Sunday, February 23, 2014

Live Blogging: "The Walking Dead" - Season 4 ,Episode 11, "Claimed"


Wow, Seth Rogen is guest-starring as Sgt. Abe Ford. I knew there was life in action after Green Hornet for this man!



What's so funny about Michonne's shirt Carl? I don't get it?
Are they really having a conversation about soy milk? The writers saw no other way to awkwardly transition into Judith's absence?

Michonne: What's the plan Rick? - The question of the hour (five hours ago).

Does it really make sense to split up Rick & company at this point, after already experiencing how easy it is to get lost and separated? Rick sticks behind in the house for "rest." Rest is for the brainless dead (also known as the current Walking Dead show runner).

Michonne and Carl go to gather supplies and make more strained small-talk, this time about "crazy cheese." Carl states that he is just tired, which explains why this conversation is so underwhelming, I guess.

Oh wow, Michonne is now impersonating a walker with crazy cheese in her mouth. What the eff is happening right now? Who calls Cheese Whiz crazy cheese?

Crazy cheese transitions into Michonne stating that she had a three year old son. Are these segues forced or is it just me?

Now they're playing the clear the room-20 questions but one question at a time per room game. This should cover us into about season 7. It's a quarter in to the episode and absolutely nothing has happened.

Cut back to Rick, whose rest is disturbed by the voices of strangers. Rick hides under the bed as a stranger enters. I think I saw this exact scene in Taken except Rick is not on the phone with Liam Neeson.

There is a close up on a painting of bunnies on the wall in the room Michonne and Carl are clearing. Michonne says that her son's name was Andre Anthony.

Michonne is staring off into space at other random paintings on the wall, such as a sunflower, as Carl does all of the heavy lifting.

M adds about her son - "It happened after... after everything happened." - These lines are as artful as the bunnies and the sunflower.

If your back story is "not really a secret" than why have Carl drag it out of you M?

M picks up a jacked up painting of a girl... this raises her alarm and cues suspenseful music.

M stealthily walks in to the bathroom... then a kid's room and sighs. End suspenseful music and cue thoughtful music, as she peruses the room.

M enters an adjacent all pink room - suspenseful music returns. Bodies abound. The all pink is creepier.

Carl surprises M, who lies about a dead dog being in the room instead of a dead family.

Carl states that maybe baby Judith and Andre are together somewhere. M ushers Carl out of the room stating that it's almost noon - and half way through another horrendously dull episode.

Rick is still hiding under the bed. He listens to a fight by the strangers over the bed. Random stranger is murdered right in front of Rick's face. Guy on bed is a bad man who murders comrade over a bed.

Glenn was passed out all this time (much like I was), and is now awakening on Sgt. Abe's truck with Tara. Glenn finds out that it's been three hours since the truck passed by the zombie cheese bus. Glenn freaks out and stops the truck.

Sgt. Abe wants Glenn really bad and is willing to manhandle him to prove it. Sgt. Abe intros his company, including Rosita Espinosa (executing a trying too hard to look tough but also sexy pose) and scientist Eugene. They are on route to Washington D.C. because Eugene has the answer to resolving the zombie outbreak but he says he can't be more specific cause it's classified. How is anything classified anymore?

No one's picking up the phone anymore in DC but they still think it's a good idea to go there.

Glenn insists on leaving to find Maggie. He punches Sgt. Abe which seems like a bad idea to me. I'm distracted by Eugene's mullet. Sgt. and Glenn are too busy rolling around to notice walkers joining the party. 

Sgt. Abe is a good shot and has unlimited ammo, eliminating the intruding walkers. However, Eugene has accidentally shot up the gas tank of the truck and so they are now stranded.

Rick is still hiding under the bed but now slowly sliding out. Rick continues to hide in the hallway. The strangers sound like rapists. This scene is actually good. Rick stumbles into the bathroom and surprises a guy on the toilet. Rick chokes him out and gets his gun.

Cut to commercial break - Mindy Kaling will be a guest on Talking Dead. It's cool that Mindy Kaling watches the Walking Dead. 8 minutes left to the show.

Rick sneaks out a window and climbs down the roof. He sneaks off around the house and hides some more.

Sgt. Abe is trying to fix the truck as Army Barbie Rosie poses some more and sighs heavily. Rosie gratuitously bends down to pick up Glenn's photo of Maggie which the production assistant removed from his pocket and placed on the ground.

Sgt. Abe and co. join Glenn as he departs.

Rick is still hiding. A stranger is spitting and whistling on the porch. Rick sees Carl & M returning and is almost forced to make a move but is able to breakaway with Carl & M when the strangers are distracted by discovering the bodies in the house.

Tara concludes Sgt. Abe is a good person and we know what a great judge of character she is. This time I want to believe it too though because I heart redheads.

Rick & co. see the sign for "sanctuary" and follow the train tracks. I think they'd all be more skeptical by now but this is not addressed whatsoever. 

First half = awful. Last quarter = better, but none of the action we witness has anything to do with the long-term arc of the season - perhaps because there is none.

I realize this episode was Daryl-less. "Son of dick!" Maybe, that's okay because this meant an absence of his current companion, the always momentum-stalling Blondie.

Pokerstars Sunday Billion Tournament

I'm still annoyed to have blown through a million dollar buy-in about twenty spots away from placing in this tournament today. I'm too competitive to care that it was just play money.

Thursday, February 20, 2014

"The Walking Dead" - Season 4 ,Episode 10, "Inmates"

This show makes no effing sense.

The following post technically includes spoilers except there really isn't anything to spoil anymore.

The nonsense from last Sunday's episode included:

1) Daryl & Blondie are running from walkers in the opening scene followed by, later that evening, chilling next to a walker beacon campfire with not a care in the world. They don't know better by now? At least have one of the characters explain, "I don't even give an eff anymore about attracting a herd of walkers with this fire because I'm so effing cold and tired and Daryl, I need you to hold me right now."
By the way, Daryl should have run out of arrows a long time ago, but he looks so effing cool with that bow that I'll give this a pass.

2) Tyree & kids managed to escape the prison during the melee with bottled formula & diapers? How the eff have they had enough formula/milk to last Judith this long?!

3) A baby who doesn't start crying when a bottle is pulled from her mouth as she's feeding is more unbelievable to me than an apocalyptic zombie outbreak.

At least, this episode was more entertaining than the most bland Episode 9 mid-season premiere featuring one-note Michonne, the usual (but this time literally) unconscious Rick, and Carl needing some Kansas-rearing.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Eff American Idol

How effing cruel is it to narrow down contestants to 15 finalists only to have 10 perform on the live show? The remaining five were waiting around the entire two hours, ready to sing for no reason, only to have America (or whoever is still watching in America) witness the pain oozing from freshly crushed hopes as these poor souls were awkwardly herded before the judges who offered trite messages of certain future success at the close of the show.
Tonight was Male Performers night - so I imagine this happened last night for the Females also. Why are the contestants separated by gender anyway? Are we in effing grade school? Why should their genders factor in at all in a singing competition?

Effing Advertising Executives

I don't even blame the kids for these awful Halos commercials, which involve adults kowtowing to bratty child actors losing their shit over mandarins in the most lame representation of parenting ever:

http://halosfun.com/halos-videos/halos-mandarins-tv-ad-duckies/

Isn't this kid too effing old for floaties in the tub and rubber duckies?

My First Tweet


Water for Effing Diamonds?

"800 million people don't have access to clean drinking water. That’s 1 in 9 of us."

See more at: 
http://www.charitywater.org/

This charity pledges 100% of donations to the field to fund clean water projects. They suggest pledging your next birthday to raise funds:
http://www.charitywater.org/birthdays/


$770

average amount raised by a person’s birthday campaign.

38 people

get clean water as a result of an average birthday campaign.


Gabrielle Union's 8.5 carat engagement ring was reportedly valued at nearly $1 million. According to these stats, that's enough water for over 49,000 people. 

How many women would support engagement projects? 

Don't get me wrong - I effing love Gabrielle Union. But this shit is really sad: The Last Walk for Water

Eff Dr. Phil


*Picture courtesy of shrink4men.com

Here's a recap from the Dr. Phil website of his show which aired on Monday, February 17, "Sex Abuse and Murder: A Daughter's Repressed Memories or Lies?":
"Tracy says that about three years ago, disturbing memories from her childhood began to surface about sex abuse and murder — involving her mother, Donna, and now-deceased father, Alan. Tracy claims that she and her sister, Kelly, were molested by their father and grandfather, and alleges that Donna killed Kelly’s best friend and buried the girl in their backyard. Donna and Kelly vehemently deny the claims, calling Tracy “delusional.” Emotions run high when Tracy faces her family on Dr. Phil’s stage, including Donna, whom she hasn’t seen or spoken to in more than a year. Is Tracy remembering actual events, or are these fictionalized memories? Plus, don’t miss part two tomorrow, when Donna agrees to take a polygraph test to clear her name. Will Tracy get the answers she’s looking for?"
This show was continued on Tuesday, February 18, entitled "Is this Daughter Having False Memories: The Polygraph Results."

What I proceeded to view shocked and appalled me - not just because of Tracy's disturbing claims, but because of how poorly Dr. Phil handled the situation despite his purported expertise.

Dr. Phil committed several rank amateur mistakes when confronting Tracy about her past and her allegations:

1) Dr. Phil did not enter the "discussion" unbiased. Undoubtedly, he had already been advised by his team regarding their take on Tracy's credibility, which is fine, except he did a terrible job of hiding his contempt for her beliefs. Dr. Phil repeatedly mischaracterized Tracy's statements, exaggerating her claims by stating that she alleged multiple people were murdered and buried in her backyard, when she was actually saying that she was unsure of the victim's identity and therefore ran through multiple possibilities. Further sensationalizing the statements of a woman who admittedly is not wholly confident in her recollections serves to only frustrate the "fact-finding" mission Dr. Phil was supposedly undertaking. Also, he showed no recognition that lack of clarity on Tracy's part did not automatically negate all of her allegations. This leads me to my second point.

2) Dr. Phil seemed to espouse the idea that discrediting Tracy's claim that a body had been buried in her backyard would automatically negate all of her other claims. That's illogical. Proving any one of Tracy's memories to be unreliable does not in itself disprove all of her allegations. Even if Tracy is experiencing delusions, these delusions can themselves be byproducts of sexual abuse that in fact occurred, and not solely because of therapist hypnotic inducement and/or drug use, which was implied by a show expert.
While not all of Tracy's allegations may be credible or reliable, one false memory does not equal all false memories. Also, Dr. Phil and his expert repeatedly alluded to Tracy's drug use as a factor in discrediting her memories. While drug use may indeed have physiological consequences, it seems highly irresponsible and a dangerous, slippery slope to suggest that individuals who have used drugs can no longer reliably defend claims of childhood sexual abuse.

3) Dr. Phil proclaimed that he has not encountered even one instance of a legitimate repressed memory in all of his 30 years of practice. How is this a logically sound argument by itself? He did not offer to what degree his practice or expertise involved repressed memory patients - because that would be a critical component of the argument he is indirectly making. That's like me stating, I have not encountered one blue whale in all of my 30 years on this planet - what's the merit of that argument? Just because he hasn't encountered a specific event professionally or personally, does that necessarily impact its legitimacy or likelihood in this case? Wouldn't making that kind of overly broad proclamation already betray his position and bias at the outset of evaluating this situation?

4) Dr. Phil was combative and dismissive when Tracy attempted to distinguish her memories on the basis of those she was sure of and those she was less confident in, using air quotes to frame the latter. Why is this so preposterous given the trauma and psychological damage she would have endured were even a portion of her claims true?

5) Now, I'm well aware of Dr. Phil's "tough-tell it like it is" persona, but when he picks and chooses -poorly- whom to target with this heavy handed method, he comes off like a bully. At one point, he actually mimicked Tracy's emotional reaction, characterizing it as her "unplugging" and threatening to end the discussion. He similarly attacked Tracy's husband at the end of Part 2, which aired the next day, by saying "You want to get up on your hind legs and bark, find out what the hell you are talking about before you are enabling this woman." Was this really necessary or helpful?

6) Where was the tough doctor routine when Tracy's sister, Kelly, was caught in a blatant lie? At first, Kelly vehemently claimed that none of Tracy's recollections ever happened. However, when confronted by an inconsistency in this argument by Tracy's husband, Kelly admitted that she did witness their grandfather with his hands down Tracy's pants as a child, but "only that one time." Dr Phil seemed to have fallen asleep at the wheel here. Although he made a bare minimum acknowledgment that hands down the pants would "not be right," he totally failed to adequately handle Kelly's admission which exposed many issues. An adult's hands down a child's pants is not merely "not right," it's highly inappropriate, seems indicative of child abuse and supports at least one of Tracy's claims. How could this have been so readily dismissed!? Also, Kelly's credibility was immediately suspect. Never was it raised that Kelly may have had a motive to suppress the truth because corroborating Tracy's account would mean exposing Kelly's own victimization - something many victims will go out of their way to keep hidden, even by lying to cover it up.

7) Kelly's admission supported Tracy's account that she had been sexually molested by her grandfather. Dr. Phil should have immediately put Tracy's mother, Donna, on the spot about her take on the grandfather's behavior and relationship with her children. This line of questioning was never entered into! If Donna responded that she was not aware of any such misconduct, and Donna's supporter, Kelly, has already admittedly witnessed at least one incident, than how many other incidents could there have been? Dr. Phil never explored these signposts that could have possibly resulted in information supporting Tracy's allegations.

8) Tracy's brother's take on the situation was almost irrelevant. So what if he never witnessed anything? That doesn't mean abuse didn't take place.

9) The Polygraph Test -
"Dr. Phil explains that Donna previously took — and failed — a polygraph test that Tracy set up for her. He says that polygraph expert Jack Trimarco reviewed that test and found that it was flawed.... Dr. Phil says that Jack administered a second test to Donna, which had only one question, asked two different ways: "Did you ever bury a human body in the backyard?" and, "Did you bury a human body on your property?"
Why was the polygraph limited to only one question? What about anything else related to the actual sexual abuse Tracy claims she suffered at the hands of her grandfather and father, with her mother's knowledge, and even by her mother? Even if Tracy is delusional when it comes to whether a murder occurred in her house or whether a body was ever buried in the backyard, that doesn't automatically discount the possibility that she actually was the victim of sexual abuse in which her mother was complicit.

10) One of the most egregious events happened at the end of Part 2.
"I want to talk a little bit about this father, who has been accused, because of memories, of some really terrible things," Dr. Phil says. He reads from a letter sent to Tracy's late father, Alan, by the Department of the Navy in 1975, which says in part, "The caliber of your service, patriotism and deportment have been exemplary." It continues,"Your outstanding contributions to the military are a matter of record and reflect consistent recognition of loyal, efficient and exemplary service....There's someone who doesn't have any investment in this, speaking about this man, in terms of who he was and how he conducted himself," Dr. Phil says. "Since he's not here, I just wanted to throw that out on his behalf."
While Dr. Phil could have acknowledged that Alan was deceased and unable to defend himself against accusations by Tracy that were made only after his passing, reading accolades about Alan's miltary service has no bearing on whether he abused his children. Plenty of molesters have distinguished careers across all walks of life - teachers, priests, soldiers, cops, award-winning film directors, football coaches?! - this has zero connection to their likelihood of being pedophiles, and Dr. Phil completely confused the issues for his guests and his viewers when he ended on this note.

Dr. Phil clearly demonstrated his lack of training and expertise in handling sensitive issues such as child sexual abuse. While efforts to highlight the issue on a national platform could be admirable, I found this two-part series to be reckless, exploitative and victimizing of a woman who clearly needed help that Dr. Phil was not capable of providing.

Eff Justin Timberlake

... for so many reasons.

Timberfake tweeted this message after postponing his NY concert tonight:


If it killed you, then who the eff is performing on Friday?

Thank Goodness We're Not in Effing Kansas Anymore

"Kansas representative Gail Finney has proposed escalating existing spanking law to allow parents, teachers and caregivers to strike hard enough to leave a mark."


Escalating?! WHAT THE EFF?! 



Eff Walking Dead

*Picture courtesy memecrunch.com

So, basically, Walking Dead is like that hot girl you had totally been lusting over suddenly deciding she wants to eff you back, and even better, the effing exceeds all of your effing expectations.


Then, after an amazing honeymoon period of endless effing, where you actually even enjoy cuddling, she decides you two should get to know each other better. Surprisingly, you're actually down with that. The effing's been so good, you're actually interested in investing more time in to this relationship.

So, now in between getting effed sporadically, she wants to talk about her childhood, and her hopes and dreams, and her new coworkers, and her daily grind at the farm, and are they really trying to go there with Carol and Daryl cause she looks like his mom, and where the eff is Sophia, and are you even effing listening anymore?!

But great effing bears all things, believes all things, and so you stick with it through a couple of more seasons, because here and there, she sprinkles in a little action and excellent finales that keeps hope alive for that hard-core effing that initially bonded you.

Gradually, amidst all of Andrea's inane whining and long awaited demise, and a whole episode of pointless conversation with the Governor when Rick should have just effing shot him in the head - I mean, after everything you've been through Rick, why the eff would you just sit around fake negotiating with this villain who just sneak attacked you and your family!!? -it dawns on you that she wants you to change.

No longer are you good enough as the person she initially met and wanted to full-blown eff. Now, she is relentlessly nagging you, but at an incredibly slow-moving pace, about how you should be willing to listen to her more. She needs you to be less interested in fast-paced and regular effing. She wants you to just be there, present, through entire episodes where the plot is not moved forward at all and characters are engaging in behaviors that make no sense for them.

You question yourself - maybe there is some method that you don't yet understand to this plodding and irregular character development that leads to nowhere?

Could this lethargy ironically resuscitate the now-defunct effing and bring back the effing that once was, perhaps even effing better than before?

But slowly, painfully, you realize, revived zombie-ass effing is not as good as effing when you were both alive, before this thing that you once loved had sucked the life out of you. You effing find out that you're not alone -your girl has effed all of your friends and millions of strangers in the same way! Most of them linger, like you, haunted by the past of glory days long dead. Some are in complete denial, lying to themselves about being satisfied and holding out for a hopeless future. Those, with far better judgment, have long abandoned this whore. The brutal truth fully emerges - AMC, making mad advertising dollars pimping off your girl, is too short sighted to care about the long term consequences of jerking all of you around.

Plus, she's totally let herself go and you're not even sure you want to eff her anymore. But there's no one else to eff on Sunday nights in your life right now, and you're extremely loyal, even to the memories of a good lay. So now, you're basically effed unless something better comes along. You admit, this is partly your fault. If only you hadn't been so superficial in the first place. No-effing-thing lasts forever.