Monday, May 14

Apathy (or, an open letter to Dennis)

An inquiring mind once wrote in the comments section:

Dude, it's like May. I'm ignorant as of the current state of Jack Bauer statistics and your opinion of Spiderman 3!

Well, Dennis, if you must know, I'm holding off on compiling 24 statistics until the season's done because I've grown immensely bored with it. Not the statistics, the show. Plus, I couldn't really come up with anything funny to say every week. Perhaps I'll be better able to amuse you after these last five episodes coalesce into a giant ball of death, ridiculousness and TV-14 swears. So you'll hear about this shortly after the two-hour finale on the 21st.

Spider-Man 3 was just very much not good. I want to preface this by saying that I almost always come away with, at the very least, a neutral opinion of movies that I see. I rarely feel that a movie has been bad enough that having seen it was a waste of time. Spider-Man 3, however, came close.

I think Sam Raimi fell asleep with his face on the Overbearing Schmaltz key. You know, the one right next to Scroll Lock. Multiple times we're looking dead-on at Peter Parker crying all-out my-dog-just-died double-chin-grimace style. There's no little-kid crying in Spider-Man! For some reason, every single little bit of the everyday life stuff (the stuff that makes Spider-Man different than, say, X-Men) was unbearably dull.

I don't think the big problem was that there were too many villains, but rather that nothing was really done with any of them. Sandman was cool, but, like Dennis said, he probably could have had his own movie. He was pretty much wasted in this. Venom looked cool, but was mostly pointless. Uh... in fact, Dennis already said all of this. Goblin was okay, but probably mostly because James Franco brings back warm fuzzy Freaks and Geeks memories.

Don't even get me started on the horrible, horrible, final-act Exposition Butler. Oh, this was unforgivable. Here's a hint to movie-makers from someone who will consume nearly every piece of cinema you put out there: when you are using a previously unseen butler to steer your plot in a different direction, you need to throw away your script and start over. Do it.

Two more thoughts:

1) How in the world did Bryce Dallas Howard come from this guy? And have this guy as an uncle? HOW?

2) Dennis, you better watch yourself. I hear if you make fun of Bruce Campell, or any scene he's in, his chin comes and kills you while you're asleep.

It should also amuse you to know that I'm so lazy and apathetic that I started this post 5 days ago and am just now finishing it.

Saturday, April 28

Shiny

This might be way old news, but this guy's photographs are just amazing. If you need new wallpapers for your desktop, check it out. Just hit the "previous" button in the upper right to go back, or go to his archive.

Very, very nice.

Jack Bauer wants to blow himself up (episode 19)

Sorry it took so long. I'm sure you were waiting with bated breath. Bated!

Jack slew two villians this week at a botched hostage/Russian military chip swap which, if "successful", would have meant Jack blowing himself up, along with uncountable Chinese dudes. Whew. (Would he get credit for killing himself?) You know, it seems like when Jack's suicide/hostage swap plot is foiled, the very least I should expect is one "DAMMIT!" This is getting disappointing. We did, however, have one "DAMMIT!" back at CTU.

This brings our season totals up to:
Total Jack Bauer-caused fatalities: 24 (!!!!)
Total utterances of "DAMMIT!": 23
Total Jack Bauer-uttered "DAMMIT!"s: 11

Which leaves us with these season averages:
JBKpH (Jack Bauer Kills per Hour): 1.263
DpH ("DAMMIT!"s per Hour): 1.211
JBDpH (Jack Bauer "DAMMIT!"s per Hour): 0.579

My buddies Seth and Chrissy realized 24 was on about 10 minutes into it, asked each other if they wanted to watch, and both said, "meh." I'm starting to feel that way too. I just can't muster the enthusiasm for this after 5.79 seasons of this. There's always statistics, though.

Wednesday, April 18

Jack Bauer takes the night off (episode 18)

Jack Bauer decided not to accrue any statistics tonight, and when Jack Bauer decides not to accrue statistics, you let him.

One "DAMMIT!" from Chloe. Guess that's it.

This brings our season totals up to:
Total Jack Bauer-caused fatalities: 22
Total utterances of "DAMMIT!": 22
Total Jack Bauer-uttered "DAMMIT!"s: 11

Which leaves us with these season averages:
JBKpH (Jack Bauer Kills per Hour): 1.222
DpH ("DAMMIT!"s per Hour): 1.222
JBDpH (Jack Bauer "DAMMIT!"s per Hour): 0.611

Yep.

Friday, April 13

Vegas, baby!

Well, now I'm actually off to Vegas. See you Tuesday.

Wednesday, April 11

American Airlines blows most heartily

Our 6PM flight to Vegas just got cancelled. Now we're not going out until late friday night and I have to go in to work tomorrow and friday. SIGH.

Tuesday, April 10

Jack Bauer Kills Everyone (episode 17)

Sweet sassy molassey, Jack's been busy. He said the coveted "DAMMIT!" twice. In addition to "killing" two guys in an elaborate ruse, Jack killed six actual people last night. He was like some sort of truck-transmitted terrorist epidemic, taking suckers out with one shot while they sprayed their ineffectual AKs all over the place. Four evil bad guys were taken out with the pistol, while he snapped another dude's neck and strangled the main Skeletor-looking bad guy with a winch chain.

Says Jack to emaciated terrorist Fayed: "Say hello to your brother."

I wanted so badly for him to add "...IN HELL."

This brings our season totals up to:
Total Jack Bauer-caused fatalities: 22
Total utterances of "DAMMIT!": 21
Total Jack Bauer-uttered "DAMMIT!"s: 11

Which leaves us with these season averages:

JBKpH (Jack Bauer Kills per Hour): 1.294
DpH ("DAMMIT!"s per Hour): 1.235
JBDpH (Jack Bauer "DAMMIT!"s per Hour): 0.647

The show is ridiculous, but that's why we love it.

Tuesday, April 3

The Jack Attack Stat Pack (episode 16)

Two kills, no "DAMMIT!"s.

This brings our season totals up to:
Total Jack Bauer-caused fatalities: 16
Total utterances of "DAMMIT!": 19
Total Jack Bauer-uttered "DAMMIT!"s: 9

Which leaves us with these season averages:

JBKpH (Jack Bauer Kills per Hour): 1.0
DpH ("DAMMIT!"s per Hour): 1.188
JBDpH (Jack Bauer "DAMMIT!"s per Hour): 0.563

Sigh. Even for 24, this episode was pretty ridiculous. You get the President out of his coma to prevent the evil Vice President from nuking a Middle-Eastern country, which he does, at first, only to have him reverse policy and decide to go ahead and do it anyway, just because. Since when do you show terrorists a lesson by nuking a country? What the heck?

Oh, and the political-correctness-motivated non-identification of the terrorists' home country is so very absurd. It's been bizarre to watch the writers try to work around naming a country to avoid offending people. It's just a silly TV show. Offend someone already.

UPDATE:
Chrissy beat me to the punch on the bewilderment. Just giving credit where credit is due.