Andy Gapin

A vegan kindergarten teacher accidentally invents a car that runs on blood while trying to make a wheatgrass powered engine. Ridiculousness ensues.

Most of the movie is pretty silly and there’s a lot that doesn’t make any sense at all. For example, why do none of the government agents even look old enough to vote? How far into the future is this movie supposed to take place that people make such a big deal about riding in a car like they’ve never done it before?

Worth a watch if you’ve got nothing better to do, but don’t expect too much.

Wall-E was absolutely fantastic. I loved this movie from start to finish and there wasn’t a dull moment in between. How Pixar keeps pumping out gem after gem, I’ll never understand, but doing so has afforded them the ability to take the risks that made Wall-E what it was. No dialog for the the first half of the movie? This turned out to not be a problem in the least, but it was still a very risky move, especially for a movie that is primarily geared towards kids.

I think that Wall-E fits in perfectly with the rest of the Pixar catalog as far as being able to offer something for everyone of every age. It was quirky and silly and caused me to giggle more times than any grown man should ever admit to.

I loved the social commentary throughout the movie in regards to big corporations owning everything. And it scarily offers a glimpse into the future of mankind in terms of both dealing with what we are doing to this planet and what we are allowing technology to do to society and ourselves. Hundreds of years into the future, humans have become completely plugged into technology and reliant on robots doing everything for them. This leaves them completely helpless to do ANYTHING on their own. Even such things as just getting up when falling out of their chairs require a robot’s help. And none of the humans have any idea what’s going on around them. It’s sad, but scary because I think it would be very easy for mankind to get to such a place if we’re not careful.

All of the references to other movies were great too. Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., Cars and other Pixar films as well as some 2001: A Space Odyssey references that were a great way to really real in the older folks. Loved it.

And let’s not forget about Wall-E himself. Beyond the obvious physical resemblance to Johnny-5, Wall-E is one of the cutest robots and cartoon characters ever. And watching him fall in love with EVE and earn her love in return was probably one of the sweetest romantic story lines in any movie I’ve ever seen.

See this movie.

PS: The short before the film, Presto, almost caused me to pee my pants, I was laughing so hard.

Update: This made me love this movie even more.

I’ve been listening to this album a whole lot over the last week. I really wanted to make sure that when I reviewed it, I had done my homework.

After the first 30 seconds of the first listen, my immediate reaction was “what the hell is going on with the production here?!?!” I know that they were purposely producing it to sound live and to have a really strong Springsteen sound. There’s nothing wrong with being influenced by Springsteen, he’s an amazing artist. However, it’s one thing to be influenced by him and another to try and be him. I really feel that the production on this album is a bit too Springsteeny. It really does sound like they’re trying to be him instead of just sounding a bit like him.

The songwriting on the album is great though. The songs are really good and they sound exactly like where this band should be and needs to be right now. Even though there isn’t a lot of differentiation between many of them, they’re catchy. And there is some obvious some growth over Sink Or Swim in them, but the songs still keep a very Gaslight Anthem sound.

I love all of the references to other bands in the lyrics. Counting Crows, The Boss (obviously), Tom Petty, Otis Redding, Miles Davis. It’s kind of an explicit way to define who their influences are and as a listener it’s really awesome when you catch one of them and you’re like “wow, that’s such a random reference. I never would have expected that.”

I also love the consistency of the lyrics over the past couple albums and how some seem to reference others. I really like the whole “Maria” thing too. I’m glad that they keep doing that. I always wondered if every time he uses the name Maria, he’s talking about the same girl. But with the the lyric “call every girl we ever meet Maria” on the Senor And The Queen EP, I’m going to go ahead and say that it’s not always the same girl.

Despite the production, I really love this album. I loved the way the vocals sounded on Sink or Swim and I wish they sounded the same on The ’59 Sound, but other than that, I think this is a pretty solid follow-up. Any fan should be able to dig this.

Duct tape does fix everything. Even turtle shells.

Got this one from shirt.woot.com

I got a cute little kitty today! Her name is Leela and she’s awesome…and she better like being exploited on the internet because I’m planning on making a whole crapton of lolcats out of her.

I’ve always been way more of a dog person because I love their affectionate nature. But we’re not allowed to have dogs in our place and I don’t have the time to take care of one right now so I figured a cat was the best I could do right now since I wanted a pet of some sort that was actually fun and would play a little.

Here are some pictures…

Here’s last night’s playlist from my show.

Source: 90.3 The Core

Last night I had a dream about the Jersey Devil and a separate dream about the zombie apocalypse. The latter generally happens about once a week so that’s normal, but the Jersey Devil? Really? Nothing against the Jersey Devil, in fact, I am pro-Jersey Devil, but where the hell did that come from?

It was one of those dreams that was just all kinds of weird when you think about it. Very little in dreams ever seems to make sense, but still this was the kind of dream where you’re constantly running from almost certain death and even when you wake up, you’re still not quite sure it’s over. Yeah, I’m 25, but when I woke up in the middle of the night after this dream, it definitely took me a few minutes to reorient myself and convince myself that it was safe to go to the bathroom.

While I’ve heard countless different scientific explanations for why we dream, I’m not really entirely convinced by any of them. As far as I’m concerned your brain is just processing information that you recently took in or thought about. Just about every other aspect of my dreams from last night can be mapped back to something that I talked about, saw, or thought about in the past few days, but I’m still not getting this Jersey Devil thing. The closest that I can think of that would have brought this up was a brief mention of the Pine Barrens, how part of NJ is below the Mason-Dixon line, and how there are Klan rallies in a town not too far from where I grew up. I guess that’s enough to trigger some thoughts of the Jersey Devil.

But this isn’t about the Jersey Devil or the reason for dreams, it’s about how random dreams can be. It’s like Mitch Hedberg said, one minute you’re relaxing and the next you’re building a go-kart with your ex-landlord. Where the hell does this crap come from?

With a tag line like “51% motherfucker, 49% son of a bitch” this has to be good!

Unlike with The Happening, I’m going to have to completely disagree with The Onion’s A.V. Club review of Get Smart. From beginning to end, I thought it was absolutely hilarious. I laughed harder, and more high pitched, than I have from a movie in quite some time and walked out with a few quotable lines.

I said this when I first heard Steve Carell was going to be playing Maxwell Smart and I’m going to say it again, he is the perfect actor for the role. Steve Carell may be completely one dimensional with his acting skills, but stepping into Don Adam’s shoes for Maxwell Smart fits right into that dimension perfectly.

As far as Anne Hathaway is concerned, all I have to say is: Damn did this girl get hot! Wow. There were no less than three separate times during the movie that I leaned over to my girlfriend and said “yeah, I’d stick it in…a lot.” And there were quite a few times that I said it afterwards as well.

I highly recommend checking this one out. I may not remember a whole lot of the TV show since I was probably in elementary school when I used to watch it on Nick At Nite–I do remember loving it though. But from what I do remember, it seems like a lot of the vibe and humor was kept intact for the movie, but of course with all of the modern Hollywoodness added into it as well. And even if you didn’t watch the TV series at all, I think it stands pretty well on its own, serving as a James Bond parody better than any other such attempts over the last decade. There may be a few jokes and references to the original series that you may not get, but there are still plenty of contemporary jokes and Bush bashing for everyone.

Here’s the playlist from last night’s edition of The Playlist.

Source: 90.3 The Core