Author Archives: Jean-Paul

Anyone Remember These Commercials?

I was in the shower this morning when this randomly popped into my head:

I have no idea why that popped into my head.  It’s best not to ask questions of my brain.  It’s an incredibly creepy but effective ad.  That sent me spiraling into a Youtube vortex of Mormon commercials from the 80s.  Remember this one:

Or this one:

The last one is interesting because it features a black kid.  Why is that interesting?  Let’s just say the Mormons aren’t know for their racial sensitivity towards Blacks.

There are other commercials too, but the above are my favorite.  They’re simple, catchy, and tell an important moral lesson without being preachy aside from the memorable “From the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-Day Saints, the Mormons!” at the end.

Three-Fifths Of A Living Wage

I recently read that phrase on a blog post that I have since forgotten, but the phrase itself stayed with me.  That’s some really powerful imagery in a few words.

Obviously, living on minimum wage is not anything nearly as bad as slavery was, but the phrase isn’t meant to evoke the way minimum wage earners are treated physically but the way they are treated politically and socially and in that respect there is a lot of similarity.  Giving every person the ability to have a 40 hour work week which pays a living wage would go a long way towards equality.

I don’t have much else to add about the subject past what I’ve already written in my American Disdain for the Poor post.  The phrase just stuck with me so I thought I’d share.

LOL Of The Day

There has been a brouhaha over a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Capitol Building.  The ACLU has sued saying it’s a governmental establishment of a religion which directly contradicts the First Amendment.  It certainly does, but that’s not what’s funny.  What’s funny is what happened next.  A few other religions then requested to put their own monuments on the grounds.  This would certainly be a way for Oklahoma to skirt the First Amendment violation.  The only problem is that one of the first to apply for adding a new monument was the Church of Satan.  Well, they recently released a design proposal for said monument and it’s…well, take a look:

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The best part is you can sit on Satan’s lap!  BWAHAHAHAHA!  There is no way in hell (ha!) this gets approved, but oh, would it make the Oklahoma State Capitol Building a tourist attraction.

Goodbye Net Neutrality

Here’s an inventive way to screw over the Internet.  Take a service you put an arbitrary cap on, say cell phone data plans, and then offer companies an opportunity to bypass that cap by paying a nominal fee.  As if I needed another reason to hate AT$T.

I have to admit, it’s a wickedly inventive way to wedge your way into disbanding net neutrality.  Cell phone companies have long charged more for more use for minutes and texts and data plans, but now they’re offering customers the chance to use certain web sites that won’t count as going over their cap.  It’s a win-win situation for AT$T.  Customers get to use unlimited data for certain sites and AT$T gets more money from the companies that can afford to bribe them the extra costs.

AT$T gets away with that for a few years and then Comca$t can come in and complain that AT$T has a market advantage by being able to charge more for allowing companies unlimited access to their networks.  Soon, all of net neutrality is completely thrown away causing a massive shrinkage in the amount of commercially viable websites on the Internet.

The Beauty Of Winter

I couldn’t find my good camera so these were taken with my phone, but the still turned out pretty nice. Ice crystals forming on my window. It is amazing how delicate they look.

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The Day After A Party Is The Most Unhealthy Of All

Any successful party is sure to have lots of leftovers, some of which are bound to be perishable.  You have your chips and dips which no longer have a container.  There’s usually cakes and crackers left sitting out.  Salads and fruits that won’t last long.  All of them need to be eaten.  The day after.

So let it be known that on January 1st, 2014, I ate the following: 10 deviled eggs, half a bag of pita chips along with some sort of cheeze sauce, 4 slices of pretty disgusting cold pizza, a handful of pistachios, a slice of really stale cake before I threw the rest away, some mixed vegetables and their accompanying dip, 6 peppermint cremes, lots of pretzels, and more cookies than I can count.

Also, there were a couple of wee ones at the party near the beginning and an hour in, you’d swear that an all night rave had just occurred.  I should start a new tumblr, awesome party or 4 year olds, where people have to guess which was responsible for the mess left behind.

Book Review: 2013 Revue

I read a lot of books in 2013.  26 in all.  Here’s a recap with links to the reviews.

Jitterbug Perfume – 3/5 stars

Reamde – 4/5 stars

Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writings – 2/5 stars

Eating Animals – 3/5 stars

The Fourth Hand – 2/5 stars

The Book Thief – 5/5 stars

South of Broad – 3/5 stars

The Warmth of Other Suns – 5/5 stars

Stormfront – 2/5 stars

Stonemouth – 3/5 stars

Fool Moon – 2/5 stars

Old Man’s War – 4/5 stars

The Jungle Book – 4/5 stars

Stranger Things Happen – 2/5 stars

World War Z – 5/5 stars

Zoo City – 2/5 stars

A Princess of Mars – 4/5 stars

Pump Six and Other Stories – 4/5 stars

The Ghost Brigades – 4/5 stars

The Last Colony – 4/5 stars

Dubliners – 3/5 stars

Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression – 5/5 stars

Peter Pan – 5/5 stars

Mercury Falls – 4/5 stars

Mercury Rises – 3/5 stars

Mercury Rests – 2/5 stars

Movie Review: 2013 Revue

I saw a lot of movies in 2013.  50 in all.  Here’s a recap with links to the reviews.

Flight – 4/5 stars

Skyfall – 3/5 stars

Lincoln – 5/5 stars

Life of Pi – 5/5 stars

Killing Them Softly – 3/5 stars

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – 3/5 stars

Les Miserables – 2/5 stars

Django Unchained – 4/5 stars

Gangster Squad – 1/5 stars

Zero Dark Thirty – 4/5 stars

Broken City – 3/5 stars

Side Effects – 4/5 stars

A Good Day to Die Hard – 1/5 stars

Jack the Giant Slayer – 3/5 stars

Oz the Great and Powerful – 3/5 stars

Olympus Has Fallen – 4/5 stars

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone – ?/5 stars

G.I. Joe: Retaliation – 2/5 stars

42 – 3/5 stars

The Place Beyond the Pines – 3/5 stars

The Company You Keep – 3/5 stars

Ironman 3 – 3/5 stars

The Great Gatsby – 4/5 stars

Star Trek: Into Darkness – 4/5 stars

The Hangover 3 – 2/5 stars

Now You See Me – 3/5 stars

Man of Steel – 3/5 stars

World War Z – 2/5 stars

Pacific Rim – 1/5 or 4/5 stars

RED 2 – 3/5 stars

The Wolverine – 3/5 stars

2 Guns – 4/5 stars

Elysium – 1/5 stars

Kick-Ass 2 – 3/5 stars

The World’s End – 5/5 stars

Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters – 3/5 stars

This is the End – 3/5 stars

Prisoners – 3/5 stars

Rush – 4/5 stars

Gravity – 5/5 stars

Captain Philips – 4/5 stars

12 Years a Slave – 5/5 stars

The Counselor – 2/5 stars

Thor: The Dark World – 4/5 stars

Dallas Buyers Club – 4/5 stars

Catching Fire – 4/5 stars

Homefront – 2/5 stars

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug – 2/5 stars

American Hustle – 4/5 stars

Anchorman 2 – 2/5 stars

Movie Review: Anchorman 2

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom Line: A few good laughs.  Some great cameos.  That’s about it.

I don’t know why I went to see this movie given that I’ve never seen the first “Anchorman” movie and I find Will Ferrell movies to be pretty overrated.  The previews for it looked genuinely funny, though, so I gave it a shot.  I ended up with exactly what I’d expect from a Will Ferrell movie.  Not a lot.

Inasmuch as plot matters to a movie like this, Ron Burgandy (Will Ferrell) loses his job as a news anchor while his wife is promoted which causes them to break up.  After hitting rock bottom, he ends up getting a job at the first 24 hour news network where he quickly makes it a news rating juggernaut all while putting his family back together.  But if you expect the movie to make sense, you are in the wrong movie.

Given the audience reactions, this was the funniest movie ever made.  There were many guffaws and plenty of hearty laughter throughout, only I wasn’t the one laughing.  I believe I got more entertainment laughing at the people laughing at the movie than I did the movie itself.  That isn’t to say there weren’t any laughable moments.  There were enough laughs for an hour long movie, a few of which only I found funny.  Unfortunately, the movie was two hours long.

The final battle scene (yes, you read that right) has what is perhaps the most cameo appearances ever accomplished in a motion picture.  The scene is only clever because of the amount of cameos which includes Liam Neeson, Amy Pohler, Tina Fey, Jim Carrey, and John C. Riley just to name a few.  Oh, and the Minotaur which was the only funny part of the whole battle.

There was, surprisingly, some pretty good social commentary in the film.  Many of the jokes that hit were of the “this is what ‘news’ has become” variety.  That’s not nearly enough to save this overlong clunker whose idea of comedy is to throw as much at the wall as possible to see what sticks.  Comedy movies have gotten more and more lazy that way.