The Awesome Nick Offerman as The Narrator in The Gunfighter is ... Awesome

One of the oldest narrative tools in film is the voice-over. A way to convey information to the audience, or storyline information to the audience while keeping characters on-screen ignorant of that information, they can be useful or clunky or outright bad.

Good voice-overs add to the narrative. An example would be anything from Goodfellas



Bad voice-overs cover for holes in a weak script. Or add nothing to the film. The voice-over that was added to Blade Runner fits this description perfectly. Forced to add it in by the studios, the rumor is that Harrison Ford intentionally delivered it poorly so it would have to be cut. It didn't work and the film was released with voice-overs in 1982.



But now comes the short film The Gunfighter which presents a different take on the voice-over. What if everyone on screen could hear the voice? And what if Nick Offerman were said voice? The results are pretty fantastic.

And This is Why I Hate Flying

No. Fucking. Thanks.

I need to become a billionaire so I can travel everywhere by luxury train / massive yacht.

Nice save by the pilot, though.

This is ironic...right?

The concept of irony has been so misused and abused I'm not even sure what the Hell qualifies anymore.* But I am pretty sure that a video of a Neo-Nazi finding out he is part-black qualifies. Especially when he is trying to create an all-white town in North Dakota.

Do yourself a favor and watch the video. The best part isn't the racist's reaction to the news. It is the black lady sitting next to him with what is one of the best laughs I have ever heard in my life.

The next best part is finding out that Cobb requested the test because he thought science would make him 100% white. And when science declined to go down that road, Cobb decided it was bunk. Which gives me an excuse to finally use this picture

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* Thanks a lot, Alanis.

Best Trailers for the Last-Gen Games

Nice little piece over at Kotaku about best video-game trailers of the current (soon to be former) generation of video games.

They have some obvious choices there. The Borderlands was an instant classic. The Beatles: Rock Band trailer is an artistic masterpiece. The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim was epic in its feel with the pseudo-Norse chorus in the background. And the ad for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, despite the controversy around it, was really well done.

But they missed a couple. So please allow me to submit them here.

First are the trailers for the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic. They're better than the last couple of movies hands down. Here they are combined into one long trailer.

But my favorite is for a game that is in limbo. Prey 2 marries the idea of a human-turned-interstellar bounty hunter chasing down a target to the tune of Johnny Cash's remake of Rusty Cage. And the result is amazing.

That's some solid stuff right there.

"He-Man is More Powerful than Jesus"

Now, before you start trying to save my soul or argue that Skeletor is stronger than either of them, I am not the one that said this. This quote comes from a video made in the mid-80s by Phil Phillips and Gary Greenwald that attacked the demonic, anti-Christian gateway toys, movies and cartoons such as He-Man, Dungeons and Dragons and ... The Smurfs.

Okay, I'll give them the last one. Smurfs are weird.

Greenwald was the asshat who really ramped up the "Everything kids like are full of Satan" movement in the 1980s. And the video excerpted below was his masterpiece, his Pietà of insanity, simply called Deception of a Generation.

Game pieces possessed by demonic spirits. Voltron is sexually oriented. G.I. Joe is occult-oriented. You have to watch out for those sneaky Hindus. Obi Wan Kenobi practices something called "Obi Witchcraft" (God as my witness they actually say this). And of course, the creepy creepy Smurfs are dead, gay Satan creatures.

Some things from the 80s really, really sucked. Greenwald and the other Bible-thumpers were one of those things. And while it is fun (and proper) to laugh at this bullshit, it has serious consequences for the rest of us even today.

The people who said and thought things like "They think He-Man is more powerful than Jesus" are the same knuckleheads who say "The Affordable Care act is socialism" and "Obama is like Hitler!" today. It's the same reactionary mindset that sees enemies and conspiracies around every corner and in the heart of every person that is different from them.

It's a toxic mix of self-righteousness, fear and stupidity that never questions itself, never wonders if they have it right. They see something different...and it's bad. Or possessed by Satan. Or Stalin brought back to life.

Yeah, Greenwald is a doofus with a bad haircut. But he set the table for people like Glenn Beck and the Tea Party. And it's why we can't get anything done in this country today.

Fare thee well, Edna.

There were rumors that, in what I think is the 137th season of The Simpsons, another major character was going to move to the Great Beyond. Sadly, reality forced the issue when Marcia Wallace, the voice of Edna Krabappel, passed away at age 70

So here's to you, Marcia/Edna, with one of my favorite clips and a great montage:

Dayman....Whoa-oh!

If you have ever watched It`s Always Sunny in Philadelphia then you likely know that one of the many, many highlights was Charlie discovering the song "Dayman":

Simply awesome. So via Gawker, this is simply blowing my mind.

I have three pertinent questions:

1. Why are Japanese Kindergarten students singing "Dayman"?
2. Why is there a drawing of Peter Griffin in the background?
3. How high is the American grad student who is obviously teaching these children?

Age Means Nothing in Oakland

Now...I am not, repeat, NOT condoning people brawling with police at baseball games. That is wrong. Shame on you for thinking that is a proper thing to do. Shame.

That said...I don't know what set this guy off. I don't know why he felt the need to single-handedly fight the entire Oakland Police Department. But at least he went all in on the idea.

That's how you commit to something - fight cops and security, get out of a choke hold and take a taser shot to the spine. A taser shot from about one foot away.

Almost as awesome as this Geriatric Jason Statham? The entire drunken crowd cheering and yelling all around the chaos. Oakland is hard core in the sports stands.

Bryan Cranston Plays Another Criminal Who Cares About Family

But that isn't his next project, oh no. For before he was ever Walter White, Mr. Cranston was the hygiene-obsessed Philip Moses on an episode of The Flash. And he came back to Central City to get his infant daughter and millions in bearer-bonds.

No ricin, though. And this kid seemed happier in the car.

In Paraguay They Play for Keeps

Being a native New Englander, I take sports seriously. The Yankees are the spawn of Satan, Montreal is a city of dive-artists and crybabies. And the Jets...well, they're just sad. Really, really sad.

But as seriously as I take sports (as do many other fans and players across the country), it never really gets to the point of what you see in South America or Europe. Like fans invading the field. Or, say, a player kicking the ref in his face like it was some kind of kicking bag.

Enter Marcos Leguizamon of Paraguayan side Porvenir FC. After one teammate barrels over a player like a drunk chasing a truck full of free beer, he draws a straight red. Then another teammate draws a straight red for getting in the ref's face. But Marcos will not stand for that. Oh no, he must be the most over-the-top player on his side. And so he goes Bruce Lee on the ref's face.

Say what you will about the morality of it all, but the dude is flexible.