Review of American Pie

Review of American Pie

American Pie is a documentary about my high school life. The names Mike, Kevin, Good Joe and Dustin were only changed to protect the not-so-innocent. They changed the ending a bit, and improvised with the middle, but other than that, they kinda hit it right on the nose. I haven't checked the list thoroughly, but let’s just say that odds work as they should and agree that half the people on this list are males, and I'm pretty sure you've all gone through high school by now too. They say that guys think about sex about 95% of the time. They're wrong. Those times that we were thinking about sports or college, we were just thinking about how to impress chicks so we'd get laid. Candy coat it however you want to, but facts are facts. And speaking of facts being facts, the movie also points out that the decision is ultimately up to the girl. So if they determine when it starts, it's only fair that we determine when it's over.

They didn't really touch upon that in the movie, but they touched a lot of stuff, believe you me. This movie stars nobody you know except for Eugene Levy and you won't even remember his name next week anyway. Everybody in it is funny. The characters all have character to the point where I found myself scrunching down in my seat and covering my eyes in embarrassment for them many times over in the film. You find yourself rooting for them. You want some to win, you want some to fail, but you want them to do it. And I don't recall a pause in my laughter. I remember different degrees of it, but this film kept me laughing all the way through it, the car ride home, and a few days into day camp. But here's a tip: Don't go see this film with your younger sister and her boyfriend. Or your girlfriend and your mom. Or your mom at all. Lots of people will be too uncomfortable to laugh about that stuff around the wrong people. And you need to laugh out loud. So go see it, but only with close friends. Or your girlfriend (if you've been dating for long enough for the sexual tension to be gone). Worst comes to worst, go see it by yourself. You can wait for it to come out on DVD too, there are no big screen special effects or in stereo musical scores you'll be missing, but you will be out of the loop for 9 months. I'll give American Pie 9 1/2 bugs. Half a missing bug because it didn't do anything innovatively special like have an ant and an unlikely tube sock full of circus bugs make a bird to scare away grasshoppers, or make me remember my own mortality. 9 1/2 remaining bugs because I haven't laughed so hard at something besides Russ' dating career probably ever. It was even better than Something About Mary. I rode home with Flynn and Good Joe and neither of us could stop laughing or talking about the movie...

Quote of the Day 7/23/99

"Gee. My dad comes home everyday about this time. Hey, I have an idea. Why don't I fuck a pie!!"

-The Almighty Flynn


Hey, at least you didn't broadcast that over the internet.

Running with scissors,

Weird Dustin.


It's All About the Pentiums...

Witless Fitness

Witless Fitness

Well, I know I mentioned before that it was going to happen sometime in the future, and that future was 3 weeks ago tonight. At any rate, I started teaching a college class. All these young, impressionable minds (average age is 26) at the whim of my corruption. UMBC is paying me good money to teach these people about Lifetime Fitness. What the hell do I know about Lifetime Fitness? I'm a contortionist with a high metabolism so I look thin and flexible. The layman would have a tough time distinguishing between me and somebody in shape. That's what I was counting on. 13 out of 13 physical laymen. I got 12.

Thankfully, the thirteenth one is willing to take a bribe. He's actually pretty cool. I spend a lot of class time sitting on the weightlifting equipment with him gawking over the redhead in our class. My class. Anyway, he was asking me if I had ever thought about becoming a physical trainer or anything like that. I told him that I would probably feel uncomfortable having somebody pay me money to get them into shape...

Quote of the Day 7/22/99

"So how's that different from what you're doing now?"

-Joe, unlucky #13.


OK class, get in line. We're going to flail our limbs again today...

Hot for student,

Mr. Robinson.


Still Standing Right Here...

Sarcasm in Training

Sarcasm in Training

Sorry about that last absence, but the last week has just been one big blur of booze, drugs, and chicks. Actually, the chicks are only about 9-12 years old, the booze is pink lemonade, and the drugs were vitamin C pills. By the way, I was really sick last week. At first I thought it was just allergies, but it turns out I had strep throat. Apparently, I'm allergic to bacteria. I didn't see a doctor or get a throat culture or anything, but I just have a feeling. I also have a feeling that the earth is getting dangerously close to the sun and will cause our atmosphere to burn up almost completely within the next 7 years, so take that medical diagnosis however you want to. But I was sick. Of that much, I'm positive.

I've said it before, but I love seeing children outsmart these "adults" we have working for us. Especially when it shows signs of a budding sarcastic bitter hatred for the world's supposed "humanity." One of the 12-year-old girls in the older group is cheating on her "boyfriend" from school with a 13-year-old junior counselor at camp. And she shows no remorse for what she's doing. Apparently I've been giving women a bad rap. It's not a conscious choice they make to be evil. It's inherent in their DNA. Genetics is to blame and that's a losing battle, despite what those Austin Powers penis pumps say on the label. If it wasn't for the fact that men's DNA make them inherently blind to it, procreation of the human race could be in serious jeopardy. I think I got a little off the topic for a second or two.

Anyway, I have a pet peeve which is admittedly sort of anal, but a pet peeve nonetheless. I get so annoyed when people leave dangling prepositions on the end of their sentences. "Where's Darryl at?" Crap like that. There's absolutely no reason for the "at." It's an extra syllable you could save for later in life, it makes you sound less intelligent, it's not grammatically correct, and all the information you need is contained in "Where's Darryl?" That, and it annoys me and I'll tell you about it when you do it, which will annoy probably both of us. Anyway, I'm trying to stop this at an early age in day camp. A 15-year-old junior counselor named Erica was caught using the sentence "Where can I get the dodge balls from?" I then went off on my little anti-preposition dangling schpeal (sp?), to which she corrected herself...

Quote of the Day 7/20/99

"Sorry. From where can I get the dodge balls at?"

-Erica


Apparently, smart ass is in the DNA too.

Ridding the world of the grammatically incorrect youth,

Mr. Cantaloupe.


Still Standing Right Here...

House Sat

House Sat

Well, the house sitting has come to a welcomed end. That dog was the most stubborn thing in the universe. And I had to take her out a total of 6 times a day! I guess I shouldn't complain too much, because these people were paying me pretty decent money to just basically sit in their house and watch TV (TV watching optional), which is what I would normally do at home anyway. But Jiggy is so much cooler than that boring dog. For one, Jiggy moves when you push her, and sometimes she does it voluntarily. Keesha (the husky) just sits around collapsed under her own weight most of the day. But anyway, it's over. The thing that really sucked about it was that I had to just sit there all weekend knowing that there was other, much funner stuff going on elsewhere in the world. And I was stuck with this stupid lethargic as she wanna be dog. I got sick of staying in all the time though, so I went out with Tony and Julie to eat and lay carpet Friday night. We wound up in Giant somehow at around 1:00 in the morning. I was complaining that I didn't have time to play all night in Giant because I had to drive all the way back home and get up at 6:00 in the morning to walk the dog. Julie was a bit confused because last she had heard, we had a cat. Gender can be easily mistaken, but genus is pretty hard to fuck up. So she looked at me and Tony with this look that said "but I thought..." I was going to keep her in suspense, but Tony decided to break the silent confusion...

Quote of the Day 7/19/99

"He's learning how to do the yo-yo again."

-Mellow-tone-n.


Remind me to get some mad carbs in my system before I try to rock the cradle again.

Robbing, er uh... rocking the cradle,

Mr. Cantaloupe.


Still Standing Right Here...

Review of the Wild Wild West

Review of the Wild Wild West

So Hollywood spared no gimmicks with this flick. They combined the 5-year old 4th of July Will Smith action/adventure release with the recent fascination of remaking old 60's sitcoms. Throw in an older, respected actor, a gorgeous babe, and a never-ending slew of computer generated gadgets. How can this go wrong? I'll bet that's what the filmmakers are asking themselves right now.

Before I tell you how I feel about the film, I need to give you a dissertation on the term "suspension of disbelief." Suspension of disbelief is a talent. And it is an important one to have in order to enjoy this film. And do you know what helps you out with your SOD? A barrage of people telling you that the film sucked. I walked into the theater ready for the film to be the worst possible thing I've ever seen. Not one person, even a child, told me it was good. Respected friends told me not to waste my money and I'd be better off buying the new In Sync CD. I had also seen the previews and recognized the 80 foot long mechanical tarantula. Right then, I knew this film wasn't going to necessarily be historically accurate. The president's name was Grant and railroads were popular. Don't expect to go into social studies and bring up any more relevant facts about the old west that you got from this movie. I enjoyed this movie, even though I was supposed to see American Pie, but another alleged friend (I'm never going to try to watch a movie I want to watch with Good Joe again) screwed up the show time. If you remember your QOTD history, you'll probably recall that I started using the bug scale after unsuccessfully trying to see A Bug's Life in the theaters 3 times in a row. If I don't get to see American Pie the next 2 times I try, I may have to institute a pie chart scale of some sort. But anyway, WWW had its moments. The action sequences were decent (though almost always impossible and a bit silly at times), and the witty one liners were mostly cheezy, but there were a few good ones in there.

And the special effects were good too. Not quite Jurassic Park or Star Wars, but they were good. Don't get me wrong, I thought the movie sucked. I just said that I enjoyed it. I don't recommend it to anyone and I probably won't watch it again, but if you get locked out of every other movie, you can watch this one. First of all, let's start with Jim West. The character's name is West and that's where they are. An allegedly clever play on words. And he's black. He wasn't black in the TV show. But it's Will Smith. The man has no rules. He sings, he dances, he does sitcoms, and he stars in a blockbuster action flick that gets released every Independence Day since... well, Independence Day. So after such a long string of successes, one flop is excusable. What is inexcusable is that Kevin Kline decided to be in this film. I am quite positive he never read the script. Probably still hasn't. He probably fired an agent over this mockery of his reputation. The usually reliable Kline comes across as corny and over the top. I finally understand now why Salma Hayek isn't in more movies. She is very nice to look at but has limited acting ability, and I think that is a very generous assessment. There was also no reason for her character to be in this movie. The formula for a blockbuster film has traditionally had an element of a love interest in it somewhere. I would be willing to bet that whoever wrote the script added her character in it after he or she was finished with the entire thing. Same with Godzilla. Actually, I'm pretty sure Godzilla never had a written script. And Kenneth Branagh did fairly well as a legless evil scientist, and whatever he had going on on his face this film worked for him. But if you can't pull off a southern accent, don't try. All in all, I give the obvious product of a Hollywood Blockbuster equation 3 bug pies. I think that's my new lowest rating of any movie. I didn't even bother to go into all the plot holes there were in the film. "Oh, hey, look. It's my other tool kit. They must have forgotten to check my pockets when they searched me." If you do go see the movie, at the end of every scene, do your best to try to forget what you had previously seen. Watch this movie from scene to scene, not as a whole. Maybe that will help. Or go get that In Sync CD.

I've noticed a direct correlation between how much I dislike a film and how long my review is. Thank God I started doing these after Godzilla came out. I'd already have developed carpul tunnel syndrome. On the topic at hand, Meawad was telling me and Tony that Kevin Kline turns down possibly more movie offers than anybody else in Hollywood. In fact, he's gotten the nickname "Kevin DeKline" for his pickiness. I contrasted this lifestyle with Kevin "Bring Home the Bacon," who averages at least 3-4 bit parts in movies per year, to which Tony said...

Quote of the Day 7/16/99

"Do you think he feels obligated to connect himself to all the new young actors coming out today?"

-Tone-Def


"If you don't get me on an episode of Dawsons Creek, I'm getting a new agent!"

The Hollywood avenger,

Coach.


Still Standing Right Here...

Bang For My Buck

Bang For My Buck

For those of you who care, I went home (PA) and played with Good Joe for the first time since January sometime. Well, it's sort of become a tradition that every time we see each other, we play tennis sometime that week. I had left my racket here (MD), so I needed to go buy one, which I had been meaning to do anyway. I shelled out the $40 to get this new lightweight super top spin reach racket that I probably wouldn't be able to use to its advertised capacity. We went to play, and apparently Joe had gotten better. The day before we went to play, when it looked like we weren't going to get a chance to do so, I had lied and told him that I had gotten better also. Anyway, we warmed up a little bit, and he looked really good. I was hoping it was just luck and he'd choke like normal when we met in a game. Well, he took the first two games easily. My new $40 racket sucked ass. I missed a volley at the net to embarrass the last point of those two games out of me. In anger, I hit the top of the net with my racket. I've done this 8,000 times with all my other rackets, other people's rackets, and a clenched fist once or twice too. But this racket was apparently made out of tin or some equivalent alloy. It didn't bend. It dented. It looked like this:
__
-/ \
----/
\___/

You get the point. At any rate, it was no longer usable. So in effect, I paid over $20 a game to lose and play like shit. I haven't consulted Tony, but I imagine that's not a great financial decision. I was pissed, and since the damn thing wasn't worth anything to me anymore, I did what any normal intelligent man would have done. I bashed it to hell. Now it looks more like this:

/ _
--/ \
__
/ /
-\/

Close enough. So anyway, Joe kicked my ass, and I was mighty pissed. When I simmered down enough after getting some Italian water ice, I mustered up the humility to tell him that he had a really nice first two games...

Quote of the Day 7/15/99

"Yeah. Things kinda fell apart after that."

-Beats Me While I'm Down Joe



Now Joe has no racket.

More proof that love stinks,

Coach.


Still Standing Right Here...

Balls and Worms

Balls and Worms

Well, I have some news for you guys. After bitching and complaining about how stupid the phrase "the ball is in your court" was, my mom sent me a message enlightening me of the origin of the actual term. Back in the days before disco, when kings had balls (as in dances, not testicles), they would throw parties and invite everyone around the land. Back in the old days, there was a sense of social obligation to carry your own weight, or there was a possibility of a beheading. So to spread the obligation around, the lords of the land would alternate who's "court" the ball would be held in. So after a ball was held, it became tradition for the hosting lord to approach the lord scheduled to hold the next ball and say to him "the ball is in your court, sire." Eventually, the "sire" was dropped for modern-day style reasons, and hence the saying that I no longer think is so stupid anymore. Now if anybody can help me out with "farting around," that one still stumps and disgusts me.

For those of you who care, Lance Yelnick Mikey Freelander from PA had a birthday a few weeks back, during my not-so-sabbatical. I was telling him over the phone about our new place and how he had to come down to check it out. 300 channels of programming, Friends-style "recliner row" complete with living room beer/coke fridge, and the devil embodied in fur. To sweeten the deal, I told him that we (Tony) had just bought Worms: Armageddon. This game is awesome! It combines all the old fun of high pitched yelps of desperation and clumsy mishandling of weaponry for comedic effect with some really neat shit! There are weapons with names like "holy hand grenade," "old exploding lady," and "baseball bat." And the sheep fly in this game. And there are about 80 different voices you can choose from, including Drill Sergeant, Geezer, and Angry Scots, and you can pick your own victory theme music. But don't take my word for it. Come over and try it for yourself. Please. We're bored. But anyway, I was telling Mike all this with a lot of excitement in my voice, and Mike started whimpering as I was explaining this to him, because last time I introduced him to the regular game of worms, he flunked out of college, lost his girlfriend, and stopped eating to play worms 20 hours a day. But I don't care. It's not my life and I need somebody to play with. So I was telling him how you can walk over to another worm and hit him with a baseball bat straight up in the air or release a skunk bomb to spray all over the enemy like a biological weapon, and I could physically hear his will breaking over the phone...

Quote of the Day 7/12/99

Me: "...so anyway, you have to come down and play. I'll even copy the game for you."
Mike: "Dustin, there are already some days where I don't leave the house."


Damn, Mike. There are some days where I don't even get a chance to go back to mine anymore.

Looking for a court to hold my balls in,

Dustin.


Still Standing Right Here...