21 Movie Headlines That Don’t Belong on a Front Page

Joe Don Baker. Mitchell

Fun trivia: Googling “Joe Don Baker Mitchell remake” yields negative-3,000 results.

I brake for far fewer movie-news articles than the average geek. I still like movies, but what passes for movie “news” nowadays generally doesn’t merit my time or clicking because the majority doesn’t meet my minimum specifications for “news”. I have no vested interest in following the full life cycle of every production from germination-of-idea to perennial-AMC-airings.

I can think of numerous examples off the top of my head for most steps of the filmmaking process and marketing campaign. To illustrate my apathy, let me walk you through the vantage point of internet news outlets — not official sources such as The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, or Nikki Finke, but the other guys. Pretty much all the other guys.

For the sake of argument, let’s pretend the following examples revolve around a remake of the 1975 police drama Mitchell, which starred Joe Don Baker as Oscar Madison from The Odd Couple, plus a gun, minus friends. Let’s pretend we’re in a near-future dystopia in which Hollywood used up its first 5,000 ideas and the only things standing between us and the bottom of the barrel are Mitchell and The Snorks. And James Cameron already has plans for the Snorks.

Let the disposable headlines begin!

After the Blizzard, Sliced Bread Will Be the New World’s Currency

grocery bread aisle blizzard conditions doomsday prepOur local weather forecasts are calling for massive snowfall this Sunday. Depending on who you believe and how much you exaggerate when you pass the word along, by Monday evening we should expect anywhere from six inches to fifteen feet. Midwest meteorology is an inexact science in that respect.

One result you can count on with demonstrable exactitude: if a TV weatherman so much as whispers the word “snow” as if it’s Today’s Secret Word, viewers will drop everything they’re doing, shove aside their loved ones, drive to the nearest grocery, and buy all the bread they can carry. Without knowing whether the coming storm will produce a mild drizzle or The Day After Tomorrow, the better-safe-than-sorry motto of the doomsday-prepping majority dictates that everyone err on the side of caution and hoarding.

Why bread? Great question…

If You’re Gonna Fail at New Year’s Resolutions, Fail BIG

personal reboot, relaunch, restart

All the typing in this entry is new, but my MS Paint gag is a rerun from last year, not unlike the average person’s New Year’s resolutions.

It’s January 1st once more, which means it’s time to reinvent your entire life from scratch yet again. Gone are those halcyon days when people awoke on New Year’s Day, looked in the mirror, and thought to themselves, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!” Alas, this holiday dispels contentment, disregards recent successes, assumes the worst in you, and demands you rethink your life now. Not on February 14th or June 22nd, or some random day in otherwise meaningless August, but now, because federal law mandates that Things can only begin on January 1st.

I’ve never been great with New Year’s resolutions. I can’t think of the last one I ever even chose, let alone the last time I actually attained one. Though we see renewal symbolized in the rough annual transition from Father Time and his 365-day reign of terror to Baby New Year and his inevitable future letdown, beginning my personal transitions on a meaningful date has never worked for me. My most successful diet began on a July 5th. I proposed to my wife on December 26th. I was baptized on the Sunday after a Thanksgiving. My first comic book was given to me sometime in a December. I had to start wearing glasses one nameless summer month. The forces of change laugh at our puny human concept of calendars.

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A Very Special MCC Thanksgiving Haiku-tacular

Thanksgiving dinner leftovers

Thanksgiving success / is measured by the lack of / pretty leftovers. [Source: file photo from / our two thousand eleven / meal to end all meals.]

Just because I can
Write a Thanksgiving haiku
Clearly means I should

Does it get worse? Let’s find out!

Spoilers for “It’s a Wonderful Life 2: the Final Bell Rings”

It's a Wonderful Life

Nope. They don’t believe it, either.

Because nothing good can remain untarnished and self-contained:

Variety reported Tuesday a small movie company that doesn’t own It’s a Wonderful Life is planning an official sequel — somehow, for some reason, possibly because greed minus self-awareness. Tentatively titled It’s a Wonderful Life: The Rest of the Story, the superfluous production will show George’s grandson being taught a lesson by his aunt Zuzu, now transformed into an angel. The company is hoping for a holiday 2015 release so it can compete against Star Wars Episode VII and look that much more foolish.

So what else could they possibly do?

So You Want to Be a Super Awesome “Freshly Pressed” All-Star

WordPress "Freshly Pressed" badgeA fake reader lurking within my subconscious writes:

Dear Mr. Crossover,

Hello! How are you? I am fine. I have been using WordPress.com for four years. Please follow my blog and reblog all three of my posts so far, because I just Liked a random post you wrote last month without reading it and now you owe me. I have another question. I read your About page and it says you had three different posts on Freshly Pressed, which is a really big deal because it means WordPress likes you best. I think that’s really unfair and you didn’t deserve it and I want to know your secret. How can I be more like you and get Freshly Pressed so that I can become famous and everyone will like me and then I can write for Hollywood and make enough money to buy your website and set it on fire and run over the ashes in my new Humvee? Also, I nominated you for a Liebster Award and I will Follow you if you Follow me.

Sincerely,
N.V.S. Strawman
Exposition, WY
http://ripoffsweatshopfashions.wordpress.com

Dear Mr. Strawman,

I wish you hadn’t asked, but I can tell you what I’ve learned from the experiences that changed my life forever and made me Hero of the Internets. As you begin reading, prepare to rethink your entire existence piece by piece, until every second becomes retroactively spectacular from Day Zero onward.

Click here for handy tips on how to be me!

The Mantis (With Apologies to Poe)

The Deadly Mantis

Once upon a weekday dreary, one that ended with us bleary,
Still we persevered to complete every forgotten chore
As my wife, who got home first, often has the workload worst
Let out the dog before he’d burst, burst right through the door
“Hold on, already!” she muttered, “First let me at the door —
Then you’ll go, and not before.”

For dog’s sake she flung the entry, when, while standing there as sentry,
Nearby hung a praying mantis about as tall as Tipper Gore
Perhaps a slight distortion make I, but it looked her in the eye
It, with mien of calm and cool, perched right on our outer door —
Perched upon the squeaky hinge that held fast our outer door —
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

(Continued…if you dare!)

America’s Educational System Must Be Fixed for the Sake of Our Anagram Puzzles

Mot Hanks, Simpsons

Can YOU guess the answer? That’s right — it’s Matt Kuhn, one of the producers of How I Met Your Mother! Or, uh, close enough.

Today I exchanged emails with a loyal MCC reader (we’ll call her “my wife”) who spent part of her work day on a themed anagram puzzle, given to her as a light-hearted challenge to while away the seconds between hectic responsibilities. She received a list of twelve scrambled people or things from the 1960s and tasked with decrypting their true identities. No problem, right? Anagrams are a simple task straight out of Highlights for Children, or a weak issue of Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games when the writers were tired of trying.

Because her supervisors set forth no rules about what might constitute cheating, and because I know stuff, she shared the list with me so I could help her speed up the process and possibly win prizes. I like when my wife wins things because sometimes they’re shareable and I therefore also win by extension.

Three of the names on that list took us much longer than they should’ve. As a quick exercise in audience participation, see how long it takes You, the Viewers at Home, to figure out their real names before allowing your eyes to drift along further for the answers.

And…GO:

1. jaineicopnjl
2. jrdmneyiximh
3. ediotasowtlen

Take all the time you need. I’ll be here.

Click here for the quote-unquote “answers”!

How Not to Celebrate Customer Service Appreciation Week

Are YOU ready to make your employees feel like kings and queens for a week? It’s rewarding and legal!

Anyone who’s in the same general field as my wife and I should be gearing up right about now for this year’s Customer Service Appreciation Week. I’m not sure if this annual internal salute to service representatives was invented by the same Hallmark scientists who created such business-based holidays as Boss’ Day or Secretaries Day, but since it benefits me each year, I refuse to be an ingrate.

The premise, for those of you in other fields with your own traditions of positive reinforcement: each year for five consecutive business days, customer service supervisors who can spell and pronounce “morale” treat their employees to a series of extra fun perks. Sometimes it’s free donuts for breakfast and/or a a catered lunch. Sometimes there are team-building exercises or one-on-one contests, with useful prizes at stake. For companies with relaxed dress codes, there can also be themed clothing days — e.g., Hawaiian shirt day, sports apparel day, jeans day, etc. If it’s different from a normal work day and doesn’t double everyone’s stress level, it’s welcome this week.

Between my wife and me, we have [mumble-mutter] years of experience in customer service, many of which have been blessed by superiors who observed CSA Week. We each have multiple fond memories of the occasion.

For those about to party on the clock, we salute you…

My Super Awesome Blockbuster Reboot of “E.T.”

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Those eyes are pretty in the right light, but the rest of this will have to go.

February 2014 will see The Killing‘s Joel Kinnaman taking over for Peter Weller as the new Robocop. This fall Ironside returns to TV with Blair Underwood somehow replacing Raymond Burr. Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, the Lone Ranger, and the Green Hornet are but a few of the myriad characters to return from pop-culture limbo in overhauled guises. And this is the sentence I had set aside for DC Comics if I could narrow the possible examples down to less than four hundred.

At the rate our entertainment recyclers are plowing through their back catalogs, every intellectual property from the last fifty years will have been remade and/or rebooted before I’m fifty. Even if 90% of them flop, every producer, editor, or writer will convince themselves their attempt will be different from all the rest because they truly believe in themselves, if not their work. Maybe 10% of them will hit the jackpot, reap the rewards, and retire at forty.

Sounds like a sweet deal to me, even though I’m running dozens of laps behind the competition. If I’m to win, I need to move now. That’s why I’m calling dibs on E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial. It’s not taken, right? Excellent.

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BREAKING NEWS: Cumberbatch to Play Sir Johan in “Smurfs 3”

Benedict Cumberbatch, Sir Johan

Prove it’s true, you ask? I say, prove that it’s NOT true! Because impeccable internet journalism.

You love him in TV’s Sherlock. You thought he was one of the best things in Star Trek Into Darkness even though he straight-up lied to the press about his character. You were annoyed by his ten-minute role in War Horse despite having no idea who he was at the time. You’re looking forward to his dual roles in Peter Jackson’s overextended Hobbit trilogy. You’re undecided about watching him play Alexander Godunov in The Fifth Estate. You noticed his name in the fine print for August: Osage County and are weighing your options.

Today is now the best day of your week because the internet has collectively decided to buy into the sketchy rumor that Benedict Cumberbatch, England’s second-biggest export of the decade after One Direction, has allegedly been cast to play an unnamed role in JJ Abrams’ still-untitled Trek sequel, Star Wars Episode VII. On a normal news day, your competent aggregator sites and discerning bloggers prefer to wait for official word from the likes of Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Deadline Hollywood Daily, or from TV news a full two months later. Sometimes, though, some headlines are just too awesome for professional composure or baseline fact-checking. Thus, this gossip is popping up everywhere today.

Along those same lines, I’ve decided to announce the nonexistent, completely unfounded, nonetheless tantalizing rumor than Cumberbatch has also signed on to give life to the role of brave Sir Johan in Smurfs 3. Just because I can, and clearly because we geeks now demand that he star in everything ever hereafter.

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A Night at the Ballgame (Baseball Optional)

Victory Field, Indianapolis Indians

Anyone who knows me is well aware of my aversion to sports. I was raised in a household with zero male authority figures and consequently never acquired the stereotypical male’s tastes for sports, among other fields. (Also: car repair, gas-powered tools, alcohol, partying, sexual conquest, bar fights…) That’s not to say I’m ignorant of sports. I learned most of the rules during childhood, so I can follow most games if necessary. American football still puzzles me, but it’s a relief to me that its order of operations has yet to factor into any life-or-death situations.

In fact, one of my little-known secret rules is that, schedule permitting, I’ll gladly attend any sports event to which I’m given free tickets. Invited by a friend? Won ’em in a contest? Someone had extras? Deal. I’m sold. So far in my life I’ve been a guest at one college basketball game (Butler vs. Purdue, though there was more shoving than dribbling); won tickets to the RCA Tennis Tournament when it was Indianapolis years ago; watched a few events at the 1987 Pan Am games back; was invited along to two (or was it three?) runnings of the Indianapolis 500; and tried to attend two of our niece’s junior-high softball games, but one was rained out and the other was held at a completely different park from where we’d driven.

In that same spirit, a boon from my employer facilitated tonight’s very special date with my wife at fabulous Victory Field, home of the Indianapolis Indians, our local minor-league baseball team.

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Indiana Ad Campaign Targets Unsuspecting, Hopefully Well-Connected Times Square Tourists

Indiana business ad

There’s more than corn in Indiana! Now we’re gonna have trips to MARS. Your move, Kentucky.

I’m used to seeing other states infiltrating Indiana’s airwaves with their vacation ads. Ohio, Tennessee, and even faraway Florida have been grasping at our wallets for years. Michigan even stepped up their game a while back by hiring the Tim Allen to narrate their radio ads in dulcet, nature-loving tones, mesmerizing us with the possibilities of boating and hiking and exploring the wonders of God’s creation due north of us, all while carefully sidestepping the whole Detroit thing.

This week, Indiana decided to strike back and dream big. Rather than harass our mediocre neighbors, the Powers That Be struck a deal that leapfrogged over Ohio, Pennsylvania, and the northwest corner of New Jersey to target the Big Apple itself. In an even brasher move against the colossus that is New York City, we’re not even bragging about our welcoming tourist trade, our copious sports-related attractions, or our much cheaper downtown parking. Apparently we’re looking for a few good businesses.

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Your Handy Spam Comment Inspection Checklist

MasterSpam Theatre

Random spammer, welcome to This is Your Life! And might I say, you have much to rethink.

Each day the ol’ Midlife Crisis Crossover spam filter catches a few would-be advertisers and funnels them into a gravity well for handy reevaluation and inevitable permanent disintegration. For my first depressing month on WordPress it was simple to discern spam comments from real, live comments: if it was a comment, it was a spammer. My undying gratitude remains perpetually owed to those longtime followers who wrote real, live comments in subsequent months so that I could eventually form a basis for comparison between sincerity and superficial salesmanship.

Nowadays my daily spam dosage tends to be the same few varieties over and over again. It’s quick to flush but boring to glance at. It’s rare to see one of their lowly kind be creative enough to merit more than four seconds of my time.

When one of them fails at their quote-unquote “job” in spectacular fashion, then they have my undivided attention for all of a minute, the equivalent of an eternity in their world.

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What to Do with My Free Yellow Cape?

free yellow cape

Behold the freebie I received for running the Norton Symantec promo gauntlet at Wizard World Chicago 2013. Five minutes of minimal effort toward a game meant to sell a product I’ll never buy, and this was my reward. My wife and I normally avoid any booths huckstering software or any other merchandise we’re unlikely to buy on impulse, but when the doors opened at 10 a.m., not all the guests or exhibitors were in the house yet. We had to find something to do until they did.

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America Lines Up to Preorder Sharknado Quality Merchandise

SharknadoNovel

When my wife and I threw caution to the wind and watched Sharknado on Syfy (as previously reported), we were curious to know why the internet wouldn’t shut up about it. By the time the end credits sped by and Ian Ziering was transformed from a 90210 also-ran into a chainsaw-wielding hero soaked in shark fluids, we had learned an important lesson and vowed never to be curious about anything ever again. We also didn’t speak to the internet for three days.

Outside our household, Sharknado-mania is allegedly sweeping the nation. Consider the following recent headline stories:

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If I Were in Charge of “Star Wars: Episode 7″…

Star Wars villains

In my version, only one of these characters survives the first five minutes. Possibly the bearded guy in the white hat. He’s already guaranteed his own action figure. (Photo from our personal Star Wars Celebration III archives, April 2005.)

Every Star Wars fan has their own ideas about what Star Wars: Episode 7 should accomplish. Director J.J. Abrams and screenwriter Michael Arndt should make it all about the Holy Trinity of Luke, Leia, and Han, pretending they’re all still under 35. Or they should make their kids the main characters. Or they should invent all-new, barely related Jedi. Or they should bring back all the dead characters because movie magic. Or it should be a mixture of demographic demands scientifically calculated to please everyone, if everyone loved formulaic sequels. Or it should be a two-hour Jar-Jar roast.

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#BadTwitterRecs

One of the more amusing one-joke Twitter handles I follow is Bad Netflix Recs, which pokes fun at automated recommendation services with poor logical parameters. Behold examples of the joke:

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Dawn of the Exclamation Points!

Scott McCloud, DESTROY!!!

When exclamation points were king! Art by Scott McCloud! From his giant-sized book DESTROY!!! Which was loosely adapted into a film called Man of Steel!

Our family vacation is coming up soon! Looking forward to another annual road trip! Hopefully Boston and the cities along the way are worth the gas money! In all this looks to be a busy summer! I spent part of tonight researching, but now I can’t concentrate!

My current excited state isn’t just about getting away from it all! I’ve spent the last hour thinking entirely in exclamations! This is not normally a problem for me! I blame another website! As a longtime comic book fan, I like keeping up on comics sales figures! A comics news site called The Beat provides monthly updates that can be either entertaining or dry, depending on the writer! For DC Comics’ April 2013 writeup, the drier writer decided to try something different! Every sentence was a shout at the heart of the world! Every comment was a drill sergeant’s command! Suddenly the stats and comparisons were all about action! And danger! And thrills! And now I can’t stop using them myself! I’ll get him for this!

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Mailing Stuff for Dummies

sample envelopeTonight I found a glaring hole in my son’s education that all the high school diplomas in the world couldn’t cover.

At his recent graduation, a friend asked him to hold her school ID during the ceremony because neither her dress nor the graduation robe had pockets. As her friend and a lifelong pants-wearer, he obliged. When we arrived home hours later, he realized she failed to ask for it back and he forgot to return it. (Even though they’re both graduated and free, I think she still needs it to pick up her 2012-2013 yearbook when they’ve finally printed circa spring 2015.) Since their schedules haven’t quite synched up, he offered to mail it to her. She messaged her address to him.

I handed him a blank envelope. He gave me a blank look.

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