Hey, Avenue...

Did you forget to mention you got a new job shilling Yahoo! mail?

17 second video of a giant dead anaconda found...

...outside some building in south america.

Movie Review Triple Feature: Early Nineties Edition

Singles (1992)
synopsis:
A group of twenty-somethings search for love in the big city in this cameron crowe written and directed romantic comedy (spoiler alert: it's neither romantic nor comedic).

review in a nutshell:
Awful. Truly awful. Its irritability factor is off the chart; they should have called it Shingles- at least that way viewers would know what they were in for.

Watching this movie is like taking a telephone call from a.v.e. (which is basically him reading a blog post to you while you try to think of an excuse to hang up); it's listening to a bunch of people you don't really care for tell you about things you don't really care about, while all the while they're convinced they're telling you the most interesting/important thing ever.

brief commentary on the "twenty-somethings":
While there aren't quite twenty of them, the main characters certainly are something (major prickfaces). Think back to a pretentious coworker (but just your run-of-the-mill boring pretentious, not the oddly fascinating pretentious where the person isn't aware of it). Watching this movie is like being trapped with that person in the break room for 95 minutes.



Barton Fink (1991)
synopsis:
Barton Fink is a semi-successful serious New York playwright hired to write a B movie script for 1940s Hollywood. I guess I should say that the film takes place in 1941; this isn't a time-traveling movie (although adding a flux capacitor and hoverboards wouldn't have hurt).

Fink is supposed to be writing the story while he's staying in a shady hotel, but instead develops a serious case of shingles. Sorry, I meant writer's block. He's torn because he wants to write "art for the common man", yet he's supposed to be writing a schlock wrestling movie.

review in a nutshell:
Watching a movie about writer's block is just as boring as it sounds. There's some stupid symbolism (which is both a cheap substitute for actual plot and a poor trade for the entertainment no longer in the picture) that I choose not to go into because it's too boring, and some strange, but ultimately disappointing, plot devices (yawn).

even writing about this movie is uninteresting:
It's long, it's bland, it's a letdown (insert your own joke here). Anyone who says they like this movie is only saying that because they think they're supposed to. Or they're stupid.




Jungle Fever (1991)
synopsis:
Professional black guy (black guy who's an architect, not a guy who's job is being black) and his Itialian secretary have an affair (re: he bones her on his silly architect desk in what has to be the most awkward at-work porking session I've seen since Moronica sent me a link to "Trainyard Skanks 4" (trains don't need to be steered; you won't believe how the engineers occupy their time on the rails).

The story follows what happens with each of their lives once their tryst becomes public knowledge.

Other issues this movie attempts (but laughably fails) to tackle:

-The architect's wife's issues with being a light-skinned black woman
-The architect's relationship with his religious and racist father
-The architect's relationship with his crackhead Brother
-The Brother's relationship with their father
-The architect's relationship with his best friend (who leaked the affair)
-The architect's workplace relationship with his white bosses
-The Italian girl's relationship with her racist father and brothers
-The Italian girl's boyfriend's relationship with his own father
-The Italian girl's boyfriend's relationship with her brothers who hate him
-The Italian girl's relationship with her best friends (who also leaked the affair)
-The Italian girl's boyfriend's relationship a black girl he wants to date
-The Italian girl's boyfriend's relationship with his racist friends
-The architect's relationship with his daughter


review in a nutshell:
A real snoozer filled with unlikable characters being assholes to each other.

one more thing:
So bad it doesn't even deserve me writing a third section about it.

In sum: based on these films, the early 90s sucked. And if people actually acted like the characters in these movies... Thank god I was too busy playing Super Mario 3 to notice.

here goes nothing . . .

I don't have much, but what I've got you can have:

I've been banished to a small South Dakotan town for most of July. . . this sort of setting does not generate the kind of material I'd prefer to blog about. But, honestly, who am I kidding. . . nobody reads this anyway.

When you cross the border into Eastern South Dakota (and eeeeeeverybody knows that East River drulz and West River rulz) you get greeted by two billboards that pretty much sum up time spent crossing the state. 1) the billboard that tells you to eat meat. Seriously, that's all it says. "Eat Meat" in big Red Letters. and 2) the how far away you are from Wall Drug sign. Wall Drug is the waste-of-space town that SD likes to pretend it a holdover from the good ol' days of cowboys and ten foot tall kelly green brontosaurus statues with blinking red eyes. Wha? I don't get it either, but if you want to see both, apparently this is where you come. And there are signs as far away as Greenland and Africa to entice tourists to visit. Ugh.

And when I arrived safe on the Eastern border, I was greeted by the "WELCOME VETTERS" sign gracing the highway exit. Glory, Glory . . . I didn't miss the wonder that is the Corvette Rally. If you can call a group of James Spader (circa Pretty in Pink) wannabe, Creed blaring, personalized license plate sporting ego-maniacs a "Rally".

Perhaps not enough to keep anyone reading this -- but what if I could promise a follow up of girl-on-girl streetfighting and a trip to Deadwood? eh? eh?

If you've got a better idea I'd loooove to hear it.

In a measure of desperation, I'm about to do something really horrifying and give one of our sometimes-commentors a temporary submit button. Except I don't think it really counts as giving if you have to beg them to take it. Maybe I could ring the bell and leave it on A.V.E.'s doorstep. Or bribe Slogan Echoes to take it. I should start making a list of obscene sexual favors now.

Do any of you readers masochistic shut-ins have any suggestions? For guest bloggers I mean, not sexual favors.

An open letter to my fellow bloggers

Where the fuck are you.
I'd have better luck getting this broad to blog:




Babbles? I know you're bored out of your skull hanging out with Cruella's dogs all day and trying to devise new ways of killing yourself. Do you think, maybe, you could post once or twice while you're gone? No?

Moronica Bars. I know where you are. I know what you're doing riiiiiiight now. And it's more fun than blogging, but that doesn't let you off the hook. You are in fact still on the hook. The blogging hook. And if you refuse to blog, could you at least come help me dig this pond? Babbles started it and then fell into a black hole somewhere.

Gal. I feel like you're my best hope. I'm pretty sure you're on the edge of a serious comeback. And you were at least partially responsible for starting this whole thing, so dust your keyboard off and let's see some fucking BLOGGING ACTION!

OK, everybody, on three!


One...

Two...

...

(guys?)

Better him than me...

Babbles is in Colorado visiting Cruella DeBoner for... like... the next year or something. I'd say that means we'll be Babbleless, but I'm guessing he's bored already so we'll probably be hearing from him with stunning frequency. (Do they have the interwebs in hell?)

I think he thinks there will be a lot of this:






When really I'm pretty sure it's going to look a lot more like this:


And this:



And this:


Too harsh? She once choked me in her living room. Until I turned blue. In front of about 6 people (none of whom stopped her--thanks, mom and dad.)

Here's a hint, Babbles: If she goes for the throat, put your finger in your nose and pretend to try to wipe it on her. She'll be too busy barfing to maim you.

It's like a Rorschach test.

Williams Sonoma's online catalog says it's a meat tenderizer.