Max-stravaganza

"Everybody needs a villain." - Kanye West ********** The Expendables is now on DVD (note: use the Amazon link at the bottom of this page to buy the movie, and you'll have bought one kick ass action movie). Stallone has said that he's planning to return to the franchise in coming years. Names that have been thrown around for the next group of action heroes with HGH assisted muscles and guns that never seem to run out of ammo. Rumored names include (in decreasing awesomeness): Dwayne "The Tooth Fairy" Johnson, Jean Claude Van Damme, Kurt Russell, Carl Weathers, Danny Trejo, the Old Spice guy, Steven Seagal, and Brian Bosworth. But that would be rehashing the original. What Stallone needs to do is up the ante. Make the Expendables 2 into a film that joins The Godfather Part II and Wayne's World 2 as sequels that surpass the original. What we need is the ultimate team of action movie villains. The Legion of Doom to the Expendables'...

What fresh hell is it where The Office and Glee decide to cross-promote in order to create a perfect storm of overrated, emperor's new clothes television? Y ou combine two overhyped shows with limited range and undeserved fan frenzy in a move tantamount to when Lex Luthor and Brainiac would pool their resources and team up against Superman. I suppose it could be worse: they could have thrown in Rubicon, a show that apparently I'm "not intelligent enough to appreciate," but thankfully AMC saw the light, pulled the plug and promised to give us more meth-synthesizing chemistry teachers and Zombies. Either way, I'm getting away from the thesis statement of this five paragraph essay: Glee must die and the soil of musical television will be salted by a latter day, media savvy version of William Tecumseh Sherman. I decided to watch Glee last week since GQ told me that most of the actresses were sluts, and that's a big prerequisite for any television program tha...

Song stuck in my head for the day: "Read My Mind" - The Killers. ******* There was a recent article about how incoming college freshmen grew up in a completely different world than even recent college graduates. Examples include knowing Fergie as a pop singer rather than the Duchess of York, they don't remember the Cold War, and they don't use wristwatches. Trying to add to the list, I figured that when they hear the words "Paul is dead," they think that someone recently died, as opposed to playing the White Album backwards. In my strange, tangential, wikipedian mindset, this got me thinking about that great conspiracy theory. Honestly, it's worth wasting a few minutes looking into the clues on the cover of Abbey Road or mishearing lyrics to All You Need is Love. I wondered why our poor, deprived generation didn't have a similar urban legend. Where is our "Who shot JFK?" or "Did man really walk on the moon?" Sure, you hav...

The Hair Product Strength Coefficient The stronger the hold on your hair gel, the greater the chance that when it dries it will look like you have semen in your hair.

With the advent of user generated web content, the Internet is supposed to conform to my own needs. Either I don't make a good first impression or the Internet could seriously use a refresher course. I dislike most of the people that Facebook suggests I add as friends (I'm looking at you, "angry dude from college" and "quiet girl I never spoke to in high school"). I hate half the music that Pandora recommends (REO Speedwagon on my "AC/DC" channel? Really?) and Hulu tailors some very strange ads "just for me" (Diaper commercials, LensCrafters, HIV prevention tips for gay Samoan men, etc.). And since I'm a straight, contraceptively competent, and continent caucasian with perfect vision, I'm not sure who that one was meant for. So I've been hard pressed to see how Web 2.0.1 has made life easier for society. It's just an outlet to post tons of unnecessary information about yourself (see: here ). And suddenly it hi...

In 2008, my friends and I turned 21. We shared the moment of realization that from here on out, alcohol just wasn't special anymore since we could acquire it legally. It is a fact universally accepted that barriers to entry only make people want said product even more. Example #1: iTunes made LimeWire even more popular. Example #2: Whenever a woman says "Just for the record, we're not hooking up tonight," she probably just wants flowers. Example #3: The US/Mexico border. But despite the fact that beer has lost its illegal charm, I still like to throw down every so often. It's about shedding my Bruce Banner (Ed Norton, not Ruffalo) and unleashing what my friend Jeff has coined "Frax" (Frat Max). If this takes off, I'll have to photoshop an image of Admiral Ackbar screaming "It's a Frax!" True, leaving college hasn't done much for my social life. But for those of you who say that I've gone soft in my old age, for those ...

A week since the last post. I don't want anyone to think I've already quit the 'Ganza. No, this won't be an on again/off again Ross and Rachel/Sam and Diane/Chris Brown and Rhianna kind of relationship. No, I am still dedicated. But over the past seven days, I have still been going through geeky detox (Geek-tox?), recovering from Comic Con 2010. It's a life experience. It's like going to war or shopping at Best Buy on Black Friday. I check into my room. Heading to the convention, the guy who plays the priest on "V" was in the elevator with me. The doors open, and there's Stan Lee. Definitely set the mood for an epic weekend of epicness (note: as you can tell, the Scott Pilgrim cast ran wild in San Diego. And by "run wild," I mean that Michael Cera took his hands out of his pockets and was only slightly awkward as he hit up the local bars). I could do a day-by-day run down of events/photos, but you can go on Flickr or Faceboo...

Getting rid of another one of my pre-30 bucket list, as tomorrow I'm finally going down to San Diego for Comic Con. (Sidebar: You have noticed that there are a few more things added to the list, many of which involving food and extreme sports. On the other end, my dream of holding the WWE heavyweight title has been put on the backburner, at least until later on in life. I saw a movie that revealed the true horrors and struggles of being a Wrestler. I'm speaking of course, about Ready to Rumble ). And although Comic Con seems like the perfect destination, you can't simply hop in your car and drive down the 405. It's something that men and women prepare their whole lives for. If you dive in head first , you could end up rocking back in forth in the fetal position as a horde of Stormtroopers circles you. Yes, I read comic books. Yes, I think that Han shot first. Yes, I work for a publisher. Yes, I can tell you the difference between Sin City-era Frank Miller an...

It has been two years, six months, seven hours and fifteen days since my last post. I suppose I could go on a blow by blow, self-serving, "Story of our film so far"-style recap of what has happened since. Like those Christmas letters that your one aunt always sends, three pages, double sided, telling you everything that happened to your forgotten side of the family since January of the last year. But recap pages are for 1970s comic books and people with short term memory loss. So I'll spare you and simply dive back in off the top turnbuckle, probably ending up with brain damage. No, I wasn't off on vacation. No, I wasn't unfairly suspended for throwing at Aaron Rowand. The point is that two and a half years ago, I realized that by keeping up a blog, I was accomplishing nothing more than perpetuating my stereotype as a pretentious student. I had the look down. Checkerboard Van's. Check. Messenger bag. Check. Urban Outfitters t-shirt with an offbeat...

It has only taken four and a half months, but the weather has finally warmed up in Auckland. Even though I still carry around my umbrella in my backpack (gotta be prepared for flash floods), I can confidently and pragmatically parade down the street in sunglasses and a t-shirt. But most importantly...for the first time since I've been down here I've been able to wear shorts. Yes, I can finally bust the plum smugglers out of my wardrobe and flaunt my oddly-youthful calves. Yes, it has been far too long since my legs have been allowed to breathe. I've sported my favorite pair of jeans so much over the past semester that I've worn unfortunately placed holes into the back pocket and crotchal regions. So now I get to rotate in my khaki shorts and stop exposing my boxer shorts to anyone walking behind me. This all ties together with my dream summer job: UPS delivery guy. I mean, what could possibly be cooler than getting paid to wear shorts to work? What could be cooler?...

Halloween has come and gone, and despite the fact that I missed out on what has always been a legendary weekend at CMC, I feel like I ended up okay. And seeing as we can all learn something from this occasion, I'll start with the end of the night. I come back to my room around 2am-ish (Big life lesson here: Nothing good ever happens after 2AM. True story.) and I log on to Skype just for the hell of it. And sure enough, one of my friends (who will remain nameless, *cough*Ben Fawkes) was still on. So I drop a line and start rambling about my night... When I get stopped by a surprising female voice on the other end. Sure enough, the guy's mother back in Brooklyn had logged onto his Skype account on a whim. Luckily she stopped me when she did, otherwise I might have made some homoerotic insinuations about his time in Prague. Either way, I had a fun chat with Ellen (first name basis now) and I learned an important lesson: If you ever use AIM or Skype at home, don't save yo...

I now have indisputable visual evidence that the universe is in full support of my addictions. I'm sitting at my laptop, alternatingly bitter over the fact that the new episode of Weeds isn't online and that I can't find the new Stereophonics album on iTunes. I'm all set to type out some depressing, moody, Ben Folds-inspired post about how you can't petition the Lord with prayer...when KNOCK KNOCK. Now, not too many people knock on my door. My room's at the very end of the hall and the leg work arouses more phone calls than half-marathon knocks. So who the hell could be at the door, waiting to blow my house down? Odds are it's someone who has the wrong room # or one of my roommate's bizarre Malaysian yakuza cohorts. But instead, it was a group of three borderline-attractive girls with odd, cylindrical backpacks. Yeah, it was a safe bet they were part of the new religious cult dedicated to Stan Lee, but at this point of ennui you'll do anything fo...

And now for something completely different: a Davisonian diatribe on love. And like everything else that I have ever written, I'm deferring the first line to another writer. I thought of that old joke: this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, my brother's crazy. He thinks he's a chicken." And the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much how I feel about relationships. They're totally irrational and crazy and absurd. But, I guess we keep going through it because most of us...need the eggs. -Woody Allen Over the past trillion years (2,500 if you listen to Kansas), God has played some cruel jokes on humanity. He filled the evil tree of knowledge with the enticing red, juicy apples as opposed to rutabegas or poison oak. He gave allegedly-celibate priests the authority to dictate our sexual mores. Then he decided to give Bo Jackson the greate...

This weekend marked one of my typical (and apparently bi-weekly) mid-mid life crises. Yup. I seem to go through more crises than DC Comics does each summer when they realize that Marvel is outselling them 2 to 1 and their books need a shot of adrenaline. God, I need to stop sounding like a fanboy. But yeah, every so often I'll wake up at 2am in the morning and ask myself the $64,000 question: where the hell am I going after I graduate? I mean, for the love of Pete, I plan on going into a field where "intelligence" and "talent" mean nothing as opposed to practicality and connectedness. So it seems like I'm only using the present to worry about the future. I mean, Michelangelo painted the Sistine ceiling at 33. David Lynch directed Eraserhead at 31. Orson Welles made Citizen Kane at 26. And Dwight Howard was drafted #1 at the tender age of 18. At 20, I'm getting to the point where I actually have to worry. And although it looks like my days of ...

You may have noticed (probably not) that I haven't mentioned the disaster area that is Southern California. This is partially because it's such a sensitive subject that hits close to home both literally and figuratively. A couple of my compatriots here in New Zealand have had their families evacuated in the past week and have no idea if there's even a home waiting for them when the semester ends. But mainly, I've been on a crusade to douse the fire with the silent treatment. I honestly feel that by giving the fire all of our attention, we're letting it win. Every time a front page story runs in the papers, it grows. Every time Geraldo Rivera risks life and limb to get his scoop, the blazes flare up (and hopefully will engulf Geraldo). The media is feeding the fire with all the awareness. My plan? Just stop paying attention and POOF it's gone! Facing a problem head on can take years of reconciliation and therapy to get over. But if you just forget that it...

Well, technically he's still alive. But start warming up the smoke monster, because Jin is as good as dead as soon as Season 4 starts up in February. That's right, my droogs. The LOST curse has struck again, as Daniel Dae Kim was arrested on Thursday for a DUI. First there was Ana Lucia (thank god that whackjob got fired when she did. I mean, did anyone really want to see her hook up with Jack? What the hell were you thinking, Abrams?). Then there was Libby. Then *tear* Mr. Eko. When are these actors going to learn? If you're going to drink and drive, make sure that you're not a cast member on Lost. I mean, think about all of the other famous drunk drivers who are still employed: Charlie Sheen, Mel Gibson , the Cincinnati Bengals, and (further proof that there is no God) Ted Kennedy. As Dr. Cox once so eloquently put it: You can't show up to work when you're hammered. You're not airline pilots. Although there's a slight chance that the powers th...