Criticult.Com

Seriously, it was that bad.

Come on, don't look at me like that - if he could come back for five minutes Carlin would make that joke himself.

Vaya con Dios, George.

Labels: Box office bomb, Subversive Genius

Cue Music...

Here's to you, Mr. Driving Around With Your Parking Lights On All Day Guy!

Background Singer: Mr. Driving Around With Your Parking Lights On All Day Guy!

You wanted daytime running lights but they weren’t an option on your cheap import. But you’ve never played by the rules. No, not you. You’re the kind of guy who thinks outside the box.

Background Singer: Outside the boooooooowwwoowoooooooox!

As soon as the clock hits four PM you reach for the switch. Not too hard now, gently…gently…you don’t want to turn it all the way because that would actually turn the headlights on. No, you’re going halfway…you’re going for that sweet orange glow...like a cat’s eyes….

Background female singers: Sweeeeeeet orange glooooowoooooooooowww!!

Look at all those daytime running lights. They’re just as big a traffic hazard but they don’t look nearly as cool as you do. You’re menacing. You’re dangerous. You’re a little timid because you didn’t just turn your fucking lights on but mostly just menacing and dangerous.

You’ve got the cat’s eyes.

Background Singer: Got the cat’s eyes…..roooooowrrrrrr!!!!

And those fools who have their lights off just because the sun is still out, and they’re perfectly visible….they don’t have the guts to ride the lightning, like you and your annoyingly half turned on headlights. They aren't man enough to almost turn on their headlights but not quite do so. You’re a pioneer. You’re King of the Wild Frontier.

Background Singer: Daveeeeeeeey, Daaaaaaaaveeeee Crockett!

Yes, you drive around all in the broad daylight with your lights half on, but not completely on because you’re making a point. Sure, you’re distracting to other drivers. Maybe you could just turn your lights all the way on. And maybe it doesn’t make you any easier to see. But that’s not the point. Your car looks like it’s in one of those commercials where the guy skids through the water, knocks over all those orange cones, offers zero percent financing until January and then gets the girl in the bathing suit.

You’re a Rock Star, my friend. You ARE…

Background Singer: Mr. Driving Around With Your Parking Lights On All Daaaaaaaayyyyaaaaaayyyaaaayyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaay Guyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

Labels: Daytime Running Lights, Douchebag, Fucking Annoying, Road Hazard

I was hoping last night that I could finally go out to a restaurant with a group of friends without one of the girls at the table having to bring up the fact that she used to be a waitress. You know what I am talking about? Say, the bill comes and you try to leave a tip and one of the girls snorts at you and says:

What, twenty percent isn't enough for just bringing me my food? I'll go get it myself if that'll make you feel better. My Dad always tries to leave five percent, but you don't have to have physically waited tables before to know that leaving a five percent tip is really poor form.

That's just common fucking sense. Twenty percent is the minimum and while fifteen is a little rude, it's the least you should leave if you want to avoid getting someone's pubic hair added to your food next time you drop in for dinner.

I don't remember the context of the remark last night but as soon as she started: "Blah blah blah blah, as a former waitress I think that..."

I stopped her. "Ok are you really gonna be that girl who whips out the whole 'you know I used to be a waitress' thing at a restaurant? I mean, that's great and all but big deal? You want a cookie or something?"

I know it sounds harsh but the tone of my voice was only gently mocking. She actually got it and had a good laugh over it.

But seriously, what is it with girls who always have to bust that one out? Not to sound misogynistic but it's almost always the girls and it's almost always 'waitress' or 'nurse'. Oh Christ, if I have to hear one more girl whip out the whole 'I used to be a nurse' thing, as if that makes her opinion on your twisted ankle somehow more valid.

There's a girl at my office who was a nurse for one year and as a result thinks she's Trapper Fucking John - every time someone has a headache she's screeching out shrill, unsolicited advice like a life-size Kathy Griffin Pez dispenser.

Being a nurse is a perfectly noble profession and I have plenty of respect for it; I know more than a few people - male and female - who've burned themselves out in it faster than Ryan Leaf burned out on football. However - and I hate to be the one to break this to you - but being a nurse is not the same as being a doctor so I don't really need your opinion on my paper cut any more than I do George Clooney's.

He once pretended to be a doctor too, you know. Just hand me the Neosporin and shut up.

Getting back to the waitress thing, though...

I am fairly certain that as an unscientific statistic that fully eight of ten randomly selected people right off the street have waited tables before, so there's really no need to wear your former food service duty like a red badge of courage. Everyone knows how hard it is to wait tables; big fucking deal? It isn't like you fought at Iwo Jima or walked on the moon, or made the Patriots 18-1 or something.

And why is it always the girls who have to whip it out?

"I used to be a waitress you know, so you really shouldn't split up your order like that."

First of all, who asked you? Second, I don't give a shit whether or not you waited tables in college; so did everyone else. The difference is that every man I've ever known who's ever waited tables is either still at it or would like to just forget about it, thank you very much. Meanwhile half the former waitresses I've ever known are still trying to make everyone else feel guilty about it.

Sorry but there's nothing particularly exceptional about having held down a menial job that everyone and their dog has done. You're never going to hear me start a sentence with:


Yeah, I've worked at almost every fast food joint in existence south of Colorado Springs and there are only two discernible benefits to it:

• I know that even at eight dollars an hour it's not hard to remember that I asked for pickles on this you little shit, so fix it.
  
• And bring the pickles up here, don't take it back to the grill so you and your friends can spit on it. That's right, I was born at night, but it wasn't last night kid.

So spare me your war stories people, unless they're actual war stories, because then you will have actually done something worth discussing. Otherwise, save it. After all, I once was a paper boy but all I did was deliver the news.

It doesn't make me Tom Freaking Brokaw.

Labels: Burger King, George Clooney, pubic hair, Shrill former wait staff

You've already heard about this, right?


I suppose this makes me a lousy blogger since I am not posting on this ten minutes after the story broke, but you know what? Sue me. I have a life and this ain't it. Unlike a lot of people on the internet, I do see the sun every day.

In any case, I find the entire situation hilarious.

If of course by 'hilarious' we mean yet one more sign that nobody can say 'boo' any more without some hyper-sensitive candy-ass getting whipped up into a frenzy and turning it into some sort of socio-political battle cry.

I don't feel like posting the link to the video because you've no doubt already seen it and heard about it 1000 times by now. But if you're like me when you saw it you said:

"That's it?"

In fact if you're not listening carefully you'll completely miss the word 'faggot', and to be honest with you, I thought the OTHER guy was Shia LaBeouf. It's literally just some sort of house party where a bunch of people are plastered out of their minds and Shia and his pal are having a drunken slap fight.

I don't know about the slapping part but as far as the whole drunken horsing around bit, this is literally nothing that just about every red blooded American male who's ever been to college has done no fewer than about...oh...500 times. I remember being at a party with TylerDFC during Super Bowl XXXIV where after a series of keg stands someone decided it would be a terrific idea to have a WWF match in the living room of a 700 square foot apartment.

I am a little fuzzy on this but I am pretty sure I incorrectly executed the People's Elbow because I couldn't bend my arm for a week. I am also pretty sure since a bunch of guys were drunk, watching football, eating red meat and hitting each other with steel chairs at some point the words 'faggot', 'pussy' and 'bitch' were used.

People, this is what men say to one another when they're drunk and sopping over with beer, testosterone and tryptophan. I just don't see the big deal.

Look, I know that Shia is the 'It' boy in Hollywood right now, as well as Steve Spielberg's little darling (sorry River Phoenix, I guess you shouldn't have...you know...died.) and the heir apparent to the Jimmy Stewart/Tom Hanks/Harrison Ford actor-anyone-can-love mantle. A guy like that can't afford to be heard using the word 'faggot' any more than Miley Cyrus can afford to be photographed in her underwear.

However, it amuses me when a public figure is caught saying something off color on camera and the public goes into an uproar of finger pointing recrimination and self righteous stone throwing. It's disingenuous at best, and utterly hypocritical at worst. It's like someone once said regarding masturbation:

There are two kinds of people, those who do it and those who lie and say they don't.

Yes everyone jumps on celebrities when they get caught in the act but come on! No really, COME ON! You don't think if everything every one of us ever did or said was on You Tube any of us would ever step outside the house again? Much less point an accusing finger at someone like Shia LaBeouf?

Maybe it should be that way. Just like they say, if we all had guns we'd be more polite to each other - well if we all had video of each other picking at zits in high school we would be too. Imagine if you could log on to You Tube at any time, type in anyone's name and see every embarrassing thing they ever did. Such as:

• Bob in Kansas whacking off to that Farah Fawcett poster as a pimple faced 13 year old back in 1980.
• Sarah at a UCLA sorority party in 2002 making out with another girl.
• Your next door neighbor dropping the n-bomb on a black motorist who cut him off in traffic, thinking nobody could hear him?
• Or, yourself taking a shit.

Or why limit it to the anonymous? Suppose at any time you could see:

• George Dubya Bush - standard bearer of Christian propriety and conservative values - picking his nose, calling someone an asshole behind their back or flipping off the camera.
• Pamela Anderson working Tommy Lee's Donkey Kong in a way that makes Jenna Jameson look like an amateur.
• An owl-eyed Ben Affleck literally molesting a reporter during a television interview.
• Shannen Doherty basically cussing like a longshoreman.

Oh, wait. You CAN, because all of these things actually happened! Yes, I hate to burst your bubble but celebrities are not only just like you, you're just like them! Maybe you can't act, sing, catch a football or dance without breaking your ankles but there are at least a few things 99 percent of us have in common, famous or not:

1. We have all used dirty language at one point or another.
2. We've all been drunk and then done or said stupid things.
3. We've all expressed prejudice toward something or someone.
4. Lying, cheating and stealing: If you can read this you're guilty of at least two of them at some point in your life.

Yes, I know, there's the one person in ten million who really has never taken a drink or had anything harder than morning breath come out of their mouth all their lives, but you know as well as I do these people are about as rare as a three dollar bill so yeah, just save it.

Before you point the finger at your favorite celebrity for using dirty language, expressing a social stereotype, drinking too much and making an ass of themselves or looking like shit on a Sunday morning remember something:

Whatever it is, you've probably done it too, to one degree or another. It may not make the papers but if it did, I'll bet you wouldn't be so quick to pile on every time someone else got caught with their pants down.

Besides - does any of it really matter? So Shia got drunk in private and called someone a 'faggot'. What are you going to do, eat your copy of Disturbia? So, Tom Cruise is a nut-bar. Top Gun still rules. Mel Gibson clearly has some issues but I am still down with Mad Max and Lethal Weapon. So Russel Crowe likes to make like Nolan Ryan with hotel telephones.

The quality of Gladiator is not affected by this.

Rumor has it Walt Disney had a problem with Jews. So, are you going to tell your kids 'no' on behalf of all six million Holocaust victims when they pee themselves begging you to take them to High School Musical 3?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

And don't give me all that crap about how celebrities are supposed to be role models. I agree that you should watch what you do and say in public but that really goes for any of us. At the end of the day, what you do on your own time is your business. It isn't against the law to be a heavy drinker, an alien, a bigot or a hot tempered prick.

If we all worried primarily about how we conduct ourselves and left others to do the same the world would be a lot better place. Besides, your parents should be your role models, not some total stranger you saw on television who lives two thousand miles away. And if your parents suck then be your own role model - the dimmest man in America still knows right from wrong. Just because he doesn't have someone around to slap him on the wrist when he fucks up doesn't let him off the hook.

Get over yourselves, people. Your shit stinks too, you bunch of lousy faggots.

Ah, shit. There goes my shot at the White House.

I just felt the need to record my thoughts about an incident today where someone saw me writing TylerDFC over my shoulder at work about how although I was listening to Radiohead at that moment, I am not really a fan.

I have one of those music subscription services (see my post below for a little insight on that) and one of the great things about it is it allows me to have access to countless artists whose albums I'd never dream of buying but I can at least expose myself to the material and appreciate it.

Oh, I appreciate Radiohead and respect them as artists, I just can't stand that genre of music. You know, that navel gazing emo piffle with all the jangling guitars and gobs of reverb. Radiohead fans hate it when people call them an emo band but look me in the eye and tell me the following equation is not accurate:

Isn't it funny how emo fans love emo but hate it when you use the term? Everyone's favorite emo band is never an emo band. Oh no, My Chemical Romance is not an emo band, their black eyeliner-wearing fans will tell you.

But back to Radiohead. The person who excoriated me for my point of view was one of those people who owns six thousand albums and can tell you what the band was having for breakfast when each one was recorded, but has never actually picked up a musical instrument in his life.

He just thinks that owning a shitload of albums and having opinions on them all is the same as actually being a musician. These are the sorts of people who like Radiohead, much the way half the people who listen to Jethro Tull are tone deaf English majors who have every J.R.R. Tolkein novel committed to memory and insist they don't own a television.

Hey it's nothing personal. They're just not my cup of tea. No, seriously. No, I don't need to hear you tell me about how they're one of the most influential bands ever. Please tell me who they influence other than music critics (meaning people who always wanted to be musicians but can't play so they write stories about people who can) and beatniks sitting around in college coffee shops arguing about the pros and cons of ethanol, the meaning of Donnie Darko and whether it's still ok to like Dave Matthews Band after the Toilet Incident.

Good thing I didn't tell him I don't like The Beatles, either. I'd have had to call up my CPR training. Let's see, is that 15 compressions to two breaths or two compressions to 15 breaths?

Never mind, you don't deserve to live you pretentious snob.

Ok, I am being harsh. I'm just sick of music snobs and social lemmings telling me what I am supposed to like and treating me like a pariah if I don't agree. No, I never liked Nirvana. The only good Nirvana ever did was give the world Dave Grohl and made the planet safe for real bands like Soundgarden.

So no, I don't like Radiohead. I am not against them, and I don't mind if you love them. Just stop looking at me like that. Can we at least agree that the whole emo thing is just a weak kneed, watered down ripoff of the whole Goth thing?

No? Okay, okay...just finish up your soy latte and go have a good cry, emo-boy.

Labels: Dave Matthews, Pain, Souxie Souse, Suffering, Suicide

So there's a new iPhone out, and within seconds of the official announcement hitting the internet the guy in the cubicle next to me at work was on his current cell phone gushing to someone about how wonderful it was.

Just because it was.

This is a friend of mine and although there's not much chance he'll ever read this I'll go ahead and point out that I bring this up just as a typical example of our culture's fascination with technology for technology's sake and not as anything personal. My friend has been trying to invent reasons to buy an iPhone since the day they came out, not necessarily because he needed one but because, well...you know...they're cool.

Yes they're cool all right but I can't help but notice the way people these days are in constant consumer mode, never happy with what they have and always fretting over the fact that there's a better, faster, shinier version of everything they own every time they turn around.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the iPhone, or against Apple. Apple helped invent desktop publishing, redefined what a mainstream personal computer could be and transformed the wireless industry with the aforementioned iPhone. They've done a lot of good.

They also make slick, elegant, relatively easy to use devices that sell at boutique prices, are difficult or impossible to upgrade and they do their best to make you feel like an idiot for not replacing it every year with a new one. It's insidious, but it is also genius because they have legions of loyal fans who worship Steve Jobs like a sweater-wearing rock star. At his beck and call they throw away all their disposable income on expensive, shiny gear that will be sitting in a landfill 16 months from now, but they clearly feel that the whole convenience and ease of use issue is an acceptable trade off for all those shortcomings.

To each their own. I guess I see the drunken furor over the new iPhone as symptomatic of how people are fascinated by gadgets, and not necessarily the usefulness or immediate necessity of the technology behind them.

Recently I was in Las Vegas on vacation (which is a whole other entry), standing at the Hard Rock with a vodka tonic in hand when I spot some UFC guys in town for a pay per view event on the other side of the bar. I am texting someone back home about this when suddenly I find myself being taunted by all my friends, and for what?

My cell phone. Now, you know how it is these days. Every where you go socially people are walking around with their Blackberrys, Chocolates, iPhones and whatever other flavor-of-the-week phone that's out conspicuously in hand as though they must be tinkering with it at all times or they'll miss something critical out of life. You know, the way when you're at a restaurant everyone has to have their phones out on the table in a sort of subliminal, unspoken line-in-the-sand competition to see who has the most ostentatious piece of mobile bling in the joint.

Nobody's phone actually ever rings, no they're not expecting a call. They're just hoping for one so that everyone will see them using their new Palm Centro with smoke screen, oil slick and laser pointer.

So, I whip out my good old Samsung SPH-A680 (Awkward name circa 2003, before they started naming cell phones after foods) to send some text and next thing you know people are treating me like I am carrying around an abacus. For Christ's sake, this phone is by no means state of the art any more but it does have a color screen, internet, text, gaming and email capability - all novelties at the time I bought it.

I just never use any of that crap, save the texting. I don't even have any of that other stuff on my plan. I don't even have any of those stupid, annoying custom ring tones. When my phone rings it just rings. Call me insane but my cell phone's primary purpose is to place and receive phone calls. I don't need or want to surf the net, send emails or watch movies on it. And I only got the texting turned on because a girl I was dating was always bitching that she couldn't text me.

"It's a phone. Why don't you just call me, as long as you're holding it?" I'd ask.

"Because, sometimes you don't have enough to say for a phone call."

"Well if you don't have anything to say you probably don't really need a phone."

Well, nobody ever said logic works on everyone. So, in the interest of getting some I did what I was asked. It's handy sometimes but it's mainly it's just a silly trifle.

It's a god damn phone, and it works great, has survived two trips through the wash and several drops from heights greater than four feet so you know what? One day when it stops working I'll look into a Nakatomi Whizbang 5000, but not before. I don't give a shit about you and your fucking iPhone or whether you can get stock prices and access You Tube in the middle of dinner at the Olive Garden.

Congratu-fucking-lations. Can it make phone calls? Well so can mine.

I'm no luddite - I have no fewer than ten functional PC's in my home (including an Apple IIe, by the way), three of them in regular use. But that's the thing. I am surrounded by technology at work and at home. Even my fucking car talks to me. I do want there to be at least 30 minutes of my life every day where I am not tethered to the internet or having a conversation with some form of artificial intelligence.

Plus, I am just not the sort of person who has to have all the latest shit just to say I have it. When I need it, I'll get it. When my 32 inch color TV, circa 1998 finally explodes in the middle of the Super Bowl XLIX, trust me I'll be down at the Best Buy in a flash to watch the rest of the game and then price HDTV's.

But not before.

I have an MP3 player. It's not an iPod, and it only has 4GB of memory, two of which I installed myself. My iPod owning jackass friends scoff at me as they wave their shiny new $500 32 GB iPod Touch in my face. Why did I not buy the flashiest, most expensive device available?

Well, I'll give Apple credit for finally lowering their prices on much of their product line but at the time I bought my player I wasn't prepared to spend more than $150 and the comparable iPod Nano to the one I did buy was a piece of shit with no screen.

Yeah, I have yet to understand how an MP3 player with no display is useful.

Sure you can get a 1GB iPod Shuffle for $50. That's fine if it works for you. But I'd suggest that if you only have $50 to spend on an MP3 player, it's possible that you have better things to do with your time than listening to music. Like, getting a job. Save up and buy something useful, my friend.

I found 4GB to be more than sufficient, because 4GB will hold about a week's worth of music, give or take. I can't imagine being away from a computer long enough to run out of stuff to listen to before I can load up again and if I am I am probably lost in the desert and have bigger problems than not having the Foo Fighters around.

Besides, whether your player holds 4GB, 40GB or four hundred, you can only listen to one song at a time, right? Now aren't you glad you paid for all that fucking space? Hey, get what works for you, but don't wave it in my face or act like because less is more for me that I have a problem.


Well fuck you and your overpriced toy. My little Sansa holds way more songs than I could possibly listen to if I were stuck up to my waist in cement for five days, it can show movies but why I would want to watch movies on my MP3 player when I can watch them on my television is beyond me. It can hold photos, but I already have a three year old five megapixel camera with 2GB of storage that I have used on approximately five occasions, so who cares? It even has an FM radio tuner, which is ironic because FM radio is what drove me to buy an MP3 player in the first place.

I just want to listen to music. You can keep all that other crap.

So, now that Apple is only charging $200 for the entry level iPhone, I say good on them. All they have to do is un-tether themselves from Ma Bell and they'll have something. But they'll have to wait until my trusty Samsung dies and there's no indication that's going to happen before 2010.

And when I do finally buy one of those flashy new handsets, do you know what I am going to do with it?

Place and receive 150 minutes a month of phone calls, just like I do now.

Labels: Extra Stength Tylenol, Gadgets, iPhone, lemmings, Steve Jobs

I have formed a team with my friends and family and will be participating in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life event on June 27 to raise money for cancer research. My mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer a couple of months ago and is currently undergoing chemotherapy. I hope my small gesture can help to end the suffering for others so they don't have to experience what she is going through.

Please click the link below for more information and consider making a donation. It is for a great cause and every little bit, no matter how small, is another drop adding to a hell of a big pool.

Thanks for reading.

click here to visit my team site

Labels: cancer, donations, personal, relay