May, 2015:

Summer Blockbuster Jamboree ’15

The summer blockbuster season is upon us, and no franchise is safe. Everything must be sequelized, rebooted and thrown through the ol’ grit grinder. Now, you may find this hard to believe, but as a pasty, bearded, bespectacled fella in his 30’s, I have some things to say about the state of movies. This is the prison that I have built for myself.

Movies have to appeal to wider audiences now because they cost $700 billion to make. This character or series or toy that you still hold dear? It now has to appeal to every man, woman and child living in China if they want to make any money off of it. This is what we in the movie industry call “money making plan.” So that’s why Iron Man has to fly to Tibet and breakdance with a monk for 30 seconds, give a thumbs up to no one and then fly off to do whatever it is Iron Man usually does. Screw your continuity, pal, in this rebooted universe Peter Parker assembles iPhones and he’s never been happier. Look at him go.

Speaking of reboots, my brain processes their existence in a very specific way: First is general interest based solely on name recognition. Ah yes, Name of Movie, I remember that movie. I liked the part where it was a movie. The second stage is anger. The original Name of Movie was perfect. The special effects looked like dog shit, none of the actors remembered the other character’s names so they snapped their fingers and pointed and called everyone “um uhhh what’s their face, the guy with the amulet,” and the entire third act was considered a hate crime in 38 states but GODDAMMIT, NAME OF MOVIE WAS SO GOOD AND THIS REBOOT WILL SULLY THE GOOD NAME OF NAME OF MOVIE. The third and final stage is forgetting the reboot exists and watching it on Netflix three years later and saying eh it was ok.

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Though I’ve only seen the trailer, I’m going to assume the Poltergeist reboot is not for me. Me, the person whose favorite scene in Poltergeist is when the mother is setting up ghost traps in the kitchen, maybe a little stoned from the night before. She’s drawing circles on the floor, she’s putting chairs in the circles, chairs are flying all over the kitchen. She’s just so damn excited to have ghosts in her house before all hell breaks loose, and who could blame her? It’s a scene that breaks up the tension without grabbing your head, throwing it onto a curb and stomping a lighthearted, tender moment down your throat while screaming, “DID YOU FEEL THAT? ARE YOU FEELING THIS?” You know? Do you know what I mean?

The house lights come up. The ghost of Roger Ebert turns around and gives my blog post a middling half thumb up. “I felt like he had a point in there somewhere,” he says, ghostily, “But it seemed lost in a toilet of all-caps yelling and word vomit.” He rattles some chains and makes a candelabra float around the room before disappearing forever. Thank you, ghost of Roger Ebert, for inspiring me to reboot this series of words, maybe bring along a plucky CGI sidekick, and try again in two weeks.

You can watch me scream and yell all of my recent posts on AwesomeTalk! It airs every other Tuesday on our YouTube channel, where you can also find past episodes and other psychotic vlog vids.

Attaining Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wisdom Teeth Extraction

The surgeon placed the needle in my arm, and in a very soothing voice said, “This is the last thing you’re going to remember.” Puzzled by this, I asked, “The needle in my arm, or the fact that you said this is the last thing I’m going to remember?” but wait, no, actually I just said “what” and then fell asleep.

When I told people that I was being put to sleep for my wisdom teeth extraction, they all had a glint of jealousy in their eyes. Sure you’re going to have teeth ripped from your skull, but the dreams, my god the dreams when you’re under! I hoped that I would dream of waking up in a quiet meadow, perhaps with a Native American shaman waiting for me, sitting Native American style on a rock. He would point off to a mountain in the distance, a perfectly timed eagle scream somehow illuminating my path towards spiritual enlightenment. For hours we would walk, stopping briefly to admire the vistas of the world that lives inside all of us. At the mountain’s summit, a black elk would whisper a passage from a forgotten tome in a language unspoken since the beginning of time, and my third eye would open. My mind would flood with the knowledge that every living being is connected to the roots of the tree that was now growing out of my back.

That’s what I hoped would happen. I would have settled for Adam Sandler in brown face, playing a character named something spiritual like Farts on Dick, reviewing dialogue from his new racist hit movie The Ridiculous Six with me. Steve Buscemi is wearing a bear costume for some reason, Rob Schneider has a feather behind his ear and he’s huffing paint out of a brown paper bag, screaming about the dangers of vaccinating my children. Actual Native Americans are storming out of my spirit journey, uncomfortable with this bastardization of Apache culture and blaming me for concocting this nightmare.

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None of that happened. Instead I had a vague sense that a man was breaking my goddamn face in half with a series of sharp metal instruments. That, my friends, is the difference between nitrous oxide and anesthesia.

My wife drove me home, filled my head with percocet and fired up HBO Go. My eyes (sadly not my third eye) focused on one movie and one movie only – Devil’s Advocate. And though I saw about a third of the movie as I drifted in and out of consciousness, I managed to see my favorite part of Devil’s Advocate, maybe my favorite part of any movie. Charlize Theron is torn. On one hand she wants to have a baby with her very consistently southern accented husband Kevin, played by Keanu Reeves, but she’s having satanic nightmares of babies ripping out her baby making parts. Anyway, long story short, before he carts her off to a psychiatric hospital she screams, “They took mah ovaries Kayvin” which is right up there with “You talkin’ to me” and “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass” in terms of perfect cinematic dialogue.

What was this about again? Right. Wisdom teeth. Some say that you lose your wisdom when you have those little fuckers removed, but that’s only if you don’t have them on your person at all times. And honestly, what kind of amateur do you take me for?

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You can watch me scream and yell all of my recent posts on AwesomeTalk! It airs every other Tuesday on our YouTube channel, where you can also find past episodes and other psychotic vlog vids.