If I had a time machine...

If I had a time machine…

Wait don’t leave, there’s more.  If I had a time machine and…

No wait don’t leave, this time I swear there’s more than just an extra word.  If I had a time machine and could travel back in time to either observe or change the past, here are some of the ways I would utilize this mind blowing power:

1)      I would see how hot Helen of Troy was and correctly calculate the number of ships/airplanes/internet articles she would have launched in our day.

2)      Seen what late teens to early 20’s Jesus Christ was like.  Did he attend hardcore shows or was he more into let’s say disco?

3)      Observed what three books the Time Traveler from The Time Machine would have taken to help the Eloi. 

4)      Followed Mansu Masu along his Hajj and expertly taken advantage of his gold giving away policy.

5)      I would lose my edge before James Murphy and tell him to shove it after giving him a compilation of every great song ever done by anybody.

6)      See the Marx Brothers perform live at as many venues as possible.

7)      Visit a Roman orgy and vomitorium and show them how it’s really done.  Once I’ve arrived, I would turn my disappointment about learning that vomitoriums didn’t exist into a moment of opportunity by creating the first vomitorium, thus changing the course of history forever.

8)      See the Ancient Wonders of the World in their full glory.  This one is a no brainer and I’m frankly a little mad at myself for putting it so low in the time travel list.  If you had a time machine and didn’t see at least all of these babies in their prime?  Well, I said good day sir!  I said good day!

9)      Eat a Dodo bird.  Why not?

10)   Ask the person who decreed that writing lists was a viable substitute for writing a prose article why list articles must end on a multiple of 5?  What makes 10 the perfect number of bullet points for a writing silly list?  Hopefully this person will have the answers to all the questions I will be slinging.

These are ten things I would do if I had the awesome power of time travel.  As you can see I hit the big points and avoided the usually haunts of killing Hitler and seeing Thomas Jefferson have sex with his slaves (to be honest that was number 11).  What would you do with this awesome power?  If you have said time machine, travel back in time and exercise the old show don’t tell maxim.  If you don’t have a time machine, then by all means tell don’t show. 

Girls Season 3 Review

Girls Season 3 Recap:

Girls season the third is over and the finale posed many great questions to keep a viewer like myself interested into what will happen next.  The greatest question is how the show will deal with Hannah’s departure to Iowa (I assume that her holding the acceptance letter up with a smile means that she will be attending the graduate program)?  Will the show create a duel focus to juxtapose her life in Iowa with the rest of the crew’s life in New York or will they assign a character (most likely Elijah) to have her face time with the group at important moments?  Perhaps they will jettison two years in the future to show Hannah’s triumph return to New York after completing her graduate program or they will zoom to the summer after her first year to see her discuss her struggles/triumphs with the group.  What the show does with Hannah will be interesting.  Hopefully she will learn a thing or two about timing and about giving somebody their moment.  While her acceptance into the Iowa Writer’s Workshop is excitng, telling her boyfriend minutes before he gives his Broadway debut that they may have to change major details about their relationship should be filed under the heading of poor timing.  For Hannah to throw the curveball of moving to Iowa just before Adam takes the stage for his Broadway debut is downright irresponsible.  At least this time she seemed genuinely happy for somebody else’s success, as Ray expertly noted, and didn’t do it to intentionally mess up Adam’s performance.  I’m glad Hannah’s revelation didn’t throw Adam off during the show with flubbed lines or pained stares towards her and just played out his simmering anger in an alleyway fight.   

The master of bad timing and making somebody’s moment all about you goes to the reigning hot mess of the season: Marnie Michaels.  Shoshanna has hit an all-time low after finding out she won’t graduate on time due to her failing a class.  Marnie hears this and immediately goes into a self-serving story about the good old days with Charlie and then casually brings up the fact that she slept with Ray and feels disgusted and ashamed by it.  She’s not ashamed that it was a friend’s ex, but rather that it was Ray, the guy with the Andy Kaufman cutout and the Buster Keaton bathroom photo.  Throughout the entire episode, Marnie verges on psychopathic behavior.  She shows little to no empathy to Shoshanna’s situation, brushing off Shoshanna’s obvious pain by telling Hannah that she’ll be fine.  She can only feel glee watching Desi and his girlfriend breakup and views her earlier kiss with him as a wholehearted positive and win when everybody from Hannah to Elijah (who stole the episode with his blazer shorts combo) predicts danger.  What will happen next with Marnie?  She ends each season with a romantic victory and then begins each subsequent season broken and shattered.  Here’s to seeing what happens to the character we love to hate in season 4.

Shoshanna finally had some good scenes in this episode.  Outside of the Beach House episode, she has been neglected and relegated to her odd couple pairing with Jessa.  Her tackling of Marnie was cathartically beautiful and her moments with Ray were simply heartbreaking.  Her line about m&m’s was one of the best of the night.  In terms of her not graduating she can always take a summer class and then be done with school and the like.  It’s a minor setback, not a huge life altering goal.  The show never mentions if she has anything lined up directly after college that would make taking a summer class impossible.  Shoshanna’s development for the fourth season will be one to watch due to the season placing her farther and farther away from the group.  At the present moment she hates Marnie and merely tolerates Jessa.  She and Hannah have a peace between them but a two year friendship break could change things.  How or if Shoshanna fits into the main friendship group will be an interesting development next year.

Jessa suffered this season from having virtually nothing to do.  She sat on the sidelines either kind of working or giving into a wily old British man’s urges to relapse.  She spent the whole finale with Louie Lasser when I felt her stir up the pot attitude could have been better served at the play where everything was dissolving for the group.  I would have loved to see her reaction to the play or to the revelation that Ray and Marnie were sleeping together.  Her shit kicking attitude was greatly missed in those scenes.  My prediction for Jessa was that she and Adam would either become great friends or have an affair after she started attending AA meeting with him.  My big prediction for the season would be that Adam would have sex with one of her friends but that went quickly by the wayside.  With the amount of uncertainty in Hannah and Adam’s relationship for next season, maybe Hannah returns after a year or two from Iowa and see Adam in a relationship with one of his Major Barbara castmates (the nice lady who pecked him on the check) or Jessa/Marnie/Shoshanna.

I greatly look forward to the next season of Girls as I enjoyed this one a great bit.  As always I await the overwrought thought piece on the show’s every failing and more discussions on Lena Dunham’s body.  Bu until then let’s just all sit back and enjoy Shoshanna telling Marnie she hates her.  Good times, good times.

St Patrick's Day Tips

St Patrick’s Day falls on a Monday this year but the celebration will begin today due to what I can only imagine is an overwhelming love of Irish culture.  St Patrick’s Day was originally started to fill the void of a March drinking holiday.  January has Martin Luther King Day, February has Ulysses S. Grant or President’s Day, April has Manischewitz Appreciation Week or Passover, and May, of course, has the night after the AP Physics exam.  All are important drinking days and the St. Patrick’s Day weekend fills the March void.  My last few St. Patrick’s Day outings have been in the ballpark of what constitutes a successful holiday.  Instead of drinking alcohol, I ingested copious amounts of illicit substances and rather than destroy public property, I destroyed a private reputation.  When I said ballpark understanding of the holiday I meant it.  So, in preparation for this year’s festivities, I have rounded up a list of tips to have a successful St Patrick’s Day celebration.  Enjoy! 

1)      Partake in the ancient and sacred Irish tradition of discriminating against Gay people (double points if it’s in a parade). 

2)      Eat a traditional Irish meal of Corned Beef with a side of Leprechaun’s wife.  Make sure the Leprechaun watches.

3)      Everybody wears Celtic green on St Patrick’s Day.  Celebrate an alternative St Patrick’s Day with a neon green shirt.  Who’s a conformist now?

4)      Today is officially the day to whip out your Cinco de Mayo advent calendar.  The celebration never ends!

5)      Watch a few Conan O’Brien St Pattys Day clips.  Then watch every Conan remote and Jordan Schlansky bit.  Then watch every Triumph bit.  Then watch as a once productive day has died a slow but hilarious death.

6)      Honor the mundane and boring stuff you do daily by adapting it into a larger series written by James Joyce.  Smells like a future Penguin Classic to me!

7)      Learn the proper way to slowly pour a Guinness out of a glass and into the ground.  Show off your new knowledge at the nearest AA meeting.   

8)      Acting upon seeing a “Kiss Me I’m Irish” shirt usually leads less to future freeform smooching and more to future alerting the neighborhood that you’ve just moved in.

9)      St Patrick’s Day started as a religious holiday but turned into a drinking holiday.  If you think this is a strange turn of events let me just point you towards the holiday of Easter. 

10)   Today is the only day in New York City you can get away with wearing anything Boston related.  Enjoy this temporary freedom while it lasts because mark my words, if I catch you wearing that goddamn Celtics jersey tomorrow so help me god I will hit you over the head with a tire iron. 

If you follow these ten tips you will be well on your way to enjoying St. Patrick’s Day.  If you choose not to follow these tips you will also be on your way to enjoying St. Patrick’s Day.  Either way I really don’t care.  Just have a good time and please invite me to your parties for I have no plans this weekend as I spent this entire week writing up this incredibly dumb list of suggestions.  That’s all I do, sacrifice myself to help you people out which in turn makes me the living embodiment of St Patrick.  I will graciously accept your apologies now.

Ashy Ashy Wednesday

Yesterday I noticed an abnormal number of people walking around with dirt on their foreheads.  Usually this is a sign that I should walk faster to leave this said neighborhood, but then I realized (thanks to my nana who I was about to have a delicious diner lunch with) that it was Ash Wednesday.  It was the day that Christians put some shmutz on their heads in the form of a cross to honor how their lord and savior died or how they’ve all disappointed the Holy Father in the past year.  Nothing quite says I’m sorry like putting some dirt on your forehead.  It certainly beats apologizing to those you’ve been continually wronging.  For the repentance to properly activate, the ashes must be rubbed on the forehead in the shape of a cross because that seems to be the only symbol Christianity has.  Judaism uses a mutated star as their symbol.  Islam represents itself with a crescent moon and a non-mutated star.  Christianity utilizes the Roman Empire’s standard method of execution as their go to logo.  You’d think this would be a bit of a public relations snafu, but lo and behold, they are the most popular religion in the world at the moment.  Go figure. 

I also never understood why Christians like to depict Jesus in his paramount moment of suffering.  Do you think Jesus looking down from on high wants to be continually reminded of the worst day of his life?  How do you think Jesus Christ feels when he sees so many images of him bloodied and ready to die?  I think he gets a bit queasy, but then again that’s just how I react if there were a million depictions of the way I was brutally murdered.  He probably wants to be depicted more in the style that was presented in the movie Dogma, with a nice smile on his face.  The Bible talks about this guy like he’s some sort of God with him being all nice and wise all the time.  Me thinks that Mr. Christ would like a few more images of him helping out some poor people or hanging with his disciples.  A friendly picture of Jesus hanging with the fellas and cracking open a tall cold brewski would probably put a smile on our old savior’s face more than the umpteenth picture of a Roman solider jamming a nail into his wrists.  The man-god is most likely suffering from intense post-traumatic stress disorder and we keep reminding him of the moment he’s taken so many therapy classes to move on from.  Every time he wants to check in on how his flock is honoring him, he is forced to stare at the worst moment in his life.  It’s enough to make a man-god bring on the rapture.

I would like to bring the conversation back to Ash Wednesday.  It’s weird to put ashes on your forehead just as it is equally strange to eat foods meant to represent your savior.  All religions do weird stuff, but Christians, Jews, and Muslims get a general pass because they are the grizzled vets who have been through the rookie hazing that Mormonism and Scientology are receiving right now.  Imagine if we all still believed in the Aztec human and virgin sacrifice religion.  If we saw these crazy people with dirt on their foreheads we would laugh and mock them like I am doing right now.  We’d ask why they don’t just sacrifice 12 virgins to the Sun God like normal people do when they want their problems solved quickly (if you’re in a pinch 30 cows will do as well). 

So in closing I’d like to say: Ash Wednesday it’s kind of stupid.  Even my fairly religious nana said that in honor of the day she was going to put some pasta sauce on her forehead.  If she makes a semi-decent joke about something, it has to be pretty silly. 

Thoughts on the Oscars

Below I present my lists of things I enjoyed about the Oscars (Oscar Likes) and things I did not enjoy about the Oscars (Oscar Dislikes).  Comment with your own!

Oscar Likes

Bill Murray’s off the cuff tribute to Harold Ramis – Harold Ramis never won an Oscar, yet was one of the most influential (and greatest) people to ever create comedic films.  Another example of how worthless the Oscars and award shows in general can be.

Bill Murray leading the standing ovation charge for Darlene Love – who else but Bill Murray to steal the Oscars twice.

Cate Blanchett’s acceptance speech – A great shout out to having more leading women in film and a nice little shout out to Woody Allen for writing a great film.

Lupita Nyong’O’s poetically beautiful acceptance speech – First time winners usually give the best speeches.

The fact that Gravity didn’t win Best Picture – My perfect form of Gravity eliminates the back story and makes it a story about Sandra Bullock trying survive and return to Earth or for her to float away into space and have her come to terms with her own mortality and rather imminent death paralleling the Ray Bradbury story "Kaleidoscope".  Surviving the hostile terrain of space is hard enough so I did not see why it was necessary to tack on a ham-handed back story.  It is compelling enough to watch an astronaut struggle to survive in the most hostile of environments. 

The Celebrity Twitter pic - for some reason it warmed my heart.

Karen O’s “Moon Song” performance – a simply sublime song.

Oscar Dislikes

Ellen’s “talks” with the audience - She wasn’t even talking to anybody specific as she simply gilded by celebrities while casually offering their first names to the viewing public.  Witty banter I think not!

The pizza bit - Way to draw out a one note sketch.  I did enjoy seeing the stars struggle with how to appear “not cheap” on national television with the tipping gag.  

Matthew McConaughey’s acceptance speech – If you are going to thank God for all the goodness in your life you also must curse him for all the not goodness in your life.  The big man taketh and he giveth away.  Sure he blessed you with an Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club, but let’s also remember that it was God’s will and divine plan that put you in Sahara and Failure to Launch/How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days (Yes I made fun of Failure to Launch and How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days.  I look forward to the hate mail).  Plus, what was up with that whole chasing himself ten years down the road speech, but never quite getting there?  When did human life become linear progress rather than a series of ups and downs?  Hell ten years down the road you could be living in another country, under another name (lines courtesy of “Gotta Serve Somebody” by Bob Dylan).  In short, a lot can go wrong in ten years.  Haven’t you ever seen It’s a Wonderful Life?  If young wide eyed George Bailey had the chance to see what his life would have become in ten years he would have offed himself before Clarence got up reviewing the Buffalo Bill scene.  So, let’s not count our chickens before they hatch.

Missing the first half an hour of the show – I should note this is not the Oscars fault but rather the blame belongs on my attempts to get a live stream of the show.  My bad on that one, but I’d also like to think the Oscars played a role in that particular failure.

Not giving Bad Grampa the Best Makeup Oscar – That movie is nothing without the makeup.  If anybody recognizes Johnny Knoxville, the movie is kaput.  Makeup is central to this film fulfilling its premise of having a bawdy old grampa offend average joes.  Plus, I think it’s about time the Jackass crew got some Oscar recognition. 

Leonardo DiCaprio not winning the Best Actor Oscar – Guy is an unhinged maniac in that film.  The academy is going to have to buckle down and give it to Leo someday lest they fail him like they did Peter O’Toole.

Steve McQueen not winning Best Director – Somebody named Steve McQueen should win an Oscar.

Observations from Attending a Trashy Daytime Talk Show (not Springer)

Observations from attending a trashy daytime talk show (not Springer):

1)      The audience is chock full of the most judgmental people I have ever seen.  It was a chorus of mmhmms coming from the regulars amidst general shouting at these poor people on stage.  It was quite hilarious to say the least.  The barrier between audience member and guest is closer than most would audience members would like to think.  The best audience I had was on a show about obesity.  A three hundred fifty pound woman enters the stage and the Greek chorus of old regulars behind me yells out that she is perfectly healthy and not fat at all.  Her skinny sister enters the stage and the same women are yelling that she is skinny due to all the crack-cocaine she smokes and that she should put down the pipe (this was the first thing to prop to mind).  The regulars in the audience are amazing and can be broken down into two categories.  The first set of regulars is older women who legitimately watch and enjoy the show and the host.  They are interested and involved in the proceedings.  They sit around with a group of show friends and discuss the guests in a serious tone.  They have a sincere enjoyment of the show.  The next set of regulars is a younger batch of men and women who attend just to enjoy the train wreck.  They enjoy the show on an ironic train wreck level and instead of passing judgment through a well-timed mmhmm, they laugh hysterically and register their best shocked faces.  The second batch is always willing to share their steady fix of bizarre stories and could not be friendlier.  They invite you to sit with them during the show and crack the best jokes.

2)      The show’s crew is fascinating as well.  The behind the stage crew could not be friendlier and view the action with detached amusement.  Few things faze them.  I was talking to one of the crew about the way a guy jumped up and down in ecstasy after learning he wasn’t the father and the guy laughed with me and said “this show isn’t classy”.  It’s funny how the people getting paid for putting on this show take it less seriously than the audience who has nothing to lose. 

3)      The audience is the true highlight of the show.  Before each taping, the crew invites the audience to dance on stage and a wild dance party emerges as the show is warming up.  Usually it is a bunch of 50 year old women going insane.  The best dance party moment that even shocked the jaded crew was when a woman brought her boyfriend up on stage and pretended to blow him while he “pretended” to cum.  Pure insanity.  Then this same woman started crying when a crew member starting joking with her about it.  She claimed she was sensitive about jokes directed at her.  This was a woman who minutes before simulated a blowjob in front of at least 100 people and then tripped and fell into the first row of seats but could not handle a light barb directed in her vicinity.  Moments like this hit against the ceiling of surrealism.  Once the show started she snapped into place and started yelling at the guests on stage calling them “hoes” and such.  She was a fun person to sit behind.

4)      When the guest’s segment is done, the crew splits up the guests and seats them at opposite sides of the stage as they await the final segment of the show where all the guests return to the scene of the crime.  It is fascinating to observe the guests as they watch the rest of the show.  One feuding couple spent the whole show exchanging longing stares at each one another.  That was sweet to creepily stare at.  Some of the guests became proxy audience members and laughed at the absurdity presented on stage.  My favorite reaction came during the lie detector test segment.  The lie detector tests had absolved one man of cheating and he and his girlfriend looked to be headed down the pleasant road of reconciliation.  Now it was the second couple’s turn.  When the results of the test were disclosed it had been revealed that one party had engaged in some infidelity.  The first guests reacted like they had never been part of the show.  They did their best “oh shit” face and laughed when the women flipped her husband out of his chair (to be fair, that was quite hilarious).  Once they were off the hook, they became one with the audience.  They no longer viewed themselves as part of the train wreck but rather, as part of the rubbernecking audience.  Transitions like that can be hard to make, but this couple turned it like an old pro. 

5)      The host had little personality and simply gave out a banal set of advice and instructions.  The family therapists and lawyers on the show shout out common sense advice that is somehow taken as gospel.  They also dress very strangely for supposed professionals.  One family therapist was wearing a skin tight cheetah print dress with heavy cleavage.  Not the most professional look if you ask me (mmhmm).  Jesus, two days on set and I’m already sounding like a regular.  I now even clap my hands at every syllable when making a point (ex: you *clap* is *clap* a *clap* skanky*clap* ass *clap* ho).  Needless to say, I loved every minute of the shows from the chair throwing to the failed DNA tests.  If anybody ever wants to go to a trashy daytime train wreck, call me up, I’ll be there.