Super Bowl XLIII

I can't remember a Super Bowl that seemed to garner as little interest as this one. Steelers vs. Seahawks maybe? Bucs vs. Raiders? I don't know, maybe I am still suffering a hang over from my Giants losing but there just seems to be ZERO excitement around this game. Over the last two days Bruce Springsteen has gotten more coverage for his upcoming halftime show than the two teams actually playing in the game. With less than two days until kickoff, lets try and break this thing down.

Is it me or does anyone care that the Arizona Cardinals are one of the teams playing? From what I have read, there has been very little media interest this week in covering the Cardinals. Huh? Offensively, Kurt Warner to Larry Fitzgerald has been pure gold. You have to love how they have played defensively as well. And look, they have zero pressure, none. The only people who really believe in this team are in the Arizona locker room. That fact alone makes a dangerous Cardinal team even more so.

So one might think I would be leaning towards picking the Cards but think again. I will be rooting like heck for the Red Birds but I am going to pick Pittsburgh to win a record setting sixth title. Yeah, it's true, sometimes the best teams don't always win. The Steelers are the better team, especially on the defensive end. But with two weeks off between the conference championships and Super Sunday, the edge goes to the D here. Steelers win, 23-13.

So what else can you look forward to on Super Sunday? Well, for me I am more geared up for the Boss at the half and The Office in the post game. The commercials, despite the new 3-d angle, are overrated and over hyped. Ever since the Timberlake-Jackson titty debacle, the NFL has gotten it right during their halftime shows. We've had Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Prince and Tom Petty, all stellar. Other favorites: U2 in 2001 after 9/11, and who could ever forget Michael Jackson at the Rose Bowl where there were a bunch of different Michaels coming out of every corner of the stadium? Classic. This year should be another gem with word being Bruce is set to play Glory Days, 10th Avenue Freeze Out, Born to Run and a fourth song, most likely off the new album (yet another strong effort I might add). Should be great. Enjoy!

Two Predictions for the Super Bowl this Sunday

I will be getting drunk....

and eating meat.
WHO'S WITH ME?

Lies, Damned Lies, and Peanuts

The newsroom here at Pterodactyl Puke has been on top of the Great Peanut Butter Menace (not to mention the gathering threat of Ding Dongs and Ho Hos) since the beginning -- or at least since the first few million news organizations had reported on it -- and this grand narrative of monumental muckraking has resulted in at least 14 (non-sexual favor-related) promotions here at the Puke and may end with a Pulitzer for some eager and dashing young cub. We told you how Big Peanut Butter would inevitably knock humanity off its royal perch, and we were doubted –- nay, ridiculed -- by the vast and toxically liberal media for our belief in a telepathic toad race scouring the galaxy for a planet in the throes of a peanutty (or marshmallowy) holocaust.

Well, it turns out that Peanut Corporation -- very well named, by the way -- actually knew about the salmonella in their child-killing product and shipped it anyway. Their own tests prove it, and the FDA was asleep at the peanut grinder. How could they get away with this? Is there any doubt that the Peanut Lobby has spread its sticky tentacles deep into the halls of power and threatens our way of life? Don’t you know they hate us for our freedom? What to send little Johnny to school with now? Slices of bread pasted with some other slop? Do you want the other kids to make fun of him because he smells like mayonnaise? How about bratty little Edgar and uni-browed little Hortense? Is peppery lox in their future? Pimento loaf? The future is too ugly to contemplate.

I just happen to be very similar to some of the greatest people ever

You always have to be suspicious when someone says, ‘I don’t mean to compare myself to Gandhi, Martin Luther King, or Nelson Mandela,’ and then proceeds to compare himself to Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela. You really have to wonder what two species of crazy had to mate to produce a specimen like Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. He said – and I’m not kidding – that he thought about what these great men had done in his situation, and how he was doing the same. For a minute, I started thinking what Gandhi did after he tried to sell a US Senate seat. Probably no one in India could afford it at that time, so he never really ran into any problems. It all makes sense though. Blago and Gandhi. They’re almost the same person if you think about it.

On a similar self-praising note, our favorite happy un-elected Senator, Roland Burris, said, ‘If there was no Martin Luther King Jr. and no Roland Burris, there would be no Barack Obama in the White House today. We must recognize, friends, that we all stand on each other's shoulders.’ Referring to oneself in the third person may be creepy, but tacking your name on to MLK’s with ‘and’ is pure genius and really just solidifies whatever argument he was making. It's like saying, 'If there was no John Lennon and no other random guy who wasn't even part of the Beatles, there would be no Beatles.'

But, in any case, is it possible to ‘stand on each other’s shoulders?’ Have you ever tried to stand on someone’s shoulders while they’re standing on yours? Burris is really getting all Cirque du Soleil on us now. He was also overheard to say, ‘I’m gonna grab you by the ankles and throw you in the air. Before you fall, some dude in tights will throw me into the air and then another dude in tights will throw him before he catches you, and so forth, so that there are always three of us in the air and one on the ground at any given point in time. How bendable is your back? Go find me some music by Enya or something.’

Thain's Unthrifty Throne

John Thain resigned in shame from Bank of America. It turns out that he sold Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis a lemon in the form of investment bank Merrill Lynch. And not just any lemon. A black hole lemon that sucks out all the moisture from anyone who tastes its juice, and leaves pillars of salt in its wake. Merrill Lynch lost $15B just a couple of months after Lewis paid $50B for it.

Now, Bank of America is basically insolvent and the economy may be going to holy hell because of all this, but that’s not the real story. Thain also distributed $4 billion in bonuses before the end of the quarter, despite the mammoth losses, but that’s not the real story either. There’s also the fact that he spent $1.2 million renovating his office, but even that’s not the whole story. The real story here is the fact that he spent $35k on a commode. That’s right. Thirty-five thousand dollars on a toilet. A crapper. A cold porcelain shit catcher.

I can’t confess to having ever purchased a toilet, so I’m really not sure if that’s a reasonable sum or not, but I think I’d probably go without one before I’d spend $35k on a dumper. What could possibly make it worth so much? Was it diamond-studded or gold-rimmed? Who cares? Why would these things matter if all you do is deposit a rancid turd into a little swirl of water? It’s not like you’re gonna show your friends. You can’t exactly impress a girl at a party with the fact that you routinely wipe your nasty underside over a bowl designed by Cartier.

The toilet is a place of privacy, of refuge. Some people read magazines or books to occupy their minds. Others just meditate, snatching a few precious moments of alone time. The only thing that would make it better for me would be some other form of entertainment it could provide during my, um, exertions. Not a TV. Maybe a time machine. Not the kind where you get trapped in the distant future trying to save a race of children from underground mutants –- just the kind where you can calmly view the events of humanity or of your own life, future or past, without interfering, all the while dropping a deuce into a little pot. That would be worth it. I’d fork out 35,000 smackers for that. To hell with the shareholders and the financial system and the flailing economy.

Movie Review: The Reader

If you like boobs, pedophilia and Nazis, then do I have a movie for you!!!

You've got to hand it to Kate Winslet. She has no problem dropping trow. At this point, I feel uncomfortable watching a movie if Winslet has her clothes on. Our Titanic friend (she is, actually, not titanic but pretty slim in this movie, although, she is not well manicured... if you get my drift. Wink, wink. Ahem.) doesn't waste anytime getting her clothes off in The Reader. The story revolves around a fifteen year old --yes, I said 15-- boy's affair with a ticket taker (Winslet) on the local trolley. The boy is helped by the woman when he is overtaken with an illness while walking home from school. As we all know, if you follow movies, it is impossible not to fall in love with someone after they vomit all over your front steps. The woman checks out his underage tuckus while he is bathing and yada, yada, yada...pedophilia! The movie is pretty graphic. At one point it looks like Winslet's character is checking the boy's oil. Winslet is naked, the boy is naked and he reads to her.

So, get this, the grown woman having sex with the underage boy is NOT the big, dirty secret in the movie! The movie is set in Germany and flashes forward many years after the affair. The young boy is now in law school and he goes with his class to watch a Nazi trial. Well, who is on trial as the big Nazi???? Yup, Tom Cruise!!!! Ok, I made that up. Winslet was a Nazi guard. That is the big twist. She gets convicted for something that she wasn't fully responsible for. Flash forward a few more years and Ralph Fiennes (who manages to keep his clothes on) is now the young boy turned full grown attorney. He is the only person in the world that she has but he can't bear to talk to her, so he reads her books on tape. Not kidding, he reads books onto a tape machine for the woman who molested him as a boy and IS A NAZI!!!!!!!

The movie is well made and written, but it is tough to watch. Kate Winslet is incredible. She deserves the Oscar nomination, but Meryl Streep should win Best Actress for Doubt. If you have a great hankering for Nazi molester boobs, then run to see The Reader.

Mercy is for Girls

A girls' basketball game in Dallas, TX had the most ridiculous numbers you will ever see in sports. Covenant School beat Dallas Academy by a score of 100 to nothing. That’s right, 100-0. What are they feeding the girls at Covenant? Or better yet, how much lead content is there in the water at Dallas Academy? Couldn’t they just throw the ball up and score at least one basket by accident, and make it a respectable 100-2?

Well, I looked up the web site of Dallas Academy and found that it’s a school for ‘learning differences.’ Okay, now I feel bad. Also, on the web site it says the following: ‘Education reclaimed. Confidence is restored.’ Wow, they have some unorthodox methods, methinks. Do they also make the girls try out at modeling agencies and get rejected? The assignment today, class, is to call Johnny Depp and ask him out on a date. If he says no, you are truly worthless pieces of shit. Next week, you will all apply to Harvard even though we're pretty sure none of you can read. Seriously though, the best I think these girls can do is maybe move to Alaska and become governor.

I also looked up Covenant School. Their charter says, ‘Teaching our girls to beat the snot out of your girls, to bathe in the blood of lesser opponents, and to make sure that girls with learning differences always get their asses handed to them.’

Darth Fedor vs. Andre Arlovski

In the immortal words of a drunken 280 lb. T Rex at his own bachelor party - Ahhhrlovvskiiii?

This Saturday night in the world of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), Andre "The Pit Bull" Arlovski will be yet another man attempting to take down the most dominant heavyweight fighter we have ever seen, Fedor Emelianenko.

I normally support the UFC only, but you can bet I will be glued to the TV watching this on Saturday night. Both fighters are of Russian descent, both have great footwork and knockout power and both have some prowess on the ground (submissions etc..) Let's break this down:

Knockout power - Edge to Fedor - I have never seen any fighter who has mastered throwing his whole body into every punch.
Boxing - Edge to Arlovski
Submissions - Fedor - loves the armbar.
Gas in the tank - edge to Arlovski - only a slight edge.
Strength - although it doesn't look it by their physique, I say this one goes to Fedor who has, what I like to refer to, as farmboy strength. If you want to say retard strength, fine.
Experience - Fedor - has been competing professionally in Russian Sambo for many years before MMA.
Toughness - big edge to Fedor. Arlovski has shown a suspect chin in few of his fights, and if he makes a mental mistake, it's all over for him. Weak chins and mental mistakes do not mix.
Quickness - Arlovski - can he stay away from Fedor's power and pick him apart?

Conclusion - Arlovski's only chance in this on is to maintain distance and fire out jab upon jab. If he can control the fight and turn it into a 3 round boxing match, he wins. This blogger does not see that happening though.

What will happen, however, is that Fedor will take him to the mat, rough him up a bit and then armbar him in the 2nd round. You heard it here.

State-of-the-Art Time-Freezing Vision Emulation Device

It's not in our nature to report on our personal lives, but the crack team here at Pterodactyl Puke have made a large capital purchase and mastered a new and abstruse technology at the same time. This goes well beyond the esoteric secrets of the Electronic Internets. We now have a non-telephone contraption that captures and stores images. I am not lying about this, nor even slightly exaggerating. What you see above is a view of my desk, along with some deftly placed product advertising for which we are not receiving moneys, nor are the respective producers of said products even aware of their presence in the image. But it is our aim to leverage and exploit this new technology for moneys in the future, and maybe to steal the souls of frightened animals.

Reverend Rhymey

It's hard not to like this guy, the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, a titan of the Civil Rights Movement, and one of the founders of the SCLC along with Martin Luther King, Jr.



But I say 'titan' metaphorically: he's really not so very tall and seems to have lost a few inches in his old age. Couldn't someone have gotten him a soapbox to stand on? You can barely see the guy over those giant mics.

And I'd like to add a few things to the end of his speech. If "Black will not be asked to get in back, when Brown can stick around, when Yellow will be mellow, when the Red Man can get ahead, man..." -- can't we also ask Green to stay lean? When will Blue debut? Peach reach? Maroon swoon in the afternoon? Purple nurple?

I call you to... do nothing

We’ve been hearing a lot of political commentary about how Barack Obama should ask all of us to help move the country forward, to call us to service, to tell us to do something. But what? Is there anything anybody can do to prevent us from slipping off the cliff into near certain disaster? And besides, most of us are almost complete idiots. What do we have to contribute? Doesn’t he know he’ll be talking to a country that elected George W. Bush twice? He should really be asking most of the country to take a seat and shut the eff up for the next four years.

In the previous two presidential elections -– the only two in which I exercised my electoral right -- I voted both times for Ralph Nader precisely because I wanted to throw my vote away (and I kinda liked the old coot) and because I had nothing else to contribute. This time I voted for Barack Obama twice, if you include the primary, and I had to go through the trouble of changing my voter registration from the Independent Whacko Party to Democrat in order to do it. It took well over an hour and a half. I consider that to be a seismic effort on my part. I’m not going to do anything else because that was exhausting and once again, I have nothing more to contribute.

I’m confident enough to know that I’m not a complete idiot but I really can’t make that assertion about the vast majority of people out there, including whoever might be reading this blog. So really, almost none of you should be helping, almost none of you should serve. I know everybody likes to think of JFK -– ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country, etc. –- but really, most people ask stupid questions, so most people should just ask not anything.

I’m sure Obama will say something similar to ‘ask not, etc.’ in his inaugural address and he’ll inspire us to hope and do something or other, but please realize that it’s just a speech. Just rhetoric. As a great man once said, ‘That's just what we call pillow talk, baby.’ You voted. Good job. Now shut the eff up.

The Sports World is Back to Normal...

Ah, all is right in my little universe again. The Eagles blew it and the city of Philadelphia can eat shit once again! Being a NY Giants fan, I have had to sit with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach all week. Losing in the playoff sucks. Losing to a hated rival, at home, well that really sucks. One of the reasons I really love sports is that when you are a fan of any team, I mean a TRUE, live-and-die-with-every-play kind of fan, when you drop a big game, get knocked out of the playoffs, that shit stays with you for a while. For me, I didn't watch SportsCenter once this week. Not once. I couldn't stomach all the Eagles talk. In my mind, they were probably going to beat the Cardinals and then ruin SuperBowl Sunday for me. The thought of it makes me want to puke. Call me a sore loser, that's fine. So, this afternoon I took my dad to see Gran Torino instead of watching what I thought would be an Eagle celebration. (On a side note, great movie, Eastwood is stellar.) Got home just in time to catch U2 and our new President. Then I figured, hey, let me click on the game and maybe, just maybe, the Cards somehow got lucky. Sure enough, halftime, Arizona up 24-6! HOLY SHIT! Could this really happen? Now I am hooked in for the second half. Please let them finish the job and bury these freakin' Philly fans. Then, right on cue, here comes McNabb. 19 unanswered points and I am staring at a 25-24 Eagle lead. My wife asks me why I do it to myself and I have no answer. I mean, can the gods really allow the Phillies to win the World Series and now deliver the Eagles to the promised land? But ah, that Eagle magic found a way to piss it away yet again. God Bless Kurt Warner. Really, the holy roller deserves it. Now we can listen to the Philly faithful moan and groan about pass interference on that 4-and-10 play. Boo-fucking-Hoo. The best part, the absolute BEST PART, is watching that stupid shit-eating grin wiped off McNabb's face in the closing seconds. Just pure bliss for this Giants fan. I can't wait to watch SportsCenter tonight.

Peanut butter sticking to the roof of humanity

The FDA has warned us to stay away from peanut butter because of a salmonella outbreak. Of all the ignoble ways to die –- a list which should include contracting scurvy while living in Florida, being trampled by a crowd at the World Curling Championships, or being bested in a jousting match by a boastful D-list reality TV star –- I would rank getting killed by a mouthful of deadly peanut butter cookies way up there. If you keel over after stuffing your mouth with Little Debbie crackers, the Fates have played a truly awful trick on your sorry ass.

I’m pretty convinced this is the way in which the human race will finally destroy itself. Not nuclear war or global warming or even Karma getting us back for the way we treat robots, but something stupid like double-stuffed peanut butter Oreos. This may just be a warning. The real killer, when it finally wipes out humankind, will be something even stupider, like HoHos or Ding Dongs. Then when the super intelligent space aliens eventually arrive to explore our little planet, they’ll find what they’ve found all over the galaxy –- yet another planet whose semi-intelligent life was undone by crappy, processed dessert snacks with hilarious names. They’ll have become so jaded and cynical by that point that they’ll just unceremoniously collect all our Thetans in a jar, download all Tom Cruise movies from the Internet for free (because who’s gonna stop them?), and be on their way to dominating the Alpha Quadrant with nothing more than a shrug and half a smile.

A boring weekend in the news

Barb Dwyer reported on Charles Barkley’s DUI arrest a while ago, along with a hilarious comment on something Sir Charles said, and it got me thinking. This weekend, as we wait for the big inauguration, it seems like we just don’t have enough juicy news. And what are we going to do afterward? I mean, a rash of celebrity DUIs is cool, but they're just fleeting joys, sticks of peppermint gum that lose their flavor too quickly. I really think we need a celebrity murder trial to keep us interested in the doings of other people. And instead of OJ killing some non-celebrity and her non-celebrity lover, I think we need to involve two or more celebrities. It may not just happen on its own, so we’ll need to help it along. For example, I’ve been sending emails to Ryan Seacrest, telling him that Rachel Ray called him an infantile homo hack with girl-lips. For those of you who want to get involved and take some real action, I think you should start contacting the cast of Lost and tell them that Al Pacino joined the FLN and blames them for the French occupation of Algeria until 1962 and that it would be very hard to reason with him. I’ve also left a message at former UN ambassador Richard Holbrooke’s office stating that Gary Coleman thinks his mother is a fat dead old lady with a hairy neck.

Celebrities' Real Names

We all know that celebrities change their names because their original name may sound too ethnic or just not cool enough. I wanted to point out some where I truly believe if they had not changed their name, they would be like you and me (peons).




Thomas Mapother III - who wants to see a guy with that name on the silver screen? Tom Cruise sounds way better.






Saul Hudson - the epitome of a rock guitarist - AKA Slash from Gun's n Roses. Saul effing Hudson?? Dang.

Patricia Andrejewski - she loves Rock N Roll, just put another syllable on that polish name baby - Pat Benatar

Michael Douglas - what is this you might say? He is a great actor. Too bad the actor I am referring to is Michael Keaton. Yep, that is his real name. He would have been known as the Diet Coke of Michael Douglases.

Martha Kostyra - doilies and cream puffs would never have been the same for...Martha Stewart.





Stanley Kirk Burrell - please Stanley, don't hurt 'em - MC Hammer







Marion Morrison - with a name like Marion, how could you strike fear into the heart of every cowpoke in the Wild Wild West? - John Wayne. Hey Marion, the horse shit needs picking up.

Henry John Deutschendorf - Rocky Mountain Douche-endorf? - John Denver

Georgios Panayiotou - he may not just want your sex (if you're a dude), he may want a gyro with extra feta - George Michael





Carlos Ray - damn, this is a biggie. The almighty beard that has spawned numerous -isms. He might have gotten a show called "Walker, Texas Migrant Worker" - Chuck Norris.





The next time you see your favorite celebrity, be careful, he might actually be known as Howard McShitstein.

White House says no to funny jokes

A reporter asked White House Deputy Press Secretary Scott Stanzel yesterday if there were going to be any ‘practical jokes’ played on the incoming Obama team by Bush staffers. Back in 2000, Clinton staffers removed all the W keys from keyboards and also hid photocopied porn pictures in the white paper stacks for the copy machines so that anybody making copies would occasionally be surprised by booby shots even weeks after Bush took office.

But Stanzel said no, there would certainly not be any petty tomfoolery this time. ‘All the keys will remain on the keyboard. I can assure you that,’ he said. But continued, ‘There just won’t be any wheels on the country. This White House concentrated on the big things, like f***ing up the world and leaving a sh*t sandwich for an economy. Good luck, incoming White House team! Yah! [putting his hand up to receive high fives that were not forthcoming from the humorless press corps]’

Abandon Hope

I believe I need to apologize. We’ve been a little too optimistic about the state of things lately and maybe projected too rosy an image onto the idle goo of your frontal lobes. We used that vile word ‘hope’ at least once, and suggested there was some kind of solution to the implacable and imminent wave of ruin that will soon engulf us all. I had a sinking feeling this was the case, but now I’m pretty certain.

This morning, I walked into a convenience store -– a bodega, if you like -– and there was a 20-something year old, neatly dressed white guy standing behind the counter. Not Pakistani, Arab, or Korean. White. I thought little of it, at first. After all, he could have been helping them cheat on their taxes or something. But when I walked up to the counter, he spoke: Can I help you, sir? This is a phrase that should never be heard in a convenience store. If you ever hear it, be very suspicious. I thought this was maybe some kind of secret government research program, so I went on and asked for the reputedly harmful product I am occasionally wont to purchase. When I asked him how much, he responded with the correct price. The correct price! Not the usual practice of adding 50 cents or a dollar to the price when a customer is stupid enough to ask how much something costs. If this was government research, it was a sloppy operation.

Could he have been a real employee? Is this a job he needed? Considering our erstwhile financial system has been revealed to be constructed entirely of burnt balsam wood and cleverly placed ribbons, I figured, as I feared, that this was altogether possible. This poor white guy had probably lost his executive position at a Federal Reserve Bank or was forced to relinquish ownership of the San Diego Padres. When he went to the unemployment office made especially for his people, the old boys at Skull & Bones said something like, ‘We’re really up against it this year, chum -- all we’ve got is this convenience gig. We’ll let you know when an ambassadorship comes up. Cheers.’

So it is that bad, after all. I apologize for any optimism I may have displayed in the past.

My Biggie Friend

I wish I had a dead friend I could exploit for money. I mean, doesn’t everyone? I picture my friend as a fat former crack dealer who took pride in (and boasted about) being a fat former crack dealer, even sang about it -- the kind of guy everyone remembers warmly and lionizes as some kind of hero, even though he probably shot some people and cheated on his wife constantly when he was alive. I’d release songs he wrote, and I’d mix his voice into tracks over other songs that other people wrote, and I’d make a fortune. I’d ride his big, bloated corpse to the bank every week, probably. Even better would be if I were somehow connected to the circumstances surrounding his untimely death. It would lend a certain level of mystery to my personality, but I wouldn’t want anybody to talk about it -- not publicly at least.

We’d be stars, my dead friend and I, and starting a fashion line would seem like a good idea to me at that juncture.

I’d throw parties in the Hamptons in his honor (and my own), parties where everyone was required to wear white suits with tails. The people at those parties would call me the new Gatsby, and I'd spend money on a lot of stupid things.

Then I’d make a movie about my friend's life, except for the part where I somehow contribute to his violent demise. I’d leave that out. Still, the movie would make money, and I’d think back about how much mileage I got out of him, considering he’d been dead for over a decade.

But I’m just dreaming. I guess we all imagine ideal ways of living from time to time.

Best Way to Leave the Office

This gets better as it goes. Probably more appropriate for a Friday but what the H-E double hockey sticks.

Movie Review: Doubt (Or how you can have a great movie that features long fingernails and runny noses)

Doubt doesn't seem to be making many best movie awards lists this season, and I am not sure why. I thought the movie was great. Granted, I have not seen all the major movies yet, but this is the best movie I've seen this year. Meryl Streep is just the best actor out there. Period. She so completely turns herself into my seventh grade math teacher, Sister Helen Maguire, that I kinda got a little nauseous. Sister Helen was the single scariest person I have ever met in my life. She required us to bring a number 2 pencil into class with us every day, and she would call us up to her desk, row by row, to inspect our pencils and our work. One day, my friend Frankie forgot his. I had an extra, but it was unsharpened. As Sister Helen started calling the rows up, Frankie panicked. He was in the fourth row. Sweating and starting to foam at the mouth, he took the unsharpened pencil and chewed the end until it was sharp enough to write. It worked. Frankie lived to see another day. Meryl Streep brought me back completely to that time.

Doubt is about a stern nun who is a principal at a Catholic school in the sixties. She suspects that the parish priest, a popular, jovial fellow played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, is screwing around with one of the male students. The movie seems to take the side of the priest, making you like the priest and dislike the nun. The high point of the movie is when Streep and Seymour Hoffman go toe to toe, with their verbal battles being better than most action films these days.

This wouldn't be a Brother's Keeper movie review if I just thought about the actual movie and plot. I was mesmerized by Phillip Seymour Hoffman's long fingernails. The movie actually uses it as a plot point. WTF?!?! Seriously, they show his long fingernails and he talks about them a couple times. Doubt makes us look at Hoffman's chubby hands and sausage fingers up close, so that we can see these gross fingernails. The playwright / director has a fetish and it makes me feel all gross inside. Also, there is a great performance by Viola Davis as the boy's mother. She is phenomenal. The most phenomenal thing about her acting is how she is able to control the snot dripping out of her nose while she's speaking. Her nose is running and clearly featured in a scene. The runny ooze comes out just perfectly to right above her lip and stops there. She then gives the performance of her life. I don't know about you but having a runny snot on my upper lip is the most annoying thing in the universe. I must wipe it off immediately. (In fact, I would have used Hoffman's long fingernails to knock the snot off.) Not Viola Davis. She is able to give an Oscar worthy performance with gooey boogers on her lip. Fantastic.

Go see Doubt. It's a great movie. By the way, as scary as Sister Helen was, she was an excellent teacher, and she kept her fingernails neatly trimmed.

Yes, World, You Need the USA

World, we've noticed: you just don't like the USA very much. Because we like to bully and invade other countries? Because if we don't get our way, well, we'll still get our way? Look, if we want to elect a halfwit as President, we'll do so -- twice. If we want to deny global warming even as we're planning beach holidays in Antarctica, we will. If we want to imprison people without cause, strip them naked and take pictures as we point to their naughty bits and laugh, we'll do that too. So it's not unexpected that everyone from Indonesians to the Dutch might hate our guts and maybe feel a gratifying sense of schadenfreude with regard to the monumental collapse of our economy -- like German ministers making statements that we were reckless in our banking and that our influence in the world is at an ebb, or the Chinese hinting that they don't want to lend us any more cash.

Well, guess what? You still need us, Germany. [As a side note, Germany, you really shouldn't be pointing fingers here. We remember a certain guy whose name rhymes with 'fitler.'] You still need us, France, China, Russia, Brazil, the rest of you.

Why? Well, your economies just won't work without us. And for one simple reason: we have the largest number of stupid people with a lot of money in the world. Other countries have stupid people, but our stupid people have money. Lots of it. And they buy your stupid crap. In order for the world economy to work on the scale that you all expect, we have to buy things like flying alarm clocks, inflatable toast, bars of soap with 'butt face' printed on them, DVD rewinders, umbrella shoes, and tons of other crap we train our stupid people to buy. Our stupid people are the engine of the world economy.

So, in 9 days when we inaugurate Barack Obama, you'd better start hating us less. Because we've got more George Bushes in this country, and we just might be stupid enough to elect one of them next time. Now, get back to work, World, and hurry -- we need another shipment of these can openers.

Which one of these things is not like the others?

Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the man who refuses to show his forehead because Google didn't offer him money for the ad space, was impeached today by the Illinois legislature. The vote was 114-1.

The State Senate will now decide if the governor will be removed from office. Of course, none of this stopped Blago from making Harry Reid look like a dumbass -- which, frankly, is not hard to do -- by appointing the smiliest man in Washington to Barack Obama's vacated US Senate seat.

The lone vote against impeachment was cast by Milton Patterson, pictured here (on the far right) with his college wrestling team. Said Patterson, 'I always have to stand out, whether it be voting in favor of a corrupt governor or being the short guy in a lineup of jolly, fat wrestling dudes wearing colorful, skimpy uniforms.'

BCS Bullshit and the NFL Playoffs...

Before I try and get my NFL playoff picks back on track, a thought or two about last night's BCS Championship Game. One, if last night taught me anything about college football, its that the voting for the Heisman Trophy should be held after all the games are over. Tim Tebow from Florida is the best football player in the country. Maybe not the best quarterback, but the best football player, hands down. Second, I know it will never happen but a playoff system needs to find its way to this sport. If last night's match-up between Oklahoma and Florida had been the culmination of an 8-team or 16-team tournament I could accept that the Gators are the best team in the land. I mean USC or Texas, hell, even Utah woke up today and fully believed they could have taken Tebow and the Gators out and I'm not so convinced that they couldn't. I won't go on a huge rant about the BCS because there is no point, it will never change. This system is ruled by one thing, greed. The millions and millions of dollars these conferences and schools rake in with these idiotic bowls has way more clout than the actual results on the field. As the system operates now, the only result we can get that makes any sense is if two teams meet each other undefeated. How realistic is that? With the quality of teams out there especially in the SEC, Big 12 and Pac-10, isn't asking a team to run the table in order to get a chance at the crystal football a bit of a tall order? Every year it seems like we are left with a handful of one loss squads and the task of trying to determine if losing to Oregon State on the road in September is better or worse then losing to Texas on a neutral field in October. Huh? The system sucks.

On to the real postseason, the NFL Divisional Playoffs. Ok, so Saturday night I saw my Super Bowl dream match-up go up in smoke as Darren Sproles shoved it right up the Colt's ass. I still got one horse in the race though so lets look at the 4 match-ups, or should I say re-matches.

AFC
Baltimore at Tennessee - Two words for you - Ed Reed, Super Bowl XXXV. I like the Ravens for those two reason. Reed is the best defensive player in the league and I am fully convinced he will score at least once in this game. Super Bowl XXXV as in Giants-Ravens Super Bowl, as in Titans QB Kerry Collins nightmare. The Titans are a very, very good football team but I just don't trust Collins in this game and you know the Ravens are going to stop the run. I hate picking a rookie QB here, but I see Baltimore making just enough plays to win something like 14-10.

San Diego at Pittsburgh - Everyone is hot on the Chargers and I am going to follow suit. I don't trust Ben Roethlesberger after the concussion and I can see their offense struggling. Even without L.T., I think the Chargers will keep it going for at least one more week. QB Philip Rivers will have to win it with his arm because I find it hard to believe that the gimmicky Darren Sproles can run wild on the Steelers. Chargers pull out a tight one, 20-13.

NFC
Arizona at Carolina - This has got to be the stinker of the weekend, no? I don't see how anyone can pick the Cardinals on the road after what they showed this season. Their Super Bowl had to be last week. Carolina, a week off, top-notch running game, Steve Smith. Lock it up, the Panthers advance, 31-13.

Philadelphia at New York - A NFC East heated rivalry. The Eagles, the NFL's other hot team, are looking to flip the script on the G-Men and pull off a title run similar to last season. Not going to happen. The Giants will be ready rearing to go come 1 pm on Sunday. Earth, Wind & Fire will have a big day and the NY Giant defense will seal it up late. Giants win, 24-20.

Mass Hypnosis

There is a whole field of study most people call economics. Now, economics has a lot of various specializations and cross-disciplinary subjects that come under this field, too, but basically, economics is a vast, complex area of study in which some of the smartest people on the planet crunch numbers, form theories, check back with the data to confirm those theories, test methods of control, investigate causes and effects of certain conditions and events, etc, etc, etc -- all to make sure we don't get seriously screwed. Now if you check the news, you'll see that the whole endeavor just isn't working very well. All these smart people have obviously been smoking crack over the last 10 years or so. I know a few of these crack smokers, and I asked one of them, 'So... ummmm... What the eff?' He told me the banks have no money. 'Well, that's easy,' I said. 'Just give 'em some.' (You'll recall Mr. Government did that a few months ago.) 'No,' he replied, 'the problem is that they have never had enough money. What they need is confidence. Confidence that they have enough money, even though they don't and never will.' Being an expert in self-delusion, my mind really started working. I said, 'Oh. How about a big Tony Robbins seminar? Or Scientology can help, can't it? After all, it helped Tom Cruise learn to read. This economy thing is small potatoes. How about one of those hypnotists who can improve your self esteem and maybe help you remember where you put your 8th grade diploma? Or we'll get one of those funny hypnotists who gets a good looking girl out of a crowd and makes her think it's 90 degrees on stage and she really ought to remove her sweater.' The economic expert / crack smoker had very little to say after that. He must have been impressed with my logic.

So being the deep thinker that I am, I decided this principle can be applied almost universally, not just to banking. If you know a guy who lost his job, just tell him he's a swell guy and maybe tell him that he looks trim and youthful. He may wake up the next morning gainfully employed. This morning I gave a kind word to the homeless guy who grabs bundles of free newspapers and tries to sell them to passersby while also pretending to direct traffic. I told him he performs a valuable service. He smiled and waved his hand enthusiastically to let a bunch of cars go by -- cars that, admittedly, he had stopped for no reason. Still, I have a feeling something good's gonna come from that guy now.

So let's all do the same. Give each other confidence. Compliment your fellow human being. And extend it beyond mere labor and economics. Tell him/her that s/he's special, important, interesting, good, kind, talented. Just lie.

Maybe it's because I'm Brown but...

Slumdog Millionaire is the best movie of 2008, without question, hands down, everybody shut up you're all wrong and I'm right. Nothing even comes close. The Dark Knight is a joke, a stinking snooze-fest, a waste of time and money and light and noise, an exercise in putrid profligacy. Heath Ledger, while not completely inept in the movie, over-acted and underperformed. Flitting around the screen hysterically is not acting. Just because the poor guy died of an Olsen-twin-related overdose doesn't mean he should automatically be given the most prestigious award in the business. Then we come to Christian Bale. I've seen lamp posts with more acting skill. And his voice as Batman! The whole movie, I just wanted to reach through the screen and hand the guy a lozenge.

All in all, with the exception of Slumdog, there really weren't any movies released in 2008 that I know of. Remember 2007, when we had There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men? Thanks, 2008, for reminding me once again what a stanky little whore you were.

My Top-10...

Here is my top-10 favorite movies of 2008. There are two flicks still on my radar in The Wrestler and Gran Torino but because I don't live in NY or LA, this list will have to go on without them. This list is really my #1 pick and everything else. I loved The Dark Knight and have now watched it I think 5 times and it just keeps getting better. Every other movie on my list, given the day, could move up or down. Anyway, here you go with a honorable mention list and a few of my picks for the worst movies I've seen this year. I've seen everything on this list at least once. So if there is a flick you can think of that is not here, I either never saw it or I thought it was just mehhh.

1. The Dark Knight
2. Tropic Thunder
3. Wall-E
4. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
5. Iron Man
6. Burn After Reading
7. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
8. Pineapple Express
9. Hellboy II - The Golden Army
10. The Incredible Hulk
Honorable Mention: The Bank Job, Shine a Light, Rambo, 21, Smart People, Valkyrie, Kung Fu Panda, Get Smart, Step Brothers, Zak and Miri Make a Porno, Quantum of Solace

Just Horrible, Pieces of Shit: Jumper, Be Kind Rewind, Vantage Point, 10,000 B.C. (May be the worst movie I have ever seen), Drillbit Taylor, The Love Guru, Star Wars The Clone Wars, Twilight

Roland Burris Smiles, Wants to Sit Down

This guy will be a US Senator. How? Well, he was appointed by the corrupt governor of Illinois to Barack Obama's empty Senate seat. But Harry Reid said he'd block the appointment, you say? No matter. Roland Burris decided he was just going to smile his way to Washington, and keep walking and smiling, until everybody started to think that Harry Reid was the douche bag for not seating this guy in the Senate. Everyone on earth knows Harry Reid is a complete idiot, a guy who got out-maneuvered by the smallest forehead (and the biggest cahones) in America. Who would deny a seat to a 71 year old man who just wants to sit down? Shame on you, Harry Reid, for not letting this nice old man sit down with all your white buddies, even though there's an empty seat and it's raining outside.

Couldn't live in the poor house

Some German guy named Adolf Merckle killed himself by jumping in front of a train. Merckle was once worth $12.8B. After 2008, he was worth only a paltry $9.2B. Can't blame him really. Imagine living with that kind of shame? I guess even the angelic, transcendental voice of David Hasselhoff couldn't save this miserable Teuton.

Is Obama really in charge?

When I think of Leon Panetta, I don't think Change, and I certainly don't think Spy. I think Clinton. I think Clinton and I think of all the Clintonistas surrounding Obama before he even takes office. Then I wonder who really selected Panetta as CIA Director. Frankly, the name Panetta makes me hungry for lunch. I'd like a Panetta with olives and oregano, maybe some sun-dried tomatoes. I think I'll order lunch early today.

Boring, Corrupt, Richardson

Without being racist, think of a Hispanic name. Now think of the most Hispanic name you can think of. (When I do it, I come up with 'Omar Quintanilla.' If you came up with 'Jose Rodriguez,' you’re a borderline racist.) Now take that most-Hispanic name and think of its absolute opposite. I believe that no matter how you do this, you should come up with the name of Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, who happens to be the country’s most prominent Hispanic politician. Due to his owning the least Hispanic-sounding name on earth, the rules of identity politics dictate that Richardson must affect an accent when he says words like Latino or aburrido -- softening Ts, rolling Rs – and that he must spend too much time tanning his face in the muy caliente sun of his home state –- all this to convince voting Hispanics that he’s one of them.

But none of this makes poor Bill Richardson interesting, which is why no one paid attention when he ran for president (even though he was the most qualified candidate in the whole field), and why Obama passed him up for VP and position after position in the cabinet until he came up with Secretary of Commerce. A boring job for a boring pol. Well, he’s withdrawn from that because of a federal investigation. Turns out he’s corrupt. Yawn.

I Permit You to Hope

Okay, let’s just face it. 2009 hasn’t started off very well. We’ve got layoffs and bombings and earthquakes and shootings and fires, inept Presidents that won’t go away, a cavernous echo-chamber where the national coffers used to be, and a serious shit sandwich in the Middle East. The economy continues to crumble, and you can pretty much set your watch to breaking political scandals. You might be a little discouraged by all this. You might be thinking, ‘We had a good run, America,’ before you go fortify your house with sandbags and barbed wire and shoot any poor bastard who breaches the perimeter.

But there is a glimmer of hope that all this can be turned around, and that glimmer came toward the end of 2008.

No, not the election of Barack Obama.

That hope came from none other than David Hasselhoff. My whole life, I have held the belief that no person can recover from a drunken inability to eat a hamburger properly and the public humiliation that follows. A taco, sure. Who hasn’t screwed up eating tacos? But a hamburger? Never. Call me old-fashioned, but that’s what I always believed. Until now. David Hasselhoff, beloved of the German people, former star of Baywatch, made just such a recovery before the end of 2008 when he sang the national anthem at a college football bowl game in Las Vegas. And hence, our cause for hope. If that hairy-chested beast can recover his public persona and be half the man the Germans think he is, then we have hope too.

Just think of 2008 as this:


This could be 2009:

Do we all feel better now? So come out of your fallout shelters and remove the ammo from your Kalashnikovs, take that gas pipe out of your mouth and tell your neighbor to step back from the ledge –- because maybe things won't be so bad.

Or maybe they will be. Maybe the Las Vegas Bowl just couldn't get anybody else. I hadn't thought of that.