I have an awful habit of going to see a movie every couple of weeks even if there is absolutely nothing to see. Well, I’ve got to admit that my habit led me to the lowest depths of desperation when we actually paid to see a Kevin Smith movie last night. Fuck.

I hate Kevin Smith so fucking much. I’m surprised shit like this doesn’t happen to him more often with the number of people in the world that probably hate his fucking guts.

Anyway, Cop Out has Tracy Morgan in it and he’s my achilles heel. I will watch anything with Tracy Morgan in it with eager anticipation. I should have known better that Kevin Smith would make him deliver a bunch of garbage punch lines instead of just letting him do what he does best: show up drunk and take his shirt off. Pause.

I initially thought this movie looked awful but I was given an ounce of hope when the red band trailer dropped. Let me save you the grief I went through and recommend you watch the trailer because it’s the only pleasure you’re going to get out of Cop Out. I understand that this movie is supposed to be a parody of 80’s cop flicks and that all the corn is supposed to be taken with a grain of irony but I don’t care. Kevin Smith blows a million dicks. I’m just sorry Tracy had to be there…and Jason Lee I suppose.

I’ll see you in hell Kevin Smith you fat, un-flight-worthy fuck.

(I’m sorry for swearing so much.)

Has anyone tried watching The WWE recently? Is it me or has it slowly mutated into recruitment propaganda for the Marines? It’s amazing that this thing is still going on! Why are they even trying? There’s nothing in the world that could touch the golden era of the WWF (circa 1985-1990) — not movies, not cartoons, music, comic books, NADA. We fell into a bit of a renaissance with The Rock, Goldberg, Triple H, Stone Cold, et al. But man, the spectacle of the golden age was our generation’s Vaudeville. This was EPIC drama with Meth-addled Barbers, Loud mouthed Scotsmen, Weasels, Pimps, Hitmen, Giants, Hacksaws, Hammers, Commies and Snakes! Now that the best is behind us from the House McMahon, it’s evident that one Swatch sunglassed, sequened robe rockin’, feathered haired man stands as the Greatest Wrestler of All Time.

MACHO MAN Randy Savage.

Come join me in this retrospective in OH YEAH!

Early Years – You can see the impetus of a schtick which will eventually explode into the luminous nebula of Macho Madness!

In my pre-teens, I was partial to Hogan and later Ultimate Warrior — the former being a horrible wrestler with inspiring charisma, the latter being just what a young hessian needed. I loathed Macho Man back in the day!!! That sleazy, scary, abusive, arrogant, rude and crude cretin!!! It would be years until I realized that these very same qualities are what add to his legend of the WWF’s G.O.A.T. Savage owned it all! The charisma, the acrobatics, the gimmick, catch phrase, overall steez, and man oh man, could that dude improv in a promo!

I like to fantasize about Macho snorting a huge rail of coke in the Gold’s Gym locker room with Hogan when he came up with his infamous “OH YEAH!” catchphrase. His Intercontinental Champion era was his finest if you ask me. He jumped the shark as the Macho King with Scary Sheri!

A Goldmine of Macho

It’s no revelation to speak of his rivalry with Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat yielding the most amazing WWF match in history. Now, if you were like me you were down with Team Steamboat and those Chinese Stars and Tiger Claws stuck in your backyard tree were indicative of that. But looking back, Steamboat is such a herb!

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I’ll be upfront in saying I have not read Axolotl Roadkill by Helene Hegemann, and the mere thought of reading a 17 year old author’s debut  on clubbing and drugs, makes me cringe… I don’t care how highly praised it is.

But that isn’t the point of this post. The New York Times had a great article today about the controversy young Helene’s book has stirred. You see, while initially released to glowing praise, certain passages and chunks of Axotol Roadkill have since been accused of being lifted from a variety of sources. Helene Hegemann’s reponse to these allegations has simply been this:

I myself don’t feel it is stealing, because I put all the material into a completely different and unique context and from the outset consistently promoted the fact that none of that is actually by me

The problem is that Helene never at any point cited in her book the original source material nor stated from the outset that she would be “sampling” existing prose. Her excuse was that she didn’t understand she needed to (oh how 17 of her!). She says her “sampling” of text was just a byproduct of her generation and the youth culture, comparing it to DJing.

I honestly think it’s a pretty intriguing concept that, if done correctly, could be giving new perspective and purpose to old ideas. Our modern Pop Culture says sampling is OK, and so sampling back from itself to create something “new” should in theory be acceptable, or shouldn’t it? How is it really all that different from countless generations looking to and appropriating religious ideas, archetypes, and text in creating their own works? Of course those never actually lifted whole passages and pages, but that was then and this is now. Sure some may poo-poo the idea and impact of Pop Culture as inspiration, but like it or not, it’s quickly becoming the dogma of choice for each incoming generation.

Now in regards to Helene Hegemann, I feel she should have always been upfront about her intentions and use of material not her own while constructing this story… but my question is how do you all feel about the concept of sampling for works of literature?

It’s already been a sad morning with the death of Alexander McQueen, but now Google lands a blow which is surely only the opening salvo in a failing Music Industry’s last ditch effort to find a place in modern society. Google has gone and shut down a bunch of sites that were hosted on their blogspot and blogger arms with out any warning or back-up with the below letter to the host sites.

We’d like to inform you that we’ve received another complaint regarding your blog,” begins the cheerful letter received by each of the owners of Pop Tarts, Masala, I Rock Cleveland, To Die By Your Side, It’s a Rap and Living Ears. All of these are music-blogs – sites that write about music and post MP3s of what they are discussing. “Upon review of your account, we’ve noted that your blog has repeatedly violated Blogger’s Terms of Service … [and] we’ve been forced to remove your blog. Thank you for your understanding.

This will I’m sure shape up to be one of the most over-arching stories in the music world for 2010.

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This isn’t meant to generalize ALL Hot Wheels collectors. It just concerns a small group of them I used to encounter. Unless they are all like this. Then fuck em.

Last night I was thinking about how I haven’t set foot in a Toys R Us for a good three years. There’s a Target about a half mile from my place, so I always head there if I feel like some cold-call toy shopping. Just popping into a department store for toys isn’t as suspenseful as it used to be. Since the internet, we just gather; there’s no hunting really.

Anyways, I used to go to the Toys R Us in Rockaway, NJ about twice a week. New shit came in on Wednesdays, so I’d always go that day after school. Give them underpaid kids time to stock my shelves, gnomesayin’? But Saturdays were always my jam. I would get up around 7:00 and drive my Chevy Celebrity to Toys R Us. Once there, I would have to stand outside with the other collectors until opening. I never knew if they had any new Star Wars shit in, but that was part of the fun.

Outside there would always be a handful of dudes, usually Star Wars heads. We’d shoot the shit, maybe talk about trading…and stay far away from the huddle of Hot Wheels collectors. They’d be standing in a circle right up against the door, chain smoking, eyeballing us, and looking over their checklists. They were older than us – maybe in their forties – and always reeked of shadiness. I swear they wore the same clothes every weekend.

A wary employee would finally come over and open the doors, and the Hot Wheels crew would bum rush the poor kid. They’d charge up to their aisle, where the employees would have cases of new stock just sitting there. They wouldn’t even bother putting the cars on the fucking shelf; they knew there was no point. These fools would just tear through like locusts and leave die-cast cars scattered all over the floor.

I’ve been to midnight Star Wars toy releases: Episode 1, 2, and Clone Wars. Each time, everyone showed respect for the store, employees, and other collectors. And there were hundreds of us in there at once. But this small amount of Hot Wheels collectors were a band of cutthroat, obnoxious, douchebags that left that small area of Toys R Us looking like Baghdad. They’d dig through the cases and just leave what they didn’t need on the floor. Then they’d ask the employees if there was any more stock in the back. “Everything is out here,” would be the answer but these dudes would still throw them dagger eyes. Why the store ever put up with these dicks is beyond me.

Maybe I’m just bitter Mattel never made a Hot Wheels Chevy Celebrity.

Former Bulls All-Star Scottie Pippen just issued a press release regarding an upcoming straight to video release titled Mascots vs. Midgets, which due to to the absurdity surrounding it, is now beginning to circulate the internet.

Apparently Pippen agreed to appear in a cameo role for the movie formerly known as A Tribute to Big Red. What he didn’t know is that the director had ulterior motives and set Pippen up for what appears to be a full-on little people beatdown. The scene in the above clip wasn’t scripted and after it was shot, the director explained to Pippen that he’d been “punk’d.”

If this wasn’t strange enough, Gary Coleman is pissed about the movie containing “inadvertent” nude scenes of him. Poor Gary. The only thing missing from this are a few juggalos with some facepaint and Faygo.

Read the full story here.

For the past year I’d been hearing scattered reports about this movie, Avatar, from the Vidiot.

“Hey, have you heard of Avatar?”
“No”. I’d respond even though he’d told me about it five times.

I wasn’t really lying. The movie sounded so boring that all awareness and understanding of Avatar would enter my brain and then instantly slide out my brain’s buttpipe as soon as the words Vidiot spoke were done. He was fascinated with this movie because it was James Cameron’s first movie since Titanic, half a billion dollars had been dropped on it and up until recently the general consensus was that it looked like shit and was going to flop so hard that it would sink the movie industry.

I saw the movie yesterday and it’s just your average kinda-shitty movie.

The movie starts with some guys getting off a spaceship on a planet called Pandora. They’re there to mine for unobtanium. They clone bodies that look like the local aliens who are giant, blue and mostly naked, I kept thinking of them as Fucksmurfs. Then they use magic metal sleeping bags to enter the minds of the otherwise vacant alien bodies. The main human inhabiting an alien body gets lost while exploring and then gets rescued by one of the resident lady manimals and she slowly brings him into the tribe. It turns out humans are going to blow up the big tree they live in and then they do and then most of the main characters die, especially Michelle Rodriguez. Why does Michelle Rodriguez always die? It happened in Resident Evil AND Lost. I don’t care about the white women with ugly faces and college attitudes. I want Michelle Rodriguez to be famous and get fucked in all her movies, not to be some Latina redshirt with “tude.” So then main boring white guy transfers his consciousness into his giant blue alien body and the movie ends.

I guess I thought this movie would be a little less corny. It starts off being like Starship Troopers and turns into Ferngully: The Last Rainforest….In spaaaaaaaccccccce! The characters and story offer no depth or surprises. You can pretty much guess every character’s story as soon as they say their first line except that more main characters die than I expected or thought was needed. The CGI is nothing special. It all looks like a videogame and none of it is convincing. Has anyone ever seen CGI in a movie and thought,”Whoa, that looks so real that I believe it?” Most of T2 is believable. The Powerloader in Aliens is believable. Even the Yoda puppet in Empire Strikes Back fools me into believing in it. I have never seen CG in a movie without it pulling me out of the experience completely. That’s not true. movies that are completely CG animated, like Pixar’s are good and don’t bother me. All the animals and characters looked like other shit I’d seen. It was all a bland mixture of Delgo, the Star Wars prequels, that recent Terminator movie and some videogames. Also it’s long as fuck. It’s almost three hours long. That’s too fucking long.

This movie’s the future of nothing. It’s not Battlefield Earth bad and it’s not T2 great. It’s just a big nothing and the story is for retards. One thing that is funny is that it’s PG-13 and they say “bitch” and “shit” as much as possible.

An 18 year old charged with $7300 dollars worth of graffiti vandalism is receiving an 8 year term in a Texas state prison without parole? Srsly? Let’s reform this misguided youth by sending him away to spend his most impressionable years amidst murderers, crooks, rapists and scums! Corpus Christi makes Texas proud!

I’m sure by now you’ve either seen or heard one of your friends go on endlessly about MTV’s new reality show Jersey Shore. I caught up with both episodes over the weekend and I have to say it’s the best reality TV show I’ve seen since the first 3 seasons of The Real World. Keep in mind that this is coming from someone who hates Reality TV.

My girlfriend and I found the show not only hilarious but pretty accurate to our own formative years surrounded by Brooklyn and Jersey Guidos & Guidettes. The only two Guido types sadly missing are the plump “life of the party” Guido and the Alterna-Guido. However, unlike me, she felt the show was a little exploitative and racist and well, she’s not alone. The Italian-American defamation league (UNICO) has gone after the show for portraying a poor stereotype and TV critic, Linda Stasi chimed in with her own 2¢ on the matter in today’s NY Post.

I personally don’t see things their way and tend to agree with MTV’s response to the critics. I’m of the mind that “Guido” has moved into its own youth based sub-culture much like Punk, Juggalo & Hipster. The “Guido” stereotypes (like it or not) have become identity benchmarks within their own community like mohawks and studded belts have to punk rockers. Remember, that’s within its own community… NOT the Italian-American community (and anyone who can’t separate the two has bigger issues than this show).

I’m not ignorant to how things work behind the scenes on reality shows where the producers play a role off-screen in creating on screen conflict (especially since Greg spent time working on Elimidate). However in no way do I think anyone on the show is acting in a way that’s “clearly at the urging of its producer.” Linda Stasi believes otherwise, but I think the show’s producers are for the most part letting the camera roll and what gets captured makes for some great TV. Yes it’s funny and yes we’re laughing at them (at least I am) but that doesn’t mean everyone else is… fuck, I’m sure that if the people on Jersey Shore were to watch a show based on the daily interaction of the Мишка office, we’d undoubtedly be the butts of their jokes too.

After spending decades with a front row seat to the Guido sub-culture I honestly find that the show is not only accurate but silly and amusing. Is this any different than say MTV turning their cameras on at the Gathering of the Juggalos and making a show out of that? Is it really exploitative if it’s documenting things as they are? No question MTV could be heading down a slippery slope by singling out one specific sub-culture that is so ethnically tied, but did they really go too far? I guess that’s where you all chime in with your own thoughts about it in the comments.

If you haven’t yet seen the show go to MTV’s site now and watch both episodes and bonus clips. They’re totally worth the watch and then you can decide for yourself if the show is too exploitative and inaccurate.

P.S. As an added bonus, here is  Snooki’s Youtube channel.

As we all know I am a giant cheerleader for Twitter.  However, today I have a sad story to share.

So it’s been a whole month since I’ve been able to actually log into my Twitter account.  I went from having 3 people logged into my account tweeting for me while I was in jail – to coming home and not being able to log into my own account.  I immediately emailed Twitter, which yielded nothing but mass responses that boasted “SUPPORT” yet they didn’t help one bit.

After a couple of days of not being able to log in because of password issues, I realized that I could tweet from MySpace.  Tweeting from MySpace is annoying as FRUCK!!!  Using MySpace makes me feel like a rapper/pedophile since MySpace is pretty much teen occupied and “Next Best Rapper!” strewn.  Still synced with Twitter, MySpace was the only platform I was able to update with until Twitter suspended my account due to “suspicious activity.”  The suspicious activity they speak of was actually just me trying to reach out to the employees at Twitter via Twitter.  Who wouldn’t get tired of logging into MySpace just to tweet? Or going to www.search.twitter.com just to see @replies?  I know I did.  I doubt that anyone besides myself would have gone through all that trouble just to update some anti-social yet social at the same time internet service in the first place (Ease DaTwitterholic).

As I am having this written by Roger DaIntern, I have yet to get a response from Twitter.  Not tweeting has slowed down my thinking process, and now I have to resort to prehistoric forms of communication.  But despite it all  I am still Ease DaMan, just minus a working Twitter account.

Please keep my account in your prayers.

Love,
Ease DaMan