None More Black

A good Black Friday to you and two Spinal Tap references in the last three posts means we're doing good things, but first I'd like to say you stay classy, Wal-Mart customers.

Check out this, 200 people in Long Island trampled some poor bastard who was trying to hold them back from those sweet, sweet bargains. But whats one life in exchange for getting your shitty kids the...something....they wanted? I don't know what the kids want anymore. I just want Left 4 Dead, because I'm so ready for the zombie apocalypse.

Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, and many other news agencies feel the same, its still a holiday. So I don't owe you anything good. But I made an effort to find something that I know no one reading this blog will see and tear it apart just so I can write something. I give you Bride Wars.

Notice that it will be released in the box office wasteland that is the month of January. So remember that we're heading into 2009, Almost Famous came out in 2000, and yet we still take Kate Hudson seriously. This should stop.

No one has sucked the life out of one success like she has. She hasn't done anything worthy of getting leading roles anymore but people keep seeing her movies. "I think we should go see Generic Romantic Comedy this weekend. You know its got Kate Hudson, shes adorable." goes much further than you'd imagine. Think of a band that made one great album in 2000 and garbage since. Would they still be getting the type of support from their label that Kate Hudson gets from major studios?

Maybe this raises the question of the way people value music vs. movies, which I couldn't be less interested in trying to break down right now. Just know that Ghost Rider grossed $115 million in the US alone. Maybe questioning the thought process of the American film going audience is going about it all wrong. Hmm...

As for Anne Hathaway, everyone just started to like you. You've had a string of tolerable or better movies that I didn't see and you've got sympathy from the Us Weekly crowd because your boyfriend went to jail for stealing $24 million or whatever it was. Why ruin all that goodwill with an unfunny Kate Hudson wedding movie?

At least this one doesn't have Matthew McConaughey in it.

Giving Thanks

I'm not much for tradition. Or worse yet, family. But there are a few things to be thankful for today

1. Amazon is selling seasons 2-10 of The Simpson's for $15 each right now. Go get them.

2. I'm thankful for Chris Johnson's 25 fantasy points by halftime.

and a Thanksgiving Day institution, Arlo Guthrie. Set aside the next 19 minutes.

More tomorrow.

Complete Nonsense

Some of you probably noticed the lack of blog yesterday. I personally blame my lack of focus. You see, I was dealt a blow yesterday. Given my outstanding, some may say transcendent writing ability, you'll be surprised to know that I am not college educated. Whats that? "Surely you jest?", you say? I'm afraid not.

I was denied financial aid and have no idea how I'll be paying for classes when the money has to be in by December 18th. I handled this by drinking myself into a stupor and watching the critical and box office failure, Be Kind Rewind. Which is worth watching just for the way Mos Def and Jack Black remake Rush Hour 2. But otherwise, not so great.

I'll be accepting donations by the way.

Its not all doom and gloom though as we have an endorsement....

"...funniest things I've read in a while." - Dr. James Dunphy of http://j-dunphy.livejournal.com/

So visit his blog, as he is a friend of our blog.

Moving on to todays thoughts, I don't have many. The only thing that has really peaked my interest is the new Kanye West album, 808s & Heartbreak. As a white person, I like Kanye. And while I wouldn't call it great by any means, consider what he did. He basically decided that hes going to do whatever he wants. Kanye has entered his Jazz Odyssey period. I mean, what else can you call it? He can't really sing, theres a lot of ambient noise, the hooks are barely there. Hes in his own world on this. I don't really care for it but I know it'll have its defenders, and it'll probably be the most polarizing album to come out this year.

(15 minute pause while I stare at the screen)

(5 minute pause while I stare at the 15 minute pause update)

This is hard when you're short on ideas. All I can think about is how much I hate Thanksgiving. So to save you the time of reading whatever garbage I'd spew out in a pointless rant, I'll end it here.

And you'd better hate tomorrow as much as I will.

Short and Horrible

If you grew up like me, and you probably didn't, your grandfather was a diesel mechanic who really loved TNN(thats the Nashville Network, for those who don't remember what came before Spike TV). I spent a lot of time at my grandparents house, and he sure as hell wasn't changing the channel for some bastard kid. So I watched a lot of TNN too. This meant seeing endless amounts of horsepower bullshit, like mud bogs, tractor pulls, and the dumbest, most bad ass monster truck ever, Snake Bite.

But mostly monster trucks, which I'll admit to loving at the time. All young boys have a fascination with trucks, which thank god I lost. Now I'm just a catty, effeminate writer. Regardless, that experience left me with my first feeling of being embarrassed by what I was seeing on TV. It takes a lot to dumb down monster trucks, but Monster Wars did it with aplomb.

Its really hard to watch, because its one of the least funny things you've ever seen. But its something you need to experience because from this point forward you will always use this as the high water mark for what you'll consider the worst thing you've ever seen.

I give you....Monster Wars.

This may have been an especially tense contest as I was a Grave Digger fan, my grandfather supported Carolina Crusher, which looks like Hulkamania era Hulk Hogan embodied in a monster truck. But more importantly, heres 45 seconds of two men that have obviously just been shit out the bottom of the wrestling industry and had to hope their children would forgive them for what you just saw. At least Grave Digger, better known as Skeletor, whose style hes stolen, gets to wear a mask. Crusher isn't so lucky. This failure of a man beast might still be recognized walking down the street, or being spit on in restaurants(Stuckey's, natually), assuming he hasn't killed himself from the shame.

Spoiler alert, Carolina Crusher wins.

The most amazing part is that he wins the race in 2.78 seconds, and that requires 45 seconds of costumed hype, followed by 30 seconds of screaming by a man who has to cry himself to sleep at night.

Somehow, this show only lasted one season in 1993/94 and the champion was a truck with no mascot, Bearfoot. Bigfoots lame brother. Or so I always assumed. I was 5.

I hope you feel enlightened.

Pardon my tardiness

Being as my introduction was more then a few days ago, and I am contending for world's top procrastinator, I will continue on my laziness by giving you the following to ponder in the midst of our next entry:

Dominatrix Karl

Fat, Smelly Man on the bus you don't want to sit next to Karl.

I think Fat Karl is overall the more charming, button popping & all.

Defending Regretable Taste

Its really not my style to do two music posts in a row, and yet, here we are. You see, I'm not exactly qualified to be a music writer because theres a lot of music I probably should have heard and haven't. Its hard though, as a lot more albums are made than movies or TV shows. Whats your album to DVD ratio? I don't fancy myself a music guy and think I have a pretty decent movie collection, and mine is probably still 3:1.

More importantly, my DVD collection is solid. Endless Oscar winners, cult favorites and critically acclaimed indies. My album collection has its quality, for sure. All the essential classic rock, enough metal, indie and rap to speak about them and maintain credibility, and enough ironic choices to win the "whats the worst thing on your iPod contest?"(either Unk's "Walk It Out" or the entirety of Napalm Death's 1987 grindcore opus Scum).

But there are quite a few horrible albums on there as well. For example, I don't own any movie thats as bad as Buckwheat Zydeco's Taking It Home is an album. Though for some reason, its on my iTunes. I don't know if this is a fair comparison. No one who has had iTunes/Windows Media Player/Whatever for more than a week knows exactly just how certain things got there. Typically thats an excuse when people see that you have the entire Yeah Yeah Yeahs catalog, but in my case, it leaves me wondering why I have The Bodyguard soundtrack. Its also made worse by the fact that people seem to illegally download a lot more music than movies. Unless you're on a plane a lot, or just couldn't be less interested in what your college professor is saying, you probably aren't watching movies on your computer. But everyone has an iPod in their pocket or car. You just have more use for music, meaning you're going to need more of it. So you just download anything and everything building your collection even if you aren't particularly passionate about it.

But for arguments sake, lets assume this isn't the case. Its safe to assume that the overwhelming majority of music you have is something you like or something very much like what you like because you bought/downloaded it because of someones suggestion. Or in a scarier situation, something you used to like and are now horribly ashamed of.

Sadly, this is the case for me. I'll out myself now.

I'm young, and like most young people we find it easy top get swept up in trends. Especially when you play music and are in high school. So like many kids who were in high school in 2005, I have a sizable emo collection.

You probably do too. So shut up. More importantly, you might still believe Armor For Sleep was a great band. Thats when you've taken your immediate nostalgia too far. Like the Holocaust, as soon as it ended, no one was willing to admit they were involved in emo. Even as it was big, no one wanted to be called "emo". They'd say pretentious things like "I think its ridiculous to pigeonhole us like that, we're a rock band."

MC5 were a rock band, you have song titles like "Lipgloss and Letdown". Lets not kid ourselves.

But there was nothing wrong with that, it was the style at the time. I'm happy to say that I never had bangs, dyed my hair or had a lip ring. And with the exception of some pictures in me in band shirts, theres no proof of any kind that I was ever an emo kid. Except for the albums that I own, and in a few cases, still enjoy.

Sometimes you need to abandon preconceived notions about what something is or isn't. To say that you love Finch isn't an opinion, its a sentence. It means that no matter what you say from that point forward people will say "He's still into emo, what the hell does he know?". I'll use my uncle as an example. He was over today and his phone rang. His ring tone is "Hot and Cold" by Katy Perry. My uncle is 49 years old, gay but potentially asexual in my opinion, and his main source of pleasure comes from picking fights with liquor store employees. He probably has very little idea as to who Katy Perry is, and being gay hes not into her because of how she looks. He just likes the song, unaware of the stigma that being a fan of that song carries for someone who considers himself as cool as he does. Its admirable, in a way. If someone told you that Linkin Park had just recorded the greatest song of all time, would you even give it a chance? Or would you dismiss it as rock radio bullshit right away? I think most people like myself would do the latter.

This was my part of my childhood though. It might not be the best genre of music thats ever existed, but theres some quality. There were some terrible choices, and I'll get into them. But first, the embarrassingly enjoyable....

Taking Back Sunday - Tell All Your Friends:

It has its moments where its kind of cringe inducing, lyrics such as "the truth/is you could slit my throat/and with my one last gasping breath/I'd apologize for bleeding on your shirt" that make you ashamed to own it. But when you really get into it, its a solid album. Its catchy without being to poppy. Not the most talent musicians of all time but John Nolan did an excellent job with arranging the songs and his back up vocals make the album for me. Its no wonder why they never did anything else as good without him, even if the subsequent albums all charted higher.

Brand New - Deja Entendu

I was never into Brand New in high school and I'm not quite sure why, I've only recently rediscovered the album and I really like it. The song titles are a little much. "Good To Know If I Ever Need Attention All I Have To Do Is Die" is a bit much, if you ask me. But otherwise, there are some stand out tracks that I'd put up against anything from this decade. "Sic Transit Gloria...Glory Fades", apart from being one of 20,000 songs from this era to reference Rushmore has an outstanding, simple, infectious bassline and "Okay, I Believe You, But My Tommy Gun Don't"(another unnecessary song title) is the best song lyrically. Its very minimalist, just a guy and a guitar for the first half, but not in an emo acoustic way. Rediscover it like I did.

Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American

While most would defend this as a pop-punk album, they were lumped into the emo group like so many bands that without the existence of the word "emo" wouldn't have been(Side note: It is extremely strange that Matchbook Romance, Avenged Sevenfold and Gym Class Heroes shared a lot of fans, no?). The title track is a blistering rock cut, "A Praise Chorus" has my favorite lyrics of any song that could possibly be mentioned in this column. "The Middle" had enough cross over success to be performed by my high schools show choir. Its strong from top to bottom and is by far the bands best work.

But there is the bad too. And my is it bad. I avoided most of it, but sometimes I got sucked in. I don't think in depth descriptions of these albums are necessary, but I'll list some of whats on my iTunes...

Underoath - They're Only Chasing Saftety, Matchbook Romance - Stories and Alibis, Senses Fail - Let It Enfold You, Silverstein - When Broken Is Easily Fixed, Atreyu - Suicide Notes And Butterfly Kisses, and worst yet, From First To Last - Dear Diary, My Teen Angst Has A Body Count.

If these are guilty pleasures, its okay. But expect to be endlessly mocked if you openly admit to liking any of them.

Theres one omission from the bad list that a lot of people were probably hoping to see, Hawthorne Heights - The Silence In Black and White. Yes, I did buy it. Yes, I hated it after the first listen and never uploaded it. I should have for ironic/nostalgic purposes, but my friend smashed it against a wall. Thus was ever thus. But to remember it, heres this. And this. And...this.

In the end, I think I can live with myself. I'm not ashamed of what I like, for the most part. We all have a musical past, some worst than others. But we all make mistakes, and if you're lucky, you made decent mistakes, and all can be forgiven.

Unless you liked Boys Night Out...

Outlandish Statements

Due to a lack of chemistry and intelligence, theres something that happens on NFL pregame shows that is really stupid and really effective. When not talking over each other or pretending to laugh at each others joke, they force an argument. Sort of like what they used to do at Crossfire.

Heres how it works, you have a topic where people have some strong opinions and then one guy decides to step up and take it way too far. Now, for the record, the next thing I'm about to say was never actually said, I don't think...

"What we need now is Terrell Owens in prison becau...hey, no. Let me finish. Because he is a CANCER and with that CANCER you CAN NOT win games in the National. Foot-ball. League."

Right away, nearly everyone in the room is furious because its the dumbest thing they've ever heard. The audience is furious and everyone loves it because now they tune in to see the arguments over ridiculous things.

So in order to get people fighting, I'm delivering a list of opinions here. Remember that I believe most of what I'm about to say.

- The Velvet Underground sucks.

- Metallica's Load is an underrated album.

- The Beatles only deserve about 65% of their fame.

- Emo wasn't the worst thing that ever happened to America

- Aerosmith was.

- Pearl Jam is the best American band of all time.

- The Rolling Stones only have 3 great songs.

- So to put their needless fame in perspective, thats only 2 more than Buckcherry.

- And one more than Duran Duran.

- A cover of any Ramones song is better than the original.

- Radiohead isn't as good as you claim they are.

- Same goes for Tool.

- If at any point you considered Thursday to be the best band in the world, all your opinions are invalid.

- Theres no such this as an 'important' ska album.

- Its acceptable to like the idea of a band better than their music. Its why Motorhead is successful.

- Judas Priest doesn't hold a candle to Iron Maiden.

- Green Day does not deserve our respect for their 'contributions' to anything.

- If the Beastie Boys and their entire catalog just went away tomorrow, we wouldn't miss them.

- Coldplay deserves their success.

- Did I mention that I really hate The Velvet Underground?

The best thing about the outlandish statement? You don't back up a word of it, you let everyone else fight it out.

I Love You, NXE.

NXE, of course, means New Xbox Experience. Its the new dashboard(if I haven't lost the non-gamers yet, I just did by saying 'dashboard'. When you turn on your console, you see this, so keep with me) that came out yesterday(I was up until 5am waiting to download it) and I'm thrilled with it. Not quite beyond words, because then the post would end here. So here's my thoughts...

The last thing I want to do is turn this into a games or tech blog, so I won't wax poetic about every single feature, but here's the best parts. One, theres avatars now. Obviously this is a reaction to the raging success that was the Mii. Yes you can play games as your avatar. Only three at the moment, one being Uno, but more are coming. It also gives us an animated idea of what the verbally abusive, extremely racist 9 year old that kicked your ass in Gears of War 2 looks like.

If the Klan is having trouble recruiting, really look no further than Xbox Live. For $8 a month they'll get to take the pick of the litter as there is no shortage of kids who just won't stop screaming about how they hate basically every single ethnicity. No one can really do anything about it either, I don't want this to take a serious turn, but just reporting them and clicking 'racist language' doesn't really do enough with some of these people.

Worse yet, the avatar of the kid you hate is probably wearing the same fedora you picked for your avatar first. Naturally, you're furious.

So while 50% are wearing the same fedora, the other 50% are taking the chance to make theirs look high which will be funny to them for approximately eternity. They give you an option to have "tired" eyes, which looks like "stoned" eyes. Microsoft clearly knows its audience. After all, you can't join a room where at least someones gamer tag doesn't end in '420'. Once again, hilarious.

You and your friends can have a party, because real social interaction is over rated. Perhaps you just hate your real friends, this is ideal for you. You all stand there, laughing about similar taste in hats and how your avatar is totally high. Forget the fact that Netflix lets you stream movies right to your console.

I don't do a very good job of selling it, or go into any real detail at all, but Microsoft really gave us a polished, cool platform here. Xbox Live takes up quite a bit of my day, as I have a lot of free time, and this enhances the experience much more than I would have anticipated and it was definitely needed. I don't know how we made it this far without it. After all, you're not paying that $8 just to get called gay.

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Not only did you just sit through a few hundred words about something for Xbox that you don't care about, now I'm asking a favor. If anyone knows how I can watch the season premier of Screenwipe from Tuesday night, I'd be very appreciative.

and for those unaware of Charlie Brooker's work, search his name on YouTube or go to his old site, here. You'll see a familiar title.

Something more relevant tomorrow. Perhaps at a reasonable hour today...

Because video game movies weren't bad enough...

We've moved onto board games. Check it out. (and for the record, The Guardian is far and away the best paper in the world, this is not debatable.)

The stupidity of this hits home for me. When I went to community college, the first time anyway, I took Intro to TV Production, and how the group of people that took that class were ever piled into one room I have no idea. Hardly the finest Mercer County had to offer, myself included as that was the only class I didn't abruptly stop going to in early September of that year.

But we had all kinds of projects where we had to develop and shoot ideas and group discussions where we would rail against the inanity of Laguna Beach, which was in its final season at the time. You know, the season with the fat girl.

And I have to go off topic a little to discuss that. If you still believe that The Hills is real, you're an idiot. Please take any TV class and learn something about camera positioning. I was watching an episode last night where 3 cameras were on Heidi hanging up clothes in her bedroom. Three cameras. Why? Just in the faint hope that Spencer might walk in the room to make some incendiary comment at that given time? If this were the real, organic show people claim it to be, this would never happen.

Consider that on yet another re-run I shouldn't have been watching, Rock of Love: Charm School, Lacey throws a drink on Dallas and there is ONE CAMERA IN THE ROOM. An event that could spark a bloodbath and there's one camera guy, but Heidi Montag does laundry and gets three. No, that's perfectly reasonable that MTV would pay three camera guys to stand there all day.

Oh, lets also remember that Audrina's own website admits that she was cast for the show. I'm hardly breaking new ground here, but some people still don't understand. But I digress.

In TV Production we were given a project to make a pitch for a show and deliver it to the class. As this was the peak of MTV dating shows, I believe Date My Mom had just started around that time, my group thought of what was tentatively called The Battle. The idea was that two guys, presumably wearing polo shirts and making dick jokes, would fight in a pit and the winner would win a date with the girl who hated her dad enough to appear on this show. Super creative title, I know. We had a half hour for this.

It appeals to people on the most basic level possible, and you know that you'd watch it out of mere morbid curiosity. You know the guys on the Next bus wanted to fight each other, why not let them? You get to watch the lower end of the gene pool settle their difference in a storm of fists and damaged egos, for free at 4 in the afternoon. This is gold.

I pitched this idea to my class, and do you know whose group won?

The group that pitched live action Monopoly.

Now, credit where credits due, they were clearly ahead of the curve here. However, its still the worst idea possible.

Hows that feel Hollywood? Some below average community college students beat you to the punch on this one two years ago. But I'm sure you aren't worried, because sadly, things like Not Another Not Another Movie will probably find its audience. So then who looks stupid?

Me.

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Today Michael would like to mention a low point in his life. "Yesterday I hit bottom culturally when I recognized the host of Scream Queens, Shawnee Smith, not by here role in all five Saw movies, but as the wacky girl Linda on the pretty awful Ted Danson vehicle, Becker.

relaunch news!

So its been 34 days since the last blog post where I said 'more tomorrow', or something to that effect. Given that there was nothing the next day, or since, some of you(and by that I mean no one) have been wondering where I went.

Well, as it turns out, there isn't a limitless amount of bad TV. Not if you want to write about it 5 days a week and aren't too interested in keeping tabs on decent shows. AV Club has a much better version than I could ever do by myself with TV Club. Why would you come here for a review of 30 Rock when its everywhere? I excel at tearing down the people who really couldn't fall much further. My endless spite is what makes this interesting.

But to survive we must evolve, which is a pretentious way of saying I'm changing it up a little. Now the focus will be all forms of culture. Its going to be opinions on whatever we see fit.

Notice that I say we.

Indeed, there will be a new staff member. I like saying it that way because it sounds more professional. So heading up the Tampa branch of Grief Digestion Theater will be the esteemed Kristen Vasquez. Basically a life long friend and talented beyond compare, I'm sure you'll enjoy her contributions week to week. She probably has more to say about what she'll be doing so I can leave that to her.

As for myself, you can expect a lot of the same, plus a lot of different opinion on the state of television, film, music. Given that all three of those things have massive problems, I'm sure I'll have a lot to talk about.

There are plenty of other ideas brewing too. Its the dawn of a new era with non-stop-white-knuckle blogging action and you've got a front row seat. You lucky bastard.

And if you want to see anything on here, let us know. E-mail us at GDTblogstaff@gmail.com and we will take it under consideration. We aren't that creative, after all.

So the blog is back, spread the word. More tomorrow.