By Steve Rhodes

St. Elmo’s Fire was on last night and I hate that movie on about 50 different levels. First, the movie was an obvious attempt to craft an 80s-based version of The Big Chill. You know what? The Big Chill people were a lot cooler. Second, there’s not a single likable character – and I like plenty of unlikable characters, but you like them because they are unlikable. These characters are just loathsome.
I mean, the rebel is a guy who can’t break away from his frat house! God, I hated the 80s.

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Posted on May 8, 2007

By Steve Rhodes

My name is Steve Rhodes, and I’m a binge TV viewer. I know it’s killing me, and I hate myself when I do it, but I don’t want to stop, either. It makes me feel good.
Like yesterday, when Dr. Phil morphed into a particularly good Celebrity Fit Club, which slid easily into Bad Girls Club, and then its male counterpart, the Cubs. Can you feel the high?
Oh yes, there were bouts of self-loathing amidst the rushes of seeing Dr. Phil smack down the 19-year-old doofus planning to marry his sneaky 30-year-old girlfriend after just two weeks of dating, and watching the rerun of new roommates arriving to cold, skeletal shoulders on Bad Girls Club, but this was also a journey of self-discovery. I discovered, for example, a new high/low in laziness, which I reported to my friends with glee. Like John Bender said in The Breakfast Club, being bad feels awfully good.

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Posted on May 2, 2007

By Scott Buckner

Has the grown-up life you envisioned when you were in high school turned to shit? Can’t get a job because you’re a convicted felon? Is every single boss you work for an insufferable asshole who’s keeping you down? Don’t despair, buckaroo – the fugitive recovery industry has a place for pretty much any loser who still somehow maintains some initiative, some brains, or a clue about how not to jolt yourself with a taser.

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Posted on May 1, 2007

By Scott Buckner

My evening started off with ABC’s World News showing President Bush dancing and banging a drum onstage with a highly colorful African drum troupe. What followed for me was the exact same thought a bazillion other people worldwide with access to television sets had at the exact same moment:
Oh. My. Fucking. God.
Back in the day, the most embarrassing thing an American president would be caught doing in public was trying on a silly hat. President Reagan was good for this. How in the world could the president and his advisers – and the First Lady – not see this disaster coming? Perhaps President Bush was observing the death of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin by paying homage to Yeltsin’s dance chops.
At least Yeltsin had the decency to be drunk at the time.

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Posted on April 26, 2007

By Scott Buckner

When it comes to boxing, I can take it or leave it. Not because it’s violent and has an underbelly with all sorts of unsavory characters, but because for me, it’s not as exciting as, say, Ultimate Fighting. But last night’s The Best Damn Sports Show Period turned into the best damn boxing show period with a 10-round women’s bout between Holly Holm and the extremely scary-looking Ann Marie Saccurato.
Before last night, the only exposure I’d had to women’s boxing was seeing Muhammad Ali’s professional-boxer daughter Laila once and thinking she was pretty damn sharp. I came in halfway through the Holm-Saccurato bout, and these two were brutal – but not in that sort of aimless, drunken brawling way you normally see during boxing exhibitions featuring washed-up child stars. No, these two knew how to administer a professional Grade A ass-kicking, and the only thing missing was the slaughterhouse freezer with sides of beef hanging from huge hooks and Saccurato glaring at the camera and snarling, “I predict . . . pain.”

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Posted on April 21, 2007

I’ll buy one today, just in case I look like that.
What it Is: An ab workout machine and instructional DVD, guidebook, Web guide, etc.
Cost: The spot claims a full, free trial, complete with free shipping.
Quote: “Commit to becoming a ‘doer!”

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Posted on April 20, 2007

By Scott Buckner

I’ve long believed that cats were the most vile creatures on the planet. Not any more, thanks to an early Wednesday-morning viewing of Rogue Nature: Chimp on The Discovery Channel. Sure, chimpanzees are outrageously smart and can be trained to do just about anything – act, smoke cigarettes, maybe even win a national election (or two) – and, unlike cats, they’ll come when you call. But there’s one pretty significant drawback to our closest relative in the evolutionary chain: They’ll chew off your face and hands, and rip off your balls too.

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Posted on April 12, 2007

By Scott Buckner

I’ve always wondered what transpires in the moments before certain people end up winning a Darwin Award, the official “salute to the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it.”
After watching an early Tuesday morning episode of Stunt Junkies: Go Big Or Go Home, I now know.

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Posted on April 11, 2007

By Scott Buckner

When you have satellite TV, you get all sorts of programming surprises popping up regularly. These are mostly in the form of channels you’ve never noticed before, and new blocks of free preview channels. Seriously, I have something like 700 channels (with probably half devoted to things I never bother with, like sports, Jesus, and home shopping), so it’s impossible to keep track of all the comings and goings.
Tonight, I noticed a block of 17 new channels. Most are HBO derivatives, but one is Cartoon Network’s “Boomerang” channel. For someone like me, this is the TV equivalent of Christmas morning because I remember when Cartoon Network became not-your-dad’s-Cartoon-Network by dumping its cable TV lineup of 1950s/1960s-era toons to shift to the whole Transformers and Ren & Stimpy-sorta school. This was great if you smoked a lot of dope, but overall it was a shame because a lot genius disappeared – particularly that of legendary voice Daws Butler in the toons generated by Walter Lantz Studio before the mid-1960s. Since they were originally movie-theater shorts, the Lantz stuff had plenty of adult humor.

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Posted on April 10, 2007

Real-estate secrets around the pool. Yeah, just one pool.
What It Is: A book-and-CD set about making money in real estate “without a lot of hard work or financial risk.”
Cost: $39.95.
Quote: “Now is the time to discover an easier and more financially secure way of life . . . an opportunity for true financial freedom for the rest of your life, working only a few hours a month. And friends, that’s incredible!”

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Posted on April 9, 2007