This Hot Fire

With the upcoming movie “The Hangover” making its way out this weekend, I thought Id share some thoughts on the subject…

I have suffered from the mighty hangover and have fallen victim to its predator like ways many times.. it stalks you slowly, forcing you to give in to the peer pressure of “Take a shot! Pussy!”… and “Time for a Jack Daniels chug!”..drinking games get easier, you become smarter, vodka tastes like water, EVERYONE is bone-able and cigarretes are the most satisying thing since sex.. but alas, we mortals are not meant to partake in such utopia, so we blackout… Nature, you are one evil son of a bitch.  You cant go out, drink an entire handle of vodka and then continue the next day guilt and consequence free. Cant happen. Trust me… oh god, trust me.

The world cant have the good without the bad. You cant win the lottery without paying half of it to taxes, giving more of it to family, and then spending the rest on a mansion just as the real estate market crashes.  The hangover is the balance, the yang to drunks yin.  The great universe balancing the equation.  Yes, I just got that deep about alcohol consumption.

When you think of a hangover, no one ever really has any sympathy for a person suffering from one… you just laugh at them.  As I do.  You cant think of the last time you had one and empathize… you more than likely ask the dumbass “Hey, want a cocktail?” Just to amuse yourself, and see if they start vomitting right there.  Yet when youve awoken from your dark unconcious slumber to the taste of vodka, cigarrettes, and tid bits of food in your teeth, your not in a laughing mood.  Your clutching bed sheets in your closed fist fighting off the feeling of yacking your brains out. Sometimes you win, many times you lose.  Once youve experienced the Level 5 hangover, as I call it, you either stop drinking or start looking for hangover cures…

If you’re a drinker of any kind, you’ve heard all the hang over prevention tricks, and rumors like take vitamin C, or some OJ before you go to bed. Some people say drink lots of water. Some people say to eat lots of fiber, or greasy food so you can drop a huge deuce and hopefully knock some out. There’s lots of techniques and advice, and the one I love to hear is to pick up another beer and drink it when you wake up. Son of a bitch, if they were right. It works for some mild hangovers, but all it does is postpone the hang over til 3 in the afternoon. Yet again the cruel world only teases you with a miracle cure.

In essence the hang over is the price you have to pay for having a carefree, insane, and god damn good time. Sometimes its worth that price when you can wake up with a women with huge knockers, or you shatter a previously held beer bong record, or take an unprecedented 14 shots all at once.  Sometimes a night of debauchery and fun can be worth the consequence, but take it from me dont mix the hard booze… just dont.

Let me start by saying this is not the average Seth Rogen film.. not even close.  This is an offbeat and DARK comedy, and I cant stress that enough.  I laughed my balls off, but without a twisted sense of humor and the ability to let yourself go, you wont enjoy this movie.  Yet I cant praise it enough, I loved it.

The writer and director of the movie is Jody Hill, and for anyone familiar with Jody Hill, hes the man behind the new HBO series East Bound and Down, and the independent movie the Foot Fist Way.  If your not familiar with those works, or Jody Hill then Ill tell you… this guy is whacked. But in an awesome way.  He sees things in a bizarre perspective and does comedy in a dark and intense way that I haven’t really seen too much.  I don’t expect Observe and Report to break any records at the Box Office because of this, but hes definitely got my respect for having the balls to go outside the norm.

Observe and Report is about a mall security guard with bipolar disorder, who is incredibly delusional and for that is seen as somewhat retarded.  He sees everything in the most whacky perspective and takes things to such extremes it makes for a fucking hilarious movie.  I don’t like to completely spoil a movie but, its something you really have to see for yourself.  Its like Taxi Driver meets a Farrelly Brothers movie.  A guy with delusions of grandeur and a psychotic tick rules like a dictator only the world he rules is all in his head, and slowly throughout the movie it grows to be the audiences world too, which helps him become a good guy.  Spice in some over the top humor and whackyness, and you’ve got Observe and Report. I wont guarantee that everyone will find it hilarious, its pretty out there, but with the right mind set you could really enjoy this movie and get something different.

Prepare yourself for the chase scene at the end.   Wow.

Back in 2006 I was a busy man with lots of projects and working on a book when Heroes premiered on September 25 2006, so I didn’t catch it from the start.  But in early 2007 a friend started talking about a new show that sounded a lot like X-men… Since The X-men kick all kinds of ass I decided to check it out.

After watching all the episodes in the series thus far I got addicted.  I couldn’t stop watching the first season.  I watched the first six episodes 3 times each.  It was awesome, and had a formula of sucking you in like Id never seen.  With a bonanza of ads and marketers hitting up every message board on the internet, they hit the nerds first.  That’s always a good move, and with nerds aware of a new Sci-Fi show they had a great base. Then to attract the every day viewers and morons of pop culture they recruited pretty people to star in the show, and incorporated award winning special effects.  BAM! Ratings gold.  The first season’s 23 episodes hit an average of 14.3 million viewers in the U.S., receiving the highest rating for any NBC drama premiere in five years.  The American Film Institute, Writers Guild of America, Hollywood foreign Press association and more all licked the balls of Heroes calling it the best show, and series of the year.  It had great writing, good acting, and looked awesome in HD so I thought it was the best drama series I had seen on TV in a long time.

NOW COMES ALL THE BULLSHIT.  When season one ended I felt like I wanted to punch my TV.  It was like the whole season I was getting the most awesome blow job ever and then when I was about to finish up the lips were removed and I was punched in the face.  Very upsetting.  Everyone was waiting for a huge super power battle between Sylar and Peter, and anyone who wasn’t is a homo… That’s right I SAID IT.  That battle didn’t have to happen to appease me, but Jesus Christ, 22 and three quarters of awesome episodes just to have a minute and a half of one sword stab and two guys flying away in each others arms.  Fuck you Heroes.  Maybe having Peters brother sweep him away to blow up in the sky, and Hiro doing a quick stab through Sylar’s chest was done to save money on all the special effects they would have needed to do. Why the hell did I say maybe!? I’m positive it was done to save money because I sure as hell know it could have been exponentially better.  I wasn’t looking for an ending or one final battle of good conquering evil, because it’s a TV show, I understand it needs to keep going… but COME ON.

Once I got into Heroes it happened to be one of the very few shows I watched when it first premiered on TV as opposed to watching it online or otherwise.  So when season one ended with a shank I was left with blue balls, I didn’t really feel like watching any more and when it came back from its hiatus, I didn’t watch. Apparently other people felt this way too, because ratings dropped 15 %. Yet some how the marketing genius’ sucked me back in and I was back on Monday nights watching Heroes.  Other people didn’t quite feel the same and by episode seven Heroes dropped to 9.87 million viewers.  Damn near cutting ratings by 40 %.  This would be a death blow for any other show, but Heroes is one of NBC’s best in the 18-49 demographic, as well as having strong international appeal so they keep it alive.  When the big twist hit just after episode 7 it slightly came back up but still ended at 11 million which was still 3 million lower than the average of season 1.  Then to make everything worse the writers strike happens and cuts the 24 episode second season down to 11.  So I can’t directly slam Heroes for the downfall of the story here, but it hurt ratings and viewers again.

So now Season 3 begins, A YEAR LATER, and its with a 3 hour bullshit “meet the fans” and “catch up on the red carpet” pre-show.  God damn man, fluff me a bit more why don’t ya.  The ratings die again, and of course the producers chalk it up to the writers strike, but give me a break your showing an hour of pre-show that’s 50 % commercials and 50 % actors trying to be hosts… this blows.  Yet finally after 2 hours of garbage the premiere pops on and its pretty slow but like the Heroes of old it set up tons of promising story lines and crazy twists to what we know.  Then the first few episodes are actually pretty good and have all kinds of questions bubbling, then Peters dad is shot and the entire thing starts to crumble and we lose interest all over again…

So this brings us to the present and there are only 3 episodes left before it goes on break until September and without some of the most amazing shit ever, this show may be dead to me.  Its constantly filled with more commercials than any show I can think of, the writing has fizzled out like a bad fart and I’ve been left disappointed.  A man can only take so much…  Somebody fix Heroes…

Message to the Producers:::  I will write for this show and make it fuck-your-face awesome.  Just give me a chance.



Once again my ol’ hometown is about to make national news.  Good ol Stockton CA..

Amidst big budget cuts that may include laying off cops, a 66 year old retired truck driver and Vietnam War veteran name Alan Pettet is planning on putting together a vigilante Super Friends.

Wow. Part of me wants to belittle this guy and tear him a new one for trying to relive Nam’, and possibly beat up some colored folk.  But another side of me is realizing lots of the country is falling into shambles and the state and local governments are CUTTING funds for cops, which is going to make the cities even worse.  With Stockton being a huge bastion for violent crime, laying off even 1 cop in Stockton would be one too many. The place has only gotten worse as far as crime is concerned, and every time one side of the government tries to kick start the place, such as with a soccer team, hockey team and AFL team another side of the local government tries to kill it again.

So with Stockton in freefall this guy Alan Pettet has wrangled together 18 other guys, some ex-military, to actually patrol crappy areas of Stockton if the police officers do get laid off July 1st.  Apparently they will wear armbands to identify themselves and drive with 4 men per car armed with rifles, and some non-lethal weapons.  Dear god I hope they wear a cape and cowl like Batman.  For those of you familiar with guns, or Nintendo 64′s golden eye, (fuck, that game was awesome) Pettet plans to carry a Desert Eagle pistol.  This is a beast of a handgun folks; it could punch through a guy’s chest.  Yet even with devastating weapons, he says when they patrol they only plan to detain suspected criminals and call the cops.

So your telling me with an arsenal of weapons at your disposal these guys will be acting like gated community security?? BUUUULLSHIT.  Pettet did say if anyone opens fire on him or his super pals they will return fire, but what happens when the first little punk gets all uppity and shoves one of these guys to run away?  “Ahh shucks Jimbo, he’s getting away”… not a chance.  I don’t think he’ll pull the desert eagle on some kid breaking curfew but, a nice tazer blast to the throat could be executed.  I just see lots of bad stuff happening with this set up.

The Mayor and vice mayor and other officials are saying Stockton isn’t at the point where it needs an armed militia, but Pettet has already set up an acronym for his boys “S.A.M.” Stockton Armed Militia. So once an acronym has been established, everyone knows it’s an official agency… EVERYONE. It almost makes me want to get a cowboy hat and yell Yee Haw from the dukes of hazard car and shoot a couple of Yosemite Sam pistols into the air.  Who else would be down to do this?  I would,   Id get a sweet ass code name like Iron Hawk or Lazer Thunder and get to shoot somebody or tazer scum, straight up Saturday morning cartoon style.

I mock this old guy because it all is pretty whacky to actually organize a militia in 2009, but at the same time there’s never been an economic dive like this in my lifetime and sometimes crazy times call for crazy solutions.  The guy has done his homework and realizes the constitution allows citizens to form a militia, and has been getting advice from his attorney friend Ron Stein.  So he’s doing everything by the book and plans to get permits to carry concealed handguns.  Stein seems just as determined as Pettet about the police being laid off and even said “We are in the wild, wild West when you take people who are supposed to protect us off the street.”

I’m definitely conflicted about a vigilante fighting force for Stockton.  Do I think bad things will happen if they organize a militia? Yes.  Do I think bad things will happen without the militia and 50 less cops on the street? Yes.  But which is worse?  Hell if I know.  Honestly if some old school bad asses that fought in Nam’ wanna go clean up the streets, all the power to them.  That takes some balls.  They may accidentally shoot a little kid with a fake gun, pummel a minority on video camera, be caught up in a drug scandal or any other incident cops get into but Id rather have more people on the street trying to do some good then less of them to let crime grow.

What do you think?

As some of you may know, my hometown is Stockton CA…

And in early February Forbes declared my hometown the most miserable city in the entire country.  Since I dont live there any more and have several friends who do, my first reaction was to laugh my ass off.

Then I actually read the article and felt bad, but still laughed my ass off and made sure to post the article and all its information on every social profile I have to desecrate my friends still stuck in Stockton.

The article mentioned how they ranked the  cities, and explained…

“Stockton ranks in the bottom seven in four of the nine categories we looked at: commute times, income tax rates, unemployment and violent crime. Only New York City has a higher income tax rate than what Stockton, and all California residents, are forced to pay.”

Wow.  I was aware, even as a child, Stockton had a reputation for things such as highest murder rate per square mile and highest car theft during the holidays.. but sweet jesus, most miserable city in the U.S. God damn.  That includes places like “every city” in Utah, where mormons thrive and alcoholic beverages are watered down, and illegal on sunday.  Thats brutal…  But then again from the time I was 12 to 17 I had a gun pulled on me and was threated by death 4 times.  So, I understand the difficulties in living there.

Something I was not aware of is that Stockton was number 2 the year prior! Stockton isnt new to misery and shittyness apparently, even to people who dont live there.  Yet, something still stirs in my belly to hear shit talking about my hometown.. Theres a level of comradery in misery and any Stockton native still has a soft spot for the place.  Whether it be a “209″ reference on a myspace page, or a “stocktown” verbal reference… Something about that shithole makes you miss the few people you were able to find who didnt want to rape and or murder you.  Its like making best pals with the bad ass in prison who will protect you from anal rape… its comforting… and you could remember a person like that the rest of your life.

I was the first person within a large group of friends to leave Stockton, and one of few who hasn’t been forced to move back and I take pride in the fact im 2 minutes from the beach and 6 hours away from the rectal cavity of California.   But I’ll always have a friend in a Stocktonian, they are the only ones who share the same level.  Yet let me make this clear… Im not looking to make a new Stockton friend, I dont need crackheads and crackwhores emailing me for friendship.. I made my friends there and Im done.  Loyalties and ties remain but no new ones need to be formed.  YOU HEAR ME!!?

209 Fo’ Life son..



Well holy shitballs..  The 2009 NCAA Women’s Division I Basketball Championships commenced March 21, 2009 and will conclude April 7.  Because of this, opening day for MENS baseball on April 5th is being pushed to ESPN2, so that women’s basketball can be televised on ESPN.

Before continuing further, I’d like to exclaim… “What the fuck?”

Since when did women’s sports at any point in their season, up to and including world championship games, supersede any men’s sports?

At ANY TIME Ill be watching the Bi-regional Minnesota curling opening day rather than a women’s championship of “insert sport here”.  This may sound blatantly sexist, and I’m not one to dodge accusations so yes.  Yes it is.  Its also the truth.  A pre-season football game beats the ratings, hell a draft day for football can beat a women’s championship game.  This all leads me to, what the hell ESPN, what in the HELL!?

Sure Ill still be able to watch the opening day of baseball, I’ve got a simple cable package that includes ESPN channels, and I don’t have to watch the women’s Final Four.  But that’s not the point, the point is how in gods name is women’s basketball superseding the MLB?  Did the steroids scandal devastate it that bad?  Did the Venezuelan sweat shops that raised Alex Rodriguez finally kill a kid from overexertion!?

What happened?  Someone tell me.  Please.