It's a gas, gas, gas...

This week is really two rants shoved together....

I have had a lot on my mind recently, I am 26 years old. Yes, I know 26 is the new 22 3/4, but I am starting to feel like the best years of my life are behind me. I only have mind-crippling depression, more debt, and more illegitimate children to look forward to. So, I need to make a drastic life change. One so drastic that it will make my last 7 drastic life changes look like stupid ideas I gave up on the moment they became challenging. I know what you are saying to yourself 1) "does this guy ever proof read?" 2) "How is this different from the novel or the yearly movie blog?" 3)"penis." Well, fuck you. I’m going to get more involved with politics. My old age has made me care more about the proud country we live in.

We here at the Rant tried to keep our nose clean of politics. I can only think of one other instance I have ever written something political in a rant and to my delight it won an Emmy. (I'm still not sure how that happened) Right now our nation is fighting about Obama’s proposed Health Care Reform. I have health insurance. The best fucking health insurance this side of Canada and after seeing my life flash before my eyes in a horrific car accident I have decided I would like to live forever. If for some reason I couldn’t live forever I would atleastlike to live to be the oldest man in the world. My health insurance is fantastic, but they have not found a cure for death (yet). Now the way this ties into ObamaCare is with the proposed “death panels” so many people are riled up about. The Fox News has been all over this. I am a strong supporter of population reduction. Scientist Dr. Al Gore has proven that man is killing this planet. I don't see how anyone can go green and have children. By creating more people we are only killing our planet and ourselves. We need to drastically decrease our population so I am really excited that Obama has seen this and is doing something about it. By providing health care to the young and killing the old, President Obama has put the future ahead of the present or past.

Conservatives however do not like this plan at all. According to the GOP the murdering of the elderly should be left to drunk drivers and HMO’s. I honestly think everyone should be for these death panels, Dems and Republicans alike. It pains me to see the hostility at town hall meetings. Some people have even decided to bring guns to these protests. Personally, I'm not a gun nut. I have no problem with RESPONSNABLE people owning guns for protection, recreation, or robberies. I honestly feel anyone who would bring an Assault Rifle to a protest with hundreds of people around should not be allowed to have a gun. Yet this is what happened three fucking times. I understand why some would be slow to act on "killing" innocent people, but removal of these people would greatly improve the current situation of this country. People just need time to accept it; we didn't want to murder Muslims in 1999. If we go through with Obama Care the sky is the limit:

1. If we kill the old, the unemployment rate should fix itself. Old people and cripples don’t fucking work. Kill those worthless sacks of shit.

2. If we kill the old, lines at grocery stores will be faster. Cuz the few old people that do work won’t be hogging all the cushy jobs at Kroger’s and Wal-Mart.

3. Less Granny porn. I mean really that’s just gross. It needs to stop.

4. We can make it a sport. Who wouldn’t love to visit the Kill Old Folks camp just 30 minutes outside of Las Vegas. We can finally hunt natures most dangerous game, Man

5. No one will talk shit about how new things suck and the past was great. We can forget the past ever happened.

I mean really that’s just the shit I came up with at lunch. We need to support ObamaCare!

In other news...

I am a huge fan of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption. I think Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon are two of the funniest and smartest guys on television. During my recent 2-month house arrest I got to look at a lot of television. I mean A LOT more than any normal person should watch. (I watched 4 hours of Cash Cab a day.) PTI recently started doing a sort of look in during commercial breaks. After one or two commercials the camera would show in studio TK and Wilbon talking or writing or doing whatever they do during the break. I thought it was a fantastic idea. It lets the fans see more of the stars and feel semi included in the behind the scenes happenings of the popular TV show. Then I started to see this on many other TV shows and I began to piece it together. They fucking tricked me into watching commercials. It’s a brilliant trick. It’s even better than “Trivia Question to be answered after the break”.

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I am not a gun.

This week I destroy my already fragile mental state…

As I am sure all my readers know I am what they call "All That is Man". I'm pretty sure Adam looked exactly like me because God made Adam in his image and so forth. In the history of my legendary existence there have been a handful of times where my eyes have pissed all over my face (still in the most manly way possible). Some people (pussies) call this act crying and while I am tougher than most even I am not immune to the occasional emotion. Seeing as America is a countdownin' and rankin' lovin' society I am now going to list the five movies that have ever made me cry. The numbers have no value, but they look pretty don't they.

5. Terms of Endearment

Yes, I watched Terms of Endearment. Yes, it made me cry like a little bitch. I watched this movie a month after cancer took my father's life. It was on TV and nothing else was on so I watched it and preceded to relive the death of my father.

4. The Green Mile

SPOILERS I guess, but the killing of John Coffee made we cry the first time I was this film. It does a good job of making you enjoy a mentally challenged man and then see him die a meaningless painful death. Kudos Durabont you got me.

3. Wall-E

Sniff...I'm still crying actually....This movie is one of the best movies this decade and easily the best romantic comedy I have ever seen. TAKE THAT KATE HUDSON!

2. The Iron Giant

Two words, "Super...Man" (That's two words right?)

1. Field of Dreams

I don't really have to explain this one. My father's death in 2002 was the biggest emotional event of my adult life. Losing a parent is very hard, but losing your father as you truly become a man is even tougher. There is isn't a day that goes by that I don't miss him and I am glad Ray Consella got what so many of us wish we could have. Even if its only for one game of catch.

In other news…

I need to vent. 2009 has been the single worst year of my life. 2002, the previous king of awful, had very little competition, but with only six months 2009 has ruined me forever. For anyone that didn’t know, at 6:00 p.m. Sunday, May 31^st, 2009 I had a major car accident. In the small town of Clute, TX my 2006 Mitsubishi Lancer and a 2003 Ford Ranger had a head on collusion. For legal reasons that is all I will say about the accident. I will say that at 6:00 p.m., Sunday, May 31^st, 2009 whoever I was before that moment essentially died. I am not the same person. I process information differently. I may seem the same externally, but the world in my brain is not a place I like to live anymore. All of this hurts more because at 5:59 p.m., Sunday, May 31^st, 2009 I was happy, very happy. For the first time since my father died in 2002 I was in a good place emotionally. I was still manly as they come, just sad my dad wasn't around to see how awesome I was. I had a well paying job, a moderate number of friends, a girl who let me touch her, all three major video game consoles, and damn near every episode of MST3K on my computer. I was doing better than Bernie Madoff circa 2007. Like all good things, however it ended quickly and without warning. I now have limited use of my left arm and wrist. I have severe pain in both ankles. I have medical bills that make my student loans look reasonable. I wish none of this ever happened to me, but we don’t get to pick and choose the bad shit that happens to us. A wise man once said,” I don’t want to go through life without any scars.” Well he didn’t get a look at my left hand. Fucker.

I’m glad no one reads my blog because this was hard for me to write. Its one thing to talk about it when asked, but writing it alone makes me relive everything that happened to me after 6:00 p.m. Sunday, May 31^st, 2009. It was the toughest and most painful thing I have endured in my adult life. I’m not writing this for anyone to read and feel sorry for me. (If you do feel sorry for me please send any and all donations to: “One Armed” Joe Sterling/ 615 Texas Ave./Houston, TX 77002) This post is for me May 31^st, 2010. I really hope you’re doing better, you large rock of a man.

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Next week: We talk about HOT MEGAN FOX NUDE PICS in another shameless attempt at more readers….

Joe’s Chick Flix 2: Two Week’s Notice

This is the second movie review I did.  Like the others its a complete rip off of Nathan Rabin only really shitty...

Originally Posted 2/1/08

2002 was a very busy year for Sandra Bullock. After finding a surprise hit in 2000 with Miss Congeniality (Ms. Jackson if you're forced reference) Bullock made a Jude Law-esq three films in 2002 (none with Mr. Law however). Her first film of 2002 was the shocking emotional thriller Murd3r by Numbers. A film so shocking and relevant it reverted to l33t in the title. Not since The Net has a Bullock movie been so in touch with today's internet savvy world. Her next film was the heart warming gem The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sister Hood. A movie so good it decided to go with the backup title. Neither film was the success that Miss Congeniality had been, so for her third movie that year she re-teamed with the writer and director of Miss Congeniality, Marc Lawrence for Two Weeks Notice. A romantic comedy produced by Bullock starring herself and Hugh Grant. Of her three movies in 2002 Two Weeks Notice had the worst title; the correct grammar is Two Week's Notice. (I learned this from the internets because I am no one to judge grammar.) In spite of its title,however,  Two Weeks Notice was her most successful film of the year, grossing as much as her last 2 movies combined in theatres. While researching the movie I learned a weird fact about it. The film was one of the first movies filmed in New York City after the attacks of September 11th. The success of Two Weeks Notice is actually credited with helping the cities economy rebound after the attacks and December 11, 2002 was actually named "Two Weeks Notice Day" by the mayor. You see Guliani had nothing to do with helping rebound NYC after the attacks and Sandra Bullock should have run for president. If only she would have made a movie in New Orleans post Katrina.



Two Weeks Notice is an interesting film. When I started out doing this I figured it would be 52 weeks of me bashing these movies to shit. What would happen if one of these movies was actually good? Well half way into my second week I was ALMOST faced with this dilemma. We are introduced to Lucy Kelson (Bullock) at the open of the movie. Lucy is protesting hippy and is currently protesting the destruction of a building. Lucy is a lawyer/activist who went to Harvard and got a law degree so she could lay in the street to protect condemned buildings. She has a boyfriend who is over seas with Green Peace and never comes home to visit her. The stress of fighting losing causes and a boyfriend she never sees causes her to over eat, and the movie LOVES this fact. It even calls back to it every 15 minutes. If anything makes her nervous she binges on food (thankfully all off screen). It seems that every building Lucy is trying to save in New York is being destroyed by a company run by George Wade (Grant).

George Wade is a rich British man who was raised in America (according to photos shown during the opening credits) and has a very British accent. I will assume George was raised in the Wee Britain area of Manhattan (be sure to look out for the Poppins). He is the face of the company while his, also British, brother really runs the business and bosses George around from behind the scenes. When we meet George he is summoned by his brother in the middle of a party. His brother tells him that he needs to hire a new lawyer and one with an Ivy League education. Luckily, on the street he is approached by Lucy who makes him an offer. If he promises not to destroy a community center, that she went loved as a child, Lucy will get him a lucrative land deal in Coney Island across the street. After learning she is a Harvard grad George offers her the lawyer job with the promise he won't destroy her community center. We have a plot!

The movie then has a flash-forward to one year later. After working for George for a year Lucy has grown tired of his neediness. George is a rich man who can't make decisions for himself and almost every decision in his life is made by Lucy. He calls her at 3 am just to ask her what pants he should wear. It is after a call forcing her to leave a wedding that Lucy decides to quit her job and go back to being a hippy activist. The first half of the movie the not bad at all, it's surprisingly good. The two characters are interesting and for the first 45 minutes it's not about them being in love with each other at all. It's the opposite of last weeks How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. That movie was a collection of unfunny skits with two mediocre actors playing two shitty characters. This movie actually attempts to let us know how these characters need each other without treating the viewer like an idiot.

Then the second half of the movie starts and it feels like insert cliché here from then on. Lucy has given her two week's notice (WE HAVE A TITLE!) and she now has to find a replacement for her. Alicia Witt is introduced as attractive young attorney looking for a job. George hires her just by looking at her and so begins the Lucy is jealous of the attractive redhead part of the movie. Lucy has quit her job because she was sick of George and now she hates that George is getting close to her replacement. In the year she has worked for George, Lucy had a boyfriend and when they break up she drunkenly tries to sleep with George. It's a good thing she had already quit. George does not sleep with her and actually frees her from an awkward situation by joking off the fact she made a move on him. Lucy clearly has feelings for him, but she never says anything to him when she is sober. She instead plays the jealous woman who hates the younger woman because the younger woman is moving in on the guy she likes, but she has never told the guy she loves him. The movie gets as stupid as that sentence. The jealousy plot goes on for the entire last half of the movie leading to a collection of skits where Witt and Bullock butt heads in tennis matches and a horrible scene about a company stapler. It is on Lucy's very last day George is told by his brother that the company has no choice, but to tear down the community center that George promised to save. This event makes everything in the movie George's fault, because he now has to break his promise to Lucy.

The movie closes with a predicable wrap up. George chooses not to give in to his brother and quits his job for Lucy. He then goes to her new job to tell her what he has done and to ask her for forgiveness, because the man is always wrong. He finally confesses to her he loves her and the movie ends with a kiss. It was really touching and I cried on the inside. I am only two movies in and I have noticed a pattern in these types of movies. Women love to be apologized to and told they are loved in front of strangers and/or coworkers. Women want to be swept off their feet either at work or before they are leaving the city/country forever. I think I am going to go to the airport next week and tell every woman I see that I am sorry and love her.

The movie had a chance of being good, but it bailed out and became just another chick flick.

Better than How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days: Yes.

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Next week I spend another evening with Sandra Bullock in The Lake House…

Pray for me.

SUPER HOT MEGAN FOX PHOTO!

This week I sell out for free...

In a blatant attempt to get traffic to my blog I am now posting a random picture of Megan Fox:

So there you have it.  I'll be back tomorrow with a repost of another chick flick review and if you're lucky another picture of Megan Fox.

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Joe’s Chick Flix 1: How to Lose a Joe in 10 min...

This was the very first movie review I ever wrote.  It was suppose to be the start of my 52 entry saga, Joe's Chick Flix.  Laziness always prevails...

Originally Published 1/25/2008

Okay, so about 3 years ago I came up with the idea for my first novel.  Just like my life and everything I do it was a complete joke. My first novel was the touching story of a boy who loses his little brother in the mall and has 5 hours to find him before said mall closes. In these 5 hours he finds love with his nerdy best friend who he had never noticed was in love with him, fights a monster of some kind, and falls into a time vortex. It was a mystery romance with a sci-fi twist, everything a teenage girl would look for in literature. The title for this amazing novel was, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. I chose this title because I thought it was clever and just seeing the trailers for the movie of the same name made me laugh. No, I didn't laugh at the trailer because I thought it was funny (I DIDN'T! You believe me right?!), but because I thought the title was fucking terrible. I mean Breakin' 2: Electric Bugaloo, terrible. So, because it was already worthy of being the title of my first novel I chose How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (Yes, I will write the entire title every time) as the first movie in my groundbreaking expose on chick flicks. Having never seen it, no other movie could possible be first in my year long odyssey. In preparing for this review I did some research on the film, I didn't want to just bash the movie for a couple of paragraphs. I wanted to understand why it existed and why I wanted the people responsible for it dead. There was something I didn't know about this movie, something that turned my world upside down and then shook it a little. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days was the film adaptation of a book called, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. That's right, not only had my first novel been written and published, but it had already been made into a movie. Before I had a chance to call my lawyers I decided to find out more about this book. You see the book version of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is a cartoon how-to book made to make people laugh (something the movie makes poor attempts to do). I know its cliché, but the book is almost always better and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is no exception to this.

Before I get into my review of the movie let me just say that writing about chick flicks every week will be 100 times harder than I thought it would be:

1) Some of these movies will be fucking terrible and very hard to watch with out some MST3K treatment and that's hard to do when you're alone in your room with your pants down.

2) I have given up drinking for the next month so at least the first four entries in Joe's Chick Flicks (working title) will be seen by me sober. I was on vacation last week and I proceeded to get drunk for 6 straight days. No more drinking, unless these movies drive me back. I have a bottle of scotch just in case shit happens.

3) Buying these movies was an awful idea and I should shoot myself for entertaining the idea of it ever in my life. I don't even care about the embarrassment of being seen buying it or it being seen in my DVD collection (I own Joe vs. the Volcano proudly). It's the spending more than $4 for How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days I can't stand. I mean I can watch it on USA for free any day of the week. So no promises on me buying all of these movies, it only matters if I watch them and dear God did I watch How to Lose Guy in 10 Days.




How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is about a woman named Andy Anderson (Kate Hudson). She works for a Cosmo like magazine named Composure. She writes a monthly How-To column which ranges from the interesting topics How to Get a Better Body in 5 days to even the more interesting topic like How to Talk Your Way Out of a Ticket. For some reason she doesn't enjoy writing these types of stories and would like to write stories that matter on a global scale. Helping women get out of speeding tickets by using their breast isn't fulfilling I guess. She has a friend/co worker, whose name I refused to remember, that has just broken up with a guy after a week. She is a clingy cry-baby succubus of a woman that deserved anything bad that has ever happened to her in life. This woman leads to Andy getting the idea and being forced into writing a column on How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (we have a title!).

Meanwhile, there is ad executive, Benjamin Barry, played by Matthew McConaughey. We are introduced to Ben as he rides into traffic on his motor cycle wearing a black leather jacket and a black helmet. He is all that is man. Six minutes into the movie and less than 3 lines into his character McConaughey's shirt is off. I'm pretty sure that this is what the women who paid to see this movie wanted and I think it was foolish to put it in so early in the movie. Ben is a young shirtless go-getter and for some reason the only way he can land an advertising contract is by tricking a woman to fall in love with him before the a big office party that happens in, you guessed it, 10 days. Other characters appear in the movie, but only to force these two people together. Adam Goldberg is in the movie, but I would like to erase that from my memory because I like Adam Goldberg and I enjoy him in movies. Then there is the woman who is competing with Ben for the same job (played by Michael Michelle). She knows of Andy's story about losing a guy in 10 days and she manipulates it so Ben has to make Andy fall in love with him in 10 days. Andy and Ben meet each other and for some reason they have a conversation only using verbs that only gave me a headache and the movie was only 20 minutes in. After this conversation they have an amazing date that starts an awful chain reaction that is the plot of this film. The next 10 days are the most ridiculous 10 days of dating I have ever seen.  

Each day is essentially a new skit for Kate Hudson to try and be as funny as her mother was in the 80's. Looking like Goldie Hawn can only get you so far and from this movie it looks like it isn't really that far. She takes him to game 1 of the NBA Finals. The New York Knicks vs. the Sacramento Kings and game 1 is in New York. There are at least 30 things wrong with this game. During the last minute of the game Andy makes Ben miss the final shot pf the game by insisting that he buy her a soda. Thus begins the chess game that is How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Andy tries to make him dump her and Ben tries to make her fall in love with him. The next day Andy makes Ben go to see Sleepless in Seattle and gets him beaten up. The third day she moves in all her stuff and starts to give his penis girly nicknames. I'd feel sorry for the guy, but I don't give a shit. The movie would be watchable if it had a different plot and a different cast. Hudson and McConaughey play two characters you care nothing about. Most of the movie you are suppose to feel sorry for Ben for having to deal with this shitty, shitty woman, but he is equally shitty. It's not that they will end up together (they will); anyone who sees this movie knows that before they watch it. It's not even about the ridiculousness of the plot. Any movie you see has a bit of absurdity to it and nitpicking the coincidences that led to their dating is pointless. Most romantic comedies feature one person who is in the relashionship for love and another person who is in it for the wrong reason or they never notice the great thing they had in front of them the entire time. In the end the person who was in the relationship for the wrong reason realizes they love the other person and chases them because the other person is worth it. This movie chooses to take the dirt bags from other chick flicks and forces them to fall in love.

By the third act both characters have really fallen in love with the other and now it is time for each to find out the horrible truth about the other. This happens at the big office party were Ben wins his bet and gets the job. For some reason the movie decided to have a musical number here and the two characters belittle each other while singing. They argue and go their separate ways. Ben starts his new job and Andy quits hers, but not before she writes he article about her time with Ben and about how she really found love in her stupid attempt to lose a guy. Ben reads it and decides that he must go and get back the woman he dated for 10 days that lied to him pretty much the entire time. He loves her dammit! Ben runs to her office, but she is no longer there. She is moving to Washington for a better job! That's right with 10 minutes to go in the movie he has to go stop the woman he loves form leaving him forever. This is the first chick flick I have chosen to watch and review and I am already sick of this plot device. (It's going to be a LONG year) I'd tell you if he stops her, but I would just be wasting more of my own time.

Honestly, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. At no point did I laugh, but I didn't fall asleep and honestly that's a victory for this movie. The movie also taught me a lot about life. If you are in a relationship and both of you are lying, no matter who has lied the most it's up to the man to apologize because he is wrong. If you're gay, you're both wrong. If you're a lesbian you're both right and you better go find a new girlfriend.

Since this is the very first movie I will not give it a rating. It will be the bar for which all other chick flicks I review will be judged. So I'll be back next week with Two Weeks Notice and maybe a beer of seven.

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Everybody Funny, Now You Funny Too...

Well, it would appear the last comeback attempt was the shortest.  If you are one of the 3 people to read this blog then you know this is my 11th comeback.  This time I'm not going to to lie to you and say you're going to see alot of updates.  I'm probably gonna move the movie reviews to this blog then write some new shit about the car accident I was in.  Alots changed since I last wrote this blog. Google owns this here blog, i bought an Xbox 360 and it broke after a year of me owning it (I didn't even listen to my own advice) and a black man is president.

Also I'm lame now and I have a twitter.  I'm thinking about taking up rollerblading...

DUKE, OUT!

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