Blogging Twilight

Soooooo. I said I would update this site whenever a new installment was available, but I did not do that. But in case you haven’t started reading BLOGGING TWILIGHT, you can still catch up. It’s only like 16,000 words so far. Here are the links to parts I-VIII:

PART ONE: Seriously, I am going to read Twilight (Plus a clarification)
PART TWO: First Sight
PART THREE: I am Bella Swan
PART FOUR: Paging Dr. Acula
PART FIVE: There Will Be Blood-Typing
PART SIX: I am Team Jacob
PART SEVEN: The Volvo Paradox
PART EIGHT: Never mind, I’m Team Edward

News Roundup!

Obviously, there was no AFO this week. Well, there sort of was. You might have seen me, and a curtain, for a second there. But we needed a week off, a week to blow up some balloons and not contemplate that madness that is, you know, EVERYTHING.

It is possible, however, that without our award-winning reportage– okay, well we have never won an award for reportage, so let’s deputize that adjective into a gerund and make that “our award-winning and reportage”– you might have missed a few things. So what happened this week?

This was the week where everyone was very weird. The Heene Family? Those guys are very weird. I’m not even going to link you to the “pussification” video, because you have seen it already. And those guys don’t deserve the traffic.  I’m all for people being to raise their kids however they want, even if that means driving into tornadoes in your makeshift Dolorean and making rap videos where you smear your own kids with fake excrement. Wait, nevermind. I’m not all for people being able to raise their kids however they want. I am all against that.

Then there was a guy who tried to kill a dog with a hammer and a machete and FAILED at killing the dog. So much of that sentence was unexpected, wasn’t it? Read all about it.

One of the basic fundamentals of Journalism is that DOG BITES MAN is the typical non-newsworthy story. A dog bites a guy? What do I care? I got kids, man. Why you wasting my time with this? However, MAN BITES DOG is totes newsworthy, as the kids say. I know, the kids do not say “newsworthy” they say “hip” or “jive,” but I’m Old School. The point is, people see MAN BITES DOG and they want to buy your paper. A man bit a damn dog? What? Gimme that paper! I want to read about that! And then advertisers are happy and print journalism is saved. So I’m glad this guy was doing his part. MAN TRIES TO KILL DOG WITH HAMMER AND MACHETE AND DOES NOT SUCCEED on the front page of the New York Times is going to keep a lot of people from getting laid off this year. This guy may be a total moron, but he saved Christmas, no way around it.

Slate Editor Jacob Weisberg is causing a ruckus, calling for journalists to ignore Fox News because they are oh so very biased. Old news, right? Did you hear about this, though? Fox got caught passing off a GOP press release as an original news story. That is not necessarily evidence of a bias, of course. It’s more like evidence of being lazy. Why write your own segment when there is one just sitting there? (It could have been any press release, though I doubt the Dems even bother sending their to Fox.) The bias was probably an afterthought. People are lazy. Like, one time I got a pizza, and I couldn’t eat the whole thing, so I just opened my window and put the box outside. It was winter. Just like a fridge, right? Then a squirrel ate my pizza.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE CAME OUT! Reactions seem to be mixed. It seems like a lot of high-brow types (looking at YOU, Slate) are angry that the movie is not more like a book. It’s too long, they say. An hour and a half? It should be more like 39 pages! For the record, critics, making a book out of a movie does not cause the original book to no longer exist. I haven’t seen it yet, I am going tomorrow. As I have previously stated, I fully expect to be literally killed by this movie and to die in the theater. It was nice knowing all of you.

Speaking of grumps– Troy Patterson at Slate got all angry about Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin slapping Jay Leno around on Thursday night. You’re calling 30 Rock smug and elitist? Tracy Morgan is elitist? Matthew Broderick and Alec Baldwin getting sprayed with a chemical that makes you gay is elitist? I think the lesson we should learn from this is that Tina Fey is ballsier than any of us will ever be. Start coming to terms with that, gentlemen. Also are you following Tracy Morgan on Twitter yet?

I carry a bit of a torch for actor Chris Messina. That’s what she said,  no homo, for real. The guy can act like he is really good at acting. He just got cast as the lead in a new movie called “Devil.” Win all around! Everybody share a high-five! OH BUT WAIT IT’S BEING WRITTEN BY M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN. I take back the win. Chris Messina is a good enough actor to survive this, I think. If Zooey Deschanel did, so can he.

Health care stuff continued to happen. I hesitate to say I am bored with all of this, because I worry my insurance provider will find out and drop me for having a pre-existing condition (proclivity toward boredom).  That joke was lazy. This isn’t the Fox newsroom over here! Call back!

Chris Brown and Falcon Heene walk into a bar. Chris Brown punches a woman in the face, but it’s okay because it was all a stunt to promote a reality show. Then Falcon Heene vomits all over everything.

Finally this week, Butterfinger rolled out the next phase of its viral marketing campaign. It’s a pretty effective ad. Take a look:

That baby better not have laid a finger on Seth Green’s Butterfinger!
Makes you just CRAVE that buttery, chocolaty goodness, doesn’t it?

Site Recap for August

So blogs are kind of tricky to navigate for some people. My some people, I mean “my mom.” But also your mom! Everybody’s mom is having a tough time getting around this site. But that’s okay, because every month I will (try to remember to) recap what we have done on the blog for the ease of your mom. I live to service your mom. Put that on my tombstone. So what happened so far?

Jory introduced you to this site, and then I did again.

Jory taught everyone how to add an avatar.

I mentioned the first episode of Rock and Sock and Robot from wayyy back in February 2009, and then talked about how f**king excited I was for Where The Wild Things Are.

Josh appeared on the blog to talk about Walden Pond and then he disappeared on a road trip forever.

I talked about the similarities between drummers and comedians and then laughed at a protester’s sign.

I played around with embedded playlists to bring you the RTV stuff even Jory and I have forgotten about.

Jory mused on his trip to Quebec and shared photos which will probably end up in a creepy tribute video some day.

We brought you Barney Frank blowing some poor girl’s mind just as the rest of the internet was discovering it too (RELEVANT! THAT’S US!).

I looked at DogPile search spy and we all had a good cry over how scary the internet is.

Jory explained our comment-acceptance process (which none of you have taken much advantage of yet).

I teased the fact that RSR #32 is going to be a little complicated and acknowledged that RSR #31 probably wouldn’t make any sense to normal people (and it sort of didn’t).

Jory announced the miniseries he and I will be producing for the next few weeks and then launched the HA BISKY facebook group.

I built a bed and told IKEA to do something innapropriate.

As for our shows, the ANGRY FILMS team discussed the universe-destroying DDOS attack on Twitter and Facebook, a lawsuit brought against Microsoft Word, the strange Cash-for-Clunkers saga, and the return of Michael Vick.

As for Rock and Sock and Robot, the gang discussed whether or not anyone should care about Twilight and debunked the theory that Barack Obama is the Antichrist and concluded that he was maybe Satan instead. Rock tried to create his own catchphrase, and he was successful. The gang tried their hand at conservative humor, and everyone got mad that I made them read.

And that’s it! That was August! This was the month that everybody died (has anyone even noticed that DJ AM died?), but we didn’t die, so remember the dead and go back to school and do your homework and all that!

What is the internet searching for on SearchSpy? Forget it! I’m not going there!

Okay, maybe just a peek. (3:02 pm Sunday):

“sexy matures”

“preteen pics”

See– and that’s just two! The internet is diverse! Different strokes! That’s what she said! No homo!

Suck my dick, IKEA

An important note, dear readers: if you ever buy a lofted bed from IKEA, make sure your apartment ceiling is high enough to accommodate the bed, and you know, your body.

Yesterday Christy and I go to IKEA to buy a new bed frame after a few aborted attempts at Boston Interiors and the like. We decide to go with the lofted bed, because our apartment is about as big as the average walk-in closet. So we get this imposing black wood number and basically disassemble the interior of our car getting the boxes in. Interestingly, we also bought some candle sticks, but were so focused on getting the huge boxes into our car that we left them on the cart in the parking lot. No matter– when I later consulted the receipt I realized we hadn’t been charged for the candlesticks anyway, probably because the cashier was too busy molesting the children of the mother in line ahead of us. Seriously people. I know parenting his hard, but some things are black and white. The IKEA cashier does not touch your children ever, in anyway, let alone PLAYFULLY SPANKING THEM. (That really fucking happened. Shudder.)

We go home and lay out the fifty thousand identical looking pieces of black wood and start consulting the IKEA instructions, which helpfully contain no words.Thanks, IKEA. This picture of two pieces of wood next to each other on the floor with an X through it really makes sense. So should I not put the pieces of wood next to each other, or should I not put them on the floor? Or should I not have any pieces of wood? Because I have like 200. Is that bad, IKEA?

After a few minutes of measurements and picking up pieces of wood, we come to the conclusion that the bed is too high for our apartment. We briefly consider returning the damn thing until we realize it must be returned in it’s “original packaging”– the aforementioned huge boxes having already been torn apart in our driveway because we couldn’t even get them in our door.

At this point it dawns on us that we are in this for the long haul, but we are not about to let these freakishly tall Swedes screw us into buying a three-hundred-dollar pile of wood. At this point I must thank the gentlemen of Dough Pizza for lending us a saw. We take a foot off the bed and then we’re in business.

I have to say, a lofted full-sized bed is a little more imposing structure than I was prepared for, but as always, I feel like a better man for having defeated IKEA. FUCK YOU, IKEA! I AM BETTER THAN YOU! Learn to fix your immigration problems, Sweden, you seem like a real bunch of racists to me!

Okay. Had to get that off my chest. Meantime, HAVE YOU SEEN THIS YET?

Can I Tell You How F**king Excited I Am For Where The Wild Things Are?

So a few months ago I saw this trailer (sorry, this embed seems incompatible w/ WordPress) when it first surfaced at /Film, and my friend Spoon and I compared notes. We were still able to be skeptical at that point; he even qualified the idea that Where The Wild Things Are would be mandatory viewing for everyone with something like, “even if it’s horrible, I feel like I need to see it.”

And then I saw this same trailer on the big screen before Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince, and I can honestly say it was more enjoyable than the actual movie (this is saying something; I really liked the movie). There is a second trailer out there, and I think we can definitely say this movie is not going to be horrible.

In fact, I am going to be disappointed if this is not the greatest movie I have ever seen. I’m pretty confident it will be, though. Here’s why there’s no real reason to worry:

I have no real attachment to the book other than a visual one. Adam Carolla quite  decisively ruled on his podcast that the writing in the book isn’t even very good. Does anyone even remember the plot? Everyone remembers the illustrations. Spike Jonze has the wisdom to not destroy our collective memories with CG effects—at the very least, the Wild Things might be a hybrid—I suspect a little digital activity in the facial region like Benjamin Button or The Hills Have Eyes. That’s okay. The point is our visual senses will not be offended by this film, and that’s really the only thing he could have screwed up!

This is in contrast to, say, The Polar Express, a slightly more milquetoast affair. Gabe at Videogum put it better than I could: “Where the Wild Things Are is all about the inescapable nature of life as it’s presented to you, not only by the laws of reality, but within. All of us must face up to the world as it is given to us, for worse but also for better.” And Polar Express is about…Santa. It’s also a book I remember for seasonal reasons, not because it looked very striking. Without an absolute illustrative vision, who could blame Robert Zemeckis for coming up with that terrifying, 30 Tom Hankses having a conversation with himself trainwreck? Okay, I can blame him. Fuck Robert Zemeckis, fuck Jim Carrey, and fuck A Christmas Carol. But don’t fuck Tom Hanks; the man made Band of Brothers! Tom Hanks is O.K. in my book.

I feel like after I see Where The Wild Things Are, I’m not going to be able to watch other movies again for a long time; the cinematic equivalent of listening to Veckatimest. I better go see The Hurt Locker soon.

Okay, there is one thing that can be screwed up: Dave Eggers is writing this thing. If the Wild Things and Max find fulfillment by opening a school for young writers in Africa or something I’m going to strangle Dave Eggers with my bare hands. I seriously doubt this will happen, though.