The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 120,000 times in 2011. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 5 days for that many people to see it.
Over the holidays, my buddy/boss Paul was kind enough to inform me of how terrible Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked happened to be (it was his children’s choice… at least I believe it was). I told him “thanks” and “I figured.” But it got me thinking… they sure don’t make kids movies like they made when I was a kid anymore.
In fact, there’s practically no way they would make the movies I grew up with, and here’s a few plus the reasons why:
The Last Starfighter (1984)
THE PREMISE: Kid in a trailer park plays an arcade game so well he gets recruited to be an intergalactic war hero.
THE STOPPER: Justifies kids playing video games.
Sure, arcades don’t exist anymore, so there’s that. Besides, this idea has already been tackled in more adult fare, such as Barry Levinson’s Toys and the sci-fi flop, Gamer. There is no talk of a remake, but there was a 2004 off-Broadway musical based on it…
The Monster Squad (1987)
THE PREMISE: A group of kids battle the classic movie monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolfman, The Mummy, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon.
THE STOPPERS: Talk about virgins (and sex “not counting”) and wolfman nards.
Sure, kids these days are way more hyper-sexual in their text messages than the language in this film, but would parents complain? Someone would complain. There’s talk of a remake, but it’s supposedly going to be about more current monsters, like Freddy Kruger or the Predator.
The Goonies (1985)
THE PREMISE: A group of kids seek out a pirate’s treasure to save their town.
THE STOPPERS: Racism, Sloth, and gluing penises upside-down.
Sure, you may get Samwise Gamgee out of this movie one day, but you also get Jonah Hex. (And Corey Feldman.) They’ve been talking about a sequel to this longer than an Arrested Development film, and we all know how that’s going… they’re making it!
Cloak & Dagger (1984)
THE PREMISE: A kid finds a video game cartridge containing information that could get him killed, so he runs for his life with the help of an imaginary friend.
THE STOPPER: The kid kills a bad guy.
Sure, it has that whole “video game could get you killed” angle, but the kid really shoots someone! Cross my Atari! And so far, no sequel, prequel, remake, or reboot talk at all… even though this was pretty much a remake.
Big Shots (1987)
THE PREMISE: Two kids are chased by bad guys because they stole a car with a dead body in its trunk!
THE STOPPER: The premise!
Sure, this was marketed as a kid movie, but we didn’t know better at that time. It was written by screenwriter Joe Eszterhas… you know, the guy that scripted Flashdance, Basic Instinct, and Showgirls. There isn’t even a DVD release planned for this flick.
Sometimes I notice things in this world that I plan to share with you, but I quickly forget. These are some Coinkydinks or Coinkydonks that I almost forgot about. Lucky you it was only almost.
ITEM #1 – THE BREA GRANT CONNECTION
That smirk seems permanent.
Brea Grant may not be a well-known face (or even known at all), but the moment she appeared early in the sixth season of Showtime’s Dexter, I recognized her. I didn’t know what from, so I investigated. Turned out, she also starred in NBC’s Heroes during its third season. I tried to forget that awful show, and thus, I forgot her. Now here’s the Coinkydink (or Coinkydonk)…
She starred alongside Actor! Masi Oka on Heroes, and alongside character (Vince) Masuka on Dexter.
It’s a little weird, right? No, not really? Okay then, moving on.
ITEM #2 – STOP SHOUTING!
I’ve noticed that The General Insurance must be doing pretty good, because their graphics have been getting better and better. As for the concepts…?
Does this woman’s “hiya’s” sound familiar to you?
Because to me, I’m reminded of Link’s sidekick, Navi, form The Legend of Zelda – A Link to the Past:
You don’t hear it? All right, how about this last one.
ITEM #3 – ROBOTS AND ALCOHOL DON’T MIX
Here’s the party I was late to… I love robots, but I couldn’t stand it when Heineken had this atrocity of an ad for an atrocity of a product (the keg can):
So it amazes me that Svedka Vodka could one-up their craptacular idea:
If that’s the future of alcohol, color me sober.
I know you’ve been clamoring for this list for a while now, so I’m glad to present A Handful Of… My Latest Crushes:
She's the ideal girl next to the window.
Ms. Woodward first came to my attention last year during the first season of Raising Hope, and she’s held my attention ever since. I’ve never seen the movie The Haunting of Molly Hartley, or the show she was on previously (The Riches), but they are definitely in my Netflix queue now.
She's keeping the wall stable, but not my heart rate.
I didn’t watch Two and a Half Men with any regularity, but I was aware of Ms. Stables when she had a recurring role on it. Since I only caught her appearances in random reruns, I was pleased to find out she had a new show on TV Land called The Exes, which is actually pretty good… emphasis on the pretty.
Don't worry. She's 25.
I’m pleased to admit that Tim Allen’s latest show, ABC’s Last Man Standing, is funny. But even if it wasn’t, I’d still be in inclined to watch it because of Ms. Ephraim. She plays middle daughter Mandy on it, and just like middle son Randy on Home Improvement, she steals many of her scenes. And surprise, surprise… I’ve now added Paranormal Activity 2 to my queue, too.
Maid in Heaven (or Hell)
As I mentioned in regard to Ms. Ephraim, I will watch a show I don’t particularly like if I like an Actress! on the show. So when it comes to Ms. Breckenridge, she was a primary reason I watched FX’s American Horrible Story (well, her and Jessica Lange’s scenery chewing). Let’s just say I’m glad that show was only thirteen episodes long. And I hope Ms. Breckenridge gets another gig quick.
I am no longer the master of my domain hosting.
I’m not a fan of Go Daddy for many reasons, and their commercials do not help. On the other hand, Ms. Dearing helps their commercials, so there’s that. She’s also in Will Ferrell’s Everything Must Go, so you know what I’m going to do to remedy not seeing that. In the meantime, I guess I’ll stumble over to Go Daddy’s website to see how her commercials end. Gah, I hate that!
What is "that"?
I have a bit of a pet peeve to share…
Ambiguity has its place in music. It has its place in many places (how’s that for ambiguous).
Songs like (sorry for these weird examples) Michelle Branch’s Everywhere and Matchbox Twenty’s 3AM seem like they could be about relationships with significant others, when in reality hers is about her grandmother and Rob Thomas’ song is about his mom.
But then you’ve got obvious ambiguity. And by that, I mean songs that use that. Here are some songs that go out of their way to make it clear that they don’t want to be clear.
MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: Clothes shopping together.
MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: Change his name, or stop eating so much of his name.
MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: Syphilis.
MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: Anything but Katie White… that’s her name.
MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: Some type of feather or shoe?
MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: All that.
MY GUESS OF WHAT THAT IS: Slut.
I just finished watching Gnomeo & Juliet (it’s a new release on Netflix streaming and I was just testing out my new Blu-Ray player and I picked this and I ended up sticking to it no excuses… it was highly entertaining and pun-derful), but something about the ending bothered me.
It ended with a stupid dance scene.
I don’t know where the idea for this cop out ending began, but the last time I noticed it was during the end of Despicable Me (I watched this one on a long flight to Prague no excuses). This was the first dance scene that really bothered me because it seemed to be an answer to the question posted above – how should we end this movie?
(SIDENOTE: This is how…)
When the live action version of Alice in Wonderland came out, there was a lot of brouhaha over this ending (amongst other things). For the record, I’ve not yet never seen this movie:
So did this start the trend? Let’s see if there were any others before these (I will not count dancing during the credits):
But hey! Those are all Dreamworks films! That’s like picking on them for their Dreamworks faces!
Okay, well to be fair, here are some live-action, non-musical, non-credit dance number endings:
Even though this walk down memory lane hasn’t really produced an answer, I have a theory. Beetlejuice is the oldest one on here, and the scene fits in with the rest of the movie’s universe, so I could probably discount it for the film I truly lay the blame on… There’s Something About Mary and the infectious (in every sense of the word), Build Me Up Buttercup:
(SIDENOTE: I’ve always found this Farrelly Brothers’ flick to be overrated. Also, I had never heard The Foundations ode to Legos-shaped flowers (build… buttercup… ha!) before, and people picked on me for that. Plus, I worked at Circuit Shitty at the time of DIVX, and it was claimed at the time that TSAM was partly to blame for its demise. Apparently, 20th Century Fox released it on DIVX earlier than DVD, and DVD owners were pissed you had to have a “special format” to watch the movie a week or two earlier, and wrote angry letters to Fox. Not that I was on the DIVX gravy train or anything, but there’s something to TSAM’s ruining everything!)
*end rant*
I didn’t always have a blog, if you can believe that. This posts imagines what I might have written about when Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me came out… in 1999.
Oh behave!
I can’t get the sequel to Mike Myers’ Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery out of my head. This is the main reason why:
Mini-Me and Dr. Evil
They were hilarious! A clone identical in every way… just one-eighth his size. But their odd pairing got me thinking, where have I seen this before?
Let’s start with…
Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo
Scrappy was Scooby’s beloved nephew, not a clone. Nor was he really all that much of comic relief. So maybe it’s not them…
Garfield and Nermal
There was no relationship between Garfield and Nermal, but at least Nermal was the color gray, like the good doctor and his clone’s uniforms. And I might have thought the old comic strip was funny at one point. But still…
Godzilla and Minya
Godzilla was the father of Minya, but he could have also been a nuclear reaction that was called “son.” They were cute together, and Minya was about as useful as Mini-Me. Let me think a bit more…
Kermit and Robin
Kermit is Robin’s uncle, but their cut from the same cloth, literally. Or should I say, the same felt. Robin is similar to Kermit in every way, just one-eighth his size… and confidence. Wait! I’ve got it!
You should try Frosted Evil Wheats.
This one you’ve probably seen everywhere, and it’s not that big of a deal. I’ll explain why in a second.
These are bears in game reserve started by Walt Disney forever ago (of course). And it’s not that rare (although it’s still nice of them to wave).
(SIDENOTE: My guess why the first one has 5,000,000 hits is because it’s only 7 seconds long.)
But this… this just doesn’t happen everyday, even in Uganda. Skip ahead to the 2:50 mark (sorry it’s not 7 seconds long):
Hi, I’m Sean. This is my blog. This post is about other people named Sean (spelled the right way) that have done more than write a stupid little blog. Some of them I consider The Shit; some of them are Just Shitty; most fall somewhere in between. Here’s how they fall in my rankings:
THE SHIT
Seans Connery, Combs, and Bean
Why are these three Seans ranked so high? Let’s see… one was Boromir in The Lord of the Rings and a James Bond villain (plus supposedly fantastic in HBO’s Game of Thrones), one was the original James Bond and Indiana Jones’ father (who has since quit Hollywood), and one is a bad boy for life.
Nuff said.
JUST SHY OF THE SHIT
Seans Penn and Astin
Sean Penn has had a hell of an interesting career and life… He’s been fantastic as an Actor! (Mystic River, Milk) and as a director (The Crossing Guard, Into the Wild); he was married to Madonna back at the height of her career and Robin Wright back when I had a crush on her back in Toys and Forrest Gump. So why isn’t he considered The Shit? He also got to bang Scarlett Johansson. Screw him. He gets #2 on my list of #2’s.
As for Sean Astin?
Pros: The Goonies, Toy Soldiers, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Cons: Encino Man and Rudy. Fuck Rudy.
NEITHER THE SHIT NOR SHITTY
Seans Hayes and Patrick Flanery
Sean Hayes played the zany comic foil to the straight (gay) man in Will and Grace well, and he started a reality TV show to find a new scripted show (which flopped); now he co-produces NBC’s Grimm and TV Land’s Hot in Cleveland, so there’s that.
Sean Patrick Flanery was one of The Boondock Saints (which is a little overrated in my opinion), and he also played Indiana Jones, so there’s that. Neither is either.
CRAPPY
Sean Young and Big Sean
I used to really want to see Sean Young naked; now I really want to see Paget Brewster naked (she looks like the upgraded version of her… plus, I fear I’ve said too much).
As for Big Sean, do I really need to remind you of his contribution to society?
—————————————————————————————————
And now the drumroll please… what, there’s no drumroll?!
JUST SHITTY
Sean Hannity: a man of so many emotions, shirts
This smug bastard doesn’t even know how to smile like a human being! Go ahead and do an image search! He always looks like the turd that he is! Why couldn’t he have spelled his name like Seann William Scott so he would have never made it on here! I’d much rather have ranked Shawn Carter (Jay-Z) or Shaun White if their parents knew what all the parents of the people above knew–
–how to spell Sean!
The Wonder Bread Years
There are degrees to which I get happy about my Happy Finds.
For websites such as Celebrity School Pics, it makes me more sad than happy to find out they have a section devoted to porn stars… so this non-charting Happy Find would be a Meh Find.
Then there are sites like Bread People that entertain me, but not for long, like a pita roll compared to a baguette, so they merit the most generic of Happy Finds. What else could set the bar other than bread humor?
Memba this?
Pica Pic can be considered an Excited Happy Find because sites like it provide unlimited interactivity… until you get bored with its unlimited interactivity. There’s a reason Nintendo stopped making Game & Watch… and most recently it’s called the 3DS.
The last level of Happy Find is the Ultimate Happy Find. It usually ends up relating to a site full of videos, and tends to be updated somewhat regularly. It likely has misses, but there are enough hits to keep you coming back. One example might be Bad Lip Reading. Check out this sample:
monkeyBLOG monkeyDO 