- Barney Stinson
- The bartender at MacLaren’s Pub who never says anything.
- Any of the hot bimbos Barney hooks up with from any episode ever.
- Lily Aldrin
- Any of the chicks Ted Mosby dates on his way to meet his dream girl.
- His future wife who has yet to be seen or heard from.
- Marshal Erikson.
- Any of my imaginary friends who populate any TV show I watch (most of them are Vulcans).
- Any crew member from the production company not in front of the camera.
- Robin Scherbatsky
- Any of the dudes Robin dates for a while.
- The entire population of New York City.
- The entire population of the world.
- Any venomous snakes, rabid rats or other dangerous animals and vermin who might be in the alleys and sewers in and around MacLaren’s pub.
- The cockroach Robin smashed with her hand in one episode.
- The ebola virus.
- Ted Mosby.
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 27 the Alternative Factor
So we are headed into the final stretch of of this run and to be honest I have had a blast writing them. In retrospect I am very glad I opted to do them back to front so I can end on a high note with some of the best Season 1 episodes.
That being said there are some S1 episodes that aren’t all golden. The Alternative Factor is not really one of the worst (nor even the worst of S1) but it is no Galileo Seven. I kind of liked the idea of Lazarus and Anti-Lazarus fighting in the corridor for eternity but honestly this story has a lot of dopey plot holes.
First of all if Anti-Lazarus is from the anti matter universe does he really have to encounter the body of Lazarus in order to destroy the universe? Wouldn’t any part of him or the air in his lungs be enough to encounter matter and destroy the universe? He could come though the ship and his next fart could end causality (an ending I think anyone with a sense of humor would find hilarious). The human body more or less changes all it’s molecules every seven years or so. What if anti Lazarus came to our universe and got a job somewhere as a pastry chef eating all of our food? In seven years he and Lazarus could have had full on intercourse without destroying any universes. Also what is it about alternate universes that the people over there automatically have to be evil or insane? 
Why can’t it be the alternate universe where Walter White survived and Jesse died in Breaking Bad or they made twerking punishable by death but are otherwise fine people? Walter White image courtesy of the Breaking Bad t shirt category.
Also when Kirk jumps through the flying saucer to the other universe wouldn’t he automatically destroy that universe because anti Kirk lived there? Or did he have to wrestle anti Kirk? I guess they avoided that issue simply because they had already beaten that dead horse with The Enemy Within.
I’ve often wondered why they named the character Lazarus. In the Bible he is the saint Jesus raised up from the dead after 4 days. Normally Star Trek has some kind of hidden meaning behind such things but I cannot figure out why they thought this name would work for a guy with an evil twin. This name might have worked a lot better for the main character in Requiem for Methuselah.
Anyway, kind of a meh episode but fun nevertheless.
the Infamous Dave Inman
@nerdkungfu
How I Met Your Mother Season 9 is up on NetFlix and I’m conflicted #howimetyourmother
So yes I have watched all 8 prior seasons and yes I will probably watch season 9 but the question is whether I am excited to watch them or whether I’m secretly dreading it. I guess just by asking that question I have answered it for you but I kind of see it as getting an ex girlfriends name tattoo lasered off: you know it’s going to be painful and every minute you spend in that chair will be another agonizing reminder of her but at the end you will be glad it’s done and you will have regained whatever dignity you can dredge from the bottom of the septic tank of your life.
The thing is this: I started watching the show because I have yet to see Neil Patrick Harris do something bad (well, except for that whole Dougie Howser MD thing. Early 90’s television sucked) and in truth it is his character that keeps me coming back. However the rest of the cast collectively make being dragged behind a pickup truck by a rope for a couple miles look fun. In fact, let me summarize my feelings about the cast by putting them in my favorite order with this handy dandy numbers list that I just found out my blog can do:
Yes, he is the perfect example of a man who has managed to suck his testicles back into his body with force of will alone. Normally when I see a character that I want to push his face in with my fist that badly I just drop the show, but the combination of Barney Stinson, the hot chicks that seem to crawl out of the woodwork at MacLaren’s on any given night, and the super hot Colby Smoulders (I hate her character but would still marry Colby as long as she agreed to reserve her unsolicited comments to things like “Run, Dave! The volcano is erupting!”) keeps me coming back. Remember the scene in Time Bandits where Robin Hood is giving each of the peasants something valuable and after they accept it the other guy punches them in the face? That’s what watching this show is like.
Oh well. I will for sure watch it if only to see who they finally cast as Ted Mosby’s poor wife. That marriage will for sure last until death because
there is no way any woman could live that that whiner for more than a couple years before poisoning his cornflakes. Also I still enjoy Barney a lot and let us never forget that in spite of his anti nerd sex appeal image he is a huge Star Wars fan, making him at least part nerd (Stormtrooper image courtesy of the Star Wars T Shirt category). I just don’t know how much I am destined to enjoy it.
A Walk Among the Tombstones Review #AWalkAmongtheTombstones
Not exactly a tiptoe through the tulips.
I often say things like “I am a fan of so and so” or “I enjoy this persons movies” typically as a prelude before explaining exactly why I hate that persons latest role or movie. Rather then say I am a fan of Liam Neeson I am going to say I am a fan of Liam Neeson when he plays the right role. What is that role you ask? That role is a desperate loser on the dirty end of the poo stick of life desperately trying to save someone or find some kind of redemption. It is very specifically NOT when he is playing any form of Jedi or other super James Bond Superman. He was good as a desperate loser in the Grey. He sucked as an indestructible super spy in Taken 2. He was good as an alcoholic loser in Non Stop. He sucked as an admiral in Battleship. So I am a fan of his in the right role.
So was this the right role for him? Yes. He plays an ex alcoholic ex cop trying to do the right thing in a bad situation. I enjoyed his character a lot. 
Superman is hard to cheer for when you know there is a limited list of material in the universe that can actually hurt him but seeing Liam Neesons character get his guts stomped out but still keep on struggling makes us identify with him more and more (image courtesy of the Superman t shirt category). I worry for the future of cinema based on the whole anti-bullying campaign kids are subjected to these days. You can’t really root for the underdog unless you have been forced to eat dirt off the ground by a kid three years and 40 pounds heavier than you. Oh well. Sorry kids you are being raised to be wimps.
So how about the film, Dave? Decent but not great. This movie didn’t just drink the noir punch; it hooked a tanker truck full of noir punch to it’s food hole and turned the spigot to full blast until dark angsty crime drama was gushing from every pore and orifice. There was not a single character in this film that couldn’t have shifted from good to bad at the drop of a hat except for maybe the 14 year old girl. The film is basically a Scooby Doo mystery complete with a big chunk of deus ex machina but there is a reason we love good mysteries. However the mystery was solved with the linear approach normally reserved for drawing lines from point A to point B. No real twists and no real depth. “Some guys are kidnapping and killing women. Now we find them by finding out who their next victim is. Now we end the film.”
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 28 The City on The Edge of Forever #StarTrek
This is one of the greatest Star Trek episodes of all time, and arguable one of the greatest TV show episodes of all time. I’d put it up there against any one episode from any other series. Star Trek was not all amazing but when it was it really was.
This was the first really good time travel episode and had far reaching effects in that the acclaim it garnered caused us to get Return to Tomorrow and the awful Assignment: Earth (suck it, Gary Seven). 
Furthermore whenever the newer series started scraping the bottom of the barrel for story ideas they always seemed to pull up time travel. This would be cool if Star Trek had pioneered time travel on TV (and were called Time Trek) but Doctor Who had been doing it for six years prior to this episode (Van Gogh Tardis image courtesy of the Doctor Who T shirt category)
Anyway, this is the episode that made me realize how hot Joan Collins was in her day. The rumor has always been that Edith Keeler was Kirks one true love and all the other green chicks he hooked up with were to help him forget her. I think that is one medicine I would enjoy taking. This is one of the few time Kirk cusses when he says “Let’s get the hell out of here” (another time would be when Kirk says “Go to the devil” in Day of the Dove). It was also the source of a lot of controversy when Harlan Ellison sued for royalties. I guess they settled but I read his original treatment and if anything I think he owes Roddenberry some money for that train wreck.
So a great episode and everything Star Trek is supposed to be about. Of course in the movie with the whales they managed to just bring a chick home with them but whatevs. I’m sure if they use this episode for a new reboot movie Kirk will need to save Edith Keeler so she can become an American super spy who guns down Nazi’s wholesale but really at this point I’m so burnt out on those I can’t even be bothered to speculate. Suck it J.J. Abrams.
the Infamous Dave Inman
The Maze Runner Review #MazeRunner
Lost meets Lord of the Flies.
And by Lost I mean Lost in every way good and bad. Remember how Lost drew you in with a cool, weird situation and interesting characters? How it sucked you deeper into it’s plot with the smoke monster and all the other stuff? How every episode raised another intriguing question that you sought the answers for in a desperate belief that if you could understand what was going on with Lost you might understand what was going on in your own life? Remember how the producers headed by bane-of-all-things-cool J.J. Abrams swore on a stack of Bibles big enough to rival the Great Pyramid if Giza that they had a plan and answers to all your burning questions would be produced by the final denouement?
Then remember how when time came to give you those answers the producers instead shot us all in the face with a firehose loaded with excrement? Well, that’s pretty much the Maze Runner.
By the way, in order for me to do this movie review justice I am going to have to spoil the crap out of it so SPOILER ALERT.
I admit it sucked me in. Not the trailers of course. I am too much a veteran of the inane YA novel movie genre to be fooled by a bland brunette girl with a 1,000 yard stare and a posse of sizzle chested man boys to expect anything other that the dregs of cinema. No, the movie itself sucked me in. The first half of the film was REALLY FREAKING COOL. The aforementioned man boys actually looked like they might have shared one or more testicles, acting was shockingly good, and the setting was awesome. The whole premise was fun and intriguing and like Lost I found myself drawn into the mystery of what this maze was and who was torturing and killing these kids. Was it some kind of sick snuff reality show? 
Were the parents of these boys political criminals who were being punished by being forced to watch theirs sons being eaten by Tyranids? (Punisher image courtesy of the Punisher t-shirt collection) Was the lone survivor of this show destined to become king of the world or turn into a stud to engender a new generation of super survivors? I was honestly wracking my brain coming up with cool possible explanations. The story did what is almost impossible for me in that I got involved in the plot.
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 29 Operation: Annihilate!
This is the fried egg on the back episode. I remember thinking he flying creatures looked very gross, like flattened fake vomit bleached to a sickening pale. This is one of those stories that always left me with a lot of questions and since I have a lot to do today why don’t I just ask a few of them?
First off how do these things fly? I mean, obviously with cheesy strings on the show but what was their theoretical motive power? They clearly can’t flap enough to generate lift. Telekinesis? If so why do they have to swoop around like a bat? Couldn’t they just float around? Or use their collective power to hold humans in place long enough to give them the wet back slap? For that matter if their means of attacking humans is attaching themselves to the back of the humans why didn’t anyone think to just wear a breast plate? It’s always aggravating when you suddenly realize that the entire problem could be solved with the application of some 8th century technology 
(don’t get me started about what a couple suits of chain mail would do for the zombie fighting capabilities of the Walking Dead cast. Rick and Michonne (armed with a sword BTW) image from the Walking Dead t shirt collection). They don’t even have to go full metal. Seems like you could defeat “them” with some plastic armor, a few big butterfly nets, and a tree shredder to feed them into.
Also can someone tell me what the title was about? Were the flying fried egg monsters out to annihilate the human race, or were the humans going to annihilate them? Not a really Federation approach. This title always seemed at odds with all the other really good Trek titles (Dagger of the Mind, City on the Edge of Forever, the Devil in the Dark).
I guess this episode shows that the only thing worse than being a red shirt under Kirks command is to be related to him. Poor Sam Kirk died in agony while his nephew and sister-in-law spent some time in a lot of pain. Also let us not forget how Kirks son David Marcus died on the edge of a Klingon dagger in the Search for Spock. Also didn’t Kirk let the one true love of his life get run over by a truck in City on the Edge of Forever. Don’t know if I would be inviting him to the family reunion.
Anyway, cool episode all that aside. It was later ripped off by Stargate SG1 and a few other shows. The only thing dumb was the devastation Kirk and McCoy felt when Spock was blinded. I really don’t think blindness was as debilitating in the Federation as it would be today. Geordi had that cool wrap around muffler face thing to help him see, and even in TOS they showed that blind people could see with technology in Is There No Truth in Beauty? I don’t think Spock had the emotional attachment to color as we would.
the Infamous Dave Inman
@Nerdkungfu
The Identical Review
That is, a review of the movie the Identical. Not a direct copy of one of my other reviews.
This may come as something of a shock to you, my gentle readers, but I am apparently not the only person in the world who goes to movies and then writes his or her opinion on whether the movie is good or bad. Lord knows it was a shock to me. It even appears that some of them have somehow scammed newspapers and other media sources into actually paying them money for the service (I’m really at a loss as to how that happens. I can only assume some kind of grift so complex and convoluted that it makes a Ponzi scheme look like a shell game with only one cup). However, do not worry for me as imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and it appears I am being flattered by every paper and web site in the country.
Rather than rail against the injustice of it all I have learned to use all of these lesser reviewers as sort of a bird dog, pointing out easy prey for me to go after (or, more appropriately, like a canary in a mine warning me of fatal fumes by passing out and dying) and when I see a Rotten Tomatoes score of 4% it’s like Commission Gorden lighting up the Batsignal, causing me to change into my super hero reviewer costume (Dickies shirt, jeans, and a “don’t sit next to me” scowl that goes over extremely well in kids animated films and romances) and dash off in my Batmobile (i.e. my silver Crown Vic) to the local theater (I mean crime scene).
So I was really, really hoping for a movie that was so bad it was good. However, this film is a double failure in that it is only just really bad. It is not The Room bad. It is not Plan 9 From Outer Space. It is not even Ice Pirates bad. I’d put it on the badness level of the Warriors Way, a film that started out with some cool ideas and a decent cast but fell on it’s own sword from lack of resources (the main one being decent writers). It has zero originality, zero actual conflict, and a story that looks like it was written by someone who was locked in a room with copies of Great Balls of Fire, Dead Ringers, and a worn out biography of Elvis.
Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 30 Amok Time
Of course when you think of Star Trek the Original Series this is one of the first episodes that come to mind and for good reason. It has some very cool Spock development, is a perfect example of the bond of friendship that was such an important part of this series (and kind of lacking in all the latter shows. In almost all of them the friendship was just assumed and kind of perfunctory, while in this show it seemed truly genuine) and let’s see. I think there’s one more thing that’s escaping me. Hmm. What is it? Oh, yeah. THE GREATEST FIGHT SCENE IN TV OR MOVIE HISTORY.
I will argue this to my grave. In truth it wasn’t the best choreographed (although it was brilliantly choreographed) nor was it the most athletic or brutal, but the greatest dramas occur when you see stuff happen to characters you care about and you know are in a bad spot. In this sense you can’t let this one go with less than the top prize. Kirk knows he doesn’t really have a chance against Spock nor does he want to hurt him. Spock is frenzied and actively trying to kill Kirk but you know he really doesn’t want to while McCoy stands helpless to the side. A more dramatic fight scene you won’t find.
Sure, you can talk about the fight scenes from They Live, or Enter the Dragon, or the Empire Strikes Back as brilliant fight scenes (and they are. They Live image courtesy of the Horror Movie T-Shirt category) but put all the camera and chroreography on a level playing field and you will not ever find a better, more engaging fight. Of course it is all set to the greatest fight music song off all time in my humble opinion (as an aside, should you ever come to trade fisticuffs with me and for some reason the Star Trek fight music is playing in the background prepare to have your ass handed to you six ways to Sunday. There isn’t a song in the world that gets my blood pumping harder or my aggression more up. On the other hand if you manage to get something by One Direction or Justin Bieber playing I will probably just roll up into a fetal position and let you kick me in the stomach until I puke up my small intestine).
Anyway, if you want to see the power of this scene watch it and then go watch Cable Guy again (one of Jim Carrey’s most underrated films). Also, while this observation probably won’t go over with all two of my female readers but this fight, like most brutal fist fights between best friends (and casual acquaintances) is all the girls fault. Just saying.
the Infamous Dave
When the Game Stands Tall Review
A good play that was sacked at the line of scrimmage.
So I have said that, while I really have no interest in watching football, baseball, hockey, tennis, golf, badmitten, curling, soccer, lacrosse, polo, dwarf tossing, dachshund racing, or bowling (actually soccer is kind of exciting to watch. I kid, I kid. Soccer sucks too) I quite enjoy a good sports movie. Major League, 42, Rollerball, A League of Their Own, Slapshot, Field of Dreams, Jerry McGuire, the Hunger Games; these are all sports movies that draw me in. While I might not be interested in watching muscular grown men sweat and strain while slapping each others behinds in real life the story of how they got there is really fascinating.
Even Peter Parker wanted out of high school.
So why did I not enjoy this film? Well first of all as the main character says frequently “It’s only high school football”. Caring about high school sports that do not involved your own kid in some way (quarterback, cheerleader, water boy) is something only creepy single middle age men with no lives do from the comfort of their parents basement (and before any of you say anything I DO NOT live in my parents basement) as a means of pretending they have things going on. As I learned the hard way high school is merely a diving board from which you launch yourself into college, the Army, or the deep fryer at your local McDonalds. A week after you graduate your sum accomplishments will have all the weight and sticking ability of a fart on a windy night. High school is not something to be enjoyed so much as endured and watching a bunch of teenagers talk about how this is the greatest moment of their lives actually left me feeling sorry for them all (Spiderman for class pres image courtesy of the Spiderman t-shirt category). The net effect leaves this film clawing desperately for a point.
Secondly movies about sports generally are good when they have a story, and this movie didn’t bother with such minutia. I’m not going to say all movies should have a standard three act structure with a protagonist, an antagonist, and some kind of main story line but if you are going to divert off that path odds are you should have some idea of what else you are going to do, rather then move from unconnected plot point to plot point like a single cell in a Brownian movement. There was a definite tone or feel to this film but in truth if felt like six different 20 minute after school specials about God and sports. It is rarely the sign of good movie when the big bad monster the hero has to slay is introduced, confronted, and defeated in the last 30 minutes of a 115 minute film.
Star Trek Retrospective: Episdoe 31 Who Mourns for Adonais #StarTrek
I’ve always had a warm spot for this episode. It a weird way it really makes sense, and the tragedy of Adonais at the end of the show really tugs at you. Plus it’s one of those great episodes where the crew have to do something horrible that they later feel bad about it like when Kirk had to let Edith Keeler die in the City on the Edge of Forever. The best line in the show was McCoy saying “I wish we hadn’t had to do this” after they burned down the temple.
It was also a very cool use of the horrible special effects they had back then. I remember looking at this episode as a kid and really believing that Adonias was holding the Enterprise in his hand, or that he really did grow up huge and fade to nothing. People who say TNG is better then TOS because of the special effects are idiots. That’s like saying an iPhone is better then a retro 70’s rotary phone. The phone might suck, but in 1970 it was state of the art. Also phones back then could be used as deadly blunt instrument and more than one person was strangled with the cords. They made those old phones to last.
Anyway, I got this image from the Star Trek category, but honestly when I look at it for some reason I think of the new Attack on Titan t-shirts. Not just the size of Adonias but the framing and positioning. I wonder if the Attack on Titan makers are fans of Star Trek?
