Wicked Attitude

I’m getting really irritated with how Hollywood is remaking everything.  Have you really no original thoughts in your brain???  You have to take all of the classics from our childhood or other classics and wipe your untalented taint of doom all over it in order to make money with zero thought?  Here are some of the remakes that are coming up.

An American Werewolf In London
The Blob
The Birds
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Child’s Play
Clash Of The Titans
The Crazies
Das Experiment
Death Note
Drop Dead Fred
Excalibur
Fantastic 4 (Reboot)
Frankenstein (2011)
Ghost In The Shell
Harvey
Karate Kid
Let The Right One In
The Lone Ranger (2010)
A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)
Night Of The Living Dead
Oldboy
Piranha 3-D (2010)
The Stepfather (2009)
Robocop
Tomb Raider
The Thing
The Three Musketeers
The Warriors
The Wolfman

If you’d like to keep up with what movie from your childhood they’re going to crap all over next, you can go to Movie-Moron.com

Or at least fire all of their writers.  I’m watching the Seth Rogen episode and his talent is being completely wasted as are most hosts these days.  I grew up on SNL and always looked forward to it.  I’ve held on through the rough times and the bad casts but this is just ridiculous.  The skits are always too long and basically they don’t know when to stop. 

I mean what ass wrote the skit where Rogen accidentally puts “You’re the One That I Want” on a CD that goes out to 50,000 clients and most of the skit consists of his “co-workers” who worked hard on the program that was supposed to be on the CD glaring at him while the song plays?  Then the big boss walks in and asks how he knew that was his favorite song and it ends.  WTF???  How is that remotely funny?  These writers have really sucked the past few years and at this point I would rather see it cancel than continue to be a continuous poop skid in the toilet it’s being flushed down.

If anyone reads this, I feel I am remiss in not introducing you to both of my neighbors.  One has the demon dog that she refuses to train and then there’s our other neighbor…techno boy.  He’s playing it right now at 9pm.  Now I’m not an old fart, I don’t get overly irritated unless it’s past 10pm and after 11pm. it’s just not acceptable.  Acceptable music levels means I should not have to turn up my tv because you have the need to get your beat on.  I often imagine what it is that makes him randomly bust out his rad beats on a Wednesday night at 8:50pm and worse, what he’s doing.  Let me first describe him.  He’s probably about 5′6″, has the hair fringe that he opted to shave but you can still see the stubble, thin and in his late 30’s, early 40’s.  I get this horrific vision of him all oiled up in leather pants, no shirt (kind of like Right Said Fred’s little brother) doing booty shakes and pops while a strobe light flashes.  Sometimes it takes a worse turn and I picture him doing lewd things with the windows open because the techno told him to.  It usually lasts for 20-30 minutes and then he’s done.  One day I should really try to walk past and see if he has the decency to close the windows or maybe I don’t want to do that.  It would be bad to see my heinous visions were anywhere near right.

This was the question we found ourselves asking when our 13 year old dishwasher started quitting its day job of cleaning on the top rack.  Well of course you can’t replace one thing and not the rest right?  I mean you could if you wanted the same color but we don’t.  We didn’t get a choice of our appliances when we moved in so we wanted a say this time, which means stainless steel.  We started racking our brains on where to look and off we went.  Our biggest dilemma was the fridge because we have limited space (33″) with our current fridge but most are 35 7/8″ which would cover 3″ of our window that we never use.   We decided on the GE Profile series and we both really liked the features of the bigger one but felt we needed to find the smaller one to rule it out or see if we should go with it.

To hopefully save anyone else out there some time, I’ve listed what we found out there and keep in mind the prices may be different depending on your area.  We asked the same question of all of the following stores…how much to install a microwave since it’s the smallest appliance that needs to be switched out.

HH Gregg-$120 to install and they had the highest prices of anyone we looked at.  The “sale” price was the regular price listed elsewhere.

Lowes- $130 to install and our particular “salesman” was like a racist Larry the Cable guy so we decided if we went with Lowes it sure as heck wouldn’t be with him.

Sears- $159 to install and while the salesman was nice and we’d probably feel okay going with them, his talk of how badly they were cutting back hours made us feel like they were ready to close their doors anytime.

Home Depot- $99 and the saleswoman was quite possibly the most helpful person we’d encountered.  The delivery charge is refundable by rebate for the stove and fridge so it’s essentially free and the more you buy of the Profile series, you get money back in the form of a check card so we’d get back $300.

Needless to say we’ll be going with Home Depot and it’s important to know all accepted competitors coupons.  I believe that Sears was the only place that said they’d match and then beat it by 10% but I don’t know if that was a limited time thing or not. 

We also stopped by a place that sells scratch and dent appliances not because we were interested in those but because we wanted to see the 33″ model and they had a few of them in stock.  They just happened to have the bigger one and the smaller one right next to each other and that made the decision easy.  Bigger one!  I highly suggest you do this if the model you are thinking of is not in stock at places you look.  Chances are a scratch and dent place will have it and you can look before you buy.  They also save you a good $500-800.  We would’ve considered them but every one of the ones we liked were dented far beyond what we considered acceptable.

So hopefully some of our legwork will give you a place to start!

Update:  We bought ours from Home Depot who matched Sears 15% off sale at the time.  We just checked HH Gregg’s prices on the exact same models with their 20% off “sale” and we still paid $20 less for each appliance!  Bottom line, don’t buy from HH Gregg, they obviously will always be the highest price even with a supposed sale.

So I’m watching E! News Daily and there’s some style segment where they tell you how to get designer looks for less.  They show Vanessa Hudgens and Lauren Conrad in “high rise jeans/pants” and call them “chic” and “boho” (gag) but put them on the recently more curvy Jessica Simpson and they’re “Mom Jeans.”  WTF!?!  The double standard in this society is disgusting and they wonder why girls have body image issues.  They might as well have said “if you’re thin you have the right to wear what’s in style and if you’re over a size two, stick to a tarp because nothing will look good on you and we’ll make sure we tell you how bad you look.”  The media can truly suck it.

I’ve been watching The Price is Right for…well, a long time.  When you stayed home from school, it wasn’t a sick day unless you had Bob Barker on the tube and you were trying to play along with the games.  When Drew Carey became Bob’s successor, he had some big shoes to fill and after doing this for over a year he’s made the show his.  There are little changes like getting annoucer Rich Fields more involved with the show, especially the showcases, Drew talks to the models and isn’t grumpy like Bob was the last 6 years of his run and my favorite is when Drew makes fun of or is shocked by the prices of some of the prizes.  “What!?  $2000 for Kate Spade luggage!?!” or “yes because we all need some Oreos to go with our curio cabinet.”

What I’ve noticed over the past few weeks is a trend shifting in the showcases.  Today one of the showcases was a set of Viking appliances (which is kick ass but I’m old enough to appreciate how much those are), a year’s worth of groceries, a night with a personal chef for a cooking class/dinner party and a trip to New Orleans to various restaurants.  The other showcase (the historically better choice) was like a hovercraft, a Harley and something like a dining room set or something I can’t even remember right now.  I understand we’re in a recession and damn near a depression but people want to see those showcases with a trip AND a car or something big and grand, not two mediocre showcases with prizes that you could win at a raffle.  (Groceries, personal chef, etc)  It’s that promise of something really over the top that people want to see not a reminder of our economy being in the crapper and people getting groceries for a year.  That’s just kind of depressing and I’m not ready for my game shows to turn depressing as well!

I made a resolution to be a little less cynical this year.  I am tired of being barraged by ads everywhere and I got my last bit of cynicism out as I cursed the ball dropping over a huge Toshiba ad and then quickly broke it as I saw everyone wearing blue top hats provided by Nivea.  I think that’s a record even for me.

If comedian Kathy Griffin made a resolution to not say anything others would view as inappropriate on the air, she broke that one an hour into the new year.  Griffin was being teased by a heckler in the crowd and dropped “I don’t go to your job and knock the dicks out of your mouth!!”  Quickly cut away to commercial.  It was a much more toned down vibe when they came back from break as they announced 3 Doors Down and both Anderson and Kathy looked like they may have been scolded.  Kathy didn’t really speak much after that.  I wonder if she’ll be asked back.  Regardless, we were shocked and laughed our asses off.  That’s what happens when you put the 2 time Emmy winning, razor tongued funny lady in a live situation!  The whole reason we tuned in to CNN was to see what she would do this year and with that comment alone, she didn’t disappoint!  Happy 2009!

Update: As pointed out by people in the comments section, she apparently made that comment to a crowdside heckler not Anderson Cooper which makes the comment even better.  I somehow missed the heckler’s comments but her comment perked my ears!  Thanks for pointing that out, I updated the post accordingly!

I’m not a Britney fan and I do little more than shake my head at her most times and move on with my life as some new story pops up.  I got reeled in by my morbid curiosity to watch her special Britney: For the Record which was pretty much uninterrupted except by her own fragrance commercials.  I was hoping to come away with some understanding of why she’s made the choices she made over the past few years but that wasn’t really the case.  She didn’t say more than she was going through hard times or how her marriage ending was hard on her.  Well, okay…most of us surmised that on our own.  The whole head shaving thing?  “People shave their heads all the time.”  Um actually no they don’t Brit and especially not one of the most searched people on the internet so you can’t see why this would be news?  I mean I don’t particularly care but apparently lots of people do or else people wouldn’t bother to tune in to your latest train wreck.  I don’t know how she lives with the whole paparazzi thing but I still felt like a lot of the things she was saying were off of a script her Dad probably gave her to make her appear sane to the courts.  Of course, that dude isn’t the most stable either.  When you dress up in a killer, evil clown that would induce a heart attack to a 30 year old, why the hell would you dress up in it and terrorize your grandchildren with it??  This will surely be a topic in their therapy as they recall one of their first memories.  I weep for those children.

The most shocking thing in this special actually had nothing to do with Britney but Madonna.  What the HELL happened to her face???  I mean I remember seeing that one really hideous pic of her without makeup coming out of the Kaballah place and her face looked all plastic surgery mangled.  I just figured it was a weird angle or something.  Well that special showed that that pic was no weird angle.  You know that “Cat Lady” they’ll occasionally show who looks like a lion from so much plastic surgery?  Well let’s just say the man and I saw the definite beginnings of that look.  She looks like she might’ve had cheek implants and maybe collagen in the lips and her forehead definitely doesn’t move.  I shudder to think what she’s going to look like in 10 years when she hits 60 and has that tell tale old woman neck and gnarled hands but this smooth, injected face.  People, learn to grow old gracefully.  Seriously, you look idiotic.

But before I talk about that I want to mention a few things that are rollin’ around in the ol’ noggin. 

Since when did we as a society accept that having an ad for another TV show that takes up 1/4 to 1/2 of the screen while watching another show is okay??  I can’t remember what I was watching last night but it was on TBS and the bottom 1/4 of the screen filled up with a color band and words and then at the top of the screen a rope drops down and some chick repels down the screen to the bottom.  This is about 2 minutes into the next segment of the show I was watching and blocked out a key piece of something I needed to see.  I don’t know what show it was promoting because I was so pissed that the show I was currently watching was being interrupted that had it penetrated, I would’ve likely boycotted it.   Why are we allowing ourselves to be subjected to more ads that we’re already forced to watch during that 2-5 minute period called commercials?? 

I read this story about how we shouldn’t honk the horn and how it’s not effective anymore, blah blah blah.  Yes, I agree that people honk entirely too much and there should be some quota or something.  But the writer suggested that if something gets in your way in the road, you should simply brake.  Well sir, that’d be fine but given I’ve been on the bleeding side of more people not checking their mirrors and veering into our lane than I can count and had my husband not honked, they would’ve hit us.  Hell, we’ve even had a dude actually hit us while backing up at a light despite us laying on the horn!  Of course the resulting crap cakes in his drawers after seeing my burly husband in a screaming rage was satisfaction enough for us.  I don’t know about you but I like the horn as a last resort option.  I don’t think it should be overused or even used until about 3-5 seconds after a light turns green for the inattentive driver but don’t pass any laws taking away my right to safety.

Tomorrow is turkey day.  I hope everyone out there enjoys their day whether you’re spending it with family, friends or preferred solitude.  Me?  I’ll be making the “tasty” turkey to help feed our brood at Grandma’s and 15 lbs of mashed potatoes.  Pity the man, he’ll be the one peeling them.  Then I plan to be in a food coma the rest of the weekend!  Happy Thanksgiving!

Most people know that Dr. Pepper said that if Axl Rose finally got off his ass and released his album Chinese Democracy in 2008 after 13+ years of ego laden procrastination that they would give everyone in America a free Dr. Pepper.  (Except Slash and Buckethead…whatever.)  Problem is, when you have XX million people slamming your website (this was the actual link http://www.drpepper.com/freeDrPepper/?icamp=hp_dpfree_coupon) then you can’t exactly get your coupon for your promised Dr. Pepper.

Yeah, it was having fatal errors all over the place, clocking out, not letting you register, etc so it would be interesting to see how many people actually get this coupon because we’ve been trying for 12 hours and nothing.  It’s not that we’re desperate for Dr. Pepper, I don’t even like the crap but it’s the principle of it.  Give people a week to register, one coupon per household and be done with it.  How hard is that??  *rolling eyes*