For relaxing times, make it Open Thread time.
I promise this is the last time we’ll talk about Lil Wayne for a while: Lil Wayne released from prison yesterday! Young Money Records is throwing a massive party for him on Sunday at King of Spades in Miami. Stay tuned to Overthinking It for Mark Lee’s coverage of this ballin’ event.
Yo, where the Leezy at? I gotta holler at my boy.
New movies out today: Megamind looks pretty fun. 127 Hours supposedly has viewers fainting and vomiting from the intensity of its injury scenes, while Due Date has viewers passing out and vomiting from the tepidness of its formulaic plot.
Great, fart gags and sassy stereotypes HURRRDDDRRGGHHHK
And finally, fans of the Sci-Fi Channel’s recently canceled BSG spin-off Caprica have mounted a campaign to save the show by mailing massive amounts of apples to the studio. I respect your dedication, Caprica fans. But if the network that gave Sharktopus a chance has no room for a show, where else is it supposed to live?
Will Lil Wayne take advantage of the cult of personality that sprang up around him while he was in prison, leading the colonists in a revolt against Zach Galifianakis? Or is there something we missed? Sound off in the comments, for this is your … Open Thread.
Just wanted to point out that this week’s South Park has a few subtle references to “My Neighbor Totoro.” Specially, Cartman befriends the evil Lovecraft monster Cuthulu by climbing on its belly and being adorable. Then at the end of the episode, there’s a song that’s clearly mocking the Totoro end credits. Love it.
Wow, that’s a deep cut. “My Neighbor Totoro” is a classic, of course, but in the Venn diagram of people who watch “South Park” and people who have seen “My Neighbor Totoro,” the intersection of those two groups can’t be that big.
Which reminds me: we should do some Overthinking of Studio Ghibli movies. Have you guys seen “Porco Rosso”? Crazy heavy stuff.
Porco Rosso is great.
The picture you chose for Lil Wayne has this look I’ve seen before in my high school students. It’s the “I’m going to smile because I have to, but really I hate what you are saying / doing.” In looking up more pictures of Lil Wayne, it appears this expression is as permanent as his tattoos.
A lot(?) of actors get into drugs. Some die, some fade out, some come through on the other side (Drew Barrymore, Robert Downey Jr.). I wonder among the current crop of druggies who is going to come out the other side. Sheen apparently can do and be his character in 2 1/2 men in his sleep. In pro sports, you get tested and suspended. Is it OK in Hollywood because performance is not related specifically to drug use?
I think it is okay in Hollywood to have a substance abuse problem because, unfortunately, many of the top comics/actors are better when they are on pot/cocaine. Greg Giraldo, Mitch Hedberg, Sam Kinison and Bill Hicks were all a lot better comics when on drugs (Ever hear Bill Hicks before cocaine – not horrible but not great either). Chevy Chase was good before he popped pills, but then when he started popping was fantastic. When he quit – his career went on life support (An aside – did anyone see him take some medicine yesterday on Community which made him see Andy Dick. I don’t know how I felt about that). The Beatles were great, but after meeting ‘Dr’ Robert Fraser – they transformed music.
Basically – drugs are used as a ‘performance enhancer’. In sports, they are frowned upon because it is a competition and it is seen as an unfair advantage. In entertainment, if the performer is enhanced, no one looses as in sports.
Man – I sound like a druggie with that, but I’ve honestly never done an illegal drug in my life.
As far as your original postulate, it is hard to see who will make it to the other side because the ones who hide it the best will probably the ones to get over it. Zach Braff had a huge drug problem after the first season on Scrubs, but we didn’t hear about it till he recovered. Lindsey Lohan, who can’t hide it, may be the next River Phoenix . . . because she can’t hide it.
Just my crazy theories.
“Young Money Records is throwing a massive party for him on Sunday at King of Spades in Miami. Stay tuned to Overthinking It for Mark Lee’s coverage of this ballin’ event.”
Lat month it was a press pass to Comic-Con. Now, it’s Lil’ Wayne’s release party.
I’m moving up in the world!
Have you seen Due Date? If not, it isn’t terribly fair to call it tepid or to proclaim it has a formulaic plot. Besides, there are plenty of movies with “formulaic plots” that are quite good thanks to fine scripts and good acting and what have you.
Anywho, at the website The Simpsons Archive they have a bunch of academic papers on, naturally, The Simpsons. Granted, a paper I wrote a couple of years ago has now joined the ranks, but if you are a fan of The Simpsons and of academic papers, there’s some good reading on there. Here’s the link: http://www.snpp.com/misc.html
mcneil and belinkie here in the city of brotherly love. After congratulating blinks on his youtube success, he pointed out that Justin Bieber has the #1 video of all time. We just watched it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kffacxfA7G4
Can anyone explain this to us? The video is pretty pedestrian – its no OK Go. Is the this the greatest Bieber song? As belinkie just put it, “this is a song that could only be stupider if it were longer.”
Also, what’s Ludacris’s motivation here? Does he want to expand his fan base among teenage girls? Does he really respect Bieber as an artist? The latter seems incredible, but hell, Dr. Dre produced two songs for Bieber’s next album.
We’re old and confused. What the hell is going on?
Re: Luda and Bieber, I’ll quote DJ Shadow’s classic track “Why Hip Hop Sucks In ’96”:
Somehow I doubt that Chris Bridges believes that parents who buy their eleven year old daughter a Justin Bieber album will buy the same daughter a Ludacris album. I’m guessing he negotiated with Bieber’s people for a good chunk of the royalties. As he said back on his third album: “All these rappers wanna know what I’m getting for sixteens? Try eighty. Want a discount? Blow it out your ass.”
I’m very disappointed about Caprica – it’s a problem with viewer numbers – it’s far from casual viewing, being totally serial and involving a certain investment in BSG as well. It may be the webseries Blood and Chrome which is much more viewer friendly will get more attention and support now. But it suggests that on a network less reliant on numbers (i.e. a subscription one/a smaller one, if such a thing exists) we might have seen it persist. A lot of the complaints on the Facebook fan-page refer to SyFy showing Wrestling as a mark that it no longer has a mandate as a Sci-Fi channel and has got its priorities completely wrong, but given I’m watching in the UK through ‘channels’ I can’t say if this is accurate or just reactionary.