What Are We Up To? 07/05/22
Take a break from the fall of the Free World by staring at dumb things!
This one’s on me. I know I promised a review on Everything Everywhere All at Once, and it’s coming. But I was distracted by a few things this past week.
One was Covid. I had it before I was vaccinated, and it was pretty bad. I’ve now had it since being vaccinated and while the physical effects are almost nonexistent, I spent several days with a case of balloon-head, completely unable to marshal my cognitive functions.
That’s when it happened.
I’d given up trying to write, and sat on the couch to watch something as my head expanded. Anything. Suddenly, I felt a presence to my right.
It was Nicolas Cage.
His gaze was as intense and impenetrable as a lion on hunt. I was unable to look away. Before I could make a move he spoke. His muscles were coiled, like volcanic rebar. His voice shook me to the core, like the roaring engines of an interplanetary rocket.
“Question,” he snarled. “Would you rather be Caged….or Un-Caged?!?”
Those eyes…they bored into me like lasers. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I foolishly blurted out: “I don’t know…which one is the bad one?”
He slapped me, and my mind reeled. “Wrong answer, pal of mine,” he thundered.
He may have leapt to his feet and sprouted flaming wings. I’d definitely taken more than one Tylenol PM. The last thing I saw was when he extended his bejeweled hand and said:
“So are we gonna hit it, or quit it?””
And so it began.
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
In his most challenging role yet, Nicolas Cage stars with Pedro Pascal, Tiffany Haddish, Ike Barinholtz and Other Nicholas Cage on a majestic quest to save his career, defeat his alter ego, battle a Latin American drug cartel and reconcile with his broken family.
In that exact order.
If you’re reading this sentence, it means you’re not watching that movie.
Un-Cage yourself now.
I am 100 percent covering this one next week.
Beavis and Butthead do the Universe
Because it’s 2022, and everything that’s old is new again as long as it makes money, we’re getting a sequel to 1996’s Beavis and Butthead do America. Nobody expected the original film to be more than a bunch of strung together sketches in the same vein as the original MTV show.
They were wrong.
Today, you might anticipate the sequel being little more than another cynical, short-term nostalgia franchise cash-grab for a middle-aged population increasingly concerned about where they’ll land if the bottom doesn’t stop falling out of the world.
And once again, you’d be wrong, fartknocker.
That Damn Michael Che
Michael Che made history with his tenure on the writing staff and “news” desk of Saturday Night Live starting in 2013 before deciding to leave in 2022.
Apparently things have changed, and soon to be ex-SNL producer Lorne Michaels has agreed to let “Che”, as he’s affectionately known, have more time for side projects.
One of them turns out to be this delightfully funny, intellectually challenging sketch series on HBO Max. Unencumbered by network censors, or the prying eyes of people who are already making so much money they don’t care what he does, Che has put together an illuminating commentary on American life, from a Black perspective.
It’s worth watching for anyone interested in all of us getting along, living and laughing together.
For everyone else, I guess I challenge you to listen to a point of view that’s not your own. And to just open your damn heart to Damn Michael Che’s damn laughter.
No matter who you are, I’ll bet you could use more of all those things right about now.
The Kids in the Hall (2022)
Was I just talking about laughter, innovation, Lorne Michaels, and therefore Old Canadians?
Don’t look now but the Military Industrial Complex have (Episode 1 opens with a backhoe literally disinterring them) dug up yet another 90’s IP in yet another mocking attempt to squeeze a few more precious dollars (or Loons, as the Canadians call them) out of something that made you warm and fuzzy if you were a college student in the 1990’s.
Wrong again, fartknocker. The Kids in the Hall never gave a damn about anything, and they still don’t.
Within moments of their new series’ opening sketch, the line is drawn. These are men in their sixties who are unafraid to give zero cares about your delicate sensibilities. The glee and abandon with which the Kids attack this new show is indistinguishable from what you remember from way back when.
Assuming, of course, you’re old enough to remember way back when. If not, I guess you’re just going to have to figure out what to do with a bunch of naked, foul mouthed sexagenarians.
Heh…heh…I said…”sexagenarian”.
I promise to UnCage myself presently. There is more KITH in the world. Michael Che is hilarious. And I will undoubtedly pay for bumping Michelle Yeoh.
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Bruce Hall View All
When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall maniac grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, and he looks you crooked in the eye and he asks you if ya paid your dues, you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol' Jack Burton always says at a time like that: "Have ya paid your dues, Bruce?" "Yessir, the check is in the mail."
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