My wasted time cannot be avenged.

There are times when I really hate being a movie snob. People don't like it. They can sense my frustration with mindless garbage and they advise me to chill out and just enjoy the ride.

"It's only a movie," I've heard far too many times. Well, for me, movies aren't just movies. I have made them the primary interest in my personal time, and they will continue to play an important role in my life in the future. It is a truth that movie critics are so hard to please because they've seen more movies than everyone else. Although I am only twenty and have many more great films to watch in the years ahead, I still have seen thousands of movies, and I am less easily impressed as a result. This is a trait that gets me some criticism on occasion, because everyone thinks I just go around picking on every movie that isn't The Godfather. That  isn't true. Movies are a great art form, but movies as entertainment have their place too. But am I wrong to expect even entertainment to be above average?

Seeing The Avengers was one of the rare times I wished I didn't have an opinion. As I sat in the theater, I realized with mounting horror that I was the only person in the place not enjoying himself. I knew I probably wasn't going to like it. After all, I thought Captain America was just OK, I didn't like Iron Man too much, and I outright hated Thor. The best chance at impressing me that The Avengers had was that it was in the hands of Joss Whedon, the man behind the very creative and entertaining TV series Firefly. He could have rescued the movie from monotony by doing something nobody's done before, but his devotion to the published sources forced him to steer clear of anything unique. I can understand. He is so eager to please that he forgets we're not all into comic books.

Remember not too long ago when it was lame to be into this stuff? I think Tim Burton's Batman in 1989 was the first time that really changed and there's been a consistent stream of superhero movies ever since. Studios love churning them out because they're big piles of guaranteed profit. Film-makers love to make them because they're so easy. Just connect the dots. People are so pleased with this familiarity that they are acting like The Avengers is perfect or something. No critic seems to want to trash it, probably because there would then be a mob of millions of angry fans to deal with. As of this writing, it has a 93% on rottentomatoes, and it already broke every opening weekend record in the book. Before it's done, it will have grossed approximately 100 trillion dollars worldwide. Despite everything, it still isn't a good movie.

The main problem I have with it is that it really isn't a movie at all. It's a product that has been carefully manufactured by a group of experts who know all the right buttons to push. I watch The Avengers and it is a joyless experience. Since it's essentially a two and a half hour action scene, there is no room for imagination. I sense no love for the medium or any attempt to create something that will last more than a couple of years. That's what's so dissapointing about Whedon's direction, a good director would know that characters like Thor and Loki have no chance at infamy. The movie is so loosely pasted together, that there are parts that don't even fit right. I may be getting something wrong, but why is it in one scene, the Hulk is an uncontrollable Mr. Hyde terror that would kill his closest friend, and then in the climax he's shown patiently standing around until such time as he can fight for the good of the planet. I can only suspend belief so much.

I just plain don't understand what everybody sees in these people. Robert Downey, Jr as Iron Man really just gets on my nerves. The smart-alecky prick persona that apparently makes him so endearing is really very obnoxious. I've already mentioned elsewhere how I feel about Mark Ruffalo and his acting inability, and it's a shame to see Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner get thrown away as a pretty face and a nobody at all respectively. It's all a horrendous waste of time.

So, it really does bug me when I don't like the movie everyone loves, because I feel like if I say anything about it, it's like flat out saying those people are idiots. However, I'm not going to just keep quiet and let Marvel get away with the murder of common sense. I guess I just have to keep being an annoying snob until everyone else becomes one too. I was going to say that I am waiting for everyone to mature to the point of not needing this kind of entertainment. But that is again insulting intelligence and acting like I'm better than everyone else. I've got to stop doing that.

All you need is love. Really.

I have seen the new restored version of Yellow Submarine, which will be released on blu-ray next month, and am happy to report that it looks excellent. If you're like me, you've already seen the movie multiple times, always on that crappy old out-of-print DVD from forever ago that you probably paid too much for on e-bay. Or you have the laserdisc, which I can't imagine being any better looking and which probably made your wallet suffer big time.

Anyway, this is a movie that always seems to slip past my mind despite how many times I've seen it. That's partly because I consider A Hard Day's Night to be the superior film. I mean, anybody who watches that one comes out a Beatles fan. If you jump straight to Yellow Submarine because of nostalgia (For Pete's sake, how old are you?) or because of its infamy, that's not the best idea. This is 60s psychedelia at its peak and the experience is not well interpreted across cultures. I recommend being a fan of the music and/or the era before taking the leap. Also, if you haven't seen A Hard Day's Night, go watch it. I'm serious.

When I use the word psychedelic to describe anything, it seems to conjure up the wrong idea. People imagine a long-bearded, sunglasses-wearing, dope-smoking hippie who speaks in a slow slur about "the man" and "peace." What I really mean is that this movie is quite the trip. It is animated, in case you didn't know, so anything can happen, and it does. Some of the strangest things ever put to film are gleefully thrown at us at a rapid pace in a cheap cartoon style that is jarring at first, but you get used to it. I should point out that I think too much credit is given to drug use when these sort of things are discussed. I think more of the bizarre things in the movie spring from a good imagination than from illegal substances, something I feel better about praising.

The movie takes place in Pepperland which lays (or lies) beneath the sea and is a colorful place where large words like LOVE and YES and KNOW grow up out of the ground all over. This happy place is over-run by the Blue Meanies, who only take no for an answer. One of the things that occurred to me during this last viewing is that Blue Meanies did not exist prior to the making of this film. These music-hating cotton balls with their Mickey Mouse ears and apples of mass destruction have become such a permanent part of my entertainment subconscious that they may as well be real creatures. More importantly, the Beatles really were real. Oddly enough, John, Paul, George, and Ringo had almost nothing to do with the making of this picture. They commissioned an animated movie so they wouldn't have to actually go through the trouble of appearing in another one; they didn't even provide speaking voices. They did provide the dry sense of humor the movie so craftily emulates, and, of course, the songs.

I guess the title song is the most famous one heard in the film, except for maybe All You Need Is Love. My favorite has always been Eleanor Rigby, which I think is one of the most hypnotically sad songs I've ever heard. There's also All Together Now, When I'm 64, and Nowhere Man. That last one spawned the creation of the character Jeremy, a "nobody" (another fuzzball) who speaks in rhyme to hide the fact that he isn't intelligent, writes reviews of his own books, and makes all his nowhere plans for nobody. Isn't he a bit like you and me?

The really tricky thing about explaining to anyone who doesn't know anything about Yellow Submarine that it's a good movie is because I still can't think of any specific reasons. I think it's important as one of the surviving, if seldom seen, milestones of a dead culture. I think it's great because it's just so much fun. There are some movies that don't have to tackle big issues or even sport an expensive production. When I watch the Beatles movies, they make me happy. Their music has had an influence on me and my generation in almost the same way it affected their own followers. In my opinion, the music and images of Yellow Submarine have proven their longevity. Here I am over 40 years later, and I'm still laughing, humming, and smiling. Maybe there was something to that love philosophy after all.

Thursday is far too gruesome.

If there was just one truly evil thing in this world, you can rest assured it was probably somehow related to Babra Streisand. I also hate Thursdays.

Think about it. Yes, Mondays usually suck, but that is expected and you know that better things are coming. Tuesday is pretty passive. I know I at least am busy on Tuesday with all the stuff I didn't do Monday because I was too tired, but by this point you're used to the new week. By the time Wednesday is over you start to feel the weight of your workload heavily beating at your skull and you begin to see a glimpse of the hope of the weekend that begins with Friday, that most majestic of days.

And then Thursday hits you. So close to the end and equally far from it, Thursday teases you with its length and its complete lack of anything to do. It is my least favorite day of the week. The only way to get through it is to carefully make a plan for where tomorrow's paycheck is going and to convince people they don't know English.

You may find that most people are not grammar nerds and it can be shocking just how much people don't know about their own language. Why can't the English teach their children how to speak? Take the difference between gone and went, for example. "I should've went to the store," is incorrect. "I should've gone to that tarantula circus. Why, oh why, didn't I go?" however, is not. I would be all too happy to correct you after your next misuse.

Another English debauchery is the deplorable overuse of words that inconceivably enough don't mean what you think they mean. Plethora is a word typically used to describe any selection of things, like, "There are a plethora of good movies to see this weekend." Thruthfully, there are no good movies playing this weekend, but my point is that this statement refers to maybe three possible movies the speaking party may be interested in seeing. That is quite the selection, yes, but it is not a plethora. The dictionary describes the word plethora as "way too friggin' much." It is proper to use plethora to describe everyone you haven't met yet, an excess of items, but not to describe the number of colors in your outfit, which can be counted by a blind retard.

Perhaps the most fun time-waster ever is the art of making people not be able to speak at all. This can be accomplished by performing a shocking act, like flashing or throwing knives at them. Another more legal way is to ask them to say "toy boat" repeatedly. It helps if you are able to say it many times fast without error, forcing the other person into a frenzy of increasingly unsuccesful attempts. You scoff at my suggestions, but this last item has worked for me exactly three times and is a terrific way to spend an hour.

As luck would have it, I was alone in my office today with a very large load of work to do left over from the vacation day I took Monday. Therefore, my Thursday was just swell and it passed with exactly zero insane exhibitons. Although, I just downed several spoonfuls of coleslaw while I was typing this, a certain guarantee that an upset stomach is afoot. Such is the cost of deliciousness.