These conundrums don't merit individual images, so let this family portrait of Alaskan yuck stand for them all.10. 21: From the numerous mathematical innuendos spun like floating substances throughout this pigpen jumble, I deduce the movie's unalterable crappiness. Fortunately, I procured the necessary theorem by which to dispel its dreaded effort to look cool and be smart.
9. Federer pushing aside an elderly fan after losing to Ivo Karlovic at Cincinnati: Roger, come on, we know you've been disappointed all year, but by declaring a grumpy jihad against old people you expose yourself as the record-seeking, cardigan-wearing, prissy fameaholic that you are. People all the time tell me how classy Federer is, how like a gentleman he acts, how he gives the sport credibility and manners. Not so. It's easy to be a nice guy when you win all the time; having nothing but eternity, gods can be patient. The real test of a man's character comes when he falls to the earth, regains his mortality, and begins to suffer again. Federer flunked. Men like Andre Agassi did not, which proves that balder and shorter men than Federer have built records that even he must continue to chase.
8. Redbelt: It's exactly like The Spanish Prisoner but with ninjas. Unfortunately, one of the best parts of The Spanish Prisoner is its lack of ninjas. So not only is the content marginally distasteful, it's unoriginal as well: to make new movie, take old movie and add karate. And we expect this from the writer of American Buffalo? Unthinkable--but ironic, given that The Spanish Prisoner is about a con job and a stolen formula.
7. Mamma Mia: It's a movie based on ABBA songs, and therein lies the problem.
6. Gap commercials "featuring" people: anonymous corporate shills are bad enough without people I've never heard of, but I'm supposed to have heard of, dancing around looking like Tom Green on amphetamines and singing Christmas songs in some desperately hip attempt to make the psychotic wintry buying and selling of useless and unwanted goods and services less, what, conventional? You're not a retro-spunking free spirit if you solicit, purchase, or endorse Gap products anyway, so face the facts: singing and being young doesn't make you clever; it makes you an advertisement.
5. Edge lubricity commercials: I don't care how many nonsensical adverbs you string together, it's still a shaving gel. So instead hire a grizzled farmer to sell the stuff; he, at least, will be wizened and reticent.
4. The Vice Presidential debate: How many angels died when Sarah Palin winked at us? All of them. And then she didn't answer any questions, which was monstrous until she recognized that she wasn't answering any questions, which was awesome. I hope Obama gets to keep her as a pet, a witchdoctoring, secessionist-marrying hamster.
3. Lost, Season 4: Jungle-born babies do not survive helicopter crashes in the middle of the ocean. And for that matter, islands don't disappear when somebody with big bug eyes turns a crankshaft by half. For once we get interesting new characters, mostly Chinese and psychic, but then the series wraps itself up in ludicrous plot holes and narrative knots, as it always does, and the show's obvious potential brilliance sinks once again into the morass of lame exhibitionism and popular mythology. And now John Locke (ha-ha) is Jeremy Bentham? What freshman philosophy class did these writers drop mid semester? Why not just name the main character Socrates and get it over with? Unless season five features Bunk in a fiery pink robe, I'm done with this show.
2. The Happening: What in God's name was this movie about??
1. Batman: See my earlier post for reasons why Christopher Nolan should be forced to direct episodes of Lost for the next ten years. That said, this is actually a pretty good action movie. But it's a terrible movie, because it tries to think beyond superhero morality, which is a fatal flaw precisely because 1) it seems to have been written by people who read nothing but comic books and transcripts from Lost and 2) comic book morality is necessarily one-dimensional. And as far as action flicks go, I'd rather watch Die Hard.
Slothrop: Slothrop don't mind no big pictures when they gots women in round hats in 'em, but a too big picture of Swiss Family Retardation is upsetting. Learn you some photoshop skills, Koko.
Ass-Hatted Ass-Headed Bottom: Yeah, look, Koko, like a jackass I was under the misimpression that I would no longer have to look at Sarah Palin once McCain was handed his defeat (so richly deserved that it was like the Plotinian principle of rich desert), but of course she's still everywhere. My New Year's resolution will be to ignore her entirely, to put my fingers in my ears, shut my eyes tight, whirl my elbows like Billy Blanks, and wail until whomever is referring to Sarah Palin runs away. But also, as an unabashed lover of rodents, Koko, you shouldn't denigrate hamsters by associating them with Sarah Palin. Hamsters don't shoot mice from helicopters.
But otherwise this list is fantastic, and far more appropriate for 2008 than a ten-best list. I'm still working on my own installment of the latter, though as Slothrop can testify, indeed as Koko can no doubt testify, 2008 was too miserable to produce ten superlatively excellent things, so I'm having all kinds of trouble getting past The Wire, season 5... But I did want to mention in response to your inclusion of The Happening here, that ever since I detonated an evening by watching that movie, I'd been meaning to hoax up a post on it, lavishly praising it for its subtlety, slapping on some vague Spenser reference, pretending M. Night Shyamalan is actually a universally misunderstood improvement on Hitchcock, and seeing if either of you would be fooled into watching it. But I just couldn't manage it. It's simply the worst movie of all time. It must have caused the global recession, it's so awful. I do not believe, were I handed infinite resources and satanic will, that I could make a movie half as bad as The Happening.
And aren't the Edge commercials the ones in which tightly-and-scantily-clad, jetpacked women fly up some semi-shaven guy's nose and spray foam around his nasal cavity? Ew.
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