Author Archives: Kobe
The Lonely Island: Turtleneck & Chain Review
From We’re Back! the opening track, to the No Homo Outro, Turtleneck & Chain is both an amazing hip hop album and an amazing satire of hip hop albums. Pulling off either one is a tall order on its own; that Lonely Island manages to do both is proof that they’re not just a great comedy group, they’re a great hip hop group too.
Thor Review
The summer movie season is finally underway and Thor is a worthy jumpoff. It’s an entertaining popcorn flick, bookended by some absolutely fantastic action sequences in Asgard and weighed down regrettably by a “Thor loses his powers and then gets them back” storyline in the middle. It’s not enough to ruin the film though, as the situation is played for laughs pretty well.
Mike vs. Kobe vs. The Game With No Name
A couple of years ago I joined Bobbitt on a trip down to Missouri for a weekend of shows. The journey was memorable for several reasons: spawning a still-running dispute over whose idea it was to go see In Bruges (mine), the discovery of a podcast deconstructing the 1987 triumph Masters of The Universe , the crowning of Mike as the King of The Ozarks and seeing the movie Doomsday , a relentless turd crusade starring Rhona Mitra.
Hey Kids…Twitter!
Kobe here. Let’s cut right to the chase: I love Twitter. I was a dyed-in-wool, take-no-prisoners Twitter basher for a long time (I don’t need to know what Johnny Tweetdeck is doing every second of the day) but I’ve since become an ardent convert. Turns out it isn’t a relentless onslaught of ZOMG JUSTIN BIEBER hysteria; there are plenty of interesting and entertaining people on there, I just needed to look. I wouldn’t be surprised if we all follow a lot of the same comedians and entertainers: Paul F. Tompkins, Louis CK, Sarah Silverman and so on; the big boppers. But I’m always on the look out for the hidden gems. I’ll share some of mine and you can share some of yours. In no particular order…
@beatonna.In no particular order except for this one, I should say, as Kate Beaton’s Twitter is by far my favorite. She’s the cartoonist responsible for Hark, A Vagrant! an absolutely terrific webcomic. Her Twitter is one-part humorous observations and one-part cartoon strip, as she regularly posts impromptu single-panel comics to it.
@jenny_wade. Jenny Wade is best known (possibly only known) for her role as District Attorney Liz Traynor on the short-lived TV show The Good Guys. This is the textbook definition of a hidden gem, as I would never in a million years have thought to follow her, but a retweet of something she wrote got me to mosey over and check out her twitter, which is one of the funniest out there.
@neiltyson. Another retweet revelation. I’d seen Neil deGrasse Tyson as a guest on the Colbert Report a couple of times and thought he was amusing, and now enjoy his tweets. He’s an astrophysicist and tweets mostly to point out scientific inaccuracies in news reporting or to put scientific theory and factoids in layman’s terms. Funny plus I learn shit.
@Marylandmudflap. I have no idea who the fellow behind MarylandMudFlap is, but I do know he’s hilarious. Receive it!
And of course Michael Lynn Bobbitt can be found @offthemike.
Have a follow suggestion? Some fount of hilarity and entertainment that not enough people know about? Post it in the comments below!
Not Bad meaning Bad but Bad meaning Good
This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.
I love a great bad movie and this one looks like it’s the Citizen Kane of movie turds. This thing was playing at a theater in Farmington Hills just three months ago and I missed it! Saddest face! Prior to seeing this masterpiece of a clip my favorite bad action scene was a Cynthia Rothrock car chase in which she caught up to the bad guys she was after, blew past them down the road to some hotel, took the elevator to the top floor, took the stairs to the roof, tossed a rope over the side so she could shimmy down to street level and then – while dangling from this rope – karate kicked the bad guy’s car as it zipped by, making it flip over like eleven times and burst into flames. GLORIOUS.
If you have the time, take in Part One of this clip montage, which features our Bollywood Terminator chasing down a mosquito that had bitten the female lead, getting into an argument with the mosquito and a gang of his mosquito buddies, and then forcing it to come back with him to apologize to her. There’s also an extended fight scene that reveals that the Terminator’s fists are apparently made from empty Coke bottles. I need this movie in my life.
Hey kids…Podcasts!
Here are five of my favorites:
How Did This Get Made?: This is a brand new podcast, just two episodes old, but absolutely terrific. The League’s Paul Scheer and Jason Mantzoukas, Diane Raphael (Flight of the Conchords) and a weekly guest break down exactly what’s terrible about the terrible movies we love to hate. So far they’ve skewered Burlesque and Nicolas Cage’s Season of the Witch. They’ve talked of expanding the show to include DVDs and television shows, sparking my secret hope that they’ll take on The Cape.
The Bugle: Featuring the Daily Show’s criminally underused John Oliver and his long time comedy partner Andy Zaltzman, this is a satirical commentary on the news of the day. If you like the Daily Show or Colbert Report, The Bugle is square in your wheelhouse. Even if you don’t; if you enjoy British humor, give this a spin. And it’s worth it to dive into the back episodes, their string of podcasts covering the 2008 elections in particular were hilarious.
WTF: The great thing about this podcast is that the host, Marc Maron, is just as interesting as the people he interviews. Maron and his guests get into the highs and lows of being a comedian and the business of stand-up over the last two decades in a way that is incredibly frank and always gratifying.
The Nerdist Podcast: This is the second podcast I really got in to. Chris Hardwick has thoroughly entertaining conversations about comedy and showbiz, but with a nerdy slant, with everyone from his fellow comedians to MMA fighter Mayhem Miller to Ozzy Osbourne to the Muppets. The variety of guests and Hardwick’s palpable enthusiasm for comedy is what makes the show so enjoyable.
The Pod F. Tompkast: Hosted by Paul F. Tompkins, this is a variety show of a podcast, featuring ‘The Undiscovered Project,’ an ongoing series documenting the making of a movie shrouded in secrecy and ultimately hidden away by the very geniuses that brought it to life; clips from Tompkins’s various live comedy shows, the occasional phone conversation with comedian friend Jen Kirkman and assorted other shenaniganery. Sadly, it’s a monthly podcast, but it never fails to amuse. Cakeboss!
Off the Mike 