That'll Do, Kevin...

Hey, did you guys hear? Batman, that badass, hard-nosed, ass-kicking, crime-fighting superhero from Gotham City is a total fucking pussy who pisses his pants when he gets scurred?

At least, that's what Kevin Smith, the portly director of Clerks, Chasing Amy, Dogma and whole host of shitty films, has imagined.

*sigh*

While this is far from his only transgression in anally-assaulting the Batman legend--a more elaborate description of Smith's heinous assault on the Caped Crusader can be found at Comics Alliance--it is by far his most damning. I'm particularly fond of Smith's notion that a crossbow, for some strange reason, uses a firing pin. Way to rock the Wikipedia, Kev!

This one trick-pony--two tricks, if you count dick- and shit-jokes--has to be sitting on 14:59 by this point, right? Yes, Kevin Smith is comic chic, I get that. He's written a few series in the past that have been decent, but the storylines have been spiraling down into his normal dog-and-pony show, culminating with Batman's "bladder spasm".

What's the difference between this and fanfic? Is it just that the author of this particular piece of fanfic has thrown up on a reel of film and called it "Mallrats"?

Is this what it takes to write comics these days? I know the industry is feeling the pressure of the southern turn of the economy, but shit like this is not going to fix anything. I stopped reading comics a long time ago (and apparently, so did a lot of people) because the storylines were just getting too fucking ridiculous thanks to terrible writing. Sure, not Kevin Smith terrible, but terrible nonetheless.

Here. Here's an idea. All those years that dweeby-ass Peter Parker was listening to Mary Jane fighting with her dad next door, all the times he saw her running out into her back yard to cry away the pain daddy inflicted on her...well, Peter was standing at his bedroom window with the shades half-drawn, the lights turned out, masturbating. This was his dream girl, and she was just so...vulnerable...and it turned him on so much that he had to relieve himself manually.

See what I did there? I made an early connection between Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson, I appealed to the adolescent males in the audience who can't get the gall to ask out the girl they're pining for, and I gave Spider-Man a much-needed dark aspect to his personality.

I can have my own series now, Stan Lee? Oh, and I'd like a shit-ton of cash to go with that. Thanks, and, I'll be in touch.

Kind of like Petey in his bedroom.

*sigh*

Shit like this frustrates me. It frustrates me to no end. I consider myself to be a writer of some talent who doesn't devolve into dick-jokes at every turn of my writing. Sure, maybe I rape my characters a little too often, but that's for effect, not for a puerile joke. Honest!

I guess it's just the frustration boiling over about not being published yet. Combine that with this past year of being dicked over by publishers and agents and shit, and the frustration doubles ten-fold. I'm doing everything I can to get published (not true, but work with my lying here, please) and yet I'm still holding my manuscript in my hand. All the while, someone is making Batman soil his knickers.

It doesn't seem fair.

I guess what I really want--what I really, really want--is to get published so that someone can make an irreverent song that is full of awesome and win about me. Kind of like this one, which is filled with all sorts of Not Safe For Work lyrics and "book title based double entendres" as Neil Gaiman put it.

UCBcomedy.com
For more funny shit, visit: http://www.ucbcomedy.com

I will never look at Something Wicked This Way Comes the same ever again. And, wow...does she have some nice tits.

If that doesn't inspire me to keep writing, I don't know what will...

Happy Saint Pambo Day!

Today is Saint Pambo's day. Saint Pambo was a member of a group of people known as the Desert Hermits of Egypt. He was a disciple of Saint Anthony, and when he asked Anthony what he should do, Anthony told him "Be not confident of thy own righteousness; grieve not over a thing that is past; and be continent of thy tongue and belly."

Pambo took this to task, especially the last part. He spoke little, and what words he said were usually deep and profound. Many people came to follow him--kind of like Forrest Gump running back and forth across the country, I'm feeling--and they worked to help the poor and spread the Word of God to the Egyptians. He was most famous, however, for the fact that he didn't speak often, but when he did, the words were usually carefully selected and their meaning profound.

On the day he died, he was weaving a basket. He looked up at his followers and said:

"There's a million fine looking women in the world, dude, but, they don't all bring you lasagna at work. Most of 'em just cheat on you." He then bought a pack of smokes and walked out.

His follower, Saint Melania, dressed his body and took the unfinished basket to lay in the ground with the body. Reports say that she had long blond hair, wore a black sock cap, went nowhere without her trademark black trenchcoat, and had a mouth that was constantly running.

So, wish your fellow man a Happy Saint Pambo's Day. But just do it with a knowing nod.

For Mature Audiences Only

Created by OnePlusYou

How'd I get to be so low? Apparently, the scanner found five instances of fucking, three shits, a pair of crappies (not the fish), and a single dead. Wait. Dead? Makes me NC-17? I guess my four-year-old is a sailor-mouth, then.

Before you turn away in anger/fear/disgust/rage, just remember that "Clerks", "Dogma" and "Zack and Miri" were all NC-17 originally, and look how funny they were. Yeah, I'm not buying it, either.

I shudder to think what some people's blogs would be rated. Even though they totally go and try to sweeten things up...and fail miserably...I'm guessing they'd be rated pretty high. But, forget the sweetening. I say, revel in what you are, and don't try to hide behind the ruse of fanciful unicorns and kittens licking dew drops.

I'm all out of inspirational messages, so here's a picture, instead:

Ruby Vroom

Sorry for the delay. It's been a bit hectic around here of late. Currently, a full half of the household is afflicted with some bronchial/pneumonic/allergy plague (that would be the younger half) and I'm going mad with the constant, continuous coughing [1]. It sounds like a fricking sanitorium around here.

I was also, you know, remiss to remove the picture of the lovely Leelee Sobieski off the top page of my blog. Plus, after Lisa-tastrophies suggested casting Leelee as Princess Leia, I about passed out thinking about Leelee in a Slave Girl Outfit. Tasty. Then it suddenly hit me: gratuitous Leelee Sobieski pictures![2] Not to mention, I'm still really just in absolute love with the idea of Kevin Smith directing remakes of Star Wars. I don't even care if Yoda spouts out "Snoochie booches!" instead of "Concentrate!" when he's on Luke's back while giving Luke his Jedi training during The Empire Strikes Back. Seriously, Harvey Weinstein, get this done.

Speaking of movies...did you guys (and fine ladies) know that there's a live-action G.I.Joe movie in the works? Makes sense after Transformers (which I still haven't seen, more on principle than anything else) and all, since for some reason the two are inexorably linked (at least in my mind). Anyway, I found out after coming across the following picture while reading one of my favorite new blogs, Pfangirl:
As Pfangirl put it: Wow, a hot girl in a leather cat suit. No one has thought that up before! (I paraphrase).

After a bit of due-diligence (read: reading blogs), I discovered that said hot girl is named Rachel Nichols, who apparently is a popular blonde actress from the tv show Alias and some other movies which I've never seen. At first, I was confused. I mistook her for ESPN's sultry slice of NFL coverage, who actually has red hair. You can imagine my confusion. Also, didn't Scarlett wear an outfit that was much more yellow and much less black? And just where the hell is she supposed to keep extra bolts for her crossbow? On second thought, maybe I don't want to know.

Rachel Nichols...

...and more Rachel Nichols.

One final update, we won't be putting the house up for sale this spring. The realtor came out and looked at the house and basically said the following: "The interior looks awesome, the yard and the landscaping look great, the exterior of the house looks like shit." Again, I paraphrase. So, I'll be busy here in the next few months scraping and repainting trim, replacing rotting wood, replacing damaged siding, reglazing exterior windows and touching up parts of the paint where it has peeled away from the house (I have a bad feeling I'll be painting the whole damned thing in the fall). If I can get a weekend where it doesn't rain and/or drop below 40 degrees, I'll be able to get a bulk of that stuff done.

Oh, and major announcement coming later in the week.

[1]: I loves me some alliteration.
[2]: If you think it's easy to find a picture of Leelee Sobieski that won't trip the porn filter at your work, think again. Oh, and, yes, I am encouraging goofing off on my blog while at work. Deal (hi, Amanda).
[3]: I didn't put a three, but see if you can catch the obscure pop culture reference from the title and how it fits into this entry. No fair using Wikipedia.

Continuing the Path toward Enlightenment

I spent this weekend corrupting my children, my daughter moreso than my son, though he did get himself a little taste. Let's fill in the back story first, and then we can sally forth into the wilds of the tale which I am about to craft.

Remember last weekend, when I flipped back and forth between the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies? And then sprinkled in a little bit of UNC getting their asses handed to them by Kansas? Right, well, there were a lot fewer North Carolina beat-downs this weekend, but the original three Star Wars movies were on Spike TV or whatever it is (I think the Lord of the Rings movies were on, too, but I resisted that temptation). And, if Star Wars is on, I've got to watch.

But this time, I had a little friend.

Yes, I let my daughter stay up Friday and Saturday night to watch Episodes IV and V. Being as today was a school day (though she's home sick), I didn't let her stay up to watch Return of the Jedi. I have it on tape, anyway, so I can complete her training at some point. The little boy, however, got really sleepy and really pissy toward nine pm, and thus he had to retire for the evenings.

Now, my daughter liked the original movie plenty. It captivated her and kept her interest. However, it was hilarious watching her get all fired up and worried toward the end of The Empire Strikes Back when Luke is facing off against Vader and Han gets frozen in carbonite. She was yelling at the television, "No Luke! Don't go in there!" and "Oh, is he going to be okay?". It was marvelous. But, somehow, we had kept the big secret from her and she was like, "What? That's his father?!?" Classic stuff.

Anyway, my wife had a friend over last night, and after her friend left, we watched the very end of Return of the Jedi (since there was nothing else on). This was the remade version, where there was that awkward, strange ending that no longer featured the Ewoks' celebration music. I'm not saying it was better; I'm not saying it was worse. I'm just saying it was awkward. My wife didn't like this new ending one bit, and she voiced her opinion as such (she loves her some Ewoks). Then she said, "You know, you should get Silent Bob [Kevin Smith] to redo these movies."

My mind went blank for a moment. And then it began to imagine the possibilities. And then I had to excuse myself from the room so I could clean up the mess in my pants. What a brilliant idea! I thought Kevin could sit down with George Lucas and be like "Look, you can do the special effects and help with the directing and you also get all the licensing and marketing. I just want to make good movies." And the fantasy was good. Very, very good.

She wondered who might be cast as the various roles. We tossed around a few names for various roles and I offered up a few story corrections that needed to take place. And then my wife suggested getting Leelee Sobieski to play the role of Padma/Amidala. And then I had to reexcuse myself from the room so I could clean up the new mess in my pants.

Yes, that's right. I have a crush on both Kevin Smith and Leelee Sobieski. Sue me.

Welcome!

Wow. I haven't blogged in almost a week. Okay, so maybe it's not that shocking, but I looked at the date of the last one (which I put up with minimal effort...I'll admit) and I was a little shocked. For a while I was cranking one, maybe two blogs a day. Ah, laziness has dragged me into her clutches once again.

In case you were wondering, laziness has beautiful red hair, so it's not much of a struggle to escape her wily clutches.

I digress. What else is new? Certainly not my tangental musings.

Why roll the welcome mat out?

Ah, that's something entirely new. It's because I've been threatened with new readers. Now, I've come to know my readers (one of them in particular rather intimately) and I'm pretty much on a first name basis with all seven of them (it helps that my readers are largely my friends). Now, however, I might have to learn a whole NEW cast of characters.

The reason for this sudden influx is simple: I did a guestblogging stint for a friend's blog where I wrote about what it was like being 24. 24 was not one of my best years (though I did meet my wife, the comely and buxom Boudicca, at that age), but when telling a story, no one wants to read happy tales. They want romance, tragedy and war. 24 pretty much provided all of those things for me. So, I wrote a short summary of the things that went wrong that year and how they were different from how I had envisioned my life unfolding. If you want to read it, you can find it here.

Being the nosy type that I am, I read the comments attached to the guestblogging post. Wow. Was I ever humbled! To anyone who wanders over here from Ex's blog...thank you very much for the kind words. I try to remain humble, but with you people propping up my ego, well, it's tough to not let my opinion of myself suddenly run away. Again, though, thank you all for your very kind words.

Now that I've thanked you, let me warn you: I often don't put in the same amount of thought to my posts here that I did to my post I submitted for the guestblogging. In fact, I recently went on a rant about a particular basketball game where someone criticized the post as being poorly written. It most likely was (note: it is horribly written), but it was more of a visceral reaction to a game rather than anything else.

Another warning: my posts here tend to be more profanity-laced than the one on Ex's site. I fancy myself to be like Kevin Smith, except without the success, money, good looks, man-crush on Affleck and little dick. Okay, so pretty much the only thing I share in common with Kevin Smith is a proclivity toward using the f-word and a hot wife.

So, if you have moseyed on over from Ex's site, I invite you to stay, look around, kick the tires, read up on my life, have at it as you will, and don't get too offended by anything that I say or write. If things seem a bit too empassioned, chances are I was writing more from the gut rather than from the cerebrum.

And, above all, have a good fucking day.

Connecticut: Most Definitely NOT Smacked in the Mouth

I think I've decided that I'm no longer going to blog about Notre Dame football. Instead, I'm going to blog about the ACC because, honestly, it's a lot more funny.

Take, for instance, the radio caller in mid-July who made the prediction that "Connecticut is going to come down here, and we're going to smack them in the mouth, and the winning's going to keep on coming. You heard it here first: Duke, 6-6, going to a bowl game this year."

Apparently, Connecticut didn't get the memo. It seems as though Duke forgot to read it.

That's when suddenly it hit me: the members of the ACC are just like the characters from one of the greatest movies ever made: Clerks. (Wow, consecutive uses of the colon). You might disagree with my tastes in low-budget black-and-white films about a day in the life of the average Quick Stop schmo, but I hope that you'll at least read this and enjoy the comparisons that are really spot on, at least from my point of view.

Virginia Tech: Dante Hicks. He doesn't want to be there ("I'm not even supposed to be here today") and he's surrounded by inferior beings ("Bunch of savages in this town") and yet he keeps going on, trying to do his best, not offend the customers, and get the job done. The parallels with VT are many: they're in an inferior conference, surrounded by inferior schools, and yet they go out, play sound fundamentals, flash out some superstars, and basically do things right (we can even say that giving scholarships to the Vick boys is kind of like closing the store to play hockey on the roof or to go to a wake).

Clemson: Randall Graves. Probably could be doing something better with his life, but yet he does just enough to keep employed at the video store. A slacker and consummate underachiever, he watches movies all day and leafs through porn at the Quick Stop when he should be manning the counter at the video store. Clemson does just enough to get to bowl games and keep Tommy Bowden in a job.

Florida State: Jay. Put your pot-smoking references aside, kids, we're going a bit more cerebral here. Talks a big game, but never comes through in the pinch. Does a lot of illegal, shady stuff, but doesn't get caught. As soon as Dante turns his head, Jay is stealing stuff from the store. Whenever someone mentions "Clerks", you immediately think of Jay. When someone mentions the ACC football, you usually think of Florida State.

Wake Forest: Silent Bob. Most of the time, they're just there, hanging out, looking shady. Every once in a great while, he speaks. Consider last year to be the football equivalent of "There are many fish in the ocean".

Boston College: Egg Man. He's going through life, searching out the perfect dozen eggs, but he can never find them. This is a consequence of his life having no meaning. When the ACC expanded, Boston College jumped up and down in the back of the room yelling "me, me, me!" only to finally, as a last resort to get 12 teams, have the ACC say "fine". Inferiority complex, anyone? Not to mention their golden dome envy of Notre Dame. In the end, the Eagles just smash the eggs against the glass door front and start to cry on the floor.

Maryland: Old Man. You know who I'm talking about. He shows up, requests a nudie mag, and goes off to the shitter for the rest of the movie until the climax. This is Maryland. They're relevant for a while, slip into the background and you forget about them, and then suddenly--BAM!--they show up again and play a critical role in the end by screwing someone while they weren't paying attention.

Georgia Tech: Angry Hockey Playing Customer. Shows up, wants to complete the sale, doesn't get access (read, respect) to the store, climbs up on the roof, pushes people around and slaps the puck into a sewer drain across the street. Most of these are based on their manhandling of Notre Dame over the weekend. Deal with it.

Miami (FL): Olaf Oleeson. The Russian Dude trying to make it as a rockstar. His lyrics are filled with violent and sexually-charged imagery. He's what the Seventh-Floor Crew would be if they had Slavic accents. You don't really understand either of them, and you probably don't want to. ("Did he just say 'making fuck'?")

Virginia: William Black, aka "Snowball". Likes to have his own cum blown back into his mouth after getting a blowjob. Virginia should probably be happy with just the blow job at this point.

North Carolina: Caged Animal Masturbator. Every so often, UNC likes to think of itself as really important ("We hired Butch Davis, and you didn't...and we beat James Madison!"), enough so that they look down on the rest of the world from their ivory tower. Really, however, in the end, they're just stroking animals for their seed.

North Carolina State: Veronica Loughran. Just like Veronica, they show up, act all sexy, pretend like the world should eat out of their hand, all in a sad attempt for attention because no one has given them any. They make a date with their old boyfriend (NCSU's version of football notoriety), only to end up screwing a corpse in a darkened bathroom and having to spend the rest of their lives in a mental institution.

Duke: Caitlin Bree. Sucked 37 dicks. In a row? Not quite, but they're getting there.

And one more, because they're atop the college football world right now:

Appalachian State University: Rick Derris. Sexy, fit, gets the girl, and can taunt Dante (Virginia Tech) with the notion that they've done something he hasn't: beaten a top-5 school on the road this year.