The number one comedy in America is...

This is more of a rant that it should be... rather than recommending 'so bad it's kinda good', these are more along the lines of 'danger, Will Robinson, danger, danger.' First off- have we lost our (collective) minds? Are we unable to distinguish good from, "Oh please kill me... so awful"? Are people looking to put me out of a job?!

This began some months ago after seeing Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Now let me say to begin- this movie looked terrible from the trailer, but I thought to myself, 'ohhh aren't we the arteeste? We refuse to see things that are popular...' Bad, bad decision. First, it was lazy... like it used EXTREME sports (only 5 years +/- after their peak, no less) as an excuse to bring in some 'X-treme' action to a movie about a chubby guy. No value judgment, but Kevin James is not Sammo Hung, so the director had to find some way of having action happen *around* the protagonist... here's a hint, that doesn't happen through osmosis, we see that he isn't doing the board stunts. The laziness results in shoehorning two separate films, into one that is less than the sum of its parts.

Hell, as I type, the anger at being snookered into watching this PoCoaR (piece of crap on a rock- Thank you S. F. Brian, for that evocative and ever useful descriptor)... shame. Even if it had been compelling, even if the 'twists' weren't visible from space, the simple fact that in one scene set in an 'empty' mall, you can see shoppers milling about behind some actors. Not panicked victims (as the 'plot' would have it), just regular shoppers who are standing around, looking at the lights, camera, action. Dammit, don't we have post houses now? How much is it to shoot a clean plate and do some digital fixing? AAArgh.

Curiously, that 'Mall Cop abomination' is a less offensive entry for me than the next and I'll tell you why- because if made me wonder WTF happened to a good writer/director. I'm talking here of Kevin Smith.

Now, if profanity isn't your thing, then you may not dig him, but I've been an unabashed fan of his for years and own many of his movies on DVD, and Zack and Miri Make a Porno got the shaft at the box office (see what we did there? Single entendre!!)- it happens outside of the 'Askewniverse' and is a sweet movie that is remarkably raunch-free (considering the title). Anyways, so Clerks II didn't really do anything for me, but whatever, diffen' strokes, right (RIP G. Coleman, BTW), and I haven't seen Jersey Girl yet (it's on the queue though).

Okay, now you may have guessed that the apple of my ire is Cop Out, an avoid at all costs debacle of a thing. How can you take a script from the 2008 'Black List' (the top unproduced film scripts of the year) an ever improving director, some appealing actors, Harold Faltermeyer (that right, cat who wrote "Alex F" and many iconic soundtracks from 1980's movies, came out of his self-imposed retirement to provide the score) and get this mess? The script was... well, we hope that it started to suck in turnaround- if this was the original draft, the world is a cold, frightening place.

Okay, so the execution was painful, the plot, contrived, the acting (mostly by the always mugging Tracy Morgan, though Sean William Scott and much of the cast of 'straight out of central casting' Latino heavies) was completely Over the Top too. Gah, blerhg, apoplexy... okay, medication, making better...

At any rate, alls I'm sayin' is, the next time you see a movie trailer that runs for a couple of weeks, then appears mostly unaltered save for a jovial announcer (sounding like he's mere moments from splitting his sides with laughter), stating, "The number 1 comedy (this is where the other alteration, a #1 Comedy imprint will appear somewhere, usually with a stamping sound) is..." there is no spoon, let alone funny.

Tempin' ain't easy

While I keeps it real (and Puffy, you know this) I do also have a strange aversion to losing Castle Vigor, not having enough gruel to feed the minions or running out of fuel while hither and yon in search of adventure. This means one thing- I must sully my hands with, for and in the acquisition of filthy lucre.

Since being 'down-sized/right-sized' (after 7 + years) from a position coordinating services for an 'at risk' population a couple of years ago, I've had some interesting forays into various realms. This has meant doing everything from working in a university library to spending two days blind-calling donors for a non-profit, to providing administrative support for lawyers, to spending time at a high school. Until recently, one believed that staying ethical barred entry into things governmental, now... not so much.

So far the most fascinating aspect of temping has proven the (in some cases) radical differences between cultures from site to site- the climate in one place may not prepare one, at all, for the next posting. After a while of being employed, I totally took0 the 'culture' or atmosphere of my long-term job for granted after a while- there were some demoralized/ing whingers, some young upbeat enthusiastic (bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as they say) do-gooders and a range of temperaments in between. Despite adding and subtracting some, often strong, personalities, the overall umwelt didn't change that much- being thrust into different offices though, one sees all kinds o' things...

Just musing at this point as too many specifics may prove unfortunate, but I'm hoping to find a way to be generic enough to speak to a range of experiences... we'll see how effective that can be.

Just because there haven't been any posts lately...

Doesn't mean that there aren't (metric ass) ton(ne)s of badnesses floating about. As part of the tireless search for terrible, I've encountered some new 'martial' arts related stuff (some doozies in the sword-ish category in particular), a batch of movies, and a few random musings, including my ode to unemployment, "Tempin' Ain't Easy*". We'll try to be more productive soon because my backlog of notes is going to require devotion of a special room in Castle Vigor...

*If you don't get this reference, it is to a Big Daddy Kane album of the 80's, those halcyon days of hip-hop yore.