Yes, another one. This one is not exactly about how creepy all of his roles are (especially that Kelly Leak--scary!) or anything like that; they are more about coincidences that I have found in roles all throughout his career (isn't it sad how I have an eye for this kind of stuff?).
For one, did you know that in 1974, he guested on an episode of The Partridge Family, the one entitled "Strike Out King," where Danny joins a baseball team? Then, two years later, he would go on to star in a little baseball themed movie you may know called The Bad News Bears. So an early chunk of his career had something to do with baseball.
Then (and yes, I suppose this is straying into "creepy" territory), a bunch of his movies deal with bad things happening to children (Little Children, a part or two of Watchmen, A Nightmare on Elm Street--2010). More often than not (except for Rorschach, who was just investigating it), he was the one who was doing it/had done it.
Also, many of his characters only have one name: Eric, Bill, Moocher, Dave, Einstein (no, not that one), Dukes, Guerrero, Stick, Turk, Harlan, Tom, Kraik, Tony, Rusty....
He once delivered pizza to a guy who had edited one of his movies (this was when his career was in its "practically nonexistent" phase).
His son's name is Christopher, and as we all know (or you should, if you've read this blog at all--cough cough, "Eldo" page, cough cough), that is the first name of Chance in the now-departed Human Target.
Moocher and Kelly Leak both had tempers and liked to hit people (Moocher more than Kelly, but woe to you if you dare call Kelly's dad a "f----t.").
"Kelly" and "Guerrero" both mean the same thing, "warrior." How appropriate.
He acted opposite Kate Winslet in both Little Children and All the King's Men.
He's one of the partners to Chance's bodyguard; he played a bodyguard in All the King's Men (the one where his name was "Sugar Boy").
When he stopped acting, he drove a limo for a bit; in the "Taking Ames" episode of Human Target he played a driver.
He lives and is the president of JEH Productions in San Antonio, Texas, the same state graced by his Bears and their Bad News in Breaking Training.
There is a racehorse named Kelly Leak. I'm not kidding. I think he even won some sort of big race or something. Hold on. Here. Check it out yourself. I've done the work for you, loser. http://www.horseracingnation.com/horse/Kelly_Leak
A stretch? Maybe, but think about this: That's what the five-foot-five (and a half) Jackie Earle Haley has to do every time he wants something that's high up on a shelf.
Go Jackie Earle Haley! And go Kelly Leak! Win one for the Looper!
Yeah. I had to go there.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Yeah, Seems Like a Fairplay (Karma, Part Two)
So I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that most of you probably have some sort of idea who Jonny Fairplay is. For those of you who don't, he's the arsehole who lied about his grandmother being dead on Survivor. Normally I wouldn't waste my posting time on him, because he's a very bad word I can't say, much less write here because I don't want to taint your minds like that...which I guess I'm kind of doing by writing about the guy anyway. Oh, well. Some taint has to be good for you.
Anyway, I'm writing about him because his wife walked out on him and took their kid with him, and usually I feel sorry for people when their spouse walks out on them and/or they lose their kid, but I kind of laughed when I heard this. I mean, it just serves to reinforce my very earlier post on this blog about my veiwpoint on karma, which is that she is a witch with a capital "B" and will always come back around to get you. Like the mob. Karma is, like, the greatest mobster that ever lived, because she never misses anybody. If you do something so slimy and matarded as lying about your grandmother being dead on a reailty show (really, what was the turd trying to accomplish by doing that, anyway? And how long did he expect to get away with it? Did he tell his granny to "play dead," or something? I mean, did he even bother to plan for what he would do when people actually, you know, found out?), then a few years later your wife (who was an America's Next Top Model--????????) will walk out on you and take the kid.
And I don't really want to rant, or anything, but how sad is it when your claim to fame (word used very, very loosely) is that you were the arsehole turdsack who lied about your grandmother being dead on Survivor? Where do you go from there? I'm not saying don't lie a little to win a million dollars--but not about that. Did you want the sympathy vote, or something, you...bad word? Because what if there were other people there who really did have a dead grandma or something and were planning to use the money to start a charity in her name or something? Or, even more tragic, what if there was a teenage blogger there who was planning on using her winnings to buy her own laptop with internet access so she could blog from home whenever she had free moments, thus making more postings, instead of having to have her dad drive her to the library every week and only having a limited amount of time there before she had to go home and slave over a book she's trying to write and sell, huh? Did you ever think about that, you arsehole?????
And at least I wouldn't have lied about a relative being dead to get it, you loser.
It's Almost July Fourth--Do You Know What You're Eating Yet?
Let me just state for the record here that at all cookouts and barbecues, I eat hamburgers. And that right there probably tells you exactly what this post is going to be about.
I care about my readers. And for those of you who don't know exactly what's in those hot dogs you chow down on every holiday weekend, or those who don't know the extent of it, I'm here to educate you. And while I may not have a fancy-schmancy teaching degree and all that, I might still be more qualified to educate than some of the teachers at my school.
Here's some of the extremely healthy crap that's legally allowed in your beloved hot dogs:
- ears
- cheeks/jowls
- tails
- snouts
- liver
- intestines
- kidneys
- hearts
- eyelids
- gristle
- tendons
- membranes
- blood
- bone fragments
- gums
- insect fragments
- hair
- rat excrement
- preservatives
- some of these corpses have been dead for a while
Friday, June 24, 2011
Threw Me For a Looper
Last weekend, I saw The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training for the first time, and unlike some of the people on the internet that I read, I actually liked it ("love" might be a better word). But I was saddened by the Bears' loss of Timmy Lupus, who had been nicknamed by Tanner, his friend now, "the Looper," due to a leg broken in a skateboarding accident (too busy digging for gold to look where he was going? Discuss). You see him, though, when Tanner and resident nerd Ogilvie (who is almost unrecognizable at first; our geek has grown up!) go to pay him a visit and give him the only signed Bears' baseball in existence and a framed photo of when he caught that ball in the first movie. For those of you who forget what that unforgettable moment looked like (shame on you!), here's a refresher:
Yep, there's our Looper!
Anyway, I kinda teared up (so shoot me) when Tanner asked if Timmy (who had made him "wanna puke" in the first one, remember?) would come with them "next time," because they are heading to Texas to play in a game in the Astrodome (which I can't visit on my tour of famed Bad News Bears sites because I don't think it's still standing, and Timmy said yeah.
Neither Tanner nor Timmy are in the third one. But's that's neither here nor there.
So they don't have a coach now, the Bears, and they don't have a pitcher (at least Buttermaker is mentioned; nothing is said about where the heck Amanda went. Well, she said she wanted to be a model...), at least not until Kelly Leak (yeah!) rides up on his freakin' sweet Harely--a girl on back, of course--and announces that not only has he changed his mind and will be playing with the Bears in Texas, but he's found them a pitcher: Carmen Ronzonni.
Apropos of nothing, the pasta my dad routinely buys for us is branded Ronzoni.
Let me digress here for a minute (or a small paragraph, whichever) about the Evolution of Kelly Leak. You know how you can look at people at different times when they're kids and see "yeah, they grow up to be that"? This is the movie where This Happens to Kelly Leak. His Guerreroness is coming out. Not that it wasn't there in the first one, but that was more in the way he talked and stuff. Now all he needs is the glasses and a pair of chopsticks. And to, uh, lose the fringe. Not that I don't like it--and yeah, I'm trying to find one like it; anyone know where I can get one?--, but Guerrero doesn't do fringe.
I digress.
All right, so they get Carmen (the actor, by the way, is Scott Baio's brother, in case any of you care, 'cause I don't, not really); now all they need is a coach. And, thanks to Kelly and, yeah, Carmen, they get one, for appearances anyway: the groundskeeper at the field. Watching the Bears tell their parents about their new coach is funny. Kelly, though, is never shown, nor his mom. Interesting...
They don't really need him, though, apparently not even for driving the super-funky van Kelly's managed to, um, borrow. Coach? They don't need no stinking coach (until later)! All they need is--well, love, and:
Yeah, that's Leak. Hey, the look fools the cops, so I guess it works.
Along the way to Houston, hijinks ensue--see: "female hitchhiker on the side of the road+van full of teenage boys," Engleburg (who is not the original actor, unlike the others) running to a bunch of bushes to "go," Ahmad saying that they're all going to go to the "joint"--and, yes, throwing a "The Man" in there for good measure.
Then they get to Texas--and need a coach, because somebody parked the super-funky van in a no-parking zone (I guess that's what happens when you don't actually, you know, have a license). So Kelly says they have one, and while the other Bears all look around like huhh??--even Carmen, who has seemingly been in cahoots with Kelly the entire movie--, he skips off merrily to find him.
Well, not really. He actually hitches a ride in the back of a truck. But whatever. He still gets to the same place, which is...a plant! Who is at the plant, you wonder? Who is this mysterious coach? Well, it has something to do with the picture of an unknown man Kelly was staring at earlier in the movie by the light of a Zippo, and you see this man comes walking out--
Holy snot it's William Devane!
Yes, for all those people out there who actually know who he is, try not to have a heart attack because he looks, you know, so young. For those of you who don't know, skip the above paragraph.
But in this movie he's not just William Devane--he's a man named Michael ("a guy named Michael runs the school..." jk). Michael, we learn as Kelly calls his name out, Leak. As in, father of Kelly.
And for all you freaks out there, please don't write WD any weird letters of thanks--it's just for the movie, guys. Chill out.
Anyway, so Kelly and his estranged father have a Typically Awkward Conversation, but Kelly manages to get his dad to agree to coach the Bears. Who get out of trouble for the whole van thing. And who are now primed for a training montage!
Mike does his best Buttermaker here, though he is less tolerant of Kelly's smoking (seriously, dude, you won't grow up to be Rorschach unless you quit while you're still young--I spelled "Rorschach" right on the first try! Yeah!). And, thank God, he actually gets Carmen to, you know, pitch, right when I was starting to pray for a runaway bull to take him out and pitch for the Bears instead, because throughout the movie it has been demonstrated that Carmen can't pitch--or, as Tanner puts it in the beginning, they now have a team made of "Jews, spics, niggers, and a wop that throws airballs." I mean, yeah, Amanda was a girl, but at least she could throw.
Then Kelly and his dad get in a fight, and Kelly runs all dramatically and teen-angsty away from the field, where he encounters a bunch of players from the Texas team, the Toros, who taunt him by saying the word "f----t" a lot. Then they make fun of Mike, and Kelly attacks one, and then he continues to run away crying. Aww. This was not helped by the fact that Dad, who was sitting next to me stealing my popcorn, telling me that Kelly gets hit by a bus while running and crying. I mean, I know he didn't, but that still was not a very nice thing to say, Dad, you jerk.
Mike finds Kelly in a pool hall (pool and air hockey and baseball? He's a triathlete!) and they have a talk--well, Kelly goes off about a bike Mike gave him the day he left, and how it's sitting untouched in the basement, and this is where I cry. A little. You know. Because it's emotional. Mike walks away after telling Kelly to ask himself whether he still would have looked Mike up if the Bears hadn't needed a coach.
Then they're all in the locker room before the game, wondering where Kelly is. He has not come back. They have to press on anyway, so when Mike asks them if anyone has anything to say, Tanner says "I do" and walks into the middle of the room. He then proceeds to paraphrase the movie Knute Rockne: All American's "Win one for the Gipper" speech by saying something about Timmy like (don't quote me): "Timmy couldn't be here with us today, but we should win this one for the Looper, because he'll know, and he'll be happy." This is when my heart melted with "awww"ness. Again.
And then, just in time, Kelly shows up and utters the line "What are we waiting for?" and the Bears, bolstered by the return of their star player, run out onto the field, ready to kick the Toros' butt and take jersey numbers.
"Toro," by the way, means "bull" in Spanish. Bulls and Bears? Is this a baseball movie or Wall Street?
I'm not going to give you a play-by-by, but let's just say the Bears are the Bears and are losing five-nothing at the end of the second inning (it's a four-inning game between major-league games). Also, in a funny aside, when Jimmy Feldman is up at bat, the catcher says "we got one of the Marx brothers up here," when in reality the actor who plays Jimmy, Brett Marx, is a grandon of Gummo Marx. Really.
However, before the Bears can go up again and reclaim some dignity by, you know, winning, the game is stopped--apparently, they are out of time. All the Bears shuffle off the field--except for Tanner, the shortstop who is taking "win one for the Looper" to the extreme and refusing to get off the field. When people are sent out to get him off, he starts running--and even throws a base at one of their groins. You gotta love Tanner Boyle.
Some of the Astros players come in an ask what's going on. Ahmad explains that they were supposed to have four innings but are only getting two. The player replies, "Aw, let 'em play." This seems to inspire Coach Leak, who runs out onto the field and, while not going as bat-dooky crazy as Tanner, starts chanting "Let them play, let them play!" over and over again, fist-pumping before fist-pumping was cool (see, Snooki? Mike Leak started it). And then, just when I thought my heart couldn't melt any more, Kelly runs out onto the field with his dad and starts chanting with him (I didn't cry here. I almost did. But I didn't.).
Soon, everybody else starts chanting (Tanner still evading capture in the outfield), leaving the people in charge baffled. Eventually, they decide to, yeah, let them play, and they do--again, no play by play, but: They actually win. Yep. They do it.
Then, walking back to the locker room after the big game, Kelly stops his dad and says that yeah, he still would have looked him up even if they hadn't needed a coach. Awww. Life is looking good for you and me.
And sometimes life imitates art: At the 2002 Major-League All Star Game, when it was announced that it would end in a tie if neither team scored before the end of the inning, the crowd began to chant "Let them play!" But it still ended in a 7-7 tie because both teams ran out of players. Oh, well, sometimes it's great just to have played.
But sometimes it's better to kick butt and win one for the Looper and reconcile with your dad and actually learn to pitch and have a cool theme song that, thirty years later, nobody will be able to find anywhere so they can download it for inspiration.
There's something telling me our time is now...
Yep, there's our Looper!
Anyway, I kinda teared up (so shoot me) when Tanner asked if Timmy (who had made him "wanna puke" in the first one, remember?) would come with them "next time," because they are heading to Texas to play in a game in the Astrodome (which I can't visit on my tour of famed Bad News Bears sites because I don't think it's still standing, and Timmy said yeah.
Neither Tanner nor Timmy are in the third one. But's that's neither here nor there.
So they don't have a coach now, the Bears, and they don't have a pitcher (at least Buttermaker is mentioned; nothing is said about where the heck Amanda went. Well, she said she wanted to be a model...), at least not until Kelly Leak (yeah!) rides up on his freakin' sweet Harely--a girl on back, of course--and announces that not only has he changed his mind and will be playing with the Bears in Texas, but he's found them a pitcher: Carmen Ronzonni.
Apropos of nothing, the pasta my dad routinely buys for us is branded Ronzoni.
Let me digress here for a minute (or a small paragraph, whichever) about the Evolution of Kelly Leak. You know how you can look at people at different times when they're kids and see "yeah, they grow up to be that"? This is the movie where This Happens to Kelly Leak. His Guerreroness is coming out. Not that it wasn't there in the first one, but that was more in the way he talked and stuff. Now all he needs is the glasses and a pair of chopsticks. And to, uh, lose the fringe. Not that I don't like it--and yeah, I'm trying to find one like it; anyone know where I can get one?--, but Guerrero doesn't do fringe.
I digress.
All right, so they get Carmen (the actor, by the way, is Scott Baio's brother, in case any of you care, 'cause I don't, not really); now all they need is a coach. And, thanks to Kelly and, yeah, Carmen, they get one, for appearances anyway: the groundskeeper at the field. Watching the Bears tell their parents about their new coach is funny. Kelly, though, is never shown, nor his mom. Interesting...
They don't really need him, though, apparently not even for driving the super-funky van Kelly's managed to, um, borrow. Coach? They don't need no stinking coach (until later)! All they need is--well, love, and:
Along the way to Houston, hijinks ensue--see: "female hitchhiker on the side of the road+van full of teenage boys," Engleburg (who is not the original actor, unlike the others) running to a bunch of bushes to "go," Ahmad saying that they're all going to go to the "joint"--and, yes, throwing a "The Man" in there for good measure.
Then they get to Texas--and need a coach, because somebody parked the super-funky van in a no-parking zone (I guess that's what happens when you don't actually, you know, have a license). So Kelly says they have one, and while the other Bears all look around like huhh??--even Carmen, who has seemingly been in cahoots with Kelly the entire movie--, he skips off merrily to find him.
Well, not really. He actually hitches a ride in the back of a truck. But whatever. He still gets to the same place, which is...a plant! Who is at the plant, you wonder? Who is this mysterious coach? Well, it has something to do with the picture of an unknown man Kelly was staring at earlier in the movie by the light of a Zippo, and you see this man comes walking out--
Holy snot it's William Devane!
Yes, for all those people out there who actually know who he is, try not to have a heart attack because he looks, you know, so young. For those of you who don't know, skip the above paragraph.
But in this movie he's not just William Devane--he's a man named Michael ("a guy named Michael runs the school..." jk). Michael, we learn as Kelly calls his name out, Leak. As in, father of Kelly.
And for all you freaks out there, please don't write WD any weird letters of thanks--it's just for the movie, guys. Chill out.
Anyway, so Kelly and his estranged father have a Typically Awkward Conversation, but Kelly manages to get his dad to agree to coach the Bears. Who get out of trouble for the whole van thing. And who are now primed for a training montage!
Mike does his best Buttermaker here, though he is less tolerant of Kelly's smoking (seriously, dude, you won't grow up to be Rorschach unless you quit while you're still young--I spelled "Rorschach" right on the first try! Yeah!). And, thank God, he actually gets Carmen to, you know, pitch, right when I was starting to pray for a runaway bull to take him out and pitch for the Bears instead, because throughout the movie it has been demonstrated that Carmen can't pitch--or, as Tanner puts it in the beginning, they now have a team made of "Jews, spics, niggers, and a wop that throws airballs." I mean, yeah, Amanda was a girl, but at least she could throw.
Then Kelly and his dad get in a fight, and Kelly runs all dramatically and teen-angsty away from the field, where he encounters a bunch of players from the Texas team, the Toros, who taunt him by saying the word "f----t" a lot. Then they make fun of Mike, and Kelly attacks one, and then he continues to run away crying. Aww. This was not helped by the fact that Dad, who was sitting next to me stealing my popcorn, telling me that Kelly gets hit by a bus while running and crying. I mean, I know he didn't, but that still was not a very nice thing to say, Dad, you jerk.
Mike finds Kelly in a pool hall (pool and air hockey and baseball? He's a triathlete!) and they have a talk--well, Kelly goes off about a bike Mike gave him the day he left, and how it's sitting untouched in the basement, and this is where I cry. A little. You know. Because it's emotional. Mike walks away after telling Kelly to ask himself whether he still would have looked Mike up if the Bears hadn't needed a coach.
Then they're all in the locker room before the game, wondering where Kelly is. He has not come back. They have to press on anyway, so when Mike asks them if anyone has anything to say, Tanner says "I do" and walks into the middle of the room. He then proceeds to paraphrase the movie Knute Rockne: All American's "Win one for the Gipper" speech by saying something about Timmy like (don't quote me): "Timmy couldn't be here with us today, but we should win this one for the Looper, because he'll know, and he'll be happy." This is when my heart melted with "awww"ness. Again.
And then, just in time, Kelly shows up and utters the line "What are we waiting for?" and the Bears, bolstered by the return of their star player, run out onto the field, ready to kick the Toros' butt and take jersey numbers.
"Toro," by the way, means "bull" in Spanish. Bulls and Bears? Is this a baseball movie or Wall Street?
I'm not going to give you a play-by-by, but let's just say the Bears are the Bears and are losing five-nothing at the end of the second inning (it's a four-inning game between major-league games). Also, in a funny aside, when Jimmy Feldman is up at bat, the catcher says "we got one of the Marx brothers up here," when in reality the actor who plays Jimmy, Brett Marx, is a grandon of Gummo Marx. Really.
However, before the Bears can go up again and reclaim some dignity by, you know, winning, the game is stopped--apparently, they are out of time. All the Bears shuffle off the field--except for Tanner, the shortstop who is taking "win one for the Looper" to the extreme and refusing to get off the field. When people are sent out to get him off, he starts running--and even throws a base at one of their groins. You gotta love Tanner Boyle.
Some of the Astros players come in an ask what's going on. Ahmad explains that they were supposed to have four innings but are only getting two. The player replies, "Aw, let 'em play." This seems to inspire Coach Leak, who runs out onto the field and, while not going as bat-dooky crazy as Tanner, starts chanting "Let them play, let them play!" over and over again, fist-pumping before fist-pumping was cool (see, Snooki? Mike Leak started it). And then, just when I thought my heart couldn't melt any more, Kelly runs out onto the field with his dad and starts chanting with him (I didn't cry here. I almost did. But I didn't.).
Soon, everybody else starts chanting (Tanner still evading capture in the outfield), leaving the people in charge baffled. Eventually, they decide to, yeah, let them play, and they do--again, no play by play, but: They actually win. Yep. They do it.
Then, walking back to the locker room after the big game, Kelly stops his dad and says that yeah, he still would have looked him up even if they hadn't needed a coach. Awww. Life is looking good for you and me.
And sometimes life imitates art: At the 2002 Major-League All Star Game, when it was announced that it would end in a tie if neither team scored before the end of the inning, the crowd began to chant "Let them play!" But it still ended in a 7-7 tie because both teams ran out of players. Oh, well, sometimes it's great just to have played.
But sometimes it's better to kick butt and win one for the Looper and reconcile with your dad and actually learn to pitch and have a cool theme song that, thirty years later, nobody will be able to find anywhere so they can download it for inspiration.
There's something telling me our time is now...
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Now That THAT'S Out of My System...
My birthday was Monday, and I promised I would write about it, so I will. I just had to get my feelings about that worm off my chest first because, seriously, who in their right minds would...
Sorry. I'll save it.
Anyway, my birthday was great. I got a lot of the stuff on my list, which is always good (in case you're wondering, I got The Outsiders book, dolphin earrings, Jane Eyre (shut the freak up), and The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (yeah, I liked it--so what?) and Breaking Away on DVD), and apparently I still have two coming in the mail...yay! Stretch it out!
We had pizza for dinner, but the biggest event was my, um, "special" cake.
Dad said he would do it, but I just thought he was messing with me. He does that sometimes. But this time, he messed with me by not messing with me, which, in retrospect, I should have totally seen coming.
I got a Harley-Davidson candle on my cake, which is always good, but there were two other things on my cake, um...kinda hard to explain...
See, my dad is laboring under the delusion that I'm in love with both Danny Bonaduce and Leif Garrett, which I am not. However, my dad (okay, and the rest of my family) thinks I am, and he said he would get their pictures scanned onto my birthday cake, a sheet cake. I was all, yeah, right. And he played serious, and said he was going to put the worst pictures he could find of them on there.
To make a long story short, I ended up with a cake with Leif Garrett's mug shot and a photo of Danny Bonaduce looking battered after a boxing match scanned onto it. And even though it was supposed to be chocolate but turned out to be vanilla, man, it was delicious and awkward at the same time. Deliciawkward? I just made up a new word! Suck it, Oxford English!
And another birthday wish comes true.
And if you don't believe me, you try chowing down on a slice of cake with a high/bloody guy's face on it. I'm just lucky my piece was Leif's shirt. My brother got a piece with most of Bonaduce's face on it, and lemme tell ya, he certainly had fun eating it, shoving it in my face and telling me to look at it. My dad gave me the photos he used for the cake as a "keepsake," and I took some of my own--I'm gonna put the photos up here one day. The ones of the cake itself are a near impossibility, because I don't have uploading equipment or anything, but I'll try my hardest.
Deliciawkward, I'm telling you.
I Know What They Were Feeling, But What Were They THINKING???
I have a bone to pick with you, Billy Bob Thorton and Richard Linklater.
And not just, like, a soup bone or a rawhide bone or something, but...if you killed a Gigantosaurus (real dinosaur, y'all), and chopped off the biggest bone in its body and multiplied by ten, that's pretty close to the size of the bone I have to pick with you.
What have you done?
By now, anybody who reads this thing knows of the intimate and extreme fan-love I have for 1976's The Bad News Bears. So it was to my horror that I discovered the version from 2005, from you two. I was thinking about it and wondered why it needed to be redone in the first place. And then I went back into some older magazines I have and found some stuff about it from when your guys' version came out, and it completely horrified me. My soul threw up and died. Please let me list my grievances (wait, how can you stop me? Ha! Too bad I couldn't stop you...)
First, it is called Bad News Bears. Was "The" not good enough for you, you buttholes? Second: Hooters?????? I was talking about that aspect with my dad the other day, and he asked if I would have objected to it if Walter Matthau (the ONLY Coach Buttermaker) had taken them to Hooters, and I realized where some people might misconstrue my reasoning. I do not object necessarily to the fact that he hauls the "Bears" to Hooters (I can't bear to write his team's name without quotes, much like "Celebrity" Rehab) in the remake. I have nothing personally against Hooters; they have not done anything to me (except, you know, involve themselves in this movie, so...); I do not hate them as a chain. And I would not begrudge the "Bears" their trip to the land of Hooters if it had been in the original movie. You see the difference there? A remake is supposed to be, you know, the original movie. WALTER MATTHAU DID NOT TAKE THEM TO HOOTERS!
Anything else, you ask? Heck yes. I'm all fired up now.
Marcia Gay Harden is his lawyer, who arranges for him to coach the team and who, oh, yeah, WASN'T A CHARACTER WHO APPEARED IN THE ORIGINAL MOVIE! And, kid-wise, who are Prem Lahiri, Garo Daragebrigadian, Matthew Hooper, and Joey Bullock? That sounds like what this movie is, pure bullock (I believe there's a not-so-nice word for it, too, only I can't say it here. Trying to keep it kid-friendly, y'all. Unlike some people...). MGH plays "Liz Whitewood," who was a councilman in the original, Toby Whitewood's father, and his name was Bob Whitewood. Nice to meetcha, Bob! And Greg Kinnear doesn't escape my wrath, either, or should I say, Ray Bullock--a.k.a. Roy Turner in the original. Okay, I get it now. Joey Bullock is Joey Turner. Got it. But it's still wrong.
And this...Don't get me STARTED on this, Linklater/Thorton, 'cause this is one of the worst transgressions in the whole damn pile of crap: the ruining of everybody's favorite seventies teenage badass, Kelly Leak. He had a super-groovy Harley that he tore across the field on in the original, played by the incompatible Jackie Earle Haley. Now I see pictures of him...looking like he's sixteen at least...with a skateboard. No! Teenage punks do not need skateboards, especially when they didn't have them in the first place! And why, oh why, does he look like a long-lost member of Hanson? My head is about to freaking explode, people!!! Gahhh!!!
And nothing against kids with eyepatches in wheelchairs, but...say it with me...there was none in the original!
And where's Regi, Toby, Jimmy, Rudy, Ogilvie? You know, half the team? I think they were kinda important, don't you?
And then I read an article about you, Richard Linklater, where you were talking about what to keep in and leave out of the movie. And you said that at a read-through, when Tanner Boyle's infamously politically incorrect line "All we got on this team is a bunch of Jews, spics, niggers, pansies, and a booger-eating moron" was read (and I quote you): "There were crickets. It's just not funny in today's world." And so it was left out.
Well, Mr. Linklater, if a part of a movie you are redoing isn't funny, maybe that's a clue right there. The point of a remake, as I said earlier, is to be really faithful to the original. Maybe you and Billy Bob should have thought about that, how the stuff from the ORIGINAL (God, how many times do I have to say it?) wasn't funny (to you and your fellow turds on the movie-making turd-pile, anyway), and added that to the fact that you changed like half the freaking movie, and just made your own. Sure, it still would've sucked and elicited comparisons and ultra-high amounts of derision (which it totally deserves), but at least you wouldn't have the chance to ruin a beloved movie for many, many people. Including those with blogs who can rant about it for posts on end (believe me, I went easy on you).
And also, Linklater/Thorton, just to let you know, when I, NiteOwl, have my owl children, adopted or not, they will be seeing the ORIGINAL version.
Yeah. I had to get that word in one more time.
ORIGINAL. ORIGINAL. ORIGINAL. ORIGINAL.
ORIGINAL...
Friday, June 17, 2011
Newzz
I have a few brief announcements I would like to make (and yeah, for anyone who goes to my school reading this, they will be shorter than Mr. Diamond’s stop-start daily afternoon announcements) before I forget, because forget I will, even if I write them down.
Happy early birthday (I know, I’m usually late) to my friend Erica (told you I would do this!), June 19th.
Happy early birthday to somebody you might actually know, your buddy NiteOwl—yes, it is my birthday, on June 20th, this Monday. I’ll be sure to give you a post about my presents…and the “special cake” my dad is supposedly getting for me (that evil laugh can’t be good....I think I’ll have somebody taste-test it first).
And, last but not least, a shout-out to all the dads out there. Happy Father’s Day…especially to those who have to deal with their daughter routinely blogging about them.
Have fun this weekend, everybody! And party responsibly. I need readers.
Some Rough News
I’ve been trying to avoid saying this for a few posts now, but I think that you guys need to know. Something horrible has happened.
Greg the Egg is dead.
There, I said it. He’s dead. Passed on. He threw a seven. Etc.
It happened a couple of weeks ago, but I'm just coming to grips with it now. I loved that little guy. But I guess all good things have to come to an end eventually, and this one has. He cracked, and maybe that wasn't fatal, but he smelled like a dead bear rotting inside a volcanic crater. Even I, with my superhuman abilities--they're just hiding--could not handle that for more than, oh, two seconds. So I had to throw him out and, unlike the doughnut, he was irretrievable.
So goodbye, Greg the Egg. Fare thee well. May we all meet Greg in the Easter Basket Far Away someday.
*insert "Taps" here*
An Urgent Message From Second Chance Blog
As you can tell by my last post, school is out for summer, and this brings many things with it, the most notable being freedom. But with all that freedom, there comes more danger, especially of something you may have heard of called “crack.” Kids—and adults—have more time to run around and do stuff, and in that free time they may fall prey to this vicious problem. This is a heartfelt warning: I have seen many people become a victim of this problem, and each time it just affects me more and more, so I thought I had to share this with my faithful readers. Crack is horrible, and so many people are harmed by it every day.
This summer, make sure you keep yourself safe from this, all right? Stay clean, my friends. I don't want any of you to misuse the responsibility that comes with your summer fun and ruin your lives. Even "just once" can destroy your life, steal everything away from you in a moment. So please, pull your pants up high or buy a belt.
Please.
School's Out For Summer, School's Out Forever!
Well, more the first part and less the second--I have to wait two more years for that, but only two, hooray!--, but still. Yesterday was a momentous event, just like it was the year before, and the year before, etc., and I only have one thing to say about that:
FREEDOM!!!!!
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
30 Things That Make Me Happy--Another List, By NiteOwl
- Getting a chance to write my stories without being interrupted
- Chocolate
- Breaking Away
- The Bad News Bears (yes, all three movies)
- Playing with a baby and/or puppy
- Hanging out with friends and/or family
- "I Think I Love You"
- The Partridge freaking Family bus!
- Watching World's Dumbest on a hot day with the air on
- Blogging
- Hearing a song I haven't in a while from beginning to end
- Rereading a book I love, like Jumper or The Outsiders
- Getting my homework done early
- Surprise pizza
- Going to the beach/swimming in the ocean
- Re-watching old Human Targets (as long as I don't think about that they're all I have now)
- Finishing a story and actually liking how it turned out
- When I think something I wrote is absolute crap but someone unexpectedly compliments me on it
- Random presents!
- Lying in bed and listening to the radio when I know I don't have to be anywhere else later
- The Rolling Stones--anywhere, any time
- Waking up to Elvis Duran and the Morning Show on Q102
- Re-watching a movie I love
- Finding something I love on TV just in time
- Beating writer's block with a hammer
- Feeling like I'm actually doing something worthwhile with my life
- Discovering a new favorite thing
- Going on the computer
- When a plan comes together
- Random other things that make me happy during life that come along at exactly the right time!
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Come On Get Happy!
This post has no real substance to it, just something I felt I needed to remind you of. Everybody needs to be happy at least once and a while! You can't be all doom-and-gloom all the time, because if you are then you're doom-and-gloom all the time. And you can't let yourself be afraid to be happy for some twisted pathological reason, because that's how serial killers are born (fact: Son of Sam was never told any jokes when he was younger. Fact: I don't know what "fact" means, exactly). I'm not talking about being happy when you hear "Firework" on the radio for the eightieth time today (I don't like that song much, either. And, fact, too much concentrated Katy Perry can literally make your brain explode, and not in the fun way that the Rolling Stones and The Black Keys can) or when you manage to drive to work on fumes in the gas tank (although, on the last one, good for you).
Everybody needs a "happy day" where they do all their favorite fun things and don't let anyone bother them. For me, this includes writing, eating chocolate, blogging (duh!), hanging out with my friends, and/or seeing a rabbit or two out my bedroom window. But you don't have to force a whole day of fun, either: You should manage to take the time to find the fun in the everyday, too, like when I saw a deer running in the woods on the way to school on the bus last week.
I have fun listening to the happy, bouncy song "I Think I Love You" (don't dis, you love it too, you punk) and just listening to the words and stuff, or when I bite a piece of chocolate cake and flavor explodes in my mouth, or I finally--finally--figure out a complicated math equation and X fits just right, like porridge, or when I write through a particularly thick chunk of writer's block and come up with something better than I have written ever before.
So, here's what Doctor NiteOwl prescribes: Have a "happy day" or, if that's not technologically possible for some reason or another, find the happiness in small, everyday things, like retro TV shows or YouTube videos of baby pandas and kittens and people doing something dumb. Take with a glass of soda (shake it first and laugh at the bubbles) and enjoy!
"I think I love you..."
Everybody needs a "happy day" where they do all their favorite fun things and don't let anyone bother them. For me, this includes writing, eating chocolate, blogging (duh!), hanging out with my friends, and/or seeing a rabbit or two out my bedroom window. But you don't have to force a whole day of fun, either: You should manage to take the time to find the fun in the everyday, too, like when I saw a deer running in the woods on the way to school on the bus last week.
I have fun listening to the happy, bouncy song "I Think I Love You" (don't dis, you love it too, you punk) and just listening to the words and stuff, or when I bite a piece of chocolate cake and flavor explodes in my mouth, or I finally--finally--figure out a complicated math equation and X fits just right, like porridge, or when I write through a particularly thick chunk of writer's block and come up with something better than I have written ever before.
So, here's what Doctor NiteOwl prescribes: Have a "happy day" or, if that's not technologically possible for some reason or another, find the happiness in small, everyday things, like retro TV shows or YouTube videos of baby pandas and kittens and people doing something dumb. Take with a glass of soda (shake it first and laugh at the bubbles) and enjoy!
"I think I love you..."
Don't Call It a Comeback...It's a Work of Art
I have to admit that I think the art of the comeback is a dying one. I mean, think about it. A good comeback has to be good, smart, and fast, but comprehensible, and not inane, unoriginal, or annoying. If you're like me, you always come up with the perfect comeback...five hours later.
This whole thing about the "art of the comeback" occurred to me yesterday, around quarter-to-eight-ish. What? I like to be specific.
I have somewhat of an acid tongue, according to my friends (one of them asked me to come up with some insults for them, and no, I'm not kidding, because I was so good at it), and occasionally I can come up with some seriously good shizzle on the fly (like the time my dad made a comment about his "guns," meaning his arm muscles, and I said right back, "Too bad they're loaded with blanks." He even admitted it was good, so that means it had to be seriously brilliant.)
I have found a couple good examples of comebacks, and one of them is from Winston Churchill (if you don't know who he is...shame on you). He was drunk, and a woman walked up to him and said, "Mr. Prime Minister," (know what he was yet?), "you're drunk." And he looks at her and says, "Yes, I am. But in the morning I'll be sober, and you'll still be ugly." Oooooohhhhhhhh, snap!
Another example came from watching World's Dumbest Drivers 9 on truTV last night with my family, which is what I mean by "around eight-ish." There was a cop who pulled a woman over for speeding, and she said that she didn't think they gave pretty girls tickets. And he says, completely deadpan, "We don't." He pauses and then says, "Sign here." You just got served, lady!
And can I just make a public service announcement before I go along my merry way here? Have fun with your smart mouth, if you have one. If you don't, don't force it. It will not end well for you, trust me. And please, for all you juvenile-minded morons out there: "Your mom" is never a good comeback, no matter what. So please, for the love of all that's holy, spew out all the venom-laced comebacks you can, as long as they're deserved, because otherwise you're just being a gigantic arsehole, and you're going to get punched by someone. It might not be right away, you might have to wait a little bit or a few years, but if you are an arsehole and ruin comebacks for everyone or dare to utter the words "your mom" without a sentence like "makes the nicest chocolate cakes I've ever tasted" or "sure does like the Partridge family" following it, you will be punched by someone somewhere. Comeback karma, baby. Comeback karma.
Please. For the children. Don't do it.
This whole thing about the "art of the comeback" occurred to me yesterday, around quarter-to-eight-ish. What? I like to be specific.
I have somewhat of an acid tongue, according to my friends (one of them asked me to come up with some insults for them, and no, I'm not kidding, because I was so good at it), and occasionally I can come up with some seriously good shizzle on the fly (like the time my dad made a comment about his "guns," meaning his arm muscles, and I said right back, "Too bad they're loaded with blanks." He even admitted it was good, so that means it had to be seriously brilliant.)
I have found a couple good examples of comebacks, and one of them is from Winston Churchill (if you don't know who he is...shame on you). He was drunk, and a woman walked up to him and said, "Mr. Prime Minister," (know what he was yet?), "you're drunk." And he looks at her and says, "Yes, I am. But in the morning I'll be sober, and you'll still be ugly." Oooooohhhhhhhh, snap!
Another example came from watching World's Dumbest Drivers 9 on truTV last night with my family, which is what I mean by "around eight-ish." There was a cop who pulled a woman over for speeding, and she said that she didn't think they gave pretty girls tickets. And he says, completely deadpan, "We don't." He pauses and then says, "Sign here." You just got served, lady!
And can I just make a public service announcement before I go along my merry way here? Have fun with your smart mouth, if you have one. If you don't, don't force it. It will not end well for you, trust me. And please, for all you juvenile-minded morons out there: "Your mom" is never a good comeback, no matter what. So please, for the love of all that's holy, spew out all the venom-laced comebacks you can, as long as they're deserved, because otherwise you're just being a gigantic arsehole, and you're going to get punched by someone. It might not be right away, you might have to wait a little bit or a few years, but if you are an arsehole and ruin comebacks for everyone or dare to utter the words "your mom" without a sentence like "makes the nicest chocolate cakes I've ever tasted" or "sure does like the Partridge family" following it, you will be punched by someone somewhere. Comeback karma, baby. Comeback karma.
Please. For the children. Don't do it.
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