A few days ago, I was on facebook, and I noticed that, after reading a movie review that completely panned the hell out of Transformers 2, one of my friends had decided to go see Transformers 2.

I found two things troubling about this:

Which form is cooler: 80's-style boombox or killer robot? The verdict: Impossible to decide.

1: I was retarded for Transformers as a child, and when the movies don’t excite me as much as the toys did when I was six, I get incredibly angry.

My childhood was a long time ago, and I’ve reached that point where there aren’t really any distinct memories of those years so much as a hazy collage that all kind of melts together, but I still have a very distinct memory of the first time I became aware of Transformers. I was up at the crack of dawn watching Saturday morning cartoons. It was still dark out, and I was sitting on the couch underneath an afghan my Grandmother made. Then, an advertisement came on for cars that turned into fucking robots and started shooting at each other. As the ad continued and a stubbly little prepubescent tent started forming in my pajamas, I became more and more convinced that I would be willing to do anything to get my hands on some of these sweet-ass fucking robots.

It’s probably a sad, sad commentary on me that one of my most vivid childhood memories is of a toy commercial, but whatever. The point is that I was crazy for Transformers, and I was young enough when they came out that I was able to maintain pants-shittingly intense passion for them throughout their lifetime – I had a similar love affair with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles a few years later, but by the time they were nearing the end of their popularity, I had reached the age where I was just shrewd enough to catch onto some of the bullshit – I remember when I realized that they were putting ten new characters into the cartoon every week so kids would “need” to buy ten new toys. I was too young to have that realization with Transformers, though. I was thrilled to get Soundwave, the robot that turned into a boombox at the beginning of the franchise’s lifecycle, and was just as excited in the twilight of the product line’s success to get Polypraxon , a scrappy Decepticon who could transform into a colonoscopy camera.

They were just grasping at straws at that point.

Now, the toys I loved as a kid are the subject of movies, and I can’t watch those movies without wanting to punch someone. I get tired of the comic relief that would make Carrot Top cringe, I don’t like the constant whining from the male lead about how his parents just don’t understand, there’s not a single fucking scene where they play Pantera while the robots are fighting, and I get tired of Michael Bay’s “We’ll film the action sequences with the camera shaking like the person holding it has Parkinson’s and use 30 cuts per second so people will get the sense that something intense is probably happening on screen even if it’s impossible to tell what the fuck it is” style of directing.

"Forgive me Johnny! I didn't hear your critique of my new movie - I had 112 million dollars of opening week box office revenue plugging my ears!"

(Here’s my take on Michael Bay: He should be a special effects consultant, not a director. If you’re making a movie and there’s a scene where you need to blow some shit up, you better believe that you get Michael Bay on the line stat, because nobody can blow shit up like Michael Bay. For Christ’s sake, don’t let him direct the entire movie, though! You’ll end up with “Pearl Harbor”!)

Because of all of this, I feel like I’m watching someone shit on a cherished childhood memory every time I see a Transformers movie, and every dollar that get’s spent on movie tickets encourages another sequel with even more unfunny, choppy, Panteraless robot fights.

Why I am wrong:

Much like they were when I was a child, Transformers are directed at children, not bitter 29 year olds. Even if I don’t like the movies very much as an adult, when I’m being honest with myself, I realize that the new Transformers movies and toys are still directed at kids and just as good, actually probably far better than the ones that were released when I was 6. If I had seen either of the new Transformers movies as a 6 year old, an usher would be scraping my semen off the ceiling of a movie theater right now.

2: I don’t understand the concept of watching bad movies because they are bad.

I know that people do this. I have plenty of friends who watch shitty movies so they can enjoy them ironically, and I’ve never understood it.

First of all, it seems a little bit mean spirited to watch something just so you can laugh about how much it sucks.

More importantly, why are you deliberately watching something that you think will suck? Wouldn’t doing something you like be a better way to spend two hours?

When I’m hungry, I don’t make Ovaltine in the tank of my toilet and then slurp it up while making snarky comments with my friends about how bad it is. I eat some nachos, because they’re delicious.

When I watch TV, I don’t watch The View and then smirk and badmouth it. I see if Rob & Big is on, and if it isn’t, I throw the remote at the television and storm off to someplace where I can’t hear Elisabeth Hasslebeck saying enraging things in her shrill voice while she doesn’t take off her top because she NEVER DOES.

I know what you're thinking: "If I watch this show long enough, she's bound to stop cycling through Republican talking points and lose that dress eventually!" Don't hold your breath. Trust me on this one.

Then, I eat some nachos. Did I mention that they’re delicious?

When I watch a movie, I don’t find something to go to that I’m pretty sure I will think is stupid so I can make a show of laughing as conspicuously as possible in order to make it clear to everyone around me that I’m thoroughly unimpressed with what I’m seeing. I watch things that I like (or at least attempt to – fuck you, Battlefield Earth). Did I mention that I like eating nachos? Take notes – my birthday is right around the corner!

Why I am wrong:

After a little bit more reflection, I realized that I actually do almost all of those things.

An old roommate and I used to spend hours of our lives watching “Amazing Grace”, a bad, bad television show, but we loved making fun of it.

That same roommate and I watched Catwoman one night; It was terrible, but I’m not sure I’ve ever laughed harder.

I was hungry one time…so I ate some nachos. I’m a hypocrite. Not a moron.

Still not convinced? Kid Rock is playing at the Independence Stampede this year. I don’t like the Independence Stampede. I don’t like Kid Rock. I am also totally going to that concert, and I plan to pretend that I am pumped up about Kid Rock. Let me just repeat that: I am paying money to see Kid Rock.

You had me at "Too Much Metal For One Hand".

Okay, so, actually, looking at that picture gets me a little pumped up. Maybe I’ll be getting a little more genuine joy out of this show than I’m willing to let on.

What This All Means:

I am an inconsistent moron.

Go and enjoy not enjoying Transformers 2, friend. You have my blessing.

Bawidaba.

I am fucking sick of writing papers.

Normally, I like writing. I do it enough that I can usually hack my way through a five page paper fairly easily. I’ve been writing five page papers like nobody’s business these last few days, however, and my brain is starting to short out.

If my count is correct, I have written almost 30 pages worth of papers over the last week. Papers about subjects that I don’t want to write papers about, which is the real problem. I turned my last one in about thirty minutes ago. The only logical thing to do was take a shower, grab a glass of Kool-Aide and sit back down at the keyboard and hack out another thousand words.

I’m finishing up the core classes for a Social Science degree so I can hopefully, at some point down the road, be an actual teacher with things like health insurance and pay over the summer. Social science is pretty fun, so it’s been a busy summer, but it’s also been an entertaining summer – I took a few history classes, a political science class and a women’s studies class.

I haven’t been in school for about four years, and I forgot a lot about college – the weird hoops that you have to jump through, the 20 year old boys who think that they are smarter than everyone else on the planet, spending the equivalent of three months rent on textbooks for one class – It’s been kind of fun to come back to all of it.

There’s one another thing that I had completely forgotten about that I find less entertaining: The token old person in the classes who feels obligated to speak as much as possible but doesn’t really know what they’re talking about. Sometimes it’s an older man. Sometimes it’s an older woman. Sometimes they’re 40, sometimes they’re 60, but they always make sure to talk as much as they can and make sure that none of it quite makes sense.

"Astroglide Warming Lubricant - The perfect contraception for people who are actively trying to get pregnant."

This semester, it happened in my Women’s Studies class. There was one guy in the class who was a few years older than I was. He felt compelled to talk frequently, and was always about 20% on topic when he did. It was always just close enough to the topic that I would think that he was going to say something that had to do with what we were talking about, and then it would veer off into something bizarre and unrelated. One day we were talking about third wave feminism when all of a sudden he asked the teacher what she thought of metrosexuals. Another day we were talking about contraception and he told us about the time he was shopping with his wife and he saw a big tube of warming lubricant. Another, we were talking about domestic violence and he told us that he and his ex-wife used to fight all the time and then have crazy make-up sex.

At first, it annoyed me. After a while, I started to love it, though. Every time he put his hand up, I was excited to find out what sort of crazy, unrelated information was going to come out of his mouth.

I started trying to guess what he was going to say before he said it. We had just been talking about Nancy Reagan…was he going to tell us that he used to love reading that comic Nancy? That his daughter looked just like Nancy Drew? That he saw Nancy Sinatra buying warming lube with a metrosexual? I never knew what it was going to be until he said it, and he almost always exceeded my expectations. After a while, the only time I got angry was when he was on topic and said something insightful – there’s nothing hilarious about that.

On the last day of class, he really outdid himself, though.

It a free day, so we were just supposed to find something that we wanted to discuss in class. One girl brought in Mrs. Congeniality. A guy showed us a youtube clip of a woman talking about the media. Another girl showed us an episode of Sex and the City (Someday, I’ll forgive her for that. Someday. (P.S.: No, I won’t.))

Anyway, last but not least, it was my good friend older guy’s turn. He headed up to the front of the classroom, plugged a flash drive into the computer…

And started showing us porn.

I won't lie - the subject to the left of this picture is porn, and I was pretty seriously considering putting up a picture of some dude's ass. I decided to be classy and go with this picture of Mr. T in a suit instead. You're welcome.

I mean, it wasn’t ALL porn. There were some pin up girls and old sculptures thrown in, but it was about 70% porn.

It was awesome. For the first four or five minutes of the presentation, he would bring up a picture and describe it to us as though we were blind. “Here’s a girl sitting on a couch with her hands on her boobs.” Next picture. “Here’s a girl taking a picture of herself in the mirror with her breasts exposed.” Next picture. “This girl is standing on a boat and she’s not wearing any pants.” Next picture.

Finally, one of the girls in the class asked him why he was showing it to us. He explained that he wanted to show that this sort of thing had been around for a long time. We were then treated to another five minutes of him showing us pictures and then describing them to us just in case any of us were blind or autistic and couldn’t understand that he was showing us people or figure out what poses they were in. The highlight (at least for me) was when he showed us a picture of two naked girls embracing. After explaining to us that the picture was of two naked girls embracing, he elaborated more than usual by saying “Some people find this offensive, but I think it’s beautiful.”

It really was the perfect ending to the class. If he would have been doing it in an attempt to piss everyone off, or if he had had any inkling of how inappropriate and bizarre it was, it wouldn’t have been that funny, but I’m pretty sure that he genuinely thought that he was doing something meaningful and relevant.

I feel like he may have set my expectations a little bit too high, though. I’m sure that I will have other old and slightly confused peers in my classes between now and when I graduate (again), but can I really expect them to proudly show the class a bunch of Internet pornography? Probably not. Only time will tell, I suppose.

He’s not the only thing I’ll miss about that class, though. There were some really cool kids in there that I enjoyed getting to know. I’m guessing that I’m ten years older than them, though, and so I think that it would be kind of weird to try and maintain contact with them outside of the class. Now that I think about it, I guess that means that I probably won’t see any of them again. Oh well. It was a fun six weeks.

Now, it is officially time for me to get some sleep. I have one day of tests, and then this summer session is done and I can start the next summer session.

Enjoy your weekend. I’ll see you all on Monday.

I’m tired and it’s finals week, so you get my trash. It’s all part of my three part plan:

1: Provide garbage for content.

2: Start out the post by talking about how awful it is in order to alienate the audience.

3: Throw in a couple of pictures of David Lee Roth and a Horse Penis and watch the site flood with hits regardless of how bad the content is. (You thought step three was going to be “Profit”, didn’t you? Wrong. I’m unpredictable. That’s why you keep coming back.)

Enjoy.

***

The platinum records, the sex with countless groupies, the semi-successful solo career - It all pales in comparison to his most impressive accomplishment of all: taking himself seriously while simultaneously wearing a pair of buttless chaps.

The song “Let Forever Be” by the Chemical Brothers is attached, very vividly, to a specific three month period of my life. It was my first summer away from home, stumbling through Jr. College. After putting in level of hard work and dedication over the semester that had yielded an impressive 1.7 GPA, I decided that it was time for some richly deserved rest and relaxation. I would wake up around 11 or 12, and then sit around in my basement apartment and play Playstation games until three or four o’clock. At this point, I would go to work. At the time, my job didn’t really seem like a job. I worked with my friends, listened to CDs, food was free while I was at work and I was young enough to get a feeling of accomplishment from manual labor that I could tell most of my older coworkers did not share. I got paid to hang out with my friends and listen to music, and all I had to do in exchange was cook a little bit of food, which at the time felt like rewarding work.

After getting home from work around 12-1 in the morning, I would usually see what my upstairs roommates, friends from high school, were up to. About every third night they were throwing a party, which I would join in. On the nights that there was no party, one of my friends from work and I would go running. Either way, I was usually screwing around with my friends until about 3 in the morning. I would then dick around on the Internet until five or six in the morning. At five AM, a show on MTV called “Dawn Patrol” would come on. On that show, they would frequently play “Let forever be”. At that point, I would usually head to my room, get some sleep in my uncomfortable twin bed sized futon and repeat the whole process the next day.

As of when I write this, it’s been just shy of 10 years since that summer. I rarely think about it or even really remember it. But whenever I hear that Chemical Brothers song, I immediately feel a warm, euphoric rush of my memories from that summer. I can smell the hot summer air blowing in my window. I can see the layout of the apartment. I can see the gigantic Air Bud: Golden Receiver movie poster that Dan and I put up over the door to the kitchen because it was easier than doing the dishes to just pretend that the kitchen didn’t exist.

It’s funny, because that song played a relatively minor role in that summer. I never owned the CD it was on or thought much about it afterwards. The only time I heard that song was right around dawn on MTV during that summer, and I doubt that I heard it more than five times during that three month span. I would guess that I’ve only heard it seven more times since then. And yet, nothing brings back such a comprehensive and vivid recollection of that period of my life.

So why is it that a song that I only kind of like that I almost never hear brings back memories of that summer in a way that nothing else can? I think that it’s because I never listened to it except during that brief period. Nothing else from that summer is really exclusive to it. I wasted several more years of my life working at the same restaurant. I had been listening to all of the cringe-worthy rap metal that I loved so much before that summer (and continued to listen to it for longer than I would like to admit). I spent time with those friends and in that house long after that summer vacation. I think you know how much I’ve played games since then.

Even though that summer was a great combination of things that I loved to do, the only thing that I did that summer that I never did before or after it was listen to that one song.

Things like that are rare in my life.

Chemical Brothers – Let Forever Be

I’m going to bed. I’ll try to be more interesting on Friday after finals. If you’re lucky, maybe I’ll just throw my political science paper up instead.

A problem as old as time itself: After a bombastic performance, Diamond Dave has completely rocked the ass off of his chaps. There's no leather on the planet strong enough to withstand the force.

1.

I noticed a few weeks ago that there’s a site called adamriff.com sending people to my site. All of the incoming traffic to my site normally comes from people’s RSS feeds or google searches for David Lee Roth and Horse Penises, so naturally I was a little bit confused.

I investigated a little bit more, and as near as I can tell, it’s a blog maintained by Biff Tannen that’s a lot more polished and frequently updated than mine. On the left hand side about half way down, there’s something called the “Dot-Conference”. Low and behold, there’s good old Mind Your Own God Damn Business in the Central Division. When I first noticed it, I was below .500, but I’ve clawed my way up to 12-10. I don’t know why I’m there, or what that means, or how my wins and losses are determined; all I do know is that if I can manage to string together seven more victories and everyone else chokes, I’ll have a one game stranglehold on the rest of the division.

Either way, you should check out the website. At first I was just interested in where the hits were coming from, but now I check it because it’s an entertaining blog.

2.

When I was in middle school and Jr. High, my only good memories involve hanging out with Danny. We would hang out, listen to music, play Super Nintendo, be sexually frustrated and watch kickass action movies. Danny has grown up, but that’s still basically what I do. Anyway, I remember watching a couple of Van Damme movies with him during one sleepover during the early 90′s. The details are pretty fuzzy with both of them, but they went down kind of like this:

In the first movie, a tour de force that undoubtedly pushed his acting skill to the limit, Van Damme played some guy who had a twin brother. Then, he beat some Asian people up.

In the second movie, some fighter puts Van Damme’s brother in a wheelchair, so he trains to avenge his crippled brother. In the final fight, they wrap their hands in gauze, dip them in resin and then roll them in broken glass. At the end of the fight, Van Damme cuts the gauze off and beats the other guy’s ass.

I remember being incredibly impressed by how kickass both of those movies were.

Dear Telemundo, I love your soft core porn programming. Don't change a thing. <3 Johnny.

So anyway, I was watching Telemundo (one of the, like, 30 Spanish channels that I get) while I was doing homework. As luck would have it, the Van Damme movie where he had a twin brother was on, so I watched it while I studied. After it was over I stayed on the same channel, because when you’re watching the Spanish channel, the odds are good that there’s going to be a talk show with a morbidly obese, sweaty, balding man and a couple of curvy 20-somethings dressed like they just got off the set of a rap video. I didn’t get any girls speaking Spanish falling out of their tops, but Telemundo did me one better: The other Van Damme movie where he avenged his crippled brother was on.

Naturally, I watched that one too. After spending four hours studying and watching Van Damme movies that I hadn’t seen in fifteen years, a few things struck me.

- Those movies are noticeably shittier than I remember them, yet, strangely, enjoyable in entirely new ways.

- These movies lose nothing from being broadcast in a language that I don’t understand. It actually keeps me a little bit more engaged, because I have to work for it to figure out the shitty, paper-thin plot when I don’t speak the language that the characters are speaking.

-Telemundo went for four hours without showing any hot Latina chicas. That has to be some kind of record for them.

- Van Damme looks way better than I remember. Maybe I’ve gotten gayer in my old age, but in the scenes where old Jean-Claude didn’t have his shirt on, I was too busy focusing on how striated his shoulders were and wondering what his body fat percentage was to pay any attention to how badly he was beating up every Asian person in sight.

You thought the "I can see his taint when he kicks" thing was an exaggeration for a cheap laugh, didn't you. Maybe this picture, which I will refer to as "Exhibit A" will change your mind. THE DEFENSE RESTS, YOUR HONOR.

- The final scene in Kickboxer is pretty gay. Van Damme and his opponent are wearing nothing but these tiny little thongs and some gauze on their hands. The result is a lot of male buttcheeks splayed all over my television screen during the fight. Once again, it was supposed to be the nail biting, action-packed climax to the movie, but all I could do was think “Jesus, Van Damme looks ripped! That being said, I wish that he wouldn’t do any more kicks, because I’m getting really sick of seeing his taint peeking out from underneath his loincloth.”

My final conclusion is that I will be watching Telemundo exclusively from here on out. It’s tits and action movies 24/7. I can get on board for that.

3.

I really like the new Mos Def album. I feel no guilt about that.

I like about every other song on the Black Eyed Peas new album, but feel terrible guilt and shame about enjoying any of it. I kind of wonder what happened to the guys who made Behind The Front.

I mean, fucking listen to this, and then compare it to that stupid “Don’t Funk With My Heart”. Those assholes pulled a pretty big Sugar Ray on me.

To those of you that were expecting a new post at 12 AM sharp (i.e. “none of you”), I apologize.

I have an excuse, though.

Just seeing this logo gives me an erection. A g-g-GHOSTLY ERECTION!!! ...Look, it's really late and I'm incredibly tired. I'm sorry. ...BONECHILLINGLY SORRY!!!

My little brother bought the new Ghostbusters video game yesterday, and today he brought it over.

This evening, when I should have been sleeping, writing and exercising, I instead played Ghostbusters with my little brother. Did I say “played”? I meant, of course, “He played the game while I sat next to him and screamed directions at him.”

We started at about 9 o’clock and wrapped things up about thirty minutes ago (three AM). It wasn’t quite as fun as it would’ve been if I could’ve touched a controller, but I still enjoyed the hell out of it.

The Ghostbusters game has a few things going for it.

First of all, I’ve had extremely limited contact with video games for the last six months, eighteen days, three hours and twenty three minutes. My standards at this point are at rock bottom. If you were to sit me in front of a television while someone played Dave Matthews Band: The Video Game, I’d probably be willing to watch it for seven or eight hours, or at least until the level where Dave and Jeff Foxworthy have a jam session with Rob Thomas where they play Creed covers.

Second of all, it’s a relatively solid shoot-’em-up, at least from what I can tell. Certainly not the greatest game ever made, but good enough that I’m willing to spend six hours yelling things like “Turn left. Left! That’s right! You’re turning right! I said turn left!” and “Switch to your proton pack! YOUR PROTON PACK, GOD DAMN IT!!!”

The controls, from what I can tell by watching someone else play it, are pretty solid, the graphics are good enough, and, best of all, the environments and enemies are very destructible. This is an especially nice feature when you’re fighting the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man – every blast from your proton pack leaves a corresponding charred, burning scar across his body, so if you’re the kind of person who finds it incredibly funny to focus all of your firepower on the Marshmallow Man’s crotch when you’re fighting him (and I think that it’s more than safe to categorize my brother and I as “those kind of people”), you’re rewarded with the comical image of Stay-Puff lumbering towards you, his body completely unblemished save for his badly, badly burned nether regions. It’s one of the oldest rules of game design: If there’s no way to mutilate your enemy’s genitals, you haven’t made a game that’s worth playing. This standard dates all the way back to the original Space Invaders, an arcade classic where the object is to fight off extraterrestrials by shooting them in their nards.

Third of all, it’s Ghostbusters.

"Don't shoot until you see the whites of his Twig'n'berries!"

Let me paint a picture for you: Suppose that there’s this movie that you loved as a kid. Maybe you wanted to see this movie really badly when you were a kid, so your Grandma took you to see it in the theaters, but you got really scared when the ghost librarian screamed at the protagonists and so you left about ten minutes in.

Maybe a year later the movie came out on video, and now that you were a seasoned, mature, worldly second grade man, you gave the movie another try and you watched it three times in a row the first day your parents got a copy of it. You watched it enough that you could recite all of the lines from the movie by heart. When you were in third grade, you made a really kickass proton pack (I know, I know, putting “Kickass” in front of the words “Proton pack” is redundant, forgive me) out of painted cardboard because you liked that movie so much. Maybe you and your little brother used the bathroom at the same time when you were little kids and you would constantly joke about “crossing the streams” while you were peeing. Maybe when you woke up after getting your wisdom teeth pulled you said “I feel so funky” about fifteen times.

You really liked this movie is what I’m saying.

Suppose that you also like video games enough that it borders on an unhealthy addiction.

Now, go a step further and pretend that you find out that the movie that you loved as a child is being made into a video game, the writers of the movie penned the script for the game and all of the original actors are lending their voices.

Finally, suppose that your little brother bought that game and brought it over to your house so you could watch him play it.

I think it’s pretty clear that in a situation like that, updating some shitty blog or getting a good night’s sleep is going to be the last thing you’re worried about.

Holy crap I love that movie.

And now it’s 5 AM. Jesus I need some sleep.

Goodnight.

While I was doing homework tonight, I fell asleep while reading about Javanese tribes drinking each other’s blood and eating each other’s hearts.

While I was asleep, I dreamed that I was taking a road trip with my Mom in this old, shitty Ford Fairmont the family used to own. She was driving, I was eating caramel apples.

Eventually, we stopped to take a breather, and for whatever reason, decided to do so on a stranger’s porch. We parked, got out and sat on the steps.

I continued to eat caramel apples.

Then, the owner of the house came out, holding his infant son. It was my friend from 2nd grade, Anthony.

He was completely naked.

My Mom was a little bit weirded out by it, but to reassure her, I said something like “I think that out of the last four times that I’ve seen Anthony, he’s been naked three.” We shook hands, and I think I woke up after that.

It was an interesting dream. The car we were in got scrapped about ten years ago, I don’t think Anthony has a kid, and it’s been something like fifteen years since we’ve hung out, but I’m pretty sure that out of the last four times I’ve seen him, he’s been naked none of them. Actually, I’m roughly one hundred percent positive that I’ve never seen Anthony naked, ever.

Except in my dreams.

Do what you will with that information.

Anyway, an hour later I got the following message on facebook from Anthony:

Have you heard this dope jam? When I heard this dope jam, I thought “this is the kind of dope jam I think [Johnny Castle] would enjoy.” Make sure you listen to (and watch) this dope jam all the way through if you don’t already know it by heart. Worth it, trust me.

Anthony knows more about pop culture than I know about anything, so I trust that man’s opinion on dope jams. I decided to give it a listen.

I decided that I had to do more than that, though. I needed to document what I was hearing, while I was hearing it, so I could let him know my reaction to the song as it was happening, Bill Simmons-style (only far less clever and entertaining). I mean, I owe it to him. Anthony and I share everything. Hell, he’s been naked three of the last four times I’ve hung out with him.

Here’s the video, if you’d like to watch along:

—–

00:06: Initial impressions: I see a bunch of dudes with girl’s skinny jeans, tight black shirts and emo hair.

The band’s name is Attack! Attack!.

One of them has a keyboard.

I am probably going to enjoy this.

00:07: They’re screaming, headbanging and playing their instruments as close to the ground as possible.

I am totally enjoying this.

00:38: He just started singing. I’m a little worried.

00:59: That was a pretty nifty little maneuver they just did with their guitars. I love shit like that.

1:00: They’re rocking twice as hard as they were a few minutes ago, probably to make up for the singing from earlier. They’re bouncing in unison. I’m a sucker for that.

1:18: Now they’re rocking even harder. I have to say: I’ve heard heavier, but I’ve never seen someone play as close to the ground as the guitar player is right now.

1:36: The singer is running in place. It’s unorthodox, but I’ll allow it.

1:46: Synthesizer solo. I’m retarded for those. The vocalist is singing again, but he appears to be using that voice thing T-Pain uses. I would prefer screaming, but this will do.

2:22: They’re still singing. This would totally be better if they were screaming. I’m getting concerned that this is how they’re going to end the song.

2:31: …There we go. The vocalist is screaming again, and the guitar player is back to teabagging the dirt.

2:47: HOLY SHIT THEY’RE RAVING. I did not see that coming. Attack! Attack!, YOU HAVE MY ATTENTION.

3:08: They’re not raving anymore. They’re just singing. Twenty seconds is NOT ENOUGH.

3:20: They’re back to yelling. It’s a hell of a lot better than singing, but I could really go for some more raving right now.

3:34: The song is over.

—–

Let’s do the math: I love hardcore. I love techno anthems. Do I even have to tell you how I feel about this?

It’s certainly not everybody’s cup of tea; in fact, I’m guessing that most of you completely ignored the video once you saw that I said I liked it.

That’s fair. I love trash.

Let me sum up my feelings about this song with a poorly worded, awkward simile:

The first two and a half minutes of this song are like showing up to a family reunion and finding out that you have a hot cousin that’s about your age. You know that even if she was interested, you can’t do anything with her, but at least you have something to stare at while you’re stuck getting drunk with old people that you don’t know. Then, the part when the synthesizer kicks in is  like finding out that she’s actually just a relative’s roommate and not related to you at all, and she thinks directionless 29 year old losers are really hot.

I can already tell that this song will be the soundtrack to a lot of one-man dance parties in my room and the source of a lot of embarrassment when I’m wearing headphones in public.

Thanks, Anthony. I owe you.

But seriously. Put some fucking pants on when you come to the door.

This week has been filled with tornado warnings.

I’m neurotic, so as a result, it has been almost impossible for me to leave the house. This has meant that I’ve been watching a lot of television, and, as a result, seen a lot of ads.

"You motherfuckers better believe that I'm enjoying the hell out of this rich, creamy Activia yogurt, and that I'm about to throw down some serious dumpage in the cushions of this couch! Try to stop me! Hell, with bowels this regular, I couldn't stop me if I wanted to!"

I’ve noticed that almost all advertisements are setup to make it look like buying the product in question will provide you with something not necessarily directly related to the product – an air freshener won’t just make your house smell better, it will keep your family calm and under control. Beyond satisfying your hunger, ordering a couple of Pizza Hut’s new pizzas that have corndog crust will shut up your finicky, shithead children who always argue about what to eat for dinner. Buying Swiffer window cleaners won’t just clean your windows, it will take your dick head spouse down a peg or two for thinking he could do it quicker with the competing brand.

After watching for a while, I started to notice some patterns in the ads. Advertisements for products aimed at women tended to make the following claims:

-Use of their product would promote family harmony.

-Use would give an advantage over women they were competing with.

-Use would allow them to be included and accepted in social groups.

-Use would give them more time to relax and enjoy themselves more.

-Use would help them find love.

There were a couple more minor things, but these seemed to take up the lion’s share. Advertisements for men’s products leaned towards the following claims:

-Use of their product would make women want to have sex with you.

…And that’s about it. Given that information, I decided to take a look at advertisements and try to figure out, based on television ads, what the ideal male consumes.

1. 

   Admit it, ladies: You saw this picture and your tops immediately came off.

   Axe Body Spray. This is by far the most important product on the list. There are numerous ads for Axe, but they are all essentially the same: if you use even a small amount of the product, women who are complete strangers are physically unable to do anything but desperately try to have sex with you. You will literally be running for your life with a mob of young, attractive, sex-crazed twenty-somethings hot on your heels.

2. Any kind of alcohol, but especially cheap beer: Most inexpensive beer tastes, looks and costs the same, and so Coors, Budweiser and Miller have to differentiate their products using advertising. Sometimes the ads are focused on humor, but more often than not, it is made very clear that if you get your hands on a six-pack of Miller Lime or order an always-fresh-cold-brewed-refreshment-sealed-cold-as-the-Rockies Coors light at the bar, boobs will follow.
   

3. Diamonds: Women love diamonds, and your willingness to buy her a rock that was dug out of the ground by shelling out a sum of money based on artificially inflated prices thanks to a DeBeers Monopoly is the kind of thing that will make or break a relationship. My favorite of these are the “Jared” ads, where a woman is gushing about the piece of jewelry her husband got her from Jared Fine Jewelry, saying “He went to Jared!”, followed by her parents bragging that “He went to Jared!”, concluding with one of her friends jealously hissing “He went to Jared!” at her significant other, who apparently had the audacity to purchase jewelry from another chain. For the record, if I am ever married and my wife starts bitching at me that her friend’s husband went to Jared, her next gift from me will be a backhand and annulment papers.
   

4. 

   Holy shit, when did the Phantom of the Opera stop wearing his mask!? Someone get The Elephant Man some Just For Men, or his days of philandering are over!

   A full head of hair that isn’t grey: If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from ads, it’s that if I go bald or my hair turns grey, or God forbid both, I can forget about women ever taking me seriously again. As a male who is beginning to suffer the onset of male pattern baldness, it’s troubling to know that my love life is now officially over unless I undergo surgery and invest in some male hair dye.

5. Viagra: I don’t think this one requires an explanation, and I also have to cut it some slack, because the product’s specific purpose is to allow you to have sex. Therefore, I don’t really find it that strange when they market it by saying “These will help you have sex” in the same way that I do when it’s how they sell KFC batter fried mashed potatoes or tombstones.

There were certainly plenty of other products I saw selling sex, but these were probably the top five.

This changes everything! Five weeks ago, I was CONVINCED that I knew what women wanted: Fun, camping, music, honesty and fun! Now I know that was all a lie.  I guess that it’s time to switch to plan B: I have to sell all of my camping gear and re-invest in Miller Light and boner pills!

Then, I can just sit back and watch the ladies swarm like bees to honey.

(I originally finished this post at two in the morning. Then, my shitty Internet connection and WordPress teamed up to eat half of it. It’s an incredibly demoralizing feeling to arrange a few hundred words in a way that you like and then be forced to do it again, but it IS Friday, so I did my best to crank out the second half again from memory. If this post sucks more than usual, that’s why. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to sleep my ass off.)

Tonight, my Mom was going to a movie called “Ink” and wanted to know if I wanted in. I didn’t know anything about it other than a few people I knew had said it was pretty cool and that some guys from Denver made it. I checked out a couple of previews and it looked kind of interesting, so I tagged along.

According to "Ink", this is what an Incubus looks like. Actually, that's pretty cool.

The movie started out showing various people going to bed. As this happened, another group of people started appearing out of thin air. They touched the sleeping people, and when they did, the sleeping people started dreaming. One woman dreamed about being proposed to and seeing her father again. A little kid dreamed that he was hitting a homerun in a baseball stadium, getting kissed by a girl at a carnival and then playing electric guitar for a cheering crowd.

It reminded me of something.

Two summers ago, I went to see Back To The Future at Red Rocks. For those of you who don’t know, Red Rocks Amphitheater is this really cool venue in Colorado. I went to my first concert there, which was Rage Against the Machine, The Stanford Prison Experiment and Girls vs. Boys. Despite all of the bands having awesome names, Rage Against the Machine was the only one that wasn’t memorably bad. You’d think with a name like “Stanford Prison Experiment” you could kick a little ass, but I guess not. Oh well. Good times.

Anyway, during the summer, they have events where local bands play, and then when it gets dark they show a movie. Back To The Future is awesome, and a band that my friends really like was playing, so we hopped in a car and prepared for a delightful evening.

In between the band playing and the start of the movie, they had a little interlude where a small crew of guys with cameras came out and spoke to the crowd. They explained to us that they were filming a scene for a movie and they needed the audience to help out. In the scene, a little kid is having a dream that he’s a rock star, so to film the scene, he was going to pretend to wail on an electric guitar, and we were all going to jump around and freak out like it was a Slayer concert. It seemed like a fruity premise, but I’m always up for making an ass of myself, so he wailed on his guitar, we all jumped around and screamed, they filmed it and then I completely forgot about it. I mean, come on – I had to find out if Marty was going to be able to get his parents back together and make it back to 1985 in time to save Doc from the Libyans (Spoiler alert: He totally does!)

A nice picture of Red Rocks, even though it's probably some shitty jam band playing hippy music.

Which brings me back to tonight, when I realized that I was watching a movie filmed in Denver with a little boy in it who was dreaming that he was playing electric guitar for a cheering crowd.

At first, I just kind of noticed that the venue looked a lot like Red Rocks. Then, I remembered that night two summers ago and the film crew’s description of why we had to jump around for five minutes. The description seemed to fit what I was seeing on screen, but the camera was focused on the kid playing guitar and the audience was blurry, so I couldn’t be sure that the scene I was watching was the one I was thinking of.

At least, not until I heard the sound of every female’s nipples in the movie theater getting hard simultaneously (Don’t know what that sounds like? Imagine the sound of a bunch of slide whistles in bras being played all at once. It’s just like that). I had my doubts before, but once that happened, I knew that there was only one explanation  – I was one of those blurs cheering for that kid.

It’s very strange to go to a movie without knowing anything about it, and then, a few minutes in, realize that you’re in one of the scenes, even if it’s for two seconds and you’re just an out-of-focus smudge.

But enough about me.

Two second cameos from gorgeous smudges aside, it was a pretty enjoyable movie. I’ve spent some time trying to figure out just how much I liked it, and I’m not completely sure. Before I give my opinion, I think the following facts need to be considered:

1) I felt like there was a smattering of hoaky and/or cloying dialogue, some goofy characters and a couple of scenes that seemed a little bit drawn out.

She's so three thousand and eight, you so two thousand and late.

2) It is currently four thirty in the morning, and I tend to think a little bit crazy when it’s this late. This is the time of night when I start to make grandiose and profoundly retarded statements like “Say what you will, but the bottom line is that Shot at Love with Tila Tequila is the greatest television show of this or any era!!!” or “Boom Boom WOW!!! The first album that the Black Eyed Peas made after bringing Fergie into the band was the greatest hour of music in recorded human history…that is, until it was dethroned by their newest album, The E.N.D.” Because of this, I’m a little bit weary of giving any verdicts right now.

Those two things being said,

3) I drank about a gallon of coffee thirty minutes before I went to the movie, and despite the fact that I came far closer than I ever have post-puberty to wetting my pants, I refused to go to the bathroom until the credits rolled because I didn’t want to miss anything.

4) Although there were parts of the movie that I found a little bit silly, I could tell that if I had seen this movie in my late teens or early twenties I would’ve considered it a completely flawless masterpiece. I would have left the theater with an erection that would have more than likely required medical attention at some point.

I’m not quite sure what to make of that collection of facts, but I think it leans towards a positive review.

Like I said, there were some parts seemed a little bit goofy, and when I write things this late at night I’m frequently embarrassed (even more than usual) when I see them the next day, but 23 year old me would’ve been struck with priapism after seeing this movie,  and even though I didn’t think it was perfect at 29, I liked it enough that I was willing to risk bladder failure to make sure that I saw every second of it. When I take those two facts into account, I think that it’s clear that I liked this movie and I have to recommend it. You should see it if you get a chance. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Just be sure that you wear really durable clothing if you do – There are going to be a few seconds in that movie where your nipples are going to be hard enough to cut glass.

Boom Boom POW!!!

(I would write something interesting, but I am getting corn-holed by school right now. I said I’d try to get this Monday-Wednesday-Friday thing going though, and it’s totally Wednesday, so I guess I have to. It’s cool. I need a break from homework.)

I don’t wear a bike helmet. I think they look goofy, I mostly use my bike for commuting, I hate carrying it around, I have a gigantic head so whenever I wear a helmet it just looks like I’m wearing a plastic, strap-on yarmulke, and I’m a stupid fuck who still thinks he’s immortal like a 16 year old. It’s a bad idea, but I go without.

Exactly. Exactly.

Anyway, I was riding my bike to the gym a few days ago. I was about to cross the street into the parking lot when I heard a skidding noise.

I looked over to my right and saw a gold car come blasting around the corner up the street towards the parking lot. It went in a straight line and kept accelerating, like somebody had just tossed a brick on the gas pedal and then let the car do its thing. It jumped up onto the grass between the parking lot and the street, hopped into the parking lot and then T-boned the hell out of an SUV that was waiting to come out. I would guess that it was going about 45 miles an hour when it hit.

The SUV had a teenage girl in it, who got out, said something like “What the fuck just happened?!” and then sat down. The gold car had a girl in the passenger seat and an old woman behind the wheel. The girl in the gold car helped the old woman out and got her to a chair to sit in.

I had a very strong initial reaction when I saw the driver, which was “I should go over and punch that stupid bitch in the face.” I managed to calm myself down and go over and see if anyone needed help instead. Everyone was okay, so I hung around long enough to tell the Police what I saw and went to the gym.

What happened after that was a little bit frustrating.

Every time something like this happens to someone, and they have some sort of brush with a random negative event, they say something cliche about how “life is fleeting, and you never know when you’re going to go, blah blah blah.” Every time I hear someone say something like this, I am unsurprised and unmoved, because I’ve heard it so many times.

And then, after a car accident that didn’t badly injure anyone and that I wasn’t involved in and didn’t really even come that close to being hit, I had that exact same “epiphany”.

I always hate these moments in my life – the times when I feel like I’ve really cracked one of the mysteries of the human experience, only to realize a split second later that whatever my groundbreaking realization was is so completely, utterly common that I’ve heard it a hundred times in teen books and pop songs (Who can forget the time that I was convinced that I was the only one to realize that the humpty dance was your chance to do the hump?).

That didn’t stop me from spending a few minutes freaking out, however.

“OH MY GOD!” I thought to myself.

“If I’d ignored the screeching sound of tires and just crossed the street, or left my house two seconds sooner, or had been on a skate board instead of a bike and I’d been trying to hold on to the back of that gold car like Marty McFly in Back to the Future, I’d be crumpled up in a little heap right now! I can’t control everything in life!”

Exhibit A. You're just hanging out with some friends, watching TV, and then Cookie Monster shoots you in the face.

“You can do everything safely and mind your own god damn business (HA!), but if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, some random event can just hose you in a split second!”

It shouldn’t have been that alarming to me, but it really was; a shady patch of grass that’s five or six feet away from the road is not the kind of place where I’m watching to be sure that there’s no danger of getting hit by a car, but under the right circumstances, it’s clearly not impossible for something like that to happen. What other places that I had previously considered safe were actually just accidents waiting to happen?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the answer was “everywhere”. Someone with a gun could show up and shoot up my school while I was in class. Any building I’m in could randomly collapse. Even my beloved reading area – the can – could get hit by a meteor while I was enjoying myself!

I thought about all of this while working out (ironically, I never stopped to consider the fact that my knee could decide to buckle while I was squatting, or one of the supports holding the bar in place in between sets could give out – it might be dangerous everywhere else, but I was clearly safe with a bunch of weight sitting on my back), and was briefly paralyzed by it – no matter where I went or how careful I was, there would always be over a 0% chance that something might kill me.

Exhibit B. You're in an ancient temple, minding your own business, when an alien that hunts men for sport appears and kills you.

Then, I started to calm down. Not only was I freaking myself out and thinking that it was the end of the world because I witnessed a fairly minor car accident, I realized that it was pointless to worry. If I’m going to get hit by some lady in a car, or struck by lightening, or eviscerated by chupacabras, or killed by the Predator, because he’s invisible and hunts humans for sport, it’s going to happen. I can constantly worry about it, or I can just keep doing my thing and enjoy it until some act of God annihilates me.

I finished my workout, hopped back on my bike and rode home.

And then immediately ordered a bike helmet.

I’m wearing it right now.