Today’s Jeopardy (Teen Tournament) Clue of the Day:
The $2000 clue from the Double Jeopardy round category SUPERBAD
“IN 1717 & 1718 THIS PIRATE TERRORIZED THE SOUTHEASTERN COAST IN HIS SHIP THE QUEEN ANNE’S REVENGE”
Answer:
“WHO IS BLACKBEARD?”
AAARRRRR!
- Lenny
Today’s Jeopardy (Teen Tournament) Clue of the Day:
The $400 clue from the Jeopardy round category AMERICAN NOVELISTS
“HE WROTE “CARRIE” WHILE TEACHING HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH AT HAMPDEN ACADEMY IN MAINE”
Answer:
“WHO IS STEPHEN KING?”
Holy shit!! Have you read or seen Carrie?! What kind of fucked up school is the Hampden Academy that it was the inspiration for Carrie? Damn. Hopefully the place has been burned down and the earth where it once stood has been salted.
Now let just spit over my shoulder three times, aaaaand I’m good.
- Lenny
Look at me being all international with that title. Now on with it.
I don’t get offended very easily. I get pissed off at the drop of a hat, but to offend me, it’ll take something special.
And that’s what we’ve got ourselves here. But first, the back-story…
The other day I was over my friends house. We’ll call her “Yolanda”.
So “Yolanda” was trying to show me this dating site that her uncle had signed her up for, but for whatever reason she couldn’t log in.
This was when I suggested that she try JDate.
There was a brief protest, but in the end she relented.
I looked on as she began to fill out the various sections now required to simply look at profiles.
Then she got to the “about me” part and nearly scrapped the whole idea.
After some tasteful and creative suggestions of mine were rejected, she decided to just fill it out herself. What she wrote went something like this:
“I’m…blah blah blah, and I also like to try new things, blah blah blah…”
“Try new things?” I said, “don’t put that, you’ll get a bunch of guys messaging you about anal.”
“Someone did yesterday.”
I jumped up (literally) in a fit of laughter. Some twelve minutes later when I was finally able to catch my breath, I naturally declared myself a clairvoyant svengali wizard.
“So who was this guy?” I asked.
“Just some guy I was talking to.”
“So what, you’re chatting and he just randomly asks you about anal?”
“I don’t know, it was late. I had been chatting with him for like an hour and then he asked if he could just call me.”
“Jeez, how late was it?”
“Like 3 a.m.”
“3 a.m.?! Are you serious? I’m surprised he didn’t ask if he could come over!”
She sheepishly admitted:
“He did.”
And another fit of laughter ensued. Followed by a proclamation of solidification of my clairvoyant svengali wizardry.
What you folks can’t possibly know is that my friend “Yolanda” is a bit of a prude.
“So how long had you been chatting online with this guy before you gave him your phone number?” I inquired.
“I had just started talking to him the day before.”
“What??! You talked to the guy for a day before giving him your phone number? Goodness. No wonder he’s talking to you about anal.”
“What, I shouldn’t have?" I don’t know. How long should I have waited? I honestly don’t know.”
And she doesn’t folks. Her prudishness is only matched by her naïveté. So she truly saw nothing wrong with simply having a phone conversation with a guy she just met online. She’s a bright 25 year-old who just got her Masters, but like many of these higher learned folks, she’s afflicted with a touch of social retardation.
But that’s more than enough back-story.
Fast forward two days, when I get a text from her that simply states “you’re stupid”. And cue another fit of laughter, the reason for which shall be explained shortly.
So I call her up to share the laugh, but she’s not having any of it. How could I? I had further ruined her already bad day. Plus more venom along those lines.
She was referring to a comment I had left on her Facebook page.
“It is not funny. It is so not funny. I’m friends with people from work on there. I can’t believe you did that.”
“Um, you’re right, it’s not funny, it’s hilarious!” I countered. “If only you could see it from where I’m sitting.”
“It’s not funny.”
“Yes it is.” We went back and forth like this for a minute or two until this:
“That was so disrespectful.”
Hold the fucken trolley folks! That’s when I flipped. Before I share that comment with you, if you’ve read any of my previous articles, you’ve probably got an idea of my sense of humor. “Yolanda” too, knows very well my idea of funny, and is a frequent recipient (participant?) of it’s end results (i.e. laughter). So that too, I believe plays a part in my becoming offended.
But before giving you my “disrespectful” comment, here’s another comment I’ve left on a Facebook page, this one being my Cousin’s (who also happens to be my best friend):
“Have you succumbed to your love of penis yet, or are you still trying to fight it?”
The only person that got offended (momentarily) was a gay friend of my cousin’s, and my cousin’s a fucken surgeon! Oh, and when his gay friend made a comment about my comment, I asked if he had succumb to his love of vagina.
See folks, I’m a trasher not a basher.
And now, the since deleted Facebook comment that brought you all here today:
“Dear Yolanda,
Would you care for a spot of anal?
Kindest Regards,
Lenny”
I clearly wasn’t asking her for anal! I was sharing an inside joke. I was poking (surprisingly, no pun intended) fun. I posted that with tears of laughter in my eyes, not with a hard-on in my pants, and no, it’s not because I wasn’t wearing pants. It was meant to, at worst, be embarrassing, but never disrespectful.
At most I expected admonishment for being, perhaps inappropriate. But disrespectful? Come off it Yolanda!
Shit like this turns me cold and distant towards a person right quick. I don’t think I’m in the wrong here. As such, I did not apologize, nor do I plan to.
Any thoughts?
- Lenny
**I was thinking of calling this post “Anal on Facebook” in the hopes of attracting more readers, but I stopped myself for two reasons – 1. that would be disingenuous, and 2. it would have given away the ending.
I’ve missed 3 Clue of the Days as of Tuesday. Saturday’s fumble was due to my being on the losing end of an altercation I had with some alcohol that I met over the weekend. Monday’s and Tuesday’s misses have to do with my house/pet sitting duties for my Aunt. I’ve programmed her DVR to record me my Jeopardy’s, so that should get me back on track. I’ll probably come back to them and put them up in couple of weeks just for the fuck of it.
I’m gonna be here ‘til the 29th, so I doubt there will be any Inside My DVR columns. I guess I’m just gonna have to regale you all with my Lenny Vs. and Lenny Explains… articles.
I’ve got a few other write-ups in the works as well, so while APFL’s August won’t be as robust as July content wise, it shouldn’t be a complete wasteland.
Okay…
- Lenny
So, I was watching something I had recorded about two weeks ago, skipping through commercials as usual, until something caught my eye. Apparently there’s been a new (at least as of two weeks ago) Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen TV spot airing here in Los Angeles. It’s of your typical “#1 Movie in America” blah blah blah variety, where they include key buzzword quotes extracted from various reviews.
Now remember, we’re talking Transformers 2 here.
First quote - “Astonishing”. Fine, whatever I guess.
Next quote - “Thrilling”. Um, okay.
Third and final quote - “A Masterpiece”.
Yeah, “a masterpiece”. You don’t believe me do you? I didn’t think you would. I wouldn’t have believed me either. That’s why I took this:
See! I told you I wasn’t bullshitting. And I pinky swear that I didn’t Photoshop it.
Let me get this out of the way right now, I’m no Bay basher. I actually like and own many of his movies. But Revenge of the Fallen, while possibly his biggest endeavor, was by no means his greatest. Or great. Or even good.
So when I saw that – “a masterpiece” – I thought for sure it was a work of trickery at the hands of some weasely marketing exec.
I knew, without a doubt, that they must have spliced out the two words (“of shit”) that “a masterpiece” proceeded.
Go ahead, take a moment to put it together.
Yep, there it is.
Who the fuck would call it a masterpiece?!
I had to know where they got this quote from…wait, Cinematical? No, that can’t be right. I read Cinematical. Often. They’ve got good stuff on their site.
Well then maybe it was another case of a fake critic, like what happened with The Animal (Google it). Todd Gilchrist though? I know that name. I recognize it from the site. He’s a real person as far as I know.
I had to see this review for myself, so I headed over to Cinematical.com, typed “Transformers” in the search box and hit enter.
First result - “Review: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”.
Click.
By Todd Gilchrist.
Bingo!
Ctrl F
m-a-s-t-e-r-p-i-e-c-e
And there it was right there. Towards the end of the second paragraph. “…(A)ction masterpiece…” I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was no “of shit” following it.
What the hell? Was this guy for real? So then I read that second paragraph.
“Michael Bay, condensing the cumulative total of the spectacle from all of his seven previous films into one unwieldy, gargantuan opus, has exceeded even the possibilities of sequel-driven "moreness," combining his own muscular, high-gloss sensibility with the conventions of blockbusters past, present, and probably future to create a monolithic action masterpiece that feels destined to be the biggest movie of all time.”
Hold on, he just called the thing “unwieldy” in the same breath as “masterpiece”. And yet the “masterpiece” remark is written without an inkling of sarcasm. Great! Now I gotta read the whole thing.
…And done!
Okay, so I think I know what happened, but more on that later.
Having now read the review, it’s plainly obvious that Todd doesn’t believe this movie to be a masterpiece, at least not in the traditional sense, but instead he considers it to be…
“…exhilarating, idiotic escapism.”
I fully concur, save for the “exhilarating” part.
He goes on to admit that,
“(e)ven for a sequel, there seems to be precious little originality in any of the film's ideas, relationships, characterizations, or plot developments.”
Amen to that brother!
“…much of the film still feels like an assault on the senses…”
Well actually, only five of the six get assaulted. Yes, there’s a sixth sense, and no it’s got nothing to do with ghosts. The real sixth sense, in my opinion is the most sacred. It is the Common sense and it can’t get assaulted, because if you watched Transformers, then you obviously don’t possess it.
“…it's important to note that these are only shortcomings if you're going into Revenge of the Fallen expecting something other than a movie about Transformers.”
No no, not entirely true. While yes, we expect escapism, preferably non-idiotic, and sensory assault from a movie about giant robots, we can still at least hope for a smidgen of originality, or you know, at least a decipherable fight scene that wasn’t cut to keep the attention of a kid whose Ritalin ran out.
Todd takes his craft seriously, not like some people I know (ahem*Lenny*ahem), providing details of the convoluted mess they were passing off as a plot, and even thoughtfully commenting on the cinematography. In fact, not only does “of shit” not appear after “masterpiece”, “shit” is absent from the entirety of his review.
That praise notwithstanding, “masterpiece” was an egregious choice of words.
Here’s what I think happened (told you I’d come back to it)…I think Todd meant that it was not a masterpiece as in being a masterful film, but rather he limited the term strictly to the film’s grandiosity (a word I chose quite deliberately as I most certainly didn’t mean to say “grandness”).
And with that meaning behind it, I wholeheartedly agree – Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, is, without question, a masterpiece of a spectacle. (Don’t tell nobody I told you, but the real reason Michael Bay made this movie was so that he could check another item off his To Do List by destroying a Pyramid.)
But because Todd failed to expressly state to his readership the limits of the word’s usage, and also because most marketing exec’s aren’t as thorough as yours truly, they took (my belief of) the meaning of the phrase, in letter only, rather than in the spirit with which it was intended.
Personally, I would have chosen “idiotic escapism” or “precious little originality” for the ads. I mean it did work for Gossip Girl, but that’s just me.
- Lenny
*Can you believe it? An entire discussion about Transformers without a single mention of Megan Fox?
Today’s Jeopardy (Teen Tournament) Clue of the Day:
The $1600 (Clue Crew video) clue from the Double Jeopardy round category A VOYAGE THROUGH EUROPE
“PAMPLONA’S 16th CENTURY OUR LADY OF MISERY WAS A WAY STATION ON A SET ROUTE FOR THESE RELIGOUS TRAVELERS AS THEY TREKKED HUNDREDS OF MILES FROM FRANCE TO THEIR FINAL DESTINATION, SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA”
Answer:
“WHAT ARE PILGRIMS?”
I don’t know about you, but when I’m trekking hundreds of miles, there’s no place else I’d rather stop at than “Our Lady of Misery”.
Bonus Jeopardy (Teen Tournament) Clue of the Day:
The $1000 clue from the Jeopardy round category URBAN DICTIONARY LINGO
“URBAN DICITONARY SAYS THAT THIS 3-LETTER WORD CAN MEAN A BOYFRIEND OR GIRLFRIEND OR BE A “WORD USED TO SCARE PEOPLE””
Answer:
“WHAT IS A BOO?”
Seriously Jeopardy?! I mean I know this is the Teen Tournament, so we cut you a little slack there, but this is just embarrassing. My how the mighty have fallen. What’s next, a clue about a “Baby Daddy”?
Oh, and that whole IT’S LIKE, SHAKESPEARE, YOU KNOW? category was an abomination not only in practice, but in theory as well.
- Lenny
