I know many of you (are there many of you?) were expecting your regular dose of "don't go see that" from Laaz the movie guy. But I figured you were all smart enough to know that the list of "don'ts" this week begins and ends with Battlefield Earth. Stay home and watch mediocre 80's movies on HBO, the network that knows what we want to see...if this were 1993.
posted by LT2 7:27 PM ET | discuss | link

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Ok, I admit it. I kinda like pandas. They have goofy, sing-songy names like poo-poo, pee-pee, and ling-ling. Plus they're purty cute. Here's a live camera shot of the Pandas at the San Diego Zoo.
posted by LT2 2:45 PM ET | discuss | link

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I didn't expect this to be worthy of the blog... but then I saw the word pantaloons, and I was sold. And it only gets funnier from there.
posted by LT2 2:01 PM ET | discuss | link

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Here's a fantastic collection of funny photos from around the web. This one sent to me by my cousin Pat in Looo-ziana.
posted by LT2 12:47 PM ET | discuss | link

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Ever sit around and discuss the exact moments when your favorite shows started to go south. Remember how badly Friends started to suck after Ross and Rachel finally got jiggy witit? Remember when those plucky E.R. docs ran out of things to do and were reduced to performing illegal surgeries and getting in trouble with the angry bald guy every week? Well these guys talk about it much more than you do.

This one comes courtesy of WakkoJacko as well.
posted by LT2 12:12 PM ET | discuss | link

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My buddy Jack (a.k.a. Wakkojacko) pointed this one out to me. Haven't found it particularly funny just yet, but the concept and domain name are hsyterical. The idea: For a re-cap of some of the worst movies ever made, just scream Oh the humanity!!!!
posted by LT2 12:07 PM ET | discuss | link

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Lots of Battlefield Earth fun from today's Post. From an article by Sharon Waxman:

Audiences dissolved into laughter when hero Tyler, played by Barry Pepper, tells his fellow hunter-gatherers that they plan to free all the human slaves and, implausibly, blow up the Psychlos' planet. Pepper pauses dramatically and opines: "We're going to need more supplies." With that, the illiterate slaves scamper off and learn how to fly fighter jets and launch nuclear bombs.

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Travolta turned back and flashed a grin at the polite journalists. "You all enjoyed it, didn't you?" he asked.

There was no reply.

From a review by Rita Kempley:

A million monkeys with a million crayons would be hard-pressed in a million years to create anything as cretinous as "Battlefield Earth."

From a review by Desson Howe:

"Battlefield Earth" is a third-rate sci-fi flick, full of laughable moments: scene transitions are signified by a cheap-looking, video-style "wipe" of the screen. Humans yell "Nooooooo!" in slow motion when anything bad happens. And Psychlo aliens use such extraterrestrial turns of phrase as "Have you blown a head gasket?"

posted by MES 12:28 AM ET | discuss | link

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Thursday, May 11, 2000

After reading Lars's funny idea, I thought I would fiddle around a little bit in Paint Shop Pro, and so I think it might look a little something like this...

posted by MES 12:33 PM ET | discuss | link

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Wednesday, May 10, 2000

Here's a fun game to play. Braveheart airs on HBO this Friday night at 1am (and is in regular rotation). Watch it and, as you go along, pay close attention to the various pronunciations of the name of Mel Gibson's wife's character. Everyone in the movie says it differently, and I came up with three or four possible spellings, each one starting with a different letter. When I got in to work on Monday, I looked up her name on the IMDB and the actual spelling was so far away from any of my guesses, that I decided this might be fun for all. Remember, don't look it up until you've watched the film. Quite funny.
posted by LT2 6:47 PM ET | discuss | link

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I don't know much about prgramming or software, but somebody help me with something. Instead of all these expensive trials and saber-rattling about splitting Mircosoft up, why can't the government just order Microsoft to release two versions of Windows, one with I.E. bundled and one without? Is this so crazy it might work? Or what? Mike, this is probably one for you. Nice work with the "fatbodies" quote by the way.
posted by LT2 5:06 PM ET | discuss | link

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Well, it's Wednesday again, and so it's time for a new Angry Pen. This week's topic? “Johnny Reb and Disgusting Fatbodies”.
posted by MES 4:15 PM ET | discuss | link

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Just had, what I think is a very funny idea. I sit with my back to the rear wall of my office. It's this huge white expanse of empty wall and everyone who comes in here says I need to hang a picture or a poster or something. What if I were to take a picture of myself sitting at my desk, blow it up, frame it, and hang it directly behind me. Give your mind a second to construct the image in your head and I'll think you'll appreciate the comedic potential. It would be even funnier if my officemate did the same thing.

Ryan suggested that I hang side-angle pictures on the walls on either side of me.
posted by LT2 3:32 PM ET | discuss | link

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We were talking about a British director of ours this morning and someone mentioned that he should consider doing a project about a real-life reporter murdered by the IRA in the 80's. His agent's response was "I spoke to him about it and he had some concerns. Apparently, when you're British and you get invovled with IRA subject matter, there are certain lifestyle issues you have to consider."

I thought it was kinda funny.
posted by LT2 1:15 PM ET | discuss | link

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Funny how these things work out... but Dave and I were having a conversation about Absinthe just 12 hours ago.

I especially like the part where the researchers admit that it's difficult to know whether test mice are having hallucinations or flashes of brilliance.
posted by LT2 11:30 AM ET | discuss | link

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For those of you expecting an Anrgy Pen this morning... well there is one, but outstanding fact-checking by his editor, Da Schwartz, has revealed that The Pen completely mis-interpreted the remarks of a state senator from Virginia and his anger was, while not completely unfounded, definitely directed at the wrong person. Revisions are in the works and you can expect to see a new Pen sometime today.

Viva El Pen!!!!
posted by LT2 11:22 AM ET | discuss | link

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Tuesday, May 09, 2000

In her column this week, Molly Ivins calls the Elian theft, "Janet Reno's raid on the Branch Floridians."
posted by LT2 2:28 PM ET | discuss | link

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Damn! I got into my car at 9:30 and Howard was in a commerical break. It ended at 9:49. 19 minutes later people!!! And keep in mind, the commericals were already running when I got in the car!
posted by LT2 2:16 PM ET | discuss | link

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As if there was any doubt... here's a pretty funny review of, what the reviewer calls, Battlefield: Girth.
posted by LT2 12:19 PM ET | discuss | link

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I'm blogging this page for my own future reference, because I'll never find it again otherwise. It has a good way of saving Quicktime movies to your hard drive, which is something Apple and the movie companies don't want you to be able to do. I did this with the M:I-2 trailer, but my way was much, much more difficult than their way. I have a secondary, removable hard drive on my laptop, so what I did was I set my temp directory to a directory on the removable drive, wait for the 35mb movie to load, which created a weirdly-named temp file on the hard drive, yanked the hard drive, quit QuickTime, put the hard drive back in, renamed the file to .mov and it worked! (Yanking the hard drive was the only way I could find to get QuickTime to let go of that damn file!)

Anyway, their way is a bit more elegant.
posted by MES 12:05 AM ET | discuss | link

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Monday, May 08, 2000

I realize that the fact that trailers are giving too much away is old news, but I thought I'd point out the Talkback regarding the "What Lies Beneath" trailer that everyone saw this weekend.
posted by MES 6:24 PM ET | discuss | link

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Hey, I bought one of those Microsoft optical mice at Price Club this weekend for $40. It's really cool. It's also my first-ever USB device. I plugged it in and it just started working--no fuss, no muss. The mouse I already had is still working too, at least until I get around to unplugging it. My favorite feature is it's got two extra buttons, one of which acts as a back button. Plus, it's got this really cool eerie red glow emanating from underneath. And of course, the biggest advantage is that it doesn't have a ball to get dirty and sticky.
posted by MES 4:45 PM ET | discuss | link

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Our soccer team, The 10/90's was not quite victorious this weekend. Playing a very untalented opponent, we had to climb back from a 3-0 deficit to pull out a tie. Lars "The Steel Curtain" Theriot only gave up one goal. And Damaré rediscovered her talents as a defensive enforcer, stripping their big angry striker several times right in front of the net. The tying goal was scored by Erin in an exact replica of the "Hand of God." Fortunately, no one, including the other team, saw what really happened and we eked out our first non-win.
posted by LT2 2:17 PM ET | discuss | link

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Second review of the weekend comes from my evening with Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python. Hmm, I really don't know where to start here. I had never seen any of the Pythons on stage before, so that was kind of exciting. But without the other guys, it really was, kind of a waste of time. Caveat coming... Most of the show is Eric singing the songs he wrote for the gang, which is a blast. He did pretty much every song I really would've wanted to hear, "Lumberjack, Meaning of Life, Eric the Half A Bee, Sit on My Face, I Like Chinese, The Philosophers' Song", but the few skits they did were a complete waste of time. The guys they had on stage with Eric, frankly, sucked. Of course, no one could ever do John Cleese's part in the argument sketch well enough to appease me, so maybe it was unfair. The second thing was the technical gaffes. It got so bad (several gaffs per song, I counted) that many times, Eric had to break character, sometimes in the middle of songs, to apologize, or yell at the guys running the tech. aspects of the show. Pretty bad. But I think we all agreed that the second half was much better than the first. Eric sat alone on a stool and told stories from the Python days, and did a little tribute to each of the other members. That was really cool and, I must admit, brought a little tear to my eye. Those guys really were great.

My other complaint is not so much a complaint as an interesting sociological discovery I made... I can sit and quote the Pyhtons for hours with my friends. But sitting in a crowded auditorium and listening to old hags from Pacoima quoting Python directly into your ear, often incorrectly, is about as annoying as that sound Jim Carrey makes in Dumb and Dumber. For the first time I knew what it must be like to be the girlfriend of a screaming Monty Python fan.

Highlights were a new song Eric wrote about the Getty Museum, and new lyrics to I Like Chinese.
posted by LT2 11:25 AM ET | discuss | link

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Well.

I've got lots to review this morning. Let's start with Gladiator. I saw it at 10:55 on Saturday night in a packed theatre in Santa Monica. Here's the thing. I know everyone loved it... but no one can tell me why. Every single person I've asked says "I loved it, I thought it was great!" Then I ask why they loved it and, what I find interesting about the answer is it's always proceeded by a long pause. Then they say somethig like "I don't know, it was fun." Then I say "OK." And then they amend their comments to say, "It looked great. Ridley rocks." OK, fine. Ridley does rock, I agree, and some of the sequences are visually amazing. But here's the bottom line. I fell asleep three times, I turned on my cell phone twice to see how much longer I was gonna have to sit there, six people walked out, and all the cheering I was hearing about never happened. I realize I'm in the minority here, but I think most of you are repressing. Judging by your reactions, I believe many of you can't come to grips with the fact that you were let down by a Ridley Scott directed Gladiator movie. You know how when you see a really great movie, you keep talking about different scenes and different actors and it sounds something like "OH and remember when..." "Yeah that was awesome, but what about..."? I'm gettin' none of that from anyone... just monotone "It was great" answers over and over. You people are shills. Go to therapy! All of you!!!
posted by LT2 11:12 AM ET | discuss | link

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Sunday, May 07, 2000