Untertainment Weakly (4-27-12)

By Jake

Hulu picked up the show “The Awesomeness” created by Seth Myers.

“Real Time with Bill Maher” has been renewed by HBO for two more seasons.

FOX has ordered a fifth and final season of “Fringe.”

Christina Ricci will voice Vexi, the evil version of Smurfette, in “The Smurfs 2.”

MTV is “rebooting” its movie awards with new categories and an academy of voters.  Yet, Justin Timberlake will still sweep the awards for his role in “In Time.”

Mel Gibson has joined the cast of “Machete Kills.”

Jessica Chastain is in talks to join “Iron Man 3.”

Gina Carano is in talks for “Fast 6.”

Jenna Fischer claims that the entire “Office” cast is coming back for another season.

On May 6, Scott Aukerman and Zach Galifinakis will bring “Between Two Ferns” to Comedy Central for a 30-minute special.

“Think Like a Man” is the #1 movie in America!

Adam McKay is in talks to direct an “Uptown Saturday Night” remake.  Great!  We need more fucking remakes.  Will Smith and Denzel Washington are already attached.

“Yes, Dear” reruns are coming to Nick at Nite, proving that it’s not a network for classics any longer, if that wasn’t apparent by the endless reruns of “The George Lopez Show.”

Matthew Perry Watch

Matthew Perry’s show “Go On” was picked up for 13 episodes by NBC.  

Movies Out This Weekend
The Pirates! Band of Misfits 3D - Directed by the other, non-Nick Park, director of “Chicken Run,” “The Pirates,” has actual potential to be a pretty solid, if not very good, children’s movie.  Take your kid!  See it by yourself high on marijuana or peyote.  Smoke salvia during the film!  It’s in 3D and cartoons are amazing in 3D.  I was planning on seeing this, but it’s not playing until 7pm tonight, so I’m going to see “Cabin in the Woods” instead.

Five-Year Engagement - This movie looks sort of like shit, which is unfortunate because it is the same writing team behind the excellent “The Muppets.”  Jason Segal stars and writes this flick about, I suppose, an engagement that lasts for five years.  Allison Brie, Emily Blunt and Chris Pratt also star.  So, this could be your thing.  It could be my thing, but the trailer looked so bad.

The Raven - John Cusak stars as Edgar Allen Poe, who I guess is writing the poem “The Raven” in this movie.  The trailer makes it look like he’s fighting evil or some shit.  All I know is that it looks horrible, has a 20% on Rotten Tomatoes, and you would be a real asshole for going to see it.

Movies I Watched This Week
Lars and the Real Girls 7/10
The Descendants 8.5/10

Song of the Week

I've Died And Gone To The Mall


By Bub

I recently took my daughter to Dollar Heaven at the mall.  Everything, including eternal salvation, costs a dollar there.  It's a great place to trick children into thinking they're being rewarded - they can literally pick out anything in the store they want.  From sun-tan lotion to off-brand containers of allspice, they can have it all for one low price!  And with the amazing array of goods we found, you'd have to be a soul-less ghoul not to accept the dollar as your lord and pray everyday that when you die you'll be lucky enough to go to - DOLLAR HEAVEN!!!!!

We found a magic mop that an omnipotent Panda God uses to paint rainbows that span the entire world.  Don't be fooled by the rainbow colored dust brushes you see in the picture that you would think to be the product advertised on the label, the 'global brush' inexplicably is the mop pictured at bottom.  It is not the family-cleaning, multifarious-color-inducing dynamic 'brush' the cummerbund-ed bear would have you believe, it is very same generic, malaise-grey-hued mop you would find crusted, crying to itself in the corner of the darkened quarter-booths room at your local adult book store.




It was casual Friday at the pictured businessman's place of business.


 


Then there were flip-flops that sarcastically congratulate you for wearing them.
 

 


And 'Kid's Magic Gloves' that magically have a place for all five fingers!  They help children to count, awkwardly, and to remember the alphabet up to the letter 'C'.


 


The designer of this product sent a cryptic plea in word-bubble-sticker form.


 


 This game is not as challenging as Monopoly, still, harder than you think to cook that one clove of garlic with only serving plates...


 


 ...especially when there is 'no off' power option on the stove.


 


This 'modern and elegant in fashion' kitchen play set comes with a refrigerator, wok, and cooking-themed red security button for ordering pretend retaliatory nuclear strikes...


 


 ... it comes hightly recommend...


 


...and the refrigerator is funny and happy!...


 


 ...all in all it is the best gift for children!!!


 


A close second is this play set of articles household which of course is modern and elegant in fashion.


 


 It features the unlikely combo of 1st class shampoo...


 


...and every kid's favorite, super coal gas.


 


This kitchenware toy set boasts a feature that seems more likely found in Japanese robot pornography. 


 


 Jenni, having seen better days, has been reduced to sleeping under a parasol in a folding chair and living out of an armoire she keeps on the beach.


 


The official kazoo of America's premier live kazooing competition television program.


 


 Indeed from lazer-gun to triceratops to fish bones to butterfly, every styles is fully wonderful.


 


Milk or juice, or mercury-tainted blood suspended in a floating glob.


 


Unclear if this is describing the emotional state of having a sweet kid, or if this cradle is sized for a sweet kid or whatever a loveliness baby is.


 


 The American Mills company mills their oven mittens in the far eastern rust belt states of Pakistan and China.


 

 


 This bag containing smaller bags with pictures of humvees on them admonishes us that it is not a toy; implying that the smaller bags within with pictures of humvees on them are, in fact, toys.




For when you can't let them know you're thanking them from dry land.


 


A mousepad for the home-office of a serial killer.





 Greatest dads wear black collared white shirts.  A runaway photo would defeat the purpose of of this product.  Tucking in a gift card at the top of the pouch reveals a startling message to dad when he removes it.


 


A commemorative photo of the South African soccer team from the 1990 Apartheid Games.


 


 A holdover from my last visit to Dollar Heaven - this New York souvenir of Hawaii.


 


 Eight months ago I found Wall-E push pop from 2008 on sale.  This package of rip-off King Kong movie gummies is several years older than that.


 

And with that I knew it was time for us to check out at Dollar Heaven.  Still it was terribly enjoyable, you'll be happy to know that I am enjoying it right now - as I type this I am kazooing with a mouthful of rancid gummies, wearing nothing but business socks and magic gloves!   Dollar Heaven is the closest thing to the popular conception of heaven that actually exists.  I hope you enjoyed our excursion to Dollar Heaven as much as we did. I'll see you all at Dollar Mosque next Friday!!!

The Lucky Lady: A Strip Club Adventure

By Jake



Rick and Joey stand on the lawn of Rick’s parents’ house playing a game of bloody knuckles.  A red station wagon pulls up.  Rick and Little Joey rush into Tommy’s car.  Kid Rock blares on the stereo.  Rick and Little Joey could hear it from a block away.  

“Hey fuckheads,” Tommy shouts.

Rick sits in the passenger seat.  He reaches over to punch Tommy in the crotch, but Tommy smacks his arm away.  Rick laughs.  Little Joey cackles in the backseat.  He’s sitting in the middle, lurched forward.

“So homos,” Little Joey shouts over the Kid Rock song, “what are we doing tonight?”

Tommy is drumming on the steering wheel to the song.  A smile creeps across his face.  “We are going to the titty bar, you faggots.”  They all let out a cleansing primal scream.  Even Kid Rock does, shouting his own name, as “Bawitdaba” restarts.

One week prior to these events, Rick had come into $600.  His grandmother passed away after suffering from Alzheimer's and leaking brain fluid from a fall on her bathroom floor.  The $600 was his inheritance.  He had already spent $500 of it on cigarettes, alcohol and fast food.  Rick loves Burger King.  He can devour several Whoppers in any state of intoxication.  With his last $100 he was planning on paying for all of their night at the strip club.

“I’m a cowboy, baby,” they all sing while twirling an imaginary cowboy hat above their heads and gyrating their hips like they are riding a horse or awkwardly making love.  After the song ends, Tommy skips back to “Bawitdaba” once more before they arrive at the strip club.

The trip from Rick’s parents’ house to the strip club was about 40 minutes and they had to cross a state line.  The strip club was called the Lucky Lady.  It’s a BYOB joint due to zoning laws.  Can’t serve alcohol and have women’s genitalia exposed.  The law may have had to do with pubic hair, but that would imply these women had pubes.

Rick and Little Joey are 20 years old and Tommy is 18, meaning none of them are of age to drink.  Rick had been getting anybody he could to buy alcohol for him, whether it be a 21-year-old friend or a person entering a gas station he managed to talk into helping him out.  He was desperate for livation.

“We’re here, you assfuckers.  YEAH!” Yells Rick.  The car buzzes with excitement and a massive cloud of cigarette smoke.  Little Joey rolls a joint with some regular weed.  Joey and Tommy get high.  Their mouths drying out and expelling hacking coughs.  They all light one more cigarette and make their way through the parking lot.  Joey’s eyes redden deeply, but Tommy’s are fine.  

They present their ID cards to the heavy-set man sitting behind the Lexan--a type of bulletproof glass.  He looks them over carefully and they each pay the $15 cover out of Rick’s money.  They can hear the thumping music leaking through the door.  The man stamps their hands and they push open the door and enter.

The club is hazy with cigarette smoke.  The black lights show off some embarrassing stains on Joey’s pants.  He hasn’t changed or washed them in weeks.  There are three connected, tiered stages.  The women rotate, with a new woman entering on the lowest stage.  The women strip their clothes off on the first stage and are completely nude on the next two.  All three stages contain a pole, of course.  Dim light strips line each stage.  Patrons can sit around any of the stages, or at a table further back.  The stages are lined with refrigerators, customers can use these to keep their drinks cold.

Rick, Joey and Tommy take a seat around the third stage.  A thin, white woman with curly brown shoulder-length hair gyrates and writhes around on the stage.  Her vagina is pierced and the barbell through it contains a flashing red light.  It is quite a spectacle.  “Walk” by Pantera crunches over the PA system.  Rick hands each of them $15 in singles and keeps $25 for himself.  They all place a dollar on the stage.  The woman crawls over to their section of the stage and brushes the money onto the stage.  She leans over and squeezes her breasts onto each of their faces, the scent of coconuts lingering on their skin.  Tommy and Rick have erections.  Joey is successfully fighting his back, although with great difficulty and concentration.

A blond woman wearing a g-string bikini approaches the three friends.  She offers them a lap dance.  Rick one-ups her and takes a private dance.  She leads him up a staircase into a room with a row of seats, each separated by a dividing wall.  She begins her dance as “Head Like a Hole” by Nine Inch Nails starts to play.

Tommy and Little Joey are watching a black woman with braids dance on the stage.  She is jiggling her bottom, but not to the music.  Tommy and Joey discuss sexual conquests which never happened.

“I fucked this one bitch so hard in the back of my car.  I accidentally honked the horn,” Joey says laughing boisterously.

“That is too fucking funny.  I fucked this hot bitch once in my parents’ basement, man.  It was, like, fucking amazing.  She sucked my dick and everything,” Tommy lied.
The woman on stage continued her dance, and put the crack of her butt against the pole, to separate her cheeks.  A few men whooped.

Meanwhile, Rick was still getting his private dance.  The dancer starts by facing away from him, and shaking her bottom from side to side in time with the song, lowers it halfway to the floor before popping it back up quickly.  The she lowers her butt onto Rick’s lap.  Rick’s erection throbbed.  She turns to face him and grinds her crotch against his, and places her breasts in his face.  The song ends and she offers him another dance, which he accepts.  The next song was “Dragula” by Rob Zombie.  This dance continues with the grinding, which is all Rick wants anyway.  They were dry humping.

Tommy and Joey continue to place dollars on the stage in trade for breasts on their faces.

“Man...tits are awesome!” Tommy exclaimed.  Joey agreed.

The woman on stage was on all fours, raising and lowering her butt, showing off her bald vagina.  Joey and Tommy stared and each place a single dollar on stage.  The song ends, and so does Rick’s private dance.

“That will be $80,” the stripper said.

“Oh, okay.  I’ll have to get it from my friends,” Rick said, knowing they would not have it.

Rick approaches Tommy and Little Joey and in a hushed voice says, “Okay, we need to go to the ATM.”  The ATM is located between the doors to the outside and the doors to inside the club.  They agree to go with him.  Rick takes out his driver’s license and puts it where the ATM card would go.  “Okay guys, on three we run to the car.”  Joey and Tommy don’t even have time to react before Rick starts counting.  On three they sprint toward the car yelling a string of profanities.  

Tommy fumbles with the keys to unlock the door.  They’re frantic.  Tommy speeds out of the parking lot, though nobody is chasing them..  Joey keeps looking out of the back window to make sure nobody is following them as they speed down the highway.

“What the fuck happened, asshole?”  Tommy asks.

“I got a blowjob!” Rick says, lying.

“Yeah right, you fucking faggot.  You probably gave her a blowjob!” Joey says and then gives Rick a high five.

Debate: Comparing Apples to Oranges

By Glenn and Jake

Some of the worst scum in human history have said you cannot compare apples and oranges. Why not?  They’re both round, fruits and can be paired with a banana to make a “joke” penis and testicles.  As summer approaches like a unarmed black teen walking through your apartment complex, now is the time to stand out ground and fight over which fruit is truly superior.  Lie down, put on your favorite Beach House track and enjoy two fruits debating two other fruits.


Glenn: I love apples.  Braeburn, golden delicious, blood libel, or the sweet and implicitly sexual “pink lady” - these flavors do to my taste buds what the finest male prostitutes can do for extremely wealthy conservative Republican men.  Their taste is amazing and their uses are plentiful.  You can convert them to juice, sauce and, with enough persistence, Mormonism.  So many of America’s finest suburban legends are based upon apples: William Tell shooting one off his son’s head, Johnny Appleseed massacring the Mayan Indians and your mother cooking you an apple pie.  Frankly if someone gave me a fruit basket that included oranges and no apples, I would send the fruit basket back and then commit an Anders Breivik-style shooting at my nearest grocery store.


Jake:  Biting into an orange slice is like waking from a walking nightmare.  The rest of my day might be intolerable and filled with jeering passers-by, but for the moment when I’m eating my daily orange, I get a momentary reprieve.  An orange is bliss wrapped in a fragrant waxy peel filled with concentrated pesticides.  The orange is such a benchmark when it comes to fruit it spun-off into its own color.  Is “apple” a color?  No way.  At best, it is a sauce, juice or cider.  Orange juice is superior to the juice of an apple.  Orange sherbet is miles ahead of apple pie.  When you are “tripping balls” do you reach for an apple or an orange?  Which makes staring at a candle more entertaining?  I think we all know the answer to that question from the Timothy Leary records we listened to as children.  Orange has zest and apples are rotten to the core.


Glenn:  Orange is, famously, the only word in the English (olde or otherwise) language that has no rhyming counterpart.  This is an abomination and your first clue it is Satan’s fruit.  My opponent asks if when tripping, do we prefer an orange or an apple?  If I grab an apple on mushrooms, especially a Granny Smith, I’m likely to experience a taste sensation. If I grab an orange I’m going to struggle with my fingernails to peel it, then struggle with a razor blade to cut out the bugs crawling in my veins.  Talk about a walking nightmare!  I like apples because they are simple to eat but you have the option to peel them if you are autistic and cannot handle the skin.  Also children love “shrunken apple heads” because they’re cute, fun, and you can throw them away once they start telling you to kill.  They biodegrade too, unlike oranges which break down slower than styrofoam.  They’ll still be there in a million years when we’re all watching TV on Hulu and no one has cable and most of us have canceled our landlines.


Jake:  What rhymes with apple?  Snapple?  Snapple is a sugar drink passed off as a health drink.  While nothing may rhyme with orange, “Rhymes with Orange” is one of the best comic strips in the Dispatch and Rock Island Argus.  Oranges have a pleasant odor.  If you eat too many apples you will get diarrhea, but you can use the orange peels in your potpourri mix sitting on the back of your toilet.  You can use orange oil to fight the fire ant infestation you have dealing with ever since your significant other broke up with you.  And let us be honest for just a moment, oranges blow apples out of the water in terms of taste.  Oranges have a complex taste bursting with layers, apples are flatter than your ten-year-old sister’s friends.  Oranges are the shape of a planet, apples are the shape of an ass (at least according to Nelly’s brand of Apple Bottom jeans).  Do you really want to side with ass fruit?


Glenn:  Yes!  One of the worst experiences of my life was when, to prove something to myself, I ate an entire orange, peel and all.  I got terribly sick, puking and bleeding from the bottom of my feet.  I ended up having to get them both amputated.  Some might say this was just punishment for eating an orange peel but I say there is no justice in this world.  George W Bush walks free among us and every day apples are picked from a tree, loaded into barrels and sent to their certain deaths in shades of the Armenian genocide Bush’s grandfather helped orchestrate.  Unlike oranges, my memories of apples are as sweet as a Pink Lady and as sentimental as the early days of M(a)cIntosh: the time I spent eating applesauce after a fist fight knocked all my teeth out, the summer I lived in an apple tree to protest GMOs, and especially when I ate the first apple from the Tree of Knowledge.  I stand by that decision and think we’re better off realizing our own nakedness.  Place leaves over your genitals with one hand and eat an apple with the other.


Jake:  When Adam ate the apple from the tree of knowledge he probably said, “what the fuck is this?  This is what I’m supposed to be staying away from?  Two out of five stars.”  Apples are just not very good.  They are too crisp, they will pull the teeth out of your mouth if you’re not careful.  Oranges are supple.  What is better than biting into an orange and getting a mouthful of its juice?  The only things I can think of are wind-surfing and reading a Jane Austen novel.  An orange is loaded with vitamin C, which helps boost your immune system, which is already working overtime trying to fight against HIV.  As you lay on the floor, coughing and overly thin, would you rather have an apple or an orange?  Of course the answer is “orange.”  If you bite into an apple your teeth will shatter like the glass at the beginning of “Stone Cold” Steve Austin’s theme music.  Orange is the color of the sun, and the color of my heart.

Shot of Love


By Bub

Yesterday I did something uncharacteristic for an atheist - I attended church. This was the first time I’ve ever gone to church either by myself, or of my own accord, in my life. Motivated by anthropological curiosity, slight cynicism and boredom I decided to delve into the beast’s belly. And while I was bemused, finding many curiosities, I also found warmth, sincerity, and more common ground than I thought I would. I wont be going back anytime soon, but it was a generally pleasant experience that I’ll be more careful to begrudge anyone in the future.

When the service began we were prompted to greet each other. The projection screen above the altar showed on it a picture of elderly people shaking hands among the pews. The elderly people around me followed suit, shaking each others' hands, then mine. The least elderly lady in my vicinity made her way down our aisle shaking hands, reaching past me to get to everyone, then arriving at me as the pastor thanked everyone she gave a startled smile in my direction and went back to her seat without extending a hand.

Everyone sat down as the pastor updated us on an unfortunate soul - Hugh - who had recently been admitted to hospice care in the last stage of terminal cancer. This was followed by a brief hymn 'O How He Loves You And Me', in contrast to how He apparently felt about Hugh. The pastor offered his appraisal of The Lord, that He is good and faithful. He admitted that in times like these, such as coping with Hugh's illness, it is hard to know how to pray - what to say, how to feel - avoiding the admission of the obvious thing to say, 'Hey Dickhead, stop killing Hugh' and the obvious feelings of anger and dissonance that are elicited by God's more confusing acts that are difficult to characterize as 'good' or 'faithful'.

He urged the congregation to spread God's word throughout the small village we occupy; to the schools, the courthouse and the gas stations, the three main employers in descending order. Then it was time for an intercessory prayer, where we were to lift names of those who could not pray for themselves up to Heaven presumably so that God could mark them down in his planner. "Bruce," an elderly lady offered. "Linda," a young boy followed. "Odetta, Trog..." it went on, devolving into people offering howls, and then only things similar to sounds.

Then the collection plates were passed around as the screen projected the passage "Seek first His Kingdom and these thing will be given to you" superimposed over a picture of a bowl full of money, as though a slide from the secret power-point shared amongst the Church-Conspirators was accidentally slipped into the one meant for general consumption. The pastor collected the plates of money and held them up toward the projector screen thanking it or Jesus for the bounty.

The pastor tucked away the cash and then instructed to the children of the congregation "In the words of The Price Is Right, 'Come on down'!" They gathered on the steps of the alter, and the pastor retrieved his props. This was the 'Children's Message' the projection screen explained. He held up two sticks. "I am holding up two sticks" he said to effect. He then asked the children what they thought he was going to do with them. "Beat us," one child said jokingly, at least by half. The church and I laughed. The pastor strained a chuckle and added the offputting rejoinder, "if I did it'd be through Christian love." Yikes.

He went on to break the sticks individually to show how susceptible the individual child was to evil, but when buffered by the members of their church their piety could not be so easily snapped as demonstrated by the pastor attempting unsuccessfully to break a bundle of sticks. He then led them in prayer, forcing the children to thank God for letting them be part of His church, and impliedly, Christian love.

The pastor began his sermon with an anecdote about 'Little Johnny' who thought God was in his bathroom because his pathologically angry father yelled "Good Lord, are you done in there?!" every morning through the bathroom door. Then the pastor told of his friend from out of town that asked him where his church was. The pastor gave him directions to the church. But this was folly, he said. It turns out that God is in Heaven, and in our hearts, not in our bathrooms or on Google Maps. Unless of course you and your heart are using the toilet, or you type ‘Heaven’ into Google Maps (which by the way will get you directions to a gay bar on 6th Ave. in New York).

The ‘incredible and amazing’ thing is, we were then instructed, that the ‘God of The Universe’ has chosen to live inside our hearts. I found this compelling - the Rosetta Stone for atheist and theist thought. The religious have anthropomorphized and personalized what the ‘God of The Universe’ is but it is also incredible and amazing to me that I am manifested with life. I am unable to project meaning onto the orchestrated force of DNA replication that propels and controls all life but I am no less susceptible to its awesome purpose.

We search for patterns of meaning because it is evolutionarily beneficial to do so, so much so that we often find them even when they’re not really there. But oftentimes they are there, we observe and test cause and effect through science, and while we can only say things happen in the observable world in a merely correlative fashion and that it is possible that all ’reality’ is only within the margin of error, even we atheists can see what seems to be the grand purpose of existence without knowing or purporting to know why it is, or thinking anything that comes of it is bad or good.

Even though we differ on value judgments, atheists and theists are both limited to that purpose. Without God we can only do what our basic chemical make up has in store for us vis-à-vis everything that preceded it and everything that influences it while we're alive. With God we can only do anything within His Plan. We can do anything but whatever we do is only a mammoth confluence of cause and effect toward an unknown purpose, or it is the unknowable will of God. The distinction to me is growing more and more negligible.

It hasn’t gotten to the point however where I’m ready to ‘crawl up into God’s lap and embrace His love’ as was suggested at the end of the church service. But I think I will make more of a conscious effort to embrace love wherever I may find it despite its inherent emptiness. Even though I can find amusement in the absurdities of the bizarre attempt to grope for meaning that is organized religion, I can relate to, love and feel camaraderie with its participants while I engage in a bizarre groping attempt at meaning of my own.