TV: Is Conan O'Brien an Insensitive Prick?

Yesterday morning there was an unfortunate and tragic plane crash in Lexington, Kentucky. There were 49 people killed and one is in critical condition. Yesterday evening Conan O'Brien hosted the Emmy Awards for the second time. He did a little stand-up routine to open up the show and then a montage spoofing the top shows on television. One of these skits, which was very funny by the way, was goofing on the hit show Lost. The fake plane our intrepid host was flying in experienced turbulence which forced him to hide in the overhead compartment. It flashed forward a step to Conan washing up onto an island. The question is, was Conan and NBC aware that earlier that morning a plane had crashed in Kentucky? If they had known should they have pulled the gag and replaced it with something else? Are people in this country so wound up about anything and everything that they go looking for controversy when none exists?

NBC apologized later this afternoon for the skit, but personally I don't think they really had to. It is sad when human life is lost, and it would have been over the top if in that same skit they showed a beached plane or blood or anything of a graphic nature. They didn't; it was tasteful and it was a parody of a show that happened to involve a plane crashing. There is no smoking gun here, no one was making fun of people dying or trying to create an uproar, I can assure you. Apparently the station manager, Tim Gilbert, at WLEX in Lexington, KY does not agree with me. He was shocked and stunned by it and that an apology from NBC wouldn't even make up for the insensitivity. Sounds like grandstanding to me - this guy should be ashamed of himself. People have to start to understand that bad things happen all the time. Moreover, bad things happen all the time to people who are not Americans, and no one seems to complain that it's insensitive to go on with our lives - even laughing now and then. It seems we're so wound up, we're becoming megalomaniacs - beginning to think our lives and our affairs are more important than thousands of people killed in a hurricane in Guatemala, or tens of thousands killed in an earthquake in India. Where are the people protesting the insensitivity of disaster flicks in the wakes of such tragedies? There surely are some, but they don't seem to make the headline news on CNN. Not that we need more protests, though a little more awareness wouldn't hurt.

It was unfortunate that the crash happened at all, much less on a day that someone decided to do a little skit about a plane that crashes. Luckily for us we don't have that many plane crashes in our country, but that they do happen it is apart of life, and so is the healing power of laughter. Laughter gets us through the hard and sometimes cruel nature of existence. I think people need to relax and stop reacting to things so quickly. Is this a rational argument - did someone truly intend to hurt someone else physically or mentally? So give Conan and NBC a break. They've had a tough couple of years. They didn't crash the plane in Kentucky and they sure as hell didn't make fun of it. It was just one of those things.

MOVIE REVIEW: Accepted

What can I say about Accepted that would make it different from Animal House, Old School, PCU , Revenge of the Nerds and Van Wilder? Not much. All of the old clichés are still intact in this one with a dash or two of Ghostbusters and any Vince Vaughn comedy. There are some good laughs especially for Jonah Hill who plays Schrader. I definitely could relate to Bartleby Gaines dilemma about the difficulty of getting into college. I applied everywhere myself and struggled just to get into the university of my choice. There are so many rules with regard to higher education that it is a wonder sometimes how someone can get an education at all much less learn something that they are passionate about.

Bartleby Gaines (Justin Long) can't get into college so in order to appease his parents he and his cohorts, Hands, (Columbus Short) Schrader (Jonah Hill) and Rory (Maria Thayer) decide to take matters in their own hands and create a fake university, S.H.I.T (South Harmon Institute of Technology). Things get out of hand when the general public believes the university is real and kids start to enroll.

Justin Long is adequate as the lead, although he does plagiarize Vince Vaughn to a tee. Schrader steals the show with his sarcastic wit and general nerdiness. When the kids decide to construct their school in a dilapidated former Psychiatric Hospital Schrader comments as they enter the shabby lobby, "I hope you have your Hobo stab insurance." They of course go through the rigmarole of whether or not they want to keep the scam going, and of course they do. They create classes where students do nothing at all except watch hot chicks in the pool, while others take classes in skateboarding. I will say that they did avoid the typical gross out pranks that defined many films in this genre. No revenge against the Alpha Betas or anything like that, although they do a few scenes for rush week, involving Schrader that are pretty damn funny. There is of course the girl that our hero wants, played amicably by the very attractive Blake Lively. I only wish that they gave a little more time to the crazy dean played by comedian Lewis Black. He's hilarious and if you listen carefully he gives out a few nuggets of common sense regarding the state of education in this country. Overall it's funny and forgettable and fits snuggly into the lexicon of College movies.

Grade: 3 Buckets

SPORTS: Yankee-Panky: Gettin' it on, with the greatest franchise in sports history.

Let me just start by saying that I love the Yankees. And in an effort to let them know just how much I love them, I plan to write them a love letter each week expressing my thoughts and feelings. However love is not always teddy bears and flowers. Sometimes, when necessary to the betterment of one's beloved, you have to be tough and nasty and HARD. Not beacuse you want to be, but because you just care about them so damn much and it kills you to see them act a fuck-up again and again. So here is the first of my weekly love letters to the Yankees.
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I love you Johnny Damon,

Boy, did you really shove it up the poopshoot of your former team over the weekend! You went 11 for 23, with 9 RBIs and 7 runs scored over the Yankees five game sweep of the Red Sox. That's fantastic! Those ingrate Boston fans can boo you all they want. You have a new home now and you're fitting in like Flint. Just goes to show you that the majority of Boston fans are nothing more than a bunch of slack jawed moonshine boys. I mean, have some class people! After the way you played your heart out in the 2004 ALCS to get Boston into the the World Series for the first time in 18 years, not to mention helping them win the World Series for the first time since the wheel was invented, for the Boston fans to boo you is just shameful. They should be booing the Red Sox front office for not ponying up the extra ka-ching to keep you around. Instead, the Bosox Brass opted to go with Coco Crisp, a guy who is not only named after a cereal that looks and tastes like horse feces, but who's also been the most ineffectual lead off man for a big team this year. Guess what Boston fans... there's a new curse in town. The Curse of The Idiot. Enjoy the next 86 years!

Yours truly, madly, deeply,

Cody
xoxoxoxo

CELEBRITY BUCKET 'O DUMB: Three Times A Celebrity

We've got the tri-fecta for you this week! The winner of our Summer of '06 Celebrity Bucket O'Dumb is a three way tie between a diaper dandy (I'm channeling Dick Vitale), a washed up hyper active buffoon and a religious zealot. That's right I'm talking about Paris Hilton, Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise. If we could just ignore them maybe they would go away, but somehow it's difficult to look away as the train careens toward the cliff. These three are perhaps the most annoying Hollywood has to offer and hopefully, as the front pages have reported in the last few weeks, if we, the viewing public have any luck, this may be the end of all of their careers.

Let's start with the Diaper Dandy, Paris Hilton. Why did we give her this award? She's a moron with money. She represents a bygone era known to many as the 80's. Excess. Her kind of people should never be encouraged in a free society; they represent everything that is wrong with capitalism. Instead of rewarding this retard for being rich why don't they tell the little tramp what she really should be doing with a billion dollar fortune. I blame the parents first, just like Willy Wonka--"What do you do if your kid is a--brat." I say the girl didn't get the belt as a kid--Yesss that's perfect that's what I want to see Paris Hilton on live TV getting spanked with a belt. Who am I kidding they probably have a sex tape of that somewhere--she would probably enjoy it anyway. My point here folks is that we as a society need to stop pretending to ignore her and really ignore her. She isn't interesting, she's dumb, her boobs are flat and come on she really isn't that pretty. This should be a no brainier. So come on and join me in turning your back on this hack celebrity who shoves her blinged ass in our faces and for some reason we say yes please Paris humiliate us some more. It must end now. Vive Le resistance!

What can be said about Tom Cruise? He's not that bright. He appears as a fake to the public with his Joker like grin and horrendously overly enthusiastic laugh. He is also a representative of a controversial religion/cult that tends to grow stranger as time passes. I personally do not like Tom Cruise but I love his movies and hopefully one day maybe he will disappear to the bowels of Hollywood only to show his face for another Hollywood Blockbuster. I fear those days may be numbered. Sir Tom was just handed his walking papers by Paramount Pictures where he has been able to drink the Kool-Aid of success since Top Gun in 1986. It could be a sad day for Paramount but they've put up with his shit for a year or so now. Tom Cruise gets the Bucket award because he totally tanked a good movie, Mission Impossible 3, cause he couldn't keep his feet off Oprah's furniture and his mouth shut in front of Matt Lauer. The guy has a severe PR problem, but that is the price you pay for ideology. Tom it's time to decide between your career and Scientology, it's taken you this far but I think you just peaked. Personally I think you have enough talent to go at it alone, drop the Xanu talk and stop worrying about your next stress test and audit of your Thetan or whatever you call it. Prove to the world that you aren't batshit crazy and get back to the business of entertaining people with your movies. I don't care about your baby, I don't care about your relationship with Katie Holmes--Stop making public appearances, people know who you are it's not necessary for you to promote your movies, okay. You're starting to make Michael Jackson seem normal, so get your shit together, admit your baby is a fake and just go under for awhile, people will forget, trust me.

Now onto our third winner, another celeb with a PR problem. Let's move past the anti-Semitic remarks and "Sugar Tits" and get to the real problem at hand. Mel Gibson was driving drunk and not just a couple of glasses of wine drunk, I'm talking Nick Nolte drunk. He blew a .12; the legal limit in California is .08. I mean that kid from Sixth Sense is going to the big house, what makes Mel so special? Is it because he has friends on the Malibu police force? What if someone were hurt or killed during his little adventure, not to mention the guy mouthed off to the arresting officer, which should be another charge. I used to like Mel Gibson when he pretended to be crazy in Mad Max and Lethal Weapon. It's sad that this guy inspired all of these Christians with his Passion of the Christ and then blew it all on booze and hate. Look, I think the guy was an ass to say all of those things but I think it's even worse that he was driving drunk. I've noticed that he didn't really apologize for that. So Mel you get the award for being a complete and total loser, hopefully you'll clean up your act. But I know deep down that we will be revisiting more of your exploits on these pages again soon--I have faith in that.

MOVIE REVIEW: Snakes On a Plane

I came, I saw mother fucking Snakes on a mother fucking plane and Samuel L. Jackson kicked their mother fucking asses. Everything the marketing team advertised about this movie was 100% accurate. It was by far the best film about snakes I have ever seen, way better than say Anaconda or Anaconda 2: The Blood Orchid...but I guess that really isn't saying very much. The scares were great, the snakes were crazy and the comedy routines of Kenan Thompson (Saturday Night Live) and David Koechner (Anchorman) were hilarious.

F.B.I. agent Nelville Flynn (Samuel L. Jackson) is tasked to escort a federal witness (Nathan Phillips), from Hawaii to L.A. And as the title suggests, a Mafioso decides that the best way to take care of this witness is to release 500 pheromone charged poisonous snakes onto an Oceanic Flight. Let the carnage ensue.

I don't like snakes, and I found myself a little squirmy when I saw where some of these poor souls were getting bitten. I kid you not within the first twenty minutes of the attacks I saw a half naked woman with a rattler attached to her boob, I saw another guy who walked in to take a piss and got a python attached to his y'know python. Oh, man that one hurt the most; they really wanted you to see the agony on that guy, ouch! Another dude got bitten on the ass, hell the damn snakes were biting people's eyes out and slithering into their mouths. It was pretty horrific; I kept saying to myself how the hell does a snake do that. Anyway, the CGI was pretty crappy; I could usually tell what was a real snake and what was fake. But that’s a good thing cause if it looked too real I think I would have crapped my pants. It wasn't as badly written as I thought it was going to be but again this isn't Oscar material here, and it was kind of funny seeing Nurse Hathaway from E.R., Juliana Margulies, trying to keep it real as she chucks a hatchet at a couple snakes.

So if you're looking for a couple of good scares, some funny bits then go and check out what has to be the king schlock movie of the decade.

Grade: 3 Buckets