Best Week Ever |
- Vegas Odds: Which Idol Does America Hate The Most?
- Life-Sized Barbie Doll Looks Like It Has An Awesome Personality
- Happy Birthday, Tim Curry!!
- So “The Kennedys” Is Terrible
- TSA Finds Nothing But Rolls On Orlando Bloom’s Baby
- It’s A Gaddafi Summer Fun Clothing Sale!
- World’s Smallest Horse Makes Tiniest Television Debut
| Vegas Odds: Which Idol Does America Hate The Most? Posted: 19 Apr 2011 09:26 AM PDT  Welcome to Vegas Odds, our silly take on serious betting. First wager: Which American Idol is next to go? If you think you understand the fickle taste of this sorry nation, then place your bets now. (I'm still upset it sent my lovely Pia packing instead of getting rid of Casey Abrams' scary mug.) For our inaugural game we're giving Haley Reinhart, a.k.a. The Fake Growler, 2/1 odds that America will kick her ass to the curb. In part because she'll never live down that lipstick smear incident. And we're giving James Durbin 25/1 odds. Let's face it, he's the second coming of Adam Lambert. But if you bet on him and I'm wrong... SCORE! You'll RULE this game! Please keep in mind no money or goods are exchanged in the playing of Vegas Odds, ever. This game is for bragging rights only. All bets are 10 points. We'll give you 50 points to start and keep a running tally of your score over the weeks, months, and yes, dear readers, even the years. The top 5 most brilliant players will always be featured in our sidebar. For those who don't have much in the way of pop culture smarts, you can never go below 10 points. We're nice like that. |
| Life-Sized Barbie Doll Looks Like It Has An Awesome Personality Posted: 19 Apr 2011 08:35 AM PDT Galia Slayen, a sophomore at Hamilton College, has constructed a life-sized Barbie Doll designed to provoke students into conversing about eating disorders:
Ahhhh!!! Before we get to that eating disorder conversation, which we should still definitely have, can we have a conversation about how to not get murdered in our dorm beds by this rampaging Boob-Frankenstein? While I certainly support her mission, and Barbies are clearly ridiculous whether we’re off by an inch here or there, the proportions do look a bit exaggerated — I think she used the measurements of “Lead Heroine In Anime”:
Still, even with Barbie’s “more realistically proportioned dolls” initiative (did that ever end up happening?), it’s certainly a valuable conversation starter. At least, until other college dudes keep looking up the doll’s relationship status on Facebook every Saturday night.
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| Posted: 19 Apr 2011 08:13 AM PDT Tim Curry, everyone’s favorite actor, butler and transvestite, turns 65 years young today. I’d like to offer up my thanks to the man who was the star of my favorite film, Clue, and played The Devil in my not favorite film, Legend. And then of course there’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where he plays a sexy scary transvestite, as opposed to his sexy scary clown in IT. Just kidding, the clown isn’t that scary. Now let’s all watch a montage of great moments from Clue. It’s literally the best thing you could do on a Tuesday. “And monkey’s brains, though popular in Cantonese cuisine, are not often to be found in Washington D.Cl.!” Dear Tim Curry, just so you know, birthday cake and you are my favorite things. Also napping. So, if you would like to eat birthday cake today and then take a nap with me, you would make my life. Sometimes it’s nice to give back on your birthday. |
| Posted: 18 Apr 2011 03:21 PM PDT
The Myth: The History Channel commissioned an 8-episode miniseries about The Kennedys starring Greg Kinnear as JFK, Barry Pepper as Robert, Katie Holmes as Jackie-O, and Tom Wilkinson as Joseph Kennedy Sr., but ended up not airing the series because it was too controversial, then the rights were acquired by the Reelz Channel so it could finally be seen! Much More Likely: The History Channel didn’t air the series because it is completely f***ing terrible, then the Reelz Channel aired it because they didn’t care that it is completely f***ing terrible. Forget every synonym of the word “controversial” that you’ve heard during the modest, intentionally-flame-fanned leadup to the Kennedys minieries. Forget the “conservative critics love it” controversy, or controversies about historical inaccuracies, or controversies about perceived, tough-to-digest historical accuracies, or controversies about peoples’ enjoyment of the miniseries largely overlapping with their modern-day political affiliations. Ignore all of these controversies because The Kennedys doesn’t deserve them; it’s a horribly-conceived, horribly-written piece of schlocky historical hindsight that essentially takes the average American’s casual understanding of John F. Kennedy’s life, tosses in inhumanly literal dialogue, and juices up every second with a loud stringy soundtrack to trick you into thinking you’re watching genuine drama. I watched the first three Kennedys episodes over the weekend, and ordinarily I would now qualify my review with the obligatory “I can’t fully judge an eight-part series on three parts,” but honestly, I could’ve properly judged the terribleness of this miniseries just by looking at the titles of the episodes:
Failed Invasion, Failed Fidelity?? Probably wasn’t intentional, but there couldn’t have been a more prescient summation of the entire series than a built-in repetition of the word “FAIL.” After the jump, let’s go into details about the two suckiest aspects of The Kennedy’s sucking:
I’ve defended Katie Holmes’ acting in the past, and I still believe that she’s completely fine in Batman Begins and that no one would’ve complained about or even really noticed her in that movie if it weren’t for gossip-magazine backlash. That said, she is absolutely unwatchable in The Kennedys, sporting a wavering accent that affects one random word per sentence and delivering every line as though it’s some scene-ending bombshell that’ll go straight into the trailer. She’s my early pick for the 2011 Costneries, the awards show honoring annual achievements in awesomely terrible accents. It’s hard to blame Holmes, though, when the magnitude of the script’s suckiness manages to reduce Tom Wilkinson — one of the most invincibly likable actors in Hollywood no matter which role he assumes — into a stiff caricature of a villain. Every line spoken by the Joseph P. Kennedy character possesses equal parts inexplicable malice and way too much foresight; he’s essentially a d*ck Ghost of Christmas Future. At JFK’s wedding, while John and Robert are backstage getting ready, John’s father comes back and straight-up tells him “women don’t expect fidelity, they just don’t want infidelity thrown in their faces.” The screenwriter presumably intends for us to react to this scene by yelling “OMG these Kennedy men!”, but the scene is so skull-bludgeoning, with Joseph’s line being so cartoonishly misogynistic, unrealistically direct, occurring backstage at the actual wedding (there’s no way this happened), and possessing such self-awareness of its own foresight (we know Kennedy ends up not being faithful!), you quickly run out of space in your skull for a sufficient enough eyeroll. Also, Barry Pepper’s Robert Kennedy looks like a walking editorial cartoon:
The dialogue in The Kennedys is, as I mentioned above, insultingly basic, impossibly direct, and possesses way too much self-aware hindsight to be taken seriously. Nearly every line fits at least two of these three flaws, but just as an example, here’s one sentence spoken by Jackie’s mother-in-law to her after she marries John: “The men that we’ve married have great gifts…and great flaws.” Is that a sentence that two human beings actually exchanged with one another, or is she reading the first line from The Kennedys press kit that Reelz mailed out? She’s literally summing up the overarching dramatic theme of the show in one clunky sentence that Jackie’s mother-in-law did not ever actually say to her because human beings don’t speak in terms that dramatic and economical. They might as well have just had Jackie respond “John can control the world’s most powerful nation… but the one person he cannot control… is HIMSELF. Watch The Kennedys every Sunday beginning April 3rd, only on The Reelz Channel.” Similarly, when Jackie finally confronts John about his cheating — though we never truly explore his infidelities in detail in the first three episodes, the show just sort of banks on viewers knowing about it — they quickly enter into a direct yelling dialogue about fidelity, in the way that no married couples begin to discuss the issue. There’s no nuance, no buildup, no passive-aggressiveness, and no believable humanity in the characters; they’re basically just vessels used to retell the history of John F. Kennedy’s life from a fake first-person perspective mixed with shoehorned-in “dark side” issues to make it seem more genuine and complex. The depictions of the actual historical events are no less basic and underwhelming, and largely serve just to re-affirm peoples’ existing understanding of Kennedy’s life. The Bay of Pigs “military roundtable” scene was about as brief and enlightening as a fifth-grader’s report on the event distilled from three Wikipedia paragraphs; basically, nothing that happened in the first three Kennedys episodes couldn’t have been accomplished just as efficiently in a documentary or a History Channel special. The HBO John Adams miniseries, by contrast, used historical characters and events to delve into genuinely captivating dilemmas about humanity, loyalty, principles, and the impossible feat of building a nation; The Kennedys just co-opts historical events we all at least peripherally understand as an excuse to construct a faux layered-drama about complicated “cheating” characters (which, ironically, we also already know about). There’s never a genuine sense of enlightenment or insight — it’s just stuff we already know, but said by people in makeup and wigs instead of a narrator.
None of this is to say that The Kennedys isn’t worth watching; once you get over the initial shock of how stiff and inhuman the characters are and how incessantly gratuitous the dramatic music is — I think the music team from Chopped was involved — it’s really pretty funny. At least three or four times, myself or one of my friends said a joking way-too-literal line in a cartoony Kennedy accent and a character in the show actually ended up saying it, which ever stopped being amusing. But if you’re looking for anything remotely enlightening or insightful, or even something deserving of a fraction of the controversy that’s surrounded this project (which I’m now firmly convinced Reelz completely cultivated, because this thing is only angering in its badness, not its political idealism), then The Kennedys will assuredly disappoint. If you’re a fan of poorly written America cartoons, though, set your DVRs this second: |
| TSA Finds Nothing But Rolls On Orlando Bloom’s Baby Posted: 18 Apr 2011 01:02 PM PDT You might think the real story here is that the TSA found it necessary to pat down Orlando Bloom’s baby. But you’d be wrong.
The real story here is that Orlando Bloom’s baby looks like it was manufactured at a Toys R Us plant inside my reproductive organs. I WANT IT. This baby already weighs more than its mother people:
More pics ahead. I realize I’m like 3 years away from snatching a baby away from someone at Target, so I should really get working on that for myself. Meanwhile, look at these lucky attractive people:
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| It’s A Gaddafi Summer Fun Clothing Sale! Posted: 18 Apr 2011 10:41 AM PDT
Wait, I’m confused — “everything must go,” like Gaddafi, so this clothing store display is anti-Gaddafi? But then why is Gaddafi wearing the summer shirts? Clearly he’s in favor of these summer clothes, and if we buy them doesn’t that mean we’re agreeing with him? Maybe I’m splitting hairs here, but when I’m splurging on aloha shirts and leis for the summer, I’d like to know definitively whether or not I’m supporting a murderous dictator whose regime is rife with recent sanctioned-rape allegations. Cause like, The Gap’s right across the street. (via NextRound.net) |
| World’s Smallest Horse Makes Tiniest Television Debut Posted: 18 Apr 2011 10:11 AM PDT There’s really only one thing to say here: OMFG.
Einstein the World’s Tiniest Horse is frankly the only Einstein that counts in my book. Above, he is standing next to a large dog, who has no idea what a horse is or why that thing next to him is so effing pumped. Einstein made his morning television debut on Good Morning America today, and thankfully was rescued from the front of a Chevy Volt or another equally small vehicle before his appearance…
Here he is standing next to a pair of boots about as tall as he is and made from an equally cuddly barnyard animal:
Hayyyyy:
If I had my druthers, I would rent Einstein out by the hour and just spoon his cuddly little ass on the barn floor while braiding his tail and talking about our childhoods… Sadly, I lost my druthers years ago to a fire. Druthers 1981-2005. |
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