"The Hurt Locker" is great and everything, but...

You know what you do on Friday nights when you're not drinking? You go to AA meetings or learn to knit. No, no, fuck that, you stay in and watch movies. So Friday night we watched "The Hurt Locker" because, you know, it's highly acclaimed and all that shit.

Now, I'm obviously going to look like an idiot casting any doubt on a movie that got a 97% approval rating on RottenTomatoes and just won the Critics' Choice Award for Best Picture, but I am kind of an idiot, so here goes.

(Side note: at least "Avatar" didn't win. If that wins the Oscar for Best Picture I am really going to get pissed off.)

First of all, Jeremy Renner is fucking phenomenal as the bomb disposal guy, so let's get that out of the way. And the movie totally has you in its grip from the opening sequence and it never fucking lets up. It's like standing on the edge of a cliff and waving your arms scrambling trying to get back for 2 hours.

Here comes me being an idiot. I just thought it was a little, I don't know, shallow. I mean, the Renner character veers close to cliche - a bomb defusing guy who's kind of crazy and maybe has a death wish!!! Maybe all bomb defusing guys really are like that, but it just seemed a little predictable. And the fact is that this is really an action flick - it jumps from one highly-charged white-knuckle action sequence to another. There's a nod towards character depth with a whole subplot about the Bomb Guy developing a relationship with an Iraqi boy, but ultimately we don't learn a lot about Bomb Guy as a result.

Don't get me wrong; it's a powerful, gripping movie that never lets up and absolutely keeps you riveted for 2 hours. But it's essentially an action thriller. I'll be fine if it wins Best Picture, as long as Avatar doesn't, but I don't see it as this Amazing Achievement in Cinema. I'm no film critic, though, so what do I know.

40goingon28 watches the Prop 8 trial so you don't have to

Since I work in the neighborhood and had some time to kill this morning, I wandered over to the federal courthouse to take in some of the Prop. 8 same-sex marriage trial. The line to get into the main courtroom was like the line for the bathroom at Amber at midnight on a Friday (RIP, BTW), so I went to the overflow courtroom on the 19th floor and watched it on closed-circuit TV with a bunch of other youngsters.

(P.S. Don't bother looking for it on CourTv or anything - the Supreme Court shut that shit down. Oh wait, I guess CourTv doesn't exist any more. Oh well.)

So anyway today we have Small British Psychologist Dr. Michael Lamb, who reminds me a little of Daniel Faraday from "Lost" and has the kind of English accent you just love in your experts on developmental psychology. He teaches at Cambridge so he's easily the smartest person in the room. He's going to be talking about how kids raised by gay and lesbian parents turn out pretty much the same as kids raised by straight parents.

So he's written like 15 books and a billion articles and yep, all the research shows it's true - kids of gay and lesbian parents are just as likely to be well-adjusted as kids of straight parents. There's tons of research. They're not even more likely to become gay. I mean, I pretty much assumed that was true, but it's nice to know science is backing me up.

(One personal note - as he's going through all the stuff that makes a well-adjusted kid, I'm starting to see what might have gone wrong in my own case. But let's not dwell on that.)

The upshot of the whole thing is that keeping the gays from getting married won't improve childrens' adjustment. It might cut down on Crate + Barrel's annual revenue, though. He totally didn't say that. I just made that up.

Here comes the pro-Prop 8 guy on cross-examination. He wants to start out by showing that Dr. Michael Lamb is a simpering Tool of the Left, so he quickly gets him to admit that he's a member of the ACLU, the National Organization of Women, and, I don't know, Communists for Whales or whatever. But the best part, which I wrote down verbatim and I SWEAR IS TRUE, was when the lawyer asked, with a tone of voice like he was getting a real zinger in there:

"You've even given money to PBS, correct?!"

Hold. The. Fucking. Phone. This Lamb guy supports that fag Grover? GAME FUCKING OVER. And that Jacques Pepin? SO FUCKING FRENCH. Lamb is toast now.

Hates America.

Not really. What really happened is that everyone in the courtroom busted out laughing. I guess in SF, donating money to PBS isn't like supporting the Church of Satan like it is everywhere else.

So the cross went on, and the guy was basically trying to establish that - gasp - there are differences between men and women. (Shocker that emerged: "Men can't breastfeed, right?" Lamb had to grudgingly admit that no, men in fact cannot breastfeed.) I bolted at the break, so I don't know what other Earth-shattering revelations will come forth later.

What this all means, big picture, I can't say. I'm definitely going back for more some other time, though. It was a hoot.

The dog totally knows

Check out Sophie with the advance warning on the Humboldt earthquake last week:



[Video via the Eureka Times-Standard.]

She's all "FUCK, I AM OUTTA HERE." I guess that shit about dogs being able to predict earthquakes is true.

Speaking of EQs, there's been a lot of Unwanted Seismic Activity in the past coupla weeks. We're off to Target on Saturday to replenish our earthquake kits. And BevMo, too. I drank the vodka out of our kit like a year ago.

The Sex Robot, or Shooting Fish &c.

I know this shit is already all over the Internets and it's the Fall of Humanity and blah blah blah whatever, but I'm sure everyone's just dying to know my jaundiced take on it, so let's do this thing:

New Jersey company TrueCompanion and Hines has developed the world’s first “sex robot”. The robot called ‘Roxxxy’ has different personalities and responds to the sense of touch. Roxxxy, is a female robot which acts as a life partner or mate for those who can’t find the 'real thing'. TrueCompanion claims Roxxxy “can carry on a discussion and expresses her love to you and be your loving friend. She can talk to you, listen to you and feel your touch.”

TrueCompanion introduced its first robot, Trudy, in 1993.

The sex robot is a two and a half year project costing around $1 million. The company is currently working on the male version of the robot.

Roxxxy will be available in the US and European market from next week and will cost about $7,000 to $9,000 (excluding subscription fee).

First of all, "The Money Times," decide whether you like your punctuation inside or outside of your quotation marks and fucking stick with it. The bopping back and forth is maddening.

Second, what happened with Trudy? I don't remember hearing anything about Trudy. In '93, what was it? A blow-up doll with a couple of built-in Dustbusters and a cassette tape of Meg Ryan doing the orgasm scene in "When Harry Met Sally"?

Third, what does the "subscription fee" cover? Roxxy gets "US Weekly" or something? Actually, she'd be about midrange, IQ-wise, for the typical US Weekly reader, so I wouldn't rule it out.

Fourth, ugh:

Meet Roxxxy, the sex robot apparently modeled on Chrissie Hynde

But I saved the best for last:

Hines inspiration for Roxxxy came from the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

“I had a friend who passed away in 9/11. I promised myself I would create a program to store his personality, and that became the foundation for Roxxxy True
Companion,” said Hines.

Here we have reached the absolute nadir of 9/11 capitalization. You thought Rudy Giuliani was bad? You thought you couldn't get any more exploitive than the "Freedom Tower" coins? You, my friend, have underestimated the perseverance of American capitalism. Because a talking moving sex robot can't sell itself. But a 9/11-INSPIRED TALKING MOVING SEX ROBOT? That's what I'm talkin' about.

I'll throw a bigass party, too!

The Wife and I have entered the Marin Dream House Raffle. Obviously, when we win, we're going to take the $1.6 million in cash and not the house, because (a) we couldn't afford the property taxes on the house, and (b) neither one of us particularly wants to live in Larkspur. Nothing personal, but if you've ever hung out in Larkspur, you know what I'm talking about.

SO after taxes we figure we'll clear like $800K. Not that much, but enough to make a good start of it. I've already got a few things picked out!

A Juicy Couture faux fur coat for my dog.

Faux fur is OK, but I was kind of hoping to find a REAL fur coat for my dog. Like a big Snoop Dogg fur. Because then my dog would be all "I AM SUCH A FUCKING BADASS I'M WEARING ANOTHER DOG'S FUR" except they probably don't make dog fur coats for dogs. Baby seal fur would be fine.

A custom built dog house would be cool too. Do you think they could build like a little mini-Zeitgiest with little tiny picnic tables in the back? That way we can have little happy hours and my dog's friends can come over and get wasted and throw up behind the Porta Potties. That would be cool.

I'll probably need this statue:

I have no idea what it's supposed to mean, either.

If there's any money left over, we're going to go to the Hemingway Bar at the Ritz in Paris and have a couple of those €400 Ritz Side Cars. That's about $570 apiece Amurican. Tell me it wouldn't be a fucking trip just to roll in there and go "Yo, Francois, set me and my homies up with a pitcher of those Side Cars. Chop chop, don't make whichever Olsen twin this is wait!"

In six months, no one's going to remember anything about this and we'll all be going "What was that about, again?"

I was working on this whole other post about going to the gym and self-improvement and not drinking and all that bullshit, but SCREEEECH RECORD SCRATCH SOUND The Great Hipster Comment War of Aught-Ten has commanded my attention. 25 years from now I will be telling my - what, kids? court-ordered lecturees? Hugh Hefner-like bevy of child brides? - this story as a cautionary tale of what the Internetz were like in Ye Olde 2010.

It seems that Intrepid Local Blogger Kevin of Mission Mission visited Debaser at Knockout recently and maybe didn't think it was all that great:

I always thought The Knockout was a place where people who still think Nirvana is indie went to score blow. Turns out people dance there too! I had been seeing these pictures pop up on flickr a lot and kept thinking “what brand of douchebag goes to a club that, presumably, hires some jackass to take photos of their trashed customers, watermarks/brands/copyrights the photo, and upload them to flickr?”

So I decided to do a little recon/spectating with the ultimate authority of Mission douchebags last night. Dunno about it. Felt like a more over-hyped promoted/less fun version of emo night at Pops (which is free and they serve $1 high life). The whole time I was there nothing really notable or exciting happened. Some drunk chicks hit the photobooth but the whole thing was mostly shouting at your friends over the DJ. Rolled out at midnight, went to Farolito, savaged a burrito, and went to bed.

Hey, whatever. Last time I went to Debaser, an extremely sweaty guy with a beard and a neck tattoo spilled half a beer on me. Did I totally get pissed off and go "WHAT!? WHAT!?" No, of course not, you silly twat. IT ALL BEATS LIVING IN RWANDA.

(I should interject here that the "some jackass" who takes the photos is my friend Chris, who I personally know not to be a jackass. Anyway.)

(I should also interject that Kevin and I probably have different ideas about what constitutes fun, because it seems like I spend a lot of my time shouting at my friends over the DJ/band/illegal cockfight crowd/whatever.)

SHIT HIT THE FAN. By now, if you're reading this, you read all the other SF blogs and you know the whole story - Debaser's response, the brazilian comments on Mission Mission, and the what-does-it-all-mean article on SF Appeal, followed by another raft of fist-shaking and chin-rubbing comments. OUR NAVELS ARE THE MOST GAZE-WORTHY OF ALL NAVELS WORLDWIDE.

Why am I writing about this? I don't know. Aren't I perpetuating this silly fight? Yes. Yes I am.

Here's your takeaways: Not everyone likes the same things; Debaser will continue apace, without noticeable wounds; people say all kinds of things on the Internet, some of them mean; it's awesome we have the free time to worry about this. Me included, times ten.


UPDATE: As suggested by commenter Rocco, we should print up shirts! Or how about baseball jerseys and hoodies. Like so:

January's Little Joke

And so we have reached that yearly event known as Sober January, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like and is basically just a chance to clean out the system, so to speak, catch up on our Netflix, save a ton of money and lose some weight. I'm shooting for the rehab-standard 28 days this year. Some prior years have been relatively successful (i.e. solid month) and some not so much, like last year, when The Wife (who was still Super Hot Irish Girlfriend at the time) and I collectively talked each other into breaking down and going to a bar on the 10th. Let's hope for better results this year.

Here are the changes that you, loyal readers, will notice during January:

1. Fewer drinking-related stories. Duh.

2. The blog will be about 20% less funny. I'm sorry, but it's true. I think my posts are consistently funnier when they're written either while slightly buzzed or the morning after drinking. Can't help it, it's true.

So let's hang in there together. You forgive all the movie reviews and talk about my dog, and I'll forgive you for actually having fun this month.

IN OTHER NEWS, this "Tooth Fairy" movie with The Rock has to be an elaborate joke, right? I mean, the commercial looks EXACTLY like the kind of parody commercial they'd do on SNL if he were hosting. There is no way this can be a real movie, right? Right? Please tell me it's not.

Speaking of movie trailers, thanks to Periqueblend for turning me on to The 5 Best Movie Trailer Remixes. Genius: