Stupid What’s Your Number anyway
A conceit I hate in rom-coms is the “omigod I’ve only got X amount of time to net me a man or I’ll be single forever AAAAAHHHHH.”
(I also hate the “casting Goldie Hawn’s daughter constantly” conceit, but that’s kind of two sides of the same coin.)
Please, Kate, just TRY showing a little range or something, PLEASE.
What’s Your Number? stars Anna Faris (who is supposed to be very funny and, thus, wasted in this role, apparently) as some chick who reads some stupid article about the number of lovers you’re supposed to have and decides that she has to go and track down all her ex-boyfriends for some reason. Because why not take the word of some women’s magazine article as gospel, right? Because you don’t want to be alone forever AAAAAAHHHH, right?
Also, if Captain America is your neighbor, what the hell are you looking for other men for? Unless he’s stuck in the thankless role of “gay best friend,” all your wooing should be saved for him.
Um, gay?
Anyway, I guess this could be a funny movie (because it’s always funny when you have to talk to your exes, ha ha ha, seriously, stop trying to contact me) but from what I’ve heard, it’s not.
Realy, people, they're your exes for a reason. Don't stalk them.
So if you live in a city that got Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil, go see that instead, and tell me how it was.
Thanks!
Professor Hubert Farnsworth vs. Dr. Walter Bishop
It’s a battle of two mad scientists!
In one corner, we have Futurama’s Prof. Farnsworth, the oldest, crotchetiest, maddest scientist you’ve ever seen!
He’s so old and crotchety, he even uses a chalkboard in the future!
In the other corner, we have Fringe’s Walter Bishop, the not quite as old and crotchety but certainly equally as mad scientist!
Possibly more mad.
(Have you ever come across a madder scientist than these guys?)
Let’s see who comes out on top or, alternately, who keels over and dies first!
Physicality. Prof. Farnsworth is a cartoon character and an American one at that. Those guys are hardly ever attractive. Also, his head resembles an eggplant.
I’m not the only one who sees it, right?
Walter Bishop is a dignified looking man with great hair and variable posture. Winner? Walter Bishop.
I seriously can’t get over how great this man’s hair is.
Has nearly destroyed an alternate universe? Why, yes, as a matter of fact! Prof. Farnsworth created and nearly destroyed an alternate universe, while in the same instance, his alternate counterpart simultaneously created and nearly destroyed our universe! Science is hard! Walter Bishop nearly destroyed the alternate universe (we’ll call it Universe A) when he went to rescue his alternate son from his alternate death. Winner? It’s a tie!
Or, wait, was this one Universe A?
Has an interstellar spaceship? Prof. Farnsworth has an interstellar spaceship. Walter Bishop takes a lot of acid. It’s not quite the same thing. Winner? Prof. Farnsworth.
I’m always willing to give bonus points to the guy who’s mastered interstellar travel.
Has a better relationship with his relatives? Prof. Farnsworth has one living relative, his great (to the 30th degree) uncle Philip J. Fry from the 20th century. He constantly sends Fry on extremely dangerous missions and probably has tried to kill him in his sleep when no one was looking. Prof. Farnsworth also has a clone, but I’m not sure that’s the same thing as a “relative.” Walter Bishop has (as far as I can tell) one living relative, his son, Peter. Actually, it’s not really his son, since his son died and he replaced him with the alternate universe Peter. Still, they get along okay, when Peter can get past the whole “you kidnapped me from an alternate universe” issue. Winner? Errrrr … Walter?
Awwww, look how cute they are together!
Lives in a cooler city? Prof. Farnsworth lives in New New York, which was built upon the ruins of Old New York, which hosts sewer monsters and mutants galore. Also robots. Walter Bishop lives in Boston, which has a really cool comic book store that I went to one time. Also, lots of crazy things happen there like shapeshifters come to visit and stuff. Winner? Well, because most of the cool stuff happening in Boston seems to end up with someone dying horribly, we’re giving this one to Prof. Farnsworth, who lives in a city where people only sometimes end up dying horribly.
“I want to be a part of it: New New York, New New York!”
Has a better lab assistant? Walter Bishop’s lab assistant is the beautiful Astrid Farnsworth, which is possibly a coincidence but maybe not. (She’s actually an FBI agent, but she’s always stuck in the lab with the guy, assisting him, so it counts.) Prof. Farnsworth’s lab assistant is whomever he can get a hold of at the time, so it varies from Fry to Bender to Dr. Zoidberg and the rest of them, which is pretty cool. Still, Astrid is awfully sweet and awfully pretty. Winner? Walter Bishop.
Plus, she has to take care of Walter’s cow. Lab assistants just don’t get better than that.
Sports a better fashion sense? Prof. Farnsworth is generally found wearing a white lab coat and his bedroom slippers. Once, in the past, he wore a zoot suit.
It’s a zoot suit riot.
Walter Bishop has a habit of wearing worn-out old sweaters or nothing but socks. Winner? We’re all losers here.
“Good news, everyone! I shouldn’t be allowed to dress myself.”
Has saved more people than he’s killed? Prof. Farnsworth’s delivery company has a motto: “Our crew is replaceable. Your package isn’t.” As such, he’s gone through several crews already and, as a mad scientist, is probably responsible for tons of deaths he’ll never admit to. Walter Bishop has doomed the alternate universe, as well as invented a bunch of stuff that people in our universe use for killing. Sure, now he’s on a team that’s trying to save the universe and the other universe, but has he really managed to reach a karmic balance here? Winner? We’ll give this one to Walter. At least he’s trying.
Has reached his 17th decade? You know who’s really old? Prof. Farnsworth is really old. He’s, like, in his 170s. 170s divided by 10 is 17 decades! Walter Bishop is not that old because he’s not from the future. Or is he? No, he’s not. Well, except for that one episode in Season Three, but whatever. Winner? Prof. Farnsworth.
Has created an actual, working time machine? Eh, not so much. Prof. Farnsworth traveled through time accidentally, created a non-working time machine and then created the “only going to the future” time machine, which he was forced to travel in through two incarnations of our universe. I mean, I guess that counts as “working,” but the “going back in the past” thing would be pretty nice too. Walter Bishop sent some pieces of a doomsday machine back in time, but not via a time machine he had created. Rather, it was a worm hole that led back to some dinosaur era (shut up, I don’t care which one it was). Winner? Prof. Farnsworth, kind of.
Eh, he looks pretty happy.
Wow, this one’s gotten a bit long. Let’s move on to a tie-breaker, shall we?
Let’s do.
The tie-breaking question: Which of these two mad scientists has a more frightening alternate universe counterpart? Walter Bishop’s alternate universe counterpart is Walternate (a name Walter himself coined, proving that, deep down, he is a fanboy at heart), the Secretary of Defense who is willing to do anything (except experiment on children) to save his universe. Prof. Farnsworth’s alternate universe counterparts are sundry and varied, and include the one with no eyes. Which is frightening, but not as frightening as that Twilight Zone movie where the girl didn’t have a mouth. Winner? Walter, because the professor’s alternate universe counterparts really were intended to be played for comedic effect.
Quick, Future Olivia! Use your telekinesis to save yourself!
Overall winner? Walter Bishop, but only just barely.
He might have done better if he wasn’t missing all those pieces of his brain.
Why did I like Sherlock (so goddamned much)?
So, my friends who recommended the BBC series Sherlock will be happy to learn that I finally watched the first episode. And it was exactly as good as they said, if not better.
I never knew that London had a big ol' Ferris Wheel in the middle of it.
For those of you who didn’t recommend Sherlock, here’s the gist: Take Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, toss ‘em in the 21st Century and call it a day.
And then they run through the sewers or something!
I know. Doesn’t sound like it should work, does it?
But it does. Oh, how it does.
For Sherlockians such as myself, there’s all sorts of fun little tidbits, like: “It’s a three-patch problem” and “I’m not his date.”
And most importantly, they got Holmes right. (I am glaring in your general direction, Guy Ritchie.)
If I could just master the look of death, he'd be a smoldering pile of ashes right now.
I mean, sure, I’m the first to complain when Sherlock Holmes is attractive, and Benedict Cumberbatch is awfully attractive. But he plays Holmes so ugly. It’s just brilliant.
I think I'm a little bit in love with Benedict Cumberbatch now.
When another character calls him a psychopath, he’s offended.
“I’m a highly functioning sociopath,” he sniffs.
Ladies love a highly functioning sociopath that dresses this nice.
God, that’s so right!
And then everyone thinks Watson and Holmes are a couple, because of course they do! There is such a chemistry and a bond between the characters that what else could you think? There’s even a fun little bit where Holmes thinks Watson is coming on to him and he turns him down politely, because he’s “not interested.” Nor is he interested in dating women, thankyouverymuch, show!!!
Holmes has ALWAYS loved Watson the most, and that's just how it is.
The mystery itself was interesting, with a string of suicides that are actually murders that are actually suicides, and the name Moriarty is dropped. Also, Watson shoots someone and is awesome.
I have to say that I enjoy a more proactive Watson.
Speaking of Moriarty, they totally tricked me with the whole Mycroft thing, because I was like, “Oh, well, that’s clearly Moriarty because Mycroft Holmes is fat,” and then later, Holmes is like, “Have you gained weight?” and I was like “You fooled me!”
So, anyway, yeah, I loved it, but I did have a few complaints:
1. Holmes and Watson kept calling each other “Sherlock” and “John,” because I guess we go by first names in the future, but it just seemed unnatural to me. I’ll have to suck it up and get used to it.
2. The music was a little too “creepy carnival in town” for me, but we can’t all be Bear McCreary, I suppose.
3. I figured out who was behind the murders before Holmes did. And it was something so obvious that I just wanted to slap him when he gave up the lead so quickly because he had made a wrong assumption. I’m not smarter than Holmes. I don’t want to be smarter than Holmes. I’m only letting this slide because (I’m hoping) Holmes’ giant ego had such a hard time accepting he was wrong that when the solution was right in front of his face, he was flummoxed.
4. At the climax, when Holmes sits down with the murderer, who offers him the choice of two pills, Holmes just assumes one is poison and one isn’t. I kept thinking: “Haven’t you ever seen the Princess Bride, Sherlock? For goodness sake.” But maybe the killer hadn’t either, I don’t know.
Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
So those were my main issues with the show, but everything else was just so perfect and right that I can let them slide and eagerly wait for evening, when I can watch the second episode.
So you think you’re dating a robot: A modern teen’s guide
All right, so you’re not dating a werewolf or a vampire or any of those things. But something seems a little bit off about your new boyfriend and you just can’t quite put your finger on it.
Well, maybe he’s a robot!
Here’s a list of 10 ways to be sure, possibly.
1. Does he want to destroy humanity?
It’s true that a lot of robots want to destroy humanity, except for the wussy Asimov ones, but you could just as easily be dating Magneto.
"Hey, Baby, wanna kill all humans?"
2. Does he come from the future?
Some robots come from the future.
Everything is pimpin' in the future. ESPECIALLY the robots.
3. When you prick him, does he not bleed?
I just really wanted to get that one in there.
Shakespeare reference alert! Shakespeare reference alert!
4. Can he do things that normal, non-robotic human beings can’t do?
Like enjoy a life as a mechanical man?
Or send you into convulsions of pants-wetting terror at the mere sight of him?
5. Can he transform into an automobile, jet or possibly a (*snicker*) cassette deck?
Transformers are robots, aren’t they?
I mean, they LOOK like robots, but you know the old saying: "There's more than meets the eye."
6. Does he sometimes call your family “those puny humans”?
And then he crushes your brother’s car with his bare fist?
Or his bare pincers, I guess.
7. Do his funeral pre-arrangements consist of “downloading into a new body”?
Handy!
8. Can he time travel?
Some robots can time travel.
AND kill everything in their paths.
9. Does he go for long periods of time without eating, drinking or breathing, say, like, the entire time you’ve known him?
This is a good hint that your boyfriend doesn’t need to do any of those things and, thus, is a robot.
Also, he looks like this, which should really have clued you in in the first place.
10. Last, but not least: Is your boyfriend constantly looking for loopholes in Asimov’s laws so he can do something about his pesky neighbors?
Seriously, honey, if he was a regular human being, he’d've already shot them for letting their dog poop on his lawn for the 12th time this week.
"Jerks."
A Trifecta of Terrible (movies)
Lest you think that liking Revenge has made me soft and not as pre-judgmental as usual, rest assured that there are three terrible, horrible, no-good bad movies that I won’t be seeing this weekend.
1. A Dolphin’s Tale.
I hate the sea and everything in it. (Except for the opportunity it allows me to quote the Sea Captain from The Simpsons, I guess.) But I hate dolphins the most. They’re the bastards of the sea.
Man, that kid's just asking to be aquatically murdered.
Also: Cyborg dolphins? Are you kidding me, humanity?
2. Moneyball.
I'm pretty sure there's nothing you could add to this movie that would make me not hate it and want to stab myself in the brains if I had to watch it.
I’ve already said I don’t particularly find Brad Pitt attractive, but even if you cast Takeshi Kaneshiro in this thing, it wouldn’t be enough to make me want to watch a movie about baseball and … statistics, I think. Ugh.
Well, gosh, if you insist: Sure, I'll shoehorn a photo of Takeshi Kaneshiro in there!
3. Abduction.
I always thought that the real evil in Twilight lay in reading the “books.” (I put the word books in quotes there because do they really count?) But now I see that the real evil is in the UTTER RUINATION OF OUR ACTION FILMS WHY WOULD ANYONE CAST TYLER LAUTNER FROM TWILIGHT IN ONE ARGHHHHHH.
Man, remember when our action heroes were named "Snake" or "Indiana" and they didn't suck?
Also, I’m kind of pissed, because now I can remember Tyler Lautner’s name. That knowledge probably pushed out a useful fact, like a statistic on how many baby kittens dolphins have murdered or something.
Oooooh, good news! It turns out it's TAYLOR Lautner, so I don't actually ... shit. I've committed that to memory now.
Why did I (kind of) like Revenge?
ABC’s Revenge is a grand melodrama, not really the sort of thing I go for, except for that time I was out on medical leave and got addicted to All My Children. (Now let’s never speak of this again.) So I wasn’t really planning on watching it, until I kept hearing comparisons to The Count of Monte Cristo, which it turns out I’ve forgotten how to spell since reading it in college and had to google. I’m a tad embarrassed, but it’s my own fault, because you would never have known if I hadn’t told you.
I even watched the movie, but that was really mostly for Guy Pearce.
Moving right along, I love me some Dumas, so I thought, “Heck, why not, you know?” and sat down to watch Revenge.
You know ... I never saw this promo poster until AFTER I watched the show, which is good, because this is a really stupid poster.
The basic gist of the show is this: Emily Thorne used to be Amanda Something (I’m sorry; people kept coming by and being like: “Oooh, what’re you doing? Are you watching TV? Oh, it’s too bad you don’t have DVR so you could watch this when I’m not talking to you, isn’t it?” so I missed some key bits of information) and lived in the Hamptons with her wonderful best father ever. They had so much fun together in the flashbacks, I really felt like my childhood was missing something. Like love or something like that.
Eh, not that I'd've been much happier if I had taken childhood trips to the beach, because I hate the sea and everything in it.
Anyway, it’s all fun and games for little Amanda and her dad Whatsisname until the good people of the Hamptons frame him for an act of terrorism. Now this is one of the parts where someone started talking to me again, so I missed the details, but apparently he was accused of funding terrorists who caused a plane crash that killed 246 people. So of course I was thinking this happened around 2000, but apparently it was 1992? Little Amanda and her father are separated and she thinks he’s guilty until she gets out of … an orphanage? Kid prison? I couldn’t tell … and is given his secret journal, which says how he wasn’t guilty, and of course she believes that, even though I guess she wouldn’t have believed him if he told her so? Because being written down makes it true? Anyway, at the end of the journal, he’s all like (oh, by the way, he’s dead now): “Please forgive them. Blah blah blah forgiveness blah blah blah don’t take revenge blah forgive forgive FORGIVE!!!” and she’s all like: “None of that forgiveness crap for me,” so she dons a new identity and heads to the Hamptons to wreak all sorts of havoc.
Ha! That'll teach you jerks.
That was a really long synopsis, and I apologize for that.
Anyway, she’s in the Hamptons and her arch-nemesis is Madeleine! Stowe! who is so awesomely bitchtacular I want her to be my new best friend (and she’s in the market for one, since Step One of Emily’s Dastardly Plan of REVENGE!!!! was to take out her dad’s old secretary/Madeleine! Stowe!’s BFF through a convoluted plot that relied heavily on the woman having an affair with Madeleine! Stowe!’s husband).
Madeleine! Stowe! gonna hurt you.
Also, there’s this bit with a dog who recognizes Emily, and maybe his owner (her childhood friend) does too, and he’s totally a great guy because he was going to sail off on his boat, the Amanda (get it? Get it?), to Haiti to help with earthquake relief, but instead he sells his boat to help his dad *sniff* pay his debts so they can keep the family bar. So you can tell he’s being set up as the love interest, like, YAWN. Then there’s the guy who buys the boat, who is this creepy self-made trillionaire who videos everything at parties and creepily goes to Emily’s house to be all “I know what you did last summer, Amanda,” and she totally kicks his ass and threatens to crush his windpipe. And that is when I got a little bit of a girl crush on Emily VanCamp.
Plus, you guys, isn't she just soooo pretty?
So, yeah, I’m totally curious to find out what happens to the rest of these bad people and if (Spoiler alert!) the guy that was murdered in the credits really was Madeleine! Stowe!’s son (Emily’s fiance, apparently) and if Madeleine! Stowe! and Emily Van Camp will come to blows, because, my god, that would be the best cat fight ever.
Watch out, Emily! She'll cut you.
A breakup (?) letter to Chuck
Dear Chuck,
(The TV show, not the titular character.)
(Hee. “Titular!”)
Dear Chuck,
Lately, I’ve been feeling like maybe we need some time apart. Sure, we had a pretty good run together. I’d leave work early to get home in time to watch you, and curse work for not paying me enough to be able to afford DVR and having to take a really short lunch break so I could leave early. But you know what? The sacrifice was worth it. You were so cute, with your pop culture geek references, and your espionage and your action sequences, and the way John Casey growled a lot.
Also, Ellie and Captain Awesome were there, and they hadn't had a baby yet.
And, yeah, I’ll admit it: I loved you. I loved you a lot. It made me happy to be with you.
But things have changed, Chuck (the TV show). And I’m just not feeling it anymore.
In fact, the other day, someone asked me when the new season begins … and I didn’t know. And worse? I didn’t particularly care.
And that’s when I knew, Chuck (not Bartowski, but the show he stars on). The magic is gone.
I mean, Morgan as the Intersect? Come on, show, really? And Chuck is married to Sarah? I mean, I was shipping them as hard as the next guy, but you end your series with a wedding. (Not that I blame you for not getting canceled after your fourth season. I mean, we all kind of expected it.)
Also, what was the deal with Morgan officiating the wedding? I totally thought it was a dream sequence, but I guess it wasn't?
And Casey? Well, Casey’s just not killing as many people as he used to do, and that makes me deeply, deeply sad.
He's much sexier as a cold-blooded killing machine, is all.
But I don’t want it to end like this, Chuck. I’ll give you a chance. I’ll watch your fifth season. I mean, sure, it’ll feel like that relationship where the one just doesn’t go away and the other is too lazy to make them, but hey! Lots of marriages work like that.
I’m just saying, Chuck, don’t be disappointed now that I’m seeing Fringe on Friday nights. I have a feeling we were meant to be.
Dear Fringe, I know YOU won't break my heart. I love you.
In many situations, the easy pun is to be avoided
So, my uncle, upon hearing of my new job in the funeral industry, says to me: “I hear you’ve decided to undertake a new career.”
"Our customers are just DYING to get in," I responded.
Drive: more trailers without sound
So, in Drive, Ryan Gosling plays a somewhat dopey-eyed getaway driver. Since I don’t know too much about the guy, except that he is in the band that does “Pa Pa Power,” that’s fine with me.
Dead Man's Bones, that's them.
There’s a blonde in the film who appears to be his romantic interest (I figured it out from the part where he kisses her in the elevator) (Oh, and she appears to be that chick from Wall Street that I didn’t know who she was and it turns out I still don’t care) and a redhead who’s probably not. Also there’s some pretty impressive fight scenes and a couple of spectacular car wrecks.
I can't decide whether I love Ryan Gosling's jacket or want to laugh at it.
Most importantly of all, there is Ron Perlman.
Verily, I say unto thee: There is nothing more important than Ron Perlman.
So, even without sound, this looks like it could be my kind of movie. But I’m not going to see it anyway.
Why?
Well, because I’m getting a little sick of “Pa Pa Power.”
Ha, ha, no, I’m just kidding. That’s a great song.
Seriously, though, tell me if Drive’s any good.
Or if I'd be better off getting an entire Dead Man's Bones album.
Some people just don’t get music
Like the other day, my father says to me: “Well, who can tell the difference between rock and disco anyhow?”
Um, everybody?
