A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

Still no book deal

To prove I'm still generating content - just not on APCB - here are some links to stuff I've written in the last few weeks.

Reviews

I haven't seen a lot of movies lately, thanks to the general insanity of the holiday season and a distinct lack of enthusiasm about most recent releases. To wit:

Twilight *1/2 - I'm no longer convinced "at least they're reading" is adequate when the books in question are as shitty as these.

Hair Balls - I've been a little more productive on this front (amazing what the promise of financial remuneration does for one's output). That said, I went a little apeshit on the whole "James Bond Week" theme:

The Top Five Bond Girl Names (11/10/2008)
The Top Five Henchmen (11/11/2008)
Best Five Non-Villain Deaths (11/12/2008)
Best Bond Villain Deaths (11/13/2008)
Five Best Bond Songs (11/14/2008)
Best Bond Villains (11/15/2008)
Best Bond Movies (11/16/2008)
How Quantum of Solace Stacks Up (11/17/2008)

I also did a couple of lists in "honor" of Twilight and Turkey Day:

The Five Worst Movie Vampires (11/21/2008)
Memorable Movie Thanksgivings (11/27/2008)

Finally, in response to those lousy Sam Houston Comcast commercials:

Top Five Commercials Featuring Political Figures (12/01/2008)

I do have some cool pics of She Who Shall Not Be Named on a zipline that I may have to post here.

BCSOL

Longhorn Nation, I have stood with you for nigh on 20 years. I have bled in your streets (okay, peed in the alley behind Joe's Generic Bar) and fought the good fight (screamed obscenities at Gary Gibbs during the Red River Shootout in 1990), so it brings me no pleasure to tell you we're screwed.

In case you hadn't heard, there's a three-way tie in the Big 12 South. The Longhorns has no problem handling crybaby Stephen McGee and the Aggies, Oklahoma did slightly more than eke out a victory against OSU, and Tech...survived against Baylor. All are 11-1, meaning we'll have to wait until Sunday's BCS rankings to see who gets to curb stomp Mizzou in the Big 12 championship.

The sad fact - which has been all but admitted by everyone from Kirk Herbstreit to Bob Allen - is that OU will jump Texas in the standing. Whether that means they'll be the new #2 or, more likely, Texas will swap places with #4 Florida, will be apparent later today. Whatever the case, we'll likely be on the outside looking in at OU vs. Missouri.

I'm not thrilled, but I'm not going to chant "45-35" like an idiot either. We should have handled Tech, and we didn't. And maybe we ought to reconsider scheduling that game against North Texas every year. I imagine the conference will revisit the tiebreaker rule after the season is over, but when you have a very realistic of having every major conference champion emerging with at least one loss (the Gators are going to destroy Alabama), it's pretty obvious the system is still screwed. No playoff is going to make everybody happy, the NCAA Tournament proves that, but anything has to be better than what we're stuck with now

UPDATE: Surprise, surprise, surprise:

The Longhorns beat Oklahoma by 10 points on a neutral field.

But .13 of a point will keep them from playing in the Big 12 championship game.

Oklahoma finished with the highest ranking in Sunday's Bowl Championship Series to break a three-way tie with Texas and Texas Tech in the Big 12 South.

Oklahoma (11-1) will play Missouri in Saturday's Big 12 title game in Kansas City, Mo.

And Florida, which lost to an unranked Mississippi, will probably move to #1 with a win over Alabama. I love college football.

Bi-Polar disorder

Knock it off, Disney.

Thanks to Winnie the Pooh sheets, Ariel underpants, and a near-constant media/retail assault that would've made Joseph Goebbels shake his head in admiration, you mercenary pricks already have your hooks set into most of our kids since birth (and maybe earlier, if the Princess Jasmine speculum is successfully patented). You've insinuated yourselves into our lives to such an extent I no longer offer even token resistance when She Who Shall Not Be Named brings me the Little Mermaid DVD case and the remote control.

Though I must say, her rendition of "Part of Your World" would make even the surliest among you crack a smile.

I'm willing to accept a certain amount of cultural omnipresence, as you can see, but what I'm not going to stand for is the annual push to make The Polar Express the next holiday movie classic.

[EDIT: I (think I) knew Warner Bros. actually made Polar Express, but the push I'm referring to is by ABC and the ABC Family channel, both of which are cramming PE down our throats, and both are owned by Uncle Walt.]

The 2004 adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg's book is, hands-down, one of the creepiest fucking things I've ever seen. Much hay was made about the groundbreaking technology used to capture the live actors' movements ("actors" meaning Tom Hanks and, like, three other guys), and the result is admittedly pretty eye-popping. Trouble is, the overall impression is that of a bunch of Real Dolls suddenly brought to herky-jerky life. There were also reportedly some screw-ups during the final stages of production, resulting in scenes where elves go sliding across the screen with apparently frozen extremities. Advanced technology or not, everything still looks desperately fake, and not in a good traditional animation way,

What's really funny is that the book takes about 15 minutes to read, but because filming a true adaptation wouldn't justify the outlay required for all this "revolutionary" motion capture technology Robert Zemeckis and company went on to bloat the film with instantly forgettable musical numbers and nonsensical action sequences. And what kid wants to endure an hour and forty minutes of this garbage just to see Hero Boy and Token Black Character Hero Girl finally reach the North Pole, a true Industrial Age wonderland where all the workers look the same and Aerosmith is the musical act of choice.

We already have enough Christmas-themed movies to play 24/7 the entire month of December, and that's not counting the holiday cluster bombs released every year (Fred Claus, Deck the Halls). There's always room for a worthy addition every five years or so, like Bad Santa, but I'm not prepared to push aside true classics like A Christmas Story and Die Hard just yet. Disney, you grossed $160 million with Polar Express during its release, I suggest you quit while you're ahead.

Thoughts regarding the series finale of The Shield

Sheeeeeeeit.

Man in the box

I gave Heroes more of my valuable free time than multiple alternate future plotlines and Suresh doing his best audition for The Fly III warranted. Luckily, I found another way to get my Adrian Pasdar fix while digging around Half-Price Books last weekend:

Three episodes in and I'd forgotten how good this was. Look past the goofy Lawnmower Man computer effects, the creepy/annoying stepmom, and the way-too-Stephen J. Cannell soundtrack and you've got a show that was years ahead of its time. Granted, in a post-Sopranos/Dexter/The Shield world the existence of a sociopathic protagonist who blackmails and murders his way up the corporate ladder seems almost quaint, but in 1996 people couldn't turn away from a character who uttered lines like "Sorry Mom, but servicing you tonight is the least of my concerns" fast enough. Fox, already notorious for series infanticide, cut its run after four episodes.

And there's nothing like seeing the look on someone's (like your spouse's) face when they see that closing shot in the pilot for the first time.

Picture this

Oklahoma beats Texas Tech - Already happened

Texas beats Texas A&M (11/28) - Not a given, but it's in Austin this year

Auburn beats Alabama (11/29) - The longest of long shots, but it's a rivalry game, so all bets are off

Oklahoma beats Oklahoma State (11/29) - Sooners are on a roll

Alabama beats Florida in the SEC championship (12/06) - Stranger things have happened

Texas, somehow voted ahead of OU in the BCS, beats Mizzou in the Big 12 championship (12/06)

With an Alabama loss against AU, an 11-2 Florida, and a USC with a horrible strength of schedule, Texas and Oklahoma could play for the national championship.

Should all this bear out, I'll be able to take Miami off of the list of cities I've never been in a fight in.

Rhymes with "pyorrhea"

I made my first trip to the Galleria in about a year last week. It'll probably be my last trip for at least that long.

It actually wasn't that bad, even though I noticed the Christmas rush seems to have begun a few weeks early. I had to drive the West Loop last night to make a screening of Twilight last night (I'm still working on the maximally hilarious way to incorporate "sucking" into my review). From 290 to 59S took 25 minutes.

But that wasn't the case when She Who Shall Not Be Named and I headed over to kill a few hours while The Wife got some cold-induced couch time. We navigated through mercifully traffic-free streets and snaked one of those elusive first parking garage level spots less than two hundred feet from Neiman Marcus. Granted, we didn't actually buy anything but we did come up with some amusing mall activities.

1. Go to the Apple Store and see if an employee ever gives an answer to a question that doesn't start with, "Well, if you go to our web page." And it didn't matter if it was about financing or the relative fragility of the MacBook Air. Why the hell do you guys have a store in the first place?

2. Ask the girl at the Hollister store if they have any clothes that don't say "Hollister" on them. Chuckle at her response and say, "No, really."

3. Allow your four year old to run into the Versace store with a large, slobbery lollipop. Pause briefly to enjoy the horrorstruck expressions before corralling her.

4. Laugh at the hair on the guy working in the Michael Kors store. His 'do says Good Charlotte, but his crows' feet say Charlotte Rae.

5. Count the number of kids and adults-who-should-know-better wearing South Pole and Aerospatiale clothes. Stop when you reach 1,000.

Cold play

Thanksgiving brings with it family togetherness, boring football, and the return of Film Threat's Frigid 50.

Our answer to the ubiquitous power lists put forth by other movie sites has been running since 2000, and details "the least-powerful, least-inspiring, least-intriguing people in all of Tinseltown." It's also an opportunity for cheap shots galore, as should be apparent from the get-go.

I think it's funny the amount of shit we get for dumping on millionaires. I contributed a...significant amount to this year's edition, and it never ceases to amaze me how fiercely protective some are of a bunch of overpaid game show hosts, but those are our priorities as a nation, I guess.