Day: January 14, 2010

MasterChugs Theater: ‘Any Given Sunday’

As a cinematic flasher of not-so-secret mass culture fantasies, Oliver Stone is Hollywood’s R-rated answer to P. T. Barnum. Instead of clowns, aerialists and lion tamers, he parades his own hyper-macho vision of modern American life as a primitive bread-and-circuses carnival of power, greed, lust, fame and violence (especially violence). And in Any Given Sunday, his viscerally charged, razzle-dazzle ode to professional football as a blood sport, he comes up with some quintessentially zany Oliver Stone moments.

Using the film, Stone dissects the glory and decadence of football, as seen through the stunning victories and stinging defeats of the fictitious Miami Sharks. Stone presents the players of the NFL as modern-day gladiators who do battle before bloodthirsty crowds in multi-million dollar coliseums, where on any given Sunday, you either win or lose. And while the veteran director has assembled some top-notch talent for this ode to the American past time, the film’s potential for being one of the great films of 1999 ends up being sabotaged by Stone’s own directorial indulgences, which almost make it unwatchable. Almost. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Any Given Sunday’

That’s what we’re talking aboot, Canada!

Canada’s second oldest magazine (the first being fashion mag Beauty, Ey?), The Beaver, is finally–after 90 years–changing its name. As of April, it will be titled Canada’s History, which is rich in hockey, lumberjacking and their controversial SNL training camps, in which children are enrolled by the age of four.

Editor-in-chief Mark Reid said that the change is in response to a lack of female readers.

“‘Market research showed us that younger Canadians and women were very very unlikely to ever buy a magazine called The Beaver no matter what it’s about,’ said Reid, adding he has mixed feelings about the name change. ‘For whatever reasons, they are turned off by the name.'”

Well, good for you, Canadiennes! Way to ensure that the focus of Canada’s history remains on humans and not on animals, particularly ones that are trying to steal our trees and water!

It’s almost like a monster truck in that regard

It’s half plant.

It’s half animal.

It’s all destructive.

Be there (be there, be there) on Saturday as we watch the latest monster to rrrrrr-ise from the depths: the photosynthetic sea slug. Watch as it steals the genes of chloroplasts and absorbs them into its own. Watch as it floats around and consumes alllllll. It digs grrrrrr-aves with the bodies of the animals it eats and then creates new hybrid animal/plants out of its offspring. Will it consume us all since it now has two sources of energy output? Probably. Kids tickets are still just FIVE BUCKS.

BE THERE!

Terror alert: Boy Scouts

At this point and time we would like to thank our government for totally not making us look like idiots for having an eight-year-old Boy Scout on the no-fly list. Mikey Hicks, has been padded down and searched by security since he was only two.

Our best guess as to why Hicks has been searched since 2004? He either knows where an untapped source of oil is, or the Boy Scouts are the new weapons of mass destruction.

Science: Women holding up the evolution train

Are you glad you don’t have a tail to sit on right now? Thank your male ancestors. That’s right, the dudes–the original ones.

Science has found, startlingly, that the Y chromosome that makes guys guys may in fact evolve faster than the X chromosome, which is what makes guys cry for sports-related tragedies. The Y chromosome is actually continually renewing itself. This means that guys are evolving faster.

In fact, you know how humans and chimpanzees have less than one percent difference in DNA? (We don’t like it any more than you do.) Well our Y chromosomes are 30 percent different from theirs. So guys are more different from chimps than women.

Men: Proudly working to grow wings for mankind since about six million years ago.