Cru Jones Society

It’s Wednesday night as I write this and I have just returned home from a trip to Milwaukee and Chicago. I have been home for about two hours and I am happy to be here. Buttfor and Bumhug are pleased to see us. I am relaxing on my own couch after staying in two generally marginal hotel rooms. I am not subtly (or not so subtly, depending on the temperature) sweating on account of the semi-oppressive summer Midwestern humidity. When a vacation ends, I am almost universally happy when it does. The only thing better than going on vacation is coming home from one.

With that said, one thing I will miss greatly from this trip is the uncanny politeness of Midwesterners. For as friendly as Westerners are (and they are), they’ve got nothing on the generosity, pleasant demeanor, and goofy charm of our Scandinavian friends to the east and north. That’s why they’ll always be a CJS Thing We Love. Continue Reading »

We ain’t got no place to go/so let’s go to the punk rock show/darling take me by the hand/we’re gonna see a punk rock band/there’s no use in TV shows/radio or rodeo/I wanna get into the crowd/I wanna hear it played real loud

I may have expressed once or twice my love for punk rock as well as my predilection for live music. So when I get the chance I always try to combine these two loves, and so far this year has helped me feed this addiction quite well. Actually this has been one of the best concert years for me as the bands I have wanted to see not only tore shit up, but were on tour with some fairly awesome bands.

I have been so blown away by these shows that I just want to sing their praises, and hopefully convince you to check out some of these bands next time they swing through, unless you buying a ticket somehow keeps me from getting one, then fuck you, you stay home.

Now, as the wracked with grammatical errors MxPx song suggests, let’s go to the punk rock show! Continue Reading »

That Charlie Sheen thing didn’t last long, did it?

From approximately early January (I can’t be certain of the exact begin date considering a search of the AV Club’s archives turns up 164 answers to the query “Charlie Sheen”) when the country learned of Charlie’s crazy substance abuse superpowers, his desire to create a porn family, the tiger blood, winning (duh!), and all the other seemingly unbelievable (read: Holy shit, this is actually happening in reality?!?) until about – what, May at some point? – when CBS announced Ashton Kutcher as Sheen’s replacement on “Two and a Half Men” we were all fully within the crazy Charlie Sheen vortex.

Think about the elements of this story for a moment. You’ve got the star of the #1 sitcom in the United States, hookers, cocaine, Twitter, the president of the #1 network in the United States, something called “vanity cards,” porn stars, an eager public, and professional publicity exploiter Dr. Drew all involved. It’s a huge fucking story, but lasts only 4 months.

Why? Our culture churns and burns this stuff at a clip thought previously unimaginable and turns the page like a meth addict reading a manual on how to smoke meth more efficiently. The Charlie Sheen thing left with barely a whisper about Ashton Kutcher as the new star of the nation’s #1 sitcom, and was promptly shown the door by the revelation that the most recent former Governor of California, not to mention star of no less than 7 movies that grossed over $100 million, banged his house maid, fathered her child that is the same age as one of his children whom he had with his wife, and is currently trying to make some sort of Terminator reboot. This event, it bears mentioning, is greeted with a mere shrug among the people I know despite it being abstractly the biggest political/celebrity scandal in over 10 years.

What’s the point of all this? Weirdness is dead. I am simultaneously shocked all the time, and yet surprised by nothing. Our culture has reached satiation point and there is nowhere left to go. Good luck. Continue Reading »

“I don’t know what it is about your face, (holds up fist), but I just wanna deliver one of these right to your suckhole.” – Rob Riggle as “Randy” in Step Brothers.

Watching the NBA Finals this year, and this is exactly how I feel about Chris Bosh. Something about his stupid face makes me just want to put my fist square in his grill and knock that obnoxious, manicured, boy band beard off his big ugly head. I don’t think there’s anything he can do to change my mind either. I will probably always want to punch Chris Bosh in the face.

I suppose he can take solace in knowing he’s not alone. So in honor of the day we all get to point and laugh at Lebron, Wade (looking like the only one with any sack of these three assholes) and Bosh choke away the Finals after turning the entire country against them, let’s take a look at E Dagger’s 5 Most Punchable Faces. Continue Reading »

There is no denying the impact television plays within our lives. People often gather around it with friends, or discuss the latest episode, some people even use it as a sleep aid.  So it only seems natural that television itself would use television within the shows it shows. This is a device called a show within a show. These would be things like “Itchy and Scratchy” on “The Simpsons,” “TGS with Tracy Jordan” on “30 Rock,” or “The Muppet Show” on “The Muppet Show.”

This is a concept that has been used nearly as long as television has been around. I think Dick Van Dyke’s character on “Dick Van Dyke” worked on a television show, or he worked in advertising. I really can’t remember, though I did watch that show a lot as a kid, thinking about it now I am not sure why. Anyway, television existed which meant people on television had to be aware of it.

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the shows within shows, mostly about if I would watch the show. “Itchy and Scratchy?” most likely. “TGS?” Probably. “The Muppet Show?” Doi! But my brain is not satisfied with simply considering if I would watch the show or not, so I pieced together some of the other thoughts about a few of the shows within shows that have sprung to mind often. Now sit back, relax, and don’t touch that dial. Continue Reading »

“It isn’t enough for Bridesmaids to be a great comedy; it has to be a comedy that transcends the lady-movie ghetto, thereby becoming the thing to which all lady movies aspire. We don’t have the vocabulary to talk about what it is, so we elevate it into something it isn’t: a paradigm shift, a game-changer, whatever.” – Genevieve Koski , “Why Bridesmaids won’t save the ‘chick flick’ and shouldn’t have to,” AVClub.com

Lady E and I saw Bridesmaids this weekend and both laughed our asses off. Like most of Judd Apatow’s oeuvre, the movie has a laugh out loud quotient higher than almost anything else out there thanks to spirited and inventive profanity, humor driven from fully realized characters, and gross out gags that don’t hold back. Also like the rest of his work, the movie underlines a very sad protagonist that balances the comedy with understated poignancy. Real problems don’t have easy solutions, and the troubles faced by the characters in Bridesmaids don’t resolve easily either.

For as interesting a piece as Bridesmaids is, what I found more interesting was the dialogue Lady E and I had after the movie over giant mason jars of beer. I made the crack that we both should have been wearing our “This is what a feminist looks like” t-shirts while we chatted, but ultimately I came to realize something similar to what Ms. Koski argues above. I have very little distinction between male and female comedy anymore. Funny is funny. And that’s a good thing. Continue Reading »