Breaking News/Grandford

Hey guess what dudes and dudettes,
I didn't know I could do this, but I fixed my blog so now

ANYONE CAN COMMENT

regardless of race, creed, gender or whether they have Blogger or not. Even old people can do it! All you have to do is click "anonymous" and you can sign your name at the bottom if you wish, unless your name is Anonymous, in which case you're taken care of.
Don't hesitate to leave me your comments! Love me like a CPR dummy! (sorry that's gross, don't comment about that)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Things my 98-year-old grandpa has bought in the last year:

• A tooth-whitening kit after seeing it work for my aunt. My grandpa has approximately half of his teeth left. He signed on for $90-per-month deliveries of this stuff and promptly forgot he ordered it.
• A home electrolysis kit to stop hair from growing on your face. He told my grandma that he had been shaving for too many years and he was tired of it. Apparently it only partially worked and now hair just grows in patches. My aunt had to talk him into shaving again because he looked crazy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My DVDs of these BBC/Masterpiece Theater still haven't come. They've been caught up in customs and I may not get them for months. Fortunately, Cranford is on youtube in it's entirety. Unfortunately, I've discovered this a little late for my class tomorrow morning. I'm soaking up as much as I can, but it's 5 hours in total and it's already midnight, so... Whatever happens, I'm definitely not catching up with True Blood tonight.

The nice thing is that Cranford is actually pretty good (if you have five hours to kill I recommend it). After watching the execrable adaptation of Jane Eyre and enough of the adaptation of Great Expectations to know that it's execrable this is a pleasant surprise (for free!). And Dame Judi Dench is in effect, rocking a bonnet like it's 1846.
The best part about it is that it's actually true to the tone of it's source material - a Victorian novel about change in a small town - and actually improves on the scant story of the book by fleshing it out. Of course, improving on Bronte and Dickens is pretty tough, while improving on Gaskill is not so daunting - her writing is looser than the former and the loss of her authorial voice doesn't hobble the story like it does the others.
The other adaptations really labored under the duel purposes of staying true to their classic source material - knowing that straying too far would anger purists - and trying to make their adaptations stand out as new, culturally relevent adaptations standing out among the dozens of others; the fact that the books are so well-known and loved is a complete burdon on them. This leads them to wobble about, drolly hitting the expected notes, yet with an irritating attitude and need to prove that they're "not your father's Great Expectations/Jane Eyre." It reminds me of the less gifted son of a brilliant father trying to prove himself in his shadow - clinging to it sometimes and distancing from it at others (call it Sean Lennon Syndrome). The dirty-sexification of Victorian novels with the aim of filling pocketbooks - or worse, with the idea that because Charlotte Bronte couldn't write frankly about sex she really intended to and that by imposing it her true aim is fulfilled - it just makes dull, bad movies.



Except, of course, Alfonso Cuaron's Great Expectations starring Ethan Hawke, Gwenyth Paltrow and Robert De Niro. Get this: Pip's name is now Finnian Bell and Mrs. Havisham's is Mrs. Dinsmoor; Pip's not a lawyer he's a famous painter and Joe's not a blacksmith he's a shrimp fisherman! - how can you say this is not an improvement? It's so dirty-sexy!



Anyways, to sum up,Cranford the book is charming and Cranford the mini-series is pretty good and my grandpa's funny.

Exciting Movie News

Well, it's been a shitty week to top all shitty weeks. In the least shitty bit of news among the shit, I went to go see "Heaven's Gates, Hell's Flames" today but couldn't find the church and ended up walking around for 3 hours. The plus side of that will be toned legs. Or sore legs. I'm gonna try again tomorrow but if I don't make it I'll have missed my chance!

Anyways, at least the movie stars are aligning. I found out today that Danny Boyle's new film, Slumdog Millionare stars the kid who played Anwar on the awesome Skins! Even though the trailer doesn't give me reason to hope that it will be Trainspotting + 28 Days Later + Skins, it's apparently a very good film in it's own right. That said, will someone please make a film about sexy British teens shooting heroin and fighting zombies? Please?


In stranger news, the new Todd Solondz movie reportedly features both Paris Hilton and Paul Reubens! Charlotte Rampling's in there, too. What happens when a famous socialite, Pee Wee Herman and the Nazi-loving dancer from The Night Porter get together in a Todd Solondz movie? I can't wait to find out! We already know what happens when Philip Seymour Hoffman enters the Solondzoverse:

Brick Casey Taught Me the Confidence of Abstinence

Everyone who watches enough viral videos has seen that clever French contraception PSA where the dad is trying to do his grocery shopping and the kid is being a brat. Don't have unwanted children, har har. In between doing my homework (I'm back reading The Way We Live Now and it feels so good!), when most of my blogging takes place, I started thinking about how many awesome pro-abstinance commercials there must be available on youtube. I found professional videos (sweet), non-professional youth-group videos (sweeter) and music videos (ultrasweet):


If you're like me then you assumed that the note being passed is about the teacher. This point of view makes this PSA much more enjoyable.


What is TRUTH? Can we really trust it? You really can't trust anyone about anything! You're living in a two-dimensional city of lies! Oh, except trust my disembodied voice about this no-sex thing... that's true.



But what does acclaimed CDBaby artist Brick Casey have to say? This music video has the answer.
Best part: "If he really cared he would go to church and pray wit' ya/ all he do is talk a lot and play wit' ya (BLAH BLAH BLAH)"



Yo, straight outta Guyana, SolidYouth is here for your feature edification! It's like a group of four Sean Paul's and they are all Christian. SolidYouth's suggestion for an alternative to sexual actvity: A walk at the zoo.



Whoah, nothing gets your attention like a record scratch! The (only?) three members of this youth group seem to be suggesting that there is something wrong with politely asking before sharing an STD with a loved one. Honestly, I have to give this kid some points for class - though personally I would have written a little poem.



The user that posted this ad says it speaks for itself. I beg to differ. Could this commercial be more elliptical? I suppose it doesn't matter, as all other thoughts go out the window after the disconcerting close-up of the dude grabbing his boner.



The scary thing - the baby's father is a shadow puppet.



No words can describe the shitty awesomeness or the awesome shittiness of this video.



This clubhouse full of 12-year-olds picking up 12-year-olds is a regular Gomorrah.
"What are you about to do?"
"Oh, I'm 'bout to... you know! Come on now!"
"No man, that's not cool."
Oh ok, problem solved. Now just materialize on a couch and tell me all about it.



The real crown jewel that I found is this slow-as-molasses computer game nightmare masquerading as a lazy attempt at a school project. Lemme break it down for you to save you 4 and a half minutes and try and explain what I think is happening here:
Geddy Lee enters a French maid/Little Bo Peep's future mansion in hopes of "a smooch." Luckily she rebuffs him with an "Eww!" and hits him with a rubber chicken(??). "Get lost you scumm!"
Geddy promptly apologizes for offending her and they sit in armchairs staring at the walls. After an unbearably long pause he tells Bo Peep, "I feel something between us." This must be the so-called confidence of abstinence where the video gets it's title, and apparently it's not creepy at all.
Cut to Geddy and Peep standing in a vortex waving, saying "the confidence of abstinence." Fin.

According to 15-year-old auteur, Jakeh89, one of the main themes in this video is playing with the viewer's expectations by presenting pro-abstinence images with "pro-sex music" (read. 50 Cent fucking non-stop). I'm pretty sure he thought if he stuck that on here he could swing a C and survive until gym class.

Bitching Post: Americans vs. Natural Beauty

Went to the Giant's Causeway today and dealt with terrible, terrible, terrible Americans on the bus. I had already complained about the people in my study abroad group, but little did I know that some of the kids who are studying the Republic would be 10x worse. They came up en masse this weekend to go on a catered trip around NI and I tagged along with some of the people in my group. It was awful. Things that I was subjected to listening to on the bus:

• The worst game of "Would You Rather" ever. Sample questions: would you rather fuck your mom or be fucked by your dad? Would you rather get AIDs or (something equally offensive and unclever).
• The fact that most of these college-age Americans don't know what "secession" means nor do they know who Robert E. Lee was ("Was he a poet?").
• Insensitive stupid shit about Northern Ireland like "There's no old buildings 'cause they've all been bombed." They also split their group into two teams for some drinking game they have planned for later, naming themselves the IRA and the Loyalists.
• Speaking of that drinking game, they talked about it for at least five fucking hours. How can you talk about a future drinking game for that long? Why? Are you trying to impress somebody? What is there to say? "You just gotta chug it, playa."
• "That's what she said."
• A long joke about the different connotations of the phrase "eating out."
• The fact that they are all simultaneously reading books in the Twilight series (you know, the one about vampires that the 7th-graders I taught this summer read?).
• "Tonight I'm gonna get as stoned as a witch in Salem." "Weren't they burned at the stake?" "Oh, then I'm gonna get blazed." (...kinda clever comeback)
• A couple making out and dry-humping in the seat in front of me.

Despite the awesome natural beauty of the Causeway (pictures later), this trip was just a cherry on top of a delightfully shitty reading week sundae. I really forget how specialized and marginalized they people that I really enjoy spending time with are in the whole scope of people my age. I also forget how awkward I am in general around people I don't know. Things to cheer me up:

First of all, courtesy of the Miami Sun Sentinel via the AV Club: a list of the worst football rap music videos of all time. A taste - you'll think you won't want to watch all five minutes of this, but I defy you not to:



Robots! Presented in the most casually snarky, British way possible:



Also, I got three movies from the library - Ran, Bande a part, and An American Werewolf in London (which I, ironically, have never seen).

Also, I'm going to eat chicken dinosaurs for dinner. Nothing can stop me from having fun!

Get off your cellph, that cow's talking!

Today while I was scouring the Prelinger archives for some old films to watch I ran into an ad for a Northern Irish horror movie called Shrooms. It's about American students (like me!) who go to Northern Ireland (like me!) to get high in the woods (not yet).
Seeing as how it looked like B-level, straight-to-DVD horror I was pretty sure that someone would have loaded it onto Megavideo and I was right. Unfortunately this isn't B-level fun horror like Basketcase, nor F-level fun horror like Plan 9 From Outer Space. Rather, this is D-level terrible horror by an Irish sub-Eli Roth (who himself is strictly sub-par) that is so mind-numbingly, skull-scrapingly awful it makes you want to throw a petrol bomb. The dialogue bears no semblance to how real people speak, coming from three identical bimbos, a backwards-hat-wearing thug with roid-rage (named Bluto!), a muscley Jay from Jay and Silent Bob and an Irish guy who's obviously actually English.



Oh, also some drooling, livestock-screwing locals in the vein of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and every other movie that ripped it off. One of them confesses that, unlike his brother, he never fucked pigs. "My only weakness now would be for a bullcalf tied to a gate. Lovely tongue on a bullcalf - like... sandpaper." That's the authentic Irish flavor I've been trying to communicate in this blog. My other favorite moments:

British guy: One rule - no mobile phones.
Roid-rager: But I'm lost without my cellph!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Roid-rager: (on finding a strange girl in an abandoned car in the middle of the woods while wandering in his underwear) Lemme in lemme in lemme in!
(she rolls down the window)
Roid-rager: (pulls his dick out) Look what I got for you baby? Yeah, you like that.
(she obviously gives him a blowjob)
Roid-rager: Oh yeah! Yeah, babygirl. So soft. Oh!
(Oh no! It wasn't a girl at all, but an ancient druid! It pulls his dick off)

The choicest dialogue comes from the girls. Writer, Pearse Elliot must have never heard real human females talk, because judging by Shrooms their only conversations are about is sex and tampons, plus these true-to-life exchanges:

Bimbo 1: (on being charged with voyeurism) What, you think we wanted a peak at your hairy 'stache?
Bimbo 2: You know what, bitch, at least my tits are real!
Bimbo 1: Oh you wanna play like that, Chewbacca? 'Cause I will rip that hair right off you!
Bimbo 2: Fuck you.
Bimbo 1: Eat me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bimbo 2: (on a hike in the woods) I wish I'd brought adequate footwear.
Bimbo 1: Yeah, well maybe if you took better care of yourself your boyfriend wouldn't have to check me out every five minutes.
(catfight)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bimbo 1: I'm so sick of this - our bickering, the mood swings, our stupid fights when you go on the steroids, and your pimply ass... and most of all your perverted behavior.
Roid-rager: You know you're not so hot yourself.
Bimbo 1: What?
Roid-rager: You fart in your sleep
Bimbo 1: No I don't! (farts)

Slather that class on top of a bunch of quick cuts, fish-eye-lens and "am I scaring you yet?" wannabe-Ring cheap-shots and you have Shrooms! Not only is this film unrelentingly stupid, but it's never scary (watch out for those druids!). Maybe now is a good time to mention that this film was nominated for two Irish Film and Television Awards, including Best Film. Really, Ireland? Really? This?

Perhaps the scene that put it in the running is the following exchange where Roid-rager, sulkily pondering his pimply ass downs some shrooms, vomits on his own face, follows a mysterious naked girl into the woods and discovers a talking cow that sounds like the movie trailer voice-over guy. To get the full effect of this scene you have to imagine dissonant strings in the background, a cool, blue color palette and a cow speaking with the most sinister, gravely voice imaginable:

Roid-rager: Holy shit. Huh huh huh. Hello?
Cow: Well well well...
Roid-rager: Haha, you can talk.
Cow: That's cuz you're out of your mind.
Roids: You see a girl?
Cow: She went that-a way.
Roids: Thanks.
Cow: Wouldn't do that if I were you!
Roids: Why not?
Cow: You know you're fucked.
Roids: EEEEe, yes I know.
Cow: I mean.... dead fucked.
Roids: What, you're just a fuckin' cow.
Cow: A fuckin' cow... that can fuckin' talk.
Roids: I gotta go.
Cow: Yeah... bye bye.
Roids: (vomits)

Does Northern Ireland just hand out awards to every Tom, Dick and Paddy who figures out how to make a cow talk? Or is this movie actually a sly commentary on American students?
Whatever it is, I thought I'd turn it off pretty quick, but this movie sucked so hard that it sucked me in. I really wanted to see if it had bottomed out early or if there was deeper to go. Does that make Shrooms a success? Maybe...
Let me ruin the ending for you and you can decide. As she's being carted away in the ambulance after the ordeal is over, protagonist, Bimbo 3, realizes that all along the killer was, in fact HER! Why?
Because the whole time she was tripping...

...ON SHROOMS!

Paul Broun Says What We're All Too Sane To

Imagine my surprise and delight upon finding a CNN story today titled "Congressman sorry for likening Obama to Hitler." I often post CNN headlines in this blog that make me laugh by being unintentionally silly, but these stories usually have a context within the article that negates or explains the accidental humorousness they give off at a glance. Not so here! This article is pure jingoistic crazy from bottom to top. Like how Tina Fey only had to repeat Sarah Palin's own words for them to be self-satirical, this story does all the work for us. Observe:

(CNN) — Republican Paul Broun is sorry for calling President-elect Barack Obama a 'Marxist' and comparing him to Adolph Hitler, the Georgia Congressman said Tuesday.

“I regret putting it that way,” he told WGAC radio in Augusta, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “I apologize to anyone who has taken offense at that.”

In an interview with the Associated Press earlier this week, Broun admitted to calling the future commander-in-chief a 'Marxist' at a recent Rotary club meeting, and said Obama has expressed support for policies similar to those of Hitler.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Broun told the AP. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may– may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Broun was specifically referring to a July speech by Obama, where the then-Democratic presidential nominee said he supports a civilian force helping the military when it comes to national security: "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded [as the military]," Obama said in the speech that was largely a call to national service.

Responding to those comments, Broun told the AP Monday: "That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."

"We can't be lulled into complacency," Broun added. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential."

The Obama transition office did not respond to Broun's comments, and in his interview Tuesday to WGAC, the first term congressman said, “The point I tried to make is that he is extremely liberal, he has promoted a lot of socialistic ideas, and it just makes me concerned."

"Look, I guess it may sound a little crazy and off-base, but all I'm saying is Barack Obama is Satan. I mean... he reminds me of Satan. Wait, was that offensive? I'm not comparing him to Satan, I'm just saying he has potential to be Satan."
Forget it, I can't even make fun of it, it's too crazy in and of itself. Luckily for Paul Broun, it's impossible to stay mad at this face:

Hey Dave, what's going on? Nothing.

There's still not much to update about.
I have a cough that won't go away. Apparently it's classified as a "tickly cough," as opposed to a "chest cough." This means that instead of cough drops or something I'm taking Veno's tickly coughs solution, which is a mix of honey, lemon and menthol (and magic). It's pretty foul.

This is my week off, or "reading week," and I had originally planned to go somewhere, but now I think I'm actually going to read. I have four days off every week to take a day trip or something and this is pretty nice just catching up. I finally finished Great Suckspectations and now I need to finish the last story in Cranford before delving into The Way We Live Now again. Oh, and my other two classes.

That's about it. What will make this blog update more riviting than it already is? How about videos.


It's hard to debate Keith Olbermann's annoyingness, but here he pretty much hits the nail on the head. Unfortunately, anyone he's actually preaching to probably changed the channel pretty quick.




And hey, this is pretty neat: