The King Is Gone But Not Forgotten

• The Monologue:
• Drew Brees won Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year award, the most shocking news since the sun came up this morning. (For the record, I wanted Josh Hamilton.)
• To protest a rule that low-income people could not use WIC to buy white potatoes, a man in Washington ate only potatoes for two months. The U.S. Department of Agriculture responded by not caring.
• Interpol is searching for the head of WikiLeaks. If only there was some sort of organization that could release information on where he's hiding...
• Random Pop Culture:
• After a relatively weak (or, more appropriately, meandering) season, the Sons of Anarchy finale was outstanding. The whole episode was good, but the point from when SAMCRO was waiting for the Russian Mafia on? Great music, great camera work, great twist, satisfying ending down even to the setup for next season. Bravo.
• Thursday night, 8PM, TNT: Heat at Cavs. I won't watch the whole thing, but I'm sure as hell watching the beginning and tuning in a couple of minutes early.
• I'm going to have to see this movie at some point after this spectacular review. The best is the director's Uwe Boll-esque -- minus the curses -- sentiment at the end.
• Random Video:
• More from 1992. It was a sick year. At some point, I'll list the albums that came out.

The Heat Went 1-2 Since My Last Post

• The Monologue:
• I realized I hadn't posted in almost a week. Not doing posts for almost a week?! I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO...
• A Spider-Man musical? What a great idea!!!
• Giving info to WikiLeaks is treason and treason has to be punished! Just ask Scooter Libby and, um, whoever it was that had him out Valerie Plame!
• Random Pop Culture:
• The end of last night's The Amazing Race pissed me off, big time. Absolute BS.
• Human Target revamped itself with some new characters and a slightly new premise. It was probably the most fun show on the air last year and it will take some time to find itself, but a lot of the pieces are there.
• Season finales this week for Sons of Anarchy, Terriers (hopefully not the series finale), and The Walking Dead. TV gets a lot less entertaining next week.
• Random Video:
• Okay, I'm officially obsessed with the "Class Reunion 1992" station on my Yahoo Music app. Let's do some music from 1992, a great music year, for a while.

Ears Bleeding Like The Guys In Star Trek II After Those Bug Things Crawled Out But Maybe In More Pain Than They Were In

I didn't post last night because all I did was watch college basketball until the wee hours. Duke looks very good. Kentucky and Washington set the bar for most entertaining game of the early season. To make up for it, here's a great new song that all the kids will be talking about. It's Angelina from The Jersey Shore!

An American Tragedy

No need to harp on the lowest common denominator humor to which a lazy How I Met Your Mother writing staff can sink, nor to talk about the obvious Stephen King influences in the writing of The Walking Dead. No, it's November 22, forty-seven years to the day that President Kennedy was assassinated by no fewer than two people in Dallas. The only way to pay homage to such an important date in American history is with one of our national treasures, Bret Michaels, performing the Star Mangled, er, Spangled Banner.

Worst of the Worst: #13, Constellation

After an opening flashback that is so schmaltzy that my laptop veritably oozed, the main character of Constellation -- played by none other than Billy Dee Williams -- walks through an airport concourse. He's finally back home in Alabama after having been away for a long time, drawn because of the death of his sister. He goes towards baggage claim, passing the Starbucks and gates that you'd see in an airport, teeming with passengers. And, as he passes these lines of people, some of the extras turn and stare at the camera. It was at this point that I got a big grin on my face and knew that I was in for something special.

Constellation, recipient of the rare Rotten Tomatoes "Blutarsky" (0%), is perfectly bad. The rare good moment is so incongruent in this film that it, itself, seems bad. The movie follows a family coming together for said funeral. The sister who passed had a long-kept secret; she had a love affair with a white man in the 1940s and paid the price for it. To be fair, I couldn't tell if the rednecks raped her, just beat her up, or merely cracked their knuckles, because nobody ever discussed what happened and she didn't seem to be bruised at all after the event. Just sad. So, so very sad. This sadness is apparent in the constant voice-over narration in the movie from the young version of the sister, played by Gabrielle Union, who was apparently going for some sort of Best Overactor award. When the family comes together -- along with a whole heck of a lot of random white love interests who nobody seems to say anything about even though they are afraid to speak of the dearly departed's one-time affair -- they hash out old problems between them. Lucky for them, none of them actually have even the slightest modicum of animosity towards each other, so the tension is extraordinarily low for a drama movie. Wonderful for the bereaved, but incredibly boring for us.

They all have names that are supposed to be folksy, but nobody actually has in real life, and the director gives us a great treat each time they meet each other. While the script is so cheesy that I couldn't eat meat while I was watching the movie, there is a smattering of ad-libbed scenes as the characters eat meals or have drinks. Chemistry between actors can be a powerful boon -- look at Swingers or Terriers -- but there is no chemistry here. They either talk over each other or wait way too long to make sure the other isn't still going to speak. One of the best laugh-out-loud moments of the movie happens during one of these ad-libs. The movie is rated PG13 and the director seemed to be shooting for that, given the violence that seemed to be cut from on-screen, but not explained. PG13 only allows for one "f-word" in the entire movie and that one occurrence comes in a big dramatic spot. So, later when one of the actors is ad-libbing and drops the "f-bomb," the audio cuts out. Better to not waste money on another take!

The music sounds like it came from someone's keyboard, and not someone horribly skilled at writing music. This music is used for background in one of the many, many, many scenes where characters stare at each other or just into space, thinking about how they can fix their lives. I assume that's what they're thinking since, again, there's little exposition as to what they learned from staring into space and what resolution there is in the end doesn't make much sense with the rest of the movie.

Billy Dee Williams is at his I-just-don't-give-a-crap best as he does the Billy Dee Williams chuckle and then stares into space. There are other actors that I recognized, but I won't embarrass them here. I will point out that Zoe Saldana acts circles around the rest of the cast. She came into her own last year with a good performance in Star Trek and a great -- and very underrated -- one in Avatar. She's so good in this movie that it makes you wonder if it could be only half-bad if everyone else was up to par with her. Unfortunately, because she is so much better than everyone else, it actually makes her parts not work at all because she doesn't fit with the rest of the garbage performances put up.

This, the review for the sixty-second film I've seen on this list, is one of the longest I've written yet and there is so much to love/hate about this movie that I could keep going. Like many funny-bad movies, the awfulness ends up taking over so any humor wears off. By the end, most of the things I had laughed at in the beginning became merely boring. Still, the humor that I found here was not only rich, but because I had never heard of this movie it was a surprise, which goes a long way. I like laughing at bad movies, and overwrought writing, bad acting, and poor direction? It works every time.

High-Fiving A Million Angels

• Random Pop Culture:
• Even with no Shirley and only a very strange two-second appearance by Pierce, tonight's Community may have been the best non-paintball episode of the show. Everything fit together perfectly and there were many -- many -- laugh-out-loud moments.
• 30 Rock was funny throughout, but it can be summed up in one line from Alec Baldwin. "It wasn't the feces, it was the poorly-scribbled hand-written notes that said, 'Help me.'" Monkey escape, indeed.
• House has taken a big step back from last season. It's not having a season anywhere close to as good as Grey's Anatomy is having. Ugh.
• Forget the fact that they always find a way to choke in the tournament (I've been burned by picking them too many times), #4 Pittsburgh is way overrated.
• Random Video:
• I hadn't actually seen or heard the Palin/Situation video until today. It is even worse (read: better) than any of us could have imagined. Best part is Bristol talking about why she's saving herself for marriage. Sex doesn't count if it results in a freaking out-of-wedlock teenage pregnancy.

I Can't Be More Direct -- Watch 'Terriers'

• The Monologue:
• Best line from this article: "U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday's verdict confirms that the Obama administration's decision to try Gitmo detainees in civilian courts 'was a mistake and will not work.'" Also not working for Rep. Hoekstra: the 14th amendment.
• The Air Force is warning its troops not to use FourSquare or Facebook Places. Private Johnson is now Mayor of Fallujah! (@Fallujah with 13,999 others)
• Bristol Palin and Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino teamed up to make a PSA in favor of abstinence and safe sex. That video is so like a black fly in my Chardonnay.
• Random Pop Culture:
• I can't say it any more clearly -- FX's Terriers is the best show airing on TV right now, by far. It's funny, sad, suspenseful, and brilliantly acted and written. I can't recommend it enough.
• Now the two best players in this season of Survivor -- it's all relative -- are out and it's wide open between six of the remaining nine contestants. A big twist in tonight's episode shows that even in an off-year, the format still works.
• Human Target returned tonight. No better mindless fun on TV. Hawaii Five-0 is a distant second.
• I was playing with my Yahoo Music app and I found that with its new Pandora-like format, you can get stations called "Class Reunion" that let you pick only songs from a specific year. Now I can totally avoid any new music.
• Random Video:
• Wherever does Lady Antebellum get the ideas for their music?

Grizzly Spice

• The Monologue:
• DeSean Jackson said a dumb thing. Reading his statement totally made me feel like I got hit in the head and knocked out.
• Bristol Palin is going to the finals of Dancing With The Stars. To be fair, we knew this would happen when her mother backed all of her opponents.
• Why do people in the US still care at all about the British royals? Do they still have the power to cut off anyone's heads? No? Eh.
• Random Pop Culture:
• The major plot twist in tonight's Sons of Anarchy was an egregious cop-out. They start out the episode with this amazing scene and it means nothing two minutes later. Lots of good stuff on the show still, but it's been a pretty weak season. What would have easily been the best show once Mad Men is gone has dropped to at least #4 and isn't even close to the best show on its own network.
• Lots of college basketball today. A great game in Baylor-UConn, a dominant performance in #5 Ohio State pounding #10 Florida in Gainesville, what -- at the time of writing -- is on its way to a great game in San Diego State-Gonzaga (I loved SDSU as an 11-seed last year that lost its 1st round game by 3; they return all five starters). I don't just like Michigan State to win it all, I love them. Experienced, talented, a team that usually peaks in March to begin with.
• Random Video:
• Spice hit #1 on the UK charts on this date in 1996. I still can't often shake the urge to zigazig ha.

Laughing Matter

• The Monologue:
• The Washington Redskins.
• Random Pop Culture:
• I realize I haven't done those TV rankings in a bit, but The Walking Dead would be quite high. Not only is it beautifully shot and pays fitting homage to Romero, but the second episode contained something I'd never seen before on TV. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about.
• I liked the "Space Teens" part of tonight's How I Met Your Mother, but after that they just tried way too hard for joke after joke. And when they're trying too hard and I'm not laughing, I notice the laugh track. And once I notice the laugh track, I'm done for the show.
• A few shows are really on fire this year. Dexter is having its second-best season to last year. Grey's Anatomy is having their best season in quite some time. Ditto 30 Rock. Terriers is still the best show airing right now, by quite a bit.
• Random Video:
• I like this song fine, but there are some awful, awful rhymes. "Old piano" and "I don't know"? "Morning" and "talking"? More coherent than Stone Temple Pilots lyrics, but still...

Worst of the Worst: #41, Zoom: Academy For Superheroes

When you mix Tim Allen trying to recapture the magic that he found in Galaxy Quest with producers trying to cash in on the success of The Incredibles, the result is going to be predictably bad. Allen plays a washed-up superhero who is ostensibly a drunk, though you only know that because he is unshaven -- not only do you never seen him drink alcohol, he makes a milkshake at some point and what was supposed to be alcohol came from a regular water bottle. When his former archnemesis -- it doesn't matter that it's also his brother, but it goes to show how cheesy the movie is -- threatens to return and do something bad, I guess, though they never say what it is, he is called into action to train a group of misfit kids with superpowers and form them into a team. After the requisite fart and booger jokes, the kids sweetly find acceptance within their own group -- now a family -- and have to fight the bad guy. "Sweetly" was sarcastic there.

This movie was a pure cash grab. The writing is horrible, with Allen cracking non-sequitir one-liner after another -- and practically looking at the camera as he does it. One great example of bad writing is at the beginning when, upon being told about the threat, Rip Torn says, "I speak Greek, not geek!" He doesn't look thrilled to be saying it. With such a bad script, the acting is bound to be weak as Allen and co-star Courteney Cox look as if they're giving almost no effort. Why bother, when what you're saying is going to be so poor?

It's not just the dialogue. They really do never explain why the bad guy is so dangerous and any confrontation with him is over quickly with a we-don't-know-what-we're-doing-so-pay-no-attention-to-the-actual-action flair. As with many kids' movies, the protagonist kids end up playing pranks on the grown-ups that may make them seem cool to kids, but to me it just makes them seem obnoxious. Throw a guy with no powers into a room and hit him with a tornado! Hilarious!

There are maybe one or two one-liners that connect and that, at least, makes this better than many of the other movies on the list. Because this is a kids' movie, I grade it on a lower scale, as well. Would I stick my kid in front of this movie when I need babysitting? I'd probably rather she watch Aladdin, but there are worse things out there. This isn't evil, it's just lazy.

The best example of the laziness comes in a scene when Kate Mara, as the teenage girl hero, comes into some sort of dance that the kids are holding. There are only four kids, mind you. She's supposed to be 17, but she was 23 when this came out. She's wearing a dress that Cox's character gave her and wants to look good for the teenage boy hero. Allen and Cox greet her at the door and when the boy comes over, they leave. As they walk away, Tim Allen absolutely looks back and checks out Mara's ass. They left it in the movie. I googled to see if anyone else had noticed it, but there's no mention in any other review that I could find. It's clear as day; I rewatched the scene three times. The cheesiness of Zoom makes it slightly enjoyable, but something like that is comedy gold.

The Perils Of Fandom

It's very easy to say the Ravens should have won tonight because the refs screwed them on the no-call on blatant pass interference. However:

• they spotted the Falcons an entire half of football;
• they were awful on third-down defense all night;
• Ryan could have spiked the ball three times from where he was on that last play and the Falcons win because they were in field goal range.

But still, that no-call was awful.

Word To Your Very Old Republican Mother

• The Monologue:
• This article cracks me up. Republicans like more popular shows than Democrats. Democrats like better ones, but also some really stupid ones. Surprised that 30 Rock wasn't higher on the Democrat side. I like some from both lists, but most of my favorites are on the Dem side. This also makes me think of a Def Comedy Jam-style routine...
• Republicans are all like, "We like The Mentalist. CBS is great." Democrats are all like, "CBS is for old people. We like the Kardashians!"
• No, seriously, a lot of the shows on the Republican side are on CBS, which dominates the "nearing the afterlife*" demographic.
• This one is sweet, but the teaser on Yahoo read: "Bay Area bear is a war vet," which, you know, could mean a number of things.
• *If you believe in an afterlife.
• Random Pop Culture:
• Sons of Anarchy did get a lot more focused this week after biding its time plot-wise all season. I especially like that they brought back the main plot from the first season of Jax questioning the direction of the MC. They had strayed way too far from that.
• I'm basically ripping off a Kornheiser rant from the other day, but he's right. Tina Fey won the Mark Twain Prize for Humor, awarded by the Kennedy Center to the person who best symbolizes comedy for their time. The past winners include Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Steve Martin, Carl Reiner, and Richard Pryor. Fey is certainly one of the great current comedy minds. Here's who hasn't won: Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and many others. Fey's comedy, from 30 Rock to the Palin impersonation, has reflected today's society, but I'd argue that Woody Allen is the greatest living comedy mind. I know the Kennedy Center is trying to get press, but put aside even Rock and Seinfeld; Tina Fey does not deserve any non-gender-specific award for comedy that Woody Allen or Mel Brooks hasn't yet won.
• Random Video:
• Twenty -- twenty -- years ago today, To The Extreme hit #1 on the US charts and stayed there for sixteen weeks. There was a list of the top 100 rap songs somewhere on-line (so bad that I don't feel like looking for it) that had, in its top ten, two Beastie Boys songs, two Eminem songs, and this song. I think we'll revisit this rap song thing in the future, but until then... Yo, VIP, kick it.
  
  

The First Step To Hating Black People And Immigrants

• The Monologue:
• By going to Indonesia, Obama finally confirmed that he's a Muslim. It's a relief that we know, at least. Now if he'll only visit Kenya, so we can prove that he's a foreigner, too.
• Adam Sandler gave Mazeratis to each of his co-stars in Grown Ups. Rob Schneider finally has a house, which is great.
• San Francisco is banning toys from Happy Meals. Railing against government doing parents' work is going to make me sound like I'm in the Tea Party. Maybe people should teach their kids that some food is bad for them, no matter how much the kids cry for a toy. Or does San Francisco want to ban Cracker Jack, too? Damn, this makes me mad.
• Random Pop Culture:
• Finally getting around to going through the second season of Steven Seagal: Lawman. The over-earnestness, the ego. So unintentionally funny.
• One of the cops on the show described a rain shower that lasted all night as "a mini-Katrina." Is that how they do rain in New Orleans now? "It's going to be sunny on Tuesday, but we're looking at a microscopic Katrina on Wednesday morning, so the commute may be rough."
• Also, watching A&E gives me commercials for the show Psychic Kids. How have I still never watched that?
• People are treating that Wheel of Fortune video like it's super hard to solve that game. One letter is hard, of course, but there have been plenty of times that I've watched it, gotten a hunch on a solution, and had one or two letters make it clear to me. Not the hardest game show of all time. It's just that the contestants are usually dim-witted enough that it makes the show seem hard by comparison.
• Random Video:
• What about these Happy Meal toys? They're good for kids!

Okay, fine, you know you want it now. What is MJ wearing?!

This Post Offends Me

• The Monologue:
• I'm receiving word this evening that Wade Phillips was fired as coach of his Madden franchise quickly into his unemployment when his team quit on him after an 0-3 start.
• From this article: "Duncan has said the constitutional amendment was not intended as an attack on Muslims but an effort to prevent activist judges from relying on international law or Islamic law when ruling on legal cases." In order to be fair to Muslims, the amendment will be revised so that Oklahoma courts can also not rely on the Code of Hammurabi or the Art of War. Bible? Still okay. Love how every right-wing crazy in the country knows the phrase, "Sharia Law." Obama's bringing it to the country, don't you know.
• I'm sure this is true of all extremes, but I'm going to pick on my own ilk here. The difference between liberal and too liberal is when you start taking things so seriously that you can't laugh or use certain things as satire because of political correctness. Just because one makes a joke does not mean they don't care. If anything, said joke can be used to shine a light on the injustice at which the joke itself is prodding (see: Beavis and Butthead and others). This isn't a rant based on anything that happened to me, just based on observation.
• Random Pop Culture:
• When did Jon Miller and Joe Morgan become worthy of being fired? And how did they get booted from ESPN before any of the approximate 90% of their workforce who has been involved in sexual harassment claims?
• Finally caught the pilot episode of The Walking Dead. Wow. There is some ridiculously good TV being made right now.
• I meant to do some midseason NFL rankings at some point, but everyone knows where the league stands. Baltimore, Pittsburgh, New England, and the Jets, are the top four. Everyone else is fairly far behind. The Ravens are probably the best, as Pittsburgh has some questions about their line and secondary, New England has questions about their big play ability, and the Jets are looking like they could go into a free fall at any moment. I don't believe in the Giants as being elite. Going on a roll against Carolina, Chicago, Houston, Seattle, and Dallas? Eh.
• Random Music Video:
• This song entered the UK pop charts on this date in 1969.

Worst of the Worst: #23, The In Crowd

Nobody has ever heard of this movie. It is from 2000, right after teen thrillers were a really big deal, so someone decided to make a teen thriller. Girl gets out of a mental hospital and goes to work at a posh country club. The "it" girl at the club takes said former mental patient under her wing and brings her into an exciting life of playing "I Never" on the beach, drinking, date rape, and implied homoeroticism between hot women. The "it" girl has a dark secret that she uses to terrorize her friends. Mental patient is made to feel crazy because she starts to find the secret, but then exposes the evil "it" girl and saves the day before becoming friends with the less attractive (but still attractive, because it's a movie) friend and the guy with some sort of developmental disability played by someone who should never, ever play a guy with some sort of developmental disability (see: Holton, Mark; Leprechaun). The film makers couldn't find anyone famous to be in the movie, so the "it" girl sort of looks like Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, the mental patient sort of looks like Jenny Garth, and the cute and concerned guy sort of looks like Matthew Lillard.

As I'm sure I've said in the past, some of these movies work up hatred and anger, some work up puzzlement, some work up schadenfreude at the film makers' extreme failure. Some of these movies, The In Crowd included, work up absolutely nothing. I watch it and just wonder why anyone even bothered. Everything about it -- the music, the acting, the script, the plot, the direction -- is bad, but just bad enough to be flat and not funny in any way. The movie is flat and boring enough that I ended up turning it into my own MST3K; because the only way the poor actors could generate angst was through frequent dramatic pauses, I added my own dialogue. It didn't make the movie any more entertaining, but it did keep me from falling asleep. Until the end, that is, as I slept through the climactic fight scene. After realizing that I didn't know how the ending came to be, I went back and watched the scene. Meh. I wish I had just settled with sleeping through it. The In Crowd. Catch the excitement.

Once I Blog This, It's Out There Forever. I Get It.

• The Monologue:
• Former Dallas offensive lineman Nate Newton has lost 175 pounds. This marks the second time he's lost this much as he once lost 213 pounds. Of marijuana from his van.
• George Bush said that the aftermath of Katrina -- specifically what Kanye West said about him -- was the low point of his presidency. Similarly, lots and lots of people thought the aftermath of Katrina was the low point of their lives.
• A United Nations study shows that Norway is the happiest country in the world and Zimbabwe the least so. In Zimbabwe, the per capita income is 176 dollars. On the good side, there's not much food to spend that on.
• Random Pop Culture:
• With a rare (as in once in the last three months) night to myself, I went to see The Social Network. It is overall a pretty good movie, visually stunning at times. There are flashes of true brilliance in Sorkin's script, but there are also some really confounding moments of preachy dialogue. Really preachy. Definitely worth seeing, but not the masterpiece I thought it might be. It's a clear third among movies this year after, in some order, Toy Story 3 and Inception.
• I already have a front-runner for Christmas movie this year (assuming I get to a movie on Christmas). True Grit (trailer here) is going to be awesome.
• I thought Community tonight was really, really good. They don't all have to be big productions like last week's zombie episode.
• Random Music Video:
• This popped up on Pandora as coming from Del Amitri's "Greatest Hits" album. Which is a single? And isn't this video a little creepy, since it seems it's possible that they are all flirting with their erstwhile mothers? Anyway, 132 seconds of perfection.

Not My Cup Of Tea

• The Monologue:
• Now that Christine O'Donnell has lost her bid for the Senate, can I get some cleaning done? That nose isn't going to twitch itself.
• The McRib is back at McDonald's. Little-known fact: God actually used the McRib to create Eve. There's no sound for "Mc" in Hebrew, so the Biblical translations are all wrong.
• Am I reading this right that the Cowboys lost an election for Senate in Texas? No, they lost an election for Congress in Hawaii? No, they lost Question A in a county in Ohio? Can't they win anything?
• I, for one, welcome our new Republican overlords.
• Random Pop Culture:
• Not loving The Amazing Race right now. You have a pretty difficult leg with my least favorite teams battling it out for last, just to find out it's non-elimination? It feels like a waste of an hour, especially considering how easy the Speed Bumps are.
• I'm way behind on TV between the World Series and the election returns. Priority #1 tomorrow: The Walking Dead.
• Oh, And:
• Harry Reid. The Tea Party does not work on a national scale.

56 Years In The Making

Amazing that the Giants, with all of their great players, had not won since they were in New York. I thought they'd win on their pitching, but I thought the World Series would be close. Not so. Earl Weaver's old key to baseball was: "pitching, defense, and a three-run homer." There you have the Giants right there.

Since we know the Cubs will never win again, it's on the Indians now as the only team that hasn't won in over fifty years. After that we get into expansion teams.