Day: December 13, 2012

MasterChugs Theater: ‘Casa de mi Padre’

A quick-sketch routine stretched — amusingly, absurdly, thinly — to feature length, Casa de Mi Padre stars Will Ferrell as Armando Alvarez, the eldest son of a rancher down Mexico, or rather down telenovela, way, where the men are brave, the women beautiful, the villains venal, the passions inflamed, the prose flourished, the sunsets honeyed, and the dangers as numerous as the clichés.

Any Will Ferrell/Adam McKay team-up is worth checking out, and Casa De Mi Padre is no exception. While never hitting the heights as some of their previous efforts, this Spanish language parody by debut director Matt Piedmont is well-made, full of actors and comedians clearly enjoying themselves, and is unlike any American comedy you’ve ever seen.

Unfortunately, it’s just not consistently funny enough to earn itself the mark of a classic, and will probably be remembered for its technical accomplishments and soundtrack rather than its laugh-out-loud moments. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Casa de mi Padre’

Four cups of coffee a day keeps the cancer, sexy makeouts away

The researchers attempted to evaluate those who drank seven or more cups a day, but the study couldn't find any, presumably because they live slightly out of faze in space and time.
The researchers attempted to evaluate those who drank seven or more cups a day, but they couldn’t find any traveling slower than light.

The results of a survey started in 1982 should cause heavy coffee drinkers flash their biggest, brownest smiles: drinking four or more cups of coffee a day may cut your chances of dying from oral and throat cancers in half.

(Just to be clear: it only prevents dying from oral and throat cancers, not contracting them.)

Researchers evaluated over 968,000 cancer-free men and women in 1982. Within the next 26 years, 868 of those people had died from oral and throat cancer.

Of those with one or both cancers who hadn’t died, the researchers evaluated their lifestyles, including caffeination. Those with the cancers who drank anywhere from four to six cups of caffeinated coffee a day outlived those who drank tea, decaf and no coffee at all by nearly 50 percent.

So, Death may not have a nose, but he still doesn’t like coffee breath.

How Hitler’s toilet ended up in America

Picture this: You’re an American solider at the end of World War II. You’re part of the forces in Germany storming the Eagle’s Nest, a getaway of Adolf Hitlers up in the mountains. You’ve seen this in Band of Brothers. You get to the top at long last, and it’s lootin’ time!

Other soldiers go for the fancy wine, art, silverware and trinkets, some of which no doubt once owned by wealthy Jewish families. Each G.I. is going for something worth some money, to bring home some spoils from the war, but you know what’s really worthwhile: Hitler’s toilet.

That’s what Sgt. Ragnvald Borch thought, and ever since, it’s been in the Borch family. Until now it had been hidden away. Now, the Borch family is releasing that toilet and its history.

If toilets could talk, right?