The Not-So Great Hallmark Xmas Movie Challenge

I had been noticing a strange phenomenon on my cable recently, since before Halloween, actually. I mean aside from the fact Springsteen was right and there’s 257 channels and nothing on. How is that even possible? How can I have this many channels, and still not find anything good to watch? If it wasn’t for football, hockey, and a true handful of shows I like to watch, I would cut the damn cord. Anyway, apparently I have some channels that show nothing but Xmas movies. 24 hours a day, seven sad, sad days a week. What the effing eff? Is this why my cable bill is so high?

Why does Xmas get this much attention? Why not my beloved Halloween? There are a ton of cool, vintage horror movies out there, and more than enough since the slasher genre happened in the late 70s. Why can’t I have a couple channels of just horror movies for the month of October? They can take any of the 103 channels I never freaking watch. Is it too much to spend a few hours every fall with Vincent Price and Jigsaw?

"NO! Not the Heat Miser already!"

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything for myself. So what better way to bust out of a slump than to torture myself? That’s always funny, right. Right!?! Geez, the things I do for you guys. So, maybe it’s time I see for myself what one of these Hallmark/Lifetime Xmas movies is all about.

I will watch a Hallmark Xmas movie.

The good news is this is one less person to buy presents for.

You guys pick yourselves up from the floor yet? Yea, OK. Good

Now, I have done some cursory research-my favorite kind of half ass research, don’t cha know--and I think all these Lifetime/Hallmark movies have the same general plot. Cute, single chick meets handsome (I guess) dude with a secret why he doesn’t like Xmas. One of them might own a business. If it’s the girl, it’s a struggling business (like, duh, of course, she’s a girl!), and handsome dude’s company is threatening to put her out of business. Another hackneyed angle is the dude runs a business (usually a family business, often inherited) that is directly tied into Xmas; sells Xmas trees, a toy company, etc. His business is located in a small town where, of course, it’s the main source of employment for the town. And dude wants to shut it down because he has a penis and it’s evil. So he has to come to Christmasville or whatever, to shut it down. Said hot chick appears. She either lives in the town or works for his company. And, goddamn it, she’s just the one to save the town and admit her love for the dude 10 minutes before credits roll. Book it, done.

Often, the dude is so stone stupid, he can’t even see cute chick is falling for him. He might even-gasp!-start dating another trollop. I think there’s gotta be some shitty writing factory where they just hand out Mad Lib type outlines, and poor schmucks who can’t make any money writing their own blog have to fill out the blanks. Get a chick who used to be on One Tree Hill attached, and it’s green lit.

Naughty and nice.

OK, but I at least get to pick what dreck I am going to subject myself to. And if there’s anything that can make anything tolerable, it’s hot girls, so I get to pick. I have noticed that many of these movies star a certain tier of actor. Like not super-famous, but maybe was on a hit show a few years ago. In fact, more cursory research-my favorite kind of half ass research here-reveals there’s like a whole collection of actresses who apparently just do shitty Xmas movies now. Lacey Chabert

"Hey! Eyes up her...ah, never mind."

"My jacket conveniently hides my boner!"

does about three a year it looks like. Teri Polo, Danica McKeller, 

"I hear you like math. You + me= 15 seconds."

Candace Cameron Bure, Alicia Witt. I guess it’s smart money. Suffer through one movie, and it runs a billion times every year, and they probably get a nice royalty check.

These movies are my horror movies. After watching this, you broads better not ever bitch EVER when your guy wants to watch a horror movie. Actually, the two types of movies aren’t all that different. More often than not, a cute girl and her boobs is the main protagonist (look it up) in both horror and holiday movies. At times she will display poor judgment; i.e. run to the basement or fall for her boss. Holiday movies, though, are far more predictable. The factory will stay open, the town will be saved, Xmas will happen, the couple will fall in love. Every time. Why can’t someone make a dark Xmas movie? Maybe the factory closes, maybe the girl decides she doesn’t like the dude. Maybe that strange angel character was just a drug fueled illusion this whole time. That’s not how holiday movies work, apparently. But they should every once in a while.

And now I will subject myself to the sheer torture that has to be a Hallmark Xmas movie. There needs to be a word for dread; just a hundred times stronger. ‘Cause that’s what I’m feeling right about now. Wish me luck, and I hope to not be the shell of a person I expect to be afterwards. The movie review itself will be up on Black Friday; my gift to you.

You sadistic bastards.

I Hate You Mark Harmon

You know, Mark Harmon, I really used to like you. You always seemed to be the affable, laid back guy. Your first big impression on me was one of my favorite classic summer 80s film, Tuff Turf. Er, no wait a minute, my bad, wrong movie. No, your first big role to me was Summer School. What a great movie, and those of you old enough to remember it probably to this day wonder whatever happened to the lovable Chainsaw. Or the kid who never showed up to class. That was a great movie, and I am sure Mark counted himself lucky to be acting with a young Courtney Thorne-Smith and a pre elephantine Kirstie Alley. Even Saw cutie Shawnee Smith was in this flick. Day-um, stupid girls sure were hot back in the day.

He would continue through more TV and movie roles. He married –and apparently is still married to-Mindy from Mork & Mindy. He was voted People’s Sexiest Man Alive in 1986, the year People also suspiciously disqualified me, for some bullshit reason of ‘not being even remotely famous’. Fuckers. Anyway, Harmon all but disappeared from my consciousness, to be replaced by such happy things as orange creamsicles and Tetris.

Recently, Mark Harmon has reappeared in my life in a big and negative way. In fact, I now hate you Mark Harmon. I see entirely too much of you. Apparently, he’s been on this show called NCIS, which I believe stands for ‘now can I speak’. And this show, unbeknownst to me, has been on the air for quite a few years. I didn’t know this until the show started rerunning on USA. I know all of this because my wife is addicted to this goddamn show.

At first it was just on USA and whatever other channel it first airs on. Life was good, life was tolerable. But that has all changed over the last year. Now, NCIS is omnipresent in my house. We have 3 TVs in the house. At any given time, all of them are on channel 13 (aka USA, aka NCIS central). This pisses me off more than when they all used to be on the Food Channel. It’s not like she ever made me any of that stuff…

Since then, I have clearly been put in my place. I know between the hours of 5-7, I am second fiddle. I am third wheel. The house can be on fire, and upon telling her this fact, I will get scolded, “WAIT FOR A COMMERCIAL!” If this was only contained to scheduled intervals, I am laid back and accommodating enough to work around it. Hell, I’ll even give her the big TV-you know, the B&W one-to watch all the nefarious goings ons going on. But it has grown worse. It appears NCIS spreads quicker than the swine flu.

Now it seems NCIS is on 4 channels that I am aware of. Which I believe still pales in comparison to how many fucking channel show Scrubs. That was her previous crack TV. I think I’ve counted Scrubs on no less than 6 fucking channels. It’s now gotten to the point that I can watch Scrubs rather than NCIS. But Elliot is still fucking annoying.

Also, USA appears to be so devoid of alternate programming, test patterns and infomercials that it now runs NCIS marathons. So imagine my shock as all day yesterday-a Wednesday-USA went all NCIS. Surely somewhere, there must be unaired Billy Mays commercials. Fuck me.

I’ve arrived at the point where I am familiar with the characters and certain storylines. Me. But she can sit there and watch the whole damn thing all over again. Yesterday, I hit a new low. “We” were watching the show, and about 15 minutes in, I realized I fucking saw this show before. Yet, her gaze was the gaze of a traveler spotting water after a week in the desert. Ambrosia to the angels and such shit.

I don’t like the show, for a few reasons. Chief amongst them is she likes it so goddamn much. But there’s more to it than just that. (And I am ashamed I can go into this much detail of a show I don’t even watch.) First of all, Mark Harmon’s character is named Jethro. Right, Jethro. That’s his first name, too, not his last. It’s hard to buy an action hero as a ‘Jethro’. A Clampett? Sure, but not a federal agent. Unless he was the federal agent of moonshine. So Gibbs (Jethro’s last name, the name most people use to call him.) is one of those smarmy types that is always fucking right. What’s that? All the evidence points to the husband as the killer? No, because Gibbs is Gibbs, he has some sort of ESP that actually tells him the real killer is the neighbors’ gardeners’ cousins’ eighth grade teacher! Alas, how could we not have seen this? We all must bow to the knowingness of brother Gibbs. Gibbs always knows where the bad guy is hiding.

Gibbs is a maverick. Gibbs will only use your last name, even if it’s Gibbsisapedophile. OK, that was a funny episode. Gibbs thumbs his nose at his superiors, he disobeys orders, he ‘goes dark’. I believe he even has a pristine copy of that Erin Andrews video. Gibbs can anticipate the bad guys’ next move. Gibbs is a deadeye. Gibbs. Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs. Enough fucking already!

Sure, he is surrounded by less smart characters as well. There’s the suave guy, the nerd guy, the chick, the goth forensic chick, the weathered coroner. Every week, it’s a new struggle against evil. And my sanity. I don’t like the slickness of Gibbs. It gets quite tiresome to see the same general scenario week in and week out. Right, I can see all of you rolling your eyes-you know your webcam is on, right?-thinking, “Well what about your hero, Jack Bauer?”Jack Bauer is far more hardcore than fucking Gibbs. Take away seasons 5 & 6 (please) of 24, and 24 is the far better show.

But, boom there is NCIS on just about every damn channel we have. Look, we’re poor, we just have basic cable. And at the rate they’re taking away my channels, we’ll be lucky to have 20 left. And Mark Harmon will be on at least 5 of those. Maybe T snuck in some sort of NCIS channel unbeknownst to me. All I know is I have 20 channels-16 if you take away the Spanish speaking ones-and I am pretty sure I’ve seen NCIS on 4 of them. And one of the Spanish ones. Eh, Senor Gibbs?

I can see by the hour upon us, that soon, the NCIS channel will be on, and any actual conversation must take place between the commercials. Even if it’s a rerun. Even if it’s a rerun I’ve seen, I’d best not spoil the ending. Sure, you can argue the same thing with me and The Simpsons. Yes, true, I’ve seen the majority of the shows, but not all of them. And since it’s only a half hour long, I get 2 episodes for the price of one measly NCIS. Plus, with all my drinking, my memory is spotty, so sometime it really is like watching a brand new episode. And it’s all about escapism for me; it makes me laugh, and my troubles vanish for a brief, fleeting amount of time.

Besides, if Gibbs ever got bonked on the head with a transmission, I would laugh my ass off. Hey, I am starting to hear a certain theme song right now….

Marley & Me (Complainary re-edit)

The gist was I thought it was a great book. It took me only a weekend to plow through, which says a lot. You can tell I write at about a fourth grade level-doody-so reading any book written higher can be somewhat a challenge. Plus, there were only a few pictures, and just a few words containing 7 or more letters.
I should warn you now, that this post does contain spoilers. So if you haven’t read the book or still want to see the movie, please stop reading now. I will go off topic for another paragraph or so, but then the cat will be out of the bag. You’ve been warned.
I need to state up top that I might not be the most objective reviewer on this one. Well, geez, that’s really no way to entice you to read on any further, now is it? First, I am in the odd position of seeing a movie of a book that I already read. The few books I do seem to manage to read never get made into movies. I feel that puts me into the snobby class of having read the book, and now will compare it to the movie. Like everyone else in the theater is a dullard who can’t read and decided to just drag their lazy, illiterate ass to the theater. I will also be undoubtedly biased as well. You see, my precious Bauer is a yellow Lab that looks a lot like Marley. So it’s damn near impossible to not see a lot of Bau in Marley’s actions.
OK, seriously, you’ve been warned. If you don’t want to know about the book and movie, stop reading now. Sure, you can make the argument why I have to give away key plot points. But I think it’s vital to my story. Plus, I am sacrificing Bauer time to write this, and I am sure he would be pretty pissed if he knew I was writing about seeing a dog movie, and not playing with him.
The book chronicles a couple from marriage to having kids, jobs, moving, dreams, heartbreak, etc. The lifecycle of the dog allows this to happen. And by lifecycle I mean from adoption to, well, yea, that…. I remember reading the book. I had gotten further ahead than my wife. As the pages wound down, it was clear what was going to happen. I was reading it in the living room. I knew I wasn’t going to make it, so I discreetly excused myself to our bedroom, where I could finish the book in peace. And also because my wife wouldn’t see me cry. Yes, I admit it, I cried (and snotted) at the end. Because it hit me as a dog owner, a Yellow Lab owner, that, God one day I will be in this situation. I just cannot imagine it (there’s a lump in my throat as I write this now). And to read this guy so eloquently describing it was devastating. Here was a book that not only made me laugh out loud, but now made me cry. It’s pretty fricking powerful for the written word to do that. Yea, OK, so I give away Marley buys it. But it factors in later on for me.
It was mixed emotions that I had when I found out it was going to be a movie. Now I can live with Jennifer Anniston. I don’t think she’s horrible. I did see one movie she did where she worked at a cosmetic counter in a small, dumpy department store. It was one of those real quiet, could be happening anywhere/to anyone kind of deals. Well, the first half was, but then she ends up sleeping with like 3 different guys or something. But she was very watchable in it. But when I found out Owen Wilson was going to the main character, o man.
I don’t like Owen Wilson. Maybe it’s because I think he is a bad actor. Maybe because in the thankfully few movies I’ve seen him in, he plays the exact same character. Maybee it’ss the wayyy he seemms to slowllly roll outtt hiss speechhh that annoys the crap out me of. Maybe it’s his nasty gnarled up nose. Maybe it’s because I’ve never seen him and Ellen Degeneres in the same room at the same time. Maybe it’s because he tried to kill himself after dating Kate Hudson. Kate Hudson! I was not enthused to hear him screwing up the movie.
The previews start to come out, and lo and behold it looks watchable. The clips look funny. Again, maybe it’s because my dog looks and acts like Marley. (And yes, I know every dog owner will say that now.) I decide to stay away from it. I want to go see it and decide it’s worthiness for myself. I tried to stay away. But I would read something online (stuff like if they are running this many commercials for it, it must suck), or Howard would talk about it (Beth seeing it and saying it was just OK.) Who knew ignorance would be so damn hard? But like I said, I liked what I saw in the clips I saw. And when it makes $51 mill in its first week, there must be something to it. So on a Tuesday afternoon, we went to see the flick.
I only have one goal for the entire duration of the movie. Two, actually. 1) Don’t drink so much of the bucket of Diet Coke that I will have to pee in the middle of the movie. And 2) and MOST IMPORTANT do NOT freaking cry in a movie theater.
It opens up with Wilson drawling his monologue over the scene. Yea, I’d be Marley running away, too, if I had to listen to this dolt all day. Already, I find myself comparing the movie to the book. Which is funny, because I have very little memory of much of the book. I mean, I can identify the parts that are clearly movie, and the parts from the book.
Halfway through the movie, I fail in one of my 2 missions. I have to pee. At least I could have drank all my Diet Coke and whizzed in the cup, but I couldn’t even do that. At least I pick a scene with no Marley.
It becomes clear that we hit a point that the end will start creeping in. GODDAMN IT! I am sniffling! But this is the fake-out, there is still life left! What a wuss I am. I start snotting too. I disgust myself.
OK, we’re really hitting the beginning of the end now. And why o why, does the movie theater pick this time to send someone through the theater? There is the guy, walking around with one of those glowing orange cones like he’s trying to land a plane. I fully expect him to come right up to me and yell, “Are you crying? There’s no crying in my movie theater. Get yer pansy ass out of here, you disgust me.” I think it’s dawning on people now that Marley will not make it out of the movie alive. We’re getting to a key scene where it is spelled out for the Neanderthals.
It is about here I fail at my second mission. Damn, I can feel that tear slowly leak from my left eye. I am sniffling. I know this is coming. I try to choke down more soda so I won’t be sniffling and tearing as much. It’s a pretty dramatic scene, between John taking him to the vet, making the decision and being there for the result. Goddamn, did something get into my eye here? I will give the movie credit, as they made up some stuff to make the scene more dramatic and heartfelt.
John tells Marley that he was never the world’s worst dog. “No Marley,” he tells his fading buddy,” you’re a great dog.” I often tell Bauer that, too. I just don’t call him Marley, because that would confuse the guy.
My sleeves are now covered up in the various goo leaking from my facial area. I really feel for the John character, not because Owen is slightly less cardboard here. I really identify with the guy as dog owner. They use music here excellently, a bunch of strings that slowly arch higher and higher until Marley shuts his eyes for the last time.
Sniff, and the sound of a few tears falling. Wow, pretty powerful. There’s a few more scenes, but this was the first movie I can remember in a long time that when the movie was over, actually got applause from the crowd. Of course, while they were clapping, I was making sure it didn’t look like I was affected at all. Black heart, man, black heart. Man, all the death I’ve seen in movies, all the notable, historical, iconic deaths didn’t touch me, but this Marley one makes me sniff and stuff.
So I would give this movie a solid thumbs up. It’s a fair representation of the book. I think it works, even if you haven’t read the book. It’s one of those rare movies where I don’t feel like I got ripped off for seeing it in the movie theaters. Even if you don’t like dogs, I’d imagine you would like this movie.

DVD Bonus Material
Commentary
OK, so again to follow up to the Leap post, I joined a new site, Complainary.com. I know, sounds right up my alley, right? For my first post, I re-edited an older entry Bus Stop. Within a few days, I already got a positive comment, which is pretty flattering. They were looking for a review of Marley, so I re-edited my previous Klog. I am still feeling my way around Complainary, so I took out a bunch of personal stuff, and cleaned it up a bit. So don't feel as you have to read these re-edits all over again, but I will try to comment on what I did, and why. Also, KevTheory serves as my archive, so this is another way to show how I can tighten up and 'mainstream' my stuff.
Thanks for reading. Again.