Justified Season 5, Louie Season 3

Justified Season 5

Justified is nothing if not consistent. It consistently provides some of the best stories on TV. Once again, we journey to Harlan county, although this time with the first detour to Florida since the first episode. Raylan goes head to head with the Crowe clan. The Crowes are the dumbest, most bumbling group of redneck criminals of all time. Despite their idiocy, they manage to pose a significant threat to the good people of Harlan. Raylan does his usual shtick of talking tough and quick-drawing on bad guys. He’s a fairly straight-forward character, it’s true, but you know exactly what you’re getting with him. The person you can never be quite sure about is Boyd. Once again Boyd weaves his way in and out of the lives of the other various characters in Harlan county. This season sees him travel as far North as Detroit and as far South as Mexico on his quest to become a drug kingpin. Boyd probably kills more people this season than in any previous. Despite him being a despicable criminal, he has so much damn charisma, it’s impossible not to root for him. The biggest surprise this season was that Boyd’s relationship with Ava became the driving force behind the story. The fifth season of Justified continues full-steam ahead, bringing awesome, complex tales week after week. The best part, as always, remains the lively cast of characters.

Verdict: Awesome

 Louie Season 3

I’m not sure what sort of glowing praise I could write about this series that hasn’t already been written. Louis C.K. remains at the top of his game in the third season of the show that he writes, directs, edits, and stars. That’s a lot of heavy lifting for one person. But with near total creative control, he manages to stick to his vision resolutely. It pays off nearly every single time. Each episode is funny, insightful, and somehow tragic all at once. He experiments more with long form storytelling this season than in the previous two. He features a long arc in which Louie is recruited to shoot a pilot to show if he has the right stuff to replace David Letterman. This late night “mini-series” was by far the highlight of the season, and David Lynch was a treat as the “mentor” (if you can call him that). Louie continues to grow, continues to take risks, and continues to pay off in spades. It is one of the best comedies on TV.

Verdict: Awesome

Haywire, Louie Season 2

Haywire

She looks better with her hair covering her face.

What do you get when you cross Ocean’s 11 with The Bourne Identity? A steaming pile of shit, that’s what. This 2011 movie was written by Lem Dobbs whose previous work included such gems as Dark City. It’s directed by Steven Soderbergh who filmed the aforementioned Ocean’s movies. Haywire is about a beautiful female spy (is there any other kind?) who gets betrayed on a mission and has to go on the run. 90% of the screentime is dedicated to Mallory (played by Gina Carano) avoiding capture by spies or police. At times she must outwit them, and other times she must beat the crap out of people. This is exactly what happens in all the Bourne movies. The espionage angle and the fights are portrayed realistically, just like in the Bourne movies. However, unlike the Bourne movies, this movie eschews madcap pacing necessary to build tension and keep viewers interested. Haywire insists on being slow and methodical, even during chase scenes. Mallory doesn’t seem particularly in a hurry even though everyone wants to kill her. For example, after she kills the man who was supposed to assassinate her, she takes a shower, does her makeup, and makes a phone call before vacating the premesis.

Carano, a former martial artist turned actor, is headlining in her first major motion picture. Her acting, as expected, is just as good as any former martial artist turned actor: shitty. You could easily replace her with Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal, and get the same caliber of wooden line delivery. The only difference is that Carano has a pair of tits, so I suppose that makes her better than those other guys. Soderbergh does a terrible job directing. Clearly, he wishes he had been a movie director in the 1970s. All the framings, the zoom-ins and zoom-outs, random use of black and white, and weird lens filters scream 1970s. Hey, guess what, Soderbergh? We aren’t living in the 1970s. Get over it. You can’t make a Bourne movie and film it like an Ocean’s movie. It just doesn’t work.

Haywire happens to have a pretty good cast, including Awesomely Shitty favorite Michael F. Assbender, Channing “C-Tates” Tatum, Ewan McGregor, Bill Paxton, Antonio Banderas, and Michael Douglas. Sadly, the good actors (Douglas and Banderas) get the least amount of screen time possible. The majority of the film is taken up by the people who suck at acting, namely Carano and C-Tates. Lastly, the story is goddamn retarded. The double-cross against Mallory makes no sense. If the bad guys hadn’t involved her in the first place, their plan would have totally worked. Let’s not forget how Mallory, who is a fucking spy, has a bad case of verbal diarrhea, spilling the entire events of the movie to a hostage who looks like the poor man’s version of James McAvoy. Why did she do that? It is a narrative device, obviously, but they could have just as easily told the story through a flashback, and not made Mallory look so stupid. All in all, this movie sucks ass. The lethargic pacing, the crappy acting, the faux-70s directing, and the fact that Soderbergh just can’t handle the material all make this movie a big ole turd.

Verdict: Shitty

Louie Season 2

Louie doesn’t look too thrilled to have his own TV show.

The second season of Louie continues the harsh, honest, and hilarious look at the titular comedian’s life. After watching two seasons of the show, I realize that it doesn’t really conform to the typical narrative structure you see anywhere else. It is mostly a series of vignettes in the life of Louis C.K. If anything, you could say it is a bunch of disconnected short stories that can be pretty horrifying, but Louis somehow manages to extract humor from them. Although the first season was amazing, I think the second season was consistently better. Every episode was memorable, or at least had memorable parts. The two highlights for me were the episode where Louis meets comedian Dane Cook and they talk about Cook having been accused of stealing Louis’ jokes, and the hour-long episode where Louis inadvertently takes a duckling to Afghanistan while performing a few USO shows for the troops. Incredibly, the show manages to be extremely high quality with Louis taking on acting, writing, directing, producing, and editing duties. If he isn’t a one-man production team, then I don’t know what is. Season 2 continues the greatness of the first, and is highly recommended.

Verdict: Awesome

Awesomest/Shittiest Things of 2012

It’s that time once again, people. Time to look back at the awesomest and shittiest things of 2012. As always, it remains a struggle to find things for the awesome category, and to keep the shitty category to a minimum. Check it out:

Awesome

1. U.S. Presidential Election – Two years ago today, someone left a comment on the Awesomest/Shittiest Things of 2010 that said, “I wonder how the author would feel when Obama loses in 2012.” Well, I’ve been waiting a long time to answer this question, simply because I had to see who won the 2012 Presidential Election. Since Obama won, I guess we’ll never know how I would feel in the event of his loss. Nevertheless, his win was a glorious victory for socialism, comrades! Anyway, the 2012 Presidential Election was amazing because it gave us such great moments as Clint Eastwood talking to an empty chair, Paul Ryan loving to pump iron, Obama telling people if they had successful businesses, they “didn’t build that”, Romney saying how he had “binders full of women”, Obama blowing a huge lead, Romney having a vendetta against Big Bird, Obama completely fucking up the first debate, and Romney mentioning that “47%” of Americans are slovenly assholes who are completely dependent upon the teat of the government. This was a hilarious race from start to finish.
2. Jenny Johnson – Jenny Johnson is a twitter comedian who you can follow by looking her up at @JennyJohnsonHi5 and I highly recommend you do. She tweets the greatest non-sequiturs I have ever seen on the Internet. For example, “I thought by the time I was a successful 34-year old adult, I’d be tired of putting people’s yard reindeers in sex positions. I was wrong.” or “There are two kinds of women in the world, those who don’t wear makeup to the gym, and those who let guys cum on their faces.” or “Watching my mom use an iPhone is like watching a 12 year old girl try to contact her dead grandma on a Oujia board.” She writes all sorts of inappropriate and sexually explicit jokes. The best part about her is that she often replies to tweets from Kim Kardashian and Chris Brown. A few months ago, there was a very heated argument between Brown and Johnson. Brown used all his courage gained from his extensive years of women-beating to essentially tell Johnson he wanted to take a dump in her eyes. Johnson, actually being intelligent had plenty of comebacks for him. By the end of it, Brown was so butthurt he quit Twitter. Jenny Johnson put that piece of shit in his place. She’s my Internet hero (apart from myself, of course).
3. Mars Curiosity Rover – Curiosity landed on Mars on August 6, 2012. Its mission was to traverse the planet and collect data about the Red Planet from the biological to geological and more. In a short amount of time, we have already learned a number of new things about our interplanetary neighbor, all thanks to Curiosity. This could one day lead to the colonization of Mars. And, hey, if that gets us one step closer to banging hot alien babes, then I’m all for it.
4. Higgs Boson (maybe) discovered – I’m told that this is a super amazing scientific discover that will help us better understand how our universe works. I think. Well, to be honest, I always sucked at Physics, so I will have to take the scientists’ word for it. This was all made possible thanks to the Large Hadron Collider which made the 2010 Awesome List. I’m still waiting for the right atom to get smashed which will lead to the complete destruction of the universe.
5. Call Me Maybe – This Carly Rae Jepsen song was a mega-hit in the summer, and is still getting pretty frequent playtime on the air. It’s catchy as Hell. It’s a light pop song meant to be nothing but pure entertainment. So, I should hate it. But I don’t. No matter how hard I try, I just end up liking it even more. So, fuck you. Don’t judge me.
6. Jesus Painting Restoration (Ecce Homo) – The greatest most unintentionally hysterical artistic achievement of 2012 came from Spain. A small church had a 19th-century fresco of Jesus which was in need of restoration. Not knowing any better, the church hired 80-year-old amateur artist Cecilia Giminez to restore it. Unfortunately, she completely fucked it up. The image of Jesus changed from Savior of Mankind to vaguely-apelike-apparition-with-a-Zoolander-mouth. Her fuckup made international headlines, and became a hilarious meme all at once. The highlight of the story came when tourism in the town increased exponentially, and the church began to charge people to view the fresco. Ms. Giminez then sued the church to get a cut of the profits for all her hard-earned work.
7. Louie C.K. – Anyone in their right mind would nominate this guy for comedian of the year. He has the funniest show on TV, and is the funniest comic working today. His brand of humor manages to seamlessly blend comedy, drama, and reality. His ability to dig jokes out of everything from racism to masturbation to war to even more masturbation is the reason why he is a comedic genius. He goes where no one else will, and still manages to come out with great jokes every time. If you haven’t seen his show, or at least his recent SNL hosting gig, then you need to check him out.
8. Weekly (almost) Posts – Mrs. Brik advised me to try and shit out a post every week for the blog. Admittedly, I missed a week here or there, but for the most part, I posted something weekly. Obviously, this is a good thing because it kept the site more up to date, and you lucky readers (yes, both of you) got imparted with even more of my profound wisdom. Just don’t expect anything more than one post a week. The effort alone would probably kill me.

Shitty

1. U.S. Presidential Election – The problem with the 2012 Presidential Election was that you couldn’t avoid getting constantly bombarded by it. Every radio station, TV channel, magazine, and website were bearing some kind of election advertisement. Hell, I think the hookers were being sponsored by some candidate or another. Of course, we got great stuff from smaller races like the whole “legitimate rape” business, which just proves that the Republican Party is still the preferred political party for misogynistic assholes everywhere. Ultimately, the worst part of this race was that it solidified that candidates must pander to all sorts of scumbags in order to win a vote. The two party system is broken. All this election did was to prove that it didn’t matter who got elected. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
2. Almost every movie from 2012 – Joyful Noise, Haywire, Redtails, Underworld 17, One for the Money, Big Miracle, The Vow, Ghost Rider 2, Act of Valor, John Carter, Mirror Mirror, Wrath of the Titans, The Three Stooges, The Raven, The Avengers, Battleship, What to Expect When You’re Expecting, Prometheus, Rock of Ages, That’s My Boy, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, Madea’s Witness Protection, The Amazing Spider-Man, Savages, Ice Age 24, The Watch, Total Recall, The Odd Life of Timothy Green, Hit and Run, The Cold Light of Day, Resident Evil 70, Looper, Taken 2, Here Comes the Boom, Alex Cross, Paranormal Activity 32, Twilight Breaking Dawn Baby Vampire Fetus Falls in Love with a Werewolf Part 9, Red Dawn, Playing for Keeps, Jack Reacher, and The Hobbit. Whew. That’s a lot of shitty movies. The only new releases I can remember liking were The Dark Knight Rises and Skyfall. I hope this year Hollywood will try a little harder.
3. We Can’t Eat at Chick-Fil-A – In June, the COO of Chick-Fil-A made a statement against gay rights. He had been using proceeds from the restaurant to support legislation against gay marriage. Apparently, this had been going on since 2009, but didn’t hit the spotlight until last summer. Afterwards, nobody was allowed to eat at Chick-Fil-A anymore. Yeah, the chicken was dry, flavorless, and borderline grotesque, but the waffle fries were fucking amazing. Goddammit, Society! Are you trying to tell me that just because the COO of Chick-Fil-A is a homophobe, I’m no longer allowed to eat delicious waffle fries? In the immortal words of Jenny Johnson, “I’m gonna do my part and feed Chick-Fil-A waffle fries to a tranny through a glory hole today.”
4. 2012 Summer Olympics Opening/Closing Ceremonies – The 2008 Summer Olympics in China had the greatest Opening/Closing Ceremonies of all time. Literally thousands of people were moving and playing instruments in perfect synchronization. It’s something only the Chinese could accomplish with their amazing groupthink and natural martial-arts/flying abilities. The follow-up took place in England and was a massive fucking disappointment. Nobody expected them to top the Chinese, but it was seriously terrible. It featured a bunch of douchebags reciting Shakespeare and wearing top hats in an industrial revolution setting. ZZZzzzZZZzzz. To make matters worse, it wasn’t even that well executed. I asked my wife to wake me up when it got interesting, and guess what? I slept through the whole thing.
5. A Bunch of Shooting Rampages – Seriously, guys, what the fuck is going on? There were a billion mass shootings in the U.S. this year. Excluding the killers themselves, 81 people died in 13 separate events around the country. This kind of shit is ridiculous, and clearly things are spiraling out of control. We need two things to happen. First, the ban on assault weapons needs to be reinstated. It lapsed in 2004. There is no reason the NRA can justify the sale of fully automatic weapons with 30-round clips. That’s bullshit. All that shit needs to go. Second, this country needs to start taking the role of mental healthcare seriously. If someone is crazy, they need help. That’s the only way to really prevent these things from happening. The shooters aren’t just “evil”, they are mentally ill. And they could be treated so violence on this scale can come to an end.
6. Elmo is a Child Molester – Elmo has been a fixture of Sesame Street since the 1970s, but rose to prominence in the 1990s with puppeteer Kevin Clash. This year Clash was accused of having molested an underage boy. Pretty much everyone ignored it and gave Clash the benefit of the doubt. After all, Micheal Jackson slept in beds with little boys and never touched them, right? So why should Clash be any different? Then another boy came forward, and Clash resigned from Sesame Street. People started to think, “Eh, maybe he did it.” And then three more. OK, so it looks like Clash totally did molest all those kids. I can just imagine him feeling up those kids using his creepy Elmo voice. That’s more horrifying than all of  my worst nightmares combined.
7. 50 Shades of Grey – When Twilight was super-popular, every romance or teen-centric book on the shelves had cover-art that copied the artistic style of the Twilight books. Now that 50 Shades of Grey is popular, every romance or teen-centric book on the shelves has aped its cover-art style. If you thought Twilight was bad, well, 50 Shades is 50 times worse. I shit you not, it began as Twilight fan-fiction, written by someone using the moniker Snowqueen Icedragon. It’s about BDSM. Yeah, that’s right, it’s an incredibly popular fan-fiction about sexual sadomasichism. So, the next time your mom yells at you for finding porn in your room, just tell her it’s no different than her leaving a copy of 50 Shades on the coffee table.
8. End of the World Didn’t Happen – Obviously, the world wasn’t going to end on December 21st, 2012. It didn’t end in the year 2000, and it didn’t end every other time somebody went around spouting doomsday prophecies. The most ridiculous part was that the Maya didn’t predict the end of the world. Rather, their Long Count calendar ended on that date. And, naturally, a bunch of modern-day morons took that to mean the end of the world. Since the world is still around, we get a thousand more years of human idiocy to come.

Well, another year has come and gone. 2013 is just getting started. I’m sure there will be many more awesome and shitty things happening during the Earth’s long trek around the sun. Let’s hope, no matter what happens, we can ridicule them with reckless abandon.