On Cola Marketing

Coke apparently made a "Happiness" Vending Machine. Terrific.



I'm guessing their slogan for the year is going to be "Coke: We'll make diabetics of you yet."

On Harry Potter

"Good moooorning…." Seriously, no one just appears like Batman in a scene except for
Batman. Props to actually showing a dude sneak up and pose funny.

I saw the newest Harry Potter movie the other night.

I used to hate the franchise, but–while I still vow never to read the books–I have to admit the movies are okay and I can appreciate the idea of letting your characters grow up and take on their own lives, even letting them end.

I used to think nothing could get worse than replacing badass vampires and werewolves and Jedi with unintelligible British ginger wizards, but now I find myself almost begging for more Harry Potter news to overshadow the literary and cinematic plague that is Twilight.

Currently, my beefs with HP are pretty small. Is it annoying that *SPOILERS IF LIKE ME YOU DO NOT READ THE BOOKS AND KNOW NOTHING BUT THE MOVIES* Moody dies off-camera? Yes, but only because in all other theater dying off-screen means you're probably still alive in secret. I will not fault a movie for being unconventional in how they kill beloved characters. A sudden upset is a better effect, anyway.

No, at this point all my beefs are that Harry Potter, as a franchise, has given up on the idea of making a coherent series of films.

But that's actually kind of interesting. I have to tip my hat to a production that knows it's audience knows all these extra bits so there's no need to include everything (so long as it's not a detriment to the story). Hell, the Star Wars prequels were bloody awful, but Star Wars nerds will tell you that's only because you don't understand the finer points of pan-galactic politics and trading bylaws in a representative democracy. (Shame on you.)

When did everyone suddenly develop the ability to teleport around the Harry Potter world? Why does everyone seem to be aware of an impending wedding beside us? Why isn't the general populace confused by the world's greatest teen hero suddenly being branded an outlaw?

Who cares? 90% of people seeing this movie know what's going to happen already. I've already read the Wikipedia entries twice over. Even I'm pretty familiar with the gist of it. At this point, they're making a movie for a collective of rabid fans and the trick is just not screwing up the big stuff. No one's going to notice if the narrative itself is flawed, because mostly everyone knows why already.

And frankly, it's kind of cool to see characters referring to things they are aware of that we're not. There's a wedding? Well, yeah, if you've read the book there's a wedding. And Bill Weasley shows up after being casually mentioned a few times. However, Harry and Ron have been friends for more than 6 movies years now, though we've only been privy to just over 15 hours of that. Granted, they were the most exciting 15 hours, but I'm pretty sure Harry and Ron had a few conversations in that time that didn't quite make the grade in that time.

"Oh, by the way, 'Arry, I have like a half-dozen siblings. You might see my older brothers this year. Oh, and my little sister is a few grades behind us, but that'll probably never come up again, I'd wager."

Yeah, that seems like night-one bunk talk to me.

The "So … yeah, I'm sort of boning your little sister," conversation will probably get cut later too, actually.


Addition: Best line of the entire movie? Ron Weasley: "Twilight's good too, though. Better even."

On Self-Abuse

Is it considered a bulimic disorder if you binge constantly and just forget to purge?

I've seriously hurt myself. It started with Thanksgiving day breakfast at 10, then full dinner at 2, then dessert and midnight grilled cheese.

Then the next day was a pile of fried things-which-shouldn't-typically-be-fried and beef with bacon and cheese.

And now today was Chinese buffet and miniature souffles with some kind of cream sauce.

Honestly, my stomach hates me and I can't even fault it, except I still need nutrients and I need it to take in some food every few hours but it's like, "Hey, man! Let's take it easy, alright? We don't want any funny business here. No heroes, alright, man?"

No, fuck you, stomach. Hypothalamus says I need food, so I need to put healthy things inside you. So why don't you man up and get on that so we can both be a lot happier.

I mean this afternoon is Chanukah dinner, guy. We need to be on our game by then.

On Long Island

Just to be a douche, I'd like to point out that parts of Suffolk
County are farther "Upstate" than parts of Westchester.

I drove back up from the center of Long Island yesterday, after a truly wonderful Thanksgiving.

The first half of the sentence is, I suppose, superfluous, as I am told no human creatures actually live on the outskirts of Long Island. Apparently, everybody's clumped together about 45 minutes away from each other in the center of the land form.

Irrespective, I drove a different route home than I usually would because I met an old college friend for lunch. (This is where I plug Bryan Haas.) Maybe it was just the sandwiches and the fried pickles and fried Twinkies and fried Oreos from a sandwich shop with subs so big you get to name one if you finish, but I think I've made an observation no soul has ever before noticed about Long Island.

There are a ton of Marshall's department stores. Also, a disproportionate number of Chuck E. Cheeses along the Sunrise Highway, which I might also add runs contrary to the pretty, lightly-trafficked roadway Straylight Run once lyrically painted. Frankly, Sunrise Highway is one of the worst, ugliest, busiest hellholes I have ever had to drive through. But thank God I didn't have to turn down "Hicksville Road."

Still, I must ask you, Long Island, why it was I had to pass the South Shore Infectious Disease Institute? Is one solitary infectious disease institute not enough to serve all the shores?

If it's like the Jersey Shore, then I completely understand and I'm sorry. You can have all the infectious disease institutes you want. In fact, take, like, seven. On me.

On Thanksgiving Dinner

My aunt has a habit of clearing people's plates before they've actually finished eating off them, which is kind of ridiculous for an Italian family. She'll still try to send food home with you, because you're too skinny, but God forbid you lay your fork down to grab a napkin or some salt. As soon as you make that lay-down, it's like throwing in the towel. No conversation, no good times, just eating. Everyone eating like ravenous boa constrictors, gulping down their meals in single portions by dislocating their jaws out of fear they might not come across further sustenance for weeks.

The only acceptable reasons to stop eating on Thanksgiving are:

1. Pass out,
2. Vomit (which only frees up room for dessert), and
3. Recently recovering from gastric bypass surgery.

None of this "I'm getting full" crap.

You can have my turkey when you've pried it from my cold, dead, cranberry sauce stained hands.

On Hand Turkeys

When I was in grade school we actually drew some hand turkeys a few times. Sure, some kids would free-hand theirs, and that was fine too, but we were allowed to do pretty much anything we wanted with them. Add little hats and belt-buckle shoes, what have you.

But I was an odd child.

I knew how feathers worked. They were layered, with different colors and patterns. No matter how anyone else wanted to draw theirs, I knew my turkey wasn't right, at least as far as turkeys went.

So I would sit there for hours, adding shorter and thinner feathers between the finger lines of my hand turkey, brown with dark outlines and little red arrowhead tips, until my turkey was some kind of overly rounded, misshapen turkey-ball.

I'm sure Purdue farms would love to get their hands on my turkey hands, genetic modification permitting.

On Penile Enlargement

There really is an app for everything. Or at least there was, until Apple pulled it for being a load of crap. Still, a Penis Enlargement Hypnosis App is pretty high up on lists for both "utter horse shit" and "…okay, maybe I'll buy it now that no one is looking."

Seriously, go ahead and listen to some of the audio in that. It's appalling. It's just called Penis Enlargement, and it's some pretty piano music with some guy talking over it telling you you've got big, growing junk and he's frankly not very convincing. Plus, it probably doesn't even use binaural audio.

Dudes, the only way to grow your junk permanently and effectively is called jelqing and it's best reserved to liberally regulated games of Scrabble. If you're curious, it's stretching your manhood until the tiny fibers inside it basically tear and then reform. It's the same thing you do building muscle except, you know, spongy material that isn't designed to to that and can break horribly if you try this and do it wrong.

But yeah, if you don't mind hurting your dick, by all means, add that extra 1/4 inch.