Just another Saturday in Long Beach.

The huge, over-exposed ass cheeks in Brazil. The roller skating weight-lifters wearing spandex in LA. The freaks (both professional and in the general population) wandering Coney Island. For whatever reason, public beaches and boardwalks have always been places where the oddest swatches of humanity congregate.

Take my hometown, for instance. Long Beach, NY. The City By The Sea. What wonders might one see if they decided to stroll up and down the 2.2 mile boardwalk on a Saturday morning? Well...

It all started, as many beach excursions do, with our friend, Metal Detector Guy.


This modern day 49er looks to find his fortune by mining through Chipwich wrappers and seagull shit hoping to find the gold plated bracelet that some guy named "Avi" dropped while playing Kadima with his hairy-backed cousin.

Like many boardwalks, the Long Beach boardwalk has a lane dedicated for bicyclists. In this lane, you'll see all sorts of sights, like tandem bikes and bikes dragging little wheeled pup tents filed with kids and seated bikes and hand-pedaled bikes and on and on. Maybe even the occasional unicycle. And, most notably, you will always see one or more guy like this: Unnecessarily Tall Bicycle Guy.


That's right. Nothing screams please notice me any louder than riding a bike with a seat 3 feet higher than normal for no practical reason whatsoever. And just because you like to get high doesn't mean your bike has to be that way too. How do I know he likes to get high? Well, he's riding that bike. Barefoot and shirtless. And has a beard that extends from his neck and not his face. And he has a pale, long-haired friend who rides next to him on a similar bike. And then they pull over and meet their other friends and play hackey sack on the boardwalk. The only way I'd be more sure was if he was hanging out with Snoop Dogg and Ricky Williams while licking a shirt worn by Woody Harrelson.

As I progressed further towards the west end of Long Beach, I noticed a fairly professional sporting area set up on the beach. Was it the AVP beach volleyball tour? Nope, that's in July and August. Was it Budweiser Volleyball Invitational? No, that's still a few weeks away. This was a less familiar yet all-too-common site. This was a group of We Act Like We Think This Sport Will Take Off But We Know It Will Never Go Anywhere Guys.


You see, late last summer, the "Beach Tennis USA" folks started loudly hyping their awesome new sport to the Long Beach crowd. They had the biggest names in their sport (I don't even have a joke for this. The biggest names in Beach Tennis? Really? Just think of something clever and chuckle to yourself) appear and hold a big exhibition match. They played music, gave away prizes, demonstrated the sport and gave individual clinics. And after all that, I could still only think of the words of the immortal Homer J. Simpson.
"They were the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked"

The last oddity that caught my eye on Saturday was this:


No matter how hard I thought about it, I could not for the life of me figure out how or why a desktop PC monitor would end up in a public trash can on a beachside boardwalk. Someone had to consciously decide to take a non-functioning monitor with them from their apartment, walk or drive to the Long Beach area, climb up an entrance ramp and cross to the seaward side of the boardwalk to deposit said monitor in the trash. WTF?

Anyway, that's just some of the weirdness you might enjoy spending a day in my hood. Unfortunately, I was unable to discreetly photograph the young woman who thought it was best to jog the boardwalk in a jogging bra and tight silver metallic short shorts. Jogger stripper? Stripper jogger? I'm still trying to do the math on how you can slip a twenty into the pants of someone as they run by.

My slow and steady march towards insanity.

Someday, many, many years from now, when I lie on my deathbed hooked up to tubes and monitors, I will use my last breath to eke out a "Citizen Kane"-esque final phrase. And when everyone is sitting around wondering what the hell "9MPH" means, this blog posting from the year 2009 will be the answer.


I know it's not a big deal, but it's the little things that will ultimately lead me into a haze of alzheimers, schizophrenia and dementia. Things like trying to figure out why in the world this sign ever needed to be made (and in turn, why the rule it enforces is needed as well). Somewhere there's a sign shop where hundreds of "10MPH" signs are already produced and waiting to be sold and hung. But for some reason, the Tropicana Resort and Casino in Atlantic City (home of New Jersey's most mediocre Hooters franchise) feels the need to enforce a 9 mile per hour speed limit in their parking garage, and to place a sign reminding us of it at every possible turn. Really? Would gunning it up to 10 mph suddenly put life and limb in mortal danger? Is 9 scientifically proven to be the safe speed for degenerate gamblers looking to park their Kias and Saturns?

Whatever, it's just a stupid sign. But it bugged the living piss out of me.

When "creativity" backfires.

People, if you're gonna be the desperate one who brings a love poster to American Idol, at least let someone take a look at it before you leave home. You know, just to make sure your use of hearts as the letter "O" doesn't create an unfortunate mis-read.

Sublime Nonsense Returns!

What can break me out of my long blog-less slump? In a word...GOOBY.

First off, allow me to apologize for not posting in a while. Things have been hectic and I got lazy. Then again, things are always hectic and I'm always lazy, so...my bad.

Anyway, why am I back now? Here's why. My boss recently brought to my attention a movie trailer he found online. The movie, based on title and premise alone, seems innocuous enough. Then I watched the trailer. Oh. My. God. Or, better yet, WHAT. THE. FUCK?!?

But before I continue, please watch the following video. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present..."Gooby."

(Please see the receptionist on your way out for a refund on the 1:55 of your life I just sucked away.)

The sheer terribleness of this trailer hurts me in my soul. It makes me weep as I fall asleep each night. It makes my spleen hurt. I'm offended by the very notion that somewhere a script was written, liked, approved, green lit and given a budget. That they hired Eugene Levy offends me (and I actually like him, and even thought he deserved an Oscar nod for A Mighty Wind). That Robbie Coltrane attached himself to this project offends me (forever tarnishing his great work in the Harry Potter series, The Black Adder, and of course, the immortal "Let it Ride"). And the dude from J.A.G.? What, was D.B. Sweeney unavailable? Did French Stewart have a prior commitment? They may as well have googled "D-List Jackoffs" and cast the first few names that came up. To sum up...me = offended.

But simply agreeing that this all looks terrible is not enough. I think we genuinely need to dissect just why this may be the most egregiously noxious trailer ever committed to celluloid (a title previously held by the first "Inspector Gadget.")

Let's start at the top. The first thing we see is the Monterrey Media logo. No one has ever heard of Monterrey Media. The parents of the guys who founded the company probably have no clue who they are. And the art card is awful. It's made out of ripped pieces of paper and a cheesy font. An auspicious start, to say the least.


Next we see a logo for Coneybeare Stories Inc. It's never a good sign when the unknown director of a movie needs his own production company to help release it. In other words, the companies in Hollywood with actual talented people empowered to make decisions all said, "no thanks."

As the actual trailer begins, we hear the voiceover, and now I know what the guy who narrated my 7th grade health videos is doing with his life. I mean, I know Don LaFontaine is dead, but he still could have done better than this hack. Trailers, even ones for sweet family movies, need a voice like Don, or Peter Cullen, or someone who has gravitas. This guy sounds more llike he has a spastic colon. Anyway...moving on.

At this point we get to the heart of the matter, as we meet "the most ferocious monster of all," Gooby. Immediately, we see that Gooby looks like the retarded cousin of John Candy's "Barf" character from Spaceballs. If Fozzy Bear had a baby with Wicket the Ewok, we'd have Gooby. We are also treated to a reaction shot from the lead boy character that will forever go down as proof that you can recognize terrible acting in a single frame.


Congratulations, young man. Your acting career is officially over. If this were the 80's, you'd already be relegated to mysterious sleepovers at Michael Jackson's ranch.

Next, we see that the movie was honored at two film festivals. Obviously, they are prestigious, because they put palm fronds on either side of the award. They reserve those things for Cannes, and Tribeca, and...Worldfest-Houston? Wow. I mean very very very wow. That is weak. Why not put up the "Saskatoon Public Library Medal of Watchability" or "Mrs. Thurston's Second Grade Class' 8th Favorite Movie of 2009."

The next few scenes are the obligatory awful music accompanying generic scenes of the kid and his plushy running and slide and falling and hiding. And Eugene F-ing Levy with an Wolverine haircut and bowtie. Aaaaaaannnnd....speechless. I honestly have no clue what to say to that. (Cue tear rolling down my cheek like an Indian watching someone litter.) When Levy slips at the 1:03 mark and whatever was in his hand flies up into the air, I briefly contemplated suicide.

Then the reviews start to pop up. The first thing you notice os that they are in Comic Sans, a font typically reserved for people who want the most generically playful typeface imaginable. When I was in ad school, and I was a copywriter art directing my own ads, even I knew not to use something so unimaginatively lame. Of course, when you are posting reviews from such reputable sources as "VideoViews.org," "The Dove Foundation" and "NAMBLAonFILM.com," a hack font is appropriate. (P.S. one of those reviewer names is fake, you guess which one.)

And finally, we are greeted with a title card that, as one would expect, is as cloyingly sickly sweet and horrendously unappealing as every second of the trailer that preceded it. All told, it was simply hideous. A travesty of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of a sham.

But I always hate it when people critique my work but offer nothing constructive or helpful. Never let it be said that I am one who criticizes without offering a positive suggestion. Recast the title role. Reshoot the movie. And you don't need a list of potential names to play Gooby. Hell, you don't even need one name. All you need is one letter. "T."


There. Now THAT's a Gooby I'd pay to see.

Well, that's my post. It certainly does feel good to be back blogging again. Nothing makes me feel better than spending 45 minutes writing about how much I regret wasting 2 minutes of my life on a bad trailer. Look out Interwebs, I'm back!

You can never be too safe...

Sent to me via email. Thanks, Blitz.