Tag mythbusters
Old-Timey Movie-time Time! (Part One)
If you know me, you know I dig old stuff. And I mean OOOOOLLLLLDDDD stuff. Sure, I have a brand new grey felt Fedora on the way (thanks, ma!) and am a certifiable Dapper Dan man. I don’t want “Fop” goddammit!. This led me to a realization the other day. People stopped wearing hats for a while. I don’t mean “caps” like the ones worn by baseball players and hip-hop DJ’s. I mean “hats.” Fedoras, Bowlers, the odd Fez…hats, boys, hats! The kinds worn by men! Real men who fought Nazis and stopped the spread of Communism! Hats, I say! Anyway, recently the trend has started reversing itself. Thanks in large part to Justin Timberlake and the P. Diddy set, stingy-brimmed fedoras and pork pies have moved from the fringes of hipsterdom into the mainstream. Hell, you can get a decent lid at Wal Mart, fer gawd’s sake. For too long Indiana Jones and Mythbusters’ Adam Savage were the only dudes you regularly saw sporting a hat with any sort of brim. And frankly, that ain’t enough.
And there’s a very simple reason for this trend: hair. Rather, hair care products. See, Don Draper got guys interested in the side-part again. AXE even makes a variety of pomades for the gentlemen among us to slick or comb their hair like, well…gentlemen. Who wants to go to all the trouble of either spiking up their ‘do like it’s 1998 or crafting a painstakingly messy look out of putty and wax only to either REALLY mess it all up or even worse…GASP…cover it up with a hat?!? Madness!
And suits…boy, do I love suits! Of course, I work as a retarded morning show rock radio DJ, so I rarely have to wear them. That’s why I like playing dress-up. Remembering how to tie a tie is always a great adventure! It usually ends with me standing in front of a mirror for fifteen minutes trying to get the skinny back portion of the tie to not be eight inches longer than the front before I say “fuck it…I’m wearing a vest anyway.” Yes, the suit is awesome. It makes you look smart, older, respectable, classy…all the things my old Rancid t-shirt or Edmonton Oilers jersey fail to convey. Why, with my tattoos all covered up I look a proper gentlemen! Like a dad or something! And let’s be honest…if you’re going to drink a martini (Bombay Sapphire for me, please) or scotch on the rocks, a suit makes it so much better. The inverse of this is also true: if you have a three-piece suit and fedora, I’d best not catch you drinking draft Bud Light out of a goddam plastic cup. I’ll box your ears, young man!
Jesus…it’s finally happened. I am my grandpa. Also, I haven’t even mentioned any movies. I tend to get distracted, you see. So let’s call this “Part One” and I’ll get back atcha later this week with the flicks, mmm-kay? Swell!
Geek Rant: Big Bang Theory Isn’t Funny.
Okay, goddammit…I can’t take it anymore. It’s come to this. Listen to me carefully, people. Listen with your ears, and hear me with your soul. The television show “Big Bang Theory” is bad. Really bad. Like, terrible. And every time I bring that up to someone, they look as if I’ve sodomized their grandma’s cat whilst wearing my Obama t-shirt. I hear responses like “Un-fucking-MURICAN! Fuckin’-A, IT’S FUGGIN HILARIOUS!! EAT SHIT AND DIE, FAG!” And so on.
A little back story. If you’re not familiar with this particular network television offering, the premise of Big Bang Theory centers around a bunch of physicists and their crew of stereotypically smart-yet-socially-awkward genius friends and the hot whore that lives across the hall. Imagine “Seinfeld” if Jerry happened to work at the JPL and Kramer was a hot blonde actress. Oh, and in order for this comparison to work you’d have to lose all of the funny stuff that made “Seinfeld” watchable and add a big, stupid, obvious LAUGH TRACK OVER EVERY GODDAM JOKE, ASIDE, LEER, SIGH, OR AWKWARD PAUSE. But I digress.
It’s funny to me that most of the people who find it odd that I don’t DVR every episode of “Theory” are not what I’d call “geeks.” In fact, most of them are softball-playing frat boys or golf-addicted pseudo-jocks. It’s like they know I’m a geek and expect me to love this piece of network crap simply because “well…them guys are all nerds like you!” Brilliant. And therein lies the problem. See, this show was created by Chuck Lorre. Remember that guy? He’s the creator of a show you may have heard of called “Two And A Half Men.” Yes, the show with John Cryer and, oh…what was his name…the other guy? Gosh, can’t seem to remember. He kind of disappeared after gracefully exiting the show. Huh. Anyway, “Men” is a huge success, and is based on the same formula that’s been used for television comedies for, well… EVER. The Odd Couple, Three’s Company, Gilligan’s Island, House…the list goes on and on. When it works, it’s comedy gold. When it doesn’t…it’s “Big Bang Theory.” God, even the name of the show pisses me off. See. it’s a physics-related phrase that also has the word “BANG” in it, like “boy, we half-dicked science nerds sure would like to BANG a real female vagina…wait! There’s a hot chick across the hall that would never even look our direction in real life, but now she’s woven into our lives to create sexual tension and give everyone something to masturbate to!” BAZINGA!!
Bazinga. Don’t even…no. Not going there.
Comedy. That’s what this show needs. You know what this show has instead? “Jokes” like these. Seriously, here are some honest-to-god quotes from the show. Try not to bust a gut…
“Scissors cuts paper, paper covers rock, rock crushes lizard, lizard poisons Spock, Spock smashes scissors, scissors decapitates lizard, lizard eats paper, paper disproves Spock, Spock vaporizes rock, and as it always has, rock crushes scissors.” BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!!! GET IT? STAR TREK!!
“A fear of heights is illogical. A fear of falling, on the other hand, is prudent and evolutionary.” WOOOO-HOOOO! HE SAID “EVILOUSHUN!” GEEKS ARE SOOOO FUNNY!!
“I don’t know how, but she is cheating! Nobody can be that attractive and this skilled at a video game.” I KNOW, RITE? CHICKS CAN’T PWN NEWBS ON “NUKETOWN!”
“A neutron walks into a bar and asks how much for a drink. The bartender replies, ‘For you, no charge.’” Okay, so that one’s actually pretty funny. Damn it.
The point is, these jokes are written, I’m guessing, by non-geeks who lurk on Reddit or have friends who’ve bought t-shirts from J!NX, and then try and write to an audience they don’t really “get.” It’s like Michael Richards writing to the Spike Lee crowd, only with much less hatred. But now the show has become wildly popular with the non-geek crowd, in part, I think, as a response to the fact that geeks are taking over the world. Zuckerberg, Jobs, Gates, the Google guys…they are our new overlords. The Large Hadron Collider makes CNN now and then when the CERN guys make a breakthrough. Movie stars are seen wearing “Portal” shirts. For a non-geek, the paradigm has shifted and maybe they’re just trying to catch up. In which case, maybe I’m over-reacting. Maybe I should welcome the frat boys who have traded in their Hollister shirts for a “Halo” or “Gears of War” t-shirt. It’s a start. (When I see them sporting “Team Fortress 2” or “Deus Ex” shirts, I’ll be impressed.)
In the meantime, me and the rest of the nerd, dorks, geeks, and wonks will be watching OUR shows. Galactica, Dr. Who, Firefly, Mythbusters, and Arrested Development. Some of those shows are obviously no longer on the air. Maybe when the “Affliction” crowd catches up, those shows will be given another chance.
With a laugh track, of course.