I WIN! I'M THE MOST POWERFUL PERSON IN THE WORLD!

Back on July 5 I gave a Colbertian wagging of the finger to Fandango for purchasing and then dismantling movies.com in an attempt to absorb its millions of users.
I took upon the Herculean task of sending angry emails to fandango, asking, no - demanding, that they bring back Mike's Buzz Bin and movie reviews by that Dave White guy. Well, ladies and gentleman, I received an email from Fuckdango this week: Movies.com is bringing back Mike's Buzz Bin and reviews by Mr. White.

These turn of events prove that, once again, I am the most powerful man in the world. My classically trained typing digits posses more clout than Paul Reuben, Fab Morvan, Rob Pilatus and Courtney Love - combined.

If there are any other world-plaguing injustices plaguing your limp, week and completely ineffectual little index fingers out there, I, Fred McSchmeckinstien, will write angry letters to anyone for the small fee of $1,000. It is time I use my powers for a greater good - capitalism!
Next on the list (if anyone pays me the per-letter fee) Henry Paulson, Mugabe, any Arab leaders, every citizen in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and Afghanistan, all of you racists in Pennsylvania still clinging to guns and religion (I couldn't resist).

note: dammit, talking about Blandango on my blog again will probably trigger my advertisement bar to include fuckdango ads again

Epic Fail

Dear 25 percent of Americans that still support George W. Bush, and/or 40 percent of Americans voting for John McCain:

Your movement is dying a slow and painful death.
It may spring back to life in 8, 12 or whatever years, but it's failed miserably and you are part of the minority still clinging to policies that have resulted in massive spike-covered earthworms eating away at Americans' rectal cavities.

Have you been irked by Obama's success? All media has to do is report what's going on in our country and around the world and of course it will appear negative towards McCain, he stands for all the same bullshit that has gotten us here in the first place — even with the incredibly incompetent 24/hour news media, no matter how they try to screw it up with the endless news cycle beating gaffes into your forehead and stretching half-truths and confusing opinions for facts.

Sure, there have been Democrats that haven't helped (Chris Dodd, Murtha ...) but they don't, at least in principle, represent the crumbling tower of Babel.

Simply reporting what is going on in this country looks bad for McCain and that is why Obama is destroying in the polls and many people are finally not voting against their own economic interests. If Wall Street hadn't collapsed, perhaps the Rovian tactics of fear and Evangelical base-stirring could have led the blind to another weaker-than-the-original-yet-still-diabolical Regan facsimile. Palin can try to divide America all she wants between lines of "real-Americans" and, ahem, whatever a "fake American" is, but it wont work. Americans' check books still need to be balanced, houses need to be paid, and giving more tax breaks to large corporations with more pull that any branch of government just isn't going to cut it. (And neither is stopping gays from getting married).

Your movement has failed so miserably that your own candidate, John McCain, claims he will try to change it. He is part of the incumbent party, yet he's co-opted the reform party's slogan, "change."

Lets have a quick summery:
Pre-emptive war and regime change to create a domino effect of democracy in mideast: Fail

Supposed reasons for going into iraq: Fail

Deregulation of banks and lack of government oversight of Wall Street: fail

trickle down economics (Bush's tax cuts): epic fail

Bush's plan to privatize social security: thank god we didn't give it the chance to fail or even more people's retirements would be tied up in sinking markets

diplomatic relations with Russia: currently failing

diplomatic relations with Iran: fail

diplomatic relations with N. Korea: I have no idea

finding Osama bin Laden and stabilizing Afghanistan: fail

diplomatic relations Pakistan: soon to fail

the troop "surge": successful solution to unnecessary problem .. hey! a half success!

leaving office better than you found it: fail

PS: If you think trickle down economics and lack of oversight of Wall Street didn't help to cause today's problems, then you must surely believe that poor people caused the crises.

note: I copy/pasted part of this entry from things I wrote in a facebook message. So, if I ever yearned for any respect/credibility/whatever, I will never attain it and remain a hack forever.

Peaches and Cream (know what I mean?)

I recently watched the excellent 2000 Brit gangster flick "Sexy Beast," and it introduced me to a band called The Stranglers, by way of their 1977 hit "Peaches." (It's the song that plays at the very beginning when the chubby main character is sunbathing by the pool.)
See how this works, one greasy piece of entertainment leads to another ...

Anywho, all it takes is the word "peaches" and I'm thinking about the Presidents of the United States of America. So, in honor of my favorite band in 4th grade, here's a list of my favorite food pyramid (fruit portion) inspired tracks:

The Stranglers - Peaches.
The bass line grooves like some proto-garage soul strut while the singer (whoever he is) sneers like Mick Jagger with more contempt than sex. The organ plops around, and before you can ask yourself how a California quasi-punk band could find such a groove, the singer (whatever his name is) is making near farting noises in what sounds like a vocoder. Whatever.

The Presidents of the United States of America - Peaches
Not to be outdone by the Stranglers, POTUSA still gets thrown on mix CDs occasionally, when I'm feeling really frisky. I will always love this song
they were made, by a man, in a factory ... downtown ...

A Tribe Called Quest - Bonita Applebum
This is the first Tribe song I heard, before I listened to any hip hop, I thought it was good then, but was confused - the only "hip hop" I knew was the shiit on the radio.
Years later I heard "Can I Kick It?" and "Scenario," went and got most of their songs, and realized these were the dudes I saw on TV when I was like 10 singing "Bonita Applebum." I can still see that video, Q-tip and crew in flannel, hiphoppin around, the sound stuck in my brain, man.

Bright Eyes - Bowl of Oranges
I don't really care for bright eyes, he's always sounded a little more dickless than Dylan. This is more along the Neutral Milk Hotel side of his sound, and its a great song.

Marvin Gaye and/or Creedance Clearwater Revival - Heard it Through the Grape Vine
This has to be one of the most covered songs of all time. Even the least musically inclined can probably hear that bass line in between their clogged ears.

Herbie Hancock - Watermellon Man
Contrary to a joke in "Tommy Boy," Herbie Hancock was not one of the USA's founding fathers. But he did record some of the best jazz and funk of the century, this included.

Booker T and the MGs - Green Onions
OK, onions are probably vegetables, I don't really have a clue, but this is one of the all time classics.
Stax's house band was in full effect with this, one of the most indelible, cool-as-ice mother fucking instrumentals to ever grace the organ, drums, bass and guitar. You might not know it by name, but you know the riff when you hear it.

Spoon - You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb
"Cherry Bomb" is one of the best tracks off of the band's 2007's near perfect "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga." How does Spoon mix so many seemingly incompatible sounds and make it sound like effortless pop? This one's throws it all in - the band's first time use of Stax style horns (surprise! It's a list from Ed, I can't go three paragraphs without mentioning Stax), Brit Daniel's always clever but concise songwriting, precise production, very danceable '80s drum beat and post-punk guitar ... wazzle wazzle wazzle ... he must be crazy CUTTING PRICES LIKE THAT!

The Beatles - Strawberry Fields Forever
Haunting nostalgia, beautiful, there's nothing left to say about the Beatles. I believe this song is about one of the fab four's grammar schools.

The Runaways - Cherry Bomb
I really wanted to leave this off the list but it's too damn sexy.

The White Stripes - Apple Blossom
This one just stomps around in all its lo-fi glory, good, not great.

Missed the cut
112 - Peaches and Cream, Beck - Peaches and Cream, Jack Johnson - Banana Pancakes, Gwen Stefani - Hollaback Girl, Warrant - Cherry Pie

The annals of bad taste: "Postal"

Welcome to a new (and hopefully recurring) feature here at the blog-that-no-one-reads, I will joyfully watch films that bathe in the fermenting stew of bad-taste and hopeless shit and dick jokes. We'll start with a newer film, "Postal," the latest English-language travesty from German director Uwe Boll.

It's the wholly unique, completely stupid vision that sets "Postal" apart from the rest of the direct-to-DVD and limited-release litter. Director Uwe Boll's absolute dedication to adolescent, bloody story telling really shoves "Postal" down your throat, whether you want it or not. The film is not a side-tossed idea directed by a studio machine with minimal artistic control and no wriggle room. It wasn't pushed out in response to a marketable trend, with a title that sounds similar to a current blockbuster. It not only aims to entertain, the film actually attempts to make you think, something Boll should have sat long and hard on before he rushed over to the type-writer.

Boll actually poured his heart and soul into the film and crammed every inch of geopolitical and religious commentary he could into so-called themes and plot points. Then again, the director is as known for his video-game adaptation movies as he is for his exploitation of an obscure German tax loophole that allows him to make bank off failed movies. (apparently "Postal" is also a video game adaptation, but have no idea what the two have in common.)

All it takes is five minutes of "Postal" to understand why he has more haters than Rachael Ray, and less talent than Pauly Shore and Steven Baldwin have career sense. The man has challenged his critics to fight on countless occasions, but after his cameo in "Postal" I don't think any vitamin-D deficient scribes are going to take him up on the offer. He looks like one of the Eurotrash goons in Die Hard — slightly silly, yet still menacing (and of course frighteningly German). According to the avclub.com, "major talent agencies refused to let their actors appear in the film on the grounds that the script was too 'disgusting, insulting and over-the-top' for their clients. Many of the actors Boll wanted passed, and distributors refused to take the film out of fear of being attacked by Islamic fundamentalists." Boll thinks the whole world is against him because he speaks the truth, not diarrhea.

He sandwiches his social commentary and political messages between boobs, ultra-violence, dick jokes and girls in bikinis stealing plush male-anatomy dolls called "Krotchys." The bikini-clad bimbos work for a New Age cult leader named "Uncle Dave," [Dave Foley, (how the hell did he wind up in this mess)]. Uncle Dave is in some trouble with the IRS, and he wants to capitalize on "Krotchy's" beanie-baby like craze after he steals the dolls. But, Osama bin Laden and the rest of his homicidal home boys are also after the dolls. Al Qaeda plans to insert vials of Bird Flu into the dolls and then distribute them on a mass scale. "Uncle Dave" is Boll's primary vehicle to smash religion and the lemmings that follow both Christ and Christ-like figures off the figurative cliff. The slams are all far-from-subtle and played-out, or at best, poorly executed.

Boll portrays the terrorists as a bunch of incompetent but American-English speaking, white-collar dudes with extensive keffiyeh collections, and a direct phone line with President Bush who's always helping them out of bullet-ridden jams. It's a scenario that could have produced some good gags, but instead all you get are a few forced smirks. They also film their video releases on a sound stage in a warehouse, fake cave walls and all. One noticeably handicapped terrorist is always crawling around on the ground and looking, well, generally retarded.

Thrown in the middle is the protagonist, named only as "Postal Dude" [Zack Ward, (who?)]. He hates his job, hates his town and really hates his three-thousand-pound wife who's always shaking the family double-wide with some other tooth-challenged neighbor. The most bearable parts of the movie involve Postal Dude's painful existence — a job interview with a psychopathic boss and his evil secretary, a Jersey shore type who always hassles Dude for bus money. But that honeymoon from inane plotting goes out the window when Dude goes all Rambo, shoots terrorist, blows up trailers and jumps on Foley's stuffed-animal-stealing bandwagon. When Dude stops the action to give a 5 minute speech detailing his thoughts on humanity, pointless violence, and the need to come together, he only stops to mercilessly mow down the remaining citizenry.

Like everything in Boll's universe, "Postal" is uneven and out-of-touch with reality. He must have really looked deep and stripped himself of all self-awareness to achieve some zen-like level of cluelessness. When a black cop executes an elderly Asian lady with a shotgun for sitting at a green light through two cycles, the cop says defensively, "She called me a n*****." According to the avclub.com, Boll called the scene his special moment to himself because of his hate for slow (specifically) Asian drivers.

The shootouts and action sequences almost always boil down to Dude waiting for the bad guys to run out of bullets, before stepping out from behind a car/dumpster to shoot all the baddies with a machine gun. For a movie with such a high body count, there really isn't one inspired moment of fight choreography or impressive set design.

The relentless poor taste, irreverence and overall disregard of societal norms would be accepted by me with open arms, if it was funny. But it's not. It's shock humor at its most base level, and political at its most juvenile. Though it does get a few Annals of Bad Taste Bonus Points (ABTBPs) for the sheer number of children struck in the chest and head by stray AK bullets. The kid body count was at least 15.

Film: 1/10
Annals of Bad Taste score (comparative to others movies with similar taste): 3/10

Radio Raheeeeem

the only part really worth watching in this entire movie.

Baseball and Star Wars

There are so few shared cultural experiences.
It's a fact that becomes more apparent every time I try to relate to anyone about culture, even so-called popular culture. We all exist in different bubbles of taste — different television channels to surf, different Web sites saved as favorites. I don't even know about many of the same bands my musically-inclined friends like. I scour the internet daily to find new artists, listen to new albums, and it's still hard to connect with many people on anything, even music. Pitchfork.com reviews new albums everyday, most of which never appear in the mainstream media outlets — Entertainment Weekly — etc. Even more discouraging, the same albums often don't even appear in other indie publications.

But when I go to a Cub's game and walk around Wrigleyville, everyone has the same purpose — watch the Cubbies win, drink beer, eat hot dogs, yell at the umpires, high-five. That social animal instinct comes out. I should be running in a pack! I should be participating in group think! It's my nature, man ...

Arriving on the North side, you feel like you belong to something, even if it is only for a few hours, and you aren't even really from Chicago. But when the all the cheering and parading is over, you can't help but feel like a sucker. The cliched complaints come out in full force. Did I really just spend more than a hundred dollars on a ticket and concessions? Did I really just use $50 worth of gas to watch grown men run around in a circle and hit a ball with a bat? I just spent a half a week's worth of pay. The owners and players and managers continue to earn millions, but are still hungry for more. Is this the cost today to have a simple, shared cultural experience?

Why is it appealing to shell out that kind of cash for something so superficial? My meager salary is a year's work worth less than Alex Rodriques' payout for one game. It all comes back to that shared cultural experience. For those few hours, I was a part of something bigger, there were 40,000 fans united momentarily for one silly purpose. The same thing that can make a concert more than just music.

Maybe it's because there are some things ingrained into my psyche as a little boy that I will always enjoy, even when I know they are silly and ultimately unsubstantial — baseball, Star Wars and hot chocolate. So even while my attitude rises and falls like an uppercut hitter's swing, I can't help but enjoy going to baseball games. It's a feeling a colder, more rational person would level.

PAKISTAN, SCHMAKISTAN

THIS IS A DRAFT, FINISH LATER

Well, the story has been buried all day, but Pakistan has ordered its army to fire upon US troops if we violate the country's borders again.

We sure know how to treat our allies.

It was revealed this week that President Bush signed off on the cross-border attacks this summer. Initially just bombing raids, each one became more brazen until US commando boots actually touched ground in Pakistan on Sept. 3. There have been repeated reports of U.S. drone aircraft striking militant targets, most recently on Sept. 12.
Our cross border attacks were aimed at Al Queda but more often than not maimed citizens. President Bush does not have respect for any other country's borders. Pakistan hasn't been doing enough to bring law to it's borders with Afghanistan. but they have been making striodes, sending over 100,000 troops into he region. Instead of working with them, we work around them.

Pakistan's pro-US government is the only thing that keeps its citizens from openly aiding the tAl Queda and Taliban. Pakistan's government maintains a huge political risk every day it's in allegiance with the US, and yet we piss it away. The Taliban in Afghanistan would love to expand into Pakistan, and by crossing broders without Pakistani assitance, we are helping the Taliban gain the popularity with Pakistanis it needs to do precicly that.

When I see shit, I follow the smell and more often than not it leads to George W. Bush's doorstep.
He plays my favorite game: how many wars can one President start/instigate?
He has two in seven years. Can he tack on Pakistan in his final at bat? If he's really ambitious there's still time to rile up Iran. And if we're really lucky Kim Jong Il will finally die from that stroke, and a real nutbag will take his place and reclaim its spot on our Axis of Evil shit list.

His cock-sure bravado cowboy act has gotten Mayberry in a real gee-golly pickle this time.

Here is the AP story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080916/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan