow plunked his mansion down right in the middle of an educational dead zone, but not likely. Part of my antipathy on this issue just comes from the fact that I've never liked the idea of private schools. You don't like the schools we have now, but instead of improving them, you'll just spend a shitload of money to send your kids off to a Separate But Unequal private school instead? "Fuck the rest of the world, I just want MY special snowflake to get special privileges." (And I'm saying this as a guy who spent three years in private school myself, it's not a case of sour grapes.) If all the money which is spent yearly on private schools were spent on public schools instead, we wouldn't have the same lousy public schools we do now.

I already said "it's his money and he can do what he wants with it". What bugs me a little is the unspoken implication that there is no school currently in existence which is good enough to teach his oh-so-gifted kids. I mean, opening his own new school, is that really necessary? And I've always found the general idea of rich folks sending their kids off to also be elitist. It's understandable if you live in an area where the public schools are complete shite and there's a massive difference between the two. But it makes me think back to my high school years, when I lived in a rich town full of rich kids. The public school I went to there actually scored higher on test scores and related subjects than the two local private schools (our sports teams regularly kicked their asses, too). Yet some parents would still spend untold thousands of dollars for their kids to go get an inferior education, just because Private Is Better somehow. Firstly, you're still assuming that all these families just have one kid. Secondly, just because you're making 92K on paper doesn't mean you can throw away 12K per year (or 24K, or 36K...) on something like this. With the standard of living cost so high in Cali, and whatever taxes or debt they might have which drags that number down further, it's not hard for a person who makes that much to not have much disposable income.

Are you kidding? 90% of American households couldn't afford that, especially if they had more than one kid. I would define that as "a whole lot". I'm not saying it's a bad thing and we should fart in his general direction for it. But... buying your own school and running it the way you want because you don't trust any currently existing schools with your kids? It just seems kinda pretentious and elitist to me, but hey, it's his money and he can do what he wants with it.

As long as it's online somewhere I can watch it for free, Youtube or similar, I'd gladly participate in such a thing.

I've never understood the phrase "too indy" when talking about something driving away casual fans. Wouldn't you have to be a pretty serious wrestling fan who's seen a lot of alternative products to even know what "too indy" would mean in the first place? As for Joe's tights, I don't see what the big deal is between Steve Austin tights and Bob Holly tights. It's a couple extra inches of fabric, so what. Though I do wonder if Joe might look better in a singlet, one tailored to help hide his gut while still showcasing his thick shoulders and giant legs. As to his weight, how is he supposed to cut that down? The guy can wrestle hour-long matches, so clearly he spends plenty of time in the gym and is in great cardiovascular shape. He just seems to be one of those guys who's genetically predisposed towards being fat. Haven't we all known That Girl who you feel sorry for because she works out regularly and is always on a diet, but still stays fat? And think about it, aside from maybe Jimmy Snuka, how many Samoan wrestlers have ever had a six-pack of shredded abs?

The randomness even gets down here. Texas should not be having 50 degree weather during daylight in May. Then the next day it'll go back up to a hundred and seventy. Nor should we keep getting the bizarrely abnormal level of rain we've been receiving over the last year. Last spring we had restrictions on when we could water our lawns and whatnot; after getting rainstorms every other day, the city actually voted to remove the regulations because we'd gotten so much excess precipitation that it no longer mattered. EDIT: and oh yeah, the tornadoes. To explain what the tornadoes down here are like, allow me to quote a wee bit from The Blues Brothers. "How often does that train go by here?" "So often you won't even notice it."

I demand a rant on Zoroastrians of Bahrainian descent. Whoa jesus you ain't kidding. My brother's wife is puerto rican, and she's a perfectly cute little petite chick who looks like she could be equally comfortable in a boardroom or going clubbing. Meanwhile, her terrifying brothers are all 400-pound monsters who look like villains from The Shield.

Yeah, helping all the needy kids who can afford the $10,000 per year for tuition.

Which is one of about several loopholes in the testing policy which make continued steroid use possible. 1. For the company to test their performers' hormone levels, first they have to do a baseline test. This means the first piss test these guys took is considered to be their "normal" hormone levels. So you only test dirty if your hormone levels are weirder than they were the first time. That means if you were right in the middle of a steroid cycle the first time, you could keep taking the same amount and still not test positive. 2. Here it gets a little complicated, but I'll simplify it somewhat. Most steroid testing gives a result based on percentages of testosterone vs. estrogen in a person's bloodstream. If the testosterone is abnormally high, it's rated on a numeric scale. In drug testing for the Olympics, the NFL, and most major sports, a score of anything higher than a 4 is considered an automatic failure. In the WWE test, anything from a 4 to a 10 doesn't mean you failed the test, it just means you have to come back and get tested again. Only if you score about a 10 is that an automatic failure. In the WWE you can get away with 250% the amount of steroids which would get you punished in almost every other testing system. 3. As Frogg Ending pointed out, if you've got a prescription for whatever shit's in your system, you get an automatic pass. This is how all those guys who bought the drugs from online pharmacies got away with it until the federal investigation. 4. Even aside from all that, there are certain really expensive designer supplements, such as Human Growth Hormone, which don't show up on the WWE's tests. 5. And even aside from all THAT, they tweaked the testing procedure because some guys were using fake penises loaded with someone else's urine in order to pass the test. Seriously, that's what the wrestling mindset is like, some of the workers were on some shit which they were blatantly not supposed to be, even in this Post Benoit World. 6. Finally, the office seems like it is willing to ignore its own guidelines for punishments and do whatever the hell it feels like. You're only supposed to be fired after failing three tests, yet Test, Simonova Dean, Chris Masters, and Kurt Angle were all fired when they hadn't failed that many. Meanwhile, what is Orton on, his sixteenth or seventeenth chance now? So between that and the fact that we know for sure that at least half the current roster has used 'em at some point or another, my base assumption for any given wrestler employed by the WWE is that I assume they're on steroids unless it can somehow be definitively proven otherwise. Like, it's likely that Colin Delaney and JBL are probably not using. But they still could be. Being on the gas doesn't automatically balloon you up into Quadruple H shape, and plenty of guys use it for non-size reasons anyway such as healing injuries and helping to keep in their current shape with less time in the gym.

Along the same lines, but even better, is when the captain hands out the guns to all the "ravers" in House of the Dead. It's the kind of gun porn which slowly, lovingly caresses all the firearms with "oh my god, isn't this the coolest shit ever" type of camerawork. And then all these civilians somehow turn out to have a Chow Yun-Fat level of stunt marksmanship. (One of many arguments for the greatness of the new film Zombie Strippers! is a similar scene where a bunch of badass weapons are handed out to our working-class heroes... and then Robert Englund mutters "Okay... now, does anyone know how to use one of these?") I remember listening to the director's commentary track, which had many many LOL moments. But the best one is where he basically calls Tara a pussy because she refused to get naked for a sex scene which is so beyond gratuitous that it doesn't even make sense that it would be happening. He uses that excuse to brag for the thousandth time about how Kristianna Loken is his Bestest Friend Ever while proudly discussing her nudity in the upcoming Bloodrayne (which turned out to be brief and inconsequential anyway).

I'd say that's more of an argument that he was using. Nobody, period, can be in that kind of physical condition just a couple months after tearing their pectoral muscle completely off the bone. He's either got Logan's mutant healing factor or a hypodermic needle. Guess which one I'd bet on.

Do you have a link to that? I went looking for it, but their site's search function sucks. Especially how some of the characters' weapons suddenly transformed during the bullet time sequences. She's holding a pistol! Oh wait, now it's a shotgun! Now it's a pistol again! Oh I dunno, I thought House of the Dead was fairly hilarious at parts. I'd watch it again, if only to show it to poor unsuspecting victims who didn't know what they were in for and laugh uproariously at their reactions.