Super Commercials

Yet another Super Bowl has come and gone. Congratulations New York, way to beat Tom Brady and the Patriots into submission with solid defense and clock control.

But enough about the game.

Everyone knows that we watch the Super Bowl for the Commercials. In fact, I take my piss break during the game so I do not miss a single one of these 90 second long  celebrations of our hyper-consumerist society. Hooray for buying stuff! That is the only way we can be sure that the terrorists never win.

Sadly, the Golden Age of Super Bowl commercials has gone the way of the Budweiser Frogs. Back in the good old days, a Super Bowl Commercial was an event. Something that only happened during the Super Bowl and then talked about over the water cooler the next day.

"Hey Did You See that Crazy Orwellian Apple Commercial?"

"No Man, I had to take dump and totally missed it." 

"Dude, you should have turtled it. It was epic."

Nowadays, chances are pretty good that you are going to see these super duper bowl commercials over and over again until they start feeling like that one Daniel Powter Song. Heck, you might even catch the damn thing even before it airs during the big game, like Shatner's final take as the Priceline Negotiator. 

                                       

Is nothing sacred on Madison Avenue anymore?  

I personally found this year's crop of super commercials rather lame. Perhaps it was because I was not drinking during the game, but it did seem that all the ideas seemed a little played out. Coca Cola rolled out the Polar Bears for the umpteenth time, VW went overkill in trying to recreate the magic of its Kid Vader commercial from last year and everyone else seemed to simply throw in a celebrity and an alien and dare call the commercial "super". 

Super Lame that is. 

Okay, so maybe there were a few exceptions.

                                    

This one was pretty funny even though it was a bit sexist. What? Only dudes in denim drive trucks? You need at least one chevy driving chick if you want hope to repopulate the Earth. 

                                    

This other car commercial was also kind of funny. Take that you fucking vampires. I am glad they all blew up instead of  getting all rainbow sparkly like they do in Twilight.

                                    

Okay, I actually did not see this commercial (I was taking a dump) but checking out on You Tube Later, I thought it was pretty funny albeit both Ricky Gervais and Zombies are soo 2011. 

                                

This was, by far, the funniest commercial to come out during the Super Bowl. This commercial has everything: A Chinese Girl, a politician, rice patties, blatant xenophobic thinking. Budweiser could learn a lot from Congressman Hoekstra.  

I love it when a good plan comes together

For some stupid fucking reason, I decided to stay up until the ass crack of dawn the other night and watch  the A-Team Movie on HBO. I did this because I had way too many other important things to do the next day so I needed to make sure I went to bed at late as possible so I could sleep right through them.

To be fair, I actually kind of enjoyed the beginning where they set up the new versions of the characters which I spent a good portion of my childhood emulating. Sure they were a little off from the originals, but the basic templates werestill there. Liam Neeson made a decent enough Hannibal: the brilliant, cigar smoking leader and Bradley Cooper was at least good looking enough to be Face if not nearly whiny enough.  I thought it was Luke Wilson playing old crazy ass Murdock, but it was actually SharltoCopley, the lead character from District 9. While not as charmingly nutso as the Dwight Schultz (the original Murdock), Copley was okay. As for B.A. Baracas, well nobody can really be B.A. except for Mr.T, but I guess Rampage does a decent job at playing the big tough dude who is afraid of flying even if he was not wearing the appropriate amount of bling. 

Apparently I missed the beginning, where they all meet in Mexico for the first time, but I started watching in time to catch the basic set up. The A-Team, is  a special army task force with a penchant for destroying things without killing people, that goes on a secret (wink, wink) mission to capture some printing plates that are in the hands of the Iraqis. The plan goes off without a hitch, except for the part where the General gets blown up, the plates get stolen and everything is pinned on them.The four get sent off to various military prisons around the country until a CIA spook played by Patrick Wilson hatches a plan with Hannibal to get them all out to get the plates back. 

I know I should have just given up and turned it off after the whole "Flying Tank " scene, but I was compelled to keep watching to make sure that it was going to end as retardly as I thought it was and to see if my hero, Mr. T, was going to make a cameo like the the the original Face and Murdock did during the prison escape scenes. At the very least, I was hoping that  Jessica Biel who was playing a DOD agent/love interest was going to finally show us a little skin. Unfortunately, neither of these happened, and the plot just continued to become more confusing and convoluted like it was written by J.J. Abrams after a crack binge. The whole complex  shell game aspect of the final plan (hatched by Face for some stupid fucking reason) tried to be smarter than it really was and even after several more bong hits and a bottle of beer, I still could not suspend my disbelief enough to not roll my eyes at the inevitable outcome. 

Here are some problems I had:

1: B.A. is afraid to fly yet he has no problem rappelling down a 50 story building. 

2: What the fuck happened to the  plane they flew to the cargo ship? Did they just abandon it?

3:Where the fuck is the crew of the Cargo Ship? Who is steering the fucking thing? 

4: Why is Face doing all the Stratergy? His job is to look pretty not plan, that is why he is called Face. Let the dude named after one of History's most brilliant military tacticians come up with the plan. In fact, this is my biggest problem with the movie. It is like they felt they had to cater to Mr.Hollywood Cooper by giving his character a more important role then he deserved. 

5.What wrong with Jessica Beil? Why can't she find any good movies to be in? Perhaps God is not through with punishing her for abandoning Seventh Heaven. . 

6.Why are people dying? People do not die at the hands of the A-Team. Shit just get blown the fuck up and the bad guys jump out of the way before it does.  

 I pity the fool who did not have the chance to grow up with television during the 80's. Those were the the Golden Years my friend and the A-Team, with its glorification of violence and conservative values, was right smack in the middle of it.It was the epitome of the Cold War, where stuff gets blown up but no white people got hurt. To take these characters and to throw them into a story line involving rogue CIA agents, a complicated money laundering scheme and Jessica Biel is blasphemy. 

Origin Story

Of course, all the violence and complicated plot twists and turns can explained away by the fact that this is supposed to be a Origins story. All this is supposed to take place before the A-Team became a ragtag team of paramilitary misfits who roamed the country helping grandmothers and such who are being victimized by gangs of truck driving rednecks. That is fair, I suppose. However, if they ever make a sequel, it better include some nuns, some orphans, a greedy politician, a lawnmower turned into a catapult, and Hannibal better be making all the plans. Also, for the sake of fuck, find a way to get Mr.T to make a cameo. pr, at least put some bling on Rampage Jackson.   

Sexy Bald Man

I think I might be going bald.

I am not positive, I still need to run a few more blood tests and computer simulations, but it does seem like the hair in the middle of my head is refusing to grow back.

I guess I should have realized this sooner, however, during my 20's, I wore a cap, so never noticed and hair recession and then later on in life, because I was living in a tough neighborhood, I shaved my head and got an eye patch. It is only now, having moved to a more gentrified part of town, that I decided to let my hair grow out  and that was when I noticed the distinct horseshoe pattern of nothingness on the top of my head.

Gramp's Fault

This new information startled me. I always figured that at anytime I could, once again, have the mane of a Norse God like I did in college and now I was looking at living the rest of my life as a baldy. I did not want it to end this way.  First off, I needed to get to the bottom of this sudden hair loss. Googling the bitch, I found that several things can cause a handsome motherfucker like me to lose his hair. While my rock star lifestyle may contribute, it appears that the biggest culprit is my damn genes. It turns out that my mom's dad was a baldy as well, I managed to get his X chromosome when I got put together in my mothers womb after my parents banged each other.

Male Pattern Baldness Bitches

The condition is called Androgenic Alopecia and it is brought on from having too much testosterone in your system. Well, that figures. I have always been a virile motherfucker. This extra man juice somehow makes its way up to the scalp and chokes off the hair follicles (probably for looking at them funny) which then causes hair to fall out. Thanks a lot grampa.

Now that I have come to grips with the fact I may be losing my hair, I guess I could do something about it. Turns our there are a lot of solutions. I could go "Shatner" and have hair from my butt stapled to my head, but this costs money and I don't have the same kind of scratch as the Captain. I could also buy some bug juice to rub into my scalp everyday but that seems like a hassle and I don't want my man boobs to get any bigger than they already are.

Balls

Doing further research, I found out that there is only one true cure for baldness and that is to attack the very source of the problem: The Balls. You see, balls produce the testosterone that ends up choking out your follicles. Cut off the man juice supply and your hair has a fighting chance. So, that is why my dog still has all his hair. So, all I gotta do now is wrap an rubber band (this is how they do it in China) tightly around my sack and wait for the family jewels to fall off and then bam! My flowing locks will be back.

After that, I imagine I am going to be beating the bitches off me with a stick.

Preparing for the Apocalypse

Holy Shit, Can you believe that 2012, "the year all the shit goes down", is just around the corner? Finally, we are going to find out if those mother fucking Mayans with their calender knew what the hell they were talking about. I have not been this excited since 1999, when we all thought our computers were going to go berserk and start believing that somehow the world had been been transported to the Victorian Era. But this time, I think the threat is a little bit more real. I mean, these are the mother fucking Mayans we are talking about, an ancient race of stargazers who seemed to know what they were doing when they portended that the world was going to hell in a hand basket sometime during the next winter solstice.

The fucking Mayans man. I don't care what Mel Gibson thinks of them, these were some wise ass mother fuckers who had  booby trapped pyramids, mass virgin sacrifices, and soccer matches that used actual human heads.How the hell could they be wrong about something like this?  And from what I read on the internet and in various books written by guys with psuedo scientific backgrounds, their is enough scientifical evidence to back these wise ass mother fuckers with their doomsday prophecies up.

Any Day Now...

-The Planet's Poles are going to Reverse, causing our lithosphere to suddenly shift, wreaking enough Havoc upon the Earth to give Roland Emmerich a raging hardon.

-A solar flare is going to knock out all of our electronic doodads, plunging us back into the 1940's which will prompt the North Koreans, who never left the 1940's, to attack and enslave the entire free world. Soon, the Earth's resources will be depleted as they attempt to carve the moon into the likeness of Kim Jong il.

-Machines will suddenly become "Aware" and after that, it will just be a matter of time before they start using cyborgs with Austrian accents to enslave humanity and turn them into batteries.

-Apes being used as modern slaves will suddenly make a evolutionary leap and decide to arm themselves and take the planet.  Their demand for Bananas will end up driving the Earth's ecosystem into chaos.

-Jesus finally makes his second showing and then promptly disappears again, leaving the world to fend for itself against the antichrist who turns out to be a famous Hollywood director/actor/producer known for his big budgeted movies that refuse to end. The world shall than plunge into a millennium of darkness under the dark rule of Kevin Costner.  God help us all.

-An radioactive asteroid the size Texas shall plunge to Earth and wipe out Texas. The world will rejoice, but this joy will be short lived as the the Texans come back as flesh hungry zombies. Texas BBQ will take on a new meaning as the zombie scourge spreads across the Earth.

These are just a few of many things that can and will happen as the year of doom draws ever closer so it is time to prepare my friends and get ready to survive the impending apocalypse, even if means killing and eating your neighbor's cat (trust me, it will eventually come to that). Thankfully, since I have been reading Dystopian Fiction for the past 20 or so years, I am more or less prepared to survive the coming months of trials and tribulations.

Here are a few things that I suggest doing as you prepare yourself for the world to be reborn in fire so that you might come out virtually unscathed and set about rebuilding civilizations.

-Water Wings and Helmets: Start wearing these wherever you go, just in case a stray earthquake or tsunami tries to take your ass out. "But BS, I live in Michigan," you might say,"Earthquakes and Tsunamis never happen here!" Bullshit, I say to you, read your Bible and Weekly World News. In these End Times Earthquakes can happen anywhere, especially with the lithosphere all out of whack. Also, Michigan is surrounded by water so if a Earthquake happens, rest assured the Great Lakes are going to to what they can to swallow you up. So, keep those water wings handy my friend.

-Throw away your smartphone: These things are of the Devil I tell you and are becoming way too smart. It will be only a matter of time before they become aware  and try to graft themselves to you in order to use your body as a battery. Toss those creepy talking iPhones in the fire before it is too late my friends.

-Learn to Speak Korean: self explanatory

-Stock up on Bananas: Having enough Bananas on hand will be the only way to keep the monkey overlords satisfied. Since Bananas go bad, if might be wise to get yourself a Banana tree.

-Watch the latest Kevin Costner movie: Keeping this man's film career may be the only way from keeping him from going into politics and turning into the antichrist. Of course, James Cameron might end up taking his place.

-Avoid Texas at all costs

These are just a number of things that you can do to survive the impending doom. Also having a super intelligent dog that you can communicate with telepathically is also helpful, but those kind of dogs are pretty hard to come by.  Just ask David Berkowitz.

Smart Ass Coffee

So, a few short weeks ago, I found myself in Los Angeles for my sisters wedding. Wanting to rack up as many Four Square points as humanely possible, I found myself checking at every taco truck and hipster bar in the Silver Lake area.  The cool thing about Four Square besides allowing your friends to stalk you is that when you "check in" somewhere it also shows you other businesses in the area. One such business that popped up as I was checking in at the local laundry mat Starbucks was a place called Intelligentsia Coffee a few miles up the Sunset Strip.

Intelligentsia...

Intelligentsia...

Intelligentsia...

The name rang a bell and not for the fact that it sounded like something a Russian Commandant would say through clenched teeth during yet another purge.

Intelligentsia.... Coffee

I knew that I had heard of them, but due to the lack of good fresh roast, the timing belt in the engine of my mind was in need of an adjustment. So I did what any red blooded American would do. I asked my smart phone (A Motorola Atrix Holla!) and was directed first to Wikipedia where I picked up my Russian joke and then to a company website geared toward hardcore coffee nerds like me.

It was then when I remembered where I heard that name before, I had watched a billion different videos on Vimeo that they had put out on how to brew the perfect cup of coffee, videos that my smartphone was more than happy to play for me again. "Hey", I thought to myself, "these motherfuckers are kind of famous, I should probably try to check this place out and collect even more Four Square points before I leave town." Good old smart phones and their applications, what the fuck did we do before they came along?

So that Sunday, the morning before my flight, I got up nice and early and headed out towards Silver Lake, my thumb ready and waiting on my map app so that I might not get lost heading down Sunset. I bit of a walk and a short bus ride later, I was there ready to collect my "First Time" Bonus points and taste the sweet nectar of Araby that these uber smart coffee alchemists are supposedly capable of brewing via a ceramic pourover.

I must say that the Kenyan Coffee that I paid six bucks for was superb, leagues ahead of the Laundromat coffee and they did seem to take great care in brewing up the perfect single serving cup of coffee. But, it was not anything better than what I could brew at home using my own fresh roasted beans and my trusty Chemex. Also, it was six bucks, which is probably chicken scratch in a city like L.A., but a small fortune to a Midwesterner like me, especially when you consider fact that my own home brew costs me about fifty cents a cup, if that.

Despite their City Slicker Prices, I am still glad I checked out Intelligentsia in Silver Lake. After a few weeks of drinking cafe coffee (I have been to busy to roast) it helped remind me how good fresh roast is. Also, I totally got the highest score ever on Four Square. Ahh, Social Media Apps... How the fuck did we know what are friends were up to before they came along?

Ranting

Dear Ass Munch,

The douchebag sitting in front of me on the 737. Yeah you, you squat hairy middle aged neanderthal. Thank you for crushing the shit out of my legs the whole way to Atlanta. That was really swell of you. I was just thinking as I was getting the ride to the airport that my legs could use a good crushing and made my dreams come true at 35,000 feet.

I know, it was not enough that you had the fire exit seat which gave your stubby little gorilla legs ample room. No, given the important role that you might have had to play in the event of an emergency, you figured that you had the mother fucking right to really stretch out and make yourself comfortable on the crowded flying bus. Never mind me asking if you could resist leaning back on the account that I am a big ass Scandinavian not built for the teeny tiny seats that can be found on most airlines, I am but mere hoi polloi sitting here in the seat that is not an emergency exit aisle seat. Good for you for stretching out the entire way. The mind numbing pain and annoyance of your seat slapping down on my knees every time you plopped down after draining your hypertonic bladder actually helped take my mind off all that turbulence we experienced while flying over Albuquerque.

So thank you shit head. Thank you.for making this plane ride a memorable experience.

At least your legs crushing gymnastic maneuvers were only mildly annoying when compared to the overt conversationalists sitting behind me on my next flight. I know, riding on the plane is exciting.You get to sit next to total strangers for several hours, get to to know them a little bit and then never see them again.Riding a plane is also scary. Why not stop at the bar and put a few screwdrivers down your gullet before take off? It's not that you are an alcoholic, you are just a nervous flyer right? And I eat chocolate for its potential health benefits. We all may die any second and you are probably not going to remember any of this anyway, so why not give your new bestest friend that you just met and the rest of the passengers sitting next to you a loud narrative on how you managed to lose 35 pounds over the summer eating nothing but cantaloupe. Who gives a shit. Okay maybe your new best friend does. After all, he is a dancer.

But then again, I need to thank you too. You did provide an opening to get to know the cute girl sitting next to me a little bit better. She was already making it hard for me to concentrate on my book more than your annoying voice anyway, and when she looked at me rolled her eyes and smirked during one particular brutal part of your dialogue, we ended up sharing a moment. Then the plane landed, and we went our separate ways probably never to see each other again.

 Ce'st la Vie

Costumer Service

The most popular costumes I have seen this holiday season have been The Black Swan and The Joker from the Dark Knight. Now, the Black Swan I can understand. That movie came out just last Christmas which makes it somewhat relevant. But the Joker? Isn't that a bit dated guys? Sure Heath Ledger's run in with a bottle of pills right after the filming of this pivotal role made this character a bit of an icon, but is it really relevant for dudes to be still emulating him almost four years since the movie came out?

Come On

While Heath Ledger did a great job in the movie and probably deserved the Oscar, his joker is, in my opinion, not any more iconic than Jack Nicholson's or Cesar Romero's take on everyone's second favorite demented clown (Ronald being number one). What my theory is, is that this guys walking around dressed as Joker, thought they did such a great bang up job at it in 2008, they figured they might as well keep at it for the next three years or however long before their demented clown makeup stash wears out.

To me, that is just plain creative laziness.

That would be like me dressing up like Micheal Moore every year just because I happen to kind of sort of look like him anyway.

I admit, that I am not the type that starts planning my Halloween costume in January, but I always make an effort to go as something different every Halloween. Even if it is through together at the last minute with card board, duct tape and various items around the house. At least it is something new and not the same old retreaded idea.

Take note all you bitches who plan on donning that swan outfit again next year. You will be hearing snarky remarks from the guy who should have just come dressed up like Micheal Moore.