Comedy, Seriously

You wouldn't think that the guys behind the brilliant satire newspaper The Onion, the precursor and probable inspiration to The Daily Show, would need a refresher course on comedy, but it seems to be so. I've recently watched Drop Dead Gorgeous on DVD, and I thoroughly enjoyed it as an over-the-top black comedy mockumentary. Perhaps because this hasn't actually ever been done before on a large scale, The Onion AV Club reviewed the movie as a film made by morons for morons. Excuse me, but you didn't fucking get it. Taking Christopher Guest's patented, and wearing thin, deadpan mockumentary style and throwing overtly excessive comedic plot devices and funny, stereotypical characters on top of it is something new. And quite entertaining, were one to step out of his film professor loafers for an hour and a half. Yes, one of the characters is mentally deficient, and yes, he's used for cheap laughs. It's only a movie, so get over your indignant reaction and enjoy Will Sasso's performance. Yes, it's predictable, but so are all slapstick comedies. The point is to enjoy the gags and the actors, and The Onion didn't bother to mention Brittany Murphy's show-stealing performance or multiple-Emmy-winning Allison Janney showing up as the foul-mouthed heart and soul of the film.

At any rate, I suppose I've made my point, and managed to work my irritation at The AV Club into a DVD review. I only brought it up because I was irritated with their review of Underworld, which they thought was overly moody and derivative. For the last time, guys, I don't care if it's derivative! A movie can be entertaining even if it's in a genre that's already been done by a more heavily-hyped flick. It's like saying Deftones' White Pony is pointless, because alterna-rock has already been done by Nirvana's Nevermind. It's time for The Onion's movie reviewers to take a step back and realize that not all movie-goers are perfectionists; we only want a well-spent two hours.

Halo 0x

I spent some time this past week going through my many, many Nine Inch Nails CDs. There really are a lot of gems buried in Trent Reznor's nationally published personal hard drive. I can't claim to be as fluent in the NIN discography as some people, but at one time I was a huge fan. For me, it started with the Quake soundtrack. I bought the Broken EP in 1996, then Pretty Hate Machine. I was still trying to figure out just what the hell was going on with this Reznor guy, when I drove to Knoxville on a whim, listening mostly to Ride the Lightning-era Metallica and cruising at my Bronco II's limit of 110mph. I arrived early, with a sore right foot (no cruise control), and with some time to kill I bought The Downward Spiral in a record store on Cumberland Ave. I parked under a bridge by the Tennessee River and played the whole record, looking through the then-revolutionary liner notes-turned booklet. Rez hooked me.

I ended up buying pretty much the whole NIN catalog, but the slow pace of Reznor's releases has caught up to me. I bought The Fragile the week it was released, and I still think it's one of the greatest double-albums ever, but I didn't bother to buy Things Falling Apart (I Napster'd it, back when Napster was free and legal) or the live DVD. Eventually I started selling off some of my old NIN remix albums, particularly the imports, after I'd burned the few tracks I really wanted to keep. I can only hope the new album, which I'm hearing should be out soon, will renew my faith.

20,000 bhp

Through a friend of my mom's, I got free tickets and pit passes to Memphis Motorsports Park this weekend for the Nascar Busch Series race called, unfortunately, the "Sam's Town 'He Dared to Rock' 250." Ridiculously overwrought name aside, it was a damned entertaining race, what with the record number of caution flags, all but two caused by wrecks and spins in turn two, smack in front of the east grandstand where I happened to be sitting. It was my third trip to MMP. Nearly eight years ago I went for a local NHRA drag racing event, and a year or so later for Busch Series qualifying and an ARCA race. But this was the first time I sat down for a full-fledged, nationally televised, sold-out Nascar race. I've been to 30 or so NCAA football games and at least as many division 1-A basketball games, but nothing quite like this. There's something about seeing nearly 25,000 people all around you standing and screaming, completely mute, because the roar of 43 unmuffled race cars tearing down the track 50 yards away obliterates all other sounds. This is the most-attended spectator sport in America today, and I can see why. Watching five years worth of races on TV is nothing compared to actually attending just one.

Marionaction!

Should be seeing Team America: World Police tomorrow afternoon. The tagline for this movie is, "Putting the 'F' back in Freedom." I think the "F" is supposed to stand for "Fuck." Hooray! I haven't seen Orgazmo, but if South Park and BASEketball are any indication of what Trey Parker and Matt Stone like to put down on celluloid, I'm going to like it. Which is why I'm paying to see it. So, there you go.

Anyway, I just watched Underworld, finally, during a free weekend of movie channels on DirecTV. Loved it. Absolutely fucking adored it. I missed out on what turned out to be a very good Nextel Cup race to see it, but it was worth it. Cool plot with great pacing, kickass action sequences, a sparse but excellent soundtrack put together by Danny Lohner (NIN, etc.), a cool backstory, and, most importantly, Kate Beckinsale in skin-tight vinyl bodysuits, killing people in various hideous ways. If the DVD has a decent amount of extra material on it, I'll have to pick it up, as soon as possible. Material like, say, footage of Kate Beckinsale stuffing herself into a skin-tight vinyl bodysuit.

Sucker Punch

So a few nights ago I'm browsing around, listening to music, playing some Tetris, basically killing time, and I decide it's time I go to bed. So I go to close down whatever's open, and as I close IE, something odd happens. I get a ton of HD activity, and I start getting a lot of downstream traffic for no apparent reason. When I try to get offline, my ISP's software hangs, and becomes unresponsive. No big deal, I think, as I try to end-task it, and that's when I notice three running apps I've never heard of before. I shut it all down and reboot. The vaguely named programs show up again, and I realize some blocked pop-up has installed spyware. Took me two fucking hours to uninstall and remove no less than six applications and all their affiliate software from my HD, and manually remove all mention of them from my registry and IE's trusted sites listings. Then I had to install SpyBot S&D to scour anything I may have missed and "immunize" IE against future invasions. Bottom line: stay off the internet.

Anyway, I hear that a former producer of Bill "Me Me Me" O'Reilly's super-non-objective talk show has accused him of sexual harassment. Among other things, he, allegedly, called her up and described his "sexual fantasies and exploits" while, ahem, using a vibrator on himself. I have to quote Craig Ferguson from The Late Late Show, who said, "Please, god, let this be true."

In non-sex-toy-related news, I found out that if you try to randomly combine Half-Life mods with no idea how to seamlessly do so, you can get some pretty entertaining results. I was tryng to use BotMan's Bot10 with Valve's Deathmatch Classic mod, and I got all kinds of neat-o surprises. Like playing DM2 with no weapons or enemies, or DM3 without the ability to switch between weapons you've picked up, or DM6 against bots who don't make any sound, ever. I suppose it's good that I gave up. The last thing I need is to get really into this and write a bot program for an obscure mod for an obsolete game.

Peter Potamus

Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law is the funniest animated show on television today, including Family Guy and Futurama. It's probably the funniest show on TV, period. I can't be sure, since there are roughly 477 sitcoms airing that I won't watch on the basis that they're sitcoms, and all sitcoms are derivative and predictable and embarrassingly unfunny. The only show that can even come close is Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which, not at all coincidentally, is also produced and aired by [adult swim].

In other news, never buy smokes at a bar. Four bucks for a pack of Turkish Gold is outright larceny. Unless it's the kind of bar that runs illicit slot machines behind a curtained door in the corner and sells weed behind an unmarked back door through the bartender. In that case, you're in a redneck bar and four bucks is an outright bargain. Another sign that you're in a good redneck bar: The jukebox goes from Willie Nelson to Stevie Ray Vaughan to the Beatles to Kid Rock to Parliament to Incubus to Lorretta Lynn to Creed to the Eagles. And there's no George Strait. My kind of dive.

Redirection

I spent several hours Tuesday driving around midtown and the university area. I didn't find what I was looking for, but ultimately I suppose it worked out. I spent some time in SpinStreet looking for used DVDs, and instead I found Cake's new album, Pressure Chief, on sale for ten bucks. So I bought it. I don't think I like it nearly as much as Prolonging the Magic or Motorcade of Generosity, but it is excellent driving-aimlessly-around music. I spent a good part of the afternoon driving through all my old neighborhoods, with the windows down and the moonroof open, and it made for a pretty goddamn pleasant atmosphere. So I highly recommend it for that sort of usage.

Nothing else good has happened recently, other than figuring out how to get into the Half-Life pak file to alter all the weapons to make them slightly more powerful and to make Barney slightly less useless. I see that the Grizzlies are looking to carry 60 regular season games on their very own TV channel. Isn't that nice? I especially like the part where they want a deal with Time Warner, a known outpost of Satan on earth. What pisses me off is that they seem only marginally interested in pursuing a deal with DirecTV. As if DTV subscribers can simply get a separate hook-up to TW cable. I can't believe I've watched 240-something Griz games over three seasons only to be summarily cut out of the loop because the Grizzlies' ownership group isn't making enough money from television revenues. I am not going to drive to some fucking sports bar three or four times a week to watch my fucking hometown team play. Now I know how all those Catalonian fans feel.

Wasting Time

I'll be driving all over town this week looking for copies of Blue Shift and Quake I, and, if I can't find them, Quake II and the Quake II Mission Packs. It's not that I can't order all this software over the internet, which I'm perfectly capable of doing. It's just that it gives me an excuse to spend hours and hours out of the house, driving 'round Memphis in an overpowered and obnoxiously mufflered sports coupe, looking for stores where I can waste time ogling at video cards I want and software this computer can't possibly run.

Despite the numerous emails I received practically begging me to take part in the alumni band's halftime show, I declined to attend the University of Memphis' homecoming game against Houston. Sure enough, DeAngelo Williams racked up 262 yards on the ground and beat Houston's defense into the fetal position. If the Tigers were in the SEC we'd be smelling Heisman by now.

Meanwhile, the Titans lost yet again, but who the hell cares? The Grizzlies re-signed Pau Gasol for 7 years! Life is good again. Only a few more weeks til the Griz tip off against the Cavs in their preseason opener, and I'll be right there, watching and waiting for the national media to finally figure out what we're all so excited about. We beat the goddamn defending Eastern Conference Champion New Jersey Nets by 47 points last year, the largest winning margin of any game in the league last year, and heard barely a murmur from the national press. Just wait til we're giving the Spurs a run for lead in the division, ahead of the Rockets and the Mavs.