And now, Bookshelf Q. Battler, one of the greatest minds of the Twenty-First Century (although hey, it’s still young) will share his great musings…
#1 – Once a fart exits the butt, does it still exist?
#2 – Fur is like a coat for a dog, except it does not include a zipper or buttons and cannot be taken off.
#3 – I’m not sure why cereal is considered a breakfast treat. I enjoy it at any time of the day or night.
#4 – Sometimes, when I see a hamster running around a wheel, I want tell the little guy to stop running, because the joke’s on him…but then the more I think about it, the joke’s probably on me.
#5 – We can put a man on the moon but we can’t devise a cure for crotch rot.
#6 – Rulers in America are always 12 inches long.
#7 – Couches are good for sitting.
#8 – Pressed for time? Start a film at the last five minute mark and save yourself two hours.
#9 – Well, those bastards at the post office raised stamp prices again.
#10 – Soy sauce, like most sauces, can be put on any food, but the key to deciding whether or not you want soy sauce to be on your food is to a) imagine what the food tastes like b) imagine what the food would taste like with soy sauce on it and then c) decide whether or not that would taste good before proceeding with the squeezing of the soy sauce packet onto the piece of food in question.
#11 – I’ve never met a bagel that couldn’t be improved by cream cheese.
#12 – Coffee helps you wake up in the morning.
#13 – I’ve found that whenever I’m sick to the point of vomiting, it’s always good to stay take a sick day from work. Otherwise, you might vomit on your co-workers and boy howdy, will that ever put a bee in their bonnets.
#14 – Bermuda is a better country to visit than North Korea. If your travel agent gives you a choice between visiting Bermuda or North Korea, pick Bermuda.
#15 – When your feet are cold, it’s time to slip on your socks.
#16 – Space is enormous. You can fit a lot in there.
#17 – When it comes to sticking your head in a velociraptor’s mouth, I’m against it.
#18 – Nazis are history’s dick cheeseburgers with extra turd sauce.
#19 – Music is a symphony for the ears.
#20 – Whenever I need a good laugh, I remember that Kirk Cameron’s best friend on “Growing Pains” was named “Boner.”
#21 – I visited Muncie, Indiana once. It was OK. There are worse places to be and there are better places to be.
#22 – Skunks are just smelly rats.
#23 – Why are pineapples called “pineapples?” They don’t come from pine trees. Some ancient tree scientist somewhere really screwed the pooch on that one.
#24 – One day, a dog and a cat will fall so madly in love that they will fornicate. When that happens, an everlasting world peace will not be far behind.
#25 – It has been my experience that when an electrical appliance requires power in order to function, the best action to take is to take the plug attached to the aforementioned appliance and insert it into a wall socket. Consult a fully bonded, licensed and insure electrician for more information.
This is pretty much a standard “big misunderstanding” comedy. Max and Annie (Justin Bateman and the ever boner inducing Rachel McAdams) host weekly game nights, where the couples they are friends with (Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury as Kevin and Michelle; Billy Magnusson and as Ryan and Sharon Horgan as Sarah) play the classics – Pictionary, Risk, Clue, charades, trivia and so on.
On one fateful night, Max’s brother, Brooks (Kyle Chandler) joins in on the fun. Max feels threatened as Brooks has always been more confident, charming and successful than he could hope to be.
Always the over achiever, Max kicks game night up a notch. He hires a murder mystery acting troupe to stage a fake kidnapping – a caper that the game night posse will have to solve.
Naturally…dun dun dun…a real kidnapping occurs before the fake kidnappers arrive and the gang will have to bungle their way through the movie, thinking that everything and everyone they encounter next is one great, big elaborate joke even though they are all in extreme danger.
Bateman and McAdams are well-preserved, convincing me they are a young couple trying to have a baby even though the expiration date sticker on that proverbial milk carton – if it hasn’t fallen off yet, is definitely starting to peel. McAdams remains one of my favorite, all-time actress crushes and if she ever wants to marry the owner of a blog that is only read by 3.5 readers she should have her people contact my people.
Morris and Bunbury are a cute young African American couple, attempting to navigate through the mystery gone bad while having an ongoing argument (early on it is revealed Bunbury’s character once slept with a celebrity and Morris is beside himself over this.)
As for Magnusson and Horgan…the joke here is that Magnusson is a wayward, studly womanizer who just runs through women like water, bringing another ditzy bimbo to game night every week. On this particular game night, he brings a higher quality, more intelligent woman and we wonder if this means Ryan will get over his pervy ways to grab a winner…and sadly, SPOILER ALERT…we are left to wonder as this part of the plot is left to flap in the breeze.
Meanwhile, Jesse Plemons banks on the creepiness he displayed in “Breaking Bad,” here as a creepy neighbor who has been ex-communicated from game night, but it makes him very displeased, as he wants back in.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. We’re in a time period where comedy is dying, but Hollywood made a pretty standard fun time here. It’s not a gutbuster, but there are a few good laughable moments. It’s a good time, there is some good action and there is a pretty awesome scene where the gang runs around the mansion trying to outrun baddies while catching a MacGuffin and it appears from my untrained eye that it was all filmed in one take – impressive given all the moving parts in the scene. Worth a rental.
I am an avid news watcher and this is a strange phenomenon that happens often.
The news anchor will say, “Up next, a female teacher has been convicted of molesting a student…”
I immediately think, “Oh God, I bet she’s an ugly, hideous beast if she was chasing kids around…”
So then the commercials play and they show the teacher and like sometimes it’s a hideous beast but more often than not it’s like a hot chick who could just get any dude she wants so why she chases after students makes no sense.
Don’t get me wrong. Any adult who molests a kid is an insane pervert psychopath who should be thrown in a dungeon and hanged upside down by their feet and given daily horse whippings…I’m just saying I don’t understand why the hot women just don’t like, go to a bar or just put their head out the window and yell, “I’m a hot chick!” and wait five minutes for 50 men to show up.
Custard. I actually like custard a lot and it’s sad you don’t see it as much as you should.
Strawberry
Shepherd’s pie
Apple pie
To the best of my knowledge, these are the types of pie that I like. I cannot think of any other kinds of pie that I like at this time, though this is not an exclusive list. What kind of pie do you like?
Believe it or not, this is the first time I’ve ever reviewed a music video on this exceptional blog. Perhaps it could be the start of a trend.
Actor/comedian Donald Glover was the funniest part of NBC’s “Community,” but for years, he’s rapped under the moniker, “Childish Gambino.” As rappers go, I thought he was ok, he had some skills but never really blew any wind up my proverbial skirt until now.
Although it isn’t for the squeamish, his new video “This is America” is worth a watch, and maybe even a couple watches just to pick up all the hidden and/or double meanings. He’s definitely lit up the Internet, getting people talking and there are all sorts of theories about what he’s trying to say.
I’ll give my two cents though I admit up front I could be entirely wrong in my interpretation:
#1 – On a surface level, it’s a psyche out. It begins as though he’s going to sing a happy song, something lively and fun in the wheelhouse of Pharell’s “Happy.” But then it turns dark. Ever so nonchalantly, Gambino blows away a man seated in a chair with a bag over his head.
The tone of the song goes from happy tune to hardcore rap…and yet, ironically, Gambino and a gaggle of young students in school uniforms proceed to dance happily, as though the happy music was still playing.
This happens a second time, when the happy music starts up again, then Gambino machine guns a church choir, then the hardcore rap plays yet he and company dance happily to the hardcore beat.
The casual, non-introspective viewer will think this is just a bait and switch, get you to look left while you get walloped with a right hook you weren’t suspecting. But there’s much more.
#2 – Obviously, gun violence is a major theme. One thought I had is that the first shooting was a street crime style shooting. As the dancing goes on in the foreground, a small amount of people freak out and run around in the background.
Meanwhile, the second shooting was an act of terrorism, and tons of people freak out and run around in the background. I could be stretching here but it dawned on me that people freak out when a lot of people are shot at once in a mass shooting and they demand that something be done to stop mass shootings. Yet, individuals are shot in criminal i.e. (you crossed me or you got something I want) style shootings and the public doesn’t respond with equal alarm, even though if you add those individual shootings up, the numbers get high.
Both types of shootings need to be solved, stopped, prevented.
#3 – The choir scene is clearly a reference to the Charlestown church shooting where 9 black worshippers were gunned down by a white supremacist. And I think Gambino was trying to make a point in how quickly and casually he was able to wipe out a whole choir, cutting a large group of people down as easily as how a hot knife would go through butter, perhaps trying to make us rethink the idea of letting the average person wield a device that carries so much power.
#4 – Dancing happily amidst tragedy = the general public seeks constant entertainment and distraction. We sort of know that these shootings are going on, maybe we heard about them on the noise or something, we care for a little bit and then…ooohh, hey! What’s that new song? Time to dance to this new beat! We’re easily distracted and should be taking the time we put into entertaining ourselves with pop culture and putting it into solving society’s ill, gun violence in particular.
#5 – We celebrate black pop culture and black entertainers in particular…the music, the dancing and so on…and yet, are we doing enough to help inner city African Americans who suffer all day? Do we only care about African Americans who can sing and dance but not about those who live in downtrodden neighborhoods who just want to get through their day without becoming the next victim?
I don’t know. Those are some of my observations. Could be wrong. I don’t know if he has done it yet, but would love it if Glover would come out and spoon feed us what he was trying to say.
It’s a joke as old as “Why did the chicken cross the road?”
You get in an elevator, someone asks what button you want them to push, and you say, “Women’s lingerie.”
It harkens back to the old days, the 1940s and 50s when there were big city department stores with elevators and operators who would shout out the floor being stopped on, “First Floor, Dinner Ware…Second Floor, Hardware…”
Basically, you think of something funny that could be on that floor and usually the funniest is “Women’s lingerie.”
Apparently, this joke was told at a professor’s educational conference. A female professor offered to hit buttons for those on the elevator and when asked which button he wanted pushed, a male professor joked, “Women’s lingerie.”
Smartest joke to make in today’s ultra-PC environment? Probably not.
Worth ruining his career over? Absolutely not.
Come on, people.
Here’s the thing about the #metoo movement. I know, an evil owner of a penis daring to mansplain about women issues. The dreaded patriarchy strikes again.
But seriously. While it’s great women are finding justice for inappropriate activities that otherwise would never have been heard about….it’s pretty ridiculous to string this guy up for making one of the oldest jokes in the world.
Let’s have some common sense. Let’s use our brains. Let’s be rational and reasonable. You cannot, you just cannot, absolutely cannot take this man who was a professor for many decades, who makes a silly joke that millions have made for decades and lump him in with the likes of Harvey “Casting Couch” Weinstein, Matt “I Can Lock My Office from My Desk” Lauer and Bill “Slip ‘Em a Mickey” Cosby.
Sorry. You just can’t.
I agree #metoo is, on the whole, a good thing that will clean out a lot of bad dudes from the world’s proverbial closet.
But just as it is important to recognize valid claims, so to is it important to call out bogus claims and to tell the people who make them these claims are dumb.
I’m sorry…but this claim is dumb.
3.5 READERS: “Oh you evil man, how dare you tell this woman how to feel…”
My penis doesn’t prohibit me from having opinions…just as vagina ownership has not kept women from sharing their opinions with me…and boy howdy, do they know how to share them. I haven’t met a woman who was shy about that, let me tell you.
This is just silly. It’s the rush to offense culture run amuck.
Further, I think the male professor should file his own complaint. Hey Professor, if you happen to be one of my 3.5 readers, I wrote your counter-complaint for you:
I was outraged when the female professor assumed that I was asking to be led towards women’s lingerie out of some misguided belief that there was an underlying, inappropriate sexual connotation. In actuality, I like to wear women’s lingerie and shame on this person for not realizing that the lingerie was for me!
Yikes. Now there’s a cross complaint that would make the academic world’s explode.
Comedy is dying. It just is. Pretty soon, they’ll be coming after the chicken joke. Animal rights activists will say it is none of your business why the chicken crossed the road because whatever the chicken was doing, it was between him and who or whatever was on the other side, so how dare you butt your nose in where it doesn’t belong?
On another note, it’s time to take a good, hard look at colleges, what courses are being offered, whether anything these navel gazers who can’t even think critically about a silly joke are worth the tens of thousands of dollars that students have to borrow.
Sigh. In high school, I knew all these kids who became plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc. They skipped the navel gazing and they make bank. Idiot that I am, I signed up for the navel gazing and all I have to show for it is copious debt and this blog that is only read by 3.5 people.
You have a choice, 3.5 readers. You can take the blue pill and wake up, forget that you ever read this pitiful blog, or you can take the red pill and see how far down the rabbit hole this terrible blog goes.
What? You took the red pill? What the hell is wrong with you?
I first saw this movie in the theater when it came out in the summer of 1999. At the time, everyone I knew who saw it thought it was the dumbest movie they’d ever seen. I, on the other hand, thought it was special, unique, different – a science fiction film that didn’t involve space, or clichés, or wasn’t derivative, something that was brand spanking new. The Wachowski (then brothers, now sisters) had invented a whole new world that built off itself and it was intriguing.
Plus, the special effects alone made it worth watching. The slowed down, 360 kicks, spins, the “bullet time” slow motion where characters dodge bullets, all set the standard for other flicks to follow. It holds up today, and looks like something that Hollywood’s best FX gurus could have made yesterday.
The plot for the uninitiated – Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) lives a lonely, forlorn life as an office drone for a tech company, hopelessly searching for meaning and finding none, even while he stays up all night exercising his hacking skills and surfing the Internet. It was 1999, so people still thought they might find meaning on the Internet, rather than just the giant reserve of pornography and cat videos it is today (and to be honest, was kind of back then too, just a lot grainier and slower…still if you were willing to wait 12 hours, you might get ten seconds of exceptionally slow, grainy, not worth watching cat footage.)
Impressed with his hacking skills, Thomas, who takes the name “Neo,” is recruited by Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne in perhaps the most memorable role of his career) and his band of rebels, including Trinity (Carrie Ann Moss), Cipher (Joe Pantagliano) and some others who weren’t that famous so, you know, moving on…
Neo is let in on a big secret. The world as we know it is not a world at all. It is a computer program, dubbed “The Matrix.” The machines have won, they have enslaved humanity by putting them to sleep and hooking up to an array of cords that turn them into living batteries that give the machines energy. To keep the humans docile, their minds are hooked up to an alternate reality program that makes them believe they are living actual lives in an artificial world.
Those, like Morpheus et. al., who realize the world is fake, know that the world’s rules can be broken. They can load their brains up with all kinds of survival training, i.e. kung fu, weapons training, etc. They can run up walls, fire guns with great precision and do incredible kicks where they launch into the air and time stops as they connect their foot to an opponent’s face.
The villain of the film is Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), a cold, calculating computer program who takes the appearance of a stern Federal agent. I think Agent Smith is one of the more underrated baddies of sci fi film history. Darth Vader might come at you like a honey badger on crack, but Agent Smith will, with his monotone, almost school marmish style, lecture you into believing that all hope is lost and that the best option is to give in, and frankly, he is very convincing. He’s every mean adult you met when you were growing up who told you the rules matter and you better drop your pie in the sky dreams this instant.
It’s funny how you learn as you get older and can watch movies and understand them more. At 20, I thought this was a fun movie. At almost 40, I realize it’s double meaning. Life is “the Matrix” and we often find ourselves weighed down by all these rules that keep us from doing what we want. “You can’t do this because of XYZ.”
“The Matrix” can mean a lot of different things to different people. “Taking the red pill” has become part of the cultural language now. I’ve heard people use that phrase in a variety of contexts, including people on both sides of the political aisle trying to convert others to their way of thinking.
Basically, there’s who you are and who you would like to be and if you stick with the life that makes you unhappy, you’re like Cipher, who decides “ignorance is bliss” and wants to stay in the Matrix because living under the imposed rules is better than going it alone. And in truth, to break the rules will lead to a period of suffering. Morpheus and company, by freeing their minds from the Matrix, do enjoy special powers when they return to the Matrix, but when they are out of it, they live in a harsh reality, one where the few surviving humans live in underground tunnels, eat gruel, and are constantly hunted by the machines.
Thus, if you stop following the rules, your life will be hard for awhile. People will make fun of you, not want to talk to you, you might suffer in a variety of ways, but eventually (hopefully) you’ll master your new life and become the sunglass wearing, black coat wearing kung fu master you were meant to be.
Again, “The Matrix” could be an allegory for whatever it is in your life that is standing between you and what you want. And it’s entirely possible that you might try to break out of the Matrix and fail. In the film, the rule is that if you die in the Matrix, you die in real life, because the body can’t live without the mind….and thus, if we think about real life, it is entirely possible that we might break the rules, suffer, and then succumb to suffering. Maybe Morpheus is right and it is better to live free and suffer than to live a lie. Maybe Cipher is right and it is better to live as a dupe and follow the rules rather than live in a cave and eat gruel.
Ironically, I assume that the Wachowskis broke out of their own personal Matrix by becoming sisters instead of brothers. But again, the Matrix can be adapted to whatever beliefs you have and whatever you think is standing between you and becoming who you want to be.
The film holds up. Although there are some late 1990s things that aren’t around today (the rebels in the Matrix talk to their friends in reality via big cell phones and must seek out a hard line or a telephone booth to get back to reality), the key is that the machines made the Matrix so that the world perpetually remains 1999 forever, even though in reality, it is 2199.
So technically, Hollywood could remake this and set it in 1999 and it would hold up with the film’s rules, though I hope they don’t. To be honest, this film was unique unto itself. The sequels that came out almost back to back in 2003 felt like cash grabs and to me, aren’t that memorable. The second is better than the third though.
STATUS: Worth a rental, or sometimes I even see it playing on cable so you might find it for free.
Bookshelf Battle 