Graffiti with Punctuation*

Apparently, it was movie day today.  I had never heard of it, but Annie wanted to go see Contagion.  She gets off on dystopia-related fiction.  I like movies, so I was down.  We headed over to the Grand Lake to catch a matinee, so we only had to pay midwest ticket prices.  ($7, as opposed to $15 L.A. prices.)

My opinion:  meh.  There was nothing that made me particularly interested in the story.  I mean, I felt for Matt Damon.  Losing your wife and step-son, only to find out that your wife was a cheating whore would be pretty rough.  Trying to keep your last close relative safe was the only good story line.  That and the chick that would eventually get a Nobel prize for risking her life by testing her vaccine on herself.

Should've used Wahlberg. They're the same person, but Mark is better looking.

Diseased slut.

Other than that, there were just too many unresolved things.  Was the vlogger really batshit, or was he right all along?  Did that chick in China have Stockholm syndrome?  Do I really touch my face 3-5 times every waking minute?  Are blogs really just "graffiti with punctuation"?  (Regardless, it was a great quote, and I feel like it's a fair representation of my blog, if not all of them.)  *Does Demetri Martin really think that he can pull of the brilliant scientist/biologist role?  Not with that bowl cut.

Crazy or not?

Stockholm?

"Don't be attached to anything that you can't walk out on in 30 seconds flat when you spot the Heat coming around the corner."  That was my second movie.  I'm sitting here blogging while I watch Heat, from 1995.  I've never seen it, but I know it is highly regarded.  It's pretty good.  It's making up for the movie earlier.  Both have crazy casts, but young Natalie Portman in Heat is probably the best surprise.

*Updated:  I had no clue that Heat was 2 hours and 45 minutes long.  It kept me up way past my bedtime.  It was so good, though.  Why can't Hollywood make good movies any more?  They're too busy trying to turn shit like Toddlers and Tiaras into a movie.  Pacino shaking hands with De Niro as he was dying:  classic movie gold.  So was young Portman's suicide attempt.  As if Pacino didn't have enough shit to deal with.

It was obvious that the movie was going to be good.  Hell, there's a Jim Gaffigan skit about how hits hard to talk about good movies long after they've come out.  I think Dane Cook drops some beats about being in a heist, referencing Heat as well.  Since that whole scenario has already been dissected with comedy, I have nothing else to do here.

~RoB

There's NO Mind Eraser

There are 2 online videos that have stuck with me since the day that I first viewed them.  Here are those stories.  Neither of these videos are directly embedded (or embed-able), so I just provide their internet links.

I was in a computer lab at Michigan when one of my friends said, "Do you wanna see the most fucked up video you've ever seen in your life?"  I was happy to take that challenge.  Come on... I watch crazy porn, I giggled through 2 girls 1 cup, I've watched all kinds of horror flicks like Faces of Death, what could you possibly have on your little ol' computer that is so screwed up?!  Then, my life was forever changed.

BME Pain Olympics (probably the only time that I'll warn you that something on my blog is NSFW). Save it and watch it at home tonight:
http://www.painolympics.info/

The other video is notably less fucked up, yet still gross (and never-ending).  I don't remember how I came across it.  I think it went around Facebook a while ago.  Now I can only find references to Tosh.0, but I like to think that I knew about it before that show...

Giant Pimple Pop:
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/81033219/

"You've gotta be kidding me. You've gotta be kidding me."

I warned you,
~RoB

Liam & Clint

I just rented and watched Unknown.  I was, once again, pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the main actor.  There are actually two actors that I've really been surprisingly digging the past few years, Liam Neeson and Clint Eastwood.  They aren't the first names I think of when I'm contemplating current Hollywood stars, but they are both solid performers.  It's impressive that Clint is even still working, and Liam's movies in the past year have been stellar (Taken and Unknown).  Here are my favorite movies of theirs.

Liam Neeson movies I love (well some I only really like), in order:

1. Love Actually (The best romantic comedy ever.)
2. Taken (This movie makes me not want a daughter.)
3. Unknown (Liam is totally badass out of nowhere.)
4. Batman Begins (This was a solid movie with or without Liam.)
5. Schindler's List (Liam was Schindler, if you didn't know.)
6. Next of Kin (One of the 4 Patrick Swayze movies I can name, but I like them all.)
7. Leap of Faith (I saw the musical version of this with Brooke Shields.)

I had no clue Liam was in a few of these older movies until after I IMDB'd him.

Clint Eastwood movies I love (and some I like), in order:

1. Unforgiven (Best contemporary western ever.  Maybe best western ever.  Trust me, I took a class.)
2. Million Dollar Baby (The last time I almost cried was the end of this movie.)
3. Gran Torino (The ending was the biggest twist I would have expected for a Clint flick.)
4. Mystic River [Director] (I always happen to find this on TV on lazy Sundays, much like Shawshank.)
5. Every Which Way But Loose (Wait, Clint can be funny, and he can hang with an orangutan?)

Again, I had no idea Clint had directed Mystic River until I IMDB'd him.

If nothing else, you should really go see the first two movies from each list.  If you don't like them, I'll reimburse you the rental fees.  (I'm lying, but I doubt you won't like them.)

Annie hates it when I talk about famous people as if we're tight, which is why I like to use their first names only,
~RoB

Michael & the M-word

I remember sitting on my couch watching the movie Michael, with John Travolta, as a young adolescent.  The word 'adolescent' is the only word I can think that foreshadows this story, since to me, that word means unfortunate-kid-going-through-puberty.

Anybody remember this movie?

I know that I watched this movie.  I can vividly picture the layout of my living room, where I was laying across the couch that was butted up against the long wall.  Pops was in his recliner, and that sums up our living room furniture (as well as the total square footage of 50% of my house back then).  This movie was clearly playing on our TV.  I can remember a few pictures, but the whole story is lost to me.  Traumatic amnesia?  I think so.

I have NO clue what prompted this conversation.  I have NO clue at what point in the movie it happened.  All I know is, one moment I'm into some sappy movie about an archangel, and the next minute I'm getting the M-word speech.

Masturbation.

"It's OK to masturbate.  I used to do it all the time.  I've heard you in the bathroom flipping through pages, early in the morning."  I believe that is all he had to say, yet it feels like I was held down on the couch for days being tortured by awful masturbation conversation.  It was true.  He did have dirty mags in the bathroom, which I took it upon myself to explore.  I also had found a porno tape, which was my first real introduction to 'what everyone was talking about'.  I also have a sneaking suspicion that he caught me workin' it once, but that's never been confirmed.

Regardless, as comfortable as I am with masturbation (as well as everyone else should be), I can't help but feel a little scarred when I think back on this scene.  It certainly hasn't affected my performance as I get older, but it may have something to do with my crippling fear of awkward moments on TV and movies.

This story is trumped only be Granny's crabs story, the bottle of Viagra in our medicine cabinet in the bathroom, Pops' penile medical problems that he drew on a notepad for me, being walked in on Granny while 'watching a movie' with a girl, and seeing my mom and her then-husband doing it doggy-style (standing up, which is damn impressive, Mom) in the middle of the night on the way to the bathroom.

So, yeah, talk to your kids about sex..?
~RoB

Bridesmaids & Batteries

I told Annie that I was interested in seeing Bridesmaids when we first saw the poster a month ago.  I knew that it had something to do with a bakery (my cupcake blogs were abuzz), and I love the girls from SNL.  Well, the movie was a hit, but we didn't get to see it until last night.  It was truly hilarious and a highly recommended movie.  Hell, you've heard that all week.  However, I woke up this morning frustrated by unanswered questions that apparently haunted my sleep.  (IMDB this shit if you don't remember character names from 3 days ago anymore!)

1) Why can't they make anybody from the Midwest in movies sound like they're from the Midwest?  They had crazy accents flying around the whole movie, and not one sounded Milwaukeen.  I know people study accents.  Come on!
2) What was the pill/drink combo that Helen gave Annie, and why wasn't she ever caught purposefully giving her a concoction that would fuck her up?
3) Does Annie ever get back into baking professionally?
4) What was it that Helen said that convinced Rhodes to come reunite with Annie after the funeral?  And where, exactly, did he change from his uniform to the hipster suit?
5) How long can a butterfly survive enclosed in an envelope?

I guess I can't expect things to come full circle if the script is written entirely by women.  (Considering how popular yesterday's post was, I guess I have to keep things controversial.)  [I'm clearly joking.  Women are smarter than men.]  {I'm out of parenthetical enveloping symbols after this.}  <Except these, I guess.>

I figure that some of these questions were left unanswered to leave room for Bridesmaids 2 (where Annie and Rhodes get married) and Bridesmaids 3 (where Megan marries Air Marshall Jon) and, assuming Hollywood continues as it has, Bridesmaids 4 (where talking puppies get married) and Bridesmaids 5 (where one of Rita's 'sticky' boys grows up to marry Helen's step-daughter) and Bridesmaids 6 that I can't even pull out of my ass right now.

Moving on...

I stayed home yesterday to fix my car.  It was just the battery, though it was hard to diagnose.  The most physically intense part came where I had to try and jump start the car so I could drive to a store and replace the battery.  My car was parked in the car port under our apartment building, so the hood was inaccessible.  I turned the key (it didn't start if you've been keeping up), but I was able to put it in neutral and let it roll down the driveway.  However, I'd have to turn the car uphill in order for me to park it downhill (everything in the bay area is at some sort of angle).  There was some pretty crazy leg pressing going on as I pushed my car slightly uphill, jumped in, pulled the steering wheel with everything, and managed to depress the manual brakes before ramming Annie's gas-guzzling SUV.

I have no real tools at my apartment, but I managed to do it all by myself.  It required using a random-ass assortment of tools available at the local auto parts store.  While struggling to get the battery out in the parking lot, there were some great moments.  One African American guy walked by (and into the store) shirtless, openly smoking a joint.  He didn't seem to give a f*ck.  Also, two Hispanic guys climbed out the back of a semi trailer and asked me what the price of some tires sitting outside were, as if I gave a f*ck.  I'm out $100, but that's way better than I thought it would be in the middle of my freakout.  I then went home and made chili in a crock pot, and I took the rest of the day off work for some macho time watching Bill Burr's first HBO Special.  Once again, I had one of those days where my pimpmones were flowin'!

Can I even talk about bridesmaids and pimpmones in the same post?
~RoB