The Good, The Bad, and The Weird: March 22, 2017

THE GOOD

Lethal Weapon

Since nothing new has shown up on my radar as a “good” thing this past week, I’ll talk about a show that started this past fall TV season and had all the trappings of big-wig executive producer with no ideas cash-in. I’m talking about FOX’s Lethal Weapon TV series, based on the classic 80s/90s action films of the same name starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover as Riggs and Murtaugh (who’s too old for this shit).

If you’re thinking to yourself “This doesn’t need a TV show remake” I don’t disagree with you. But surprisingly enough it actually turned out pretty good.

In the TV show version, Clayne Crawford (aka the guy that plays the scummy hick in that one TV show) plays Riggs and Damon Wayans (aka the successful Wayans brother who wasn’t a part of White Chicks or Scary Movie or…) plays Murtaugh. Most of the fun of the show comes from these two lead’s chemistry – they play off each other really well and it only takes a few episodes for them to completely slide into buddy cop territory. Crawford is great at being unhinged and manic as Riggs, and Wayans (who has obviously already established his comedy chops) does a good job at being his restrained, straight-laced foil.

It doesn’t hesitate to be over-the-top with the action either. In the climax of one episode, Riggs chases down the bad guy who is attempting to run over the Attractive Female of the Week. While driving, Riggs leans out the window and with both hands on his gun, shoots out the tires of the bad guy’s SUV, causing it to crash and flip over the AFW (who has tripped and fallen helplessly, of course) and land on its roof behind her, allowing Riggs to stop, pick up her, and walk away from the subsequent explosion in slow-mo.

Yeah, okay, the show isn’t going to win any progressive awards. It’s pure popcorn entertainment, sprinkled with some family values (I thoroughly enjoy that they kept the wholesome Murtaugh family aspect from the movies, as it’s fun to watch Wayans-as-Murtaugh juggle a suicidal partner along with a son who is expecting a car for his birthday) and some honest emotional moments (Crawford does amazing work showing Riggs’ emotion grieving over his dead wife).

And while I’ve focused on the main duo, the supporting cast is pretty great as well. Jordana Brewster plays the department psychologist in a much more pivotal role than the movies where the psychologist was just a punchline for Riggs’ antics. Kevin Rahm does great as the Captain who has to drag Riggs and Murtaugh into his office every week thanks to what mayhem they’ve caused on any particular case. And Keesha Sharp gives a great performance as Trish, Murtaugh’s wife. (There’s also an episode where Thomas Lennon guest stars as Leo Getz, and while he can’t replicate Joe Pesci’s sleazeball exactly he still does a wonderful job as Riggs and Murtaugh’s third wheel.)

All in all, if you’re looking to turn off your brain and watch some fun entertainment, you could do a lot worse than Lethal Weapon. The first season just wrapped up and it’s been renewed for a second, so I expect it to pop up on Netflix or Hulu or one of those places in the near future. Give it a watch if you like action comedy. I think you’ll enjoy it.

THE BAD

YouTube Celebrities Are Celebrities

Do you know who PewDiePie and Jontron are? If you don’t, I’ll give you a crash course: PewDiePie is a YouTube star who makes gaming videos and has over 50 million subscribers to his channel – he’s the richest and most subscribed to YouTube personality. Jontron is another YouTube personality, formerly of Game Grumps and now kind of his own thing (and has around 3 million subscribers on his channel).

Both recently have kicked up a shitstorm in different ways. PewDiePie made headlines last month because he pulled a “practical joke” when he made two Indian men hold up a sign that said “Death to All Jews.” His explanation was that it was a joke and he did it to highlight absurd services you could pay for online. Disney immediately ended their partnership with him, unsurprisingly, after this “joke.”

Jontron more recently – as in last week – also decided to be racist and defended Steve King’s abominable tweets (you know the one: “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”). He then went further and double-downed on his racism during a streamed interview with another streamer. One of the finer talking point he brought up was that the richest black man is still more likely to be a criminal than the poorest white man. You know, standard racist shitbag stuff.

Both of these guys have millions of followers on YouTube. More importantly, a lot of their followers are impressionable kids. And their attitude after making these “jokes” and remarks has kind of been “Why do people care? Aren’t there more important things to do than harp on me for some little thing I did?” Remember when Michael Richards went on a racist rant doing comedy and his career basically died? Remember when Mel Gibson espoused Anti-Semitism and he’s still struggling to claw his way back into the accepted ranks of Hollywood?

Back when reality TV was booming, people would distinguish between “real celebrities” and “reality TV celebrities.” This distinction has continued to the YouTube generation where there are “real celebrities” and “YouTube celebrities.” The thing is…these YouTube stars are still reaching millions of people with what they say and do and the videos they post. They’re still celebrities. And the problem is because they exist and make their celebrity from the internet, it’s very hard to hold them accountable because for every article that pops up denouncing him, there are far more who subscribe because they think that joke is fine.

As YouTube (and other internet-based) celebrities grow, as a whole we need to stop treating them with kid gloves. Jim Sterling (one of my personal favorite YouTube personalities) wrote a good article on it today – better than I could ever write – so I highly recommend reading that. Here’s a quote from it: “YouTube has seen more individuals than I can count skyrocket to fame without managers, without marketing departments, without agents, without people telling them when to stop or how what they say and do could impact the world as well as themselves. I do truly believe that some of them don’t understand how important they actually are, and that their surprise right now is genuine. But this is the reality of the situation. You are celebrities now, and that doesn’t mean you get to say and do whatever you please.”

More importantly, we’re in this middle-ground where parents don’t really pay attention to what their kids watch on the internet (as long as it isn’t porn). Sure, you can keep them from watching an R-rated movie or listening to Eminem’s latest album where he talks about killing his wife again, but do most parents nowadays have time to go through YouTube videos themselves and filter out who they’re allowed to watch?

Hold people accountable for what they say. Don’t let racist shitwads get away with being racist shitwads, and don’t encourage them either.

THE WEIRD

What WHAT In The Butt?

I’m not gonna link to this because I’m sure you can find it yourself if you really want to know more about it, but apparently a matador got a bull’s horn up his butt in Spain recently.

That’s right, the horn went up his butt.

Ow.

Also ew.

Ew and ow and ow and ow and ow.

The Good, The Bad, and The Weird – March 15,2017

THE GOOD

Horizon: Zero Dawn

I wanted to wait until I’d played enough of the game to do a proper “review” before I put this in my good list. And after about twenty or so hours of gameplay over two weeks…yeah, this is definitely a good. One of the best games on the PS4 for sure and a must-pick-up if you’re into open-world games that involve giant robot beasts, and I mean, who isn’t into that?

The basic plot of Horizon: Zero Dawn is you’re a young woman who has grown up as an outcast in her culture. It takes place after an apocalypse (like most fiction does nowadays) and the human race lives in different tribes while wild machines roam the earth killing and sucking up resources. Most machines move like herd animals, although some are more aggressive than others. It’s an interesting concept – normal wild animals like rabbits and foxes and pigs roam the wilderness as well, but the main threat to humanity’s existence are these large robotic animals that are very intimidating.

Gameplay is addicting – each beast has weaknesses you have to exploit to be able to take it down. You never feel overpowered – the only things you get from leveling up are a few more hit points and a skill point. Therefore all of the robot beasts still pose a threat even twenty hours into the game. “Easy” encounters can go sideways very quickly when an unexpected variable is introduced. For example, I thought I had a beast well away from the rest of its herd and started trying to take it down – unfortunately I didn’t sequester it far enough away and I ended up having to fight the entire aggressive herd at once instead of one by one. Whoops.

The game suffers from typical open-world tropes – there’s collectibles you have to search for, sidequests that involve you going from point A to point B, only to discover you actually need to go to point C before returning to point A. But Aloy herself makes it worth it – she’s a well-developed character who faces the world with lots of sarcasm, and it’s nice hearing her talk to herself about some of the situations she gets into. And the minute-to-minute gameplay makes you forget about the “typical” quests – I get so much joy out of chipping away a robot’s armor and exploiting the weaknesses. And the game fits different playstyles – going in with no plan and shooting from the hip can be just as efficient as taking a few minutes to set up traps and plan out your attack.

On top of all that, this is a very pretty game. Videos don’t really do it justice due to compression and the like – everything about the environment is gorgeous. The robots are very detailed and life-like in their movements – one of the little joys I get is overriding one robot and watching how they interact with other robots before they attack each other.

All in all, I highly recommend this game if you have a PS4 and like open-world games that aren’t just your typical marine shooters. The world is big enough to be impressive but not so big that it’s overwhelming, and people seem to be finishing it in 40-50 hours which is a pretty good number for these types of games. I could go on and on about it, but if you’re interested – you can watch one of my videos to see whether you’d like it or not.

THE BAD

Amai Clooney’s “Baby Bump”

This is gonna be short. Last Thursday, Amal Clooney gave a speech at the United Nations. The next day everyone was not reporting on her speech, but instead her fashion choice and her “baby bump.” The Washington Post has a good summary of everything here.

I’m going to hark back to what Tina Fey said at the Golden Globes in 2015: “Amal is a human rights lawyer who worked on the Enron case, was an adviser to Kofi Annan regarding Syria and was selected for a three-person U.N. commission investigating rules of war violations in the Gaza Strip. So tonight her husband is getting a lifetime-achievement award.”

It’s Hollywood’s shittacular treatment of women on steroids. Amal Clooney happened to marry George Clooney – and the media treats her like she’s the trophy wife. This is a woman who has accomplished pretty much everything that George Clooney has pretended to accomplish as the characters he’s portrayed in movies.

Why the fuck is a “baby bump” something important to report about in the first place? Sure, fine, if there’s an actress on the red carpet who is pregnant, fuck it. Report on that if you fucking have to. But this woman was literally giving a speech on crimes perpetrated by ISIS to the United Nations and the media has the gall to report on her fucking “baby bump”? Jesus Christ. What’s next? “Ruth Bader Ginsburg rocks amazing hairstyle and puts the supreme back in Supreme Court”?

Fuck off gossip trash media.

THE WEIRD

Metacritical Mass

I don’t really have a “weird” thing to report on this week. This gravitates more towards bad than weird, but in lieu of anything else I’ll just throw this out there.

On February 28, the aforementioned Horizon: Zero Dawn released. On March 3 (the Friday of the same week) the new Legend of Zelda game released as well. Both are open-world video games…both are console exclusives…both are being raved about as excellent games…and under normal circumstances, that’s all you need to know.

However, as much as I hate to say it as an avid video gaming fan, video games are insanely petty and childish. Going all the way back to the days of Nintendo vs. Sega, people who play video games have stupidly ludicrous brand loyalty. And with the advent of the internet, there’s this subset of video game players who have to prove that MY game is the BEST game and no OTHER game can be as good as MY game.

Metacritic is the bane of video game existence right now. I’ll probably go into more depth about this in a later blog post, but essentially the review aggregator holds a lot of weight in the gaming community. Horizon: Zero Dawn currently has an 89 (out of 100) average review score. That’s awesome. The new Zelda game currently has a 97, which is amazing.

But it’s not a 98, which is absolutely horrendous to some idiots.

You think I’m joking? I’m not. The reviewer that gave the new Zelda a 7.5/10 which lowered the Metacritic from 98 to 97 ended up having his website DDOS attacked and people also tried to hack his e-mail and Twitter handle. All because his review wasn’t a 10/10 (or, in a pinch, a 9/10).

This stupid shit is why people won’t take video games seriously as a medium. For fuck’s sake people, grow up.

The Good, The Bad, and The Weird – March 8, 2017

So I know I promised two blog updates a week, however I had a few issues with coming up with a theme for Monday’s blog post. Fortunately I finally settled on one – unfortunately it was Sunday night when I was hit with inspiration and didn’t have a topic that fit my theme that I felt comfortable writing by Monday. So there will definitely be two blog posts next week – I apologize for that!

Moving on to this week’s Good, Bad, and Weird:

THE GOOD

Logan

I saw Logan this weekend and it was fantastic. As I described it to my friends, I came out of it thinking it was a good movie that happened to include superheroes, as opposed to a good “superhero” movie – if that makes any sense. It wasn’t perfect by any means but it was damn good and a wonderful send-off for both Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart – who have both said this would be their last movie in the X-Men universe. And what a movie to go out on.

I won’t spoil anything about the plot itself, but if you didn’t know this is an R-rated take on the character of Wolverine. And within the first ten minutes the movie lets you know that this isn’t a family-friendly take-your-kids-to-see-superheroes-fight movie: there’s boobs, there’s cursing, and Wolverine slashes a guy’s arm off in a much bloodier fashion than we’re used to from the sanitized previous X-Men.

Once the director establishes that this is not your father’s X-Men, it slows down a bit and becomes plot-focused. Not that it’s a bad thing. Both Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman are at the top of their acting game, giving increasing depth to both characters we’ve come to know and love. And Dafne Keen does an amazing job as Laura, the young girl Logan ends up having to care for, and manages to keep up with both actors in her film debut.

This isn’t a popcorn flick by any means – it actually evokes a very T2: Judgement Day-like atmosphere both in cinematic experience and also the world created. I highly recommend seeing it even if the regular Marvel superhero movies aren’t your thing – I have a feeling in years to come Logan is going to stand up with the greatly respected movies of the genre like The Dark Knight.

THE BAD

Obama is not the Oboogeyman

On Saturday morning, Donald Trump tweeted a message accusing the former president of wiretapping Trump Tower. Trump claimed in that tweet that it was a Nixonesque, Watergate level scandal. Now, as far as reporting has investigated, it seems Trump got this idea from a Breitbart article that mentions wiretaps in regards to an FBI investigation regarding the Trump campaign and Russian banks. Having to condense the article into a 160-character tweet, it became “Obama’s wiretapping me!”

Now let’s put aside any sort of discussion that maybe it was to distract from the Sessions/Russia brouhaha that was stirring. Let’s focus on one simple fact:

For 8 years, Barack Obama has been the person the GOP blames for everything. Now they’re having trouble letting go, and on top of that Donald Trump is trying to invoke the former president’s name as some sort of Bloody Mary type scenario.

The White House leaks are Obama loyalists. Obama wiretapping. Obama is secretly still pulling strings in the WH to make Trump look bad. Trump inherited Obama’s mess. Obama Obama Obama Obama Obama. (Careful, Congress GOP, don’t say Obama’s name three times in front of your bathroom mirror or Obama might appear and allow transgender people to use your bathroom.)

But in all seriousness – Obama is no longer the President. There’s a little bit of wiggle room at the beginning here during the transition of power. But invoking Obama’s name to take the blame can only work for so long. The GOP is in control from top to bottom. They basically have all three branches of government in their control (whenever Trump’s Supreme Court nominee goes through) so eventually it’s going to become their mess. I think the actual career politicians are starting to notice this – especially with the Trumpcare bill that is now being debated. They’re starting to realize the blame game they’ve been passing forward for the last eight years is no longer a credible action. Especially because they tied everything to the former president. But that’s what they have to live with – they spent those two terms villifying Obama and everything he tried to accomplish, and set themselves up to be the conquering heroes if they only got that dastardly Obama out of office.

Well he’s gone now…you’re going to have to stop trotting his name out to distract from your own problems. Sorry!

THE WEIRD

The Switch Taste Test

If you’re not up-to-date on video game news, the latest hot new console has been released: The Nintendo Switch. Now I’m not going to review it (I don’t have one) or talk about it much yet. Instead, I’d like to inform you of the weird internet-goings-on related to the Switch cartridges.

You see, Nintendo (in a smartish move) applied a bittering agent to the Nintendo Switch cartridges to keep small children from licking/biting/eating them. The same agent used in anti-nail-biting treatments and the like. That’s a good idea…except, well…

See, the funny thing about human nature is that we have an indomitable spirit. And when we’re told “NO” sometimes we just have to do it anyway. So when the Switch released this Friday, it wasn’t long before YouTube was flooded with videos of people “taste testing” the cartridges. Because they couldn’t be THAT bitter, right?

You think I’m joking? I’m not. Just take a look at all the hits when I search for Switch Taste Test.

Yep. That’s this week’s weirdness. Don’t have anything else to say about that…other than…for the love of God, why?

The Good, The Bad, and The Weird – March 1, 2017

After getting on a schedule with my YouTube videos, I’ve realized if I hold my own butt to the fire and establish a specific time for which to do things I start actually doing the things on a regular basis. Surprise! So in an effort to start getting back into posting blogs on regularly, I’m going to start holding my butt to the fire on these as well.

To help with that, I’ve decided to schedule blog updates on Mondays and Wednesdays (this coincides with my YouTube videos going up Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursday). With the possibility of also having a special type of blog post on Sundays – I’ll get to that in a bit. On top of the schedule, I’ve decided to theme my blog posts as a way to make sure I write. The fact is so much stuff happens that it gets overwhelming trying to decide what to write about. So if I stick to my weekly themes, hopefully I’ll be cranking out blog updates on the regular pretty quickly.

So the Wednesday updates are going to be called The Good, The Bad, and The Weird. Every Wednesday I’m going to pick something from the past week or so that makes me happy, something that makes me upset, and something that was either strange or caught my eye for a random reason. It’ll be three quick, short-form topics that I can either heap praise on or rant about to get out of my system. Should be fun for everyone, right?

Cool! So that’s enough preamble – let’s get to it!

THE GOOD

Netflix’s Santa Clarita Diet

So I just finished watching the first season of Santa Clarita Diet on Netflix (it was added early February) and I’m gonna go ahead and say this is a big ol’ recommend from me. Now I knew what I was getting into when I started it – it’s by the same guy who created Better Off Ted, a lesser known comedy that got two seasons on ABC before being cancelled. Better Off Ted was a workplace comedy that took the ridiculousness up to 11 and was right up my alley in terms of its humor. (Better Off Ted is ALSO on Netflix, if you’re curious!) It also stars Timothy Olyphant (who is one of my favorite actors) so it was basically a must-watch for me and I was pretty certain I’d enjoy it. And I did.

Santa Clarita Diet is a send-up of the suburban family comedy the same way Better Off Ted messed with the office comedy genre. In it, Drew Barrymore and the afore-mentioned Timothy Olyphant are married realtors whose life has gotten a little…routine. Then suddenly the wife becomes a zombie and everything goes ass-up.

Every time I thought the show was going to go in one typical comedy direction, it almost always threw me a curveball and took the plot in a completely different direction. Drew Barrymore is great as the bored wife-turned-exciting zombie, and Timothy Olyphant plays slightly against type as the somewhat exasperated husband who can’t keep up with his wife’s new zombie ways. Some of the best moments of the show are them arguing about typical husband-wife things – for example, while standing over a large pile of weapons they bought for the purposes of a murder, one argues with the other over a hairbrush: “Just once I’d like to go to the store and buy only what we put on the list!”

Liv Hewson plays the hapless couple’s daughter, who for good reason has a bit of a teenage rebellious streak once she finds out her mom is undead – and she often times steals the scenes she’s in. Similarly, Skyler Gisondo plays their nerdy neighbor who knows everything about zombies and is totally cool with all the people-eating happening next door, and he has some great one-liners over the course of the ten episodes.

If you’re in the mood for a laugh, I highly recommend putting this show on – it’s ten half-hour episodes so easy enough to binge watch if you like it, and also easy to get a decent sample size to see whether or not you’ll enjoy it, but not too much that you’ll feel like you’ve wasted your time. But I don’t recommend eating while watching it – as it has to do with zombies, there are quite a few gross-out scenes included that may make you question that burger you’re about to chow down on.

THE BAD

Kellyanne’s Couch “Controversy”

A while back I made my feelings on “controversy” very clear. As such, the “controversy” that has come up in the past two days has drawn my ire because of how goddamn stupid it is.

If you haven’t heard, a picture of Kellyanne Conway with her feet on the Oval Office couch made its rounds on the internet recently. Some people made it a meme, some people were outraged by the disrespect she was showing the Oval Office. Some people even went so far as to say she was being racist, because it was during a meeting with a bunch of leaders from HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities) and surmised that if the room had been filled with a bunch of white people, she would have been standing at attention and not in such a casual position.

And this pisses me off.

Kellyanne Conway has done some stupid shit. “Alternative facts” and the “Bowling Green massacre” come to mind immediately. There’s probably lots of other things she’s said and done as Trump’s mouthpiece that are disrespectful and dumb. I’m not arguing that people can’t dislike her as a person or think she’s doing a bad job. But please. For the love of all that is holy – don’t make fucking controversies out of petty shit like this.

Make controversies over Congressional Republicans trying to sweep the Trump administration’s ties to Russia under the rug. Make controversies over Trump rolling back clean water regulations and heading towards dismantling the EPA. Make controversies over Sean Spicer taking people’s phones to see who they’ve been talking to. Make controversies over people like Trump, Spicer, and Conway making up terrorist attacks to make people scared and become more pro-nationalism.

But don’t do this. Just don’t. This is one of those things where people have decided to hate Kellyanne Conway and now every little thing she does is put under a microscope and judged. She happened to be sitting on the couch, looking at her phone (as she was taking a picture of everyone with said phone) when somebody else took a picture. Fuck off if that’s enough to get riled up about when there’s plenty of ACTUAL problems we should be discussing instead.

THE WEIRD

Tacos in Traffic

This one’s gonna be short as it’s just a link to an article:

In Seattle, a taco truck apparently opened its doors and served food to people stuck in traffic while waiting for an accident to be cleared up.

Just an amusing little anecdote that caught my eye. The world isn’t all that bad, right? Find happiness in the little things.

Even if you’re stuck in traffic.