Sorry Charlie

Today, on the aptly named "Today Show," Gary Busey's estranged lover/runaway clone Charlie Sheen apologized for his meltdown last year. In a move that can only be described as "totally lame" by your humble author, he said that there were times in 2011 where he felt as though he was having an "out of body experience." He lamented his "cringeable" behavior in an apparent effort to rebrand himself to the public before launching "Anger Management".

Know what? This really just ruins everything. The best thing I have going in my life is my ability to Not Be Charlie Sheen, and, through his apology, he has dashed the last scraps of value from my being.

Chuck, you stormed through Hollywood last year like a coked up Tasmanian Devil leaving sobbing strippers and laughing masses in your wake (Looney Tunes reference #1...the strippers were my favorite part of that cartoon). Is selling your new sitcom important enough to you to ruin the legacy of the Taggart Transcontinental-esque trainwreck that WAS your 2011??? (I read books).

You, sir, have shaken the very foundation of my self-worth by taking this away from me.

Jerk.

How The Hunger Games Brought Nerd Balance to My Household

Here are some examples of what my fiancee has had to endure from me in just this past year:

-"Let's watch this movie, Take Shelter, because I heard the lead actor got snubbed for an Oscar nomination. But really, let's just watch it because the guy is going to be playing General Zod in the new Superman movie."

-"Can I tell you my wrestling storyline idea?"

-"Do you hear that drum fill? Seriously, are you kidding me with this drum fill?" - while listening to a Smashing Pumpkins song I've heard 300 times

-"Can I explain to you for ten minutes how my fantasy baseball league works?"

-"I know these episodes of the original Star Trek series are bad, but I have to watch all of them."

-"After work I'm going to see Transformers in 3D by myself."

-"I'm going to try out this wrestling promotion called Chikara. Yeah, sure they wrestle in high school gyms, and some guys wear masks, and one guy's gimmick is a heel marching band drum major, but it's fun."

-"I'm sorry, but I have to rewind that and watch it again." - after nearly every Pete Campbell scene in Mad Men

-"I might cry." - while I was waiting for The Hobbit trailer to load

-And some other stuff  I'm too embarrassed to admit.

The tables are about to turn.

The newest monster of pop culture primed to take over our country will be unleashed today, March 23rd. The Hunger Games already broke the record for most advanced ticket sales of all time, and two weeks ago my soon-to-be wife called me at work to tell me she contributed to that via Fandango. This was the culmination of nearly a year of MacKenzie, who read the trilogy in about two days, squeeing over the release of casting news, posters, thirty second clips, magazine covers, magazines stories, teaser trailers, full-length trailers, and now its 87% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. 

Tomorrow I will sit next to her at the first showing in the Athens Carmike (which smells like mildew and alley piss, like every other Carmike) wearing my jacket, so that my skin doesn't touch the 70 layers of human filth on the armrests. And it will be in that seat where I will feel a huge relief: I am no longer the only dork in our household. 

The best part? The Hunger Games is the first of four movies. Four sci-fi movies, based on a series of young adult novels, set in a post-apocalyptic future. I'm going to enjoy the next few years.

The Blow-Your-Mind Friday Question

Every once in a while, I'll have an extremely vivid dream where I
accidentally kill someone. These are among the most terrifying dreams
one can have because not only have you just killed someone, but you're
also facing a possible long prison sentence.

Last night I had a dream that I was being harassed by a group of guys.
I was trying to leave, but a bunch of them jumped in the back of my
truck. After repeated warnings, I climbed up into the bed and
confronted them.

"Get out or I'll throw you out," I said.

They remained. I grabbed the one closest to me and slung him towards
the back of the truck. His feet caught the tailgate, which upended
him and caused him to land on his head with a sickening thud.

The other four or five guys rushed to his side. Horrified at what I'd
done, and fearing retribution from the crowd, I fled. Shortly after,
I found out he had died.

I spent the rest of the dream terrified that I was going to prison for a long time. When I finally woke up, I was relieved that it was all a dream.

I thought about it for the rest of the morning when a thought occurred
to me, and it gave birth to The Blow-Your-Mind Friday Question.

Question: Do you think that somewhere, someone had a dream that he harassed some guy until he was thrown from the back of a pickup truck, causing him to wake the moment before his head hit the pavement?

Mind: blown. Happy Friday.

A Different Kind Of Dream Date

Photo: Fox News
 

Within the last year or so, we've seen a couple of high profile celebrity date requests.  Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis were nice enough to attend military functions with their dates who boldly asked them over the internet.  More recently, hundreds of similar requests went out from Oakdale, MN to prom date prospects in the adult film industry.  Funny thing though, those hundreds of tweets came from one guy: 18 year old Mike Stone (right).  

Stone actually managed to get two of them to say yes: Megan Piper (pictured left) and Emy Reyes.  Piper agreed on the grounds that Stone pay for her plane ticket.  Right now, though, it's looking like Stone's dream date won't come to fruition.  The school district has banned Piper from the dance on the grounds that it wouldn't be in the "best interest" of the school or the district.

This is yet another of the million examples we see every day of the overreaching, nanny state in which we live.  District Superintendent, Patty Phillips, made the call to ban Piper from the dance.  We see this time and time again where people get just a little bit of juice, a little bit of power, and they just can't wait to wield it with their nose-in-the-air righteousness.  Just let the adult film star go to prom.  What is it really going to hurt?

As for the two girls who said yes, namely for Piper: this is a shrewd business move.  When you're in any industry where all of your competitors are exactly the same, you can only gain an advantage by raising your profile.  The amount of free publicity she is getting from this story is amazing.  Lucky for her, I'm sure she has nine films coming out this week.  She just needs to fork over the $400 and go to prom with this kid, but not be a big whore about it.  If she can keep it somewhat classy in photos, then it's a win-win: she'll sell more films and she will have been the sweetheart who went with the awkward kid to prom.

As for Stone (and I've saved you for last), hundreds?  How do you know hundreds of adult film stars?  Furthermore, do you follow all of them on Twitter?

In all seriousness, if this is a ploy to expose senior proms everywhere as just some farcical dance that is blown out of proportion by students across the country every year, or if this is something you did just to say you did it, then I applaud you.  I'm all for shaking things up.  However, if you decided to ask an adult film star to your prom because that is really your ideal prom date, and likely your ideal woman, then I pity you.  When you view women only as a sexual commodity, you miss out on everything else. (I expect our female readership to go through the roof for that one.)

Anyway, best of luck Mr. Stone.  Beef O'Bloggy's is rooting for you.

Full story can be read here.

Rick Santorum: Larry the Candidate Guy

Rick Santorum, a candidate for Command-Nerd-in-Chief, spent nearly $100,000 on sweater vests in February in a move that can only be described as Urkellian in nature. According to Politico, Santorum's embattled campaign is offering a sweater vest for each donation of at least $100. So, if you are the sort of person who enjoys wasting money and votes, and likes to look like a dweeb doing it, then this is like Christmas in March.

Ivan Drago: Misunderstood

I'll admit, the number of times that I have seen Rocky IV is so low that it borders on the un-American.  I only recently found it on Netflix and decided to watch it last night while I caught up on some work.  Toward the end, a strange thing happened.  I don't remember feeling this way the other times I've watched this film, but I ended up feeling really bad for Ivan Drago.

I know what you're thinking, "Woah, Drago represents everything that was wrong with the Soviet Union and why they were such a threat to the US of A. "  And you're right, but for more reasons than you know.  We all understand that Ivan Drago is the product of the latest (at the time) advances of exercise science.  We see him injected with what we can only assume is anabolic steroids.  The result?  A magnificent physical specimen, but what about the man inside?

The Ivan Drago I see is a product of the failed Communist school system.  He speaks six times in the film: four in Russian, two in English.  Every time he speaks, we hear the most basic sentences with little to no thought or nuance.  When he is brought out to fight or go to press conferences, he looks frightened and confused.  Coupled with his poor schooling, I really estimate his cognitive development is mildly to moderately retarded.  Being a professional athlete and nationally beloved sports hero can bring a lot of pressure, especially to someone ill-equipped to cope with it.

The part where I really sympathized with him was right before the last round of the fight.  In the later rounds, Rocky was making up ground on the scorecards, but he was still behind.  Had it gone to a decision, Drago still would have won easily.  However, the Soviet crowd had turned on their hero before the fight was even over.  Like Frankenstein's monster, Drago only wants to be accepted for who he is, and it's that rejection that pushes him over the edge.  Drago loses his cool, chokes out a member of the politburo, and steps in for the final round.  He loses to Balboa by K.O. and the rest is history.  Rocky wins.  Ivan Drago is relegated to obscurity, comforted only by his wife after a devastating loss.  6 years later, the Soviet Union crumbles.

I've had my say and most will disagree with me.  Bad guys are just bad guys, you might say.  But that's where you'd be wrong in this case; Ivan Drago lacks the requisite intelligence to be a truly bad guy.  What we're left with is less of an evil villain, and more of a 6'5", 261 pound idiot man-child.

Welcome from Chris

Welcome to Beef O'Bloggy's, a website for The Everyman. Co-Founder Joe Smatherton and I have long felt that the internet lacked the depth of content necessary to appeal to the varying interests of its primary demographic: Everybody. The only solution to this problem? Satisfy everyone, all the time, and often in multiple languages, with this - The Holy Grail of Blogspots.

So how does this website appeal to Everybody? It just does. The only restraints placed on the content of contributors is that the work not be tasteless, but what does that even mean? Our content will cover everything from movie and music reviews to pop culture to politics and sports. Most who know Joe and I personally would assume that this will be a humor site, and while it is true that our personal styles tend to favor general clown-itude, we want to leave ourselves open to serious topics when we deem it necessary (because the plight of midgets in this country is no laughing matter).

Our primary goal in this exercise will be to consistently publish content, but we have not worked out the nuts and bolts of who will publish what- and when. We will eventually look to add contributors to expand our appeal. We have some great ideas about how to organize content to make this a user-friendly experience, and we are looking to buy our own domain name.

Follow us on twitter (@CLane400; @JoeTweeting) and we'll keep you posted on our posts, post-publishing.

We are still under construction, but open for business. So, welcome, Everybody.