Black History Month Essay #13

My essay is about my favorite singer, India. She is best known for her lovely voice, her sense in fashion, and her fierce loyalty to her African/Indian heritage.

India was born in May of 1977. Unfortunately this was the month that Star Wars came out, so even her own parents ignored her. However, not for long as she recovered from this set back. Her natural singing talent led her to release her first album in 1994. It's titled Hi Naturally and it helped people during awkward introductions. Her career took off from there.

When not appearing in music videos with such respected people like Madonna and Ja Rule, India also had an acting career. I can't see her complete list due to the restrictions on my browser, but the list looks long. Hang on, she has appeared in a number of Sista movies, which I'm sure are the kind of movies that appeal to teen girls. She was in 8, 9, 10 before the movies lost their way. However, she returned in Sista 16 to let the series go out with dignity.

Acting was still a side job for India. In 2003 she sang for the parody film The Walking Tall, which winked at audience about how anybody could replace Joe Don Baker in an action role. Her latest hits include Get It Girl, a song about a harsh self-reminder whenever she nearly forgets her keys. Her last album was the 2006 Role Play, which I can only assume is about spikey haired emos with big swords and magic powers.

In conclusion, this essay is not about trying to lure people to my blog.

One more.

You know, this looks like a happy cat to me.

But maybe a smart person will write a long reply telling me that it's CLEARLY an unhappy dog.

Maybe I'm being a little cruel.

I mean, at least this guy isn't shooting politicians.

But seriously, it's a friggen checklist. That's how bad it is. There's probably thousands of Phantom Menace reviews. What Red Letter Media did was take a step back and looked at why things didn't work from a film makers point of view. Just listing things off shows what a waste the 108 pages are. Also, gotta love these early pages:








The latter picture is one of the funniest attempts at a straw man I've seen. It's not like RedLetterMedia advertises his celebrity fans at every or any moment.



Edit:




I bet this is the point where most people reading the rebuttal just laugh and close it.




Edit:


HAHAHAHAHA! Remember the part where Red Letter Media got some people to discuss the main characters? This was one of the best parts of the review because people curious about a seventy minute review would watch this part and decide whether to watch the rest. Well, clearly RLM just made that part up. Yep, they MUST be actors because they're too stupidpants to understand the characters.




Yet another edit:





HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

This is Tork's Blog Reminding you...

to have your local nerd punched and wedgied.


108 page rebuttal to Harry Plinkett's Phantom Menace review.

Two Bad ESPN Columnists...

I just wanted to say something about two guys at ESPN.com who's work I used to like but now hate.


First up is Gregg Easterbrook, the Tuesday Morning Quarterback. I used to like his column because he would point out certain things about NFL games that I would miss. And I like his points about not blitzing too much or going for it instead of punting when it doesn't make sense too.

But the man has become insufferable. Never mind the fact that his column is so predictable now. The man JUST. CAN'T. LET. SPYGATE. GO! He wants to say that the Jets win last Sunday was due to karma. No really, karma over something two years old. This from a guy who wants you to believe that he knows stuff about science, which he (sorta) sprinkles throughout his column.



The other is Bill Simmons, the Sports Guy. Bill used to have a great gimmick. When the Patriots started winning Super Bowls, he was able to give a long-suffering fan's view. I bought his first book, even if it was a bunch of his own articles stapled together. Problem is that the Patriots have passed from losers to dynasty, he's lost his identity, so to say. Now, I don't hate him because his team is successful, nanny nanny boo boo. But he's a forty year old making references to MTV shows and I've lost interest in his work.

That and HE'S WHITE, BUT HE LOVES BASKETBALL!!!!!!!!! B!A!S!K!E!T!B!A!L!L! Hey, the stupid NBA season is over, what about football, or some other interesting game? NO, LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT HOW I'VE BEEN TO ALL THE CELTICS GAME! (Just like all sports fans!)



By the way, I don't want to imply that the rest of the columnists are good. I'm sure they suck, I just don't read their work.

Football games I won't watch.

Go Steelers! Go team that can best beat the Steelers!

Curse you, Jackie Gleason.

I'm the type of person who has to turn off every light in the room when I go to sleep. I keep a sock on my DVR to cover up the timer before I go to bed. So it was rather rude of the moon to poke outside my window and be brighter than I have ever recalled today. It was 4:30am and I thought it was 7:30. I have the worst sleeping patterns.


No, I'm not going to get an eye mask. Nature needs to bend to me, not vice versa

Friend Codes are dead.

Long live simpler friend codes.


Also the 3DS will be released in March for 250 dollars.

Hear those stories about mammoth clones?

Mammoth ride line starts behind me!

What happened to the 'little' part?

I was looking through some trailers and noticed an entry for "Red Riding Hood." Sure were a lot of scenes where her boyfriend was pushing her against the wall or laying her on the ground. What? Yeah, Red's got a boyfriend in the movie. I thought the fairytale was about a little girl but this movie has been Twilight'd. No really, it was directed by the guy who did at least one of the movies. Weren't there already werewolves in the Twilight books? Do we really need to further ruin them?


In other news, there's a fourth Scream movie. The franchise is still pretending that it has rules. NO! The movies have never given a damn about the so-called rules. Knock that off. It's just a series of lazy, cynical movies that pretend that it's subverting tropes instead of embracing them. The Scream movies are like the last dozen seasons of The Simpsons. See, we point out our laziness, so that makes it OK! The Simpsons got away with it because it's suppose to be funny, but Scream just wants to have an excuse. If you're scared, then they'll claim that it's part of the plan, but if you're not, they'll pretend that you didn't get the joke. "You're just not smart enough" is the kind of excuse that dumb people give for their failures.


The Smurfs movie still looks like a terrible live-action/cgi hybrid.


Pirates of the Caribbean 4 dumps the two costars, which is good because they were out-of-place in the sequels, and brings back Captain Barbossa. As ridiculous as it was to bring his character back in the third movie, he was the ONLY good thing about that film. He can bug his eyes out halfway through his lines all day as far as I'm concerned. I still don't think Jack should be the main character, but maybe this movie will be closer the the original.

Unseen Academicals

I finished the book a few days ago. I liked everything about it, accept the two main characters.


On further review, Glenda isn't a new take on Granny. She's just a retread of earlier Pratchett female protagonists. She's OK by herself, but her arc stinks. By the end of the novel, she learns to be an asshole. Great. As for the other main character, Mr. Nutt starts off as a humble, sympathetic character, but by the end it occurred to me that he was just a Gary Stu. Yes, book, we do remember all those other novels where other monsters integrated into Anhk-Morpork. That doesn't mean you get to get away with rehashing stuff from the far superior Men at Arms, as well as Thud!

I always felt that the fifth and weakest Discworld novel, Sourcery, could have used an extra fifty pages. If I recall correctly, Pratchett added a new threat late (midway?) in the book, but then ignored it. Unseen Academicals could have lost fifty pages. I rolled my eyes when it turned out that the orcs weren't really bad guys during some long forgotten evil empire. The whole section where the main characters confronted Nutt after he ran away, plus the stuff about crabs, should have been cut. I don't care if it ruins the themes of the book, either. I nearly gave up three fourths way though the book. Luckily the book ended with the soccer match that it had promised since the beginning, and that was great stuff.


So Unseen Academicals was the weakest Discworld book since Monstrous Regiment. Pratchett, I know you have a couple more novels in you and I can't wait to read them. Please don't make another one about Glenda.

Football and stuff.

Go Pittsburgh! Go New England!


Go whoever wins the NFC! I'm rooting for you in the Super Bowl!

Dear people trying to exploit the Arizona shootings,

Go to hell. (But I don't mean that literally, since apparently having an opinion might cause random crazy people to do something!)



I lost good friends because they could no longer view their political opponents as anything but mere caricatures. And here we are with people pointing fingers long before any facts about the killer himself was established.

I'm so sick of the politicization of everything. I understand that politics is a part of life but the constant sophistry is ridiculous. This just in: There are people who disagree with you. About anything! If that's shocking, you're an idiot and you need to keep OUT of politics.

Although you probably can't tell from this blog, I'm an adult. But this whole thing has me scared. Really scared. What exactly is your endgame if you blame speech like this for causing near-political assassinations and the murder of many innocent bystanders? If you don't like debate, even passionate debate, there's always dictatorships.

It's off the shelfs like Donkey Kong.

I've been wanting to buy Mario Vs Donkey Kong: Mini-Land Mayhem! but I can't find it. I hope people realize that this is a Lemmings like game and not a Mario platformer.

And now, Tork's Scienctry Corner...

I usually focus on games and movies and stuff, but now I'm going to take time out to post this link about science. (Actually, it's more of a rant, and it's not safe for work.)


Whenever someone tells me about standing up for causes, I'm going to shove Jenny McCarthy in their faces. There is such a thing as harmful do-goodism.

Dear Football,

please have the Packers win this weekend. That way I can loosen up and root for a Steelers/Seahawks Super Bowl.

I'd also be happy if the Chiefs and Colts won this weekend.

Tork's Blog Person of the Year for 2010!

And the winner is.....Tad Tadlock!




Congratulations!

THE WASHINGTON CAPITALS WIN THE STANLEY CUP!

Wait, what? Oh. Never mind.

Nice to see the Penguins defeated, if only for a moment.