Toner_Low

Top Ten Reasons Why Paramount's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the

Crystal Skull" will NOT be #1 at the box office this weekend.

-There's zero buzz about this film.
-SPOILER: Indiana only uses his whip to get better service at a
restaurant.
-Cate Blanchett attempts an Australian accent.
-SPOILER: Instead of snakes or bugs or rats, the overabundant pest in
this film is America On-Line diskettes.
-Shia LeBouf agreed to co-star only if the Transformers made a cameo.
-George Lucas and Steven Spielberg hired M. Night Shyamalan to do a
rewrite of the script.
-SPOILER: It turns out that Shia LeBouf is not Indiana's son but rather
his new butler.
-Although John Williams' "Raiders" theme is heard at the beginning, the
rest of the soundtrack is hip-hop songs.
-SPOILER: When Indiana causes yet another bar Marion owns to burn down
(this one lacking insurance), she goes into a frenzy and stabs him to death.
-Harrison Ford is too old to convincingly play a 65-year-old man.

"Speed Racer" was expected to make between $30 to $35 million this
weekend at the box office. On Sunday night, it was estimated to have
taken in $20.2 million and come in 2nd place. When the box office
numbers were adjusted on Monday, it turned out that the Warner Bros.
cinematic extravaganza earned only $18.6 million, placing it 3rd behind
"Iron Man" and "What Happens in Vegas".


Top Ten Reasons why "Speed Racer" ran out
of gas this weekend.

-It was based on a 40-year-old cartoon(!)
-It was two hours and fifteen minutes long(!)
-In an homage to the 40-year old cartoon, the actors strived to be as
two-dimensional as possible.
-In an homage to the 40-year old cartoon, the actors to speak
super-quickly, as if trying to match English dialog to Japanese mouth
movements.
-In an homage to the 40-year old cartoon, the filmmakers worked hard to
ensure that gasps from the characters did not match when their mouths opened.
-Susan Sarandon saw this film as a chance to win a 2nd Oscar, thus her
performance is totally off-kilter from all of the others.
-Willy, the monkey playing Chim Chim, saw this film as his chance to win
his 1st Oscar, thus his performance was better than Sarandon's.
-Although they tried to hide it, all of the actors, except Willy, have
tremendous disdain for Japanese cartoons from the 1960's.
-Although they tried to hide it, all of the actors, except Willy, detest
driving cars.
-The writers/directors, the Wachowski brothers, brought in M. Night
Shyamalan to do a rewrite.

FREE COMIC BOOK DAY

May 3rd was Free Comic Book Day--you either know what that is, or there's no point in explaining. I had circled the date on my calendar last month, and mentioned it to the wife, to her amusement. I'm pretty sure she thought I was joking about the whole thing.

But I really really wanted to pick up some free comics. And when the day came, I was practically jumping out of my skin to get down to Best Comics, maybe a mile away from my house, to get my hands on the loot. Naturally, this being a Saturday, there was a fair amount of housework to be done, and various other errands, but I had it all mapped out. I knew that I could insert the trip between the grocery shopping and the hardware store. And I'd bring Master Blaster along, so that it wouldn't be a grown man scamming free comics--it would be a dad out for a walk with his kid, who just happened to walk into a comic book store on Free Comic Book Day. I mean, crap, I was making up cover stories as if I was going out to see my meth dealer, or my secret other wife.

But by 2 o'clock I was running late with my errands, and the wife made a case for heading to the grocery store with me. Now on the surface this would save me time, but it also meant I would have to insist that we make a stop at Best Comics. Which I did. Some eyebrows went up. Oh, so you were being serious about Free Comic Book Day? My wife was grinning all the way to Stop & Shop. "I hope someone calls," she said, "someone important. So I can tell them where you are." I could hear her formulating the conversation in her head. "Hi Mr. Nobel Prize Committee Chair! I'm sorry, but my husband isn't here right now. He's at the local comic book store picking up free comics because, you know, today is Free Comic Book Day." I felt considerably less authoritative than a man of 36 years should feel.

I brought the Blaster to the store after my wife dropped me off (yes, my wife dropped me off), still planning on excusing this as some QT with my boy (asleep). When I walked in and asked the guy at the counter if they were participating in the promo, he pointed to a table behind me and said, "You're allowed to take two comics." It seems worth mentioning again that I am 36 years old.

The table was full of dreck that the store couldn't sell, plus Rick Veicht's ARMY AT LOVE, an adult title that shouldn't have been on a giveaway table of any store that's heard about the Gordon Lee case. After going through everything, I picked up the Hellboy promo. For this, I endured jabs from the wife.

When Master Blaster and I got home, the wife told me that some ex-girlfriends had called. It was the worst Free Comic Book Day ever.