Has Entertainment Weekly Jumped the Shark?

EIMER NOTE: A while ago, my buddy Mac, who has contributed a number of articles to this page, published this post on Eimer Debris about a year ago lambasting Entertainment Weekly.

Turns out he's completely through with the magazine. I'll let you read his thoughts below:

Entertainment Weekly now officially sucks!

I am cancelling my subscription to the so-called pop culture magazine called ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY. At one time. EW was a great resource for movies, music, and books. That was about ten years ago.

I've been reading Entertainment Weekly since 1991 when Al Pacino was on the cover sporting a pair of cool-as-hell shades. This was right around the time I really started to get into movies and great actors like Al. So I started buying evey issue after that until finally I got a subscription that I have kept for the last seventeen years...until now.

Somewhere in the past 5 to 10 years, EW has shifted away from serious movies and focuses more on crappy reality TV. Television is in the toilet right now if you ask me. There's only about a dozen shows that are good enough to be called 'must-see tv' and most of them are on HBO. But EW writes about it as if we are in the golden age of TV with shows like American Idol and Project Runway.

And the books that they praise are mostly stupid memiors from female writers who sleep around with a ton of men and then write detailed stories about what assholes we are.

The actors and actresses they cover are mostly models who get away with acting via their good looks. Two weeks ago Ryan Reynolds was on the cover wearing nothing but a couple floaties and a snorkel. The week before, Megan Fox was on the cover with her legs spread. That girl couldn't act her way out of a paper bag! They loved Adam Lambert of American Idol because they thought he might be gay. You know who might be gay? Entertainment Weekly, that's who!

What pisses me off the most is their critics of movies. Owen Gleiberman at one time was a fine movie critic. Someone I enjoyed reading and agreed with 65% of the time. But I think his co-worker is starting to rub off on him. Lisa Schwarzbaum is the other film critic of EW and could quite possibly be one of the worst critics since Ralph Novak of People Magaizine or Michael Medved, who only adores movies that are about magical fairies or princesses. Just by reading her reviews, I can tell that Lisa Schwarzbaum doesn't know shit about movies!

And in a recent video in which the two of them pan Michael Mann's new movie 'PUBLIC ENEMIES', I'm convinced that Owen Gleiberman has lost his integrity as a film critic becuase the editor at EW and the rest of his bosses are now influencing his reviews.

Because PUBLIC ENEMIES is a great fuckin' movie!

One sidenote: Dave Karger is the only writer left at that magazine that I still like a lot. I will continue to read his articles on ew.com.

EIMER NOTE: I wholeheartedly agree with Mac. However, I often visit ew.com to read Jeff Jensen's detailed plot summaries for LOST and all other LOST news. But that's about it. Maybe EW has turned into Watermelon Bubbalicious Bubble Gum - very sweet in the beginning, but a slightly nasty aftertaste after you chew it. Maybe Premiere magazine is the last vestige of great movie reporting. Maybe we're just turning into grumpy middle-aged men.

Thanks again for submitting Mac.

Funny Michael Cartoon.

When it comes to recent devastation or a celebrity death, I always turn to the political cartoonists to turn an colorful spin on an otherwise sad tragedy.

Everyone has their opinions about Michael Jackson, but I thought this cartoon, illustrated by cartoonist Peter Broelman, was a humorous pearly gates tribute to a talented, misunderstood and strange man.

Appletrees, Bonfires, Bath and Cidiots

While we were on our vacation, our backyard apple tree was knocked down in a wind/thunder/rain storm.

It’s a bummer because the apple tree itself, was a nice accoutrement to our backyard. It evened out the entire feng shui of the property. Plus, it was always the first thing that caught my eye when I looked out my kitchen window.

A neighbor and I cut down the remainder of the tree for firewood. My neighbor took his turn and cut horizontally into the base of the tree. Black ants poured out, like the scene from The Mummy when the scarab beatles attacked Indiana-Jones wannabe Brendan Fraser and made him scream like a little girl.

Since my neighbor is almost 60 years old, I had the unique pleasure of dragging the deathly remains of the apple tree to a burn pile.

Now, in Bath, Ohio, it’s illegal to have bonfires. Big roaring bonfires. However, I have only witnessed one summons from the fire department since I moved here in 2006. Some knucklehead across the street was burning leaves in his front yard on an Autumn Saturday morning, which created a blanket of smoke visible from the outer space.

So, this past Saturday night, I decided to light said pile of brush on fire. We didn’t invite anyone over. We didn’t buy stuff for s'mores. We didn’t haul a keg next to the fire and start drinking. We just lit the goddamn thing and watched what happened.

Prior to starting the bonfire, I poured about a half-gallon of gas onto the dry wood, just to ensure that we would have a successful fire.

After a big ‘POOF’, the fire took shape. And started getting higher, and hotter, and higher, and hotter. In fact, the highness and the hotness of the fire caught the attention of my neighbors who live in a cul-de-sac about a half-mile away from my house. It was a man and woman, and they both had beverages in their hand complete with red, puffy Catholic faces.

“Hey there,” the guy said. “We saw the fire and thought we’d come over and introduce ourselves.”

As I was shaking their hands, I already had my reservations about these two. Something shouted out ‘nosy neighbor worried about forest fire’ instead of ‘future friends’.

We started talking about life, liberty and the future of Bath.

“So, how do you like it here?”the dude asked.

“Pretty good, we moved in about…”

“Holy shit,” the guy interrupted. “Is that a gas can!” He pointed the red can that said “GASOLINE” on the front.

“Yeah, I thought I’d toss a little on the fire to, you know, get it started.”

The couple looked at each other.

“That’s a cidiot for ya!” the man said and they both cackled like hyenas.

I chuckled. “What’s a cidiot?”

“Oh nothing,” the woman answered. “Just our little term for city folks who move out to the country and try to do country things.”

The smile was wiped off my face.

“Well,” I said. “Technically, this isn’t the country. I mean we’re about a mile and a half from an Old Navy. And I grew up in the country (I did the fake parentheses with my hands) for 18 years of my life until I moved away for college.”

“Hey, hey, don’t get upset,” the guy said. “We was only joking. A little mineral oil, dry newspaper or motor oil will do the trick just fine.”

“Thanks for the tip,” I said almost instantly forgetting his advice. Just to spite this guy, I already knew the next fire I was going to start was going to be with my good, ol' trusty gas can.

After a couple more minutes of conversation they moseyed along their way. Pointing at trees. Taking about property and other stuff that ‘country’ people talk about.

Don’t know what my point was.
Maybe it was my new introduction to the word ‘cidiots’.

Maybe it’s, as a get older and older, I’m starting to call people out on their bullshit.

Maybe I’m just sick of people that think they know everything, but – after they open their mouth and start talking for a couple seconds – you realize they don’t really know anything at all.
Now that I think of it, it’s probably the latter.

Oldie But Goodie Toon

Not sure why I like this toon so much, but I do. And it's not because I drew it. Enjoy.

A question about giving blood...

I was driving to work today thinking about the possibility of giving blood. I've never done it. Not sure why. I'm not entirely disgusted or light-headed when they red stuff has spurted out of my body in the past.

The thing I was wondering is if giving blood is healthy - for you - the person giving the blood.

Get rid of your old blood that's been surging through your body for 36+ years and have your body create new, fresh blood that revitalized. Like making Kool-aid in the summer - with insulin instead of sugar.

I'm curious if giving blood raises your life expectancy in any way too?

Hmmm, maybe that's a chapter for FREAKANOMICS BOOK 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO.

To The Loser, Belong The Movie Spoilers.

Back in my early 20’s, I wanted to know every single thing that I could about movies.

In addition to the director, the screenwriter, the locations, the story, the plot and, ultimately, the ending, I read all of the spoilers on all of the movie geek websites. I read all of the leaked scripts and early test screening movie reviews. I wanted to be armed with all of this knowledge before I took one step in the theater to watch a movie.

Let me say that again. I wanted to know all of this information before I walked into the theater.

Why? I’m not sure. Maybe I wanted to brag about (which I didn’t too much). Maybe I was a little narcissistic thinking that I had a one-up on all of the other movie goers that night? Really, I'm not too sure what caused this crazy obsession.

However I do know one thing, in hindsight, it was dumb - and a bit of a let-down to boot.

Two years ago in September, I DVR’ed an Ohio State football game so I could participate in my son’s birth. After my healthy son was born, I called my Dad to tell me the good news and he accidentally told me the score of the game (Ohio State won). That night, I went home that night, started the Ohio State game, but wasn’t that pumped to watch it. Maybe because it was against Northwestern as well, but that’s beside the point. The excitement was gone.

That's exactly how I felt after watching a movie in my 20's...a little empty.

Which goes back to my underlying point, basically everything that you knew was going to happen in the movie, well….happened.

As I’ve stated in a previous post, when I was growing up, I remember judging a movie by the poster alone as to whether or not I wanted to see the film. It was a wonderfully innocent time, when the magic of movies surprised me at every turn.

Skip my alcohol-fueled late 20’s, and fast-forward to my current 30’s.

Maybe it’s my growing wisdom or the fact I’ve mellowed with age, but I’ve sort of turned over a new leaf when it comes to foraging for these little extra nuggets of film knowledge before I watch a film.

As a matter of fact, besides knowing the director, screenwriter, cinematographer, producers and the basic plot (e.g., A man witnesses a murder and the mafia hunts him down to silence him.), I take careful steps to avoid knowing any other information about the films I watch.

Perfect example, I was having a conversation with a fellow co-worker about Richard Bachman’s (i.e. Stephen King’s) novella The Long Walk. Good book check it out. The story reminded him of a 1969 movie called They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? about a depression-era dance contest directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Jane Fonda. Never heard of it.

He told me the basic premise and I was hooked. I tossed it into my Netflix queue, waited a couple days and watched, quite frankly, one of the best films I’ve seen in quite some time. And the cool thing was I didn’t know a god-damn thing about it. Didn't know the beginning, the ending, the actors, the actresses. Didn't know anything that was going to happen.

It was fucking awesome.

Oh, sure, I could have visited Wikipedia for a complete synopsis or visited some other spoiler websites, but - like a Biggest Loser contestant saying no to a cupcake - I shunned the temptation and decided to let the movie play out in front of my eyes with a complete blank slate in my head.

Of course, I scour critics top-ten lists and visit other movie-rating sites such as Rotten Tomatoes to get a gauge on what’s hot and what’s not. By the way, life’s too short to watch shitty movies. Most of the films I watch are chosen from critics top-ten lists, positive word-of-mouth, director, producer, screenwriter and, in a lot of cases, my intestines (that's right, the Eimer gut).

And, you know what? It’s working. I’m enjoying movies a helluva lot more than I used too. In this situation, and only in this situation, I’m going out on a limb and saying that ignorance is bliss.

That said, I came across this article in Wired magazine from J.J. Abrams, the creator of Lost and Alias, the writer/director of Mission Impossible 3, the new Star Trek and producer of Cloverfield.

It talks about the ruination of films through knowledge (i.e. internet spoilers) and the pesky vermin of geeks hell-bent upon ruining a movie with the simple goal of being the first to report on the big happening in the latest, greatest film.

It’s a good article. Hell, any article that brings up the trials and tribulations of spending useless hours trying to solve Super Mario Brothers 2 already gets kudos in my mind.

By the way, if you click the Super Mario Brothers link above, World 7-1 starts at 6:53. Read the article, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Sun, where art thou?

Today, this Bath-living resident is day dreaming.

I'm day dreaming of collecting enough money and heading South. Way South. Not Alabama or Florida. Farther. (or is it further?)

Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.

Too far. You hit Antarctica.

Head north. Go past the Equator. Just a smidge

In any event, I'm dreaming of a land. It's a warm land. Filled with adventure. Where I can wake up 365 days a year, walk outside, say hello to the snakes and have a cup of coffee with my shirt off.

Is that too crazy of a dream?