TV

Sh–ty To Just Sh–tier… Sobe’s Too Long Oolong Radio Commercial

Posted on by sgottahurt

This MF’n FM commercial drives me almost up the wall when I’m driving.  I’ve been trying to record it to share with the masses for a while now, but I’ve finally caught it and bottled it up to torture you.  I missed the first oolong, but I certainly got the rest, as well as all the goji pears, if that’s how you even spell it.

Fuck you, Sobe.  Fuck you hard.  Except for this.  This you did all right.

(SIDENOTE: I know Piccolo’s name is not Goji Pear, but Oolong is definitely right.)

Awful Battle… Douchey Wool-Pullers

Posted on by sgottahurt

I would like to bring up a new branch of douchebags, as the post title suggests.  This group can be used as a warning signal, something we look to in order to insure it never happens again.  These are the douchebags that pulled the wool over our eyes, and tricked us into thinking they were as cool as they thought they were.

So here lies the ultimate Awful Battle… of the Douchey Wool-Pullers:

DOUCHY WOOL-PULLER RATING

Dane Cook

Done Cooked, more like it.

I would say Cook seemed to explode on the comedy scene, but he would only spin it into some jizz joke.  Who knows how long he worked on his material?  (That doesn’t sound right either.)  Who knows why he caught on so fast?  I’ll even admit to enjoying him at the get go, and with an upcoming movie career, I believe I even hailed him as the next Steve Martin (compliment or not).  But when all the shit came out about his liberal borrowing of other comics’ bits, bits of me died for thinking Dane Cook was once cool, when really, he was a douchebag.

DOUCHEY WOOL-PULLER RATING

Scott Stapp of Creed

Scott Stop, more like it.

Really, this one is more our collective fault than anything else.  Though his level of douchebaggery may be high, his level of trickery/wool-pulling is not so.  We caught him early, mostly because he claimed to be Christian rock and wore leather pants and left his wife after having a kid and had that alleged sex tape with Kid Rock (and girl groupies) and need I go on?  I really did like Higher, My Own Prison, and With Arms Wide Open, though… what’s wrong with me?

DOUCHY WOOL-PULLER RATING

Fred Durst

Fred Duh, more like it.

Like Stapp and Cook, he appeared out of thin air that was apparently quite chilly, since he often appeared in his puffy jacket and backwards hat.  He was quite popular from the word nookie, and was in the pop music backlash crowd that included Eminem and the Wu Tang Clan.  But soon after, his song Break Stuff became like his anthem, and he was pissing people off at Woodstock ’99 (allegedly instigating the riot which lead to some rapes), Eminem and D12, Slipknot, Christina Aguilera, and Britney Spears.  I also remember hearing that Durst got pissy because Aaron Lewis of Staind never thanked him for putting them on the map.  Oh yeah… he had a sex tape, too.  Gross.  It’s a shame I picked his remake of George Michael’s Faith as the greatest rock remake of an 80’s song.

DOUCHEY WOOL-PULLER RATING

Kanye West

Kanye Messed, more like it.

I still maintain that West’s The College Dropout album is one of the best I’ve ever listened to, but we all know how fool full of  himself he is.  And how much he loves his Louis Vuittons and all other fashion whatevers… gah!  That stuff bores me.  Rap about important things (Jesus Walks, All Falls Down)!  Or even fun things (Slow Jamz)!  Not designer clothes!

DOUCHEY PULL-OVER RATING

M. Night Shyamalan

M. Not (!) Shyamalan, more like it.

How can someone make two incredibly cool films (The Sixth Sense and yes, Unbreakable), and not only get to keep making more films, but worse and worse films!  And then… AND THEN!  He has the audacity to say we, the audience, just don’t get it!  It takes something to rank pretty high on my Scale of Fury.  He’s at Rage Level 8 (out of 10).

_________________________________________________________________________

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

  • LeBron James and George Lucas

Though they may not be as cool as we once thought, they have not gone full douchebag.  They’ve come close, though.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS:

  • Michael Bay and Brett Ratner

They never pulled any wool over anyone’s eyes.

In Defense Of… LeBron James

Posted on by sgottahurt

Talk about a double-take.

Millions of Americans are probably more than ecstatic to join in the schadenfreude that is the defeat of LeBron James and his Miami Heat at the hands of the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Finals, so I’m taking on my biggest challenge yet.  I am going to be In Defense Of one of the most indefensible players in all professional sports.  So where to begin?

The Beginning

  • LeBron James was born in Ohio and he played for a team from Ohio.  So that’s something.

Even though he was drafted?

  • Um… from 2006 to 2010, he lead the Cleveland Cavaliers to the appearances in the playoffs.  In 2007, he took them all the way to the The Finals, the team’s only appearance.  That’s pretty good.

Wasn’t that the season that one ref got busted for fixing games?

The Betrayal

When “The Decision” was made to switch teams before this past season, James took a lot of heat for the way he went about it.  He has since apologized for that course of action, and even though some may have viewed it as coming a bit too late, he still did it.  Remember, he didn’t have to do it at all.

When the Heat fell to the Mavericks in only six games, James took a lot of slack for this comment:

All the people that were rooting for me to fail, at the end of the day, they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They have the same personal problems they had today. I’m going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that. They can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy about not only myself, but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal, but they have to get back to the real world at some point.

Taken out of context, it can come off as pretentious and douche-y, but he even had to clarify this.  And he didn’t have to:

Basically, I was saying, at the end of the day, this season is over and with all the hatred not only myself, everyone else has to move on with their lives as well. They have to move on with their lives and their day-to-day, good or bad, and I do, too. At the end of the day, I’ve got to move on with my life. So it wasn’t saying that I’m superior or better than anyone else, any man or woman on this planet. I’m not.

Let’s think about his decision in real world terms:

  • He was 25 years old
  • He was presented a chance to play with a team that has won a championship
  • That team is managed by Pat Riley who has 6 championships under his belt (one as player, five as coach)
  • Florida vs. Ohio
  • Miami vs. Cleveland

The Final Breakdown

I could go into a dovetail of defenses, stating at least he hasn’t been caught sexting, he hasn’t been accused of rape, he hasn’t been involved in any dogfighting rings, or he hasn’t shot himself in the leg, but I won’t.

Everybody’s mad at him because he’s a Midwestern kid that turned his back on the Midwest and made a big deal about it.  He got cocky.  That’s really the root of it all in a nutshell.

I heard one reporter state that when James first returned to face the Cavaliers in his new uniform, the fans could have affected his game much more by giving a standing ovation – not booing.  He would have regretted his choice, potentially, rather than feed his drive to prove every one of his old fans wrong.

The Slamdunk

After all of this, you may agree or disagree, but I have one last line of defense.  Of all the athletes that have taken a crack at acting (O.J. Simpson, Shaquille O’Neal, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Brett Favre, Dan Marino), I feel LeBron James (all the LeBrons) may be the best:

It’s too bad his first film has been postponed, a comedy entitled Ballers.  They claim to still be developing the script, but perhaps their reconsidering just the title…

Bawlers

(There’s more Nike commercials featuring The LeBrons after the jumpshot…)

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Happy Find… Forget About Planking! Here’s Cone-ing!

Posted on by sgottahurt

If you’re unaware of the concept planking, here’s a British puff piece on the craze:

Here’s a much more interesting (and humorous) alternate… cone-ing:

Coinkydink Or Coinkydonk? Irony Is A Dish Best Served In Cold Milk

Posted on by sgottahurt

I only recently learned of this, and it made me suckle(!) chuckle, so I thought I’d share.

Tori Amos is probably best known for her weirdness red hair this(!) song Cornflake Girl.  If you are one of those unfamiliar with it, take a piglet(!) gander:

Here’s the weird thing… she kinda was a cornflake girl:

That got me wondering about what other musicians kinda lied.

For instance, was Bruce Springsteen really Born to Run?

Looks like he was born to amble.

Was Elton John really a Rocket Man?

Harland Williams was.

Was Lady Gaga really Born This Way?

This could be true.

A Handful Of… Items I Want – Nay – Need!

Posted on by sgottahurt

Every now and again, strange impulses overtake me, and I work hard to suppress them.  They can come out of nowhere; sometimes they’ve stewed silently for years.

Most times, they even baffle me, but it’s the baffl-ing-ness (?) that drives me further.

Oh, I realize that this opening sounds like it could be bad things, but they’re not.  Depending on how you look at them, I guess, they might be.  But that’s neither here nor at Target (if any of these were at the Ol’ Bullseye this post would be a list of my greatest shopping regrets).

Here’s A Handful Of items I want – nay – need!

Yes, it looks like a nerd toy, because it is a nerd toy.

I saw an article about Öliblocks in an old issue of Wired Magazine recently, and it’s more of a morbid curiosity than anything else.   They don’t just look like the above picture, there’s tons of different versions.  To be honest, I probably wouldn’t really buy them… but I would want to play with them.

  • Unicycle

Don't they look cool? On second thought, don't answer that.

I didn’t know I wanted a unicycle until The Colbert Report presented an expose about riders in NYC.  It’d be safe to say that the people who use unicycles as their primary source of transportation would probably not be friends of mine, so then why would I want one?  I like balancing.

  • Banjo (or Ukulele)

King Tut and the King

I play the guitar, so either of these would be a fun sound to play around with.  It’s just another one of those ideas that’s been brimming inside for a long time… and speaking of brimming…

  • Cowboy Hat

Hat = Badass

Tim Olyphant rocks as Marshal Raylan Givens on FX’s Justified and he wears a cool cowboy hat.  Am I that simple of a person that I want to look like Elmore Leonard’s smooth, quick-triggered character?  Maybe.

Comfortable performance or annoying gimmick?

I saw these at the end of season five of Showtime’s Weeds, and even though they made fun of them, I still would like to try them out.

Landon Meier makes these. I think there's something wrong with him.

I’ve mentioned that I wanted one of these before, but it bears repeating.  I really want – nay – need one of these.

Worth 1002 Words… More Bruce Than Bruce Can Handle Edition

Posted on by sgottahurt

Die Hard-On

Some altercolorofnights:

  • Mood Lighting
  • Pulp Friction
  • Heart’s War
  • Twelve Monkeyspanks
  • Arms A-Gettin’
  • Dupli-Sin City
  • Hudson Hawks
(via)

Happy (Sad) Finds… Maybe Memorial Day Weekend Got To Me

Posted on by sgottahurt

These songs are life affirming even though they might come across quite the opposite.  One of them causes me great concern, though… am I about to turn country fan?

The first video, David Crowder Band’s SMS (Shine) was sent to me by my sister quite awhile ago, and I’ve finally opted to watch it.  This was her actual pitch:

it’s a christian rock band, but the animation is cool

…now you understand my initial hesitation.  But it’s definitely worth checking out…

Now if I had followed her advice earlier, I might not have felt as effected as I did this day, because I just heard this (apparently old) song on the radio, and it too captivated me:

I guess The Band Perry’s If I Die Young found new life (so to speak) when Lauren Alaina performed it on American Idol, and I might be glad about that.

Coinkydink Or Coinkydonk? Attached Friends With No Benefit Strings

Posted on by sgottahurt

So we’ve already seen this:

Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher

And we’re about to see this:

Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis

And we used to see this:

Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis

And we want to see more of this:

black swan

Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis

But please… never this again:

Ashton Kutcher and Justin Timberlake

Awesome Battle… It’s Fright Night Fight Night!

Posted on by sgottahurt

Who doesn’t love the classics?

Who doesn’t love remakes?

Well, typically I never look forward to remakes, but their have been some decent ones through the years.  One of my personal favorites is Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead.  He did all right by George Romero’s original, which is probably his best zombie film to date.  I’m not saying would actually date it… but I’d probably fool around.

Anyreboot, Fright Night is an 80’s classic you may or may not be familiar with, so here’s its preview:

I’ve always had a soft spot for the film, and here are the reasons why:

  1. It’s cheesy good.  For comparison, what’s cheesy bad?  Actually, I think anything cheesy is good because it’s cheesy, especially if it was made in the 80’s.
  2. It’s self-aware.  It knows that it’s a send up of schlocky horror films, hence RoddyMcDowall’s character…
  3. …Peter Vincent: Vampire Hunter.  Think Vincent Price in the style of local horror film TV hosts.
  4. Writer/Director Tom Holland.  He elevates the Rear Window rip-off into celebratory genre-crossing territory, like Shaun of the Dead would do about two decades later.  Plus, he also wrote Cloak & Dagger – one of my all time faves.
  5. Marcy D’Arcy, Herman’s Head, and Jack Skellington.  Well, the Actors! that would go onto play those roles round out the cast.

So you would think the thought of a remake would set me off on a rampage, and it might have had I heard of it before seeing this preview:

Okay, the CGI bothers me, but the cast is actually pretty good:

  • Colin Ferrell – you know who he is
  • Anton Yelchin – Chekov in the new Star Trek; Kyle Reese in Terminator Salvation; Charlie Bartlett
  • Toni Collette – the mom in Sixth Sense, About a Boy, and Little Miss Sunshine; United States of Tara
  • Christopher Mintz-Plasse – McLovin in Superbad; Red Mist in Kick-Ass
  • David Tennant – Dr. Who; somebody in one of the Harry Potter films
Can the story stand the test of time… and technology… and modern sensibilities… and directors?  We’ll see in August.