An Open Letter to Troy Duffy, Director of Boondock Saints 2.

Look. Before I start, we get it. You like to see gunfire in slow-motion. And you love bloody squibs popping from the chests of your racially insensitive bad buys. And you obviously have a fixation with making people say and do manly things in very manly ways using a lot of expletives to prove how large their dicks are. Got it, thanks.

But the thing is: you already did that. Remember, it was called The Boondock Saints, and it was pretty terrific. Did you really need to go and make a second one?

I’ll answer that for you.

No. 

No, you definitely did not. Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day acts as nothing more than a shout-out to the fact that you made a movie that some people liked ten years ago. You took the original, shoved in some more over exaggerated action sequences, turned the main characters into Irish versions of Inspector Gadget (minus the cool technology), brought back the supporting cast to read the same lines they read before, and replaced all of the dead cast with new dead weight.

There were no characters in your movie. There were only glimpses of people who would die, kill, or eventually call someone else a queer.

In Sunshine Cleaning, Clifton Collins Jr. played his character Winston, a handicapped sterile products salesman, with great subtlety and charm. I’m curious then, when Collins showed up on set for All Saints Day, did you make him re-watch that performance all day in a tiny room with the volume cranked up and the Spanish subtitles on? And then make him sit through twelve hours of Speedy Gonzalez cartoons?

And holy H.E. Double Hockeysticks, you replace Willem Dafoe’s Agent Smecker with that ridiculous collection of tit-wearing Southern witticisms? (Also, she was the worst part of the show Dexter. It’s like her job in show business is to take potentially wonderful things and ooze a deadly case of the terribles all over them.)

After watching two once-commendable actors play grab-ass and masturbate each other (mentally) on camera for two hours, I can see why Dafoe would want as little to do with this as possible. And yet, you somehow got him to show up for two minutes at the very end—for the purpose of…fuck, I dunno, something about faking his death in order to facilitate another horrible sequel? It’s at this point I’m forced at ask: do you have nude photos of Willem Dafoe banging an orangutan while force-feeding meth to a child laborer? I honestly don’t know how else he agreed to show up on set.

He can't even look you in the eyes...

I know, maybe he was so engulfed by the script that he was desperate to be included in the plot in any way possible? I mean, what’s not to love about this plot?

These things are not to love about the plot:

1)     The son of the mob boss who was killed by the boys in the last film is Judd Nelson...? (I’m not asking if that’s really Judd Nelson, I’m asking if it really had to be Judd Nelson?) He suddenly gets the urge to go after his father's killers. After 8 years. It took him 8 years to figure out he didn’t like that two dudes killed his dad? That’s just a poor family bond.

2)     Meanwhile, the boys have spent the last 8 years growing beards and playing hide the pickle with each other—though the last part is purely (accurate) speculation—in Ireland until they get news that someone killed a priest they used to know...or something. Annnnnd cue romantic comedy montage of trying on fancy dresses in a mirror while Hall & Oates plays in the background. Or something equally unnecessary and stupid.

3)     And that final conversation between Henry Fonda and Billy Connolly? You must have shot so many loads over that scene that both actors are now pregnant with scripts for Boondock Saints sequels. I’m sure you were aiming for an Oscar here but you got a fucking Elmo, guys. Sorry.

I’ve heard you say that you wanted to do another Boondocks movie “for the fans.” You wanted to “repay the fans putting clothes on [your] back for the last ten years.” But couldn’t it be that you wanted to do a sequel because you haven’t had a gig in ten years and need more clothes on your back? Well, hopefully the box office from this pays for some new threads from Farm & Fleet.

This wasn’t for the fans, Troy. This was two hours of homage to the first movie. A re-cut, regurgitated mess full of annoying new characters and bad accents.

Hopefully it’ll be longer than 10 years until you ruin your franchise even more.

Essentially Condensed Reviews: Nirvana - Nevermind

Today I'm reviewing Nirvana's seminal grunge album, Nevermind, which spawned mega-hits "Come As You Are" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

It's pretty good. You should go download it or something.


Next week I'll review Michael Jackson's Thriller.

Shaky Jake: Facebook Status Editor

No, no, no. You're still not getting it. The whole idea of a Facebook status update is to grab all your friends' attention and let them know, without a doubt, that you're not f'ing around here!

Let's go over it again. When Jenny reads that you "wish some people would just get over themselves," she's not going to know you're talking about her. Because you're not being specific enough! When she told you how excited she was about those new bedazzled headphones for her iPod, she probably didn't even catch your inconspicuous eye roll--mostly because that's what the word "inconspicuous" means. So do you really think your passive aggressive update is going to catch her attention? If anything, I suspect Jenny's going to "like" that update.

Go for the jugular! Try something like, "I wish some people wouldn't bedazzle every goddamn thing they own and stop cheating on RICKY WITMER with that douche from her Intro to State Gov class!" And to make sure it doesn't go unnoticed in the news feed, comment on your own update an hour later with the douche-in-question's address and phone number if you have the information handy. Now you're being specific and helpful!

And what about this update from Friday? You're "gearing up" for the weekend?

Mm. Mm hmm.

Well...who isn't? Not that I'm sure everyone won't be super impressed by your willingness to drink on a Friday--clearly you're a party animal--but this might be an undersell. Instead, let everyone know of your dedication and, again, be specific. Maybe something along the lines of "ready for tonight, I think: flares, wire cutters, shot of adrenaline, and a change of pants. Let's go bar-hopping!" Extra points if you post it on a Tuesday.

Hey! Are you even paying attention? Look, I'm trying to help--did you just post another status? What's it say?

Uggh. Inspirational song lyrics? ...Really? Okay, I understand that Josh Groban really "speaks to you" but nobody should have to wade through twenty lines of sappy, faux-motivational lyrics. No matter how badly you need to express your wish to "stand on mountains" and "walk on stormy seas." If you're going to go the lyric route--or post movie quotes--make it more than sappy and/or inspirational. Make it informative! Get everything out in the open using Tiny Tim's "She Left Me With the Herpes." Or make it instructional! Let Poison express exactly how you want that special someone to talk dirty to you. (Even though they still haven't confirmed your request to be in a relationship.)

Whatever you do, be specific, be confident, and most importantly, don't post an update every hour. Or I'll come back for another lesson. And I'll bring some rope, a ball gag, several swords, and a video camera. And my status will read: "Shaky Jake is gearing up for the weekend!"

Let's Hear It For the Boys...Hearing It For the Girls

In an age when music is more abundant--and thus, more divisive--than ever, a person can listen to truly anything that fits their personalities. The choices are endless. And yet, if you are the proud owner of a vagina, you may still feel underrepresented in the music world. Especially if you're not all that fond of current pop music. (Which you are, so stop lying on all of those surveys.)

There's not that many french-tipped fingernails holding the microphone nowadays. Who can you count on to tell the world how you feel? Not everyone can read your diary! And Taylor Swift is only allowed to sing about one topic for the remainder of the century. (Love, and how it's good and/or bad.) You're just not being heard out there!

But ladies, stop bedazzling the ass of your jeans for a second and think of how rough it must be for those on the other side of the gender tracks. You're not being heard because a huge part of the population can't hear you. No, I'm not talking about deaf-mutes. Or those who lost their ears in tragic goggle-related accidents. I'm talking about men.

Tell me this: when is it acceptable for a straight, heterosexual, masculine, non-cross-dressing, penis-having, labia-less man to listen to a female-fronted rock band? Or any variety of ovary-bearing musician? If you answered anything other than "very rarely," you're very wrong.

We with the extra appendage, the hanging sack full of guilt and social anxiety, the heavy burden of manliness, we are judged for enjoying things considered too feminine. And what could be more feminine than a female singing songs about feelings?

Meanwhile, you with the innie in your skinny, a closed door to your closed minds (and equally closed legs), you are the ones judging.

Men: why must we cross our fingers when we put our iPods on shuffle, praying the next song to come on isn't "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" (even though we're totally ready to deal with anything the world throws at us)? Why shouldn't we just hear what we want to hear, gender issues aside?

I've picked my brain (and my dong-waving iTunes catalog) to come up with the following list of acceptable chick music. I'm calling it...

It's now officially cool to listen to the sounds of estrogen when...

#1. When she's manlier than you.  
Joan Jett. She's the bad ass rocker chick that Juliette Lewis wants to you to think she is. Her raspy, "just smoked a pack of Marlboro Reds before chugging whiskey-coated rocks voice" would be enough to justify having her on your iPod, but she's also a leather-clad hottie.

GET YOUR MAN ON to Cherry Bomb.
Sisters In Arms: Pat Benatar, Patti Smith.

#2. When she's got (legitimate) attitude. 
Gwen Steffani with No Doubt. There hasn't been a boobed-punker with this much attitude since Patti Smith. Even the lighter songs ("Don't Speak," "Simple Kind of Life,") will make you remember you have a heart buried somewhere around your weiner. Society still won't condone you singing karaoke to "Just a Girl" though, regardless of how much you've been practicing your high-kicks.

GET YOUR MAN ON to Spiderwebs.
Sisters In Arms: P!nk, The Donnas.

#3. When she's a bit odd. 
Regina Spektor. She caters to all the hipster boners out there. For some reason, guys are allowed to dig the quirky music of weird girls with no excuses necessary. I'm not complaining, of course. I'd love it if Regina's mouth was open 24/7.
...singing...singing music...not...
 ...She's a very capable musician. Is what I'm saying.

GET YOUR MAN ON to Folding Chair.
Sisters In Arms: Lily Allen, Kate-Miller-Heidke, Kristeen Young.

#4. When she clearly runs the show.  
Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Girls who truly LEAD bands are just plain fucking cool. And Karen O definitely knows how to take control.
...with her music. When she...you know...when...singing...
...I'm starting to feel like this article isn't furthering the cause much. It might be doing the exact opposite by this point. Oh man.

GET YOUR MAN ON to Dull Life.
Sisters In Arms: Bat For Lashes, Fly Leaf.

Mel Gibson Hates You, Expects You to Deal With It.

Mel Gibson kindly invites you to fuck off. And if you could also stick those kitchen tongs over there up your own ass, he'd really appreciate it. Seriously. Just go to hell already. Don't cry to him about how far he's fallen and ask "what happened to the guy who played Riggs?" If Mad Max wanted to hear about your feelings, he'd read the screenplay he just wrote about your life in which he changed your name and occupation to avoid any legal issues.

Also: punch yourself in the dick. You deserve it for eyeballing him like that.

If you don't do it, he will. And he wants those things tenderized.

To be clear, Mel Gibson doesn't want to kill you. He just wants to severely hurt you. In the worst way possible. Broken bones, deep bruises, an eventual skin graft...these things will all be in your future if Mel Gibson has anything to say about it.

And ladies, for the love of Christ, please stop asking him why he's not more like the guy from What Women Want. You and he both know the only response to that will be a titty grab and a purse snatching. His life is not a romantic comedy, it's a snuff film. He doesn't buy flowers, he doesn't make speeches, and he doesn't run through the airport to stop you from flying to Paris. (Unless it's to give you an impromptu brain transplant...with a baseball bat.)

He knows you don't like him, but guess what? He hates your guts, too! He doesn't even know you and he doesn't like you. Deal with it!

Oh, and if Mel had his way with the Ransom script, the kid would have died at the end. Not the character, the actual 9-year-old actor who played his son would have been drowned, off-screen, once the credits started rolling.

You don't even want to know what his intentions for Braveheart were...


*Image courtesy mediaoutrage.com

Name That Porn.

Hey party people, Justin here. For those who don't know me, I'll explain a bit about myself. I have a two-bedroom loft in West Hollywood, filled with plush lounge chairs, trays of fresh fruit, and copious amounts of items to snort and sniff. And it's all paid for by the two days a week I work at home. I'm the creative director in charge of titular copy-writing for an adult entertainment provider. Basically, I make up the names for your favorite porn movies.

Six Inches of Kevin's Bacon. That was me. Once Upon a Time In Karen. That was mine too. Debbie Does Dallas was some other guy, but the sequel two decades later, Debbie Does Your Taxes (While You Bang Her) was the one that put me at the top of the porno naming game.

You think you like your job? Why, 'cause you teach underprivileged kids how to read? BFD, pal. You drive a company Corvette with a license plate that says "DCK MAN" on it? Yeah, me neither. My Vette's license plate says "UR DONG" because "DCK MAN" was already taken. I bet you think it's rewarding to see the look on some half-retarded 10-year-old's face when he learns how to spell the word "moron." Well buddy, you can't imagine the pride I feel knowing that on Halloween night, a man is going to pick up the new Lexxxus Leggs film because the name Ghosts and Gobblin' caught his eye. It makes me feel warm all over.

The thing people don't understand about my job is that it's equal parts science and art. You look at the genre of the movie first--is it a parody of an existing movie, a big-budget plot pounding, or a simple "guy does girl in back of van" kind of thing?--and then you let your creative juices just drip all over the page. It's exhausting.

Right now I'm working on a three-movie series with an ex-reality star. I'm tentatively calling it Hogan Knows Bestiality. It's a little more low-brow than the type of thing I usually attach my name to, but a guy's gotta eat, ya know what I mean?

I love this job. I'll do it until the day I die or until it's no longer spiritually satisfying for me. When I jot down something like Escape From Ass-catraz and don't feel anything tingle inside me, then I'll know it's time to pack up my dirty word thesaurus and get out. Until then, I hope you'll think of me, Justin Syde-Yu, when you browse your local adult video store and take home The Whole Nine Yards (of Dick).

Dale Hazel Lives His Favorite Lyrics.

::
Dale Hazel is a music lover. He loves how songs tell important stories in a few melodic minutes. Dale believes that every song is a chapter in someone's life story. Dale wants every song to be a part of his life story. That's why every day, Dale attempts to live out one of his favorite songs, for better or for worse...


Dale's feet are tired and layered with blisters. His muscle mass is all but deteriorated, with the exception of his newly-toned calves. It could be from all the time he spent on his feet over the last few weeks. More specifically, it might be the collateral damage of walking 500 miles from Rockford, Illinois to Lincoln, Nebraska, and then another 500 miles to Oklahoma City. This was all in an effort to be the man who walked a thousand miles to fall down at Marcy Hoover's door.

One late night, Dale came across Marcy's online dating profile and was instantly entranced by her gentle features and winning smile. After briefly perusing her personal interests, Dale discovered that he and Marcy shared a passion for mango-flavored drinks and 90's pop music.

Following his heart in a blind race towards true love, Dale put on a pair of tennis shoes and MapQuested the walking directions to Marcy's home in Oklahoma City. Showing up uninvited and unknown into Marcy's life was a risk, but Dale felt that their matching astrological signs--along with their shared fondness for Tom Hanks movies--had joined their souls in a cosmic, and irreversible, way.

The trek to reach Marcy lasted nearly three weeks, during which Dale fought off wild animals, slept in abandoned buildings, and broke two of his toes. He also dropped 34 pounds and became dangerously dehydrated, as he took no provisions and had to subsist off scraps of food people threw out of their car windows. But upon waking from his heat-induced mini-coma in a bed at Saint Anthony's Hospital, Dale expressed his joy and sense of accomplishment at seeing Marcy's fantastic smile in person.

Staring into Marcy's eyes, he said, "When I woke up, well I knew I was gonna be, I was gonna be the man who woke up next to you."

In actuality, the look on Marcy's face would later be self-described as that of "pure confusion and a little bit of terror." Marcy had taken Dale's "romantic" gesture as a creepy and reckless act of self-endangerment. Had Dale spent more than a few seconds glancing at her dating profile, he would have seen her personality type listed as "cautious and definitely not impulsive."

Although she took Dale to the hospital and stayed with him until doctors confirmed his stable health, Marcy has since issued a restraining order against him; coincidentally, Dale is no longer allowed within a thousand miles of Marcy.

"It's dangerous to encourage that type of behavior," said Marcy. "I think I'll be deleting The Proclaimers from my iPod."
::