Month: April 2012

MasterChugs Theater: ‘The Trip’

Road trips by their very nature tend to be part plan, part improvisation, part fun, part irritation. And so it goes in The Trip, starring British comic actor Steve Coogan and his frequent pranking partner, Rob Brydon.

They’re doing another riff on the “characters” Steve and Rob, who were responsible for most of the tongue-in-cheekiness of Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story. This latest bit of silliness reunites them with filmmaker Michael Winterbottom, who seems to have endless patience with their antics, having worked with them on 2005’s Tristram and 2002’s 24 Hour Party People. The Trip began as a six-episode faux documentary series on British TV in 2010. Now, it’s been nipped and tucked to about half of its original size and released as a film, which might sound improbable but surprisingly works. As this is near total improvisation, there is no writing credit, and that holds up remarkably well too. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘The Trip’

Bit by bit, Anchorman invades our world

Here at SG, we don’t exactly hold weathermen in high regards. Meteorology just isn’t one of the sciences that interests us much, and furthermore, we think that most anyone could do their job. It’s a deservedly thankless and full of blame job. If they get it right, great, they’re actually doing their job. But if they get the weather wrong, and when I mean wrong, I mean, wrong, then they have now earned a tongue lashing and internet beating.

Regardless, and I hope animals are listening, they’re our future pinatas. They don’t belong to creatures, they belong to human beings. Don’t send your mob enforcer equivalents to beat up our weathermen. We’ll send the real mob enforcers to do the job, thank you very much.

Chick-fil-A turns to viral marketing

If there is one deadly animal we all come in contact with, it’s cows. First, they say red meat is bad for you; second, their milk goes bad; and third, can you say “stampede?”

But cow are not the dumb creatures we think they are. In fact, they are just farm animals biding their time until they can make their move. That’s why the town of Brush, Colorado was racked with fear this week when a cow walked up to a McDonald’s drive-thru window. Hell-bent on exacting revenge against the human race, Darcy the milk cow broke out of her pen (her owner is a student named Zach, apparently having a pet cow is big out west) and walked a half mile to McDonald’s where she demanded that people stop eating her kin. The cow was arrested.

Science makes slurpees its biotch

Who here likes a brain freeze? This being the internet, I have no idea about the results of that question, but for anyone that said yes, please run into a brick wall. Brain freezes are horrible. Just as you’re enjoying the best parts of a slurpee on a hot day, just as you’ve consumed massive amounts of delicious ice cream, just as the ice water becomes tastiest … the brain freeze hits. Pain! So much pain!

Science would have words with you, brain freeze.

While trying to unlock the secrets behind migraines, a break-through was made! In the development of stopping that icy ache fiend, that is.

The researchers monitored the blood flow through their brains using an ultrasound-like process on the skull. They saw that increased blood flow to the brain through a blood vessel called the anterior cerebral artery, which is located in the middle of the brain behind the eyes. This increase in flow and resulting increase in size in this artery brought on the pain associated with brain freeze.

When the artery constricts, reining in the response to this increased flow, the pain disappears. The dilation, then quick constriction, of this blood vessel may be a type of self-defense for the brain, the researchers suggested.

That’s right! The origin has now been revealed! We only need wait a short bit until science finds a way to eliminate the pain created from the process. And then, ass mumps, you’re next.

Now we have to crush our own beetles

For years, you’ve probably heard rumors that the Food and Drug Administration allows a certain amount of bugs into the food you eat every day. Well it’s true, but not in the way you think.

It’s not just that a bug happens to land in your food in the factory where it is made, and subsequently it ends up in your meal, bugs are actually ingredients. It’s Big Food’s way of sticking it to the animals, aside from, you know, raising them in deplorable conditions and then slaughtering them.

But now, one of the bastions of America’s War on Animals is turning all France-like on us. Starbucks announced recently that it will no longer use a coloring made from crushed beetles that it uses in its strawberry drinks, bowing to pressure from species traitors around the world. But don’t worry, they’ll still roast their coffee beans over a fire made from dead vermin to bring you that burnt flavor you so adore.

Calling a tiny shovel ‘a tiny shovel’

Sure, that hive of partially Africanized honeybees in Tennessee was destroyed (and became the working title of our first children’s book). But, that doesn’t mean the threat is over. In other parts of the world, there’s a menace nobody likes to talk about, probably because it sounds a little racist: Africanized elephants.

Well, we can’t keep silent anymore. A zookeeper died trying to keep this secret. She was killed by Mila, a 39-year-old Africanized elephant.

If you’re not worried because you don’t live in New Zealand, you should be. That’s not to say you’re in grave danger here in non-hobbit country. Just make sure to wash your Gala apples to remove any elephant eggs before eating.

Eat My Sports: Saint it a B

Now is not a good time to be associated with the New Orleans Saints. Between Bounty Gate, the Drew Brees’ contract fiasco and now the latest eavesdropping schedule, the former biggest punchline in the NFL is now back to being a mockery. But it begs an interesting question for the league’s current doormats: what wouldn’t you do for an NFL championship? Continue reading Eat My Sports: Saint it a B

You get one free maiming like your driving test, right?

Speaking of women getting shot in the legs, another one took a bullet at — of all places — a gun safety course in Virginia. The instructor told police that he had just left the room when he heard a gunshot. One of the students had shot his wife in the leg, but made it look more like an accident by sending the bullet through his own leg first.

It appears that gun owners are taking the open War on Women a little too seriously. If only women would learn that we’re like mama bears, and you don’t get between us and our ammo cubs.

Women are both the cause and solution of Japanese work problems

According to figures put together by the 21st Century Public Policy Institute, a think tank linked to Japan’s Keidanren business federation, Japan might no longer fall among the world’s top economies by the year 2050. A shrinking and aging population and a decline in productivity are listed as factors influencing the downgrade.

The institute predicts that in a matter of 40 years Japan’s GDP could dip to about ⅙ that of China and the U.S, and ⅓ that of India. However, if policymakers could boost workforce participation by women to the same level seen in more gender-progressive countries such as Sweden, Japan could be the 4th largest economy by mid-century. The report states that if women did not quit their jobs due to marriage or childbirth, Japan’s workforce could see an increase of up to 4.5 million people in a matter of years.

Of course, achieving this goal would require a massive change in Japan’s corporate culture. That should be eezy-peezy.