911 is a joke (but only when they get calls like this...)

stupidity of such an extreme must speak for itself...

Click here to find out what i'm talking about

Would you like some derision with your MSG?

so, anyone ever been insulted by a fortune cookie?! HUH?! NO?!

well, up until yesterday i would've said the same thing. but then my whole world changed. if i'm not mistaken, fortune cookie makers, you're supposed to say pseudo-wise things on fortunes that make people smile or even chuckle (or at least think) and then include some lottery numbers on the back and a delicious cookie contains this tiny piece of paper.

well, i got the following fortune in my cookie last night: "You have a slow and unhurried natural rhythm"

now, what the hell is that? could that possibly be construed as a compliment?!

however, i now have a politically correct, nice-sounding way of telling people "You are retarded!"

can't type...too busy cursing!

alright, now i'm pissed. this post won't be very long, simply because i know a few people read this blog that don't appreciate curse words. i assure you that if this was still back in the day, i would post a little more freely.

that said, i hope those CBS bastards get what's coming to them! clearly, CBS understands that NBC is going to kill them this year and is too scared to commit to decent shows in the face of slow audience response.

what am i ranting about? i'll tell you. the new show Smith, starring the fantastic actor Ray Liotta and his crew of thieves, started this season. really, CBS has 2, maybe 3 good shows including Smith. the plot was intriguing and multi-faceted. it was decent, thought provoking TV. well, now it's cancelled and i can barely contain my rage.

do you smell the bile CBS? it's racing up through my esophagus just so i can spew it at you!

dearly departed

so i saw the departed tonight.

not sure what to say...i left the theater confused. i'm still a little confused, sitting here 1 hour after the movie ended. this isn't typical scorsese.

thinking about it, this is possibly the best scorsese yet. it's also possibly not. but the performances that he gets from his actors are outstanding. i honestly felt that every one of the main actors in the movie give the best performance of each of their careers.

dicaprio is ridiculous in his performance as an undercover officer in the mob that's the best of its kind since johnny depp in donnie brasco. jack nicholson is the most hateful and hate-able mob boss i think i've ever seen. there is nothing sympathetic in nicolson's performance of the very psychotic frank costello. i've always believed in damon's potential, and he definitely doesn't dissapoint here. but i guess the most surprising performance for me was mark wahlberg. in past roles i almost always found his performance or on-screen personna as incredibly difficult to respect. but here i find that his performance finally lives up to the standard of acting set by his older brother's career (see band of brothers, the sixth sense, etc.).

scorsese proves again that he is the master of suspense. there are a lot of directors that can't hold suspense past 80, maybe 90 minutes. then it's almost like they run out of ideas. i didn't find, for 1 second of the 150 minutes of the departed, that scorsese was stretching things out artificially. scorsese's suspense lasts and develops very naturally until there is no more choice but for it to explode. and when it explodes, there is no chance of not getting hit by shrapnel. i found the scenes after the climax of the movie to be shocking. it was tense. almost too tense. i have to see the movie at least one more time to figure out whether i can buy it when it hits dvd. it's so much tension that once it broke i wasn't sure if i wanted to go through it again.

after seeing this movie, i arrived at the thought that everyone who sees will be faced with a decision, you're either pro or con. it took me a while to figure out whether i was pro or con. i think i've decided pro.

the review

well, once again i'm posting on "the rant", but not much in the way of a rant. the wife and i went to see the black eyed peas the other night. it was fun. thing is, we weren't gonna go, but then we discovered at the previous show we went to (see previous post) that our mariah carey tickets were each worth $25 off for tickets to the black eyed peas. well then we pretty much had to go.

I was pretty stoked about it, but not just because it was the black eyed peas. swollen members were opening the show...swollen members! only problem there is they were on stage for 30 minutes total. they didn't do the 1 song i hoped they would do, probably because 1 key member doesn't seem to be part of the group anymore, but they did 2 songs that i really like and didn't think they would do. but they know how to get people amped for BEP...that's key.

speaking of amped...
these guys put on a big show. not as big as mariah, but really big. it's a show. they have a lot of stuff goin on, a lot of break dancing, a lot of percussion demonstrations, and what i thought was really impressive was that they had something that each member of the group did on their own. they shared the stage with each other by letting each member show off their own stuff. apl.de.ap did some phillipino rap. that was tight. fergie, of course, did her new solo single. will.i.am did some stuff about winnipeg, it was great. nothing like it. worth every dollar we paid (our seats were really good too).

one thing that almost wrecked it was the retarded drunk in front of us who, clearly, wasn't there because he liked BEP or swollen members. he was fine until he started drinking, then he would sit there and try to impress the girl he was with by making fun of the big girl dancing in the seat in front of him. the great thing was no one was giving him any fuel...none of the people he was with or near were impressed by his stupidity.

but if there's one thing i've learned from both the busta rhymes/mariah carey and swollen members/bep shows, it's this: if i'm ever a performer and go on tour anywhere, the best way to get a crowed amped is to say the name of the town several times and to occasionally ask if that town is "in the house". it works like magic, every time!