Josh Way

Bride of the Squeaky Wheel

JoshWay — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:12:11 +0000

From: Tom Hastings
To: “Joshua Way”
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008
Subject: Re: AMC Theaters

Mr. Way,

I was dismayed to read your email regarding your recent visit to the AMC Theater multiplex in West Nyack, NY. We manage our theaters according to very strict standards, so I can assure you that any issues you encountered were out of the ordinary. I would also add that you seem to harbor certain a preexisting bias against our theaters and multiplex theaters in general.

The cutting-edge automated ticket machines outside our theaters are there for the convenience of our patrons. They are not, as you suggest, “filth encrusted money vacuums.” Likewise, the ticket takers positioned at the entrance are a team of highly motivated, personable young people. They are by no means “a coven of brain dead reprobates who speak in guttural tongues, offending the visual and olfactory senses in equal measure.”

AMC Theaters offer an unprecedented variety of beverages and concessions to fit every taste. We do not “sell colorfully packaged wads of agricultural waste at prices that would bankrupt a Saudi Prince.” I doubt your claim that the Raisinets you purchased “represent a significant sampling of the extant fossil record.”

The restrooms at our theaters are cleaned at least once every shift, so it is unlikely that you discovered the “remains of Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanov” in your stall. We’re proud of our cleaning staff, they are a conscientious and well-trained group of workers, none of whom is “one breakdown away from being CNN’s top story for the next quarter.”

Our theater seats have won industry awards for comfort and design, and we believe they give us a special edge in customer satisfaction. Strange then, your claim that our seat left your body “twisted and broken like some H. R. Giger nightmare.” And whether or not the man sitting behind was kicking your seat throughout the film, I reject outright your suggestion that AMC Theaters was “direct depositing hundreds of dollars into his checking account” to egg him on.

AMC projectionists (who, by the way, are not “mouth breathing garage apartment dwellers”) are expertly trained professionals who operate their projectors at a standard level of brightness. They do not “project movies by the dim light of a discarded glow stick.” I can assure you also that our projectionists are showing a precise and reasonable number of advertisements before our features. There is no evidence of any of our projectionists ever “performing psychological experiments on their captive audiences” by running an “endless loop of commercials so shrill and insipid they would annoy children.”

Of course I cannot speak to the quality of the films and coming attractions exhibited in our theaters, but I am confident stating that the “Mamma Mia” trailer you saw was not “an atrocity wrapped in a disaster” nor is it “born of some ancient black magic nearly forgotten until exhumed by warlocks.” Personally I think it looks cute. As for the feature presentation, I feel you’re being rather unfair when you state that Renee Zelwegger’s face “obscures the silver screen like a rotting, bloated pumpkin” and that her “permanently puckered lips” resemble “the devil’s sphincter.” I think she’s lovely and she seems like a nice lady.

Thank you for taking the time to write us. For your trouble, find enclosed a free pass for two adults to our nearest local competitor, the Clearview Cinemas in New City.

Respectfully,
Tom Hastings
AMC Theaters Customer Service

Digital Strips Interview

JoshWay — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 20:08:52 +0000

According to their about page, Digital Strips exists “to bring the 5% of webcomics worth reading to the rest of the world.” How flattering, then, that they’ve just posted an interview with yours truly. In this, possibly the most important document ever published, I answer six questions about Chronicle, its characters and origins, and my thoughts on the creative process. Cool, huh?

2007 Scandal Preview!

JoshWay — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 20:07:59 +0000

Mel Gibson, Rev. Ted Haggard, and now Ann Coulter. In America, we like our celebrities and public figures one of two ways: nude or irreparably scandalized. If the two can somehow be combined, even better (individuals listed above excluded). 2006 was a fairly weak year for scandals, although we’re picking up some of the slack here at the end. As a public service, I present the JoshWay.com 2007 Scandal Preview. It’s gonna be a great year for sleaze!

February

Name: Michael Moore
Known As: Pundit, filmmaker, Lord of Deception

Scandal: Surprisingly, Moore will not be undone by his renowned brand of social/political rabble-rousing nor his admitted food addiction. In this early month of the new year, he will shock his left-wing fanbase when it is revealed that he accepted payment from movie studios and distribution companies for his films and television shows. Even more painful will be the revelation that Moore used this “income” to purchase goods and services from privately owned businesses. Moore will plead ignorance, insisting that he thought he was in China or Canada or something.

April

Name: Angelina Jolie
Known As: Model, person who recites lines in movies, activist

Scandal: After she adopts her fifteenth child from a third world nation, Jolie will reveal her true purpose when she and her army of diverse toddlers with pretentious names invade and occupy Baltimore. The National Guard will end the coup after a three week standoff, after the Jolie militia runs out of little baggies of Cheerios.

Name: Pat Robertson
Known As: Religious broadcaster, Christian parody

Scandal: You know what, we’re really just spitballing with this one. While there’s no specific scandal to preview, we’re gonna take the safe bet that he’ll say something mind-numbingly stupid and counter-productive to human progress. We’d put big money on this one.

July

Name: Katie Couric
Known As: News anchor, rhymes with “witch”

Scandal: Her perky, wholesome image will be tarnished forever when a wardrobe malfunction reveals the true demonic form beneath her human-suit, blinding all four hundred viewers of the CBS Nightly News.

Name: Barack Obama
Known As: Promising young senator [D], presidential hopeful, “the black one”

Scandal: Perhaps breaking under the pressure of being one of the Democratic Party’s few bright young stars, admired by voters on both sides of the aisle, Mr. Obama will sabotage his own political future when he takes the floor of the Senate and demands reparations… for the gnomes that live in his pants.

August

Name: George W. Bush
Known As: Divisive Republican president, three time “World’s Best Uncle” award recipient

Scandal: After six years of controversial policies, allegations of malfeasance, and constant ridicule from every celebrity who wants desperately to remain popular, the Bush administration will finally fall. But it won’t be war or politics that brings down Dubya, it will be one of his crippling personal vices. Not the cocaine or the booze or any of the ones we know about, but something far more unnerving. The president will be impeached, censured, and removed from office after an experimental episode of MTV Cribs offers a glimpse into his bedroom, and thus his disturbing obsession with Raven Simone, star of The Disney Channel’s “That’s So Raven.” It’s not really that he’s a sicko or anything, it’s just one of the few shows he’s allowed to watch now that The Powerpuff Girls have stopped making new episodes.

October

Name: Mayor McCheese
Known As: Politician, meat

Scandal: To the horror of his millions of supporters, financial records will reveal that McCheese’s campaigns and every one of his administration’s initiatives have been funded by a single American corporation. We can’t name the company here, but you will be SHOCKED.

Cinema Craptastíque: RiffTrax Edition

JoshWay — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 19:05:01 +0000

The latest in a series of essays about classic, awful films.

This is a very special edition of Cinema Craptastíque, wherein I’ll review some very awful films I might not otherwise have seen, were they not featured in Mike Nelson’s series of online mp3 commentaries known as Rifftrax.

These films fall into a very specific category. They are not the z-grade, so-awful-they’re-great classics featured on Nelson’s previous gig at Mystery Science Theater 3000. But neither are they what any decent person would describe as “good” movies. These are modern mainstream flicks, most of them successful (by certain criteria), that are just complete turds when you get down to it. They are, truly, Cinema Craptastíque.

Road House
Road House was directed by Rowdy Harrington. There are no quotes surrounding the Rowdy, indicating that it is not some cute nickname given him by college pals but something far more sinister. Anything that can be said about Road House stems from its bizarre premise. Bizarre isn’t even the right word. Human nature is bizarre. This movie is completely ape @#%&*! .

A world famous bouncer with a graduate degree in philosophy played by Patrick Swayze (I could end the review right here) is brought in to clean up a rough joint in Jasper, Missouri, the Double Deuce. He intends to stay only long enough to finish the job before moving on to the next adventure, but small town politics envelop him and he sticks around to kill several people. Most of them are probably pretty bad, and they’re all men, so it’s OK. Sam Elliot, Kelly Lynch, and Jeff Healey are added for flavor.

Road House really is the zenith of the 80s action flick. All of the ingredients are present:

Vaguely zen hero who really wants to live in peace, but spends most of the movie covered in other people’s blood
Boobs
Ridiculous villain who is evil, primarily, because he is rich
Breasts
Ugly clothing (though the perpetually shirtless Swayze would have done well to put anything on)
Hooters
Bad music (Healey’s very talented, but the soundtrack is dated)
Ninnies
A monster truck
Jugs

By now half of you are shaking your heads in disapproval, and the other half are queuing up Road House over at NetFlix. Personally, I wasn’t even able to enjoy it at the “guilty pleasure” level. There are some visceral thrills, delicious overacting from Ben Gazzara, and countless mammary glands, but in the end it’s just another hypocritical Hollywood bloodfest. Giving your hero the conscience of the Dalai Lama doesn’t offset the carnage the way you think it does.

“He didn’t want to rip that guy’s throat out, he had to!”

Crossroads
Bad movies are charming when they are made with sincerity and goodwill. Even Ed Wood was being creative. The worst kinds of bad movies are those made as part of a business plan, your video game tie-ins, your remakes, your pop star vehicles. The Britney Spears road movie Crossroads is one of these atrocities.

There is not a moment in this film when you are not keenly aware that you are watching a hand tailored star vehicle for a moderately talented pop singer. There is a look on Spears’ face throughout the ordeal that screams “I get to do my movie now!”

The semi-biographical story is not worth summarizing, as it is not the point. The screenwriter (I’m shocked that there was only one) was clearly working from an outline of moments. “There’s got to be a scene where she’s wearing only a towel.” “what if they think the cute guy is a murderer for a few scenes?” And so on.

By far the most offensive to the intelligence are the scenes relating to Britney’s revelation as a singer. She stumbles onto it, stepping up for a nervous friend at a karaoke contest, transforming in mere seconds from a timid good girl to the embarrassing slut we’ve all come to know and fear. For the rest of the film, the friend (whose dream of musical fame put them on the road in the first place) drops her plans and it’s the Britney show. In what just might be the most ludicrous scene ever committed to film, she sits down with the “cute guy” and co-writes her hit song “Not a Girl” in about twenty three seconds.

Throw in some maudlin, ill-fitting Lifetime movie tragedy and you’ve got a completely bad movie. This film wants to hurt you in a very deep and personal way.

Point Break
Patrick Swayze plays another zen terrorist in this outrageous and extreme adventure from the late nineties. This time Swayze is the bad guy, a Buddhist surfer who steals and murders to make some kind of obscure point about society. Keanu “Woah” Reeves is an FBI agent who must learn to surf to gain the confidence of Swayze and his crew of bank robbers. Gary Busey is also on hand to flash his frightening teeth and act generally nutty.

Take Road House, remove anything resembling charm, throw in Keanu Reeves and you’ve got Point Break, sort of. This movie takes itself a lot more seriously than Road House does, while simultaneously asking us to reach even farther in our suspension of disbelief. A world famous bouncer is a pretty tough concept to wrap your brain around. How then, am I to feel about a wise Buddhist surfer dude who hangs out with Anthony Keidis and robs banks in the spring to pay for his surfing adventures in the summer? And will the FBI really pay me to learn the techniques of some extreme sport so I can cozy up to some criminals? Forgive me if I’m dubious.

Looking back at Point Break, I can see why the Keanu Reeves of today spends his screen time holding his head and body completely still, moving only his lips and carefully supressing any vocal inflection. He tried acting in this movie and the results are harder to watch than Faces of Death. Gary Busey may be crazy, but he’s also a big ball of charisma. Next to him Keanu looks like, well, like Keanu Reeves trying to survive onscreen next to a professional actor. Ouch.

Not as difficult to watch as Crossroads, but painful nonetheless.

That’s it for this installment. I was going to go on to talk about the two Tom Cruise flicks featured in RiffTrax (Cocktail and Top Gun), but that’s a whole ‘nother universe of discomfort and hurt. Maybe next time.

Timeless Truth Doesn’t Sell

JoshWay — Tue, 23 May 2006 17:38:22 +0000

Disney Animation Cheats

JoshWay — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:34:59 +0000

It feels kind of silly to pick on Disney for this, since most other animation of the same era was crappy limited television animation that consisted of nothing but cheats, however it is fascinating to see many instances of this I hadn’t noticed before.

The topic is Disney animation cheats, specifically scenes of animation that were recreated frame by frame with new characters. Here are some examples:

What I find most odd about this phenomenon is how time consuming and difficult it must have been to copy these scenes. It wasn’t simply a matter of photocopying the drawings, the details and physics of the animation had to be adapted to fit the new characters. It almost seems like more trouble than it’s worth.

This one stings the most:

It’s really tiny, but if you look closely you can see that the Beauty and the Best dance is identical to the one from Sleeping Beauty – right down to the folds in the gown.

These screen grabs come from a Russian website (page 1, page 2) with many more examples.

Bargain Bin Fun!

JoshWay — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 17:27:13 +0000

I hate grocery shopping, but so does Shereen. So it’s one of those chores in which we both participate each week to keep it “fair.” One of the few available distractions are the junk bins at the end of the aisles in Stop n Shop. I root through them and have a giggle while she spends eight minutes picking out a light salad dressing.

This week I spotted a familiar-looking DVD in the $1 bin:

The characters on the cover bore a striking resemblence to the characters in a Russo-Finnish live-action childrens film (featured, of course, on MST3K) called “Jack Frost,” so I assumed this was a crappy animated knockoff of that crappy Eastern European flick.

But looking closer at the back cover, I realized it actually IS that Jack Frost movie, just with inexplicable cartoon artwork.

For fans of this movies’ MST3K episode, I’m sure you’ll be fascinated to hear that the “uncut” version of the movie contains numerous extra scenes – mostly undubbed musical numbers.

The back of the box offers “chapter breaks” as the sole bonus feature. I’d like to point out that this is technically untrue, as the movie is broken into three separate titles (sometimes cutting in the middle of a line), each of which only has one chapter. I’m just sayin’.

Yeah, it was a pretty slow weekend for old Josh.

Cinema Craptastíque: Titanic

JoshWay — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 19:57:15 +0000

On April 14th, 1912, widowed preacher John Harper kissed his six-year-old daughter Nana on the forehead before lowering her down into a lifeboat. “I’ll see you again someday,” he called to her, as he disappeared into the chaos on board the RMS Titanic. He died that night while helping other children and women escape the sinking ship.

But market research clearly shows that widowed preachers don’t “sizzle” with the 18-25 demographic, so Mr. Harper’s true-life tale was scrapped for the movie version. Instead of father and daughter John and Nana, we got lovers Jack and Rose, and we were instructed from every corner of the media that we cared deeply about these two extremely fictional people. We were invited to open our hearts and wallets, but mostly our wallets, to Titanic the MOVIE.

There’s a curious and annoying notion in the age of digital filmmaking that huge, expensive movies with raging special effects and even the slightest grounding in historical fact are somehow definitive, as if history itself were made obsolete by its translation to entertainment.

I realize I’m navigating a mine field here, suggesting that the biggest box office success in history is full-on Cinema Craptastíque. That’s why I’ve waited nearly a decade to record my thoughts in this manner. But given the crowd we have here at the site, I have a hunch I’m not going too far out on a limb.

James Cameron funded, wrote, and directed Titanic on the wave of success created by his earlier films, like Piranha Part Two: The Spawning. and True Lies. Clearly this was the man to define the Titanic tragedy on film. Surely the voices of those who perished “that fateful night” would now be given new amplification. Or would they?

Showing off the same storytelling prowess that made him the Executive Producer of Point Break, Cameron invited every prominent Titanic historian to a meeting and then had them killed (or imprisoned; records are sketchy). In fact, so determined was he not to be influenced by the facts surrounding Titanic disaster, he was known to cover his ears and chant “La la la, can’t hear you!” during Titanic-related programs on The History Channel (why he didn’t simply change the station is unknown).

And really, this is my biggest beef with Titanic. I can forgive the awkward screenplay, with its forced period references and clichéd class conflicts. I can forgive the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio. I’ll overlook the “king of the world!” moment. Heck, I’ll even forgive the Celine Dion song. While these would typically be enough to instantly disqualify any other movie in which they all appeared, their cumulative effect in Titanic isn’t nearly as damaging as the simple fact that we’re told an uninteresting, fake story that uses a fascinating and very real story as a mere backdrop.

Of course, you remind me, historical fiction is a rich and valid genre! There are wars and eras that have provided fertile foundation for drama these many centuries. Absolutely. But why tell the story of one ship that sank on one particular night, and then simply invent your main characters out of thin air? Might we also, then, enjoy a re-telling of the Hindenberg explosion from the perspective of a family of animated mice?

This was a vanity project through and through, made by a stubborn and talented auteur who doesn’t know how to share creative ownership. Cameron sacrifices real emotion and tragedy for his own fluffy version of the story because he needs to be in control. Telling the true stories of the Titanic would have required a personal investment and a give-and-take, and would have put elements of the movie out of his hands. So instead of John Harper kissing little Nana goodbye for the last time, we have the cartoonish villain (Billy Zane) chasing the dashing hero through the cabins with a gun.

Much is made of the effects in Titanic, and they are spectacular. The sinking of the ship is the one area of the story that is rendered with historical accuracy. But isn’t technical accuracy of limited worth when humanity is absent (or at the most disingenuous)? A more gifted director could have driven home the reality of the Titanic experience without even showing the event.

To me, Titanic is more than just a big, dumb, loud, incredibly popular movie. It’s a beacon, marking the moment in our culture’s history when we searched our collective hearts for a fitting memorial for our fallen brothers and sisters of the RMS Titanic, and all we could come up with were a stupid adventure movie and an insipid pop song.

Wow. Did I really say I’d forgive that song? You should probably disregard that part.

My Christmas Dream

JoshWay — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 19:55:42 +0000

My Christmas dream this year is one of hope. My dream is a dream of peace and goodwill, with a choir of angels proclaiming good tidings from the sky. In my dream, the joy of Christmas pierces all the man-made boundaries that keep us from being true brothers and sisters the rest of the year. My dream is in color, but it’s that hazy, muted, other-worldly color you only get in dreams. I don’t know. It might actually just be black and white.

My Christmas dream finds hundreds of men and women walking hand in hand, converging in a snow-covered glen where they lift up their voices as one to sing songs of praise and joy. It kind of looks like the field behind the neighborhood where I grew up, but it’s totally bigger than that. I must just remember it that way.

Faces, both familiar and strange, glow in the starlight in this wintery wonderland. My middle school math teacher is there, but it’s more like a cross between my middle school math teacher and Chloris Leachman. It’s weird how sometimes in dreams you know exactly who someone is, even if it’s not actually them. You know what I mean?

At this point in my dream, they start handing out Toll House cookies and hot chocolate. I’m excited, but just when it’s my turn in line everthing starts to get kind of dark and blurry. I reach out to take the cookies, but it’s like my perception is all off. Things that look like you could grab them are out of reach, as if they were behind some force field or something. It’s very frustrating.

I get more anxious and claustrophobic, but before long I figure out that I must be in a dream. Isn’t that the best? That rare moment when you realize you’re dreaming, but you don’t wake up? You can do anything you want, with no consequences. I immediately launch myself into the air and start flying like Neo in The Matrix.

It’s exhilarating for a while, but because I’m now aware it’s a dream, the fabric of the imagined reality begins to tear apart. Real life floods in, and I start to remember all the mundane things I need to do, like buying stocking stuffers for my wife, and all the emails I need to answer at work before vacation begins. But before I wake up, my imagination has one more surprise for me; I fly face-first into a tree.

My whole body convulses as I wake with a shock, which in turn rips Shereen out of her deep sleep. “What the heck was that?” she mutters. “Nothing.”

I look over at the clock. 3:45 am. I rearrange the bedding and the pillow to accommodate the face-down sleeping position and attempt in vain to return to my Christmas dream. It’s no use. Everyone knows you can’t will yourself back into a specific dream. At this point I’ll be lucky if I get an hour of sleep between now and when the alarm goes off at 5:30.

Eventually I do get back to sleep, and I even dream a little. It’s nothing special, just the one with the dock and the ocean and the mysterious woman.

Merry Christmas.

Nog Loaf

JoshWay — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 18:13:54 +0000

Ok, so it’s more of a pound cake than a loaf, but “Nog Loaf” is just a fun phrase to say.

Here’s the recipe for this sumptuous treat. I wish I could say it was proprietary, some generations-old family secret, but it actually comes from an Eagle Brand Holiday recipe book:

Nog Loaf

INGREDIENTS
1 package yellow cake Uranium- I mean mix (18.25 oz)
1 package vanilla pudding mix (4 serving size)
3/4 cup egg nog (dairy kind, and not from a can)
3/4 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
1/2 tsp. nutmeg (optional)
Confectioner’s sugar (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350°.
2. In large bowl, combine cake mix, pudding mix, nog and oil. Mix until moist. Add eggs and nutmeg. Mix on higher speed for 4 minutes.
3. Pour into (well) greased and floured fluted/tube pan (10 inch).
4. Bake 40-45 min (until toothpick comes out clean).
5. Cool, remove from pan. Sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar.

And that’s it. It’s so yummy. As you can see above, this year’s came out very well. Shereen doesn’t eat it, so every year this is my exclusive personal treat. The best part is the sticky, gooey stuff that collects on the bottom of the cake.

To print this page without the sidebars, click the printer icon by the date and title (in blog view).

Enjoy and Merry Christmas!