I've always been a big fan of the movies. I usually catch the flicks over at the local Hollywood Googolplex over on the Loop, where I'm greeted with "Here's your ticket stub, an aerial map of the building, and some bread crumbs...good luck, and Godspeed."
So before I take off on my Martin & Lewis & Clark expedition, I always try and stop for refreshments before I go into the theater, so I don't risk winding up in somebody's lap while making a Milk Dud run. "Excuse me...pardon me...I need through...sorry...excuse me...could you move your clown-sized feet, ma'am...thank you...sorry..pardon me."
I always like to check out the concession stand, look into the interest rate on a bag of popcorn and a coke. You know, a lot of places have gone to giving out free refills on their large popcorns and drinks. This is a promotion that totally escapes me. Unless you're going to include a bedpan and a catheter, a theater-sized large is too much fluid for one human being anyway, unless that being is seven foot tall and weighs three hundred pounds. And just for future reference, when that guy checks into the theater, I'm always the guy sitting behind him.
A beverage with a diving board is not meant for one person, even with a silo of popcorn on the side. Now if I'm taking the Von Trapp family to a matinee, maybe then I shell out the big bucks for the bottomless beverage. Until then, leave the Eternal-Super-Big-Gulp Cup behind the counter, where you can soak your mop in it.
Once I have the beverage and snack of choice, I hustle into the theater to find a nice seat. I find if you get there early enough, you can get a great seat up until the movie starts. That's when some big fat obnoxious family dressed like they're camping out at Talladega invariably comes in and plops down right next to you, with no respect for the "one-seat neutral zone" rule. Remember kids, if you don't camp out on that armrest and establish a precedent early, you could be stuck hanging out one side of the seat like a drunken fratboy.
Some theaters have gone to stadium seating, where the seating is angled to make sure everybody can see. I applaud this idea. However, this does nothing to shut the people in front of you up, does it? For future reference, we don't care if someone on the screen reminds you of your cousin Lester in Logansport, I've just spent a week's pay on this blockbuster, and you can't follow the flick if you miss the dialogue between the explosions.
Of course, seeing a lot of movies means that I see a lot of what Hollywood think people want to see. I think men and women are obviously very different in many ways, the theater is a perfect little example of the miniature Bosnia-Hertzogovina that the different sexes fire mortars into every day.
Women's favorite movies? Gone With the Wind, Titanic, Pretty Woman, The Bridges of Madison County.
Guys' favorite movies? The Godfather, Braveheart, Star Wars, anything with Clint Eastwood except the Bridges Of Madison County.
Notice a trend? Women have to have somebody fall in love. Guys have to have somebody killed.
What do women want from their movies? Just like with life, I have no idea. They seem to have a pretty sharp double-edged sword they watch flicks with. Julia Roberts is okay as a hooker in Pretty Women, but men aren't really encouraged to suggest prostitute films on the first date.
What do men want from the movies? I think it's a simple formula, really.
To begin with, you need a gunfight car-chase ending in explosions before the opening credits have rolled.
A fight between two normal looking guys who somehow both turn out to be special ops black belt martial arts masters.
A disposable sidekick who gets killed by the bad guy in the first half of the movie to make our hero really, really, violently, emotionally, briefly angry.
Good guys who can shoot better than John Wayne, and bad guys that shoot worse than Charles Nelson Reilly.
A heroine in trouble, who doesn't like our hero, but will sleep with him anyway.
And finally, heroes that are cool, but not threatening. Guys like to see Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Robert Redford...old guys, basically.
We don't want to see Jude Law or Heath Ledger in our movies. Those guys are young enough to get their own girls.
Just a quick acknolwedgement and thanks to buddy Whit Watson, the main man at Sun Sports Network in Florida, for mentioning the Fistful of Sports in his weekly column. While writing about a column in Sports Illustrated, Whit uses the Fistful as an example of sports blogs, with the ready-made pull quote "Fistful of Sports, composed by Reid Kerr, unfailingly funny".
Gracias, Whit! For my readers, Whit's columns are available here. He's just as funny, and a whole lot more informative.
Debra LaFave, the Florida teacher who got in trouble for boinking a fifteen year-old student, has gotten off. Of course, so did her boyfriend, but for him it only took about 90 seconds.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Anyway, LaFave had the charges dropped, and then stepped headlong into blaming the media and talking about God's plans for her life. She blamed her behavior on her bipolar status, and challenged the media and the rest of us, the little people, the peons, the schmucks, to "read a book or an article on mental illness."
Okay, I think I've had enough. The day I get chastised by a low-rent Jennie Garth who can't even wait until three when school is over to cheat on her husband is the day I relent my obligations, and let Toby Keith lead us all into war.
Deb? Hon? Look, I really don't care what you did. Growing up, one of my favorite movies was "My Tutor." I wish guys everywhere had teachers like you, decently attractive women with absolutely no self-esteem who owned a cool car. But you've gone too far.
Understand this. Nobody has to care if you're crazy. It doesn't matter what you say you are, bipolar, depression, mood swings, Asperger's, erectile dysfunction, uncontrollable falling down syndrome, Beatlemania, Dutch Elm disease, nobody cares. The cause of despicable actions is irrelevant to anybody except psychiatrists, therapists, and other people who can get away with wearing bow-ties.
Why you did it, no one will ever care about. It was weird, and illegal, and you have the misfortune of being a blonde woman in her mid-twenties who got caught in a sex crime on a slow news day. The only way the story could have been bigger would be if you went to Aruba and turned up missing after sleeping with the kid and blowing the President.
Don't blame this on being bipolar. Van Gogh was bipolar, and he painted "Starry Night". You were bipolar, and you gave a high school freshman a hand job while you let one of his friends drive you around.
It's all in what you do with your disability, Deb.
I've got a site counter on Reid About It here that tells you not only how many people visit the site, but how they are referred to it. I'm always intrigued by the way people find my page.
From Ontario, Canada: "celebrity sex tape" -- Nope. I'm apparently the only person left who doesn't have a sex tape, or a Scientology membership.
From Skipwith, York: "rocky six plot" -- Let's see if I can help you, Skippy. Rocky overcomes incredible odds to beat up a guy a third of his age.
From AOL: "weird chuck norris worship" -- Yeah, I'm confused by this fad too. Chuck Norris is the new Kevin Bacon. Of course, Julie Tam is the new Chuck Norris.
From Germany: "Bryan Adams", and from Bulgaria: "dancing when the stars goes blue brian adams" -- Apparently as Chuck Norris is to America, Bryan Adams is to Europe. Perhaps he's the new Hasselhoff.
From Sunnyside, New York: "Neil Diamond mash" -- No. The only thing that would make Neil Diamond songs funnier to listen to would be adding Jay-Z and Linkin Park to them.
From Princeton, New Jersey: "I rule" -- Well, I do. Really though, I think you were just looking for the quote from American Beauty.
From East Dunbartonshire, UK: "reid kerr battle of the bands 2006" -- Nah, my band, the Caucasian Boys, doesn't engage in battles of the bands unless wit and sarcasm are approved weapons. And by the way "East Dunbartonshire"? That sounds like the name of a place I'd make up, doesn't it?
From the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- No search term here, I'd like to admit it just makes me nervous.
I enjoy seeing where my traffic comes from, several of my friends have linked me from their sites. I appreciate that, everytime I get a visitor, I like to go leave a comment at the site that referred them, so please keep up the good work.
Of course, if I wanted more traffic I could just make a single post that says "sex boobs angelina jolie naked" and triple my visits, but that would be unlike me. Unless I could get a cheap joke out of it, as above.
Britney Spears was walking around barefoot in a parking lot, and stepped on a hypodermic needle. The singer was understandably shaken.
"My gosh, ya'll! I was coming out of the Stuckey's bathroom, and look at this big ol' needle stuck in mah foot!"
Yeah, a little advice, Brit. At this point in your career, you can afford shoes. Wear them. In ten years, you'll be barefoot for a different reason. Enjoy the freedom to stay warm and clothed while you can.
You just know when she turns up with Hepatitis, she'll blame it on that needle and not on her husband, professional baby-daddy K-Fed, yo.
He did come to the hospital to see her, and brought her flowers purchased with Britney's credit cards. If he had used his own bankroll from his burgeoning rap career, he would have had to bring her a bouquet of parsley swiped off plates from the restaurant where he'd bus tables to make ends meet.
In a remarkable display of quiet panic, Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt recommended that Americans start storing canned tuna and powdered milk under their beds as the prospect of a deadly bird flu outbreak approaches the United States.
Wonderful. Way to plan ahead, guys. Now I have to move all of the duct tape and plastic sheeting out from under my bed, and put in a little pantry for the tuna and milk. And why tuna and milk? It sounds like Leavitt has just invested his pension in Tuna Helper, and wants to make a couple quick bucks off germophobic panic. Either that, or once society falls to the Bird Flu, we'll use our well-hidden bounty to trap cats to eat.
Is that it? In the New World Order, will we use cats as currency? Life will be centered around the kitty, apparently. Will the ruling class elite be the people who had the forethought to invest in catnip and chew toys, and who can afford to pay a hundred Calicos for a new automobile?
What else? Why not tell us all to stock pile potted meat and rice, and keep it in our pillows? Get as much spam as you can, and put it with refried beans, and bury it in a tupperware container in your back yard.
As for me, I'll have a good time with all of the pickled pigs feet and canned lemonade powder I've been storing under my refrigerator for just such an emergency.
Okay, this is even stranger than normal. Apparently in Japan, people are organizing internet suicide pacts, and killing themselves with people they've never met in real life.
Please, people. For the love of freshness, would you please just turn off the damn computer and go outside for once? I love the internet, and I've met some really cool people on it. But come on, we've gone from bulletin boards to chat rooms to instant messages to cybersex to online marriages to internet suicide groups.
B: "Hi, are you StaciQ5688? I'm BigJon82, nice to meet you." J: "Thanks, you too." B: "You really look nice. Your internet pictures don't do you justice." J: "Very sweet of you to say, but I'm still going to kill myself in a few minutes." B: "We can't even make out?" J: "No, I just took a hundred sleeping pills and my breath is kind of funky." B: "Oh. Well, crap. I guess I'll go ahead and kill myself too, then."
At some point, you actually have to go outside and catch a cab to where the people are, don't you? I'd like to think the people I'll wind up killing myself with will be old friends, and not just people I met on my "Dancing With The Stars" chat page.
And do you go to the chatroom with the express desire to find somebody to kill yourself with? Or do you just go for conversation, and wind up being so bored with it that you decide then to end it all? You know, based on some of the conversations I've had on the internet with Beevis and/or Butthead, I can see that.
B: So what's everybody think about the new Radiohead album? MorbidAngle6969: show ur boobs TexDog5440: Anybody here from Texas? DeezNutz96: u suck!!!! B: Screw it. Anybody else feel like killing themselves? KristinJ: Right here. BobCharls74: Where can we meet?
Remember kids, people don't kill people. The internet kills people.
The news today says that three college students in Alabama may have been drinking when they set fire to nine rural churches last week. Well, good grief, I hope so! When I hear about three dirtballs in Ala-freakin'-Bama burning down black churches, I'm going to assume that alcohol was involved, because only something like alcohol could give teenage Alabama crackers the feeling that they were superior enough to anybody else to take up arms.
R: "Hey, Skeeter...is that a black UMC Church over there?" S: "Ralph-Bob, you know I can't read. Pass me that Natural Light. Let's go down to the Super Wal-Mart and get some Skoal and gas cans, and take care of them people who's dumber than us. I'm gonna make me a Molotov cocktail with a Coors bottle and the sleeves out of my 'Rest In Peace Dale' t-shirt."
And I really can't understand the rationale behind church burning. Even if you do hate another race, if you believe in God, don't you think that at some point your favorite diety is going to be pissed about it? I mean, the pictures of God in black churches are pretty much the same as they are in white churches.
And if you don't believe in God, why would you burn down a church? Wouldn't it be funnier to you to just watch this race you hate spend their lives worshipping something that's not there? Isn't it funnier, and safer, rather than to burn the church down, just to drive by Sundays at eleven and laugh your head off at them for wasting their time?
Top Ten Reasons I, Reid Kerr, Rule 10) Shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. 9) Bad handwriting on college application led to an accidental minor in "Methmatics", thus leading to my haggard appearance. 8) I share a birthday with Bobcat Goldthwait. 7) I can clearly remember David Letterman's guest appearance on "Mork And Mindy". 6) Slept with Eddie Money's girlfriend on a bar bet. 5) I can identify which "Friday the 13th" movie I'm watching within 10 seconds of tuning into it. 4) I actually know Julie Tam.com, of JulieTam.com fame. 3) I live my life with equal doses of the four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, and the seven words you can't say on television. 2) I like to call myself a nihilist, not because I truly am one, but because people don't know what that is. 1) I can identify any song from the 80s by less than a second's sound cut from it. It's a gift.
A new video relased shows musicians Kid Rock and Scott Stapp engaged in after-concert relations with strippers. Suffice it to say that this is no longer much of a big deal, other than the weird combination of the two names. Unless Ludacris does a sex tape with Adam Ant, I doubt we'll see a stranger combination of video tag team partners.
Kid Rock does not care, and you have to at least appreciate that. Everyone who's ever been around musicians know that they're not in it for the long hours, bus rides, and lack of benefits. Into everyone's life a little stripper-action must fall.
Honestly, this is a wonderful thing for Kid Rock. He not only has a new album coming out, but now has a video to go along with it that shows him drunk with four strippers in his trailer. So far, I haven't seen anything that is out of the ordinary for Kid Rock. Let's remember here that it's not a big deal to him. He was engaged to Pamela Anderson, who by my count has been having sex for at least 18 years, and has every single one of those encounters filmed and available for sale.
And now, for Scott Stapp...dude, I don't know how to break it to you, but you can start a fight at a concert, or get drunk and try and get on a plane, or show your peeper to somebody else's strippers all you want to, but nobody cares. You were the oiled up, shirtless singer for the most correctly-maligned, God-awfully pompous band in recent memory. You married a chick that works at your fan club, and were about to embark on a club tour.
You know who embarks on club tours? Failed singers of bands that used to be popular. Enjoy your big shindig tour with David Lee Roth, Vince Neil, Don Dokken, and Hootie.
Seems like a fitting punishment for taking rock and roll to a higher, more pretentious level, Scotty. Rock music and overblown Christianity go together like country music and sobriety. You're already setting up a club tour, and getting second-hand head from trailer-strippers who came to see Kid Rock. Enjoy your time on Celebrity Fit Club.
Addendum: The woman in the video is now suing Scott Stapp for letting the video get out. Let's think about that for a minute. A stripper, who willingly came with three other women to a trailer to have nasty carny sex with Kid Rock, is getting legal counsel to prevent anyone seeing an encounter she had with Stapp. Scotty, it's just not getting any better for you and your newlywed life.
Surely by now, everyone on the planet has seen the story of the autistic basketball player who hit for 20 points in five minutes. It's a great story, one that appeals to everybody even if they're not sports fans. I see what everybody is interested about, but I see that story and you know what I wonder?
What was it like for the guy who was covering him?
How about the coach on the other side, what was he thinking? I've known a lot of coaches, and I doubt that many coaches have the necessary sensitivity to handle that situation.
"Time out! Time out! Alright guys, get over here. Grab a drink...okay, I've just got to ask. Who's covering the retarded kid? You know, the autistic guy? The guy who started the game as a freakin' manager? Is that you, Danny? Good work out there. In case you can't find him, he's the one with a learning disability who shoots the ball every time it touches his fingertips. Yeah, him. The one over there getting water for the other players during the timeout."
"Dammit, Danny...we're going to be on SportsCenter for the rest of our lives, boy. Why can't you cover the guy? Every eye in the place is watching him, and they're watching him drain three pointers over you."
"(pulls Danny close and whispers) Now, listen son. I wouldn't do this, but we're getting our asses kicked out there. He gets the ball, you yell at him. Scream his name. Bark at him. Whatever it takes. You grab a freakin' camera from the crowd and set the flash off at him if you have to. You've been working out for this game all of your life, and you're getting schooled by a guy with rudimentary social skills. Step up, son! Get a hand in his face!"
"We're 10-11 this year, and I'm not going to lose my job because my finely-trained boys couldn't cover a kid with a learning disorder who's never played the game. You got me, Danny? You distract that guy, or I'll have you running drills every afternoon for the rest of your life."
It's gone too far. I saw a guy at my grocery store cleaning the glass doors in the frozen foods section while wearing one of those BlueTooth Ear Phones. You know, in case somebody needed to urgently reach him while he was squeegeing the front of the lasagna case. Remember back when everybody in the world wasn't always available, and we were just able to make do without being in constant contact with everyone from the President right down to grocery store support staff?
"Brokeback Mountain" will be the biggest renter ever for Netflix. Once that movie gets to a point where uptight white males can see it without being seen watching it, it'll be even bigger.
I enjoy the band The Killers, but that "Mr. Brightside" song is so thematically similar to "Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee," that Jesus should be asking them for points on the record.
The McDonald's double cheeseburger is 99 cents. The McDonald's single cheeseburger in 95 cents. That doesn't really make me feel comfortable. Although now, I'll admit, when I want a cheeseburger, I'll go ahead and splurge and get the whole 5 cents more of meat. I'm worth it.
By the way, while the single cheeseburger is 95 cents, the regular hamburger is 85 cents. This means it costs McDonald's half as much to make a piece of meat as it does a piece of cheese. Just a little something to think over.
