Monthly Archives: March 2013

Movie Review: The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

I’m going to start writing movie reviews. I figure every Friday, I’ll look at the week’s new releases, I’ll pick one at random, go see it, and then review it. So today was the first day. Unfortunately, I chose The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. I guess it was kind of subpar week for new releases. My options were this or The Call, which labeled itself as a low-budget thriller starring Halle Berry. It was a tossup, but Burt Wonderstone was showing earlier, and I figured I’d get it out of the way earlier, before I have to go to work tonight.

I don’t want to be overly negative. I hate reading movie reviews where everything is about how bad the movie was, how unfunny all of the jokes were, how positively unwatchable everything turned out to be as whole. So I want to start with something positive. Here it is: While I was watching Burt Wonderstone, I didn’t die. As far as I know, everybody else in the theatre escaped equally unscathed.

That’s all I’ve got. In all honesty, the movie was terrible. It stars Steve Carell and Steve Buscemi playing Burt Wonderstone and Anton Marvelton, two childhood misfits that find solace and friendship in their shared love of magic. We experience their start as kids, learning all about magic from some boxed magician set, complete with a VHS of Allen Arkin playing Rance Holloway, an older magician.

Anybody who saw DodgeBall will notice the almost exact same bit being stolen directly from the VHS of old dodge ball pro, Patches O’Houlihan. As soon as I saw them pop in that cassette, I knew it would be a total rip-off, that sometime later one of the main characters would find Rance as an old washed up magician, that he would help them overcome whatever problems the story might throw their way.

Anyway, cut to the present day, Wonderstone and Marvelton are famous magicians hosting a nightly show at some Vegas hotel. There are a few cheap shots, some sort-of gay jokes, “We have a magical friendship / We always knew we weren’t like other boys,” and the usual over-the-top in-your-face sex jokes. After insulting his magician’s assistant to the point where she walks off stage, Wonderstone picks a female volunteer from the audience. After the show, we see the woman signing a release form in Wonderstone’s penthouse, agreeing that she is providing consent to all of the various sexual acts they will be performing.

The rest of the story is pretty cliché. The duo’s magical act is getting stale. A threat arises in the form of Jim Carrey, who plays Steve Gray, one of these edgy street magicians, a weird combination of David Blaine and Chris Angel. Gray’s show is called “Brain Rape,” a not at all subtle or funny jab at Angel’s “Mind Freak.” This all might be clever if “Human Giant” hadn’t successfully parodied all of this stuff years ago. As Gray’s star rises, Wonderstone and Marvelton lose their audience. They get in a fight, they split up. What follows is the typical riches to rags to personal epiphany to reunion to comeback story.

Great, terrific. Yes, I could go on about how the movie is totally uninspired, how it blatantly tries to copy movies like DodgeBall, like Anchorman, like every other big budget comedy movie. I could write about how the supporting cast is made up of has-been TV typecast actors, James Gandolfini, Britta from “Community,” Raymond’s cop brother from “Everybody Loves Raymond,” plus lots of old SNL faces I haven’t seen anywhere else in like ten years. The whole cast, they’re like crabs trying to get out of a barrel, clawing every which way in a futile effort to somehow stay famous, to be relevant. At one point Carell goes to a retirement home in Las Vegas. He walks in and goes, “So this is where old entertainers go to die.” This movie has to be self-aware.

It’s all of the bloat of big Hollywood, the bad writing, the terrible acting, all in a one and a half hour snooze fest. The studio must have been aware of this, must have been conscious that the film was unwatchable. The finale involved the two magicians drugging their entire audience unconscious. I wish they would’ve handed out samples for us on the way in.

But the real problem with this movie is that it’s just not funny. The jokes were awful. I only laughed once, mildly, at a minor scene where Buscemi, having left for Cambodia to provide magic to the poor (Operation Presto,) gives some little kid a rabbit to pull out of a hat. We see the little kid walking the animal off screen as he pulls out a huge knife. Also, Wonderstone’s hair goes from long to short, back and forth multiple times throughout the course of the film, with no explanation. That was kind of funny.

Steve Carell screams a lot. Jim Carrey makes Jim Carrey faces and Jim Carrey noises. We’ve seen stories like this a thousand times, with the same endings, the same one-dimensional romances. The girl hates the lead. The lead tries to seduce her all while calling her the wrong name throughout the entire movie. She’s disgusted. He has his personal epiphany. He calls her by the correct name. Now she’s in love. Now she’s having sex with him. Her reward is a promotion, from magician’s assistant to magician’s opening act. Go women. How liberating.

Whenever I watch really bad comedies, I always get to a point probably three quarters of the way in where I’m just like, this sucks, I’m bored, I don’t want to have to finish this movie, and it’s taking forever. This movie was way too long. I was struggling to pay attention. I was thinking, how do they get away with making boring movies like this? They definitely cost millions of dollars to produce.

And then I remember being in high school, after I first got my driver’s license. I remember being free, for the first time, I didn’t have to ask my parent’s to take me to the movies, I didn’t have to answer their, “What movie are you going to see?” followed by, “I don’t know, that sounds inappropriate.” I’d go see all sorts of shows, finally, movies I wanted to see, adult movies. I’m remembering stuff like American Pie 2, Shallow Hal, Austin Powers 3, Some ping-pong movie with Christopher Walken.

That’s how they get you. They make these movies for adults, but market them to little kids. Adults leave their kids at home to watch these terrible comedies. Kids sit at home and wish they could go and see adult movies. Adults come home, disappointed, because nobody can watch this junk. But the damage is already done, the kids are totally primed to get their driver’s licenses and head out to see whatever’s opening up on Friday night. Then they have their own kids and leave them at home. It’s generation after generation of big movie studios making terrible movies and robbing us blind, laughing all the way to the bank.

At one point, Wonderstone and Marvelton try to do a Blaine-esque spectacle where they sit in a glass box suspended in the sky for a week. As they get hoisted up, some producer shouts at them, “Remember, all you have to do is nothing!” I think everybody involved in this movie took those instructions a little too strictly.

Don’t see it. If you were going to see, and didn’t because of this review, I just saved you thirteen bucks. I’m not saying I deserve all of those thirteen dollars, but if you could give me five, that would nice.

What your choice of Internet browser says about you, as a person, as an individual

You’re wrong. There’s a huge difference between web browsers. They’re so much more than a bunch of seemingly identical graphically-illustrated rectangles glowing in front of our faces, a means to our digital ends. They’re the lenses through which we explore the online world. And just like your preferred brand of deodorant or regularly purchased fabric softener, your choice of browser says a lot about you, about you as an individual, about what kind of an individual you are, getting stuff done online.

Internet Explorer:

The granddaddy of Internet. Actually, that’s Netscape, right? I don’t know, that was all a little before my time. You know what? I’m going to start with Firefox.

Firefox:

The RC Cola of web browsers. If RC Cola were still around, south of Binghamton anyway. I went on a trip upstate recently and found this gas station with RC Cola. I was so pumped because, I barely even remember seeing this stuff around when I was a little kid. An alternative cola, finally, I’m not going to be choked out by the big two any longer, not on this road trip anyway, not in this gas station. And I’m not going to have to pay six bucks for some organically local hipster cola either. Let me just crack this open and … hmm … I mean, it doesn’t feel flat, like I feel the bubbles on my tongue, so how does it taste flat? Jeez, that was kind of a let down. Yeah, you know, whatever it was only a dollar anyway, and the gas station was huge, so I wound up just going back inside and grabbing a Mountain Dew.

It’s like, you want Firefox to work so badly. The idea of this sweet looking web browser with that sick orange and blue logo. Even the name – Firefox! – it just makes it feel like when you click on the Internet that it’s going to be this adventure, that the possibilities might truly be endless. But then you open a few tabs, and yes, they were the first browser to use tabs, and you load up your email and your Facebook and then you kind of waste ten minutes and fifteen more minutes looking at this and that and then … I don’t know. It’s still the Internet. Only it’s getting really slow the more I open more tabs. And when Google finally loads so I can try to figure out how to fix the problem, it keeps telling me that there’s a new way to surf the web, faster, even better than Firefox. Come on. Just try it out. You don’t have to commit to anything. Just take a peek.

Chrome:

And so you launch Chrome and immediately it wants you to commit. Just click here and we’ll import everything you were trying to do over in Firefox – Firefox! It doesn’t really sound as cool as it did before. Now it just sounds cute. Quaint. – and not only will we have it all loaded and ready to go, but while we’re at it, we’ll also import all of your Firefox settings. Look, we’ll make it look like Firefox. There. And now we’ll make it look even better. And come on, just let us remember your passwords. We’ll put your Gmail right on your desktop. You might as well just let us activate full screen mode; there’s not much going on outside of Chrome anyway. We’ll let you know. We’ll take care of it.

It’s like, man, I really don’t want to like Chrome. I just imagine a future populated by humans, yeah, humans are still around, but we’re all trapped inside of our houses, our G-houses, and roaming the streets outside are a race of giant robots, and they’re just constantly marching down every block, making sure that everybody’s inside, on their computers, on Chrome. And every time they take a step, these robots are so gigantic that when their feet slam into the pavement, it makes a sound, it sounds like “Chrome! Chrome! Chrome!” But everything updates automatically, it never asks me to shut down and restart to install.

But Chrome spoils you. You spend so much time not having any problems with the Internet at home that when you head to work in the morning, you’re already feeling that pit bubbling up from the depths of your stomach. Those work PCs.

Internet Explorer:

OK, well, maybe if I just type Chrome into IE, Google might come up with a solution here. “Warning: You are about to leave an encrypted page. Are you sure you want to leave this encrypted page? Yes or No.” I don’t know. What does that even mean? Shouldn’t it have warned me when I entered the encrypted page? OK, yes. “Warning: If you exit this page, you will lose all unsaved data. Are you sure you want to …” They’re playing hard ball. OK, new window. Google. Chrome.

“Please contact your network administrator. You have insufficient clearance to make any of the necessary requested system changes.” Well, it was worth a try. Maybe I can take the IT guy out for a beer after work and get him to install Chrome for me. Fucking IE.

But I wind up buying the IT guy more than just a beer. Drinks turn into shots. Everything’s getting a little blurry. How the hell did it get to be past midnight? I’ve got to go. I can barely walk straight. But wait, the IT guy, he’s telling me to come closer, lean in, he’s whispering something in my ear. What’s that? Opera?

Opera:

Seriously, I’ve never met anybody that uses Opera. It’s what I imagine Mellow Yellow to taste like, or Mr. Pibb, or if you’re tired of my soda analogies, what Carl’s Jr. tastes like to a New Yorker, or what White Castle tastes like to somebody from the Midwest. But whereas Firefox sounds cool and Chrome sounds like it gets shit done, Opera? I don’t know. Nobody knows. Maybe it’s ahead of its time. Or maybe it’s already wildly outdated. Or maybe both.

So yeah, just, you know, do what I do, tell everybody you use Firefox, but secretly use Chrome, and when you’re at work, just go take a really long walk and tell you’re boss you were on the phone with a client, because man, that job sounds terrible. Get out now.

Safari:

I just realized that I forgot to mention anything about Safari. But whatever, I’ve already written like over a thousand words. And what can I say about Safari anyway? It’s a web browser. They’re all web browsers. Aside from some very, very minor differences, it’s all the same. It’s the Internet.

I just want the regular carwash

Look, I just want a regular carwash. The least expensive option. I’m not interested in Tire-All performance enhancing tire grip wash. Wait, how much extra? No, no that’s OK. I’m really just here for a pretty basic soaping, rinsing, and wiping. Do you guys vacuum the inside? Like the inside mats? Is that standard, included in the basic package? Sixteen fifty, right? OK, cool. No I don’t want the leather moisturizing detail combo. It’s fine. Really, I don’t even think those seats are real leather.

Synthetic moisturizing detail sub-combo? I’ve never heard of that. Three ninety-nine? I mean that’s kind of reasonable, I just … you know what? No, I always fall for this stuff. Regular car wash please. With the vacuuming. Well, what does the deluxe vacuumizer do differently than the regular vacuum service? Two sixteen additional? I mean, just explain it to me, what am I getting? Is there a noticeable improvement from using the regular vacuum to using the vacuumizer?

Well then why only two sixteen? Why don’t you just up the base price of the car wash and then automatically use the vacuumizer? Won’t that contraption pay for itself a lot faster if you make sure you’re using it on every car? Because, look, I don’t mind necessarily paying two sixteen extra, it’s just that, I don’t like being offered one price and then being offered an increase in vacuuming quality for two sixteen extra. You want two sixteen, just take two sixteen, don’t try to make me voluntarily cough it up.

Besides, you’re going to keep two functioning vacuuming systems installed and ready to go? I guarantee you less than half the people are opting for the vacuumizer. I’m just saying, I’m already leaning towards no. Wait, did that guy misunderstand me? What’s he doing with the vacuumizer by my car? No, I said … well I didn’t make up my mind yet, but now I’ve made my decision. And it’s no. No vacuumizer.

Well I don’t care how long it takes to power up. You should have thought about that before you decided to assume I’d automatically cough over two dollars and sixteen cents. Now it’s not even about the money. It’s about the principle. Don’t give people an option between a default system that doesn’t get the job done and a special surcharged system that … what does this vacuumizer even do?

Do the regular vacuums get the job done? Yes? Well then the vacuumizer, it does the same job, but what, it’s easier to operate? Less manpower? So I’m going to pay extra so you can have an expensive machine do the same job but with less work?

Whatever, you know what, I can’t talk about vacuumizing anymore. Just make sure you get all that crap out from in between the doors. I can’t even reach in there. I don’t even remember the last time I had Lucky Charms while I was driving, so I don’t know how all those hearts, stars and rainbows got in there.

Can I ride in the car? You know while it’s going through the car wash? Why not? Come on, when I was a little kid every car wash used to let you do that. I’d sit in the back and pretend I was a prisoner on a pirate ship. Now nobody lets you stay inside. You always have to walk through the little gift shop, look at all the different varieties of air freshener.

How much? Four twenty five? Just to stay in my own car? Plus the vacuumizer? Two times? Well can’t I just pay you for the first time it was powered up, and you can just still do the regular vacuuming? Come on, why does that guy keep powering it up prematurely? You’re jumping the gun buddy!

All right, thanks a lot boys. Just, no, I already put the tip in the tip box. What do you mean how much, I put like five bucks in. Well why was there a giant metal box that said, “Thanks for the tips!” right where I paid for the car wash? You’ve got to talk to the boss, I don’t know, I see that box, I think, OK, tips, you guys’ll divvy them up afterward. And look, another box right outside. You’ve got to streamline this tip process. I promise you I already tipped.

Man, there’s still so much crap in that crack. I can clearly see a pot of gold, right there. Can you just go over it again with the vacuum? Really? I’d have to drive all the way around? There’s such a long line of cars. You know what, forget it, thanks a lot guys, you’re all doing a great job here, running a great business.

Understanding the Higgs-boson

I read this article in the Times today about two competing groups of physicists that searched for and ultimately found the elusive Higgs-boson particle. This article was huge. Like huge in its implications, yeah, but I was talking about length. It went on forever and ever. Don’t get me wrong, it was good, but I was reading the newspaper through my iPhone app when I got up in the morning, and I didn’t intend on sitting by the edge of my bed in my pajamas for that long.

But it seemed so important. And it is. I think. I’m not a physicist. That’s the problem with these articles, or with me, or with science. I’m not sure with what really. But I’ve been following the Higgs-boson for a while now, not that I was really making an effort. Much to the chagrin of the scientific community, somebody infamously dubbed the particle the “God particle,” a couple of years ago, and the sensationalized label kind of took off on the Internet. I’d see stuff about it from time to time, and the headlines would always hook me in.

Which is to say, I’d read, but not really understand anything. And that’s kind of how it was with this long article also. They explain how the hunt for the Higgs-boson started way before they even had the means of looking for it. It’s all math. It’s all logic. Based on their understanding of the universe, they kind of just figured out that something like the Higgs-boson had to exist. If they could prove it, terrific. If they couldn’t, then they had to scrap everything they thought they knew about physics, about the cosmos, and start over.

I read these science articles and I find that I’m only able to grasp the periphery of whatever it is that they’re talking about. For example, in this big piece, which is really like a huge victory lap, a summing up of sorts, they write about the giant particle accelerator that they used to conduct their experiments. They detail the two competing teams who used this accelerator to conduct experiments looking for the Higgs-boson.

And this is what I mean by me understanding only the generalities of what’s being discussed. They talk about the scientists, about their personal lives, about their previous successes and failures. They talk about earlier scientific breakthroughs that led up to this point.

But what about the actual Higgs-boson particle? From everything that I’ve read, I can tell you that it’s something big, for a particle, that bestows mass upon our universe. I think. There’s also something about an invisible force field that permeates the cosmos. So yeah, I don’t understand any of it.

Which is why I had to finish this article. If I can’t understand the science, then I can at least understand the article, the words written down in English. At least I can finish this piece. I had to finish it, to try and understand something. Like, OK, I have an idea of a force field in my head. Yeah, it comes from Star Trek.

But maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s how the upper echelons of science trickles down to some guy who’s late for work because he’s sitting on the edge of his bed stubbornly refusing to get moving until he finishes this behemoth of a front-page newspaper article. Scientists do the work. Scientists understand the work. Then they try to explain it, not with math, not with logic, but with cool sounding analogies like invisible force fields and God particles.

Can you imagine what it would be like to be one of these scientists? To truly grasp whatever it is that they’re talking about? To be at the forefront of human intelligence, it must be the best feeling in the world. I’m insane with jealousy just thinking about it. But I’m insane with jealousy whenever I think about anybody understanding something that I don’t. One time I was out to eat with a big group of people. I wound up sitting next to this guy getting his PhD in economics at Columbia. I tried to strike up a conversation, “What kind of stuff are you studying?”

He seriously said, “OK well this is all very complicated so stop me if I’m droning on and on,” and he talked at me for like ten minutes straight about something regarding the Swiss currency compared to the American currency, and you know what? I’ve already said too much about the conversation, because I didn’t really grasp any of it. But I was determined to sit there and listen and nod at all of the appropriate times, at least making it look like to an outside observer that maybe I’m taking in something, maybe I’m capable of learning something really niche, something important and complex.

There’s so much to know about and to learn and to struggle with and master in this life. If I can’t know what I’m talking about, I want to at least be able to know how to pretend to know what I’m talking about. That’s got to be good for something, right?

Internet problems

I got up really late this morning. And even after I woke up, I stayed in my bed for hours, just kind of tossing and turning, staring at the ceiling, not able to summon the will to stand up and get going. I reached for my cell phone and killed another hour or two on the mobile Internet. It’s gotten to the point where I can stay on the Internet indefinitely, not doing anything at all. I’ll go through my Facebook news feed, reading the statuses of my Facebook friends, a lot of people I haven’t even spoken to in years, just kind of indirectly keeping tabs on everybody’s lives.

And it’s weird because a lot of people don’t really use Facebook anymore. Or if they use it, they only lurk in the background, they’re not actually posting daily content. So it’s just this weird mix of friends, relatives, people that I went to school with twenty years ago, people that I’ve worked with ten years ago. And so I can always waste ten or fifteen minutes scrolling all the way the down, keep scrolling, keep loading more stories.

Then to Twitter. I’m really bad at Twitter. As in, I’m not really actively involved. I’m following something like seventy people, but I don’t really know how I chose those seventy. I’ll follow people on a whim, usually because Twitter suggests it. When I first started using it, I’d see a funny Twitter joke and I’d be like, “Ha! Follow!” only to realize that maybe that was the one funny thing that this person ever wrote in an otherwise boring list of daily nonsense. Like why am I following Ensign Wesley Crusher from Star Trek? If I ever tweeted out, “I’m drinking an IPA!” that would be a huge waste of everybody’s time. But Wil Wheaton does it and somehow I’m reading about it. I guess Twitter is really just like a backup Facebook, like if I’m very bored and I seriously just want time to disappear I’ll go through the feeds of all of these people that I really don’t have any connections to at all in real life.

And look at that, Reddit has a mobile app too. Whereas Facebook and Twitter are perfect for eliminating time in ten to fifteen minute chunks, Reddit is a great way to make a whole day vanish, as if you never had off in the first place. Let’s just look at stupid pictures and lame jokes, but indefinitely, a never ending sea of blue links to be clicked and mindlessly consumed. I sometimes have to make it a conscious activity just to refrain from even going to the home page, it’s that dangerous.

The worst part is, if and when I ever pry myself away from Reddit, I’ll get all anxious, looking at the clock, seeing how I’ve let the day totally slip away, something I had, time that I’ve lost that I’ll never get back. I’ll jump up, not standing up entirely, but I’ll leap up in bed and think, I’ve got to do something here, I’ve got to get going. But then I’ll look at my phone again. Well, after I check Facebook. I’ve been on Twitter and Reddit for so long that by now there has to be a whole new list of status updates to scroll through. And the process repeats itself.

There’s no escape. It’s not like I can just not have a phone. What am I supposed to do? How do I turn it all off? I can’t. I don’t know what else I’d do. And I can’t even turn to anybody or anything for any guidance. History doesn’t have any advice. We’re in new territory here. The great minds of humanity never had to deal with such bullshit problems like Facebook and Reddit. How can Plato or Socrates or any of the other great philosophers help me out when I can’t even get through a whole sentence without being distracted by the email sound going off on my iPhone? And look at that, it’s junk mail! What a surprise!

There’s no going back. We can’t turn off progress. But there’s got to be a better way.