I have been declared Emperor of the World. Let us not waste time explaining why or how; let’s all simply accept the fact that we are better off, as a result; hence, my next decree:

Emperor’s Decree No. 222-134-56/66Q: When the Emperor speaks, he speaks indisputable truth; therefore, if he bans an artistic work, it is the right thing to do — we’re not talking about “censorship” by mere mortals, here; we’re talking about benevolent and infallible reasoning for the benefit of all. That said, the Emperor now bans movies about women, with perfectly kind and dedicated husbands, who go off on their own into some bohemian part of the city and meet a random, younger French guy in possession of an interestingly decorated apartment and a cool scarf and a shock of black hair that hangs down over one eye that causes him to flop his head sideways to get a decent look at his coffee and who, subsequently, reads the heroine some Rimbaud and then introduces her to a new world filled with the violent and breathless pleasure that is her birthright as a woman but that has been denied her by a life lived within the constraints of her oppressive role as wife and mother, especially if these movies show the cheating, self-centered strumpet in a sympathetic light. (And before ye — unwisely — try to cast the Emperor in the image of a perpetuator of the male-centered mindset, bear in mind that he highly recommends the work of Kate Chopin, if you want to see how these issues can be treated with insight, depth and artistic merit. It’s not “women’s issues” that the Emperor dislikes; it is morons creating puerile treatments of it that he loathes.)

The Punishment: Producers and directors and writers of these tedious and pretentious attempts at art will be forced to watch Romeo and Juliet, as rewritten by Paula Abdul (to “bring it up to date”) and starring Sylvester Stallone and Rosanne Barr as the star-crossed lovers — all without popcorn.

The Emperor will grace the world with a new decree each Tuesday morning.

Tags: art & entertainment, The Emperor decrees by Chris Matarazzo
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As it turns out, “Mommy Tattoos” are a “trend.” Even among celebrities. So, I made a little comic about it.

Tags: art & entertainment, family & parenting by Ricky Sprague
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Tags: on the law, politics & government, television by Alexander Thorburn Hoffman
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I have been declared Emperor of the World. Let us not waste time explaining why or how; let’s all simply accept the fact that we are better off, as a result; hence, my next decree:

Emperor’s Decree No. 9000: Henceforth, no one is allowed to come up with asinine categories for types of music, especially categories that revel in their own masturbatory paradoxicality, like “folktronica.” Likewise outlawed are terms like “synthcore,” “shoegazer” and “melodic death-metal.” Creators of such silly genres need to be informed, in clear terms, that no level of verbal skullduggery will ever conceal the vapid, hackneyed and generally worthless nature of their insubstantial compositional flatulations. The Emperor, for instance, is The Emperor because he is intrinsically superior, not simply because he wears a blinking neon cape with ermine trim and exquisite silken underlay. (Although he does look dashing in his neon cape.)

The Punishment: Violators will be chained in the bowels the Dungeon of Serious Woe and forced to listen to their own pretentious drek for a period of thee years. If able to survive this heinous ordeal, they will be released into the custody of Barry Manilow who will keep them as pets until the end of time.

The Emperor will grace the world with a new decree each Tuesday morning.

Tags: music, The Emperor decrees by Chris Matarazzo
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Disney taught us that, “when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true.” Unfortunately, if your dream is to have both of your parents live to see you succeed, you’re sheer out of luck. In fact, of Disney’s forty full-length animated features from 1937 until 2000, I know of only one where the protagonist’s parents remain alive for the entire film.* Then there’s the fact that just about every super-powered hero is an orphan. If this isn’t bad enough, one or both of the hero’s adoptive parents often dies too! Superman lost his adoptive dad, Spider-Man lost his uncle, and Luke Skywalker lost both his aunt and uncle. With the Amazing Spider-Man movie set for release this summer, and that movie actually exploring the mysterious back-story about Peter Parker’s real parents, I thought it would be a good time to delve into the topic of why so many of our heroes—both super and animated—are orphans, and what the message means for all of us. [Read more →]

Tags: movies, religion & philosophy by Marc Oromaner
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10. Trying to cash in on jukebox musicals like Mamma Mia and Rock of Ages, your new musical is called Menudo

9. No elementary-school-level play has ever won the top prize before

8. It’s called You’re a Good Man, Charlie Sheen

7. All the dialogue was translated into Lithuanian, because it lost something in the original

6. The marquee reads “Johnny Knoxville is Willie Loman”

5. Your idea for an ‘all mime’ production of My Dinner with Andre never really worked

4. When the premiere ended, the audience shouted “Author! Author!” while boiling tar and stirring in feathers

3. Your play is the first pro-Catholic pornographic musical – and they’ve already honored The Book of Mormon

2. The Tony Awards Management Committee has a photo of you on its wall with a bull’s-eye drawn on it

1. You unwisely named your production Theater Closed for Renovations
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: art & entertainment, Bob Sullivan's top ten everything by Bob Sullivan
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There comes a point in every individual’s lifetime when he or she must face the inevitable question: should I read a 307 page mystical- psychedelic Chilean-French science fiction tarot epic that was originally published in the same format as a Tintin book?

The answer is to be found between pages 188-201 of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Jean “Moebius” Giraud’s The Incal. During this sequence the protagonist John DiFool participates in the sacred five thousand year games of the Bergs, a race of beaked aliens awaiting regeneration:

[Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, books & writing, religion & philosophy by Daniel Kalder
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U.S. News, May 30, 2012
Fox Airs 4-minute Video Attack on Obama

It’s not quite a political ad but it sure looks like one.

Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” aired a four-minute video today attacking President Obama. The video is made in the same style as the most negative of political ads, complete with frightening music, graphics and voiceovers. Obama’s words are juxtaposed on screen with images of a dystopian America.

I watch Fox, CNN, and MSNBC all the time. And I can tell you that not one of these news outlets is unbiased. In fact the reason I watch all three of them in steady rotation is so I can find some sort of truth to what is going on in our country. [Read more →]

Tags: politics & government, television by Robert O'Hara
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“There’s a wild and crazy man inside of there just waiting to come out.” – Mrs. Romney on her husband

I used to watch Mitt Romney and think, “He’ll make a fantastic villain on Dexter.” (Maybe not one to hold our interest for an entire season – he’s no John Lithgow – but definitely a two or three episode arc.) Either that or he could be in American Psycho 3 – yes, there was already a sequel and it starred Mila Kunis – as the new Patrick Bateman: perfectly attired, great hair, then he opens his mouth and it gets weird. Indeed, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign often seems to be less about taking the White House than dropping as many subtle clues as possible he’s actually a serial killer. (I’m almost positive Christian Bale quips, “Corporations are people, my friend” before attacking the hooker with a chainsaw.)

Now I take that back: Mitt Romney is no Patrick Bateman. Mitt Romney is Prince Joffrey. Both born rich and destined for power. Neither with a knack for handling the common man. And each of them with a line that cannot be crossed.

For Game of Thrones‘ Joffrey: You don’t hit the king.

For America’s Mitt: You don’t use blonde highlights.

It’s time to ask ourselves: will Mitt Romney make more sense if we stop thinking of him as a human being… and start thinking of him as character from George R.R. Martin’s Songs of Fire and Ice? [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment by Sean Cunningham
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The curtain rises on a dingy office. It could be the 1980’s: a man sits silently at an ancient computer screen and pushes buttons but nothing happens.  In frustration, he rifles through a box next to the computer, and finds there a copy of  F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. He begins reading aloud –  and gradually, without undue artifice, other co-workers come and go and assume various roles. Our original Office Man becomes Fitzgerald’s narrator, Nick Carraway, while his colleagues provide other dialogue. Thus adapted to the stage, the short novel unfolds over six hours like a brilliant origami of the layered contradictions in American life. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, books & writing, just fantastic by Jeff Scheuer
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I have been declared Emperor of the World. Let us not waste time explaining why or how; let’s all simply accept the fact that we are better off, as a result; hence, my next decree:

Emperor’s Decree No. 34-A: While directors of automobile commercials will continue to be permitted to cast the ubiquitous “slightly-graying-youngish-but-not-old man” in order to send a message of a certain level of maturity which doesn’t preclude the ability to woo and subsequently satisfy multiple women several times each in one evening, said directors may no longer instruct these actors to drive the car whilst wearing a self-satisfied and slanted “knowing smile.” The Emperor has found that every car commercial made in the past twenty years has contained an exact duplicate of this smile and he has had quite enough. (Worse, such a smile implies that the character in the car knows everything about everything and, as anyone who is likely to avoid the Imperial Dungeon of Eternal Woe knows well, only the Emperor himself has this quality.) Further, that smile is downright nauseating. Directors shall find another way to induce the impotent sheep in the purchasing world into buying a car–some method other inspiring them to say: “I will be like that handsome and no-doubt sexually successful guy who knows everything, if I drive that car.”

The Punishment: Violating directors (and, what the heck, the actors, too) will be forced to have dinner with Rush Limbaugh. Twice.

The Emperor will grace the world with a new decree each Tuesday morning

Tags: television, The Emperor decrees by Chris Matarazzo
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This Friday, the dreams of every single diehard comic book fan who has ever lived will finally come to fruition, when a little movie called THE AVENGERS opens in the United States. Maybe you’ve heard of this film. It’s only going to be the BIGGEST and the GREATEST film ever made! And it’s not just the so-called “fanboys” who are excited. Critics have given the film an overwhelmingly positive response (the Avengers Tomatometer is currently at 94%).

Most critics, that is. A select few have decided to play the troll and unfairly criticize this masterpiece of cinema. How do I know their criticism is unfair? Because ANY criticism of this film is unfair. And even if there are only a handful of these unfair reviews, they could still derail this film, that only has about a squillion dollars worth of marketing and licensing behind it, and only about 100% total population awareness. Thankfully, RottenTomatoBot isn’t afraid to stand up and protect this film, with his withering and biting comments on these negative reviews. Below we see the RottenTomatoBot standing up for each member of the Avengers, with RTB’s dialogue taken directly (verbatim, misspellings included!) from Rotten Tomatoes Avengers critics message boards and from these comments sections over at the New York Post.

(Click the images to embiggen.)

[Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, movies by Ricky Sprague
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If you know Bob Marley only through the greatest hits album Legend and your college roommate’s poster of him smoking a spliff the size of a toddler, see the documentary Marley now. It makes a convincing case for him being one of the great musical talents of the 20th century – he wrote a whole lot of songs that sound nothing like “Three Little Birds” – while revealing a life that makes Roman Polanski’s seem downright bourgeois by comparison. Among the things you many not have known:

-His mother was a Jamaican teenager and his father a British “captain” (apparently he was not actually a captain, but enjoyed being referred to that way) a minimum of three decades her senior who quickly vanished from both their lives and then died. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment by Sean Cunningham
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1. There are many Kardashians.

They’re like the Jacksons, if the most talented Jackson was La Toya.

2. Time is cruel.

The lesson’s offered by The Girls Next Door, not so much by Hugh Hefner (who died years ago and is now moved from room to room of the Playboy Mansion Weekend at Bernie’s style) as a surprise cameo from ex-Baywatch babe Pamela Anderson, who showed up for Hugh’s birthday…naked. I thought, “This is a woman in her mid-40s with multiple children and a well-publicized case of hepatitis”; it couldn’t have been creepier if Hefner elected to hang dong on her birthday. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment by Sean Cunningham
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I. Look on the Watchmen, Ye Mighty

Back in February 2012, DC Comics officially announced that they would begin publishing seven miniseries based on characters and situations from what many people consider to be the greatest superhero graphic novel of all time, Watchmen. The series, which will begin shipping in June, are known collectively as “Before Watchmen,” which right there gives you a hint about the main problem with these books, and the mainstream comic book industry in general.

The writer of Watchmen, Alan Moore, is the most important and influential author of graphic fiction since Stan Lee. Watchmen is the most influential graphic novel of all time. Since its publication, it has been the benchmark by which all other works are measured. Most mainstream comics creators have been re-writing it for 25 years. It’s a masterpiece, at least in the Renaissance sense of that term. The three primary creators, Mr. Moore, illustrator Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins, all employed every tool at their disposal in its composition. It was a unique experiment in storytelling and printing techniques, an elegantly constructed and dense meditation on the idea of supeheroism, and a deconstruction of the serial comic book form itself. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, books & writing by Ricky Sprague
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Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were both about 19 years old when they created the character called “Superman,” in 1933. He was based upon the title character from a novel called Gladiator, by Philip Wylie, Hercules, and Samson. Also, interestingly enough, Siegel and Shuster seem to have swiped the name “Superman” from an ad for “The Man of Bronze,” Doc Savage:

(Image source)

He was not originally appreciated by editors:

But the two did still try to sell Superman and got back nasty replies from some editors. Bell Syndicate told them, “We are in the market only for strips likely to have the most extra-ordinary appeal, and we do not feel Superman gets into this category.” United Features said that Superman was “a rather immature piece of work.”

Finally, in 1938, the pair of impractical dreamers managed to sell the character and an initial 13 page story to Detective Comics, which is now known as just DC. The total value of their first check was $412 and, as it turns out, that supercheck is now up for auction by a company called ComicConnect, which features a suitably purple description:

On March 1, 1938, DC Comics gave two young men from Cleveland $130 for the rights to a comic character named Superman. That $130 check essentially created a billion dollar industry and set in motion nearly 70 years of legal battles that continue to this day. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, on the law by Ricky Sprague
4 Comments »

The first time I saw Alexander Shishkin, the greatest Adolf Hitler lookalike in the history of the planet, I was in awe. This tall, cadaverous man didn’t just look like Hitler, he looked like a Hitler that had died and been dug up again. It was eerie: the sunken cheekbones, the severe parting and of course the black moustache were almost enough to persuade you that Hitler was indeed back from the dead. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, travel & foreign lands by Daniel Kalder
2 Comments »

Too often, the best thing about a movie is the music. It is almost impossible to imagine a great film without the music. The closest thing to ‘classical music’ being written today is for the movies. Those three thoughts have occurred to me so many times through the years that I am surprised at myself for never having thought to construct a list of my favorite movie music until now. But then again, until recently, I did not have access to Spotify. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, movies by Vincent McCaffrey
6 Comments »

One look at me, and it’s obvious that food is a big – perhaps TOO big – part of my enjoyment of life. That includes my time on the move, traveling, which I’m preparing to do later this month. Looking at our itinerary, I’m already looking forward to making a couple of stops at places I’ve seen on the Travel Channel.

TC has three shows on their prime time lineup devoted largely to food at various locations around the country and around the world. Two of them – Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” and Andrew Zimmern’s “Bizarre Foods” – are really, REALLY good, and encourage me to set my feet and my palate along the paths they have followed. Then there’s then there’s Adam Richman’s “Man vs. Food” … oh, well – two outta three ain’t bad.
[Read more →]

Tags: diatribes, television, travel & foreign lands by Jeff McDonald
3 Comments »

In a New York Press article from August of 2011, film producer and director Tommy Pallotta, said, “I am a fan of audience participation, but I also think audiences like to be told a story. There’s this thing video game designers call a ‘golden path’—there’s a definite way that the majority of people are going to experience the game, and the designers plot that. A lot of the interactivity in a video game is really just the illusion of interactivity. It’s about engaging the audience and giving at least the feeling of volition. But as the artist you have the sense that you are, in some way, controlling it, blending the craft of storytelling with the illusion of agency.” In other words, in a game you think you are controlling the action, but really it’s already been pre-programmed. Kind of like what we think of as destiny. In fact, maybe that’s exactly what destiny is: the path we are meant to take in order to have the most fulfilling experience. [Read more →]

Tags: movies, religion & philosophy by Marc Oromaner
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