I can still remember when I got for Christmas when I was nine....

It was a King Arthur's Castle made in West Germany, and it was freaking awesome.  I put it together in about twenty minutes and spent god knows how many hours playing with it over the course of the next several years.  I loved it so much that when I happened to come across one on Ebay about fifteen years ago I bought it again, and it's sitting in my apartment right now.

I wonder how long the jackasses in this commercial will remember the Very Special Christmas when someone bought someone virtual-reality headsets and the family spent the next hour experiencing the Virtual Reality which was so much better than the Actual Reality of being with family during the holidays.  I imagine that the most memorable part of the experience was all the stupid shrieking and jumping done by the person wearing the glasses while the rest of the family, unable to experience what the person wearing the glasses was experiencing, looked on.

"Remember when mom jumped?  That was funny.  Can't remember what she was looking at when she jumped.  But she jumped.  And when dad tried them on, he laughed and yelled once.  That was fun.  Who ended up with that headset, anyway?  Well, whatever."

All my snark notwithstanding, I'm sure that this is someone's idea of an awesome Christmas.  Maybe because it's slightly more interactive than everyone talking on their own cell phones?  But we see one of these people using his phone to video someone else's experience with their headset- isn't that kind of doubling down on the isolation?  I mean, seriously.  What the hell?

Before and After Depressing Fun with Google

"Daddy, how big is a Blue Whale?"

Before Google: "I'm not sure, let's write that down and go to the library tomorrow to look it up.  We can stop for ice cream on the way home.  I'd like to find out, too."

After Google: "Google, how big is a Blue Whale?"

"This is where mommy does a big whale noise."

Before Google: "Ok, tell me what she sounds like when she makes it, and I'll try to do it too."

After Google: "Google, what does a Blue Whale sound like?"

"Do whales sleep?"

Before Google:  "I don't know- lets put that on our list of questions to answer during our adventure at the library tomorrow."

After Google:  "Google, do whales sleep?"

I have to wonder why this girl is even asking her father- the stupid Google Answer Machine is right there on the table.  Did the makers of this ad think that it would just be a little TOO obnoxious to have her interrupt her father by directly asking the stupid magic Google Answer Machine?  Could it be that she just wants to have a conversation with her father to spread out this daddy-daughter moment, but the asshat just keeps sabatoging her efforts by instantly asking his Electronic Substitute for Brains and Initiative?

Could we be just a little more helpless and pathetic here?

More disgusting nonsense from Verizon, just in time for the holidays...

One kid is outside, doing what kids have been doing for pretty much as long as there's been snow in winter- having fun with a sled.

Four lazy-ass, clueless, stunted morons are inside with their g-d damned phones and tablets, standing at the bay window waiting to record the one person in their family who is actually doing something...do something.

All of this is supposed to encourage us to contact Verizon so we can start "living" like these digusting twats.  Pass.

(Thumbs up to the kid who actually bundled up and went outside to do something that didn't involve texting, tweeting, streaming or "connecting" with anything except the concepts of fun and exercise.  He should do himself a favor and stay outside until a family not made up of clueless brain-dead lunatics offers to adopt him.)

Tresiba Queasy

You know, I'm going to skip some of the obvious points I could go for in this stupid, overlong ad- like how the barber guy could possibly know what the next best move is in a chess game being played across the freaking room from his chair, or how annoying the zoom-in-and-slow-down bit is when the writers just want to slap the "Tresiba Ready" label on the screen and play the little jingle, or how that barber shop guy uses an acronym I don't recognize and don't think I should be expected to know.

That's because I'm too irritated at how freaking thrilled to death the woman in her late-fifties seems to be to have a job waiting freaking tables.  It's ok that she maybe enjoys her job a little, or is a naturally cheerful person, or just very good at swallowing her resentment at the really crap hand life has dealt her.  But her attitude in this commercial makes me wonder if Tresiba is just a combination of pixie stick sugar, caffeine and illegal uppers.  Take it down a notch, woman!  You'll get your freaking tip!  At least the delivery man hauling big-screen tvs to rich white couples in the posh suburbs in the middle of the freaking night doesn't look like he's impossibly thrilled to be doing it. And the barber shop guy looks like he might be managing his own business and setting his own hours and not working all that hard, so he's got SOME excuse for the ridiculous Permanent Grin of Insanity.

Oh, and I don't know what this medication is even supposed to do.  Just that if I'm prescribed it I can take it any time of day- so maybe it really was developed for people who have slave-labor jobs like two of these characters.  Yay Tresiba.

Random Truths to Ring in the New Year- Hollywood Edition

(None of these are disputable, btw.  So don't give me any crap, especially about the Prequels.  I may have to put up with having a Fascist in the White House but I don't need to deal with prequel apologists.)

1.  There Have been Three Star Wars films, and there will never be more than three Star Wars films.  Those films are Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.  There's no such film as A New Hope (and if you don't believe me, just watch the original scoll embedded with this blog post.) There are no "prequels" and there aren't any "sequels," either.  The Star Wars franchise opens with the Empire eliminating the last of the Imperial Senate and it ends with the overthrow of the Empire and restoration of the Republic.  It's basically the history of Rome with a happier ending.

And yes, this means that to be a Jedi you have to be pure of heart and a willingness to devote your life to defending the citizens of your universe.  That's why they are called "knights," dammit.  You don't need little bugs in your bloodstream.  Because there aren't any prequels.  And in the end freedom is restored and Darth Vader has redeemed himself, the end.  Because there aren't any sequels.

2.  There have been Three Indiana Jones films, and there will never be any more than three Indiana Jones films.  Those films are Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  There's no Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I know this because I saw the film when it was released and I used to have the original poster.  And don't even get me started on that rumored "fourth film" which does not exist.

3.  There was one Rocky film.  It was called Rocky.  It had a great story which did not lend itself to a sequel at all- a loser who has never dared to reach for his full potential is placed in a situation which gives him one last chance to prove to himself that he's not a loser.  He achieves this by going the distance with the undefeated, invincible heavyweight champion of the world- and now he's shaken off the weight of a wasted, directionless life and can go on to a happy life with Adrian.  He doesn't get a rematch (he doesn't want one at the end of the one film, and neither does the champion) because Chuck Wepner, who inspired Stallone to make this movie by coming within seconds of going the distance with Muhammed Ali and knocking the champ down in the process didn't get a rematch.  He sure as hell doesn't win the damn title.

No second film.  And don't even get me started with Mr. T or Ivan Drago.  Those guys don't exist. Because this Oscar-winning film was a stand-alone.

4.  There were two Terminator films, period.  They were called The Terminator and Terminator: Judgement Day.  The second film tied up all the loose ends and assured that Skynet would never exist, so no nuclear armageddon happy ending all around.  If there were any more films- and there aren't- they would totally wreck the point of the two films and probably erase the timelines as well, because that always happens when time-travel films don't know when to stop beating a good idea to death.  If they kept making Terminator films after the two they did make, they'd probably end up completely bleaching out the original story and have Sarah Connor meet a protective Terminator as a child or something really insulting and stupid like that.  Man I'm glad that never happened.

5.  There was only one Iron Man movie.  It ends with Tony Stark, having realized that his life has been a shallow pursuit of earthly pleasures leaving him a vacant waste of skin, tossing aside his old habits in exchange for a life dedicated to repairing the damage done by his blood-drenched weapons company.  He received his epiphany when facing imminent death in a cave in Afghanistan and watching a total stranger willingly sacrifice his life to aid his escape.  If there were any sequels, they'd probably completely forget Tony's growth and have him go right back to being an obnoxious, spoiled playboy obsessed with his own shallow desires and responding to slowly dying by becoming a morose, "I don't give a damn" peevish brat.  That would have been awful.

If I think of any more Indeniable Truths concerning movies, I'll post them here because this is the kind of stuff bloggers do at the end of another year- I think it's the way guys respond to midlife crises when they can't afford a Lexus convertable  or a girlfriend half their age.

How did I miss this one from PureFlix?

For those of you who lucky enough never to be exposed to the wretchedness of PureFlix, a film company co-founded by fundamentalist actor/director David A.R. White whose catalog includes such cinematic gems as God's Not Dead (student uses Bible and strawman arguments to defeat evil Atheist professor,) God's Not Dead II (teacher uses Bible and strawman arguments to defend her right to preach the gospel in in a public classroom) and War Room (emotionally abused woman saves her marriage to an abusive, cheating criminal of a husband by locking herself in a closet and shouting prayers,) a film like The Christmas Angel might look like a piece of innocent, dumb fluff and a way to keep your kids occupied for a few hours during the holidays.  As someone who HAS plumbed the almost bottomless depths of inanity and preachyness that these films represent, I urge you to stick to the DVDs of Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph.

I haven't seen this particular film, but I can glean the entire plotline from the trailer (it doesn't take a genius- go ahead and watch it yourself if you want to, and tell me where you disagree.)  There's a creepy old house in a neighborhood made up entirely of Christians, all of whom except one family is white.  The kids in this neighborhood have gotten the idea that if they make a wish and break a window in the old house, it will come true.

One day Kevin Sorbo (who played the Evil Athiest Professor in God's Not Dead but is still going to spend the rest of his life being That Guy Who Played Hercules) moves in to the house and, not being particularly religious, gets unreasonably irritated that kids keep breaking his windows (like I said, he's not religious, otherwise he'd understand perfectly.)  His complaints against the innocent behavior of the Very Christian young vandals (who after all are just trying to get God's attention so they can have new bikes and such) are so unreasonable, it creates a wall between him and the community- especially when he goes so far as to use police tape to show that his house is a crime scene (which it is, but man what a jerk, he must hate God or something.)

Gradually, Kevin Sorbo's hard heart softens, probably because of the widowed mom of adorable, rock-weilding children who lives next door (surprisingly not played by Roma Downey or Valerie Bertinelli,)  and maybe he's visited by a Might Be An Angel character played by Dela Reese (who else?  Hector Elizondo?)  The kids stop throwing rocks and write their wishes on pieces of paper to place in a box instead.  What happens when these wishes don't come true?  My guess is that this never comes up because, well, PureFlix.

Unlike the other PureFlix films I listed above, this one was made for television (Hallmark Channel- what else?) so it's hard to say how well it was received.  The other films received wide release and made huge profits on small budgets (War Room, for example, made $70 mil on a $4 mil production budget, and was even the No. 1 film on a very slow weekend.)  I wonder if David A.R. White isn't a little irritated with himself for not rolling the dice and putting this on the big screen.  But I'll be sure to catch it on my small one now that I've seen the trailer.  It looks treacly enough for some good snark, at least.  Merry WTF-ever.

Apple stretches disbelief until it snaps back and hits me in the face

Am I to understand that a middle school somewhere decided to put together a big-budget production of Romeo and Juliet featuring nine-year olds who will, if they provide a faithful rendition of the script, commit suicide on stage at the conclusion?

Ok, I get that the quality is probably not that awesome, and the whole idea is that the iPhone7 is just so superawesomeamazing at taking movies that it will make kids being kids on stage look like they are in something produced by Kenneth Branagh (or even something good,) but this doesn't change the fact that these are very young children performing Romeo and Juliet.  We're kidding here, right, Apple?