No Need for Speed
May 14I’ve done this before and you probably have, too. When someone professes to dislike a piece of entertainment that you happen to enjoy quite muchly, you come up for some excuse specific to the disliker that explains their dislike. For example, I’ve heard that I do not like The Phantom Menace not because it’s shitty, but because it’s “a kids’ movie.” Similarly, when a friend and I professed our general hatred for Into the Wild, we were told by various people that we did not enjoy it because 1) we’re too young! and 2) we’re girls and 3) we hate camping.
I’m having kind of a similar thing with Speed Racer. A lot of folks in the geekscape have come out heavily for this movie, rallying against the mean ol’ critics who didn’t get it.
Dudes, dudettes, fellow geekly brothers and sisters, I’m sorry, but Speed Racer was SO FUCKING BORING.
And here are a few rationales folks might offer for me not liking it.
A Smidge of Shat for Matt
May 12I ran across this while channel surfing on the weekend – if you can sit through the Country, there is a Shatner reward. Also a smidge of Jason Alexander.
Also, Bill was on the Adam Corolla show – grab the podcast file while you can.
Just for you, Matt!
I ♥ Joel McHale
May 12No, really. He’s my hero.
I remember seeing the old Talk Soup show years back, but hadn’t seen it since it morphed into The Soup. And the hilarious cynicism of McHale just sells it. Plus, as the show says, he watches all the crap so I don’t have to! Or, his staff of writers does, but his Eddie Izzard pantomiming just nails it. Plus, their nerdy post-commercial pie chart this week made me the happys.
Four-Color Critiques #3: The Dude Is From Circumstances
May 09I remember an afternoon at my first job when I discovered the Dysfunctional Family Circus, a notorious early net project in which Family Circus strips were scanned and recaptioned in the most surreal, offensive, and hilarious manner imaginable.
I seriously spent hours (while at WORK, mind you, being paid poorly to attend) getting lost in the site–I had to read them all, that day, immediately. I laughed myself to tears in silence.
I had a similar experience more recently with Achewood. Busy as hell, totally uninterested in webcomics beyond Penny Arcade, and then out of nowhere–WHAM. I read about it over at J. Caleb Mozzocco’s site (if he was late to the party when he wrote about it, I’m SUPER FUCKING LATE myself). I started reading, and I never stopped. Hours upon days lost to reading and laughing myself to tears. In silence.
That’s the kind of experience Achewood is, to me–solitary, unique, and sort of astonishing.
