Crushed by Inertia

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Google Image Search results should be proofed before you air them on TV

Krispy Kreme ARE very delicious...but maybe not that delicious. A little decorum, please...

Spinal Tap: New tour, less hair! | PopWatch Blog | EW.com

Spinal Tap announced at a press conference yesterday that they will be going on tour later this spring –- but not as Spinal Tap. Confused? Let me explain. The core Tap trio of actor-comedians, Christopher Guest (aka "Nigel Tufnell"), Michael McKean ("David St. Hubbins"), and Harry Shearer ("Derek Smalls"), are hitting the road for a 30-date "Unwigged & Unplugged" tour, which starts on April 17 in Vancouver, B.C., and ends in Milwaukee on May 31. And they will be playing songs from both 1984's This Is Spinal Tap and 2003’s A Mighty Wind, in which the three played aging folkies The Folksmen. BUT they will be leaving their Tap outfits –- and, in Shearer’s case, the foil-wrapped vegetables -– behind and perform as themselves. The Tap are also set to release a new CD on May 25. I can’t confirm at the moment as to whether they will try to “milk it for a few more years in Europe.”

via popwatch.ew.com

Not sure I totally get this...They're going on tour playing Spinal Tap songs, but as Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Christopher Guest? I'm not saying it won't be pretty awesome, but why do it this way? It obviously won't be as much fun as seeing them as Spinal Tap. I don't know...sort of smacks of self-importance.

Posted via web from lons's posterous

Monday, February 23, 2009

Thoughts on the Oscars

As for the show...kind of a meh year. And not just because it was a pretty lousy year for movies. The whole event just felt sort of lazy this year, like they're not even trying to make it entertaining. I'm fine with not having a comic host it, and dispensing with the hackneyed Bruce Vilanch-style "one liners" between all the awards...but I'm not sure the solution is to replace it with cheeseball musical numbers either.

In particular, the Jackman/Beyonce/Mamma Mia thing was just weird and sloppy. They didn't sing more than three words from any one particular song...they were skipping around so much, I had a hard time even figuring out what was even going on. Also, why have Queen Latifah singing over the dead person montage? Just seems disrespectful...If you're going to take time out from the show to remember the deceased, at least do it with some class. Silence or light music, I should think (and ask the audience to please save their applause for the end!)

Also, whose idea was it to have previous winners in the acting categories come out on stage and address this year's nominees directly. It was SO PAINFULLY AWKWARD. The poor nominees didn't seem to know that was going to happen, and weren't quite sure how to react. As if it wasn't self-indulgent enough already for actors to hand golden awards to one another once a year...Hey, I know, let's have other actors who've won the same award get up on stage and talk about how GREAT it is, musing ceaselessly about the COURAGE and WISDOM of themselves and their colleagues. They should just have James Lipton host and give out all the awards next year and be done with it.

A few memorable moments...I thought Ben Stiller's bit as Joaquin Phoenix was pretty amusing, Kate Winslet and Sean Penn gave pretty good acceptance speeches and it was all over quick.

As for the winners themselves...you obviously had to give Supporting Actor to Ledger, and Slumdog seemed destined to win the evening, so there was a whiff of inevitability to some of the choices. Man on Wire was a deserving win in the Documentary category, though Encounters at the End of the World puts up a strong fight. (It's available streaming on Netflix, I believe, and is otherwise on DVD...check it out...)

I'd have liked to see more The Wrestler love. Though I enjoyed Milk, it really felt like Rourke's year to me. Penn was great, but Rourke's performance is that whole movie, and I'm pretty sure that's my favorite movie of 2008. And I'd have picked Anne Hathaway and Rachel Getting Married over Winslet and The Reader, but if that film was going to come away with ANYTHING, that would be the award.

I'd have replaced 3 of the 5 Best Picture nominees, actually. Swap in Dark Knight, WALL-E and The Wrestler for Frost/Nixon, The Reader and Benjamin Button. Or, for that matter, Vicky Christina Barcelona, Rachel Getting Married and Doubt. Or Encounters at the End of the World, Man on Wire and The Edge of Heaven. The point is, those three feel like fillers. The Reader was not good at all, Frost/Nixon was professional and slickly produced but ultimately not very interesting (and downright poor as history) and Benjamin Button was technically brilliant but dramatically adrift.

Slumdog Millionaire, on the other hand, isn't really a typical Best Picture winner, which I suppose is why it feels right in this year when ideas about change and diversity were dominating the conversation. Out of all the nominated films, it's the rousing crowd-pleaser...those kinds of movies are ALWAYS most popular during dark times. Plus, it's massively entertaining; the entire film has an energy that few filmmakers can manage to capture for more than a sequence at a time.

Consider all the other options. A Holocaust picture. An ambiguous, emotionally distant gothic fantasy. A biopic about intolerance and harsh social divisions, culminating in a political assassination. And a period drama about a corrupt presidential administration.

Those are things people have been trying to forget, not celebrate. What you're left with is a gritty but ultimately uplifting and redemptive romance that soothes us with the comforting thought that things are FATED to work out okay in the end. It's not hard to see why that was an attractive choice for Best Picture. Plus, the only nominated film that was actually BETTER was Milk.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Given My Track Record, Expect a "Reader" Clean Sweep

It seems like whenever there's one movie nominated for an Oscar that I truly disliked, that STANDS OUT to me as one of the year's biggest disappointments of most memorable turkeys, that's the movie that wins.

I thought for sure "Brokeback" had the Oscar all sewn up that year, and then what comes along and topples it? "Crash," the most embarrassing Best Picture winner in decades. Seriously, does anyone continue to watch or discuss that nonsense? It's reign of influence and importance was over before the afterparties disbanded.

So bearing that in mind, I'd bet the farm on "The Reader," because I was at least tolerant of all the other nominees.

I'll be liveblogging the event over at Mahalo.com. Here are some of the pages we've been prepping:

Monday, February 16, 2009

Sonic BOOM!

"Street Fighter 4" comes out tomorrow, and we here at Mahalo are EXCITED in a way that's somewhat inappropriate for people who aren't in middle school. Here are JUST A SAMPLE of the different places on our website where you can catch up on all the hot, steamy Yoga Flame-oriented action:

Abel? Come on...Well, tell me what am I supposed to do with that.

She does this for attention...

It's official. Ann Coulter will say anything for attention. She will defend white supremacist groups if it means people will "get outraged" at her and "put her on TV" so she can "hawk her pointless, angry diatribes" to "morons."

Yes, I am aware of the irony of writing about her in order to condemn paying attention to her. But it needs to be said. People need to stop getting upset with her for saying these things, because she most likely does not mean them. They are not designed to engage debate, and therefore should not be engaged in a debate.

Ideally, Coulter would become the pundit's answer to what Carrot Top or Carlos Mencia are to comedy. A figure that exists only to be held up for ridicule, as an example of the most odious form of the profession. "Now you sound like Ann Coulter!" is already 99% of the way to being a clear and aggressive insult. I'm just saying we need to push it that extra 1% of the way.

Friday, February 13, 2009

A Weekend of Sports

We're covering two major sporting events this weekend at Mahalo. It will be a rare chance for me, a pudgy coastal elite, to mingle with all you good regular salt-of-the-Earth Midwestern people, which can only be good for me.

Enjoy.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Thank You, Sir, Sallie Mae I Have Another?

3 years ago, when I was working in a video store and living juuuuuuuuuust above the poverty line, the Sallie Mae Corporation and I engaged in a series of frank exchanges of ideas, often in the wee small hours of the morning. In a nutshell, they felt that I should begin paying off the loans I incurred while earning a Master's Degree at USC, whereas I felt that this money would be better spent on pizza and DVDs. Needless to say, the discussions could get quite lively.

That was June of 2005. I have since improved my financial situation (SOMEWHAT!) and have started to actually pay back the loans. When I get around to it. But it's no longer a crisis.

Yet the blog post I wrote about the situation at that time CONTINUES to get a steady stream of traffic and comments. More comments, in fact, than any other post in the history of Crushed by Inertia, save the one where I wrote about all the dirty movie quotes and the one where I bashed the hell out of Zach Braff.

The post's relative popularity is not so surprising, I guess. Lots of people run into student loan trouble, so the topic is more relatable to more people than, say, discussions of classic Mexican horror films of the '50s. Many people share their own debt nightmares - constant anxiety, threatening phone calls, the walking death of wading through endless red tape and bureaucracy. Some of these people have stories that are seriously chilling and sad. I can't help but feel for them. They were, after all, getting into trouble in the pursuit of an education, not an Xbox or a Humvee or a McMansion.

So that's not a shock. What is surprising to me is how many of the responses to the post are vicious and pointless. Not intended to aid or inform or sympathize or even comment, really.
Some people show up just to lord over others, I suppose. They seek the elation of feeling superior to an anonymous stranger, for a fleeting second, because that anonymous stranger has one problem that they DON'T have.

The VERY FIRST RESPONSE I received, in fact, was cruelty from a stranger:

I suggest you pay them somehow, some way or your future is shot.

Now, at no point in the post did I say that I would never pay off my debts. The whole point of the post was that the company had spent a considerable amount of time and effort threatening me, even though I had no more money to give them.

But beyond that, my future was not SHOT. That is a ludicrous overstatement. Literally millions of Americans have found themselves in debt and managed to survive and press on, to restore their credit and begin building their financial dreams anew. So this person is showing up on my blog and responding to a post meant as humor with an idle threat. "Do as I say or you are ruined!"

2 comments later, another Anonymous person responded to that previous comment thusly:

Why would anyone sign your comment with an anonymous? It's amazing how close that email is to the things that come from Sallie Mae's halitosis breath.

I basically overlooked the observation that my threatening commenter may have been Sallie Mae-affiliated because of the hacky, schoolyard insults strewn throughout the paragraph.

(A brief note to people who rant on the Internet...Many of you seem inclined to emphasize your criticisms of an individual or body by resorting to gross-out humor or obscene insults. This is not an effective rhetorical strategy, however, as it makes you sound like either a junior high bully or, in the case of the person who left the above observation, a mental patient. Cutting, satirical statements should always be based on acute observation, not just taunting language.)

As it turns out, though they lacked eloquence, that Anonymous visitor to my blog may have been correct. I am now of the opinion that a number of the negative comments left on my amusing, mildly chiding Sallie Mae blog post could have been left by either employees of the company or other individuals who have been enlisted or hired to defend her honor on the Internet.

Don't believe me? The next negative comment on that thread came from another Anonymous person:

you people are fucking tards and ruining your credit. trust me i work there.

Interesting...

Maybe you should quit wasting your money on beer and trying to be twenty and actually pay your bills like an adult. maybe you could get another job while you are typing all these blogs. just a suggestion

Am I crazy or is this a hostile response to a blog post by a stranger written in a comically ironic fashion? Bear in mind, the post is clearly dated June of 2005. This comment was left at least 2 years later. Yet this person sounds ANGRY with me for suggesting that I couldn't afford my student loan payments. They degrade my lifestyle, call my immature...everything but actually threatening to beat me up and give me a swirlie.

(Also, pet peeve, people who USE blogs and yet do not know how to USE the word "blog." You type ON a blog, or you BLOG, but you don't type A BLOG. You type A BLOG POST that is then added TO YOUR BLOG. And you can just say "write," Mr. McCain. We're not using typewriters any more.)

So, one explanation is that these people are angry because they work at Sallie Mae, and are told to respond angrily and in a threatening fashion to these kinds of blog posts, so as to scare the author into paying up. Another explanation of such aggressive commenters is that they're pissy Sallie Mae employees who see this kind of crap from people all day...They have become jaded and bitter, and just wish people would stop giving excuses and pay bills like they're supposed to.

I hope it's one of these explanations. I really do. I can understand these scenarios...They make sense to me. I can relate to these people if they fit these profiles.

I just hope that the alternative isn't true. That these are just ANGRY strangers with no dog in this fight one way or the other. They just want to get on their computers at night and YELL and BARK at people who maybe aren't as secure or well-off as they are, who have some obvious flaw like irresponsibility and poverty that could be held up for scorn.

I hope this isn't true...but I suspect that it is. Because of the bullying tone of the responses, the way they remind me of the things assholes in real life just say all the time, because they are assholes.

I hate to break it to you, but you took their money and promised to pay it back. Quit drinking your money away and do what you promised. It's really not rocket science (presumably not what your masters is in). If you loaned money to someone who never paid you back, I guarantee you'd be calling them to ask about it as well.

That's just being an asshole. This person obviously read my post carefully and then proceeded to write the most bilious, mean-spirited response he could devise. For no reason at all. In the hopes of ruining my day. (Too bad he was about 2.5 years late.)

First off, whenever people say "I hate to break it to you..." you know they are full of shit. People who say that always LOVE to break it to you. THAT'S WHY THEY'RE THE ONES BREAKING IT TO YOU! It gets them off, somehow, to tell other people bad news.

Also, this guy can take his guarantee and cram it. Plenty of people over the course of my life have borrowed money from me and never paid me back, and I'm not on the phone threatening and harassing them all the time. And we're talking about money that, proportionally, is much more important to me and my livelihood than my individual loans are to the health of the Sallie Mae Corporation.

(I should note here that I did say in the post that Sallie Mae woke me up when I was hung over. But I also say that I went to a party and got drunk, not that I drank all my money away again because I'm an abusive alcoholic. Who never ever goes to a party and has a few drinks? Because I went to USC a few years ago, I'm not allowed any further vices, ever? In fact, someone who gets drunk at a party is THRIFTY and OPPORTUNISTIC, not fool-hardy and loose with money. That's the person who gets drunk at home.)

These two comments came in today:

count yourself lucky that you got a call on saturday at 10:30 am. They start as early as 8AM on saturdays. So quit your bitching and pay your loan back. YOU borrowed the money!

Again, 3 years too late, so by now I HAVE quit my bitching and started paying my loan back.

But why on Earth does this person care so much about my finances? They don't. They're just an asshole. (Though...note that this person KNOWS what time Sallie Mae starts calling people on Saturdays. Possibly because this is their job? I hope so, for their sake...)

Wow! I find it funny that you people can't pay on your student loans, but you have the time to sit here and type out these comments and you have the money to pay for internet connection? Hmm odd...Why don't you take the money you use for internet connection, put it on your student loans, & go get a job, since you do have all this free time to sit here and bitch because salliemae helped you go to school. OMG what an awful company! They loaned you the money you asked for so you could go to school to better yourself! OMG I would be sooo mad too! You all are so stupid.

At least this one's honest. He or she admits to finding other people's pain "funny." They're not even pretending at trying to help or making an honest suggestion.

(This one doesn't so much sound like a Sallie Mae employee as a Republican. Who goes around when the economy is shedding jobs like a German Shepard on a crushed velour couch and yells at strangers to GO GET A JOB! I even mention in the 2005 post that I HAD A JOB! PLUS IT'S 3 YEARS LATER!)

Sunday, February 08, 2009

This Stoned Kid and I Are Done Professionally

Friday, February 06, 2009

Steve Wonder AND The Jonas Brothers? I've got to sit down...

You know what's really amazing about this Grammy performance line-up? It includes Carrie Underwood AND Kid Rock, and I'm still looking at it thinking..."Hey, this is much better than usual!" I'll be covering the show LIVE for Mahalo on Sunday. Here's where you can keep up with all the hot, sensual, exciting Kenny Chesney action.

Neil Diamond MusiCares Person of the Year

Smokey Robinson Grammy Performance

Stevie Wonder Grammy Performance

M.I.A. Grammy Performance

Kenny Chesney Grammy Performance

Sugarland Grammy Performance

Jamie Foxx Ne-Yo Grammy Performance

Carrie Underwood Grammy Performance

Jay-Z Grammy Performance

T.I. Grammy Performance

Chris Brown Grammy Performance

Adele Grammy Performance

Kanye West Grammy Performance

Jonas Brothers Grammy Performance

Jennifer Hudson Grammy Performance

Rihanna Grammy Performance

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss Grammy Performance

Kid Rock Grammy Performance

U2 Grammy Performance

Radiohead Grammy Performance

Paul McCartney Grammy Performance

Katy Perry Grammy Performance

Coldplay Grammy Performance

Best Rock Album 2009 Grammys

Best Alternative Music Album 2009 Grammys

Best Country Album 2009 Grammys

Best Pop Vocal Album 2009 Grammys

Best Rap Album 2009 Grammys

Grammy Awards

Grammy Nominations

2009 Grammy Nominations

Album of the Year 2009 Grammys

Song of the Year 2009 Grammys

Record of the Year 2009 Grammys

Best New Artist 2009 Grammys

2009 Grammy Nomination Performances

2009 Grammy Performances

Grammy Winners 2009

2009 Grammy Awards Photos

Grammy 2009 Live Coverage

A Few Words About Michael Phelps

On the radio earlier this morning, Adam Carolla was talking about how the person who photographed Michael Phelps smoking from a bong and then sold the photo was an asshole. I've seen several comments on Twitter to this effect a well. I agree, it's not the nicest thing to do, and it's greedy, and that's a person you wouldn't invite to your next raucous collegiate get-together.

But come on...That person just took advantage of an insane society that actually cares if a guy in his early 20s takes a few b-rips at a party. It shouldn't be a big deal to snap a photo of one of your goofball friends smoking pot because it's not a big deal to smoke pot. The real culprits here are the bizarre hypocrites who are even pretending to be outraged by this photo. Getting angry at a young celebrity for smoking pot is like getting angry at Christian Bale for loudly telling off some guy. That's what they do!

Punishing and condemning a guy for doing a thing that harms actually no one, and is a good deal of fun, and has been done at least a few times by the vast, vast majority of teenage and adult Americans makes absolutely no sense. Suspending him from the USA swim team for 3 months is ludicrous. How many other people on that swim team have smoked pot ONCE and just happened to not be photographed at the time? Have we checked all their Facebook pages?

Basically, my point is, Afroman should publicly apologize for getting high. I'm pretty sure I've seen that guy photographed smoking pot on his own album covers.

Monday, February 02, 2009

Can Someone Seriously Explain This To Me?

For real. I don't get it. What the hell IS this? Is this supposed to be for children? Is it meant to be funny? Is this ironic? Why is this happening?

I mean, okay...Steve Martin's not actually funny any more. Fine. Fair enough. It happens. But that doesn't begin to explain this video.

Discuss.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Super Bowling

I will once again be covering all the Super Bowl Sunday action for Mahalo.com tomorrow. Here's JUST A SAMPLE of the awesome pages we've already built to take you inside the athletics-junk-food-and-mindless-consumerism action!

Impressed? Of course you are. I have some even more impressive information, though! I have totally managed to avoid any and all news about this year's football season or Super Bowl game. That's right...I could not even tell you who's playing. For real! I think the game itself is in Tampa, but I literally have no idea who will be featured on the field. I know the Eagles DIDN'T make it, because of my disappointed family members.

But who did? I'll just have to figure it out when I start covering the event. (Don't worry, sports fans, we'll leave the coverage of the actual game to more dedicated professionals. I'm just taking on Commercial Duty.)

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

The Streets Will Flow with the Blood of the Non-Believers!

Lots of people are picking up on the fact that Obama purposefully name-checked "non-believers" while listing the Religions of America during his inauguration speech:

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus–and non-believers."

It's nice to be included, and I'm glad Obama's not a Bush-style troglodyte who rejects the notion out of hand that atheists are part of the American fabric. (You'll recall that it was George HW Bush who, allegedly, does not think atheists should be considered citizens or patriots. I use 'allegedly' here because Bush has always denied making this comment, though it appeared in a newspaper which has never retracted the article, so he probably did.)

But I can't really get all that excited about having my non-adherence to a religion acknowledged by the president this way. OF COURSE I'm allowed to believe or not believe whatever the hell I want. OF COURSE I can be an American citizen and not be religious. It's completely asinine to believe anything else. Obama doesn't need to say it to me. I'd rather he not have to talk about religion at all.

I feel like only someone deeply insecure needs the President to tell them they're okay all the time. It's Obama's job to run the government, not to listen to a list of things I think and then pat me on the head and tell me I'm smart. So many Americans demand this kind of hand-holding...It's just desperation for approval.

If he had just said:

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus..."

and left it at that, he'd still technically be correct. There are many people from all of those faiths in this country. That statement is not exclusive. He's merely describing some different religious groups in America, not listing all of them, or the degrees to which you can or can not adhere to them. Sikhs are not hurt that they didn't come up. (I'm not sure, actually? Are they? If so, they should get the fuck over themselves.)

Here's the point...I think people are too sensitive about religion, and that includes people who do not follow any religion at all. I'm not religious because I don't care about it. I think it's kind of interesting, actually, and have probably read more about it than a lot of very religious Americans. But I don't care about it. That means I don't have to hear the president discuss whether or not my take on it fits in with the larger patchwork of his plans and ideas. I don't care about it.

Anyway, I appreciate the gesture. I'm sure, in part, what Obama and his speechwriters were doing was signaling, through language, their overall intention to be a more inclusive, tolerant administration. Which is great. I just think atheists make too much of these sorts of stupid gestures. Fight the real fights, where the separation of church and state matters - science classrooms, stem cell research divisions, and so forth. Nitpicking things like "In God We Trust" on the money and mentions in high-profile speeches just makes the non-believers seem shrill and arrogant.

Plus, I think there were more interesting aspects of the Inauguration on which to focus attention. Like that thing Aretha Franklin had on her head. What was that thing? It's stretching things to refer to it as a "hat."

Friday, January 09, 2009

McSane?

All of the sudden, John McCain sounds almost half-rational again.

"There are not many times in history," he said, "that a president has come to office with as many challenges as the president-elect does and that's incumbent then upon all of us to try and do all we can to work with him."

Appearing on Fox News for one of the few times since losing the election, McCain offered a supportive assessments of the president-elect's agenda. He acknowledged the need to pass a stimulus, but said he would reserve judgment until he saw the final package.

"All I can say to you is that I want to see the stimulus package I want to see what it does, I want to see what kind of provision it has in it," he told Neil Cavuto. "I think the president-elect is going to marshal public opinion. Right now his approval ratings and hopes of the American people are very high," he later added.

He also called Obama's national security team "excellent," and saved special praise for CIA Director nominee Leon Panetta.

"I think that Leon Panetta is highly qualified, and in all due respect I think it is not bad from time to time to have somebody from outside of the intelligence community but with strong managerial experience as Chief of Staff of the White House, to be head of one of these agencies. I think there is some good balance there."

McCain said he talked with Obama since the election about foreign policy and domestic matters. Calling those conversations "very cordial," he added, "I want to help the president succeed."

Until he cemented his decision to run for president in 2008, this is how John McCain always sounded. Not like a bold, decisive leader or anything...just a fairly rational guy. This is what made him appealing to independents and Democrats.

Most Republicans sound completely insane.

Cheney also said during an interview Thursday with The Associated Press that he has no qualms about the reliability of intelligence obtained from terrorism suspects through waterboarding, a technique simulating drowning. The vice president said waterboarding has been used with "great discrimination by people who know what they're doing" and produced much valuable information.

They say things that rational people can only puzzle over, baffled.

A candidate for the Republican National Committee chairmanship said Friday the CD he sent committee members for Christmas -- which included a song titled "Barack the Magic Negro" -- was clearly intended as a joke.

"I think most people recognize political satire when they see it," Tennessee Republican Chip Saltsman told CNN. "I think RNC members understand that."

When one of them starts making ANY SENSE AT ALL, it's a huge relief. And that, to me, was always the explanation for McCain's appeal. He's still behaving like a Republican, but I can listen to him speak for more than a minute without feeling like I've plunged into some kind of Carroll-esque alternate universe, with everyone speaking in silly puzzles.

I mean, you could replace Rudy Giuliani's stump speech with dialogue from Prince Caspian and it'd have about the same level of relevance to everyday life in as it is lived in America.

Bear in mind, I don't think this bodes well for John McCain's character or integrity. This means that he's clued in enough to know better. He might not really believe in all the insane things he said and did during his presidential run...but he said and did them anyway. That's how much he wants to be president. Enough to potentially leave us with President Palin. Enough to pander to bigots. Enough to blatantly lie about stupid nonsense just to win over a few more ignorant yokels.

At least you get the feeling Rudy's genuinely crazy, and perhaps even sinister, by nature. He doesn't know any better. He thinks constantly boasting about and exploiting 9/11 makes him a hero. Because he's a nutcase. McCain hoped to fake being a nutcase in order to profit by it. That's worse!

Saturday, January 03, 2009

The 10 Worst Movies of 2008

This is an annual tradition here at Crushed by Inertia - one of the few I've managed to keep up - and so even though I've been blogging less lately, I wasn't going to skip it. (Also stay tuned for my "Best Movies of the Year" list, which is currently being written. (I still have to see a few big, Oscar-buzzy end of the year films before it's finalized as well). I know I say this every year, but it feels like 2008 had a higher-than-average number of truly awful movies. Some really good ones, too, but...holy shitballs...I mean...wow...

MOVIES I DIDN'T SEE BUT THAT I'M SURE WERE HORRIBLE

The Love Guru

One of the least appealing trailers I have ever seen. I couldn't even watch this film just based on Myers' atrocious accent.

Bangkok Dangerous

I've seen the original Thai version of this (the American one is made by the same guys, the Pang Brothers), and it sucked. Now it sucks with Nicolas Cage, which likely makes for a deeper and more nuanced level of suck. But I think I can safely skip it anyway, unless it develops a Wicker Man-esque cult-like reputation for sucking so bad, in which case I'll have to check it out after all.

Vantage Point

I have completely lost all interest in these kinds of "race against the clock" thrillers. Seriously, they never add up to anything more than gimmicry. Has any movie in this genre - and I'm thinking of stuff like Nick of Time or Snake Eyes here - been good in decades? Seriously...decades...

Superhero Movie/Disaster Movie

STOP! Please, stop! I can't take even hearing about the existence of these any more. The parody movie is unfortunately dead. You have killed it. Let it rest in peace, you bastards.

Smart People

Oh my God, I'm so urbane and Caucasian...It's awful...Please listen to me whine about my chronic depression and my intimacy issues for two hours while I make informed cultural references...What if I bring Juno along? That do anything for you?

Meet Dave

Hey, it's "Herman's Head" meets Pluto Nash! Who wouldn't want to see that?

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Really? I need another entry in the Brendan Fraser Mummy series like I need another Fast and the Furious sequel. Wait, really? They're doing another one of...with Vin Diesel and Paul Walker again...Are you fucking serious? Ugh.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Yeah, I just don't care any more. I even liked Revenge of the Sith, too. But it's just overkill now. Congratulations, LucasFilm. In the course of one year, you made me bored with both Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Fortunately, you've got so many other great properties to work with...I'm anxiously awaiting the big Radioland Murders follow-up.

Righteous Kill

It has been so long since either of them were relevant, it's hard for me to even remember being excited about the prospect of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro sharing the screen. Now, it just invites grim mathematics...if two guys whose films are routinely awful star in a film together, with their awfulness cancel one another out, or make the film doubly awful? My bet was the latter.

The Duchess

I can't take one fucking more pouty-yet-defiant Keira Knightley bland-fest. It's just not in me. I'm done.

An American Carol

I watched the Ben Stein documentary. Isn't that enough? I'm not sure I can handle Kelsey Grammar as General Patton, okay? I'm delicate.

Seven Pounds

Will Smith's annual venture into treacly earnestness never interests me. This movie looks so earnest, I hear they digitally added Jim Varney into a couple of scenes, just for the sake of consistency.

You Don't Mess With the Zohan

This was a recommendation from @britsilverstein on Twitter. Adam Sandler making a bad comedy based solely around a wacky accent and a wig is pretty much an annual event any more. He's on a rather amazing streak, really: It's almost impressive (almost!) how steadily drab and uninspired his films have been for more than a decade now. (What was the last one that actually worked as a film at all? Wedding Singer? That was 1998!

And now...

THE 10 WORST FILMS OF 2008

10. Rambo

Okay, the film is complete nonsense that takes itself very seriously. Fine. I could deal with that. But it also feels the need to realistically recreate in the most fetishized, off-putting, gruesome manner possible, acts of deplorable violence against innocent men, women and even children. I'm not a prude when it comes to movie violence BY ANY MEANS. I've even defended Hostel on this blog. But there is a huge difference between cartoonish movie violence, designed to elicit chills or even laughs, and brutal recreations of genuine international conflicts. Do we really need to see wave after desensitizing wave of villagers cut down in vividly gory detail to recognize that Sylvester Stallone's character is heroic?

From my original review:

Once we arrive in Burma, the movie is essentially a carnage promo reel. Think "Satan's Screen Saver." The Burmese army enters villages, rapes women and children, and generally just turns every living thing into CG-enhanced red goo, much of which is splattered directly into the camera. Then we get some scenes of Rambo laying waste to the bad guys, and then the film's over.

9. Jumper

It's hard to even write anything about this movie, because I remembered so little about it 10 minutes after it's over. The narrative is garbled, clunky and confusing - I suppose you could follow it if you were really determined, but who would want to actually devote the energy? Something about a war between Samuel L. Jackson and other actors who don't yell quite as loudly as Samuel L. Jackson.

I will say that I distinctly recall hating the film's protagonist, a man who can teleport at will and uses it to non-creative ends like robbing banks and impressing ladies. I suppose it's somewhat realistic that a young guy would use these powers in that fashion, but that doesn't mean I'm going to root for him when a bad guy wants to put an end to his journey of greedy, perverted self-discovery. Doug Liman once made good, or at least watchable, movies. Now he turns in woeful turds like Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Jumper. Did we anger him somehow? How can I make this right?

8. Get Smart

The wit of the original TV series "Get Smart" never once surfaces in this wretched, embarrassingly-unfunny homage, which is a shame, because Steve Carrell could have worked as Maxwell Smart in an actual adaptation.

I'm not sure anyone who was involved in making this film has ever seen the series "Get Smart." Neither the characters nor situations in this film not resemble their original counterparts in any way, and they don't even make any sense and behave inconsistently from one scene to the next.

Does The Chief like and respect Agent 86, or does he think he's an idiot? What about Agent 99? I'm not even sure if Max is supposed to be smart or dumb in this version. The movie hasn't even figured that out! He's sort of like Ace Ventura - brilliant in one moment, then talking with his butt the next. I didn't think that character worked too well either, but at least Jim Carrey was completely unleashed to do his thing in every moment of every scene, squeezing out all the laughs he could from a murky, uninteresting premise. Here, Carrell's given a bunch of lame, unfunny dialogue and a stupid spy plot to navigate and never gets to open up and have any fun with it at all.

What results is a 90 minute comedy without a single actual funny joke. Pathetic.

7. The Ruins

I swear to Christ, the plot of The Ruins involves a bunch of teens on an outdoor adventure that get chased to the top of a temple and then are not allowed to move around or leave! Seriously, THAT sounds like a fun romp. I mean, maybe as a set-up for a STAGE PLAY, that could work. But as a movie? It's like "Samuel Beckett's Existential House of Horrors."

Possible tagline: "A nightmare may be just around the next corner...too bad you're stuck on that stupid sound-stage looking Aztec-like ruin, fuckstick."

I'll also add that this is the latest in a spate of recent horror films that confuse "scary scenes" with "scenes showing people in excruciating pain." Now, sometimes a scene that is scary also happens to feature an individual that's in excruciating pain. But JUST because you're showing someone who's hurt real bad doesn't necessary mean that the scene is going to be exciting, frightening, or spine-tingling for the audience. Just maybe difficult to watch, if anyone's sensitive to that sort of thing. I'm not sure why this is so confusing for this new upcoming generation of horror movie directors, but here we are.

6. Teeth

Watching Teeth, I got the impression that writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein read about the archetypal concept of "vagina dentata" (or "toothed vagina") somewhere, laughed for 20 days or so, and then wrote this "movie" in a weekend. The thing is, if you've matured to a point where the mere concepts of penises and vaginas no longer make you howl with laughter, you're probably a bit too grown-up for this movie. Which means the ideal audience for the film's humor is too young to actually get to see the film, which includes a few close-ups of its favorite organs and is therefore inappropriate by the contemporary standards of American parents.

A movie about a girl whose vagina bites off weiners could potentially be clever, I guess, though I'm tempted to say that 99% of the time, it would quickly devolve into sophomoric, Troma-esque "gross out" schlock or camp, as it does here within 10 minutes. Even worse than the fact that he's just retelling the same dick and pussy joke for the length of a feature, though, Lichtenstein actually thinks he has something to say about sexually repressed religion-obsessed Middle Americans or something. He doesn't.

5. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Yes, I actually watched it. (Hey, it's streaming free on Netflix). Suffice it to say, Ben Stein should stick to hosting game shows and eye drop ads. His anti-evolution screed (let's not mince words, "Intelligent Design" as a theory and this movie as a propaganda item are nothing more than rejections of evolutionary theory) is both offensively and bafflingly stupid. There is a difference.

Insultingly stupid is when someone says something stupid that you secretly think he or she doesn't really believe, just to see if they can make YOU believe it. For example, when Ben Stein implies that the theory of evolution is responsible for the Nazis.

Bafflingly stupid is when someone says something stupid that you think he or she really does believe, and you're stunned that anyone could possibly hold this position. For example, every other scene in this movie.

Stein's constantly trying to make the case that his viewpoint has been PURPOSEFULLY LEFT OUT of school curricula across the nation, as if this is somehow rare and his beliefs have been singled out. He's of course never able to reasonably make his case in this film, because it's dumb. Most things that could possibly be taught in schools aren't actually taught there, because of time constraints or a lack of consensus or a million other factors, not because of deep-seated prejudice towards them or those that believe them. So Stein just kind of hopes you won't notice this glaring hole in his argument and never addresses the issue of just why we should give his particular viewpoint more credence than any of the other hundreds of thousands of personal philosophies on the origin and nature of the universe that Americans might hold.

4. The Women

The opening titles of The Women credit the screenplay to Diane English, a human person, but this can't be right, because none of its characters have any genuinely human qualities, or behave the way real people would. It's like watching Russian spies try to recreate "Sex and the City" using sophisticated robots.

Like "Sex and the City," we have a diverse cast of four well-off ladies who are good friends. Only these women don't share any chemistry, or really anything in common, and the film can't be bothered to establish their friendship before the "plot" kicks in anyway. "They like each other," the movie seems to say. "Just go with it."

Actually, now that I think about it, the film can't really be bothered to establish anything about anyone in it, and that's why it's impossible to care what happens to them. English just relies on tired dog whistles and lazy sitcom shorthand - the home-wrecking floozy loves perfume and expensive clothes, the busy career-woman is always on her cell-phone, the brilliant writer is a troubled lesbian...Blurgh.

Also, I hate to say this, but Meg Ryan's horrible plastic surgery is making it hard for me to buy her in any movie roles any more. She's made it so she can really only play "over-the-hill actress who got a lot of unfortunate work done" believably any more.

3. The Happening

M. Night Shyamalan went from being one of the most promising up-and-coming American filmmakers to a national joke REALLY fast. It's bewildering. I don't think his downward slide is going to stop until he just stops getting money to make movies. Considering his level of name recognition, I'm doubting that will happen any time soon, which is really too bad for all of us.

I can't really recap his latest bit of mawkish, self-aggrandizing claptrap any better than I did in my original review:

Not only does The Happening lack any kind of tangible antagonist or enemy, it lacks any kind of conflict whatsoever. There are two types of scenes - scenes in which Wahlberg finds out something about the "happening" second-hand and scenes in which Wahlberg watches people in the middle distance kill themselves in increasingly laughable ways. You may notice, neither of those scenes involves any kind of conflict.

The most compelling bit of dialogue in the entire film is played between Wahlberg and a potted plant...At a random point, the film just ends, without purpose or explanation or any kind of pay-off or showdown or denouement whatsoever. The last scene is meant to be chilling, but it's so obvious what's coming and so silly by that point that it actually plays like a joke. And that first credit - "A Film By M. Night Shyamalan" - is the punchline.

2. Speed Racer

I think we can all agree that something can be an innovation without necessary moving things in a positive direction. Many people I've spoken with want to give Speed Racer a pass because it is trying to do something new with computer-generated imagery in films, to take a live-action movie and meld it with an animator's sense of color, pacing and motion.

I will happily grant that I have never seen another film that felt or looked like Speed Racer. But that's a good thing, because this is the cinematic equivalent of eating a tub full of cotton candy and then riding the Tilt-A-Whirl until it becomes up a regurgitated pink mass in the center of your favorite shirt. I've never seen a movie animated exclusively with human feces either, but that doesn't mean I want the Wachowskis to give it a shot...just to see if they can...

That this ugly mess is 2.5 hours long makes me think the Larry and Andy may have been in league with Donald Rumsfeld and John Yoo. They couldn't have intended this for use on American audiences, could they? It makes the Matrix sequels look sparse and unassuming.

1. The Spirit

I thought FOR SURE when I beheld the grotesquerie that is Speed Racer that it would be my pick for Worst Film of 2008. I was POSITIVE. 100%, not a doubt in my mind, that I'd hate it more than any other film this year. I found it physically painful.

But, no, Frank Miller's attempt to reinvent the Will Eisner comic The Spirit outdoes it, and at a far more efficient 90 minutes to boot. This movie hits every single "bad movie" note RESOUNDINGLY:

- It makes absolutely no sense and displays shockingly little narrative continuity
- It is hugely, massively shrill and irritating
- Ceaselessly gimmicky, the movie never stops dicking around to even attempt something mundane like storytelling
- The dialogue is atrocious
- The performances are excruciatingly broad

Miller's amateurish writing and direction here is actually kind of shocking. The story's so incomprehensible, he constantly has the Spirit explaining the plot directly to the viewer, either in voice-over or actually by TALKING TO HIMSELF in the middle of a scene. Looney Tunes-style sound effects and not just impossible, but impossibly silly, physics spoil all of the action and fight scenes. The comedy falls ENTIRELY flat, and suffers from both an intensely juvenile sensibility along with poor timing and a tendency to make references that no one besides a hardcore comic book dork would appreciate. Many of the scenes resort to having Samuel L. Jackson yell random phrases ("egg on my face!!!!!!!!") while mugging for the camera.

And as for the visuals, it looks like a poorly-shot Sin City with really bad production values. Check out the make-up and costumes:

What the fuck is that? That supposed to be funny?

The Spirit is a complete disaster. The whole time I was watching it, I tried to imagine the level of dread and panic that must have set in among executives when they started seeing the first dailies. I don't think there's a single minute of footage you could take from out of this nightmare to even simulate the existence of a decent movie.

Thursday, January 01, 2009

Top Thirteen Albums of 2008

Okay, usual disclaimers: These are just my favorites, and in no way definitive. There's lots of good stuff this year that I haven't heard (and some that I'm still getting into, like Elbow's The Seldom Seen Kid and the new Blitzen Trapper). Blah blah blah, you see where I'm going with this.

Also, be sure to check out Jonathan's list at Country Caravan. It is far longer, more insightful and better-written than mine, and he clearly listened to more new music this year.

Now on to the lists, with less commentary, cause I don't really know what I'm talking about.

FAVORITE ALBUMS

13. Deerhunter, "Microcastle"

This song is called "Agoraphobia." It's the track that really sold me on the album, which definitely took me a few listens to fully appreciate. The entire second bonus disc is good enough to stand alone, making this really one half of the year's best double-album.

12. Los Campesinos!, "Hold On Now Youngster"

The song is "You! Me! Dancing!" Really fun, energetic, upbeat music. There's too little like that in my personal collection.

11. Lil Wayne, "Tha Carter III"

This track is "Lollipop," chosen because it gives the best insight into the album's sound of any of the singles. But my favorite song, "Mr. Carter," didn't get a video. Shame.

10. Wolf Parade, "At Mount Zoomer"

It seems like there was a lot less hoopla/interest/hype for this year's Wolf Parade album compared to Apologies to Queen Mary, but it wasn't due to a dramatic dip in quality, near as I can tell. These guys also put on one of the best live shows I saw in 2008 (the other being the band coming in at #1).

9. Vampire Weekend, "Vampire Weekend"

Serious blowback to this collection, and I can't figure out why. It's incredibly likeable. I'm sure it's very difficult for a bunch of American kids to tackle an African sound without coming off as pretentious or silly. (Okay, this LP IS a little silly, but in a good way.)

8. Fleet Foxes, "Fleet Foxes"

I got into these guys after seeing the video below, an episode of the awesome "Takeaway Show." I figured the songs would sound very different on the album than they do in this setting, but it's not really so. Such a simple, throwback folk sound. It's not at all difficult for me to understand the appeal of Fleet Foxes to a public tired of over-produced, cheesy pop songs and grinding, unimaginative nu-metal.

7. Department of Eagles, "In Ear Park"

An acoustic version of "No One Does It Like You" is embedded below. This was the Song of the Year for me. Not necessarily because it was the Best Song, but because I couldn't get it out of my head from the first time I heard it, this fall. Still can't, really.

6. My Morning Jacket, "Evil Urges"

I really, viscerally disliked "Highly Suspicious," the first song I heard from "Evil Urges," for at least a month. It sounded shrill and screechy and utterly unlike the My Morning Jacket I loved and remembered. Then, something finally clicked, and now when I listen to the whole album, I can't even hear the thing that once bothered me any more. Weird. Anyway, it sounds different at first, but "Evil Urges" boasts the same fantastic songwriting that has marked every MMJ album since "At Dawn." Simply one of the best American bands of the moment. Embedded below is "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Part 2," though if you asked me, they're clinically insane not releasing "I'm Amazed" as a radio single.

5. Beck, "Modern Guilt"

Beck's best since Midnite Vultures. He hasn't made an album this consistently engaging, interesting and diverse since his heydey. "Gamma Ray," embedded below, and "Walls" are my favorite tracks.

4. No Age, "Nouns"

These's a kind of sound that I've just always liked in my rock music, ever since I first started listening to the stuff in the early-to-mid '90s. It's kind of a fuzzy, lo-fi, thick, hazy guitar sound, of the kind you'd hear on Dinosaur Jr. albums. No Age captures this sound perfectly. It's so rich and busy, I'm constantly surprised these songs are performed by only two people. Here's "Teen Creeps." I also think "Things I Did When I Was Dead" is awe-inspiring, though.

3. Cut Copy, "In Ghost Colours"

I mean, just listen to it. Pure ear candy. This was the year's most infectious collection of songs. Below is the single, "Lights and Music," but just about every song on the album is this good.

2. The Walkmen, "You and Me"

This track is called "Four Provinces" on the album, but is here titled "Hey, Leah." I love this live performance, but my favorite track on the album is probably the haunting "On the Water," which will always remind me of 2008.

1. TV on the Radio, "Dear Science"

I think these guys are the only band which has produced by Favorite Album of the Year twice since I started keeping track of such things. (Radiohead, maybe? OK Computer and Kid A? It's possible.) Dear Science is their best work yet, which is pretty staggering considering how much I like their older music. A unique, layered even, dare I say, whimsical record. This is my favorite song, "Golden Age":

FAVORITE EP's

Eagle Seagull, "I Hate EPs!"

Fleet Foxes, "Sun Giant"

Professor Murder, "Professor Murder On a Desert Island"

FAVORITE SONGS NOT FEATURED ON FAVORITE ALBUMS

These are in no particular order.

"Waving Flags," British Sea Power from Do You Like Rock Music?
"White Shoes," City Center

"Gotta Cheer Up," Cotton Jones from the unreleased Paranoid Cocoon

"Sex On Fire," Kings of Leon from Only By the Night
"With a Heavy Heart, I Regret to Inform You," Does It Offend You, Yeah? from You Have No Idea What You're Getting Yourself Into
"Airplanes," Local Natives
"Mister Jung Stuffed," Man Man from Rabbit Habits
"Electric Feel," MGMT from Oracular Spectacular (below is the amazing Justice remix)

"Share the Night," The Clientele from That Night, a Forest Grew
"Ready for the Floor," Hot Chip from Made in the Dark
"Regarde," Monade from Monstre Cosmic

"Think I Wanna Die," Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin from Pershing
"Tell the World," Vivian Girls from Vivian Girls
"In the Aeroplane Over the Sea," The Chairs from November EP

"Honor Amongst Thieves," These United States from Crimes
"Quarantined," Atlas Sound from Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel

"Echoplex," Nine Inch Nails from The Slip
"Demon Apple," Tapes N Tapes from Walk it Off

Friday, December 26, 2008

Revolutionary Road

Sam Mendes returns to the same subject matter as his Oscar-winning American Beauty in this adaptation of the 1961 Richard Yates novel: well-off white suburban angst. The genders are reversed, but otherwise, the situations in the two films are remarkably similar. One member of a couple living a superficially idyllic suburban life gets restless and can no longer stand the dull routine of conforming and consuming, leading the other member to seek a return to steady, quotidian equilibrium.

Kevin Spacey's vague ennui is a bit easier to tolerate in Beauty (a film, I admit, I loved at the time of its release, but which has lost some of its allure in the ensuing years) because the character and the film are funny (composed, as they were, by former sitcom writer Alan Ball). In Road, Kate Winslet's April Wheeler is so severe, so deadly serious at all times, it's sometimes hard to understand her desire to break free of the mundane at all.

It's not that Winslet gives a bad performance. Quite the contrary.

As scripted by Justin Haythe (I have not read Yates' novel), April could have been an extremely unsympathetic heroine. Her behavior is erratic, her moods shift wildly, and she makes some difficult choices. Winslet succeeds in bringing out April's essential decency, and this makes her plight far more deeply felt and meaningful. A character that could have come off as almost maniacal is instead pitiable, a woman who knows exactly the thing that could make her happy - escape - and who comes perilously close to getting it before seeing her dream strangled.

I think the problem, with both Road and, to some extent, American Beauty, is that both films fail to really capture exactly what it is about the suburbs that make their respective protagonists SO insane. Like, yes, these communities seem boring, and filled with phonies, and senselessly focused on "outdoing the neighbors" with impulsive purchasing. Like many Americans who live in rural or urban neighborhoods, many of these characters are trapped in increasingly bitter, sexually frustrating marriages.

But we're not talking garden variety disillusionment, or even depression, here. Revolutionary Road, in many ways, is a film about a woman driven to a nervous breakdown by the pressures of suburban life. Yet the film BEGINS with her already feeling intense distaste for her situation. We never get a chance to understand what has pushed her to this point. It makes Mendes' films on this subject, on some level, rather superficial. It's easy to just axiomatically insist that the suburbs are a certain way, but it's much more difficult, and satisfying dramatically, to actually render them this way.

As April's husband, Frank, Leonardo DiCaprio does his usual professional job, but this isn't one of those roles with which he really connects. DiCaprio's never bad, but he only really gets to disappear into a role every rare once in a while.

As with every Mendes film, Revolutionary Road looks great. (Naturally, as it's shot by Roger Deakins). The era of the early '60s is brought vibrantly to life, particularly in scenes depicting Frank's daily commute to work in the city. The movie turns imagery that's often fetishized, played as charming and desirable, in old films - seas of men in suits and hats pouring through city streets and rail cars - into a sinister landscape of existential terror. As we watch, Frank genuinely disappears into a faceless mob. I do think, as I've kind of made clear at this point, Mendes hews a bit too close to the style he already explored in American Beauty. Some moments in this new film, despite the difference in era, seem damn near interchangeable, particularly a series of sequences in which emotionally fragile husbands look out over their neighbor's property with a sense of quiet yearning while tinkling piano plays in the background.

[I should note here that one thing that likewise hurts Revolutionary Road is that it's very similar to the best show currently on television, "Mad Men," in both aesthetic and content. Frank and April's dilemma is still somewhat provocative and compelling to watch, but they're no Don and Betty Draper. A random episode of "Mad Men's" second season would likely be a more entertaining, complex depiction of a tense early '60s upwardly-mobile marital standoff than Revolutionary Road. The film would have felt a lot more essential, I suspect, if it had come first.]

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Merry Christmas. Face.

I have a lovely singing voice. Suck it.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Got Questions? We Can Help With That.

I'm very pleased to introduce the newest feature on Mahalo, Mahalo Answers. We've been working on this quietly for a while now and it's exciting to get to share it finally with the world.

The basic concept is superficially similar to a few other services around the Web. Users can show up and ask questions or answer questions posed by other users. Then, a "best" answer is chosen that most directly provides the sought-after information.

Mahalo's bringing a few new concepts to the table. Perhaps most significantly, what we're calling "tips." If you want your question to get featured prominently, or if you want to ask something that may take a bit of time or expertise to properly answer, you can offer "Mahalo Dollars" for an answer. Collect 40 Mahalo Dollars (which would really be a matter of providing 4-8 really compelling answers) and you can turn them into actual money!

Of course, there are lots of other benefits to the system, too. Mahalo Answers interact with regular Mahalo pages. So if you're looking up Michael Jackson, and someone has already asked
for a list of all his #1 singles on Answers, you'd see that information on the regular Mahalo page.

Perhaps my personal favorite upgrade that Mahalo Answers brings to these kinds of Q&A services are the embeddable videos. A thread like this one, about Steven Seagal's finest on-screen moments, just isn't possible on other Answers sites, and it's really compelling stuff, almost like a crowd-sourced blog list.

So I'd encourage everyone to get a Mahalo username and password (if they don't already have one) and check this system out. We're all pretty proud of it.

Oh, and of course I got the Best Answer on that Steven Seagal thread with this unimpeachable classic: