Looks like the hero in inFAMOUS: Second Son is a graffiti artist in addition to having superpowers. I never got into graffiti, but one of my friends used to tag “JungleKid” all over Atlanta back in 2000.

I still look for his JungleKid tags sometimes, now that I live in Atlanta. I’ve never been able to find one. Maybe I should start putting up my own tags. I always thought the black and white cartoons of naked women from the Playboy “party jokes” page would make good stencil graffiti. They’re very stark and minimalist.

Those tiny cartoon women are called “Femlins,” which is a cross between the words “female” and “gremlin”. Because if there’s one thing women love, it’s being compared to gremlins. They really knew how to make a lady feel special back then.

On the other hand, I’m sure the residents of Kingston Falls would have rather had their town overrun by these types of gremlins as opposed to a bunch of reptilian monsters. According to Wikipedia, Femlins are portrayed as

mischievous black and white female sprites, apparently ten to twelve inches tall, wearing only opera gloves, stockings and high heel shoes. They are usually drawn in two or three panel vignettes, interacting with various life-sized items such as shoes, jewelry, neckties and such.

I wonder if Hugh Hefner makes wishes on them. Is that how the Playboy media empire got started, by wishing on Femlins? Maybe that’s why Gargamel is always trying to capture the Smurfs, so he can wish his way to his own porn business. Just do a Kickstarter, man!

This honestly might not be the best time to get into the porn industry, though. The Internet is making Playboys (and the Femlins inside them) obsolete. One minute, you’re twelve and looking at an illustration of a naked lady treating a golf tee like a stripper pole, the next you’re thirty-five and looking at a blank wall you swore used to have JungleKid stenciled on it.

Gather ye life-sized martini glasses while ye may, Femlins. No wish is guaranteed to be granted forever, and every wall on which you paint your name is always looking for a way to get back to being blank again.

If I do start putting up Femlin stencils, I’ll probably give them some clothes, though. Or at least stethoscopes. If they’re going from the Playboy Mansion to the streets of Atlanta, there might as well be a doctor in the bunch. Or a Supreme Court Justice. They’ve been posing sexily with Father’s Day Gifts for far too long. It’s not 1963 anymore. It’s time to hit the books, Femlins!

On consoles Q1 2014.

Reading for Scene Missing: Bobbin Wages (Mannequin), Jack Walsh (Thor: The Dark World), and Brooke Hatfield (Pootie Tang).

I remember the first time I saw Britney Spears. She was featured in a special section of the Delia’s catalogue I always looked through and never ordered from when I was in seventh grade.

In the following years, I would grow up, so would she, and I would follow her every step. She was mine, my star, and everything about her was mine to know. I once bought two copies of the “Oops!…I Did It Again” album just to make sure I was doing my part to boost her sales in the first week the album was released. I own a copy of Crossroads on DVD, y’all.

My Britney thing was SERIOUS.

Every morning (and allow me to remind you here that I was 22 and not 12), I’d wake up, check my email, E! Online, then Facebook. I honestly can’t tell you how my obsession got to this point. It could be that her story had been so riveting—this was the era of shaving her head and attacking paparazzi with umbrellas and marrying Kevin Federline.

Maybe it’s that my story wasn’t riveting—I’d gotten everything I said I wanted, and it was super, super boring.

Then I saw an episode of South Park called “Britney’s New Look.”

It starts with Britney blowing her head off and surviving. The paparazzi won’t leave her alone, so the boys, feeling guilty, try to save her by taking her to the North Pole to hide. The plan unwinds when they discover the real reason behind the public obsession with Britney: her death would be a ritualistic sacrifice to guarantee a good harvest.

That episode took me on the heaviest guilt trip I’ve ever been on, and, if you know my mother, you know that’s really saying something. Before the first commercial break, I’d dropped my glass of horrible tequila punch left over from a Tila Tequila watch party we’d had the night before. I got three phone calls from friends checking to make sure I was OK.

I threw all my gossip rags in the trash. I deleted the bookmarks to the many (SERIOUSLY KAT WTF) celebrity gossip websites I read daily. Britney Spears was falling apart in front of me and it was, like, absolutely my personal fault. I had to save her.

I had to save her by leaving her alone.

Here’s what I discovered in my “Time Away” from Perez Hilton: first, most regular, mainstream, high brow news is actually just as gossip-ridden as the celebrity kind. I guess you might learn something worthwhile if you choose to roll around in one pile of shit over the other, but probably not, so, you know, choose whatever shit you like.

And second, Jesus Christ, Britney! I look away for two goddamn seconds and you’re living with some slob Hokie who shops at American Eagle!? FOR GODSAKE, WOMAN.

I left you alone to save you, and this is how you repay me?

I’m not going to pull a Carrie Bradshaw on all of you, throwing a stupid play-on-words question into the lead and then answering it with some deep play-on-words bullshit in the kicker.

But did you know Perez Hilton has a radio show now? This is a person who used MS Paint to draw dicks on people’s faces, publicly, and now he’s so normal that he’s on ClearChannel Top 40 stations nationwide. (Jason, are you paying attention? THAT COULD BE YOU SOMEDAY.)

If there is a moral to this story, it’s this: more penis.

Released January 12, 2004.

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Close your eyes. I’m going to take you on an imaginary journey through a bizarre and troubling scenario, and I think you’ll want to conjure the vividest image possible. So, close your eyes, please, and we’ll set the scene.

Are they closed? Really? I know you’re reading this. Unless you’ve got translucent eyelids, which would be freaky as fuck, your eyes are clearly not closed.

Seriously? You know what, fuck it. Just fuck me right in the ass for trying to do something nice and take you on a vivid, magical mind-journey. I don’t even care. Keep your dumb-ass eyes open.

Ahem.

Now. Try to imagine the following:

You stand on a hilltop overlooking the smoldering ruins of a once-bucolic township in Maine.

For several months, the entire town has been entombed by a vast, semi-permeable, dome-like barrier of mysterious origin.

The sunlight seems to hang in the air — the UV rays diffract, shatter, and reflect through a soup of toxins that increasingly sullies the atmosphere under the dome. The day has been stripped of its typical progression and instead a stark day/night dichotomy has taken over, consisting of only two luminous intensities: perpetual orange dusk and unforgiving darkness.

With no way in or out, your fellow inhabitants have turned on and destroyed one another—as the inhabitants of tediously contrived parables tend to do. Buildings burn. Supplies run low. Society has cannibalized itself. The dome is a mirror held up to humanity. We gaze upon it; a violent, dead-eyed animal peers back.

Here’s the worst part. Those “toxins” that are choking the atmosphere and trapping the light? Yeah, those are mostly farts.

The average person farts, like, at least 11 times a day. That same person, exposed to great stress (say, being trapped inside a giant invisible dome), farts more than twice as much. Multiply that by the population of a town, and then contain it all in a semi-permeable dome for 90 days. Now you’re swimming in stress farts.

Such is the premise of Under the Dome, a CBS miniseries based on a book by Stephen King based on The Simpsons Movie based on a documentary about Detroit. [Ed note: Did I miss anything? I had my eyes closed.]

Premieres June 24.

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Back in the 90′s, an acquaintance of mine started dating an older woman, and she made him get rid of his cardboard box full of unlabeled VHS porn movies. I guess she didn’t want any smutty tapes ruining her May-December romance. Although, if she’d really wanted them out of his life for good, she’d have waved a magnet over the box and erased them.

I wonder if that guy and his older lady friend are still together. Must be hard for her to keep the porn out of their relationship these days, what with the internet and all. Can’t hold a magnet over that. And you can’t kick the internet out in a cardboard box. It is the cardboard box. In fact, those poorly dubbed X-rated films with bad tracking may have been the seed from which the mighty oak of internet porn grew.

One of the movies in the box was a porn from the 70′s called Thoroughly Amorous Amy. It was about a woman named Amy, who jogs through the city, picking up strange men and leading them back to her house for an orgy, like a slutty, detail-oriented Pied Piper.

Even a hobo joins the marathon, as I recall. I guess life on Skid Row hadn’t damaged his health enough to keep him from running a few miles to have sex with a beautiful stranger. You don’t often hear the internal monologue of characters in porn movies, but he was probably thinking, “Feet, don’t fail me now!”

Just the other day I was walking to my office in my suit and tie, and an old hobo sitting on the ground next to his crutches looked up at me and said, “You’re doing the 9 to 5 thing, and I’m just sittin’ right here.”

He didn’t say what series of events led him to be sitting right there. Maybe he’d broken his leg chasing a horny woman down the street 30 years ago, and decided to stay where he was.

I should have asked him, “Is that you, hobo from Thoroughly Amorous Amy?”

Amy is due to take another jog around the city to pick up stragglers, from the looks of things. Isn’t that what being throughly amorous is all about? I’m not sure her lovemaking was comprehensive enough the first time around to earn her the title.

Anyway, looks like the haunted tapes in V/H/S/2 could stand to get magnetized. Who knows which one of them is the seed from which the mighty oak of horror grows? If only they’d threatened an older woman’s love affair with a young pornhound, we wouldn’t be having this problem.

In theaters July 12.

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My fear of heights started in a movie theater on my fifth birthday at a showing of Superman II.

At first, it was all unreal fun—Lex Luthor had hair even though my dad told me that he wasn’t supposed to, and the crazy, short-haired Krypton lady with eye makeup and shoulder pads who looked like a Kryptonian real estate agent threw people around until folks wised up and kneeled before Zod.

And then came Niagara Falls.

A boy who was my age, my size and my hair length gets away from his distracted family. He investigates the waterfall through some pay binoculars for three seconds, then he decides to go hanging off the railing. He grabs hold, he lets go, and catches himself. He grabs hold, he lets go, and catches himself. It looked like a cool way to behave to me. And, like I would have, the boy yells, “Hey mom, look at me!”

Then he falls down the side of the waterfall, screaming.

Superman caught him, but later my dad told me that Superman was not real. I became a fan of guardrails and safety nets after that. I realized I was never going to leap tall buildings in a single bound. When I finally did go to Niagara Falls at 12, I didn’t use the pay binoculars.

But that scene also profoundly affected the way I experienced movies. A movie didn’t seem complete to me unless some child was hanging in peril from a great height. My favorite cliffhangers were literal ones.

The 1980′s were the golden era for dangling-children scenes. Annie climbing the railroad tracks on a raised bridge before she has to be saved by the guy in Daddy Warbucks’ helicopter, E.T. stopping those bikes from going off a cliff, Short Round hanging off the rope bridge in Temple of Doom, Carol Ann walking the ledge of the Sears Tower in Poltergeist III, a baby climbing out on the ledge in Ghostbusters II—kid-related cliffhangers were happening every week at the multiplex. At any moment, blissfully unaware, I could just plummet down an elevator shaft or off the side of a bridge.

I saw The Goonies five times in the theater. Partly because the poster and the cover of the movie novelization (which I read twice and still have) had all of the kids dangling one after the other – in order of star billing – from a large rock. It still bugs me that the scene never appears precisely in the movie, though they cross a number of narrow, wet bridges and walk a plank. It was my favorite. I related so much to Mikey in that movie that I wanted asthma.

I can’t tell you how thrilling it was to watch Adventures in Babysitting while I was visiting my dad in Chicago. First we watched the VHS as the little girl obsessed with Thor went out the window of that skyscraper. Then, my dad would take my brother and me outside to look at the actual building. I always looked for some sign that an errant child was hanging on for dear life.

My dad would tell me that most kids wouldn’t be able to hang on to window ledges for that long. My brother would dare me to go to the edge of the top floor or roof of every skyscraper we visited that summer. I only did once, and he grabbed me by the knees while I looked off the edge so that my stomach gave out and I thought I was going to fall. I never forgave him for that.

Something has happened to movies since then. They just don’t throw kids off buildings like they used to. The last time I remember seeing a small child fall to his death in a movie was The Good Son, and I guess they scorched the earth of that cliché after they tossed Macaulay Culkin. (Someone mentioned Antichrist to me while I was writing this, but I haven’t seen it. And Lars von Trier ain’t Hollywood.)

When Super 8 came out, I felt a pang of nostalgia for those kinds of movies, for that kind of thrill. I wanted to be a kid in danger again. Now I’m more firmly grounded in both my sense of reality and about how high up I will venture.

Although if I’m ever in peril, Superman can come catch me any time he wants.

Released in theaters June 19, 1981.

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Because I grew up eating Southern Baptist guilt for Sunday brunch, I felt like I needed to request God’s forgiveness for everything. My nightly prayers comprised a litany of offenses – anything from making fun of my teacher’s pronunciation of the date (Mondee, Tuesdee, Wednesdee, etc.) to stealing a diary key from a boutique and burying it in my backyard. I convulsed on my bed sobbing, desperate for redemption.

“Good girl,” my father probably thought while watching The Smothers Brothers a couple rooms over.

To be safe, I sought absolution for crimes I didn’t even commit, in case God wasn’t completely watching and might be confused.

One Halloween, my best friend’s mother took us to the local parade where hillbillies dressed as hippies, Huckleberry Finn, and hookers hurled candy from their floats. On the car ride home I sat in the back seat with my friend’s little brother Christopher, who bemoaned his accumulation of several grape Jolly Ranchers but only one of the coveted green apple flavor.

Once Mrs. Burger parked in front of my house, everyone leapt out of the car, and one of my green apple Jolly Ranchers slid into the mound of candy in Christopher’s seat. Just as I finished scraping it back into my pile with a White Mystery AirHead, Mrs. Burger opened my door and caught me even though I didn’t do anything wrong so I resolved to pray about it pronto because I shouldn’t be concerned with setting things straight with Mrs. Burger but with God.

While listening to my plea, God probably thought, “That church fucked this girl up GOOD.”

I ended the entreaty with the following refrain:

Redeemed, redeemed,
Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb;
Redeemed, how I love to proclaim it!
His child and forever I am.

In theaters June 28th.

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Boy, that Riddick gets into a lot of scrapes, doesn’t he? I almost got into a fight myself the other day.

A guy in an American Apparel tank top and lime green sunglasses yelled, “You can’t park for shit!” at me from his car, then sped off in a cowardly (yet stylish) fashion. How threatening could I have looked? I was holding toilet paper from CVS and an iPad charger I was returning to Verizon. Stand and fight me, American Apparel guy! I will crush your cool shades beneath my Cottonelle!

He was right, though. I can’t park for shit. My car was all catty-cornered and my trunk was hanging out into the street. In my defense, I was mad and distracted because a guy at Verizon sold me the wrong charger, so I had to make a second trip to return it.

While I was standing in line to exchange it, I noticed the the man on the Verizon “Don’t Text and Drive” poster in the lobby who was about to run over a toddler on her bike while texting “LOL” had full bars on his carrier-nonspecific Android-ish phone.

There’s a relatively unknown bathroom at work on the third floor of my office that I call “Siddhartha” because of the level of secret-garden-esque contemplative silence I find there, and I have to wave my iPhone around in the stall to get even one bar.

Meanwhile, this vehicular manslaughterist enjoys the full range of his unspecified carrier’s cellular service! I guess cellphone companies are duty bound to provide full coverage to even the most criminally negligent among us. But shouldn’t I also get great reception in the closest place to Nirvana I know of here on Earth?

I wonder how I would have felt if the person about to get run over on the poster had been Lime Green Sunglasses guy. Like, right in the middle of telling someone they can’t park for shit.

I guess that isn’t very Siddhartha of me. LGS was only telling me what was true, I was the one who didn’t want to hear it. He’s like a modern-day Ksitigarbha!

Ksitigarbha is a Buddhist monk who vowed not to achieve Buddhahood until all hells are emptied. He travels to Hell to teach and relieve beings of their suffering. Presumably by yelling, “You can’t get enlightened for shit!”

Looks like Riddick will also be relieving beings of their suffering—by chopping them up with a sword. Anyway, now that it’s on the internet, everyone knows about my Narnia bathroom. Don’t go looking for bodhisattvas in my office building! And don’t text and drive, dummies.

In theaters September 6.

Last weekend, my friend from New York came down to visit Atlanta, and she was all about shooting guns. “I don’t care what else we do, but we have to shoot guns. In a field. Outside. I want to do something I can’t do in New York.” When I said maybe we could go to a museum in addition to shooting guns, she said, “New York has a museum on every corner. Fuck museums!”

So we took her to a field in Middle Georgia, and she got to shoot all the guns she wanted. Then we went to a BBQ joint, and two strip clubs. Even the stripper in a fur stole we nicknamed “Game of Thrones” was wearing rhinestone gun-shaped heels. If she’d been wearing heels shaped like museums, I think my friend would have punched her in the face.

There’s a scene in Cormac McCarthy’s book Blood Meridian where a man gets shot in the thigh with an arrow, and nobody in his gang will help him. “Will none of ye help a man?” he begs, before bleeding out. I get the feeling that if the world had started to end when we were shooting guns, I’d be the member of the gang in the post-apocalyptic Cormac McCarthy world doing the most will-none-of-ye-help-a-man’ing.

“I just wanted to go to the museum!” I’d cry, before bleeding out.

I bet Game of Thrones would do just fine on doomsday. She’s already dressed for the end of the world. She’s the Cormac McCarthy of strippers! Judging by the wad of bills tucked into her garter, she’s doing just fine in our regular non-ending world. Maybe I’m the one who needs to get a fur stole and gun heels. According to my girlfriend, I do have a bubble butt. I’m ready to twerk it!

All I ask is if I get an arrow in the thigh, that one of ye put down the BBQ ribs and help a man.

In theaters June 12.

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I’m glad there’s another Man of Steel trailer, because the studios need to drum up some interest in this obscure indie gem about a little-known comic book character. “Man of Steel? Is that a sequel to Steel, the critical darling for which Shaq was awarded the Palme d’Or at Cannes, in recognition of his portrayal of both Iron Man and Thor at the same time, except he could also use his big-ass hammer as a gun?” (Come to think of it, who wouldn’t pay good money to see that? Get cracking, Hollywood! And make sure you spell my name right on the royalty checks, please.)

Alas, there’s no Iron Thor with a nifty hammer-gun in Man of Steel, but there is General Zod, who has journeyed across an ocean of stars to force us Earthlings to narc on Superman. Kind of like when I got grounded and snuck out my bedroom window to go play Dungeons & Dragons, and my dad tracked me down to my friend’s house. Dad didn’t even have to threaten my friends to make them give me up—they all just pointed wordlessly at the closet where I was hiding. (Thanks, guys.) [Ed note: You need a better Dungeon Master! Didn't they read the "Snitches Get Snitches" section of the Player's Handbook? Roll D20 to see how many stitches, etc. You should have cast "Magic Missile" on them. With your dick.]

General Zod can’t take Superman back to Krypton, since it’s been destroyed, but he can probably throw Supes into the Phantom Zone, which is kind of like being stuck in your room, pondering how much fun your friends are having slaying orcs and getting cool magic swords without you, imagining all the awesome things you should have said as your dad dragged you away, like growling “I’ll be back!” in your best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice.

That’s what Man of Steel needs if it’s going to grab the attention of snooty Steel-loving moviegoers everywhere: a cool catch phrase. Like, Superman slams General Zod into the ground and says, “You’re grounded!” Or he punches him into the Phantom Zone and says, “Go to your room, Zod!” And Zod just sits there, with nothing to do but watch Steel on a loop. And not even the whole movie—just the part where Shaq shoots his hammer-gun at a carful of hoodlums and says, “It’s hammer time!” Over and over again, for all eternity, until Robert Redford hands him the Special Jury Prize.

In theaters June 14.

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Space travel has never really seemed like it was in the realm of possibility for me, but then again, I never thought the future would bring me a tiny espresso machine that could fit in my car’s cup holder. Actually, I don’t have that, but thanks to Facebook’s targeted advertising, I now know that I am, apparently, the kind of person who should want it. There are no pitches for space tourism yet, but that’s just a matter of time. Allow me to preemptively click “no thanks.”

When I was little, my first exposure to the terrors of outer space (or, at least, the ones that I didn’t learn about in Star Wars movies—watch out for monsters in trash compactors, by the way) came from a National Geographic coffee table book.

My parents originally bought me Our Fifty States and Our World, both of which I would later paraphrase without attribution for numerous elementary school reports. So, once you’ve mastered information about Nebraska’s chief export (it’s probably soybeans, but corn looks better on the map illustration), where do you go from there? Yeah, that’s right.

I don’t remember much about 90% of Our Universe. I spent all of my time poring over the back section. It was speculative stuff about Tomorrow with crops grown in giant space stations and artists’ conceptions of furry aliens giving fiery birth to tadpole-like babies.

But the part of Our Universe that left the biggest impression on me was tucked inside the cover flap: a flexi-disc of “space sounds.” The flexi-disc, an innovation/relic of the LP era in which audio was etched onto a floppy plastic sheet, was most often found in magazines and the odd paperback book. I’m not sure why National Geographic didn’t include an honest-to-God record in this oversized hardback. Probably because flexi-discs were way cheaper, but I like to think that they seemed very Tomorrow.

In retrospect, most of these space sounds were probably produced by a guy with a Moog synthesizer and a wire whisk he used to beat an amplified Slinky. But, at the time, I listened to them riveted in fascination and fear. These were the sounds of the Great Void. Transmissions from an alien world. The ghostly echoes of the Big Bang. They were the sounds of my cosmic insignificance, and they scared the hell out of me.

The author as Luke Skywalker.

I was always a jittery kid and harsh noises generally unnerved me anyway, whether I was told they were solar storms or not. But, I still think I internalized the implied cosmic horror on the disc. This was heavy shit for a six year-old. It was at this time that I abandoned any astronautical inspiration that I may have gotten from Luke Skywalker.

Can you imagine the liability release you’ll have to sign when somebody finally gets commercial/recreational space travel off the ground? It’s going to be the size of Our Universe. Possibly a large print edition. I mean, just look at what happens to poor Sandra Bullock in Gravity: slung into space like the chunky kid at the end of the human chain in a game of Crack the Whip. And, judging from what I can see, her luggage gets lost, too.

Granted, she’s supposed to be a professional astronaut, so the risks of things going horribly wrong with one little misstep are a given in that field, I suppose. This is a profession where your commute begins by sitting atop what is basically a skyscraper filled with rocket fuel. Count me out. Dying alone, adrift in the cold void of space with the maddening reverberations of that flexi-disc as the last sounds I hear is not the way I intend to go. More likely, I will go to greet eternity with a lapful of hot espresso.

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The biggest problem I have with this trailer is that the sisters look too much alike. I have no idea who’s the sick one, or whose birthday it is. Who’s the evil twin/good twin here? I would have an easier time if the Olsen Twins were in this. I already know which one of those girls is effed up. Thanks, Perez Hilton. [Ed note: I think we'd all have an easier time if the Olsen Twins were in everything. Movies, books, paintings, our DNA, our atoms—an infinity of Olsens showing us how the West was fun on a subatomic level. ]

What I get from this trailer is that a game of Spin The Bottle ruins a birthday party, and then someone does a really awkward dance. THAT is my kind of party. I have a deep affection for conflict; this is why I love reality television and confrontational Facebook posts.

There is only one thing I like more than conflict—when people embarrass themselves with awkward dances. This movie has all of that. Damn. Now, if it only had the Olsen Twins solving mysteries.

I guess the only thing that would make this movie better is if it had dance-fighting, maybe I should get into that. Like Capoeira, only slow and off beat. No flips or cartwheels. Just awkward, off-beat dance-fight swaying. [Ed note: If you master the art of fighting with awkward dance, are you not exhibiting a type of grace through your mastery? And now that you are graceful, does that not mean you have failed to master the art of awkwardness? And is not failing to master awkwardness the highest state of awkwardness? I think I just accidentally reached enlightenment. My God, it's full of Olsen Twins.]

Do you think that Mary Kate, Ashley, and I could form some kind of dance/fight/sway/not-Capoeira team that also solves mysteries with a cowboy friend named Buddy? Maybe we could solve the mystery of who ruined this confusing party. [Ed note: Probably Buddy, he can't dance-fight for shit.]

Caroline and Jackie was released in theaters on May 3rd.

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Ever since I texted my girlfriend a joke about “Pussyville,” my phone’s been auto-correcting all the “P” words I type to “Pussyville.” So if I text you that I’m taking you to Pussyville, don’t get too excited—we’re probably going to P.F. Chang’s.

Batman probably doesn’t even need auto-correct. I’m sure every wireless communication Batman sends is flawless, concise, and to the point. If he texts you that he’s taking you to Pussyville, you can be damn sure you’re going straight to Pussyville. And then he’s going to take you to P.F. Chang’s.

I used to drop my Batman action figure off the third story balcony when I was a kid. “Aaaaaaaaaah!” he’d scream in an un-Batman-like fashion as he plunged to his death again and again. He’d explode with a loud “BAM!” every time he hit the driveway, sending his arms into the kudzu and his legs under the trampoline. He was never truly broken, though—it was easy to snap his parts back together again. All I had to do was fish his head out of the ivy.

My girlfriend’s phone is like that Batman figure. She’s always dropping it, or knocking it off the bed, or just letting it fall out of her hand. It explodes with a loud “BAM!” every time it hits the ground. In her defense, she’s probably dropping her phone in shock at the amount of Pussyville texts she’s getting. No matter how many times it shatters into pieces, she can always snap it back together and it runs just fine.

If Gotham City was a hot half-Korean girl with an encyclopedic knowledge of hip-hop, Batman would be her Samsung Galaxy S III. Throw him off the roof, he doesn’t give a shit. He’ll still upload your pics to Instagram. Hashtag #pussyville.

That’s probably what makes a good Batman. Not so much your indestructibility, but your ability to pull yourself together after you fall. He’s the hero Pussyville deserves! I mean Gotham. The hero Gotham deserves.

On consoles October 25.

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Few people outside of conspiracy-theory circles know this, but Justin Bieber was created by a certain pop singer in an attempt to bring about world peace. After all, who better to usher in an era of harmony than, well, Usher, known for his soulful, harmonious crooning? Just like Ozymandias at the end of Watchmen, Usher knew that to save the world, he had to give it a common enemy. And so, wielding the dark studio arts, he summoned from the blackest pits of Canada a sprightly young chipmunk of a lad.

“Here world,” Usher cackled. “Here is your naked Doctor Manhattan! Look upon my works, ye ladies, and despair!” Lil Jon laid an infectious groove over it, Ludacris contributed a guest rap, and “Naked Doctor Manhattan” went to the top of the charts. [Ed note: Meanwhile, the single "Girl, I'm Not Locked In Here With You, You're Locked In Here With ME" by "Naked Rorschach" failed to sell a single copy.]

Alas, much like “Springtime for Hitler” in The Producers, the plan backfired. Instead of uniting the warring nations of the world, “Justin Bieber” became a hit, and the big guns had to be called in. When you want to manufacture a pop act to get under the world’s collective skin, there’s only one man to call—the man who unleashed Taylor Hicks upon an unsuspecting world: Simon Cowell.

And so One Direction was born, cobbled together from various X-Factor contestants. In short order, this jury-rigged boy band of fresh-faced ragamuffins rattled Justin Bieber’s carefully calibrated programming. Soon, the Auto-Tuned Antichrist began to exhibit unseemly behavior (even—gasp!— neglecting his pet monkey). By the time the Biebs was baptized in a chorus of boos at the Billboard Music Awards last weekend, he had become all but irrelevant, thanks to a plucky, ragged band of adorable urchins.

But while Simon Cowell’s precisely crafted algorithms and subroutines have saved the world from Justin Bieber, they have also failed in their primary goal of bringing about a Utopian age of peace and prosperity. Instead of causing the defense ministries, presidents and tribal warlords of the world to put aside their differences, One Direction has caused the lion to lie down with the lamb, both of them spent in their adulation of these apple-cheeked automatons. [Ed note: Wait, lions and lambs have sex to One Direction? Haven't they seen the video for Ciara's "Body Party"?! The rapper Future tells Ciara's fortune in it, just like Zoltar in the movie Big, except I don't recall Tom Hanks stripping for Zoltar afterwards. Maybe in the deleted scenes?]

They’re just so darn cute, these heavily accented moppets, what with their wacky hijinks, like piling tea cups atop one another’s heads, creating enthusiastically forgettable pop songs, selling out gargantuan sports stadiums filled with screaming girls who are mostly far too young for them, and dating Taylor Swift. Those little rascals!

Watching this trailer, their wide grins and general aw-shucks demeanor are irresistible. Sitting through a whole movie? Fuhgeddaboutit. There’s nothing to be done. We must all bow down and submit to our new post-adolescent overlords. As soon as we know their names, or can identify one of their songs.

Resistance is futile.

In theaters August 30th. 

There’s a floor in my office building that I think might be a portal to another universe. People on the elevator are always getting off on this floor with their suitcases, but nobody ever comes back down with any luggage. What if there’s a Bioshock Infinite-style tear in the fabric of reality on that floor, and people pay to travel to different versions of our world?

They sure don’t look excited about it, if that’s the case. Maybe they’re playing it cool so nobody gets wise to their dimension-hopping. If I ran the dimensional portal service, I’d be like, “Make sure to wear sunglasses and just nod at everybody. Don’t mention the door to another world. If anybody asks you what the luggage is for, tell them you hate your suitcase and you’re going to throw it off the roof.”

There’s a printer in the office that I’d love to throw off the roof. It never prints anything right! All it wants out of life is to tear important documents up and make you put your hand inside it looking for the pieces. If I chewed up your passport and then made you put your fingers in my mouth until I spit it back out again, you wouldn’t want me in your office, but somehow this printer gets a free ride!

It constantly beeps whenever it jams up, too. The beeping sounds exactly like the “Wii Shop Channel” music on the Nintendo Wii. One time while the printer was performing its beep song, I said, “Does anybody else think this sounds like the shopping music on the Nintendo Wii?” and my coworkers looked at me with blank stares. What if they’re from a dimension where the Wii was never invented? I should throw them off the roof, too.

Maybe the guy that runs the dimensional portal will let me send the printer to another world. If he doesn’t, I’m going to spit his passport in his face.

Anyway, if you see me on the elevator with a printer beeping the Wii shopping theme, and I’m wearing sunglasses and nodding a lot, you’ll know I finally got the guts to save our universe from shitty printers. Or better yet, I’ll be going to a world with NO PRINTERS. Is it worth it to leave my family and friends behind to never have to clear another paper jam? Probably. It worked for the people in Europa Report. Do you see any printers on their ship? Hell, no.

In theaters August 2nd.

This is exactly—exactly—why I never let strangers find out I’m having a party.

Obviously, unlike Paris Hilton’s parties, my parties don’t involve me leaving my six-million-dollar mansion unmanned while I snort champagne in another state or whatever, but the principle is the same. Word gets out about your party, things get weird.

For instance, I once thought it’d be smart to circumvent potential noise complaints by inviting all the neighbors over for my birthday. I barely knew them, but I figured they wouldn’t show up, and so what if they did—it was worth a few beers and some Chex Mix to keep them from calling the cops.

Only they definitely did show up, lots of them, and some brought friends. Weird, drunk, malodorous friends. And the guy who lived next door made a legend of our guest bathroom, even though he could probably see his own toilet from where he was sitting, and as a result we had to let people parade through the master bedroom for the rest of the night and use the ensuite.

I don’t like guests parading through my bedroom. They look at my shoes and probably draw unfair conclusions about my snowglobes. They were a gift! [Ed note: "Look at these dumb snowglobes! I bet you could barely fit an episode of Nurse Jackie in there, much less the entire series run of St. Elsewhere."]

Anyway, we still ended up with a noise complaint.

I guess I should count my blessings, because when people see my shoes they’re like, “Huh, you have kind of a lot of shoes,” and when people see Paris Hilton’s shoes they’re like, “I’m taking all your shoes.” Then they probably make their own little legend of her closet while they’re in there. There’s no mention in the Bling Ring trailer of anyone pooping in Paris Hilton’s closet, but I’m making an inference and I’m probably right. I bet it was Hermione. [Ed note: In her defense, she thought she was in Voldemort's closet. There were Horcruxes everywhere!]

Jim Carrey quite clearly fears painting himself into a Rip Taylor-style corner.

Yeah. Boom. How’s that for a thesis statement?

Stop shame-shaking your head at me, man. You think I don’t know?

Look, Judgey – just hear me out, OK?

Jim Carrey—his mounting desperation to avoid the Confetti Cannon of a Rip Taylor Fate impels him to adopt evermore implausible grabs for Versatility and strained claims at the Legitimacy that will never come.

Because for every Eternal Sunshine, there shall remain a Cable Guy, for every Truman, there shall persist an Ace Ventura.

Look, Jim—you can plunk down in the makeup chair for five hours every morning of the shoot to get the prosthetics on that face, but we are never, ever going to regard you as a Super Committed Super Serious Actor Man. Ever. You are and shall remain a Rubber-Limbed Clown at the Center of Whom Burns a Molten Core of Attention-Lust That Consumes Everything In Its Wake Pausing Only to Bellow “MORE!”

Like that plant in Little Shop of Horrors, but less relatable. [Ed note: Speaking of relating to Audrey II, Rip Taylor will also beg you for a few drops of blood if he sees you've got a cut on your finger. In his defense, he thinks confetti is blood. Which means he must think that he's throwing buckets of blood all over the audience during his performances. Dear God.]

I am aware that Mr. Carrey will disagree with this assessment, and can be seen here composing his 38,000-word rebuttal. [Ed note: Here's me typing my own rebuttal that Kick-Ass 2 looks amazing.]

But at night, when the Monkey Demons once more descend to nestle in the quivery cradle of his brainstem, to gnaw like Satan’s own earwigs upon the spongy meal of his disquiet brain, then shall he whimper that I speak true. [Ed note: So what you're saying is, a monkey has to chew on someone's brain before they'll admit you're right?]

In theaters August 16.

In real life part three of a hangover is usually getting drunk again, but sometimes it also means you end up shirtless in a cemetery drinking Tab, which is what happens in the trailer for The Hangover Part III.

Or maybe it means your friends drive you to rehab, or to Alabama! Past casino billboards, a vintage store called This’ll Do, and a spear-hunting museum! Going to the Florida/Alabama border is kind of an action movie, if the action you’re looking for is waiting for your friend to pick you up in her grandparents’ minivan after you woke up two miles away from your condo in the bed of a 24-year-old who you only slept with because he wrote his thesis on Faulkner. [Ed note: Meanwhile, guys who write their thesis on Tom Clancy can't even get a peck on the lips!]

And what is throwing a fish across state lines if not action? Once a year the Flora-bama Lounge—the crown jewel of the Flora-Bama Lounge, Package, and Oyster Bar Empire—is the steward of the Interstate Mullet Toss, an excuse to throw a fish across state lines. [Ed note: Seems like the only way to top an interstate mullet toss is to get the mullet in international waters. Then it can commit any crime it wants! Do fish have the same system of law as humans? I guess the whole ocean is their jurisdiction. Which means land is international waters for fish.]

According to the Flora-Bama Lounge website, the mullet “is the only fish with a gizzard and is said to possess mystical properties.” Sadly, it cannot be said to possess Mystikal properties. [Ed note: Due the to mullet's adamant refusal to shake its ass, or show anyone what its working with.]

“When they are not drunk anymore, they pay their consquences(sic),” says the Hangover’s wiki, all Engrish-like. The beach near the Mullet Toss reeks of this arc. A sunburned man waylaid by Miller High Life and his own mortality lays prone on the sand. “Fuck Alabama!” he yells to no one in particular. “______,” Alabama yells back.

In theaters May 24.

I’m bringing back “Great, kid. Don’t get cocky!” You know, from when Han Solo says it to Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. I say it all the time now. Watch out, people who just did something great but are starting to get cocky about it—you’re about to get put in your place. By an old man quoting Star Wars.

There’s a kid in my apartment complex who is waaaay too cocky. He rides his Razor scooter around like he owns the place. He’s really Luke Skywalkering the parking lot in front of my apartment. Every time I take my dog out to poop, this kid shows up popping wheelies.

My dog is mesmerized by this. She can’t keep her eyes off him and refuses to shit. It’s like she needs to use the restroom at Cirque du Soleil, but doesn’t want to get up from her seat in case she misses an ethnically ambiguous wood nymph trapezing into the arms of a guy in a Mephistopheles outfit with a huge boner.

If only I could train her to be entertained and go to the bathroom simultaneously. God knows she’s watched me use my smartphone on the toilet plenty of times. That’s what separates man from beast, I guess—the ability to browse Reddit while going number two.

I do feel bad for that kid, though. There used to be a lot of kids in my apartment complex for him to play with. I guess they all moved or something. Now he rides alone, showing off for a French Bulldog. At least she seems impressed. Maybe I should get her a little Han Solo vest. Though if she doesn’t start pooping quicker, I’m going to freeze her in carbonite.

You know how I know Harrison Ford is getting old? He’s not wearing a vest, and he’s actively encouraging the kid from Ender’s Game to get cocky. How do dogs get any pooping done in the world of Ender’s Game with all those cocky kids running around distracting them? They must save a fortune on doggie poop bags. Maybe dogs in the future take their iPads to the restroom. I’m sure they’ll address this in the movie, though Orson Scott Card has remained surprisingly tight-lipped about whether he thinks dogs will check Facebook on the can in the future.

You know what? I’ve changed my mind. Get as cocky as you want, kid.

In theaters November 1.

Has the FDA approved a drug that turns the general population into “Paranormal Teen Romance” obsessed moviegoers? Honestly, I wish it was a fucking drug that caused this hysteria, because it seems like people are still obsessed with werewolves and vampires fucking without any good goddamn reason. [Ed note: What if a genie reads this and grants your wish?! Man, I hope nobody's holding a monkey's paw and reading your review out loud. Nobody grant Johnny's wish, especially not in Robin Williams' voice!]

I’m confused as to why all of these movies are also coming-of-age stories. These motherfuckers are centuries old, but because they look 16, we’re supposed to believe that they haven’t actually matured passed the 11th grade. It actually reminds me of Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused. 

“That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.”

It actually seems like late 20’s to early 30’s males are obsessed with banging High School girls, just like McConaughey’s character and the vampires in this new genre of Para-Rom movies. And why shouldn’t they strive for this post in life? McConaughey is a good looking guy and vampires live forever. Isn’t that every bar-hopping frat boy’s one desire in life? To look good and get em’ young?! [Ed note: You know what porn that advertises itself as "Barely Legal" needs? A judge in the background with his arms crossed, just shaking his head. He can't believe these hot teens are getting away with this, but the law is the law. When are we going to start emphasizing the judicial side of barely legal porn?]

It’s unfortunate, but without fail, every time another girl has her 21st birthday party at the local dive bar, the Matthew McConaughey Dazed and Confused persona rises up in some beer-fueled red-blooded horny male at the bar and the famous quote always comes spewing out of his mouth “I get older, they stay the same age.” What’s even creepier, is from time to time, I catch myself finishing the sentence. [Ed note: The FDA should approve a pill that suppresses chronic McConaugheyism in men. You get younger, and they stay the same age. Until you're a baby,I guess? Looks like Benjamin Button is the anti-McConaughey. Genies take note—I am not wishing for a magic Benjamin Button pill. I am wishing for mandatory judges in all pornographic films featuring teens.]

At the end of the day, or I guess night, it’s not really that creepy because it never really goes anywhere anyway. I mean, have you ever tried having a conversation with a 21 year old girl? All they want to talk about is fucking teen vampire movies. [Ed Note: and Macklemore.]

Released in theaters April 25, 2013

Sometimes an adult person wakes up one day to find himself in a loving, grown-up relationship with another adult person, a person who is really pretty special once you get to know her and is actually really good for the first person and has totally helped him mature a lot and get serious about starting a productive grown-up life and that, despite what the first person’s stupid idiot friends think, is not at all a horrible controlling succubus bitch who manipulates the first person’s emotions and uses them like child soldiers in an endless fucking trench war of a romantic partnership, which, now that we’re thinking about warfare analogies, likely boasts a similar body count in terms of emotional casualties as the real-life Rwandan genocide. [Ed note: Or to use a "crossing the streams" analogy, try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light, and Janine Melnitz Instagramming it. #totalprotonicreversal]

So anyway, when adult people engage in this type of relationship, sometimes the first person gets to earn certain “perks” in the bedroom. Like, sexual allowances that the second person might choose to make.

Like if the first person is on his best behavior all week and has really started to stand up for himself at work [Ed note: For example, not letting Walter Peck shut down the Containment Unit and letting all the ghosts out!] and has finished all of his chores and not asked too many stupid questions and generally over the course of the week has made significant progress in eliminating all the personal shortcomings and inherited flaws that have prevented him from living up to the second person’s vision of what and who he should be if he ever expects to fuck her ever again.

And sometimes when the first person gets to request a bedroom perk, he asks if maybe if it’s all right with the second person maybe the two can do some role play. Like maybe the first person is allowed to pretend to be Bill Murray’s character from Ghostbusters, and the second person, if she wants, can pretend to be Sigourney Weaver’s character from Ghostbusters, like when that character is possessed by the demi-god Zuul, and the first person can call the second person Dana during foreplay, Dana being the name of Sigourney Weaver’s character in the movie, and the second person can recite that line from the movie and say, “There is no Dana. There is only Zuul,” and talk in like a deep gravelly demon voice throughout the duration of the intercourse. [Ed note: Why doesn't anybody ever want to pretend to have sex with a pre-Stay-Puft-Marshmallow-Man Gozer the Gozerian?!]

Because honestly the first person feels like he’d probably enjoy being around the second person more and generally be happier in life if the second person were actually possessed by a demon and maybe he’ll leave her one day but until then he really hopes she doesn’t read this because that will be the end of sex for him possibly forever. [Ed note: Tobin's Spirit Guide is probably full of demon ladies who'll have sex with you. Like the ghost woman that tried to give Dan Aykroyd a blowjob.

Did she end up getting ghostbusted eventually, do you think? I could never have the heart to put anyone who gave me a blowjob in a ghost containment unit. They probably just let her hang around the firehouse around like Slimer. Wait—is that what Slimer had to do to stay out of ghost jail? Is that why he kept putting so many hot dogs in his mouth?!]

In short, Ghostbusters is a good movie and Bill Murray has aged into a really good actor and consistently exhibits a whimsical and friendly off-screen persona.

In theaters June 8, 1984.

In Only God Forgives, director Nicolas Winding Refn promises to take us through the seamy underbelly of Bangkok’s red light district, blue light district and then back through the red light district. Not since 2007′s I Know Who Killed Me have we seen such a bold attempt at tinting things red and blue and I, for one, am excited to see how such a daring director applies this tactic to a movie with male strippers in it instead of female ones. [Ed note: Remember when Gizmo the Mogwai wore 3-D glasses in Gremlins? What if he wore them to famous Atlanta male strip club Swinging Richards? Like that, maybe?]

Because let’s get real. This trailer promises us a movie chockablock full of jacked Thai strippers in jockstraps flexing for what I can only hope is 75% of the film’s running time.

Besides these gyrating hunks, the film also stars successful internet meme Ryan Gosling returning to the silver screen as a taciturn, steely-gazed antihero who raises important questions like “Wanna fight?” and “Was that really the best take?” This trailer doesn’t give us too much of Gosling’s performance, allowing us to fill in his acting choices in our own mind, which is basically what we’re required to do any time we are privileged enough to sit through one of his movies. Besides, it’s clear that this film’s acting budget was mostly used on Kristin Scott Thomas’s delivery of the word “platter” and there’s only so many Oscars the Academy can give out, people! [Ed note: I pronounce it, "Pláttêr!" Which is why my house is like the goddamn Burlington Coat Factory, except with Oscars instead of coats.]

Besides, you don’t need dialogue when your film features machete-wielding maniacs, sullen women behind beaded curtains, and a score ripped straight from Castlevania. And wait a minute, is this a film adaptation of Castlevania? We’ve got a family with a knack for violence, an assortment of brutal weapons, and all the time my grandfather wants to talk about how the Thai people are “bloodsuckers” (which I’ve always found confusing as he was stationed in Korea but, hey, respect your elders I guess). [Ed note: Also, Ryan Gosling whips a Thai stripper, just like Alucard in Symphony of the Night. Dracula got his start as a Thai stripper, right?]

I think the real lesson here is that sometimes making a film is like boiling a pot of coconut curry soup; you’ve just got to add the right ingredients and let them simmer. Simmer in the eyes of Ryan Gosling, that is. [Ed note: Gross!]

In theaters July 19.

I’ve noticed that James McAvoy treats women like pigs in a lot of films. [Ed note: Which explains why he keeps writing "Some Pig" in a spider web above many actresses' heads in his movies.]

The most literal example I can think of is Penelope, starring Christina Ricci as a girl cursed with a pig nose and McAvoy, a vagrant who doesn’t kiss Ricci until the curse is broken. Ricci dates him anyway, and the movie ends with them swinging on a hill while Sigur Rós’ “Hoppípolla” plays in the background. Little do they know that the last line translates to “I get a nosebleed, but I’ll always stand up again.” To me, this insinuates that McAvoy falls off the swing and busts his nose, leaving both characters with new snouts. [Ed note: Aren't most Sigur Rós songs about getting new snouts?]

People used to tell me I look like Christina Ricci.

I can’t decide if that was a compliment, since I’m unsure what iteration of Christina Ricci they were referring to:

• A 10-year-old Ricci flitting around the kitchen in a swimsuit eating marshmallow kabobs with Winona Ryder and Cher?
• A voluptuous Ricci tap dancing in a teddy for Vincent Gallo?
• A sorority girl Ricci who falls in love with Pumpkin, a mentally handicapped man whom she trains for the Special Olympics?

I would prefer to be likened to a teenage Christina Ricci slow dancing with Devon Sawa, fondling his bowl cut while I lip sync “Remember Me This Way.”

I’m going to wear a teddy and tap dance while singing “Remember Me This Way” the next time I hit up my favorite filthy karaoke bar. [Ed note: Presumably while Vincent Gallo eats marshmallow kabobs with a mentally handicapped man at the back of the bar.]

In UK theaters October 4th.

Last week during our vacation, my girlfriend looked over at a woman feeding seagulls on the beach and said, “Look at that bitch feeding the seagulls.” My girlfriend doesn’t normally go around calling women bitches, but this lady was definitely causing a seagull problem vis-à-vis feeding them in a bitchy fashion.

Next thing you know, every begging-ass seagull on Panama City Beach shows up wings a-flappin’ bothering all the sunbathers. Then this old woman walks off smiling like she was doing everybody a favor. Great job, Angela Lansbury. Seagull, She Wrote!

In Thor: The Dark World, is Thor the bitch feeding seagulls?  It just seems like we didn’t have as many creatures from the pre-universe darkness attacking us before he showed up. Now every demigod on Asgard is flying around knocking over our buildings. Asgard is practically the Redneck Riviera of Norse Mythology! Odin definitely looks like he just pulled up to Pineapple Willy’s for Bike Week.

I bet that lady wasn’t even feeding those seagulls bread. I almost cut my foot on a split-open can of Four Loko that washed up on the shore a few minutes later, is it possible that bitch was feeding those seagulls Four Loko? Do seagulls even like Four Loko? They probably love it, because they’re dicks.

Then Thor teleports away on a beam of light with his girlfriend Natalie Portman, who’s like, “Wait, what?!” Classic Panama City Beach behavior. Just leave your proverbial cans of Four Loko (Four Loki?) laying around for us to step on. Next year, we’re going to Hilton Head.

In theaters November 8th.