The Esteemed Critic Reviews The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies

Ah, let's get this over with. My disdain for blockbuster movies is well-noted--if it's not in French and not neo-surrealism, then it isn't worth watching--but I must admit that the Lord of the Rings trilogy is acceptable by modern entertainment standards. Sure, women and minorities are either totally unrepresented or given nothing to do, but the movies are tonally consistent, and the burgeoning homosexual love between Frodo and Sam is pure, and has none of the classism of Tolkien's original work. They are, in short, a meatheaded good time, and who doesn't desire to forget one's high consciousness every once in a while? Me, that's who. Unfortunately, the last movie in Peter Jackson's bloated Hobbit trilogy is not worthy of even a simpleton's consideration. Bilbo, ostensibly the trilogy's protagonist, is given little screen time and nothing to do. Too much time is spent on Orlando Bloom and the she-elf, both of whom are deficient in acting ability. Arnold Schwarzenegger is/was a better actor than Bloom; Bloom is not capable of any emotion other than a steely-eyed stare, like the object in his gaze got his pancake order wrong. I comprehend why Jackson invented the part of Tauriel--Liv Tyler was the series' sole female character, other than Cate Blanchett, who's crammed in here as well--but she becomes a damsel in distress more often than a heroine, and distractingly so, since she's capable of gymnastic twirling and other elf crap that somehow disables three-hundred pound orcs. This movie is sorely lacking Smaug's Benedict Cumberbatch, who's distinctive voice and reptilian menace made him entertaining to watch. An orc chieftain is the main baddie--Alzog the large-membered, or some nonsense--and he's so unconvincingly rendered that you have to wonder if this movie was under budget constraints. Indeed, the CGI looks worse than that of the Lord of the Rings movies--gelatinous ogres look like they belong in an early Harry Potter movie, not Jackson's grim trilogy. As for tonality, this film is all over the place. There is an unfunny, self-serving comic relief figure that you keep praying gets decapitated, yet the moment never comes. Thorin, the dwarf king and pseudo protagonist, undergoes a bipolar change in personality that is neither convincing nor particularly compelling. Characters ride into battle on giant pigs and giant reindeer. Legolas defies gravity with stripper-like machinations; 92 year-old Christopher Lee smacks orcs like a video game character. Battle scenes take forever to complete, and are completely without tension. Surprisingly, two main characters die (spoiler: it's the only two dwarves you might be able to name) yet their deaths leave the viewer happy that the relentless onslaught of CGI violence is over. Let's put a nail in the coffin of the Hobbit trilogy. It made money, which was its purpose, yet I doubt you'll be compelled to ever watch it again. Degeneracy, in short.

Conclusion: Watch the 70's animated film. It's still the best version. And all those songs! The greatest adventure is what lies ahead...

New Music: Broken Up and Drunk Again

The Diary of Mitch R. Singer

In a tenement house, hoodlums and vagabonds loitering
"What is time but a playground for gods?" I write and write, my typewriter keys pounding a primal rhythm, music set to my fevered dreams. This place has gone to hell--the wallpaper is covered in mold, and the carpet is littered with stains of blood--but I like it; hell, I welcome the squalor. It helps me concentrate on some diseased level; it helps me tap into the rotten core of existence. They deal crack and stronger drugs outside on the stairwell, bargaining with sex and stolen funds. Sometimes I come out of my apartment with a naked machete, my eyes red from lack of sleep and caffeine, and I make bizarre threats. They either laugh or hurl curses at me. They are all cowards. When I publish my novel, I will move to an even worse place.

In the sewer
I appropriated this room from rats as large as corgis. A candelabra hangs from the ceiling, stolen from a box car I found in the depths. The mole people won't come up this far, so I'm good as far as they're concerned. My little radio somehow gets reception through fifty feet of concrete. I listen to NPR and snicker while I eat canned ravioli by the light of a burning trash can. You have to be careful with fires down here. Gases get trapped; air isn't plentiful. The smoke can bring the wrong sort of friend. The last time I met one of the mole people, I had to kill him with a wrench. His eyes were red, the color of a demon's. I think they found something terrible down in the depths. I don't care, though. I'm a subterranean creature now.

Hanging out in a gazebo with my deadbeat friends
Andre dances the knife across his knuckles, showing off. I take a sip of beer from the bag and laugh with all the rest. It's about three o'clock in the afternoon; children are playing on the playground, and we're eying the mothers, trying to figure out how easy they are. One of them is scared; she takes her kid and starts walking down the street. Andre follows her, along with me and another. They yell catcalls, vulgar things, crude words that have ugly meanings. Eventually, they corner her in an alley. Andre tells me to go take the kid somewhere. I take the little brat around the block, but she starts crying and I feel bad. I try to smother the emotion with a blanket of ambivalence, but it just ain't happening this time, for whatever reason. We get back early and Andre has his pants down around his ankles. I hear the kid ask a question, and suddenly Andre is coming toward her, a vapid expression on his scarred face. He pushes me out of the way. I look at the mother and at the ugly face of my crony, and somehow I've got Andre's neck in my arms. It only takes a second--one quick snap--and he's on the ground, dead as a piece of meat. My crony looks shocked. The kid goes back to her mother and I take Andre's knife. Something that's been dead in me for years has just been shocked back to life.     

New Year's Resolutions

1. Eat more shrimp. I am an animal, and shrimp are my prey. I shall rid the world of these creatures.

2. Pass more gas. One must hasten the decline of our planet's atmosphere if we are to experience the Rapture.

3. Sacrifice more goats. Have you ever met a nice goat? Of course not. They are terrible people.

4. Compete in a professional bodybuilding competition. When you walk on stage, little banana trunks cradling the remnants of your testicles, and a roar rises from the crowd, all the drug abuse will have been worth it.

5. Eat one-hundred percent grass-fed beef. Cows that eat only grass release more methane than those given feed; therefore, one should eat only grass-fed beef, if the Rapture is important to you, which it should be, you heathen.

6. Drink more. Life's short. Your organs won't last any longer than you need them to.

7. Read more comic books. Life is a comic book, and you are a superhero. A terrible one. With no powers. You are basically Batman without the money. You are Fatman. Go out and save the world from a double cheeseburger.

8. Get close to Jesus. Get to know him as a man. What are his hobbies? What does he really want from life?

9. Write a pop song about cats and become a YouTube millionaire. Spend the rest of your life in glorious shame.

10. Catalog the decline of your person on a blog. Post about cats a lot. Wonder if they truly know all you've sacrificed on their behalf. You could be married. You could have children. But all you have are these goddamn cats.

11. Get fatter. Like enormously fat, so huge that people mistake you for an anthropomorphic slug. Start eating people like a monster. When you break wind, the earth shakes. They will build a temple to your immensity. Children will carve figures from ivory and stone. A thousand years from now, they will find the bones that you devoured. They will not know what to think.

12. Find true love. Expand your definition of love. Include rocks and lamps. Make a person out of sticks and name it Lucinda. She will always love you. Unless she finds someone better.
  

Songs Your Mother Taught Us: Looking for Advice

Jerry Seinfeld's Best Material

So like what's the deal with airplane food? It's like, really bad. So bad, I don't even want to eat it. Here, neighbor, take my airplane food. See if you can find something to do with it.

Have you ever been to the doctor? Of course you have. Why do they make you wait in that room with all those sick people? It's crazy. Then they call your name and you have to wait in another room, this time by yourself. Why can't you just start off in the second waiting room? I dunno.

There are all kinds of rules regarding breakups. Have you been on seven dates? Well then you have to breakup with that person in person. I know, what a pain. Society demands it, though. We must follow the rules of society.

Sometimes I think I live in the bizarro world, just like in Superman. There's bizarro Jerry, which is me. Somewhere out there there's the real Jerry, doing logical things. Maybe his jokes have more flow than mine. Maybe he's not successful. Maybe he lives in the sewer.

What's the deal with tipping? You mean I have to pay more than what's on my bill? How did tipping become a social institution? How did we get to this point? Why can't we just pay waiters what they're worth? There's a fundamental dishonesty in the relationship between waiter and waitee. It's something we as a society need to work on. I'd put it right up there with global warming.

Do you ever think that maybe aliens are watching us? They're sitting in their spaceships with their feet up on the coffee table, drinking alien coffee, watching us bumble around on their alien televisions. To them, we're all comedians. Maybe that's the great irony. If we're all comedians, what am I, chopped liver? Do I stop being superman or bizzarro superman and become Jimmy Olsen? Hey, I guess that's better than being Krypto the superdog.

What's the deal with jokes? I mean, how do they work? Can you tell me why a joke is funny? Because I'd really like to know. Seriously. I'm an alien in a meat suit, and I've been trying to understand why people find me funny for the last thirty years, and for the life of me, I can't figure it out. If you know, please tell me so I can end my mission on earth. All these pithy observations are the result of a profound incomprehension of the way humanity lives. Someone save me.

And tell me, what's the deal with airplane food? Please tell me. ASAP.

The Post-Holiday Blues

Christmas is over. You got some of the things that you wanted. The mingling with the relatives has ceased. The feasting is finished, unless you count eating dried turkey leftovers feasting. Welcome to reality, asshole. Get back to the grind.

You try to postpone it as long as you can. You wear a Santa hat to work until your boss tells you to quit being an asshole and take it off. On the way to work you listen to Christmas music until you realized that if you hear Paul McCartney sing one more time about simply having a wonderful Christmas time, you're going to lose your shit. Fuck you, Sir Paul. Thanks for breaking up the Beatles. Of course, it's not fair to blame Paul for all that, but the holiday spirit is still lingering in your heart, and sometimes, we lash out during the holidays, when we realize this idealized time is but a sliver of our actual lives. You can't live on candy canes forever, buddy.

But still, you resist. The Christmas tree stays up till March. You keep the lights on the house till July. You start planning next Christmas. You keep wrapping paper in the closet, where it's close and handy.

Eventually you start seeing things. Elves crawling the walls. You hear the labor of their workshop, the pounding of their hammers. Outside, silhouette shapes crawl, some surrealist's impression of reindeer. You put on considerable weight. Your beard starts to grow shaggy and unkempt. People pass you in the street, and you mumble "Ho ho ho," under your breath.

"Jesus," you say, your voice a bassetto rumble. "Where's the holiday spirit?" You ask random people this question, and you run after them when they try to escape. The police apprehend you after you assault a women for not wearing enough red. Somehow, you escape your bonds. They search and search for you, but nothing is found.

You retreat to the Arctic, feeding off of the flesh of seals. You make your home out of the bones of whales, the beasts of the tundra your only friends. When they come from the ice, whispering demon dreams of progress, you let them in and put them to work. They make marvelous contraptions, complexities no human hand could forge. They make you their chief, their saint. You dress yourself in shaggy robes of red. You've become enormous. Your bulk threatens to devour every room you enter.

Congratulations, you are Santa Claus. What will you do with your power? Only you can decide.

Poem: Chicago

Wrote this years ago, and just rediscovered it. Merry Christmas.

Part One

The bodies bump and tussle in the night

Slick with youth's yawning focused poet's love

Sharp like a fresh wound that time will soon heal

The non-voyeur buries his skull in deep sand

Searching for an answer quick and easy

Midnight is long past, yet day is remembered

The orange sky autumn's lovely tragedy

Halloween christening my child's heart

Romancing in the mind and lonely hand

Beset by meager slivers of souls

Sweet of breast and soft of throat but doe-eyed

Why should a beggar get to choose?

Who has crowned him king and judge?

Righteous and worthy are we in our eyes

Never afraid of bustling crowds

Never lacking in charisma or character

Never cloaked in silhouette and subway grime

Never making dangerous eyes out of steamy windows

Never shying from the mutant glow of the street lights

But always passing hours in derelict hideaways

Always lingering at blue notes ripe with jazz

Always pushing past the mangy harlequins on Addison

Always leaning in a corner with no way out

Part Two

Yet hope was handed to me by trembling strings

Stretched out across waving amber expanses

I shook slender hand and bid her come

Well-met we were at Navy Pier

Walking shoulder to shoulder along the Rhineland

Fertile with jagged glass and cigarette butts

Smiled we did at life's eccentricities

I played the gentle heart's part with abandon

Watery-eyed and mistletoed, murmuring and glancing

Beholding waifs with windy worried expressions

Kissed by a bubbling insatiate thirst

The city noise was a chorus song sung sweet

Beneath the citadels gothic and zebra-striped

I left the smoldering wreck of my foundation

Retreated I did to sit at Ignatius' noble feet

Long-thought solitude bestowed upon me once more

There I sowed a saccharine construction

When snow began to fall, I went for the El train

My hands were cupped as we passed the boneyard

Strewn with dilapidated hulks ravaged and decimated

So soon would there be light

When Helios warmed my reptile blood

My choice had been made

Part Three

The train station looms ahead, vast and empty

Electric blues spark, cackle, and move ahead

Yet one remains entrenched in murky recesses

Staring downward at a sticky concrete floor:

A vaudeville theater and a gout-stricken man

An angular oddball with a penchant for polish sausage

Two Russians with bulbous eyes and a lisping delivery

They speak of European girls and communist fatalities

Ivy-grown stone under neighborhood villas

The crack of Kentucky wood hammering a homerun

Crowds draining from the coliseum and into the bar-filled streets

Stacked with memorabilia of beloved losers

That time in Chinatown, searching for the golden pig

Finding plastic toys and foreign language comic books

Paying for over-priced, salted-down chow mein.

He rode the El downtown in the twilight

Red lines streaking past tenement houses cold and drafty

Mexicans living Spanish in front of the whole wide world

Water lapping against the lonesome pier, beneath the moon

Jogging between suits and spiked-hair and bums

Fat, fetid, and filthy, eating trash, pillaging cans

Under the bridge beneath the Tower of Babel, a deserted night-town

This was my playground and I shall miss it.  

Hillsdale Paranormal Society: Keeping Away the Krampus

Yeah, he looks all bad-ass, but he's really a child molester.

Christmas is a time for exchanging your favorite Marky-Mark movies and snuggling up next to your best lady friend. Unfortunately, there exists assholes in this world who would seek to ruin that shit for ya'll, and one of the biggest is the Krampus. The Krampus is a demon who follows Santa Claus around like a loser bro, stealing children and generally making an asshole of himself. He ain't supposed to be around kids, if you know what I'm saying, although the many attempts to prosecute him have basically gone nowhere, since Hell has a crack legal team, both living and dead. Now, a lot of folks don't believe in the Krampus, which I can't blame them. He doesn't appear that much, and only seeks to capture the worst kids. He picks and chooses his targets, is what I'm saying. So if little Billy has been really bad this year, working on a rap sheet to rival 50 Cent, well, if you want to keep his ass, you better perform some preparations so that he don't end up in the basket of an eight-foot tall goat demon.

First things first: seal all the entrances to your home before Christmas Eve. That means nailing windows shut, barring doors, covering chimneys. Put little Billy in a dog cage if you have to, but just make sure that thing's got a good lock on it, though I hear the Krampus usually carries a pair of bolt cutters 'cause he's that kind of bro. Make the place a fortress, at least for one night. Then little Billy can go back to being a fucker.

Second, get yourself a loaded weapon, preferably something heavy-caliber. The Krampus may be an eternal goat-demon, but he still feels pain, and a .50 caliber slug in his ass will certainly make him less-liable to go kidnapping little Billy. Shoot the dude in the groin to really get him moving--that shit takes forever to grow back, and it'll put in end to his Christmas festivities, the fucking perv. For extra effect, have a priest bless your firearm. If you're Jewish, have a rabbi, since they still count, Trent claims.

Thirdly, have several big-ass cats, all mean as shit. Cats hate demons, since demons smell like giant rats, and many a Christmas kidnapping has been foiled by a crazy old cat lady's brood. Get like five or six tom cats, and I guarantee little Billy will see another year.

Fourthly, you can always call your local paranormal society. If they're anywhere as competent as me and my boys, you'll be in good hands. We charge competitive rates, but we guarantee results. Keep that in mind, jabronis.

Fifthly, have a Merry Christmas, motherfuckers! Drink that egg nog and groove to the beats of the funky bunch like God intended. Peace, yo.

New Music: He's an Animal

A Christmas Story: The Death of Horace

Horace was a bad bear. He was made entirely out of gummi, and he was given to a man who ate bear flesh. A group of bears is called a sleuth, did you know? This is Horace's story.

Here Horace is, his figure still intact. I gnawed most of his head off. He was delicious.

In this photograph, I have used a bread knife to saw off most of Horace's head. His cranium is holding on by a thin strand. How grotesque!

As required by the ritual, Horace has been decapitated. I shall place this head on my ramparts as a warning to any travelers.

I am not uncivilized, however. Note the care I have taken to carve Horace's flesh into nice, ragged chunks for ease of consumption.

I find gummi bear goes best with a soft red wine, as the flavors compliment each other.

Yet in the end I could not restrain my hunger.

Rest easy, Horace. I shall use every part of you, like the Indians and the buffalo.