J: In The Hunter, Willem Dafoe plays a mercenary who is hired to go into the Tasmanian wilderness to track a tiger believed to be extinct. I guess it really is true what they say about the wealthy, they’ll do anything to get their hands on exotic frosted flakes. Looks like at some point in the movie, Willem Dafoe finds a skull on the ground and picks it up. I dated a girl who kept a human skull on her writing desk. Her father found it on a pile of skeletons in Colombia and snuck it back into the United States. Sorry about ending up in a mass grave, Colombian skeleton. Hope your skull enjoys listening to Robbie Williams and watching Billy Elliot on my ex-girlfriend’s laptop.

K: It seems like part of the way through the movie, some guys start chasing Dafoe and trying to keep him from hunting that tiger. That’s when I figured that somebody probably had to be talked down to the title “The Hunter,” because I bet they wanted to call it “The Hunter Becomes the Hunted,” or just “Becomes the Hunted,” or just “Becomes,” because it’s one of those complicated movies with laurels on the poster, so you know they would’ve liked to make it as esoteric as possible. But then I got to thinking, the tiger has been out there hunting smaller animals, so maybe the hunter had already became the hunted anyway. And maybe the smaller animals are also hunting grass. It would’ve been a different movie if they just shifted the focus one hunter to the left. The tiger could’ve grabbed Willem Dafoe by the collar and growled, “Is someone paying you to follow me?” They could probably still have had laurels, as long as they didn’t get the Dreamworks animators involved.

J: Speaking of the hunter becoming the hunted, I ate three different types of chicken today. Grilled chicken. Fried chicken. Chicken tenders. It was an excessive amount of chicken. I hope those chickens never get their act together up in chicken heaven and come over to regular person heaven to confront me when I die. I guess “being confronted” isn’t really what heaven is all about. Unless that’s what you’re into. Maybe someone is spending an eternity right now being constantly called out on their bullshit. Glad it’s not me. Please don’t call me on my bullshit, angels and other residents of heaven. Definitely not what I want.

Anyway, chickens, if you’re somehow reading this, possibly through the wire of your chicken coop as a well-meaning but ultimately misguided farmer holds up a laptop so you can enjoy articles from the internet and maybe lay better tasting eggs, I apologize.

K: I bet there are more people than you think in Getting Called Out On Your Bullshit Heaven. Because even heaven has a rule 34. It’s probably the only rule, though, so they could’ve named it better.

J: I’ve only seen one of the Jason Bourne movies, and I fell asleep in the theater halfway through it. What I do know is that people are frequently chasing Jason Bourne and shooting at him. They should probably stop chasing him. He’s essentially The Gingerbread Man of amnesiac spies. The story of The Gingerbread Man is actually pretty crazy. He leaps out of an old woman’s oven, gets chased by some barnyard animals and then dies in the jaws of a fox. Is this what life is all about? You’re the world’s first sentient cookie, magically endowed with the powers of speech and reason, and everyone on the planet just wants to eat you. What if that talking cookie was the next cookie Dalai Lama? Then again, he did look pretty delicious. I guess this explains why some people call Ashton Kutcher “The Gingerbread Man”, because he also came to life in an old woman’s oven. Anyway, this movie doesn’t even have Jason Bourne in it.

T: It’s actually a good thing there’s no Jason Bourne, since Ed Norton is in this movie. Did you really want to see him reunited with his Rounders co-star Matt Damon? You can’t be tangled up in a web of international intrigue while you’re also trying to replenish your bankroll so you can buy into the Main Event at the World Series of Poker. Tournament poker is a game that requires great focus. You don’t want to be on the look out for snipers while also trying to keep your composure after some asshole spikes a two-outer on the river. Although, it would be nice to have a license to kill in that situation. Bourne has one of those, right? Or is James Bond the only one who has one? Was Bourne assasining without a license? Hey, wait, why is assasining not a word? This is bullshit.

J: Assasining is the process of raising your “ass sassiness” quotient. For example, writing “PINK” or “LIL’ FLIRT”  on the butt of your terry cloth short shorts is going to result in a very sassy ass. On the other hand, writing “THE BOURNE LEGACY” on the butt of some sensible grey work slacks is going to result in a negative ass sassiness score.

T: Didn’t the first Bourne novel explain that Jason Bourne was recruited by the CIA after a mix up in Panama City, Florida when he was spotted poolside at the Ramada, wearing shorts with “DEAD DROP” written on the ass? Or am I thinking about the 10,000 word Bourne fan fiction I once read, The Bourne Lemon Party, and its sequel, Bournse.cx?

J: May I quote my favorite passage from the Orson Welles character in The Bourne Lemon Party? “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone. Also, we put upsetting photos of old men fellating each other on the internet for people to trick their friends into looking at. Plus The Bourne Legacy looks kind of boring. Good night, everybody, I’m Orson Welles!“

J: I haven’t seen a soldier this threatened by an enormous squid since Beetle Bailey’s girlfriend made him try an Ika Maki roll at Benihana. And by Beetle Bailey’s girlfriend, I mean Sarge. I have to say, the female Commander Shepard in this trailer looks a little like a grown-up Pippi Longstocking. Which explains why the two newest companions in her squad are a spotted horse and a monkey named Mr. Nilsson. Don’t worry, the horse is a biotic and the monkey keeps Medi-gel packs under his comical straw hat.

Considering the fact that my main Commander Shepard looks like a scraggly jug-eared country singer, it wouldn’t hurt to have Waylon Jennings and Harry Nilsson as squadmates, either. Just Midnight Cowboy the shit out of those Reapers. Do you think Bioware will release “suede fringe jacket” N7 armor DLC for Commander Shepard?

E: Suede fringe jacket would be a huge upgrade to the crappy non-armor outfits in Mass Effect 2. You either had to look like a rejected Firefly crew member with a penchant for light bondage, or a Steven Seagal inspired “martial artist” who is actually just a lawncare guy that does karate twice a week but never fails to mention it in every conversation.  This FemShep is so much better than that generic HeShep (ManShep? MascuShep?) they used for the Mass Effect 2 trailer and packaging.

I’m really excited about this game, adding multiplayer should be an awesome addition. The hardest part of Mass Effect 2 is deciding if I play, or my wife does. We tried a cooperative Shep that we both played on, but it almost ended our relationship. Fortunately, I got custody of our ShepSon, but she gets him every other weekend. Local co-op is going to bring a really cool dynamic to the game, but hopefully it doesn’t detract from the solo stuff for ForeverAloneSheps.

J: Is this where the phrase “beat you like a red-headed ShepChild” comes from? You know, I used to have a Taekwondo instructor named Shep. He had a mustache and a thick black mullet. He taught me to how to hold my leg properly when I did a side kick, knowledge that I promptly used to kick another kid in the balls. Speaking of mustaches, I just realized that none of the Mass Effect races have facial hair. How does the Batarian Jeff Foxworthy distinguish himself from the Batarian Larry the Cable Guy on the Blue Kestrel Armor Comedy Tour? The Batarian Larry the Cable Guy probably tears the arms off his Torso Sheath, I guess.

E: Surprisingly, the Mass Effect franchise has spawned a lot of commonly used phrases, as well as the wildly popular late 90′s TV show, Shep-By-Shep. So, as it turns out, the multiplayer mode in Mass Effect 3 does not support local co-op. That is a major disappointment, but BioWare hinted that post-launch DLC might change that. It didn’t deter me enough to cancel my Gamestop pre-order though. Despite hating Gamestop for everything it is and everything it hopes to be, they had the best pre-order DLC bonuses, so they got my money. My only sadness is that they don’t have the Collector’s Edition. I mean, I need that robot dog!

J: Incidentally, George Jetson’s dying words were ”I need that robot dog!” Because in the future, doctors have been replaced by robot dogs. Bark once for aspirin, bark twice for heart surgery. And those are your options for medical attention in the future. Also, the robot dogs perform eulogies, which comes in handy. Come to think of it, they probably shouldn’t have let the Robot Dog Funeral Home Corporations privatize the health care industry.

Anyway, I look forward to multiplayer mode in Mass Effect 3, because if there’s one thing my favorite single-player science fiction video game storyline needs, it’s a way for strangers to insert their own dumb personalities into it. That’s usually how classics in any genre are improved, right? Letting idiots off the street put their two cents in? On the other hand, maybe I shouldn’t rush to pass judgement before I’ve played it. I should probably give it a chance and take things one Shep at a time. You’ll probably want to bark once after reading that joke. Or twice. I don’t know, I’m not a doctor!

A lot of people think that the first person to cut a hole in a tub of popcorn to put their dick inside of it was a guy in a movie theater trying to get a handjob. Actually, it was Orville Redenbacher. He used his penis as a measuring stick. Anytime he wanted to test a new flavor of gourmet popcorn with a focus group, he’d fill a tub and put his dick inside. If all he could see afterwards was the tip, he knew it was back to the drawing board. But if the level of popcorn dropped to the base of his shaft, he knew he had a winner. In fact, this is where the phrase “Poppycock” comes from. He’d get so excited about a successful new line of popcorn, he’d try to yell, “Popcorn Cock!” but would get too worked up to say all the syllables.

Incidentally, his dick could also taste butter. How do I know this? I used a Ouija board to contact the ghost of Orville Redenbacher’s butter-tasting dick and ask it questions about its amazing abilities. Actually, it just used the planchette to write the word “BOOBS” because it is the spirit of a popcorn baron’s genitals, and therefore has limited cognitive functions and mostly just thinks about sex.

I took my dog down to visit my grandfather last week. I’ve had my dog for four months now, and thought it would be nice for her to meet my grandfather. He always has a cigar in his mouth, so it was super-cute when she tried to take the cigar away from him. It wasn’t as cute when she put the cigar out on the back of a prostitute’s hand. I think the first red flag, for me, should have been when my dog wanted to hire a prostitute for the trip down to see my grandfather.

According to the LL Cool J song “Around the Way Girl”, LL Cool J’s ideal woman has at least two pair of bamboo earrings, a perm, and is wearing rayon, silk or maybe even denim. Good news, LL Cool J. I think I saw your soulmate haggling over the price of some porcelain dolls on Antiques Roadshow.

My friend put a photo on Facebook of some little kids in superhero costumes and captioned it, “Superman, Batman, and Captain America are all here. Who’s watching over the city of Atlanta?” So I wrote, “Tyler Perry.”

But somehow, my comment ended up on an album that my ex-girlfriend put up of pictures of her kid. So there’s pictures of him running around, hugging his Mom, playing with toys, just general little kid stuff. And what was my response to this montage of childhood memories?

Tyler Perry.

She responds with “????” and I write, “I don’t know, it’s a Facebook glitch, I’m not sure what happened.” But later I got to thinking, and I realized that I stand by my original comment. That is what I think of your kid. Tyler Perry. Tyler Perry to you, little boy! In my defense, the kid was dressed like Madea.

Finally, I think we can all agree that there is no arguing with results. “Results” being the name of the bouncer at the strip club where I am no longer welcome.

Photo by Flickr user charisse joy photography.

J: I always knew that mankind would be crushed by enormous balls of steel, but I always assumed they’d be metaphorical, and attached to Hollywood’s elder statesman, Clint Eastwood. So I guess Liam Neeson and Rihanna are trapped behind a force field of ocean water in naval uniforms? I imagine this is the kind of thing that happens to people who get trapped in Kanye West’s saltwater pool. Is it just me, or do the aliens in Battleship look like they’re wearing Daft Punk helmets?

B: You would be correct, Sir Jason The Observant. Or if you really want to get geeky, I’d say they also slightly resemble Marvel’s Rom Spaceknight. But who really gives a rat’s ass? This movie looks like the same exact steaming pile of cinematic dogshit Hollywood has been foisting on us since Independence Day brought back the alien disaster flick. First off, fuck Liam Neeson. He’s in every single Hollywood ”thriller” these days, playing the same exact ball-busting, we’re-going-to-do-it-my-way-or-the-highway type every single time. And that just sucks. Namely because I prefer my heroic prick types to be bald like Bruce Willis. Secondly, am I getting this right, that this sagging piece of Hollywood tit snot is loosely based on the classic board-game, Battleship? Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Adam Sandler is making a cinematic Candyland, so I’m not even going to feign indignation. Thirdly, I don’t care if aliens try to destroy our stupid planet anymore. Seriously. I’m over it. Go ahead and do it, you futuristic pricks. See if I care. I’m actually rooting for you.

J: Speaking of cinematic piles of dogshit, I was walking my dog this morning and saw that someone had put a sign in their yard that read, “PLEASE PICK UP YOUR DOG’S POOP! IT’S DISGUSTING! WE CAN SEE YOU!” Maybe we should put a sign outside of Liam Neeson’s house that reads, “PLEASE PICK UP YOUR SCRIPT FOR BATTLESHIP! IT’S DISGUSTING! WE CAN SEE YOU!” You know, I read your comment about Hollywood “foisting” bad movies on us, and I realized that nobody ever foists anything nice on people. No one is foisting delicious candy on anybody, except for witches, and they are just trying to put your bones in a stew. And can I just say, witches need to stop putting our bones in soups and stews! Hey witches— maybe if you didn’t make your dinner in enormous cauldrons, you wouldn’t need so many goddam skeletons.

B: I could not agree more, Jay Pepper. These witches need to be put on notice: stop foistin’! Also, stop being the first commenters on everything I post by writing, “Foist.” It’s not funny after the foist time.

So, anyway, it’s interesting you bring up witches b/c they’re the kind of spooky ooky crap people used to be scared of 500 years ago. These days, if Hollywood’s depiction of sci-fi reality is any measure, we’re all sitting around, just shitting our collective pants about the impending alien invasion that’s about to happen any day now. And for good reason. These space pricks have superior technology! And they’re not afraid to queef out a bunch of bowling balls of mass destruction on our beloved metro areas. I know! It sucks! But I mean, what if it really happened, man?? I mean, shit would be fucked up, wouldn’t it?? I mean, we’d want to know who the fuck sunk our battleship, right???

J: Initially, I read that as, “we’d want to know who the funk sunk our battleship??” And the answer, of course, would be George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic. I have to say, I like the idea of collective pants. Whose pants are these? They’re everybody’s pants! “Everybody’s Pants” could be a George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic song. ♪♫ Everybody puttin’ on their pants/Funky space pants/Got to put on our collective pants/Liam Neeson ♪♫

I think have just outed myself as a person unfamiliar with the work of George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic.

B: That’s fine. As George Clinton once sang, “I Got A Thing, You Got A Thing, Everybody’s Got A Thing.” Which pretty much sums up how this whole gosh-darned Internet bizness works: every single dickhead in the world now has a “thing” that they must express about everything––just as I am doing right now. It doesn’t matter if I’m completely unfamiliar with the subject matter at hand. In fact, I vow to never, ever, ever pay any of my hard-earned money, or any of my attention, to see the movie, Battleship. But that’s not going to prevent me from tearing it apart like a rabid DVD-ingesting jackal, and saying awful stuff about it, like it looks like poopy. Really stinky poopy that someone smeared all over the movie screen. That’s right! I said, “poopy.”

Am I a “hater?” A “troll?” Or just another denizen of this mealy-mouthed pile-on we call the World Wide Web? I PUT IT TO YOU, DEAR SCENE MISSING READERS, TO JUDGE ME.

P.S. PLEASE DON’T JUDGE ME.

I was bitten by a rooster, Blacula, and Count Chocula, all on the same day. Transforming me into the most terrifying of all monsters: Cock Blockula.

My first victim? Myself. Actually, I didn’t even need that assortment of animals and monsters to bite me, I was already cock blocking myself at a professional level.

Have you ever had a homeless guy come up to you asking for change, and the person you’re with is like, “Don’t give him any money! They’re just going to spend it on booze!”

First of all, that’s rude. The homeless guy doesn’t get to come to your office and say, “Don’t give him that paycheck! He’s just going to spend it on bills, rent, and groceries! Also, adult websites where you finally get to see what happens when college girls lose their inhibitions behind closed doors, but your wife doesn’t know that you have a subscription to it because it shows up on the credit card statement as Wayne Enterprises, not THAT Wayne Enterprises, though the CEO does dress like Batman, but it’s a fetish thing.”

Wow. That homeless guy knows a lot about your spending habits and the CEO of Wayne Enterprises.

Second of all, there is no need to keep a homeless man sober. He is not taking the SATs later. He is not giving a TED talk. He is not making hand-crafted tiny furniture for dollhouses. His day is wide open.

I guess people don’t like giving beer money to people who don’t have houses. This is why when I give a homeless guy money, I make him promise to make an appointment with my realtor. Fortunately for him, my realtor is also a homeless guy. Which is why I live in a refrigerator box.

I love my George Foreman Grill. I cook everything on it. Hot dogs, hamburgers, you name it. If I could cook a Cadbury Creme Egg on it, I would. Another thing I like about the George Foreman Grill is that George Foreman’s signature is on every single grill. What this means is, you can write whatever you want on a George Foreman Grill, and George Foreman is legally obligated to honor it. It’s a binding contract. Also, in the state of Georgia, grills are admissible in court as legal documents. I now have 75% of George Foreman’s estate and full custody of all five of his sons named George, except for the youngest one, who I renamed Cadbury Creme Egg, which makes what I said at the beginning of this paragraph much creepier.

I like living in Atlanta, but it is a very expensive city. Every time I leave my apartment, I spend twenty dollars. Twenty dollars for drinks, twenty dollars for parking, twenty dollars to eat. The last time anyone wanted this many pictures of Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren was putting together a scrapbook to masturbate to. That’s right. A joke about an old dead president jerking off to another old dead president.

In fact, that’s all they do in old dead president heaven, is jerk off to each other. It’s why they ran for office!

As improbable as it sounds, my cat recently competed in a drag race. I like to point to his little cat-sized car that he built in my garage and say, “Look what the cat dragged in.”

Actually, I don’t have a cat. I made him up for the purpose of that joke. As well as the concept of cat drag racing. I do have a dog, though. She’s a French Bulldog. I’m a little worried she might be too French— she only shits on wine lists from four star restaurants. Actually, that’s not true, she’ll shit on anything. And that’s what makes her so French.

Sorry, people of France.

I have a problem with the Elton John song “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” from the movie The Lion King. First of all, I’d like to say that whatever two consenting adult lions want to do with their genitals is fine by me. The issue I have with the song is the line, “It’s enough to make kings and vagabonds believe the very best.”

Who cares if a king believes the very best? Things are going really well for him at this point. He’s already going to believe the very best going into the situation. Because he is a king.  Vagabonds, on the other hand, give handjobs under bridges for nickels. For them to believe the very best is a much bigger deal. Elton John should change the lyrics of the song to, ”It’s enough to make even vagabonds, those filthy tramps, believe the very best.” He needs to go full vagabond!

Elton John, you can have that for free.

I read a news article about a man who was killed by his pet hippo. For years, he and the hippo got along really well, with no problems. One day, the hippo just freaked out and started biting him. In the hippo’s defense, the man’s pockets were filled with white marbles.

A lot of rock stars are getting older, especially hair metal bands. Poison, Mötley Crüe, and Whitesnake are all starting to show their age. In fact, due to changing dietary needs, Def Leppard would now prefer that you pour some Splenda® on them. Their bodies just can’t handle the sugar.

I was eating at an Atlanta restaurant and I overheard a woman at a nearby table say, “I liked Eat Pray Love, but I don’t go in for all that meditation bullshit.” And I was thinking, what if she’s the Dalai Lama? Like there was some huge mix-up and the 14th reincarnation of Buddha is an ex-sorority girl in a North Face jacket with a designer bag who hates the shit out of meditation. Just hates her superpower.

Finally, the actor Timothy Olyphant is in town. You’d think he’d be able to afford his own hotel room, but he’s been crashing on my couch. In fact, he’s kind of overstaying his welcome. It’s getting a lot harder to ignore the Olyphant in the room.

King courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Vagabond courtesy of Russell-Morgan via Wikimedia Commons.

J: Wow, this movie has it all. Little girls in bird costumes, old compasses, kids writing notes to each other on custom stationary and Ed Norton in a Boy Scout uniform. It’s like the deleted scenes from The People vs. Larry Flynt in an alternate universe where Hustler magazine is about the top sellers on Etsy. According to its synopsis, Moonrise Kingdom is about two twelve-year-olds who fall in love at summer camp, make a secret pact, and run away together into the wilderness. I had a crush on a curly haired girl at 4-H camp when I was twelve. She never smiled and got pregnant in the tenth grade. I guess she would have gotten pregnant even sooner if she hadn’t scowled so much.

K: I bet that girl smiled a lot before you knew her, like right up until age 10. Because when I was in the fifth grade, every once in a while, some nice girl would suddenly and unexpectedly turn into an awful, mean girl—I guess like how vampires do—but, like a vampire, you wouldn’t be aware of the change until she struck. When she did, it would be very confusing, because this was someone who had always been friendly to you in the past. At first you would assume you must be misunderstanding the horrible things she was saying, and that she must somehow have meant them in a sweet way, because a nice girl like this would never say things like that or kick you in the neck unless she thought she was being helpful. That’s how I feel about this trailer. I want to trust all these actors, but I’ll soon wake up to the reality that no, this really is another Wes Anderson movie that’ll leave me feeling deeply annoyed and a little left out. Too bad, because I like the bird costumes.

J: I think liking bird costumes was what got Tom Cruise into that whole Eyes Wide Shut mess in the first place. One minute you’re at Party City picking out a parakeet mask, the next thing you know you’re at a gothic mansion attending an orgy with Nicole Kidman. Anyway, I think this Wes Anderson movie might have too much Wes Anderson in it. Or too much Wes and not enough Anderson. Or maybe it’s all Anderson. Which part of Wes Anderson is the one that is entirely comprised of illustrated wallpapers with animals in sweater vests, tennis headbands and Bill Murray?

K: I think the wallpaper and animals in vests must be the Wes part and Bill Murray and tennis headbands are Anderson. Also,  Jason Schwarzman and Owen Wilson. That’s some more Anderson. I would take a movie that was all Wes, though, like The Fantastic Mr. Fox. I imagine what saved that movie was that Bill Murray, Jason Schwarzman and Owen Wilson were all too big to fit in it. No, I’m mistaken—not Owen Wilson. He was in Night at the Museum and he was only small. I think if tiny Owen Wilson had been in Fantastic Mr. Fox, it would’ve been okay, and not just because he probably would’ve been killed.

J: I want to make sure I’m following you, did we just agree to kill a tiny Owen Wilson? Are we in a murder pact right now? We are going to need a shrink ray. And access to Owen Wilson. And a matching set of murder gloves. Which are actually just regular gloves with skulls on them. I think we might be the only people on the internet who aren’t charmed by this trailer, the response has been overwhelmingly positive as far as I’ve seen. I’d say my reaction is a cautious optimism, mixed with skepticism, mixed with an unrelated but overwhelmingly positive feeling of goodwill toward cake. Earlier today, I misheard my friend and I thought he said he was preparing his “cake resume”, which I took to mean a resume written in icing on a cake. “You’re hired!” I thought to myself.

Everyone has a wheel.

For some people, the wheel is a grindstone, an oppressive force pushing them down into the dirt as it turns, squeezing the air out of their lungs as it spins against their back. For others, the wheel is a puppy in a velour tracksuit, massaging their shoulders with a tender professionalism, because it is a certified massage therapist in addition to being a soft, wiggly puppy. And for some, their wheel is a grindstone in a velour tracksuit that dropped out of massage school to become a cashier at Target, a place notorious for not giving massages.

But make no mistake. No matter who you are, one day your wheel will spin off its axis and roll you into your grave.

Even Bryan Adams would have to admit that the summer in which he got his first real six-string and gawked at some girl on her mama’s porch paled in comparison to the one I was having in the Summer of 2011. I was living off a a modest inheritance and a generous severance package from having been laid off earlier that year. I was never going to have to work again, for any man. My life was full of limitless possibility.

You see, I had $30,000. I was, for lack of a better term, hillbilly rich.

I had decided to take an honest crack at making a career out of my two passions. Namely, co-hosting a science fiction podcast and writing sarcastic reviews of movies I watched on Netflix Instant with low Rotten Tomatoes scores. “By the time I run out of money” I said to myself, “I’ll have built a media empire.”

Meanwhile, my wheel had turned into a Nerf gun in the sky, the Excalibur of Nerf guns, raining down on me with soft golden pellets of alcohol and Xbox Live points. If I was the Baby Jesus, then surely Apple products were the swaddling clothes and sweet hay in which I lay. I bought an iPhone 4. I bought an iPad 2. I bought a Macbook Pro. I bought an iPhone 4S for the unsubsidized full price, guided by my own Star of Bethlehem, MacRumors.com.

I spent hundreds of dollars at the famous Atlanta strip club The Cheetah. Which, by the way, if a stripper confides in you that she considers the men she takes to the VIP room “suckers”, and you later see her leading an earnest young man to said VIP room, do not give her a hearty wave and yell, “HEEEY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” You and she are not a two-man team pulling a long con.

All this will have earned you is a scowl and squandered stripper goodwill, which is worth twice as much as goodwill from women who do not take their clothes off for money. That having been said, the highlight of my time at The Cheetah was getting a lap dance from a stripper who looked like Baroness from G.I. Joe.

I ate Croque-monsieurs at Atlanta restaurant Empire State South, surrounded by wealthy businessmen. Incidentally, if the members of the Occupy movement had really wanted to get up in the faces of the super-rich, they would have made reservations there, instead of pitching tents in city parks full of hobos, who have to eat regular ham and cheese sandwiches toasted over a trashcan fire instead of Croque-monsieurs.

And finally, I bought the world’s cutest French Bulldog, who I named Gotham, because she looked like Batman.

The Summer of 2011 was so incredible that it protected me from the realities that I was not yet brave enough to face. Like an internet that was hugely indifferent to sarcastic movie reviews and science fiction podcasts. Like the fact that I had lost the best job I’ve ever had in my entire life. Or that my mother passed away after a long battle with cancer in the Spring of 2011. Or that these things happened within weeks of each other.

After losing so much, so quickly, an irresponsible Summer of strippers and bourgeois sandwiches was the only thing that stood between me and a feeling of total oblivion. So I would say to you, appreciate your amazing summers while they last. They are important, finite events.

Now that Summer has turned to Fall and eventually Winter, I am no longer living high on the hog. If anything, I am being lowered into a deep dark well by the hog. I am now so broke, I can only afford a lap dance from a stripper that looks like Cobra Commander from G.I. Joe.

In the meantime, I write. I bring home bones for Gotham. I play a game on my iPhone called Tiny Tower. My tower has an aquarium, an architecture firm and an ice cream parlor called Scoops, all in the same building. Ironically, it also has a 100% employment rate.

I do not know when I will see another Summer like the Summer of 2011 again. Like a more pragmatic Little Orphan Annie, my philosophy is now, “The sun may come out tomorrow, but don’t bet your bottom dollar, because you will need it to buy the least expensive box of Hot Pockets.”

And my wheel continues to spin.

J: The good news is, Ewan McGregor and Eva Green fall in love. The bad news is, the world is ending. There’s a virus that’s robbing people of their senses, starting with smell. Although I guess this means that Oscar the Grouch is finally going to get to have sex. I hope he gets to have sex with Ewan McGregor, come to think of it. Ewan McGregor will be all, “Listen, Eva Green— I know you’re a beautiful woman, and our love transcends the apocalypse, but now that I no longer possess the senses to determine if this grouchy puppet who lives in a trashcan stinks or not, I am really going to lay into him with my penis.” That’s what people who have sex usually say, right? “I’m going to lay into you with my penis.”

B: Yes, that’s correct, Jason. “I’m going to lay into you with my penis,” is the accepted nomenclature of our people here on Planet Sesame Street. Also, “I’m fittin’ to drop some dick science into your fart tube, Elmo” works equally well. Now, as for the people in this movie Perfect Sense, their love making seems to be preceded by a conspiracy theory-induced apocalypse. Not unlike my love life. I too like to pretend/believe that the Illuminati is poisoning my brain with chemtrails and other unseen chicanery before asking, “May I take off your pants, please? It’s urgent because at any moment, ‘they’ might detonate the nano-bomb in my nutsack.” When she says “no,” that’s when I pretend/believe that the nano-bomb indeed is exploded, causing me to fall to the floor clutching my genitals and whining, “Aaaargh!! Look what you made ‘them’ do!!” But alas, all is not lost. At least not according to this trailer.

J: You know who else has a nano-bomb in their nutsack? The Jason Bourne of squirrels. He has a tiny messenger bag filled with acorns, nuts and a nano-bomb. Also, like most squirrels with squirrel-sized messenger bags, he has a miniature copy of Little Women. And the latest issue of bitch magazine. I once dated a girl who subscribed to bitch magazine. She got mad at me for taking a photo of myself with her Polaroid camera and asked me why I wanted to kiss so much. I bet that little squirrel with the nano-bomb is a passionate kisser. Oh, have I been saying nano-bomb this whole time? I meant iPod nano.
Anyway, you know what else makes perfect sense? Making tender love to Ewan McGregor on your last day on this planet, apparently.

B: All I have to say is, you could do a lot worse. Imagine all of this horrible stuff going down in real life and it just so happens that you’re in the middle of a rebound relationship. A fling. A six-week joyride, at best. And perhaps it’s with someone who looks more like Ewan Dobson than Ewan McGregor. Sure, he’s everyone’s favorite Canadian fingerstyle guitarist, but when it comes to grinding out some hardcore, end-of-the-world, bonded-in-death-and-eternity copulation, he’s just kind of like, “I don’t know. Things are moving kinda fast, eh?” Kind of like your bitch friend, Jason! If the two of you were in this movie, I imagine her saying something like, “Oh look. It’s the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse stampeding through our bedroom. Could you hurry up and get that Durex on?”

J: I appreciate that you assumed I consummated my relationship with this girl, but anyone who works that hard to keep our kissing to a minimum is not going to give me the keys to her maidenhead. And by maidenhead, I mean the wooden lady at the front of most 19th century ships. Which is where most hip twenty-something girls keep their valuables these days. Oh, has anyone seen my Tie-Neck Sweater Dress? Never mind, I found it. It was locked beneath the bared wooden breasts of the mermaid on the deck of the Snow Squall.

B: Well, that really does make Perfect Sense, Jason. Which reminds me: oddly enough, I was thinking about filming a movie of my own about a budding romance cast in the midst of the end of the world. Except my film was going to be called Perfect Cents, and it would be about the most parsimonious prostitute on the planet who, despite it being the Final Judgement and all, refuses to sleep with what is certain to be her very last “john” ever until he can come up with the exact price in dollars and cents for her services. Here’s a sample from the opening scene of my current script:

Prostitute: “This is only $84.43. I need $15.57 more, you cheap bastard.”
John: “Are you crazy? We’re all about to die and you’re nickel and diming me?”
Prostitute: “I don’t give a shit. I’ve got costs to cover.”
John: “What costs?! Where are you going to spend this money, anyway!? At Zombie WalMart???”
Prostitute: “That’s none of your goddamn bizness, dude. Now go find yourself $15.57 or go jerk off in a bomb shelter.”
John: “Okay, fine. Just wait right here. I’ll be back.”

INTRIGUED MUCH??

James Franco steals a super-smart baby chimp from his lab! He takes the chimp out to a state park for the first time and the chimp holds his hand out and looks down. James Franco takes this to mean the chimp is taking a submissive pose and asking for permission to climb the trees, but actually it is customary to tip your monkey when you bring him to the woods for the first time.

There’s a scene in Rise of the Planet of the Apes where James Franco takes his baby chimp into a steamy shower to make him feel more comfortable. So ladies, you might want to consider disguising yourselves as uncomfortable baby chimps if you want to trick James Franco into taking a steamy shower with you. Then again, I’m not sure how sexy it is to have a lady jump out of a baby chimp suit while you’re in the shower together.

At one point in the movie, James Franco is giving a presentation on projected stock earnings when a chimp escapes and smashes through his charts and graphs. Coincidentally, I use an ape jumping through stock market predictions to do all my financial planning for the year.

John Lithgow plays James Franco’s father, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. James Franco injects him with a virus he created that makes monkeys smarter. The next thing you know, John Lithgow is playing the piano with the skill of seven Harry Connick Jrs. He also has the strength of seven Harry Connick Jrs., which is the same as the regular old man strength he had before.

James Franco’s chimp has to go to monkey jail because he bites off a man’s finger. If this is what happens to James Franco’s super-intelligent ape, I’d hate to see what his apes of average intelligence go to jail for. Probably secretly filming women’s feet at Target and uploading the videos on the internet.  Anyway, Franco’s chimp becomes king of the apes in monkey jail by giving the other chimps free cookies. This is also how you become king of a high school auditorium full of people who just gave blood.

James Franco’s chimp leads the apes in a monkey uprising against the humans. Not only do these monkeys rise up to defeat their oppressors, but they also shine on the field of battle. And it is these monkeyshines that will one day lead to an entire planet of the apes.  The ape rebellion breaks in to James Franco’s lab and when his boss arrives at the office, he is surrounded by monkeys, inspiring several one-panel Far Side rip-off newspaper cartoons.

The apes have a final showdown on an enormous steel bridge against a battalion of police officers. The apes are able to gain a tactical advantage against the police by climbing to the top of the bridge, which is also an excellent vantage point from which to throw barrels and fireballs down at any local plumbers who might intervene. A gorilla leaps onto a helicopter, causing it to crash. He is later revealed to be a man in a gorilla costume who was late to a fancy costume party and wanted a ride.

James Franco tries to convince his chimp to come back home, but the chimp tells him that his home is with the other apes in the forest. James Franco is like, “Fine, enjoy your filthy monkey house out in the dirty woods. I’ll just go home to my beautiful wife and comfortable furniture and indoor plumbing.” The movie ends with the human-killing virus that James Franco created spreading around the globe. Also spreading around the globe as a result of Jame Franco’s body of work: women in baby chimp costumes. Planet of the Apes!

J: Wow, the trailer for The Hobbit has all kinds of stuff going on it. Pigs in harnesses, dwarves with spider webs in their beards, threadbare antique furniture—it’s essentially the video for the Nine Inch Nails song “Closer”, if Trent Reznor had eaten second breakfast on his eleventy-first birthday. The dwarves in this movie are short, hairy and have enormous ears. Looks like there’s going to be some a cappella dwarf singing as well. I usually feel uncomfortable if someone starts singing in front of me without musical accompaniment, but the other dwarves just put down their pipes and start singing along like the cast of Glee, if everyone on Glee was my grandfather.

K: If everyone on Glee was your grandfather, I probably wouldn’t have quit watching two years ago. That is, unless they kept the story lines all the same, and your grandfather was yammering about sectionals all day and trying to sleep with his teachers (also played by your grandfather), whilst coming out as a gay man and also as a lesbian and also as a surprise virgin. On second thought, even that might be better than regular Glee. But I’d definitely need them to tone down the kissing, and I’d like to see more subplots involving newspapers and butterscotch. Basically, they should start with the blueprint of Glee, but let it move in its own direction—much like they will with the inevitable American version of The Hobbit, starring John Krasinski.

J: In addition to pipe smoking and fence hopping, looks like there will also be a good amount of suspender tugging in The Hobbit. I know there’s also sword fights and magic rings and whatnot, but Martin Freeman will be undeniably be sporting some nice thick suspenders to hook his thumbs into. I’m afraid people who were wishing for some bottomless hobbit nudity or a peek at Martin Freeman’s digitally miniaturized bare ass will just have to go wanting, because those hobbit trousers are going to be firmly locked in place. Also firmly locked in place: people who wish for bottomless hobbit nudity.

K: Funny you should mention suspenders. I was just thinking about suspenders today, and how in England-English, when you say suspenders you mean garter belts. So if anyone reading this is British, you’ve just filled their polite little heads with all kinds of sexy hobbits in stockings, hooking their thumbs seductively behind the satin straps on their hobbit thighs.

J: What ruins the imagery of Bilbo Baggins in satin stockings for me, other than everything about it, is that in my imagination he’s chewing a piece of straw and looking very pleased with himself.
Speaking of risqué underwear on diminutive fictional characters, I once went into a Victoria’s Secret to buy lingerie as a Christmas gift for a girl I was dating at the time, at her request. As an unaccompanied man amid all those women’s undergarments, I felt a little like an unaccompanied Cookie Monster in a store that sold cookie jars. Sure, there aren’t any cookies anywhere, but you’re still not entirely sure he isn’t getting off on this.

K: Are you describing Cookie Monster as diminutive? I think of him as pretty big for a muppet, like the size of a large woman, but that’s probably wrong. I was wrong about Smurfs for years, too. I thought they were a few inches tall, but they’re three whole apples high! Coincidentally, three apples is also how much Hello Kitty weighs, but she’s five apples high. Apparently that’s how you measure fictional characters. I wonder how many apples a hobbit is.
Well, hang on, I went to school. The average height of a hobbit is 3’6″ and the average red apple is five inches tall, so a hobbit must be a little more than eight apples tall, if you can stack them that high. Unfortunately, I can’t find a record of hobbit weight averages. But according to Tolkien’s maps, the Shire is right about where England is, and the average Englishman is about 5’10″ and weighs about 185 pounds, which—assuming the weight of men and hobbits is similarly distributed—means that a hobbit might weigh, in pounds, only around 108. If the average red apple comes in around five ounces, the average hobbit might weigh the same as 345.6 apples. But I don’t like that number. It’s too big to mean anything to anyone. How do they do apples? In bushels? A bushel is roughly 9.3 gallons, and if the average person contains 16 gallons of blood, and we apply the man-to-hobbit ratio we’ve already determined, a hobbit must contain about 9.3 gallons of whatever is in a hobbit. That’s one bushel! Eight apples high, one bushel heavy. There. Now there’s no reason to see the film; all your questions have been answered right here. Everyone owes me $12 ($10 if you’re reading before 4 p.m.). PayPal is fine.

The Starship Enterprise has a new crew and it’s going on its maiden voyage! Captain Kirk and Scotty and Chekov are there visiting, but the new captain makes them sit in little plastic chairs over by the wall like they’re waiting on their girlfriends to get done shopping at Anthropologie. Later, the new captain emerges with a cute scarf and a pewter spoon with an owl on it.

Suddenly, there’s a distress call because two starships are being crushed by a mysterious energy ribbon. Also, the crew members aboard are crushed because they didn’t win the “Best Starship” ribbon at the county fair. If only a spider had written “Some Starship” in her web, they might have had a chance.

Scotty takes over the warp drive and saves forty people from the energy ribbon by beaming them aboard the Enterprise. Captain Kirk goes down to fix the deflector shields, gets sucked into space and is pronounced dead. Guess he shouldn’t have dropped out of Deflector Shield Technical College with only two semesters left.

Seventy eight years later, the crew of Star Trek: The Next Generation is having a grand old time on the holodeck pretending they’re 19th century sailors. To celebrate his promotion, they make the Klingon Worf walk the plank and jump in the air for a hat. Then they make him take off his top for a Girls Gone Wild shirt. The android Data gets in on the act by pushing Beverly Crusher into the ocean, kicking off the Enterprise’s first wet T-shirt contest. Commander Riker cuts his uniform pants into Daisy Dukes and dances to “Cocktales” by Too $hort.

Judging by the metallic pallor of Data’s face, he’s been huffing more spray paint than a ne’er-do-well Banksy from a parallel universe. Data puts a chip inside his head so he can understand human emotions. Unfortunately, it’s just an SD card loaded with pirated Tyler Perry movies. After installing the chip, Data decides that he can do bad all by himself and begins writing a diary from the perspective of a mad black woman.

Captain Picard gets an email that upsets him, and storms out of the holodeck in his sailor suit. Normally, the only thing that can make Picard rush out dressed as a sailor is half-priced drink specials at his favorite male strip club, The Anchor.

Meanwhile, a solar probe blows up a nearby sun and sends out a shock wave. Turns out Malcolm McDowell was in league with the Klingons, two of whom have amazing breasts. I once saw a dancer with a tattoo on her leg that read “100% USDA Grade A Beef” at a rundown club called Lucifer’s Follies. She had an amazing body and a face that looked like an orc from Lord of the Rings. It was probably her tusks that gave me that impression.

Picard beams down to a planet where Malcolm McDowell is about to shoot a rocket into the sun so he can redirect the energy ribbon and get back into the nexus. He’s got a force field up, but crafty Picard sneaks through a hole in the rocks. Incidentally, “sneaking through a hole in the rocks” costs an additional $200 at Picard’s favorite male strip club, The Anchor.

Picard gets pulled into the nexus, where he meets Captain Kirk, who is living in his own private heaven with his favorite dog and his ex-girlfriend, and where $#*! My Dad Says was a critical and commercial success. Picard convinces him to go back in time to fight Malcolm McDowell. McDowell turns his rocket invisible with a remote control. Picard and Kirk struggle to find the remote and then the rocket prematurely explodes, both of which are common problems for men their age.

Picard stops the rocket and saves the Enterprise, but Captain Kirk dies under a bridge, like a troll or a dancer at Lucifer’s Follies. Picard buries Kirk under some rocks and Data finds his missing cat. Star Trek!

J: In space, no one can hear you scream. Which is why it is so difficult to get ice cream in space. I mean, I screamed, you screamed, we all screamed for ice cream. And the void of space was indifferent to our collective calls for sweet iced cream. Now gelato on the other hand—very easy to get in space. You can’t throw a moon rock in space without hitting a gelato stand, usually with some kind of gloopy tentacled monster trying to sell you a mint raisin sorbet. Speaking of gloopy tentacled monsters, looks like there’s a little space trouble happening for the characters in Prometheus. There are a ton of shots in the trailer of people looking dismayed in space helmets.

B: Yes, they do look dismayed in their space helmets, Jason. You could also say they look completely terrorized, filled with spacepants-shitting fear and not a little like Chaz Bono after finding out she had to grow her own dick instead of having her father’s penis exhumed and grafted on. I know that look well, Chaz. It says, “I don’t got you, babe.” Speaking of confusing creatures from Hollywood, I’m not exactly sure who or what’s doing the attacking in this trailer, which is always an encouraging sign. It shows that the director has the courtesy not to whip his proverbial dong out on the first date, and wave it around in our faces moments after blurting out, “I’ve got something to share with you.” Indeed, I’m intrigued. I’m not a huge sci-fi/horror person; I’ve always thought Blade Runner is an excellent movie to fall asleep to. But I am intrigued. You have my attention this time, Mr. Ridley Scott!

J: What a gentleman! I’d say you are correct in your assessment that Ridley Scott is not the sort of man to show you his cinematic penis moments after introducing himself to you like some frantic wild-eyed OkCupid user in the parking lot of an IHOP that he lured you to with promises of Atlas Sound tickets. He teases his proverbial moviemaking penis like a burlesque dancer in an H. R. Giger crafted codpiece. I also couldn’t help but notice the trailer had a shot of a man with his hands in some green slime. When I was a kid, you could buy little cans of green slime to pour on your The Real Ghostbusters cartoon action figures. Is it possible that a character in Prometheus is just sliming a plastic Peter Venkman? “Slime my Peter Venkman” is also how I start most of my Craigslist personal ads.

B: I know you do. But I still have to ask, “Who you gonna call?” I mean, when people answer your Craigslist personal ads, they usually just leave you with a Hotmail address and detailed instructions on which Honda Accord they’ll be parked in underneath IKEA, right? Speaking of “foreign” places, is there ever going to be an alien planet as presented by Hollywood that isn’t some black hole version of the Vietnam War? Everybody’s always helplessly bumbling around in the dark in these movies, getting poked, prodded and prolapsed from every unseen angle by some hyper-evil army of E.T. octopi that gets off by impregnating people’s brains with thought worms or some crap. Wait. Now we’re right back where we started: at your Craigslist personal ads. Which is apropos since this trailer seems to be setting us up for a Planet Of The Apes-like return-to whence-we-came kind of story.

J: Coincidentally, one thing that separates us from the apes is IKEA. Literally— there’s an IKEA between my house and the zoo and the monkeys are always jumping up and down because they’re furious they can’t live in monkey houses with Swedish ready-to-assemble furniture. When I was a kid, I saw a monkey mom give her monkey baby a bath in a claw-foot bathtub at the zoo. True story. Monkeys had more elegant furniture back then.

B: Ah, yes. Monkey mom bathes monkey baby in claw-foot bathtub. That ol’ ditty.

Monkey mommy, monkey mommy
What are you doing now?
Just gettin’ my lil’ baby all cleaned up
At night I sometimes dream of IKEA furniture.

Yes, that was the number 1 song in 1998. In that particular section of the zoo. If I remember correctly. I believe I heard someone humming it once. There. Never did understand why that monkey mommy was so particularly proud of washing her lil’ snookums in a bathtub. Hey Auntie Anthropoid, why don’t you come back next year when you’ve proven you can give her a Shellac manicure?

Isn’t that what Prometheus seems to be about? Us silly humans getting in way over our heads while trying to imitate and investigate our higher selves? No? Am I reading too much into this trailer? Is anybody listening to me???

The first thing I did in Skyrim was join a group of warriors called The Companions. They turned out to be werewolves. Then I became a werewolf. Then I was cured of being a werewolf by cutting off a witch’s head. Later, I realized I’d misread the instructions and the cure for being a werewolf is cutting off a witch in traffic.

I was so obsessed with werewolves as a kid I tried to convince a girl at summer camp that I’d made a wish during the full moon and was now part werewolf. That same girl pressed my hands together and told me that the lines in my palms connected to form the horns and goat face of Satan. Later that summer, we saw lightning strike the surface of a lake. She wore faded Ozzy Osbourne shirts and thick mascara. Much like Skyrim, with its vikings and dark gods asking for ritual sacrifices, she was so metal she made carving “Slayer” into your arm for the devil look like carving John Mayer lyrics into a devil’s food cake.

After The Companions, I joined the Thieves Guild. They mostly wanted me to steal gold candlesticks and whatnot. Guess they were getting ready to decorate Elton John’s piano. Every once in a while, I’d fight a dragon that would swoop down and perch on villagers’ houses and breathe ice on everything. To be fair, the dragon had just swallowed a Snoopy Sno Cone machine and was just trying to give the townspeople a frosty treat.

I hired a wizard who was hanging around on a bench by the door of an inn and gave him a powerful staff. Then we went down into a cave and killed some bandits. Usually, when you pay a man who’s been loitering in a motel lobby to take your staff, he charges extra to go deep into a dark hole, but this guy wanted a flat rate of 500 coins.

Then I joined The Dark Brotherhood, who gave me Shadowmere, a magic red-eyed horse who rose up from a pool of bubbling dark water. He’s one of the fastest horses in the game, probably because he’s so relaxed from smoking all that pot in a jacuzzi. I once watched the director’s commentary for the Method Man & Redman movie How High, and they were talking about how a scene with a donkey who got drunk and passed out was incredibly difficult because they “couldn’t get that donkey to lay down for shit.”

I also became the arch-mage of a college for wizards after destroying a sphere of magic electricity that was too powerful for its own good, which is also why I was kicked out of Spencer’s Gifts after kicking over a whole display of plasma globes.

Finally, I killed an ancient dragon who was hell bent on eating all the souls in the world. If souls taste anything like deviled eggs, I can’t say I blame him. The other day I went to a restaurant in Atlanta and ordered deviled eggs and they only gave me three deviled eggs in a big red basket. I guess they were trying to avoid putting all their eggs in one basket. Anyway, I learned a magic shout from some dead vikings (in Skyrim, not at the restaurant) and yelled at the dragon until he fell on the ground. Which is also the only way to get me to stop eating deviled eggs. Skyrim!