What time is it?

I’ve already gotten used to the idea my blog might cause some ruckus amongst my friends. Either because they sincerely disagree, think I am being too much of an ignoramus, or just to play Devil’s advocate. Recently, I noted people get very heated over Kevin Smith movies. Mostly because I refuse to acknowledge that Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back is crap. I believe that the part in the end in which they attend a Morris Day &  the Time concert in which everyone is dancing to Jungle Love really embodies everything life should be, could be and more. And thus, makes up for the crap that may or may not precede it. I wish life was more like Morris Day & the Time.

yes, more key-tars! more gold suits! MORE DANCING!

So this past weekend, we watched Purple Rain for Valentine’s Day. Who could ask for a better date than a date with Prince and Appolonia. I’m not going to discuss the details of the movie, most of you are already familiar with it. However, what’s important here is the movie trailer included with the DVD of Purple Rain, Graffiti Bridge. Here, enlighten yourself.

My favorite part about not having seen Graffiti Bridge yet, is that I can read the Netflix user comments and half care. One user said Prince must have been using the same stylist as Michael Jackson at this time, and I laughed, and agreed. Nothing like some sexy pasty men who know how to use a hair straightener. Oh wait, those are emo kids.

sorry to frighten you all

he's thinking he went wrong here, he's right

There’s really not much Prince has done wrong in his life. So I can excuse him for the bad hair, and other bad decisions probably involved in this movie. Some who find themselves jealous question his sexuality, but that’s okay, but Prince definitely knows he likes women and gets plenty of them, so this is a non-issue. Prince still rules, and always will. If you are unsure of that, there’s always this, (and thanks to Steve for sending this over):

you want some segway, bitches?

Even in frilly shirts, velvet pants, and high heels, he’ll kick your ass.

-posted by samsquared

Affirmation Station: Ginger-vitis

I have decided to do a weekly affirmation. If I am ever going to get my cult going, I am going to have to start addressing people’s concerns and issues. So if you feel something needs to be reaffirmed, feel free to send us an email. I’ll do my best to affirm its place in the world. Oh, it’s also for random bits of knowledge, because I’m really good at seeking out some weird stuff. I decided, since feeling down earlier this week, to reaffirm why I am awesome, and in particular, why Gingers are awesome.

we ain't goin' down like that!

Gingers are rather enigmatic. Some of us are gorgeous (I like to think I fall into this category) and some of us, are.. not. We do have lots more in common than just the recessive genes that gave us the ginger color. For example, I don’t know one Ginger who really enjoys references to our fiery colored pubic hair. For one, pubic hair isn’t something anyone really likes to focus on. That’s why waxing and shaving is such a big market, people are never going to want to stop getting rid of body hair. So what if it’s a new color variety you haven’t seen before. Second of all, don’t knock it til you tried it. I know you’re jealous because that hair coloring kit you bought in Summer Sunset tells you not to use it down there. But lets get back to why we are awesome, and subsequently not going extinct.

Yes, the new rumor, that we are all dying off. You know what the rumor used to be? That’s right, rumors about redheads have been thought up since the dawning of time. There was plenty about the “Redbeards” who took over America, floating in on their clouds, to wreak havoc on super advanced civilizations. I especially like the rumors from those days about how we came from space, and the ones where we are the spawn of Satan. That’s right. Hail Satan bitches.We are not dying off, but scientists get sick of talking about how the Earth IS dying off, and fat people are not.

ginger smarts

While watching the inauguration, someone said I might understand why everyone was crying once a Ginger became president. Tough shit, there already was one! Thomas Jefferson. And technically, all those old fogies at the beginning of our nation wanted another Ginger, Benjamin Franklin, to be president. He politely declined and suggested George Washington. There’s all kind of righteous redheads, and we have to do a lot of cleaning up for the redheads, who are well, not so righteous.

Where was I? Oh yes, redheads who make up for shiteous redheads. I won’t put myself on the list, or people I know, but there’s a few of us out there, flaming proud. Ours is a light and it never goes out!

since when was I hot?

We somtimes forget where we are...

I'm hot when I don't date Marilyn Manson

we wish you were still this hot

We also have the fakers, or the unsures, or the trainwrecks who aren’t doing anyone any good.

please leave

please make the pain stop!

I think this shows that despite a few of God’s, we’ll call them ‘mistakes’, gingers have been relatively successful and attractive humans. Gingers generally affirmed.

Also, if you missed it, Jim Gaffigan made a guest appearance on Flight of the Conchords this past week. Aside from him knitting, he refers to his ginger down low as a fire belt. Murray refers to his hair color as electric copper. This was a special episode you need to catch, especially if you have ginger love.

A conversation we have all of us had

- posted by russellmania3000

It begins something like this:

Act I, Scene I: The scene opens to the cold light of dawn. Two middle-aged men exit a makeshift trading post/tavern made of rotting beechwood located on the desolate main drag of a lonely rural mining town. Their skin is leathery and worn full of crevices such that a close-up photograph of one of their cheeks might look like a topographical image of the Himalayas. They walk together, blowing steamy breath into clenched fists and speaking in hushed tones. They wear silly fur hats.

Dmitri: What is this, this Sonic? Day after day I see their advertisements on the moving picture box, teasing and tempting me with their patties of ground beef, and slushie happy hours, and tots! Oh, the tots! But here, in the frozen wastes of the Urals, such an establishment there is not. Believe me comrade, I have looked, for my eyes long for the sight and my tongue for the taste.

Vladimir: They are places of legend, my friend, for in all my wandering I have happened upon nary a one for many moons. You will not find Sonic and her fresh bounties within 500 leagues of this place. But I have many fond memories of a carefree childhood in Omsk, for it was there that my family took my sister and me weekly to market and, after a long day of trading and peddling our wares in the village square, we ate a hearty meal of breakfast burritos and onion rings. Those were happier days. But here in the mines of Narodnaya, for us there is only sweat and dust and the meager root stew.

Dmitri: But why, Vladimir, tell me, why do they mock us with promotional messages for goods which we cannot procure? Surely such a ruse is not worth the price!

Vladimir: It is a strange and cruel fate that we should be cast so from the light and warmth of the simple pleasures we desire most.

Exeunt Dmitri and Vladimir stage left. End scene.

Or in 3-panel strip form, if you prefer it.

Like many of you, for years I have seen Sonic ads on TV, shaken my fist at the heavens, spat at almighty God and persevered. Or just went to Five Guys. I don’t want to make pithy banter with a balding friend or dumpy-looking wife or chubby Paris Hilton lookalike and even more busted female. And by busted I don’t mean she has nice mammaries or resembles a plaster cast from the shoulders up. I mean that when photons bounce off her body and are recorded by a camera, and this recording is played back so that more photons in the pattern of her visage scurry in the direction of my ocular cavity, the net result is an unpleasant sensation in my cerebellum. No, I just want a burger.

Last week some coworkers and I took a little 20-minute excursion up I-95 to get to the nearest Sonic, which was out in Bensalem in a run down industrial area that I would have no reason to go to otherwise. This kind of thing isn’t uncommon for us; we’ve driven a half hour to get to an Arby’s because, let’s be honest, time out of the office is time out of the office any way you slice it. Sonic’s website says “[t]here are more than 3400 SONIC® Drive-In locations across the country.” Just none where you live. Especially if you live in a city. Bensalem is not a city. In any case, if you haven’t been or even seen one (both my seeing and tasting cherries were popped with one thrust), Sonic is indeed delicious, though it would have been more delicious if a girl on roller skates brought out our food on one of those trays that hooks onto the car door.

But all this skullduggery does have an explanation, and a method behind the apparent scattershot advertising strategy. National cable advertising is, at certain volumes, cheaper than regionally targeted advertising, so that’s a no brainer right there. But the genius of the whole thing is that it drives people mad with wonder and envy. How flabbergasting it must be, as say, a resident of metropolitan New York, to find yourself jealous of some yokel from Georgia or Tennessee or where-bumblefucking-ever because they have a Sonic and you don’t, and you have to pay out the ass for McDonald’s in NY. They’ve stumbled upon the holy grail of marketing, sort of. They’ve achieved the kind of viral, word-of-mouth-driven national discussion that everyone wants, over the subject of “where the fuck is there a Sonic,” simply by advertising something that’s not available. Now, whenever they open a new joint, they get all kinds of media coverage and blog hype and lines around the block because they’ve been advertising for years to people who want to be customers but can’t.

This is not a new strategy or phenomenon. Companies have been doing this for decades in areas where they plan to launch. You’ll notice the ambiguous “Respekt” outdoor ads for Cricket mobile phone services around Philadelphia presently. They’re not available here yet, but they will be soon, and at that point they’ll start to demystify their messaging and identify that top-heavy K with their wordmark/logotype (a befuddling design choice). The difference here is Cricket isn’t offering any specific deal or even saying who they are, which is…I don’t know, who cares. But Sonic is offering free tots and gigantic slushies for under $1 to anyone in the nation lucky enough to live by or drive by one and that’s apparently been pretty rabble-rousing. The more significant difference is that Cricket’s hype/awareness campaign, and most things of that nature, will last maybe weeks or months. I’m not positive but Leap, their owner, has indicated they hope to that by the end of this year they will have rolled out service in all 27 markets they won bids on in the 2006 FCC auction. By contrast, Sonic has been advertising in Philadelphia and other major metropolitan areas for years and have yet to announce any new locations there. In fact there may never be a Sonic in Philly. But their incessant advertising has given them a legion of customers-in-waiting who are ready for a cross-country road trip, or like me, the opportunity to take an extra long lunch.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that, as a marketing guy, I am delighted that a protracted campaign designed to frustrate and drive people bats might actually work really well. It would sure be fun to try.

PS: holy balls.

Sam on Wire

Sometimes I’m sitting around, around my friends, and I think to myself, “Wow, I’m really lucky I know these people, they are really interesting and fun. They never fail to surprise me.” I have friends of mine to thank for these posts, because they surprised me with something fun and awesome. Last week it was tight-rope walking.

that high up? no thank you.

Not everyone rushes out to see little french men running across a tight-rope, or to see a french-language film. I am not one of those people. If the movie is in french, its enough to make me run out and see it. The last foreign film I saw in the theatre was Man on Wire. We have a ginger man, who is very animated, and very good at story telling (wow, kind of sounds like me, only I’m not a man). He desires to walk between the World Trade Center towers, and does so while they are still in construction. Despite this being a documentary, it’s very much like an action film, leaving you filled with suspense and wonder. Thus, I was enchanted with the idea, but I have a fear of heights, so this kind of walking was not in my future.

My friends have installed a slack line in their loft. One of my new friends is from California, and normally can’t stand the bitter cold of Philadelphia. (Although, we are enjoying a very nice warm spring-like week here currently). Next thing I knew, and my ambition knew, was that I was attempting to walk on the line several times with my barefeet. It’s with the utmost conviction you overcome the physical challenge of aligning your body straight, to balance yourself and be unaffected by the inevitable falls of a first timer. Here’s where I would post a picture of people slack lining, but apparently it’s really popular with hippies and people who don’t wash their hair. We are not those people, and I won’t post dirty hippies on my blog. So here you have some feet:

© All rights reserved. sun heefairee at Flickr.com

I also would recommend drinkin’ some beers. You are going to fall a lot. If you live in the cold and decide to do this inside, putting some mats down might be better than landing on the hardwood floor, or whatever other hard surface you may have in your large space for tight rope walking. Otherwise, just wait til it gets warm. I hear landing on the grass is easier, but I’m trying to get hard, so I’ll take the rough landing. Happy Circusing!

-posted by samsquared

Vince Offer’d

By now, I sincerely hope most of you have become familiar with the infomercials Slap Chop and Sham Wow. Infamous for coming up with classic one liners, like “You’re going to love my nuts,” and “You know the Germans always make good stuff,” Vince Offer has enchanted not only the internet blogging community, but the television shoppers simultaneously.

It turns out that Vince is a multi-talented human being. I’m not referring to the fact that he can wear a head-set and demonstrate a product simultaneously, but that he has written and directed a movie titled The Underground Comedy Movie. I owe a serious thank you to my friend Dylan for bringing this to my attention, and subsequently, your attention as well. This movie was made by Vince, and was a bigger budget realization of a public access show he helped to create in L.A. in the late 80s and early 90s. What follows here is a spoof of California Girls performed by David Lee Roth. At least that is my estimation.

This movie is absolutely as bad as you can imagine it is. Despite promising appearances by Slash and that big Black dude from Green Mile, a soundtrack full of punk classics, as well as Vince Offer’s terrible singing, you are still pained by the hour and a half that the movies plays.  It’s crude, and absurd, both things that would normally cause me to proclaim deep love for a movie and have no other master. Vince, your fame has come via the infomercial. Despite your problems with the Scientology Nation and There’s Something about Mary, your fame has finally come! Enjoy the 15 minutes, although by this point, you probably only have five left.

-posted by samsquared

It’s bigger than hip-hop

- posted by russellmania3000

Damn, son. Fuck coffee, I’m awake now, ready to go 12 rounds. My employer is a professional sports franchise that will go unnamed, whose mascot is an outsized mutant rabbit named Hip-Hop and he has a supremely gay theme song. I’ve been trying to get it changed to Dead Prez for a while, but to no avail. Something about being family-friendly or whatever, I hear them talk about kids and I tune out. By the way, in our office we can use “gay” as an epithet as much as we like without being sent to sensitivity training or whatever. So if that’s your beef, I really don’t want to hear it.

I work in interactive marketing so I check out the Google competition for anything I’m involved in, just for kicks. I checked for Redikulus a while back and there used to be a lot more that has since dropped off the face of the nets. There was a pretty cool clothing company that I can find neither hide nor hair of anymore. But there are two interesting things of note.

The first result, regrettably, is for a misspelling of Ridikulus, a Harry Potter spell. Christ, we are in poor company. But more importantly, as luck would have it, there’s a rapper who goes by same, and why shouldn’t there be? We really asked for it when we chose this spelling. Listen Mr. I Started Rapping At 6, I don’t care if your pops is in jail or what part of Las Vegas you’re from. I watched CSI and it seems like a goofy as all hell kind of place. If you so much as even think about purchasing redikulus.com, you will be in for a world of hurt, mon ami. No wait. What I meant was: perhaps we can come up with a business arrangement that will benefit both of us…

The other and infinitely more compelling item of interest with which we share a name is Redikulus Dae, an annual street fair/shopping festival in Rhinelander, WI. Sweet crackers, there’s even a second annual Hodag Roaring Contest. I am so there. Back up a minute. Hodag, you say? Yes. Think of it as a Midwestern chupacabra. There’s not enough drugs in this city for me to make up shit like this. American folklore is truly fascinating and batshit crazy.

Anyway…as you were.

Non sequiturs: vol. 1

- posted by russellmania3000

The problem with reading on public transportation, other than that it can put you to sleep and cause you to miss your stop, is that you can’t look up and check out whether other people are impressed with what you’re reading. Because if you’re looking for around for potential people to chat up, you’re not really reading, are you? Don’t give me this I-read-for-enjoyment/self-betterment crap. Books are fashion accessories, same as everything else on your person.

Is it just me or are keffiyehs the new buffalo plaid button-downs? In fact, in the last couple days I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some oversized purple or aqua buffalo plaid neckerchiefs with tassels, which pretty much qualifies as keffiyeh in the same way Chipotle qualifies as Mexican food. And we wonder why they hate us.

The thing about walking downhill on ice is that it’s really easy to start moving diagonally but once moving diagonally it’s really hard to straighten out again. Walking uphill on ice won’t put you in the same quandary.

A woman getting cat called and a man getting stared down by a gay guy are not the same kind of uncomfortable. They’re just not.

The thing about getting idea for a project is that most of the time you just accumulate the idea but never really follow through on it. Maybe you return to it a few months later and realize it’s a terrible idea. If you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, you start thinking you’re some kind of great idea man when you’re not and maybe you turn it into a start-up and lose some VC firm’s coin and ruin the show for everyone else.

I know that deep down I’m an awful person because I’m not that upset about all the lives drunk driving has claimed, but I am upset that Charles Barkley is off the air. Police are such cockblockers. This segment in which Bob Costas talks 2008 with John McEnroe and Sir Charles on HBO is amazing. No disrespect to Chris Webber, but for the last several years Charles has been the best basketball pundit in business, and outside of Bill Simmons and Nathaniel Friedman a.k.a. Bethlehem Shoals perhaps the best pundit in sports.

A while ago Sam was talking about viral marketing and mentioned Ray-Ban’s cow-birthing-a-dude spot. So the guys from Never Hide Films actually contacted us to mention they had 2 new spots out, which is, I mean, hey thanks I guess but we don’t care. Even though Disco Ballers is marginally amusing, once you have a guy coming out a cow vagina all covered in amniotic fluid and chunks of gross, you’ve pretty much maxed yourself out in advertising and you might as well pack up and hit the beach. I think Sam’s tongue-in-cheek/backhanded compliment might have been lost on them had they read her piece at all, but I don’t think they did, which makes me wonder how many times it occurs that a blog pokes fun at – or outright tears new rectums in – a particular ad or product or institution or whatever and said entity’s marketing/web team gets wind of the fact that they’re mentioned in the post but doesn’t pay attention to the context and tries to cozy up to said blog without even realizing they are poor bedfellows.

For some stupid reason I decided not to watch the AC Milan game on Sunday and instead go to the Punk Rock Flea Market, which was so crowded that even if I had wanted to buy something, I doubt I’d have been able to reach for my wallet without groping three asses that were way too young for me to be groping. Every third person smelled of reefer or of just plain body stank. I spotted a mug shaped like a tree trunk with an owl peeking out of a knot in the side, which was actually kind of cool and surely one of a kind, but no, the girl working that table told me she was only selling that in a set of six. So what she meant by that was she wasn’t going to be selling them at all.

I got smacked with awesome

This is a follow up to the awesome performance by the Boss last night. He still has it. It could be that he’s married to a redhead, I hear that keeps you young, vibrant, vivacious, and youthful. I’ve mentioned before that being a rocker was a previous dream of mine. I still haven’t let the dream go in some ways. I was rocking out to some Joan Jett the other night. I was not giving a shit about my reputation, and considering new leather jacket options, when I came across a new way to be a bitchin’ rocker chick. Little did you know, all it takes is a song written by the Boss and some Michael J. Fox!

Look at this movie! Bathe in the soft glow that is the 80s, emanating from the photo of the VHS tape cover. I’m excused from not seeing this sooner, as I was only two years old at the time of release. After making this discovery, I went right for my Netflix. I was going to see this movie as soon as humanly possible. Wrong. This movie did not only not exist on Netflix, it also isn’t included on the list of films Michael J. Fox is in. Heresy!

So I was forced to hit the whore of the internet, YouTube. It’s well known that Michael J. Fox is awesome on all sorts of levels, but I did question his ability to be a convincing front man of a rock band, despite some scenes in Back to the Future. It’s much easier to be a fake rocker these days thanks to the likes of Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Let’s see how Marty holds up..

First of all, you can barely see his head over the crowd! Whoever was operating that camera clearly has no idea how angles work, or has a secret vendetta for Marty. That’s understandable, I’m sure he was the envy of lots of men back then. And they rep Cleveland?? No wonder only half the crowd is listening. It’s good news for him that Joan shows up, and just in time to do some mirror-mullet action at the mic. And if this is the anchor of the movie, the song you splurged on having Springsteen write, why the hell are you rolling the credits over half the screen?

In other secrets, Trent Reznor also makes an appearance in the movie in a synth band covering a Buddy Holly song. How about that?

-posted by samsquared

coming soon: space in your face!

nebulaaaahhhhhhzzzzz

No, not this space. Although, space pictures are really cool. I’m a big fan of nebulae, because it’s like making shapes out of clouds, only they are sweeter. Because they come in super radical colors, and plus that’s where stars are born. That’s all pretty badass to me, but then again, I still love going to the planetarium. Don’t hate.

theselby.com

Also,this interior space is also not in your face. It could be. I wasted several hours looking at these interiors. Owned by people who presumably have cooler lives than I do. (Or at least nicer houses and apartments). The photography is truly interesting. I can thank one of my favorite online writers for this find, Rosecrans Baldwin. He writes for the Digital Ramble column in the New York Time Magazine’s The Moment. He’s coming out with a book later this year, so I’ll keep you posted on that. For now you, can also catch him on The Morning News, an online publication that he helped to start in 1999.

The space I’m talking about is the one being carved out by N.A.S.A. It’s okay, I also thought that our space program might be releasing an album of ambient space noises, asteroids colliding, or secrets hidden alien tracks recorded for the past 30 years. It’s actually a collaboration between two L.A. based DJs and their friends. If that saying is true about the company you keep, this album is going to be awesome. Their new single, Money (see video below) is going to be making them just that. It features David Byrne, Chuck D, Ras Congo, Seu Jorge, and Z-trip. If that’s not enough for you, their album is going to be released featuring covers by five artists: Shepard Fairey, Marcel Dzama, Sage Vaughn, The Date Farmers, and Mark Gonzales.

Sidenote: Russ really likes how I manage to reference Shepard Fairey all the time. It’s not my fault he’s popular and people love to blog about him, take pictures of his installations, and crowd his openings. So in an attempt to write about other things I’m interested in, it was only fitting that Shepard Fairey ironically show up anyway! I heard he designed this poster people may have heard about, it had to do with our new president. I also heard that the poster is now in the National Portrait Gallery.

inauguration installation

Last spring I chased two of my favorite men, (who are also extraordinarily fast walkers, it’s a light jog of a pace for anyone of the short legged nature) around the galleries in New York . One of the best shows I’ve ever seen was by one of N.A.S.A.’s cover artists at the David Zwirner Gallery. Marcel Dzama’s Even the Ghost of the Past was on display, with the first room dedicated to paintings and sketchbooks. The second room was dark with two displays of his sculptural work. The third room was a theatre for a black and white video installation. One of the things he is most noted for is his muted color palette, which is attributed to his using a root-beer paint for the variations in browns he achieves. He also kept amazing company in a collective known as The Royal Art Lodge, with Michael Dumontier, Neil Farber, Drue Langlois, Jonathan Pylypchuk, and Adrian Williams. Marcel features work in several galleries. I’ve seen some minature sculptures at a gallery in Philadelphia, as well as a print of his featured in a show at F.U.E.L. gallery. His sculptural work and video is as equally and as darkly enchanting as the rest of his work.

Owl Troubles, 2003

May I suggest keeping good company? It seems to be working out for everyone else.

-posted by samsquared

Moobies!

Mooby

I haven’t been the only person to notice that the movies out in theatres leave a lot to be desired. For example, better movies. Now, I don’t consider the limited release award winning movies playing at selected theatres part of the crud that is out there. I also don’t usually get all huffy about what movie is number one from week to week. The last movie I remember noting for it’s box office returns was Madagascar 2. If you weren’t excited for this movie to come out along with the rest of America: number 1, you aren’t American, and number 2, you clearly haven’t seen this!

And I enjoyed this for a year or so, before realizing the pure genius behind this character is none other than Sasha Baron Cohen. I could care less about Borat, and the success of that movie. However, at least it was entertaining, which brings me back to the point of this post. Paul Blart, Mall Cop?!?!??!? If someone understands why this has been wildly popular, enough to be more successful than Clint Eastwood’s last appearance on the big screen ever, I would love to be enlightened.

When first viewing the terrible trailer for Paul Blart, I was taken back to another time in my life. A time when I was more like Paul Blart, I worked at a mall. I actually was more experienced than Paul Blart, as I worked at two different malls. The second mall used to be the largest mall in America, before the Mall of America was built in Minnesota, the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvnia. If that sounds rich to you, it’s because most of the people who shop there are, terribly rich that is. This is a fancy mall, with fancy stores, jewelry stores that are only open by appointment. Stores with doorbells. While, we’re dropping the Minnesota references: you should be familiar with doorbell stores from Mighty Ducks 2. (see 6:00 minutes in)

One day while walking through the mall, on an average day to work, a large shadow silenty flew past me. By the time I gathered my senses, I realized that it was a mall-cop (or mall security guard, I think mall-cop has a more negative connotation). Not just any mall-cop, but one that was speeded along by his use of a Segway. Yes, Segways are quite hysterical. I’ve even noticed Police pimping out Segways Xhibit style for patrolling use, too. How are these going to help you patrol? Will they help you catch thieves? Obviously not, the Segway Security was unable to catch a man who ran out of the mall with a ring worth $300,000.

If you ever have several hours to waste, I highly recommend wasting them on the hours of footage YouTube provides on the subject of Segway crashes. I mostly have the ingenious (but sadly canceled) show of Arrested Development to thank for introducing me to the stupidity of technology known as Segways, and how to laugh at it. Upon viewing the garbage of a trailer, showing Paul Blart maneuvering on a Segway, I was unconvinced that this was comedy. But why? So many possibilities! Let me tell you.

Harry Potter rip-off Blart

I had been able to keep Kevin James out of my thought process up until this point in my life. Suddenly I saw this comedian, enjoying his mild popularity and celebrity, using his success funds to spend a Saturday shopping in a mall. He must have had a stroke of genius when he noticed the mall-cops riding their Segways, and decided it would make an excellent comedic film. I would love to be able to say that he was wrong, and that this was a terrible failure. I would  love to suggest that this was an awful idea! I can’t though, you know why? Because that movie made almost 40 million dollars its opening weekend. What?!?! I can’t believe this junk is a hit. There are funny stories and happenings at the mall, I would know from experience. Mall-cops are not one of these things, even if they are riding Segways. Not to mention, Mall Rats could never be outdone. Would you like a chocolate covered pretzel?

With the exception of Gran Torino, lets take a look at the other garbage currently in the movies. We have the Notorious movie, which caused multiple incidents of violence at several theatre locations over the weekend. We additionally have My Bloody Valentine, no, not the excellent band of the same name, but some shiteous horror movie. It has been suggested that because these movies were both rated R, and that the under 17 have nothing better to do on the weekend, the teenagers paid to see Paul Blart this weekend, but probably just snuck into these movies. Yes, these movies suck too, but I would see either of these over experiencing the pain of a movie based on mall-cops, or watching a movie with Kevin James. Russ said that he doesn’t mind Kevin James’ stand-up. Enjoy Kevin James then, you and the rest of whoever is watching that crap. I’ll save myself for Daniel Craig movies, at least he’s worth looking at, even if the movie turns out bad. Oh, and Harry Potter.

-posted by samsquared