R.I.P. Leslie Nielsen and Irvin Kershner

Last Sunday I heard that comedy actor Leslie Nielsen died at the age of 84. Shortly after finding out about Nielsen I also read about Irvin Kershner dying the day before, Kershner was 87 years old. Both men have made significant contributions to pop culture, and to hear that they have both died is horrible.

Leslie Nielsen, 1926-2010:

Did you know he was Canadian?

Leslie Nielsen was not a comedian. If he was forced to get in front of an audience on a stage he probably wouldn't have a single joke to tell. What he was, was a comedy actor. Nobody could work a gag like Nielsen. While his films may have been over-the-top and silly, he always kept a straight face. He understood that you didn't have to ham it up to get a laugh. He was like an old, silly uncle. Earnest in his convictions, but dumped into whatever situation the director threw him in (no wonder they cast him as Mr. Magoo).

He originally began his career as a serious actor, starring in such films as Forbidden Planet and The Poseidon Adventure. Then Airplane! came, and forced Neilsen to reinvent his whole career. With the success of Airplane!, and his standout role as a doctor stuck on the doomed airliner. The Zucker brothers made Nielsen their go-to star. The Naked Gun film series further solidified Nielsen as a spoof movie king and guaranteed Nielsen work for the rest of his life. The movies may not have always been good, to be honest a fair amount of them were terrible, however Nielsen never phoned in any of his performances. He always managed to have fun on screen and it showed through. That and he got to play Santa Clause twice, which is one more time than award winning actor/director Richard Attenborough.

Irvin Kershner 1923-2010:

Lets get this out of the way, the reason why you should respect Kershner is because he directed The Empire Strikes Back, which is considered to be the best Star Wars film ever. Kershner managed to bring a humanity to Star Wars that all the other films missed. There's a reason why you are more emotionally invested in Empire than all the other Star Wars films, it's because it's the one that focuses on the characters more. Yes there's the badass battle of Hoth (recreated nicely in the Shadows of the Empire N64 video game), and there's the duel between Vader and Luke (as a kid I referred to Empire as "That movie where the guy gets his hand chopped off"), but those are only small parts of the film. Kershner made sure to focus on the characters we care about, not set pieces or people that would make kickass action figures. He populated the screen with characters we cared about.

The best of the Star Wars films.

Before Star Wars, Kershner was a respected film director. Though his work was not as well known as Empire, he made a nice name for himself on the small films he made. When the director asked Lucas why he was chosen to direct a Star Wars film, Lucas answered (according to Wikipedia), ""Well, because you know everything a Hollywood director is supposed to know, but you're not Hollywood."

The next big movie after Empire was a James Bond film, titled Never Say Never Again. Never Say Never Again is interesting on two counts: it brought Sean Connery back in the role as Bond and it wasn't made by EON, Bond's usual production company. Not only did Kershner have the balls to make a Bond movie without EON, but he released it around the same time as Octopussy, Moore's second-to-last Bond film. While Octopussy made more money, Never Say Never Again still made $160 million and got a better score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Connery also got to make-out with Kim Basinger, Suck it Moore.

Kershner's next movie was Robocop 2, which managed to out-crazy the original film, directed by the insane Paul Vehoeven. Robocop 2 was darker, more violent, and a lot more over-the-top than the original film. Sadly, the film was not met with kind reviews or box office. The movie has grown in respect however, after the abortion Robocop 3 was released.

It's sad to see these two men pass, however, their cinematic legacy is still there for future generations to enjoy. I doubt Empire Strikes Back will be forgotten anytime soon, and Leslie Nielsen has made so many movies, he's bound to be on television at some point.

How to make Thanksgiving better

Thanksgiving: everyone's favorite or least favorite holiday, depending on how much you like your family. It's decent enough, with rich history and tradition. It gets lost though, with Christmas so close by. Here are some ways that I think will bring the awesome-sauce to Thanksgiving.

Tradition = lame.

1. Add presents for kids and/or alcohol for adults (note: don't give alcohol to children):

What makes a holiday worthwhile for kids? It's the presents, stupid. Whether it's candy or a new Transformer, kids will only care about a holiday if they get something out of it. I'm not calling kids materialistic, they're just spoiled brats. I'm not against kids, I love kids. Just imagine yourself when you were a kid, you were probably the biggest brat you knew. No kid gets excited about having dinner with extended family, it's just an aunt and uncle expansion pack to their normal, everyday dinner.

Adults on the other hand don't appreciate gifts as much. All they want is to get drunk as hell. From now on, after dinner there should be family-wide beer bong contest. Or, after cleaning off that table that somehow fit twenty members of your family, set up for beer pong. Make it festive and make the cups into turkey shapes (I can't for the life of me think of any other symbol for Thanksgiving). Maybe once your Aunt Margret gets drunk and tells you about the old days when black people stayed in their own part of town, the party will finally be fun. Halloween has spiked punch, Christmas has eggnog and Jagermeister, so it's about time Thanksgiving had it's own tradition.

It tastes festive, it looks festive, it has a reindeer on it. Good enough for me.

2. Liven up the parades:

Unless you are bored waiting for food or football, there is no reason to be watching the Thanksgivings Day parade. No kid likes Shrek enough to want to see a balloon of him go down a New York City street, almost taking out street lamps along the way. It's the same crap every year.

They need to find a way to make the parade radder. Get rid of the marching bands and musical numbers, make cooler floats, or add more fire. Really, there are so many ways to make people walking down a street more exciting. The floats are nothing more than Disney commercials on wheels anymore. Make floats battle like they're out of the movie Road Warrior, that would be cool. If not that, than at least speed it up. If the Mummers can't keep up than they should be run off the road. Anyone that dresses up like that deserves a beat down.

If a kid is watching he is waiting for one thing: Santa Clause. Santa is always at the end of the parade, so seeing him both signals the start of the Christmas season and the end of the parade (which is reason to celebrate enough). That's all the kid wants to see, his jolly, chubby, red-suited hero. So i demand that every five minutes of parade there should be someone dressed like Santa. In fact, every person holding the balloon in order to stop it from flying away or being taken by Batman should be dressed like Santa.

It's Santa, we can go home now.

3. Change up the food:

I'm sorry to break it to you but, according to Wikipedia, turkey was not a big part of the original Thanksgiving. There was also no mashed potatoes (my favorite part of the feast) and sure as hell no jellied cranberry sauce. So any ideas of food traditions are off. With that being said, let's spice it up. Thanksgiving tacos would be a good start. Or how about pizza, everyone loves pizza. And just like turkey, pizza is still good as leftovers. It's the perfect food. Or, if you want, make it a real first Thanksgiving. Clams, lobster, eels (pass the eel, please), or beetroot should all be on the menu if you want to celebrate a traditional Thanksgiving. The point is, there is no set foods to eat on Thanksgiving, it's whatever you want to eat, even if it's sushi. Don't feel tied up by false traditions. Especially if that tradition demands jellied fruit out of a can.

What are you?!

4. Make it less about family:

Nobody likes their family. Nobody wants to be stuck with their family for a whole afternoon. The thing about being with our extended family is, it's a lot of work. We don't get to act like ourselves under the eye of our aunts and uncles, only putting on our best in case we're under scrutiny. It's not fun pretending to like your cousins for a few hours, the pretense is exhausting. And if you're the kind of person that has "My friends are the only family I need, they are my blood," written on some long forgotten instant messaging profile somewhere I have three words for you: get over yourself. Your family are your family, your friends are your friends. It's nice having Thanksgiving dinner with our friends, it might be more pleasant than being with your parents, but don't group your friends as family. No friend, no matter how horrible they are, deserves that insult.

No teenager wants to wear matching colors with their family.

5. Name it Black Friday Eve:

This one's easy and sounds like something Jay Leno would say when trying to warm his audience up. But it's true. You may be helping yourself to your second helping of corn, but in your mind all you're thinking about is when you should set up camp outside Best Buy. Let's face it, a large group of people are more concerned about saving money at Sears than enjoying quality time with people you're only forced to see once a year. Americans are ugly, materialistic people. So we should have a holiday, aside from Valentines day, to celebrate that. So lets make body-checking the mom next to you for the last Cabbage Patch Doll into a true tradition.

That Asian-dude in the middle has no idea where he is.

Experiencing technical difficulties, please stand-by

I only just realized it was blog day, and to be honest I'm not in a real blogging mood. Sorry for the technical difficulties, please tune in next Friday for regularly scheduled programing. I think I'll write about "Ways to make Thanksgiving better." But for now, in the meanwhile, please enjoy these pictures of pandas.

Four Loko/Beatles on iTunes extravaganza

Ok, the two big stories this week were Four Loko having to remove the caffeine and the Beatles' now becoming available on iTunes. Frankly, I don't care about either topic and don't have enough of an opinion on either topic to fill up a blog post. So, I decide to lump them together into one mega-sized-super-combo-deal. Now you get double the opinion for the price of one click. On to the issues:

Four Loko:

It's crystal meth in a can!

In one can of Four Loko you can have the caffeine inducing power of being a tool with the alcohol inducing power of being a jerk. That is until the FDA had to ruin everyone's fun by declaring them unsafe. What a bunch of lames at the FDA (am I right?). How could having 12 percent of alcohol and a crap-load of taurine and guarana be a bad thing? It seems like the perfect drink for any 100 pound girl, waving the colorful can around the party like it's an "I'm about to blackout" flag. It's all the fun of jagerbombs without all the trouble of having to drop things into glasses. Not since Billy Dee Williams (that's Lando Calrissian to his friends) started slinging Colt 45 in the 80s has malt liquor ever been so cool.

It works every time.

Look, when it comes to partying you have to trust the resident experts. For me, that expert is Andrew W.K. Not only do all of his songs sound the same (but not in an annoying AC/DC way), but they all have to do with partying. Mr. W.K. tweeted last Wednesday "PARTY TIP: Stock up on cans of FOUR Loko before they take out all the caffeine." And if you ask me, whatever Andrew W.K. says goes. He is, by any definition, the man. He knows his partying.

Pictured: Partying. Hard.

Beatles on iTunes:

Nobody cares about you Ringo.

The recent Beatles news led many to declare, "Man, I didn't know the Beatles weren't on iTunes." The thing of it is, this isn't going to create any new Beatlesmania. Anybody who already cared about the Beatles probably already had them by some other means (R.I.P. Limewire). Others only know them from their crappy Rock Band expansion (those people are Philistines) and don't care how they can get their music. There's no reason why the Beatles couldn't be on iTunes to begin with, other than stubbornness. Now we're suppose to care and buy the White Album again because they tell us to. Hell, the Across the Universe soundtrack was already available on iTunes and that's all the brats nowadays care about anyway.

see more Funny Graphs

The above flowchart, supplied by graphjam.com, perfectly illustrates my argument against caring about the Beatles. Don't get me wrong, I love the Beatles, I just don't care about this news. You may ask why I spent the time to type out an argument when this flowchart is the perfect expression of my opinion. The answer is simple, because I needed space to fill on this blog. And I wouldn't rob you, dear reader, of the opportunity to read my opinion.

Deer reader?

(photo from ladydlk's flickr)

Manhunt: More than just tag in the dark

I've always found it amusing, the games that kids make up to keep from being bored. I was one of those kids that always broke the rules so I wouldn't lose. If you shot me with your imaginary gun I'd say I had an imaginary bulletproof vest on. It's sufficient to say that playing Cowboys and Indians with me was never fun. As I got older I learned to play better with others. Which is good because the games just got better as we got older.

Back in the day, wall-ball was the best. A whole school yard could play, all you needed was enough wall space and a tennis ball (how cool did you feel being the tennis ball kid?). As we got older we realized that instead of throwing the ball at the wall we can try and hurt each other with it, and the suicide variant of wall-ball was created. Our school eventually banned the game because our grade got so out of hand. To this day there are probably still some confiscated tennis balls in our math teacher's desk.

My personal favorite was tag. Tag was great because it was an excuse to run around. There is no such thing as a lazy child at recess. Different kinds of tag sprung out of the basic "touch-somebody and-run" template that is so easy to remember. Freeze tag was great and TV Tag was a personal favorite, if only because I knew a lot of television shows. The person about to be caught would yell out a television show name to make themselves safe. The cool kids would yell out The Simpsons or Beavis and Butt-head. I would relegate myself to Diagnosis: Murder, Price is Right and Nash Bridges. You know, old people shows.

Don't hate.

There was one form of tag that went past the school yards and into the streets. It was a hybrid mixture of two amazing games: tag and hide and seek. It was tag's badass older brother that let you hang out in his room. Manhunt was the game, and it was the best. Fall was the best time to play. This is because it's not too cold where you need a big, poofy jacket and it wasn't too warm where you overheated yourself. Once you get into middle school, tag seems juvenile but manhunt is still acceptable. There were two rules for manhunt: it had to be at night and it had to be in a certain defined area. Once you get past those two rules you were free to run through whatever backyard you wanted to or hide in any tree you could. The neighborhood was now the playground and whoever knew it the best was probably going to win. Oh and try not to run out of bounds or you'll get yelled at by the opposing team and they'll never trust you to play the game again (bunch of babies).

Fritz Lang even made a film about it.

My town played team manhunt, which consisted of two groups of people. One hid and the other seek. Flashlights were a point of contention. The way my town mostly played, once you got caught you had to hold on to them and count "one, two, three you're my man." Sometimes skill in the game depended solely on the ability to count to three very fast. Caught members would be taken to whatever was designated as jail. The brilliant part was, people can be freed from jail by being tagged by an uncaught hider. The kid who jailbreaked his whole team was the hero for the night or the most hated, depending on which team you were on.

Picture unrelated.

There was one rule that everybody broke, babysitting. If you, dear reader, say that you never babysat the jail in your life then you are a liar. Babysitting, for the uninitiated, was staying next to the jail in order to guard the slow bastards that got caught, and to catch the athletic kids that cared enough to free them. Sometimes just looking at the base is enough to get called a babysitter, and therefore a cheater. Games lasted either until everybody was found or until the seekers got tired of looking. Lets face it, nobody wanted to be a seeker. The game was about hiding, there's no fun in tripping through thorn bushes, unable to find the one jerk that climbed a tree. Either way, manhunt was a fun game to play. I still want to play it and I'm in college now. It's hard to escape the thrill of hiding in a bush with two seekers right next to you. You feel like an action hero.

Hmm, just a box...