Your Daily Dose of Vitamin T

Lets play a game: I’ll name a restaurant, and you’ll say what you’d get if you went there.

Fazoli’s

You’ll probably say something like “the lasagna”, or “chicken fetuccini”. You’re less likely to order the steak.

Texas Roadhouse

Flipping that situation, you’d maybe say “a t-bone” or “the sirloin”. Probably not the lasagna.

That thinking is why I’m flabbergasted when I see that The Expendables has a 39% on Rotten Tomatoes.

What the crap, guys?

When I go to a restaurant, I get what that restaurant is good at. When I go to a movie, I want to see what the filmmakers are good at. If I don’t want lasagna, I won’t go to Fazoli’s; if I don’t want to see Dolph Lundren blow a pirate in half in the first five minutes of a movie, I’m not going to go see The Expendables.

But I did want to see that, and I was not disappointed.

The Expendables could have been better, yes, but it was hardly a disappointment because I knew what I was in for. What I wanted was crazy, mind bending explosions and fist fights between the action heroes of my childhood and adolescence. What I wanted was Terry Crews wielding a tommy gun-shotgun that fired exploding rounds and blew up bad guys.

Delivered

What I wanted was to see Sylvester Stallone and Dolph Lundgren on screen together again for the first time in 25 years.

Delivered

I wanted to see Jet Li shoot people in the face while being all short and Asian and kung-fooey.

Delivered

And I wanted to see Jason Statham throw knives through people.

Frikkin’ delivered

We were never promised anything but that. This movie was not supposed to be Bourne Identity-complicated, or full of Rocky 1-and-2 character development. This was supposed to be a movie full of good guys, bad guys, a beautiful woman or two, and punching.

Lots and lots of punching.

This movie was fun. I have a little problem with SPOILER IN INVISO-TEXT!!! the name because none of the guys actually die, bringing their actual expendability in to question END SPOILER!!!, but that’s really minor. I paid to see it twice, and I’m going to buy this movie when it’s BluRayified.

(This is my latest column, cut’n'pasted right here. Have some of you already read it? Probably, but it’s content and I can easily convince myself that it counts. Woot.)

In one of my more pitiful moments of succumbing to peer pressure, I got myself a new phone, and in an effort to avoid sounding like I’m being paid by a particular company to write this glowing review, we shall call it… a Lloyd. A Fotorola Lloyd.

Just go with it.

I walk into my other job last week and one of my underlings shows me his new phone, which he bought out of necessity, predicated by him washing his hands… while still holding his old phone. He’s a silly lad.

Anyway, he shows me his Lloyd. I see the apps [little things you can download that do stuff as pointless as, say, pretending to be an Etch-a-Sketch or making Star-Warsian lightsaber noises, and can be as useful as acting as a Global Positioning System to give you directions or telling you where to find Mars in the night sky (one of my favorites)], and upon viewing everything the little guy can do, I immediately go out and purchase one. It’s only an extra 30 bucks a month to get unlimited Internet and everything else this fella can do, and with my various available upgrades for being a loyal customer, Shmerizon (my service provider) only charged me $50 of the original $250 to get the actual phone.

I’m on Cloud 9. I’ve got Internet radio that plays songs I actually like, the previously mentioned unlimited Interwebs so I can look up stuff on the fly, it acts as a portable modem that I can plug in to my laptop for when I want to use an actual computer-shaped-computer instead of a Lloyd-shaped one, it has a level (for making things level!), a compass, email, weather updates, a button I can press that gives out a quick “badump-tish!” whenever I tell a joke, a flashlight, a small zen garden, a camera, and it shows me how to tie the best Half-Windsor I’ve ever had the pleasure of looping around my neck. It is also, wonder of wonders, a phone.

It’s a Swiss Army knife that I can upgrade to my heart’s content… only not, because it doesn’t actually have a knifey part, or the bottle opener, or screw drivers. But that’s why I carry a multi-tool. Apples and oranges, that comparison was.

But you get the point.

The only problem I’ve had with it, and here we finally get to the reason I’m writing this thing, is that I can’t figure out the dad-blamed, flag-nabbited, thrice-darned alarm clock.

I know, right? The alarm clock is something we’ve pretty much had mastered for well over a century. My phone can do everything in the world except wake me up when I want it to.

WHAT THE BALLS, LLOYD?

It started out promising enough. It comes with an alarm clock that actually did it’s job, but… ugh. The offered noises it makes do exactly what they’re supposed to: they wake you up, but sound like those really annoying not-quite-digital alarms from the 70’s and 80’s with flip down numbers that sound like someone’s beating the crap out of a cricket-filled-rooster. Not the most pleasant thing to awaken too. Then I saw that it had an actual rooster-crowing noise. That’s kinda cool. I’ll try that.

WHY? WHAT WAS I THINKING?!

Yeah, it woke me up. And then I couldn’t turn the stupid thing off. So I’ve got this crowing phone that won’t shut up at 8 a.m. and it’s incredibly loud. I’m surprised the neighbors didn’t complain. Here’s me, pounding the button that says “Alarm Off” but it’s NOT TURNING OFF and it’s still crowing!

It was here that I determined an actual rooster would be better to have for this purpose, for two reasons: one, in the movies, the rooster turns off by itself after a single crow. No buttons that refuse to deactivate it, it just gets the crow out of it’s system, wakes everyone up, then saunters off ‘til tomorrow. Two, you can smother a rooster by stuffing it under a pillow. Where a rooster would run out of breath, my phone has no such weakness.

So here’s me, crowing phone stuffed under a pillow, slowly working the cotton candy out of my brain, and I decide to risk taking it out to try and figure out how to shut the thing off. Then I see a little message: “Awake? Prove it:” and it has a number and a little key pad.

I HAVE TO ENTER A COMBINATION TO TURN OFF MY ALARM.

I enter the combo, shut the rooster up, and delete that alarm with more haste than I thought I was capable of at 8:05 a.m. I look for a new one in the app store, an alarm sans-combo lock, and find one. I’ll try that out.

It wakes me up at midnight, then refuses to wake me up in the morning. What the crap?

I’m currently on my 5th alarm app. I’ve found one that doesn’t suck, and actually does what it’s supposed to without making me jump through hoops to turn it off. And it sounds nice. I’ll keep you informed.

On a completely different note, why did Tony cross the road? I don’t actually care, I just wanted to do this with my new phone: *badump-tish!*

COMING SOON TO VITAMIN T!

• Reviews for SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD and THE EXPENDABLES!

• The Greatest Movie Trilogy of All Time!

• Raised by TV, Episode 2: Cartoons!

Stay tuned for these updates and more, since Tony will soon have free time!

I laughed… very hard at this movie. I don’t really know what else to say other than that it has moments in it where I was laughing so hard I was glad that the only people in the theater with me were my employees and and their friends/family, and if they say anything about me laughing too hard I could immediately terminate them with Extreme Prejudice (the name of my whiffle bat).

Ain’t she perty?

Just… watch this movie. It isn’t as funny as it’s predecessors (Anchor Man, Talladega Nights), but those films are kind of like… they’re like Mom’s meatloaf. We’ve had them for so long that they’ve entered into what we consider to be the perfect example of the genre (in one case “The Funny Movie” and in the other “the Bestest Meatloaf Ever”). So my point is that with time it will mature, enter the public consciousness, and join it’s brothers in the realm of Classic Comedy. It still isn’t as good as Anchorman, but that’s like saying my porterhouse isn’t as good as that filet mignon: it’s still a freaking steak, and this movie is still hilarious.

Highly recommended.

These things can never be easy, can they?

The results of last night’s special election instill me with a glimmer of hope for our fair burg: the vote for the school bond issue, while not the landslide “YES!” I was hoping for, was also not the landslide “NO!” of the previous times the bond was on the ballot.

Instead of a 14-or-so percent margin, it’s a margin of about 1.5 percent. It’s still a margin saying “no”, but it’s also not the final word on the subject as not all the votes are in.

There are 136 provisional votes on their way in. The yea’s and nay’s are so close that these provisional votes can tip the scale back to the yea-side. Here’s some math:

2698 votes for (49.27 percent)

2778 votes against (50.73 percent)

Of the available 136 votes left, the yea side needs to get 109 (if my figgerin’ is correct) of those votes to win by a whopping margin of 1 vote.
If that happens, or heck, even if it doesn’t, there will be a recount, which is standard procedure when a vote comes down to a margin of half a percent.

I give you that math to drive my point home: 50 percent (rounding up) of the voting people in Greenville recognize the need for this school and are willing to do something about it. That’s so much better than the last two times we tried. I just hope that when these final votes come in, it’s 51 percent who care… because that’s all that really matters.

Here’s hoping.

Soooo I’m busy. Like, seriously, I’m a busy guy. You have no idea. What did you do today?

Really? Awesome.

Me? Oh, I saved a kitten from a tree…

This one.

… then I delivered a baby in an elevator…

Not this one, but they’re babies and they all look the same so you get the idea.

… and invented the Flux Capacitor, which makes time travel possible.

1.21 JIGGAWATTS!

And that’s why I haven’t been blogging.

Recently found out that once the Great Darke County Fair rolls around, one of my jobs is closed (the theater) and the other can survive without me for a few days, so I’m going on vacation.

GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS FTW!!!

There will be hiking and rafting and ziplining and bear-wrestling and I’mma bring a bobcat named Charlie home with me and we’ll be friends forever. That’s my plan.

All of this means: come September, I will be refreshed and reacquainted with my old friend “free time”, so I’ll be refilling the ol’ culture tank so these blogs happen more than  once every two weeks. Like, you know, I said wouldn’t happen a few blogs ago.

Whoops.

Stay classy, Earth.

I should have been born a cowboy, or in time for WWII. Back when you could punch people for being an idiot, or rude… or looking at you funny… or cause you wanted to punch them. And nobody thought twice!

I’ve never been good with bullies. I understand them, but my Christian-upbringing, combined with my steady diet of superhero comics, soon erased any possibility of me ever being one.

I got spanked as a kid. I was not abused, as so many people nowadays believe spanking to be synonymous with, but when I misbehaved extraordinarily, I was punished in a manner accordingly, and in a way that my young mind could easily understand.

Kids don’t understand ethics. They are biologically incapable of giving two craps about anyone that isn’t themselves. That’s science. But what I did understand was pain. Not thumbscrews, but a whack on the bottom.

“Throwing a tantrum because mom didn’t buy the Doublestuf Oreos will result in a spanking? Then perhaps I shouldn’t throw a tantrum.”

DING.

BAM. Goal achieved. Ethics came later, when my brain was developed enough to handle them. In the meantime, I’m not being a nuisance to my mom and the other people in Krogers.

“Shut that kid up or I’ll do it for you.”

Now, though, I’ve got to fight the notion that a sock to the jaw (or two, or a dozen) isn’t exactly what some people need. Not because of the spankings, but the comics, and TV. You watch these justice shows that are all about doing things within the law… but you don’t feel right until the main character plants some sweet chin music on the guy that steals from grannys.

I love the sound of sweet chin music.

But, I fight that urge because I appreciate our legal system. Is it a good system? No. Is it the best system? Yes.

Still, I hate people that say stuff about “an eye for an eye would leave everyone blind”. That’s straight up the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard: it’s supposed to be a warning. How many people would you go around plucking the eyes out of if you knew you’d lose one yourself? Probably not many. (Definitely no more than two.)

Still, barring that, there are more mature ways to handle things… but that sweet chin music still holds it’s appeal.

This movie is Christopher Nolan’s reward for being awesome. And the best part is we reap many of the benefits. Lemme ’splain.

Christopher Nolan is the Director of “Inception”. He also directed such Hollywood Blockbusters as, oh, “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight”, and something that has a cult following because it’s awesome, “Memento”. These films were admittedly two of the most baddest-assiest things to ever be committed to film ever, and they made Warner Brothers 17-jillion metric crap-loads of money. As a reward for their crap-loads of cash, they were all like, “Sure, Chris, go do something fun before you do Batman 3 and re-reboot the Superman franchise (true story) for us.”

He did good, he earned their trust, he gets the funding to do what he wants. And boyohboy, does he have some fun with it.

Just look at all that fun.

Inception is brilliant. It’s a story with so many freaking layers that if you’re not engaged the entire time you will get lost SO BAD, but it’s so pretty and so much fun that you don’t even mind because you WANT to be involved. I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.

One of the things I love about this is that I really had no idea what the plot was before I went in, and I’ll do my darnedest not to ruin it for you. The ad-campaign for this film was… not exactly misleading, but it only gave you a taste of what was going to happen. It has to do with dreams, and the people in the movie go into other people’s heads to mess with those dreams and get information.

I can’t… I can’t really straight up review this like I want to, as I have neither the time to do so, or, as stated, the desire to mess with what they’ve done. Let’s just say that this is something you need to see. Probably more than once. And therein lies my single, solitary issue with this film: you need to see it more than once.

The average movie-goer is used to spoon feeding, and here you kind of have to work for what you’re watching. Not that it’s difficult, but there is so much going on that unless you’re some kind of superhuman, you’ll need to see it twice just to process it. I have no problem with that, and I’m totally going to see it again, but I work at a theater so I can do that. Joe Blow on the street probably isn’t going to want to fork over another $10 to see it again, and might leave without completely understanding what he just saw.

This is minor. I don’t mind. But that’s why Nolan hasn’t created a perfect film: you need to see it twice. Again, not that I mind, but average-movie-goer-person might.

If I hadn’t sworn off decimal points, this would be a 9.9-out-of-10. But I did, so it isn’t.

Watch this as soon as possible if you love thinker-movies. I loved this.

You have one. Don’t even try to deny it. You might be able to if you don’t know what it is, but you have one even then. If you didn’t know the word ‘pancreas’ it wouldn’t matter because you have one anyway. And just like in High School Biology when you first learned and then forgot what your pancreas does, I’m here to learn ya.

The Hetero Man-Crush is exactly that: an entirely platonic crush, which means no matter what the subject of your affections does, you’re cool with and will support with more verve and fervor than you would if you weren’t totally crushing on them, OMG.

It can take many forms. The least severe are forms of mild idolization: “Did you see that catch he made? That was legendary, man!” “Dude, he was so frikkin’ buff in that movie, he could have strangled a lion barehanded!” “If they could figure out a way to put an engine in a bathtub, he’d still win on Indy weekend.”

More severe are the hardcore fans: “They should build a statue out of solid bronze, like in Rocky or something!” “Look, he’s the greatest quarterback of all time, period.” “How could he not win an Oscar for that? He was WAAAAAY better than John Malkovich!”

Then, there’s the straight-up crazies. There aren’t any quotes for this, as any disagreement as to the sheer-goditude of their man-crush results in the sound of fist-meets-face (mostly found in sports bars).

Well, I’ve found mine. It took 24 years, but I found him.

BEHOLD

I think I’m somewhere in the middle on this one. Obviously, I think he’s better than John Malkovich (but I don’t understand why people pay him money to be in movies at all). Tom Selleck, on the other hand, is frikkin’ legendary, and that mustache is Epic Tier.

I first saw Tom in “Three Men and a Baby”, which was directed by Mr. Spock and awesome. I never saw “Magnum PI”, which I’m planning to remedy soon, but apparently America agreed with me because it was one of the most critically acclaimed shows of the 80’s.

America couldn’t get enough of this.

How did this come about? I’ll tell you.

I love westerns. I’ve got several dozen of them, and I’m working my way down from the more famous (“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”, “Once Upon a Time in the West”, “High Noon”) to the more obscure (“Beyond the Law”, “Last Stand at Sabre River”, “Conagher”)… and that’s where I found it. A three-movie Tom Selleck Western Pack.

I’ve watched them all. And I knew.

Now, I’m picking up everything he’s ever been in ever (except “Friends” cause I freaking hated Friends when it was on TV, there’s no way I’m going to buy it) that I can easily lay my hands on.

Did you know he was going to be Indiana Jones, but he couldn’t get out of doing Magnum PI? Well, he COULD have, but he decided to honor his contract.

What a guy.

He’s apparently pretty nice, too, and a hard worker, and everyone who’s ever met him and talked about it says he’s awesome. So he’s not one of those nancy-boy actors who wishes they were European, and can’t eat red M&M’s, and if the sun is too bright they won’t go outside. He’s also a member of the NRA. This just gets better and better.

Do you have any idea how many pictures there are of him without a shirt on? Neither did I, but just know: it’s a bunch.

So, there you go. I admit to my Man-Crush. And if anyone says anything even remotely disparaging, I will hunt you down and make you kiss a picture of his mustache.

TONY OUT.

Oh, hey guys, how’s it going?

I’ve determined that I’m not going to be one of those guys who blogs once every month or so. I hate those guys. (Darn guys.) So, in penance for it being so long since I last blogged atcha (it’s been like a week, right? Something like that. I’m too lazy to look) here’s my first MASS REVIEW!

“But Tony,” you might be thinking, “those movies are already in dollar theaters, they’ve been out so long!” To which I say, “Yes, but SHUT UP.” My time is precious, and I’m not gonna waste it on… some things.

SOME THINGS

A-Team – 7-out-of-10 T’s

This flick was a good time. I have a saying when people ask me if I enjoyed something:

“If you’re expecting Citizen Kane, you’re going to be disappointed.”

This is not Citizen Kane. This is the A-Team. This is about a group of guys who are continuously put into impossible situations, and then come out smelling like roses because they use their brains and plan stuff. Hannibal (Liam Neeson, one of my fave-rits evar) has this great line in the movie:

“Give me a minute, I’m good. Give me an hour, I’m great. Give me six months, I’m unbeatable.”

I LOVE IT.

There’s a bit of the film, where it’s like Hannibal is passing on the planning-reigns to Face, that I didn’t really dig, but he gives them back by the end. Also, there were some fight scenes that I had trouble with because they changed shots so fast, but these are minor in the grand scheme of things. This movie was fun. It explains how the A-Team got together, it’s full of these characters being the characters we remember from the TV show, and there’s plenty of stuff blowing up. Go to a Dollar Theater and check this out. I’d be willing to pay full price to see it again.

EXPLOSIONS!

Eclipse – 6-out-of-10 T’s

I give credit where credit is due: this movie was actually decent. Was there more drama than I like? Yes. But there was valid character development, people reacted to things in ways that I understood, and there were glorious vampire-werewolf fight scenes that actually got my blood pumping a little bit.

One of my friends put it like this:

“They’re getting ready to fight, and I think ‘this better not suck’, and then the first thing that happens is a guy punches someone’s head off.”

For that, I give them props.

I haven’t made it that far in the books yet, but apparently when vampires die here, they break apart like marble statues. That’s actually kind of cool, and a way to depict horrible violence and still get a PG-13 rating. Good thinking. I gives more props.

This is the first movie in the series that actually kept me engaged, and that I didn’t want to burst out laughing at. I’d see this again. I’d rather watch, y’know, Terminator 2 or something, but I’d watch this again.

Get Him to the Greek – 8-out-of-10 T’s

I laughed so hard at this. It’s rowdy, it’s raunchy, it shows all the debauchery that occurs in the world of a rock star, and it does it with a character I already know and like (Aldous Snow, played by Russell Brand, who first showed up in Forgetting Sarah Marshall). He’s off the wagon now, and he fell off HARD.

In an effort to revive his flagging career after the release of a bad album (Called “African Child”, which one reviewer referred to as “The third worst thing to happen to Africa after Famine and War”), he’s doing an anniversary concert at the Greek Theater, which is in California. The dude who came up with the idea, played by Jonah Hill, has to get this off-the-wagon rock star from England to New York (to pimp to show) to California. Snow causes as much trouble along the way as possible, and it’s hilarious… and sometimes scary.

Something I wasn’t expecting was to actually see the downside of the lifestyle. When Hill pop’s Snow’s balloon-o’-heroin, Snow gets really angry. Like, junkie angry. Completely unexpected.

But, of course, this is first and foremost a comedy, and in that aspect it does not disappoint. I’ve already seen it twice. Another pleasant surprise was that the music was actually really good. I bought the album, which is filled with horrible single-entendre (which is like double-entendre but without the effort spent on hiding), but you want to sing along with it (which I admit I totally do in the comfort of my car).

This is yet another raunchy comedy, and it’s totally worth paying to see. Check it out.

And that was mah first Mass Review. Hopefully, this won’t become a regular thing, but if it must, it must. Thanks for reading, and take your vitamins.

This is a high pressure xenon bulb. It gets crazy bright, and crazy hot. They are what is used in the projector at the movie theater that I manage. These guys don’t just break, they straight up explode. If you are around during the explosion, I hope you enjoy the feeling of glass embedded in your skin.

Last night, one of them blew up.

Not this, but close.

Yesterday, the temperature was rather high, and we don’t have air conditioning in the box office part of the theater. As one of my employees put it, “It’s blazin’.” BLAZIN’ INDEED.

Beginning at 9 a.m., the temperature didn’t drop below 80 degrees Fahrenheit until after 11 p.m. My theory is that the heat of the day slowly destabilized the structural integrity of the xenon bulb, and then the sweet, sweet, red-hot necrophilic obsession that was happening onscreen (we’re playing “Eclipse”) ended up being too much for it, and it asploded.

Poor little guy never stood a chance.

Last night was more exciting than I wanted it to be, but whatevs.