Hollywood Hates You - Wedding Edition!

Since TV is currently in the final throes of its long, audience-torturing death rattle, I was going to kill this week's post by writing about the greatest black nerds, or "blerds," of all time. But something funny happened the other day: I got engaged. Since I am an unabashed sci-fi nerd, my friends and I soon began a discussion about what kind of geeky theme wedding I should have. I mean, there's so many choices: Battlestar Galactica, Lost and the old standbys of Star Trek and Star Wars. So rather than detail the long, storied history of African-American achievements in nerdery (sorry, Theo from Die Hard), I've decided to devote this week's issue to ultimate dork theme weddings. Enjoy!

[Note to Editor: These are very, very dork-heavy references. I'm going to try to throw in as many approproate links as possible to save you time, since you're probably not going to be as familiar with these shows/movies as I am, as you appear to have a normal social life.]

[Note to Farceface: Yeah ... I only got "cool" in the last few years. I do, in fact, "appear" to have a "normal" social life. Meanwhile, I've been alternating Veronica Mars and Battlestar on Netflix.]

1. LOST

Bachelor Party: Go to the beach and get positively shitfaced on MacCutcheon scotch. Try to reach the point of drunkeness where you wake up naked the next day, possibly after having traveled backwards in time. Wonder which of your groomsmen had angry sex with a girl who will wind up dead in less than 24 hours.

Wedding: Find a scary Nigerian warlord-turned-priest and have him perform the ceremony. Groomsmen dress in DHARMA jumpsuits while bridesmaids dress as Oceanic Air stewardesses. The reception should be held anywhere with a classy underwater theme, but beware: all it takes is one drunken wedding guest detonating a grenade for this to end in tragedy. Make sure to introduce the band at the reception as Driveshaft.

Honeymoon: The show is filmed in Hawaii, which is a good stand in for the series' mysterious island.

2. BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

Bachelor Party: Rent out a place like Joe's bar for the night, but be sure to invite as many ridiculously hot lady pilots as you can find. Let the ambrosia flow like water and, get ready for more alcohol abuse, guilty sex, and poor life-choices than you can handle (Battlestar Galactica contains more angry sex in one episode than most sci-fi franchises have throughout their lifetimes, so that should be incorporated accordingly into your wedding plans). But if you've got any angry, one-eyed drunks in your family, maybe it's best not to invite them.

Wedding: Make sure you get a trustworthy priest to perform the ceremony, because nobody wants sociopathic robot reading you your vows. Bridesmaids and groomsmen should dress in their dress greys. Come on; how often do you get married? When you shine, you gotta shine right. At the reception, be sure to tell your groomsmen to watch out for your bride's drunken cougar of an aunt; there's one at every party.

Honeymoon: Anywhere on the planet Earth. The whole planet's supposed to be the salvation of mankind on the series, so I guess even Detroit or Baltimore would be paradise according to the show's mythology. Oof.

3. STAR WARS

Bachelor Party: Start with a day at the races, but only if your bookie is a 500 pound, backwards-talking slug. Then wander over to a crazy cantina with all kinds of aliens [INSERT IMMIGRATION JOKE HERE]. Be sure to serve plenty of blue milk, but go easy on the death sticks. Bet on which of your groomsmen gets so drunk that he SWEARS that he use the Force to fly, yet winds up falling down an elevator shaft once his intoxicated ass fails miserably.

Wedding: Priest must wear a Darth Vader costume (he'd look sick with a little white collar). Groomsmen will dress as Storm Troopers, while the best man wears a Chewie outfit. The groom will, of course, be wearing a Han Solo costume. The Bride will be wearing the classic Leia costume, while the bridesmaids must dress and handmaidens from the first films. Be sure to get a guy dressed up as Admiral Ackbar to sit in on the ceremony. That way when Priest Vader asks if anyone has any objections, he can jump up and yell "It's a trap!"

Honeymoon: That place in Spain that stood in for the palace on Naboo. And of course, your lady must be wearing Leia's metal bikini when it's time to get down.

4. STAR TREK

Bachelor Party: Any strip club where you can get the strippers to agree to be covered in green body paint (shouldn't be hard; most of them have been debased by men for years and are therefore open to anything if the price is right). Make sure most of the drinks you serve are blue or green; the Star Trek universe is famous for its multi-colored hootch.

Wedding: Clearly the officiant must be a Captain of something; 4 of 5 Star Trek shows have featured weddings performed by Admirals or Captains, so your priest should be a Captain of something. Captain of industry, captain of cereal. . .who gives a dick, as long as he 's the captain of something, it'll work. Members of the wedding party should wear dress uniforms. And when all is said and done, replicas of Tribbles should be thrown in lieu of rice.

Honeymoon: That sex planet they had on the Next Generation sounds a whole lot like Thailand to me.

--Lord Farceface

P.S. At this point, even I can't believe I tricked a woman into marrying my dorky ass, so I'm just as confused as you.

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Where You At? - Saved By the Bell Special Edition

Okay, Thanksgiving=FUN:

• Packers eking out a victory over the Lions and terrific Favre numbers:
• $50 bucks worth of appetizers
• One six-pack of Negro Modelo + One six-pack of Brooklyn Lager:
• $19
• Watching a random Filipino girl walk up to TMR, asking if they could make out, and then doing it:
• PRICELESS

Due to an unforgiving Thanksgiving break schedule, I was clearly not going to post a drop to this site last week. As a result, you all get a 2-for-1 special ...

It was at this point in the article where I wrote a whole bunch about Leanna Creel, who played Tori Scott on the show, effectively replacing Kelly and Jessie. However, it came to my attention after I finished the goddamn article that the ONLY picture I could find of this girl wasn't even her- it was Denise Richards, and I assure you, she was smokin' hot. So, since I couldn't find anything good to write about this biatch who wasn't in anything anyways, I have decided: I am retiring the Where You At? column. (Pending a demand for the still-to-be-posted articles on Kelly, Jessie, and Leah Remini. Uh, you better. Everyone was all about some Stacey Carosi.--ed.)

I will be returning in the future with a new concept for an article, but, for now I leave you with this:

Denise Richards

And some of this (my most recent Visionary Thinking pick, from Sopranos and Heroes):

Dania Ramirez

And, of course, some of these:

Megan Fox

So long for now...

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Hollywood Hates You - Fall TV STEEEEE-RIKE!!!

Farceface totally wrote this weeks ago, but certain editors (like, say ... me) are huge slackers. Pretend this is still relevant, and once I move back to Brooklyn on Thursday, I pledge to beat the shit out of everyone until you're getting regular content once again. Be easy, kids. --TBB

As you may or may not be aware, this Monday Nov. 5 officially kicked off the Great Writers Strike of 2007. But since big business can no longer violently break strikes - thank you very much Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette - that means you and I, the American viewing public, are going to suffer until this thing is resolved.

For the uninformed, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) is striking because their contract has expired with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP; Evil Empire), and the WGA will not agree to a new contract until they are guaranteed a percentage of DVD sales and digital media downloads. Since DVD sales are practically a license to print money (DVD's are sold for roughly 100 times what they cost to make), the studios are understandably reluctant to give up a piece of the pie.

On a side note, remember the good old days? When workers went on strike for things like, you know, the right to work less than 15 hours a day, or mandatory medical care if the mining equipment ripped off your arms? How quaint they were, with their child laborers, criminally unsafe working conditions, and greatly decreased life expectancy.

So, what follows are a couple of guides. First is what to expect during the strike. Right now, we're heading into already entrenched in Phase II. If this isn't resolved soon, I'll have probably kill myself after Phase III. After that, some tips for surviving this horrible ordeal.

STRIKE:
A FIVE PART BREAKDOWN OF WHAT TO EXPECT


PHASE I
No More Nightlies
(Already Happened)

The first victims of the strike were the "nightly" shows. These include Late Night with Conan O'Brien, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and - if you hate comedy - The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Basically, any late-night talk show that involves Top Ten Lists, Masturbating Bears, and ThreatDowns is iced. Because these are often written and filmed the day they air, they're the first to go. The only plus? With the loss of Colbert and Stewart, college-age dipshits who think they're political now officially have no one clever to help focus their righteous indignation. They'll probably go back to ruining the guitar now.


PHASE II
The Fall of the Weeklies
(Starting Next Week Already Happened)

Shows like The Office and 30 Rock sure are hilarious; in fact, they might just be the two funniest shows on network TV right now. They're also among the first to shut down production. Why? Because the writers are the stars (and vice-versa). The Office writing staff includes Steve Carell, B.J. Novak, Mindy Kraling, and Paul Lieberstein (Oh, Jesus. Fine: Michael Scott, Ryan, Kelly, and Toby, respectively. You happy?). 30 Rock's head writer is WGA member Tina Fey. While some shows can theoretically keep producing scripts that are already written (or "banked"), any show where the writers and the stars are one and the same - or any show where the actors refuse to cross the picket lines, like The New Adventures of Old Christine, Heroes, House M.D. and others - have already been forced to stop production. So aside from one, maybe two already produced episodes, these shows are already done for.


PHASE III
The Well Runs Dry
(End Of This Year)

Each network hangs on to a few shows as "midseason replacements," either as a means of patching up their schedules when crappy shows fail (see CBS; Viva Laughlin vs. The Amazing Race) or as a means of running some plot-heavy shows without re-runs (Lost, 24, and so on). Since the strike happened before a single episode of these midseason replacements ever aired, some of these shows have a little stockpile of episodes ready to go. Also worth looking forward to? A random smattering of TV movies, like a two-hour Closer special or Battlestar Galactica: Razor. But then ...


PHASE IV
Reality TV Consumes Us All
(?)

Guess what requires no writers, no actors, costs virtually nothing to produce, and appeals to dipshits the way underage Thai pussy appeals to sailors. Give up? Reality TV! Prepare for a deluge of game shows with shitty premises, Y- and Z-List stars having camera crews follow them around, and feeling dirty every time you turn on a TV. You think, "Hey, I'll just watch this one. It won't be so bad." Next thing you know, your teeth are falling out and the cops are on their way to your house because your kitchen just fucking exploded and the baby is turning blue because he is literally choking to death on the fumes YOU brought into your home (note, this also assumes that you turned your house into a meth lab prior to becoming addicted to reality TV). This is a world where the living will envy the dead.

So, as promised, here's some things you can start doing once your TV has betrayed you:

--Catch up on TV shows you "don't have time for." How lame is that? When you try to tell a friend or co-worker about a great new show, but they shit on your idea? I was trying to get my brother to check out Dirty, Sexy Money, and this was how it went:

Me: Have you been watching that new Peter Krause show? Dirty, Sexy Money?
Bro: Not really.
Me: You should really check it out. It's pretty good.
Bro: I guess, but I don't really have time for another show right now.
Me: You don't have time for free entertainment that takes an hour of your time, or 43 minutes if you have a DVR? You're in college. You live in a frat house. You don't have to wake up until 11 a.m. most weekdays. What the fuck else are you doing?
Bro: When's it on? Wednesdays?
Me: Yeah, Wednesdays.
Bro: Oof ... I just don't have time to DVR another show. You know, my schedule is pretty full up trying to get through all the other shows I DVR. I spend some Saturdays JUST watching shows that I recorded during the week.
Me: No, you spend most Saturdays drinking and making poor life-decisions with idiot freshman girls from the Midwest.
Bro: Yeah, so I'm pretty full up.

That's the worst excuse people can give. "I don't have time for another show." Fucking eat me. That's just an excuse for not wanting to try new things. I'll tell you what, if you're so full up, delete that History Channel special on Patton. Let's be straight here, you're never actually going to watch it. You only recorded it so that when you had friends over and were looking for the last episode of Amazing Race, your friends would think, "Ooh, a special about Patton. [Your Name Here] must be a smart guy. A real Renaissance man who cares about military history and the great World War II. His hobbies are so interesting." And guess what: THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THEY'RE THINKING. So good job. Mission accomplished. Now quit fooling yourself, delete that crap, and start watching good shows.

--Develop a Halo 3 addiction.

--Take up online gambling.

--Opium: a billion Chinamen can't be wrong!

--Sporting events are a good excuse to start drinking at 10 a.m. And they never go on strike. Except baseball, in 1972. And again in 1981. And 1994. And the basketball lockout of 1998. Oh, and the hockey lockouts of 1994 and 2005. Well, whatever. It never happened in football. Because football is the manliest, ballsiest, greatest sport ev-- what? Wait, when? 1982 AND 1987? And sort of in 1968? Oh ... Ok, then. No, it's fine .. I just ... I mean, I kind of look like an asshole over here.

--Ever been with a prostitute?

--Ever KILLED a prostitute?

--Spend time with loved ones. Stage death matches between derelicts in your garage or basement.

--Catch up on movies you never saw in theaters. Realize too late that there was a REASON you never saw them in theaters (thanks, Fast Food Nation!)

--Weep.

Enjoy the strike, folks.

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