So Sad to Say Goodbye

Time for another exciting edition of The Bender, and sadly this will probably be the last time that I get to talk about little Sanjaya Malakar. Sanjaya, the boy who single-handedly saved this season of American Idol. He was like William Hung, Kelly Pickler, Kevin Covais and Justin Guarini all rolled into one (ok, maybe not Kelly Pickler.) Every week he would bring something new and exciting to the show, mostly through his hair styles, but also with his poor singing and his ability to take in Simon's attacks without losing his innocence. The aforementioned Covais was doing great last year until he decided to fight back, as if he actually thought his singing warranted his presence on the show. Anyway, I don;t know if I'll watch this week's Idol, between their constant patting of themselves on the back over the idea that they might give a little something to the less fortunate and with Sanjaya out of the picture I may need to take this week off. I actually felt really bad for Sanjaya when he got voted off, he seemed so crushed, it just reminded me that he's only seventeen. When I was seventeen I couldn;t have possibly handled the beating that he's been taking publicly, he even was the victim of a very unfunny parody on Saturday Night Live a couple weeks back. I'm all for comedy, but when it isn;t even that funny you might as well give the kid a break.

Before I get off the subject of American Idol, I want to say that I must be getting very cynical in my old age. I can;t help but view this whole Idols gives back as a giant co-opting of the people in need. I feel like the People at American Idol are going to make a ton of money for themselves while trumpeting the nice chunk of change that they're donating to young people in need both in Africa and in The US. Granted, this money wouldn't be going to these people who definitely need the help, but let us not forget the impetus for this show is not completely altruistic. At the very least they are making the American Idol brand more profitable, but more than likely they will profit off this individual act of "charity" as well. I'm tired in general of these people who have more money than they could spend in ten lifetimes (and that's taking into account inflation) but they can't stop kissing their own asses for making a large donation. By the way I wanted to congratulate Oprah for fully funding one school in Africa. I may have given away a larger portion of my income the time I gave Mr. Butch my change outside of Store 24 last month.

On a totally unrelated note, I watched the Jonestown documentary on PBS last week, and it was an incredible story. I've never been a fan of documentaries, I've always suspected that it was because I'm not very bright, but anyway, this may have been the most enthralling hour and a half of television watching I ever experienced. While many may construe that as faint praise but remember that I've watched every episode of Lost the last three years, so I take my television very seriously. So I guess this is my recommendation for the week, put that documentary on top of your Netflix queue. I might try to get the rights to this story so I can turn it into an Oscar winning flick, I know I could get Kevin Spacey to play Jim Jones in hope of winning an Oscar, this is why I should be in the movie business, there's a fortune to be made here. But I guess the studios would rather re-make Rear Window or put out crap like Vacancy.

One last note about new movies, it seems the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie is turning out to be a huge flop. This is terrible news, not because I'm necessarily a huge fan of the show, but this definitely means it'll harder to get a full movie of The Venture Bros. Which would be a great choice for the next Cartoon Network show to make it to the theaters. I sometimes feel like ATHF has trouble filling up a full 15 minute show without boring me, so I don;t know who thought it would make a good movie, but Venture Brothers has continuing plot lines that almost fill out a movie in its current half hour format. While we're on the subject, go out and buy the second season of Venture Bros. It just come out on DVD this week. So that's my second DVD recommendation for this week, I might have a legitimite DVD addiction going on, I've spent the last week trying to figure out if I lost my copy of Ordinary People or if I just never bought one, this has to be some sort of sign.

Wanted to comment on a couple sports stories from the last week. First, Drew Bledsoe retired, he never really got his due here in the Boston area. He was a damn good quarterback for the Patriots for a nine years, and aside from Tom Brady he was the most important player in franchise history. Bledsoe isn't quite up to Hall of Fame standards, although now that Warren Moon is in there, he wouldn't be the worst QB to be in. Hopefully the Pats fans will finally appreciate him for all that he did, if not he'll just have to go home and roll around in his piles and piles of money, Drew retires having the highest career earnings of any player in NFL history.

The other sports story I wanted to comment on is the official beginning of the baseball season, the first Sox-Yankees series. The story of the series through two games, aside from the Sox winning, has to be A-Rod's incredible start. He seems to have slimmed down and added a good amount of muscle in his legs. I remember about eight years ago when another superstar re-dedicated himself through off-season conditioning, that stars name was Barry Bonds. I'm not gonna come out and accuse A-Roid of anything just yet, but it's rare to see someone his age gain a bunch of muscle without losing any bat speed. Understand that these sorts of things don;t really bother me, I'm not the type to bring up that the Sox may have won two world series in a row had it not been for Jason Giambi's steroid fueled homers in game seven of the ALCS in 2003. I just like pointing out evidence that steroids are still very prevalent in MLB, and this is just the latest piece of evidence. Many of the purists want to just point the finger at Barry Bonds ignoring all the evidence at so many other stars, btw how is that Sammy Sosa comeback going? I'm glad to see he got over the initial scare and is now back with his old friend the hypodermic needle.

Thats all I've got for now, I'm sure I'll be back soon with another load of my normal crap, til then.

-Bender Out

So It Goes

I just found out that Kurt Vonnegut has died, now I'm not what you'd call a "reader", but if I have a favorite writer, it's him. He was basically the only guy whose books I bought just because he'd written them. In High school I was never really able to grasp what my teachers were talking about in terms of a writer's personal style, but it becamo so clear to me when I read Slaughter-House Five. In the interest of full disclosure, I only started reading it because I thought that was the type of book that a smart, artistic person would read. To be sure, most people would agree I was considered neither of those back in high school (and probably still not.) His writing really did change my life, if only a tiny bit. His stories were interesting and imaginative, but the writing was brilliant and enthralling, it was more about the journey than the destination. He is certainly deserving of a small tribute before I get on to my usual gibberish. He died yesterday, so it goes.

Speaking of my usual gibberish, American Idol has been going on and I haven;t been keeping up. The last two weeks have been sub-par for me. I definitely wasn't a fan of the Tony Bennett week, although most of the contestants are best suited for such songs, that doesn't mean it's fun for me to listen to it. Rock Chick, Gina Glocksen got voted off which was a bit of a downer, I usually enjoy the contestants who think of themselves as rockers first, I love seeing them try to keep their rock cred every week while singing watered down versions of songs that can't really be captured in a minute and thirty seconds. It was sad to see her go when we could have gotten rid of Phil Stacey, who seems like a nice guy but really doesn;t bring anything to the table. As bad as last week was, this week was a slap in the face. The music didn't fit the skills of the two talented singers, and I'm really starting to fear that this Blake Lewis kid might win, everyone keeps gushing over him but he's awful. Latin music is fun, and it gave Sanjaya yet another look to go for during his performance, but it's not really made for these type of singers who want to turn every song into a ballad and specialize in the Patti LaBelle ending to songs but not much else. I watched both shows, mostly just to see what Sanjaya was gonna do, and also to see what Haley would wear (she looked sexy on both shows this week btw.) Tonight she showed an ample bosom to go along with those long legs, perhaps her legs had distracted me from all the other fine aspects of her figure, I noticed this just before she got voted off!! How could the voters betray me like that? Don't they understand that the hottest girl should be kept on right up until the point where there are only great singers to keep on instead? These rules apply to the train wreck that is Sanjay as well. I'll even let you guys keep that damn Blake Lewis on, but that means that Phil Stacey and Chris Richardson get the boot before the hot girl and the train wreck. I feel like I'm dealing with amateur hour here, who would rather watch Phil sing than Haley? It's completely ridiculous. They announced that next week is Country week. If I wasn't thrilled with the idea of seeing Sanjaya look ridiculous in a cowboy hat, I would boycott next week's show. But I swear, if Sanjaya gets the boot next, I'm not watching until they get a good genre and/or guest singer.

Ok, enough venting about Idol, I've been on a great run in terms of movie watching lately. In the last two weeks I've seen The Lookout, Blades of Glory, and Grindhouse in the theater and caught Layer Cake on video. And all of them delivered at least to expectations. Blades of Glory is not quite on the level of Anchorman or Talladega Nights, but it was pretty damn funny, Amy Poehler and Will Arnett were great as the bad guys and so was Jenna Fisher as their sister. The best of the movies though was The Lookout. It's definitely the best movie so far this year, I can;t recommend it highly enough. The plot sounds like a typical heist movie but the characters are a lot more interesting than most movies that get made these days, the plot may fit together a little too nicely at some points but it's both tense and emotional, and most movies can;t even pull off one of those things these days let alone both. Do yourself a favor, go see it. Anyway that's all I got.

-Bender Out

Entertain Me!

Yesterday I caught up on all my sports thoughts, so I have to get caught up on my entertainment thoughts from the past couple weeks.

First things first, American Idol has had a couple eliminations since I last talked about it. Last week Stephanie Edwards was voted off, and it didn't surprise me that much, strictly from a talent stand point she was probably in the top five, but she never really did it for me. Something about her personality rubbed me the wrong way, as iof she thought she was a lot better than she was, she also seemed a little to ready for the fame, and when you have that lack of likeability you'd better be blowing everyone away with your talent. As far as this weeks elimination of Chris Sligh, well he was kinda the opposite, he was really likeable but he wasn't that talented. His singing was good enough but I never really thought he had a chance because he was too much like Taylor Hicks. Similar contestants never seem to win back to back years, and I think most Idol fans realize that Taylor had no business winning and they couldn't repeat that mistake. I really enjoyed that Gwen Stefani was the celebrity guest this week, she would never make it to the second round in an Idol competition, but she's really hot, very personable and has a great pop sensibilitywhich is far more important for a popstar than straight forward singing talent has ever been. As for Sanjaya sticking around, I'm of the opinion that he's the best thing that ever happened to this year's edition of the show. I tune in to see four people, Lakisha and Melinda cause they sing so damn well, Haley because I've decided she has a great body and sanjaya, because he also has a great body. Wait, no, I meant Sanjaya because he's totally wacky, between his hair-dos and wacky performances it's alomost as if William hung were being brought back week after week. Plus he makes the other more mature contestants seem more legitimate. My real hope at this point is for Sanjaya and Haley to hang around longer than that fraud Blake Lewis, musically he's like a homeless man's JT (thank you, Bill Simmons.) I'm so utterly unimpressed by his performances, and it makes me cry when Simon reacts with anything other than scathing remarks for him. 311 isn;t looking for a new singer, so there's no need to completely bite their style, if goes on and wins this competetion, I swear I won;t watch any more Idol, at least not until next winter anyway.

Just after Idol ended there was another great episode of Lost. Since coming back from their hiatus Lost has had more than a couple episodes that were greatly entertaining, but had nothing to add to the big story. Wednesday's episode was the king of such episodes. It seemed to me like the writers had an old script they had submitted to the new Twilight Zone a few years back but it never made it to air. The episode was great as a one hour experience but it wasn't anything more. Simliar to the last Hurley episode, it was all filler, greatly entertaining filler, but still filler all the same. The worst part of this episode was that they killed off the Nikki character who was quickly emerging as the second hottest woman on the show. Sure Kate is still on the show, but lets say you're on this island, and you're a guy, who are you supposed to go after if you're not Jack or Sawyer? Maybe they can write someone else onto the show, but it's not looking good for the castaways.

All during my TV watching I saw a ton of ads for new movies coming out. since when did so many heavily hyped movies come out in March? Over the last two weeks they've realeased Shooter, Pride, TMNT, The Last Mimzy, Reign Over Me, The Lookout, Blades of Glory, and Meet The Robinsons. I feel like it's the middle of summer, they all had tons of ads, big stars and big hype. This is over two weeks, not to mention it comes on the heels of 300 and just before we get Grindhouse. I'd say that all of these movies are at least worthy of a DVD rental and I'd probably be willing to see TMNT, Reign Over Me and Shooter in the theater if there weren't so many better options right now. Robinsons looks pretty damn funny but it'll have to take a back seat to The Lookout and Blades of Glory which are bordering on must see for me. The Lookout sounds like my kinda movie to begin with but it's also getting great reviews. The best news, Isla Fisher is in it as well and she's damn sexy. As far as Blades fo Glory is concerned, I have yet to miss a Will Ferrell movie in the theaters, and I would never miss the opportunity to see Ferrell doing his Neil Diamond impersonation for an hour and a half.

The best news for me was that they previewed next years pilots on AOL today. It was like they wrote this article just for me. The top highlights on the list of pilots were Football Wives, The Sarah Conner Chronicles, and Cavemen. Football wives is based on the birtish series that was totally over the top, I've never seen Footballers' Wives but I've heard the stories. I expect that the plots wioll be toned way down, there will be a lot less homosexuality in the american version which has of course switched from soccer players to football players. My most bold prediction is that this show will be more successful than the CW series "The Game." That show also centered around football players wives and it was another flop in the storied career of the oh so sexy Brittany Daniel. Do you think Brittany ever walked on the set and longed for the great writing from the series Swan's Crossing? Now Swan's Crossing, that was a show.

The Sarah Conner chronicles is a new series that takes place in between the first two terminator movies. I don;t know if it's gonna be as great as it sounds just because it's tough to make a show like this live up to the movies given the low budget of television, but I'm glad to see them trying, if I had to describe this idea in one word that word would be "awesomeness." As far as the Caveman series goes, it's a full sit-com based on the characters in those Geico.com ads. I love the ads as much as anyone, but I find it hard to believe this show will be a hit. I'll be more than happy to watch all six episodes of the show, maybe I'll sit back and enjoy it while having the roast duck with the mango salsa. I was also excited that Carrie-Anne Moss will star in a new series, it sounds pretty cool, just a new way to approach a mystery, the show all the suspects and tell their version of what happened at the time of the crime. This show could be really cool if it's done right. The other cool things were that Parker Posey, Jordana Bewster and Lucy Liu will all be in new shows and there's apparently a spin-off of Grey's Anatomy, which I won;t watch but should be a big deal. So now I'm starting a countdown for next fall already.

Anyway, That's all for today, enjoy the tourney.

-Bender Out