031 – The Finest Hours (2016)

Think back to your favorite movie about the military. Unless that flick is 2006’s The Guardian (and it’s probably not because I don’t think The Guardian is anyone’s favorite anything) I’ll bet it has nothing to do with the United States Coast Guard. The Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines – they all feature prominently in heroic tales of action and suspense, but the Coast Guard has had no such luck. Until now. Disney and director Craig Gillespie bring the public the movie they’ve been clamoring for in the form of The Finest Hours – and the good news for me is that it’s actually pretty well done.

030 – Fifty Shades of Black (2016)

Remember when all anyone could talk about was Fifty Shades of Grey? Those were the four words on everyone’s lips, from office breakrooms to bookclubs to NASA Mission Control. This fan-fiction-adjacent story designed to give middle-aged housewives a bit of a sensual thrill became omni-present in the zeitgeist  – and not just with those housewives. In fact, that ghettoization of the story’s appeal is pretty unfair, as I know at least one person who falls outside of that category who saw last year’s film version of the book. That person… is me. Sure, I saw it in the context of comedians making jokes over it, but still – I saw it. Parodic auteur Marlon Wayans (does that mean he’s an auteur of parodies or a parody of an auteur? Honestly, both are pretty accurate) and practically anonymous director Michael Tiddes have decided to strike while the iron is hot and take that movie down with their own version: Fifty Shades of Black. A year later. Are people still talking about Fifty Shades of Grey in your breakroom? Yeah, not in mine either.

029 – School Lunch by Better 4 You Meals

When you read the phrase “school lunch,” what image does it evoke in your mind? Some people may imagine a plate full o’ slop, dished up by a big fat grumpy lady in a hairnet, though I’m not entirely convinced that woman and that situation ever existed – she may have been created by the media to bolster support for Big Grocery Store. I ate school lunch for years – mostly through elementary school – and the thing I’ll never forget is the pizza: that rectangular pizza with the tiny cubed pepperoni pieces? I have a feeling you know exactly what I’m talking about. Why did it taste so good? Probably because nothing about it was real food. Well I’m sad to report that that specific pizza is nowhere to be found in 2016 – at least not in Los Angeles. No, school lunch has changed, man. It’s changed.

028 – Unfriending People on Facebook

Are your social networking outlets causing you stress? Do you stay up at night wondering who you’ll have to passive-aggressively subtweet the next day? Or quietly fume on the toilet while looking a pictures of Donald Trump on Instagram? Or roll your eyes at yet another rant about how Obama wants to take our guns so his Muslim family can take over our country? Well first of all – what are you doing on Facebook? Don’t you know it’s all about Snapchat in 2016? But more to the point – put an end to your aimless concerns. You are the master of your social media destiny and happiness is attainable. It’s simply a matter of clicking “Unfriend.”

027 – Kanye West v. Wiz Khalifa

Kanye West is one of the most interesting people to watch in our current era. In many ways he’s an artist that could only exist in the Internet age, his popularity existing as an extension of his persona. That’s not to say his music isn’t great. It is. But its value has given us a greater gift, which is the presentation of his interior humanity in an exterior form. Sometimes we see this in verbal/visual outbursts but more often it manifests in a shorter, more digestible form. Regardless of the medium these tantrums are always public – that’s just one of the reasons why we love him. He gives so much of himself, even when he really shouldn’t. Like sometimes he should really just stop.

026 – AMC Atlantic Times Square 14 in Monterey Park

I go to a lot of movies. A lot. I try to get to the theater at least a few times a week – usually more – because that’s how these pictures were made to be seen. Moviepass allows me to see a new movie every 24 hours at participating theaters for a reasonable monthly fee (this is not an advertisement, but if you want to sign up I can send you my code), so I try to take as much advantage of that as I possibly can. Sometimes it leads me to diamonds in the rough that I might otherwise not see due to monetary constraints and sometimes it leads me to Dirty Grandpa – you win some, you lose some. So when I saw the mostly-positive reviews of Ip Man 3 (and the fact that it co-stars Mike Tyson) that was enough reason for me to check it out. Thanks to the eclectic demographics of Los Angeles even a more obscure foreign film such as Ip Man 3 can find a release somewhere in the city or its outlying areas. I just didn’t realize exactly where this one would be until it was too late.

025 – Dirty Grandpa (2016)

cool reference, bros

I off-handedly mentioned all of the bad choices I’ve made recently the other day – well, I’ve made another one. Other critics (professional critics) have panned Dirty Grandpa: Glenn Kenny said the movie made him “[giggle]… for all of humanity,” Mike Ryan called it “the worst movie I’ve ever seen in a movie theater,” and Matt Singer wrote “I can’t believe how bad this movie is.” Despite the obviously negative message they hope to convey, these quotes only served to make me more curious about the picture – after all I watched and greatly enjoyed last year’s Zac Efron vehicle We Are Your Friends (and I won’t apologize for that), despite near-unanimous antipathy (it was self-aware and critical of the lifestyle it’s characters coveted). My embarrassment at asking for a ticket to Dirty Grandpa at the box office should have been an indicator though that I wasn’t in for a good time in any sense of the word.

024 – Alhambra, CA

“Los Angeles” as an entity is a bit of a conundrum, partially because it’s so unclear just what makes up the “City of Los Angeles” – and don’t even get me started on “Los Angeles County.” (Don’t get me started because I’m gonna start myself.) We could sit here all night trying to untangle the Gordian Knot that is this land mass in southern California. There are so many sub-cities and neighborhoods and mini-communities and unofficial municipalities both within and just outside the city that it’s nigh-impossible to keep them all straight. Did you know that L.A. County is larger than the combined areas of Rhode Island and Delaware? That’s crazy! (And definitely something that I knew before “researching” this review.) One little slice of that territorial pie is the city of Alhambra, located just north-east of Los Angeles proper. Don’t let the idyllic picture above fool you, though – Alhambra is a terror.

023 – Sharing a City with Your Parents

i photoshopped the guy in the middle’s face to protect his privacy

No one comes into this world of their own power. In fact, most of us are wrenched forth kicking and screaming through no fault of our own. Our biological parents are the true culprits – that man and woman who, often via passion and/or science, manage to create a life and then unleash it upon the world. In theory their end of this whole unfair bargain is that they take responsibility for us – raise us for about 18 years and then say “ta ta,” though it doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes factors over which we have no control prevent our parents from taking on those classically-defined duties. Not for me, though. My parents are… very engaged.

022 – White European Actors Saying Racist Stuff

gosh i hope Patrick Stewart isn’t next

I’m writing today to talk about race. That’s a daunting task for many reasons – the first is that while I am passionate about matters around social justice, I’m hardly an expert. I’m not well-read on the subject, I’ve never taken a class – but more than anything I am a white guy in his 20’s. Well, I’m Jewish, but generally that is the same thing in our modern society. I’ve never experienced real injustice and it would take a lot for me to truly understand the difficulties experienced by those who have. I can write all I want about these topics, but ultimately listening to me white-splain race is going to be at-best boring and possibly infuriating. So instead I’ll make fun of other white people who did it poorly.