Smart and funny

I normally don't get too bogged down in thinking deep thoughts about pop culture. And you're in luck, because I'm pretty sure none of what follows could reasonably be called deep thoughts.

But let's start with something that's been bothering me more and more lately. It really bugs me that people who can't write (or are just morons) feel the need to post their own music and movie reviews on web sites like Amazon and Netflix. To illustrate my point, I thought I'd visit Netflix for you. It took me about one second to find an example of what I mean. Consider:

"... beautifully-filmed, generally well-acted, intermittently-compelling misfire of a film. However, its complete lack of narrative energy..."

Well, my hyphen-misusing friend, you're not Richard Schickel or Janet Maslin. You're not Roger Ebert, or even, for god's sake, Richard Roeper. You are, however, a blowhard who is posting anonymous 40-word reviews on a web site where millions of people a day can ignore your horribly written opnions. Get over yourself and your lack of narrative energy and just go talk to your friends about the movie and leave the rest of us out of it.

(Deep breath.)

That said, I was thinking about the movies I saw during the holiday break: Charlie Wilson's War (entertaining, with a manageable dose of Sorkin preachiness); 27 Dresses (in an L.A. sneak preview, two weeks before it opened everywhere else, sucka); and Juno.

And I was thinking about why Juno stood out as one of my favorite movies of the last year. I can best sum it up this way: Almost all of the funny moments -- and there were many -- came from people doing and saying smart things. There was humor in the awkward tenderness between Juno and her parents, and in the awkward awkwardness between Juno's family and the couple who's going to adopt her baby, but the movie didn't resort to making fun of them.

Oh, sure, I like my dumb comedies every once in a while. (I crack up at the most random moments remembering the scene in Dodgeball when Patches O'Houlihan is killed in a casino by a falling "Luck o' The Irish" sign -- or, as Vince Vaughn's Pete La Fleur describes it, "two tons of irony.") But most comedies seem to make the audience laugh by making the audience cringe, thanks to characters doing stupid things, berating other characters, or getting hit in the groin by a wrench (again, Dodgeball is a pretty good example). I rarely see a movie that generates laughs with intelligence, but Juno fit the bill.

Oh, it also was well acted and I found there to be a sufficient amount of narrative energy.

Putting the ass in caucass

I know it's not fair to generalize about such things, but I will anyway. I'm pretty sure that even in major markets, most people working at local TV news are morons.

During last night's 6 p.m. newscast, the local NBC affiliate ran a piece about today's Iowa caucus. An on-screen graphic -- something that someone had actually designed with a little logo, and, I assume, a producer had reviewed before popping it on the air -- read, "The Iowa Caucass." Oh, so close.

First

OK, first I'll explain the name.

The late great standup Mitch Hedberg had a bit in which he posited that an escalator can never be broken; it can only become stairs. So, he said, when an escalator stopped working, no "out of order" sign would be necessary. Just: "Escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience."

So, thanks, Mitch.

I'm moderately disgusted with myself for creating a blog. If there's one thing this world doesn't need more of, it's attorneys. (Apologies to my two best friends and my uncle, who are three of the finest people I know.) But if there's a second thing this world doesn't need more of, it's blogs. (And let's not even get into blogs by attorneys.) Seriously, why can't we just keep some of these thoughts bottled up once in a while?

That said, I find I'm always posting comments on the snarkily entertaining World's Best Burger, which is the only blog I ever read. And lately I've been thinking that if I were Loree or Laura, the snarkily entertaining geniuses behind the WBB, I'd be thinking to myself, "That guy should really leave our blog alone and get his own damn blog."

So, thanks, Loree and Laura.

No idea what I'll write about next, or whether I'll actually keep SFTC going for more than a week.

But, for now, at least I've avoided posting another comment on someone else's blog.