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.

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.

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.

This Is Me At Work On New Year’s Eve

It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything on here. This seems to happen to all bloggers. There’s a steady stream of nonsense then, it slows down to a few posts a week, then a sad week of inactivity. It’s kind of like the life span of a man’s prostate gland. So yes, I’ve been lazy for the past few weeks, both here and on MoviesOnline. I have excuses, such as illness and Christmas travel, but those are weak.

So instead, let me tell you a few tales about ships and whales. Last Monday, I was fortunate enough to be part of Airport Snow Disaster ’10. I’m not going to give you the names of the cities I visited in an effort to protect my already shaky anonymity. First of all, the trip started poorly as I realized upon getting to the airport to leave on Christmas Eve morning, I forgot my iPod on the kitchen table. For this transgression, I punched a homeless. After getting past that moment of arousal, I settled down and told myself it’s okay, I’ll just listen to the music on my iPhone…even though it’s not most of my music library. Look, when I travel, I need access to thousands upon thousands of records or my ear head brain may spontaneously combust.

Other than my lack of hundreds of indie albums, the trip went fine. I won’t go into details about visiting in-laws because who cares? Also, it’s not of your business you pervert. Besides, it’s not nearly as interesting as what it took for us to leave City A to get back to my sweet Dallas Palatial Estate.

Our flight was scheduled to leave at 3:30 PM from City A and arrive in Erotic City around 4:30 PM. From there, we would take a connecting flight to Dallas. Well, our flight from City A was delayed. Not due to snow. Not due to ice. It was delayed because there wasn’t a flight crew available to fly the plane to Erotic City. Yes. This actually happened.

So we waited. I Tweeted a lot. I played games on the iPhone. I listened to music. We were going to miss our original connecting flight. So, the nice man at the City A Airport booked us on a flight from Erotic City to Dallas later in the night. Surely we would make that one. Oh, did I mention that they bumped us up to first mothereffing class? Well, they did. I naturally nodded and told the gate agent, “Look at me. Shouldn’t a guy like me be in first class anyway?” He was not amused.

Finally, we take off with a flight crew consisting of a midget in clown make-up, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and the homeless man I punched earlier in the trip over forgetting my iPod at home. Probably not, but that crew is my best guess. The flight goes great and we get to Erotic City with about 20 minutes to get to our connecting flight. Sure, we don’t get to eat dinner but at least we would have made it.

The jetway was frozen. It would not extend to the plane. We are all stuck on the plane. As maintenance crews frantically searched for several hair dryers, we watched the seconds tick by and slowly realized that we are going to miss the next flight as well. And first class. I openly wept.

Once we get off the plane and I was questioned by authorities for giving the entire Delta flight team the double bird, we were told by a very nice man that there we were going to be staying the night in Erotic City on Delta’s dime. What a pleasure. So, we were given two $6 food vouchers each and a hotel room at the Comfort Inn. Oh, we also were given a fine overnight bag complete with products that Walmart wouldn’t sell in their dollar aisle.

The next morning, we woke and made it to the airport and finally had an easy go of it. Upon arriving in Dallas around 4 PM on Tuesday afternoon, I immediately showered off the stink of two crap days spent at airports and fleabag hotels. Then, laid in bed for three hours. Upon waking, I was treated to a day’s worth of crappy treatment from my boss. So it’s been an interesting holiday season for me so far.

However, my wife bought me a sweet turntable for Christmas. I’ve already snagged a few Ryan Adams records, Wilco’s “Being There”, and Pearl Jam’s “Ten”. So I have that going for me…which is nice.

Now I’m working on New Year’s Eve. So there’s the story. Do with it as you will and please have a safe and happy New Year’s Eve holiday. As for me, I’m going to spend it hitting on my wife’s friends.

Cinematically Correct note: I’m listening to Prince now. Weird.

Sports Flash!! Rex Ryan, Rex Ryan’s Wife, Feet, & My Twittering About Rex Ryan, Rex Ryan’s Wife, & Feet

Over the past two days or so, New York Jets head football coach Rex Ryan has had to deal with a few videos that have surfaced. In these alleged videos (which you can see on Deadspin here), Rex Ryan’s wife is shown showing off her feet. Yes, it appears that she and the man behind the camera (who clearly sounds like Rex) have a foot fetish. You know what? I don’t really care what married couples do behind clothes doors. They can hump each other’s feet until they don’t feel feelings anymore, what do I care? They aren’t doing anything wrong, aren’t hurting anyone, so big deal.

That being said, it’s pretty funny. It’s this funny:

http://twitter.com/#!/Chiccywood/status/17760474951061504

http://twitter.com/#!/Chiccywood/status/17761280458752000

http://twitter.com/#!/Chiccywood/status/17761835516170240

http://twitter.com/#!/Chiccywood/status/17762360680779776

http://twitter.com/#!/Chiccywood/status/17765055755980800

The Yearly Fight With The Sickness

The blogging here has been slower than normal over the last week. It’s mostly due to the fact that I once more had my yearly bout with illness, starting last Wednesday and ending on Saturday evening. Thankfully, I was fully coherent to see the greatness of DeSean Jackson drive a stake through the heart of the New York football Giants on Sunday. That may have helped in the healing process.

So what does one do while home sick for several days? The first thing I did was pop in the “Crazy Heart” Bluray and once more realize the greatness of that movie. I mostly did it in preparation for seeing Jeff Bridges in “Tron: Legacy”. If I was going to see The Dude potentially embarrass himself in a crappy action movie, I wanted to relive his finest moment. Yeah, I love Lebowski, but I’ll be damned if Bad Blake isn’t Bridges at his finest.

The next thing? Hours upon hours of NHL 2011 and Call of Duty: Black Ops. The sad thing is that while I am quite good at hockey, I routinely get my head kicked in on Black Ops. These freaking punk kids are off the charts sick at that game. It’s become so pathetic that I am actually finding myself yelling at the screen and frustrated as I routinely finish dead last. I’m becoming what I hate most…an online gaming nerd. Eff me.

Sadly, the point of this post is to link to my Movies Online “Tron:Legacy” review. I just wanted some context around it. Honestly? That is all. I just don’t have the strength this morning to really bring any funny.