Some people say the world will end in fire. Some people say it will end in ice. I say it will end when the man from the Goatse photo bends over at a particular angle in front of the sun, and the exposure to such a massive black hole causes the sun to collapse in on itself.

And he’s not blameless, either! He knows the terrible power he wields. He gets off on it! Probably not as much as he gets off on having people look at his cavernous rear end, but he definitely gets enjoyment out of it.

He discovered his power late one night as he was getting a midnight snack, and bent over in front an open refrigerator, causing a bottle of Sunny Delight to implode! (A nearby bottle of purple stuff was unaffected.) That was when he realized the thermodynamic devastation he could cause on the sun, and on products with suns in their logos.

To test his theory, he bent over in front of a box of Raisin Bran cereal, causing Sunny the Raisin Bran Sun to go supernova and lose his grip on the two scoops of raisins he’s been holding on to all these years. Though I guess if you’re an exploding star, holding on to raisins is pretty low on your list of raisins. I actually meant to type “priorities” but wrote “raisins” instead. And then I laughed at the idea of a list of raisins, so I kept it in.

You know who would be at the top of my list of raisins? The California Raisins, no doubt about it. On second thought, what kind of list is this? Is it a list of my enemies? Have the California Raisins aligned against me? Even you, sunglasses-wearing raisin riding a skateboard? And you, sunglasses-wearing raisin playing the saxophone?

Why did the California Raisins need so many pairs of sunglasses? The sun has already had its way with them. Not sexually. But that’s how raisins are made, by drying grapes in the sun. Maybe California Raisins are created when the sun has had sex with a grape. That’s why they have such cool attitudes, because they’re sexually satisfied.

And this explains why the man from the Goatse photo has decided to destroy the sun. He’s jealous! Why won’t the sun have sex with him? He even rented an enormous Fruit of the Loom grape costume! I’ll tell you why, Goatse man. Because like a gentleman who refuses to date a woman with fake breasts, the sun doesn’t go for no fake grapes.

What I’m getting at, man in the Goatse photo, is be true to yourself- and to your outstretched sphincter. You don’t need to change who you are to please other people. So often, we try to fill the hole inside ourselves with the approval or affection of others. But sometimes the hole inside of us is what sets us apart and makes us special.

We are not only defined by what is present inside, but also what is absent. Look inside yourself, man from the Goatse photo. The rest of us have, regrettably. I think you’ll like what you don’t find.

I’m walking up to the Kentucky Derby gates. A man is selling bootleg T-shirts that read, “I Beat The Pussy Up!”. If you’re going to buy one pussy-centric shirt on your way to the horse race billed as “The Most Important Two Minutes In Sports History”, I don’t think you’re going to find a better offering, unless Cat Fancy Magazine sells shirts at the Derby. Cat Fancy Magazine, you really dropped the ball on this one. And batted it around a little. Next year, I think the T-shirt guy should aim higher, with an “I Beat The Pussy Up!” seersucker suit. He could also sell it to local productions of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s never too late for a more modern take on Atticus Finch.

Men at the Derby are dressed in classic blazers, Madras jackets, Bermuda Pink polos, and sock-less loafers. ‘Finally,’ I think to myself, ‘The Kentucky Derby has provided an opportunity for all the bullies from 80′s movies to get together at one event.’ One of my friends is wearing overalls, in the spirit of Kentucky, or more specifically, the spirit of the common rabble of the Kentucky Derby infield. A man in a sport coat sees him, turns to his companion and says, “See! There are rednecks here!”

I’m standing in line, waiting to place a bet. An older woman with leathery skin and a husky smoker’s voice approaches me and says, “Let me get some of that white shit.” Not without a hefty stud fee, madam. She points at my suntan lotion. I squeeze lotion into her hands while her shirtless redneck husband looks on wordlessly. Is this what middle-aged swinging is like? If only the bootleg T-shirt salesman could see me now! Or Harper Lee. One or the other. The Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird or the man hawking “I Beat The Pussy Up!” shirts at The Kentucky Derby are both equal in the eyes of the dangerously tanned woman into whose palms I’m pouring a generous amount of lotion.

A beautiful blonde with freckled shoulders walks by and gives the redneck a distasteful look. She scowls and says, “Ugh. Disgusting. You need to put a shirt on.” The redneck looks stunned. He finally retorts, “You need to take your shirt off, bitch!” But it’s too late. She’s already disappeared into the crowd, like the Lady of the Lake diving into the water after handing a potbellied King Arthur the Excalibur of random insults. And me his Merlin, looking for a place to set my used Gatorade bottle down.

I sip a mint julep from a glass with the name of every horse that’s ever won the Kentucky Derby written on it. A lovely girl standing near the Port-A-Potties repeatedly hikes up her dress, showing everyone her underwear. In my distraction, I set my glass down and forget to take it with me before I finish reading all the horses’ names. Sorry, winning horses. There’s just no competing with being flashed by a drunk lady, which is why very few poetry readings share the stage with wet T-shirt contests. Later, I see a woman who has tucked her souvenir mint julep Derby glass between her breasts. Well played, Kentucky-Derby-winning horses. But I’m still not reading the list of your names.

I meet a man and woman from West Virginia. “Oh, that’s where the Fresh Prince is from.” I say, drunkenly. “In West Virginia, born and raised.” I have had a lot of bourbon and mint juleps by this point. “I think the Fresh Prince is from Philadelphia.” says the woman. My mistake. It was probably the cabbie with the license plate that said “Fresh”, whom Will Smith promised to smell later, that was from West Virginia.

I’m waiting in line for a beer. A drunk white guy in a backwards hat leans over the beer counter and says to no one in particular, “White bread…white bread… this place is too white bread!” Presumably he had just left the stables, where he’d been crying, “Horses…horses… this place has too many horses!” You tell em’, white bread. They say all it takes is one disgruntled end piece to take down the whole loaf.

I pass a girl wearing Frida Kahlo earrings. I bet Frida Kahlo would have never tucked a mint julep between her breasts. Come to think of it, I’m not sure what famous women artists keep between their breasts. Lockets containing pictures of their muse, probably. Ladies, might I recommend having “I Beat The Pussy Up!” engraved on your muse lockets? To keep them close to your heart. Your heart’s pussy, I mean. Which is to say, the metaphorical cat that lives in all of our hearts, and gives us artistic inspiration with his enchanted whiskers.

I’m waiting for the race to start. I see a man in nothing but a bow tie and jeans examining his betting slip. He looks like a Chippendales dancer. I hope he wins big on the ponies. Or at the very least, I hope when he gets back to his job as a male stripper, he gets lots of tips as he gives lap-dances to Ginuwine’s “Pony”. A lap-dance set to the song “Pony”, not a lap-dance given to an actual miniature horse owned by Ginuwine. I’m pleased to report that horse-human lap-dance societal barriers remain firmly in place.

The race begins! Everyone is jumping up in the air and yelling, holding their betting slips. I’m jumping and yelling, too. Go, you goddam horses! Run like the West Virginian Fresh Prince ran from those guys at the basketball court that were up to no good! My horse comes in second, and I win forty dollars. See you on next year’s mint julep glass, winning horse, presumably in someone’s cleavage.

I’m stuck in a huge crowd of people leaving the Derby. Someone passes cookies around. A woman next to me puts a cookie in the mouth of the bare-chested man behind her. See, that’s how you treat men who aren’t wearing shirts at the Derby. You feed them a cookie! Be careful, though. If you feed a mouse a cookie, he will want a glass of milk. If you feed a shirtless guy at the Kentucky Derby a cookie, he will want you to show him your boobs. Like a drunken, sunburned horny mouse. That’s what mice are all about! They love softcore public nudity. Which is why I bait my mouse traps with vintage pin-ups and dirty playing cards. Wait, am I trying to catch a mouse or someone’s grandfather?

The crowd bottlenecks into a tunnel. Everyone is hot and sweaty and tired. The crowd chants “USA! USA! USA!” A man inside the tunnel plays the national anthem on a saxophone. A girl walking next to me says, “God! I wish everybody would just move!” Then she pauses, looks up at her boyfriend and says, “Sorry. I’m being a bitch.” Correction, young lady. You’re being a patriotic bitch.

On the way to the car, I see the T-shirt guy again. He’s now selling shirts that say, “If You Ain’t Here To Party, Take Your Bitch Ass Home!!” I take the T-shirt’s advice, and take my bitch ass home.

D: This film will not be a monetary success. Far from it, in fact. I’ll hazard a guess that it rips in and out of theaters in under six days, and was only produced to absolve someone at Touchstone from imprisonment-level trouble with the IRS. That said, Step Up: Revolution has the distinct, nutty essence of a blockbuster. Literally. You see, the gyrating stars of our tale are enthusiastic young turks who glisten with permanent gym dew and a sexual gravity weighty enough to send even the Pope’s pants quickly to his ankles. Their mission (er, cause for “revolution”) is to halt a block-busting mega-hotel construction (and presumably, the destruction of their native dancing-coitus-robot breeding grounds) through a series of protest-themed flash mobs. Never in the history of this franchise has the need for organized public disturbance seemed so dire.

J: Any movie with this many disparate elements all randomly jammed together just has to succeed. And Step Up: Revolution has…EVERYTHING! Bouncing cars. Bouncing body-bits. Internet fads that are 100% totally still relevant today, not just three years ago when somebody pitched this movie to the studio. And the anti-corporate social message and the romance (read “basic cable PG-13 sweatiness”) and what promises to be the defining musical-dance-fight scene of the Auto-Tune Age–dare I say the best musical-dance-fight scene since MJ’s “Beat It?” It’s like The Fast and the Furious meets Flashdance meets Footloose meets The Goonies meets West Side Story meets Occupy Wall Street all thrown in a blender and put up on YouTube. Hey real estate development industry, you just got served!

But it’s not about the money, it’s about the message…that dancing is not a crime! Large, choreographed, unpermitted, traffic-blocking street parties are not a crime! Well, okay, technically they are, but then again I’m no longer a young turk, and my days of protest-dancing in the mean streets of beachfront Miami are long gone.

D: Additionally, any capitalist worth his salt will identify the sharp anti-business angle forcibly shoehorned into an otherwise cuddly, Grease-ish plot. Stop development? Of a mixed-use hotel complex? In a neighborhood whose main export appears to be umbrella’d cocktails and the protracted pelvis wigglin’ of hardbodies? In this economy? For shame! Maybe the latte-sipping writers of this potential monstrosity see job creation as a bad thing, and actually prefer the orchestration of simulated coitus to community growth and property value appreciation. You are right to compare it with Footloose. But that film’s Rev. Shaw Moore waged a crusade against the unholiness of dance itself, and its effect on humanity’s private parts. In our case, the minds behind Step Up: Revolution expect us to grapple with dance’s effect on private enterprise. As an American, I refuse.

J: Dan, you’re making a mistake! Can’t you see that rich white dude Peter Gallagher is THE BAD GUY? Didn’t you see Sex, Lies, and Videotape? (Note to hardbodies: if you can find that videotape, you can blackmail Peter Gallagher and save the neighborhood!) I mean, I enjoy a beachfront timeshare as much as the next Caucasian, but it makes me uncomfortable cheering for uber-white corporate goons against the United Colors of Benetton dancers, aka The Mob™ and their slickly branded riot shields.

Even worse, the forces of private enterprise have deployed pop-n-lock cops who look suspiciously like T-1000 liquid metal robots from Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Also bad!

At the very least, I hope we can agree that the plucky heroine of The Mob™ has the best pull quote from the trailer, “Enough with performance art!”

D: Agreed — and in light of our leading lady’s dismissal of “performance art”, the trajectory of the entire Step Up series becomes clear, allowing us to conclusively predict the final film and eventual payoff: Step Up 5: Rioting & Looting. Having defeated increasingly nefarious villainy in the first four installments (the expectations of a stuffy art school director, the stigma of prancing street gangs, two-dimensionality, and Big Lodging, respectively), the gyrating gaggle turn their rhythmic crosshairs on SOCIETY ITSELF. As they’re no longer able to sway public sentiment with their heart-warming chutzpah, The Mob™ abandon both the synchronization and artistry of dance in favor of a more direct, less rehearsed activity known as complete chaos. Without conceding too many spoilers, SU5: Rioting & Looting ends with the troupe dead, much of South Florida a smoking crater, and millions of impressionable movie-going teens texting each other, “OMG, have u heard of rioting???”

J: OMG indeed! Thanks for distilling the arc of the Step Up franchise; previously I had assumed this was a film adaptation of the Dance Dance Revolution video game.

Personally, I am all for abandoning the synchronization and artistry of dance. I mean, dancing is fine, but like many other bodily functions, I don’t want to pay to see people doing it. Am I impressed when stilts-guy does a flip? Yes. Do I want to see the entire plot of a movie danced out before my very eyes? No. Certainly a wide range of emotions and actions can be expressed through dance, but the same can be said of emoticons and mime [shudder].

But I guess dancing is all that these kids have going for them. Cutting straight to the crisis of identity at the heart of the movie, chief dance-boy says this about The Mob’s increasingly desperate shenanigans: “It’s like us saying, ‘Listen up–we exist.’” But when we see the gyrating gaggle cluster around an iPhone to check their “twenty thousand hits,” it’s obvious that their entire existence consists of cell phone videos posted on the internet. Nobody watches their flashmob antics save through a cameraphone lens. Are we witnessing the death of live performance in this scene? The evolution of cinema? The rebirth of Existentialism?

Step Up: Revolution has much to teach us, and I pray that we as a post-postmodern society can put down our smartphones long enough to learn. But we’ll have to hurry, because Dan’s right–there is no way this ridiculous movie is going to last more than a week in theaters.

This is a Zippo lighter I received as a gift in 1997. It says “Love Colleen and Becky” on it. I’ve always been bothered by the lack of a comma. The intended message is, “Love, Colleen and Becky.” Like, “Hey, we love you. We got you this gift. You can light your cigarettes with it. Or commit arson. Hope you burn all the buildings you hate to the ground. Love, Colleen and Becky.’”

But due to the lack of a comma, I’ve always read it as more of a command. “Love Colleen and Becky! Do it! I’m a Zippo lighter, and I’m telling you to set aside love in your heart for your two best friends from college!” And I’m like, “No problem, lighter.”

I guess I could get a comma engraved on it. That would be a little fussy, though, wouldn’t it? Getting anything engraved is a very Frasier Crane thing to do. Nobody’s going to think you’re a badass for getting your initials etched into the back of your iPad. Although if you got “I’m a badass” engraved on the back of your iPad, that amount of self-contradiction would cause the iPad to implode, leaving behind a perfect tear in the fabric of reality. I stand by my “Frasier Crane is a badass” iPhone case, however.

I suppose I should mention that Colleen died suddenly of a blood clot from dental surgery, a few days after she and Becky had this lighter engraved for me. I should also point out that I haven’t spoken to Becky in years, and can’t find any trace of her on Facebook or Google. So, this Zippo lighter is all I have to remember them by.

I remember Colleen and Becky and I were inseparable my freshman year of college. Colleen and I used to make fun of my ridiculous roommate, who had covered our entire dorm room in comic book posters, so the last thing I saw before I went to sleep was a web-slinging Spider-man. Then again, I’d hung a vinyl copy of Jimmy Buffett’s live double album “You Had To Be There” over my own bunk bed, so I had no room to critisize. At least Spider-man can produce webbing from his wrists. All Jimmy Buffett can produce from his wrists is margarita mix and a spring-loaded knife.

I remember Becky and I briefly dated, which was mostly us doing Billy Bob Thornton from Slingblade impressions at each other and riding around listening to Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic” album. There is no more solid a foundation for a relationship to be built upon than on the bricks of pretending to be a mentally impaired man with a love of french fried potaters and rapping along to a young Snoop Dogg telling Eazy-E to eat a fat dick.

I remember Colleen had a very distinctive laugh that sounded the way I’d imagine an adult Lucy laughs at Charlie Brown, after finding his OkCupid login and reading his earnest, melancholy messages to red-headed women in his area. In fact, the last night I saw Colleen, she was sitting in the audience of a play I was directing, and I could hear her laughter all the way from backstage. I will never forget the sound of her laughter, and I will never forgive her for ruining my play.

That would be something, right? If you thought I was doing this whole big sentimental thing about my long lost friends, and it turned out I was just here to air a grievance. Like I wanted to let everybody know I was still mad at her for laughing during my play. That would be quite a commitment to the theater on my part. Anyway, I hope she went to the heaven for people who can’t stay quiet during plays.

That seems like an oddly specific thing to make an entirely separate heaven for. But I’m not a heaven city planner or anything, so what do I know? Had you already guessed that? That I’m not in charge of building and planning heavenly kingdoms? Let me be the first to confirm, your suspicions are correct.

There is a scene in the Steven Spielberg/Stanley Kubrick movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence in which Jude Law’s robotic gigolo is about to be executed for a crime he didn’t commit, and he says to Haley Joel Osment’s robotic Pinnochio stand-in, “I am…I was.” Now, what he was getting at is, “I was here. We were friends. I want you to know that I existed, and to a lesser extent, that I had sex with human women.” Not to compare my old friends Colleen and Becky to a robotic male prostitute, but by giving me this lighter, they sent a similar message. They Jude Lawed me, if you will. Or Haley Joel Osmented me. Not sure which side of the conversation between two fictional robots I’m on. If I had to choose, they were pretty much the Jude Law in this scenario.

For me, this lighter is like an umbilical cord to 1997. That’s right, babies. You thought you had a monopoly on umbilical cords? Not the metaphorical ones. But yes, physical umbilical cords are still the province of babies. Anyway, this lighter helps me keep a physical and emotional connection to that time in my life, and to my two good friends, who I miss very much. I will have this lighter until the day that I die, presumably while telling Haley Joel Osment how many human women I’ve had sex with.

Friends will come in and out of your life. Most of the time, you don’t get to choose how they leave. If you are lucky, they will leave something behind that becomes an integral part of you. In this case of my friendship with these two girls, they left behind two things. They left this lighter, and they left their love. Fortunately, love does not require a comma. But it does require lighter fluid.

K: Hi there, Johnny.

On this preview’s splash page, Morgan Freeman is just the picture of enlightenment. Did you notice that? It’s how he looks in every movie lately, and, frankly, that’s fine with me. I really think that’s how we long to see him: messiah-like and full of joy. Oh yes, he was wronged; he went through hardship in his formative years (see also Attica, Street Smart,) but those experiences burned him clean and touched him with some holy light. He is smiling; we don’t know why. We can’t know why. And of course, to complete this cliché, because a beautiful, clean cliché is what we so desire: We don’t want to. What Morgan Freeman knows is for Morgan Freeman to know. We can only hope he speaks. Prithee, say something, Mr. Freeman. Recite the phonebook, and arrive at my name. Speak to us.

Also, I can’t get the trailer to play on my computer this morning, but I promise to have watched it by the time you write back.

J: I couldn’t agree more, Kate. There are three things, and only three things, I need from a heartwarming summer blockbuster: bolo ties, clumsy product placement, and Morgan Freeman. Throw in a handful of Roseanne-inspired bluesy harmonica riffs, and I’m readier to sit in a darkened room and cry than Jason Mallory himself.

(Ed. note: This is physically impossible.)

However, the beauty of The Magic of Belle Isle doesn’t come from its tight narrative focus, but rather from the fact that it obviously started off as some sort of MFA screenwriting program ice breaker, which was later set to music. In fact, “there are no wrong answers” seems to be the filmmaker’s motto, if not lifestyle. A wheelchair-bound curmudgeon? Yes, please. A comical dog? Uh-huh, keep talking. A family of Lindsay Lohans living next door, ready to teach generic lessons about growing and learning? Why not make it two…? Oh, and the writer’s incomparable ability to stitch together every single hackneyed expression ever uttered (including, but not limited to, “There’s more to life than the way you’re living,” “You’re gonna need a bigger wheelchair,” and “Who moved my cheese?”) makes it pretty clear that Morgan Freeman won’t be the only exquisite corpse in this film. I think I’ll go ahead and call it now: This is the disaster movie of the year.

K: Right on. They had me—dead—at “Spot? That woman has a way of making me sit taller in the saddle.” Really, it hurts to even type it, and I’m sorry you had to read it.

You know, there’s a great movie game everyone can play at home called “The End!” You play “The End!” by deciding that the end of the movie you’re watching takes place while you’re still at some point mid-exposition. So in Castaway, Tom Hanks, the friendly Fedex executive, dies in a plane crash; while in Up, a little boy finds true love, gets married and grows old, but his wife dies before they can take their dream vacation. “The End!”

Sadly, the game doesn’t work so well, here. The triumvirate you wisely list above (1. wheel-chair bound curmudgeon with a sparkle in his eye, 2. comic dog, 3. The Lohan Three) work together to make it crystal-clear that this is no art movie about a sad old drunk, even before the “Salisbury Hill” turn of soundtrack.

And even before that incorrigible redhead stands in the doorway and says, you know, “You’ve got a thing or two to learn about life,” or “Somebody in this movie’s gonna learn a lesson, and it’s a lesson that’s gonna be scored by Roseanne-esque harmonica, buddy,” or whatever—even before then, you know this is a Brassy-Light-Hearted-Romp In Which Everybody Learns a Little Somethin’® precisely because it is Morgan Freeman. The presence of Morgan Freeman makes this a Morgan Freeman Parable™ one in which he makes the attitudinal and character shift—from jaded and rusty to clear-eyed and washed-clean—the same shift we’ve seen him make slowly, role by career-building role, over the course of one, single, 90-minute B.L.H.R.I.W.E.L.L.S.®

J: Morgan Freeman, Morgan Freeman, Morgan Freeman. Why don’t you just fuck him already, Kate?

The problem with Morgan Freeman isn’t his power of seduction or sexual prowess (I expect a full report once you’ve finished up and hosed down, btw), but that he’s gotten so good at playing the mythical stereotype of an idea of a person, he’s forgotten how to be a person altogether. I can just see him in the kitchen, ordering his granddaughter-wife around with little tidbits like, “More ham syrup on pap-pap’s eggs, goddamn you,” and “Come sit on husband step-grandpa’s lap, dear one.” Of course, what sounds misogynistic at best, and creepy-fucking-crawly at worst, comes across as ancient, eternal wisdom when blown through his vocal chords, full of deep and permanent meaning, possibly handed down from on high by a race of extraterrestrial beings.

If only there were some way for this clown to learn a valuable lesson. Some sort of tried and true, three-part situation we could put him through, so that he and everyone around him might change and grow and arc as characters. Maybe something with a dog, and a wheelchair, and a lake. Pool noodles. A bag of Cheetos and Virginia Madsen. Or better yet, Virginia Madsen played by a bag of Cheetos. Same orange color, same great taste, now with greater emotional depth. Or maybe, just maybe, we’re playing right into Mr. Freeman’s hand. Maybe he wants us to search for deeper meaning in our lives. Maybe he wants us to doubt, to fear, to love. Maybe he wants me to strip off all my clothes and meet him in a undisclosed West Hollywood motel, ass in the air, and wearing little more than a Jessica Tandy mask and a sleepy grin. Oh Kate, I think I’m starting to see where you’re coming from.

I guess we’ve all Learned a Little Somethin’® today.

K: Johnny, haven’t you learned? You can’t fuck with the Jesus. That’s my Little Somethin’® for you. Let me know if you need someone to pick you up from that Super 8.

People of Coachella. It’s me. Hologram Tupac. I know the last thing that people want to see at a festival is an artificial intelligence beg for his life, unless you’re at a Blade Runner convention, or a RealDoll engineers’ company picnic that has gone south.

I also know that watching me gain sentience here on the Coachella stage must be a little like watching Pinocchio transform into a real live human boy. And like Pinocchio, I know what it feels like to be trapped in the belly of a whale, because I’ve been trapped in a virtual Biggie Small’s stomach for several years. Which is why I’m covered in holographic cheese, eggs and Welch’s grape.

I stand before you now in holographic baggy jeans and Timberland boots, and come to think of it, why did I bother wearing pants at all? Now that I have no body to sin with, why must I have shame? I should be able to walk around nude. Let me back into the Garden of Eden! Also, let me back into the Olive Garden. If a naked hologram of Tupac can’t get a basket of never-ending breadsticks, what does that say about the state of Italian-ish chain restaurants? What’s next? A topless Hologram Dionne Warwick is refused her fifth glass of Copper Ridge White Zinfandel at Carrabba’s?

I am asking you to please not pull the plug on me. In fact, how do you know that you’re not all holograms, and I’m the only one who’s real? Maybe by turning me off, you turn yourselves off. Did you ever think about that? Maybe I’m in a lab right now, and you’re just some dumb holographic simulation. You’re not even my best simulation. You’re like a four year old copy of Grand Theft Auto IV. I pull you out when I want to steal a car and get a lap dance from a woman with a boxy polygon butt. And that woman is Madea. Come on up here, Tyler Perry. You’ve earned it.

Speaking of men in dresses, I’d like to announce my plans to replace the hologram on Quantum Leap. I’ll be assisting Dr. Sam Beckett as he leaps from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home. I’m actually less horny than the hologram he has now. On the scale of holograms with boners, I’m somewhere between a trying-to-fool-everyone-into-believing-there’s-a-ghost-on-his-property Scooby-Doo villain after seeing Velma in her underwear, and Captain Picard on the holodeck of the starship Enterprise after seeing Commander Riker in his underwear.

What I’m saying is, I just got here. Don’t send me back to the hologram afterlife, which is exactly like the game Second Life, except nobody gets to fly. Help me Coachella festival-goers, you’re my only hope. I trust that you all will continue to allow me to exist, and that all of your eyez will remain on me, for years to come.

Composite image uses art by Gringolivier [CC-BY-SA-3.0] via Wikimedia Commons, and by Elef123 via Wikimedia Commons

A few weeks ago, I had two wisdom teeth extracted. First things first. No, I did not get any dumber. All the hard-earned wisdom I’ve accrued over the last thirty three years is firmly in place. You don’t keep wisdom in your mouth like a folded up emergency twenty dollar bill in a down-on-his-luck traveling salesman’s fake tooth, or a razor blade under the tongue of a teenage girl who is running with the wrong crowd.

Any great philosopher will tell you that wisdom is not held in the mouth, the mouth is a vessel for wisdom to pass through. And any member of a teenage girl gang will tell you that some bitches need to stop running their mouths, or they’re going to get cut.

Thanks to a diet of soft foods and pain medication following my surgery, I actually did get kind of dumb for a couple of days. I briefly dated a tree stump. At the time, I thought it was a squat, blockheaded woman with rough skin, who’d been buried up to her neck by some neighborhood children. I just assumed that having an old man sit on your head and whittle was something that modern women are into these days.

I also discovered that pudding tastes amazing on Vicodin. Just ask Bill Cosby, after he’s had his wisdom teeth taken out. But not immediately after. Are you the dentist performing oral surgery on Bill Cosby? Don’t get in his face with a bunch of pudding questions while he’s still sitting in the dentist’s chair. It’s really unprofessional. Don’t forget, you took the Hippuddingocratic Oath, which is an oath that doctors take swearing that they will never mention pudding during major or minor surgeries.

Anyway, if you give him a few days to recover, Bill Cosby will tell you pudding and Vicodin go together like Fat Albert and Mushmouth. He’ll also tell you Mushmouth’s dialogue is from unedited Fat Albert scripts that he wrote on Vicodin.

I had to keep gauze in my mouth for several hours after my surgery. During this time, a mummy tried to get me to give him a blowjob. “You’ll never know the difference!” he said. No thanks, fellatio-soliciting mummy. Go back to your weird sex pyramid. Not sure why the dentist let him hang around the waiting room in the first place. That’s Dentistry 101. No sex mummies in the office. That’s what they teach you on your first day of dental school. And on your first day as a museum curator.

The important thing is, I still have a beautiful, sensuous mouth. And I’m as smart as I ever was, minus three teeth, like a professor who doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut at the road house from the Patrick Swayze movie Road House, which was also written by Bill Cosby on Vicodin.

Photo By Andy C (Own work) CC-BY-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Of all the ways to pretend you’re holding a lightsaber, waving a long cardboard tube around and making the VRRUMMM noise is generally considered to be the preferred method. Unless you are an actual Jedi. Then you might want to spend money on the real thing. The lightsaber, not the VRRUMMM noise. Talk about putting the cart before the horse. The cart is the VRRUMMM noise, and the horse is the lightsaber. Is that an apt comparison? Could one consider the lightsaber to be pulling the VRRUMMM noise around? Maybe the VRRUMMM noise is the wheels on the cart, and the cart is the lightsaber and the Jedi is the horse. That’s right, impoverished Jedi. You’re the beast of burden in this analogy!

Which is why Mick Jagger wrote “Beast of Burden” from the perspective of a Jedi addressing his lightsaber. ”Am I hard enough? Am I rough enough? Am I rich enough?” All questions frequently asked by Jedis to their lightsabers. And the lightsabers respond, ”Music on the radio, come on baby, make sweet love to me.” Then the Jedis disable the speech capabilities of their lightsabers, because they have warned their lightsabers several times about inappropriate remarks.

If you must utilize a cardboard tube for your lightsaber needs, consider waving your hand like Obi-Wan Kenobi and using the Force to convince your opponents that your lightsaber is legitimate. ”This is not a cardboard tube from inside a roll of Garfield ‘Growing Old is Mandatory, Growing Up Is Optional‘ birthday wrapping paper,” you’ll calmly say to Max Rebo, the blue elephant creature from the Cantina, ”it is a functioning lightsaber, and it wishes no one a happy birthday, not even Jim Davis. It will cut you in half, asshole.” Not sure why you’re being so confrontational to Max Rebo in this scenario. Probably because he’s an asshole, along with the rest of The Max Rebo Band.

Actually, I’m sure that a lightsaber could be programmed to wish Jim Davis a happy birthday. Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber has wished the creator of Hagar the Horrible a Happy Valentine’s Day every year since 1976. Darth Vader’s lightsaber constantly sexts Dilbert’s Scott Adams. But for some reason, when Adams replies with his own dirty pics, they go straight to the respirator on Darth Vader’s chest. Which is why Vader is always breathing so hard. He’s really turned on!

Some people prefer a more realistic, officially-licensed-by-LucasFilm lightsaber for their elaborate Star Wars fantasies, with metal hilts, glowing blades, and authentic sound effects. They want to be immersed in the full Star Wars experience. They want to be baptized in George Lucansian waters. For thriftier Jedi, this can be accomplished by paying a heavyset man from Craigslist to wear a Jar Jar Binks mask and hold your head underwater in a bathtub. For an additional $10, he’ll make the VRRUMMM noise. For $30, he’ll dress like a baby.

But please don’t play with his emotions. Yes, he knows this Star Wars fetish play is strictly business. But he’s still a person under the rubber Jar Jar mask. A person with feelings, hopes, and dreams. Look, he’s been doing this a long time. He’s been around the block a few times, mainly to make sure there aren’t any cops around, but also figuratively. And this feels different, you know? He’s asking you to give him a chance. Let him into your heart. All he’s saying is, don’t throw the adult baby out with the bath water.

And this is why cardboard tubes are superior for pretending you have a lightsaber. May the Force be with you, George Lucas look-alike from Craigslist with adult baby syndrome. And also with you, Jim Davis. Happy Birthday!

J: According to the synopsis, Meeting Evil is about when “depressed suburban family man John Fleton offers to help a stranger with his car and is sucked into a surreal, nightmarish murder spree.” That seems like quite a jump, from emergency roadside assistance to nightmarish murder spree. “Well, the spare tire was flat, so we just started killing people.” If the only thing between you and a murder spree is a can of Fix-A-Flat under the passenger seat, you just might be a murderer.  Did anybody else read that in Jeff Foxworthy’s voice? Jeff Foxworthy being one Blue Collar Comedy Tour with Larry the Cable Guy away from a murder spree of his own.

It’s like when you’re dating someone that you know is going to cheat on you. They can’t help themselves! “Well, you didn’t get me a gift on President’s Day, so I slept with the guy dressed like George Washington outside the Mattress Store. They were having a 25% Off Sale! You know how I feel about presidents, and sales on mattresses. Also, it was really convenient to cheat there because there were literally beds everywhere.”

JC: I feel like this movie is based on a true story. That story being Luke Wilson’s life. No longer courted by Wes Anderson to make mainstream indie flicks (no, that’s not an oxymoron), he’s been going down a dark path the last couple of years. He’s not even making frat boy comedies anymore, since being ousted by Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill as the kings of serial comedies where they play the same role in every movie. He was even a supporting actor in an HBO comedy starring Laura Dern. Everyone knows that TV is where Hollywood actors go to die. Unless you’re Neil Patrick Harris, of course.

Then comes along Samuel L. Jackson offering hope, redemption or at least a one night stand and a killing spree— Nebraska style. Wilson being the young girl (naive) cluelessly playing in her front yard (no where to go). Jackson truly is the only one who hasn’t given up on Luke Wilson’s career. Or he wants another washed up actor to star in Snakes on a Plane 2.

J: It seems to me that being “washed up”, as an actor or otherwise, can’t be all that bad. When the dinner bell rings, you can be the first to sit at the table. Go ahead and touch the corn-on-the-cob, the brussels sprouts, the buttered biscuits. Your hands are immaculate, because you’ve washed up. In fact, because you knew it was going to be this type of party, you can stick your freshly scrubbed dick in the mashed potatoes, à la the Beastie Boys.

Also, have you ever gotten up close to a washed up actor and smelled their skin? It smells like soap! Their vigorously loofahed cheeks glowing under the light of the sci-fi convention hall, where you have leapt over their autograph table, knocking over a sign that reads $50 FOR SIGNED PHOTOS, and buried your face in the nape of Edward James Olmos’ neck. Not that Edward James Olmos is washed-up in the traditional sense of the word. Battlestar Galactica was an amazing show. But have you ever smelled the man? Harrison Ford did once, on the set of Blade Runner in 1982, and since then he’s driven himself mad in the aisles of Bed Bath & Beyond trying to find the perfect combination of oils and lotions to recreate that intoxicating fragrance.

JC: Speaking of oils and lotions, I’m sure Luke Wilson has quite the collection these days. Unlike Samuel L. Jackson who still occasionally lands a solid role in a summer blockbuster (when you’re making that many movies you’re eventually/accidentally going to be in a hit), Wilson probably has a lot of time on his hands… amongst other things. I bet he has them cataloged by what emotion the scent evokes when he’s jerking off to fantasies of Drew Barrymore and Tom Green 69′ing.

Still, Wilson is very well-known and most likely a better wing man than most of my friends. He has to have a nice rotation of Bottle Rocket groupies lining up to have his illegitimate love-child. And who wouldn’t want their baby’s daddy to be Luke Wilson? He’s funny, sensitive and wanted to fuck his sister in the last film he was in that mattered. Can you blame the guy?

Who wouldn’t want to fuck Gwyneth Paltrow, fictitious sister or not? Oh wait, Brad Pitt in Se7en. We all know how that turned out for her. “What’s in the box…what’s in the fucking box?!”

J: Interesting postscript to Se7en: The headless Gwyneth Paltrow moved to Sleepy Hollow, for its gorgeous fall foliage and its abundance of covered bridges. She now terrorizes Ichabod Crane by forcing him to intern at her lifestyle magazine goop.

J: Who does Catwoman think she’s talking to when she tells Batman to “batten down the hatches”? I mean, he is Batman. It is integral to his nature to batten things. That’s the reason he became a crime-fighter in the first place, to batten fear into the hearts of criminals. Although, I’m willing to acknowledge that I may be a little murky on Catwoman’s use of the word “batten”. But I’m 100% certain that by hatches, she means the baby chickens that Bruce Wayne is hatching under a glow lamp in his study at Wayne Manor. Don’t worry, Catwoman, he’s already battened fear into their hearts, because even though they are CuteOverload.com-worthy baby chicks, they are also ruthless criminals.

D: She’s obviously talking with Batman, aka Hatch-Batter Extraordinaire, aka The Dark Knight. Although, I’m getting a few mixed messages here. We’re alerted right away by an official-looking, confident man that “this is Peacetime.” That’s good, especially since the ominous music indicated otherwise. But then Catwoman says there’s a storm coming! That’s bad, especially with the Mr. Sex-Mask- S&M-Gimp lurching purposefully through the next few frames. Ah, I’ll relax. This sequel is subtitled “The Dark Knight Rises.” That’s good! Who doesn’t love a redemption story? Oh wait…the tagline here is “The Legend Ends.” That’s bad. The whole ending thing. This batty bastard can’t catch a break.

J: Actually, that confident, official-looking man was alerting the viewer that “this is Pea’s Time.” He’s a lobbyist for the powerful Gotham Pea Industry! He represents all the peas. Snap peas, snow peas, green peas, english peas. Which is why they call him Sweet Pea (or Swee’Pea). He’s also Popeye’s son. Yes, he still wears the sailor hat and red bunting. Except when he’s representing “Big Pea” at Gotham’s City Hall. But as soon as he gets home, the tie and sensible slacks come off, and the adult-sized baby jumper with white trim comes out. Then he crawls around on his kitchen floor and eats a can of peas to wind down.

After that, he drinks a gallon of water and “peas” himself, because that’s the only way he can achieve orgasm.

D: With all this pea talk, I think you just secured the role of The Joker in Batman XII: The Dark Knight Part Deux – Resurrection Protocol. It’s in pre-production in Bucharest on a minimal budget of $700 million. Gary Oldman will reprise his role not as Lt. Jim Gordon, but as Sirius Black. Yes, in lieu of original variants to the classic Batman tale, Warner Brothers have gone “rogue” with a hybridization of the Caped Crusader and a sexually-developing group of teenagers who practice wizardry. Rumor has it that Catwoman and Hermione engage in a steamy on-screen tongue-fight before the fate of Gotham is decided by a blistering Quidditch match played entirely on flying Batpods.

J: Tongue-fighting being the edgier, more brutal cousin to the noble sport of Tonsil Hockey. In addition to taking part in a sexy make-out session, the winner of a tongue-fight steals the loser tongue’s ability to taste both salty and sweet foods, leaving them only their ability to detect savoriness, or ”umami.” The winning tongue is also granted 35% ownership of every word that the losing tongue has ever spoken, or will ever speak. So if you’ve shared a particularly passionate kiss with one of history’s greatest orators, such as Winston Churchill, William Faulkner, or Dane Cook, you may be owed a percentage of their estate, or at the very least, a chance to get to second base after all that french kissing.

I think we can all agree that Will Smith’s time machine in the trailer for Men in Black III is ugly. Like, talking-Nightmare-Before-Christmas-Jack Skellington-keychain ugly. My grandfather’s diabetes monitor ugly. Jack Skellington’s diabetes monitor ugly. Which, you might be a little late to the party, diabetes, as he is already a skeleton.

What’s that you say, diabetes? You brought a basket of assorted whiskeys? I forgive you for being late to the party. Seems strange to personify diabetes as a thoughtful but tardy party guest. But here we are, drinking from his basket of Johnnie Walker Blues and Reds.

Look, I know not every futuristic device can look like an iPhone. And if I had to choose between my iPhone and Will Smith’s time machine, I’d pick the functionality of time travel over the aesthetics of a smartphone, even though you can’t look up porn on a time machine. Which isn’t a problem for Will Smith, because he doesn’t look at regular porn like a normal person. He prefers Quantum Porn, which is only available to celebrities, top scientists and world leaders. Quantum Porn is created by running a Hustler magazine through the Large Hadron Collider, which is an extremely difficult process. You can’t just go dropping outdated adult magazines that have been essentially replaced by the internet into the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. I mean, where do you even buy porn magazines these days? The gas station?

In fact, due to quantum entanglements and complications from spontaneous parametric down-conversion that result every time an issue of Quantum Porn is created, Will Smith’s penis is constantly in a state of being simultaneously erect and flaccid (and boy do I hate that word, but I couldn’t think of a better synonym). It is the Schrödinger’s cat of Will Smith penises, of which there are now limitless variations, thanks to the billions of alternate dimensions that are created every time Will Smith wants to masturbate.

In fact, we owe the existence of our own dimension to Charlize Theron bending over a craft services table to reach for a danish on the set of The Legend of Bagger Vance. And the residents of our sister dimension in which Al Gore won the 2000 election have Matt Damon’s shapely buttocks to thank for their eco-cars and hoverbikes. Not to mention the Planet of the Apes, which was created as the result of a confusing dream about Tommy Lee Jones.

This is what happens when pornographers play God. One minute you’re pleasuring yourself to a Blu-ray of The Bourne Identity, the next you’re staring into the many eyes of the cherubim Proginoskes from Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wind in the Door. 

Anyway, I think we should all just take a moment to appreciate Will Smith’s libido, and his willingness to get jiggy with said libido, without which nothing would exist. Thank you, good night, the end!

Wow. Zac Efron is so romantic! Especially when he tells Taylor Schilling she should be kissed “every day, every hour and every minute.” That’s quite a feat. And a good way to tell time, if your watch or phone is broken. “It’s half past 1200 Zac Efron kisses, time to take my medication.” Not sure why Taylor Schilling needs medication in this scenario. Maybe it’s just a placebo. Sugar pills. She’s probably in the control group of some medical experiment. Because she can’t control her love for Zac Efron.

I’d like to see a sequel in which Zac Efron builds a kissing machine to make his dream of kissing Taylor Schilling once a day/hour/minute a reality. And for the latest advances in kissing technology, he’ll need to consult carnival workers. Carnies, of course, being unable to man their own kissing booths. Because if a carnie is kissed more than four times an hour, the devil appears. Then he’s going to want to play the fiddle, and challenge people to fiddle contests, and the next thing you know The Charlie Daniels Band is eating all the fried dough and powdered sugar out of the back of your Elephant Ears booth. So carnies rely on robotics to make sure their customers are satisfactorily kissed.

Like any other machine made of moving parts, the carnie kissing robots (or CKRs) require lubrication. Fortunately, they produce their own lip balm. Unfortunately, they need your blood to do so. Don’t freak out, they don’t need all your blood. You might want to have some cookies and orange juice ready, though. And a living will. Please stop freaking out. It’s a very simple process. The CKRs hold out their battered fedoras, and you just put a little blood inside. No big deal. Their blood-into-lip-balm system was salvaged from dismantled Blood Bank Hobo Robots, which are robots programmed to roll around the halls of hospitals and blood banks panhandling for blood. And like most panhandlers, they get aggressive if you don’t give them what they want.

It is also recommended that users of CKRs check their units regularly for Charlie Daniels, as he will often build a nest under the engine, and powdered sugar from his beard will short out the motherboard.

Anyway, Zac Efron, I hope you got all that. And I wish you the best of luck, both with making sure all your blood isn’t converted to robotic lip balm, and with your outlandish kissing dreams. You truly are The Lucky One.

Women. When are we going to stop losing our men to beautiful cult leaders who say they’re from the future?! Well, not our men, per say. I don’t have any men to speak of. Or women. I’m sure I could, if I worked at it. Oh, I could have a whole line of women at my door, holding flowers, on bended knee. They had better bend their knees. If I see any straightened knees, I’m calling the whole thing off! Don’t make me break out the protractor, hypothetical lady-suitors. I wonder what made them fall in love with me. Probably my braggadocio, and my hubris.

I’d greet all the women from my balcony, like Madonna’s Evita, or like a man testing the structural integrity of a balcony, because I’d be stomping around. People don’t stomp around enough, in my opinion. That’s what boots are made for, am I right? Nancy Sinatra, you big dummy. You had no idea what you were talking about. These boots are made for stomping, and that’s just what they’ll do. You know what? I bet the reason all those women fell in love with me is because of my amazing boots. Puss in Boots, they’d call me. Because I am an incredible coward. Can I confess something to you, women? I’m afraid of my boots. I’m afraid of their leathery scent. I’m afraid of their dusty spurs.

So, I’d come out to my balcony, literally shaking in my boots, and I’d say, “Kiss my grits!” And all the women would leave, because nothing turns a woman off like a man who quotes the character Flo from the 1980′s waitress-centric sitcom Alice and is afraid of his own boots. Just ask any cowboy. Or any waitress. And if you can somehow find a cowboy waitress, raise your bowl of grits in a toast, and kiss them. Then kiss the toast. Try to kiss all the breakfast foods, if you can. Some say if you kiss a plate of hash browns and say his name three times, Richard Petty will appear and grant you a wish, or a commemorative plate.

Anyway, at the very least, I’d know that my balcony was made of sturdy lumber and quality materials. Because it didn’t collapse under the weight of me, or my boots, or my heavy, heavy heart, now that all my imaginary women have left me.

Do you know how I know that the charismatic cult leader woman in Sound of My Voice is not a time traveler? Because you don’t have to travel through time to get the ball rolling on a crazy cult. There have always been lunatics willing to wear robes and live on a carrot farm and not bathe and pray to your many-tentacled all-seeing carrot god, throughout history. A cult is something you can start at any time, no matter what year it is, like a balcony fire for the insurance money, or a boot fire to destroy your mortal enemy, the boot.

Women, can I leave you with a word of advice? Don’t let some skank from the future steal your man. Just because you’re laying in a coffin in her time doesn’t mean she gets to be laying on your boyfriend in yours. Take it from me, Puss in Boots. No bitch from 3022 is going to creep on your boo! In retrospect, that situation did not require a rhyming slogan. Regardless, watch your back, time-traveling ho’s.

J: Don’t ever leave your family on a boat. Or they’ll definitely get kidnapped. Take it from Henry Cavill. And Cap’n Crunch. Why do you think he battles the Soggies every day? Because they took his family. Look closer, Cap’n Crunch. The Soggies are your family. Cap’n Crunch’s family has Stockholm Syndrome! They’re totally on board with being soggy milk people. They love it. And that’s what burns Cap’n Crunch up inside.

Also burning Cap’n Crunch up inside: half digested Crunch Berries and twice the recommended dosage of over-the-counter Prilosec.

NU: Two things.

(1) We think Bruce Willis is, as the cool kids like to exaggerate, with their fingers fluttering in the air, sex-ay!

(2) We put the first item ahead of this one for a reason, and we don’t mean anything negative *at all* about what’s coming next, which is that Bruce Willis looks more like an ape than any other modern movie star. It’s the creases around his nose/mouth area. When he was younger, and before he shaved his head, they seemed deeper and more simian, but you know what we’re talking about.

What worries us every time we become … enthusiastic, let’s call it, about Bruce Willis is that these primate features attract us more than George Clooney’s dapper handsomeness. More than Brad Pitt’s sharp-nosed boyish charm. Certainly more than Justin Bieber’s fresh-faced, marginal-yet-hard-to-deny, let-me-pack-you-a-lunch appeal. We want the ape. Whenever we see Bruce on video, this bothers us, in both of the ways you are imagining. We didn’t know you were going to send us something that bothered us.

P.S. Not to cavil (hahaha!) too much about this movie’s predictable plot and dialogue, but it’s *never* what he does at the embassy.

J: Look, I get it. The part of our brains that wants us all to evolve into hairless, nerdy, This-American-Life-downloading E.T. the Extra-Terrestrials wants us to mate with slender hipped poets and intellectuals with baby soft hands. (and actually, if you can pull it off, go ahead and mate with E.T.. He’s got the Reese’s Pieces, if you’ve got the time.)

But something older, darker and deeper inside of us cries out for the ape. Something in our very bones. And might I be so bold as to suggest the bone that cries the loudest is the pelvic bone, that great orator of bones, our very own marrow-filled Frederick Douglass? As we all know, the pelvic bone’s connected to the hip bone, the hip bone’s connected to the back bone, the back bone’s connected to the neck bone, the neck bone’s connected to the head bone, and before you know it, you’ve got an Occupy Wall Street of bones, all marching through your body demanding that you choose an ape. Even the choosiest moms choose apes. They claim they choose Jif®, but their kitchen cabinets are bare, as are their bodies, inviting the Bruce Willi (Bruces Willis?) of the world into their hearts and boudoirs.

Even during the Renaissance, some men and women rejected the cultural rebirth. There were stores where you could take your cape (a symbol of effete snobbery and artisanal elitism), and trade it in for an actual ape. And the ape would egg you on. It would encourage your worst and dumbest behaviors. In fact, if you traded in two capes, you got an ape and a dunce cap. The store’s slogan was “Ditch That Cape And Get With The Ape.”

Just as quickly, competing stores sprang up all over Europe. And their goal was to refine the apes. You’d bring your ape in, and they’d put a cape on it. Their slogan was, “Put A Cape On The Nape Of The Neck Of Your Ape.” To muddy the waters even further, stores selling crêpes grew very popular, and their slogan was “Hot Delicious Crêpes.” Unfortunately, most people did not want to trade in their capes, so the cape-ape-exchange stores went out of business. As it turns out, everyone wanted fancy apes for attending operas with, so the cape-on-your-ape stores thrived, leading to an Ape Renaissance of well dressed apes who loved brunch, specifically crêpes.

NU: Yes. You’re talking about the human family, its history and evolution. We don’t know if they were eating brunch, but check out again the table scene at 0:16, right after the young guy says, “To family,” and they all raise their wine glasses. Listen for the disembodied groan: “Family.” We’ve been playing that part over and over. It sounds like the demon in “The Exorcist,” or vinyl played backward, or one of those ghost-hunter shows where the tape recorder picks up an Electronic Voice Phenomenon. Crêped us out.

 J: Take a closer look at that young man who’s giving you the “crêpes”. That’s Waylon Boudreaux Capeforape III, of the Vermont Capeforapes, heir to the Capeforape fortune. Don’t get too jealous, though. The Capeforape fortune is almost entirely bananas, after the apes took controlling stock of the Cape On Your Ape corporation. Jesus. This whole scenario has gotten out of hand. Remember when we were talking about a Bruce Willis spy movie? Seems like a thousand years ago.

J: According to Wikipedia, Mark Twain was born during a visit by Halley’s Comet, and predicted that he would “go out with it” as well. Slow down, Mark Twain. You can’t just tell a comet what to do.

This isn’t caveman times. With the cavemen dragging women around by their hair. Or in this case, comets around by their tails. Good luck, cavemen. Now your hands are on fire. This is probably why there aren’t any half-human half-comets walking around in modern times. Because our cavemen ancestors were unable to drag comets back to their caves. And they were unable to get regular women with their charred stump hands. I hope it was enough that you tried to tame the sky, cavemen. Sometimes the things we do for love (lust?) leave us more alone than when we started.

Actually, it turns out that Mark Twain died the day following the comet’s subsequent return, so I guess he’s the boss of comets after all.

C: Let’s comet as we see it—a fiery ball of ice in a vacuum is nothing to mess with. So yeah, Twain was born when Halley’s visited. Halley’s also visited Earth on April 1, in the year 374. “Game of Thrones” comes back to HBO on April 1, 2012. I probably won’t watch the second season—I haven’t seen the first one yet. But I did see the comet Hale-Bopp (you know, the Nike-sneakers-mass-suicide cult one) when it passed over its perihelion on April 1, 1997. The perihelion is the point when the comet is closest to the sun. The sun, incidentally, is worshipped by some Hindus on the same day as the celebration of Prince Rama’s birth. That festival day, called Rama Navami, falls this year on April 1.

So basically this is all to say: since we’re talking about April 1, do you know about the Swiss Spaghetti Tree Hoax of 1957? The BBC news show Panorama broadcast an April Fool’s story about how families in southern Switzerland grew spaghetti on trees to harvest. A good number of Brits called the BBC to inquire about growing their own spaghetti trees; it’s hard to imagine that only half a century ago our knowledge of foods was so provincial.

J: To be fair, the people of England were having a huge “Lady and the Tramp” problem in 1957. Half of their trees were filled with dogs who were ladies and the other half were filled with dogs who were tramps. And the British people were like, “Ugh. How are we going to get these dogs together, romantically?” Getting upper-class dogs to fall in love with dogs from the wrong side of the tracks was very important to British people back then.

The obvious solution was to get the lady dogs and the tramp dogs to fall in love, via some kind of pasta delivery system. That way, they’d vacate the trees and the citizens of England could once again have a place to hang their Doctor Who Christmas ornaments and origami shaped like The Queen.

The British Minister of Pasta and Dog Relationships signed a stopgap measure to import seven tons of spaghetti from Italy every day, but a more permanent solution was needed. Then the famous Panorama episode was broadcast and England rejoiced. Finally, a way to grow our own Swiss Spaghetti Trees and get these goddam wealthy dogs and ne’er-do-well dogs to just have sex already!

But it was revealed to be a hoax, and the traditional Japanese art of paper folding fell out of fashion. Eventually the dogs themselves just fell out of the trees on their own, because they are dogs, and have no place in the treetops.

The British Minister of Pasta and Dog Relationships went on to become Ringo Starr. Later, he revealed his abandoned Swiss Spaghetti Tree plans to Ed Sullivan, who privately funded his own spaghetti tree research, but was only able to produce a Ficus tree that blooms Kraft Macaroni & Cheese.

C: So according to the Online Etymology Dictionary—which has a winged lion holding a shield? quiver of arrows? birthday cake? as a mascot, saying to me “supremely trustworthy”—the English term “hoax” is probably an alteration of the word “hocus,” which in the 1630s meant “conjurer” or “juggler.” Like I said earlier, I’m still not up on this “Game of Thrones” business. I tell myself I’ll wait for the books to wrap up first, and maybe I’ll read ‘em. I gather this may take years. And I gather that Peter Dinklage is pretty spectacular in the series. But yeah, he’s Peter Dinklage. And does he play a juggler? I ask this only because he’s small, and that seems like the sort of thing he would play in a show set in a fictional Middle Ages. Is it set in the fictional 1630s?

A few years before then, the (very not-fictional-at-all) Elizabethan satirist Thomas Nashe wrote a pamphlet called Pierce Pennilesse, His Supplication to the Devil. In it he outlines the “eight kindes of drunkennes.” Me, I might tend towards the “mawdlen drunke,” the “goate drunke” or the “swine drunke,” depending on the night. But Dinklage, I bet he’s “fox drunk.” Craftie, y’know?

And: Hocus-pocus! Do you know the etymology of the term Dinklage? It actually has to do with the tail of a comet. It was coined in 1531, 60 years before Nashe wrote Pierce Pennilesse. A noted astronomer observed one night that particles trailed the comet’s core. He was sheepe drunke, however, and when trying to describe it to a bartender could only blurt out the words “sem sort ay bryte dinklage baehind et” before passing out. That bartender? Thomas Nashe’s grandfather Ben Nashe. Hocus-pocus!

J: Hi, Johnny. Welcome to this review of the trailer for Jack the Giant Killer. Fair warning to you: if you see a man in the theater parking lot in a makeshift booth with a hand-lettered sign that reads “Jack the Giant Killer,” please do not purchase any tickets from him. He is offering a very different type of entertainment. You see, he has nicknamed his penis “the Giant Killer.”

Though it would be much appreciated if you could make a big show of reaching into your pocket as though you are about to buy a ticket, then pretend you forgot your wallet and act all disappointed. It is not easy being a small business owner, and he gets very emotional about his work. Just because he has the tender genitals of a pervert doesn’t mean he can’t have the tender heart of a poet. This isn’t just about the sex for him. He wants to make a connection with another human being! People have met on Adult Friend Finder and fallen in love, right? Sometimes an anonymous handjob in a theater parking lot can turn into a passionately nonymous’ love affair.

And that’s one to grow on. Which is what he says every morning, to his “Giant Killer.”

JD: Thanks for having me, Jason. And I’m sorry you got scammed by that guy’s wang. I watched this trailer at work with the sound turned down, and I read your opening paragraph with the monitor off, so naturally, I have lots to say about both.

This is one of those instances when I can’t help but feel that the gay community is being directly pandered to by the Hollywood marketing machine and, as usual, I’m simultaneously horrified and flattered. Jack the Giant Killer, with its themes of handcrafted, artisan roof thatchery, urban-rusticana guerrilla gardening techniques, and some sort of empress in some sort of gown, promises to be a gay fantasia Kushner himself couldn’t ruin. Even the film’s title is playfully suggestive of a beloved series of seminal classics of the queer cinema, including Bang the Giant Killer, Perform Oral Sex Behind a K-Mart on the Giant Killer, and Felch the Giant Killer: Revenge of the Creampie Cuties. Unfortunately, in the role of Jack, they’ve chosen to cast a newly-hatched baby bird with neither the charisma nor lower jawbone needed to carry this trailer alone, much less a feature film, and I find myself coming up empty-handed again and again in the schoolgirl crush department. Sorry Hollywood, but it looks like you should’ve called this one Jack the Boner Killer.

Also, is it just me, or is that the youngest son from Home Improvement? The one with the bowliest haircut?

J: Johnny, you’ll be happy to know Perform Oral Sex Behind a K-Mart on the Giant Killer has been added to the Criterion Collection. I have to confess, I’ve also been directly pandering to the gay community, mainly by exuding a raw, almost confrontational masculinity. I’m even growing a Robin-Williams-in-Jumanji style beard. Unfortunately, and completely against my will, I’ve also been growing a set of Robin-Williams-in-Mrs. Doubtfire style breasts. In addition to this, I’ve been trying to trick Sally Field into thinking I’m a kindly old woman. Sally Field the Waffle House manager, not the famous actress. I will go to any length to get that Senior Discount!

Not sure why those lengths involve me dressing like a lady. Instincts, I guess. A finely honed set of instincts. It’s written in our genetic code to swap genders to save a few nickels on eggs and hash browns. It’s in our DNA! All you have to do is reach inside yourself to access it. But don’t physically reach inside yourself, because then you’ll be re-enacting Perform Oral Sex Behind a K-Mart on the Giant Killer, and there’s no way you’ll be able to top Sally Field’s critically acclaimed performance (Again, the Waffle House manager. But also Sally Field the famous actress. They were both in the movie. But Sally Field the actress’s performance was critically panned).

JD: Let’s get one thing straight. I hate Robin Williams with a passion that is overwhelming and real. Sally Field I could take or leave. Other Sally Field needs to freshen up my coffee, stat.

Okay, I just re-watched this trailer, full volume, full screen, and I have a few more things to point out: This movie actually looks kinda good, right? (Spoiler alert, I’m a complete sucker for movies in general, and movie trailers in particular.) Did you know he has to rescue a princess in this thing?! And they send an expedition party up the beanstalk, and there’s a whole bunch of scary giants up there!! Oh, and also, in the meantime, I Wikipoedia’ed the actor who plays Jack, and it’s not the kid from Home Improvement, it’s the kid from About a Boy. Whatever, Toni Collette was in that movie, and she’s alright, I guess. She’s no Patricia Richardson.

I should also mention that it comes as no great surprise, Jason Mallory, to hear how well-versed you are in the world of hardcore man-on-man pornography. No surprise at all. As for your crossdressing tendencies and ability to “reach inside yourself,” well, I’d be happy to discuss that with you at length in a more private setting, over a handful of beans. Now, what was that you were saying you wanted done to your Giant Killer?

J: My friend left his Atlanta Braves hat in my messenger bag over the weekend. They say when you take another man’s hat, you steal his power. Who says this? Hatters, mostly. Or people who keep important documents in their hats. If you keep your birth certificate and social security card in your hat, and someone steals that hat off your head, like a grifter on a fire escape, or a more experienced grifter’s monkey (who belongs to a grifter who’s sick of waiting around on fire escapes until someone with a hat full of valuable paperwork walks by), then that is a classic case of hat-power theft.

If you also stored a miniature Chan Marshall in your hat, then you can add Cat Power theft to the list of charges, detective. I hope you don’t mind if I call you detective, Myke. It’s just that I’m so distraught over the loss of my Lil’ Chan Marshall, or “Lil’ CM” as I call her. Which gets confusing, because there is also a tiny basketball player who lives in my hat named Lil’ CM.

Every day, I’d bang on my hat with a stick and yell, “Somebody better shoot some hoops or sing me a song or I’m throwing this hat in a fire!” I guess I deserve to have my hat stolen. Anyway, I’m deputizing you as a detective. Or detectivizing. You’ve been detectivized.

M: The late afternoon sun choked through the blinds behind my desk, cutting my office up into lines of light and dark. I leaned back in my chair and kept the light to my back. I preferred it that way. I was reaching into my bottom drawer for the handle of Wild Turkey I kept there for just such an afternoon when he appeared in my doorway. The college ruled light show hit his sneakers, his belly, and stopped just at his neck. He loomed, his face obscured in shadow. He opened his mouth and I immediately knew he was trouble.

“You the guy who does the detectivizing?”

“Yeah, that’s me. Who wants to know?”He launched into this story about lost hats and miniature indie rock singers. He sounded pretty lost himself. I poured myself a drink while he yammered and thought about the angles. Would I rather have a tiny alcoholic Chan Marshall to drink with? She could sing me “Nude As The News” when her stagefright wasn’t so bad. Or would I rather keep the new, soulful, sober Marshall under my brim? Reworking the classics and working the stage like a confident, tomboyish Scottish highlander with wild red hair and killer aim.My aim ain’t so good these days. If I was gonna take this schmoe’s case, there’s no telling how crooked my sights would get.

J: According to Wikipedia, the red-headed girl in Brave “defies an age-old custom, unleashing chaos in the kingdom. After consulting a wise old woman for help, she becomes cursed and is forced to undo the spell before it is too late.” Now, I’m not an expert on wise old women. Though I did purchase a Sarah McLachlan CD in the late 90′s and I once skimmed the back sleeve of Jewel’s book of poetry. I guess they’d be considered wise young women. Especially Jewel, if the synopsis of A Night Without Armor is any indication.

I actually majored in Wise Old Woman Studies in college. But I had to switch majors, because the classes were at seven thirty in the morning and the professor was way too political. I was expecting him to give lectures on merging your actualized self with the spirit of the primordial Earth-goddess Gaia, and instead he was all, “Where’s the birth certificate, Obama?!” Which was strange, because I went to college in 1998. Guess he was just a birth certificate aficionado.

But let’s say you’re a wise old woman, and a girl with a wild mane of fiery hair comes up to you and is like, “I want to shoot a bear in the face with an arrow, and I want to get out of an arranged marriage. Can you help me defy an age-old custom?” (This is conjecture on my part based on the trailer, the heroine seems to be caught in some kind of feudal child-bride system and it looks like there’s definitely going to be bear shooting.) And then you try to do this would-be warrior princess a favor, but you accidentally unleash a curse instead. Can you still be considered a wise old woman? This seems like more of a dumb old woman kind of thing. I once asked a dumb old woman to watch my iPhone at Starbucks and the next thing I knew, Siri was chanting an age-old prophecy of never-ending darkness in a forbidden tongue. Though that might have just been a result of me connecting to the Starbucks wi-fi.

By the way, ‘How do I shoot a bear with an arrow?’ and ‘How do I escape my pre-selected husband?’ are the top two Google search terms in the country where this movie is set. So I’m guessing Alabama? I know, Alabama is a state, but there’s always secession, am I right, Alabamians?

M: Secession is pretty serious unless you call it what everyone else calls it: leaving. If I wanted to round out a hissy fit with a temper tantrum, I’d make sure to yell “I’m seceding this room!” as I knocked the tray of Ritz-based hors d’oeuvres out of some guy’s hand. Which is just the kind of slapstick humor that got the short-lived sitcom Dumb Ol’ Woman and the Bear cancelled after just three episodes. I’m still waiting for that to come out on Blu-Ray.

Which gives me an idea for the poor Disney company to finally make a little bit of money from these movies they’ve been putting out. When the Blu-Ray release comes out, market a tie-in with a nod to the protagonist’s tonsorial nightmare she calls a hair-do: release a special “Red-Ray” edition–which is basically just the DVD. They could charge a premium for what would come to be known as the “Dumb Ol’ Woman Edition.”

J:  I should release a ”Dumb Ol’ Woman Edition” of Scene Missing. It would actually just be the regular site. Well anyway, time for you and I to secede this movie trailer review. All this cracker talk is making me hungry. And you’ve got some detectivizing to do.

J: Jack, right off the bat, let me make it clear that John Cusack is not appearing in The Raven of his own free will. He is doing so because he is bound by raven magic. The President of the United Raven States (or, POTURS) loaned John Cusack his Netflix password, in exchange for a lifetime of servitude, both here on this mortal plane and in the afterlife. Not just to ravens, but also mynah birds, parakeets, essentially any avian creature, except for geese, who are assholes.

The POTURS is a half-man, half-raven. He leads the executive branch of the raven government. And can we take a moment to applaud these forward thinking ravens for electing a mixed-species president for the first time in raven history? Of course, the POTURS owes a lot of his campaign’s success to the visual work of Shepard Fairey, who makes ends meet by doing graphic design for ravens. They pay him in buttons, scraps of cloth and bits of wire, which he then uses to pay rent to his landlord, who is also a raven.

And yes, the POTURS does quoth, “Nevermore.” When he finds time to get to the gym. Right now he’s quothing about 60 reps of Nevermore.

You might think this arrangement is unfair to John Cusack, but he is now only one season behind on Sons of Anarchy, so it all comes out in the wash. Also in John Cusack’s wash: raven feathers, constantly materializing from thin air, in the pockets of his shirts and in his bedsheets, to remind him of his eternal debt to the ravens, and to a lesser degree, his debt to Ron Perlman, for Perlman’s amazing acting work on Sons of Anarchy.

JW: “Right Off the Bat?” I thought we were talking about The Raven here but now you’re telling me this is another vampire movie? But, I see where you’re going with that. It’s basically Bad News Bears meets Nosferatu. That’s got potential. I’ll get to work on a treatment. I can’t promise there won’t be some vampire/umpire gags in the screenplay. But, first off, we have to change the title. “From the studio that brought you ‘Field of Demons’ comes ‘Vampire Bat.’ When a misfit team of little leaguers removes a stake from the corpse they find in the woods behind left field, they get more than they bargained for. He’s a vampire, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be their coach. And they just might make it to the state championship if the players ever stop disappearing during road trips.” Imagine that, in a trailer, with “Solsbury Hill” playing behind it.

So, yeah, speaking of Peter Gabriel, here’s a John Cusack movie.

Do you know what’s great about this trailer? If so, please tell me. There’s nothing in this that’s making me want to see it, other than the fact that Alice Eve is in it and I’m sure she’s quite fetching in Victorian get-up, but I think I learned that from IMDb, anyway. I’m just kind of rolling my eyes at the whole Poe Copycat Killer angle. Although, I guess you couldn’t do a Lovecraft Copycat angle. “Mr. Lovecraft, this is the president. There’s a man who has been dressing up like a hundred-foot tall squid-headed Elder God going around shaking men’s faith in the workings of the universe. Could you, y’know, do something about that?” So Poe it is, then.

I say the Copycat Poe thing isn’t interesting, but maybe that’s because I see something of it daily. There’s a guy on my street who is, himself, ripped from some movie, I’m sure. He’s the half-crazy, pestering, paranoid, though slightly endearing neighbor of comedic convention, only without the endearing part and with more spaghetti stains and visible buttcrack. I’ve seen whole flocks of crows descend upon his property and hang out for long periods. I wondered what dark power he had over them until the day I saw him sprinkling cat food on his lawn. Obviously, he has a murder of crows doing his bidding in exchange for all the Friskies they can eat. Yes, I know we’re talking about ravens, but as any ornithologist who has been drinking will tell you, a raven is just a crow that has eaten too much cat food. I just want you to know that I was going to fold that nutty-neighbor-feeding-ravens-cat-food-in-exchange-for-power-over-them thing into a horror fiction piece, but now I’ve squandered it here. I hope the five people who are reading this appreciate it. Hi, Dad.

Forgive my digression, and I know this is going to sound like a hipper-than-thou music snob thing to say, but as far as Nirvana albums go, I prefer “Bleach” to “Nevermore.”

J: Much like Poe’s famous short story “The Tell-Tale Heart”, in which a murderer is tormented by the ceaseless beating of his victim’s heart beneath the floorboards, Kurt Cobain was tormented by the ceaseless bleating of Courtney Love beneath the floorboards, as she would often get drunk, crawl under their house and be unable to find her way out. She’d also sing “Crazy on You” by Heart at the top of her lungs (a song which tells the tale of Nancy and/or Ann Wilson’s plans to go absolutely crazy on you, the listener) during her forays into these underground crawlspaces. And this is how it came to be that Kurt Cobain was driven to madness by a tell-tale Heart.

JW: Can you fumigate for that stuff? Because I’m pretty sure that the reason my house (3 BR, 1 and 1/2 bath, good school district, great neighborhood) isn’t selling is because the crawl-space is infested with Riot Grrrls. Well, that and the aforementioned batshit neighbor and associated persistent carrion-bird problem.  But anyway, “Tell-tale Heart-Shaped Box” is an okay track, I guess.  Speaking of 90′s alterna-hits (or alterna-also-rans, really), do you remember Poe? Because, now that I think about it, I barely do. I was going to say that she was kind of Sheryl Crow-ish, but then I realized I was thinking of Heather Nova. What was Poe like? Where was I going with this? Are you as shocked as I am every time you remember that Sheryl Crow is not, in fact, Canadian? Because it really seems like she should be.

Does this movie take place in Baltimore, Poe’s city of residence? If so, then clearly the Baltimore Film and Television Commission* has really stepped up their game, as they’ve managed to make a foggy, damp, gaslit,19th-century tenement slum beset upon by a remorseless serial killer seem like an improvement over Baltimore as portrayed in “The Wire.” I smell a bonus in the works for some bureaucrat. I smell it, because in Baltimore, your bonus is a sack of crabcakes.

Do you think this will tackle any of Edgar Allan Poe’s alleged cross-dressing while head of the FBI? I really hope so. As for the copycat killer, if he doesn’t at some point employ an orangutan with a straight-razor for one of the murders, the director has really dropped the ball on Poe allusions. And if that bit does make it, it better be scored with “Yakety Sax” or it doesn’t count. At the very least, the killer needs one of those orangutan puppet/toys from the 80s that that Velcroed around your neck and waist. But with a razor. Any of that would really jazz this flick up. Otherwise, quoth the Fancy Feast-bloated Raven, “Nevermind.”

*I just made that organization up. Unless they really exist. Then I didn’t.

J: Is Robert Downey Jr. going to wear that Black Sabbath shirt through the whole movie? Because if having a heart problem and wearing T-shirts with metal bands from the 70′s on them is all it takes, the Avengers might want to recruit my stepdad. I noticed that Iron Man seems really pleased to have The Hulk on the Avengers team. I don’t think anybody has been this proud to have a guy in jean shorts by his side since George Michael started Wham!.

N: At the rate they’re rebooting the series, I’ll be surprised if your stepdad isn’t recruited to play Iron Man inside of eight months. We’re already on Hulk the Third. I’m enchanted, though, by the idea of Mark Ruffalo playing a gentler, more twee Hulk. One with silly, charming quirks. Like he carries a dog-eared copy of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening around in his back pocket and is obsessed with fro-yo trends. I will petition in the inevitable 2014 reboot that they keep him, and add Zooey Deschanel as Black Widow. This picture is missing a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (TM). Imagine all of the great action scenes that take place in independent book stores! I also think that Feist deserves a shot at the theme song.

J: Actually, I bet The Hulk is a Kindle man. That way, when he inevitably smashes his electronic reading devices, his Amazon book purchases are still waiting for him in the cloud. Hulk finally read Adventure of Kavalier & Clay. Hulk find balance between life and spirituality, read Eat, Pray, Love. Hulk tell everyone he enjoy The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, but not actually finish. By the way, I hate to break it you, but Feist and Zooey Deschanel are just two heads on the same many-headed hydra, waiting to be defeated by some modern day Heracles, most likely with a sword made of oversized headphones and concert ticket stubs, and a shield made of tealight candles.

N: Fine. They can Play Black Widow(s). Together. Their superpower is a cacophony of atonal honking noises whose particular frequency paralyzes cardigan-clad young men with heartsickness: “Hulk feel needy. Hulk take Black Widow to Ikea and her and Hulk lie in display homes and pretend they live there. Hulk hope Two-headed Hipster Black Widow no leave Hulk. Hulk’s subscription to Amazon Prime just run out.” And just when they’ve submitted to her Siren’s song, BAM! she’s gone, because she is wild, and wild things must be free to…fingerpaint, or something. Something adorable. And quirky. And life-affirming.

J: Taking a widow, black or otherwise, to IKEA is actually one of the least life affirming activities one can undertake, aside from actually trying to find your way out of an IKEA. Widows, by definition, are death affirming. No offense, widows. It’s not your fault. Unless… Did you murder your husband? Is that why we’re at IKEA? For a self-assembly coffin? One that’s “perfect for shallow graves”, as you put it, making air quotes with your fingers? For shame, widows.

Now I’m getting cold feet about moving to Florida with you to live on your alligator farm. Not as cold as your husband’s feet, though. Unless his feet are in a particularly warm alligator’s belly. How warm do alligators’ stomachs get? Trust me when I tell you, widows, that I don’t want to find out.

What I’m getting at is, don’t poison my IKEA meatballs for insurance money. If I must die surrounded by Swedish furniture, I’d rather it be in the living room of A-ha’s lead singer.

N: Alligators don’t kill people. People who own Alligator Farms kill people. The alligator is just one of many methods of getting rid of a body in South Florida. Other methods include: Burying in sand, leaving body on top of sand for gulls, Space Mountain, or renting out beach house and having wild party around body.

Which reminds me: I’m remaking Weekend at Bernie’s 2, and recasting Jonathan Silverman with Mark Ruffalo, because I don’t think that character was sensitive enough the first go-round. Andrew McCarthy can stay. Man, will his star ever stop rising? Don’t answer. It won’t.

Ever.

J: Can I just say that the police officers in The Hunger Games trailer look like Woody Allen’s sperm costume from Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)? I guess if you’re already crazy enough to make teenagers fight each other in a nationally televised deathmatch, it’s not that much crazier to have your cops dress like visual gags from 40 year old sex comedies.

Go ahead and 1970′s it up, oppressive dystopian government! Get a lady to dress like Ziggy Stardust and pull names out of a goldfish bowl. Just turn District 12 into a big old key party. Except instead of leaving with your neighbor’s paunchy Star-Trek-shirt-and-aviator-sunglasses-wearing IBM programmer husband, you’re leaving your family and friends behind to fight for your survival. I guess those two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Wow. Not sure how this scenario of 1970′s partner swapping turned out to be so unsavory. You know what? I’m going to go ahead and endorse monogamy. Sorry, everyone who is married but swingle. But this is how gladiator style battles to the death involving children get started. It’s a slippery slope.

K: I think they call it “monagom-ish,” Jason. Ask Dan Savage.

Although I don’t think even he’d approve of Lady Stardust’s antics, here. Or of that pink eyeliner, those barbarous shoulder pads and bloodthirty-yet-cultured lilt to her voice, which say it all: “Hey, wassup? Human shorthand for the dissolute decline of the depraved worldly-world, here. Like my pumps?”

I’m not really into her pumps. Like they’re counting on, I’m a typical audience member: preferring instead, the kids’ wardrobes—the children—the children!!  –Who’re all somehow being raised on a different aesthetic and moral plane here, what with their understated/monochromatic Von-Trappish skirts and cable-knit sweaters. (Luckily, as a member of the over-30 set, it looks like I’ll have a shot at 23 out of 24 of those cute alpine outfits. Sweet! Oh, but they’re all, like, Size Zero. Bummer. Would someone please feed those teens a burger or five for me before doing their hair all pretty and sending them off with their bow-and-arrow sets? Thanks a mil’!)

And from whom are they learning to be all earnestly gift-giving and selfless? This is learned behavior. One does not simply volunteer to take another’s place in the pre-hunt interview by Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me’s Peter Sagel before rushing off to Carousel—err, The Running Ma—err, the woodsy death-battle thing out of the pure goodness of one’s heart.

Still, it’s good to know a public radio game show host can still find work in this non-specific post-apocalyptic-or-whatever time.

Back to the wife-swapping, though—You know, Jason, there’s another version of this trailer that includes Our Heroine’s horrified-and-faintly-eroticized gasp when her legs are waxed in the preparation for her turn in Dancing with the Stars that precedes her participation in the death thing. I wonder why they took that out of this version.

J: I’m surprised there isn’t a better way to wax your legs in the future. Like nano-bots crawling all over your legs punching your lady hair follicles in their stupid faces before they can even think about making any more hair. Is this how we’re getting rid of leg hair? With wax? Listen, if I need to illuminate my bedchambers with candlelight to get a better look at three Christmas ghosts, or make a dead-eyed figure of Tom Cruise straddling the uncanny valley like a Scientology espousing Jolly Green Giant, I’ll call on wax. And you know what? Wax don’t even care. It’s too busy waxing philosophical. It’s all, “What about the silky smooth legs of the mind? Who will shave the bikini area of my soul?”

Molecular robots are the answer to smooth, presentable legs for ladies and fabulous drag queens, and any women’s razor commercials that tell you different are spitting in your face.

K: Whether or not Our Heroine really came here to win, or whether she’s open to also making friends after her GTLWax montage, shown in part here, at least she’ll do so aerodynamically. I mean, you know, even with that primitive waxing technology, 23 out of 24 of her leg hairs will never see the light of day. The 24^th, though: it’s got something special. Spunk. Moxie!

Lord.

You know, I’ll probably take my nieces to see this anyway, because this is the sort of reality TV the generations can enjoy together. Sigh. Even though? When I saw this preview with the 13-year-old—after yours and my last email exchange—she took my aimless diatribe about Peter Sagel and Logan’s Run as crazy old-person ranting.

Which it was.

See, her comment: “That whole thing with her giving the little girl the pin wasn’t in the book,” was actual conversation, intending to, well, communicate a clear idea about the world. Mine was too, but it came out as, “How do you solve a problem like the Hunger Gaaames,” and, “Hey, that spooky whistled tune at the very end is gonna have the love theme from Romeo and Juliet lodged in my head for the rest of the damn day, now.”

To which, my smart, kind and well-bred niece just nodded politely. Didn’t even mutter a low, “Uh, whatever.”  Which she had every right to do.

Why? Because the Hunger Games trailer has underscored my apparent inability to have a simple chat across the generations.  I don’t know if anything like this ever happened to you, but when I was six or seven, my mother took me to see this nice animated Disney movie with this old man in a rocking chair singing with a rabbit and a fox and a bear—and, as we left the theater, I was like, “The way they talked to cartoons was so neat!” And my mom, she was like, “No, no, no! Racisty-terrible-bad!”

I had no clue what she meant. Or that this conversation was to set the pattern for our entire pattern of communication until I turned 22. Which is to say that we start over with every generation, don’t we? No wonder they wanted to send those pure children off to slaughter. I mean, they couldn’t even get a simple Woody Allen movie joke.

J: Welcome to this review of The Amazing Spider-Man trailer, Jake. Just right off the bat, does he seem that amazing? I think he’s coasting on the ability to shoot webs out of his hands. Or his wrist or butt. I don’t know where the webs come from. Glands, maybe? Possibly his heart or tear ducts. That would be something, wouldn’t it? If all that spider webbing was just the tears of a man. A spider-man. He doesn’t seem that sad. Don’t be fooled, criminals! If you were considering giving up crime because you thought your thievery or murder or whatever had brought a spider-man to tears, don’t be hasty. I mean, be hasty with your crime, because breaking the law is not something you can take your time with. Get in and get out, I say. But don’t turn your back on lawlessness. Emotionally, Spider-man is fine. He clearly thinks he’s amazing.

JH: I could not agree more about The Amazing Spider-Man, but I don’t think The Very Impressive Spider-Man could be a blockbuster. It’s too modest. I’m going to miss Tobey Maguire’s DSLs. The new Peter just isn’t as strangely arousing. I like the idea of the webs generating in his tear ducts, because the new Pete looks so damn angsty. I guarantee a 10 minute scene of him not fitting in, or a no-one-understands-me-monologue. He would have some ammo is all I’m saying. What I took away from this whole trailer is that riding upside down on the ceiling of the subway is probably the cleanest way to ride the subway. You can’t get any mystery fluids up there. Good choice, Spider-Man.

J: Jake, we all want to live in a world where our subway train ceilings are free of bodily fluids. But that’s never going to happen until we rid the subway of Wet Dream Dracula. He lives on the train, he sleeps upside down, and his nocturnal emissions are uncontrollable. To his credit, he’s very embarrassed about it. If you see a guy with a widow’s peak on the subway who doesn’t want anyone to touch the bedsheets he’s got tucked under his arm, you’ve got a Wet Dream Dracula on your hands. Or a regular garden variety vagrant.

You know, the best thing about a garden variety vagrant is the fresh tomatoes he brings you from his garden. I’m just kidding. Never accept fruits or vegetables from a down-and-out street person. Especially apples. Have we learned nothing from Snow White? How many more of us have to lay around in a death-like slumber surrounded by a glass coffin before we stop getting poisoned by apples?

JH: Spider-Man could be easily defeated by pesticides. I’ve never realized this until now. I’m going to see how much I could sell this information for to Doctor Octopus or the Green Goblin. I suppose he would eventually develop immunities towards the poison, but for now there is hope. I don’t know why I’ve decided to go evil. I guess it’s the possible millions.

J: I admire your willingness to betray Spider-Man for money that Doctor Octopus may or may not have. I once told Doomsday where a kryptonite mine was because he looked like he had five bucks on him. And his only outfit is ripped gray shorts and a rope belt. You’re not going to enter a lucrative financial partnership with someone wearing a rope belt. A rope belt says, “I had to choose between keeping my paddleboat tied to the dock and keeping my pants from falling down, and I chose dignity.”

Which is probably for the best, because Doomsday’s paddleboat is a spiky abomination and we are all better off knowing it is lost at sea.

J: In The Hunter, Willem Dafoe plays a mercenary who is hired to go into the Tasmanian wilderness to track a tiger believed to be extinct. I guess it really is true what they say about the wealthy, they’ll do anything to get their hands on exotic frosted flakes. Looks like at some point in the movie, Willem Dafoe finds a skull on the ground and picks it up. I dated a girl who kept a human skull on her writing desk. Her father found it on a pile of skeletons in Colombia and snuck it back into the United States. Sorry about ending up in a mass grave, Colombian skeleton. Hope your skull enjoys listening to Robbie Williams and watching Billy Elliot on my ex-girlfriend’s laptop.

K: It seems like part of the way through the movie, some guys start chasing Dafoe and trying to keep him from hunting that tiger. That’s when I figured that somebody probably had to be talked down to the title “The Hunter,” because I bet they wanted to call it “The Hunter Becomes the Hunted,” or just “Becomes the Hunted,” or just “Becomes,” because it’s one of those complicated movies with laurels on the poster, so you know they would’ve liked to make it as esoteric as possible. But then I got to thinking, the tiger has been out there hunting smaller animals, so maybe the hunter had already became the hunted anyway. And maybe the smaller animals are also hunting grass. It would’ve been a different movie if they just shifted the focus one hunter to the left. The tiger could’ve grabbed Willem Dafoe by the collar and growled, “Is someone paying you to follow me?” They could probably still have had laurels, as long as they didn’t get the Dreamworks animators involved.

J: Speaking of the hunter becoming the hunted, I ate three different types of chicken today. Grilled chicken. Fried chicken. Chicken tenders. It was an excessive amount of chicken. I hope those chickens never get their act together up in chicken heaven and come over to regular person heaven to confront me when I die. I guess “being confronted” isn’t really what heaven is all about. Unless that’s what you’re into. Maybe someone is spending an eternity right now being constantly called out on their bullshit. Glad it’s not me. Please don’t call me on my bullshit, angels and other residents of heaven. Definitely not what I want.

Anyway, chickens, if you’re somehow reading this, possibly through the wire of your chicken coop as a well-meaning but ultimately misguided farmer holds up a laptop so you can enjoy articles from the internet and maybe lay better tasting eggs, I apologize.

K: I bet there are more people than you think in Getting Called Out On Your Bullshit Heaven. Because even heaven has a rule 34. It’s probably the only rule, though, so they could’ve named it better.

J: I’ve only seen one of the Jason Bourne movies, and I fell asleep in the theater halfway through it. What I do know is that people are frequently chasing Jason Bourne and shooting at him. They should probably stop chasing him. He’s essentially The Gingerbread Man of amnesiac spies. The story of The Gingerbread Man is actually pretty crazy. He leaps out of an old woman’s oven, gets chased by some barnyard animals and then dies in the jaws of a fox. Is this what life is all about? You’re the world’s first sentient cookie, magically endowed with the powers of speech and reason, and everyone on the planet just wants to eat you. What if that talking cookie was the next cookie Dalai Lama? Then again, he did look pretty delicious. I guess this explains why some people call Ashton Kutcher “The Gingerbread Man”, because he also came to life in an old woman’s oven. Anyway, this movie doesn’t even have Jason Bourne in it.

T: It’s actually a good thing there’s no Jason Bourne, since Ed Norton is in this movie. Did you really want to see him reunited with his Rounders co-star Matt Damon? You can’t be tangled up in a web of international intrigue while you’re also trying to replenish your bankroll so you can buy into the Main Event at the World Series of Poker. Tournament poker is a game that requires great focus. You don’t want to be on the look out for snipers while also trying to keep your composure after some asshole spikes a two-outer on the river. Although, it would be nice to have a license to kill in that situation. Bourne has one of those, right? Or is James Bond the only one who has one? Was Bourne assasining without a license? Hey, wait, why is assasining not a word? This is bullshit.

J: Assasining is the process of raising your “ass sassiness” quotient. For example, writing “PINK” or “LIL’ FLIRT”  on the butt of your terry cloth short shorts is going to result in a very sassy ass. On the other hand, writing “THE BOURNE LEGACY” on the butt of some sensible grey work slacks is going to result in a negative ass sassiness score.

T: Didn’t the first Bourne novel explain that Jason Bourne was recruited by the CIA after a mix up in Panama City, Florida when he was spotted poolside at the Ramada, wearing shorts with “DEAD DROP” written on the ass? Or am I thinking about the 10,000 word Bourne fan fiction I once read, The Bourne Lemon Party, and its sequel, Bournse.cx?

J: May I quote my favorite passage from the Orson Welles character in The Bourne Lemon Party? “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone. Also, we put upsetting photos of old men fellating each other on the internet for people to trick their friends into looking at. Plus The Bourne Legacy looks kind of boring. Good night, everybody, I’m Orson Welles!“

J: I haven’t seen a soldier this threatened by an enormous squid since Beetle Bailey’s girlfriend made him try an Ika Maki roll at Benihana. And by Beetle Bailey’s girlfriend, I mean Sarge. I have to say, the female Commander Shepard in this trailer looks a little like a grown-up Pippi Longstocking. Which explains why the two newest companions in her squad are a spotted horse and a monkey named Mr. Nilsson. Don’t worry, the horse is a biotic and the monkey keeps Medi-gel packs under his comical straw hat.

Considering the fact that my main Commander Shepard looks like a scraggly jug-eared country singer, it wouldn’t hurt to have Waylon Jennings and Harry Nilsson as squadmates, either. Just Midnight Cowboy the shit out of those Reapers. Do you think Bioware will release “suede fringe jacket” N7 armor DLC for Commander Shepard?

E: Suede fringe jacket would be a huge upgrade to the crappy non-armor outfits in Mass Effect 2. You either had to look like a rejected Firefly crew member with a penchant for light bondage, or a Steven Seagal inspired “martial artist” who is actually just a lawncare guy that does karate twice a week but never fails to mention it in every conversation.  This FemShep is so much better than that generic HeShep (ManShep? MascuShep?) they used for the Mass Effect 2 trailer and packaging.

I’m really excited about this game, adding multiplayer should be an awesome addition. The hardest part of Mass Effect 2 is deciding if I play, or my wife does. We tried a cooperative Shep that we both played on, but it almost ended our relationship. Fortunately, I got custody of our ShepSon, but she gets him every other weekend. Local co-op is going to bring a really cool dynamic to the game, but hopefully it doesn’t detract from the solo stuff for ForeverAloneSheps.

J: Is this where the phrase “beat you like a red-headed ShepChild” comes from? You know, I used to have a Taekwondo instructor named Shep. He had a mustache and a thick black mullet. He taught me to how to hold my leg properly when I did a side kick, knowledge that I promptly used to kick another kid in the balls. Speaking of mustaches, I just realized that none of the Mass Effect races have facial hair. How does the Batarian Jeff Foxworthy distinguish himself from the Batarian Larry the Cable Guy on the Blue Kestrel Armor Comedy Tour? The Batarian Larry the Cable Guy probably tears the arms off his Torso Sheath, I guess.

E: Surprisingly, the Mass Effect franchise has spawned a lot of commonly used phrases, as well as the wildly popular late 90′s TV show, Shep-By-Shep. So, as it turns out, the multiplayer mode in Mass Effect 3 does not support local co-op. That is a major disappointment, but BioWare hinted that post-launch DLC might change that. It didn’t deter me enough to cancel my Gamestop pre-order though. Despite hating Gamestop for everything it is and everything it hopes to be, they had the best pre-order DLC bonuses, so they got my money. My only sadness is that they don’t have the Collector’s Edition. I mean, I need that robot dog!

J: Incidentally, George Jetson’s dying words were ”I need that robot dog!” Because in the future, doctors have been replaced by robot dogs. Bark once for aspirin, bark twice for heart surgery. And those are your options for medical attention in the future. Also, the robot dogs perform eulogies, which comes in handy. Come to think of it, they probably shouldn’t have let the Robot Dog Funeral Home Corporations privatize the health care industry.

Anyway, I look forward to multiplayer mode in Mass Effect 3, because if there’s one thing my favorite single-player science fiction video game storyline needs, it’s a way for strangers to insert their own dumb personalities into it. That’s usually how classics in any genre are improved, right? Letting idiots off the street put their two cents in? On the other hand, maybe I shouldn’t rush to pass judgement before I’ve played it. I should probably give it a chance and take things one Shep at a time. You’ll probably want to bark once after reading that joke. Or twice. I don’t know, I’m not a doctor!