..:S...P...I...D...E...R...B...I...T...E...S:..

Friday, October 31, 2003

"Does my finger smell funky to you?"
- The Bucketmen (from the song of the same name)


check it out! back by popular demand! well, back in spite of no one demanding it. actually, now that i think about it, it's back in spite of the fact that at least three people complained about it. you know, this might be the worst idea i've had since i repeatedly slapped my dick against the phone receiver and refused to stop until my ex-girlfriend guessed what the noise was. i'll tell you what i told her when i called back to apologize:

it seemed like a good idea at the time. okay, i'll start over...

check it out! it's back:

The Real Time Review!!!

tonight's movie is...

The Italian Job

starring Michael "Never Mind, He Was In The Original" Caine, Mark "Don't Call Me Marky" Walberg, Charlize "Mighty Joe Young" Theron, and Edward "Ham On Rye" Norton. original music by The Funky Bunch sans Marky.

and don't think that i'm only watching movies to rip on them because i actually have high hopes for the car chase in this one. in fact, the first email i ever got from a stranger when i started this website back in May was because of my car chase list and she recommended that i watch this movie. well, now it's finally on video. you know, i haven't seen a Charlize Theron movie in the theater since i got suckered into "2 Days In The Valley" with all that hype about the girl-on-girl brawl between her and Teri Hatcher. i dragged nine co-workers to that piece of gunge and it turned out they didn't throw a single good punch. the girls, not my co-workers. like i said, seemed like a good idea at the time. just like renting "Dreamcatcher." anyway, here we go:

wait! we can't do this right this second because i see that "Major League" is on cable. i'll be back when that is finished.........

"Wild Thing! forget about the curve ball Ricky, give 'em the heater!"

...........okay i'm back. "Major League" just ended. can't help it. same thing would have happened if "Vision Quest" was on. i make no excuses. Happy Halloween by the way. so where were we? oh yeah, "The Italian Job." here we go:

The Real Time Review!!!

i just pushed play:

-Rated PG-13? strike one
-speaking of strikes. how about those three fast balls at the end of Major League? Pow...Pow.........POW!!! 101 mph
-the credit music sounds just like "Snatch"
-F. Gary Gray? where did i hear his-oh yeah! he did "Friday!" fingers crossed
-why is Charlize talking like she's high?
-Donald Sutherland? gee, i wonder if he's gonna die soon since he wasn't in any of the previews
-Marky Mark punches like the gay guy i work with. no offense if your reading this Al. just learn to lean into it
-hey, that's the guy from "Snatch!"
-"we own this place, gentlemen" here we go. that line is such a fucking heist movie cliche. and it's the first line out of Norton's mouth. strike two
-that is the most ridiculous computer program i've seen since Lawnmower Man. where do you get bank robber software like that? noisy 3-D Tron-looking maps of any building you want? 19.95 at Best Buy
-boat chase through Venice. haven't seen that before. sarcasm
-sweet. boat just smoked a pier and exploded into toothpicks
-ha! they had a boat hit another boat full of fruit. it was like a parody of when the dude runs into the fruit cart on the street. that was actually very clever
-they got away with the gold. damn. movies over already? hell, at least it was short. looks like it clocked in at about 15 minutes. didn't overstay it's - never mind, it's still going...
-oh, there's that "stereo that blows women's clothes off" line from the commercial. notice how the white kid says that line, and the black guy says he's gonna use his money to buy a library of first edition books. wow, they really flipped the script on that! taking such a chance with that daring reverse characterization! white kid likes music??? black dude reads books??? welcome to crazy world!!!
-Sutherland is babbling about this "is his last job and he's too old and" blah blah blah. he is soooooo fucking dead. does he have his SAT test scores sealed in his pocket too???
-Pop! Norton just shot Donald Sutherland, what a surprise. Kiefer's gonna kick his ass right after him and Charlie Sheen kick those prostitutes out of their hotel room
-Charlie Sheen actually looks like a real pitcher in "Major League." Tim Robbins should have studied that movie before he subjected the world to his gangly Ichabod Crane arm-flapping display in "Bull Durham."
-the worst thing about music in a PG-13 movie is it's all pop rap instead of good rap. who the fuck is this? sounds like Macy Gray meets Enigma
-One year later? Marky Mark better have a beard or i ain't buy this "one year later" shit
-Charlize has one of those jobs you only see in movies; a legal safe-cracker
-that fiber-optic camera through the tumblers was in the "Getaway" remake
-Charlize's first words to Marky Mark? "didn't i tell you i never wanted to see you again? after you told me my father died in your arms after one last job?" jesus fucking christ. how can dialogue like that get past the first draft stage? i realize they need to sum up as fast as possible but stopping the movie and handing out footnotes to the audience would be slightly less intrusive
-finally a good line: "he holds the record in strike-outs and hit batsmen, this guy threw at his own kid in a father son game..." just kidding, that was from Major League. still a great quote
-she drives a Mini Cooper. they're in the chase scene. i remember that from the preview
-"Handsome Rob once drove all the way from Los Angeles just to set the record for the longest freeway chase." what? what did he just say????????? i want to see THAT movie! wait, i already did. it's called "Vanishing Point."
-complaining about their fake names. Dogs rip-off. big time
-this movie just makes me want to watch "Snatch" instead
-is this the car chase she was talking about? false alarm
-green traffic arrows. that's something that Pittsburgh doesn't seem to have
-okay, wait a second. they're going to hack into the traffic signals so they'll have "green lights all the way and no traffic" during their getaway? where the fun in that? that's like having a car chase...on a closed movie set! great idea fuckheads
-the hacker kid just claimed he invented Napster. dates the script instantly, don't it?
-you know what? i invented those combination CD holder/sun visors for your car. i can't prove it though. i explained it to my roommate, then 6 months later they were on the shelf. wait. did he sell me out??? i talk about my stolen inventions alot (beware)
-time out...heating up an eggroll
-hey, you know what else i invented? once my antenna on my car got all bent up by some punk, so i took it and bent it more to make this lightning bolt design. about a year later they start selling antennas shaped like lightning bolts. can you believe that shit? at least it didn't catch on so i don't feel too bad
-the dude from "Snatch" just got some snatch!
-the dude from "Snatch" has been working out. nice abs. does that make me queer, Al?
-Norton however has lost every bit of muscle he put on for "American History X"
-how can Norton be so good in "Fight Club" and so shite in everything else?
-i just had an idea for a better heist movie. where's my pencil
-this movie makes me want to watch "Friday"
-she doesn't look like a Becky
-now THAT'S a TV
-c'mon, who would believe that Charlize was the cable guy?
-this movie makes me want to watch "Cable Guy"
-test run for what has to be the big car chase
-i will admit that Charlize looks real good tearing around corners in that little red car
-only females should drive Mini Coopers
-i hate when they have huge fat guys in movies and make them the toughest guy. what the fuck is that fatty going to do? makes me want to punch a fat bouncer and run away
-cool junkyard. there's a real "Sweet Hereafter" lookin' junkyard a mile from my house, full of about 20 school bus corpses. there's a story in there somewhere
-Norton looks like a fuckin' fag in his sinister villian moustache
-right now i'm in better shape than Marky Mark
-this big confrontation between Norton and the Funky Bunch is the first real tension in this flick
-i throw a better punch than Marky Mark
-the crew put up a basketball net to shoot hoops before the heist. nice touch. serious
-wait, i got to rewind. he just said the title
-oh, "The Italian Job" was their first heist. Venice 'n boat chase 'n shit? guess i was too pumped after "Major League" to pay attention for the first third.
-this Napster gag in this movie needs to stop
-these cars aren't going very fast. hey, you know what was fast? Charlie Sheen's last pitch in "Major Legue." clocked his ass at 101 mph. true story
-here's that chase. i just cracked my knuckles. here we go...
-what? they're out of the cars. that better not have been the whole damn chase.
-gee, an unexpected safe they need to crack. where are they going to find someone who cracks safes for a living? oh right, i forgot
-i have never been able to crack a safe, no matter how slowly and dramatically i fumble around with the dial.
-i did successfully break into a bubble gum machine. there were Runts inside
-banana Runts are the best. i like banana candy more than bananas
-okay, back in the cars again.
-ah yes. cars chasing cars. i do love it so.
-this movie makes me want to watch "Ronin"
-cars on sidewalks and in subways? this makes me want to play Grand Theft Auto
-ha! the bad guy has a spooky black helicopter! i hope he has a spooky black submarine too
-sweet. Mini Cooper helicopter shave
-the bad guy has joined the chase on the ground. he's driving a big red Ford Bronco
-pleeeeeeeeeeese let that Bronco chew up one of those toy cars (fingers crossed)
-who's doing this lame cover of "Fame?" strike three. i mean nine
-Charlize threw a better punch than Marky Mark sans Funky Bunch
-does this egg roll smell funny to you? i mean "funky!"
-oops, that's not "Fame" that's Pink Floyd's "Money"
-so the song that actually blows off a woman's clothes is Pink Floyd? right.
-this credit epilogue is weak. i'm looking for the Jackie Chan bloopers
-no way. that "Money" cover was Guns 'N Roses. all the members of G 'N R except with Scott Weiland instead of Axl Rose. wow. that should have sounded much better than that.
-i knew a guy who had a poster of Slash sitting poolside with a straw in a bottle of Jack Daniels
-this said no animals were harmed making this film. what animals? they don't just tack that on even if there's ZERO animals do they? seriously. what animals?
-who recommended this movie again? i'm going to give her a call. where's the phone? ziiiiiiiip!
-there were animals killed during the making of every Sam Peckinpah film
-i think there were animals killed during the making of this egg roll

-this movie made me want to watch "Dreamcatcher" again.

::: david - 2:17 AM [+] :::
...

"You sure got an imagination, son. Back when I came in, they had a way of squeezing that imagination right out of you. And they did it with one question. When you went to court, and you stood there in front of the judge trying to come up with crazy stories and excuses and alibis for your crime, they asked you this one quesiton: 'True? Or not true?' These days they just ask 'guilty or not guilty' and there's room for creativity between those words. 'True or not true?' Now, that's a whole different story. It's just one or the other..."
- Old dude from Brickhouse - my prison script that didn't win Project Greenlight


watching Mamet's "Spanish Prisoner" last night and i think he was cheating when he wrote it. i'd seen that movie before and was underwhelmed but i'm a glutton for punishment so i rented it again and this time i saw him stacking up all the clues before the big (yawn) twist and i noticed something this time...he cheated. here's what he did:

he wrote the script backwards. he wrote the big twist, the little twist before it, then sprinkled the first third of the movie with clues. every few minutes you get a slow meaningful close-up on the main character's glasses, his Boy Scout knife, the videotape, the photographs, the red folder, the FBI business card, the tennis book, the candlestick and Mr Mustand and the secret entrance through the bookshelf and on and on and on and on. basically every object that is shown later as a plot point or close-up in the last third. this is called cheating. i'll tell you why. because writing a script that way is lazy and it's bullshit. there is no mystery that way, you simply have a giant stack of clues that are rationed out at the end. that's just someone saying early in the movie, "here's my nuts, they will be important, look for them later." no wait, actually it's like having a movie where someone is choked with my nuts, THEN earlier in the movie we realize that the camera was down my shorts for five mintutes for no apparent reason. it's backwards writing and i realize now, as i type this, that my logic (as well as my balls metaphor) made more sense when i was thinking about it yesterday but whatever. he cheated, that's all i really wanted to say. he didn't write a mystery, he stacked up clues backwards and called it a twist because he dribbled them back through the pages of the script like a drooling mongoloid when he was revising it. how do i know this? i was there. i saw him do it.

also been thinking about courtroom dramas and courtroom thrillers and that lame courtroom climax that is tacked on to what, at first, seemed like a decent movie. i think i understand why there's this urge to watch that nonsense. as an experiment, i left the channel on Court TV while i did push-ups and cleaned the toilet and it turned out the trials were infectious and i suddenly realized why:

it is because, in a trial or courtroom setting, horrible crimes are decribed slowly and carefully and in great detail, as if someone is reading a true crime book to a five year-old. the lawyers dumb down their talk for the absolute dumbest person on the jury (imagine pulling twelve random people out of their cars on the street and asking them some questions, chances are they're gonna be fucking stupid) and they feed their worst instincts and morbid curiousity in the most obvious ways possible. you know how you walk up on a crime scene (or even a drunk-and-disorderly scene) and the cops are like, "nothing to see here?" well, when you click on a trial, all the sudden you get to see everything you wanted to see and hear everything you couldn't hear at that crash site or behind that bar when the cop (who of course was just as curious as you were when he answered the call) told you it was none of your goddamn business. it's rubbernecking, pure and simple. this probably isn't some great revelation but i think it helps us understand why there is this urge to end every movie with a stupid ass courtroom finale. it's autopilot, just like the killer muttering "you're not worth it" then suddenly POW he's forced to kill the bad guy anyway because of the gun he had hidden in his shoe. it's just shit that's been seen before and easily used when all the ideas run dry and what better way to wrap things up that to slowly and carefully explain the facts to the audience when you can't successfully do it with drama or action. you're like Doc in "Back to the Future 2" when he flips over that chalkboard and maps out the plot for the dunces in the theater because it's just easier that way. of course for the worst of the bunch, a movie that is nothing but a trial, like Grisham's crap and all his knock-offs, we're talking about even more of a crime against imagination. every phrase, every revelation, every bit of suspense, every single moment in that courtroom is happily served up like an overflowing shit sandwich because it real easy to make and people wil gooble that shit down because it's a shortcut to thinking. it's like Mamet's movie, here's the clues (held up high in plastic bags) and here's how they were used. here's the Hostile Witness! Objection! Murder Weapon! Surprise Witness! Overruled! Final Argument! Guilty! Not guilty! The End! not only are all these words and phrases shitty book titles, they are substitutes for dramatic moments in situations that could have taken place outside the courtroom. in good fiction, and real life, you don't need to substitute the moment with an easily recognized word or phrase to lead the idiots through the story. you can use an arsenal of ideas instead, and anything that happens outside of the courtroom is already infinitely more creative.

my friend "G" (which does not stand for "Original Gangster") that i went to see "Kill Bill" with in Cleveland happens to be a lawyer and i hope he tries to defend his profession and it's effects on literature and film. i don't think he can do it. i don't think he'll even try. neither will "S," that other lawyer i know down in Florida, because he's still brooding about losing his last trial when they pulled the oldest trick in the book, also known as the "Lazarus Maneuver":

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if you looked behind you, then, for an instant, you thought the victim was still alive, and therefore, you must acquit!"

i can't get enough of that one. it was a brilliant tactic used in an 80s courtroom thriller by the dude who directed "Porky's." or maybe it was just a dream i had. hey! found a sale on cds with cracked cases up at the record store. brand new stuff, all that's wrong is it got stepped on in the warehouse, so they marked 'em down to 4 bucks each. i bought a bunch. some bad. some worse. got the one Sex Pistols album i only had on tape. Natalie Merchant's green and orange cd that i used to see everywhere about 5 years ago, some Prince! (watch me make the symbol with they keyboard: O+>), Type O Negative, "World Coming Down" just in time for Halloween, and the Desperado soundtrack, even though i already have it i felt like i was rescuing a puppy from the pound. i'll find him a home.

also, that "Enter The Matrix" game i was all excited about finishing? not good. i don't know what i was thinking. too easy. should have been called "Enter The Matrix...For About An Hour." waaaaay too short and too many movie cut-scenes in between the action. also, there's a part where you rescue Jada Smith and the game won't let you shoot her instead. in a post Grand Theft Auto world, this in inexcusible. speaking of: let's have a moment of silence for 8-Ball, the partner you're supposed to be working with in GTA3, and the man who just couldn't seem to movie fast enough for me and kept getting popped in the back of the head on every mission. actually, i couldn't help but to shoot him every time he smiled and opened the door to greet me. how many times did the screen say "You've Killed 8-Ball! Mission Failed!" i don't know. too many times to count. the world can be unfair sometimes. here's to ya 8-Ball (beers clank together) you'll be missed...

::: david - 12:30 PM [+] :::
...

"It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive."
-Mark Twain

"Wigger please!"
-Ben Franklin

"There's a baseball diamond where our little league has its games, about a mile from here. We meet there around two-thirty in the morning, and we have us a knife fight..."
-Kill Bill


the first quote is why Mark Twain is the shit. it's a quote about quotes! madness! and i have invented many quotes "to deceive," to start of chapters or stories, or simply to cheat on my homework. it's lots o' fun.

finally saw Kill Bill. good shit. should have been called "Plot Be Damned" instead though because there was just about nothing going on except a kill crazy rampage (and he even uses the words "kill crazy rampage" which some might remember from the Dogs) and some obscure music mixed with a minimal amount of Wu-Tang beats. i drove to Cleveland to go see it because i'm stupid like that and i owed my friend "G" a visit to see his new house. we had the theater to ourselves (small town, after ten on a weekday) and they actually had to start up the movie when we got our tickets. the girl took our money and made a call ("que up number twelve, over...") and that's kind of weird, knowing that the movie wouldn't have been playing if we wouldn't have gone to see it. it's like the tree falling in the forest or something. me and G sneaked some cans of Fosters in there with us to get happily lit through the previews. Fosters...Australian for "loud fucking hiss when you crack them in a movie theater." we also had some fun imitating what the projectionist would be grumbling about up above us since we were stopping him from going home early ("i know i said i was bringing the pizza baby, i'm sorry...baby i know i said we were moving out of that van, i'll be home in two hours...baby i know i said i'd fix that car...") and we imagined him having to peddle the projector with his feet, just to make him even more miserable in our mind's eye:

"baby i don't peddle movies all goddamn day to come home and listen to your shit!"

so the new "Matrix" preview looked like Star Wars crap, with a giant Master Control Program thing talking to Ted. i always knew it would turn into "Tron." "Return of the King" preview had the usual amount of weeping and hugging and epic music. the new Peter Weir movie could be good, men screaming at each other on a wind and war ravaged ship. we'll see. i'm a huge fan of "Mosquito Coast" and "Last Wave."

"Kill Bill" was exactly what i expected. few surprises with the exception of a baseball getting sliced in half that hit very close to home. and was it just me or was there some crazy eleventh-hour editing going on? the "pussy wagon" gag was given away before the joke...the obligitory Tarantino non-linear structure was the most pointless it's ever been (why show the revenge list scenes backwards when you could just change the order on the list? and again, the "pussy wagon" showing up in the wrong order) and i'm wondering if he feels he's not allowed to make a linear movie anymore...and what exactly happened to our coma-fucking hero, Buck? was his jaw ripped off with her teeth or what? scene missing just like the Nine Inch Nails video.

still good stuff. got the trunk-view moment that he's managed to put in every one of his films. i really enjoy those. i think you can, and should, find a way to have a trunk's-eye-view in any movie there is. most movies have cars, and if there's a car, put someone in the trunk! fighting was solid. liked the little lethal schoolgirl a lot. could have done without those couple of wire-work "Charlie's Angels" moments though. where people start floating for no reason at all? that crap looks fucking awful and someday people will realize that. but most of the fighting was toe-to-toe bashing and punching and cutting so it was cool. very alarming opening scene too. hey, anyone notice the Ranger from "Dusk Till Dawn" come walking in that chapel? remember, he was the guy who said "retards shouldn't operate a grill" before Tarantino's character shot him through his 10-gallon hat? that was funny. next movie should be sweet, even if they scammed two tickets off me. although, how they're going to get a believable fight out of a tired old Carradine is a mystery to me. hell, he was moving slow in "The Long Riders" twenty years ago. well, at least he was able to finger his sword handle ominously. oh yeah, don't let them fool you with that "goriest movie ever made" talk. it's bloody but they switch to black and white at the end to minimize the impact so the most disturbing thing is actually the dripping watery sounds of the gore you're not really seeing. so yeah, the audio is the goriest, but not the visual. now that i think about it, i might have to put together another list. Gorest Movies and/or Scenes of All Time. i'm going to start working on it at work today.

epilogue: the projectionist actually drove a big new truck. his lonely vehicle was right next to mine in the parking lot when we left. at least he didn't have to peddle home too.

::: david - 12:19 PM [+] :::
...

"We had windstorms and droughts and the river that lay alongside my town had the bad habit of flooding. In the spring of my fifth year, a flood brought snakes to the streets. Then hawks came down by the hundreds in a dark tornado and lifted up the snakes in their killing beaks, and the river slinked back to its banks like a whipped dog. We had a dark queen who was one hundred and six years old. We had a gunfighter who saved the life of Wyatt Earp at the O.K. Corral. We had a monster in the river and a secret in the lake. We had a ghost that haunted the road behind the wheel of a black dragster with flames on the hood. We had a Gabriel and a Lucifer, and a rebel that rose from the dead. We had an alien invader, a boy with a perfect arm, and we had a dinosaur loose on Merchants Street...I remember..."
-Robert McCammon - Boy's Life


this is the kind of intro to a book that makes you want to work harder. look at that. look at how this dude is cracking his knuckles and saying he going to write a book with enough ideas for ten books. Look how how many things he's crammed in there. That takes balls and effort and that's how everyone should go about writing a book. up until he wrote this one, he wrote some decent B-movie type horror novels (although "Stinger" had some good desert action, and "Swan Song" seems an awful lot like a third-rate "Stand," and "Baal" i remember scaring the shit out of me when i found it in my dad's stash of horror novels in the garage when i was real young) but here he's decided to strap in and try to give us a modern day Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.

is it as good as Twain's boys? course not. but not for lack of trying. at least he tried. at least he wasn't one of those talentless fucks content to crank out a legal thriller, slap a stupid title like "The Gavel" on it, and watch the lemmings run out and make a shit movie with a courtroom climax. you know i was SURE there would be a title called "The Gavel" out there but i was wrong. however i did find all the rest of the crap legal titles i tried to think of. we got "Hostile Witness," "Prosecution Rests," "Hung Jury," (not porn) "Court Adjourned," - the list went on and on. did i find there was a book called "The Bailiff?" i can't remember. and the plots are just as easy to write as the titles. watch me:

"The Gavel": there's a bomb in the judge's gavel and a mysterious man in the courtroom tries to start a disturbance so he'll smack his gavel for "order in the court!" and blow himself up. now in theaters...

i just can't take it. 90% of thriller's titles mean nothing. less than nothing. they're the equivalent of priest lingo. phrases repeated over and over until all meaning is drained. you know what else i fucking HATE? when someone in a movie sees something horrible and they mutter, "holy mary mother of god" that's so fucking lame. it sounds so awkward and stupid and you know the writer or director or whoever thinks it what's supposed to be said when you see something horrible. they type those lines on automatic pilot. such lazy bullshit. i actually heard that line muttered twice on TV yesterday, once by Sharon Stone in some horseshit show i was flipping past and something else on HBO. what's my point here? i'm just saying i'll take some reformed horror writer trying to top King's "It" crossed with "Huck Finn" over the entire best seller list any day.

so i finally got my book together and mailed it out. took three post-work all-nighters to gather up, organize and print out the material. i had no idea how long that was going to take. i'd been writing and revising parts and putting them aside for so long now but i'd never lined them up with the page numbers and chapter titles and song lyrics and ironic bible quotes before. done. finally.

now it's time to kick back and listen to the Desperado soundtrack while finishing Enter the Matrix for the PS2. pure bliss. also my fellow bloggggggers have been typing their hearts out lately so i got some good laying-on-the-floor-computer-on-my-chest midnight reading for later. and congrats to scratchymonkey for guessing my stepbrother's name! she wins her choice between two valuable prizes. hey! Trinity was just trying to explain how you can never know if the rock will fall to the ground every time you drop it or whatever the fuck so i tossed her head-first through her goddamn Zen garden.

::: david - 11:50 PM [+] :::
...

"Henry hadn't been confused at all. He simply told me what he saw. What we had here was a dead electric dog. A dead electric dog that barked."
-Dead Dog Blues


check it out! kind of excited i finally got a nibble on my book. after enough rejections to choke a horse, someone finally requested the manuscript. i got to get this thing together to send it out tommorrow. don't know about all the procedures, i sent out the prison movie screenplay a couple times but only recently started shopping the novel. i haven't printed it all in one big stack before, just the chunks when i'm working on them. all together this thing is a monster. i'm not sure if it can be printed out with the limits of current technology. this book ain't no joke. getting ready to hit print and the machine is already whimpering. i expect smoke to be pouring out of the sides of the printer, floor creaking, lights dimming all through the neighborhood, back-up generators kicking in.

i celebrated this morning by taking an extra long shower. these showers have been christened "Movie Cop Showers" by me and my step-bro who was complaining that i was in there waaay too long this weekend. here's why:

you know that scene in the movie, where the cop comes back from his partner's funeral? or the trial where the killer got off? or just got home to find his wife has left him while he was on the stakeout? or maybe he finally killed the bad guy, but at what price??? what does he do? he takes this kind of shower - he has one hand on the wall in front of him, eyes closed, completely motionless, letting the water run down his face. that is the "Movie Cop Shower" and i'm trying to perfect it.

there are also variations like the "Firefighter Shower," the "Quarterback Who Just Lost The Game Shower," and my favorite, the "Batman Has Become What He Has Forsaken Shower." for these you have to stand slightly different, maybe one eye open, extra steam in some situations, maybe staring at your hands under the water like fucking Macbeth etc. a bloody nose also adds much drama when you're standing there brooding in the tub but how often to you jump in the shower right after a fist fight?

so here's the contents page i came up with for my book. some of the shorter stories or chapters you've already seen on this site but i've since gone back and revised those at least twice each. i stuck the revised versions on the left there if anyone gets bored enough to check out how they were changed. for the contents page, there's five sections to the book that groups all same characters and themes, although they cross paths throughout:


ROADSPORTS + ROCKFIGHTS

by david james keaton


table of contents


I. Road

- Driving
- Flying
- Spying
- Ride The Ride
- Glass Car Crash

II. Last Rock Thrown

- Rock Wasted
- Shades
- What’s Worst?

III. Bad Sports & Blood Sports

- Suckerpunch
- Skinned Knees & Scratched Basketballs
- Good Games & Grass Stains
- Nosebleeder

IV. Last Rock Caught

- Lying
- What Are You Thinking?
- Overtime

V. Sword

- Fighting
- Squirt Guns & Firing Squads
- Crying
- Keep Your Elbow Up

::: david - 1:53 PM [+] :::
...

"Dream on white boy, dream on black girl,
and wake up to a brand new day..."
-INXS


so my step-brother was in town this weekend with one of his friends and, in spite of my sinus infection and throat infection or whatever the hell is making me cough up gallons of snot, we went out exploring Pittsburgh with some interesting results.

to protect the guilty, my brother, who is named after a city, will be refered to in this story as "Moscow," even though that ain't the city. and his friend i'm going to call "Tommy Vercetti" or "TV" because he was driving like Grand Theft Auto all night, especially coming out of the Liberty City tunnels...

so we hit the road with some Q-Tip "Amplified" blasting on the speakers and head for the waterfront area of the city. we get out of the car and this is where i start to notice some of the differences between black people and white people (oh yeah, i forgot to mention, my step-brother is black) i mean, obviously there's differences in appearance, like when i first climbed into the back seat on the drive there and looked around and started thinking "who turned out the lights!" but i'm talking about personality traits here. and, of course, all these sweeping generalizations are going to be based on one night and about 4 people. here's some things i found fascinating:

first off, these dudes talk to strangers. this might seem minor but me? and most white guys i know? we never talk to anyone. it's almost painful to talk to strangers, it almost makes me angry when i'm forced to do it. in fact, the only spontaneous contact i can have with a stranger is when i walk past two of them throwing a football back and forth and i hold out my hands for the universal sign of "toss it here." they toss it. i catch it. i toss it back. not a word is spoken and i never stop walking past. that's the limit of my interaction with strangers.

not these boys. they stop at the 7-11 on the way there and have a long laughing conversation with every person inside. of course, lots of information was gained. i learned how, in Pennsylvania you can't buy beer from a gas station (?) you can't buy alcohol after nine (!) you can only buy a six-pack in a bar (?!?) you can't listen to loud music...no wait, that was in "Footloose."

and when we get downtown, we step out of the car and they walk straight up to some black dudes leaning against a wall and start talking to them like they used to build Lincoln Logs together when they were nine. hey, i was just trying to think of the name of a common toy and "Lincoln Logs" jumped into my head. think there's a deeper meaning there?

time out for a theory. you know what? now that i think about it, i don't remember hearing or seeing any black kids torturing small animals or doing bug autopsies as kids. maybe that's the problem! me, and all the white kids i knew, spent all day frying ants with magnifying glasses and setting Lincoln Logs on fire and god help a fucking Stretch Armstrong if we got a hold of it. five seconds out of the box and Stretch would be tied to a table for his autopsy (he's full of syrup by the way) so maybe that's the problem. i see a bunch of white guys leaning up against a wall and i don't want to talk to them because maybe we DID grow up together and...(guilty eyes darting around)...we don't want to talk about it. am i saying black kids were more normal that white kids? i'm i saying it's no coincidence that all serial killers are white males with "Lord of the Rings" in their back pocket instead of "Catcher in the Rye?" all i'm saying is, black kids growing up in Detroit (like Moscow and Tommy Vercetti) probably came out more sane than all the crazy white kids i was running around the woods with in Millbury.

now i forgot what the hell i was talking about. oh yeah, these guys leaning against the wall steer us towards "The Boardwalk" and "Tequila Joe's" or something there on the water, (all the while eyeing me and clearing thinking "who's the white boy? these guys know there's a cop following them around?") and we don't know where we're at so we decide that bar is going to have to do.

inside it was like the poor man's "Coyote Ugly." a line of at least twenty girls dancing on the bar, but, in spite of the DJ's attempts to get some high quality grinding out of them by mixing 50 Cent's "In The Club" and Nine Inch Nails "Closer" (no bullshit, those two songs actually fit together perfect. try it. it's like when they told you to watch "Wizard of Oz" while playing "Dark Side of the Moon" except this shit actually works) the girls just kind of swayed and contorted and every minute or so...sat down and got up real fast! that dance move cracks me up. the old, pretend-like-their-squating-on-a-dick mime. funny shit. if someone actually did that during sex, i'd toss that tease headfirst out the window. and there was this one naaaaasty one right near the end of the line (my boys know who i'm talking about) holy fuck was she nasty. gut hanging over her jeans, a thong sticking out of the back, but all twisted and crooked like she'd caught it on a doorknob on the way in, and i swear i saw a C-section scar on that stomach. bless her heart, she thought she was hot though. and she did the sit-down-real-fast move like 100 times. i couldn't take my eyes off the monster. i think everyone thought i was in love.

don't get me wrong though, there were some girls that knew how to dance up there. exactly six of them. and i could have stared at them through ten Def Leppard songs. here's the key i think: you got to know the song. you know the words, and the breaks, in whatever song (or songs) that's playing and you own the room. this one girl was singing along and stopping for the breaks and POW hitting every moment when the song speeds up and slows down and that was a pleasure to watch. she was at the top of her game and it's girls like her that made "Coyote Ugly" seem like a good idea at the time. they're rare as a good DJ though.

so back in the trenches, Moscow and TV run off to dance, because that's apparently what black people do. i'm still staring up at that bar waiting for someone to wipe out and fall off (two girls eventually did, one of them while she was "backing that shit up!" WHAM! right on her face. she danced right out the door next to me and stood outside where the boats were docked and i saw her waiting for an appropriate time to show her face again) and my crew happily dances their way out into the masses, drinks up above their heads like "The Big Lebowski."

another observation: black people dance with drinks in their hands. black people enjoy dancing with drinks in their hands. my step-brother can dance up on some girl's back while simultaniously drinking Tequila, writing down a phone number and counting out exactly three orange Tic-Tacs. i saw it with my own eyes.

eventually i lose sight of their drinks cutting through the crowd on the dance floor like a couple of shark fins and go back to my people watching. then, about 15 minutes later, Moscow runs up with a bloody towel wrapped around his hand and beer all over his shirt. turns out some kid threw a bottle into the crowd and it cut his finger. TV went up to the kid who threw the bottle and the kid tried to get all hard since he was surrounded by females and Moscow ran up and did the crazy-black-man-routine on this kid (face close enough to engulf the enemy's nose, head tilting and orbiting around the enemy's head like a moth looking for a way into a lighbulb, all the while yelling over and over, "i will KILL you dog!") and apparently he dropped a load in his shorts. security threw the kid out (and outside the shame must have been sinking in because he tried to pick a fight with someone else) and everyone around TV and Moscow bought them drinks.

so now the fight stuffs out of the way and it's time for them to concentrate on the females. because, when you go out, it seems like a waste of time if you don't do one of two things: talk to a girl or talk shit with some guy. this club is only about 4% black (just like my high school!) but somehow my boys manage to find the other 2% and start chatting them up. Moscow explains to the one girl that i'm his "brother, not his 'brother brother' but his BROTHER brother." he likes to do that to people to see how they react and i like to watch him do it. eventually it won't be such a shock because, like Public Enemy said, "white man, black woman...black baby! black man, white woman...black baby!" i also get a lot of looks from dudes in the bar because of who i'm with. but the thing is, they clear out of my way whenever i move around and smile a lot and it's weird but there seems to be this assumption that the one white guy in a crowd of black people must be Eminem. no, fuck Eminem. more like Christopher Walken in the "King of New York." this is because (another observation) black people don't need the dance floor to dance:

we're all leaning back against the bar, calmly surveying the scene, and a song comes on that my boys like and BAM! they're dancing away, drinks high above their heads and i'm standing in between them motionless, arms crossed with a big smile on my face. chicks dig that shit.

i remember a plan earlier in the night where i said i'd find them white girls if they found me a black one. that never happened of course. maybe in a more perfect world.

so on the way out i find a ten dollar bill on the floor (score!) and we spend a little too much time looking for the car. maybe it was the alcohol, but people driving past us while we're walking around seemed to be staring a lot. and Moscow must have noticed this too because there were these two girls eyeballin' out the window and their boyfriends looked annoyed and speeded up and Moscow starts doing his "white guy" voice, pretending to be the boyfriend: "hey! what are you looking at out there, Julie! You like looking at them Julie! i'm tired of you doing this to me, Julie!" he explained that "Julie" was the whitest name he could think of. Julie looked straight ahead after that. it was so funny i about pissed my pants. oh yeah! i almost forgot about that other girl in the parking lot. while we were waiting to pull out into the flow of cars, TV puts on Ludicris' "Chicken 'N Beer" and, to the surprise of the five guys that were with standing with them, managed to get 5 girls who were around the car next to us to start dancing like a disco ball was just lowered from the sky. the guys looking all nervous while TV watches them watch him (observation: black people stare at you until you react) and after a moment, one of the girls dances her way over to the car. The song "Pussy Poppin'" is blasting and she's obviously not paying attention to the song she's dancing to because Tommy Vercetti begins to analyze and explain to her the deeper meaning and metaphors in those lyrics and she stops smiling. she sees me in the back seat and looks a little more confused. her boyfriend physically drags her away from the car and the dancing slows down. TV just keeps staring at them and i'm laughing again and saying "you want to go with them, JULIE???" and these dudes sort of form a wall against the corrupting sound of Ludicris' music.

epilogue:
on the way home there's a girl chatting away on her cell phone and TV matches speed, rolls down his window and starts yelling, "baby it's me!!! hey, remember??? it's me!!!" she's obviously scared but it is pretty funny because he's not threatening. she's looking over and playing with the phone out in front of her face, debating whether to call the cops or her boyfriend. and he's so insistent that she knows him that she eventually pulls over (!) in the middle of the freeway. he jumps out and runs back to her car and he so sincere she's actually wondering if she knows him. cars are flying by all pissed and he's standing out there in traffic, just like Tommy fuckin' Vercetti. of course it wasn't exactly like Grand Theft Auto or else he would have spun her out onto the road by her arm and yelled "thank you!" as he drove off. no, TV's trying a strange hypnosis tactic or something. he just keeps insisting "it's me!" and for a minute i think it's actually working, but after a while she gives up and drives off past us. now that i think about it, i'm thinking she initially pulled over because of me in the back seat. i was like that urban legend where cars are honking and trying warn the driver about the guy in behind them with the ax. except, in this case, it would be, "look behind you! a white man is thumbing through your CD collection! pull over! they're crazy!"

that's about it. other highlights:

-after a roadside piss, TV tears off in reverse and spins his car in a 360 that would have made Steve McQueen proud.

-there was an Issac Hayes looking dude in the restroom at that bar, with crazy battery-powered UFO earings, selling everything from gummy worms to cigarettes to sunglasses to peanuts. i was waiting for him to give me a piece of Big Red and go, "looks good on ya!" i looked around to buy a rubber chicken but couldn't find one.

-the Ludicris cd "Chicken 'N Beer" calls Bill O'Reilly a pussy. ha! i did that earlier the same day.

-it finally sinks in that this is my farewell to Moscow for a year, as he's in the military and being shipped over to Iraq for an extended vacation. i realize that this will put me on some sort of Secret Service list but, if something happens to him over there, i'm going to hold Bush accountable. either him or Busch beer because that's an easier target.

-me, i raid the cupboards for breakfast cereal after drinking but Tommy Vercetti? he busts out a two-foot slab of bacon for the microwave. no wonder his mansion was so trashed in Vice City.

However, at the end of the night, Moscow and i are content when he finally locates the Oreo cookies and we all stand there in the kitchen and eat while staring at each other. Oreo cookies? damn, i didn't realize it until just now. how symbolic is that shit?

::: david - 3:05 PM [+] :::
...

"'Right on the nose,' he said.
Then came the weird part. . ."
-The Chocolate War


finally found a good radio station in Pittsburgh. when i first drove into the area and my old stations were all going going gone and i was surfing around the dial i finally settled on about ten stations that seemed to be playing decent songs. well, it must have just been a good day, or a substitute DJ, because all week i've been hearing things like Creed and Staind and Steed and that awful Effingvescence or whatever the hell it is and i slowly ended up deleting every single one of those stations. today though, on my lunch out mailing some letters, i happened across a station that busted out Alice in Chains "I Stay Away," some "Angel Dust" era Faith No More, Perfect Circle and the Deftones aka the Tonedefs! good shit. i drove around with the windows down and forgot to go find some food.

so "Top Gun" was just on last night. question: anyone remember the part where the bald dude from "Back To The Future" at the beginning of the movie is chewing their asses out and he says to Cruise, "your name ain't the best in the Navy, you got to be doing it better than the other guys!" and Cruise gets all pouty and stomps off? well, since i don't remember hearing Cruise's character's real name for the entire duration of the flick, and i DO hear his call sign, "Maverick," about 50 + times, i think that the "Back To The Future" principal dude ("check your iron Tannen!") was saying that his nickname "Maverick" was the problem. his cute "call sign" or whatever is what "ain't the best in the Navy" and THAT'S why he's got a chip on his shoulder. it makes so much more sense that way. i mean, all through high school i was thinking that line had something to do with his dad, that his last name was the problem but i was way off! it's his stupid-ass nickname that makes him fly like a madman and try to bite Val Kilmer's nose in the locker room. Iceman? cool name. cool as a friggin' cucumber. remember him always playing with his wrist-watch like a fucking magician? but Maverick? or "Mav???" sooo lame. and he knows it. notice the way he has to click that pen ten times to get it to retract when he's talking to Goose about his second "fly-by." only someone unhappy with their nickname would have such a problem manipulating a ball-point pen. and every time he was "buzzing the tower" i think the poor bastard was trying to commit suicide. i'm right on this. trust me.

i have a fucking headache that would make a grown man weep. i am dangerously close to hammering a nail into my skull to let the voices out.

plus, i don't know if i've been writing about nosebleeds too much or what, because i seem to have conjured one up last night.

so i went to buy a black denim jacket today, a seemingly simple task. my cats shredded my last one and i didn't bother packing it for the move so i thought, hey! i'm driving by the mall, i'll be a consumer! i'll consume! but no one had black ones. just every possible shade of blue. and i didn't want blue because then, if i wore blue jeans at the same time, i would look like i was wearing pajamas. and why do we continue to wear blue jeans? how silly is that? we're wearing pants with rivets on them because people used to fill pockets with rocks in coal mines or something and now it's the most common thing on anyone's body. everyone is running around with rivets on their clothing. think about that. why didn't mining helmets catch on like that? make about as much sense. at least that light bulb on those helmets would serve a purpose, unlike these pointless rivets on my jeans. or the ones on my sweeeet new black denim jacket! you know what's even harder than trying to find a black one? try finding one without giant letters advertising some bullshit across the back. same with a hooded sweatshirt. it took 3 hours for me to find a grey hooded sweatshirt that did NOT have punk-ass "Tommy Will Finger" or whatever glued on it. if i'm going to fucking advertize for them then their shit better be free. just like tv. commercials make shit free. all these fucking idiots with 3 to 5 brand names all over their bodies at any given time? to me, they look like they're sporting "kick me" signs and they don't know it.

books i picked up after work:

new Stephen Hunter novel called "Havana," i know it won't be as good as "Dirty White Boys" because that's as good as he ever got. but i still keep trying. "Dirty White Boys" will always have a place in my heart because the first page of this book has one of my 5 favorite opening lines of all time.

also grabbed "Fortress of Solitude" by the guy who wrote "Motherless Brooklyn." supposed to be good, although i doubt anything can live up to the hype on that sleeve. "Motherless Brooklyn" was the best thing i read last year and that saying a lot because i read enough books to feed several third world countries. uh, if they ate books. never mind. someone read "Motherless Brooklyn" and you'll see. it's about a man with Tourette's Syndrome trying to solve a crime while his brain and his mouth destroy and reconstuct the English language at every turn. some of the funniest lines i've ever read. a feel-good book for obsessive-compulsives everywhere. anyone who has suppressed the urge to tap every penguin at the zoo three times, or count the number of cliche's spoken in every movie trailer ("we got unfinished business!" "i'm doing my job!" "Just like that?" "Just like that.") or just reach out and slowly push the person behind you in line at the grocery store another foot away from you...then this is the book for you.

::: david - 10:10 PM [+] :::
...

"all the feelings that make up the human 'heart' are as useless to the living dead as the organ of the same name"
-Max Brooks - The Zombie Survival Guide


day off, flipping channels through reruns over cornflakes before i start my apartment hunt. i'll lead off today's post with another new feature:

Stating The Obvious!

-Saved By The Bell. the theme song? how the fuck can they be "late for school, but it's alright 'cause they're saved by the bell?" makes no sense. you can't be saved by the bell if you miss the bus. if the bell goes off, you're fucking late. this ain't boxing bitch.

-Spice Girls are horrible. just stumbled on an old SNL episode and they look so desperate to please it's embarrasing. they all have those rictus cheerleader grins and the sporty one tries to kick constantly, the sexy one writhes around like she showed up for a confused coked-up porn debut, the bizarre rapper in her army fatigues trying to be all ghetto. what the hell was that all about? just so pathetic.

-Dawson's Creek. holy fuck. don't get me started on this crap. listen to the fucking speeches these idiots give when they're discussing a plot with the depth of a Three's Company episode. Katie's mouth twitches so much i thought she was going to spit out a chipmunk at any moment. and Dawson. dude. what are you dude? if you hadn't kicked ass in "The Rules of Attraction" and Varisity Blues (just kidding. not really. sort of. moving on) i'd unload on you right now. instead i'll direct my anger at Pacey. is that his name? okay, he just broke up a fight at the resturant he works at. now he's talking to the kid about why he's flunking out of school. instead of asking why he never learned how to fight. pussies all.

-i don't know what this movie is on the Oxygen channel but some girl is sucking on some guys finger. question? whenever some girl does that, trying to look all sexy, has any guy ever NOT looked away in embarrassment until she stopped and finally found a map to locate an actual erogenous zone? ladies, please. don't suck on fingers all wide-eyed ever again. you look like a goat at a petting zoo.

-the trivia in the bottlecaps on Snapple in the best marketing idea since the Chocolate Pudding frequent-flyer giveaway in "Punch Drunk Love." did you know that mosquitos have 17 teeth? did you know that only elephants and humans have knees? did you know that camels have 3 eyelids? did you know that Niagra Falls erodes 58 feet every year and every fifth egg a chicken lays is empty and Charlie Sheen did all his own stunts in "Terminal Velocity?" okay, the last three i made up. maybe i'll make some of my own and sneak em into circulation.

-Pittsburgh's local commercials are frigging high-larious.

-hey, the Oxygen movie is "Gas, Food & Lodging" i didn't hate it when i saw it. i hate the box for the dvd and the video with the two girl swooning in Little House on the Prairie dresses like they're on the cover of a romance novel. why don't women rise up and demand not to be fucking insulted like that? check out the ads they show during the day geared toward braindead housewives. food and/or douche commercials non-stop. why do you stand for that? i don't remember the finger-sucking in this flick though. it's not all bad. all three females have their good points. Fairuza in "Return To Oz" and "Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead," the mom was naked in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," "Animal House" and "Starman" and both the King Ad Rock and i are "down with the Ione, 'cause she's the cheese and i'm the macaroni!" plus a pointless cameo by J. Mascis as a rock collector at the end. i like movies that take place in sunlight and desert towns for some reason.

enough TV. been clicking on some blogs and i have an ammendment to my previous statement about how i hate reading about boyfriends and girlfriends on the internet. correction, i hate reading lovefests between boyfriends and girlfriends on the internet. breakups, i like. keep 'em coming. does that make me a hater? so be it.

p.s. the new book "The Zombie Survival Guide" is excellent. detailed, straight-faced info about how to protect yourself and your house from a living dead assault. by Max Brooks. check it out. probably in the humor section even though it should be in Home Improvement.

the movie "Identity" is in my hand right now but i don't feel like watching it anymore because some little idiot ruined the ending for me at work. she says, "i like how it turns out that..." and then she proceeds to give away what has to be the major twist. guess now i know how it feels.

did you know that your average earthworm consumes and digests thirteen discarded roadside cassette tapes every day?

::: david - 2:26 PM [+] :::
...

"Watch the skies..."
-The Thing (1951 version)

"Eat the orange peel before you eat the orange and it'll taste that much sweeter, even if it's rotten."
-The Me (1987 version)


what up. haven't been on here in a while. been looking for a new apartment. want something with a view, seeing how there's all these trees 'n shit around here. you'd think that wouldn't be too much to ask but all these places are facing the wrong way. there will be this sweet view of the river and the window is looking at a Taco Bell. or a big green hill covering half the sky, and the window faces the dumpster. not ready to settle yet but i'm getting dangerously close to settling. also the "cat friendly" ones are a little scarce. cat friendly means they charge an extra 50 bucks a month. that don't sound too friendly to me. if i have to pay that, i'm going to make damn sure my cats do 50 dollars worth of damage every month. what do i do if my cats are tired? i'm not going to waste that money. i'll be chewing on the screen door if i have to take up their slack.

i'm going to try something new today:

The Real Time Review!

beware, this will ruin the film if you haven't seen it yet. okay, right now i've just turned on...

Dreamcatcher

the only name i recognized off the box was Brody from "Mallrats." i mean Banky. whoever. okay, here's the thing...i'm going to review it just as if i was leaning over in the theater and complaining about crap in your ear. here goes:

-wait, this is already ripping off The Thing
-now it rips off It
-for fucks sake, it's ripping off Diner?
-rips off Stand By Me
-rips off my nuts
-yawn, more bullshit pop culture references
-hey, he just said "Reefer Sutherland!" funny
-jesus fucking christ, another noble retard. this is a trend that has got to stop.
-ha! they're forcing the retarded kid to eat shit. i did that once. except i mixed it in with a pepsi and mud and tried to fool her. she wasn't retarded though. i got in trouble for that. i also got in trouble for charging kids a nickel a game to play with a tiny Tomy (?) Pocket Slot Machine. the games were rigged 'cause these kids didn't know how to win and this one kid's dad came stomping over to my friend Shawn's garage where our "Casino" was set up and grabbed me by the-

(shhh!)

-sorry.
-hey, how come retards never look retarded in movies?
-how come bullies in movies look like such pussies?
-if that kid tried bullying me in grade school i'd still be hitting him today
-a rock fight! sweeeeet.
-no rock fight! what?!? this movie blows. these kids don't talk or act like anything resembling real kids. and how does a kid pick up a rock and not fucking throw it??? inexcusable. the best rock fight ever was in "How To Eat Fried Worms." that was one of the greatest things i ever read, i think it actually had a chapter called "The Apocalyptic Rock Fight" well, if it didn't it should have-

(shhhhhh!)

-sorry
-i thought that dickhead got hit by a car ten minutes ago.
-serious. why the hell is he still alive? he got smiz-zoked
-this movie jumps around too much.
-i'll bet Stephen King put that scene in there because he got hit by that van.
-i signed a giant "get well" card for Stephen King from my old bookstore. i wrote a smartass comment on it but i can't remember what it was
-hey, i know where i saw that dude before. he was the killer in Scream 2.
-the one who shot Mikey!
-wait, that wasn't Mikey. it was the fat kid from Stand By Me and Sliders. Mikey got shot in Heathers
-and the other dude? he rode a shark in Deep Blue Sea
-that was a better movie
-this movie need sharks
-what movie wouldn't be better with sharks? that's what i'm talking about
-very cool looking snow though
-snow shark! please let there be a snow shark!
-cool car wreck just now
-movie just got better
-if the screen was an EKG, the heartbeat just spiked
-this looks like real snow. this and The Dead Zone have great crunching snow scenes.
-another pedestrian almost getting clipped by a truck. told you King was inspired by his accident
-if this has one of those dumb Stephen King cameo i will indicate it by headbutting the keyboard
-cool "Watership Down" moment with some animals fleeing something in the woods
-rips off The Thing again
-these people don't act or react like real people
-huge Thing rip-off just now
-crazy Swedes in a helicopter!
-that mass squirrel/bear/deer exodus was cool but it could have been very cool. another idea squandered
-so far six farts in this movie, and they're not played for laughs and that's worse
-mysterious blood on the mattress. "you get nosebleeds Fink?"
-that fag just said "scooby dooby doo, we got some work to do" and he was being serious
-ha! dude just shit a bloody alien into a toilet! another spike on the EKG!
-ha! they flushed it! there's hope...
-what's up with the toothpicks on the floor there, Rainman?
-Jason Lee's name is "Beaver?" stupid
-this rips off Cronenberg's Shivers. that reminds me, i just bought Cronenberg's Brood even though my dvd player is in a box and i swore i wouldn't buy any more movies for a long time. i had to though because i have it on tape and this new version has like 5 extra minutes of goo so it wasn't like i really bought anything new-

(shhhhhhhhh!)

-sorry
-holy crap. what a lame-ass, unimaginative alien that is.
-this thing i'm looking at is even worse than the aliens in Mission To Mars
-what the? okay, its head just exploded into little red spores.
-"well bless my ass!" (-Johnny Handsome) Morgan Freeman just showed up.
-Morgan Freeman just said, "you wouldn't want it marrying your sister!" hmmm, i don't think that statement was supposed to be so racially charged
-they call the alien "Ripley, after the chick in the Alien movies," how lazy was that?
-ha! they called the alien they flushed a "shit weasel"
-Freeman keeps calling people "bucko," a typical shortcut to actual characterization

time out. i have to go heat up some seafood left over from last night. Shrimp, squid, scallops. mmm. looks a little like the "shit weasel" actually...
okay i'm back:

-they've been fighting the aliens for "25 years?"
-whenever i hear something like that in a movie, i always think that, in those 25 years, i'll bet there were much more interesting stories to tell
-another alien got shat out someone's ass into the world
-the alien shitting is actually getting kind of entertaining
-sort of got a snow shark thing going on right now. please let there be snow sharks.
-i can't believe it, my wish came true! sort of.
-ha! dude just got bit in the nards while pissing someone's name in the snow! another heartbeat spike. this movie might rally at the end here and win me over
-the orange peels in this shrimp taste nasty reheated
-i used to eat orange peels all the time so the orange would taste better
-i remember explaining my reasons to someone on the track team back in 1987. he asked for the orange like i was going to suffer through the peels and just throw the best part away. i got third place that day in the high hurdles
-these people in the movie don't seem cold even when they've been buried in snow for hours
-the alien has a british accent when it takes over a body? fucking dumb
-that british accent on the possessed dudes is dumb as a box of hammers
-the guy who had an alien swinging from his dick five minutes earlier is fine now??? c'mon. heartbeat has stopped. flatline.
-still no heartbeat. eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
-snowmobile chase? doctor, we have a pulse!
-false alarm. no snowmobile chase. eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
-man slowly sticking his face into alien pod thing. another Alien rip off.
-how can they call a character "Beaver" with a straight face? ha! he just yelled at the alien,"you killed Beaver!"
-stupid CGI alien just layed some eggs. they look like the food Lou Gossett Jr. was eating in Enemy Mine
-dude just said, "so long Beaver, love ya man!" me too!
-flashback alert. zzzzzz
-apparently retarded people are from space, or so this movie seems to suggest
-now that's a planet that would be very easy to conquer
-you ever see Velvet Goldmine? that movie suggested that homosexuals, or at least Oscar Wilde, were from space too
-now that's a sci-fi movie i'd want to see: the Gay Planet vs. the Retard Planet
-wait! i did see that, it was called Star Wars! Boo ya!
-this little kid with the glasses needs a beating
-that grass is way too green. why is this movie on soundstages all the sudden? where's all the cool scenery?
-hmm, four kids walking down the railroad tracks, looking for a body in the weeds? gee, where have i seen this before?
-still no sharks
-lots of snowmobiles and no snowmobile chases. what is up?
-Tom Sizemore alert. shouldn't Malory be tweaking his nipple? Born bad! i was boor-or-orn, born baaaad
-whoa. big UFO crashsite on the horizon. very cool
-CGI helicopters. not cool
-i wish more people would have read that last story i posted. i think they bailed because of the opening line, even though the line was sort of a tease. or maybe the ones i'm putting up are too long
-hey, the UFO just turned into a giant helicopter-eating blood clot
-how long is this thing anyway? check it out, if i finish this movie, and 2 Fast 2 Furious! by seven 'o clock, i get two bucks credit towards my new shit movie.
-dude just said, "bite my bag," typical Stephen Kingism. has anyone ever said that? ever? then why do ALL his characters say it over and over
-the whole "memory warehouse" device in this movie is a complete failure
-this asshole is running around packing away boxes of "memories" every time the alien tries to read his thoughts. i'm thinking this concept would have looked just as bad on paper
-all the good snow scenes were in the first 3rd, the last 3rd is all fake soundstage crap and potato flakes that don't melt.
-infected dog, more Thing rip-offs
-i wish i had more seafood than this. i'm still hungry in spite of the ass-worms and shit-monsters in this stupid movie. you ever really look at a shrimp? little swimming meatball that's all it is, just meant to be eaten, i swear i could eat a million of those little bastards, i'm going to go buy one of those shrimp rings right now before someone else gets the same idea from watching this masterpiece and-

shhhhhhhhhhhh!

::: david - 6:37 PM [+] :::
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