It's Review Time

Along with holiday parties, Santa Claus, and that festive increase in drunk driving accidents, the end of the year brings about performance review time. This is the most special time of year when you get to make a self-assessment of all the work you've done. You'll e-mail your boss a completed standard corporate review form, all happy with yourself about the amount of work you've completed and how you're single-handedly responsible for the firm's success. The boss will in turn review your summary, make you change the language to third person so he can copy and paste your summary into a standard corporate form, and e-mail the form to HR. Then he'll reward you by not giving you a bonus or a raise. Yay you!

I hate this process. So this year I'm writing short reviews of a couple of films I recently watched as well as a short bit about why I hate Blondie.

Talladega Nights (The Ballad of Ricky Bobby)

A now former friend of mine recommended that I see this film. There went two hours I'm never getting back.

The ballad of Ricky Bobby is a shit heap of bad writing, bad acting, and Applebees. With retard strength. But what did I expect?

I believe this film was meant to demonstrate that growing up white in the south and having a dead-beat drunk for a father and a waitress for a mother will lead to a successful life as a race car driver.

Firstly, films should never be made about NASCAR, for driving in circles at 200 miles per hour is not a sport, it's stupid. Wait, how the hell did driving a car become a profession? Secondly, I'm sick and fucking tired of Will Ferrell yelling and screaming nonsensical crap while running naked through the streets or running in his(?) underwear through the streets or running in clothing through the streets. Just once, I'd love to see a dump truck filled with steaming shit mow him down. I'd personally like to punch Lorne Michaels in the taint for spewing Will Ferrell into the film world.

In the end, I believe this film did make me grow as a person, as I can finally say with confidence that I hate Will Fucking Ferrell.

Clerks II

Yay! Two more hours I'm never getting back.

After 12 years of waiting for Kevin Smith to make another good film---"Dogma" was good until Alanis Morrissette appeared on screen (if I were God, I'd be super fucking pissed off to have been played by that wretched hole)---I was happy to see that he returned to his roots and revisited the cult classic "Clerks". This time, however, Senor Smith has managed to nail the un firmly into funny.

With Clerks II, Kevin Smith has made dear sweet Dante and his charming pissant of a side kick Randal get all growds up. In doing so, he's turned his attention far away from providing the great one-liners and exploitations of slackerdom that comprised the original film, and has pooped out updated shells (albethem fatter shells) of these legendary characters (oh, and nice dye job on the old hair and goatee, guy who plays Dante). Seriously, we're expected to believe that Dante would ever leave Jersey, that Randal would cry, that Jay would choose sobriety? Fuck you.

How Smith has managed to replace the hilarity of sucking dicks (all 37 of them in a row) on the way to the parking lot from 12 years ago with tritely pitting the [Star Wars] trilogy against the Lord of the Rings trilogy now is beyond me. He even managed to misspell Moobies---it's like boobies ass head, except on men (man + boobies = moobies). Jesus. Quite simply, watching this film was like watching a chick blow a donkey. Not that I've ever seen such things. I'm just saying is all.

I did learn something, however: dance routines make great substitutes for lack of script.

So Kevin, if you're reading this, please fold up the star wars lawn chairs and take your hot-ass 8-foot-tall wife and action figure collection back into the oblivion of the South Jersey shore where you belong. And PLEASE STOP MAKING FILMS.

I Hate You, Blondie

Yesterday a Blondie song came on the radio and while I was listening it occurred to me that Blondie is perhaps the biggest farce of the punk rock scene. Take as evidence the following:

1. Heart of Glass. Donna Summer, is that you? This is possibly the biggest disco hit ever produced by a band with actual guitars, next to Kiss' "I Was Made for Loving You". I understand that drugs can cloud a musician's feeble brain, but why a band would choose to go from deserving to play the dingy basement of hell that is CBGB to wanting to play for the A list douche pickles at Studio 54 is a mystery for the ages (I'll blame it on Desperately Seeking Susan). By this point of her career, Debby had traded in more than her soul, she abandoned her ripped Rock and Roll jeans and Chuck Taylors for flowing polyester. If I had to bet, though, I'd say that the jeans were Versace and the Chuck Taylors were diamond crusted.

2. Rapture. What the fuck. I'd love to have been a fly on the heroin spoon for that band decision. Perhaps it went something like, "Well, Deb, disco is gone and we don't have any more rock cred, should we call it quits?. No way, guys, I made this new friend, Fab Flav Friday or something, and he says rap's where it's at, look, I did it too, I rapped. The man from mars, and chocolate bars, he eats guitars, and yeah. I smell hit." You smelled something alright: shit.

3. The Tide is High. The fake blonde is high. Seriously, ripping off Musical Youth? How dare you.

Need further proof, head on over to Blondie's fabulously updated web site and check out the photo of Debby (if you look closely, you just might see her mini van in the background).