Saturday, September 27, 2008

I Am A Movie Star (Very Famous)

Friends, have YOU been in a film made by an Academy Award winning director? Because I have. I expect to be hob-nobbing with celebrities every day now that I am super crazy famous and oh so sexy cool. Lindsay Lohan will have sex with me once she gets over her little lesbian phase for you see, I am a world class superstar. I really think I should have my own IMDb page now.

Are you familiar with a little director named Jonathan Demme? You should be! He won an Academy Award for the film The Silence of The Lambs, one of only three films that has ever swept the Academy's top 5 awards (Director, Film, Actor, Actress, Screenplay). If I had to make a list of things I have in common with Academy Award winning actor and known fava bean enthusiast, Anthony Hopkins, it would begin with "We both love Dr. Pepper" (Sir Hopkins' love of the fizzy beverage is well documented). But it would end with
"We are both megastars appearing in Jonathan Demme films."

Being an international movie star and celebrity, I have decided I need new and better friends and everyone reading this is officially dead to me. World class superstars and bon vivants such as myself no longer require this "Face Book" and anyone worth knowing does not use such a contrivance. Friends, I have transcended to a higher plane of existence for I, me, the lovable rapscallion you all know and love, am a world class movie star, appearing in (probably should be credited as starring in...) a world famous movie from world class director, Jonathan Demme.

You see, I once worked for a little known publishing house called Simon & Schuster. They are a two bit operation, publishing nobodies like Stephen King (who??) and a series of books based on something called "Star Trek" (what??). I am much much more famous than the company, this so-called "King," and these Star Treks. I am a world class film star and acclaimed martial artist (can you prove that I am not?). While working at S&S (as the kids call it) I had the opportunity to aid in book signings with one notable former president named Jimmy Carter. Perhaps you've heard of him? He won the Nobel Peace Prize. He is also my best friend and movie star buddy.

World class director Jonathan Demme created a delightful little documentary about President Carter called "Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains." The film is a light-hearted romp telling the story of a senile former peanut farmer who goes around talking about stuff. I don't know, I haven't seen the whole thing, nor would I care enough to ever watch the entire film. But friends, this movie, THIS MASTERPIECE, marks my debut into the Hollywood scene! Yes, it came out last year and you have probably never heard of it (the hoi polloi never hear about the really important and good movies; how many movies nominated for Oscars did you see last year? that's what I thought...). But! I am actually the star of the film. They should have called it "Dan Mulhall: Man-God From Awesometown" because it would have been absolute gangbusters at the box office since I now have a legion of adoring fans.

This film, this opus, features my amazing talents ON THE SCREEN for a full 2 seconds. Please remember that movie star and ass kicking machine Jean Claude Van Dam got his big break from a 2 second role in some movie I am too lazy to look up. I can only assume my career will have a similar path and in no time I will be starring in "Universal Soldier: The Return, The Other Return Different From the Last One."

I highly recommend everyone run out and buy multiple copies of the film, and only watch from minute 26 to minute 27. This is the best part of the film and the only part that matters. The rest is boring and stupid, unless I am in it again which I might be, I don't know. Movie stars do not watch their own movies.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0913958/ Check it out.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Howie Mandel

I think it is excellent that Howie Mandel has reinvented himself from lame prop comic with surgical glove from the 80s to magical wish-granting genie who owns a confederation of briefcase wielding slaves. Bravo sir.

It Is Weird That Kenan is on SNL

You know, I am way late to this, but it is weird that Kenan is on Saturday Night Live. The star of All That, Kenan and Kel, Good Burger, and D2: The Mighty Ducks Return is a major cast member of the much revered SNL.

That's weird.

Especially because he seemingly has not aged a day since 1997. Watch an episode of Figure It Out from 2000, then watch tonight's SNL. No difference at all.

Watch that Kenan and Kel episode where they meet Coolio, which I will completely guess was from 1999. Then watch SNL. He hasn't aged a goddamn day.

I therefore posit that Kenan Thompson is some sort of all powerful immortal, and could very well be the Highlander. Never would have thought that when I saw him in a bathtub saying he wanted his toes licked by a marmoset in French, circa 1995.

What a world in which we live.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Venom: Carnage Unleashed

You know, I make it a point in general to not write in this blog. Mostly just to annoy Janelle, but largely I don't have anything of value to say to the world. And when I do, I'm lazy.

But today I have something very important to say. I stumbled upon a gem of a book at Strand the other day (Strand being the world famous used book store here in NYC). Like a glorious time capsule from 1996, there it stood, a steal for like $7 bucks... Venom: Carnage Unleashed!

This book has everything, EVERYTHING detestable and worthy of scorn from the mid-to-late 90's comic book derth, just before (possibly during) Marvel's big bankruptcy. Before all the good comics started coming out after X-Men and Spider-Man movies, this was the stuff that pushed the Marvel machine.

Venom: Carnage Unleashed! contains no less than 200 things that are awesome and cheesy and absolutely terrible in a way that makes you feel great. It is a story ludicrously tied in to the video game "Spider-Man: Maximum Carnage" that came out for Genesis and SNES in 1996 in an absurd meta-story where, in the Marvel Universe, Carnage sold the rights to his story to video game producers and the money made goes to the insane asylum that houses him.

A quick aside for the non-comic readers... Everyone knows Spider-Man, and Venom is pretty well known after Spider-Man 3 (though they fucked it up), but Carnage is basically the spawn of Venom. A monsterous alien attached to a ridiculously over-the-top serial killer resulting in a character that has no motive and simply exists to laugh like a maniac and kill. This is completely iconic of what was happening in mainstream superhero comics in the mid-90s. Nonsensical villains that exist simply to be villains. It bears noting that Carnage is my favorite villain ever, partially because I love Mark Bagley's design for the character and partially because of this over-the-top ridiculousness.

Anyway, this is nominally a Venom story and Venom's entire reason d'etre is "evil Spider-Man." But when the character took off in the late 80's/early 90's, Marvel decided to pimp him out in a billion books, all like this one, where he is suddenly a distubred anti-hero who is actually the good guy. He just happens to hate Spider-Man and eat brains sometimes. It's completely ridiculous in every way and the beginning of this story has Eddie Brock, the alter ego of Venom, riding on a bus. That's what you pay good money to see; villains in plain clothes riding the bus. He's sitting next to a character that is almost equally laughable as a non-character that Carnage is... green-haired punk girl! With a guitar!

And he actually tells her that his name is Freddy Block, which is shocking only because Larry Hama, the writer, would have the balls to write something so terrible. (Hama was notoriously prolific and terrible during this period of Marvel).

Even better are the scenes of Carnage - literally, a mass murdering villain of immense power, convicted of murdering dozens of people in cold blood - sitting in his prison cell PLAYING HIS OWN VIDEO GAME ON A COMPUTER THAT IS NETWORKED. I didn't even have a networked computer that could play a game like that in 1996, yet a murderer is allowed to have one in a maximum security mental institution. Sense was not the selling point for this book.

I stopped reading it when Carnage reached through the Internet with his symbiotic alien suit (yes, you are reading this correctly) to murder the CEO of the video game company, who, pages earlier had been cackling in his office about how much money he was making and how much more money he was going to make off of Carnage. His underling even says something to effect of "I love working for you because you are so evil."

Some people go to the bookstore and get like Shakespeare or Dostoevsky or the complete works of Walt Whitman. I bought this and I don't regret it for a second. It is terrible in every great way. And I have only read the first 15 pages.

Also, I started law school and stuff and blah blah blah...