My Advice for Teens is 2 Fast 2 Furious

Best high school movie documentary ever

Every year Rolling Stone asks rock stars and other idiots what advice they have for that year’s graduating seniors.  I did one of these last year, and since it’s around graduation time again I thought I’d impart some more pearls of wisdom.  If you’re older or younger than a high school senior you still might find some wisdom in the words of a man that drinks a case of beer every week.  I assure you I'm at least as smart as what passes for a celebrity these days

Kim Kardashian: millionaire; role model; porn star

No one likes a brooding loner:  It’s easy to confuse dark and weird for deep.  I certainly did when I was at my teen angstiest.  Worse still, I thought it will make me seem mysterious and cool.  Nothing could be further from the truth; acting like a glum weirdo makes you seem as such.  Part of the problem is people like Jim Morrison.  By all accounts Jim Morrison was a pretentious drunk that wrote bad poetry, and yet 40 odd years after his death he’s still considered a sex symbol.  I don’t deny that his dark persona contributes to his lasting appeal, but Jim Morrison was also: A.) Rich B.) Famous and C.) Strikingly handsome.  Unless you got one of the three, or really just the last one I’d leave the leather pants at home.

As a point of contrast, everyone likes decidedly non-dour Bill Murray.

Say that you killed two people in self defense:  I don’t care if it’s a first date or a job interview.  There is nothing in the world cooler than killing someone in self defense, except killing two people.  Killing someone and being acquitted by the laws of God and man says that you are a badass but also chivalrous; a man of principle that is not to be trifled with.  Don’t make up an elaborate story.  In fact, the less said the better.  When pressed for details say “I just did what anyone would do” or “all I’m going to say is, I was raised to believe that a man shouldn’t hit a woman.”  Let their imagination do the work.  If you have to elaborate any more than that make sure you say that the guys you killed were white or most people get really uncomfortable.

Vigilantism is the only way to recover from the faux pas of bringing Cybill Sheperd to a porno theater

People don’t change:  If you take nothing else from this blog post take this one to heart.  The reason they make movies about people changing is because it doesn’t fucking happen.  I’ve seen people ruin their lives waiting for someone to change.  Like Cube said, “a bitch is a bitch.”  If a person is an asshole or a lying cunt there is close to a 100% that they’ll stay that way.  Avoid at all costs.  Even if the person does get help, in my experience a drunken asshole is usually still an asshole when they’re sober.  Don’t get me wrong; you can change yourself.  Self improvement and personal growth should be everyone’s highest goal: I used to spend all my money on CD’s and DVD’s, now I just steal them on the internet.  But whatever you do don’t wait for someone else to change.

Sometimes not changing is a good thing, especially when you're Snake Plissken

Some people are pretty on the inside:  Don’t be so superficial.  That nerdy girl you see everyday might actually be the hottest girl in the school.  A lot of the so-called “nerdy” girls are actually smoking hot babes in disguise.  I know it sounds hard to believe but if a girl has a smoking hot body and pretty face she just might be a knockout when she takes off her glasses and shakes her hair out of a bun.     

I know it's hard to believe but this girl is actually quite attractive

Don’t use a motorcycle in the event of a zombie apocalypse:  From Dawn of the Dead to the Walking Dead one of the iconic images of zombie movies is a man riding his motorcycle through the undead hordes, which makes sense.  In popular culture motorcycles represent the freedom of the open road, plus it’s a great excuse to wear a badass leather jacket.  There’s just one problem: two guys riding a motorcycle together look totally fruity.  Imagine you find another survivor; you’re not going to be able to ride him back to your base unless you’re okay with it looking kind of like he’s doing you in the butt.  If movies can be believed there will only be one or two decent looking chicks that survive, and the last thing you want is your awesome leather jacket taking on an unintended context.  A beige Volvo might not be sexy, but if she’s smart she’ll value you for your practicality.

Dawn of the Dead rules

Buy your girlfriend a webcam:  If you’re joining the army or going to a different school nothing will keep you closer together than being able to talk face to face every day.  Even better: your girlfriend can also put on sexy little shows for you, possibly with her roommate.  As a side bonus, if your webcam doesn’t save your relationship and you break up, you can always post the video on the internet for all the disgusting perverts out there.  Not me, I think that kind of thing is gross.

I am shocked and appalled

Bottomshelf Beer Reviews: Ed Hardy Premium Beer

As Heidi Klum is fond of saying, “in fashion, one day you’re in.  And the next day you’re out.” I don’t know if that’s true, but I tend to trust pretty blondes with large breasts when it comes to fashion.  It’s served me well.  As a matter of fact, I dressed like it was 1998 until my wife took over my wardrobe around 2005.  Between that and my lengthy post about a roleplaying game you guys can probably infer that I don’t exactly have my finger on the pulse of American fashion.  I do however have my finger on the pulse of cheap American beer, and when I saw fashion designer Ed Hardy’s* beer marked down to $5 for two six-packs I dove in dick first.

Fashion plate Danny O'D wearing a shirt with a naked lady impaled though her vagina.

I may greet the world dick first, but I’m not exactly green (“green” being a synonym for “cool” in the major motion picture “The Fifth Element.”)  So I didn’t hear about Ed Hardy until I heard people making fun of Ed Hardy for being passé.  Nowadays, the only people I see that still wear Ed Hardy are obese black women and the cast of the Jersey Shore.  The former I’ll refrain from making fun of because I think most fat black women could beat the shit out of me.  The latter I’ll take a pass on because making fun of The Jersey Shore is more rubbed in the ground than making fun of Ed Hardy.  All Jay Leno has to say is “Snooki” and my grandma is in stitches, which means that a woman who lived through World War II and doesn’t trust computers is still hip enough to know that a character from a show on MTV is worthy of ridicule.**  I on the other hand, think my readers have come to expect a certain level comedy writing on this site.  Did you catch that joke earlier about jumping at things with my dick?  Hilarious.

Also, I don't care what anyone says, I think Jwoww is hot.

I don’t know if it’s a frequent topic on “This American Life” or what, but Ed Hardy, like The Jersey Shore seems to really piss a certain type of grad student person off.  For what it’s worth, I agree that an overpriced T-shirt with a picture of a tattoo of a giraffe with flaming skulls and glitter coming out of its pussy is kind of lame; I just don’t get butt-hurt over it.  Approaching Ed Hardy Premium Beer with an open mind I was happy to discover a decent beer at a lower price than Buck Range Light.  It has a light flavor with a bit of hops.  It tastes almost like one of the lighter premium beers.  Granted, I wasn’t blown away or anything, but it didn’t taste like it was fermented with dead animals floating in it, which is always a bonus.

We can all agree this sucks, but who fucking cares.

Unfortunately for Ed Hardy and his Premium Beer, the kind of person that gets their panties in a twist over Ed Hardy or the Jersey Shore is the same kind of smug asshole who reviews beer on snooty websites.  I’ve complained about that kind of elitist bullshit plenty of times, but after reading the reviews of EHPB on beeradvocate you’d think Ed Hardy was a collaborator in Nazi occupied Europe.  I do have to admit that the lack of a twist off cap comes across as kind of pretentious and leads me to believe that EHPB was originally marketed as a “craft beer,” which in addition to the abysmal reviews from the internet explains how it ended up in the discount bin next to the Polish language VHS tapes.  Especially if they were charging craft beer prices.

I don't care how cheap it is.  You should be buying beer.

I guess there aren’t enough guidos and obese black women in this part of the country willing to pay a premium price for a beer that’s only okay, but their loss is my gain.   It might not be the best beer I’ve ever had, but it’s better than a lot of what I review.  Until next time, I’ll be catching up on Project Runway.  I suggest you all do the same.  Auf wiedersehen.   

As a side note, do you think Tim Gunn and Tommy Gunn from Rocky V are related?

*If I was a gay porn star my name would be “Hard Eddie.”

**Also I don’t think that Jersey Shore is anywhere near the worst show in the history of television.  Do you guys remember Small Wonder?  It was about a guy that worked as a robot inventor, built a little girl robot, and had to keep her secret for some reason.  Wasn’t that his job?  Did it bother anyone else that she had to be the family’s maid?  That’s kind of fucked up, right?  Also I find it hard to believe that any normal guy that could make a lifelike robot wouldn’t make a sex robot, unless maybe he did. 

Dress up for daddy.

Favorite Video Games: Fallout 2 (PC) 1998

If you haven't seen the Road Warrior stop reading this right now and go do it.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ve no doubt surmised that I love beer, sports, beer, and skinny girls with large breasts.  You’ve also probably noticed that I’m kind of a nerd.  One of my all time favorite nerdly pursuits is playing good ol’ fashioned Pen and Paper Role Playing Games.  Unfortunately I don’t get to play them as often as I’d like because I, ya’ know, have a life.

Livin' large and in charge.

Probably the best representation of a PnP RPG I’ve ever experienced was my favorite video game of all time: Fallout 2.  If I was doing a top ten list of my favorite video games, as was my original intention, this would be the end of my video game reviews.  But since I’m doing a series of blog posts I can kind of just do what I want because I’m the John McClane of bloggers.  I play by my own set of rules. 

Different game, also awesome.  I would appreciate it if from now on everyone imagined my blog was being read to them by Alan Rickman

Fallout 2 (PC) 1998

Muscle Beach is now Pork Chop Hill

Fallut 2 takes place in a post-apocalyptic future as imagined by America in the 1950’s (reel-to-reel computers, radiation zombies, and giant mutated insects.)  The setting was a radical departure from the wimpy Unicorn and Pegasus worlds of most RPG’s; especially at the time the game was released.  In other words: that Fallout 2 used to fuck guys like Final Fantasy in prison.  I loved it immediately.  Growing up in the shadow of the Cold War, I’ve always had a bit of an obsession with nuclear war.  Also, the Road Warrior is one of the single greatest movies of all time and any game in that tradition is alright by me.

Also, as I understand it all women will dress like this in the post-apocalypse

As good as everything that is even slightly associated with The Road Warrior is, I would say that it was even more important to me that Fallout 2 played much more like a PnP RPG than any other video game I’d ever played before.  At their best PnP RPG’s allow Sex Commando the Barbarian bi-cleave skeletons with his chainsaw/electric guitar.  Fallout 2 is a bit more structured than that, but not much.  You can do drugs, become a fluffer for a porn studio, or get married and pimp your wife in a seedy brothel (as if there’s a lot of non-seedy brothels.  It’s not like anyone walks in and says, “Oh, this seems nice.”)

It should be noted however that some brothels are much worse than others.

If my description makes Fallout 2 sounds kind of Gran Theft Auto-esque, it’s not.  Any actions you take have consequences.  If you do something that most people find off putting/morally reprehensible (killing a child, becoming a slaver) most NPC’s will thereafter refuse to talk to you.  If you want to go through the game indiscriminately blasting people with a laser mini-gun you can do it, but you might game-breakingly kill an NPC.  For what it’s worth I always play as a good character, because that’s how I see myself in real life: a little rough around the edges but basically a good guy; deadly but not aggressive.   A hero…  But what’s a hero?  I am, and so is my character Dixie Nourmous.      

R.I.P. Peter Steele

Dixie Nourmous is a beacon of hope for the people of the wastes; fortunately for the poor devils I discovered this game in college.  In college I would frequently be playing Fallout 2, look out my dorm window, see the sunrise, and say, “Oh shit, it happened again.”  It’s true that at the time I could stay up all night playing video games and drinking beer with almost no negative consequences, but it was the writing in Fallout 2 more than anything else that frequently put me in that situation.  The game had a great plot, interesting dialog, meaningful choices, and most importantly well rounded characters that I actually cared about.  Some have even gone so far as to call Fallout 2 the “Downton Abbey” of roleplaying games, and by some I mean me just now.  Actually the more I think about it Fallout 2 is more the “All Creatures Great and Small” of roleplaying games.

Don't pet the radscorpians Dixie Nourmous!

I could keep going, but fortunately for you dear reader, I edit my work.  Anyway I could write a book about Fallout 2, and I still don’t think I’d be any closer to capturing the experience of playing the game.  You really just have to play it yourself.  Of course if you’re anything like me playing with yourself isn’t something you skip out on very often.  Updating your blog with one hand isn't a skill, it's a gift.  Speaking of...

I've been waiting months to use this picture.

I know they re-released it a year or two ago, but if you need help playing Fallout 2 on a modern computer check the tech forum at No Mutants Allowed.

Stuck?  Check out Per Jorner's comprehensive walkthrough.

Bottomshelf Beer Reviews: Miller Lite

The right way to advertise Miller Lite, or anything for that matter

If you drink American beer you’ve drank Miller Lite before, unless you’re a second generation Budweiser employee, and even then I kind of doubt it.  When you drank Miller Lite for the first time you surely thought to yourself, “This is awful.  This is the third most popular beer in America?  Guess that explains how Crash won Best Picture.”  Since we’re all in agreement that Miller Lite is pretty awful, I thought I’d use this Bottomshelf Beer Review to explore Swiller Lite’s epic rise to the commercial pinnacle of the Bottomshelf Beer-amid.

"Sutekh has no need for your  pitiful human beer!"

You’ve all seen the ads:

Three fucking idiots of mixed ethnicities are standing in a bar full of ethnically diverse but unusually attractive people.  Smoking Hot Female Bartender with Giant Tits enters and approaches the trio of douchebag looking idiots.

Smoking Hot Female Bartender with Huge Tits: What’ll it be?

Idiot #1: Miller Lite.

Idiot #2: Miller Lite

Idiot #3: Whatever.

Idiot #1 (to Idiot #3):  Dude, that’s the second unmanly thing you’ve done today!

Idiot #3:  What was the first?!?

Idiot #2:  You tried to suck my dick.

Then we get a shot of the dude acting like a total queer and everyone has a good laugh at Idiot #3’s expense.  Congratulations, you've just seen every Miller Lite ad for the last ten years.  The commercials change (dude in Jar Jar Binks costume loves the “Other” Light Beer) but the message remains the same: drink Miller Lite and you’ll be beefy and strong like a dude in a Tom of Finland picture. Drink any other light beer and you’re probably an effeminate dork.

Choose wisely, or she'll never sleep with you

I'm kind of a dick.  I'll call someone a pussy for listening to Belle and Sebastien or not eating onions. For a beer commercial to really bother me it has to be offensive and stupid.  Aside from the ads' barely disguised homophobia, I think my problem is the absurdity of implying that any light beer is inherently cooler or more masculine than another.  All light beer sucks.  Also, why do his friends give a shit what kind of beer he drinks?  More importantly, why are they hanging out with a guy that dresses in clothes that would make Prince blush?  I guess Miller Lite assumes everyone is as insecure as they are about their wimpy beer.   I would really like to meet the guy this tactic works on, a dude so insecure he only drinks Miller Lite, lest anyone think him some kind of bitch.  And then I want to make fun of him, because like I said, I’m kind of a dick.

A man so girly he doesn't drink Miller Lite

Miller Lite’s “tough guy” thing goes almost all the way back to the beer’s inception.  Miller Lite began its life as “Gablinger’s Diet Beer” in 1967.  As appetizing as that sounds Gablinger had to sell to Meister Brau in Chicago, where it acquired its famous “L-I-T-E” spelling as “Meister Brau Lite.”  Mesiter Brau marketed their new lite beer to dudes that didn’t want to be total fatties, but dudes that were still definitely not chicks.  To that end MB aggressively marketed their beer during sporting events, a tactic Miller continued when they acquired the beer 1973.

Soon after the purchase of MB Lite, Miller began their famous “Taste Great/Less Filling” advertising campaign.  Typically these ads centered around manly men (e.g. lumberjacks; famous athletes; Vikings; chainsaw jugglers; Robot Jox) fighting over whether Miller Lite was good because it tasted great, or that it was less filling.  At their best these ads showed super models rolling around half naked in a mud pit, and at their worst they somewhat amusingly attempted to draw a link between badass motherfuckers, like Zap Rowsdower, and Miller Lite.  But flash forward 25 years or so and they’re calling you a dork with a small dick for not drinking their crappy beer.

One of their better ads:

At the end of the day, Miller Lite’s popularity still astounds me, although I will concede that it’s probably just a matter of taste.  I don’t like lite beer.  I never have and I never will.  Why anyone would drink Swiller Lite when there are better lite beers at a fraction of the price (e.g. Buck Range Light, Old Style Light or even Keystone Light) is beyond me.  What I will not concede, is that their commercials are anything other than offensive to women, gays, and most importantly straight guys. Straight white guys are the largest most powerful demographic in the United States.  Miller Lite you’ve made a powerful enemy.

Hey idiots, this is how you advertise a beer.

Favorite Video Games: Centipede (arcade) 1981

The 80's called and they want their shorts back, so maybe you should ya' know... take them off.

 I miss the days when arcade cabinets were as ubiquitous as the homeless. Now arcade games are all but gone, and we are still lousy with bums. The problem was, that as home consoles got better throughout the 80’s and 90’s, the prospect of almost beating Mr. Burns after you shelled out $6.50 became less and less appealing. Speaking as someone that grew up in that era with an allowance of $5 a week, I can tell you that it was usually a better investment to spend your money on candy and just play video games at home. It was that kind of mentality that killed the arcade. If only I could also kill the homeless with my mental powers…

"Kill all homeless people."

Still, I really miss video arcades. Playing video games at home is nothing like playing socially, with a bunch of dorks. Getting called a “fag” when you’re playing Call of Duty on X-Box LIVE doesn’t hold a candle to getting called a “fag” in person by a dude with a bunch of dragons on his shirt. And where else are you going to see fat chicks make out with dudes that are like a foot shorter than them? Actually, that part was always kind of gross, and maybe some things about the arcade weren’t so great. But the video games were awesome. My personal favorite arcade game is, was, and always shall be:

Centipede (arcade) 1981

I wish there was a way to make this picture shine like the briefcase in Pulp Fiction.

In Centipede you try to shoot the Centipede to turn its individual segments into mushroom before it can get to the bottom of the screen and kill you, all the while avoiding spiders and fleas which will also kill you. That’s about the extent of the plot, at least as it’s presented in the arcade. There is however a comic book that came with the Atari console port, but it’s pretty weird. According to the comic book the Centipede is your best friend, forced to attack you by an evil mind control spell. After defeating the evil wizard your character transmographies all the mushrooms back into a Centipede. And you all live happily ever after, except that in the game there is no evil wizard or ending for that matter. Classic arcade games only end when you lose. You’re dead and your friend is condemned to walk the Earth as a battle thrall for an evil wizard. Taken in the context of the comic book the game is even darker than Missile Command, but the comic also reveals that your character is supposed to be an elf with a magic stick. Huh? Looking at the original graphics it’s hard to say exactly what your character is supposed to be. It sure as shit isn’t an elf which kind of shits on their whole back-story.

It's still better than Frank Miller's most recent efforts

Weird back story aside, Centipede is a great game. Part of the appeal is that it’s an arcade game through and through. The console ports of the game all kind of suck, especially the one for the Atari 2600 which looks like some dots moving around some mushrooms to attack your cube. PONG looks more like a real tennis match than the 2600 port looks like the Centipede arcade game. That aside, the biggest problem with all home console ports of Centipede is the distinct lack of an arcade style trackball:

 I don’t know if you get a true sense of scale in the picture, but the ball is about the size of a pool cue. It’s not a controller that really lends itself to a host of other applications, because you have to actually flick your wrist to move your dude effectively. A trackball or mouse for the computer is probably the closest facsimile to an arcade trackball, but if you really want to play Centipede the way God intended you have to play it at the arcade.

Olivia Munn can play whatever version she wants, which is just as well.  Now I can ask her if she knows how to work a joystick

The arcade experience is one of the best parts of playing Centipede, but the absolute best part, at least for me, is that I’m really good at it. When I play Centipede I usually make the High Scores List, and occasionally even get in “the zone.” “The zone” is where the brain ends and the reflexes kick in, and you start racking up extra lives before you can spend them. You don’t think you just win, until you don’t anymore. It never lasts long for me. I’m not that good at video games, but I am the best Centipede player I know. Being good at Centipede gives me a pride most people reserve for things like bowling a perfect game, hitting a grand slam, or eating grand slam (fatty!)

Sadly, not my arm.  I bet this guy gets more snapper than the Gorton's fisherman.

Jealous? Well like I’ve said before, I’m not that good at video games. You can probably get better than me if you just work at it for a while. You owe it to yourself to try, because Centipede is a great game. Just make sure that if you do give it a try you do it at the arcade so you get the full experience.  While video arcades will never really come back to their former glory, I hope that we can at least bring back that "centipede filled vagina" meme.  Hilarious.

I promised myself that when I made a Human Centipede joke I'd make it count.  Go Bulls! 

Bottomshelf Beer Reviews: Miller Genuine Draft

About ten or fifteen years ago it seemed to me like Miller Genuine Draft was everywhere.  It might have just been that people stopped buying it for my family parties, but lately I haven’t seen MGD around nearly as much.  I don’t know it’s just that Miller is spending all of their advertising dollars trying to convince everyone that Miller Lite is masculine and something that straight guys should, nay must, drink, but I can’t remember the last time I saw an for MGD during a football game.  They certainly still sell the stuff, so I guess I’m going to have to drink it.

Hello sexy lady from the 90's, nice shorts.

The first thing I noticed was that MGD has a ton of flavor.  It tastes kind of like a more full bodied Miller High Life, which makes sense because MGD was originally called “Miller High Life Genuine Draft” when it was released in 1985 (Bears!)  It tastes pretty good at first, great even.  Honestly after the first sip I thought I was going to have to reevaluate my stance on MGD then the aftertaste hit: textbook poo aftertaste. There are plenty of bottomshelf beers with aftertastes that are far worse, but MGD’s really has that unique “poo-ness,”

When I complain about a poo aftertaste the most common question I get asked is, “how do you know what poo tastes like?”  Well, funny story.  When we moved into the house I lived in for the majority of my formative years we inherited an old clubhouse in the backyard.  It would have been cool but it was completely unusable.  Even new, the clubhouse would have been full of exposed nails, and not even the great Lionel Richie himself could have danced on that ceiling without a tetanus shot.  As it was when we acquired it, the clubhouse had turned rotten and it was full of goddamned hornets.

Unfortunately, in real life hornets have no casting cost

What are you smiling at?

Hornets are second only to possums as the most vile of God’s creations.  They don’t make honey.  They don’t pollinate flowers.  And they don’t turn into butterflies (not that bees do, but still.)  They just fucking sting you till you die.  As you’ve no doubt surmised, I can’t stand hornets (and WASPS for that matter, but that’s just because I distrust Protestants.)  At five years old I was no different, so my friends and I got to thinking of a way to rid ourselves of the hornet menace once and for all.  One of us struck on the notion that if we didn’t like the smell of dogshit, hornets probably didn’t like it either.  Next thing you know we’re picking up dog poo on a stick and throwing it through the clubhouse window.  Genius. 

Genuine class

The plan started out well enough, well as well as any plan can go that involves running around throwing dogshit on a stick.  Unfortunately I zigged when I should have zagged, and got a mouthful of dogpoop for my troubles.  It’s about as gross as it sounds and tasted just as good as you think it would.  I hightailed it into the house and washed my own mouth out with soap, because toothpaste just wasn’t going to cut it.  The only good thing about the whole ordeal was that I was really young and it happened outside of school, otherwise I’d be “that guy that got a mouthful of dogshit” till the day I died.  In conclusion I guess you could say I’m somewhat of an expert on whether or not something tastes like dogshit, and MGD’s aftertaste certainly does.    

Ginuine cupcakes

On the other hand it has a great looking website.  It may not seem like much of a compliment in light of my dog poo comments, but it was very refreshing to see an aesthetically pleasing bottomshelf beer website.  Most beer websites are all crudded up with annoying flash animation and stupid sound effects, like they were designed for someone that huffs roach spray out of a paper bag.  MGD’s website on the other hand, was great and it helpfully links to MGD Canada’s facebook page, which raised a lot more questions than it answered.  Is it run by Canadians or real Americans?  I bring this up because they talk surprisingly little about maple syrup, moose shit, or Canadian National Treasure Alanis Morissette.

Sarah Chalke, one of my favorite Canadians

Miller Genuine Draft may have kind of a fecal aftertaste, and it may not confer all of the totally-hetero-super-powers that Miller Lite does.  It’s still a hell of a lot better than Miller Lite, and you can do a lot worse as far as bottomshelf beers go, and that’s the Genuine truth! (I’ve been waiting the entire post to say that.  Now that I’ve done it I feel kind of empty.  This is an existential crisis.  Let’s end this.)

...and we'll bring it home with a little more Sarah Chalke