Savvy Granny - How my mom knows more than I do

While I was away in London, my mother grew up.

 She’s a 71 year-old Margaret Thatcher matriarch of the Portuguese community within Cape Town’s Northern Suburbs, with fellow residents from as far afield as Paarl travelling down to get their age-old sequin dresses hemmed and stitched by her soft and wrinkled yet experienced hands. She doesn’t quite skateboard down steep hills or listen to thrash metal locked away in her bedroom but, like a teenager squabbling to her parents for the next Nokia, she seeks out new experiences with youthful aplomb.
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Movie Trailer Watch - July edition

Wow, two blog posts in one day. Peculiar, no?

Anyway, so I've been thinking about which movies to look forward to in the new year or next, and thinking that I'd like for people to get to know me more, I thought that not only do I forward through recommendations of trailers I like, but also what I think of them.

So...tada.

Colin Farrell takes over the remake reins from Arnie in what should be August's most talked-about science fiction reworking since Metropolis director Fritz Lang thought, "Wow, wouldn't a typewriter look cool in gold with boobs?"

After the mind-warping process instigated by a TMZ-inspired John Cho in awful but futuristic peroxide hair, Douglas Quaid is bestowed with lightning reflexes and quick-trigger tenacities while being assisted convolutedly by Jessica Biel driving a floating car, keeping the setting in line with all of Phillip K. Dick's endless supplies of short stories.

The fact that Kate Beckinsale fills Sharon Stone's role as the semi-demon wife wishing ill-will on his person makes the whole two-minute affair avoiding yet another episode of How I Met Your Mother on my family's television extremely appealing and gives the "share this on Facebook" factor extremely high.

Craigslist Joe rides the Morgan Spurlock wave with a new, possibly bland, protagonist (albeit a guy that seems like he's condoms with all three girlfriends in his life, at least) as he tries to pinpoint how social media broke down America's sense of community by living completely off Craigslist, evil competitor to antipodean powerhouse Gumtree, for one month.

And by living off, I mean have no contact with friends or family, travelling through America asking for room and board in exchange for potential users seeking favours of any kind. In one scene, <insert cute voice> our hero <close cute voice> helps a middle-aged woman addicted to hoarding various goods with organising her hapless little junk empire, so that he may have a piece of bread and a floor to sleep on.

I can't help but feel jealous from this ultra-scary but über-cool attempt (ok, it's not that scary if he had a camera crew following him everywhere) at travelling hassle-free of job-searching and paying tax, while establishing the fundamental flaw of America's sociological make-up through the beginning of the 21st Century. One brief positive note: he loses a lot of weight along the way.

Cue Hollywood sabbatical diet treatment?

There are few men in this that can do what they like and actually can claim, with absolute sincerity, that they bring joy to the world, with everyone else agreeing with those people AND without fear of violent reprisal. That excludes President al-Assad of Syria (in fact, all presidents), Lord Sebastian Coe of the London Olympics, the South African Consulat representative in London that was an absolute bastard towards me, and a Somalian child soldier.

Who is included is Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane, and for that sir, I thank you...graciously, for sending us Ted, his first motion picture that nearly almost avoided animation whatsoever if it didn't include an animated teddy bear that humps a supermarket scan machine to impress a pretty girl.

Alongside Mark Wahlberg, sporting incredible magical powers as a little boy that wills his plush toy into existence, Ted grows up fuelled by an overactive sex-drive and a penchant for bong-smoking afternoons on the couch. But like any dirty-talking best friend, he gets ousted from the shared apartment by Mark's needy girlfriend Mila Kunis, voice of the ever-denied, ever-hated and totally diatribed Meg Griffin.

I want to see this wonderful movie made by the world's luckiest man (he missed boarding one of the 9/11 planes while en-route to pitch Family Guy to Fox) and, being stuck here in South Africa, I can't wait for it to reach our boxed-in shores.

Love Star Trek much?

There are few subjects I can usually relate to people about. Sports are as functional to me as sex, I just don't know the people performing in both. Even an ex-girlfriend successfully stood me up when I tried to open up the fuel-tank for a van I hired to move home.

But Star Trek...hold onto your ridges, Mister Worf.

A comedian I joyously got to meet last night was held accountable for his days playing on the PC videogame Star Trek Online, and I saw how he backed up like he was apologising for indulging in the practise, that it diminished his deserving cool factor.

I say to thee, new friend...never be ashamed.

All of us on this planet fly through this life so quickly, so fleetingly, and I bet you ten bucks that the majority don't really place enough passion into something they love. Yes, there's music, movies, other people, politics, endangerments to things they care about like the environment, social inequalities...

And for a select few, creative fiction of unimportance to the grand scheme of things that bring joy to the few that know nothing else.

But for me, I look towards the future of the human race, and Star Trek has always been the definitive representation of how we as a species can evolve into something more, devoid of aspects that divide us like territory, currency, violence and prejudice. As a television series though, it was the ultimate situational experiment set in the vacuum of space, placing the human condition in all its forms in a futuristic setting that explored facets we tend to overlook in ourselves in this modern agenda.

Furthermore...who wouldn't want to captain a starship, with warp drive and phasers?

And, finally empowered with social commentary that places me into a pigeon-hole that I am fully capable of decorating with fictional innuendo and passion in my voice remarked, "There's nothing quite like seeing your ship that you've set up YOURSELF floating with fantastic speed through the stars. And I'm proud to proclaim myself commander of the best starship a young, stupid Trekkie can ever have, the USS Fantastic."

At least one comedian laughed. :)

JohnnyCranko.com
IAmComic.co.za

 

Going Offline - Day 23: All this open space...

So what has happened since my deep and tearful goodbye from the virtuous existence of cyber-stalking my nephews and former loves?

Nothing...nothing's happened.

But I can tell you I feel less than interested about returning to the site on a regular basis to read about what sort of pancake mc-enema someone's had two weeks ago on the coast of Costa Da Whateva with their moronic brood of inter-spacial Martian children hanging from their steel-girdered nipples conversing in an unintelligible language consisting of clicks and farts.

Seriously, I am.

Yesterday, you may not believe this...but as I walked outside the place I live in, I actually...ok, you'll be shocked...I, totally, said hello to a stranger. Would you believe that, a complete stranger, someone I had never met, outside my abode, my safe place previously reserved by me to sit in front of my Dell screen clicking on status updates while eating cookies (not biscuits)...and I said yes to them.

I may be writing this sarcastically, but in reality I was more concerned now with what someone has going on around them at that very moment, which are the real moments we keep losing out on every day sitting in front of our electronic communications devices. I betcha Kirk didn't envisage that when we was strutting through the decks of the Enterprise trying to out-strut Spock.

Which is f***ing insane...Spock's struts are legendary, even his people turn an eyebrow.

Anyway, I'm glad I'm not on there. And so far, I'm enjoying it. Here's some recommendations:

• www.tedisreal.com - A funny movie coming out in August with Mark Walhberg and Mila Kunis, and a VERY rude teddy-bear voiced by Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane
• Game of Thrones is back for a second season, and the first two episodes have been gloriously evil and deliciously dirty with a hint of medieval fantasy. Find it.
• Community is midway on it's third season with a turbulent war in the making between Troy and Abed. You can't miss the best friendship group I've never been in myself, duh!
• Pancakes....just simply pancakes, there's not enough of 'em and there's nowhere enough around me to enjoy.

Peace out, lovely amigos, I'm working tonight at the Painted Grin show in Benny's Bar, come down and enjoy!

Going Offline - Day 13: 24 Hour Limits

So, as I've been reactivating and deactivating my account, stating that I spend too much time on Facebook, the lovely feature it imposes on you is to set a 24 hour wait limit every time you log in to reactivate.

In other words, once you deactivate, you return to reactivate and THEN it says you have to wait a full day.

This is marvelous.

Not only do I ensure that no spammers keep sending me crappy mails telling me to join their group OR come to their show, but now I can literally limit the time I spend on the site itself.

It's a mental hospital locking you up in a cell for drug abuse, and you're left screaming.

It's also...not working, as I'm now spending time on Twitter.

See? Addictive personalities need an addiction to cling on to, may it be substances (alcohol, cigarettes, drugs) or other forms of deprecation that hurts themselves or others...perhaps I can developer a sexual addiction where I just stop caring about rejection, approach every fanny I fall on and then tell them to bugger off.

Thankfully, my newest ones are Twitter, performing comedy shows and watching Star Trek. I swear, if I'm at least funny, I think I can do well being a loser twat with a currently-shaved making people giggle at my insecurities.

Have a happy and joyous weekend, people, and I'll see you on Twitter (check the panel on the right for details on Twitter and gigs)

Bad photoshopping

Her face reminds me of Murphy from "Robocop", it's particularly yuck.