“Do You Believe in Now?” Nope, not really.

 

We are fast approaching the best time of year for sports fans.  In the next few weeks it will be the official start of football season, both college and professional.  Not to mention there are baseball pennant races, the start of NHL and NBA training camps, and for you equestrian fans out there, the WNBA playoffs.  Let me put this time of year in perspective.  It’s like if soft porn movies on HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime had their own “Sweeps Week” only the “week” is more like several months with the culmination being the Super Bowl in early February.

Of course, it all centers around football.  Football has become the national pastime of this country.  It’s a sport that is followed immensely in every part of the United States.  The only other sport that can say that is America’s former pastime, baseball.  Everywhere you go, every city, town, village, or abortion clinic,

Former Lions fan

a football fan can be found.  And, the state of Michigan is no different.  Michigan has some of the most passionate and loyal football fans anywhere.  From the high school to college to professional levels, football is big in this part of the world.

And nobody knows this better than the Detroit Lions.

If playing on the loyalty and gullibility (I don’t even know if that is a word) of professional football fans could win Super Bowls, the Detroit Lions would be the New York Yankees of the NFL.  Lions fans are some of the most loyal in sports.  Sure, you can talk about Red Sox or Cubs fans.  But fans of those teams can celebrate the fact they have either won a championship recently or in the case of Cubs fans, just root for the White Sox. 

The same cannot be said with Lions fans who haven’t celebrated a championship in 50 years, along with only one playoff victory in that time.  And, the franchise knows it.

It isn’t as simple as the fans boycotting the team.  Ford Field could be empty for every Lions game this year and the Lions would still turn a profit thanks to NFL profit sharing.  So, the Lions have their new brilliant marketing campaign for the 2008 season: “Do You Believe In Now?”  I’m gonna have to say no.  And really, why should anybody else? 

Just like the Lions

Being a Lions fan is like dating a chick from Bridgeport, she sucks just good enough to keep her around, but becomes a big disappointment as you wait around for her to finally be pretty.

I’m tired of all the bullshit that comes with this organization.  They draft horribly with the exception of  less than an handful of potential great players (like Calvin Johnson and…..um…..well, I’m sure there are others).  They coach horribly (if I hear Rod Marinelli talk about having good character guys one more time only to have them get arrested for non-good character reasons, I’m gonna scalp somebody).  The General Manager is a complete fuckhead.  And, the owner only typically shows up to one game a year.

All that said, the Lions have had a good start to the pre-season which means the bandwagon is filling up quickly.  Not me baby, my Bridgeport girlfriend won’t fit.

Go Lions anyway!!

Who’s Watching the Watchmen?

Two weeks ago, around the end of July, you may have noticed a sudden surge of interest for a movie called the Watchmen.  This coincided with the oddly-more-popular-than-any-film-festival San Diego Comic Con and the release of the someone’s-finally-going-to-break-the-record-of-that-piece-of-shit-Titanic The Dark Knight.

Many of the people who occupy this website on a daily basis already know why this is the riskiest comic book movie ever ventured.  But for the rest of you, you may be asking some very original questions like “Why the sudden surge of interest?” or “Why is this the riskiest comic book movie ever ventured?”  I’ll tell you.

There’s a reason Watchmen is on Time Magazine’s “100 Best Novels” list.  There’s a reason it’s on Entertainment Weekly’s “Best 50 Novels of the Last 25 Years” list.  There’s a reason it’s won every award in the industry (including a Hugo award; this is the only comic to have done so) and why virtually every writer, would-be writer, and fiction author credits Watchmen somehow, someway (the names go from Anderson to King to Zubal).  The reason is that Watchmen is perfect.

The Various Faces of Watchmen

as comic characters

as movie characters

as toys

as Legos

as Charlie Brown

If you haven’t read it, here’s the (basic) story: In an alternate reality, where super-heroes are the norm, Nixon has been president for five consecutive terms, the U.S. won the Vietnam War (or “conflict,” depending on whether or not you’ve actually been there and depending on whether or not you’ve seen the feel-good movie Good Morning Vietnam), and Russia is about to start WWIII, a former super-hero is thrown out of his apartment window. 

If Watchmen was a woman, it'd look like this.

Eventually, we find - through flashbacks of Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan, Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, and Ozymandias - that he was killed because he knew a little too much about a master plan to end the Cold War and get all of humanity to come together as one (like the lyrics to “Imagine,” but with a lot more violence, blue man nudity, and middle-aged sex).  It’s a grand conspiracy that has taken decades to produce, cost hundreds of lives, and will change the world forever.  But that’s not the genius part; that’s not what makes it perfect.

What makes this structurally perfect is that every single aspect of every single storyline adds to the overall story.  Sure, there’s the story about how Dr. Manhattan came to acquire his super-powers, which eventually warps his mind when it comes to other human beings.  But there’s also a parallel story-within-a-story about pirates attacking a ship, stranding the lone survivor on a desert island leaving him warped and alone (they both talk about how lonely it can be when you’re better than anyone else.  Story of my life).  Yes, there’s the story about how Rorschach was beaten as a child and about how his view of the world dramatically changed the day he murdered a child-killer.  But there’s also a parallel story about his psychiatrist and how his strained relationship with his wife is starting to affect his judgment in his profession (they both have overcome adversity to be the top of their profession until one event makes everything shift.  Like how HAB used to be a respected journalist before his “run-in” with Dirk Shafer).  And of course there’s the heroine story or Silk Spectre who was pushed into heroing by her mother and consequently has a tough time functioning effectively in relationships.  But there’s also a parallel story of a lesbian who doesn’t like that she’s gay and has to come to terms with that fact (Old School’s life story).  What makes Wathcmen perfect is that each of these stories climaxes in the same spot.

"He just needed a ride home," HAB said of the 2005 incident.

Dr. Manhattan decides to save the world from this new threat and effectively becomes human again.  Silk Spectre, in convincing Dr. Manhattan to save the world, shows that her love for humanity actually resides in her love for Nite Owl.  The lesbian, the psychiatrist, and the pirate story all end at the point of highest tension right at the end of the world.  Each of the storylines follow the same ups and downs even though they’re about different people (some important, some not), they happen in different time frames, and they happen in different orders.  To me, that is the genius.  To me, that one climax (I’ve alluded to it several times, but since this is for those of you who haven’t read it, I won’t spoilt it.  It’s a classic “twist ending” that’s even better than The Sixth Sense or The Princess Diaries 2 because each of these storylines is essential to what happens at the end) that ties up every loose end at the same essential moment is the perfection of Watchmen.

Now, others say that the genius of Alan Moore lies in the fact that this is really a generational story.  Nite Owl is actually a second-generation super-hero, as is Silk Spectre (they both have aging first-generation counterparts), whereas Dr. Manhattan makes astute comments about the differences between the two.

Others say the brilliance of Watchmen lies with the various nods to both the golden and silver ages of comic books.  Originally, in the golden age, super-heroes were just dudes in masks (The Silhouette, Hooded Justice, Dollar Bill), while in the silver age that transformed into nuclear-powered gods (Dr. Manhattan). 

Still other say that it is the 100% professional-looking art of Dave Gibbons - who inserts various motifs into virtually every panel - that make Watchmen the work of perfection that it is.

So, I guess to answer your questions, the sudden surge of interest is because this story is the greatest comic story of all time and they’re turning it into a movie (it was supposed to be made in 2001, but then 9/11 happened, and with that twist ending, it would’ve ruffled a lot of feathers).  It’s risky because it’s like making a movie about the perfect breast: if it’s done well, people will remember and try to copy that breast for all time; if it’s done poorly, it could easily turn into a big-budget self-referential porn.

Which, come to think of it, wouldn’t be so bad.     

The Pineapple Express

After movies such as Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, as well as guest appearances in Step Brothers and Superbad and the cult-so-big-that-he’ll-be-pseudo-famous-forever-favorites Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, one might think that Seth Rogen couldn’t go wrong.  After seeing The Pineapple Express, I’m not so sure…

There’s nothing wrong with the movie.  It’s entirely watchable, the characters are entirely loveable, and the plot is entirely coherent, but there seems to be something missing from most of the film.  I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until I saw a scene with Gary Cole.

"Let's hide behind this tree so no one will notice how great this movie could've been."

See, in the movie, Cole is a major drug dealer in Clark County (Nevada?  That’s where I got my first promise of a teaching job!  I didn’t take it and instead moved to theworstplaceonearth SoCal) and has a woman cop, played by Rosie Perez, as his sidekick/lover/crooked lackey.  He’s talking on the phone saying the usual things that drug lords say “We’ll kill em all!” or something like that.  He then hangs up and Rosie looks at him, as if she’s going to laugh.  Cole then (almost) breaks character and says, “Say something in Spanish!” to which Perez responds with several punches to the arm.  This is what happens in a Seth Rogen movie.  It happened all through Superbad and all through The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which were both Top 10 of All-Time comedies. 

The reason I love Seth Rogen is that he always looks like he’s just making it up on the spot.  It’s not that his acting is that good, it’s just that when he’s on camera, he actually does make up most of the dialogue then and there (listen to any commentary with Seth and you’ll hear him explain some aspect of his improvisational style).  Sometimes the lines written are the ones they put in the film, but most of the time, what we see is Seth just making shit up, trying to be as funny as possible to get from where the scene starts to where it ends.  That didn’t happen in The Pineapple Express.

"Whoa! We're in a mediocre movie!"

Here’s the premise: a 25-year-old guy is dating an 18-year-old high school student.  He likes getting high so he finds a job - he disguises himself to give subpoenas to people that have thus far avoided being subpoenaed - where he can get high all day.  He dreams of being on talk radio and his best friend is his drug dealer.  On one of his service calls, he witnesses a murder and is accidentally mixed up in a half-assed drug war between an aging hipster and a gang of Asians who dress like ninjas but apparently know no martial arts.  This, to me, sounds like a Rogen masterpiece.  He has the opportunity here to make fun of an uncomfortable relationship with a high school student (meeting her at school, being mistaken for her brother and/or dad, her parents discussing discipline matters with him, etc.), to make various drug reference jokes (which is done, but this could’ve been on a Cheech & Chong level.  Or at least a Harold & Kumar level), to wear disguises with the hope of saying “You got served” (it could’ve been a mix of Fletch and You Got Served), to make fun of people with real jobs (like Office Space), to make fun of talk radio (the ridiculous chatter, the obvious political leanings, etc.), to make fun of the difference between “friend” and “drug buddy,” to make fun of aging drug users, and overall, to make fun of buddy movies, action movies, and slacker movies.  That’s a good 90 minutes of improvisational laughter (with an additional 60 minutes of outtakes on the DVD), given Rogen’s sense of timing and understanding of improvisation (James Franco is pretty damn good too).  Instead, though, we get a buddy/action/slacker movie with a few very scripted jokes about dating a teen, drug references, real jobs, talk radio, and Asian drug lords. 

Like I said, it’s not a bad movie, but it could’ve been so much better.  Watch any episode of Undeclared and try to argue against that point.

On the upside, Huey Lewis is on the soundtrack.

WHAT THE HELL DID I TELL YOU WOULD HAPPEN?!

I don’t know if any of you remember my wonderful tribute to the one person on this planet capable of bringing about the end of the world.  A year or so ago I wrote an article in reference to Courtney Love.  I explained that due to her basically owning all of the rights to what was Nirvana, we would start seeing Nirvana in things we did not wish to see.  Well it has happened again.  Please pay close attention to the following commercial.

I having nothing else to say.

McDonald’s is Racist…?

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but fast food places are trying to be funny lately.  If you look at the sides of cups, you’ll see something like, “You can fill it up as many times as you want.  With whatever you want.  If you want half Coke, half Diet Coke, go ahead.  If you want half Mr. Pibb and half Sprite, we won’t stop you.  But we won’t take a sip either.”  Funny stuff.  Wendy’s describes how fresh their food is (”Our salads weren’t made yeserday”) while Burger King has cute names for their boxes like the “Frypod.” 

These little distractions are rarely funny and often so oddly worded (because it has to make sense in every language) that they’re often confusing.  Nothing I’ve seen so far, though, is as disturbing as what’s on a McDonald’s box:

It looks just like a regular McNuggets (TM) box...

...but look closer...

 

 

 

New Items on Download Page!

CouchParty.com is now available to you in two new ways:

 

1. 

   A Widget - or a “Gadget” as Microsoft likes to call it - is a tiny program that doesn’t use up much memory so it can be on all the time. These particular Widgets contain the newest articles from the CP Crew! And you don’t even have to open your web browser.

2. 

   Any one of the programs listed will get you the newest articles on your portable device. This includes iPods, iPhones, Blackberries, Zunes, Handheld PCs, and just about anything else you spend way too much money on.

Exxon-Mobile 2Q Profit

Exxon-Mobile made 11.8 billion dollars last fiscal quarter.  That’s net profit.  That’s like the last number on your paycheck after they take out taxes, social security, insurance, dues, child support, back taxes from when you “forgot to pay for three consecutive years (I thought since I got the money illegally that I didn’t have to pay taxes on it), and kickbacks.

Lets have a little math lesson since a lot of people don’t understand numbers this large.

A fiscal year is just like a regular year except that it starts whenever it’s most convenient for the company.  For instance, my school’s fiscal year starts July 1st because there aren’t any teachers around and it’s easiest to simply buy all the supplies and hire all the help that is needed when school is not in session.  Either way, though, a fiscal year still contains 365.25 days cut up into 12 months.  A quarter of that - the part where Exxon-Mobile made $11.8 billion - is three months. 

That sounds like a lot, but then again, the new Batman movie has already made almost $350 million, so, you might be asking, “What’s the big deal?  It’s a company.  Companies make lots of money or they go bankrupt.”  Let’s break this down:

Math is hard.

In one month - that’s three months divided by three - Exxon-Mobile made $3.93 billion.  In one day - that’s one month divided by 30 - Exxon-Mobile made $131 million.  In one hour - that’s one day divided by 24 - Exxon-Mobile made $5.5 million.  In one minute - that’s one hour divided by 60 - Exxon-Mobile made $91,000.  In one second - that’s one minute divided by 60 - Exxon-Mobile made $1,500.  In the time it took to read this, Exxon-Mobile has already made double what you make in a year.

This is fucking sick.  Everything points to a worldwide depression (huge banks closing, student loan companies going out of business, housing markets continuing to decline, stock market going down, dollar value decreasing, food prices skyrocketing, rampant cheating in baseball, unwinable wars on virtually every continent, gigantic companies losing business like never before, oil prices rising for no apparent reason) and these fuckers are making obscene amounts of money.  Obscene.  What the hell could you even do with $11.8 billion?  What the fuck is all that money for?

On a lighter note, this could barely make a dent in our national deficit.  On a heavier note, this is less than what GM lost last quarter.

Here’s a math problem for you: in order to make $11.8 billion at my current salary, I would have to work 262,222 years.  How much do I make per hour?

[see Gas (the Fuel Kind, not the Poop Kind) for a related article]

An Inconvenient Weekend

As an educator, one of my basic jobs is to squelch any problems that I foresee in my classroom; to stop it before it happens.  If I have a skinhead and an outted gay black muslim/jew in my class, I have to be able to see where the problem might arise (the skinhead, for instance, might be get picked on by that mean ole queer) and separate the two before a lot of distractions occur.  Much like the time Dan and I wiggled into each leg of HAB’s stretchy pants, this ability to foresee problems has wiggled itself into my subconscious.  I am able to stop most confrontations before they start.  Unfortunately, the most efficient way to do this is to let everybody down just a little. 

On Friday at 12:01 AM, X-Files: I Want to Believe hit theaters like a hurricane.  Actually, to be more specific, it hit theaters like a Taco Bell fart (what do you expect?  It came out the week after the quickest-grossing movie of all time), but that’s not the point.

The Wife's other room in the house

I know it's hard to read, but you can definitely make out the arrow.

The Wife is a big X-Files fan.  She is a self-described “X-Phile” (which, from what I know about epistemology, means that The Wife is sexually aroused by the letter “X.”  This may account for her Sesame Street fixation) and owns every official X-Files licensed product, including - but not limited to - t-shirts, toys, underwear, busts, bumper stickers, and an officially licensed tattoo in her bathing suit area that says “The Truth is in Here.”  Obviously, a person this obsessed wanted to go see the new movie as soon as she possibly could.

I wanted to see it the next day, say an 11:00 AM show (she took the day off).  Seeing the impending conflict, I decided to let her have her way; we would see it at midnight.  She then suggested that we get to the theater around 9:00 PM, to beat the crowds and to get a good seat.  Since I was dumbfounded they even had a midnight show, I suggested that we get to the theater at 11:59.  Foreseeing another argument, we compromised and got to the theater at 11:00.  We must’ve beat the crowd; not only were we the only ones waiting to see X-Files 2, we were the only ones in the whole place in FBI uniforms. 

This let me down because I had to wait an hour to see a movie I would much rather’ve seen in the morning.  This let The Wife down because she finally has to come to grips with the fact that X-Files may not be the most popular show ever on television.

The next day we got up late and went “camping” with the in-laws (”camping” is in quotes because their 5th wheel is nicer than my house).  But not just to any campground, not to the one two miles down the road, or the one five miles past that.  No, we went to the one 11 hours away.  However, since we didn’t go the weekend before - this was my call because they always go tubing down the river that weekend; I’m all for tubing, but the river they use is about a deep as a Michael Bay movie and I don’t want to drive that far just to drag my ass on the bottom of a river for four miles - we had to go this weekend.

This let me down because I didn’t want to drive 11 hours to see people who live walking distance from my workplace.  This let The Wife down because she wanted to go tubing.

On the way there, we dropped the dog off at my parents’ house.  The Wife wanted to bring him, but I convinced her the having a dog in the car for that long could be considered animal abuse.  This was a disappointment to her because she enjoys treating our dog like a child: swimming, bike-riding, going for ice cream, etc.  This disappointed me because after dropping him off, I now had no reason not to participate in the in-laws’ sports (”horseshoes”, “lawn darts”, “beanbag tic-tac-toe”, and “toss the whiskey bottle at the teenage passers by” are among the many “stand still and throw things” sports that the in-laws invest in).

Once we got there, we had to sleep in the bed/breakfast nook of their massive 5th wheel.  Unfortunately, this bed is made for a large child or a small Oompa-Loompa.  This was an inconvenience for me because I am six feet tall and, unlike HAB, not used to sleeping in the fetal position.  This was an inconvenience for The Wife because she had to be a little too close to my night-terrors.  Apparently, it was also an inconvenience to the in-laws as they find it difficult to sleep in a campground without coitus. 

That Saturday everyone decided to ride bikes into town.  Normally, this wouldn’t have fazed me one bit.  I like bike-riding, I like discovering new towns.  However, instead of going to the beach or a local pub or even an off-beat store like “Vacuums, Bicycles, and Pickled Preserves!” we went to the teddy bear museum (which, from what I could tell, was just a collection of teddy bears that one person put on shelves in an old tractor shed), an abandoned train depot (which also looked like an old tractor shed), and a five-person farmer’s market (which actually was in an old tractor shed).  This disappointed me because I knew this was going to be the most exciting moment of the trip.  This disappointed the in-laws because they had already been to all three of these locations.  This disappointed The Wife because she has a boney ass and the bike seat made her limp.

That night, however, was the most inconvenient thing of all. 

These are only the ones that we finished. Somewhere someone is trying to down the last of the "Orina de la Rana," which means "Frog Piss"

We were sitting around the campfire, like one does when camping, and a bottle was being passed around.  Actually, several bottles were being passed around.  As a matter of fact, so many bottles were being passed around that each person - all twelve of us, including a nine-year-old girl - had a bottle of liquor in our hands (no, the nine-year-old didn’t get drunk.  She was just a go-between so that someone didn’t look like an alcoholic with two mostly-empty bottles of imported booze in their hands).  A member of our party decided that she was going to get wasted that night and wanted a lot of people to come with her.  This inconvenienced me because by the end of the night I had a cold sore, a strange mixture of vodka/tequila/rum/whiskey/kool-aid/circuis penuts in my mouth, and a sensation that we’re all, in fact, plants.  This inconvenienced The Wife because she had to clean up a vomit-filled Oompa-Loompa bed.

The day we started back The Wife got her period.  This let me down because I was promised dirty sex as a reward for going.  This let The Wife down because it was very dirty.

Something I Forgot

Last night, as the Inconvenient Weekend concluded (more about that in my next article), in the middle of one of our weekly “discussions” involving throwing heavy objects at my head, The Wife says to me,  “What ever happened to that other article I wrote?”  I was ready for the question of “What’s wrong with you!?  I’m not pregnant yet!” so I was taken by surprise. 

In our usual fashion of completely changing our attitudes when something interests us (we can’t seem to fight on Sunday mornings because American Top 40 is on the radio and The Wife completely blocks me out), I went to the computer, clicked on “dial-up” and finished our fight in the next two minutes while the modem was trying to connect to the local server.

I then looked on CouchParty.com and couldn’t find her other article.  So I went to the old site and still couldn’t find it.  Eventually I went through the files one by one and located her semi-funny article about cheating on me with some dude at work (or something.  I don’t know.  I wasn’t really paying attention).

But then I found a crap load of other semi-funny articles I never transferred over either.

 

• The Wife’s article
• One by some Randy guy
• An article by a lady trying to be a dude
• Another article by that same “lady” (I think it’s actually Old School)
• A sweet article by Unky D
• An article I completely forgot about by Jackie
• Another touching Unky D article 
• A surprising article by Death
• Unky D making us all feel good
• An article by someone seemingly illiterate (frankly, I don’t know how this got on the site in the first place) 

So, authors, if there’s an article you wrote and you don’t see it on this new site, let me know.  Like I say when I apologize to The Wife: I thought I was thorough, but I guess I was just thinking of myself.

Dark Knight Promotion

With $158 million and counting, Warner Bros. definitely didn’t go wrong when it came to their promotion of The Dark Knight.  Viral videos abound, giving away money with Joker faces painted on them, and the massive amount of television and movie spots didn’t hurt one bit.  But what I don’t understand is: why was that needed?

The movie, as we can almost all agree, was top-notch.  The acting, writing, and directing were all some of the best we’ve seen in an action movie.  It’s a sequel to another good movie, so the audience is already there for the suckering.  Wouldn’t The Dark Knight, in the long run, make just as much money if they didn’t spend all that time on 15-second videos and an ass-load of posters?

I would think that good movies would receive few advertisements while bad movies would receive advertisements during every commercial break. 

As a matter of fact, that’s a good way to see if the movie you’re about to watch is any good.  Have you seen numerous commercials for the new X-Files movie?  Probably pretty good.  Have you seen numerous commercials for Beverly Hills Chihuahua?  Probably pretty bad.

It works the same way in the music industry too.  If you listen to a pop station, and you hear a song ever 25 minutes, it’s probably a bad song that the station is trying to shove down your throat.  If it’s a good song, you’ll hear it once or twice a day.  They hope you’ll buy both; one sells itself, the other doesn’t.

It’s kind of like being stuck in a room with HAB and me.  One of us will invade your mind by simply being ourselves; the other has to constantly do tricks like a dancing monkey until you acknowledge I’m in the room.