Stupid Green Day

So there I am sitting in the dentist chair numbing up in preparation for getting drilled. I see Entertainment Weekly, nice light reading as I await my dentist's return. I come across a picture of Green Day all done up in their pretty suits and eye-makeup. I must preface the rest of this with the fact that I currently despise Green Day as a bunch of posers. Accepting Grammy's... letting people call them "punk." Look, I don't pretend to know a bunch about music, but I do know posers and the members of Green Day are a bunch of posers - putting out a concept album, who are they, Pink Floyd?

So anyway, on to the Entertainment Weekly article... they're such dorks, they're all in suits and the article quotes their stylist (yeah, that's so punk to have a stylist):" 'Looking smart in a suit is not new,' says Green Day stylist Dee Anderson. ''It's more a resurgence of the old-school punk style of bands like the Clash.' " (whole article here). Did I miss something? I don't remember the Clash wearing Christian Dior? Maybe there's a tie and funky sports coat sometimes, but I don't remember them being all pretty with makeup and designer suits. Plus, if you've got to point to The Clash... where are those real old-school punks? If I know who a band is, then they've made it to mainstream radio and that, except in rare cases, doesn't exactly equal PUNK!

POSERS!!!!

The Fuzz

Super Fuzz


So some cop yesterday totally blocked traffic just to give some guy a ticket. I'm stopped at a light behind a motorcycle cop. We are sitting at the light for at least a minute. He doesn't have his lights on or isn't motioning at all to the driver in front of him. But after he crosses through the intersection, after there is a little pocket for the driver to pull off into, the cop turns on his lights and pulls the guy over. So this is a lane with no bike lane and no space to pull over. I and the 10 cars behind me now have to stop and wait til the lane next to us is clear to go around.

It gets worse. I come back along the same street about 10 minutes later on the other side. The driver is gone, but the cop is still there, his motorcycle still in the lane blocking traffic while he finishes writing in his note pad standing under a tree in the shade. How frustrating! What did the driver do that was soooo bad that it was absolutely necessary to pull him over in this inconvenient spot and then continue to block traffic.

Well as I approach my freeway onramp, the cop cuts me off and then bangs a u-turn. Ahh, now I see why he's giving out tickets. There is an offramp that only allows you to make a right turn when you get off the freeway; it is marked with double yellows and a lot of people cross them. This is because the signage on the offramp doesn't say "only." So unless you've done it before, you don't know you're going to get stuck in that right turn. Now, yes, the drivers who cross the double yellow could cause accidents and shouldn't do it. But how about putting up better signs on the offramp and using those plastic barriers to inform the driver and prohibit the crossing of the double yellow? No, the jokers down at City Hall would rather have a cop cause traffic, more possible accidents and issue tickets. They might as well make some revenue out of this poor street planning.
Fools!

Thanks George!

Alright George, I expected the usual merchandising and promotions bullshit that usually accompanies the Star Wars movies, but come on! Yes, I had a bunch of action figures and the droid factory after the original Star Wars came out. But that's the key, "after." I'm all for movie previews and interviews. But do the characters really have to sell everything they can get their hands on? I think Darth Vader alone is endorsing I 3 or 4 different products and with humor! I don't want to see this evil, menacing character turned into a show monkey before the movie even comes out. And then, I go to the grocery store and the shelves are crowded with Star Wars life size cardboard cutouts. Why bother showing previews in the theaters. You've already turned the movie characters into advertising whores? Is that what the culmination of 30 years of working on the same project does to you? I suppose that's what you want people to remember instead the Revenge of the Sith. Is the movie that bad that you're hoping people will see it, but remember the commercials instead? Everyone goes to your movies whether they like them or not. Some just go to criticize them. So stop being a jerk when you know we're all going to see the movie anyway!

I know there is always a lot of this crap with all the Star Wars releases, but this time it seems like there is much, much more. So of course I'll be seeing the movie. So I guess I'm the idiot for paying George in the end anyway and he knows that. He knows that no matter how much crap he throws at us we will all still go to his movie. And I could say it will all be over with the release on May 19, but we all know there will be the theater re-release, the DVD release, the revised DVD release, the enhanced revised DVD release and then probably another theater re-re-release that will all be accompanied by the same promotional garbage. Way to go George!

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

So I saw this movie last night and thought it was mediocre. My friend Adam was terribly disappointed. Taking his reasons for disappointment into consideration, I reread some parts of the book. Today, I thought about the movie and feel that it doesn't have much to do with the spirit of the book. So I was going to write all my reasons why and back them up and so forth. But then I went to the IMDB and checked out the the message board. Man, the posts are either totally silly, "Oh this was a great movie, I can't believe you didn't like it" or a 10-page thesis critiquing every minute of the film. I mean the authors are searching the movie for all the inconsistencies with the books, radio show, TV show, etc. Then they go on to write about the screen adaptation of the Lord of the Ring books. And then they look at all the book to movie adaptations over the history of film. Of course some are going to suck. Of course the director/writer will have to change things, even the plot. I can make the list of many books better than their movies and many movies I would see and never read the books. So let's just look at it as a movie. Pretending I didn't read the book: the love story was overbearing for a good sci-fi comedy and slowed down the pace; the fact that earth is a giant computer was kind of glossed over and that concept could've used a bit more oomph; Ford Prefect is cool, let's hear more from him.
That's it.