Showing posts with label Mark Wahlberg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mark Wahlberg. Show all posts

Thursday, July 09, 2015

No-talent assclowns and such

I want you to consider the state of the world for a moment...

Now consider this: 

Weren't we all better off when Michael Bolton was still having hits?  Think about it.  Gas was cheaper.  We were all much, much younger.  Some of us were thinner.  "Full House" was still on the air.  I'm just saying.

Lots has been going on in America lately, not all of which I'm thrilled about, but more on that later.  We celebrated another birthday here in the land of liberty over the weekend.  I wore my Old Navy U.S. Flag shirt.  Which was made in Vietnam.  I would not object if you say I am patriotism exemplified.

Enjoyed some good fried Fourth of July festival food.  I know it will kill me someday.  But my thinking was, "Surely it won't be today.  And hopefully not tomorrow either."  (Because tomorrow was Sunday and I didn't want to miss the U.S. Women's soccer match due to my untimely death or anything.)

I survived.  Though things may have looked precarious at times...


I also ran a 5K, recording my slowest time ever (24:59).  It was... interesting.  No timing chip.  No bib with a number on it.  We were given pre-race instructions as follows: Run down the hill, turn right at the stop sign, then turn left at the first road.  Run until the road dead ends.  We know it's dark so there's a truck parked out there with its lights on.  When you get to the truck, turn around and come back.

One guy got lost.  He evidently took a wrong turn and it wound up costing him about two minutes.  And no, it wasn't me!  Though that would've made for a much better story.

I saw him though, as I ambled along at my 8:03 pace.  This little glow stick coming through a cornfield towards the road.  (We all had to carry or wear glow sticks because it was a night race.) I'm not sure if anyone else got lost or not, and really with no timing chip or identification bib, there would be no way to know.  So, probably.

Saturday afternoon, we went for a brief two-and-a-half-hour canoe ride.  And while the canoe did not tip over, we did manage several unintentional 360's.  (Note: These should only be attempted by paddlers who have experienced a minimum of 2 to 4 canoe trips with varying degrees of success, are not in a hurry, and are able to express their frustrations with each other without using the paddle as a weapon.)

The part of the river we were on was sparse, which played right in to my dislike of crowds, and people in general.  We only saw four kayakers, two of whom cruised by just as we were performing some of our canoe acrobatics.  And there was one group of party bargers.  They had their inner tubes tied together, were shotgunning bad beer, and screaming the words to "God Bless the USA."  God bless us, indeed.

Speaking of these United States and what's been going on here lately, I just have one thing to say:  WTF????

It's ridiculous.  And I can't believe some people are actually supporting it.  Someone even invited me to go and see one of these disgraceful "productions," which I impolitely declined.  It's an insult to my intelligence and everything I've ever been raised to believe (about comedy). 

Is this really what we want to be as a nation?  Where a suburban Boston boy can grow up the younger brother of a New Kid On The Block and go on to earn excessive wealth and a modicum of fame by co-starring in not one, but two movies alongside a talking teddy bear?!

Mmhmm, suddenly my Michael Bolton theory's not sounding so terrible, is it?


Sunday, February 24, 2013

I thought Channing Tatum was a girl

Travel back with me if you will, to a land before Twitter.  In those dark recesses of 2006, the only way to instantaneously get your virtual thoughts about a major event to the world was by live blogging.

It was a somewhat laborious process, and one that I will demonstrate here for all posterity, by live-blogging tonight's Oscars.

Now, I should preface this by saying I am not a movie person.  In Trivial Pursuit, entertainment/movies is always my final pie piece.  I'll be up like five pie pieces to one, then have to wait and hope to get a question like "What does E.T. stand for" or "What was the sequel to Home Alone called?"

So this will probably be something like if 2 Chainz live-blogged the Country Music Awards, except with less profanity.  Some profanity, just less.

7:37 PM - Getting a late start.  Sorry.

7:39 PM - I have no idea who this host guy is.  Looks kinda like Jon Cryer and Dr. Patrick Drake from General Hospital had a kid.

7:40 PM - OK, that boobs song was stupid.  And I'm a boob fan!

7:44 PM - Has Adele already sung?  Because if so, I may have a tough time sitting through three hours of this.

7:47 PM - Time for our first award of the evening.  Finally!  And it goes to... some guy I've never heard of, not surprisingly.  Kristoff Holtz?  (Bone trivia: One of my favorite songwriters is Kris Kristofferson.)

7:48 PM - Oh, according to Twitter, that should have been Christoph Waltz.  Why was I trying to make him Russian?

7:51 PM - Paul Rudd is announcing something!  I know him!

7:52 PM - Paperman just won something.  I'll let you guess whether or not I've seen that one.  (Bone trivia: Paperboy was one of my favorite Nintendo games.)

7:59 PM - This guy is wearing a kilt!  Not judging, just stating.

8:01 PM - Ooo, I've heard of three of the nominees in this category!  Django Unchained, Skyfall, and Lincoln.  I bet none of them win.

8:01:22 PM - None of them won.

8:02 PM - Just an aside: I don't know anything about movies, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Lincoln was probably a slightly better film than Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, if not as historically accurate.

8:04 PM - Another aside: I have never seen a single James Bond movie.  Well, unless you count Austin Powers.

8:07 PM - Life Of Pi?  I haven't the faintest clue what that could be about.  Though it does remind me of my freshman year of college, which I sometimes refer to as Death By Calculus.

8:09 PM - I think I always thought Channing Tatum was a girl!!  Suddenly, I'm totally reevaluating the mental image I have of Dakota Fanning.

8:14 PM - Anna Karenina is just now being made into a movie??  Tolstoy.  There's a tough read.   My brain is hurting just thinking about it.

8:23 PM - Halle Berry!  I liked her in Flintstones.

8:27 PM - Am I the only one thoroughly enjoying all these George Clooney crowd shots?  I think not.  I gotta tell you though, back in the Facts Of Life days, I never saw this coming.  I always thought Nancy McKeon had the brightest star.  Or Charlotte Rae.

8:31 PM - I have no idea who this lady singing is.  Some song about a spider's touch?

8:32 PM - According to Xinh, my resident Gchat movie expert, that is Shirley Bassey.  And just to be sure, I google imaged Shirley Bassey for the first time in my life. Yep, that's her.

8:53 PM - And... we're back!  Sorry.  Had to take a break there.  Actually, I found a site where you can play Paperboy online.  OK, that's a lie.  I simply lost interest.  This show has really gone downhill ever since Kilt Guy. 

8:54 PM - John Travolta!!!  Loved him in Welcome Back, Kotter.  I wonder what in the world he's been up to these last forty years.

8:58 PM - Jennifer Hudson, I've heard of her.  Not really sure what she sings, but wow, what a voice!

9:01 PM - I'm suffering from Adele-.... what's the opposite of fatigue?

9:02 PM - Vigor, according to thesaurus.com.  Adele-vigor?  That doesn't sound right.

9:04 PM - If they're gonna do all this Les Miserables stuff, could they at least do "Master Of The House?"  It's the only one I know. 

9:05 PM - Worst part about live-blogging the Oscars?  Having to italicize all the movie titles.  But I can't not italicize them!  Something very bad would happen.  I'm sure of it.

9:10 PM - OK, they just trotted the talking teddy bear out on stage.  I'm not sure how much longer I can watch this garbage.

9:15 PM - If I ever won an award, a teddy bear and Mark Wahlberg would probably hand it to me.  That'd be my luck.

9:16 PM - We have a tie!  A tie?  What a crock!  Next year, why don't we just give out participation ribbons to all the nominees.

9:17 PM - The teddy bear is gone.  Thank God.  I never thought I'd be so happy to see this Patrick Cryer guy in my life.

9:20 PM - Call it Oscar blogger's intuition, but sometimes I get the feeling you actually have to watch movies to get some of these jokes.

9:21 PM - Just a heads-up, if and when Adele finally sings, I'm probably going to bed.  I know it's only 7:30 in California, but some of us here in the heartland have to go to work in the morning.  Besides, Adele pretty much sings me to sleep every night anyway.  Sometimes gentle sobbing is involved.

9:24 PM - Anne Hathaway!  She was tantalizing in Devil Wears Prada.... I heard.

9:25 PM - Xinh says she probably got her start in The Princess Diaries.  If only it had been The Princess Bride.  I've seen that.

9:28 PM - Is it just me, or are the same six movies nominated for everything?

9:31 PM - Sandra Bullock!  I've seen at least three of her movies!  You cannot say that about very many actresses.  It's a short list.  The only ones that come to mind at present are Sandra Bullock, Michelle Pfeiffer, Meg Ryan, and the woman who played Adrian in the Rocky movies.

9:34 PM - Jennifer Lawrence?  There are way too many Jennifers for me to keep up with.  Of course, even one would be a challenge.

9:38 PM - Ladies and gentlemen... Adele!!!  That's gonna do it for this year's Oscars.  I'm pretty sure that's all the big awards anyway.  I don't know about you, but I think that went remarkably well considering I've seen exactly one movie that came out in the past year.  Let's have one more token round of applause for our host, the incomparable Patrick Cryer.  He may not have always been funny, but I rather enjoyed his demeanor.

See you next year! 

OK, probably not.

"You take the good / You take the bad / You take them both / And there you have / The facts of life..."