Even More Commercials I Hate

The last day of the month seemed like a perfect opportunity to get out some good old fashioned hate and I HATE commercials. Seriously, it should not be this difficult to make a decent commercial. Do people actually like these? Is it just me? Who thought they were a good idea? I don't know, but here's me yelling about stuff.

Domino's Pizza:
I was angry enough when they decided that their new ad campaign would be "Hey our Pizza used to taste like shit but trust us, it tastes REALLY good now." Well fuck you Domino's because I'm not buying it, and that refers to your shitty advertising campaign and your shitty pizza. I remember eating Domino's in freshman year of high school and thinking that it tasted like ketchup on cardboard . . . and that was 8 years ago. So like I said, their shitty campaign would be enough to receive my wrath, but then they decided to go after my beloved Papa John's. Have you ever had Papa John's? It's so freaking good. But that smug fucknut tries to tell me that their slogan is puffery. Do you think I give a shit? I just want good pizza. I haven't tried your new shit pizza because I assume it still tastes like dick but how DARE you insult my beloved Papa John. You're damn right I used beloved again. That pizza is the fuckin tits. Oh what's that? You have a chart that says more people like Domino's than Papa John's? I'm sure you couldn't have just made that up. So fuck you Domino's.

John Hancock Investments:
I'm pretty sure these are the commercials where some douchebag is sitting somewhere like a coffee shop or a train and they get some stupid message from some idiot concerned about their future. "How do we get back from WILL WE retire to WHEN WE retire?" Are you seriously going to text someone that? Well I'm glad you lost all your money because you fucking annoy me. I've admitted that I'm pretty easily annoyed, but I absolutely despise these commercials. I hate that stupid alert sound that goes off. Thanks buddy, I'm trying to enjoy my coffee and I have to listen to your stupid fucking phone going off. This review kind of sucks so I'm just going to move on to something else. I'll probably edit it but for now my angry incoherent writing will have to suffice. I might actually have to do some research on this one but you can tell that my hate is in the right spot.

AT&T and Verizon Commercials:
Apparently they've both decided that the best way to ensure that I choose Boost Mobile when my contract runs up is to annoy the fuck out of me with maps. I forget which one started this ridiculous map bullshit but I think it was Verizon. Let's see, they have the stupid one where the kid sits in front of the TV, they have the one where the two guys are speed skating and one wins because he has Verizon because that fucking makes sense, and then there's the one where the guys are at a coffee shop and they can't send in their report because they don't have Verizon. Well why don't you work at a fucking office or at home like normal people. But then AT&T decided that they would one-up Verizon by getting Luke Wilson's fatter older brother to do their commercials. He says some stuff and their map falls apart, he says some stuff and tosses some postcards, he says some stuff and ruins a perfectly nice stack of minutes. Here's the thing and I want both of you to listen up: I don't live in the middle of fucking nowhere, you know, relatively speaking. I really don't care if either of you work in West Buttfuck, Wyoming. Just tell me if . . . fuck it, I really just don't care.

As an interesting side not, I just saw a commercial saying that the Olympics are coming soon. Not difficult to see why NBC lost a little bit of money covering the Olympics.

-Slick

The Kingdom is . . .

freakin sweet. The Kingdom is a movie from 2007 but thanks to the magic of Netflix and our Playstation 3, as well as Chuck's hefty bank account, we watched it for the first time last night. And it didn't disappoint.

It's a movie review so you know the deal. However, it's coming at you with a new twist. A colleague of mine correctly pointed out that one of my questions goes to waste when I don't see a movie in the theaters. Therefore I'm introducing a new ratings system based on how strongly I recommend it. The system will be broken down thusly, that's right I said thusly: A Must Watch, A Should Watch, An If you have nothing better to do, An "Eh, Unimpressed", A Not Worth It, and finally, the much dreaded "Transformers 2". I really can't get across how much I dislike that movie. I was watching South Park the other day and the episode about the Passion of the Christ was on. In it, Stan and Kenny are so mad about seeing the Passion that they go all the way to Mel Gibson's house to ask for a refund. That's NOT EVEN CLOSE to how mad I am that I saw Transformers 2 in theaters. The Family Guy-Stewie-Bewitched gag also comes to mind, but again, its not even close. I feel dumber for having seen that movie. Michael Bay, may God have mercy on your soul. But once again, I digress.

The Kingdom is set in a post-9/11 Saudi Arabia. I imagine that you can figure out the conflict of the movie. Hmmm Americans, Muslims, post 9/11 . . . what could the conflict of the movie be? However, since this movie receives my first ever "Should Watch", I won't ruin it for you. I'll just make some observations, point out some problems I have and at the end of the review I'll have made myself feel a little better by criticizing someone else's work. That's America baby. Question 1: Would I watch this movie again? Unequivocally yes. This movie was pretty badass. Not without some flaws, which I'll address, but I really liked it. Question 2: Is this movie theater worthy? Like most of the movies I see, this isn't really an option. But in light of my new system I will modify this question to "Would I be mad if I had seen this movie in theaters?" Easy answer- No, absolutely not. Question 3: Does this movie make sense? Here's where we come into my issues with this movie. Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, and the bad guy from the first Bourne movie are an FBI squad sent into Saudi Arabia to investigate . . . some stuff. That is just a really strange cast. It didn't really bother me when I was watching it but the more I think about it, the more I'm just confused by it. Why Jason Bateman? He didn't really add anything to the movie. Why Jennifer Garner? They totally failed to capitalize on her bimbolike good looks. Whatever. Also, despite the fact that they are FBI investigation team they end up acting like total fucking badasses, which I guess would be part of FBI training? Maybe? Nevertheless my biggest problem with the movie is Jeremy Piven. I cannot figure out why he is in this movie. If you've seen it, you probably know what I'm talking about. Was it a setup? "It's a twix! They were all Twix! It was a setup! A setup I tell ya!" But was it a setup? I don't think so, but Matt does. So that's that.

In response to Jon's Al Gore/Global Warming comment I would just like to point out that they've had 2 blizzards in Washington D.C. this year. That means that Al Gore just made it up.

Also, I made pasta today and managed to cook an appropriate amount. It's about the little victories.

-Slick

Outliers is. . .

a great book. I would be referring to Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I am not sure if there are any other books with the same or similar titles, because I didn't feel like looking it up.

I have previously read Blink, but that was before I decided to mouth off periodically on the internet. Or possibly it was after, but I was too lazy to write about it. Either way, I was a fan of that book and figured I'd give Gladwell's other stuff a try. Since Chuck got The Tipping Point for his birthday, there wasn't much point in buying that one, so Outliers it was.

Now, if you know me, then you already know that I am a nerd. That means that a book with lots of data and junk like that is already going to be appealing to me. However, the book is actually very well written and interesting to read. There is a lot of information, but it's not like a boring textbook with everything in stupid tables that I never bother to look at and end up being confused later when the author refers to them. Plus, the main idea of the book is something that I have always thought: anyone is capable of being successful if they put work into it. Nobody gets to be a millionaire/billionaire/trillionaire just by luck. Even the people who catch the right breaks still have to bust their asses to make it big. Now I just wish there was a way I could convey that information to my students, since apparently they are all going to be rich or famous or rich and famous even though only a small fraction of them are willing to work hard at anything. It will be an interesting future for them.

I read the entire second half of the book today, which says a lot because there was also curling on, meaning a good chunk of my time was spent yelling at the TV announcer. Seriously, how come people think it's a good idea to let anyone announce a sport just because they played it? Does no one else notice Troy Aikman's lack of coherence?

Sorry, off topic there.

All in all, I am glad I read Outliers and I'm looking forward to The Tipping Point. Or maybe I'll read one of the other 10 new books on the bookshelf. Or maybe even get around to finishing Al Gore's travesty, The Assault on Reason. Ok, just kidding about that last one. What an awful book that was, at least at the beginning. Although I can't imagine it getting better. Stick with being a global warming hypocrite there, Al.

Final verdict? Read the book. Just don't ask to borrow my copy. As Amy can tell you, I am a little bit crazy about my books.

-Jon

CNBC's curling coverage is. . .

simply awful. Seriously. I hate them. I am not sure who "they" are, but someone has to be in charge of this, and they are doing a horrendous job.

Let's get this out of the way right from the top. I like watching curling. It's a ridiculous "sport," but I find it entertaining. It's like bocce with ice, and who doesn't like bocce? Communists, that's who. Are you a communist?

Thus, I find it quite annoying when I'm all settled in with a nice beer ready to watch some sweet curling action, and for some reason I keep missing what is going on. For instance, I am not sure that the 3rd end of the men's match yesterday started with each team already having thrown 2 stones. Or that the 5th end started on Switzerland's 2nd stone. Seriously, do I need to see 41 commercials for Mad Money? Answer: no, I do not. Just show me the Olympics! It comes around once every 4 years, I think we can take a break from the day-to-day bullshit on this stupid channel for a couple weeks.

There is plenty of downtime in curling. I am actually pretty sure the majority of the sport is downtime with brief breaks for action. Can't they fit in the Mad Money stuff then?

This is probably why I seem to remember that somewhere is reporting that NBC is somehow losing $200 million from the Olympics. Maybe they are also in charge of the Cleveland Orchestra. Why is everyone in charge of things clearly stupid?

-Jon

PS - Bob Costas just said the following: "Alright so the woman from Down Under goes up and over the competition." Yeah, so there's no hope for Olympic coverage after all.

PPS - Some announcer chick just said this about the USA's throw that went through the scoring zone (house): "She's either . . . been heavy [thrown too hard] like that, or short." Yup, those are the only 2 ways to mess up. Brilliant commentating.

Meteorologists are. . .

geniuses. Seriously. They get paid to produce absolutely nothing valuable to society. Unless you count "ruining my summer" as being valuable. In which case, fuck you.

It is currently 2:17 pm on a Wednesday. Had this been a normal Wednesday, I would be 13 minutes away from getting out of work. However, since a bunch of clueless jackoffs decided that there was going to be a huge, wrath-of-God snowstorm today, the superintendent canceled school. Great, right?

Wrong. As of this moment, there is a mild amount of snow flurry activity happening and nothing sticking to the roads. Clearly this is not the type of weather where we need to quickly run out to Big Y and stock up for the long haul. But now I have to go to another day of school in June, when I would obviously rather be not going to school and instead be going to France. So now I have to see when the new last day of school is going to be and then find out if that is going to mean I have to push my departure date back, which would inconvenience Alex and his family and also cost me precious France vacation time. Stupid meteorologists. . .

The part that really gets me is that people were prepping for this snow day on Sunday. How can you even take a 3+ day prediction seriously from a bunch of people who can barely get the current weather correct? There was pretty much a 0% percent chance that school would be open today because some idiot decided that the storm of the year was coming and started acting like Chicken Little, and then a bunch of other idiots listened to the first idiot (making them 2nd degree idiots) because they thought he knew something when instead he was just busy trying to remove his head from his ass.

Point being, since they are getting paid for basically guessing, meteorologists are geniuses. Actually, they aren't guessing. At least with guessing you have a shot at being correct. They are just making shit up and seeing what you'll believe. I bet meteorology conventions are hilarious. They all tell stories about their ridiculous predictions and how people reacted to them.

You know what? This post should have been about how stupid people are. The next person who tells me what the weather says is going to happen is getting backhanded if it is wrong.

Also, Brian Lapis has the most ridiculously large calves for a meteorologist. He must spend his entire gym time on the calf press. Seriously, they are like my quads.

-Jon

3 Days, 3 Posts is . . .

either an accomplishment to be proud of or a reason to look for more extracurricular activities. Either way, here are some things that grind my gears.

The Chase Commercials
For those of you that don't remember what these are, they're the black and white commercials where the wife is acting like a total bitch. First she takes all of their hard-earned points and spends them on a dress. A fucking dress. That's really thoughtful. You could've gone on a nice vacation or to a fancy restaurant, but she picks a dress. Bitch. Then they're on the chairlift and he wants to check how much money they have left in their account or something. I don't know I wasn't really paying attention. But she's all like, "You don't have enough time to check." JUST LET THE MAN MAKE HIS PHONECALL. Even if he had to hang up, which he didn't, why do you have to act like a total bitch about it? I will not "Chase what matters." I don't really hate those commercials, I just hate that bitch. Bitch.

The New LeBron/Kobe Puppet Commercial
I've only seen it once, but I already hate it. I think they're in a barbershop or something stupid when, and this one's a curveball, Zyldrunas Ilgauskus walks in. Oh goody. LeBron and Big Z go through some stupid handshake routine that's even more frustrating than their pre-game antics which I so thoroughly detest. I don't really have much to say about this one other than I'm glad to see that even in a down economy the less-fortunate or "retarded" can still find work. But I suppose I should say the "R-word" so Sarah Palin doesn't throw a hissy-fit. Bitch.

Cooking Pasta
This isn't really an opinion as much as a confession. I know how to cook pasta. I do it several times a week because it's relatively, ok really, simple. I've got a little system: when the pasta's cooked I drain the water. Fool proof. But here's the problem. I usually buy a 2 pound box or something in that neighborhood because it lasts for a while. But I always, always, ALWAYS overestimate the amount of pasta I need. Tonight I cooked some elbow macaroni and even after eating two huge servings and Matt eating a huge serving I still had enough pasta fore 2 maybe 3 meals. I wasn't even close. I haven't overestimated anything this badly since like last weekend when I tried to eat 6 pounds of shrimp.

-Slick

Zombieland is . . .

really funny and receives the coveted "Bill Dias Seal of Approval." You may be thinking, "Slick literally just wrote a post yesterday. Why is he already writing another one?" Well, because I forgot to put this in my last post. And I didn't feel like adding it to the last one because then you might not have realized that there was something new to the post and would have missed it. And I can't disappoint all 6 of you. I just can't.

In my typical movie review fashion I'll answer my three movie questions, make some non-topical references, and by the end we'll be slightly better friends. Question 1: Would I watch this movie again? No question about it, I would absolutely watch it again. Question 2: Would I pay to watch this in theaters? Like District 9, that's not really an option here. But I definitely suggest that you watch this movie. Question 3: Does this movie make sense? Yeah, there's some questionable character decisions but it's not Transformers 2 level ridiculous. Seriously, that movie is so dumb. It's entertaining, but it DOESN'T MAKE ANY FUCKING SENSE! Sorry, it's still a sore subject. But back to Zombieland. My biggest problem with the movie is that it just isn't long enough. I went over to Wikipedia to check out how long it was because I don't think that qualifies as legitimate research and you know how we feel about that. It's only 81 minutes. They easily could have added 15 to 20 minutes to the movie and not make it feel stretched out. Give a little more backstory about why there are so many zombies and throw in some more character development and I feel like they could have had an excellent movie. I give it somewhere between a 7.5 and a 8.5, a very entertaining movie but plenty of room for improvement.

You may remember from my Book of Eli review that I like to end my posts on the lighter side. Well, may I present A Small List of Things that Survive a Zombie Apocalypse:
1. Weapons. Apparently they become the new oxygen, those things are just everywhere. And bullets, you need bullets but you're in luck cause those little fuckers are ubiquitous.
2. Awkward Boy-Girl moments. Oh that takes me back . . . to like yesterday.
3. Gasoline. I don't know. I couldn't think of a funny joke.
4. Nick Names. Not as cool as those Paintball nicknames but it's the end of the world, so everybody's gotta make sacrifices.

Help control the pet population, have your pets spayed or neutered. But don't touch Patches, he wants to keep his.

-Slick

A Weekend Whirlwind of Opinions is . . .

what you're currently reading. It doesn't really make much sense to throw that in but I'm certainly not going to break the only tradition this blog's got going for it. And now my weekend in review:

Paranormal Activity
This movie was absolute shit. It certainly isn't as bad as Spanglish or The Terminal, but it's without a doubt one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Completely uninteresting. I'm not sure how anyone thought this piece of shit was scary. There's only one scene that could slightly potentially possibly maybe be considered scary and that's the last one, and even that wasn't that scary. I was thinking, "Oh I bet I know what's going to happen" But I didn't because what I was thinking was more fucked up than what actually happened. And I'm kind of a pussy. So fuck that.

Paintballing
I'd never been paintballing until yesterday. When we first walked in wearing our sweatpants and hoodies it was obvious that we were a little out of place. Some of those guys took that shit waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too seriously. It's a fuckin bizarro world. Apparently the nerdier you are in real life the cooler you are in the paintball world. It's like a real life World of Warcraft. No, I don't have my own gun. No, I don't have my own fucking camo uniform with some sort of lame nickname. No, I don't spend the time in between rounds working on my finger speed so I can fire ten paintballs per second. Why? Because at some point I want a girl to like me. Putting aside all that stuff it was really enjoyable and I imagine if you were playing with a group of buddies it would be incredibly fun. You want to go paintballing? Count me in. But if it's a surprise birthday present, do not tell Mark Martel.

District 9
This is not a new movie but I watched it again yesterday so here's a review. Paranormal activity fucking sucked so I didn't present my 3-question movie review. District 9 however is 3 question worthy. Question 1: Would I watch this movie again? Well I did, so yes. Question 2: Would I recommend that someone see this movie in theaters? Not really an option, but I personally feel that it was a very entertaining movie so I would suggest that you see this movie. Question 3: The all-important does it make sense? For the most part yes. There's a few details that make you think "I don't really understand why he would do that" but overall it's not flawed in any sense. Just don't watch it with Mark Martel because he managed to ruin the movie with only one sentence. ONE. That's fucking impressive, you know, if it wasn't your first time watching it. Not a great day for Martelly.

And now some quick opinions:
1. Dunkin Donuts: If I ask for French Vanilla do not give me Hazelnut. I know what the difference is you fucktard.
2. Metro: A pretty shitty movie from 1997 featuring Eddie Murphy and the rogueishly handsome Michael Rappaport. But don't bother watching. Not that you were going to.
3. Andy Roddick: He's a good looking guy but he's not that good looking. Not since Tom Brady has there been an athlete whose looks are so vastly overrated. Also, I heard he's a 4.5/10 in the sack.
4. Tim Burton: Alice in Wonderland looks like absolute shit. Stop working with Johnny Depp and stop making movies that have your signature bullshit look to them. You're worse than the Geico cavemen. Get a new fucking gimmick. Asshole.
5. The Superbowl: I wish Roger Goodell would stop picking the winner and just let them play for the championship.
6. Stealing beer glasses from bars: What? Me? No, I brought this one from home.

-Slick

Dogfish Head Raison D'Etre is. . .

a very average beer.

It is pretty much the most typical brown ale you can imagine. It isn't great. It isn't bad. It just. . . is. It seems like the type of beer that you would drink and then when you were trying later to remember what beers you had tried, you wouldn't quite be able to remember it.

Simply put, it certainly isn't a raison d'etre.

Good thing I also bought a nice 22 oz. bottle of Coffeehouse Porter. It will help take some of the sting off of my poor "other beer" choice.

Final verdict? Pass. If you want to try it, come trade me for one of the extras in my fridge.

-Jon