Untertainment Weakly (12-02-11)

By Jake

Louis C.K. will be returning to “Parks & Recreation.”


In other “Parks & Recreation” news, Kathryn Hahn, of the recently cancelled “Free Agents,” is joining the cast for a story arc.


Brent McKenzie says that there may be a “Flight of the Conchords” movie.


“Community” won the “TV Guide” readers’ poll and will be/is on the cover.  They also got a small ratings bump on last night's episode.


Bryan Singer (the first two “X-Men” movies) will direct “The Munsters” reboot pilot.  And this show is going to be a one-hour drama instead of a sitcom.  Seriously?  Fuck you NBC.


Patrice O’Neal died from complications from a stroke.  He was a comedian and wrote for WWE for two years.


Fox released its midseason schedule.  “Bob’s Burgers” doesn’t premiere until March 11th, with a full season order.  Also, for some reason there’s a “Napolean Dynamite” cartoon.


Other Thoughts
Well, no new films opened this weekend.  This is the first weekend since I started writing this article that this has happened.  What am I supposed to do now?  I guess I could remind you not to see “Jack & Jill,” but I doubt you have or will.  I could urge you to see “The Muppets,” because it was really fun and is the best reviewed movie of 2011.  Or, I could do this:


Top 10 Worst Movies I Have Ever Seen
10. “Jocks (1987)” - Now, I don’t remember watching this film, but this line in the review I wrote of it tells me that it belongs on this list: “One of the keywords on IMDB is "kicked in the crotch," and that's exactly what it felt like when I watched this piece of shit.”

9. “Robocop 3” - From my review, which I live blogged to Twitter as I watched: “As crazy as it might sound, I think Robocop just converted to Christianity. #robocop3”

8. "Paranormal Activity" - If I wanted to watch people sleep for an hour and a half, I would head over to the YMCA.  Boring film.

7. "Robot Ninja" - The Robot Ninja is not a robot or a ninja, it's just a dude who doesn't know how to fight.  This movie is very gory and very bad.

6. "The Grudge" - Super boring Japanese horror movie remake starring Sarah Michelle Gellar.  Everything in this movie happens so slowly.

5. "Fast Food - When Jim Varney is the best part of a movie you know you're watching some real shit.

4. “Cocktail” - From my review: "This is possibly the worst movie I have ever seen. I tried to think of something nice to say about it and all I could come up with is that the cameras were in focus the whole film."

3. “House of 1,000 Corpses” - Inaccurate title--I only saw 300 corpses at most--weird edits between film and grainy video, and it is basically a remake of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” or any other “freaky family” movie from the 70s or 80s.

2. “The Runaways” - This movie sucked on pretty much every level.  It’s boring, inaccurate and people praise it.  Fuck every person who liked this film.

1. “I Spit on Your Grave” - This movie is at least half rape scenes.  I’m not sure why, but rape makes me uncomfortable.

World AIDS Day

By Glenn
Happy World AIDS Day!  Every year on December 1st, we think about our experience with AIDS.  This could be personal contraction or simply viewing a television/movie character who battles the disease, like in the Philadelphia Story. The day was first established in 1987 and yearly US Presidential proclamations began in 1995 by Bill Clinton, the only American President to ever have contracted HIV. World AIDS Day is now the longest-running disease awareness and prevention initiative of its kind in the history of public health, beating out even Regional Polio Awareness Day (1935-1956) and UTI Week (2002-2003).

The theme of the last five years has been "Stop AIDS - Keep the Promise."  The countries of the world (both recognized like Republic of South Sudan and unrecognized like Palestine and Western Sahara) have pledged what is needed to rid the world of AIDS, but they must follow through on their commitments.  The European Union, for example, has pledged over 3 trillion dollars to fight the epidemic and US pop star Bon Iver has pledged 3 new singles.

This year the new theme of "Getting to Zero" begins, as a team of Israeli-trained assassinations spread out over to the globe to eliminate all HIV/AIDS positive persons.  This new method of thinking was controversial at first, but nowhere near the level of 1994's "AIDS and the Family" theme that encouraged all members of an immediate family to contract the disease after the first person was diagnosed.  In the short term it drove up infection rates in the Western world but in the long term allowed families to grow a lot closer.

I would be remiss if I lavished all this attention on World AIDS Day without giving any recognition to AIDS itself, the disease that made this possible!  AIDS, come on up and accept your award for all the hard work you've done to make this day so necessary.

Thank you so much for this recognition!  From the day I was created in a CIA lab, I've worked very hard to infect and kill people - first starting with flight attendants and homosexuals, then expanding to women, children and basketball players.  It's been a wild ride, but I wouldn't be here without some very important figures in my life.

First of all, I want to thank Ronald Reagan.  Most other US Presidents would have spoken out loudly when I first began spreading across the US or at least proportioned more federal money to fight me, but Ronnie didn't.  His silence kept a lot of people in the dark about who I was or how I moved around and this let me really spread my wings.  I also want to thank the Catholic Church.  Many groups have stood opposed to condoms and other contraception but no one has the courage or influence to really fight them quite like the Catholics.  Condoms stop me from finding new hosts, but social conservatives are right there to pull them off of an erect penis and guide me on my way.

Thank you AIDS and thank you World AIDS Day!  Hopefully after 2015 (the final year for the "Getting to Zero" campaign seeking to end AIDS as we know it) we can go back to celebrating December 1st as the anniversary of the first Vietnam War draft lottery.  That was a much better way to watch innocent people senselessly die.

Debate: Should America Adopt the Metric System?

By Glenn and Jake

The metric system was designed to be adopted by the entire world, but when’s the last time the United States of America did something because it made sense?  America has now found itself in fine company with Liberia and Burma as the only three countries to reject metricism and at the same time have a former leader sent to the International Criminal Court.  Should these “three amigos” stop holding out and convert to the metric system?  This debate will either serve as the hammer striking the last nail into the metric system’s coffin or the crowbar prying out the other nails, allowing the metric system to gasp for much needed American breaths.


Glenn: Of course we should adopt the metric system!  Anyone with severe Asperger's knows the comfort of measuring in tens.  Anyone who has ever had to walk all 1000 miles to settle a bet about the Proclaimers song would have much rather walked 1000 meters instead.  The American system, known as either United States Customary Units (USCU) or International System of Units (SI) is as bloated and disgusting as the average Midwestern diabetes II victim.  The ruler that you got hit with as a child in Catholic school was twelve inches long and the Catholic Priest who sexually abused you weighed between 175-225 pounds.  SI measurements are associated with all the worst things in our lives - Catholicism, gallons of milk, football players - while the metric system is associated with all the best - liters of soda, amounts of cocaine and the band Metric.  Why would anyone stick with SI?


Jake:  What makes America the second greatest country in the world is our ability to be completely wrong about nearly everything and act like we are completely right.  The USCU is great because a)its first two letters stand for “United States” and b)we already know it and Americans can never change their minds under any circumstance.  The only people in this country who know the metric system are scientists and drug addicts.  These are the only two groups that are universally reviled in this great nation.  A person can go to any street corner in the “big city” and purchase a gram of cocaine, but they will never be able to buy an ounce of it.  And hell, crack is measured in rocks.  That is a caveman measurement!  What this argument really comes down to is: should we do what everybody else is doing or should we stick to what we have always done?  “If everybody is jumps off of a bridge, should we?” or should we just keep sitting in our apartments streaming USA Network TV programs through Netflix?  We all know what the answer to this question.


Glenn:  The answer is no, spoken from experience.  I’ve spent entire Friday evenings watching Silk Stalkings and I’ve spent my entire life on SI.  I have nothing to show for it and neither does the United States of America.  There’s nothing wrong with adopting a popular trend - why do you think I got on Twitter in 2009 and Facebook in 2010?  America should indeed “join the crowd” and bring the metric system to our shores.  Measurements are something that need to be uniform otherwise you end up with one group of scientists saying neutrinos move .032 inches/second and another group of shamans saying they move .016 mm/second.  We can’t tell the difference between those two measurements but if even one of them is right, everything physics has rested on for the past 6,000 years is out the window and so am I.


Jake:  Maybe you belong out the window if you’re going to use that kind of logic.  Jumping on trends is why a television program like “The Big Bang Theory” pulls in nearly 15 million viewers per new episode, while programs of quality like “In Plain Sight” and “Royal Pains” can only manage a fraction of that rating.  The metric system is as confusing to the US as the Nielson ratings.  It is impossible to understand when you have been dealing with inches and ounces your entire life and it is impossible to understand why the fate of TV programs is rested upon the shoulders of a very small fraction of TV viewers.  The metric system and the Nielson ratings differ in one major area: America has adopted the Nielson ratings system.  This is why we can never change to a system that makes sense and is more accurate.  Maybe the metric system is more accurate than USCU, but I will never know, for I am an American.


Glenn:  The Big Bang Theory deals with intelligent scientists and how they navigate the “regular” world populated by people like you, me and Kaley Cuoco.  That odd negotiation of life must be how all scientists and foreigners feel when they come to this country and have to ask for things in ounces and pounds.  Think of a world where women didn’t fret any time their weight broke 100 pounds but instead when it broke 45.3 kilograms.  When you think of it like that, worrying about our weight as women seems a bit silly.  Fuck the patriarchy that creates it and by extension fuck SI.  The same argument you make about the metric system being too “confusing” is the same argument segregationists made about integration and bigots now make about transgender bathrooms.  Is it a coincidence that they measure our dosage of estrogen in grams?  I think not.


Jake:  If a human person decides to live in America, whether they enter legally or by other means, they must adjust to the measurement system.  If I took a trip to Paris, France, or Cairo, Egypt, I would hardly expect signs that said “55 MPH” and “20 oz McCafe $1” posted everywhere.  No, I would accept the measurement difference and try to fake my way through, much like I do with my orgasms.  In America we use a different system.  To us, our system makes more sense.  It probably has to do with the soil or maybe it’s just something in the air.  Switching to kilograms is not going to get rid of a woman’s body image problem.  You can point fingers at our “patriarchal system,” but you better not point your finger at the USCU, and if I catch you doing so, I am going to put you in the crawl space in my basement and like some of the bodies that Gacy put into his crawl space, you will never be found..