Getting Things Done

CRUISE FUNDRAISER UPDATE: 96/100 prints are sold which certainly means the print drive was a total success! It would be great to sell that last few  remaining prints before the the cruise, but at this point I am all booked for the boat and will be shoving off in a month. Thank you to everyone that participated in the fundraiser. Prints are being ordered now and will hopefully start shipping by mid to late January.

Hey, go see the shirts me and Wil made at Sharksplode. 

Let’s start the year off REALLY weird, why not? I was thinking about how the Space Jam movie website had been unearthed, totally preserved a while back and wondered if there might be enthusiastic groups of Internet dudes that have bitter rivalries over 90’s sports figure movie vehicle fandoms. Sounds too crazy? Did you see the part where I said, “Internet dudes?” I thought not. I’ve also been thinking about how I’ve been adding quite literally dozens of seemingly fascinating documentaries to my Netflix streaming queue with not so much as an iota of intent to ever actually watch them. Seriously, it’s at least a week’s worth of non stop potential infortainmention. I keep adding them because I feel like Netflix is judging me. Every time my daughter watches Disney Faerie Adventures or whatever, I know that it’s counting against MY RECOMMENDATIONS. What kind of personality profile is Netflix building for me? As far as the robot in my TV knows, I 5-starred Se7en, The Usual Suspects and Angelina Ballerina?! That’s evidence that will hold up in court should anyone on my street ever go missing and turn up in various boxes.

[Holy crap, I found a 1996 review of Kazaam from a local Tuscon paper.]

COMMENTERS: Two Questions! What’s your favorite 90’s movie to hate? Don’t you dare say Drop Dead Fred. That cinematic masterwork belongs in the National Film Registry. OR! Have you ever liked, faved, pinned or otherwise told the Internet you were into something you weren’t THAT into in order to appear cooler, smarter, etc? It’s confession time. Unburden your digital delusions. Or is it more analog? Do you have certain books on your shelf that you want people to see? Shame on you.

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58 Comments

  1. I used to have a poster of Shaq as Zazaam that said "Reading is cool" – I will leave that for the internet to judge me.

  2. Everybody get up….

    I liked Space Jam, to be fair, I was 11, so maybe I should strap some friends to a chair and get some of thous eye opener clamps from A Clockwork Orange and force them to watch it with me. Or maybe I guess I could just watch A Clockwork Orange. How many years does a torture charge come with?

    As for movies I hate, all the sappy Tom Hanks Rom Coms that I was dragged to as a kid, I hated that crap. Oh and when did Wing Commander out, that movie sucked.

    • Gah, Wing Commander. That was the point where I started being glad that I was just a liiiittle to old to give a crap about Freddie Prinze Jr., and where I started being just a liiiiiittle alarmed that Matthew Lillard was still working. Or that he had worked at all, I think.

      • Oh gods, I saw Wing Commander way too many times in the theater. I was working at the movie theater at the time, and got in for free, so when my brother and I were bored, we'd go see it. There was nothing else out at the time. Oh, and it was 1998 I believe. Yeah, I know it was bad.

        • I think I would've preferred to play Wing Commander just to see a better actor. After all, they had live-action cutscenes and starred Mark Hamill

    • I remember going to see Wing Commander simply because the trailer for the new Star Wars : Episode 1 was at the begining of it. 30 people in the theater when the lights went down, only five left by the time the movie started.

    • I think WC was the very first movie to use the freeze-frame/sideways pan thing that the Matrix made cool, and Shrek then made uncool again.
      Right?

    • I think Fred was trying to be helpful and inform Joel that he missed the word "love" in the mouse-over alt-text, but unfortunately Fred failed the Wil Wheaton test of Not Being A Dick.

  8. I have a the Lord of the Rings trilogy, a box set sort of thing, from the 70's with really cool wired artwork on it that I leave out on my desk. I've never read it, but it just looks so cool.

  10. I bought a book of Shakespeare's sonnets, not to display to people (it's in my room), but because it was pretty. It's hand-bound and looks artsy and old-timey. While I have read some of his sonnets in the past, I have as yet only read one or two out of that actual book.

  12. Favorite to hate has to be "Double Team". Brought to you by the cinematic geniuses who said, "What would happen if we put Dennis Rodman and Jean Claude Van Damme in an action movie together? Movie Magic!" I saw the movie once and I still can't it out of my brain. Using a cigarette as a timer? You HAD clocks in your apartment! GAHH!

    • I think the people who made that movie saw mel brooks "the producers" and thought that perhaps it was the formula for how to make an actual hit. all the wrong things are so wrong that the loop back into what is right

  13. Spiceworld.

    Regardless of how low popular music must have stooped since I got old enough to choose my own radio station, as a boy in the late 90s it was my job to scorn the Spicegirls, and to this day I wear my disapproval of that movie and anyone who owns it as a badge of honour.

    I haven't even seen it, but that isn't the point!

  15. It's from 1988 so off by two years but I saw it on video so probably 1989 at the earliest–is that close enough? Can't think of anything from the nineties particularly offhand, but "Me and Him" was the worst movie ever made.

    It was absolutely awful. The premise sounded pretty hilarious to 18-year-old!me, but gods, it was just painful to watch. Ever see a movie so bad that you have to *keep* watching, in the vain hope that it will somehow get better, have *some* moment in there that makes you not have just completely wasted two hours of your life? A "comedy" where there isn't a point size big enough for the quotes that go around the word?

    This is that show. Ugh!

    –Actually, now that I think about it, "Kindergarten Cop" was so bad that the next day after we watched it, my roomie and I not only had managed to block the thing from our memories, we'd actually managed to forget that we'd even gone out to a movie the previous evening. Took some real mental effort there to remember what we saw; we decided that our subconsciouses had blocked it because it was so dreadful.

  16. Interview with the Vampire – If it wasn't for that getting vampires all cool, then we wouldn't have had to deal with the Celluloid abortion that was "Twilight". Plus it's got Tom Cruise… pre space crazy or not…. it's Tom Cruise. Double Thumbs Down.

    • Interview with the Vampire came out at the height of my teen angst (and thus, the height of my Anne Rice fandom). I'd have to say that I really enjoyed hating that movie when it was released. Although I think I'm actually okay with vampire mania. Not that I'm going to go out and read a bazillion tween vampire psuedo-romance tales, but I like to think of vamps as the gateway demon. You get into them, and then it's on to werewolves, zombies, and mummies. Before you know it, your mainlining Cthulhu and getting tattoos of leviathans on your arms.

  17. Since I'm older than Joel I'm going to allow late 80s films. Solar Babies. Kids in the post apocalyptic future on roller blades.

  20. I have yet to see either Boring Private Ryan or Trainspotting. In fairness I want to see the latter but I am waiting for the hype to die down so it isn't spoiled for me. Boring Private Ryan I cannot bear the thought of watching. I do not by and large find Speilberg to be as good as he is cracked up to be. He makes films well but that doesn't necessarily make them good films. I am sure this outing of my feelings will decimate him and he will spend the next week crying into his bank balance.

    • A couple of people whose opinions I respect have told me that the Private Ryan movie is MUCH better than I thought it'd be. Still not going to watch it.

      I don't remember why I went to see Trainspotting, but I loved it. Funny, irreverent and, despite everything, optimistic. Your mileage may vary.

      • Your friends are right – really good movie.
        So now you can add "anonymous guy from an internet forum" to your list of people endorsing it.

  22. does starship troopers count?
    i mean i've loved it since it came out, (mostly because i was 7 and it had space marines fighting space spiders with space napalm and space rifles….space) but now it seems to actually be a widly acepted cult movie, even though it was kinda disliked when it came out
    to date i love that freaking movie

    that said ST2 was boring and ST3 was just overly religious bullshit

      • Have you ever made a comic with ST references in it?

        If not than you should, i mean how awesome would it be to imagine josh leading the rough necks, assuming he doesn't become overly arroused by the brain bug?

        • I dont think the brain bug's anatomy would fit josh's preferences too well since it was basically a giant space vagina.

    • Oh man, until The Ring came out, I maintained that Starship Troopers was the worst movie I had ever seen.
      My best friend and I, sci fi geeks recently old enough to go to R movies alone, ditched class to see it, and later wished we had just gone to class.

  24. I can actually see my visible book collection as I type this

    My current visible book shelves are all fantasy that I've actually read.. except for the 'wicked' stuff. Those are not my books. Oh, and I see there's 3 or 4 classics in pocket edition there, among which James Joyce's 'Dubliners', which I didn't actually finish.

    I know the complete works of Shakespeare are in the hidden part of the library… I had that to show off. Never actually read it.

  25. Get Shorty. I didn't hate it until I watched it the second time and only 2/3 of the way through realised that I had already seen it.

    I have a really good memory when it comes to films/books storylines etc. That sounds braggy, but I just remember almost everything I watch or read. Not always specifics, but general storylines, characters and where I've seen that actor before.

    So when I watched Get Shorty for the second time and only realised just before Bear fell down the stairs that I had already seen it, I realised that the story was SO forgettable (despite having liked the book, and liking most of the actors) I decided it must be because it was just very bad.

    That was the first time that happened to me and it made me feel like a piece of my brain was missing. >:-(

    I have bought a bunch of Noam Chomsky books but not read them because I know they'll make me angry, and there are so many books to read that don't make me angry.

    • I did the same thing with Transporter 3. Partway through I realized that I had seen it already.
      Sorry, Jason Statham.

  26. Well, there are four HALO novels right next to me that I haven't read. But technically, they're my brother's, so I don't think they count

  27. The original Blade was horrible. I have never been able to stay awake with that movie on. The weird thing is, Blade Trinity is one of my all time favorites. Show's you what Ryan Reynolds and a Wrestler with a dog fetish can bring to a franchise…

    My guilt comes from hording computer books. I have a collection of over 100 different subjects (programing languages, security, networking, out dated protocols, etc…). I claim to have read them all. The truth is I've probably only read a chapter and a half out of 50 of them. The rest I have read all the way through for my Bachelors. But I have read them all (just not all the way through).

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