or. being a stand up guy.
Check out the list of speakers for 20X2 ver.3.5 , Saturday Sept. 13th at Tambeleo in Austin, and there might be aname ya’ll recognize.
That’s right. I gonna put in my two cents, or in this case two minutes, worth. This oughtta be good.
Ok Ok, I didn’t review anything after X2, but I saw all of it. In a nutshell, here we go. Also the rating system is changed. Just remember 5 is good, 1 is bad. Starting as far back as I can recall, here we go.
The Matrix: Reloaded
Don’t worry if you thought it sucked. It didn’t, you just aren’t bright enough to figure it out, and got distracted by a few too many fight scenes. Keanu has to do something to keep him from speaking, or it really would have been bad. Remember, this is style over substance for now, because it’s only half a movie. 4 green indechipherable characters
The Italian Job
Everyone in this movie had fun making it. EXCEPT Edward Norton, who got to play a bad guy but was clearly bored to death. His character was poorly written, that’s why. Otherwise, car chases are fun. 4 Mini Coopers.
Hulk
Cool for comic dorks and fans of the old show, cool for special effects fans, VERY cool for Jennifer Connely fans. Problem is, there is almost no plot here. He gets pissed, he gets green, we knew that. 2 true believers.
2 Fast 2 Furious
2 much fun, 2 funny, 2 full of flava. Unfortunetely, for a car race/chase movie, it took itself a little 2 seriously. Also, Ludacris acts about as well as Paul Walker does, he looks like a wooden Ian Ziering, if that’s possible. The cars are cool and the chicks are hot, though. 3 number 2’s.
LXG
The most interesting action film concept ever, hard to deliver on all cylinders, but took a good shot at it. 3 1/2 fictional characters.
Finding Nemo
Those Pixar guys are brilliant, even if they are in league with the Devil. 4 pitchforks with computer animated fish on them.
Hollywood Homicide
Sucked. 1 yoga position.
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle:
Didn’t see it. Anyone surpised?
I Wish My Beer Was as Cold as Your Heart
Didn’t see this either, but sure wish I had.
Bad Boys II
Will is smooth. Martin got fat. 2 dick jokes.
S.W.A.T.
Pretty cool, dudes with guns kick ass. Cops are cool, especially if they are Sam Jackson. Then again, everything is cool once he does it. 3 M-16’s.
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and Down with Love
Skipped those also. Shocked?
Open Range
Very good, very simple and honest, much like the West. Costner was good. Duval was bad ass. Annette Bening is starkly beautiful, which I didn’t think was possible. A very interesting statement about violence as part of American character. 4 wild horses.
and lastly, the feel good movie of the year,
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Hands down the best movie of the summer. More fun than you can shake a monkey in a pirate suit at. Johnny Depp is both brilliant and silly, his girl is a httie, Geoffrey Rush cracks me up, swashbuckler flicks are almost as cool as westerns, maybe cooler, and I just had a great great time.
5 Sailing ships full of drunken singing undead pirates.
or, how MTV and TiVO have made me the happiest man in the world.
I don’t even really need to elaborate on this, do I? TiVO is pulling down a rerun of the MTV VMA’s for me, since I heard it was practically porn. I just always assumed that the greatest moment of my life would occur when Madonna and I got married, and just before the wedding, she caught me and Brittany Spears having a last fling in the broom closet. And then decided to join in.
That could still happen.
Also, a whole summers worth of movie reviews are up.
or, we’ll see how long this lasts.
I got a comment system off some homie’s website that runs, for now. It looks a little stiff, but I’m workin’ to chill that mutha out, beeatches, so check yo self befo ya wreck yo self, sucka. The last time I had one of these it lasted about a month, let’s see how this works for now.
Been listening to a lot of rap and working too much for not enough benjamins, so my stress level is pretty high. Can ya tell? Or am I just straight trippin’?
or, an exciting new beginning.
I haven’t been around much lately, and there’s a fantastic and wonderful new reason for that. For know, just let me tell you this. When you meet someone and she’s more beautiful than you were expecting, that’s good. When she can make you laugh both when she’s trying and when she’s not, that’s good. When you can have an hour long conversation on the third date about how much particular pieces of art once affected you, that’s good. When she kisses you and you fingers start to tingle, when you have to wipe smudges of her off your glasses while you catch your breath before you can drive home, that’s really, really good.
or, “Mr. President, Your Excellency, I’d like you to meet the Grand Wizard and his buddy Hitler.” “It’s ok, we already know each other.”
Don’t these people realize what they are? I always assumed that, in the modern world, in an enlightened America, that politicians and clergy would try to AVOID being bigots.
Sadly, I was wrong.
On What a Difference a Year Makes
or
The importance of bringing your best stuff to the plate.
My God, I am about as baseball blissed out as you can get. The Astros are playing really well right now, taking a lead in their division into the All-Star game. We all remember how that game went last year, right?
Well, not this time. I had so much going on on Tuesday that I almost forgot the game was on. I got to sit and watch it with the National League up 2-1. This year, for those unfamiliar with the newly set dogmatic tenets of my religion, Major League Baseball tried to prevent the tragedy that occured in last year’s All-Star Game. This year, the winning team’s league gets homefield advantage in the World Series. This is an invaluable asset, as anyone who watched the Angels come back and win Game 7 last year understands, and while this may not be the best way to decide who gets it, at least it got a lot of people invested in the All-Star Game. There was something else going on that night, though.
This game was about a game.
The announcer’s talked baseball. Strategy. Pinch-hitting. Bullpens. How to bring in the right closer. Who plays the game with apparent ease, who muscles out big wins, who throws enough heat to melt asphalt. No strike talk, no labor negotiations, no steroid troubles, no corked bats or lost dreams or heartbreak. Just Baseball. We talked about how Tim McCarver’s love for and knowledge of the game makes every one he calls feel like the playoffs. We rooted for the National League, because of the two teams I pull for in Texas (and the only one Kevin and Ryan pull for) only the Astros have a shot at the Series, and they could use the homefield advantage, they play great at home this season (so far, knock wood.) The NL took a pretty good lead, and McCarver started touting their killer bullpen, the three best closers in the majors, one of ’em an Astro. The AL couldn’t seem to get it together, and for the second year in a row I felt hurt watching A-Rod (who has ruined the Rangers chances of getting anywhere, since he’s the only player they can afford). And during a discussion on what closers do, the NL closers did it.
Closing pitchers measure success in saves. They measure failure in blown ones.
Hitters measure success and failure in batting average and RBI and strikeouts and lots of other things, but they emphasize success in the most beautiful way. The other player from my hometown (and first love) team did just that.
They hit game winning homeruns.
This time, it Counts.
On asking the question we were terrrified of at 15 years old
or
Intimate, my name is 20X2
Also, apparently now all blog posts get two titles, not just one. As I said before, deal with it.
On long ago memories from a near-forgotten past
or
How I learned to stop worrying and love The Ramones, again.
A long time ago, in a West Texas town far, far away, I worked in this bar, see. Every Monday Night was dollar pint night, packed to the walls with local Texas Tech folks, and the shot special was quite often, “Make out with Jefe the Bartender and get a Free Shot Night.” I have written extensively in the past about how much I love bartending, and this had to be my favorite experience doing so. Place was packed, I had literally dozens of women lined up at the bar ready to kiss me whom I had never even met, it was quite the party. On top of it all, we had this really great guy who played an accoustic one man show every Monday, when he wasn’t playing in his band. His name was John Sprott, and the guy could play anything. Unfortunately, the drunken fools only requested the same junk over and over and over again.
These days, I know exactly what that’s like. I love my current job, don’t get me wrong, but the piano bar is like Monday’s at the brewery without the big crowds, horny girls, and I have to wear a tie (actually, there are sometimes girls now too, but not like the old days, I must be losing my touch). However, the music is never particularly different from one night to the next. John Sprott, back in those long forgotten West Texas days, used to say that he loved to play so much that the repetition only rarely got to him, but when it did, he was desperate for an interesting request. (Note to anyone who will ever go into a bar again for the rest of their lives: Professional musicians hate you fuckers who scream “FREEBIRD!” at the top of your lungs. Ya’ll suck, and so does that tune.)
Now, John has been a guitar player for most of his life. In the early ’80’s John was in a punk band called The Nelsons (not Nelson, the weird twin brother hairband). In fact, the Nelson’s were the first ever winner of the MTV make-your-own-video contest (I forget what they actually called it). A buddy and I are having lunch at this great mexican restraunt in Lubbock where they have pictures of all these Lubbock bands on the walls, and right next to our table is a picture of The Nelsons, John Sprott and all. After finding this out, I finally had a good request for John on Monday night.
The next Monday, about 1:00am I bring John his standard shot of Jack Daniels (yummy) and ask him, “Hey can you play me a Ramones tune, I heard your an old school punk rock freak.” He giggles, and does not respond, as John was always socially awkward. And, for the last tune of the night he launches into a kind of feedback fuzzy acoustic version of “I Wanna be Sedated”.
Thank God he was drunk, ’cause the crowd went wild.
For the next few weeks, he refused to do it again. He claimed he would never have done it if he had been sober (and that it was all my fault, which was true). So I began to taunt him. During the breaks between songs, when John was bantering on the mic with the crowd, I would yell at the top of my lungs, “PLAY THE RAMONES!” Now, in any bar, the bartender is as much on stage as the musical act, so there were a lot of people staring at me, including the long line of women waiting to make out with me for free booze.
It caught on like wildfire.
By the end of the night, half the kids in the bar were yelling it, though I bet half of them didn’t know one freakin’ Ramones song. I knew John needed a bit of a buzz to get back that far into his past, so I encouraged customers (as I often do in clubs, since musicians are both broke and poor tippers and therefore should not pay for their own drinks) to buy John a shot of Jack Daniels.
He had about seven.
By the end of the evening, when the crowd, led by me, would holler out, “PLAY THE RAMONES!” John, usually soft spoken, would grab the mic and holler right back as loud as he could, “I’M NOT PLAYIN’ THE FUCKIN’ RAMONES!”. And then he would do a Romones tune.
It became a thing at Hub City. Every Monday, people would scream out (often lead in unison by me) “PLAY THE RAMONES!” and John always responded with , “I’M NOT PLAYIN’ THE FUCKIN’ RAMONES”. Very rarely would he actually do it. One night about a month later, I walk into a bar on a Tuesday night, with my buddy Aaron who also worked at the brewery, and there is John playing to about 12 people. There is a spot by the bar where someone has vomited on the floor, and the staff have moved a chair over the spot to keep people from stepping in it, rather than cleaning it up. We were about to have a quick beer (we normally wouldn’t set foot in a place that was so lax in its professionalism, but we knew John and we knew the bartender) and on a lark, I hollered out my usual greeting to John while on stage.
“PLAY THE RAMONES!”
“I’M NOT PLAYIN’ THE FUCKIN’ RAMONES!”
And he kicked off a five song Ramones set, even though I was the only one in the place who knew the songs.
About twenty minutes ago, the new piano player here at the Ivory Cat launched into “I Wanna be Sedated”.
For me, The Ramones will always mean Lubbock. I just bet I’m not the only one.
On the further construction of the English Language
or
DANGER! Words under Construction
Three new words invented this weekend.
hasselish (ha-sul-ish) adj. 1. That which causes a hassle or other such annoyance. 2. One who annoys, irritates or in any way creates an unwanted or unneccesary disturbance.
bibley (bi-bul-e) adj. 1. One who professes Christian religous beliefs in an effort to be trendy or part of a crowd, rather than based on actual faith. 2. One who wears, “What Would Jesus Do?” memorabilia, listens to Christian rock, or has a “My Boss is A Jewish Carpenter” bumper sticker. 3. Any such Christian bookstore paraphenalia.
waitering (way-ter-ing) v. to employ the physical skills used or learned as a waiter or waitress in a restraunt for any activity other than waiting tables. ex. In a classic display of waitering, Ryan balanced the box above his shoulder, carrying it with one hand held flat, palm up, to support its weight.