I don’t do resolutions. To resolve to do something is to assume I was too lazy or lame to do the thing I am resolving to do, and I am not lame or lazy. I am, point in fact, quite awesome. And I don’t need resolutions to tell me that. I don’t smoke. I eat healthy. The only thing I drink is fine wine and the occasional Ryan Atwood-inspired 7 and 7. I work out regularly and am thin and fit as a result. I talk to my parents on a weekly basis. And I’ve already started lowering my sugar intake. I read all the time (just caught up with the Y: The Last Man series. It’s totally ninja. Brian K. Vaughan is pimper than Mike Epps with a powder hand slap.).
And with the strike still going strong my TV watching is receding worse than Nic Cage’s hairline. His toupee in National Treasure 2 looked like a raccoon barfed up Burt Reynolds toupee which then mated with Sean Connery’s toupee and the offspring grew up and went to a liberal arts college where it hooked up with Britney Spears’ hippie post-Bic wig and THAT offspring was born with Down Syndrome but through goodwill and perseverance grew up to be a champion for wig rights, but one day was involved in a horrific toxic sludge explosion that turned him into something else, something unnatural, something that Nic Cage would be unashamed of wearing on the big screen. (Thankfully, the movie is good despite the wig. Fine ass Helen Mirren being too fine certainly didn’t hurt the proceedings.)
So you see, what would I need to resolve to do, anyway? Instead, I like to make goals. Goals I can reach that will progress my life and career in more positive ways than guilting myself into not having that extra Double Chocolate Mint Milano cookies or reading a few more trashy James Patterson hard covers. So because I am boastful and arrogant and not worried about having something I wrote thrown back into my face twelve months later, here is my list of goals for the New Year.
The Year of The Jay.
A little something I like to call “2008JAY8”!
137 posts over the course of the year (137 is a GREAT number).
50,000 unique visitors per month for the site.
Alexa ranking in the top 75,000.
Launch the first wave of Movie ObscuriTees.
Sell 300 Movie ObscuriTees.
See 100 movies in theaters (pay for as very few as possible).
Meet Ben Affleck and tell him “He was the bomb in Phantoms, yo!”
Start posting “The Stirring Tales of Master Assassin Dakota Fanning” (Episode One: Shinoku’s Revenge!).
Shake Jack Nicholson’s hand (I have a thing for shaking the hand of 70’s movie stars. Burt Reynolds gave me the best shake of my life. And yes, that is a euphemism. Hiyo!)
Feed Jenna Jameson and a hamburger (and as a show of her gratitude, let me touch her boobs).
Hit the tanning salon, you know, just to get a base!
See one picture of Renee Zellweger on a red carpet where she’s dropping a HappyFace.
Buy a TV so big it would make Barney Stinson weep in jealousy.
Do whatever it takes to get Friday Night Lights a 3rd Season renewal.
Get added to the press list of all the major studios (and thus gaining me untold amounts of free schwag and free advanced screenings).
Launch an American Idol-focused radio show on NowLive.com.
Have my coverage of Idol rewarded by being invited to the Season Finale Extravaganza at the Kodak Theatre where I can beatbox with Blake, light the wax candle that is Carrie and surreptitiously keep Kelly from the buffet line.
See all five Best Picture nominees, regardless of what they end up being (even if one of them is Sweeney Todd).
Get nominated for the 2008 Weblog Award for Best Culture Blog (for a third year running!) and place in the Top 3.
Monetize TheJay.com (apologies in advance for the influx of ads, Papa needs to make some kaysh).
A Google page rank of 8 or above.
Wake up in the morning and poop excellence. Just because.
Author an infamous YouTube video (Don’t tase TheJay, bro! Don’t tase TheJay!).
Meet Keanu Reeves and have him thank me for my support. And add a “whoa” to the end of the gratitude.
A winning season for the Dolphins next year. Or at the very least, 6 or 7 wins.
Enjoy Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Not get arrested for stabbing some asshat in the thorax cause he wouldn’t shut up during Iron Man.
Guest blogging around the net. So watch out for The Jay, he’s on the move…
The Jay wishes everyone a Happy New Year and a great 200JAY8!
NOTE: I wrote this last year to celebrate the Bearded Master’s big time 60th, and am reposting it on it’s own with some fun updates to honor his 61st. To check out the original post, CLICK HERE
Birthday wishes go out to Steven Spielberg, my all-time favorite director, who celebrates his 61st birthday today. He may not always make the coolest movies, or even the smartest movies, but his movies are always exceedingly watchable, expertly made and laced with the type of magic seldom seen on-screen. In other words, he makes the best movies.
There isn’t a person in this country who doesn’t love at least one of his flicks, be it Jaws, Raiders, E.T., Jurassic Park, or one of the other twenty-one. His films touch our hearts, excite our minds and dazzle our eyes. He is responsible for millions of kids wanting to be film directors; and the conductor of an even higher number of childhood playtime fantasies (who didn’t run around their cul-de-sac looking for little gold idols and demeaning a tiny Chinese boy, like Indiana Jones?). He was my first inspiration as a writer and budding director, and he remains my favorite creator of movie magic. Even when he makes a movie I don’t like (like The Terminal) I still find great things in it, like the amazing airport set, which I got to walk through when I worked as an extra on the film (which means I might just love it because I’m visible in two shots of the movie).
One of my favorite recent Spielberg trends is his tendency to give himself one and then immediately give us one better as an apology. For every lame-ass Zorro sequel he produces, he gives you the superb Munich, where we got to see Bana, Blonde Bond and Captain Barbossa get their Warrior Jew on and blow up some evil doers (with some choice T&A throw in for good measure). He encourages the employment of Paul Haggis by letting him write the two Clint Eastwood war movies nobody could give a shit about, and then double backs on you with a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick of awesomeness by unleashing Michael Bay and his big mfing robots spectacular (which was actually pretty good!). And even when he gives the geek world a collective cardiac episode by bringing in the Labeouf and dumping Sean Connery on Indy 4, we quickly forgive him when he slicks us up with the “Here Comes Karen Allen” reacharound. At this point I don’t even worry about liking or not liking his next project because I know he’ll always have something coming down the pike that is sure to pwn me harder than Summer Roberts dressed as Wonder Woman.
(I’ve got a feeling that even though the entire blogosphere is walking on eggshells, Indy 4 is gonna rock hard tasty abs 24/7 washerboard-style. And who isn’t at least intrigued by his Lincoln biopic? I love that he always casts Liam Neeson when he wants to free some slaves on-screen. Good ole Qui-Gon is his go to Freedom Fighter; this country could do worse, lemme tell you…).
I’ve mancrushed more on other directors (holla, QT!), tried to Single White Female my share of indie darlings (Wes Anderson, you will be mine) and eyebrow waggled at some flash in the pans (bite my ass, PTA, making a Daniel Day-Lewis flick doesn’t make up for Magnolia. NOTHING WILL!), but I’ve never strayed too long from my love of little Stevie. He’ll always be the one I come back to. The one whose work means the most to me. The one who started it all.
He’s the Joey to my Pacey (Dawson can go screw). The Turner to my Hooch. The Bleeker to my Juno. The edgy stubble to my beleaguered Jack Shepherd. The Hiro to my Ando. The KY to my roughshod pornstar before a tricky desert sand sex scene. The Gwen to my No Doubt. The cheeto to my Britney. The snark to my Josh Schwartz teen drama. The pouring rain to my John Cusack medium shot of dramatic longing. The Keanu to my whoa.
The one who can do no wrong. (No, not even the last 15 minutes of A.I.)
To honor the bearded great one on his day of days, here are ten Spielberg Movie Moments that completely wreck me:
The over the shoulder pull back to reveal the government base at Devil’s Mountain, in Close Encounters. The first use of what is now known as “The Spielberg Shot”. Often imitated, never topped, it is still the best way to do a reveal on film.
The trailer over the cliff sequence in The Lost World. So well-choreographed and executed, it comes off like a Gene Kelly dance, as interpreted by Wes Craven. I love the look on Julianne Moore’s face when she realizes what’s about to happen. “Oh shit” never looked cooler on a girl.
Two moments stand out for me from Jaws: 1. The entire USS Indianapolis speech (“..thing about a shark. He’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes…”). 2. When the shark drags the first barrel underwater and Hooper loses him in a chase; I love the quiet moment when Quint stands on the end of the starboard walk ramp, holding his rifle and shaking his head, while the sun sets beautifully around him. It was a look that spoke volumes. We’re gonna need a bigger boat, indeed.
The climax in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when Indy is hanging off the ledge, desperately trying to reach the grail cup, while Henry tries to pull him to safety. Henry can’t get Indy’s attention, and their grip is starting to falter. Indy’s got mad glory in his eyes, but Henry realizes what’s truly important and gives Indy the lesson our intrepid archeologist has been looking for since we saw him run from the boulder in Raiders.
Henry: Indiana. Indiana, let it go.
That line gets me more than any other moment in the series. A perfect encapsulation of the life these men lead. Man alive, can Spielberg make a movie!
The scenes of kids trick-or-treating in E.T. As a boy who grew up in The Valley, watching a movie about a young boy and his alien best friend who lived, essentially, around the corner from me (I used to play in the same park as Elliot), brought me countless fever dreams and daytime pretend adventures. The moon shot is still a stunning image, and easily makes for the best production company logo EVER.
The epic 20 minute storming the beach scene in Saving Private Ryan, specifically the extended sequences done in silence as Tom, slightly deafened from a blast, takes in the violence happening all around him. Arguably the most realistic depiction of war ever committed to celluloid. And the fact that this film lost to a Gwyneth Paltrow romantic comedy makes me sick at both ends.
The opening credits of Catch Me If You Can, with the Pink Panther-like animation and the John Williams jazz riff. It was a signal that we were not about to see a typical Steven Spielberg fantasy, but instead something far more playful and sophisticated. And it is easily my favorite Spielberg movie of the last ten years.
The spider sequence in Minority Report. The creepy mechanical crawlers search the entire building looking for Tom Cruise’s John Anderton (the last time The Cruiser was effortlessly cool on-screen). They can’t detect Cruise because he’s lying motionless in an ice cold bathtub. The last spider is walking away when Cruise lets one tiny air bubble slip out of his mouth. And the spider hears it. The delicate double take of the CGI creature is so smooth, so graceful as to be almost unnoticeable. But let there be no mistake, it is a sly stroke of genius. And serves as yet another reminder why Spielberg uses CGI better than anyone else on the planet. Michael Bay better learn himself an education by next summer. Bumblebee taking a wiz on The Jesus does not a classic flick make.
“Oh, there you are, Peter!”
The first dinosaur reveal in Jurassic Park. Maybe the single best reveal shot of the last half decade. Ellie is going on and on about some indigenous wildlife and Grant turns her head to see what he was looking at and all we see are her eyes go wide. Ellie rises out of the jeep and then BAM, we cut to the most perfectly realized depiction of a prehistoric animal ever put on film. I can still see my Dad shaking in the theater, awestruck by what he was seeing. That’s the type of reaction Spielberg elicits in audiences. He leaves them awestruck; my favorite emotion to have while watching a movie. And I thank him for giving that to me so many times.
Mr. Spielberg… Happy Birthday, sir. We honor you here at TheJay.com. May you continue to create wonder on the silver screen for many more years to come. And you may you manwhore he she bitch slap all the naysayers and deliver the old-ass Indiana Jones sequel of our dreams (with only minor goofy detractions into LaBeouf Land).
For an absolutely fantastic retrospective of Steven Spielberg’s career, CLICK HERE.
You’re in a theater with 300 other people. It’s dark. It’s quiet. If you talk or answer your phone, people with shush you and you’ll be a total dick. What do you do? What do you do?
Unfortunately, for 96.4% of the nation’s population, they’d choose to be a dick. I don’t know what happened to this country, really I don’t. It used to be different. It used to be that people went to the movies to actually SEE a movie. Nowadays, people seem to only go to the movies so that they can talk to their friends in the dark, or practice annoying people by texting on their Blackberry with the ultra-bright screens, or continue the systematic destruction of respect and decency and etiquette from this universe. Can’t people just give each other muffled hand jobs in the back row, like the good old days?
I don’t even need to give you an example of a bad movie-going experience, because everyone has one (or a thousand). Heck, I’d be hard pressed to find one person that enjoys going to the movies at all. Long lines, overpriced tickets, rude people, dirty theaters, incompetent workers, fatty concessions, ringing cell phones, crying babies, even more rude people and BAD movies.
This has got to change!
In response to the rapid decent of awesomeness that is going to the movies, I have constructed a list of things that might be able to save the experience from the depths of Frustration City (population THIS GUY!). Maybe it won’t change the movies for the better, but it’s the only thing I can think to do to make my favorite place in the world not be a place I want to commit triple homicide in. I hope it helps…
There should be ushers in each theater whose sole job is to stand in the front of the theater, watch the audience, and tell talkers to SHUT UP! They should have intimidating all-black outfits and vaguely threatening flash light wands. I don’t even care that having them there would resemble a totalitarian war zone. If it gets the idiots to zip it I say send in the Regulators. There’s not a valid reason you should be going on and on in a movie theater. Unless you are old and can’t hear well (though why you would be at a showing of 300 on opening night is beyond me, Mr. Grey Little Dick that sat behind me), going to get snacks and quietly asking your company if they want something, or devising a plan to get the a-holes behind you to shut up, you should NOT be talking. A movie theater is not your living room. Do you see your ugly coffee table anywhere? Is your crummy art on the walls? Does it smell like man ass in there? Wait, don’t answer that one. Ushers watching the audience would significantly reduce the amount of talking. Like teachers walking the room to prevent cheating on a test or pit bosses roaming the casino floor, when you are being watched you stick to the rules. And rule number one of going to the movies is STFU!
How is it that we’ve become a nation of carb watchers and calorie killers yet we have no problem walking into a movie theater and buying a 356oz Coke, n Oprah-sized tub of buttered popcorn and a Junior Mints box so big it could choke the racism out of Cosmo Kramer? Most of the eats found at a theater have exactly zero relation to the movie-going experience, so why are we settling for those artery blockers and cavitity creators? Hot dogs and nachos are for sporting events. Churros are for the zoo. Soft pretzels are for Disneyland. Icee’s are for 7-11 trips at three in the morning. Twizzlers… well, I’m OK with the twizzlers. All I’m saying is that if I’m going to make a night of the movies I might as well get to eat something good (and maybe even healthy). How about some sweet potato fries? Or a good bruschetta? Or Kobe beef sliders? A fountain dispenser of Snapple, maybe? Even an amuse bouche for the foodies of the world? I don’t need something from the cover of Gourmet, but anything that won’t make my sugar levels rocket blast to diabetes would be super, thanks!
Snack trays that pop up and over our laps, which hide in the armrests like on airplanes. I still remember the jerk that was climbing over me and knocked my pink lemonade out of its cupholder (all over my nice new pants I might add), at a showing of Remember the Titans at the Loews Universal City Walk. At the time, the cupholders in that theater were not at your arm, they were connected to the back of the seat in front of you. A nice move if you care about the extra three inches of arm rest space, but hell if you forget to grab it when people try to pass by. Let’s go tray table-style, so we can avoid embarrassing hot dog ketchup spurts, melted chocolate bombs, errant nacho cheese dips any other situation that derives from dealing with food in a dark place. We’re crammed into a theater seat just like a plane (hell most of the crappy parts about being on a plane are replicated in a theater: talking, bad airs and smells, no leg room, bad in-flight entertainment), so why not equip us the same way?
Can I get a more difficult set of pre-film trivia questions up in this bitch? Everyone knows the answer is always either “Ben Affleck” or “Jerry Maguire”. And kids in Ethiopia can spot George Clooney’s high school yearbook picture faster than they can a chicken leg with no flies on it. Step it up Screenvision, before I launch a canon full of five-dollar Milk Duds right at your bullshit low-fi trivia.
“Real” start times. If theaters want to put commercials before the previews, that’s fine, but then they shouldn’t claim a movie is going to start at 7:30pm when in reality the credits don’t roll until 7:53pm. I’ve missed countless movies because I thought I was gonna be late (I refuse to miss the trailers), when in reality I would have been AT LEAST ten minutes early. Print the actual times the movies (and/or trailers) start, so that people can properly schedule their movie-going experience. The only problem this causes is that people will be walking in and looking for seats as the trailers are going on. This can be solved in two ways. Keep the lights on but dim until the actual movie starts, so that late-comers can still see the layout of the theater. The other way is the next item on our list.
Nationwide reserved seating AND a seating chart posted at the ticket counter and again in front of the actual theater. I know some theaters have already instituted reserved seating (the Arclight in LA is the frontrunner on this), but I feel it should be nationalized. For all who have never experienced this let me tell you, it’s a feeling like no other. The way TiVo let you start controlling how you watch TV and the iPod helps you to individualize your music, reserved seating is a game changer for going to the movies. Say you like sitting in a certain seat and spot and never enjoy a movie if you don’t sit in those seats. You can remove the worry that they’ll be taken by simply going online and reserving your seats ahead of time. This way you can stroll in two minutes before the show time, casual as can be and with no anxiety, your empty seats waiting patiently for your ass (literally).
People should be forced to take a test on the movie they are seeing, so as to prove they DESERVE to see it. This would eliminate the people that are there solely to annoy everyone else around them by talking about how bad the movie is. I saw Black Snake Moan last spring and the jackhole girls in front of me said this out loud at one point “This is bullshit. Where are all the snakes? I thought this was a sequel to that plane movie”. I swear to you this happened. And we wonder why a show called “Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader” is the number one new show of the year. If you can’t name three pertinent facts about the movie you are paying $11 to see, you shouldn’t be able to ruin it for the people who are paying good money to see Sam Jackson drag a chained, half-naked Christina Ricci around a dirty shack. Seriously!
Noiseless wrappers. Remember that scene in Garden State where Zach Braff asks his rich friend how he made all his money and the guy says he invented silent Velcro? And then he whipped out a piece of it, demonstrated the effect and snapped his fingers at the awesomeness of the silence? Well, can we get a team of mensa scientists on the invention of a noiseless candy wrapper, right mfing quick? It’s not a matter of national security or anything. It won’t improve discovery, or stop suffering around the world. It won’t feed the hungry. But it will prevent me from punching out the guy behind me every time he crinkles his fucking Red Vines wrapper during a crucial dialogue scene. Nobody is polite anymore about it. You open up your candy or (snuck in) food BEFORE the movie starts. And if you gotta crinkle it, do it fast. Stop digging around in there looking for gold. I defer to the great Brian Cox in The Long Kiss Goodnight on the subject of ceaseless, stupid actions like wrapper crinkling: “He’s been licking his asshole for the last three straight hours. I submit to you that there is nothing there worth more than an hour’s attention. I should think that whatever he is attempting to dislodge is either gone for good, or there to stay. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Ass-gaskets for the seats. I know I’m the resident Adrian Monk around my area of the Interwebs, but would it be too much to ask for a seat wrapper so I don’t have to sit on or against some dude’s leftover sneeze particles, some kid’s booger balls, some ladies’ nacho cheese leavings, or any food item with any level of goo? Its bad enough I have to step on a three-month old Mountain Dew-covered floor, I sure as hell don’t deserve to rub against filth flarn filth flarn flith! Not at today’s ticket prices.
Seriously, I can’t express this enough, BE QUIET! You know what we need? A noise meter like the one from Mission: Impossible, rigged to measure the volume of the person sitting in a respective seat. If the level hits the red you get shocked. If noise level persists in the yellow without halt, you get shocked. If your phone rings because you were too much of a dick to turn it off before the movie, you get shocked. Maybe a couple hundred volts would put an end to your needless jabbering. And it would save me the time (and court fees) from having to put my size 10 s-kicker boot up your ass.
BONUS CHANGE: No babies allowed after 5pm. Why do you have a seven month-old baby in a 9pm screening of Transformers? The THX is hurting my ears, imagine what it’s doing to your infant. And even though everyone in the world finds Shia LaBeouf “oh so precious”, it’s not like your child can appreciate his brand of peach-fuzzed snark, anyway. So take your kid home, Mother of the Year, before I steal it and make it watch a Lindsay Lohan movie, thereby breaking down it’s self-esteem so much you’re virtually certain to be raising a future stripper or pederast. Or at the very least, keep it on the PG and under tip.
Here’s my ultimate solution: Raise the prices. Make it so exorbitantly expensive that the only people that can afford to go are rich people who have enough etiquette to not talk and suckers who are just glad to be there. I pay $40 to see a Broadway show and nobody talks (and there aren’t even CGI explosions or hot boobs). The extra money is worth my peace of mind. I’m happy to pay $20 to see the new mediocre Will Smith flick if it means I can just sit there and watch the movie in silence, instead of trying to punch the guy sitting behind me in the thorax (or sock the chick in her babymaker, whichever sex happens to be talking at any given moment).
With the advent of large HD televisions and video on-demand, the movie-going experience is quickly becoming a thing of the past; we might as well shift gears now and start treating it as a luxury, so that the people who still prefer getting their entertainment this way can appreciate it. And the dicks that want to talk and text and try my patience can do it someplace else. Silence is golden, people! So shut your lips and learn!
I give my opinoin, wanted or not, my humor, funny or not, and my awesomeness, which is not in debate. I give myself to you dear readers, an every day act of selflessness; I open up my mindgrapes to offer you unfettered access into the bitchiest parts of my psyche. I give criticism to those who don’t need it or ask for it. I give snarky advice to those who will never hear it. I give my time to entertainment, asking in return only that it is not wasted. And I give hell when it is.
I am a giver.
I give money to the arts. I give creativity to a paying theater audience. I give kindness to celebrities in need (I’ll always have your back, Ro Do Jr.). I give Big Lebowski action figures to myself cause I’m awesome. I give hope to passionate projects that need blogger support. I give up when they make my TiVo bleed from their craptasticleness.
I am a giver.
I give love to my family and one love to my friends. I give my loyalty and respect to people who earn it, and guilt to those that piss me off. I give my eyes to the camera and my ears to the music. I give my nose to wine and my taste buds to jelly beans. And I give my junk to Claire Forlani, should she ever need it.
I am a giver, and today I give the gift of links.
As a post-Hanukkah, pre-Christmas, and present Chrismukkah present to those near and dear to me, I am posting links to projects and profiles about and for all the people in my life who happen to have ready made links to stuff on the internet. May it bring them much traffic and many fans, and may it give me a long list of people who owe me a favor. Cause you see, I may be a giver, but I am also skilled in nija art of taking. And I plan to yoink it up all through year long.
I am the givingest of givers, and here is my gift of links:
(NOTE: There is no order to this list. So don’t give me static on your placement, or I’ll boot your Katherine Heigl-ungrateful ass the hell off my 6th Best Culture Blog on the Internet.)
If this blog ever died, I would murder Craig in his sleep and take his: HERE
Jace is the reason I don’t write more about Television. He takes all the topics and kills them. Obviously, I hate him for this: HERE
I found this kid off the streets of Isla Vista, brought him into the warmth of poorly funded student-run liberal arts rags, copy-edited him within an inch of his life and set him free into the wolf-infested woods of movie criticism with only a pocket knife and a copy of The Paper on DVD to protect him. Your welcome, Glenn: HERE
Hire Jon Dabach. You pay for the craftsmanship, but you get the awesome wit for free. Free, bitches!
Adrian is a Satin Doll. No, seriously, she’s a member of the Satin Dollz. HERE
Erica Brauer and Kelly O’Leary get me W.E.T (I swear it’s a lot cleaner than it reads): HERE
I dream of being as eloquent and erudite as Judy (I’m not even sure I used erudite correctly. Paging dictionary.com…): HERE
Tamara Day has too many skills to name in just one bullet point. Girl’s a hyphenate in the truest, most kickass sense of the word. Peep her personal page: HERE
Tim isn’t just a Schultz, he’s an Evil Schultz. True story. HERE
Barry J. Holmes takes the best pictures of me, ever. Which obviously means I love him like the Father I always have had. To see why he rules like a dumpster full of dropkicks, go: HERE
Jessica Buttafuoco is fairly normal, considering her name. I know a LOT of fucked up Jessica’s. HERE
I cast Kate Jackson in my first movie, but from the looks of things I should have had her man the camera. Girl can composit a frame. See why: HERE
My boy Laboe can break it down, Kids Incorporated-style:
Burbanked is my brother from another blogger. Remember, Burbanked born Burbanked bred Burbanked till your dead. HERE
Kaza Kingsley is the uber-talented author of the “Erec Rec” book series, and I am honored to be interviewing her during her latest book tour in January. To read about her best-selling fantasy series, go: HERE
Tiffany Limos is the coolest celeb I have ever made fun of then gone on to become good friends with. See her gorgeous website: HERE
Kickass filmmaker Vince Grashaw is working on an upcoming cable show about a trainwreck named Todd. The show is called “Eight”. Here is one of the the personal iPhone diaries from the lead character. (for more, go HERE):
Daniel runs the only Box Office site I check for weekend predictions: HERE
Cast Christina Morris. Like this second. Get on that, people. See why: HERE
Check out Mike Friedman at The Comedy Junction: HERE
Marissa runs my all-time favorite wine bar, Alisal Cellars. Become a member: HERE
Ravenstake makes people laugh. That’s science baby. If you want to respect science, go: HERE
Amir Talai is hilariously buffoonish. That is all. HERE
And of course, Jason IS The Jay: No link needed, cause you’re THERE, fool!
NOTE: If you are a friend of mine and I didn’t post a link for you, don’t lose your shit, I probably just forgot. Shoot me an e-mail or a text to remind me and I’ll update the post.
How pumped are you for the return of the best show on Television not named American Idol? With Heroes stuck in a crazy low sophomore slump, a sub-par How I Met Your Mother set (Can we please find a real reason to keep Robin on the show? General Idea “salute” is not enough.), Bionic Woman failing to become a hot lesbain robotics porn drama, or even at all watchable, Journeyman starting strong and fading faster than Sarah Michele Gellar’s big screen career, Scrubs daydreaming through a glaringly bad final season, Private Practice barely finding it’s legs, and even my beloved Friday Night Lights mired in melodrama (the Landry/Tyra murder cover-up is the second worst plotline of the Fall season after George & Izzie), the only thing keeping me going has been Gossip Girl. But that all changes come the new year, cause here comes the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815!!!
The Season Three finale might have been the best episode of television aired in 2007. With the reveal of not one, but TWO shocking discoveries:
We were watching a flashFORWARD, not a flashBACK. Jack and Kate get off the island! Boom, FLOORED!
Jack has the most righteous fake beard in the history of history. It looks like the propmaster spray-painted peet moss brown and Elmer’s glued it onto Matthew Fox’s face. It didn’t look remotely real. TomKat is realler than that beard. The Michael Jackson/Lisa Marie Presley kiss at the VMA’s was more believable than that grouping of facial pubes. Hell, the Apollo 11 “moon landing” was more convincing than the Jack Shepherd Shrub of Flashforwardness Survivor Guilt .
Not to mention the bittersweet death of Charlie, a character I had reviled for the entire run of the show, but had my support by the end. His death was poignant, beautifully shot and brought untold amounts of awesome by letting us know that Penny has nothing to do with the rescue boat currently winging its way to Craphole Island.
The finale redeemed what had been a season of inconsistency. The Nikki/Paolo arc was poorly managed. Nobody in the world cares about Mike and WAAAAAALT! Locke was seeing imaginary people. Hurley was driving VW vans around (seriously?). Sayid was essentially nuetered from the action. And the more I see of the Others, the less creepy they become (why was the dude from The Tick wearing eyeliner?). But with the impending “rescue” ship, the capture of Ben, Charlie’s death and Penelope looking for Desmond, Jack and Kate off the island!, and Locke trying to blow them all the hell up, this might be the greatest season of the show yet. And I for one can’t wait.
But because it’s Lost, there are still eleventy-billion questions. Questions that may never get answered. Questions that may not even have answers because the writers never intended them to be questions at all, but still left the hint that they could be so they seem smarter than they are and that they have a plan for the show even though their timeline is screwed up from season one and they never told us what was up with the Polar Bear or the Pony so why should we believe them anyway, and did I mention I hate this show?
So here are my Ten Burning Questions for Lost: Season 4.
Not to quote Se7en or anything, but seriously, WHAT’S IN THE BOX?!!! Who is in that coffin? It was too big for someone like Ben, maybe too small for Hurley. Who becomes so important that FutureJack has to go to South Central for their poorly attended funeral.
How quickly did Evangeline Lily pack up Dominic Monaghan’s stuff after finding out he got fired? Half an hour? Fifteen minutes? Did she already have him packed up by the time he got home from the set that day? Cause you knew that ship was never sailing after they finished shooting the show. He was kidding himself if he thought he could keep her after she moved back to L.A. And you know Evangeline was starting to look at the hobbit sharing her bed and think “I’m Evangeline Lilly and I’m with a hobbit? I should at least be tagging Legolas!” Him getting fired was for her like a guy needing a hail mary only to find out she inexplicably got her period a week late.
Who did Kate have to go home to? Is she still tagging Sawyer? Is it a new guy we haven’t met yet? Did Sayid work some Iraqi juju and turn Kate on to the pleasures of the brown? And why didn’t Jack ever get his shot? Or did he…?
Who will take the mantle from Charlie as the show’s Most Annoying Character? My money is on Hurley. His “dude” crap is wearing thin. Unlike his waistline, which inexplicably hasn’t shrunk after three months on the island. That may be the biggest mystery of the series. Survivor contestants are popping six pack abs after two weeks, Hurley is still a behemoth after three seasons! That Dharma Initiative canfood must be carb-loaded to the max.
Will Jack and Claire ever realize they’re related? If they do, will she make Jack godfather to her BAY-BE?
When is the Black Smoke Monster going to show up in front of Desmond, flash him his life, and drop the judgement on him (cause the guy needs some direction)? My guess for what it will be: “Tone down that accent, BRUTHA! You’re Scottish. We. Get. It.”
Will Mac from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia be coming back for another cameo? Maybe to guard another Others torture center. Or beat up Sawyer some more. Or, you know, JUST TO GET A BASE!
Will the writers ever realize that we want answers to the big questions like “How Locke got the use of his legs back” and NOT “What’s up with Jack’s tattoos?”, cause seriously, no one cares. Bai Ling never made anything better by showing up in it. Less useless tattoo crap and more Black Smoke Monster info, bitches!
Did Michael and Walt survive the boat trip back to dry land (it’s not a myth!)? If so, does Mike pick Walt up from school everyday by going to the school counserlor and yelling “I WANT MY BOY BACK! WAAAAAALT!” Cause you know he would and the school would totally never let him volunteer to coach the Little League team.
When do they got off the island? How far in the future were we really seeing? Who else survived? Why does Jack want to go back so badly but Kate does not? How did Jack become such a raging drug fiend? Were the survivors compensated by Oceanic Airlines? Did they all get their own reality shows? Was there a movie made of their experience, wherein Kate Beckinsale played the part of Kate and thus shattering the time/space continuum? Or is this all a dream inside the mind of batshit crazy Hurley?
NOTE: I wrote this last year to celebrate the Bearded Master’s big time 60th, and am reposting it on it’s own with some fun updates to honor his 61st. To check out the original post, 
(I’ve got a feeling that even though the entire blogosphere is walking on eggshells, Indy 4 is gonna rock hard tasty abs 24/7 washerboard-style. And who isn’t at least intrigued by his Lincoln biopic? I love that he always casts Liam Neeson when he wants to free some slaves on-screen. Good ole Qui-Gon is his go to Freedom Fighter; this country could do worse, lemme tell you…).
Pop Quiz, Hot Shot:
I am a giver. 
The Season Three finale might have been the best episode of television aired in 2007. With the reveal of not one, but TWO shocking discoveries:
So here are my Ten Burning Questions for Lost: Season 4.
