I’m not going to lie to you. I had no idea what to blog about today. I hit all my usual sources and nothing. I was about to call my editor, Jack O’Brien, and tell him not to send the package of crystal meth he rewards me with every Monday and Wednesday (he calls it “blogging candy) when suddenly I got an idea. Well, more specifically, my old crime-fighting buddy got an idea, but it was a good one: see what’s cooking on Digg!

And I did just that. Did you know that Digg really seems to like articles in list form? I had no idea.

Anyway, high up on Digg’s list of TV stories was a piece on Children of Men. Apparently, a T.V. series is in the works. This news hit me somewhat strangely. It was sort of like finding out the best steak I’ve ever tasted is now available as a low calorie soft drink. It was kind of like hearing the hottest chick I’d ever seen was now accredited to do my taxes. And it was exactly like hearing a great movie that should never be made into a series was being made into a series.

For those of you in the dark, Children of Men was a phenomenal science fiction picture set in the not too distant future. Infertility has torn through the world and, with no forthcoming generation to inherit the earth, the place has kind of gone to hell. Y’know, like the way you acted towards your high school teachers after you were accepted to college. (Or the way Dan O’Brien is acting towards his college professors right now since he sold the rights to his new book, Benjamin Franklin Used To Fart A Lot And Other Jokes I Learned From Howard Zinn).

I mean, maybe a series will work, but I don’t want to chance it. Children of Men is one of my all time favorite movies. Michael Caine’s performance made me cry. (Shut up! I was so distracted by his quality acting that I stepped in a bear trap.) Julianne Moore was great. And Clive Owen was so damn good and appealing that I’m pretty sure I lost my grasp on heterosexuality halfway through the flick.

But I just don’t see any of that happening with a TV show. For one, Michael Caine’s character is dead. Also, Juliane Moore’s character is dead. And lastly, and this may be a minor point, I’m pretty sure Clive Owen’s character is dead too.

Another reason it won’t work? The curse of Logan’s Run. Is there such a curse? Of course, there is, I just wrote it down and you read it, didn’t you? Logan’s Run was a fairly successful Sci Fi movie from the 70’s starring Michael York. But I think the spin off series only ran 3 episodes. The shows share some common ground: Logan’s Run was set in an apocalyptic future where there were no old people. Children of Men? Just the opposite. No young people. Does that mean that Children of Men will have the opposite luck when it comes to how long the series runs? Of course, not. That’s stupid. Besides, there’s that curse. Weren’t you listening?

Anyway, maybe I’m wrong. Anyone more optimistic about this show?

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Every once in awhile the media exalts some random celebrity to renaissance man status. Right now, that man is Justin Timberlake.

First, he was a successful boybander. Then, a hit solo artist. Then he turned up in a movie. It doesn’t matter that it was a rape fantasy soft core midget porn movie; it was still a movie!!

And now the Grammy winner is executive producer on a new show called My Problems With Women.

Wow. Is there anything this annoying, no-talent, scrawny piece of a shit can’t do?

He’s really got it all:

• Crying like a little bitch on Punk’d? Check!
• Satisfying his older lady fantasies with the only “beautiful” woman who bears a resemblance to Max Schmelling? Check!!
• Somehow capturing the look of BOTH redneck white trash and Orthodox Jew? Check!!!

Seriously, enough with this guy. Men will admit that Brad Pitt and George Clooney are attractive. Men don’t even mind that their girlfriends openly masturbate during Oceans 11. But I have yet to meet one dude who looked in the mirror and said, “Damn, I wish I looked more like the sniveling little brother of a bayou serial rapist.”

I’m not buying it. Timberlake is not Da Vinci. He’s just some dude. If he were taking your order at the McDonalds Drive Thru, you’d definitely double-check the bag before driving away. And you just KNOW, he’d totally forget the Sweet N’ Sour sauce you clearly asked for.

Am I wrong?

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Check out some more Gladstone over HERE. 

Well, the Oscars are over, and I have retroactively altered my opinions of films I saw in order to be popular. For example, I used to think the Juno screenplay was mildly charming, with moments of overwrought mugging. Now I think it’s a tender yet daring explosion of the teen romance genre.

But I still won’t back down about the terrible makeup in La Vie En Rose. Honestly, Academy, what were you thinking? Norbit was the clear choice, and you fucked up. Although I guess we all have the comfort of knowing Norbit was at least seriously considered for film’s highest honor.

As for the non-movies part of the show, it became pretty apparent that Jon Stewart is the perfect man to host a hastily-assembled Oscars, if only because he can take any unfunny joke, pause, laugh, shrug, and look at the camera as if to say “that wasn’t funny, and I’m sorry” and it’s totally saved.

Watch some Daily Show; he does it all the time. It’s one of six moves he has, alongside the “purposely terrible impression that’s reminiscent of an old Jewish comedian” and the “expressing political outrage via screaming at the heavens as if starring in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn.”

So now that all the statues are given out, all the awkward interviews are posted and all the American actors are wondering what the hell happened, have we learned anything? I, for one, learned that Daniel Day-Lewis wears bizarre hoop earrings, Joel and Ethan Coen are the most socially awkward filmmakers outside of Kubrick (post-mortem), and Javier Bardem likes showing off his Spanish. Hey Javier, I speak Spanish too and you don’t see me showing it off, comprehende?

As for the No Country sweep in general, I’m all for anything that further justifies my almost fetishistic love of The Hudsucker Proxy. But I’ve got to say I was a little surprised. There Will Be Blood was by all accounts an excellent film, and on top of that it had a natural advantage in that it didn’t aim to piss off the audience, whereas No Country spent its last forty minutes brazenly jerking you around and showing you what a pavlovian tool Hitchcockian suspense movies have made you.

All of which is weird for me to say, because I actually really liked it. But come on, you’ve got to admit there’s a point in that movie when you realize they’re not even going to show the final confrontation they’ve been methodically building to for an hour and a half and a little guy in your head stands up, walks out of the theater, and sets fire to the snack bar. And then the whole bit with the car accident happens, and the little guy in your head finds the theater manager and pisses on him for wasting his time. But, really, I liked it.

It just has to be appreciated on a level that’s a little harder to access than There Will Be Blood’s “if you try and act like God, God will fuck you.” Now there’s a message the whole family can enjoy. Especially the father.

Here’s hoping someone in the comments explains to me exactly why the structural choices made in the back half of No Country are symbolically sound, and not tantamount to the Coen brothers filming themselves wacking off. In the meantime, doesn’t this video lose all impact now that you know Tom Cruise is nuttier than a nut factory on Nut Day?

Seriously, I feel like I can look into his eyes and see the crazy crouched, ready, waiting for its moment to pounce on Cruise’s respectability and tear out its throat.

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When not blogging for Cracked, Michael makes Oscar-nominated short films as head writer and co-founder of Those Aren’t Muskets!

Monkey & Dog Doing Situps

I stumbled across this clip on YouTube after halfheartedly watching The Moment of Truth on FOX. Have you guys seen that one? It’s that lie detector show where people answer increasingly horrible questions and ruin their lives for the chance to win FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS. Why can’t we take a hint from Japan and start airing good old-fashioned entertainment again? You know - like a show where a dog helps a monkey do sit-ups. If they put that on FOX I would watch it dutifully every single week. They could call it Animal Magnetism… only that kind of makes it sound like they would be having sex with each other, which is a totally different kind of TV show. How about Spot Me!? If they named the dog Spot that one would be a double whammy.

I could see a monkey doing sit-ups with a bulldog holding his legs down on American TV, but to flip it around and have the BULLDOG (not) doing the sit-ups? That’s so insane it could only come from the brilliant mind of a Japanese television writer. I’d make some sort of bold statement like “Japanese television writers must all smoke crack!” but I have a feeling that most of them probably come from respectable families and come up with their ideas in drug-free workplaces, so scratch that one.

Which just got me thinking… I know this clip is from Japan, but do you think when Chinese people have a really late business meeting and their bosses say “I need you all to stick around,” do you think they say “Can we order American?” Food for thought.

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THRILLER - PEPSI COLA

Swaim: Thriller references never go out of style. Didn’t you see that YouTube video of those prisoners? Come to think of it, this commercial would have been better with a bunch of dancing CG Malaysian prisoners.

Wolinsky: Malaysian prisoners are inherently more entertaining than CG lizards. Don’t they teach that in advertising school?

Swaim: I think the implication here is that drinking Life Water can actually raise the dead.

Wolinsky: Bullshit. This was clearly the product of a cocaine-fueled brainstorming session. By 6:30 a.m. all they had on the whiteboard was “PEOPLE LIKE: 1.) Chicks 2.) CG Lizards 3.) Zombies.” They might be right, but this is still a conceptual nightmare.

Wolinsky: Also, why isn’t the CHICK a zombie?

Swaim: The lizard would have to bite her for that to happen, and lizard zombies are only attracted to lizard brains. I’m expecting some fanfic on this.

Wolinsky: Yeah, well, there’s no shortage of fan fiction… for THINGS THAT SUCK.

SPOT ON - GODADDY.COM

Swaim: To my knowledge, this is the first ever superbowl ad to go meta. If you won’t get behind something as fresh and groundbreaking as that, at least get behind the promise of pornography at the end.

Wolinsky: I can get behind the promise of internet pornography, but I’m more into dated pop culture references to “wardrobe malfunctions.”

Swaim: Sigh. Just watched the linked video at GoDaddy.com. No porn. But I DID find wider exposure and a great webspace at rock bottom pricing!

Wolinsky: Classic bait-and-switch. They reel you in with the porn, then they sell you a great hosting package.

Swaim: This is so exciting that I’m going to huddle around the computer with eight or nine of my closest friends, faces nearly touching, to read about it.

Wolinsky: Will it be an ethnically-diverse group of both males AND females? Oh, wait - these people are all white.

Swaim: Yeah, but at least they’ve got the lesbian demographic going. One step at a time, Ross. Next you’ll be wanting black people to fly.

Wolinsky: Let’s not get carried away.

(more…)

Awesome Video Of The Day

Fuck Guitar Hero

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when you and your friends had to learn how to play instruments and start a band if you wanted to rock out. These days we’ve got these so-called “rhythm games” instead, but there are some problems with them that people are starting to get fed up with. For example, don’t you kind of hate it how Guitar Hero and Rock Band pay REALLY close attention to what keys you’re pressing and when you’re pressing them? Aren’t you sick of how they give you incredibly precise & accurate scores based on your performance? Don’t you kind of wish you could have the playing-a-fake-guitar experience without actually having to learn how to play a fake guitar? I’ve heard the collective sigh of bored gamers, and, believe me, it’s not a pretty sound.

Can you describe a sound as “sweaty”? It sounds sweaty and asthmatic.

Thank God CES is this week, where Jada Toys has unveiled their new Air Guitar Rocker™. Created by a guy named “Nitrous Roxide,” the Air Guitar Rocker™ consists of a hip-mounted speaker and some sort of magnetized pick that lets you rock out to ten (count them - TEN) different riffs, eliminating the need for a guitar, a video game console, or any sort of regular social contact with other human beings. Because c’mon - who wants to play mind-bogglingly fun multiplayer video games when you can sit in your bedroom all alone with a little amp strapped to your hip, strumming “You Really Got Me” over and over again, weeping softly and cursing your cheap bastard parents for not buying you an Xbox 360.

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Wildcard!

Let’s Start A Farm!

So Yasgur’s Farm, site of the original Woodstock Festival, is currently for sale for the low, low price of $8,000,000. That’s a pretty big chunk of change, but if we can get enough people together to chip in, I think I have an idea that could make us all rich.

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For a few years now, highly influential opinion makers like Slate.com, Stephen King and myself have been wildly calling The Wire “the best show on TV,” and audiences have been wildly ignoring us. You’re statistically more likely to have read an article praising the The Wire than you are to have actually watched an episode. While this probably has something to do with its decision to focus on black characters who don’t speak in two to three word catch phrases, even I have to admit that it can be tough to get into. Over it’s four year run, which will culminate in a fifth and final season starting on Sunday, the show has unfurled more plot lines than a Dickens novel, and refused to tie any of them off into neat little bows like Dickens did.

That’s right TV viewing public, it’s less accessible than Dickens! Are you programming your Tivo yet?

This is where most articles of this sort would tell you that the show rewards your patience with characters that get under your skin. But that’s all been said before. What is really worth noting is the herculean effort it took me to turn a Wire primer into a Cracked-style update.

As the editor of Cracked.com, it is my duty to listify anything and everything. I have turned articles about great literature and hegemonic decline into lists. If Dante had submitted the Divine Comedy to me, I would have edited it into “The Top 9 Circles of Hell” complete with a YouTube clip of each level’s horror movie equivalent. But The Wire is so sprawling, and chock full of characters and plot strands that it presented a unique challenge.

After literally minutes of intense contemplation, I believe I’ve come up with a Wire primer that people might have read in a hypothetical universe where people actually care about The Wire. Behold…

The Top 4 Wire Theme Songs
One of the show’s many awesome quirks is that it uses a different interpretation of the same theme song over the opening credits of each season. In anticipation of the upcoming fifth, and final season, I’m going to take you through the theme songs for the first four, explaining what each represents about that season of the show, and ranking them from worst to best, because that’s the only way I know how to organize things (this is handy for editing a website, but could prove problematic when rearing children).

#4. Season Two

Gravelish croaking over spare instruments, Tom Waits’ version of his own song is the least listenable of the four versions, and wound up as the theme for arguably the least watchable season of the show. If Season One’s focus on the drug dealers was microeconomics, than Season Two was macro. It’s focus on the drugs’ movement through the ports required the show to shift focus from a bunch of hyper-intelligent drug dealers to a bunch of fat unionized Polish dock workers. But, Season Two is probably the most satisfying to watch beginning to end. Most of the dock workers’ character arcs are contained within the season, and it even has a twist ending that would make M Night Shamylyan poop his pants. I tried to come up with a way to say that Waits’ version is ultimately the most rewarding to listen to, but it’s not. It’s painful. The analogy between song and season will have to be imperfect.

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Here’s Jessica Sierra, performing the king of all lame metaphor songs “Total Eclipse of the Heart” on American Idol in 2005:

Now here she is three days ago, right after getting arrested for fighting with three cops outside a club in Tampa:

Besides her radical, Madonna-esque reinvention as a meth-chic diva, how has Sierra helped nurture her stellar career in the music industry? Well, there was the obligatory sex tape, complete with yet another photo (right) that I’m sure has a special place on the Sierra family’s mantle.

Alright kids, who wants to watch that have sex?! See, when I watch it, it’s research for an article. When you people do it, it’s sick.

But the thing that elevates Jessica far above your average, ordinary self-destructing non-celebrity is contained in the last sentence of the AP article covering her most recent arrest:

“She entered a California rehab facility in July that was to be documented on VH1’s reality show “Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew” next year.”

The woman, or rather the Producer maliciously filming her unstoppable downward spiral to fill a couple hours in VH1’s programming schedule, is a marketing genius. After all, the only thing we like better than watching another human being elevated above the common throng and singled out by Paula Abdul for their extraordinary talent is watching someone ground so thoroughly under God’s boot heel (God has a Western thing) that this happens to them:

In related news, look for these exciting reality shows on VH1 next season!

TMZ TV: Paris Hilton Cries for Twenty-two Minutes

The Anna Nicole Show: Tasteless Death Clips Edition

Flava of Prostate Cancer

My Super Sweet Secret Abortion

I Love New York 8: Cold and Alone

Hogan Knows the Pain of a Failed Marriage