Oh Man, Remember How Good This Was? Part I

Remember when you were younger and you were able to be entertained by almost anything? It really didn’t matter what it was, especially when it concerned comedy, but you were able to laugh at all of the overly complicated Rube Goldberg bodily fluid gags and strived to replicate the smart alec/pissy personas of the protagonists? Well, I have recently run into a couple of films that I loved growing up that have epically failed the test of time.

Remember the American Pie franchise? Not the terrible direct-to-DVD crapfest that they have slung at us in recent years, but the first three films that actually graced the big screen? Oh man, as a 15 and 16-year-old I (and every other person my age) thought that it was literally the funniest thing on the planet. A guy banging a pie? Someone pooping in the girls’ bathroom? Classic! Comedy gold!

I recently re-watched American Pie 2 and as a 24-year-old guy, I have to tell you, good Lord, that movie is atrocious. Simply God-awful. It’s so bad that it can make you cringe, enraged and once again question the intelligence of humanity.

So, after their first year of college, where, of course, hilarity most likely ensued, the original gang from the first film comes home for the summer and decides to rent an absolutely amazing shore house. That’s the first problem right there: Without asking any of his friends if they have the time, money and wherewithal to spend two and a half months living on the shore of a Great Lake, the lovable everyman and generically named Kevin Myers decides to rent this house out of the blue. Not to mention, that he somehow magically obtains this house at the very last minute, in what is most likely, late-May. You mean to tell me that this incredible house is still available for the entire summer at such a late date? Christ.

Anyway, our heroes set out to throw the “greatest summer party ever” at this house, which is just such a lame plotline, that I don’t even want to bother wasting my time picking apart. Another aspect of this horrible film is that the whole gang manages to get a job painting houses. Or I should say “house” singular, because they must be the worst/slowest painters on the planet in the sense that they spend the entire summer painting a single house.

Another terrible storyline that these idiotic writers concocted is the Kevin/Vicky subplot. These two used to date in high school, but then went their separate ways once they embarked on their collegiate odysseys. Of course, sweetheart Kevin still loves Vicky (played by the drug-fueled train wreck that is Tara Reid), who now has a boyfriend, and he spends much of the film trying to get her back. For starters, there is absolutely no chemistry between these two actors. It is so hard to believe that they could have actually dated and once they realize that they can just be friends, the corny dialogue is enough to make a stock actor from a 1980s after school special look like god-damn Daniel Day Lewis.

Then there is the completely unlikable and unrealistic character of Finch. How can this dork have any friends? He is condescending, pretentious and deserves to drown in a lake. “Ohh, look at how funny that is! Finch is meditating and reading The Kama Sutra! How hysterical!” No! My friends and I all agree that if this guy was at our shore house for some odd reason, we would beat the shit out of him. You are not funny and I hope that you pull all of the ligaments in your knees trying to practice whatever “funny” sex move you are practicing.

By the way, this huge end of the summer party that these guys throw looks like a big steaming pile of shit. There were like 150 people there with, more than likely, a single keg! Do the math here! Oh god, then there is the dialogue again between Kevin and Vicky commenting on how “crazy” the party was while looking through a yearbook the next morning.

Also, this film was only released in 2001, but it just looks so unbelievably dated. The clothing, hair styles and jewelry just scream TRL and America On-Line. Then there is the music, a pop-punk extravaganza to say the least. Allow me to just throw out some forgettable bands that can be heard throughout these 110 minutes of hell: Blink 182, Sum 41, American Hi-Fi, Uncle Kracker, Alien Ant Farm and New Found Glory, just to name a few. Holy crap! I completely neglected to mention that this movie also slung Third Eye Blind’s “Semi Charmed Life,” at us, the quintessential 1990s teen-comedy musical staple that was already four years old by the time that this film was released. But I guess that I understand where they were coming with this song. There is actually a law that requires “Semi Charmed Life” to be played in any movie/television show that is marketed towards teenagers. Seriously, look it up, you’ll be amazed.

Towards the conclusion of the film, at the unexciting end of the summer ‘banger’ that these tools throw, all of the guys are dancing and having a good time. They then proceed to all look at each other and exchange nods and glances while holding up their drinks in a toast to the smug satisfaction of having thrown the lamest party known to mankind. It is a really hard scene to watch, it is so clichéd, so cheesy and so unrealistic. This. This is my hell.

Thanks to this piece of shit, I am now afraid to revisit some of my favorite films from my adolescence for fear that I will realize that they are worse than the Ebola virus. Was I really that naïve and gullible? How could I have once enjoyed this movie? This time around, there weren’t even any real laughs, not even a cheap one. I hated all of the characters, the asinine plot and pretty much everything associated with it. It isn’t even a good “cult” film. It is simply a terrible film that is an insult to cinema, comedy and pretty much anything that has a pulse. Please bury this thing and while you’re at it, immediately stop making the direct-to-DVD garbage that you have been churning out in recent years. Get lost in some endless late-nite Comedy Central or TBS roulette of doom.

Adventures In Terrible Music Part I

Chris Rock couldn’t have said it better: “Yo man, R and B sucks.” And you know what? It really does. I put it up there as a close second (possibly even a tie) with the new obnoxious country music that, for some stupid reason, was all over the place in the middle part of the previous decade (“Honky Tonk Badonkadonk”? Barf) as my least favorite type of music.

Each day at work, I am subjected to eight hours of FM 105.3, “Philly's Best R and B and Classic Soul.” Now, the classic soul isn’t all that bad. It’s entertaining and likeable and I especially enjoy when they sprinkle a little bit of Motown in there as well. However, I would have to say that about 85% of their musical programming consists of R and B and of that 85%, 100% of it is the same five songs that have been on a non-stop rotation of torture since late July.

Maxwell’s “Pretty Wings,” Whitney Houston’s “I Turn To You” and Ginuwine’s “Last Chance,” coupled with some other forgettable crap has bled out of the speakers of the radio in my office for close to six months now. Even if I liked these songs and enjoyed listening to them, hearing them every hour is enough to make me completely wash my hands of the already sad state of popular music, especially commercial radio.

For starters, the lyrics are terrible. It is as if an eighth-grader wrote some pathetic poetry for his girlfriend in a note asking her to the spring dance. It is so clichéd and played out and I cannot see how anybody with even a single brain cell or the smallest fragment of an imagination and creativity can find these lyrics appealing. Not to mention that they just repeat the same thing over and over again while intersplicing it with various ‘ohs’ and ‘ahs.’

Here is a little sample of Ginuwine’s “Last Chance.”

“If this your favorite song, turn your radio on. Play it for your man or your lady all day long.” Repeat 1,000 times

This is a song about the actual song that he is singing! And it isn’t like he is conveying some sort of existential meaning or some “Matrix” like view on the song itself, it is simply lyrics regarding the sounds coming out of his mouth. Can it get any more stupid?

Then there is the actual music. Generic beats with the occasional snare hit and if you are extra lucky, you can have the always exciting synthesizer, which if it isn’t used ironically (as is the case with R and B where EVERYTHING is ultra serious), lost its relevance in 1987. It is almost as if some recording studio engineer thought ‘Okay, hey, we have a bunch of crap laying around the studio that nobody will touch, why don’t we make an R and B sound out of it?’ If it weren’t for the terrible singing, this music could easily pass as the shit that they play in the mattress section at Strawbridge’s.

Then there is the actual singing, and R and B divas (oh, how I loathe that term) this can almost be blamed entirely on you. Granted the guys singing about constantly having sex is creepy and borderline pathetic, the ladies take it to a whole new aggravating low.

There is nothing more annoying in modern music than a woman holding a note for longer than three seconds. Just because you can switch octaves and fly up and down the vocal scale, doesn’t mean that you have to incorporate that gimmick into every single one of your songs (especially at the end of them where it just sound like a hyena being raped and murdered). What once may have been considered a novel and talented way of expressing your musical abilities has evolved into a knock-knock joke, something that at one point in time may have had some sort of merit, but now is just old and terrible.

This is especially the case when singing The National Anthem at a major political or sporting event. Stop trying to stretch the song so that it lasts an entire quarter of a football game. There is no reason to have the word “brave” last the length of a 22-minute sitcom nor is there any reason to make hearing the word “banner” as pleasant as a root canal without any anesthetic. Just because you are able to, doesn’t mean that you should. I mean, I can go around pushing people in front of busses, but I don’t (although if I heard that terrible Whitney Houston song again, I wouldn’t mind somebody introducing me to the front of a speeding through a red light SEPTA bus).

Lastly, the people who actually enjoy R and B take themselves way too seriously, almost to the point of parody. They cannot laugh at themselves and are the types of people who never smile while dancing. They jut out their lower jaw, rarely make eye-contact and often are on the verge of fornicating in public. Now hey, I’m all for public fornication, however I have to draw the line when it consists of a guy essentially sexually assaulting a strange woman on a dance floor to a “slow groove” while wearing an all white outfit with the wind blowing while doing his best Usher impersonation. It’s just creepy, dancing shouldn’t be like a job interview with a Fortune 500 company.