Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Best Week Ever

Best Week Ever

Vampire Diaries Billboard Urges Everyone To “Catch VD”

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 08:59 AM PST

EW.com directs our attention to this billboard currently overlooking Sunset Boulevard:

And its Times Square counterpart:

My three stages of reaction upon seeing this billboard:

Stage 1 - “Get VD?” Huhh?

Stage 2 - Ohhhh, I get it, it’s viral, controversy-generating promotion for the CW’s Vampire Diaries. Gotcha.

Stage 3 -Wait no – “Get VD?” Just, no.

It’s definitely bad, but honestly, it’s not the most inappropriate slogan for a billboard I’ve ever seen:

In Defense Of The Kings Of Leon’s Refusal To Have Their Song On Glee

Posted: 26 Jan 2011 08:08 AM PST

Oh, Kings of Leon. In the past I’ve come down sort of hard on them, but after, ahem, taking an awkward photo with Caleb and Jared, I realize that they’re misunderstood. They come off as a-holes, but they’re really just Dudes. A Dude is a guy who would never “get” a show like Glee, in that it would never cross their radar and if someone made them watch it their Dudeness would form a mental barrier, not even allowing the sound and picture to enter their brain. It would just not compute. Another thing with Dudes is that when they come off as a-holes they don’t realize it, and even if they actually are acting like a-holes, they really don’t mean to. I mean, sometimes they mean to. But more often than not their real crime is just not being self-aware. What I’m saying is that the Kings of Leon are the Kings of the Dudes.

So, with that in mind, I would like to ask Ryan Murphy, creator of Glee, to just slow his roll. You may recall that Kings of Leon refused to let Glee use one of their songs, defending their decision by saying, "We could have sold out so much more. We turn stuff down constantly." (Exhibit A of sounding like an a-hole when you’re really trying not to sound like an a-hole). Well, months later, Ryan Murphy has decided to lash out again at them, telling The Hollywood Reporter:

“F— you, Kings of Leon. They're self-centered a**holes, and they missed the big picture. They missed that a 7-year-old kid can see someone close to their age singing a Kings of Leon song, which will maybe make them want to join a glee club or pick up a musical instrument. It's like, OK, hate on arts education. You can make fun of Glee all you want, but at its heart, what we really do is turn kids on to music."

ReLAX, Ryan Murphy. Take some solace in the fact that Kings of Leon will not make or break a 7 year old’s musical education. I’m sure the kid who likes KOL is also into some other artist who is on your show, and the fact that they’re already watching Glee means that they’re interested. Don’t morally blackmail Kings of Leon or whatever you’re doing. Also, don’t give them too much credit. I would be a self-centered a**hole too if someone blamed me for actively debilitating arts education. And I guess he said the same thing about Slash refusing to grant Glee rights to a song? That will not stand. Slash was in mother effing Guns ‘n Roses, he gets lifetime immunity. Except if he, like, murders someone. (Dear Slash, please don’t murder anyone)

Caleb Followill has responded, saying:

"This whole Glee thing is a shock to us. It's gotten out of hand…This was never meant as a slap in the face to Glee or to music education or to fans of the show. We're not sure where the anger is coming from. We just said no to a license for a TV show, which we do a lot."

I have to agree with him. And you can tell he’s being completely honest. Ryan Murphy, I can promise you that the Kings of Leon do not watch Glee, nor were they previously aware of its positive impact on kids. They probably thought they were refusing their song for something like the equivalent of one of those One Tree Hill musical montages. Maybe they should have done more research, and maybe if they did, they still would have said no, because it is completely within their rights to do so.

So, Ryan Murphy, please take your Gwyneth Paltrow’s and the dozens of other super famous musicians and stars who want to be on your show so that they might emulate Meryl Streep in Music of the Heart or Richard Dreyfuss in Mr. Holland’s Opus and be happy. You’re doing REALLY well! Didn’t you guys just win a Golden Globe? So let the rock stars make their own decisions and keep on keepin’ on. Also, you’re like totally cock blocking Lea Michele. At some point she’s going to want to date Jared Followill and this will put a super awkward divide between them. Not cool, Ryan Murphy.

The Obama Salmon Joke Was Even Better On The Enhanced Web Stream

Posted: 25 Jan 2011 08:44 PM PST

During the State of the Union Address, President Obama threw a moment of levity in his segment about government redundancy, joking “The Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they’re in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them in when they’re in saltwater. And I hear it gets even more complicated once they’re smoked.”

The joke was received with plenty of slowly building laughter from the clapping-selfconscious crowd, but little did they know, the joke was even BETTER on the “Enhanced” Webstream on Whitehouse.gov, which included a helpful graphical element:

Oh, haha, I get it now. So enhanced! Take that, salmon.

Laughing Work Out Video Will Make you Cry/Die

Posted: 25 Jan 2011 02:38 PM PST

When I was a small child, my older brother would do a thing that to this day scares me to think about. He would chew some Chlorettes gum until his spit turned green, hold me down on the ground by my shoulders, and slowly let his thick green drool ooze down towards my face. The whole point, he claimed, was to get the spit as close to my face as possible without it actually touching me. But then he would start laughing maniacally as I yelled at him, and the green spit would inevitably fall right into my eyes, or in the worst of times, onto my mouth. My fear of green spit waned as I grew into adulthood, but the laughing still haunts me.

Laughter is one of the greatest things in the world, but it also can strike fear deep into your heart. There is nothing more terrifying than the idea of being attacked by somebody is laughing.  Violence mixed with laughter is a surefire nightmare recipe. That’s why Leprechaun is so frightening.

While the video isn’t violent per se, you will likely get the feeling while watching it that you are about to be murdered by people with a low body fat index. HAHAHAHAHA YOU’RE BLEEDING OUT LOLOLOL and two….and three… and four HAHAHAHA.

If at any point today you feel like your life is going well, just re-watch this video. No one’s life can go well at the same time that this video exists. Where did this video come from? There’s only one place a video like this can come from. And that is Space Ghetto, which, as always, I will not link to because it is too scary and has too many pictures of decapitated naked people covered in bugs.

Here’s That Billion-Dollar Super Yacht You’ve Been Saving Up For

Posted: 25 Jan 2011 02:37 PM PST

A UK yachting company has designed the world’s first “Superyacht,” a $1.1 billion floating replica of Monte Carlo that includes a casino, racetrack, tennis courts, functioning replica of Monaco’s famous Hotel de Paris, and a giant ball pit full of the skulls of dead middle class people for your kids to play in and/or for you to have sex with (kidding, about the tennis courts):

The State Of The Union should just open with Lenny Dykstra riding this thing through the wall of congress yelling “WHAT RECESSION, MOTHERF***ERS???”

(Also, too late to have Weird Al re-record the Black Sabbath song “Supernaut” as “Superyacht” and blast it in the bedrooms? It is NEVER too late for that.)

No Tron For Best Visual Effects: Biggest Oscar Snub Ever?

Posted: 25 Jan 2011 03:17 PM PST

A year and a half ago, I walked out of the theater after seeing “Up” and said to myself while whittling in a rocking chair directly outside the theater, “Ya know, if that movie doesn’t win the Oscar for Best Score, there’s really no justice in the world.” Sure enough, “Up” did end up winning the Best Score Oscar, serendipitously restoring my faith in the Academy Awards much like a sitcom family’s belief in Santa Claus is always restored by some trivial coincidence at the end of a Christmas episode. Justice was, in fact, served. A trillion kids in Africa died that night from lack of clean drinking water, but dammit, at least the universe was just with that Oscar pick.

Flash forward to late 2010. I saw the movie Tron: Legacy and enjoyed it, and coming out of the theater, said to myself “That was the most amazing looking film I’ve ever seen – if that doesn’t win the Oscar for Visual Effects, there’s no justice in this world.” The ticket taker guy who was the only one within earshot was all like, “Sup.”

And finally, flash forward to January 25th, 2011, aka Oscar Nominations Day, aka, “The Morning Every Website Does Its Boring List Of Oscar SNUBS And Pretends To Be Pissed Off About Minor Numerical Oversights So They Can Pick Up Hits Off People Googling ‘Oscar Snubs’”. Christopher Nolan should’ve gotten nominated for Best Director, but he would’ve lost anyway, and he’ll win sometime in the future, so it’s mostly academic, but still GRRRRRR! (is the title of every post).

But Tron: Legacy — which I again stress was the most impressive-looking film I’ve ever seen — not only failed to win Best Visual Effects, but didn’t even get nominated in a five-movie field? I cry “SNUB”. Snubmarine. Snubble Bath. Snubby Brister. I’ll continue after the jump, even though I think those expressions made a pretty unarguable case:

In my older age (I blog with a cane now, which is extremely inconvenient for like several reasons), I don’t get as angry as I used to about pop culture things I disagree with, particularly with the subjective momentumfest that is the Oscars. I was hoping Hurt Locker would beat out Avatar for Best Picture last year, which it did, but if Avatar had won, even though I didn’t really care for it, I wouldn’t have taken it personally or ranted against the failure of the Hollywood machine, I would’ve just been like “that happened” and maybe Tweeted something bitchy (although I wasn’t on Twitter last year – but I would’ve definitely left a bitchy Friendster ‘Frienderoo’).

If Avatar had won over Hurt Locker, it wouldn’t have suddenly meant Avatar was a better movie or that my preference towards Hurt Locker (or the never truly in the running Inglourious Basterds, Up, or District 9) was any less valid, it would’ve just meant that Avatar factually won the Oscar. It’s an honor for Avatar, sure, but it’s not gonna stop people from watching either movie and drawing their own conclusions now or any time in the future; it’s just another detail I’ll have to remember the next time I’m taking an Oscar-related Sporcle quiz.

The Tron Visual Effects snub, however, strikes be as more objectively baffling. In a perfect vacuum where film studio Oscar promotion wouldn’t have an effect, Tron obviously should’ve won the Best Visual Effects Oscar (a case can be made for Inception but still, Tron is definitely in the Top 2 and I’d argue a clear #1). In a world where film studio promotion does have an effect, though, I’d expect Tron to win even more handily, as it’s a huge-studio movie that really only did one thing well and thus couldn’t have possibly split its Oscar promotion into any other category (besides maybe “Original Soundtrack”, another snub that we can always discuss tomorrow).

When a big budget film has one outstanding, Oscar-worthy element, and it can promote that one element for an Oscar nomination without spreading itself thin into other areas (like a Best Supporting Actress nomination for boring organic computer organism lady), I just can’t believe how it can still fail to crack the Top 5 in a relatively apolitical category like Visual Effects.

The list of other nominees isn’t bad, but, ironically, is filled with films (sans Inception) that also fit the mold as movies that didn’t spread their promotion thin by concentrating on too many categories:

Alice In Wonderland
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 1
Hereafter
Inception
Iron Man 2

Alice In Wonderland, Harry Potter, and Iron Man 2 all definitely had excellent effects, but they were standardly impressive, and nothing that I’d put on an Avatar or Tron level of “holy sh*t, this raised the bar for everything.” Inception was definitely a worthy inclusion, as I mentioned above, if only because it integrated the visual effects into the story in a uniquely essential way for an actiony-type thriller, and I expect it to win this category as a semi-compensatory Oscar for the other more important awards it also deserves but won’t win. I didn’t see Hereafter, so the effects in that may well be amazing too, but that didn’t stop me from making fun of it with that mundane photo of the kids up above (I think that’s a pretty comprehensive and fair argument).

Still, I only really harbored one strong opinion heading into Oscar Nomination Day — the uber-reasonable request that the visuals in Tron get their due — and I’m shocked that it came up empty. I know I mentioned above that I’ve gotten better at not letting these trivial pop culture matters bother me as much in my more mateure age (that’s the mature spelling), so to keep from being a hypocrite, I made sure to whip my cane at Monique’s face as mateurely as possible.

Overpopulation In Tokyo Forces Children Into 31-Legged Race

Posted: 25 Jan 2011 12:09 PM PST

There are almost 13 million people in the greater Tokyo area. They simply don’t have room for large 3-legged race competitions. The Tokyo municipal government has recently decreed that all multi-person leg-tie-together races will require contestants to be grouped together in teams of no less than 15. Or so it would seem…

Luckily, HERE IN AMERICA, we have all the space we need to have regular field days.

Thanks, Best of YouTube. And God bless you, America.

THE DAILY BULIMIA: The Dirtiest Hotel In America

Posted: 25 Jan 2011 11:22 AM PST

It’s our favorite time of year!!! That time that TripAdvisor releases their list of Dirtiest Hotels all over the world! And this year we’d like to extend a rubber-gloved palm out to the grime people at the Grand Resort Hotel is beautiful Pigeon Forge, TN, where “The Pigeons Love It Here.”

Now, I know what most of you are asking: Why would anyone want to stay in Pigeon Forge? Just how bad is it? Pahretttty bad, says this one reviewer, Sarcasm Bing:

“If you are looking for a hotel with: pubic hair stuck to the bathroom floor in some unidentifiable, gelatinous liquid; chewing tobacco spit oozing down the halls and corridors; spiders actively making webs in every corner of your room; carpeting so greasy and dirty you wouldn’t want to sit your luggage down – let alone walk around barefoot; dingy bedsheets and towels as rough and thin as sandpaper; and a room so putrid and smelly it causes a gag-reflex when you walk in… by all means, stay at The Grand Resort.”

Perhaps an even bigger offense than the bed bugs that high five your back during your sleep? Their website features an autoplay video narrated by Stephen Hawking.

Sure, The Grand Resort sounds pretty horrific, but thankfully it’s not as bad as the worst hotel in India, The Hotel Namaskar:

The room was horrible, the bathroom was filthy – i did not wash while i was there, we arrived to find cigarette butts in the toilet, sheets where dirty, We also saw several cockroaches (although this isnt exactlyt unusual in Delhi) the tipping point came when we could hear buzzing in the room which we though to be the electricity or fan, so after turning them on and off a few times we were stumped as to what it could be; went to go back to sleep picked up my pillow to reveal 2 huge cockroaches underneath it.


Congratulations India!!! YOU ARE MY EVERY CHILDHOOD NIGHTMARE.

(TripAdvisor’s Dirtiest Hotel via CBS)

Watch Kevin Smith Say “…And Sh*t” A Couple Hundred Times

Posted: 25 Jan 2011 11:24 AM PST

Two nights ago, I ended up watching Kevin Smith: Too Fat For 40, a two hour lecture by the writer/director that is available to watch instantly on Netflix.  I am not one of those people who has strong feelings one way or the other towards Kevin Smith, and I was looking for something to watch while I tried to fall asleep. I imagined the talk would be long winded, but would probably also contain story or two that would be engaging enough to not bore me to the point of getting wound up and having to switch to something else. Perfect, right? No. Not perfect.

I ended up wide awake watching with rapt attention as I noticed unfolding before me what amounted to an accidental montage of a specific nervous tic. Below is a video that required me to watch Kevin Smith: Too Fat For 40 twice and then took me 7 hours to edit. It is a collection of every time Kevin Smith says “and sh*t” over the course of the two hour lecture. No clips have been repeated, and, in fact, some have not even been included. Enjoy/try not to shoot yourself in the face. This, by the way, is NSFW about 200 times in a row.

I call this video Kevin Smith And Sh*t.

Keep in mind this doesn’t include the 57 times he says “…and what not.”

Stay Out Of This Abortion Debate, Elmo

Posted: 25 Jan 2011 10:42 AM PST

The 38th annual March For Life took place on the Supreme Court steps in D.C. yesterday, where pro-life and pro-choice advocates gathered to definitely alter each others’ opinions with inflammatory one-sentence signs.

While I’m fine with both sides exercising their right to be heard, I think we can all agree that it’s EXTREMELY CHEAP to bring Elmo into this debate:

BOOOOOOOO, that person. You can’t just throw an opinion on Elmo and hold him up and count it as a sign.

If you can just take an adorable, popular children’s character and decide that it believes a certain thing about abortion rights, then all sign-bets are off, and someone should just counter with this:

The Adorable Adventures Of A Cross-Dressing Squirrel

Posted: 25 Jan 2011 10:20 AM PST

Man, the 1940′s must have been a cah-cah-cah-crazy time! The country was at war, women were playing on baseball teams, and orphaned squirrels had surnames and wardrobes. Like the above squirrel, Tommy Tucker, who was discovered by an understandably very lonely woman in Washington D.C. only to become a tiny rabid supermodel for miniature dresses. Tommy would put on his finest gown and accompany his proud owner to the market, the post office, her acupuncture therapist, the cat store… typical day really.

Here is Tommy getting ready for his Quinceañera…



And another of Tommy auditioning for the movie version of Little Women:

The part eventually went to Claire Danes.

Boy, all of this animal torture is exhausting!!! SQUIRRELY NAPTIME!!

I’m sure Tommy Tucker would be thrilled to discover he has a half-sister who was given up for adoption so many years ago. And her name… is Sugarbush Squirrel, dressed up here as Fiddler on the Roof:

And The Award For Best Part Of The Oscar Nominations Goes To…

Posted: 25 Jan 2011 09:37 AM PST

If you watched the announcement of this years Oscar nominees live on television, you no doubt noticed that the best part of the whole event came in the first ten seconds. Academy President Tom Sherak introduced Monique as his co-host for the event. And as soon as she joined him, it became pretty clear that they had the kind of chemistry that can only lead to marriage and 5 children.

And the award for Best Moment During The Academy Award Nominees Announcement goes too…
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