wildyams

It's April Fool's Day, so while I'm on the lookout for pranks (most notably from Steve-o and Kristin), I figured I would start a new weekly feature here on ye olde blog since I seem to frequently have trouble finding stuff to blog about on Fridays. It's a weekly entry I'm going to dub "This Week's Film I Couldn't Be Dragged To". I think it's fairly self-explanatory, but just to clarify, each Friday I will highlight a movie that looks so unappealing I couldn't be dragged to go see it. Last week would have been a good week to start this, since Ms. Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous debuted, but nonetheless, here is my pick for this week:

Beauty Shop

All the ingredients are there:
- A spin-off of a sequel to a movie which was mediocre at best?
Check.
- The director of Honey?
Check.
Two cast members going by the names "Enci" and "Little JJ"?
Check.
- Forgotten stars Alicia Silverstone & Mena Suvari?
Check.
- The little girl from The Cosby Show?
Check.
- Queen Latifah?
Check.

Yep, all the pieces are in place. This one doesn't even arouse my interest enough to see whether it would make my 2005 list of worst movies of the year. I'm giving this one a wide berth.

As I mentioned previously, my good friend Chris Giambelluca (Cella) was on Late Night with Conan O'Brien last night (Milkshake is jealous, I'm sure :lol), and as promised I Tivo'd the whole thing and have converted Cella's performance into a 35 meg video clip, which you can download below:

click to watch video

By the way, Cella's the one who looks like a cross between David Spade and Beck :lol

Man if this website and this website are right, we're fucked. Between Peak Oil, John Titor's predictions and the Yellowstone Supervolcano, odds are good that we're gonna be in deep shit soon. The fact that Goldman Sachs predicted oil prices could jump to $105 a barrel is not a good sign for those who have been predicting that Peak Oil is going to leave us all in a crisis state very soon :uhoh

My first ever piece of hate mail!!! How sweet is this:

Subject: hey
From: cornholio1217@yahoo.com

hey, i wonder why youre trying to be funny by dissing dee snyder. he could kick your ass anyday, u fucking loser. so y dont u quit trying to be cool and shut the fuck up because twisted sister rocks, so go back to living in your moms basement u fucking fag.

- charlie wilcox

I've never received hate mail before, so I am quite honored to have received this. This just made my weekend :grin

I would guess that he's referencing this entry I made almost two years ago (which as you'll notice is actually making fun of Christina Aguilera, not Dee Snyder). In looking at that entry, I noticed that about a year ago I got some flack from someone else in the comments about that post. Why is it people assume that by comparing Christina Aguilera to Dee Snyder back in his glam days I am making fun of Dee Snyder? Dee doesn't wear all that crap anymore, I'm sure he probably laughs at what he looked like back then just like most people would. How could he not? Clearly comparing that picture of Christina Aguilera to Dee Snyder is making fun of her, not him. If I wanted to make fun of Dee Snyder, I'd bring up Strangeland. Oh wait, I already did. Maybe that's what this guy who emailed me is so pissed off about :lol

By the way, I noticed that Dee shares his birthday with Mr. Bell, and he recently turned 50. Belated congrats, Dee :smile

Just a brief entry before I scurry off to bed. After reading this entry on BoingBoing about the nerds/morans who are lining up to see Episode III outside the Mann Chinese, I noticed that the entry said that it's not going to be shown at the Mann Chinese. This is great news, because I knew that meant it was gonna be shown at the Arclight instead. Well, a quick peak at the Arclight's website revealed that, sure enough, they will be showing Episode III. Why is this good news? Because of the Arclight's assigned seating. Better to get your tickets for your preferred seat weeks in advance than have to deal with some huge line the day of the show to ensure you don't sit in the far corner of the theater. Thank god for assigned seating :smile

Update - This is too funny. The morans who lined up at the Mann's Chinese for tickets for Episode III are refusing to move! They want it to play at the Chinese because that's where the other 5 have played, and so they are refusing to move their line to the Arclight in protest (protest!? :lol). I guess that'll make it that much easier to get tickets online when the Arclight's website makes them available. Hopefully there will still be enough wackos there for the show at the Arclight, because the highlight of going to see Episode II at midnight was watching the guy with his homemade lightsaber (who had clearly been practicing with it) have a mock lightsaber battle with some other guy before the show. Conan needs to get Triumph over to interview the geeks at the Chinese ASAP!

I figure ol' Forehead's stayed up there long enough, so time for a new entry.

I got a couple calls late last week from some old friends. Grover called me on Thursday (I believe it was), and we had a long chat. There's a guy who definitely needs a blog. He's always had the best stories to tell, and gets himself into the weirdest situations out of anyone I know. If he had a blog, his readership would be enormous, I guarantee it :smile I also got a call on Friday from Mary who surprisingly told me she quit her job in Texas and is moving back here to LA in the next couple weeks. She had just quit on Friday and called me right after she did it :lol I haven't seen Mary since I went to Texas last year, and had really only spoken with her once (I think), very briefly, since last summer or more. It will be a trip to have her living out here again, I'm very interested to see what that's gonna be like :smile

Today I was over at my Dad's all day with my Dad, my stepmom and Rebecca. My Dad and I ended up watching The Masters (he watched most of it, I just caught the last couple holes), and it was quite an exciting finish, especially for golf. We had chicken and potatoes for dinner (since Cookie will be curious, no doubt :lol) and hung out and chatted and finished up by watching a little bit of TV. All in all a pretty relaxing way to spend a Sunday.

I'm not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow, since Friday felt hectic as hell to me and I almost felt like I was escaping when I left rather than just leaving. Hopefully the pressure will be less tomorrow, I really don't want this to be a crazy week.

I'm gonna have to cut out of work right at 6 tomorrow though because I'm going with Koga to see Garbage after work. Mr. Nuts was nice enough to procure me free tickets (after hanging them over my head for the last week every time I gave him shit :lol), and it should be a fun show. I'm not the world's biggest Garbage fan or anything, but I know some of their stuff, and I haven't been back to the Wiltern since I saw Underworld there back in October of 2002. On Tuesday night I've got an invite to go see Carlos do a free show at the Improv, so if I'm not too wiped out from work and Garbage maybe I'll go check that out as well. Anyway, I've got more I can blog about, but this entry is long enough, so I'm off to bed.

Koga just dropped me off after seeing Garbage play at the Wiltern tonight. I got off work at 6 tonight so I could meet him in front of the place at 7, and I figured I'd probably just make it, what with traffic and all; but the ride home was a breeze, no traffic to be found (don't know why I was so lucky). But since I was gonna just drive down Western to get there, I got to where I normally turn to go to my place at about 6:20, so I figured fuck it, and just went home, parked and took the subway there so I wouldn't have to deal with parking. I got to the Wiltern at 6:55, so I had a couple minutes to spare before Koga showed up with his friends. The show was pretty cool. As I've said before, I'm definitely by no means the world's biggest Garbage fan, so they played pretty much every song of theirs I know (which is about maybe 7 or 8 songs). The music was good, but they seemed to be lacking the energy that the music required, so it wasn't as good as it could have been. When the performers are way into it, it makes a big difference (which is why I'm not the biggest fan of going to see a lot of DJs live). The music was good enough to carry the show though, IMO, and for free I definitely wasn't complaining. Thank you very much, Mr. Nuts, you made my evening :grin

So I had planned to go see Carlos tonight after work, but it didn't happen. Today at lunch I went to Jiffy Lube and got my oil changed, and as part of their service they check the air pressure on the tires; and I didn't realize that meant they adjusted the pressure on my back right tire (which was fine). My back right tire has a faulty valve, so if you add air to it you need to check to make sure you don't hear it leaking. Well I didn't even consider this till I left work and saw my back right tire was flat. I realized I had left my AAA card at home, so I decided to see if I could drive on it at all or if it would make the telltale thumping noise that you get when a tire is down to the rim. Well I got lucky because it wasn't making any kind of noise and actually seemed to ride sort of ok. I didn't want to chance it at all though, so I decided to go super super slow to the closest gas station and put some air in it. I had to do this by pulling over a few times to let all the traffic go past me, but eventually I got there. The air pump was coin operated, and it was jammed though, and I didn't know where the next gas station was, so for a second I panicked. Then I figured maybe the attendant could turn it on without me having to pay, so I asked. Sure enough he could, so I filled my tire and went on my way. By that point it was about 7:40, and Carlos's thing started at 7:30. I didn't really relish the idea of going over there if I was gonna show up and have missed him perform so instead I went home.

I just joined Netflix this weekend, and my first movies arrived today. I decided to pop in Friday Night Lights because I'd never seen it, and because I had heard really good things about it. I have to say, I was disappointed. It wasn't a bad movie, it just didn't stand out at all as being a good one. It was a fairly run of the mill sports movie, with a rather convoluted message. I honestly couldn't tell you if it was trying to say that being that nuts about high school football is a good thing or a bad thing. I personally think that being that nuts about almost anything is a bad thing, but by the end of the movie it seemed almost like they were saying that the end justified the means. Oh well, it was entertaining anyway I suppose, I just had hopes for something more.

While I was going to IMDB to check out Matt's new page (leave him a message on his message board, by the way :lol), I happened to notice that on the front page it declared that today is Ron Perlman's 55th birthday. In honor of the occasion, here's some of my favorite lines of his from Alien Resurrection (because he is the main reason that movie is watchable at all):

"I can get you off. Maybe not the boat."

"Earth, man. What a shithole."

"What a waste of ammo. Must be a chick thing."

"I'm not the mechanic here, Ironsides! I mostly just hurt people!"

"Does that compute?"

"Great. She's a toaster oven. Can we leave now?"

I skipped doing this last week because the one movie that I really would have said I couldn't be dragged to (Fever Pitch, simply because Jimmy Fallon's in it), looked like one I might have had to go see with my Dad and my sister on Sunday; so I couldn't in good conscience say I wasn't gonna let myself be dragged to it and then maybe end up seeing it (thankfully I didn't see it). In any event, here is this week's movie I won't allow myself to be dragged to:

I'll be honest, I hadn't even heard of this movie till about a half hour ago when I looked to see what was coming out this week. I saw a couple movies which were rating low on the Tomatometer (it's nothing but rotten apples this week), and I only recognized one movie that was on the list (The Amityville Horror, and I can usually be talked into seeing almost any horror movie, even though they almost always stink); so I looked to see what was doing with the other new releases. House of D jumped out for one reason:

Written by, Directed by and starring David Duchovny.

Hopefully this will bomb so he can hurry up and make that X-Files sequel and finally be done with his career. Duchovny basically fell off the map after he decided he didn't need the X-Files, having done mainly a bunch of Red Shoe Diaries episodes and some voice-work for video games; but now he's suddenly been given the chance to write and direct his first movie. Not only did he cast himself in it (bad enough), but he cast his wife in it too (worse). I'm staying far away from this one.

I got this from Brian by way of Pat and thought it was pretty cool, so here you go:

* Reply to this message telling me which of these 25 artists you have also seen.
* Take the ones from my list that you have seen, and post them on your own site/blog.
* Add more until you have 25. They don't have to be in any particular order.

01. New Order
02. Bjork
03. Moby
04. Garbage
05. Nine Inch Nails
06. Jane's Addiction
07. Crystal Method
08. Ministry
09. Underworld
10. Beck
11. Carcass
12. The Bangles
13. Parliament Funkadelic
14. Skinny Puppy
15. Oingo Boingo
16. Iron Maiden
17. Mr. Bungle
18. Peter Gabriel
19. Slayer
20. The Pharcyde
21. The Reverend Horton Heat
22. The Cranberries
23. Primus
24. Morphine
25. Orbital

Tonight I'm making a return to the scene of the crime. Jon is back in town, and he's invited everyone to dinner at C&O's Trattoria. I haven't been back there since my digital camera and Handspring were stolen out of my car by the valets, but I love the food there, and the valets aren't employed by C&O's (and how can I pass up the opportunity to see Jon on one of the rare occasions he's in town?). I'll avoid valet of course, if I can. If I have to valet, I'll make sure everything is locked in my trunk this time (although honestly, they already stole everything of value that I kept in my car).

Work has been really insane lately. One of our clients (who shall remain nameless) is just not very realistic, so we've been killing ourselves trying to make their absurd deadlines. I've been pulling a lot of late nights, but tonight I'm going to see my friends and am not gonna stay late just because one of our clients seems to think they can arbitrarily ask that we all forgo our lives on a whim.

I know, I know. I'm definitely posting about something which has long been a joke on the web, and which hundreds, if not thousands, of websites have linked to or mocked, or both, but it felt appropriate to put this up. Today the Icy Hot Stuntaz (seen below) helped myself and a few other people at work get through what was otherwise another very tiring day. There's nothing like a good laugh (which these guys definitely provided) to help soothe all the craziness at work :smile

This week's movie I wouldn't let myself be dragged to is:

A Lot Like Love

This one was easy. It's the new Ashton Kutcher movie. Done deal. I need not go any further with this one, because once I see he's in a movie, I don't need to know anyting more about it. If you put him in the movie, I just won't see it. It's that simple.

I stole all this from a thread on Fark about Office Space and just wanted to share :smile

Today I was busy as hell at work, and yet I feel like I didn't get anything done. I was so busy tying up loose ends on so many projects that I didn't really feel like I made real progress on any of them, if that makes any sense. We're apparently gonna be going to two shifts at work because there is so much to be done that we're running out of room for everyone. Most of the full-timers like me will still be on the same schedule though, although I'll have more freedom now to come in a little later if I want to, which is nice.

I dunno if I mentioned it or not, but a couple weeks ago I finally joined Netflix, and I have to say, I'm really liking it. For the last couple years (or decade, or whatever) I've been really hooked on the web, and have used that as my main source of entertainment here at home; but lately I'm just real sick of sitting in front of the computer all the time. I know I'm not some hero cause I'm getting up from the chair in front of the computer and moving to the couch in front of the TV, but it's definitely more relaxing to sit there and watch a movie. Anyway, it was a slow news day, so this is the kind of entry you get :smile

Matt and I were just talking about this, and agreed this would be a good question to pose to other movie fans out there. We were discussing what were some of the best characters or roles people have had in movies where they were only onscreen for maybe 10 minutes or so. I was thinking that Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross is the king of this, but some other good candidates are as follows:

Brad Pitt in True Romance
Alan Alda in Crimes and Misdemeanors
Dave Sheridan in Ghost World
Parker Posey in Dazed and Confused

Anyway, that's all I can think of right now. Feel free to add any if you think of some :smile

In case George Lucas claiming Episode III is going to be "Titanic in space" wasn't enough to instill a sense of dread about this last Star Wars movie, then perhaps learning that Lucas had to "force" himself to write Episode III might do it. According to this article, because Lucas was so uninspired with what to write, he had to force himself to sit at a desk for 9 hours a day, 5 days a week just so he could write the script:

"I am very diligent about writing. I go to work at 8.30am and leave at 6pm. I sit there with that page in front of me but I still can't write it.

"I do get it done, I actually write five pages a day. But I force myself - otherwise I would probably write a page a day."

Well George, I'm glad to see that Star Wars is a work of drudgery for you. Maybe if you had just made it about Darth Vader going around and killing everyone, it would have been easier to write. But no, that's not the story you're interested in telling. Christ, why didn't Lucas just hire people to help write all three scripts before he started shooting Episode I? Oh well, what's done is done. Let's hurry up and get this damn thing over with.

By the way, since I've had requests for any new news on this, I noticed that over at blogging.la they've devoted a whole page to keeping up with all the new updates on those idiots waiting in line for Episode III outside the Mann's Chinese.

We're getting closer to summer, which means it's gonna get easier and easier for me to pick a movie each week that I couldn't be dragged to. This week's choice was an easy one:

XXX2: State of the Union

Lee Tamahori directed this, and even though I was a big fan of The Edge, he seems to be somewhat like the director of the first XXX movie (Rob Cohen) in that he had one good movie, and the rest is all shit. Tamahori, in addition to The Edge, has helmed Along Came a Spider, Mulholland Falls, and Die Another Day; while Rob Cohen directed The Fast and the Furious, The Skulls, Daylight and Dragonheart (his one good movie was Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story). Ice Cube takes over for Vin Diesel as the new XXX guy in this movie, and even though he's been in some decent movies (Boyz in the Hood, Friday, Three Kings), he's been in some real turds too (i.e. the Friday sequels and The Players Club). But he seems to be most disastrous when he's in these big-budget macho movies (Torque, Ghosts of Mars, Anaconda), and that is definitely what this movie appears to be. Mainly I don't want to see this movie because the first one looked stupid and was stupid, and this one looks like more of the same, only quite possibly stupider. This is exactly the kind of movie I love to see fail, because I hope against hope that Hollywood will quit churning out crap like this, and the only way that will happen is if the box office for all-testosterone, no-brainer movies like this goes right in the tank. Here's hoping this one bombs like Tombraider 2 did.

For what it's worth, Kevin Smith loved Episode III:

"Revenge of the Sith" is, quite simply, fucking awesome. This is the "Star Wars" prequel the haters have been bitching for since "Menace" came out, and if they don't cop to that when they finally see it, they're lying. As dark as "Empire" was, this movie goes a thousand times darker... this flick is so satisfyingly tragic, you'll think you're watching "Othello" or "Hamlet". (**warning, there are spoilers if you go to that link and read the full review**)

For what it's worth, I think he's either shilling for Lucas, or was just way too caught up in being shown it a month before everyone else. I hope he's right, I hope it is that fantastic, but I'll believe it when I see it (thanks to Cookie for pointing this link out to me :smile)