A Random December Post

Alright! Back on the saddle.

– Yes, Jean-Claude Van Damme partnering up with Volvo is just the logical next step that we’ve all been waiting for. More importantly, I feel, is that its existence allows for this video from Channing Tatum. I think I want to hate this guy, but I cannot. Why is he not in a Fast & Furious movie yet?

– I saw this link on Reddit, titled “This advert is 1000x better if you imagine they’re all looking at your penis.” Normally most of the internet swill that is churned up by that site is garbage and not fit posting here (who am I kidding, pretty much every link I post nowadays is something I found there) but it turns out this is one pretty accurate, really. You might say “Whoa, what about the ugly British baby?”

To which I would say, “Especially because of the ugly British baby.”

– So it turns out the next big Marvel film franchise will be Ant-Man, directed by Edgar Wright, starring…Paul Rudd. Isn’t that a fine feather in his cap? I am now more excited about this comic book movie than any other. What’s crazy is that if you had told me Edgar Wright and Paul Rudd were doing a movie about a guy who has the ability to shrink to insect size in a movie NOT based on a comic book property, I would probably love it even more. Between him and Chris Pratt in Guardians of the Galaxy, seems like Marvel’s going for more of a comedy angle on their comic book movies instead of DC’s grim and…murdery vibe. To be honest, I am much more on board with the former. Man, with Paul Rudd on board as Hank Pym, the wife beating scenes are gonna be hilarious.

– Hey, there’s a new trailer for the next (last?) season of Community that’s been all like Hobbitified. Why? I don’t know. Seemingly just to continue to be an empty, parody of something, anything devoid of substance and entirely just for the sake of parody and nothing else. Woo, more self-referential references, increasingly gimmicky episodes, and Chang getting more and more insane. Business as usual? Or maybe it will be really good. I don’t even care, that’s the sad thing.

– In infinitely more interesting news, there’s finally a teaser trailer for Interstellar, the newest Christopher Nolan directorial joint…which I assume is like a movie adaptation of that montage they play before movies with the different versions of airplanes flying progressively higher and higher. Or not. I don’t even care, that’s the great thing. These days studios are so desperate for people to come out and watch stuff, they pack the trailers with all the good bits – the funniest jokes, best lines, major plot points, even the entire twist ending sometimes. You are presented with tiny two minute versions of movies, and then asked to return and pay like twenty bucks to rewatch a stretched-out, two hour version of it.

I like this teaser because I have no idea what it’s about. I’m sure I will be paradoxically disappointed and yet very excited when the full length non-teaser trailer comes out revealing everything, but I guess I will deal with that when the time comes. Or maybe I might purposefully avoid it still when it comes out. What the fuck do you care what the plot is anyway? CHRISTOPHER NOLAN, BBBBBRRRRRMMMMM

– Here is Between Two Ferns: Happy Holidays Edition. Because, why not?

– I think this commercial for Hot Pockets (hoooot pooooockets) is hilarious. But not because it’s actually funny, which I’m not quite sure it is. I mean yes, on paper, it’s pretty wacky. Putting Snoop Dogg (Lion?), Kate Upton, Lil’ Bow Wow, and YouTube celebrity (because that is a thing now) KevJumba, and some Jewish looking dude (that I think I should recognize but don’t) together sounds soooooo random n funny rite guyz!?! I mean…maybe? I think I am more amused at the fact that someone thought this was really funny more than the actual funniness of it. Song lyrics changed for comedy! Unsubtle wink winks about marijuana! (Haha, “baked!” Like he is high, I get it!) Hashtags! Randomness without substance for randomness’ sake! It’s a pu pu platter of pop culture, an ugly blend of processed filler barely solid enough to call meat thrown together without thought or purpose, wrapped in a greasy colourful shell, baked together in the heatless fire of a corporate forge.

Curses, if only I could think of an apt metaphor, I would be so clever right now.

Also…you couldn’t get Biz Markie himself to appear in this? I don’t think he’s that busy these days guys, you could have probably paid him in just Hot Pockets. If he was in this, I think I might have genuinely enjoyed it, instead of weirdly enjoying the incredibly transparent commercial sentiment behind it.

Let’s make a viral video guys. And they did. How easily is your attention bought? You are all intellectual whores, every single of you that laughed at this video and shared it with your friends, similar to exactly what I am doing now only completely different because I am aware of it and also because I am better than you JUST SHUT UP.

It’s so desperate. I think that’s what’s so funny about it to me. It’s the likely excessive amount of money Hot Pockets threw at this attempt to “go viral”…and how it succeeded, that is what is so delightful about it. The obstacle to social media relevance is so easily breached by money alone. (Imagine if breaching the barrier of faster than light travel was so easy. Someone should make a movie about that, and you know, the ability to travel between stars. Travel that is like…inter-solar? I don’t know the right word.)

I think I am incapable of enjoying anything without irony now. But if I am still amused at the end of the day, does it even really matter?

– Which isn’t to say that the old tried and trusted fundamentals can’t still work. The oldies still sound great, you just have to play them right. Yelling at people for no reason, white people talking like black people, black people talking like white people – the embracing of the new and weird does not preclude you from loving the old and familiar.

Oh my God, dude – McConaughey!?!