Monkeys bore me

When I was in middle school, I watched Star Trek: TNG. (That's The Next Generation for you non-nerds out there. [Who am I kidding? If you read this, you already knew that.]) I was a little more receptive to science fiction then because, key words, I was in middle school. I have no shame admitting that I enjoyed First Contact and rather recently watched The Undiscovered County, but I still contend that is a good stand alone movie. I have a variety of other embarrassing things that I liked when I was younger, like Magic the Gathering, for instance, but I'm sure your VHS tapes of Jem are not embarrassing at all.

I don't have any particular affinity towards Mark Wahlberg, or Marky Mark, as I was introduced to him initially. I thought he did a good job in The Departed, liked his cameo on SNL with Andy Samberg, and enjoyed I Heart Huckabees (I guess). I also saw his remake of Planet of the Apes, which I thought would be good if for no other reason Tim Burton's directorship. He's not my favorite director, but he did direct my favorite movie (Big Fish) and is responsible for the move that gave us both the lines, "Where does he get such wonderful toys?" and "This city needs an enema," so good on him.

Here's the thing: it was terrible. Beyond awful. I have had more entertaining haircuts. In the interest of full disclosure, though, I have never seen the originals. (I have seen the Simpsons Episode where Troy McClure gets a role in a PotA musical, though -- classic.) I have never seen Charleton Heston say, "Get your paws off me, you damned dirty apes!" I have seen Soylent Green though, which gave me everything I wanted as far as Heston one-liners go.

All this PotA talk is all well and good, but they've made another one. Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I know it's summer, and dumb, blockbuster movies come out in the summer, but I just didn't realize anybody liked this one enough to make a sequel. It is ten years later, I guess, but still.

Am I missing something? Is this movie series so good that modern remakes are worthwhile? Are the PotA originals worth my time? My time, after all is precious; I could be catching up with Jerrica Benton.

Who is your favorite Traveling Wilbury? Is it Jeff Lynne?

This post will kind of buck the trend of pointing out things that bother me, but since I never get any comments, I don't care what you people think about trends. Actually, if you did post comments, I probably still wouldn't care.

I felt the need to say in blog form that Roy Orbison is great, although he is not my favorite Wilbury. That would have to be George, who is also my favorite Beatle. Roy would be second though. Don't think that's a slight on Mr. Orbison, George Harrison is a Beatle for crying out loud. But listen to Roy Orbison.

And that first part isn't really true. I would care if you left comments. But they better not suck, or Roy Orbison will be Cryin'.

Simpsons beat South Park beat me to it

I was watching Family Guy with my roommate on Sunday, and during a fifteen minutes punctuated with a below average concentration of laughs, I said that I wanted my next blog entry to be about how Family guy is overrated. I told him directly, because I'm pretty sure he's like 50% of How Observant's readership. He replied with, "South Park just did that."

So, I checked out the South Park episodes (Cartoon Wars I and II) which, in addition to making me feel lazy (I could've written that post a month ago and I would've been ahead of the curve), it did a fantastic job satiring the media, American hypocrisy and Family Guy. I didn't really consider myself a South Park fan before, but I do think that they are the best satirists on television right now.

Anyway, Family Guy is overrated. I don't really want to say much more than that because I don't want to sound like I'm ripping off South Park.