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15 more things I’ve learned about life while watching movies and TV

Posted in hollywood life lessons, humor, movies, pop culture, TV shows with tags hollywood life lessons, movies, pop culture, TV shows on February 8, 2011 by Paxton

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In March 2010, I posted a list of 17 things I learned about life while watching movies and TV shows. It was extremely popular. It got picked up by WordPress.com and posted on the front page. It’s still one of my most popular articles. So, I thought, why not write a sequel?

And here that sequel is. 15 more things I’ve learned about life while watching movies and television.

When fighting, before punching or delivering a kick, make sure your opponent is standing in front of some breakable object. A wooden wall or glass table or shelving, for example. That way if you miss striking your opponent, you’ll shatter/break the object behind which, while it doesn’t help you in the fight, looks badass. Don’t worry, the object will shatter, not the bones in your hand.

When men take off a necklace, they don’t bother with the latch, they just tear it off. Probably because the latch is broken from the last time they yanked it off their neck. When they give the necklace to a lady, she is able to fasten it around her neck despite it being torn off previously.

If you need to know something, turn on the TV. The channel will automatically be turned to the news and it will be showing the exact news story with the exact information you need. If a friend called to tell you to watch the news, no need to hurry to turn on the TV, the newscaster will repeat exactly what they just said before you turned it on.

All building ventilation systems, air ducts and vents are built big enough to accommodate the size and weight of one or more adults. It’s in the building code.

Land developers routinely build houses on top of ancient Indian burial grounds (or old murder sites, places of spiritual importance, etc). However, the building of the houses don’t seem to upset the spirits, as the ghosts will not decide to violently manifest until after a new owner with a nice happy family has purchased it.

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17 Things I’ve learned about life from watching movies and TV

Posted in hollywood life lessons, humor, movies, pop culture, TV shows with tags hollywood life lessons, humor, movies, TV, TV shows on March 4, 2010 by Paxton

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My wife and I watch a lot of movies and TV shows. We love the s**t out of them. We try to see a movie at least every weekend and we have multiple shows we watch during the week. It’s hectic keeping up with that.

However, having watched all of these movies and TV shows, we have come to take away many deep and thoughtful life lessons. Things you can’t learn by living life, but by watching hours and hours of Hollywood entertainment.

So here are 17 things we’ve learned while watching all of these TV and movies.

Davy Jones
You will always have need of a celebrity (for a charity performance or prom) at the exact time that celebrity is in town for a concert or filming a movie/TV appearance. If you need to get in to see them, it’s very easy to sneak past or distract their security people because they are always completely ineffective. The celebrity will never get pissed that their security people suck and everyone keeps sneaking in to their hotel room.

Monica's Apt
Large, studio apartments (with or without wacky roommate[s]) are affordable even for the most meager of budgets. As are furnishings from Potterybarn or Crate and Barrel. College kids and people right out of college have immaculate decorating sense.

Jolie Wanted
If you are being held at gunpoint, start running away just as the shooter starts shooting and tip over a table/couch/chair to hide behind. The bullets won’t be able to hit you. Odds are the shooter is a terrible shot anyway, and will hit EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE ROOM except for you. If you do get hit, don’t worry, bullet wounds apparently don’t hurt very much as no one cries out or whimpers with a bullet in them. You mainly shrug it off and wait for someone to bandage you up (heavy, stuttered breathing and sweating may be the only symptom that you have been shot). You may also have a sudden urge to tell your partner to “go on without you”, even with a non-fatal bullet to the shoulder.

Dirty_Harry
When you walk into a room and see the person you are trying to capture or shoot, call out their name or yell ‘Hey!’ or ‘Stop!’ first to give them a sporting chance to run. The element of surprise is overrated…and unfair.

Mr Miyagi
If you are being bullied at school, seek out the friendly, ethnic janitor or find your apartment building’s gardener or handyman. All of these eccentric, foreign, older men were actually master martial artists back in their homeland and gave up the fame and glory of being badass tournament fighters to live the dream of being a janitor/handyman here in America.

Defeat
You can defeat a master martial artist who has been studying for his entire life if you spend a few weeks/months learning to fight from the aforementioned janitor or handyman.

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15 murder mystery books with absurdly specific subjects

Posted in books, humor, pop culture with tags Book Report, books, humor, pop culture on February 12, 2010 by Paxton

I love books and I love to read. I spend a lot of my time trolling through bookstores and used paperback shops just browsing. Sometimes after browsing for 2 hours I’ll buy a stack of like six books and sometimes I’ll buy nothing, to the ever increasing frustration of my wife. She can go into a bookstore, look for 10 minutes and be done. However, get her in a fabric store and time loses all meaning. But a bookstore, that’s my domain.

One of the things I love to read is the murder mystery genre. It’s one of the most popular genres of books including such classic authors as Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Recently I’ve noticed a trend with murder mysteries wherein the author tailors the murder story around a specific hobby or lifestyle. I guess it’s to make the story more relatable to the reader. As this practice has become more and more popular, the subjects for these murder mystery books has become so intensely specific that it has become a bit ludicrous. Here are ten of the most ridiculously specific murder mystery books I could find. And there may be even more odd ball ones out there. You can click the book covers to read more about the titles on Barnes & Noble.com.

Sudoku, the OCD numbers puzzle that has become quite the rage the last few years. Now, there’s a murder mystery series featuring them. The story in this series involves a Sudoku creator for the Oregon Daily participating in a Sudoku tournament where a competitor turns up dead. She must solve the mystery and then win the Sudoku tournament (of course she does) if she is to be crowned King Sudoku and become one of the 8 Deadly Immortals and protect the Earth from the attacking Demonicle hordes…..okay, I made the last part up, but I was getting a little bored and had to think of something a little more awesome than winning a Sudoku tournament. Other titles in this series include Murder by Numbers and Sinister Sudoku.

Crossword puzzles. They are like Sudoku for old people. People obsess over these things. There are books and dictionaries created specifically to help people solve crossword puzzles. My father, my mother-in-law and my aunt are obsessed with these things. My dad told me that he’ll start a crossword puzzle during breakfast and the next time he looks up it’s 5pm, time for dinner and he hasn’t moved…or showered. Great, my dad is becoming Howard Hughes. What’s an 8 letter word for shut in? (FYI…it’s “puzzlers”) Other titles in this series include Puzzled to Death and And a Puzzle to Die On. Stay tuned for mysteries involving Yahtzee, Bunko and Parcheesi. Okay, Dad, you can shower now.

These two books belong in the “so boring I may have just passed out” category. On the left you see the first book in a mystery series about a tea shop. A.TEA. SHOP. Yes, little old ladies in red hats drinking tea and eating scones off lace doilies solving murders. It’s like a less interesting Murder, She Wrote (if that’s possible). Each title in the book has the name of a tea in the title as a pun. For instance, Gunpowder Green and Shades of Earl Gray. It’s like the author is actively trying to get me NOT read her books. On the right you can see the first book in the “coffeehouse mysteries” set in a trendy “mom and pop” coffee shop. I guess a coffeehouse is as good a place as any for a murder scene because every time I go there with my wife there are several douchebags I want to actually murder. Other coffeehouse titles include Decaffeinated Corpse and Roast Mortem. And since writing those “tea shop mysteries” most certainly drove the author insane, she also writes a mystery series about scrapbooking.

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5 Star Wars items they shockingly haven’t made yet

Posted in humor, movies, pop culture, Star Wars with tags humor, movies, pop culture, Star Wars on January 26, 2010 by Paxton

George Lucas is a media merchandising whore. There is not one other property that consistently sells billions of dollars of toys and merchandise to consumers than Star Wars. Not one. And Star Wars has been doing it since 1977. So it’s not surprising to think of the breadth of items that have been released with the Star Wars logos all over them. I myself did a very popular story (that pretty much changed the world) about hilariously inappropriate Star Wars items. There isn’t a lot of items that are man-made that haven’t had some type of tie-in to Star Wars.

However, I have come up with a few items that have yet to be produced. Below are 5 Star Wars branded items that surprisingly have NOT been made yet. And George really needs to get on this because these items are AWESOME. They would easily give Lucas that little extra pocket money he so desperately needs right about now.

The Emperor Collector Series Taser Gun – One of my favorite scenes in the Star Wars movies is the final Death Star Showdown between Jedi Luke, Darth Vader and The Emperor. When The Emperor pulled out Sith Lightning after Luke had defeated his father, I was like, “OH S**T!! WTF WAS THAT!?” Sith Lightning is BADASS. So I think it’s a natural to take The Emperor, Sith Lightning and Taser guns, mix well, and give them to law enforcement and kids. Imagine thousands of kids playing Death Star in the backyard, whipping out The Emperor Taser gun, whispering, “And now young Skywalker, you will die” and then unleashing the full stunning fury of blue Sith Lightning on their brother or sister. Can you imagine a cop that wouldn’t shout “Your feeble skills are no match for the power of the Darkside” before he tases the crap out of a degenerate criminal? It would be GLORIOUS!!!

Darth Vader Asthma Inhaler – It’s quite obvious that Vader has a bit of an asthma problem. Listening to Vader wheeze his way through three and a half movies is like listening to Rosie O’Donnell walk a flight of steps. Maybe we should use this to give confidence to kids with asthma. “See, Darth Vader has asthma and he destroyed an entire PLANET!” I can just imagine the commercial now, Darth Vader in the Death Star planning room. One of the Moffs starts choking and weezing and you think Vader is choking him with the power of The Force. Instead, Vader says, “Your lack of breath is disturbing” then hands the out of breath officer the Darth Vader Asthma Inhaler. The Moff takes a few puffs and the meeting can resume to pats on Vader’s back for a job well done. Excuse me while I head to the patent office website to copyright that “lack of breath” line I just came up with. GENIUS!

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Death and Bacon: Cavalcade of Awesome’s 2009 Xmas List

Posted in bacon, Christmas, holiday, humor, random with tags bacon, Christmas, holiday, humor, random, time machines on December 21, 2009 by Paxton

I’ve had several people ask me what’s on my Christmas list this year. What do I think is awesome enough to own for Christmas 2009. So, in answer, I decided to show you guys what I’m asking for this year.

You guys know me by now. If it’s not awesome, I don’t want it. Here are a bunch of awesome (and possibly deadly) things I want for Christmas this year.

A set of sweet nunchucks. I ruined my other pair of nunchucks earlier this year fighting off a pack of lions that were attacking an orphanage. So I need new ones in case more orphanages are attacked by jungle cats. It happens more often than you’d think.

Deadly shuriken, or Ninja Stars. Ninja Stars come in handy in many different situations. You can stick notes to the wall (see picture) or fatally puncture a victim in the head or heart. Truly versatile instruments of death.

I really want a time machine. It doesn’t have to be a Delorean like in Back to the Future (although that would be AWESOME). It can be a Ferrari or Lamborghini or Audi. I’m not picky. But it must travel through time (backwards and forwards). If it can only travel one way, then it’s pretty much useless, am I right? Where would I go? Lots of places, I’d check out Star Wars on opening day in 1977 (and buy up a bunch of vintage figs off the shelf). I’d go back and kick my own ass for wearing parachute pants (to school, nonetheless). I’d also go back and tell my dad to invest in Microsoft and Google and convince teenage Kanye West to be an accountant instead of a rapper. Nothing big. I’m really crossing my fingers for this one.