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August 29, 2006

Conan's opening bit from Sunday

So we think the Emmys are stupid. We don't really care that two shows we love won big prizes. We still think they're about as relevant as the Grammys. Which is to say not at all.

Which is why we were debating even posting Conan's funny opening to the show. But we've decided to, in part because some right-wingers got in a tizzy because the show aired only hours after the Kentucky plane crash. We're not going to tell our readers what to think; we'll let you decide for yourselves:




Also, more food for thought: is this real? August 24, 2006

Megatron revealed

You probably know by now that Michael Bay is making a Transformers movie, and that the images of the robots are gradually trickling in to the blogdome.

And we're not going to analyze this, complain about it, talk about how awesome it looks, or anything like that. We're just going to post the pictures and then leave. And we'll also point out that he does not have a giant gun, and he transforms into a jet:



Again, not taking sides. We've shown you what he looks like. And that's all.


August 23, 2006

Report: Sanz, Parnell, Thompson out at SNL, Hammond to follow?

He's not doing "Lazy Sunday" in this photo

Zap2It is reporting that Saturday Night Live is losing three cast members: Horatio Sanz, who we kind of like sometimes, but has probably run his course on the show; Kenan Thompson, who we like, but probably would be better suited to film and/or sitcom roles; and Chris Parnell, who we think has a valuable role as "go-to straight man" on the show, and who also starred in the sketch that arguably "saved" the show and ignited the viral video backlash. (Although we'd argue the case for both would be overstated.) No word on how or if they will be replaced.

Also in the Zap2It report: Darrell Hammond's status with the show is in doubt. He's been on since 1995. We can understand wanting to show him respect and all that, but wouldn't it be best for both parties if they cut the cord?

Jason Sudeikis will likely move into the "Update" chair. We'll have to see him in action; we're honestly unsure of how he'll do.

UPDATE: Dead-Frog indicates there are several different conflicting reports on what's actually going on over there, so who really knows. The LA Times's report reflects Zap2It's report, though.

August 22, 2006

Forget "Madden Day," where does the line form for Guitar Hero 2?

A good chunk of males aged 18-45 today have already purchased their copies of the newest installment of Madden. The game's popularity has exploded to the point where EA's new ad campaign likens its release date to a holiday, "Madden Day."

And that's fine for some. But not us. We're done with Madden, personally, because, like the recent NCAA release, we think it's going to basically be nothing but a roster/schedule update with a gimmicky gameplay addition (move your lead blocker on run plays! And don't forget to check your QB's cone of vision, and perform a vicious hit with the hit stick on D!) tacked on so you don't feel like you're paying $50 for a roster update, even though you are. Oh, and there's also the increasingly ridiculous additions to the create-a-player mode. Like this year's addition, MAKING YOUR GUY LIFT WEIGHTS:



Where do I sign up for that!?

We ask this in complete sincerity: does anyone really want to do this? Don't people just want to play football? Are we way off base? We need answers here.

Meanwhile, we're far more excited about the latest news on the Guitar Hero front. We already know Guitar Hero II is going to include "You Really Got Me" (the Van Halen version,) "YYZ," "War Pigs," and the Butthole Surfers' "Who Was In My Room Last Night?", among others. And now, according to Kotaku and a video found on Gamespot, another song has been added to the playlist: "Sweet Child O' Mine."

Oh, man. And I bet you don't have to make your created guitarist practice his fingering all day to earn bonus points.
August 16, 2006

Simpsons producers reading the Phoenix?

"Someone ate part of my lunch . . ."

This half of the Slop Culture tag-team is, as you may have gathered, hopelessly obsessed with The Simpsons. So, as is to be expected, we tore into our shiny copy of the Season 8 DVD set and watched the Hank Scorpio episode with commentary. And we heard someone - Josh Weinstein, perhaps? - mention that "on the internet, Hank Scorpio is the favorite Albert Brooks character" in the show's history.

They couldn't have meant . . . nah, probably not.

You're probably wondering: where's a YouTube clip of this episode, or many other of my favorite Simpsons episodes from before 2000? Well, we're wondering that, too.

August 16, 2006

How ads for "housewives I can screw" get past our spam blocker.

Like most folks, Slop Culture doesn't just have one email address (slopculture@thephoenix.com, in case you want to send us breaking news). We have an address on Yahoo as well. Yahoo does a mighty fine job blocking spam--about 200 junk mails a day. But there is one that keeps slipping through. Apparently, there's really lonely married women who want to fuck us. And there is a guy with a computer who likes to tell us about it. Every week. We don't know if we drunkenly met a swedish guy at a party who could score us some Spidey 3 bootlegs. So when we see the subject line "hi" from a guy named "Stephan," we click. Hey, we have spam blocker.

Here's the one we got this morning...

"Husband can't perform, wifey wants to bone at www.relaxhernow. com opsy no space b4 com q023iWf134iWcsd"


Last week...

"bang married girl tonight garanteed, pick at www.sleeplessdates. com opss delete space before com ,,,o"


The url isn't even a link. But we copied and pasted it, and met 27-year-old Michelle, who married too young and regrets it and 48-year-old Souzan, who got a big tattoo of a scorpion on her right tit and regrets it.

Standard, for sure.  But why did they target this to Slop Culture? It's uncanny. Nothing, we mean nothing else gets through. Dirty Amy got caught up in the spam blocker, as did Becky, Phyllis, and Susan, as well as all the low-interest loans and prince of szazmir stuff. Week in, week out, it's just housewives who need bangin.
If there is anything the web has taught us, it's that porn is always on the forefront of new technology. And within the porn industry, there is a dogfight for the next big thing. Housewives who want to bang you have lept over "ball-draining sluts," as Patton Oswalt would note. I sense a tv series.
August 15, 2006

New Zogby Poll proves pop culture is popular!

From the “and your point is?” bin, news agencies are shocked (shocked!) by the newly released Zogby poll which discovered that 75% of Americans knew 2 of the 7 dwarfs, yet only 25% could name 2 of the 7 Supreme Court justices.

Reuters non-ironic headline “Current Events Dwarfed by Pop Culture,” got the Snow White reference in there, but did not address the simple fact that popular culture is called so for a fucking reason. Like the shithead who got elected 10th grade student council president while having not one lick of government experience. It’s popular. And yet News24 South Africa, UPI, the BBC, ABC -- 49 news outlets, according to a quick survey on Yahoo! News, are running this story on the 1213 Americans who actually had enough time on their hands to answer questions about Snow White and Superman (2.5% variance my ass).

The worst part is, this survey was commissioned by a new gameshow called Gold Rush, so we’re all playing into their hands. At least we’re not going to mention the name of the gameshow. That would be like handing over free advertising. (D’oh)

But the bright side of this poll is that 74% of people could name all three Three Stooges, while only 37% could name all three branches of government.

We’re a little upset at that 37% number. But the fact that 74% of America still knows who all three Stooges are warms our cockles a bit.

August 14, 2006

Snakes Behind Planes over Fenway

One of our co-workers was standing in front of Phoenix HQ today when she spotted a small plane circling Fenway with a huge Snakes on a Plane banner waving behind it. While the web hype peaked a month early, and the little matter of a bunch of douchbags wanting to blow up 10 airplanes over the Atlantic this Wednesday might have put a damper on any plane-type horror (thank god there were no spelunking terror-plots thwarted last week), Hollywood is still trying to sell the idea that snakes on planes is fun! Never mind the fact that they wanted us to go to the junket but were unwilling to show us the movie ahead of time.


Photo by Melissa Ostrow

August 11, 2006

Deleted scenes from Star Wars: A New Hope

Big props to Screenhead (and, we're sure, like six million other blogs) for being on the ball about this, but some intrepid YouTube-r has posted three videos of scenes removed from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (otherwise known as "One of the Two Good Ones") that are not as of yet available on any of the DVDs, including this touching Anchorhead reunion:



Okay, so the quality's not exactly the greatest, but what're you gonna do?


August 11, 2006

End of the line: No more "Blind Date," Elimidate"

No, seriously.

Don't cry for this guy, we're sure he'll land on his feet:

August 11, 2006

Halo movie update

We look at how people arrive at this site, and we've learned that one of the things our readers like seeing on here (aside from nude photos of MTV's reality stars, which, before you ask, we still don't have) is Halo stuff.

First, full disclosure: personally, we're not down with Halo. We're more into the action-adventure games. And Guitar Hero. We leave the rest to our man Krpata. But to each his own, really.

Anyway, back to the actual news. The movie has a director. His name is Neil Blomkamp, and, uh . . . well, his résumé is not exactly stunning. But hey, Ain't It Cool News has an interview with him, and he seems like a decent enough guy. It's been a good week for Ain't It Cool News, actually, as they also posted this Samuel L. Jackson interview that seems to confirm a lot of what we had assumed about the guy.

And here's a Halo movie teaser from Kotaku! Okay, no not really:

We'll give you Bully's trailer instead, which, for the record, we're pretty sure is going to suck:

August 07, 2006

Colbert's Wikiality

As you may have read somewhere, Wikimania 2006 hit Cambridge this past weekend. Ian and Jessica were there and reported to Slop Culture that Wikipedia founder James Wales opened his first-day speech with the now-infamous Colbert Report segment on Wikipedia:

As you may have heard, the Wikipedia entries on, among others, Stephen Colbert, Oregon, George Washington, and African elephants were edited shortly after the airing of the episode to reflect his requested changes. See?

Screenshot courtesy of a friend with a Wikipedia user account

Wikipedia has since blocked user "Stephen_Colbert" and "StephenColbert."

But hey. At least they have a sense of humor about the whole thing.
August 04, 2006

Roadhouse vs. Star Wars: Could Obi Wan kick Wade Garret's ass? No

Fans stormed the Slop Culture offices last week demanding a retraction of our story that claimed that Roadhouse, Rowdy Huffington's 1989 masterpiece, had replaced Star Wars as the ultimate movie to reference (otherwise know as the "if you're still saying 'That's no moon, it's a space station' when a stripper first unveils her boobies at the club, you need to get some new fuckin lines" post)
"Is Kelly Lynch hotter than Carrie Fisher?" asked one fan with a smirk. "Is the Death Star deadlier than the Double Deuce?" asked another.
But the big question was posed by IG88fan14 (cause IG88fan1-13 were taken by bigger fans of the droid bounty hunter):
"Could Wade Garret kick Obi Wan Kenobi's ass?"

In a word? Yes.

Here's the deal. We're just talking about the original Star Wars here. No prequels (you don't want to go there). So we're dealing with two old men who play a very similar role of the "wise old man," in Joseph Campbell terms. While Luke follows the more traditional seperation-initiation-return cycle of the hero and gets his old man early, Dalton's old man comes in later as a quasi-helper role. Both die in the end.

They are pretty equal in the fighting categoy. Obi-wan (using a weapon), beats up two guys in a bar.
Wade Garrett beats up three, including a giant of a man, as shown here. (yes, he's hitting his nuts).


In their second fight, both of them lose.

Obi Wan gets points for controlling people's minds. Garrett gets points for his hair.

But in the end, we're talking about references--movie lines to use amongst your friends that don't make you look like a dick.
As we show you here, Wade Garrett comes out on top.

On rowdy spots:
Obi Wan: "Mos Eisley Spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."
Wade Garrett: "This place has a sign hangin' over the urinal that says, 'Don't eat the big white mint.'

On fighting:
Obi Wan: "The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded."
Wade Garrett: "If you wanna bring a man down, always go for the knees."

On death:
Obi Wan: "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."
Wade Garrett: "I'll get all the sleep I need when I'm dead."

But this one's the kicker:
Obi Wan: "These aren't the droids you're looking for."
Garrett: "That gal's got entirely too many brains to have an ass like that."

Pretty lucky that Slop Culture was the first blog to quantify this battle. But, in our experience, there's no such thing as luck.
R2luver, Endor78, and Mayhewisgod--bring on the comments!
August 03, 2006

To get you excited for Metalocalypse

In this week's Phoenix you can read about Brendon Small's new Metalocalypse, which premieres Sunday at 11:45 pm on Adult Swim. But those of you unfamiliar with Brendon Small's work on Home Movies might not be excited. So, to prepare you, here's a nicely edited series of clips from a classic Home Movies episode that showcases Small's musical talents:



And here's your Metalocalypse trailer:

August 03, 2006

Say good-bye to Ricky Gervais?

Somehow we missed this yesterday.

UK tabloid The Sun is reporting that Ricky Gervais, the mind behind BBC's The Office, HBO's Extras, a top-downloaded podcast, and a Simpsons episode that half the people who write this blog think was funny (dissenting view here), has said he will not be doing another sitcom:

“We’d like to do something with more weight, like The Sopranos maybe — not necessarily crime but something meaty. Revenge is the best theme.”

Apparently the BBC had leaked rumors he'd be involved in some future project - but this was news to him:

“They have to ask me and Stephen [Merchant] first. And it’s not going to happen.”

Sounds pretty definitive to us. Meanwhile, as though you haven't seen this, like, five million times:

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