lost

JusWondering… What Would You Put On Your Scale Of Fury?

Posted on by sgottahurt

This has been something I’ve been meaning to transcribe for a while now, and even by doing so, rage has bubbled up from the depths of my… say, what’s it called if you don’t have a soul?

Anyemptyvessel, this is my Scale of Fury.  It’s a series of missteps in pop culture that shake me to my core me, ranked on a scale from 1 to 10.  1 equals “infuriating” and 10 equals “someone must die.”

Let’s begin:

1) Invention of the word Squeakquel

This filmed monstrosity should not have occurred once, let alone twice.  It’s already cloying enough without an unnecessary pun.  Much like my pun above.

2) The Prequels

Not too long ago, and not very far away, I would have ranked Jake, Hayden, Jar Jar, and Ani much higher on my Scale of Fury.  But a few factors have changed that.  One – The Clone Wars cartoon series is really good.  Two – there’s a lot more crap out there that pisses me off more.

3) No guns in E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

Steven Spielberg needs to make some new friends.  George Lucas no doubt inspired Spielberg to go back and tinker with (and tinkle on) his classic 80’s family film.  Why remove the guns?  That’s how we knew the bad guys were bad guys.  Sure, they were aiming them at little kids, but we knew they weren’t going to use them.  Just like it was with the Russians and their nukes…

4) The Special Editions

Where to begin with these nut shots?  Jabba the Shitty CGI.  Young Anakin’s Jedi Spirit.  The replaced musical numbers.  This:

5) Cancellation of “Arrested Development”

It could be higher up on the list, but it did get three (2.75) full seasons.  Was it Fox’s fault for shitty scheduling?  Or is America primarily full of According to Jim fans?  I think the questions answer each other.

6) Emo Spider-Man

I’m sure I hope Sam Raimi had a better plan for what could have been the best Spider-Man film of them all.  Instead, we got Sandman, a rushed Harry Osborne vengeance/rebirth subplot, a wasted Eddie Brock/Venom, and this:

7) Cancellation of “Firefly”

You can blame this one on me as much as everyone else.  I kept hearing all the rave reviews about this show while it was shortly on the air, and I never watched.  Could just one person have made a difference?  If that one person was me, then yes.

8) The Last Airbender movie

I wanted earth, wind, water, and fire from this remake of the incredible Nickelodeon show, and all I got was fart noises.  Must. Repress. My. Diatribe.  (More on my thoughts on M. Night Shyamalan)

9) Indiana Jones and the Give Me a Fucking Break

Again, the Spielberg with the Lucas.  To distract myself: anyone else ever notice ol’ Steven’s initials are “S.S.“?  Ironic, no?  (More of my thoughts on Kingdom of the Crystal Skull)

10) The “LOST” Finale

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.  Fu. Ck. Th. Is. Sh. Ow.  For years, I defended it, telling people the writers weren’t making it up as they went along.  They were making it up as they went along.  (More of my thoughts on LOST)

InASense, Lost… Kiss My Zodiac

Posted on by sgottahurt

 

How fucking stupid is this sign?

 

The more I think about this, the more angry I get.  It’s this exact kind of crap that makes people skeptics about astrology in the first place.

Though I loathe to admit it – I’m kind of into the zodiac.  I’ve read enough things about Capricorns (what I am) to see the merit of it all.

Do I find astrology to be absolute? Absolutely not.

But are there some truths in there? I’d at least say there are patterns.

My belief in the entire zodiac affair is comparable to the whole nature vs. nurture debate, in the sense that the your birth sign has designs about your life, but not necessarily much influence.

I view it as the explanation to why you click with some people instantly, and reject others just as easily.  It’s also the reason why people in my life that share the same birth signs have the same types of friendships with me.

But this Ophiucus (“o-few-cus”) garbage has me butting my head against the wall (like a Goat would, but not necessarily like a Cap).  It’s New Age-y mumbo-jumbo.  It seems like cockamamie bullcrap manifested out of thin air… like horoscopes.

It’s like everything I’ve ever defended with…

It’s not made up!  They know what they’re doing!

…is happening all over again…

 

"It's not made up! They know what they're doing!"

 

The Sh– To Just Sh–ty… Weezer, Apparently

Posted on by sgottahurt

Would you raise $10,000,000 to make this go away?

"Hurley"

Well, not the actor Jorge Garcia, per sé, but the band that produced the above CD, Weezer.

Now before I go on and on about how this guy James Burns is trying to do just that, raise ten million bucks to force Rivers Cuomo and crew to disband their band, I should let it be known that I was going to list plenty of other performers I would pay to stop:

  • Green Day
  • Blink-182
  • Creed

I was going to go as far as listing artists like Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber, but other sites have done this.

So now inspired by James Burns movement, and Weezer’s latest album cover, I propose this:

How about we raise $10,000,000 to film a different finale for LOST?

Who’s with me?  That show unraveled faster than a sweater and had me screaming, “Say it ain’t so!”

Drunken Recollection… Things To Investigate If I Remember Them (Which I Did)

Posted on by sgottahurt

That's one way to do it...

Do you get drunk faster by drinking beer through a straw?

Per Wiki Answers (and I guess, common sense):

The drinking implement is not important. The speed at which you drink is. If you drink more in a shorter space of time then yes, naturally. Pretty self-explanatory really.

This one was a two-parter: 1) As a kid, did I not watch M*A*S*H* because of the theme song?

Yes.  It’s terrible.

2) Would I have liked it if it had a different theme song?

I don’t see why not.

Is “The Mike Game” a fun game to play?

Yes.  Once you understand the complicated rules.

Somebody told me there was a Polish dog that was saved from an iceberg…

…and there was.  They named him “Baltic”… you know, after the sea Polish fisherman found him on.  I named my dog the same way!

The Opposite of a Hot Dog

Find the update on the situation here (and for an update on The Situation here).  Now I’m going to go grab a beer and a straw, relax, and watch an old episode of Baywatch with my dog, “Outside the Strip Club.”

Coinkydink Or Coinkydonk? Tim And Eric Are LOST?

Posted on by sgottahurt

I apologize for the lack of timeliness of this post, and the lack of evidence to back it up, but it’s something weird I noticed that reaches a level of Coinkydink or Coinkydonk.  As a refresher, a Coinkydink is a coincidence, while a Coinkydonk is on purpose.

Anyadultswim, I am a huge fan of the phrase, “Fair enough.”  I first picked it up from Tim and Eric’s cartoon (?) Tom Goes to the Mayor.  The titular Tom Peters was equally fond of the saying:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Another thing picked up from both of those shows happened to come from their credits:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Now I may not regularly say either “fair enough” or “absolutely,” but whenever I hear them uttered, BOOM!  I think of Tim and Eric.

While watching Season 5 of LOST in preparation for Season 6, I realized both phrases were said a lot.  “Fair enough” was said so much that a forum practically devoted an entire thread to it.

As for “absolutely,” here are a couple quotes from Season 5:

John Locke: Absolutely. Richard has agreed to show us where we need to go. So I’m gonna go and see Jacob right now. And I’d like all of you to come with me

James ‘Sawyer’ Ford: You still got my back?
Juliet Burke: Absolutely.

Were I so inclined to (or provided I had the time and technology), I would have put together a YouTube video as proof.  Maybe one day I will, but for now, you’ll have to take my word for it.

So what does this all mean, you wonder?  I think the answer is simple:

Are you LOST? Because so am I...

Awful Battle… Before They Were LOST

Posted on by sgottahurt

LOST

It’s final season is days away, and the anticipation of it is killing me.  Not literally.  It’s killing me kind of like how people get killed on LOST.  That is, what the fuck is going on in that show?

Anywidmore, when the show began airing in 2004, only a couple of the cast members were familiar faces.  If you happen to have a photographic memory, these Actors! would have been familiar as well.

This first clip is an old Old Navy ad.  Keep an eye out for Fran Drescher, Oprah’s Stedman, and… Josh Holloway (Sawyer).

This second video is a commercial for the phone sex live chat line, LiveLinks. If I knew I could talk to Evangeline Lilly (Kate), I might have called.  What do you mean you don’t get to talk to the girls on TV?  What kind of operation based on lies are they running?

Remember the old game show, Russian Roulette?  Well, Jorge Garcia (Hurley) has been trying to forget about it.  (Purely my speculation based on unfounded made-up facts.)

BONUS: Besides Matthew Fox (Jack) and Dominic Monaghan (Charlie), and maybe Harold Perrineau (Michael) and Emilie de Ravin (Claire), Terry O’Quinn (Locke) should have been a familiar face, courtesy of his creepy performance in The Stepfather.

LOST

Coinkydink Or Coinkydonk? The Best Name To Survive With

Posted on by sgottahurt

(SIDENOTE: This is one whopper of a CoC, and I fear it is my greatest discovery.)

I love you, television.

There, I said it.  Are you happy now?  Be it that I’m an idiot for staring into your warming glow (if that’s how you want to take the term “boob tube”) or because I suckle your glass nipple (if that’s how you want to take the term “boob tube”), please know this – you complete me.

Now that that’s out of my system, onto business!  I’m sorry baby, but I’ve got work to do.

Two of my favorites shows on television had “mergers” a couple of seasons ago: Lost and The Office.

Lost had this happen in their second season, and the reason why, as producers explained, was to extend the show’s storyline if needed by adding more characters with new flashbacks (I know this from memory, and I’m paraphrasing because I’m too lazy to look it up).  The “merger” involved having the survivors in the tail section of the crashed airplane join the remaining survivors.  At the start of the third season, the season commitment contract was locked up, and almost all of the new cast members introduced the year prior were eliminated.  Almost.

As for The Office, the third season had two branches “merging,” à la the UK (original) version’s second series (that’s what they call “seasons” across the pond).  Unlike the British version, almost every new character quit out frustration with their new boss.  Almost.

So by now, several seasons later, only two cheeses stood, um, alone.

  • On Lost, it was Bernard Nadler, “tailie” and husband to Rose Henderson:

Actor! Sam Anderson as Bernard Nadler

  • On The Office, it was anger-prone Andy Bernard, a.k.a. The Nard-Dog, alumnus of Cornell University:

Actor! Ed Helms as Andy Bernard

So to recap… the two characters that survived massive cast “mergers” were both named Bernard.  Do I smell a Coinkydink or is that a tinge of Coinkydonk?

BONUS COINKYDINK OR COINKYDONK: An Actor! by the combined name of Andy Nadler played a character named Barnard (sp?) in the independent film, The Guatemalan Handshake.  Consider your mind blown.

In My Brain While Sleeping… A Fair Amount Of Skin, A Little Bit Of Aliens, And A Whole Lot Of Rapture

Posted on by sgottahurt

I’ve never read the book, Left Behind, nor saw the movie starring Kirk Cameron, but I currently would like to think it went something like this dream.  The references are many, so I’ll place them in parentheses to help you keep up.

Our pilots are Goofy.

Our pilots are Goofy.

While travelling back to her home in Australia aboard Mickey Mouse Airlines, the beautiful star of the hit television show Claire Voyant suddenly finds many of the passengers on her plane have disappeared.  Even the pilots!  Luckily, someone with experience playing flight simulators is present and successfully lands the aircraft.

(NOTES: The Australian actress was Carissa Walford, pictured below.  This past week she’s co-hosted G4TV’s Attack of the Show in Olivia Munn’s place, and she stole my heart, although not Olivia’s place in my heart.  Don’t fight ladies… there’s room.)

(BONUS FACT: I’ve loved Aussie accents since the days of Olivia Newton-John in Grease, so that’s two Aussie’s and two Olivia’s.)

(EXTRA REFERENCE: Claire on LOST is Australian, and the TV show in my dream shares her first name.  Weeyud.  <–Australian for Weird.)

Sugar and Spice, but not in that order

Sugar and Spice, but not in that order

Anywalfordiftheylooklikecarissa, the unnamed actress presented in my subconscious by, um, Carissa Walford, finds out that the Rapture has happened, and she’s one of those left behind (full circle).

(NOTES: The Rapture as portrayed in fiction in the Bible usually means good people are sucked up into heaven.  Here’s Wikipedia’s breakdown, a snorefest.  The Rapture as portrayed by Blondie is here.)

Basically, as it turns out, all the good people didn’t get sucked up to heaven.  It was aliens that did the sucking up, and they sucked up all the idiots to give our planet another chance.  They were big fans of Claire Voyant and decided that she should run the world.  Ever the go-getter, she obliges, and the world’s mantra becomes

The geeks shall inherit the Earth!

INGREDIENTS: Three mini-burgers and fries from Applebee’s, plus numerous pourings of brew.

(My Boss) Paul’s Top Five List… Foreign Language Top 40 Hits

Posted on by sgottahurt

 

I'm sad because I can't spell, and I don't know if there was ever a sequel.

I'm sad because I can't spell, and I don't know if there was ever a sequel.

When “my boss” Paul was just “my friend” in our youth, he was a music fanatic.  He followed trends and made his own version of Billboard magazine.  That all stopped around 1996.  You can tell by the CD case he keeps in his car. 

 

Top 5 Foreign Language Top 40 Hits (Top That!)

5. Macarena – Los Del Rio 
Per Paul: “C’mon, you know you danced to it when it came out in the mid 90’s.  It’s hard to find five good songs, so here it sits.”

4. La Bamba – Los Lobos
Per Paul: “Slightly hipper version of the 50’s classic from an awesome movie.  Not my Richie, Bob.  Not Richie.”
Per me: Can you say a movie about a plane crash is awesome?  But then again, I’d say LOST is awesome, so there.

3. Rock Me Amadeus – Falco
Per Paul: “Sad that Falco dies in a car crash awhile back.  I actually like the remixed radio version better than the original, but it’s hard to find.  Probably THE best song in history about a dead music composer.”

2. 99 Luftballons – Nena
Per Paul: “Pretty good song in English, also.  I like Goldfinger’s remake better than the original.”
Per me: He really likes this song.

1. Sadeness Part 1 – Enigma
Per Paul: “Gregorian chants and a sexy female background vocal make this my number one.  [Natch – Ed.]  Also, it was featured later on in a nude scene from Boxing Helena featuring the hot store clerk from Christmas Vacation – Nicolette Scorsese.”
Per me: I was going to apologize for putting the graphic at the top which gave this entry away, but I instead I’ll say this: I need to see Boxing Helena.

Drunken Recollection… New York: The Saga Continues…

Posted on by sgottahurt

Okay, so where was I?  Ah yes.  On Wall Street, which was under construction.  We were looking for the giant bull statue for the hell of it, even though we (Steve and I) were unsure if there was a giant bull statue in New York.  (There is… but we couldn’t find it.)

Around this time, I finally got to hear the voice of a fellow blogger (we’d eventually meet up later during my trek through East Village).  Our phones were running lower on energy than we were, so we decided in order to make it through whatever the night held in store for us, functioning electronics seemed important, and we returned to home base.

At the hotel, we plugged in our cells and due to the lack of sleep (this will be explained in the prequels), the Snuggies (this will be explained in the sequel) and bed were mighty tempting.  Yes, I typed “bed” with no “s.”  They only had a queen available (which I should probably specify is a bed size, seeing as how people might have preconceived notions about NYC).  Apparently, a four-star hotel according to Hotwire consists of this criteria: if they don’t have a pair of twins available (again – bed size), they’ll give you each a cookie.  A cookie that was prepared earlier in the day.  Possibly for the continental breakfast’s dessert?

But I digress, and as such, our digestive systems had processed those cookies long ago, so dinner sounded like a plan.  We asked the concierge to recommend a pizzeria (one that served booze was our only criteria).  He recommended one nearby – Angelo’s, on 55th and 2nd.  (Don’t I sound all local-y?  My confidence in understanding the map of the city ultimately proved to be a bit too confident.  Sequel…)

We ordered the flat-bread pizza and $6 beers.  Steve quickly learned that when the choices for $6 beers are Bud, Bud Light, and Bass Ale, you choose Bass Ale.  As we ate, we eyed the happy hour going on across the street ($3 beers!), and as soon as we finished, we headed over there for a few more (choices: Miller Lite, MGD, Sam Adams?  Sam Adams, of course!) and then back to the hotel to retrieve our banes of existence means of communication.

We headed toward Central Park to await our first fellow bar hopper – another Steve.  As we wandered the streets, we passed the bridge that Spider-Man battled on with the cable cars (I’m soooo cultured), and I missed the entirety of the quiet beauty that was the sunset that night.

As we began slinking in and out of a plethora of East Village bars, our group’s number grew to four with Tim, and five with Evan.  Eventually my fellow blogger met up with us after a lot of phone- and text-tagging, which was cool.  The hookah joint we were waiting to get into was taking too long, so we headed to another bar that carded people for some reason (nowhere else did).  In the sorta dark, sorta empty, martini-ish bar (what would be the opposite of a hole-in-the-wall?) we ended up at, I brought up Lost, I investigated something weird on the table with my fingertip (thankfully it was Guinness foam), and I think I even mentioned Twilight (the movie – not the book, as if that makes a difference).  Oh yeah… wonderful, wonderful Guinness was ordered around.  One guy selected a bottle of wine “with one glass.”  And mussels somehow ended up on the table.

Members of our group started parsing off at that point.  I recall a sliver of a diner that was stopped at by the solo wine drinker and that it amazingly carried no smell whatsoever, good or bad.  And somehow Steve and I made it back to home base.  (Taxi?  Subway?  Feet?)

I’m beginning to feel like this may be Uncle Sean’s Drunk Story Time all over again… So much more to go!