"Halt and Catch Fire" Pilot Review

“Halt and Catch Fire” is proof that no matter how many things a TV show has going against it, all I need to give it a chance is a premise that speaks to my niche interests. Sure it’s another desperate attempt by AMC to finally have another show that’s actually good once “Mad Men” joins “Breaking Bad” in the great channel in the sky. Sure the main character is just another hyper competent, amoral, successful, white male anti-hero. And sure the title is basically for no one. But how can I not watch a series about the early 1980s PC boom? I was willing to tolerate the TV movie cheesiness of Pirates of Silicon Valley so of course I’m going to watch this.

Why Did I Eat This?: McDonald's Mighty Wings

I’m living in New York City now, home of countless wonderful little authentic restaurants. I’ll get to those later though. This post is about McDonald’s new chicken wings.


-How weird is the idea of McDonald’s food with bones? Not even the elusive McRib can claim that, just weird, bone-shaped portions of meat.

-The Mighty Wings name recalls the Mighty Kids meals, Happy Meals but aimed at nebulously older kids for some reason.

-They are big though, a lot of that is due to breading, but the breading is decent. I probably like more breading on fried chicken than most but this has a nice spice to it. Not Popeye’s level, or quality, of spice though.

-I was expecting an ocean of grease based on early reports so I was glad to discover it’s more like a mid-sized lake.

-I haven’t had chicken McNuggets in like a decade, but these wings basically taste like how I remember those tasting. That’s not good.

-Even with the included buffalo sauce, these aren’t really Buffalo wings. They’re just subpar, typical McDonald’s fried chicken now with bones in them. As a proud member of #TeamBoneless nothing about that is appealing.

The fact of the matter is, the only chicken creations from a non-chicken-focused fast food place that were ever any good were the Burger King chicken fries. Their unjust demise continues to leave a gaping void in the culinary universe that these McDonald’s wings, despite their supposed “might,” can’t even begin to fill.


3 stars

Journalism Ethics Goes to the Movies

Surprise! Original content coming at you! Book review! Exclamation point!

In Journalism Ethics Goes to the Movies, State University of New York journalism professor Howard Good entertainingly examines journalists’ ethical problems through Hollywood movies. While it initially seems like a strange conceit, melding the two topics is an effective choice. The films provide a useful context for readers less familiar with journalistic integrity. It doesn’t take a seasoned reporter to know that the blatant plagiarism in Shattered Glass is wrong.

Other examples include Broadcast News’s battle of style over substance, Mr. Deeds’s deception dilemma and Wag the Dog’s exploration of political media manipulation. Each chapter uses a specific film to make a specific point, and overall the book is a teaching tool with plenty of additional reading provided after each assignment.

So I Saw Spring Breakers...

Spring Breakers is a movie I think everyone should see, and not just because it’s perfectly timed for spring break season. Whether your reaction to its incomprehensible art-house sleaze is positive or negative, it’s worth having an opinion of just the same. You may not get it or if you do you still may be put off by it. However, I loved it and that’s because it deals with so many of my own personal cinematic fixations. It’s almost as if Harmony Korine made it for me.

If anybody wants to know what I thought about Django Unchained

Great soundtrack.

Great dialogue.

Like Inglourious Basterds it's a revenge fantasy but a great one.

It's very violent but honesty it could have been worse. Maybe I just really wanted to see white people get torn apart by whips.

Its story structure is a little meandering but it's so entertaining who cares?

It's probably the best movie I've seen this year.

As for the heavier stuff...

They say the N word a lot but come on, it's 1850s Mississippi. If you can handle "The Boondocks" you can handle this. Not everyone can though.

As for the other potential racial/sociological issues, there's a serious discussion to be had about how problematic they may be. Honestly though, it's provocative quality is appreciated and its heart is in the right place.

Plus it's just awesome.

Bond Bonus Bit: Baby you’re the Best

Adele’s “Skyfall” theme song is now available and it’s awesome and everyone should listen to it.


Plus, it’s as good a reason as any for me to name my other favorite James Bond songs, in no particular order.

Bond Books Bits: Best Be Going

How much better would James Bond be if he had two heads?

Bond Book Bits: Bond By The Bowlful

More James Bond short stories, more problems.

Bond Book Bits: The Beginning

This should get some regular content going for a while. I was watching Live and Let Die aka “James Bond vs. Black People” the other day and between that and the upcoming Skyfall, I just started thinking a lot about James Bond. This led to me reading the James Bond short story collections “For Your Eyes Only” and “Octopussy and The Living Daylights” which has now led to me briefly discussing them on this blog “Love Me Some Lovecraft” style.

I decided to go with the short stories because

1. I’m lazy… when it comes to reading.

2. Many of them were based on scripts for a failed James Bond TV show and that seemed interesting.

3. The James Bond movies are so episodic anyway, reading a bunch of short stories in that universe seemed like a good fit.

So let’s get started.

Game Reviews

Although I still won’t be reviewing video games on this particular site any time soon (which means I fortunately don’t have to try to make any sense of the latest Kingdom Hearts release) that doesn’t mean I can’t review other kinds of games. With the Olympics going on I’ve been thinking about Sports more often than usual. I then realized that reviewing them as if they were like any other game would be a really fun, fascinating, trollish thought experiment especially for someone like me how doesn’t understand or care about the vast majority of sports. So here you go.

Woop Woop!

Every region has awful people. However, what makes awful people awful is sometimes inherent to the region they come from. Just like the “Jersey Shore” gang can only come from my home state, the meth-addled, wrestling-loving, magnet-studying clown family that is the Juggalos can only come from the Midwest where the Faygo flows like water.


For the past like dozen years, this group of freethinking fans of the Insane Clown Posse and their Psychopathic Records label has been putting together this music/freshness festival called “The Gathering of the Juggalos” where they can escape the mainstream and play the neden game to their heart’s content. While I’ve been aware of these ninjas for some time now, when they put out the truly spectacular infomercial for last’s year gathering, they skyrocketed up my “ironic appreciation” list right alongside James Franco and “Monster High.” The latest infomercial has now arrived so I’ve decided to share my thoughts in list form for you guys to peep.

Why Did I Eat This?: Gorilla Munch

As my sophomore year of college was beginning to come to an end, I began feeling an odd yet unfortunately familiar sensation. It seemed that my jimmies had become quite rustled. It was an understandable rustling. Finals and the thought of leaving my friends and the dorm I had lived in for the past two years were pretty good reasons to check my jimmy status off as “rustled.” So I prayed to the gods for guidance and their advice was so obvious I was a fool for not considering it sooner. All I simply had to do was walk down to my local Whole Foods, buy a box of “Gorilla Munch” cereal, eat that shit and hope that my jimmies would soon be soothed. Here are my thoughts.

Much like its Amazon reviews had led me to believe, Gorilla Munch is pretty much Kix but not as good. The taste is there but it lacks that cereal’s airy crunchiness and the mouth feel/texture suffers as a result. Beyond that though it makes for a fine balanced breakfast and works for snacking throughout the day too. Also worth mentioning is that it is and always has been gluten-free, according to the box at least. Oh, and as for the so-called “le monkey face” when you see it in-person it still straddles that magical line between well-drawn and not. Most importantly though, the munch had unrustled not only my jimmies but the jimmies of my entire suite. As they say, “a box on the table keeps the jimmies stables.”

3 stars

Last Stand Standing

Kid Icarus Uprising, the long-awaited(?) revival of the dormant Nintendo franchise has finally arrived! This new 3DS installment comes courtesy of Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai and it shows. Everything from the plot to the gameplay to the amount of content to even the menus is on a level of craziness rivaled only by, well, Smash Bros. I haven't finished it yet but I'm really enjoying it so far. It's a great example of how to bring back a forgotten series, specifically a Nintendo one. I'm hoping Ice Climbers is next.

Why Did I Eat This?: Doritos Locos Tacos

Even in the dignity-free zone of fast food, presentation matters. It just matters in a different way. Take a look at KFC for example. There’s nothing ridiculous about eating two pieces of fried chicken, some cheese and some bacon but when you assemble them all into a sandwich where the chicken becomes the bun the end product, the infamous Double Down, is absolutely ridiculous. Considering this is the same establishment that also brought us the Famous Bowl it’s no wonder that the idea of them putting out a borderline inedible chicken skin sandwich was a pretty convincing joke.

bag not included

Not to be outdone, Taco Bell, a sister restaurant of KFC ironically enough, has recently rolled out their own absurd new menu item: The Doritos Locos Taco. It’s a taco with a Dorito chip for a shell. It’s almost if the collective fantasy of Taco Bell’s 75% late-night stoner customer base came true at once. Being a fan of both of those foods though, I decided to give it a shot. Being a fan of reporting on ridiculous things, I’ve deiced to review it here.

Much like the Double Down and Famous Bowl before it, the idea of the Doritos Locos Taco is much more ludicrous in theory than it is in execution. If the shell actually was just one big Dorito that would be crazy but that really isn't the case. The shell is basically your standard Taco Bell shell in terms of shape, crunchiness and consistency. It’s only the powder that makes it remotely Dorito-like and even that is milder than a proper Dorito. This is the only way it could’ve worked though as pure, uncut Dorito flavor would have been far too overwhelming when combined with an already flavorful taco. By having the shell be more of a Dorito-inspired experience, it creates a nice balance of pseudo-Mexican cuisines. For all of the “hype” though, it really is not too different from a standard taco. It’s not bad, but it isn’t so much better that I see it becoming my primary Taco Bell purchase from here on out.

3 stars







yes, ironic food reviews, this is where I am now.

So I Saw The Artist...

Time for another series of observations in a post that barely qualifies as a review.

While my movie of last year may have been Drive, it seems like the academy's will be The Artist. After seeing it that's understandable, and luckily it's not bad.

So I Saw the Muppets

(The Toy Story short in the beginning of this is worth it just for the puns alone like Tae Kwon Doe, a fighting female deer)

This will be even less of a review than my other "sort of reviews."

Weirdly enough, the first time I remember seeing The Muppets they weren't in their original puppet forms. Instead, I grew up loving the "Muppet Babies" cartoon of all things. Eventually though I learned to love Kermit and company in their original felt forms.

I think part of the appeal of The Muppets, and puppets in general, is that they are like cartoons that actually exist. Kermit is a talking frog who can light a real match. That's that crazy Jim Henson, hippie social change stuff right there.

Love Me Some Lovecraft: Hypnos and more

Halloween, it’s the perfect day to end our short and strange journey through the works of H.P. Lovecraft. With the final entry “Hypnos”, the emphasis is on the short as the version I read was only about a dozen pages. As such, telling too much about the story would just give the whole thing away. All you need to know is that it involves dreams, statues that are sometimes people, and of course bizarre monsters. The quick pace at which it moves heightens the bizarre, frightening, and dare I say, dreamlike tone. Plus, it is so short that one has very little to lose by reading it.

Love Me Some Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness

The inter-dimensional terror gets slightly longer and more snow-filled this week with the 12-chapter novella At The Mountains of Madness.

Love Me Some Lovecraft: The Dunwich Horror

When someone tries to unleash a demon, you should take him seriously even if his name is Wilbur Whateley. That's the lesson of this week's story "The Dunwich Horror."

Love Me Some Lovecraft: The Shadow Over Innsmouth

Sorry for the lack of a "stuff I did this week" post last week but I honestly didn't do anything. At least, nothing on the internet. But now I'm back for another one of these. Fish people and bizarre race metaphors abound in this week's HP Lovecraft short story review type thing.