Harrison Ford's Hilarious Insanity

I know celebrities feel empty inside and want to use their pointless and excessive notoriety to some positive end...but can they all just shut up about the goddamn stupid environment already? It's fucked, we're all gonna burn up and die, I get it. We all know it. I'm not denying the veracity of the claims.

[Just a side-note to Climate Change deniers here...You've picked probably the least sexy or dangerous form of "Denial."]

But we can't do anything about it because switching to fluorescent lights won't clean up that Texas-size clump of plastic in the middle of the ocean or force the Chinese to stop driving the cars they were only able to afford for the first time three months ago, and our government's owned by a bunch of corporate criminals who patently refuse to do anything about it. Pretty much regardless who wins in November. So just leave us alone and let us enjoy our last few decades in peace, alright? Go make an action movie and get out of my face.

Okay, so that's pretty much how I feel any more about celebrities and their precious little "let's all go green for just a day!" stuff. But Harrison Ford's patently ludicrous attempt to "raise awareness" or whatever is just too precious to ignore. I mean, seriously, H.F., how much pot would you say you're smoking...per day?

Harrison invited Access Hollywood along as he embarked on a personal project to promote going green. And just how did Harrison, who is the vice chair of the global environment group Conservation International, want to get his message across?

By waxing his chest, of course. In an effort to showcase the pain involved in deforestation, Harrison willingly subject himself to the painful process of stripping his chest of all its follicles.

Huh? Harrison seems to have missed the best thing about hurting plants...they don't feel shit! What does waxing his chest have to do with cutting down trees again? Is this just an excuse to get him to take his shirt off on camera? And to what end? The guy looks fucking ancient these days. I mean, hey, folks, I love Han Solo as much as the rest of you. He acts like he doesn't care, but he actually does. But I can think of no good reason for him to take his shirt off on camera. That's just some of my patented Straight Talk, folks, get used to it.



Yikes. It looks like a melting wax sculpture of Harrison Ford that someone's desperately trying to suture and mend.

I mean, if Harrison's deeply concerned with deforestation and wants to work tirelessly on behalf of tree frogs or cures for various diseases that never seem to pan out or delicious new varieties of Starbucks or whatever the hell they have where deforestation is a problem, that's totally his choice and I wish him all the best. If it keeps my pasty white ass alive for a few extra days, I'll be really thankful.

But, do me a favor, let's go ahead and remain fully clothed, Sport.

Idol Preview

The Mahalo Daily Team whipped up two fantastic videos today. The first is just a tiny taste of the "Mahalo Idol" juggernaut that awaits you all. I seriously CAN'T WAIT to get these episodes out there. We've all been having a really great time shooting the competition thus far, and I'm hoping that it's going to be compelling stuff in the somewhat hokey fashion of reality television. I can hardly handle the suspense, myself, and I already got the job.



Next up is the farewell tribute to Veronica Belmont, whose enormous, Krusty-the-Clown-reminiscent shoes I and my soon-to-be-cohost will be asked to fill. It's not an easy task, and not just because she's Queen of the Sexy Geeks and I look like an unholy hybrid of Artie Lange and Ron "The Hedgehog" Jeremy. She just had a great run as hostess, and pretty much defined what the Mahalo Daily is all about, as this video ably demonstrates:



I promise, non-Mahalo-themed posts to come! I'm super-serial!

Awwwwwwww yeah....

Really proud of today's Mahalo Daily, "I'm Gonna Git You Spamma." It's hotter than Norton and cooler than McAfee:

Want to Feel Really Old?

Remember when TV promos were actually like this?



I used to watch both of these shows...Young Me had really egregious taste in television.

HiPiHi新闻联播2期横空出"事"

It strikes me that the following may seem culturally insensitive. I'm not trying to say Chinese people or things are inherently alien or weird or exotic or anything. I'm a huge fan of the Chinese people. Their movies are awesome, they are pioneers in the arena of bootlegging cool shit so I can get it for free, their lead-filled toys have never injured me, personally. Best of all, they keep their delicious Americanized restaurants open on Christmas Eve, so I can hook up some spicy Cheng-Pi Beef even though the rest of the world has come to a dead stop, eagerly awaiting the arrival of an obese, gift-bearing hermit.

So, having made that possibly-more-offensive pre-apology, allow me to say this...The following commercial for the Chinese version of "Second Life" is the most insane, creepiest thing I have ever seen. I wonder...would an American commercial for our version of "Second Life" look this weird to a Chinese person?



It probably helps that I don't understand what anyone is saying, but still...this would be weird even if it were coherent.

After some opening titles featuring a globe with non-Earth-like continents, we cut to the inside of some kind of temple, where a man with a bear claw for an arm and a firecracker strapped to his back speaks with what I can only guess is a rabbit. Oh, and the rabbit has a plunger floating just above its head. And they might be hosting some kind of show, rather than speaking to one another. I can't tell.

The weirdest part about this sequence is that the dialogue sounds like it is extremely mundane. Like they're discussing Grain Futures or something. This is supposed to sell me on whatever the hell this thing is called? So far, it looks like a crack baby's nightmare.

Then we cut to virtual news footage from what looks like an event of some sort, though I can't imagine what it would be and there aren't any people around. There's a lot of weird close-ups of crowns. Is it a beauty pageant? Could anything sound more inane than an avatar beauty pageant? I'm thinking it's probably inversely proportional anyway - the uglier you are in real life, the hotter your alternate self. You meet the Second Life Evangeline Lilly, that's probably a 400-pound guy permanently melded to his computer chair.

Then, the news show's "host" stands in front of a freaky black room containing what looks like a large perfume bottle and...I don't know...some kind of sparkly white thing. Perhaps a portal between our world and this Realm of Mystery and Polygons.

Anyway, you get the idea. Second China is frightening. It's like if someone made an Inland Empire tie-in game or something. No thanks...

Cheap Netflix Bastards!

This tweet from Anthony T. informs me that Netflix plans to charge customers more to rent Blu-Ray discs rather than traditional DVD's. This is weaksauce.

On a conference call held earlier today, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings made mention that it planned on instituting a "modest monthly premium" to its normal subscription rate for folks who rented BDs. Of course, the move only makes perfect sense -- after all, the discs do cost more, and according to Mr. Hastings, "consumers are used to paying more for high-definition content."

Naturally, the move makes financial sense. Customers with Blu-Ray players/PS3's have already spent several hundred dollars for the privilege of watching films in high-definition. The vast majority of them will clearly throw Netflix a few extra bucks a month for movies that make the player worth owning. Considering that Blu-Ray discs, on average, cost around $5-$10 over the price of regular DVD's, Netflix has to make up this difference somehow to remain profitable.

It just sucks is all. Netflix remains a fantastic deal, for the most part, but I still somehow feel "nickel and dimed" by them all the time. I'm not sure if it's just a failure of PR or my being such a movie uber-nerd that I notice small differences in rental policies...but I feel like Netflix is constantly trying to get one over on me, and it's giving me a rash, man.

I've written before about their loathsome policies of punishing more frequent renters and just generally shitty customer service. (I've still never received any kind of response to my complaint about only receiving Disc 1 of Branagh's "Hamlet." They want me to use up a second rental, I guess, to see the full film.) Once again, I'm left feeling taken advantage of, as they begin charging me extra for the same movies they've been sending me for months now.

They need some genuine competition. (Oh, I know that Blockbuster has an online rental service, but I vowed long ago never to do business with that villainous corporation again, and yeah, I could "rent" movies online and then burn them on to a disc and watch them on my TV. Shut up.) I like Netflix's business...just not the shady way they run it.