Book Report: To Kill A Mockingbird

I've never read a book that was as effective a time machine back into childhood. Harper Lee's ear for the way children think and talk is spellbinding. She respects Scout, Jim and Dill and gives each of them distinct and intelligent voices. She kills it with those characters so well that Atticus comes off as stiff and underdeveloped in comparison. Part of that is because she casts him in the simplified, idealized way Scout views the adult world.

The reason the book is a treasure is the way it addresses heavy social issues with such a light, matter-of-fact touch. Lee provides a master's course in the "show don't tell" school of rhetoric, never going the easy route to spout off convenient essays as monologues to make her points. I'm disappointed in myself that it took me so long to get to one of the greatest of novels.

Book Report: The Idiot

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

After The Brothers Karamazov and now this, I am done with Dostoyevsky and convinced he blew his load on Crime and Punishment and had coasted on the reputation of that masterpiece, garnering the accolades because people were so enamored with his accomplishment of shining perfection that they were satisfied with flickering glimpses of it in his later stuff.

This one is more comedic and accessible than the block of granite that is Karamazov. The book is at its best when its characters monologue, giving the author a chance to spout his pithy observations before lumbering back to the convoluted story he's spat out. The real idiot here is not Myshkin, but me for continuing to suffer through the book when it was obvious that it sucked and would keep on sucking.


View all my reviews

$5 Foot Long Gone

Subway broke my heart by rendering its $5 Footlong promotion moot. Since July 1, it has existed as a shadow of its former self, dropping its roster to just three of its most ghetto sandwiches and doing away with the rotating $5 selection of one of its premium subs.

The only $5 footlongs remaining are the sandwiches with no ingredients in them. There's the illiterate Veggie Delite, which is what happens when the Sandwich Artists forget the meat; the Egg and Cheese, a breakfast sandwich for those who disagree with the argument that breakfast is the most important meal of the day; and the BLT, which your mom used to make you as a kid when dad's child support didn't come in time and the grocery store rejected her credit cards.

Stricken from the list are my beloved Cold Cut Combo and Spicy Italian, as well as the shockingly-suddenly-too-good-for-the-Abe-Lincoln-menu Black Forest ham and Meatball Marinara.

Now Jared will be thin as the result of poverty as well as malnutrition.

What I Won't Miss About The World Cup

Is this commercial, which played repeatedly on the Watch ESPN app. It's the saddest thing ever, featuring a mom with a bunch of kids who talks about how she likes dancing.

The insinuation is that she hates her life now because dancing is no longer a part of it. Her youth has been squandered and her dreams are crushed, as she has become a slave to a house of ungrateful brats and a husband who looks at porn all day and ignores her sexual and emotional needs.

So the family goes out camping, and she brings a disco ball along. It's her desperate howl for self-actualization amid the wreckage that has become of her life. Determined to indulge her whim despite the soul-crushing abyss that surrounds her, she puts up the disco ball at the campground and begins dancing by herself.

And then her oppressors join in, forming a grotesque spectacle that existentially mocks her plight. She pretends to be OK with this result as a replacement for that which her life lacks.

I think it's an ad for toothpaste. Or suicide.

Chick-Fail-A

Today was National Cow Appreciation Day -- the sacred occasion on which Chick-fil-A, defender of 'traditional marriage' and 'inventor of the chicken sandwich' -- hands out free food for those willing to demean themselves by dressing as cows.

Naturally, I partake in the festivities with religious zeal. Being that two of my finest and most practiced qualities are thrift and sloth, I put as little effort as possible into cow-ifying myself. While others take to face paint, iron-ons, laminated signs and felt ears, I simply tape pieces of paper to my shirt, pants and ears. The papers serve as my spots, and although my ghetto costume tends to solicit eye rolls from checkout counter clerks, they always give me my free spicy chicken sandwich, waffle fries and lemonade.

Today, however, I met my match in chicanery. I sauntered up to the counter in my usual getup, placed my order, then was told I would need to pay $3 for my fries and drink, because only my sandwich was free.

Me: I thought you gave out combo meals for people who dressed like cows?

Liar (My name for this checkout clerk): No, just an entree.

Me: Really? This must be the first year you've done that.

Liar: Yeah, I guess they changed it.

Me: OK. (swipes credit card and loses what is left of dignity).

As it turns out, Chick-fil-A has not changed anything, and in fact still does hand out free combos to those dressed head-to-toe in bovine garb. It turns out, I assume, that Liar deigned my costume unworthy of a free combo, and came up with the ruse just to lose me, knowing full well that by the time I figured out the truth I would be unwilling to wait in that long line of free food-seeking people to get my $3 back. Again, sloth.

I use this situation as a learning experience. Not to put more effort into my costume, but to be able to confront lying clerks on their nonsense and no longer be forced to pay $3. Next year, I vow, it will be the cows who appreciate me.

Movie Review: Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

Something happened that I never thought possible as I watched Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. I caught myself wishing I was watching Tim Burton's stupid, boneheaded 2001 Planet of the Apes with Marky Mark. And that was the movie that was so awful that it killed off the franchise for a decade, causing it to be rebooted by Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011).

The Burton Planet of the Apes was so devastating that it managed to scare people away from seeing the remake of the remake a decade later. Which was a shame, because Rise was one of the best sci-fi movies ever created, with a heartbreaking father-son, scientist-monkey relationship.

There was so much promise to this movie. So much hope dashed. I tried to ignore the colossal red flag it waved in the first 10 minutes, as mediocrely-animated primates engaged in family drama by exchanging adorable, Monkey's Uncle-style sign language, helpfully subtitled so non ASL (Ape Sign Language)-speaking human viewers could follow along. The verbiage-free opening is so patently ridiculous that if the Scary Movie people were to, well, ape it, they wouldn't need to change a thing. Just cut, paste, and wham, you have the funniest sequence in franchise history.

Things go from bizarrely humorous to boring when the scene shifts to the human camp of this post-apocalyptic earth, a stage for a tournament of global domination between man and monkey. There's a timid leader, a regular joe, his compassionate, monkey-paw-stroking wife and their teenage son played by a guy who looks like he's 30. They want to preserve the human way of life, which according to them is to sit around and whine about having no electricity.

I give the movie credit for not only not encouraging the audience to root for the humans, but to make a compelling case to wholeheartedly cheer for the apes to overthrow these idiots and run the planet correctly. That even goes for when Scar Ape (his name is Koba, but he is really Scar from The Lion King, so I have renamed him Scar Ape) overthrows simian leader with a heart of gold Caesar and runs things like Pacino in Scarface.

The crux of the conflict is a dam that the humans need to get working so they can use their iPads and such. The apes, meanwhile, have set up camp nearby, and would rather the humans not send in their Geek Squad to fix it because of their penchant for busting caps in angry apes. Caesar, who in the first movie fell in love with humans because he was buddies with James Franco, thinks there can be a peaceful resolution, but Scar Ape is like "ARGHH OOOPP IPPPA EEA!" which roughly translates to "'Ell, nah, gov'na. Kill 'em all."

Cloverfield director Matt Reeves, who deserved credit in his calling card for going easy on the CGI, forgets that tack and allows his animators to spray the screen with dubious monkey cartoons and 'splosions. The movie turns into a long, dull slog of slow-witted humans tangling with their furry rivals in zero-sum contest of sadness. There are a few winning moments of intraspecies bonding that echo the 2011 movie, but those seem glib and forced rather than earned. Also, I hate how the apes all start off relying on sign language, only to suddenly all gain the ability so speak English like they are the Asian characters from Lost. As if it wasn't bad enough that we had to listen to the dull, hackneyed dialogue spat out by the human characters, it gets much worse when we have to listen to it spout from the mouths of apes as well.

A movie of half measures, spoiled potential, little suspense and tired writing, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes has me Done with the Planet of the Apes. At least until the 2001 version pops up again on SyFy channel or whatever it's called these days.

Starring Ande Serkis, Jason Clarke, Kerri Russell and Toby Kebbell. Written by Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver and Mark Bomback. Directed by Matt Reeves. Rated PG-13. 120 minutes.

Marketing Lessons

Marketing lesson no. 1: Name your movie 'Boredom.' Lesson No. 2: Give it a boring cover. Lesson No. 3: Deploy limited resources wisely by sending two unsolicited copies to the same critic. Class dismissed.

Getting Rid Of Junk

Decluttering is a form of therapy. It's freeing to tackle boxes of junk you haven't bothered to unbox in years, go through it all, keep 5 percent of it and get rid of all the rest. It's as though you are not only purging physical objects from your possession, but purging needless clutter from your mind as well.

The same goes for organizing the stuff you do keep. As you set your stuff in order, you do the same for your thoughts.

Goodbye, Old Friend: A Rhapsody For a Retired Wallet

My dad gave me the above wallet, my first, on my 11th birthday. It has served me well for nearly a quarter century, and I always figured I would keep it around for my entire life. It has died many deaths, and each time I have resurrected it with a fresh coat of duct tape. Now what was once entirely leather is now 95 percent shiny tape.

That wallet was always a point of pride for me. Many were disgusted or impressed by it. Some tried to pretend they were ignoring it, but their feigned politeness couldn't disguise their awe or befuddlement. Most pitied me for using such a homeless-looking billfold, while the select few admired my dedication to it and no doubt wistfully thought back to their favorite wallet from childhood, wondering what might have been had they taken the time and care to tape it together rather than toss it in the garbage.

While cleaning out a box of old stuff, my eyes caught this seductive minx:

My first instinct was to pack it away back where I found it, reconfining it to a cardboard prison indefinitely. But I couldn't manage the task. Before I could muster any doubt, I stripped the old warhorse of all its credit, debit, gift and rewards cards, as well as its childishly tiny amount of cash within, and stuffed it into its successor.

I considered keeping the old wallet around, but decided to dignify it by tossing it into the garbage. Someday, I gotta believe, it will make an excellent nest for a landfill rat or pack of baby scorpions.

The smug "new" Nintendo wallet, which I no doubt acquired more than a decade ago by some means now forgotten -- most likely it was one of the many given to me over the years by those hoping I would get rid of my ugly duct-taped one -- will be discarded once it shows significant signs of wear. There is no sentimental attachment to this one, so I will have no reason to keep its corpse glued together like the previous one. I will now get new wallets every couple years rather than cling to my old one. Now I am just like everyone else. Except for the fact that my wallet, still, is more awesome than everyone else's.

Return To Sender

After being told the stuff at my desk of my former employer would be boxed up by security and shipped to me, I was asked to come pick it up personally at the front desk. The caller, who was not present at the time I was terminated, insisted I was told I would need to come pick it up at that meeting. I agreed, then laughed when I saw my work junk was boxed up in USPS boxes.

Glad I could save the organization postage.

Book Report: War and Peace

Reading this was utter misery from end to end. This is in a class with Moby-Dick and A tale of Two Cities, among the least readable, universally lauded classics that normal people read only out of sheer hatred and determination.

Tolstoy is like a kindergartener talking about his day. He has a keen eye and feel for detail, but no ability to distinguish between what is relevant and compelling and what isn't. He puts you there, alright, in the grim bleakness of standoffs with Napoleon on Russian battlefields. He conveys the feeling of bitter regret and despair, when you realize that you have been plugging away through his dense, punishing prose for weeks and look ahead to see there is no end in sight.

The value of the book, and the only reason other than bragging rights to say you've conquered it to keep reading, is to be transported to the ugly, despair-plagued times in which the book is set. War is hell, peace is boring, and this book is the worst of both worlds.

My Life As A Cereal Killer

Just like a 5-year-old, I need to start my day with a bowl of cereal. It's not that I'm hungry, nor that I get a burst of energy from the meal, but it just feels right. I keep a plethora of cereals at my disposal, with each suiting the particular mood or need of the day ahead. The cereal sets the tone for what I anticipate is to come.

I don't employ my cereals on a schedule, but earmark each for a specific specialization. Think of it like a bullpen in baseball. I trot out my cereals the way managers decide to bring out relief pitchers in various situations. 

Serious days where I need to behave like an adult are Crunchy Nut days. There's something mature about that one, at least compared to the others I indulge in.

Frivolous days, where I don't need my A game and am free to relax and do as I please can begin with ones Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Reese's Puffs or Peanut Butter Crunch. Honey Grahams are just for when all the good cereals are gone. That's a sign that I need to head to the store.

Why It Makes Sense To Cheat At Words With Friends

Cheating may be awful, but there are worse things. Like whining.

We've all heard from the sanctimonious angels that whisper into the ears of Words With Friends players that they should play it straight, drawing only on their limited vocabularies to execute their plays in the popular Scrabble clone.

I'm here to clip off those twerps' wings and shove them down their coarse-from-crying throats. The only way to play fair in Words With Friends is to cheat like John Travolta at a massage parlor. By telling your opponent at the outset that you'll be a scamtastic punk and look up possible word combinations online, you level the playing field, eliminating all the distrust and animosity that the game tends to inspire. If the words you use are pronounceable, score fewer than 30 points and can be used in a sentence by anyone other than the owner of an advanced English degree, you're not trying.

The problem with playing Words With Friends in a friendly way is that it often turns games into Silence Between Bitter Enemies. There's too much temptation to boost your odds by playing dirty, and thus impossible not to blame a loss  due to an obscure word on your soon-to-be-ex pal's malfeasance.

Cheating runs deep to the rotten core of Zynga's all-powerful workplace distraction. Even the game's abbreviation, WWF, dares you to cheat. Did Junkyard Dog, Andre the Giant and the Ultimate Warrior accomplish what they did by obeying the rules of the ring to the letter. No sir. These great men weren't afraid to find an edge with the odd folding chair bash, illegal choke hold or smuggled tire iron.

Commenters, I know you're already dreaming up ways to trash this argument, comparing my line of thought to those scalawags in Call of Duty games who float through walls and rain death with one-button insta-kills. Stop right there. Exploits that sully the game with code-altering hacks ruin things for everyone, and aren't in the same classification as WWF cheating. I'd argue, in fact, that refusing to cheat at WWF breaks the game in the same way that hacking in first-person shooters does.

Refusing to cheat in Words With Friends is refusing to look up the answers in an open-book test.

Once you make peace with the fact that you're an unprincipled goon, you BASE jump into the rabbit hole that game offers, discovering just how deep the game gets. Tossing the vocabulary penis-measuring contest aside, you discover that WWF is about tactical tile placement. The winner isn't the luckier one, but he who is able to psych the enemy out, thinking several moves ahead, taking manageable risks and weighing the occasional rope-a-dope sacrifice to set up a giant score.

The act of cheating is a compelling metagame filled with pitfalls, risks and tests of hubris. Although armed with all possible plays, you still need to decide where to place the tiles, whether -- and when -- to stack words next to one another for a low-scoring slugfest or open up the playing field for a shootout. The better thinker wins out, while the losers complain they got bad tiles. 

That said, there are certain rules for cheaters to follow. One, tell your opponent what you're up to, and insist they do the same, otherwise things won't work out. Two, no abandoning one-sided games in the middle to set up new challenges without first resigning and cleaning the slate. And three, the loser of the last game is always responsible for requesting a rematch.

Some get annoyed with those who escalate their cheating ways to attack drone levels by using a program that lets you lay out all the letters on the grid and suggests the best play.

While I don't use grid cheats because they sap the fun out of the event, I don't begrudge those sorry losers who have to resort to such methods to put up a good fight against me. I'm pompous enough to be certain that using a grid's suggested play would somehow warp or scuttle the genius tile placement that I come up with. I relish victories over them and feel like Garry Kasparov that time he beat Deep Blue.

Other opponents insist on playing by the rules, and in these matches I smell blood. I respect the scruples of those who refuse to cheat, and I love handing them 300-point beatdowns that make them pause to reconsider their ways.

Sometimes, usually out of laziness or haste, I'll bypass a pilgrimage to the cheating sites. But I often pull back out of indifference or pity. it's like a football coach who pulls his starters not so much out of good faith, but to see if his backups can humiliate the opposition the way his first team could.

If you're ever playing against me and I'm using words that appear to have been generated by a human rather than a computer, rest assured that I'm mocking you, handing you a three-stroke handicap on the golf course, suggesting use a tennis racket in the batting cage or bowl with bumpers in the gutters.

The endgame in WWF is to frustrate the opponent to the point where he no longer sees purpose in challenging you. When a longtime rival begs off, ending our series, I feign sadness that covers up satisfaction. I consider refusing to rematch to be total submission. A miniboss defeated and disposed of, allowing me, the end boss who proudly spouts horns, spikes on his back and breathes fire, to tend to my evil empire and crush all comers with a titanium fist.

Unless, of course, I get bad tiles. In which case I rematch that grid-using shyster.

What Valiant Hearts Is Like

Over the past few days I've become obsessed with the game Valiant Hearts, which is set in World War I, a time of colossal human tragedy, devastating horrors and rampant fetch quests. The era was apparently filled with needy people who needed things, and you and the other characters you control (including an adorable pup I named Barky) are the only ones who can get stuff for anyone.

It's an amazing game -- my favorite of the year so far outside of Mario Kart 8 -- but it also has the tendency to stress me out. Nothing in the game comes easy. If you want to do something as simple as get a bottle of medicine to help a dying soldier, you will have to pay for that medicine, possible with an apple. Do you just find an apple on the ground? No. You will also have to pay for that apple, which will have to be looted from a corpse trapped inside a cave blocked off with steel you have to dynamite by throwing a stick through fire you create by patching up pipework via pulling a string.

So, tough times. But you feel triumphant, if exhausted, whenever you manage to solve its crazy labyrinth of fetch quests. If only the game had started in time to tell Archduke Franz Ferdinand not to get assassinated and set off a senseless conflict.

The 10 Worst NES Games

Although the NES had its highs, giving me some of my favorite gaming memories, it definitely wasn't shy about drilling us all with stinkers at regular intervals. Here are the NES games that made me cry:

10. Wrecking Crew (Nintendo, 1985) — At least one of the crappy single-screen Mario games deserved a spot on this list, and I went back and forth between this and Mario Bros. for a while. This one won out because Mario doesn't even have the ability to jump. That's right. The character originally conceived as "Jumpman" in Donkey Kong is wearing lead shoes. And unlike Bionic Commando, he doesn't even have an arm that lets him swing across platforms. Instead, your job is to whack things with a hammer, stand around because you screwed up and now must wait for your impending death, then die.


9. Anticipation (Nintendo, 1988) — "Ya know what's wrong with connect the dots?" one producer must have said to another. "There's not enough Ouija Board in it." And hence, Anticipation was born. Billing itself as Nintendo's first board game, it asked you to pass the controller around as you took turns guessing the name of the connect-the-dots object onscreen through the tedious process of scrolling through the alphabet and e v e r  s o  s l o w l y punching in usually-misspelled guess.


8. Deadly Towers (Broderbund, 1987) — NES games were notoriously tough, but this one took things overboard. You play as a dagger-tossing prince who tries to kill impossible-to-kill creatures and find hidden shops to upgrade his equipment in order to make the creatures only slightly impossible to kill. In the ages before online walkthroughs, the only way to progress was to fail miserably for hours on end, then bang your head against the wall until you hallucinated success.


7. The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants (Acclaim, 1991) — Back when The Simpsons was new, I begged my parents for anything with Bart's face on it, and convinced myself that the crappy t-shirts, this game and The Simpsons Sing the Blues cassette tape were all amazing. Hindsight shows us the error of my ways. The brawler-style side-scroller has almost none of the charm as the far better arcade game. Awful controls ensure constant death, not only of your character but your patience.


6. Track & Field II (Konami, 1988) — If there's one way to simulate the abilities of Olympic athletes, the developers figured, it was the pounding of the A button until your skin starts to peel off. No matter whether you choe triple jump, canoeing, pole vault or any other of the events, your job was to pound that A button to build up your power level. If you had the NES Max or Advantage controllers, the game was way too easy. If you used a regular controller, it was impossible.


5. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (Nintendo, 1988) — Throwing away most everything that made the original Zelda great, the slapped-together follow-up finds a tiny Link doll waddling through a needlessly huge overworld, only to transform into a spindly doofus who hops through side-scrolling levels when he's confronted with a monster or enters a town or dungeon. One of the few likenesses to the original this bastard child keeps is its insistence on stopping you from progressing unless you dig up items cruelly hidden from you in places you'd never think to look.


4. Urban Champion (Nintendo, 1986) — The one-on-one fighter is all about punching, blocking and avoiding falling down a sewer while dodging flower pots dropped by people who must be annoyed you couldn't find anything better to play. Your opponent never changes, you can never move on to a more interesting background and there are no special moves or even much strategy to put into play. I'm pretty sure this game was made in 10 minutes on a dare.


3. Bill and Ted's Excellent Video Game Adventure (LJN, 1991) — One way to make your game last longer is to make item you need to advance impossible to find. Bill and Ted's goes a step farther by filling each level with crazed enemies you have to avoid, giving you no time to look for stuff. Each level has a historical figure you need to find and draw into your time machine with you with one of these un-findable items by switching between two heroes stuck in parallel timelines. The game confused me on so many levels.


2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Konami, 1989) — No game inspired as much controller-slamming rage as this brutal side-scroller. Memories of the water-set disable-the-bomb level still creep into our nightmares, and thoughts of tangling with the ridiculous bosses still makes us shudder. This brutal dream crusher was available on the Wii's Virtual Console but was yanked a few years ago. The official reason for the disappearance was "licensing issues," but I'd like to think Konami was just trying to act in the best interests of gamers everywhere by refusing to let this beast torture them any longer.


1. 10-Yard Fight (Nintendo, 1985) — I'd forgive an ancient football game for the inability to include the proper number of players on the field, but it's tougher to overlook forgetting to include things like correct scoring and plays. This rugby-like abomination avoids a soundtrack in favor of the repetitive sounds of players' footsteps and dives. Kickoffs bizarrely pit a 5-player defense against an all-but unstoppable 9-player return team. Things get easier for the defense should it be lucky enough to somehow tackle a ball carrier, because the offense is limited to a triple-option attack that gets fewer points depending on how long it takes to score. I remember being all giddy about getting to play football on my NES, only to be crushed that there was nothing close to football in the game.

If I Were A Dancing With The Stars Judge

I would be an overpraising judge -- filling contestants with false hopes that they were really talented, only to have them kicked off the show soon and be scrubbing toilets again in three weeks -- but would just select a performance at random to give a zero. I would always select an overconfident dude for the distinction.

My only explanation to my chosen mark would be "You should be ashamed of yourself for disgracing the show."

Hopefully the contestant would approach me in anger, and then I would pull off one of the 19th century gentleman gloves I was wearing and slap him across the face with it.

I should be a TV executive.

What It's Like To Get Laid (Off)

I lost my job of 17 years today. I must have left it under my bed, or maybe it fell out of my pants pocket when I was using the bathroom.

The Arizona Daily Star, which plucked me out of the crib (or out of college as an 18-year-old freshman sportswriter -- can't quite recall) and later gave me the greatest job I ever had -- 8 glorious years as a movie critic -- eliminated my regional reporter position.

This wasn't the way I'd pictured leaving. I fantasized that one day I'd be scooped up by a giant magazine or newspaper, back when such things existed, and give a tearful farewell speech that everyone in the newsroom hoped ended soon so they could cut up my goodbye cake and get back to work.

Instead, there were no tears or cake. Just as I was about to head off to lunch, I got a single-ring call on my desk phone. That's usually a sign of trouble. An editor was maybe calling me from across the room about a problem in one of my stories, or possibly an angry caller had been transferred over. I expected urgency on the other end of the line, but instead was greeted by a calm, soothing voice of an HR director, asking if I could stop by her office.

I instinctively grabbed my phone, fearing the worst. As I lumbered downstairs, I sorted through my mental files, wondering if I had done anything controversial that would merit a verbal rap on the fist. Coming up empty, I shoved the fears out of the way, hoping that HR was calling everyone down one by one to give them a rundown about some new policy change or handbook adjustment. I had worried about layoffs for many of the past several years, but strangely had slipped into a comfort zone, assuming that my job was as safe as any, and that the herd had been thinned out as much as possible for the time being.

As soon as I stepped into the office and saw a higher-up waiting for me, I knew what was going on. Like my cancer-stricken dog, Goose, when he felt the piercing of the vet's life-ending syringe in his neck, I accepted my fate with solemn dignity. Or apathy? I was told I'd be paid for the remainder of the day, receive a last paycheck and lose my benefits at midnight. They asked me to hand over my badge and lanyard and told me they'd box up all the junk in my desk for me and ship it home. The upshot, encased in kindness, was that I'd never be allowed to go anywhere near my desk again. Just like that, it was no longer my desk, but just a desk.

I was handed a two-page contract that offered me a severance check in return for my signature. To get my hands on that money I would have signed a sworn affidavit accepting responsibility for the Kennedy assassination, the Hindenburg disaster and New Coke, so I didn't much care about the specifics. Still, I read every word, signed two copies and was escorted to the parking lot by a tiny little security guard who surprised me by not selling me Girl Scout cookies afterward.

So off I drove, jobless for the first time in forever. I'd need to sort through my career prospects and contacts, see about rolling over my 401(k) (into my wallet!), check if I could somehow get Obamacare before my insurance card turned into a pumpkin at midnight, change all my social media passwords that my old computer remembered and, most urgently, finally get that lunch.

Book Report: Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Maybe not quite the best writing I've ever read — although there are flashes of jaw-dropping brilliance — but it's definitely one of the most enthralling sagas I've ever encountered. Mitchell sings an ode to a crumbling society, embracing it for allits beauty, strength, hypocrisy and ugliness. Scarlett, Rhett and Ashley are some of the most full-bodied, complicated and maddeningly infuriating/endearing characters I have ever come across, and their interplay over decades of upheaval, successes, failures, heartbreaks and tragedies will stay with me the rest of my life.

The book is also extremely funny because of how racist it is. Maybe some of it is intentional, maybe some is satirical, but I am guessing it is largely an on-the-nose replication of the way people behaved, spoke and thought back then. It's an exquisite time capsule and a breathless narrative. Add this to the Better Than the Movie list, although the movie's use of "tomorrow is another day" and improved signature line of "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" (the movie invented the key first three words of that quote) are both staggering wins.


View all my reviews

What It's Like When Your PS4 Turns On But Has No Sound

You: Is there something wrong?

PS4: ...

You: Talk to me. Please.

PS4: ...

You: What are you trying to prove with this silent treatment?

PS4: ...

You: I want to help but I can't be there for you if you shut me out.

PS4: ...

You: I hate you. And I never want to hear your stupid voice again. 

PS4: ...

You: I can be silent too, you know. You are so immature.

PS4: ...

You: ...

PS4: ...

You: ...

PS4: ...

You: Ugh. Fine. (restarts PS4) 

PS4: Brlleriging!

You: Ah, so nice to have you back! I didn't mean anything I said, baby. Let's never argue again!

PS4: ...

Bates Motel Is A Terrible Show

I liked the first two episodes of the first season. And then it gradually started to be less and less good, and then extremely awful.

I forced myself to get to the end of the first season, then vengefully deleted it off the list of series I set my DVR to record as soon as it ended.

Then for some reason -- I guess because I screwed up -- it still recorded the first episode of season 2, which started last week. So I watched it.And it was worse than all of the previous crappy episodes combined.

So now I am watching season 2 episode 2. Why? Who knows.

I still like it more than The Walking Dead, though. Which I still watch despite hating and will never stop hate-watching.

Book Report: The Brothers Karamazov

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Crime and Punishment is one of my favorite books, and the only one of Dostoyevsky's that I'd read before this. Karamazov is beautifully and elegantly written but its story is disjointed and aimless. It reminds me of an USA network drama that runs its course after five years and has no place to go. The shift to a tragic courtroom parody toward the end is the strongest section, but it seems like a side story or sequel rather than something that's part of a ohesive whole.

The author establishes tragic, troubled characters then can't much figure out what to do with them other than using them as mouthpieces to wax philosophically. The monologues are brilliant, but largely unchallenged by conversation partners and left to stand alone as awkwardly placed essays.

The ending tries hard to be beautiful and touching, but is forced and 1950s Disney live action movie-level stupid. The last words are forehead-slappingly ridiculous.


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Foods I Cannot Allow Myself To Be Around

There are certain things I can't allow myself to have, lest I resemble the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man:

Doritos. 

Pringles. 

Ben & Jerry's.

Cinnabon. 

Wienerschnitzel chili cheese dogs chili cheese burger and chili cheese fries for $5.

Red Lobster biscuits.

Reese's peanut butter cups.

I love them too much and cannot be trusted around them. So I must gaze upon them from afar, shielding my stomach from their siren summoning. 

That said, if the streets of New York ever rumble as the gargantuan creature pictured above roars through Times Square, you'll know I had a change of heart.

Book Report: The Art of War

The Art of War by Sun Tzu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's a dry, straightforward manual on war general tactics of the era. It has some unique and counterintuitive wisdom that can be applied to other areas of management. Sun Tzu's heartless, analytic thinking was the Moneyball of its day.


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Book Report: The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales

The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Pure insanity from cover to cover, almost all of them crammed with gruesome morbidity and plot twists that seem as though they came from either the minds of 10-year-olds or were influenced by absinthe. Disney has plundered the stories for many of their classic animated movies, cleaning them up by removing the most sadistic parts. There is a lot of stuff here, though, that could never be adapted, especially the most demented story of all, Clever Elsie. This is one of the funniest and craziest books in existence.


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Book Report: The Prince

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's more of an opinionated history than it is a treasure trove of devious advice. It's still a fascinating and illuminating look into the politics of the period. It pairs nicely with The Borgias and the first three Assassin's Creed games.


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Book Report: Lolita

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I hated this book throughout, and I would hope it's not just because I have a daughter. I suffered through the entire thing only to gain the right to smack down anyone who would apologize for this as something other than a child pornography/sex slave fantasy.

The elegant writing and incredible skill involved only make me despise the book more. I don't think there's artistic validity here, and I would discourage anyone who feels as though they have to read it to be well-read from doing so. The book is full of agony and depravity, and it's sickening to attempt to put a human and relatable face to such a monster. I believe the literary world would be better off if Lolita did not exist.


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A Look Back at True Romance, One Of The Greatest Movies Ever Made

In his commentary track on the "True Romance" DVD, Quentin Tarantino reveals how much of himself he poured into the schlubbish Clarence character played by Christian Slater.

The Elvis-idolizing Clarence, an unkempt loner who works at a comic-book shop, is poor and unloved. He's also given to explosions of nutty diatribes on music, television, movies or comic books - which tends to drive girls away. His plight is much the same as Tarantino's own, the filmmaker explains, back when he was writing the screenplay that would one day be filmed by Tony Scott as "True Romance," one of the most dynamic action films of the 1990s.

After hearing his commentary, it's not tough to squint your eyes and see Tarantino in the place of Clarence. After all, Tarantino reveals he spent most of his 20s in poverty, sometimes working at a video store, never having had a girlfriend. He sold the "True Romance" script for a rock-bottom $50,000, to help fund his dream project, "Reservoir Dogs."

The film is essentially a glorious fulfillment fantasy, in which Clarence finds himself suddenly in love and empowered, a daring rogue rampaging through a criminal underworld he'd only experienced onscreen, on the cusp of changing a suitcase full of stolen cocaine into hundreds of thousands of dollars and the easy life.

To start such an adventure, Clarence first must meet the perfect woman, the one who will giddily throw herself into kung-fu flicks, chomp fast food straight out of the bag, maintain a voracious sexual appetite and help him take out the bad guys. As fate has it, the luscious Alabama (Patricia Arquette) stumbles into a late-night Sonny Chiba triple feature and spills popcorn all over Clarence. They strike up a conversation, and he lets her take him out for pie after the show.

The date leads to an all-night sex romp, then a whirlwind marriage, which isn't at all tripped up by Alabama's revelation that she's a call girl, and the only reason she came into that movie theater was because Clarence's boss paid her to do so as a birthday present. Unblinking, Clarence cares nothing about Alabama's past. All that matters is he's finally met his soulmate.

The improbable yet strangely disarming love story quickly melts away into a full-throttle, bullets-blazing blowout, kickstarted by Clarence's insistence that he must confront Alabama's pimp and get her clothes. Muddling over the matter of whether to take the risk, Clarence is fired up from a bathroom pep talk from Elvis (Val Kilmer), who pops up every now and then to advise and compliment the hero.

Bounding through its two-hour running time with unlimited reserves of energy, Tarantino's script twists and turns over on itself, rushing like whitewater. His dialogue is vintage crime-novel pulp, smooth and self-aware:

"If there's one thing this last week has taught me," Clarence says after getting entangled with the police, the mob and movie producers in the drug deal of a lifetime, "it's better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it."

That's one of the film's few printable quotes. The script is jammed with enough swear words to get someone tossed out of a longshoreman's pub.

The Internet Movie Database reports that a certain four-letter swear word is used 225 times. Then there are the 21 deaths, all from gunfire.

No, this isn't a movie to show the kiddies, but it has a unique way of bringing out childlike tendencies in adults, causing them to see the film over and over for their favorite parts.

The highlights are too numerous to mention. Christopher Walken tears things up as a sadistic gangster, attempting to beat information out of Clarence's recovered alcoholic policeman father, Clifford (Dennis Hopper), followed by Clifford's button-pushing historical diatribe on why Sicilians have black hair and dark skin. Brad Pitt and Tom Sizemore pop up in small but memorable roles, and Arquette's breathy performance is drop-dead sexy. Alabama, nothing close to a helpless innocent, can turn from caring nurturer to red-eyed killer on a dime.

Alabama is nothing it all like a real woman. She's a female version of Clarence - in turn the female version of Tarantino - and it makes for some amusing armchair psychology to suspect that she represents Tarantino's overwhelming narcissism.

The adoration he has for his dialogue and characters is contagious. The movie doesn't just play. It reaches through the screen and romances you. Truly.

Book Report: Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost by John Milton
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Extremely dense, and the sing-song iambic pentameter screwed with my head. There are fascinating insights and exploration of biblical principles, and Milton is incredibly skilled. But the focus is extremely narrow and the lyrical prose is a staccato assault.


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Top 10 Video Games Of 2013

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

Super Mario 3D World

The Last of Us

Plants vs. Zombies 2

BioShock Infinite

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

Fire Emblem: Awakening 

Shin Megami Tensei IV

Pikmin 3

Rayman Legends

Top 10 Movies Of 2013

Before Midnight

Frances Ha

Side Effects

American Hustle

Star Trek Into Darkness

Pacific Rim

Gravity

Captain Phillips

12 Years a Slave

This is the End

The worst movies were The Lone Ranger and The Hangover Part III

Our 2013 Christmas Letter

Hello, all. As you can tell from the crisp air, music on the radio, decorations in store windows and Cardinals' dwindling playoffs chances, it is nearly Christmas time once again. So now seems like as good a time as any to pretend that Facebook doesn't exist and send you a zany photo and an update about how we have been doing. 

2013 has been a year of alarming and disgusting change in our household. The change we are referring to, of course, is that of Zack's diapers. Even though he is our third child, we had forgotten just how revolting a toddler's diaper gets when he begins eating solid food. But our memories are refreshed one or two times daily, when the youngster's drooping undercarriage serves a reminder. 

Zack is the biggest mover and shaker among the household this year, having launched his own app on iTunes, launched his tech startup into an impressive initial public offering and launched an exploratory committee to gage his chances in the 2014 Congressional elections. Although he's only 1 year old, his accomplishments are remarkable. In addition to all that, he also learned how to crawl through the doggie door and spray fridge door water all over the floor, which he proceeds to lick up.

Luke, who is in first grade, is a thriving artist and musician. We see him becoming a one-man band who beat-boxes his own background music while also singing lead and backup vocals. If you think all this to be impossible, it's because you have never been serenaded by the 6-year-old.

Emma, who proudly boasts she is in 'Pre-K' and not just standard preschool, is also the artistic sort. She excels in the ancient, well-respected medium known through the ages as Grabbing Scissors Out Of The Craft Closet And Leaving Squiggly Pieces Of Construction Paper All Over The Kitchen Floor. Combined with her affinity for painting and drawing on several sheets of paper per minute, when trees see this girl, they cry.

Jessica continues to attend grad school, going for a master's degree because the master's she already earned has lost that 'new car' smell. She also continues to work part-time and rescue Zack from his minutely attempts at sending himself to the emergency room by BASE jumping off the dining room table.

As for Phil, he is still toiling away at the local newspaper -- poor guy, no one has stopped to tell him that newspapers ceased to exist in 2005 -- and passing his video game addiction on to his offspring. 

That should about catch you up. We'll check back in at the end of 2014 -- another anticipated year of disgusting, smelly change until we can get that kid potty trained.

Sincerely, 

The Villarreals

Book Report: The Witches

The Witches by Roald Dahl
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A fun book from beginning to end. Dahl's sense of wonder and imagination carries throughout the fast-paced tale. I like its bittersweet, darker-than-expected ending.


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How Cable And Satellite Will Go Down

The whole cable/satellite cabal will probably go down at some point because people are getting sick of paying for billions of channels they care nothing about. 

Once the networks are able to break away from the cable/satellite money and start selling directly to consumers there will be a revolution. It sucks that you have to buy HGTV and a million reality show channels to get ESPN. 

Book Report: 1984

1984 by George Orwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An alarmist thinkpiece and word of warning to humanity. A dark and terrible read, but illuminating while terrifying. Some of its dreary projections seem farcicle, and some have come alarmingly true. The book bludgeons your mind and soul. I was glad when it was over.


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Review: Saving Mr. Banks

Ever since I first heard of it, I dreaded Saving Mr. Banks, pegging it as a dopey Disney self-congratulations job. A pomade-slicked Tom Hanks would be the hokey, do-no-wrong master of the universe Walt Disney, Emma Thompson would be unreasonably uptight Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers. Using his trademark Disney charm and whimsy, Walt would break through Travers' defenses, make her see the error of his ways and...

Consent to wild sex with him?

That impossible historical stretch, I figured, was the only hope the movie had of being entertaining in any way. The trailer even played up this possibility, intentionally or not, with a scene in which Disney looks suggestively at Travers and asks her what he'll have to do to get the rights to her book.

The movie doesn't go that way, but it does skew far darker than I ever could have hoped for, and in that way ends up becoming something halfway profound. Although Hanks' Walt is just as much a hagiography as you'd expect, but Thompson has found a spoon-sugared plum of a role in the furiously demented Travers.

What the movie truly turns out to be is a dark flashback-laden biopic on Travers, describing in painful detail how exactly she turned out to be as coarse and brutal a caricature as she turned out to be. Her past was filled with shame, abandonment and disappointment, much of it at the hands of her well-meaning grease fire of a dad, played by Colin Farrell.

Director John Lee Hancock spins the tale with equal doses of Disney charm and indie-flick grit. The movie amuses, terrifies, intrigues and fascinates at nearly every moment, infusing suspense into a story that everyone already knows the happy ending to. After seeing the ugly, painful way the sausage was made, I'll never watch Mary Poppins the same way again.

Starring Tom Hanks, Emma Thompson, Colin Farrell and Ruth Wilson. Written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith. Directed by John Lee Hancock. 125 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Book Review: The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The pacing is incredible, and the writing is forward-driven, unpretentious and dripping with suspense. The detail is necessary and sticky rather than superfluous, flower and forced. Fitzgerald makes Gatsby loom as a dynamic phantom, as full of enthusiasm and purpose as the pages themselves. This is an amazing book. One of my very favorites. A true inspiration, both emotionally and technically.


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Review: 12 Years a Slave

Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave is one of those movies you have to see, almost as though a penance or homework assignment. It's a work of magnificence that you need to have experienced if you want to expose yourself to the best that moviedom has to offer. You know that you are in for an uncomfortable experience from the get-go, and just have to deal with that reality, wince and deal.

Based on the 1853 Solomon Northup memoir about a free man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery, the film is out to reveal the grotesque realities of human subjugation. The grime, crushing workloads, barnyard-like living conditions and cruel mental and physical tortures. It's one thing to see an innocent man whipped to a bloody pulp by a sadistic master, but quite another to see the master force another slave to elicit the whipping. Forced participation in cruelty is an ongoing theme in the movie, which explores the social strata of the slave and the interwoven levels of injustice and abuse of power all the way down through the chain of misery.

Chiwetel Ejiofor thoroughly owns the film in the lead. I hate to be one of those guys who is so stunned by a performance then runs out and declares that he absolutely needs to win the Oscar, but I have to do it here. Sure, there are about 20 or 30 movies yet to come out that I need to see before I can say such a thing with any kind of authority, but Ejiofor is so amazing here that it's almost impossible to imagine anyone out-doing him. So either he will win the Oscar or he will be robbed.

Brad Pitt pops up in a minor but crucial role late in the film, and Paul Giamatti makes a mark as a slimy slave wholesaler, but the real work comes from Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender as a disgustingly vindictive master and Lupita Nyong'o as his unwilling mistress. All three performances are enthrallingly awards-caliber, and while it's trite to boil down artistic work to that level, I want them to be recognized so badly that I can't help myself.

The movie is well paced, devastating and eventually uplifting in its strange, harried ways, but it's not quite worthy of its performances. Like The Passion of the Christ, there's a disturbing obsession with flesh being ripped from the bone. The graphic cinematography leaves no detail to the imagination. Reaction shots accompanied by sounds, which McQueen uses sparingly, are more effective at showing the devastation of lashings and lynchings, but he sticks to the gory, incredibly realized details.

The film wants to hurt you, knows you are terrified of what it will show you, then shows you way more than you bargained for. Two critics I watched the film with stormed out in disgust, and I suspect many audiences will do just the same. It normally bothers me when people do that, but I can't really blame them. I just happen to be one of the people who was stuck to his chair, unable to move even if I wanted to.

Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Paul Giamatti and Sarah Paulson. Written by John Ridley, based on the Solomon Northup book. Directed by Steve McQueen. 113 minutes. Rated R.

Ruminations On The Direction Of New Girl

I think I'm ready for Nick and Jessica to end their relationship. We'll see if the writers can continue to explore the relationship for humor. They are doing a good job but it's getting strained.

I am at the point where I think they have accomplished brilliance and doubt it can stay this good, unless there is another dynamic shift. And there have been quite a few of those over the two-plus seasons. The writers have proven that they are not afraid to shake things up and change paradigms.

Usually, a sitcom will wear out the platonic romance thing for the whole run of the show, Who's the Boss style, or the four or whatever seasons of Pam-Jim in The Office.

I think they ended the Schmidt-Cece fling too early. He did not deserve her, so it's only fair. And in a way she did not deserve him, for nearly going through with the whole wedding charade just to please her family. But still, it hurts that he screwed up his second shot with her.

But he kind of has to be a doofus who messes everything up. A Schmidt who acts rationally and makes good choices is not a funny Schmidt.He has to be an overzealous wannabe bro, who never quite knows how to bro it up properly.

Nick, in the long run, has to be an untame-able manchild, and Jess has to be someone amazing for whom love never quite works out. Eternally nearly missing out on the romance she so badly desires.

One of the things I like about Nick-Jess is how screwed up and awkward their relationship is. If they can keep that going, and keep them always hanging by a thread and never blissfully at peace with their love, then the relationship can continue to be funny.

Just Posting This

So I don't go the entire month of September neglecting my poor little blog. I want to post more on here. I've got a ton of drafts that would take me a few seconds to massage into post form. Maybe next month. Or perhaps October 2014 at the latest.

Book Review: The Three Musketeers

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

A dull and laborious haul, even for a piece of classic literature based on a candy bar. I did appreciate the use of the terms "lackey," "antechamber" and "What the deuce?" but other than that I had a tough time staying interested. It was almost as tough to truck through as Moby-Dick or War and Peace. I can't fathom why the franchise is so popular.


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Review: Getaway

Get. Away.

That's what I kept saying to the movie, but it wouldn't budge. It just squatted there all stupidly on its big dumb screen, mocking me by refusing to obey.

How dare this silly action flick spoil the good name of the beloved 1994 Alec Baldwin-Kim Basinger sexcapade, which itself was a remake of the 1974 Steve McQueen film. The title, much like everything in the movie, makes no sense, has no bearing on reality, and simply expressed the urge you feel as you longingly eye the portal below the exit sign.

Ethan Hawke stars as a racecar driver whose wife, like so many women, has been up and stolen by Jon Voight. Voight calls Ethan up, tells him that he totally dug Before Midnight and Snow Falling on Cedars, then commands him to steal an armored, camera'd-up car and race it around town at his whims. Do it or his wife dies.

Voight is rather firm about his demands most of the time, but occasionally allows a little freelancing, such as when Selena Gomez tries to carjack Ethan and ends up an unintended passenger on the miseryride. At first, Voight is all KILL HER ETHAN YOU CAN'T LEAVE NO WITNESSES!. But soon he realizes that a female lead for Hawke to vibe off of will help pass the time so he lets her stay.

Gomez tries her best, but she has a little problem in that she was bitten by a vampire at age 11, and thus, despite her biological age of 452, cannot be taken seriously as an adult actress. When Ethan locks Selena in his car, there's a distinct stranger danger vibe going on that's quite off-putting.

More video game than movie, the idiocy has Ethan, in the name of saving the woman he loves, murder dozens upon dozens of people via vehicular manslaughter. You shake your head as his tonka toy of a vehicle survives fiery wreck after fiery wreck, avoiding the cops and ramming through buildings and doing whatever because it's touched a Super Mario Bros. star and cannot be killed.

It's too bad, because this mess could have been sort of fun like Crank, The Transporter 1 through 17 or pretty much any Jason Statham movie that all happen to be exactly the same. All Getaway needed to be mediocre instead of awful was Jason Statham, half a script and one fewer 452-year-old creepy Disney demon spawn.

The real getaway here was the one the filmmakers pulled on the studio, having heisted giant paychecks for minimal work or thought. While I respect the earnest con, I am sad to have suffered 90 minutes of punishment at the hands of the execrable results. Gag away, I did.

Starring Ethan Hawke, Selena Gomez, Jon Voight and Rebecca Budig. Written by Gregg Maxwell Parker and Sean Finegan. Directed by Courtney Solomon. 90 minutes. Rated PG-13.

5 Stupid Things People Can Go Ahead And Stop Saying

1. "Breakfast of champions." When the expression is known better than the source is, it leads morons to utter it about eating Doritos or pizza in the morning without knowing or caring where it comes from.

2. "Your tax dollars at work." Your brain cells are not at work though.

3. "If I had a nickel." If I had a hammer every time I heard someone say that, I would likely be in jail by now.

4. "Which begs the question." This has been misused so much that its misuse has become accepted usage. Even if the saying has backed its way into the realm of grammatical correctness, it still sounds moronically pretentious.

5. "___ o'clock." Beer o'clock, sex o'clock, nap o'clock, snack o'clock. How about shut the eff up o'clock?

Review: Planes

Looking like a lifeless, creativity-free cash-in on a tired franchise, Planes acts the part as well for the first hour or so. A barely-tweaked, character-for-character carbon copy of Cars, the narrative hurls itself into a bonheaded plot mechanic, then lazily skywrites its way to oblivion.

And then things get interesting.

The movie no longer sucks as it teeters into the third act. Much like Happy Feet, it ventures gleefully off to crazy town, taking on a severely dark tone. Refusing to play it safe any longer, it becomes genuinely dangerous and exciting. For the first time, it's not quite clear where things are going, and characters that seemed poorly written suddenly have some definition and edge.

There is much to hate about this movie. Far more than there is to love, in fact. But I appreciate the dangerous turn so much that the glee overtook the Dane Cook-baked misery that led up to that point. The movie works, almost in spite of itself, and though it predictably coasts toward a predictable ending, at least it manages to accomplish the task with flourish.

Still, though, I have to voice my hatred of some of the crap that came before. Ahem.

* The movie shows a televised plane race. These do not exist. How stupid.

* Just like the bizarre world of Cars, humans do not exist. They must have been all killed somehow. Cars do exist, but their only purpose is to serve as forklifts or as crowd filler in the stands.

* Dane Cook does an Owen Wilson impersonation as the main character, a crop duster who decides to compete against jet fighters and such to prove to be the fastest plane on earth. I hated everything about this character until he suddenly starts calling another pompous plane out on his BS. Then I only disliked him.

Starring the voices of Dane Cook, Stacy Keach, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and Brad Garrett. Written by Jefrey M. Howard. Directed by Klay Hall. 92 minutes. Rated G.