SALTY PETERS COMEDY

I’m brining the running diary of Lost, the season finale to you live from the Salty Peters Manor, with special guest commentator, my cousin Leila. Right now they are playing a recap episode on ABC and I’m waiting for Leila to show up on Facebook for this running commentary. Why do they waste our time with recap episodes? They just had one a few weeks ago and they just list all the facts that we already know without answering the trillion questions we all still have. Lost, in my opinion fell off a bit this year and Jack has been mailing in his performance. Actually, I’m not sure I have seen him cry once this year, which is not cool. Whenever Jack cries, it makes me feel like it’s ok to cry. Just to be clear, no Jack crying scene has actually made me cry, but it’s like he’s giving me permission to cry in the future, as long as it is a strong silent manly cry. And Jack has laid out the template for accomplishing that. Kudos Dr. Jack. Ku-Dos! Alright, Leila just showed up. Let’s get started.

7:19
Leila: Ok so the first hour is like whatever… I have to wait till 9 eastern time for the real stuff to begin
Salty: Yeah i noticed that. I’m pissed that Better Off Ted isn’t on. I hope it doesn’t get canceled. FYI, I’m going to post the running commentary on my site, so you need a name for my blog.
Leila: What is your site again?
Salty: http://saltypeters.com
Leila: What do u mean?
Salty: Well, I’m Salty Peters on my blog, a thinly veiled attempt to keep some annonymity on the Internet, it’s my “celeb name.” We could always go with your middle name and the street you live on, but I think that is the gimmick used for people to pick out their Adult Movie names, so that might not be a great idea
Leila: So are you saying I need a blog name?
Salty: Well, for my site anyway, something witty and creative
Leila: Oh got it

7:26pm
Salty: Has Jack cried at all this season? I have noticed a definite drop off in the number of Jack is manly crying scenes
Leila: I don’t think so. Maybe in a flash back but I can’t remember.
Salty: I think he needs to cry a lot in this episode to really redeem the season
Leila: But what would he cry about? Maybe he’ll see his father?
Salty: Yeah, who is his father supposed to be on the island anyway? He keeps showing up and doing stuff to lead people around, but I totally don’t get why. Is he supposed to be Jacob? Which wouldn’t make sense, because he died before getting to the island, so why did he show up?
Leila: Maybe he had been on the island before and needed to come back dead in order to get back on? like Locke?

7:31pm
Leila: I wish kate would stop pursuing sawyer… like enough already, move on!
Salty: Yeah, I really think Kate needs a clear mission, she’s just all over the place.
And where exactly is claire? I know she went off with her dad like two seasons ago and nothing ever since
Leila: Claire left last season… towards the end before they all made their escape on the helicopter. Locke saw her once
Salty: Oh yeah, that’s right, she gave Locke some sort of guidance right? Locke saw her in the shack with her dad.
Leila: Yeah she acted all goofy like smoking something good. But left her baby behind so that’s weird!
Salty: Totally, whatever she was smoking, I wanted in on that. And it doesn’t make sense that she just up and leaves her baby after how much she supposedly loved the baby. I mean who leaves their kids behind like that, besides Stacy Petersen, allegedly.

7:36pm
Leila: How will they get back to the present time?
Salty: I really hope it turns out that John is the one that orders the killing of everybody in Darhma, even though I know we saw before that Ben ordered it, but that wasn’t until years later when Ben was grown up right? So they are really changing things because Ben is still little Ben at this point. But if John somehow goes through a time portal and orders it, that would be sweet. I will pretty much accept anything at this point
Leila: Who knows anymore really. At this point whatever is on the tv then fine. I’ll accept it
Salty: Me too. Even in real life, it’s just to exhausting to question anything anymore. As a matter of fact, I’m still waiting for the WMDs. Although, at this point if they told me that the WMDs were taken by Sayid for safe keeping on The Island, I will accept that too.

7:41pm
Salty: Hurley is such a happy dude
Leila: I love him! He is hilarious and he has some of the best lines; the “duh” lines
Salty: He reminds me of Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street. Yeah, he’s just a regular dude, and sometimes looking at things through the simplest of eyes give the best results. Not to say he’s stupid
Leila: No not at all. Just simple
Salty: Yeah, he’s no frills. not exactly vanilla, maybe french vanilla ice cream
Leila: and not store bought either but from a creamery

7:45pm
Salty: Hey, didn’t Locke already die once on the island? When Ben shot him and he saw Walt as he was lying in the tomb of all the dead Darhma people
Leila: Oh right. I don’t remember what happened with that but I don’t think he died. Something happened with his legs I think, they couldn’t move? or was that some other scene?
Salty: Yeah, I mean that was a mortal wound. Right after that, he got up and through the knife in that chicks back
that was two season finales ago
Leila: Yes that’s right… so he can’t die on that Island ever. Noami was the last season finale no?
Salty: No, last season they moved The Island. the season before was when the helicopter landed i think. honestly, I’m not even sure, they are all running together
Leila: so the naomi happened a couple of episodes before last seasons finale. no i thought it landed last season. because they got off The Island
Salty: I though they killed Naomi two season ago, and all last season was Dan, Charlotte and Miles with the pilot dude because Naomi landed solo.
Leila: Hmmm you may be right… wow they dragged out last season huh?

7:53pm
Salty: Yep, Naomi was killed in Season 3. i just checked on the website to be sure. That’s also when Charlie died and I think when they had the big “war” with the others
Oh, last season wasn’t that dragged out, it was only 13 episodes long because of the writers strike remember
Leila: Oh ok. yeah. wow they’re all blending together. Yeah and michael returned. I wonder if he is coming back for the finale?
Salty: I though Michael died on the boat explosion.
Leila: Supposedly Jin did as well.
Salty: That’s true. Remember that one clip last season where they show Jin deliver flowers to some girl after the boat explosion. He was off the island and somewhere in present time in the real world, and they made it look like he was taking flowers to Sun while she was giving birth
Leila: Yeah i remember
Salty: Has that been explained somehow? Did i miss it?

7:59pm
Leila: ok its starting
Salty: Alright, here we GO!
Leila: whooo hooooo!

wwwwwwwwwwwwWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSHHHHHHHHH!

I’m reporting to you live from Salty Peters Manor for the running diary of Twilight: The Movie. Now, if you read my status several weeks ago, you know that I was not a fan of this movie. I tried my best just to enjoy the movie the first time I watched it, but that proved to be incredibly difficult for me to do, seeing as Kristen Stewart sucks as an actress. Quite possibly she sucks as a human being as well, but I haven’t sat through any of her interviews, so I am not entirely sure about that yet. A few thoughts and comments before I hit play. First, I am writing the review assuming anybody reading it has read the book and watched the movie. Second, I will refer to Edward as Cedric Diggory and only Cedric Diggory. That’s not a knock on Robert Pattinson, I just think of him as Cedric. Kind of how I will always think of Jennifer Aniston as the loser that lost her husband to a much hotter and freakier woman, no matter what role she plays in a movie from now on. It is a bit difficult for me to accept him as an invincible vampire when he wasn’t even prepared to duel against Wormtail in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. In the name of Merlin’s Beard, this guy was supposed to be a Tri-Wizard Champion and Quasimodo catches him off guard? Third, I will attempt to refrain from comparing the movie to the book too much. At least in the respect that I will not be nitpicking for minor details or variations, because I understand that directors and screenwriters need to take artistic license with the material when adapting it. But in this case, I’m using the word artistic loosely, in reference to the book and the movie. Let’s begin.

The movie starts out simple enough. Establishes a group of vampires hunting and the uses the preface from the book word for word. So far, so good.

Alright, on the ride home with Charlie, Kristen delivers her first non narrative lines. She looks confused on how to play a teenager girl. This should be the easiest role of all time for her to play. Just be completely irrational and let your emotions dictate everything you say or do.

Jacob Black also looks like he’s waiting for Kristen to get into character. The entire time Kristen looks like she’s afflicted with a mild case of Down syndrome. Or autism. Actually, come to think of it, there must have been a typo in the book where it is established that she is mildly retarded and imagines things that aren’t true. None of the Cullens are actually vampires.

Alright, so we have just seen the Cullens. Now, I get that vampires are a little bit paler than us, but this make-up job is ridiculous. I don’t care how perfect their facial features are, anybody that looked like this in my high school would have been teased and ridiculed until they went crazy and shot up the place. If you darken the eyes and put come red lipstick on them and it looks like the Joker just showed up.

Cedric just smelled Kristen for the first time. He looks more like he’s about to throw up rather than fighting his desire for her. Although, Kristen does look like she smells pretty foul. She’s probably in a secret competition with Keira Knightley for smelliest girl in Hollywood. And upon the second viewing I realized that Kristen’s acting was so bad, I didn’t see how limited of an actor Cedric really is. And what’s up with the Luke Perry hair cut? Was he auditioning for the new 90210 and just ended up on the wrong set?

We are only 12 minutes into the movie, and Kristen has nervous laughed/scoffed her way through the entire script. Queue up the Razzies folks, we’re heading for a sweep!

Why did she get fake angry out of nowhere in the movie? Minute 13:45. Why is the director letting her take the character in this direction? And the direction I mean is crapping all over a mediocre but entertaining story.

I’m not too high on the casting of Charlie either. I pictured him more like a loving but uncomfortable dad, not a guy that is just two beers away from molesting his daughter and skinning his cat. I’m pretty sure that guy is a registered sex offender. As a matter of fact, I’m about 100% sure that I saw him on To Catch a Predator.

You know what, they make Bella look just as pale as the Cullens. I get that she was an indoor kid in Arizona, but not this pale.

Ok, not only does Bella have Down Syndrome, but she’s constantly shaking and trembling. Apparently she’s also suffering from Parkinson’s. Somewhere Michael J. Fox is throwing shit at the screen thinking this girl is mocking him.

Cedric is really scrawny. I didn’t think he’d be as big as Emmett, but the way he was described, I saw him more like Brad Pitt in Fight Club, not Orlando Bloom in, well, everyday life. Why didn’t this guy hit the gym to bulk up some more before filming?

The critical Cedric saves Kristen from the car accident scene. This scene went off just as I pictured it. Score for the movie.

We meet Carlisle for the first time. He’s the most pale of them all. Are you seriously telling me that nobody notices how unnatural the Cullen look. Am I supposed to accept that nobody questions them? And he looks like he’s younger than me. What the fuck is going on here? I new he looked really young and perfect, but they couldn’t find somebody better than the guy that dumped Jennifer Love Hewitt in Can’t Hardly Wait.

Jessica, one of the popular girls in the high school at Forks, WA looks like she took acting lessons on the Hills. The way this movie is going, that is actually a compliment.

Cedric is always looking off into the distance between lines, like he’s thinking of ways that he can tank this movie and keep the rest of the movies from getting made. Only the worse job he does acting, the more the crazy girls at my work seem to swoon over him.

Charlie is drinking beers. Uh oh Bella, watch out! Get out of the house! Do it now before he takes advantage of you! Cedric also looks like he realized that he’s way better looking that Bella and even he can’t believe that he would go after Bella in any realm of reality.

I think I saw the guy that plays Erik doing nails at the salon in the mall. Now he’s in a major motion picture. Talk about dumb luck.

I’m starting to feel slightly emasculated by the fact that Bella’s voice is deeper than my own.

The special effects really suck too. Smallville has much better effects. Did they not have a bigger budget? I wonder what the special effects budget conversation was like.

“So, how are we going to portray that they move really fast and are really strong?”
“I don’t know, we don’t have the much money in the budget.”
“Really, how is that possible?”
“Well, we spent all the money on hookers last night.”
“Well I guess we can just have a series of different whooshing sounds to portray their movement and strength.”
“Sounds great! That should save us a ton of money and we can get some more hookers.”

“I can read every mind in this room, apart from yours. That’s probably because you are retarded and suffering from Parkinson’s.”

The scene in which she’s doing her Internet research and figures out what Cedric is looked more like a bad snuff film. Wait is there ever a good snuff film? I was expecting it to turn into low budget porn, but instead it turned into an even lower budget Hollywood movie. Not sure which is worse.

When Bella gets into the forest and confronts Cedric about what she thinks he is, she’s listed his attributes. This is a look inside Cedric’s thoughts. Wow, this bitch is fucking crazy. Are we sure she’s not mildly retarded? Should I get her some help? No, fuck it, I’m bored. This will be fun. She really thinks I’m a vampire. Yeah, and she’s Wonder Woman. If Wonder Woman was short and retarded. This will be the easiest piece of ass ever.

Cedric shinning in sunlight effect was really limited. I’m going to try and stop complaining about the effects, but they look really dated. The hover board scenes in back to the future looked better. Speaking of which, where are our hover boards? Seriously. They think they can cure diseases with stem cell research, but we don’t have hover boards yet? How is this possible?

I’m pretty sure that Cedric isn’t really a vampire. His big secret is that he’s gay. He looks like he’s in pain from being anal penetrated the night before.

Ok, I couldn’t make it through this movie a second time. Thankfully I didn’t pay for it. Normally when I go into a movie with really low expectations, I do not get disappointed, especially if I didn’t have to spend money. But then there are the rare occasions where something is so bad, that the waste of my time was too high of a price to pay, and my time really isn’t that valuable.

I went to see the new X-men movie this past weekend because I’m a huge X-Men fan.  I loved the comics growing up and Wolverine was my favorite mutant.  I always liked the dark superheroes like Batman and Wolverine.  Superman is too much of a goody goody.  I’m just saying, if I had x-ray vision, I might still be saving the world, but I’d be staring at naked ladies all day long as well.  I mean, wouldn’t I be entitled to that after saving mankind God knows how many times. 

Moving right along, I’m not going to spend too much time talking about the plot line, mainly because there wasn’t a one.  What I really want to know is where the fucking money went, cause it sure as hell wasn’t on the Special FX.  I was really hoping that Wolverine would help and wash the nasty after taste I still had from X3: The Last Stand.  But it did no such thing; as a matter of fact, it made X3 look like a cinematic triumph.  At least with X3 I could tell that they spent so much money on kick ass FX that they forgot to pay the writers.  However, I have no idea what the fuck happened to this movie’s story.  I really feel like the writers meeting was a whole bunch of gay guys coming up with things they would want to see Hugh Jackman doing with as little clothes on as possible, then wrote the story around that.  There is a scene in the movie where Wolverine is playing with his new adimantium claws, and the CGI was so horrible that Jackman is looking at the mirror thinking, “Where are the cool claw gloves from the X-Men movies?  Did that sorry production assistant with the heroine addiction sell that shit on E-bay?  Why am I pretending to have claws here?  This budget would have never been reduced if Brian Singer didn’t jump ship on the franchise to direct a shitty Superman movie.  What an asshole. And scene.  Where’s my fucking lunch?”  Seriously, the FX sucked, I can’t emphasize that enough.  We are too sophisticated as moviegoers nowadays to have this shit thrust upon us.  The FX would have been fine for a Will Smith alien movie, but this is 2009.  This is the same reason you don’t see the robotic dinosaur displays at the malls anymore.  You remember the ones I’m talking about.  The ones where they had the fake stegosaurus eating the same plant for 10 hours a day and the plant never seemed to get any smaller.  Kids don’t fall for that shit.  But for some reason they thought it was ok to take 7 giants steps backwards to the days of Back to the Future FX.  I could go on about the FX, but I’m afraid if I do, I’ll tear my computer apart in a Wolverine-size rampage for having shelled out $26 for 2 adults and a kid to see this garbage movie.

Furthermore, I don’t know who the casting director was, but that fucker needs to be shot.  At one point of the movie you could tell that Hugh was thinking to himself as he delivered his lines, “Will.I.Am?!  Am I seriously in the same movie as Boom Boom Pow?  What is going on?”  And Ryan Reynolds carelessly delivered his lines like he’d rather be at home motor boating Scarlett.  And let’s be honest, we all would rather being doing that, but for the love of God man, take a little pride in your work.  I would love to be the fly on wall of the Reynolds/Johansson household, and not just to watch them have awesome hot people sex, but to listen to themselves actually take themselves seriously as actors.  That would be some funny shit.

I really feel bad for Hugh and Leiv, because they did the best they could with what they were given, which wasn’t much.  Their performances were pretty good, butting as the movie wore torturously on, you could tell they didn’t want to be there.  It’s probably why the movie was only 2 hours long.  They probably refused to film half the scenes because they were done doing half naked fights for a bunch of drooling fudge packers masquerading as writers.

Final Grade: D+ (and that is generous)

Towards the end of March I was up late one Sunday night with Mrs. Salty Peters watching TV, when we came across an episode of Gangland.  I had previously seen only one episode and haven’t made it a point of watching this show.  However, there was nothing else on TV, so I figured I’d tune in.  Let me just say that I was absolutely riveted.  This show has everything you could ever need to boost your self-esteem.  You’re not in a gang?  You’re not dealing drugs?  You’re not killing other people, although at times you may really really want to?  You’re not pimping hoes or stealing from little old ladies?  Then you have no reason to be down about your life.  If these guys can be proud of the lowlifes they have become, then stop crying about how you drive a Ford Explorer and all your neighbors have Escalades, you sissy.

Well, the episode that I caught dealt with the LMGs, Le Moyne Garden Gangtas, from Memphis, TN.  These guys were some ruthless thugs and were led by one G-Train.  Now, I missed the start of the show, so I’m not entirely sure what motivated Train to be a gang leader, but he did all right for himself.  There were some things about the show that I would like to point out.

First of all, the interview with former members of the LMGs drove me crazy.  I am willing to accept the fact that a gang member’s grammar and sentence structure would not be on par with a person as literate and educated as I am.  I’m a not rocket scientist but I still think of myself as a pretty smart individual.  But for the love of all that is holy and sacred in this world, can we get a moratorium on the phrase “Know what I’m sayin’.”  It really pisses me off when it is used, and it’s always used after the simplest concepts.  Dog Pound and Wild, two of Train’s former associates, used the phrase at least 50,000 times in forty-five minutes.  They would say things along the lines of, “I was makin’ $400-500 dollas a day just sellin’ druhgz, know what I’m sayin’?”  YES!  I know exactly what your saying, your not explaining Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, or even teaching basic addition to a 3 year old.  It’s a really simple sentence.  From now on, just assume that I always know what you are saying.

Secondly, after G-Train had a little bit of money, he bought himself a club.  Train thought it would be a good idea to make the club his center of operation.  Now this isn’t a mistake in and of itself.  But what Train named the club really gets me.  I’m not a gang member, I don’t run any illegal activities (that I’m willing to admit), and I wouldn’t consider myself to be a criminal mastermind like The Joker.  But if I were to establish a cover location where I conducted illegal activities and plotted murder, I’d want to give it an inconspicuous name.  Train, however, thought it would be smart to call his club The Headquarters. 

If I had been a police officer in Memphis I would have shot him just for being stupid.  Why would you name it The Headquarters?  That is inviting the cops to start staking you out.  If you are going to name it The Headquarters, then attempt to be a little creative.  Unless you can lock that place down like it’s the C.I.A. building in Langley, VA you don’t go around telling people that it’s The Headquarters in big bright letters.  At least get a thesaurus and find an obscure word for headquarters, Google that shit and put it up in Latin.  Hell, you can even put it in pig Latin, Hetay Eadquartershay, anything, but don’t’ make it that easy; know what I’m saying?

Eventually the LMGs started a turf war with cross-town rivals The Gangsta Diciples.  Naturally a bloodbath ensued, and the police formed an elite task force to deal with this problem.  My favorite display of Tennessee hillbilliness (is that a word) was an officer that had C-7 tattooed on his trigger finger.  C-7 was his Aunt’s radio call, she too was an officer, and she was shot down in the line of duty.  This officer obtained the tattoo so that his aunt would always be there with him and would help him make the right decision if he was ever in a situation where he might need to shoot a perp.  That, my friends, is redneck sentimentality at its finest.

Finally, the Gangsta Disciples found G-Train and shot him, where else, but in front of The Headquarters.  I told you what was a bad idea.  The best part though was when the showed the reenactment of G-Train’s killing.  Not because the footage was comical, but because at the top right-hand side of the screen they felt the need to put “dramatization” up there.  As if we couldn’t figure it out.  Just like the phrase, “know what I’m sayin’” any reasonably intelligent person can safely assume it’s not actual footage.  I’m guessing if it was real footage, then the murder would be solved today.  Or the person with the footage would have been killed and the footage would have never surfaced.  They always do this crap on shows like Cold Case Files or Unsolved Mysteries.  The are profiling an alien abduction and the put up on the screen “reenactment.”  No shit!  If it wasn’t a reenactment, the I’m guessing your would have solved the mystery already and there would be no need for your show.  Or you could rename the show “Weird Stuff That Happened…but we finally got to the bottom of it.”  You know what probably happened.  Some idiot with half a functioning brain saw one of these things and suffered irreversible psychological damage as a result.  Then some pencil pusher at the ACLU determined to make a name for himself got a hold of it and sued the bejesus out of the producers and network that broadcast the show and won.  Now, as a result, all shows need to cover their ass and put reenactment on their fake footage.  Just like the lady that sued McDonald’s because she wasn’t warned her coffee was hot.

Crump and Dog Pound remembered the funeral as an extravagant affair.  The whole neighborhood was out,” they allege, “like he was a celebrity or a politician.  It was like the Pope died.”  Really, the Pope?  The Pope doesn’t go around having people killed.  Well, maybe the Pope from The Crusades, but I’m pretty sure that with a name like Dog Pound, you’re not aware of The Crusades or the massacres that happened in the name of God back then.