First Real Appearance Of Me Coincides With First Appearance Of Wayne Coyne

Last night, lead singer of The Flaming Lips/greatest rock front man alive today Wayne Coyne personally delivered vinyl copies of his band’s collaboration with Neon Indian to Good Records in Dallas, TX. As I have been following The Flaming Lips for about twenty years now, I naturally went to not only get the record, but be presented with the chance to meet Wayne.

I met Wayne. He shook my hand. I said thanks for coming to Dallas. Then I froze. I have never really been the starstruck type, but I went completely stupid. I don’t know if I said anything coherent. I do know that he signed my record.

Then…he hugged Mrs. Cinematically Correct and I. And a picture was taken. I am not a fan of pictures, but I couldn’t and still can’t get that stupid grin off my face.

Thank you to Wayne Coyne for coming to Dallas and making my Thursday the best Thursday ever. As always, check me out at Red Carpet Crash and follow me, Chiccywood, on Twitter.

First Post In Forever That Will Make Any Son With A Father Cry

Yup, it made me weepy. It’s about time that my boy JK Simmons really got something to dig into. That guy is such greatness.

Also, if you are really missing me (and who isn’t), be sure to read Red Carpet Crash. Here’s a link to my stuff there. Coming up this week? My first taped interview with writer/director Tom McCarthy. I didn’t sweat through my clothes for it, so that was a plus.

The Ten Things You Can Watch Me Do During My Fantasy Baseball League Draft

1. Highlight names of players I draft in yellow.
2. Wonder how the other MLB teams don’t have Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, & Roy Oswalt.
3. Consult local legend/draft expert/Super Bowl planner expert Jerry Jones with each of my choices.
4. Drink Diet Coke.
5. Costume changes that involve several pieces of Phillies gear.
6. Annoy my wife with what is most definitely clever banter, but she simply doesn’t understand.
7. Loudly question why 1993 Lenny Dykstra is not available to be chosen.
8. Not eat gluten.
9. Bombard your ears with my own Chris Berman-style names for current day players.
10. Openly cry as I watch the 2008 Philadelphia Phillies World Series Championship Bluray disc.

Attention! Stop The Radiohead Backlash!!

After five or six spins through the latest Radiohead album, “The King of Limbs”, I’m here to tell you that I’m a fan. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not even remotely close to “The Bends” or “OK Computer”, which are two of the best albums of the past twenty years. Radiohead made the definitive records for two different music genres: guitar rock and electronic rock. There’s really no doubting their brilliance, most notably Johnny Greenwood’s guitar brilliance and the fact that Phil Selway may be one of the greatest rock drummers to ever pick up sticks.

From the second that Radiohead made their album available for download last Friday, the hate towards this band has been flowing. Critics, non-fans, even regular fans of the band are just tearing them down. I don’t get it. There is nothing wrong with this little album, other than the fact that it’s entirely too short. Eight songs? That’s lamery.

I think that most of the fervor is over this slightly silly video for “Lotus Flower”, which is the song I currently can’t get out of my head. Yeah…Thom Yorke looks a bit insane as he dances his way through five minutes of song. The song is pretty badass, but Thom is just too weird.

Then…there’s this. This is much, much better than the real video.

Halladay, Blanton, Lee, Oswalt, Hamels: The Greatest Five Man Table Sit Of All Time

ROYJOECLIFFROYCOLE

It’s going to start early this year. I’m already in full-on Phillies giddiness. For example, today’s work clothes consist of a brand new Phillies hoodie, a Cliff Lee thong, and nothing else. Oh yeah. Vans. I’m wearing some Vans.

So I apologize in advance. But I’m really not sorry. That’s just me being nice. I want the Phillies to go 162-0 while decimating every single Major League Baseball team along the way. Including the team that you like, whichever it may be. In fact, I hope they beat the team that you like ever worse than the other teams that you don’t like. If it’s the Mets, I hope they double beat them.

Why Dallas Sucks At Handling Anything Not Involving Fake Boobs & Sunshine

They put sand down on the roads instead of salt...and yes, they are stupid.

You are looking at the tire of a Toyota Camry. This morning, said Toyota Camry tried to stop on an iced over driveway and instead, slid into oncoming traffic. It is not my Toyota Camry, it is Mrs. Cinematically Correct’s Toyota Camry. Also, I am being paid each time I mention the words “Toyota Camry”. It really is a fine automobile, never mind that whole shitty brakes problem from last year. That was a total fluke.

Toyota Camry.

So yes, there was a tiny fender bender today. Normally, you can place blame at one of the drivers. With all the well-documented crap weather in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area recently, you could even blame that. Nope. I’m going to blame our garbage, no-good, moronic home owners association. Why? Mostly because our entire condo complex parking lot could host an upcoming Dallas Stars NHL game. Luckily, no one in Dallas would attend because 80% of Dallas fans are fair-weather fans and the Stars haven’t been good for enough years in a row for them to care.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the HOA. Throw down some salt. They could at least pretend to make an effort for the ridiculous $200 a month we send them. Instead, we get sub-renters cooking meth, huge guys that look like the Predator, and people who let their dogs shit on the sidewalk. If you pulled that in the northeast…I shudder to think.

Does this sound like a bitter rant against Dallas? Oh, you better believe it. I’m sick and tired of this city half-assing it’s way through everything. I understand that ice storms of this magnitude are amazingly rare for our area. But, shouldn’t you have that contingency plan ready to go just in case? I don’t care if it’s in a folder on somebody’s desk collecting dust for two decades. Last week, when everyone knew we were going to get bombarded, somebody should have said, “Wait…doesn’t Bill have some folder on his desk that tells us what do in this instance?”

It flattened a school bus tire. Note the black tire streaks where the Toyota emblem should be.

So, without further adieu, here is what a Toyota Camry (cha-ching $$$) looks like when it slides on Madison Square Garden-like ice and T-bones a school bus. No one was injured. Thank goodness.

So the police came. Then EMTs. They had to check every single kid on the bus to make sure they were okay. Other than the normal amount of kid brain damage, they were all fine. For roughly two hours, we stood in the cold and watched passers by gawk and stare like morons, almost getting themselves into accidents as they did it.

While standing there, I happened to look across the street. I saw something that had to be said aloud to others nearby, but I could not speak. A tiny ball of fur was anxiously running across a six lane road directly at me.

An effing Pomeranian.

Not kidding. This little bastard came running across the street with this stupid look on its face. It was almost saying, “I KNOW I SHOULDN’T BE OUT HERE I’M A HOUSE DOG BUT I GOT OUT ANYWAY RUN RUN PEOPLE WHAT ARE CARS!” He was quite excited to see us. So much so, that Mrs. Cinematically Correct let it lick her cheek. Ew.

As any middle-class white person would do, I immediately wanted to save this dog from its street-crossing lifestyle. I can deal with a smashed Toyota Camry…but watching a dog eat it due to some redneck in a Tahoe is just way too much for this hardest core sprots bloger to take.

So we held on to the little guy for about ten minutes. I was hoping to keep him. He seemed nice enough. Then, a kid came shuffling up the sidewalk and told us that our new little friend got out while he was letting his pit bull outside. Great. So this Pomeranian gets to hang out with a maneater. We handed the little guy back over to his owner.

Then, in a move that almost made me puke, the kid smacked the dog in the face. I am not kidding. I wanted to beat the living shit out of this kid. Perhaps the police that were still lingering around would have arrested me for throttling a teenager, but I think they would have granted me mercy. We were both so shocked by this disgusting smack that we stood in silence, unable to even scold him or express our disgust.

If this is your dog, your kid is an asshole.

So in a nutshell, today has been strange. Oh yeah, almost forgot…here’s the puppy.

The New Pornographers Make The Greatest Music Video Of All Time

There hasn’t been any posts here in forever. Why? I’m yet again writing for another movie site. This one is called Red Carpet Crash and my snarkiness doesn’t even come close to matching their snark. Really, it’s a match made in heaven. You can see my posts pretty easily there as I’m the guy named Chic wrestling an alligator. That’s just how I roll. So the majority of my gibber jabber will be on that site. Again, it’s Red Carpet Crash.

In the meantime, let’s talk about the genius of this New Pornographers video for “Moves”. There are so many funny people showing up in it, not to mention a pregnant Paul Rudd and a pregnant Bill Hader. Yeah. It’s that kind of weird. So weird that a guy puts a line of blow on a slice of pizza. Now that is mother effing rock and roll brosef.

Flash Gordon: A Midnight Viewing Retrospective

The midnight movie is a huge cult phenomenon. Initially, the movies that were shown at midnight were low-budget, obscure movies that the general movie going public wasn’t really into. Then, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” happened and it changed the cultural landscape for midnight movies. After that pop cultural explosion, the movies shown at midnight became cult classic movies like “Evil Dead” or “Pink Flamingos”. It became more about kitschy, good natured fun. It may be hard to believe, but sometimes, theaters would screen movies that are in fact horrible movies. These are more commonly described as “so bad that it’s good”.

No, I don't want to think about how nasty these couches are, thank you very much.

“Flash Gordon” fits this description. So, two nights ago at midnight, I sat down at the Inwood Theater in Dallas and watched a midnight screening of perhaps my favorite bad movie of all time. There are several things that make this theater such a cool place to see a movie like this, the first of which is that I wasn’t sitting in a traditional movie seat. This theater (which is part of Mark Cuban’s Landmark Entertainment series) only has couches and beanbag chairs in it. While I acknowledge that a huge amount of gross stuff has probably happened on these couches, it is about as relaxing a way to watch a movie as is humanly possible.

I started to get a bit giddy as the familiar sounds of the Queen Flash Gordon theme kicked up prior to the movie starting. In fact, I started to live Tweet the entire experience. If you are into Twitter and want to give them a look, I’m under Chiccywood there. But that’s enough self-promotional whoring, let’s get on to the adventures of Flash, Zarkov, and that filthy slut Dale Arden.

As soon as Ming hit the earthquake key and the greatness of Queen blasted through the speakers, the entire theater got a case of the giggles. It was either the fact that we all recognized the cheesy greatness we were about to see or the definitely high probability that several of audience members were stoned out of their minds.

I’m not going to get into some sort of in-depth review of “Flash Gordon”. If you haven’t seen it by now, then you probably aren’t going to ever see it. Of course, if you really don’t plan on seeing it, I truly think less of you as a human being-type person. In fact, stop being on the Internet, go to iTunes or Netflix or what have you and watch “Flash Gordon”. Then, immediately come back to my blog (or visit me on my Twitter, have I mentioned it?) and finish reading this post. It will probably make you a better person.

There’s no doubt I would have made Kosmo Kramer proud as I did my own impromptu bootleg filming of a handful of scenes. The first of which is one of the greatest sequences ever committed to film. It’s up there with the Christening-murders scene from “The Godfather”. Of course, I’m talking about Flash playing football with Ming’s guards. Please try and overlook my idiotic giggling.

Pretty much the greatest picture I've ever taken.

So then a bunch of other stuff happens. You know, Flash gets executed then comes back to life, Timothy Dalton (who will be called T. Dalt from this point forward) calls that ridiculously hot Aura chick a “lying bitch” (then I laughed hysterically), the main hawkman guy says some way over the top nonsense, and Dale continues to prove that she is the easiest lay in the galaxy, as she’s ready to jump Flash after knowing him for all of 24 hours. I mean come on…what a floozy.

Oh jeez! I almost forgot. Flash and T. Dalt kill Klytus. It’s fantastic. It’s also the finest picture I took of the night.

So after all that awesome/ridiculous stuff is done, Flash and his new BFFs (the Hawkmen) attack. See, they need to stop Ming before he marries Dale…that whore. I mean, once she is married to him, it’s so over. Haven’t you ever heard the old expression?

“Once you go Max Von Sydow, you never go back.”

(I’m sorry.)

Of course, there’s really only one thing that can properly accompany a Flash Gordon-led Hawkmen attack on Ming City. More. Effing. Queen. Again…excuse my giggling, but do not overlook the fantastic delivery of “impetuous boy!”. It’s probably the greatest performance in movie history of a guy dressed up like a human hawk.

So yes, seeing “Flash Gordon” at midnight is probably the coolest thing you could ever do on a Friday night. Forget clubs, hipster bars, or any of that nonsense. Cheesy movies with a theater filled with 67% virgins is the way to go.

How To Handle Office Firings The Cinematically Correct Way

This? This is you. Every. Single. Day.

It’s a new year and you know what that means? Three words pal: job performance evaluation. That being said, yesterday, I had to say goodbye to four co-workers.  It’s never easy saying goodbye to someone you’ve hardly noticed existed for over a year, but I pulled it together and made it through it. I know…I think I’m strong too, no need to mention it.

However, most of you are massive weaklings and you can’t handle the stress of a day filled with co-workers being fired left and right all around you. Are you next? Well, you probably are as you are pissing time away reading this blog. By all means, keep reading though. In fact, you should Retweet this or link to it or some such. I would really like the opportunity to squander as much time from people you know as possible. Besides, we all know that if you Retweet this, everyone will see it immediately as we are all on Twitter all day all the time anyway.

Can I get serious for a moment? It is hard watching people leave. It can be made harder when it’s somebody that you (deep breath) actually are friendly with and don’t mind having around. For instance, one of the people fired yesterday fits that description with me. I won’t say their name or tell you if they’re a man or a woman. That’s just not fair to that person, but this person was really helpful when I started in the business that I’m not going to tell you about. They walked me through things, got the jokes I made, would be cynical about the “RA RA!” cheerleader attitude of some people here. It was just an overall good experience working with this person and I’ll legitimately miss them. Was this person justly fired? I don’t know, I’m not high up enough to tell you all the ins and outs of it. I do know that it’s really messed up to fire a pregnant person.

It’s also strange to see the person that hired you get shitcanned. What if they fired them because they think they keep hiring jackasses like me? Make no mistake about it, I’m a complete and total jackass and it’s a miracle that anyone pays me to do anything. All I really want to do is drive fast cars, drink whiskey, and chase women. Well…those are things the fictional, uber-cool vision I have of myself will do. I really want to sit at home listening to my new vinyl collection, playing X-Box, while eating ice cream right out of the mothereffing tub. Do you hear me world? Right out of the freaking tub.

Where was I? Oh yeah, my boss’ boss got fired. So yeah, now they are gone too. You can insert your own funny story here about other people being fired for the rest of that story.

I know what you’re thinking. Well, not really. If I did, I sure as shit wouldn’t be doing this job. I’d be at the circus or something, telling the future. That would be so awesome. I mean, I could have totally told these people that they were going to get fired yesterday way ahead of time.

How can I continue to make light of this? Mostly because I’ve been there. I was let go of a fairly legit manager position way back in 2009. I worked my way up, got in a position that worked for me and my boss, and everything seemed to be fine. Then, the company was bought out by a larger company. Then, corporate structure and everyday working started to change. Then, I was pretty much demoted. As a rookie to these situations, I was quite vocal about my displeasure. So instead of talking to me or trying to deal with the situation, I was let go. They gave me a nice big check and said adios. So I get it. It stinks and it’s extremely humbling.

But humbling doesn’t make you people giggle or want to read this nonsense.

Lastly, if you learn one thing from this post, let it be this: don’t cause a scene. If you are let go, try and keep your emotions in check. If you freak out, you are going to freak out the people that you claim you loved working alongside. People notice it. They start to panic. Then, you’ve got an office full of 40 people walking around on eggshells all day. I realize that their feelings are as far away from your cares at that point, but it’s really the classy thing to do. I had never been fired before and I collected my things, said goodbye to a few people, and calmly left. No yelling. No disruption. Just accept and move on.

Then, later that night, sneak inside and burn the place to the ground. Hope this helps.

Sports Flash!! Enter This Contest & Support A Blogger Sports Person

As a blogger, I like to support other bloggers. Not financially. I like to link to them and stuff like that. There are movie blogs and music blogs that I visit quite frequently, most of which you can find on my links section. I am also a big sports guy. I do have a tendency to drift towards blogs that talk about what I love most: Philadelphia sports. When I need some baseball stats like wOBA or VORP, I go to Crashburn Alley. If you think that crazed female sports fans don’t exist, I suggest you check out Chicks Dig The Long Ball. If you’ve got some time at work that you want to spend not working, why not listen to the Upon Official Review podcast. It’s a good strong listening fun time.

This blog gets its own paragraph: The 701 Level. Yes, I realize that many people don’t get it or don’t think it’s funny at all. I laugh until I cry every time I read it. It’s not very safe for work as the language is fairly obscene. Well, I think it’s obscene. It’s hard to tell sometimes as Shep and Gil’s English isn’t too good sometimes. It goes without saying that they are two hardest core sprots blogers runnnin the sprots blogin game.

Lastly, there’s the Sportschump and their first ever Super Bowl Contest Giveaway Special Spectacular Gift Good Get Win Maybe Hats. Actually, that’s not what it’s called. I made that up. Sorry about that. However, I encourage everyone to go to their site and enter their Super Bowl contest. They encourage the funny and you could win a hat. More importantly, you could win the hearts of thousands by being a sports humorist. So click these highlighted words and enter.

Here is my entry:

1. The Packers will pull this one out, mostly because Aaron Rodgers is on a higher level of FIGJAM than Jay Cutler.

2. The Steelers will finally end this Rex Ryan debacle. Thank goodness as I’m sick of crappy foot jokes.

3. Steelers. I’m only pulling for them because Mike Tomlin is such a handsome dude & I want them to continue to pull away from the hated ‘boys for most Super Bowls ever.

4. Big Ben Rapelisraper. Or Roethlisberger. I can’t remember how to spell his name.

The total score of Steelers-Packers? Eleventy hundred and seven. Or 48.