Culture Blues

The Final Countdown: November 27th Edition

Let's face it:  All the people at this party are way cooler than you. They know things. They're capable of substantive conversa-- ughhhh. Why even bother? Here's a Countdown.

(11)  If you’re anything like us, you’ve got the holiday hangover bad. Sure, Yahoo has a bunch of tea and earthy medicine tips to recover from the overindulgences of the season, but here at Culture Blues we like to counter gluttony the old fashioned way, with laziness and apathy. That means laying on the couch all day and all night and probably sleeping there while slogging through soul crushing media fare like About Schmidt, Owning Mahowny, the local news, and whatever trampy gold diggers’ show happens to be on VH1, with a light sprinkling of childhood favorites like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (now in HD, you can see the strings!) and the DuckTales movie to remind us what it was once like to be happy. Come Monday morning, we’ll be so cried out and depleted of life’s essential chemicals that we won’t even be able to muster up any anger at the fact that we spend our days at jobs better suited to monkeys than to men, and that our time on the mortal coil is growing woefully short. Oh, and if anyone’s going into the kitchen, please grab us the last turkey leg, it’s just too much bother to get up.

Ben's also having trouble keeping all that food down.

(10)  Apparently, acting like you’re a violent, totally batshit insane psychopath in the movies requires a quiet mind, as Ben Foster relies heavily on Transcendental Meditation on movie sets. The technique was also a favorite of Andy Kaufman’s so Foster is in pretty good company. But he’d better be careful, as the super judgmental TM movement rejected Kaufman when they felt his lifestyle and performances weren’t consistent with the principles of TM. It’s hard to believe that anyone concerned with public image would want to be represented by the roles Ben Foster chooses.

(9)  The producers of Good Morning America had a tough decision to make this week, essentially forced to choose between girlfriend-beating-black-guy Chris Brown and openly-gay-dullard Adam Lambert. The decision was an easy one. Lambert, last seen in full-on gay frolic at the American Music Awards (the 4^th most popular music award show in America, guys!), had his GMA appearance canceled due to the unpredictably of his gayness with some producers citing worries that Lambert and Sam Champion wouldn’t be able to keep their hands off each other. Meanwhile, GMA signed up Brown, whose most memorable dance number took place on Rihanna’s face, for a performance and interview. Shocking double standard or crucial cultural moment? We would argue the latter. With that in mind, Culture Blues would like to send our congratulations out to gay dudes everywhere for finally surpassing the blacks on the “Things Middle America Fears” list. Let’s celebrate by simulating oral sex on each other to the rhythm of horribly generic pop music!

Stop bothering Him about His dependents.

(8)  Do you guys know what the Census of Marine Life is? If it sounds to you like a bunch of eggheads going door to door in the darkest ocean depths of the dread kingdom R’lyeh, then you’re exactly right. Using cameras that James Cameron probably invented, science divers are trying to document all the crazy weird shit that haunts the bottom of the ocean. Check out the awesome gallery at i09.com. We hear Octopod is delicious.

(7)  While promoting his new (other adjectives: overlong, dull, shallow) novel Under the Dome this week, Stephen King mentioned that he’s begun brainstorming a sequel to The Shining. Oh no. No, that doesn’t sound desperate at all. King has been a longtime guilty pleasure for some of us with novels like The Stand and It still holding a special place in our hearts. But recent years haven’t been kind to King: The Dark Tower ended disastrously (we’re told, anyway, we stopped reading during that stupid riddle-train part), his attempts to “hipster”ize his short fiction in the pages of Esquire magazine came off as pathetic, and the aforementioned Dome is 1,000+ pages of drek that reads more like a college freshman’s NaNoWriMo product than a twenty-five year labor of love. It isn’t our place to call for King to be put out of his misery, although we’d love to take him to a secluded cabin and break his legs, if that’s what it’ll take to drag something readable out of him. Or, maybe King is just all used up. He’s written like 100 books. At what point does man simply run out of ideas? Anyway, don’t make a sequel to The Shining. And please give us back the weekend we spent reading Under the Dome. Or else we’re going to put a thinner curse on you. Hang it up, bro.

(6)  Today in 1095, Pope Urban II asked all able-bodied Christians to help take Jerusalem from those evil Muslims, thus beginning the first Crusades. So, we all know what the religious right was giving thanks for this year. Yawn. We’re too exhausted to even work up much ire for the friggin’ Christians. Somebody roll us over, please. We’re in the home stretch here.

More, please.

(5)  It appears that Brad Pitt will star in a film adaptation of the upcoming videogame Dark Void. For those who don’t religiously read previews of yet to be released video games, Dark Void is basically The Rocketeer with aliens. While we would all obviously prefer a Rocketeer sequel, this’ll do.

(4)  The trailer for Exam hit the internet this week. The thriller about the worst job interview ever alternates between looking oddly intriguing and looking really dumb. But we’re suckers for high concepts, so consider us interested for the time being.

(3)  We don’t usually comment on rumored casting news in these Countdowns and we also try to avoid unbridled geek outs. But, the news that The Hurt Locker’s Jeremy Renner could potentially play underrated Marvel superhero Hawkeye in the upcoming Avengers movie has brought us to a Chris Farley Show level of panting excitement. You remember that one issue of Ultimates? Where the bad guys came to Hawkeye’s house and killed his whole family? And then they shot Hawkeye in the kitchen and he was all like…shouldn’t have dropped me in the fucking kitchen, and started throwing forks into people’s eyes and stuff? Yeah, that was awesome.

(2)  Look, don’t say we didn’t warn you. For the last few months on these Countdowns, we’ve been pretty clear in our warnings on the upcoming robot uprising. Well, the International Robot Exhibition got underway in Tokyo this week, and they’re already displaying the killing models. Watch the video and imagine the grim future where these jack-booted robotic overlords fill the streets, cutting down any fleshie that would stand against them. We need you, John Connor.

(1)  DOORBUSTERS!!!!

WE'RE AWAKE AND WE GOTTA GET US SOME SALES!!!!

Jeff Hart and Jeremiah White contributed to this Countdown.