Hey, cats, see if you can guess what! That's right, my birthday is this weekend. And if there's one thing I like to do on my birthday, it's drink Pabst Blue Ribbon until I can no longer stand or maintain bowel control. The Breakfast of ChampionsBut if there's another thing I like to do on my birthday, it's not think about Orson Welles at all. At most times of year, I think about Orson Welles basically nonstop. Remember that awesome thing he says about cuckoo clocks in The Third Man? The tracking shot in Touch of Evil? The "standard rich and famous contract" from The Muppet Movie? Whether he's writing and directing or just acting, Orson Welles is just about my favorite person in the history of entertainment. But now that my birthday's coming, I just don't want to think about him at all. Why? Well, by the time Orson Welles was my age, he'd already done the War of the Worlds broadcast and was at work on Citizen Kane. That's right, at my age, this dude had already created the Greatest Of All Time in not one but two different media. I, on the other hand, have a dumb website that doesn't even ...

Far be it from me to ever feel bad about anything I say or do. As a general rule, I'm a bitter, thoughtless man with no regards for the emotions and sensitivities of any other living soul. And of all the people I don't care about, the sort of people I don't care about the most are people who have become fake celebrities because they have shows about their lives for some reason. All that said, I'd sort of like to clarify a remark I made in an earlier post. This is what I said: "Futurama is emphatically not a show about a soul-devouring harridan, her emasculated husband and their brood of unexceptional children." In case that comment was too subtle for you, I was referring to the family on TLC's Jon & Kate Plus 8. First of all, the part about Jon being Kate's husband is in the process of being rendered legally untrue, but that's not what I'm here to talk about. I stand by all this remark, I just want to clear part of it up. I don't feel bad about saying "a soul-devouring harridan [and] her emasculated husband." Jon and Kate are adults and these are the personas they've projected ...

Original Air Date: October 4, 1974 Written by: Robert W. Lenski Directed by: Don Weis As our episode opens, a band of gorilla soldiers are hot on the trail of Burke, Virdon and Galen. Night falls and our heroes enter a spooooooky forest. It's here that Virdon shows off how much smarter he is than a bunch of mangy, feces-flinging apes by whipping out a compass, a piece of technology that, to Galen, is so sufficiently advanced that it is indistinguishable from magic (seriously, he asks if it's witchcraft). Our two merry men and one cheery chimpanzee are thus able to keep traveling straight and true while the gorillas, befuddled as they are by the clouds that cover the stars, ride around forever in circles. The scientific revelation that is the compass so enthralls Galen that he goes running off like a blindly confident moron and manages to immediately tumble over a cliff. As a result of this idiocy, Burke and Virdon are forced to tote Galen around on a makeshift stretcher. Even when they're friends, apes treat we humans like slaves. Attention all personnel! Incoming wounded in the compound! They lug Galen's crippled arse to a nearby ape farm, where the make a plea for ...

Stephen King is my favorite author and I've no qualms about saying it. Sure, there are those who will say, "Oh, poo poo, such popular pulp, that nonsense shouldn't be your favorite." Fuck that noise. Stephen King tells a heck of a story. To be fair, I haven't loved all of his books. It would be pointless fanboy gushing to say that I did, so I'll admit that I could do without Cujo and Gerald's Game and a couple of others. But even when I haven't loved one of King's books, I've at least found it interesting, and I've found all of them to be worth reading at least once. Movies based on his stuff are another matter entirely. They range from the superb and brilliant to the embarrassingly dreadful (for example, Children of the Corn, which was so awful that it spawned six sequels and is, of course, being remade), with most of the movies falling somewhere in between in the land of the mediocre. Let's take a look at some of the films that rise above the pack. #10: The Shawshank Redemption We've all seen The Shawshank Redemption thirty million times thanks to that period of about five years in the 90s ...

Yes, it's true. Friggin' Ed McMahon died today, at the tender young age of 86, as part of the universe's ongoing plan to rob me of everything I love. It seems he just died from a combination of sick and old—his publicist cites a "multitude of health problems"—which I suppose is unsurprising, but hardly as fitting for someone of Ed McMahon's stature as, say, Death By Being Too Cool For School. For thirty years, McMahon was Johnny Carson's sidekick on The Tonight Show, and for the same thirty years he was the greatest sidekick, real or fictional, who had ever been devised. Who will tell us where Johnny is now, I ask you? For that matter, who will aid Alex Trebek in telling old people about the importance of Colonial Penn Life Insurance? It's too painful to continue. Ed McMahon was one of the all time broadcasting greats—for proof, I invite you to look at the wonderful things just about every person in the entire industry has to say about him—and now he's gone. I ask you, how is that fair? He may have lost the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes of life, but at least now he's moved on to paradise, where the ...

I went out of town this past weekend, spending time with my various family members. That's exactly the type of thing I usually try so hard to avoid. A big part of my philosophy of life is: Why spend time with my family when I can lie in my bed watching The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.? So it was with a heavy heart that I entered my parents' house on Thursday evening. That heavy heart quickly became lighter than air when my dad remarked "I have something for you" and presented me with a box of Kellogg's Limited Edition Star Trek Cereal. Oh, what a wonderful thing! I'd never seen any cereal like this before; I'm forced to conclude that, for whatever clinically insane reason, stores in my area didn't carry such a bodacious product and left me ignorant of its existence. But now I know the truth, revealed to me like the words of a holy book. If I had the creativity in my soul, I'd write a poem in tribute to this blue box filled with eleven ounces of dreams. Instead, I'll just talk about the marshmallows and stuff. It's a Sweetened Oat Cereal With Marshmallows, it is. The ...

I've really been looking forward to seeing Whatever Works. It's Woody Allen's new movie (approximately his 5,000,000th film) and it comes out tomorrow. Let's make sure we're clear about this: I love Woody Allen. He's the only filmmaker I can think of who has never directed a movie that I don't like. That's right, I even like The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, but I may be the only one (even Allen himself has never seemed too thrilled with it, at least not with his performance). From wacky comedy to more mature comedy to straight serious drama, Woody Allen has never once left me feeling unsatisfied. So, of course, no theater within about thirty jillion miles of my house is running the movie and I won't get to see it. I realize Woody Allen's movies don't make huge bank, but come on! This is Academy Award winning comedy legend Woody Allen we're talking about, not some flick about lesbian bare-knuckle boxers during the Spanish American War from a first-time director. You'd think it would play in at least one theater somewhere in the state. There are at least two theaters that bill themselves as "art" cinemas relatively near me, but no luck. They're not ...

Via Gawker, Empire Magazine's review of the new Transformers travesty contains a small nugget of truly cringe-worthy camp from the king of things that suck, Michael Bay:  A notable moment occurs during the dementedly frenetic final act of Transformers 2. A robot-on-robot fracas is unfolding around Egypt's Giza Necropolis, with Devastator, an especially massive mechanoid comprised of several construction vehicles, set on clawing its way to the peak of a pyramid. As it lumbers up the dusty colossus, a shot tilts up to its mid-section, revealing two wrecking balls dangling down. Yes, Michael Bay, the man who brought us cyber-micturition in this movie's predecessor, has one-upped himself: Decepticon testicles. I have no comment except to say that  1) Knowing Michael Bay, why does this surprise anyone?  And 2) Knowing Michael Bay, I'm sure there is also a Robot Penis that the reviewer missed while he was busy being shocked by the Robot Balls. (Robot Balls Hat Tip:  Videogum)

In honor of the momentous news that Futurama will again be gracing the airwaves with new episodes, it seems only fitting that this week's Wednesday Top Ten be about the best episodes from the series' original run. And while it's always a pleasure to talk about Futurama, this has been the most difficult top ten list yet for me to compile. There are just so many great episodes! I'm sure some of you will carp about the absence of "Godfellas" on this list, or be puzzled at the inclusion of "The Farnsworth Parabox" instead of one of many other hilarious episodes, but this is my list; as someone who's devoted a lot of time to watching Futurama instead of graduating from college or making friends, I feel I'm qualified to make these judgments. #10: The Farnsworth Parabox The Professor invents a cardboard box containing an entire parallel—and possibly evil—universe. Virtually every line uttered by every character is hilarious. GREATEST MOMENT PROFESSOR: You people and your slight differences disgust me! #9: The Luck of the Fryrish In this surprisingly touching episode, Fry learns a thing or two about lucky seven-leaf clovers, his brother, and grave robbing. GREATEST MOMENT The Planet Express crew is watching a Behind the Music style show. WHISKEY ...

[rating: 2] That's right, monkeys.  I'm reviewing a movie well before it comes out.  How is this possible?  It's possible because I'm a hardened professional at this movie reviewing thing (I am a semi-professional at this movie reviewing thing), and I get paid for it and everything (I pay myself). So, I put on my Professional Movie Reviewing Pants and ventured out into the world to see The Proposal, a run of the mill chick flick starring Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock.  However, judging from the preview, it did look fairly funny.  Take a look for yourself so I don't have to write a summary for it: As you can see, it's about a hard working publishing executive who forces her assistant (Reynolds) to marry her in order to avoid being deported.  So, they go to Alaska (and who doesn't like a movie about Alaska?). All of the funny parts come as banter between Reynolds and Bullock, and it's a shame that the movie doesn't focus on expanding upon their interactions.  They didn't have great chemistry, but they both had decent comedic timing.  Either way, and perhaps because of the former issue, they spent a lot of their time apart, interacting in non-comical ways ...