Hi all. Sorry, but there will not be a review for this week due to it being finals week for my two summer school classes. However, I will be reviewing Celeste Bradley’s latest novel Devil in my Bed in two weeks. She is a wonderful author and I have been very excited for this book to come out. Happy reading!
The first thousand times I saw Adolf Hitler shout “Nine! Nine! Nine! Nine! Nine!” followed by Brad Pitt’s “Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes!” during TV commercials for Quentin Tarantino’s Nazi-killing summer blockbuster Inglourious Basterds, I didn’t even notice that “Bastards” is spelled wrong and that “Inglorious” has an extra “u”. The second thousand times I saw the trailer for the still unrated movie, I started fantasizing about going into the Tarantino killing business. I’m well into my third thousandth viewing of this movie ad, which ranges from 30 seconds to two minutes depending on whether you’re watching cable or commercial TV or the Internet, and the disturbing thing is that I’m bound to see it at least 5K times before this movie opens in theaters on August 21. It’s everywhere, this trailer. And the more I see the trailer the less I want to see the movie. [Read more →]
Funny People is a movie where the best part of the movie really isn’t in the movie. I’ll explain. For the film, the standup comic Aziz Ansari created the character of the standup comic Randy (or, as he prefers to say it, Raaaaaaaandy!), who manages to utilize virtually every gimmick comedians find hacky in other comedians (including relentlessly dropping catch phrases, constantly dancing around the stage, and refusing to write jokes that don’t involve oral sex) with some new tricks of his own (Randy is the first comedian to have his own DJ, who punctuates punch lines with sound effects). Aziz then collaborated on “documentaries” about the character, all available at the web site laughyourdickoff.com–Randy opens his act by asking, “Who’s ready to laugh their dick off?!?–where we learn that Randy likes breasts, dislikes what’s going on in Darfur, and met his DJ at a dentist (where Old Youngin’ was a hygienist busy “WORKIN’ ON THEM TEETH!”), creating a tremendous anticipation for the character even before the movie opened. [Read more →]
August 6, 2009
I dream a young woman decides to stay the night at my parent’s home where I still live. I am not sure what she wants. The next morning everybody in the house including my brother can’t get over the fact that this young woman wants to hang out with me. I meet her at a large, public area, and I lift her with one hand and hold her in the air in different configurations. She seems to be enjoying herself. Then, we visit J and Francis. Cockroaches as large as chicken breasts emerge from the floor and I am reluctant to step on them.
Ultimate Galactus Trilogy is a dainty chode-licker. This retelling of a classic Marvel storyline does a nice job updating things and keeping it interesting. Okay, I’m kidding. This book is a cosmic shit-heap. Marvel is a bunch of jack-offs for even considering retelling these archaic storylines. On the other hand, I really enjoyed reading it. [Read more →]
“You should know up front, this is not a love story,” a lugubrious voice intones at the start of (500) Days of Summer. I had been anxious to see this film since viewing the first trailer, and this seemed a promising start. (500) Days of Summer has some great gimmicks and many enjoyable moments, as it takes a fresh look at the course of a relationship. But the relationship between Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel) is ultimately not compelling enough to sustain the film and seems unworthy of such scrutiny. [Read more →]
I just bought the most delicious bunch of bok choy. This is the peak season for Long Island grown bok choy, also known as Chinese cabbage. It’s a great source of Vitamin C, Vitamin A, and Calcium, and so easy to saute in five minutes or less. Serve it alongside my crunchy lamb chops for a simple weeknight treat.
Hillary Clinton is traveling in Africa this week, although you wouldn’t know it by reading or watching the news. Until today that is. While in the DRC she was meeting with students at a Congolese University in Kinshasa and was asked through a translator what her husband Mr. Clinton’s opinion is about Chinese contracts with Congo. Clearly annoyed by the question, Mrs. Clinton responded harshly advising that if the young man asking the question would like to know her opinion, she would gladly give it but she would not talk about her husband. “My husband is not Secretary of State, I am.” [Read more →]
I’ve received a few messages about my lack of posts this summer and all I have to say is… I’m sorry! I’ve been summer busy and with the lack of scripted television and abundance of reality television, if you don’t watch the episode and write about it the night it airs, you fall behind. I was able to keep up with The Bachelorette because let’s be honest, it aired on Monday and I’m not that much fun. But I certainly have not been keeping close tabs on summer favorites such as Big Brother and So You Think You Can Dance. It doesn’t mean I’m not watching… so here’s what got me excited over the past few weeks: [Read more →]
Who is the world’s craziest leader? I’d assume that most people would think of a select handful of America’s more outspoken enemies, with North Korean tyrant and cineaste Kim Jong Il at the top of the list. He’s always reminding us how whacked out he really is — why, just last week he successfully humiliated former president Bill Clinton by forcing him to do a funny little dance in exchange for the release of two American journalists. Then there’s the election-stealing messianic loon Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who leaves a seat vacant at cabinet meetings for the 12th Imam, the Shiite messiah who disappeared as a ten year old boy in the 9th century AD and who Ahmadinejad believes is coming back to conquer the world any day now. However I think that when it comes to crazy these two leaders, although extremely unpleasant, pale into insignificance before America’s ally and good friend, Mikheil Saakashvili, the president of Georgia.
Portnoy’s Complaint was my first time. I read it when I was 17 and I can still remember the outlaw sensation. This was a best-seller? This was literary fiction! Wow!
Today, this famous/infamous book is still as funny, obscene, and obscenely funny as any book I’ve ever read. Terry Southern, in his Blue Movie, could only ape Roth’s tropes, but not his savage energy or laughoutloud uproariousness. [Read more →]
A guy named Manning agreed to a contract this week that will make him the highest paid player in the NFL. Peyton, you ask? Umm….no. Eli. The highest paid player in the league. You read that correctly. [Read more →]
10. The Bangor Maniacs
9. The San Pedro Pedrophiles
8. The Washington Bailouts
7. The Tampa Bay Windows
6. The Charlotte Webs
5. The San Francisco Bone Smugglers
4. The Detroit Layoffs
3. The Boston CreamPies
2. The Hoboken Hobos
1. The Major League Assholes
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
To recover from the blows dealt us all by the economic collapse, some communities came up with a new, creative idea. It’s new because that’s how USA Today touts it, although they do give a tip o’ the hat to the Great Depression,* when it apparently was also in vogue. They do not mention whether it actually cheered anyone up.
The brave new idea is introduction of local currency known under the hip new word “scrip.” [Read more →]
I really enjoy bagpipe music. Groups like Flogging Molly, The Dropkick Murphys and The Pogues have a resonance with me. On August 3rd I saw The Tartan Terrors perform at Musikfest. They were hysterical and awesome.
Good news! There are reports of a light at the end of the recession tunnel. It’s great that there might be a light. Of course, it would be greater if we weren’t in a tunnel.
Unemployment is still high. Combined with under-employment figures, the estimates come in around 16%. Until there’s some massive hiring, it’s the austerity plan — or no plan — for an awful lot of people.
For those of us who are not yet seeing the light, much less feeling the glow, here’s a special list of 23 things you can still enjoy for $5 or less: [Read more →]
As I swim my laps a couple of times, a week, I think about copy and paste. On the computer, if you type out a text once, you can copy it and paste it into all the places in your document where you need it. You don’t have to type it over each time. The teachers’ old punishment of writing “I will not chew gum in school” one hundred times loses its edge through copy and paste. But laps don’t work like that. [Read more →]
Yahoo! News/AP– George Sodini seethed with anger and frustration toward women. He couldn’t understand why they ignored him, despite his best efforts to look nice. He hadn’t had a girlfriend since 1984, hadn’t slept with a woman in 19 years…For months, he also wrote vaguely about using guns to carry out his “exit plan” at his health club, where lots of young women worked out…On Tuesday, Sodini put his plan into action…He went to the sprawling L.A. Fitness Club in this Pittsburgh suburb, turned out the lights on a dance-aerobics class filled with women, and opened fire with three guns, letting loose with a fusillade of at least 36 bullets…He killed three women and wounded nine others before committing suicide.
George Sodini was not unemployed, sick, or even picked on. He was lonely. So what better way to get back at all the girls not banging down his door to get close to him, than to open fire on them? This is scary really, because these types of massacres were generally reserved for business offices and schools. Now you have to worry about going to the gym. [Read more →]
This week I’ve put my scheduled column aside and have decided to write about the crash on the Taconic State Parkway. I’ll give a very brief synopsis as I’m sure most of you know by now. A woman went the wrong way on the Taconic State Parkway in New York while driving a mini-van full of young kids (two kids of her own and three nieces) and crashed into another car carrying three people. Everyone died except the woman’s son, who was hospitalized. Turns out she had a belly full of alcohol and was stoned. They’re calling it Westchester’s worst accident in 75 years. [Read more →]
In Ellery Queen’s Book of Mystery Stories, first published under the title The Literature of Crime, the crime stories presented in the collection are written by writers generally not recognized as crime, mystery or thriller writers.
Edited by Ellery Queen, the pseudonym of the writing team of Frederic Dannay and James Yaffe, as well as the name of thier fictional detective character, the book offers crime stories by Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson and a dozen other writers.
