2008 in review: chart topping music…

The following are the 10 best selling 2008 singles according to ITunes (which, as we all know, seems to be God these days). I think they accurately represent most of what’s wrong with our generation.

1. Leona Lewis – “Bleeding Love”
2. Coldplay – “Viva La Vida”
3. Flo Rida featuring T-Pain – “Low”
4. Katy Perry – “I Kissed a Girl”
5. Rihanna – “Disturbia”
6. Lil Wayne with Static Major – “Lollipop”
7. Jordin Sparks & Chris Brown – “No Air”
8. Natasha Bedingfield – “Pocketful of Sunshine”
9. Sara Bareilles – “Love Song”
10. Rihanna – “Don’t Stop the Music”

 7 pop songs, 2 hip-hop, and 1 measly alternative represented by Coldplay??? Where’s the Fleet Foxes, or the Ting Tings, or Radiohead? Unfortunately the world’s rise in idiots seems to be directly related to its rise in terrible music. I’m speechless… speechless and depressed.

2008 in review: box office wins, humanity loses…

There were some good films this year. There were many more awful ones. And then there were those select movies that exceeded every expectation in both how horrible they were and how well they did at the box office. Folks, I give you my top 5 most unacceptable 2008 box office successes:

1. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull- $ 317,023,851. The temple was a fucking spaceship! Enough said.

2. Mamma Mia!- $143,762,955. Above and beyond the terrible acting, campy dance sequences, and shirtless Colin Firth dancing up on some random guy, the real beauty of this film comes with its premise. Some British chicks just said “Let’s create a formulaic plot around a group of songs by an artist. But not just any artist! ABBA! That’ll be solid gold.” In line with this, I’ve decided to write my own musical based on countless classic A-ha hits… yeah it’ll pretty much just be “Take on Me” sung 12 different ways…

3. You Don’t Mess With the Zohan- $100,018,837. This movie sullies Adam Sandler’s good name. I mean, his most recent films have all been comic masterpieces! I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, Click, The Longest Yard, 50 First Dates, Anger Management… Oh who am I kidding? Adam Sandler hasn’t been funny this milennium, which makes Zohan’s success all the more intolorable.

4. Beverly Hills Chihuahua- $92,719,916. This may just be the most perplexing box office win of the year. I can, in theory, understand movies making money that have a built-in fan base of an awesome trilogy, or a tacky musical, or even Adam Sandler. WHAT BUILT IN FAN BASE IS THERE FOR DIGITAL CHIHUAHUAS? World, be ashamed.

5. High School Musical 3: Senior Year- $89,444,242. Speaking of tacky musicals AND trilogies! If you don’t know it already, here is Disney’s formula for a tween hit: Take one wholly trite idea, make it even more trite, repeat, repeat again, and voila! an incredibly lucrative franchise that won’t quit! I feel sad to be a human.

2008 in review: romantic comedies…

Since we are coming down to the end of the year (and I’m sick of all the Christmas talk), I thought this would be a good time to begin 2008 in review: a series of lists.

I am a pretty big movie fan (you know, aside from all the shit) so let’s start there. It seems as though almost every original concept in life has been thought of already. This was made evident in 2008 films by the stunning amount of comic book adaptations (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, etc.), remakes (The Women), and of course, recycled cliche romantic comedies. But how does one mask the fact that their movie is the same old, “Start of film. ‘Gosh, that guy is sexy, but a jerk.’ Characters get to know each other. ‘Is he a jerk, though?’ Misunderstanding. ‘He’s a jerk.’ Resolution. ‘Oh, he’s not a jerk.’ Swelling music. Kiss.” kind of film? Here are ten 2008 movies with that premise and the tactics they use to cover up their astounding lack of creativity:

1. 27 Dresses- Confuse everyone by trying to convince them that Katherine Heigl is a spinster.

2. Definitely, Maybe- Turn it into a fucked up bedtime story.

3. Fool’s Gold- Add in murderous rap stars and Spanish hidden treasure.

4. Forgetting Sarah Marshall- Show some male genitalia.

5. Made of Honor- Create the hope of seeing Patrick Dempsey in a dress… and never deliver.

6. My Best Friend’s Girl- Make the male get paid to be a jerk… by other jerks.

7. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist- Exploit indie film/music status.

8. Sex and the City- Exploit HBO series.

9. Twilight- Swap ‘vampire’ for ‘jerk.’

10. What Happens in Vegas…- They didn’t really try.

What to get the most optimistic person you know for Christmas…

…or Hanukkah, that African one, or whatever other December holidays exist:

 

A good bet is anything from http://despair.com/. Knock those happy bastards down a peg. It’s what Santa would want.

Christmas card photos suck…

Q.E.D.

Travel Tips…

While preparing to fly home last night, I came to a realization of epic proportions. I mean, I think I always knew deep down, but it all became so clear yesterday that I thought I’d share.

There are so many rules of travel one must follow in our current world climate, especially when checking-in at an airport. There are regulations on what you may and may not bring into an airport (yes blankets, no knives), what you can say in an airport (yes a friendly “thank you”, no jokes about a bomb in your suitcase) and what you can do in an airport (yes hug a relative, no punch a security guard). But the most important thing you can do in order to ensure a quick and painless check-in process, and what I came to realize yesterday, is to NEVER GET STUCK BEHIND A GROUP OF ASIAN TOURISTS.

I don’t know if it is due to sheer ignorance or willful disobedience, but tourists, especially of the Asian variety, manage to break every rule in place at an airport and subsequently get caught doing so. It baffles me that they don’t understand the ways of airport security because they obviously managed to make their way to our country in the first place. But over the course of my check-in, which took an extra 20 minutes, it was made abundantly clear that these particular tourists had no idea what the hell was going on. I present to you a sampling of rules they broke while going through security:

1. Do NOT have liquids in your bag. (this includes both water and some random Korean power drink)

2. Take off your shoes.

3. Take off your jacket.

4. Keep your boarding pass with you.

5. Stand over here while your co-worker goes to get your boarding pass.

6. Take your laptop out of your bag.

7. No, sir, YOU take the laptop out of your bag, not the security people.

8. Wait to walk through the metal detector until you are told to.

9. Do NOT interfere with security when going through your bag.

I kid you not when I say NONE of these simple tasks were followed. It astounded me. However, once they all passed through security (How? To this day I’m not quite sure…) things ran smoothly. Luckily I wasn’t in a rush or I would have been annoyed…

-Mara

In regards to the anotherworldcitizen comment…

Die.

I’ve been Mono’d…

So after a painfully fun blood test I took a few weeks ago, I found out I have mono. Mononucleosis. “The kissing disease.” Whatever.

For those of you without any firsthand experiences of having mono, I resent you. You don’t need to sleep 14 hours a day to be a manageable version of exhausted. You don’t get winded from walking up a flight of stairs (or if you do, that’s pathetic). And you don’t have a doctor putting your sex life on hold for months at a time. Probably.

In the interest of education on the topic, I thought I would give my top 3 pros and cons of mono, as I have found them.

PROS:

1) It becomes much easier to avoid annoying people. For me, this means almost everyone, but I will say I am especially pleased not to be in the vicinity of a particularly irritating coworker, Gabby. If you don’t know Gabby personally, she’s the classic example of a frenemy. Minus the “fr.”

2) You don’t have to feel guilty about wasting your day watching TV and sleeping. Not that I would anyway.

3) You can get away with anything and guilt other people into doing stuff for you. I haven’t bought groceries, cooked food, or done any chores since I was diagnosed. More importantly, I haven’t gotten shit for it from my roommate.

CONS:

1) Having the infamous “kissing disease” without kissing anyone. It’s pathetic.

2) Being treated like a leper by stupid people. They don’t seem to realize that I don’t want to give them mono as much as they don’t want to get it. Or almost as much. This means that whenever I DO have human interaction, it is filled with the slathering of Purell or door opening with a T-Shirt-covered hand. Thanks assholes. As if I don’t feel bad enough.

3) The whole “being sick” aspect. NOT awesome.

There are, obviously, other pros and cons to mono, but seeing as I’ve already lost interest in this post, I’ll assume you have too and leave it at that. Have fun being disease free…douchebags.

-Mara

All about my day…

It sucked.

Tis the season to avoid assholes…

The holidays have come swiftly upon us. Personally, I hate this time of year. People you don’t know smile at you for no reason. Humans seem to think it’s considerate of them to knock on your door and interrupt you from your life, just to sing some cliche tunes to you in tone deaf voices… I don’t get it.

If you’re like me, then you’ve already come up with a list of places to avoid during the holidays. If not, here’s mine. I decided not to include all 47 entries, but rather stick to the basics. Enjoy!

1) Parking lots- Supposedly, everyone driving on the roads has been forced to pass some sort of test. However, you wouldn’t know it by the insane antics assholes perform these days to evade walking as much as possible. No, it is NOT ok for you to stop in the middle of the road to wait 10 minutes for a mom and her 5 kids to pile into their car and leave so you can grab a spot 20 feet closer to the mall entrance. This reminds me of those tools who think that putting a right blinker on when they stop in the middle of the street is equivalent to parking. Also unacceptable are the pedestrians who wander in front of your car without the vaguest idea of where they are going and those drivers who have not yet grasped the concept of a one way road. Save yourself the aneurysm and shop online.

2) Department stores- Some may group this in with malls or shops in general, but department stores have a charm all their own. Despite providing anything you could ever need all in one place, not one department store has yet created an organizational system that doesn’t take a PhD to crack. In conjunction with this, one can only assume that part of staff training is learning how to avoid bewildered customers at any cost. The result of which is a 30 minute search for the new Eddie Izzard DVD, only to find the stand for them in the middle of womens wear. The issue becomes irrelevant anyway, because anything good in the store will have sold out at 4am.

3) Movie theaters- At this point, every single theater is packed to capacity with either obnoxious kids out of school to see crappy family films inevitably with a message about how it’s the season for caring, or pretentious people watching art house films that would be ignored any other time of year but because they are released in December they have “Oscar buzz.” Why producers seem to think the month of release will make their films not crap is beyond me, but whatever. Each year also provides those lucky moviegoers with some awful holiday-themed film reminding them that even though their family may be crazy, lines of genetic code make it impossible for them to escape. Which leads me to…

4) Family gatherings- Just because you can’t avoid your family forever doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. That is, unless you enjoy Aunt Mildred pinching your cheek, your mother worriedly asking if you’ve got a boyfriend yet (and offering to share her anti-wrinkle moisturizer with you) and the semi-alcoholic antics of the male members of your clan. And why is it that ugly sweaters and dry angel food cakes seem to multiply in these situations?

5) The radio- In the time between Black Friday until Christmas radio DJs seem to think that people’s taste in music deteriorates beyond the point of recognition. Why else would they bombard our eardrums with the same 10 “classic” holiday tunes butchered by literally anyone, musician or not? I mean, what is this meant to accomplish? Are these painfully overplayed tracks supposed to imbue us with a sense of hope, or joy, or belonging? Personally, all I get is a headache and the strong urge to break something, preferably in the green or red vein.

6) Anywhere with holiday decorations- They’re trying too hard.

I could go on forever, or at least a while longer, but I’ll assume that you are smart enough to come up with your own holiday avoidance list, either internal or written. So for now, I leave you to tread carefully in a land of idiots drunk off eggnog.

-Mara