This is sure to be very good and totally insightful, much like Chappelle’s new special, “The Closer”
Alright, look– obviously everyone has been suspiciously quiet on the recent Dave Chappelle controversy because they’re a bunch of sheep, and as a result, I’m going to have to be the one to weigh in on it and pontificate. There aren’t enough people out there who care about free speech enough to stand up to Big Trans, and it’s got everyone scared, man. Truly, only a martyr, a scholar, a philosopher-king such as myself is the only one capable and brave enough to weigh in on this very nuanced, multifaceted issue about a man who feels like you’re not as oppressed as he is….or was? Wait, I’ve lost track of the line of Oppression Credit, are black people or trans people currently more oppressed? What about black trans people?! Oh my God, what am I doing writing this? I may cause a Deep Thought singularity and the world might collapse into a black hole.
Much like our comedy God-Emperor, Mr. Chappelle, I haven’t produced any new content for a number of years; the world has been deprived of my genius while I’ve gone into hiding in an unnamed African continent to collect my thoughts and recuperate from the pressure of my blog writing success. It may not be as good as you remember my content being, but hopefully you’ll keep telling yourself that I was a genius back in my prime. “Oh, Really Bad Reviews isn’t as funny as he used to be, but you can’t deny that his Big Bang Theory post back in the day was inspired and groundbreaking”, you’ll all inevitably say. I’m also hoping that my prior successes and subsequent absence will allow me to coast by on your goodwill for me and how great I used to be. So in a way, I know what Chappelle Tha God is going through.
Dave Chappelle, 2019, on the set of the pilot episode of his game show “Trans Or Not?”
In September of 2021, I had two of my fingers partially amputated in a horrific industrial maintenance accident, so, also like Chappelle– I’ve returned to comedy, mechanical jumpsuit in hand, ready to produce more content about how much better I am than you. Don’t criticize me though; I’m part of a marginalized group of people now, and no matter how offensive and weirdly specific this blog post may be towards a certain demographic that I’m prepared to talk about for 20 minutes in each of my 4 upcoming posts, remember; you can’t disagree with me or you’re cancelling me. I will then claim “CANCELLATION, CORPORATE INTERESTS”, and any and all criticisms you have towards my weird fixation on a certain subset of humanity are rendered null and void by the Supreme Court of Comedy as per. Lenny Bruce vs. The United States (1957). As much as I may sound like a grumpy, old, rich boomer complaining about Cancel Culture and how sensitive everyone is these days, the truth is, actually, that Big Trans is trying to tell me what I can and what I cannot say. DON’T SAY THAT. YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO SAY WHAT I CAN AND CAN’T SAY.
Hannah Gadbsy, the CEO of Trans People, giving a Ted Talk on how best to cancel people
Ahem…anyway; if any of you had actually bothered to listen to Chappelle’s four newest specials of varying quality, you would hear Dave close out the special by saying that he used to have a trans friend, guys. How could he hate them? He used to know one! Everyone knows this is a time-tested method for deflecting criticism of anything you might say that could be inaccurately…or accurately construed as hurtful/offensive.
You guys just don’t get it, man! Comedians are the last TRUE philosophers speaking truth to power! Whether it be Joe Rogan mounting his 400th stool in a dazzling, Shakespeare-esque mockery of Bruce Jenner’s masculinity being chiseled away by crazy bitches, or Tony Hinchecliffe calling an Asian comic a chink after their set was over– someone needs to dismantle these powerful people who have had it too good for too long! Someone, anyone, needs to articulate to people that, actually, masks are for pussies, because at the end of the day,even if you contract a virus that’s killed more Americans than World War 1 and World War 2 combined, there’s nothing to fear. You can simply hire a private doctor to come out to your compound and throw the kitchen sink at it. Pay that doctor to conquer your inner bitch in the comfort of your own home, instead of dying jobless and alone in a hospital with no family or friends around!
Boy, have I got an exciting new treatment for you!
You social justice warriors don’t realize what repeatedly being cancelled over and over again is doing to men like Chappelle. All Dave did was interrupt his 4 comedy specials with brief, 20 minute TED Talks about trans people, and you cancelled him for it! Now all he has is 65 million dollars, Netflix defending him, the ability to speak on any platform he wants, his name in every headline, an army of Redditors who will defend him to their dying breath, and countless offers to go on every talk show or podcast in the world, BUT NO FILM FESTIVALS WANT TO BUY HIS DOCUMENTARY. I hope you’re happy with yourself, “alphabet people”, because you have no idea what it’s like to be socially shunned and marginalized like him.
[All sarcasm aside, I would like to note that I have been a fan of Chappelle’s comedy for a very long time. Since his return, however, I feel that either I’ve outgrown his material, or that he has. I’m a firm believer in freedom of expression, and that no topic is off-limits in comedy, but it needs to be funny. Be clever about it and actually have something to say, and people (even the subjects of the joke) will laugh. It’s possible to have a bit about trans people that both trans people and non-trans people will find funny. I have no problem inherently with someone having a bit about trans people, but just as the public doesn’t get to dictate what Chappelle’s intent was with his jokes, Chappelle doesn’t get to dictate whether or not someone else gets to feel hurt or targeted by it. When your jokes, thoughts and opinions are put out into the public eye, you have to anticipate that people will hear them and react to them in their own ways, and are free to express their own thoughtsin return. Likewise, I fully expect some readers to be angered by my obvious, on-the-nose satire, and just know that if you disagree with me, you are welcome to your opinion, BUT I WILL NOT BE SUMMONED, and also, you have to admit that Hannah Gadsby isn’t funny.Also, I agree with you. Whatever you think, that’s what I think and I agree with you. Anyways, send all your death threats to http://instagram.com/reallybradjokes or http://facebook.com/guywhohatesmovies]
The Star Wars universe has been somewhat of a mixed bag over the last 20 years, the prequels accepted with nonchalance by kids growing up with them, and almost universally hated by existing adult Star Wars fan at their time of release. Today, virtually all three prequels are running jokes all over the internet. I’ll admit to being somewhat of a fairweather Star Wars fan myself– my excitement for new content has waffled between utter indifference, off-the-charts hype, and preemptive disappointment depending on the subject matter and director of each film. Between the varying degrees of quality in Rebels, The Clone Wars, The Force Awakens, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Rogue One, The Last Jedi, and the prequels– it’s hard to tell if any one person (George Lucas included) actually knows what the hell is going on in this extended Universe.
Now, here we are in 2019, and despite all my skepticism, I found it hard to contain my excitement for “The Mandalorian”. The more I learned about the cast and story pre-release, the more excited I got. Pedro Pascal as the titular character, Taika Waititi as a Bounty Droid (go see ‘What We Do In the Shadows’, Thor: Ragnarok, Jojo Rabbit, and The Hunt for the Wilderpeople if you haven’t), Werner Herzog, Bill Burr, Nick Nolte, and Carl Weathers, with Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni at the helm? Favreau had an integral role in making the Marvel Cinematic Universe what it is today, and Filoni was responsible for some of the more beloved Star Wars animated content of recent memory. In my mind, the only way this could go wrong was if the Disney executives and Kathleen Kennedy stepped in to dictate creative control and set mandates for Favreau for and co.
I have altered the Star Wars universe, pray I do not alter it further.
I’m here today to tell you that my midochlorian hype levels are even more elevated after watching “The Mandalorian” Chapter One several times. I wasn’t sure what type of story to expect from the series, but the cinematography, sets, costumes, and tone all appeared to be what I had always wanted in a Star Wars story. We’ve had this incredible world to explore for 42 years, and for over four decades, we’ve gotten stories that more or less revolve around the same ten characters or so. Jesus, we’ve got the ability to travel the far reaches of this massive, fantastical universe, and all anyone gives a shit about is the Skywalker Family and friends? For me, what made the Star Wars universe interesting was never the Space Hippy Knight-Wizards with Laser Swords versus The Evil British Space Nazis, it was all the technology and alien species and intergalactic travel– it was the rest of the universe that fascinated me and sparked imagination and wonder in me. “The Mandalorian”, so far, seems interested in fleshing that universe out on a micro level, as opposed to a macro. Of course, I don’t want to see the Star Wars universe too fleshed out and zoomed in…it wouldn’t exactly be sexy to picture the Mandalorian rubbing the bridge of his helmet, sighing as he fills out paperwork for a second mortgage to help pay for his shitty spaceship loan, arguing with his wife (also in a helmet) about how they can’t feed their little Mandalorian kids because the Empire collapsed.
Chapter One, as the first episode is simply titled, revolves more or less around two bounties The Mandalorian pursues. The first is establishing his character and how he operates, and the second is the Inciting Incident that will likely kick off the rest of the season (and possibly series). I was happy to see that the show has a smaller, grittier, “Cowboy Bebop” or “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” feel to it. When we first meet our antihero, he’s not an un-killable badass supersoldier, he’s just a lone gunslinger Bounty Hunter with barely any money to his name, trying to make a living in a post-Empire world. His Mandalorian armor is piecemeal, his ship a rusty bucket-of-bolts, Millenium Falcon-style. He’s cool and collected, but more than once, he finds himself in situations he’s not in control of. I worried that his character would lean too much on the quiet, man-on-a-mission trope. However, he’s not a silent badass; he speaks often and when he needs to, offering the occasional quip or snide remark that thankfully never veers into forced, eye-rolling humor territory. He’s a believable character from a nearly-extinct group of clandestine warriors; bounty hunting more because his skill set intersects with his financial necessity than out of ideological motivations.
A Fistful of Imperial Credits
Finally, we’re given a Star Wars story about a character who isn’t a force-sensitive Chosen One, a Skywalker/Solo, or who’s trying to blow up a Death Star. We can focus on the character and the world-building, instead of having our expectations forcibly… ahem, subverted every ten minutes. We get a surprising amount of character development and expression from our protagonist, considering he’s a nameless, faceless guy who never takes off his helmet (must be sucking down that RepMed VitaPaste underneath the mask); Pedro Pascal is able to imbue a surprising amount of substance and personality in the Mandlorian. When he’s pinned down or surrounded, we get to see him use the various gadgets at his disposal (displayed by the Mandalorian bounty hunters of old) in strategic ways, lending a more fleshed-out, James-Bond-meets-Shane feel to this character. He’s just a man, and as such, he has to think on his toes and adapt to situations, or rely on others for help.
Speaking of “Shane”, the Western vibe is very heavy in the first episode, and I’m curious as to whether this will be the tone for the entire season or just the first episode. We spend half the runtime in saloons, city alleys, deserts, farms. We see Mando struggle to “break a horse” (in a manner of speaking), he helps an isolated farmer whose peace is interrupted by the local bad guys, there’s even a big shootout in what literally looks like the Star Wars equivalent of a small Western town, mercenaries and thugs staged on the roofs and popping out of alleys. There’s very little Empire presence, so instead of Stormtroopers, our bad guys are rocking dusters and gunslinging with their Star Wars six-shooter blaster pistols. There’s no Death Star, or Starkiller Base, or Death Star Killer Super Awesome Planet Destroyer, just a good ol’ fashioned shootout between a motivated Space Cowboy hungry for a paycheck, some alien goons, and an insanely fun Bounty Droid voiced by Taika Waititi with a hilarious penchant for suicide. The main plot point of Chapter One, a mysterious bounty dispensed by a nefarious benefactor, ends with a very surprising reveal and a glimpse of the tender side of the Mandalorian that I won’t spoil, but I’m very curious to see how this fleshes out in later episodes.
Initiate ‘Reach for the Sky’ sequence
The set design, costumes, score, cinematography, and casting are all top-notch (to be expected, considering the show’s ludicrous $15,000,000-an-episode budget). The mix of practical and special effects blends fairly seamlessly, making it easier to suspend your disbelief and focus on what’s taking place. Even as a kid in 1999, I remember thinking during a lot of The Phantom Menace “this looks like shit”, so it’s incredibly refreshing to see a return to a lot of the practical effects and costumes that helped give the original trilogy its charm. While I was cautiously optimistic before today, after several viewings of the first episode, I’m left satisfied yet wanting more, which is exactly what every woman I’ve ever slept with has said. HEYYYY
8.5/10
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“The Crusades are a popular and funny meme on the internet” is not a phrase I thought I’d ever write, but here we are in 2019 where nothing makes sense– The Simulation is wildly off the rails at this point. Elon Musk is like a real-life Tony Stark…who got busted for “smoking” weed on a podcast, Dr. Dre quietly lost a trademark lawsuit to an actual Doctor, Barbara Streisand fucking cloned her dead dog, Hobby Lobby was somehow in possession of 3,800 smuggled artifacts, and Donald Trump is the President of the United States of America and everything is just….fine? I mean, what even is 2019? What’s next? Will Nicolas Cage actually steal the Declaration of Independence in real life? Will this finally be the year that aliens land and tell us that we are on a Universe-wide reality show called “Earthlings Will Believe Anything”? Truly, nothing seems off limits anymore.
Honestly, seems plausible to me at this point.
Amidst all of the craziness of the last several years, there’s been a growing, concerning trend on various forms of social media and YouTube that I’ve noticed, as I’m sure you have as well. I’m not sure what to call it, so for now I’ll just go with Anti-Outrage Outrage Media, or Manufactured Outrage. It it, essentially, various forms of entertainers taking small incidents and blowing them up to stir up controversy among their followers, or just flat-out creating arguments that they can mock the opposing side for. I, myself, fell into this fallacious thinking several years back, and spent a lot of time thinking about how “SJW’s” are offended by everything, and are ruining our society with their constant policing of everyone’s behavior and speech. If you listen to podcasts, or follow a couple of major YouTubers, I’m sure you already know what I’m talking about. As a matter of fact, you may even be preparing to take offense to this very article, right this minute.
I first noticed this trend with the “Starbucks Christmas cup massacre” in 2015, wherein almost all of my Liberal friends were posting about and mocking how offended literally all of the Conservatives were about the fact that Starbucks’ cups said “Happy Holidays” with a red cup, instead of Merry Christmas. I must admit, I was pleased to imagine (at the time) how triggered all of the right-wing folks must have been; trembling with rage and muttering to themselves as they bitterly attempted to enjoy their cup of black coffee, refusing to water it down with any “faggy” shit like…y’know, flavor or creamer.
The thing is, here in the real world, I never heard a word out of my various Conservative co-workers, social media friends, gym buddies, and real-life friends about Starbucks’ “War on Christmas”. I lived, after all, in a heavily republican state. Yet, they all seemed content to go about their business, buying the occasional cup of coffee for $7, and nary a peep was heard. In fact, when I brought up the fact that there was a “huge outrage”, one of my right-wing co-workers just shrugged and noted that nobody in his newsfeed had posted about it. That was the first time in my adult life that I stopped and considered for a moment, that perhaps the media was making a mountain out of a molehill, and that maybe the opposing side had a few vocal outliers, but by-and-large were not quite as miffed as they were made out to be. Recently, in preparation for writing this…stream-of-consciousness, as it were, I tried to research the initial places that the actual outrage stemmed from, and all I could find were a handful of tweets with 5, 10, maybe 20 likes on them. Maybe one or two re-tweets. Not quite the Fire-and-Pitchforks mob we were told about.
Conservatives, apparently.
There are dozens, maybe hundreds of articles, thinkpieces, and books about how we’re “Addicted to Outrage”, but I’m positing that in the last several years, the pendulum has swung the other way, and folded in on itself, creating an addiction to being outraged by Outrage supermassive black hole of a paradox. Paul Joseph Watson, Tomi Lahren, Black Pigeon Speaks, Sargon of Akkad, The Quartering, No Bullshit, Gavin McInnes– honestly, I could go on for pages listing the “red-pilled” people riding this wave to more followers and views, telling their audience what they already believe. My example with Starbucks was illustrative of the Left’s version of this, and you may have noticed that all of the names I just listed above were of the “Anti-SJW”, mostly alt-right variety. If you check out any of their content outside of whatever new thing they think the “SJW’s” are outraged about, well…there’s not much there. On any given day, 75% of those “content creators” are going to be talking about the same topic as everyone else for that day, no matter how insignificant the actual outrage is. It may have been just 5 tweets to start with, but with the magic of selective video editing and a hungry fanbase salivating for any fresh kills on those Libtards, well; hell, you could make a video out of just about anything. Fuck it– even if you can’t find anything, you can just imagine something the libs would be triggered by, and talk about it anyways. You see, it’s extremely easy to discredit your opponent’s argument when you’ve literally dreamed it up yourself, conjuring it out of thin air.
These guys (I’m using “guys” in the colloquial to refer to a group of people, SNOWFLAKE!) can take any slow news day, and paint a picture of a nightmarish, dystopian hellscape. The Edgy Internet Boi’s talk about themselves as if they’re tough, factual, objectivists who are never bothered by anything, laughing at how triggered the left is, and yet simultaneously, they portray a world where they’re all Anne Franks, huddled in the attic from the oppressive soyboys. One can just imagine the Feminazi Gestapo patrolling the streets in their BDSM outfits with their trans 6-year-old’s, walking their cucked non-binary boyfriends on leashes, policing everyone’s use of pronouns, mandating gay sex through the Federal government as the Gay Air Force fly planes that spray Soy chemtrails into the atmosphere, so as to sterilize all the but the most virile of Cis-Het men. One shudders to imagine… and don’t get me started on politically correct corporate office environments! When will this bloodshed end?!
“Welcome to Mittens RomniCorp, employee C-137. Please enter the Assimilation Chamber for your mandatory ‘Sensitivity Training’.”
As far as I can surmise, humans have been very good at this sort of selective thinking and cognitive dissonance for a very long time. Even as far back as Aristotle, philosophers and rhetoricians have been referencing the “straw man” fallacy, though not by that name. It’s unclear where the actual origin of the phrase began. Throughout the course of history, many brave Straw Men have lost their lives in the line of duty, representing an argument nobody ever made, with a “So what you’re saying is…” or a “So you think criminals should have more rights than citizens?!” With the rise of the internet worldwide, however, the Straw Men have been getting massacred in record numbers, hitherto undreamt of (thanks for that turn of phrase, Doctor Strange.). The loss of non-existent lives is staggering. It’s as if Thanos snapped his fingers, and wiped out half of the arguments in the universe that never actually happened in an instant.
Charlatans and Molehill Mountaineers have also existed as long as political discourse has been around, and certainly as long as people have felt passionately about certain hot-button topics. In modern times, however, the ability to instantly connect with people who feel the same as you has given rise to Digital Lynch Mobs, weaponizing autism on levels that shouldn’t even be possible, giving a following to people who would otherwise be dismissed as the local drunk down at the bar. People all over the world genuinely walk around, day-to-day, convinced that the ten people who blew up their Keurigs for pulling ad time on Hannity are indicative of the entire conservative movement. Go search Twitter right now for the hashtag #BoycottKeurig and see what you find. I’ll even wait. I’ll give you…5 minutes, go ahead. Ok, back? Everything I could find were just smug, self-satisfied liberals like Jim Jefferies mocking the notion that people were dumb enough to destroy something they already paid for (Jefferies, by the way, is baffling as a Liberal darling, considering his jokes about how ” I would fly a fucking plane into a building too if you took bacon and beer away from me” Pretty Islamophobic there, ya cheeky cunt.)
Pictured: a bunch of triggered snowflakes
Saturday Night Live has also descended into a barely tolerable vortex of political skits on a level they haven’t approached in the past. They’ve always had sketches about politics, and some of them are still famous and beloved, like Will Ferrell’s Bush impersonation. In fact, as a teenager, SNL was one of my favorite shows on television, and is part of the reason I got into writing comedy to begin with. However, in the past, the skits felt lighthearted and less malicious when they would mock politicians like Bush; and even included taking shots at people “on their side”, such a Bill Clinton. These days, you can practically hear the cast patting themselves on the back for that “epic burn” on Trump that night with their Alec Baldwin skit. When they do venture into portraying Hillary Clinton, it’s always with a wink and a nudge, implying that she’s a down-to-earth, regular person like you and I. Give me a fucking break.
On the other side of the aisle, Fox News whips up fearmongering sugar into cotton candy stories to pitch to their paranoid Baby Boomer audience about how trans folks or Muslims are going to start molesting your kids in the bathroom, as if…I don’t know, I guess somehow they could just diddle a child, and when the police arrive, wave their “Transgender Woman” I.D around as a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card?
“Sorry ma’am, the Federal Government grants immediate protection to all transgender people and Muslims, regardless of crimes committed. Our hands are tied here. That’s bureaucracy for ya!”
They’ll bemoan the Snowflake Generation and participation trophies, but ya’know…I don’t ever remember demanding a trophy when I sucked at flag football as a kid. Participation trophies were given out because retarded parents couldn’t accept that their retarded offspring were not, in fact, special.
Fox’s younger sibling is the “alt-right” section of YouTube, mentioned at the beginning of this article. These are people who can find issue with anything as it pertains to real or imagined attacks on straight, white, men. These are people who cry incessantly about their “First Amendment rights”, never stopping to consider that the First Amendment merely prevents Congress from writinglaws that prohibit your right to practice religion or express yourself– it is NOT a magic phrase you utter to grant yourself blanket immunity from any and all criticism.
If media involves or heavily features women or minorities, to them, it’s a “forced political agenda” being shoved down their throats. Really? Seems to me like it’s just a fictional story that you’re injecting your political bias into, but okay. What even is the problem with diversity in a fictional story, anyways? Hell, Stefan Molyneux can’t even review Disney’s Frozen without it literally devolving into a 40 minute rant about how women ruin society. Whether it be collective outrage by the “Never Triggered” crowd over a Gillette commercial imploring the good men to police the scumbags (if Gillette has offended you, perhaps consider switching to Tampax or Venus), Captain Marvel being “feminist propaganda”, Rey from Star Wars being a “Mary Sue”, The Last Jedi being political propaganda because Holdo had purple hair (I mean, really? It’s Magic Space Hippies vs. Evil Space Nazis, why are you identifying with- oooh…), Battlefield V being “SJW bullshit” or “not historically accurate” because the trailer featured a female amputee serving in World War 2, there’s no fictional piece of media that can’t be drummed up into a full-on fucking meltdown by the blizzard of Snowflakes who claim that everyone else is “triggered”. Battlefield V did suck ass, for what it’s worth, but not because of that.
A Mary Sue is trained by her predecessor, a Male-y Sue.
All of this has certainly been happening for longer than YouTubers and 24-hour news cycles have existed, but in August of 20017, Charlottesville hosted a “Unite The Right” rally featuring notable celebrities of the “new Right”. Among their numbers were YouTubers like Baked Alaska (who, by the way, used to work for fucking Buzzfeed, bit of a turncoat there, huh?) and high-status members like Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler (the two of whom organized the event). Some real gems of society’s gutters such as former Grand Wizard David Duke, notable white supremacist Christopher Cantwell were also present, and ultimately, the rally culminated in the death of one Heather Heyer when she was struck by a vehicle being driven by James Alex Fields. This was, by the way, a rally to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee.
It featured chants of ” Jews will not replace us!”, “Gas the kikes, race war now“, “Hitler did nothing wrong“, “Blood and Soil” (a Nazi Party phrase), and “White lives matter, Black lives splatter” (charming). Scattered throughout were actual, real-life swastika flags, Black Sun symbols (another notable Nazi symbol), various Nordic runes that were re-purposed by the Nazi party, the list goes on, you get the idea. But you don’t have to take my word for it, there is tons of footage of the entire event.
The “Black Sun”
Hey…wait a minute, where have I seen that before?
And wouldn’t ya know it, the Human Piece of Shit himself, the man who struck Heather Heyer with his vehicle, sporting yet another “Not Nazi but actually kinda Nazi” logo.
All of this was, of course, spun to be horribly skewed by alt-right YouTubers, conjuring up conspiracy theories that Heyer died of a heart-attack unrelated to the fucking vehicle mowing her down. Sargon of Akkad is one of the cheery lads who floated this theory around on Youtube. Christopher Cantwell, an out-and-out Neo Nazi who was followed and filmed by VICE during the rally, retorted afterwards that “No one on our side died, so I’d call that a win”. I joked around earlier about the mass slaughter of Strawmen, but this time, a real person was killed. Heather Heyer was a human being, with a family, and an entire life lived before the events of the Unite The Right rally, that was thrown away by a man who became convinced that she was his enemy through various forms of social media.
People like James Alex Fields Jr. likely never “checked the work” of the YouTubers and influencers he was being converted by. He was most likely not checking their sources when they would implore him that the people who want a statue of Robert E. Lee taken down were out for his blood. He became “red-pilled” on his laptop, listening to some charlatan spout nonsense (and, it’s worth noting, was unsympathetic to her death even in incarceration). How different is this, exactly, from the Islamic terrorists who become radicalized by propaganda online? (The alt-right, by the way, are not shy about their distaste for Muslims.)
At the end of the day, it’s not impossible to cast off your prejudices and preconceived notions. Like I stated previously, I myself used to buy into the Outrage Media circle of podcasts and YouTubers, albeit very mildly. If you find yourself getting worked up, angry about the new Ghostbusters movie, furious that “blacks can say it but we can’t”, or like you’re primed to get into an argument with someone over something they may not actually believe, please just take a break. If you’re ready to grab a bat and head down to the march to jump in the fray with normal Conservatives who you believe to be Nazi’s, stop and think. Go watch a funny movie with no political message, call a friend and talk about literally anything other than politics. Better yet, go out and talk to people in normal, day-to-day life who are different from you, and hopefully realize that they’re actually just people, like you, who want to live a safe, productive, happy life free from tyranny or threats of death, comfortable in the knowledge that society accepts them for who they are. We can all disagree on certain hot-button issues without it being the end of civilization. Meet someone outside of your comfort zone, and find common interests. And after all that, please report to the Library of Congress for your federally-mandated sodomy that was written into the Gay Agenda last year.
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Disclaimer: I’m going to vaguely discuss some key plot elements of Season 2 while simultaneously trying not to actually delve into spoilers.
Season 2 of Netflix’s Punisher is, well…a total mess. I was originally quite happy with the first few portrayals of Frank Castle, starting with Daredevil and Season 1 of The Punisher. It was interesting to see The Punisher juxtaposed against Matt Murdock’s idea of justice, and to introduce Frank as what he is– an antihero. His idea of justice doesn’t involve prison cells, it involves brutal murder, and he is the Judge, Jury, and Executioner. He leaves no room for negotiation or subtlety, Frank Castle Philosophy 101 is not a debate class. While I’m not the biggest fan of Jon Bernthal’s twitchy, neurotic, mumble-whispering acting, I’ve thus far liked the core of his character and the plots it involved. That is…until now.
Punisher season 2 is 13 one-hour-long episodes, but it feels like 26. The plot is a jumbled mess of, in no particular order:
A blackmail plot involving a gay senator
A billionaire, Christian…Mafia family?
A Russian, former Nazi, bible-quoting, self-flogging pseudo-villain whose power is…he chokes people
A toxic, Harley Quinn bullshit love affair between a battered, amnesiac villain and his Evil Villain therapist whose superpower is psychoanalysis
The single worst fucking Homeland Security agent ever portrayed in cinema
A bunch of military veterans who decide to pick up robbing businesses because…they miss the military and have P.T.S.D
A suspicious amount of Tylenol usage, bordering on…massive product placement. Seriously, there’s like 7 different instances where somebody takes or asks for Tylenol (“Punish your headache with Tylenol XXXtra Strength! Fuck your skull so hard it never hurts again!”)
To make matters worse, every episode is such a slog. It’s hours at a time of boring exposition and characters talking about how badass Frank Castle is, interspersed with the occasional scenes of hyperviolence. There is a noticeable feel of cost-reduction in Season 2. With the recent drama surrounding Disney’s roundup of various Marvel properties, it feels as if Season 2 was rushed, and cheaply made. It definitely feels as if Netflix was trying to tie everything up neatly so that this could potentially serve as the final send-off for Frank Castle on the streaming service. You also get the sense that Billy Russo’s “Jigsaw” character was intended to be a bit…more. He’s shown wearing a mask in his hospital bed…for what feels like no reason when they finally reveal his face. In the end, he’s just a “crazy” guy who whinges and moans about being “carved up”, when he basically just has 4 scars on his face.
The horror!
He has amnesia, or maybe he doesn’t, maybe he’s acting! He’s “crazy”, don’tchaknow, so every time he’s on screen the music is distorted, and he fluctuates between muttering, laughing, spitting venom at his therapist, and screaming. He’s purported to have no memory of what happened to him, and yet he ends up deciding to become a villain anyways just because. It makes no sense at all. To make matters worse, his therapist becomes a toxic love interest, all creepy motivational speeches to Billy about “rebirth” and healing, not to mention aiding and abetting a wanted criminal. There’s also no explanation as to why this man who was exposed in Season 1 to have committed a laundry list of felonies and murders isn’t handcuffed to a hospital bed or being treated from a prison cell. He’s always sneering, yelling, pounding his head, smashing up rooms. The usual over-acting stuff. By the way, this is what Jigsaw is supposed to look like:
“You wanna know how i got these-” Wait, no. “Would you like to play a-“, no…that’s not it, either.
If you ever find yourself watching Punisher season 2, and you’re nervous, wondering “Oh my gosh, what’s going to happen next?!”, the answer is…nothing. Nothing is going to happen. Someone will get the everloving shit kicked out of them, be shot several times, have their head bashed with a metal instrument, and they’ll just end up sort of…limping away. They’ll be fine 5 minutes later. There’s never any stakes to anything. Everything will return to your regularly scheduled programming in the very next scene.
The plot drags on and on; for the first 5 episodes several characters won’t even explain themselves to each other, despite the fact that they’re on the run together. Despite all that, one character is fully willing to give their life for the other. 5 full hours of not knowing what the hell is even happening. After that, it takes another 8 episodes to fully wrap up. And boy, does it feel like “wrapping up”. The last 20 minutes of the last episode just feels like they were literally trying to tie up all the loose ends after 13 episodes of virtually nothing happening. Two characters will get into a massive shootout, only to both walk away at the end of it. This happens with the same two characters on three separate occasions! Y’know, for a bunch of guys who constantly talk about the military every 10 goddamn seconds, they sure shoot like dogshit.
Guy’s standing in the middle of the fucking street. He’s the protagonist, and even I was like “Will somebody shoot this guy?”
One of the few saving graces this season is that the occasional fight scenes are still pretty cool, but they feel much more spread out. The action is solid and entertaining, but it’s much less “John Wick”-style shootouts and more…indiscriminate shooting. There’s one fight scene in particular, however, that feels completely unnecessary. The character involved seems caught off guard by it, but once the details of why the fight is panning out are revealed, my immediate thought was just “Then why did he come here? There was literally no narrative point to why he showed up at this place, knowing they would try to fuck him up.”
As far is Castle is concerned, I know Frank is supposed to be this damaged character who won’t let anyone love him, but it becomes really grating when he’s constantly telling everyone “Just get out of here, just go. Fuck off. Leave me alone. Get out of here. You run and you don’t look back. This is my fight, blah blah blah“. He’s always an asshole, to everyone, and it’s brushed away by those who know him with a chuckle and a “That’s just Frank! Silly ol’ goose. He’ll cut your head off and stuff a frag grenade in your severed skull! What a rascal!” His teenage-girl companion that he’s responsible for the entire season throws a tennis ball at him as a fun little prank, but boy howdy, she’s about to get a real lesson in tough love. Frank proceeds to beats the shit out of her, throw her on the ground, fire his gun off several times a couple feet away from her face, and berate her after all that while she lies crying on the ground. Come on, man, I want to like this guy. We also hardly get any humanizing moments for our protagonist until the last 2 episodes, where he finally lets a little of his tough guy facade down for 5 minutes.
My last complaint is the dialogue. Aside from the horrendously cheesy overacting (Ben Barnes’ Russo is one of the worst offenders. The other is an old white bitch and…let’s be honest, the screaming totally fits her), there are 3 different, major characters who are CONSTANTLY. FUCKING. MUMBLING. It’s virtually impossible to make out what’s being said half the time that the titular character is on screen, unless he’s bellowing something out in his hilarious Batman voice.
If this review is beginning to feel like it’s dragging on, and you’re finding yourself wanting to tab over to check your Facebook to see if that guy from your hometown you hate has posted anything today, congratulations, you’ve experienced The Punisher season 2 the way I have. Are you tired of all the Punishing yet?
I give The Punisher Season 2 a “Big Oof” out of “Yikes”
Much like how The Human Centipede 2 is the story of a guy becoming obsessed with the first Human Centipede movie and trying it in real life, “You” is the story of a man essentially trying the D.E.N.N.I.S system in real life. On a related note, you can’t spell “Dennis” without “D-I-E”.
Also, the main character looks like Dennis.
Joe Goldberg is just your average, sweet, caring, loyal, obsessed, murderous, walking r/NiceGuys stereotype who manages a bookstore. In the beginning of episode 1, a blonde walks into his store in pursuit of some pretentious book that she (Beck) and the main character (Joe) both like, and he becomes convinced within a matter of minutes that her every action is calculated to draw his attention. “She paid with her credit card, she wants me to know her name.” He decides to engage in some light stalking and internet sleuthing, and we have our love story. Boy meets girl, boy follows girl around town, boy kidnaps her fuckbuddy, masturbates in her front yard, and steals her cell phone. A tale as old as time, really. Actually, I’m gonna go ahead and use that un-ironically, because “Beauty and the Beast” is a story about a madman kidnapping a nerdy bookworm and threatening her life if she does not fall in love with him.
Beck (left) and Joe/Dennis (right)
Basically, this sweet guy finds out just about everything there is to know about this slut, and decides he’s going to go ahead and fix her life up, free of charge. They have their meet-cute in the bookstore, and after tailing her around one evening, Joe saves Beck’s life after she drunkenly falls onto the New York subway tracks. They hit it off, because he’s a real Nice Guy™, and the rest of the show progresses into an actual, full-on, toxic relationship between the two of them (that’s not a spoiler, it’s essentially the premise of the show). After their first date, Joe discovers that Beck slept with another guy the next night anyways. The nerve! This poor dude saves her life, kidnaps her toxic Friend With Benefits, steals her cell phone, and this whore can’t even be bothered to stop chugging dicks for 10 minutes? Feminists, man. Plus, Joe would never hurt this girl, but she’ll end up sleeping with him anyways, you know…because of the implication.
Now, Joe is a nice, thoughtful, caring guy– but he has a little problem, you see. From time to time, he gets a little carried away, and murders somebody. HOWEVER, it’s always for his love interests benefit, you see. It’s not like he has lampshades or high-end luggage made from human skin. I mean, think of the smell. You haven’t thought of the smell, you bitch! Joe is a careful thinker, so in all honesty, he knows what’s best for Beck. Beck is a worthless, damaged whore, and it’s Joe’s job to fix her up into a respectable, classy girlfriend that he can manipulate into a perfect relationship with. His every action is calculated to win her affection. They do normal relationship stuff you see in RomCom’s, y’know…breaking into her apartment and stealing her panties, masturbating outside her front window, watching her fuck other guys, monitoring her every action via the cellphone he stole, kidnapping men who pose a potential problem to me him, and attempting to alienate her from her friend who doesn’t like him. It all sounds pretty reasonable to me, so far.
Joe brings Beck some flowers. Netlfix’s “You” (2018)
“You” is painfully uncomfortable to watch at times. Joe’s basic thinking surrounding pursuing a girl (legitimate stalker stuff aside) reminds me very much of real guys that I’ve met. Guys who have asked me for girl advice, guys who talk about elaborate mental games to approaching girls they’re interested in, as opposed to…I don’t know…just approaching them? I used to work out with a guy who, when we witnessed a an attractive girl we had both been eyeing arguing with her boyfriend, he legitimately turned to me and said “I saw her checking me out, and then right after that, her boyfriend came over to argue with her, all pissed off.” This fucking delusional dude actuallythought that he was so goddamn irresistible, that he caused a breakup merely by existing in the presence of a girl. Like him, your skin will crawl every time Beck becomes a little more enamored with Joe over some sleazy, charming move he pulls. When he lies to her about something, and we know the truth as the audience, and she believes it, it will infuriate you. The scariest part about the show is just how real Joe seems. He’s charming and thoughtful in genuine ways, but he also has a Book Dungeon where he takes people who “stand in his way” or misbehave.
Joe calmly explains to Beck how perfect they are together (Netflix’s “You”, 2018)
All joking aside, it’s hard to say I “enjoyed” this show. I enjoyed it in perhaps the way one might enjoy watching a zit being popped on YouTube, or watching people get injured in a workplace accident. Sure, I guess it technically counts as entertainment, but Beck is not the main character, Joe is. Virtually every line of narration is told from Joe’s inner monologue (with one brief exception). Spending 10 episodes inside the mind of some Incel/NiceGuy version of Dexter isn’t exactly fun, and any moments of levity in “You” are undercut with the notion that…you know…this dude is fucking insane. He’s manipulating her, he’s lying to her, he doesn’t see her as a human being. He sees her as a puzzle that needs to be solved, or a beautiful vase that needs to be repaired, after which only he could love.
Aside from that, this reviewer could find very few redeeming qualities in any of the characters, let alone Joe. Interestingly, we’re shown Joe being caring and compassionate towards his abusive neighbor’s son, but Beck’s friends are virtually all vapid caricatures of New York girls. They’re spoiled rich girls, Instagram “influencers”, backstabbers, etc. I honestly did not like one character in this show except for Joe’s coworker, who legitimately seems like the only normal fucking person in the entire city of New York. Additionally, there are so many twists and turns and fake twists and fake twists that turn out to be real twists, it becomes grating and almost insulting. The last two episodes alone take the show off in a completely different direction, and trust me; it’s not the ending you’re expecting, and I believe that’s the point.
I suppose the takeaway from this show is this: “If your gut is off about someone, RUN”. If you’re smart and caring enough to hunt down a girl from your business transaction with her and her social media, and you love her so much that you rub one out on the sidewalk outside her window, and love her enough to kill for her, and she still doesn’t see what a perfect gentleman you are, just run. She’s not worth the effort. One day a girl will come along who will just be whatever you tell her to be; and if she doesn’t, well, you can always just scream at her about how you’re “the only one who will ever love her”, until she comes to her senses and realizes how lucky she is. On a completely unrelated note, I have 5 restraining orders against me.
Overall, I give it a D.E.N out of D.E.N.N.I.S
Author’s note: if you enjoyed this article and got a laugh, please consider sharing this article, or hopping over to the Facebook page and giving it a like– it saves me a lot in advertising!
Full disclosure: I hate The Big Bang Theory. I have hated it since before I’d ever watched it, doing my best to ignore it, like a malignant cyst that you know, one day, you will have to address. There are few things in life that I posit an opinion on without having any experience with it, but I knew… I just knew in my heart-of-hearts, that I hated this show. Maybe you like it, and that’s fine. Perhaps you’ve seen The Big Bang Theory with no laughtrack…
Prime time ad snippets for The Big Bang Theory were more than ample evidence to justify my hatred, I figured. I got the gist of it. It is the quintessential “nerd” show; but it is not for nerds, it’s just about them. It’s mocking us, it’s mocking our hobbies, it’s mocking our masculinity. The “nerds” are not portrayed as ultimately genuine, caring guys, despite their awkwardness. They are walking, talking stereotypes of nerds from 20 years ago. The show doesn’t explore their anxieties around women or social interaction, because it doesn’t care. There’s nothing deeper to nerds to the writers, that’s just how nerds are.
I lifted weights and went to parties in high-school, but I hid the fact that I was also in marching band and played World of Warcraft, and it’s because of bullshit depictions like this show. It’s impossible in this fictional universe to enjoy nerdy things, but also be a socially adept, likable person. You know, a complete human being. This is the depiction of a stereotypical nerd you would get if you hired the stereotypical Jock Bully from an 80’s movie (complete with Letterman Jacket and pierced ears) to write the script.
“They’re nerds, they like science, they can’t get their dicks wet. What else is there to know?!”
For those fortunate souls who’ve yet to witness this cynical atrocity, I will do my best to vaguely lay out the premise of the show:
The Big Bang Theory is a basic-cable show about the exploits of a man with debilitating autism named Sheldon Cooper, and his 3 slightly-less-nerdy-but-still-implausibly-nerdy-friends, Leonard, Howard, and Raj. They’re all scientists, or something. They use math for everything, they like Star Trek, they’re shit with the ladies. Don’t be fooled though, they’re not ultimately nice guys. They’re still the type of dudes to call each other “fags”, they just do it by nerdily referring to the other’s “Y chromosomes”. They have a neighbor, named Penny, who has a vagina. Hijinks ensue. That really is, at it’s core, the “premise” of this show. All of the various plot gags, jokes, and situational comedy stem from the fact that they are, in fact, nerds, and that Penny is, in fact, a normal human female. Every. Single. Joke in this show is somehow derived from those very basic tenants. It is one of the most profitable shows in the history of television, and 4 of the 10 highest-paid actors on television are from The Big Bang Theory. Also, there is no God.
All that being said, I was not content to merely sit idly on the sidelines and criticize something I knew nothing about, and since I am a very serious, very professional journalist and critic, I decided to subject myself to the 10 “Best” episodes of this torturous affront to humanity. In the interest of journalistic integrity, I decided, I was obligated to do my due diligence before I could justifiably eviscerate it. Otherwise, how was I any different than a clickbait news site, or Fox News, or a perpetually-outraged feminist who is offended by a comedian whose controversial bit they hadn’t actually heard? I would be no better than the drunk guy at the bar, spouting off about how the “socialists” are trying to take everyone’s free speech away and make everyone transgender with soy chemtrails (or something), even though he had never actually talked to a “leftist”. At this point, you may already be thinking to yourself “Wow, this guy sounds like a miserable, pedanticcunt“…… and you would be correct. So join me, dear reader, on my rapid descent into madness, as I travel to the center of our cold, indifferent, chaotic universe to witness….The Big Bang Theory.
Chapter 1: At The Mountains of Madness (First three episodes viewed)
Do you see? I painted it myself.
As I sit, waiting for the dodgy streaming site to buffer the first episode I would watch, I gaze off and wonder where it all when so wrong in my life. How did I get here? How is it that I have ended up here, today, in this chair, desperately searching for a free way to stream this show I have already decided I will hate? People are out there, living full, rich lives full of joy, with loved ones at their side, while I watch the entertainment equivalent of a cold, unresponsive embrace of a girlfriend who stopped loving you three months ago.
I shake it off, and I come-to from my dissociative state to the sound of Raj looking through a telescope, and Sheldon quipping about him spying on naked girls with it. It’s like that scene in Revenge of the Nerds, where the nerd fucks a drunk girl who thinks that he’s her boyfriend, remember? Or in Sixteen Candles, when the nerd has his friends film him with a blackout drunk girl. It’s not rape, he’s just an affable nerd! Ah yes, Hollywood, our progressive bastion of morality and how to treat women. Remember that time when Roman Polanski fucked a 13 year old, and 100% of Hollywood came to his defense, accusing a kid of being seductive and slutty? There’s an episode of The Big Bang Theory where the Indian guy just straight up gets naked in front of a girl at a coffee shop. This is not a show that can be excused by saying “It was the 80’s!”, this show is on today.
Some text pops up on screen, and I realize that this is a mirrored copy of this episode. Someone took the time out of their day to mirror every episode of The Big Bang Theory, so the title screen is backwards, just like my priorities in life.
The episode starts with the gang beaming a laser up to a reflector on the moon, Penny and Leonard have recently broken up, and she has invited her unbelievably dumb new Dumbguy boy toy to the event. Dumbguy is worried that the mega-dweebs are going to blow up the moon. Sheldon jokes that they “set their lasers to stun”. Harr harr. It’s Star Trek stuff, get it? Everyone in this show’s universe acts like it’s their first day on Earth, with the exception of Penny, who is just a normal piece of shit like the rest of us. Penny realizes Dumbguy is dumb, so she gets drunk and fucks Leonard (her ex) instead, who then proceeds to his ex’s place in an attempt to have meaningless sex with her. Thus far, I am failing to find any redeeming qualities in any of these characters. I pour a doubleshot into my coffee. Whisky, that is.
The other two nerds set up an online dating account for Sheldon, unbeknownst to him. He acts like a prick about it, but tags along anyway when they find a match for him, because the scriptwriters need a job. They meet a woman who can be only be described as the exact carbon-copy female version of Sheldon. He offers to buy her a drink at the coffee shop, and she asks for…get this…WATER! The credits roll, and I can’t help but notice that the theme song’s tune sounds eerily similar to a Pink Floyd verse that goes “No matter how he tried he could not break free…and the worms ate into his brain”.
The next episode I watched revolved entirely around Sheldon’s new Fem-Clone discovering that she is sexually aroused by Dumbguy. That’s it. That’s literally the premise for the entire fucking episode. She’s never been turned on before, so she and Sheldon seek to diagnose her symptoms with clinical detachment. The credits list Chuck Lorre as the executive producer, who is also responsible for the atrocious Two and a Half Men. “Wait…didn’t Charlie Sheen have a mental breakdown as well?”, I think. “Could it be that this man is responsible for that, too?” I decide that I’m on to something, and I pin his picture on my board next to The Zodiac Killer, Ted Cruz, and 9/11.
As I sort through my notes on this next episode, I struggle to understand how the writers were able to weave this into something that conveyed light-hearted humor. If my sanity is still intact, and my memory serves, I shit you not, this is how Season 4, Episode 24 played out:
At this point, Indian Raj has a sister that is dating Leonard. Leonard is fucking her so loudly in his room, that Raj is able to audibly hear them discussing the fact that she is wearing Raj’s Halloween costume. Raj seeks solace at Sheldon’s place (I don’t understand who lives with whom), and Sheldon submits him to a battery of tests to determine his candidacy as a “temporary roommate”. While Raj is sleeping, Sheldon draws some of his blood for testing, and Raj is required to perform menial, subservient tasks for Sheldon just to escape the nightmare that is listening to his sister get her guts beaten up. Later, Raj is eating with Penny, and she throws on a mock Indian accent, and says “I just don’t get it, who looks at Leonard and goes ‘By Krishna, I got to get me some of that.'”
So, to recap, Raj overhears his sister having sex, flees to a “friend”s house, has his blood taken against his will, is forced to perform laborious jobs for Captain Autismo, and is mocked for his ethnicity by their token female friend, who then proceeds to sleep with him before insisting that “This never happened”. Yeah, Raj, you pathetic piece of garbage. You liking it here in The States yet? It’s hard to feel too bad for him, though, because on multiple occasions he talks about “hit(ting) it and quit(ting) it”, and ironically talks like a bro “looking for some pussy”. Send bobs and vagen plz.
My mental health is deteriorating rapidly now, and as Sheldon drones on about something or other, my eyes become heavier and heavier. I black out, and when I come to, I attempt to sort through my notes, only to discover this:
Doesn’t look like anything to me.
Chapter 2: Episodes 4-8 watched
The next four episodes are a blur of whiny voices and overly complex explanations of everyday things. Sheldon tells someone “you’re in my spot”, and the “live studio audience” goes fucking ballistic. Is this…is that a catchphrase, or something? At this point, I’ve seen 6 episodes and I’m struggling to see what any of Sheldon’s redeeming qualities are. Unless I missed a very special, heartwrenching episode where he is diagnosed with a rare combination of crippling Asperger’s and a brain tumor, he just seems like an overly unlikable, high-maintenance, demanding, authoritarian, neurotic piece of shit. He would fit right in in American Psycho.
Sheldon falls down some stairs and shits his pants from eating brussels sprouts, so he attaches an iPad to a robot and has everyone take his surrogate around. Steve Wozniak shows up at some point (BECAUSE HE’S A NERD TOO). Leonard becomes frustrated with Sheldon and unplugs his Shelbot, and Sheldon’s face pops right back up on the screen and he shouts “Bazinga!” . The Studio audience freaks out, and Leonard literally nearly veers off the road to an instant, fiery death via car accident. I weep for him, as he fares no better in the next episode I watch. There is an incessant, eldritch shrieking in my head that I cannot rid myself of by this point, but nevertheless, I persist with my grim task.
Chapter ???:
In the last “Top 10” episode I watched, Leonard’s mother comes to visit for Christmas. Everyone exchanges memories of Christmas’s from their childhood, but Leonard discloses that this succubus required them to write essays about the holidays and break off into focus groups, rather than celebrate them. BECAUSE HE’S A NERD, YOU SEE. Within minutes of her arrival in the car, she is immediately more fond of Sheldon than her own son, and Sheldon reveals that they share a far more intimate relationship than Leonard does with his mother. I sincerely hoped that Leonard would smash their vehicle into a barricade and end all of our suffering, but alas, the scene extends to his mother stating “I’m a trained psychiatrist, your nervousness resembles psychological tics similar to when you would masturbate”. Leonard ignores this, nervous to disclose that he is dating Penny, because she is not highly successful. Once back at Leonard’s apartment, within 5 minutes she accuses Raj and Howard of being secretly gay, lets slip that she is divorcing Leonard’s father, and that his dog is dead. Truly hilarious stuff. I’m really starting to see the appeal of this show as my mask of sanity slips.
Penny fucks off to the Cheesecake Factory with Leonard’s mom, and convinces her to get drunk– an event she indicates has never happened in her life. She’s never been drunk, because she’s so weird and nerdy, like a nerd. She immediately tells Penny that she “has been responsible for her own orgasms since 1982”, and remarks that she would like the bus-boy to fuck her in the alley while she eats Cheesecake. No, I did not make that up. That’s a real conversation had between the two of them.
When they get back, Mrs. Leonard proceeds to make out with Sheldon, and then they all have an awkward ride back to the airport, hungover the next morning. Poor fucking Leonard, man. What a bleak, nihilistic hellscape he lives in. Truly a nightmare. Trapped in an uncaring universe with a cancerous roommate who never has sex, but will make out with his mom, performs experiments on their immigrant friend while he sleeps, barges into his room whenever Leonard is sleeping with a woman, forces him to drive him around because he refuses to drive, tells him which shows he is and isn’t allowed to watch, and constantly emasculates him whenever the opportunity arises.
I get it now. Sheldon is the malevolent god of this universe. He controls all things. He is immortal, and immoral. There is no escaping him, there is only pleasing him temporarily, until his next sinister urge strikes him. He cannot be reasoned with, he has no empathy. God is dead. Sheldon Cooper is your god now.
BAZINGA!
Author’s note: This is a work of absurdist humor. Please do not have me committed. Thank you. Also, if you enjoyed this article, it helps the page out in a huge way if you share it on Facebook or like the Facebook page!
Every artist needs a muse. A subject that inspires them, moves them, compels them to make beautiful, timeless art. For some, it’s a beautiful woman or a painting. For others, perhaps it’s the Grand Canyon, or the infinite expanse of the cosmos. For Nick Bolton, that muse is shitty, made-for-TV, pseudo-military garbage. For me– it’s Nick Bolton. For those who aren’t aware, Nick Bolton is the As Seen On TV version of a NAVY Seal. In reality, he’s a personal trainer and infomercial shill actor. His never-ending love for half-thought-out bullshit inspires me to write half-thought-out reviews shitting on their stuff. I am mystified, captivated, bewildered by this guy. Who is he? Why does he love sub-par products that appeal to the inner “soldier” in all of us? Why is he always shirtless?
This fuckin’ guy.
Nick Bolton being so enigmatic to me is a good thing, apparently, since for reasons that will forever elude me, after 9 months of not writing for nor promoting this page, I suddenly saw a massive spike in readership on my review of the Taclight Lamp commercial, linked below.
Anyhow, since nothing draws me out of isolation quite like an appeal to my ego, and before Bell and Howell’s lawyers get to me, I’d better get on with this review:
“Everybody has sunglasses, but most sunglasses make things darker“, he begins. Yeah Nick, that’s the fucking point. For those not aware– this is the part of a commercial called the “pitch”. It’s the thesis statement, if you will, for why everyone will need this product. You can just hear these guys sitting in a boardroom bouncing ideas off of each other on how to sell what are essentially construction glasses.
Marketing Guy: “Yeah, everybody already has sunglasses though, so how can we sell them on this new product?”
Nick Bolton: “I got it. We’ll convince them that their current sunglasses are useless, and the whole point of them is wrong!”
Executive: “Nick, you just got promoted.”
It’s the part of every infomercial in black-and-white at the beginning, where some wildly incompetent mongoloid can’t seem to figure out how to use a knife, or a can opener, or even a cupboard. These are the people that make the highlight reel in Where Did The Soda Go?, a subreddit dedicated to the special people in infomercials. https://www.reddit.com/r/wheredidthesodago/
And just check out how fuckin’ cool they look!
.
He continues…”Inspired by the sunglasses worn by our heroes in uniform, the Tac Glasses can do things no ordinary sunglasses can do!” “Inspired by” is a very important distinction, since there’s no way in hell this company could claim that our military wear shitty, $20 construction Safety Glasses. He goes on to say that “normal glasses just make things darker, which could be deadly in a tactical situation.”
OK, Nick, I guess I really need to explain to you that even though they may fantasize about it regularly, the average American is not getting in a fucking shootout in the desert with a guy in a ghillie suit. He throws around a few more buzzwords like “enhanced optical clarity”, and before you know it, we’re a shown a shot of a blank white screen. Buckle up, and hold on to your fucking seats, because this is where shit gets crazy, son.
Behold! When the Tac Glasses are equipped, not only do they provide -3 dexterity protection from glare, their “enhanced optical clarity” reveals to you the image of a bald eagle beset by an American flag. If you’re not already jizzing Red, White, and Blue by now– you’re a commie-ass Libtard and you are THE REASON TRUMP WON. #MAGA
We’re shown the “on-the-street product testing”, where they have actors using the product pretending to be normal people that just decided to interrupt their grocery shopping to be in a commercial. These poor saps have to pretend to be absolutely blown away by this gimmick. “What?! That’s crazy! How do they do that?!”
You’re missing the point, Greg! The question you should be asking is “WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH SUNGLASSES?!” Why would you ever need this?! Is your life a Legend of Zelda game where you go around solving puzzles, looking for secret doors and hidden treasure?
“Come in Thundercock, this is American Lightning.”
I will never understand Bell and Howell’s obsession with appealing to e “Tactical Bros”. Anyone who shoots guns isn’t going to buy these cheap-ass glasses; they’re going to buy $5 throwaways because they’re required to wear eye protection at the range. Anyone shooting in the desert (because this is America, goddamnit) isn’t going to wear eye protection at all, because, again– America. Sadly, this time around we aren’t treated to any “feats of strength” by the product. No flamethrowers blasting the glasses, no rockets fired at them, no Humvee running them over. You’re breaking my heart, Bell and Howell.
Despite all of this, I like to think that somewhere out there, perhaps in rural West Virginia, is a guy dressed head to toe in camo, on his way to Wal-Mart, and in his pickup truck is a veritable graveyard of failed Bell and Howell products. Much like the commercial, the TacLight Lantern rolls around in the bed of his truck. The Tac Glasses hang, forgotten, from his rear-view mirror. The Taclight T1100 sits, unused, in his glovebox– along with the .38 revolver he never got a chance to heroically use when some shifty-looking black teenager came into the local Circle K with a hoodie on.
Thousands of miles away, the man responsible for it all sits in his Los Angeles apartment, wondering why his acting career didn’t pan out the way he thought it would. His name…is Robert Paulson Nick Bolton.
When I typically sit down to review a movie, I open my notebook in my lap, place my Fat Ass Triple Gulp Slurp Burp drink to my right, and hold my pen in my left hand. Generally, I’ll jot down important plot points, quotes, or whatever joke comes to mind when I scoff at something stupid during the course of the film. About halfway through Free Fire, I realized I hadn’t written anything down, and promptly snapped the notebook shut. This wasn’t my typical review process– but then again, this isn’t your typical movie. Free Fire is hard to explain, but the gist of it is this: Justine (Brie Larson) facilitates a black-market gun deal between her friends in the IRA (that’s the Irish rapscallions who blow up cars and murder Protestants, not your boring retirement account recommended by some douchebag with slicked-back hair and a cheap suit), her American buddy Ord (Armie Hammer), and his South African supplier Vern (the always amazing Sharlto Copley). The Irish originally strike a deal to buy a stash of M16’s, but Vern arrives with a truck full of AR70’s instead, causing tensions to mount. Through a convoluted series of events and extenuating circumstances that happen off-screen, the deal goes horribly wrong and almost instantly devolves into chaos.
It’s somewhat difficult to fully encapsulate the spirit of Free Fire in a short review, mainly because it bucks so many movie tropes that it becomes hard to classify. It’s a free-for-all shoot-’em-up, a multiplayer death match put to film, a last-man-standing battle royale. It’s 80 minutes of the climactic scene in Reservoir Dogs. It’s a gaggle of respected actors wearing silly wigs and costumes, delivering lines that sound almost improvised, and reacting to bullet wounds with all the flippant disregard one would expect from a videogame character while talking shit to each other. It’s like a Call of Duty Team Deathmatch that takes place in the 1970’s while everyone does drugs and wears cheesy-ass suits, except no one is screaming “nigger” over their headset.
Vern and Ord “strategize” while Vern patches up his wonderful suit.
Free Fire feels almost as if the actors were thrown into this abandoned building with a bunch of Airsoft guns and a loose premise of a movie, and told to just go nuts with it. Each character has their own over-the-top, unique personality that comes out and is expressed through the firefight– Vern seems more concerned with his suit and getting paid/laid than he is the prospect of his imminent demise. Ord remains cool and collected, smoking rollie cigarettes and casually lobbing sardonic insults at the other side. Two characters on opposing sides are more concerned with an event that occurred at a bar the previous night than they are with killing anyone else. The Irish guys are pedantic, bristly cunts (you know, Irish). You’re never quite sure who to root for, but you also don’t really care. It’s all such a ridiculous premise, and you’re too busy chuckling and having fun when someone takes a .38 slug to the arm and screams “Why the fuck did you shoot me?!”
Free Fire is an absolute mess, and I mean that in the best possible way. It’s frantic and chaotic, yet there’s an attention to detail that helps it feel real and the continuity remain intact. Every gun makes its own distinct sound, bullets ricochet in a believable pattern, every injury is permanent; if a character gets shot in the leg, they limp or use a makeshift cane to hobble around. If a characters hands are burnt to a crisp, they have a hard time participating in the crazy paintball game they’re a part of. They’re minor details, but in a world full of ridiculous movie tropes where the hero shrugs off 10 rounds and struggles through the pain to save the princess/America/World/Universe, it’s refreshing to see a character call the shooter a cunt through the pain. There are no heroes in this story, just 10 or so criminal assholes all trying to make it out alive or get revenge.
At the end of the day, Free Fire is an indie-film that’s completely lacking in pretension. It knows exactly what it is, and makes no bones about it. When I grabbed my empty notebook when the credits rolled, I felt like the movie was 20 minutes long. This movie has something for everyone– it’s a dumb-guy movie that smart people can enjoy, and a smart-guy movie that knuckledraggers who idolize The Fast and the Furious can enjoy– rife with tense standoffs, fist fights, cheesy suits and dialogue, smug shit-talking, and a 100% chance of raining lead.
You Should See This Movie If: You’re looking for a change of pace from summer blockbusters, but still want to turn your brain off and enjoy a lighthearted Tarantino-esque romp about blowing somebody’s fucking brains out.
You Shouldn’t See This Movie If: You have an aversion to violence and profanity, in which case what the fuck are you doing reading this?!
Life is that new space movie with Deadpool and Jake Gyllenhaal, with a trailer that inexplicably starts out painting it as a lighthearted comedy that turns south when a Martian life-form breaks out of the lab and starts going all Xenomorph on everyone. I was genuinely confused by the tone of the trailer, but I digress. The good news is: it’s a fairly solid movie. I went into it quite worried that it would be extremely derivative of a bunch of other movies, seeing as how we’ve had a string of space-disaster movies about your average, everyday quirky, charming, witty, funny, gorgeous supermodel astronauts who mostly just pal around in space, bust each other’s chops, and wait for the central conflict to arise when everything goes horribly wrong.
I was pleasantly surprised then to discover that Life made a fairly convincing attempt to remain somewhat plausible and grounded a bit in reality. It’s an interesting premise if you’ve ever found yourself wondering exactly what’s out there among the stars, why we’ve never heard from any other species, or whether or not it would actually be a good thing to interact with some sort of extraterrestrial life. Essentially, the crew of the International Space Station recovers a soil sample from a probe on the surface of Mars, which they soon discover contains what appears to be a dormant, multi-cellular organism encased in it. After providing it with an atmosphere inside their lab, they manage to resuscitate it and begin to observe it’s growth and interaction with the environment.
“Feed me, you Idris Elba lookalike!”
As I’m sure you’ve gathered from the fact that this movie is not 10 minutes long, things soon get out of hand. “Calvin”, as he is named by an elementary school via a contest, grows almost uncontrollably fast, and is made up of “equal parts muscle cells and brain cells”. After attempting to electrocute it (what kind of fucking biologist is this? “Shit man, I dunno Taze it or something”), it begins to act defensively and escapes its enclosed habitat, and thus we have the central conflict of our movie. What a huge surprise, this intelligent lifeform doesn’t like to be fucking electrocuted. What a shocker! (This all happens within the first 10-15 minutes of the movie, I’m really not giving away too much here.)
Life is not without its standard movie cliches. The characters all helpfully explain to each other out loud, via private conversation, things that any two astronauts should already know and not need to discuss in order to clue us in. They point blank ejaculate, apropos of nothing, their entire motivation in life so we can understand what type of character each of them are. There’s the smartass Ryan Reynolds type who exclaims things like “FUCK THE PROTOCOL!”, the reclusive weirdo Jake Gyllenhaal type (who declares “I’d rather be up here, I hate being down on Earth with the rest of them” Me too, buddy), the wheelchair-bound Biologist Idris Elba type played by Ariyon Bakare, (there is a scene in this film that literally feels like the sole reason for his character being paralyzed, you’ll know it when you see it), the token Japanese guy who apparently has no personality beyond his Japanesism, and two other actors that don’t matter because they’re chicks.
Pictured: A big, important man
Just kidding. Rebecca Ferguson plays the Quarantine Officer and the Mission Commander is a veteran female Swedish astronaut, and they’re both much more careful and reasonable than the men. This movie is refreshingly fast paced– once things start moving (which is almost immediately), they really don’t let up until the end. They are constantly pursued by this squid-like sonofabitch. As it grows and learns about its environment, it adapts, becoming more intelligent and subsequently more dangerous every time it receives any type of…ahem…”food source”. Given the setting (the International Space Station), the whole things feels very claustrophobic, which lends itself well to putting you on edge. Calvin’s squid-like properties allow him to move through tiny areas, popping seemingly out of nowhere as they simultaneously attempt to both run from and deal with this…thing. The tension is real, however ridiculous its premise may get it as the film develops.
If I had a main gripe with Life, it’s that the antagonist eventually begins to border on almost comically overpowered. I mean that literally– at a certain point it starts to feel like a bunch of Marvel comics writers were sitting around going “It can survive dormant for millenia, it’s immune to fire and electricity, oh and also, it can store oxygen and breathe in space, and it can absorb pretty much anything, and it can fit through tiny air vents, and it’s also got a yuge brain, and it’s super strong, and it’s hyper-intelligent! Oh, but he’s an alcoholic, so it kind of makes him more grounded, y’know?” I understand that they have access to limited resources in space, and that these creatures are supposed to have “wiped out all life on Mars”, but at a certain point it just begins to feel like Calvin is completely invincible. The thing might be more aggressive than a male Gazorpian, but at least it’s also super-intelligent and completely unkillable.
While Life may not be a perfect movie by most metrics, it’s refreshingly original. The fear and unease the characters experience is a sensation you share, not because of some super-loud jump scare accented by loud string instruments playing out of tune- but because you just can’t quite understand this thing. The fear of the unknown has always been a more effective premise for me personally. Life builds tension expertly, providing us that all-too-familiar experience of thinking you’re being followed by some unseen creature in the dark, even if it is a tad more tentacle-rapey than anything we’ve ever experienced. It’s also worth noting that there is a little bit of a twist at the end, which may divide some viewers.
While most films depict aliens looking suspiciously like some actor wearing a bunch of prosthetics and a suit (the Xenomorph in Alien notoriously had a bunch of condoms as part of it’s construction), Life‘s extraterrestrial feels more grounded in reality (or at least plausibility). Calvin is less a mindless killing machine, and more a predator who hunts for sustenance, killing more out of necessity than a desire to simply terrify. Instead of looking like an unrealistic, hissing monstrosity who deliberately tries to be as spooky as possible, it feels closer to a bear or a shark– a predator driven by instinct rather than hatred. Incidentally, one character states “I know it’s not rational, or scientific, but I feel hate for this thing.” Take it easy, Captain Ahab. It’s just a goddamn whale.
Ultimately, Life takes a subject that’s been done time and time again (especially with Alien: Covenant right around the corner), and attempts to do something new and more plausible with it. I mean, we’ve seen gorgeous people floating around in space saying stuff like “You’ve gotta seal the hatch!” or “We have to override it manually!” or “There’s a BREACH!”, but never exactly like this– and in today’s movie climate, that’s about as good as you can hope for. This may actually be the first time that I’ve thought a movie would probably be better if it slowed down a bit and surprised us with the monster after a while, instead of jumping into it literally 10 minutes in. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised by Life. It’s an interesting concept, and a fresh take on the whole sci-fi horror film. If nothing else, it’s an entirely original, standalone film that isn’t a prequel, sequel, reboot, or remake…and that alone is admirable. If you’re the type of person who checks out when they start to get all Event Horizon on you, summoning demons from alternate Satanic dimensions, then a bowl of Life may be just what you need.
You Should See This Movie If: You’ve always been curious to see some live action tentacle rape, or a semi-plausible sci-fi horror movie.
Ghost in the Shell is very much like that super hot girl you’re friends with on social media who does nothing, lives with her parents well into her 20’s, claims she’s a “model” because some guy took pictures of her once, and is constantly reposting “word porn” (aka god-awful, faux-meaningful drivel) on Facebook. Great-looking, but wholly un-unique. Beautiful, but with nothing of any real meaning or substance to contribute to anything. She’s the type of person who says she’s into art and spirituality, but that’s just code for “I like trippy pictures I see on social media and have a tattoo of the Buddha.” It’s much easier for someone to claim they’re something than it is to actually put forth the effort to become it. In fact, studies have shown that we receive the same neurological sense of accomplishment/reward when we just tell people we’re doing something as when we actually do it. You’re already getting the praise, why bother with the actual follow-through? It would be like someone who claimed he was a movie reviewer, when really he just kind of shits on movies in a blog.
Unfortunately, such is the case with Ghost in the Shell. It’s a gorgeous movie to be sure, but it never really shows us what it’s about– it just tells us. It wants to be a movie about existentialism, identity, what it means to be human, the consequences of placing our consciousness into something robotic or digital; but at the end of the day it would rather just get married to a successful dude than to actually achieve any of that. “It’s like, you know, like I really want to be a model, but sometimes like I think what I really want is to just like, have somebody like… pay me to look good, y’know?”
Scarlett Johansson plays The Major in Ghost in the Shell from Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures in theaters March 31, 2017.
It’s a shame, because it was encouraging to see Hollywood attempt to bring some relatively unique source material to life that’s held in high praises by it’s die-hard fans (full disclosure, I’ve never seen the original Ghost in the Shell, this review is based solely on this movie as a standalone). It’s also, however, fairly discouraging to see the tepid, lukewarm end result of that pursuit. What comes off as a very deep, complex premise simply devolves into another big, dumb movie with a hero who kicks ass up until the final boss fight, where she falls down for a few minutes before she heroically kicks some more ass by trying really really hard. It really feels like they wanted to do something new for a change, but once they were halfway through realized they were just sticking to their usual methods by playing it safe. “Hey, hey, hey, we can’t get too crazy here, we’ve still gotta put some asses in the seats, fellas! Pass me that cocaine, would ya?”
The premise (and, as it turns out, most of the plot) is pretty much totally covered in the trailers: The Major is a human brain inside of a synthetic “shell” of a body. While her body has been more or less programmed, her unique “self” (her ghost) is still present in her brain. This grants her the ability to punch harder than a United Airlines employee, a network of information she can access instantaneously, a bodysuit that allows for invisibility, and near-perfect reflexes. It also allows for her to make some of the morality decisions a pure computer would be incapable of….which she promptly uses to murder everyone with. She works as some sort of quasi-law enforcement/death squad for the giant robotics corporation that created her (Boy, that’s a bleak-ass depiction of our future, corporations getting to run the law and indiscriminately murder people, good thing that doesn’t happen in real life, right guys? Hahaha!) There’s a terrorist villain who is downloading and hacking people’s brains, but it later turns out maybe things aren’t exactly as they seem (the trailer gives away some crucial plot twist points), yadda yadda yadda, you know the drill. Bad guys bad, good guys good.
In Futuretown, most humans have begun supplementing their organic bodies with cybernetics, but the Major is the first truly complete android. Her sidekick buddy gets blown up, so they give him artificial eyes that have thermal, x-ray, and infrared vision. Another coworker electively gets an artificial liver installed so he can party harder and get riggity riggity wrecked, son. As they walk about or drive Deloreans through town (what, no flying cars or teleporters?), holographic ads pop up out of thin air. This is hands down the most realistic thing about Ghost in the Shell: you better believe in the future some holographic fucking boner bill commercial will pop up on your dashboard while your fatass is being driven around by your car.
There’s a couple of throwaway lines about people being prejudiced against enhanced individuals, but like some other concepts in this movie, it’s not really explored. Ghost in the Shell seems like a huge missed opportunity. You get the sense the whole time that there should be something much bigger and more meaningful being explored, but it never quite gets there. It feels like they spent so much money and effort on creating this beautiful world that they ran out of money to pay their writers with. There’s never really any tension, and since The Major is practically a full-on robot, she never quite displays any emotions either, which keeps you from really sympathizing with her or indeed, even giving a shit what happens to her (if she’s injured, they just put fresh parts back on her). She delivers almost all of her lines with a flat, monotone, “I’m a human playing a robot inhabited by a human controlling a robot” type of feel. But what about her brain being 100% human? What about the reality where Hitler cured cancer? The answer is “Don’t think about it”.
At the end of the day, Ghost in the Shell’s worst crime is being utterly forgettable. It’s just sort of…there, like that hot girl who just kind of exists. It’s certainly not a terrible movie– it’s gorgeous and unique. However, it’s so busy trying to be simultaneously profound and action-packed, that it falls short of ever being either. Are we nothing more than the sum total of our memories? Is consciousness anything other than an uninterrupted stream of thought? At what point do we cease to be “alive” or “ourselves”, and simply become a tool? Is there an actual identity hiding in your head somewhere, or are we just a collection of senses and experiences stored on a hard drive? Who cares! Look at the shooty thing and the big explosion! Whoa, you can almost see her tits in that suit, dude!
You Should See This Movie If: Maybe you’ve always secretly been curious about Ghost in the Shell, but you think anime is for queers and you don’t want all the heavy, existential shit.
You Shouldn’t See This Movie If: You’ve ever seen the source material. Seriously, what are you, a queer or something?
Really Bad Reviews 