Posts Tagged ‘Playboy’
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The indifference Tom displays toward The House Bunny is not actually true-to-life. In fact, in real life, I am very excited to see this film. I personally believe that Anna Farris is hilarious, fearless and a great comedian. It’ll be a treat to see her starring in a feature like this.
Both Cami and I are big Faris fans. I think it was her turn in the woefully underrated Just Friends that sealed the deal. He character is at once both annoying and abrasive, but the screen is a little dimmer when she’s not there to grace it. Even though it’s kinda of supposed to be a holiday movie, we’ll watch it almost anytime we’re bored. It’s a lot of fun.
To that end, I don’t know that there is anything particularly revolutionary about The House Bunny from a plot standpoint. Faris’s character is thrown out of The Playboy Mansion and takes up residence in a sorority house full of losers. She teaches them life lessons and everyone feels good about themselves in the end. Beverly D’Angelo shows up as the uptight house mother of another sorority out to spoil their fun. It’s pretty much paint by numbers. But Farris has a knack for making patently unwatchable films interesting. So it’s not completely hopeless.
It’s kind of disingenuous to stock the sorority house with actresses like Emma Stone and Kat Dennings as "the ugly girls." You can see their "removing the glasses and let down your hair scene" a million miles away. Rumor Willis, on the other hand… genius casting for that role.
That’s mean. Sorry, Rumor. It’s just that… well, your jawline freaks me out.
Anyway, Cami and I are hoping to see this sometime this weekend. I’m down for it, but I have to find time to go out and see Tropic Thunder as well. I’m falling behind!
Things are probably going to get a little more difficult for me from an availability standpoint. Today is the day that I start pursuing my Master’s Degree in Communication Leadership offered by Drake University here in Des Moines. There’s a social gathering for all of the people in the program this evening – kind of a meet and greet – before a full-blown introduction to the program itself, class load and expectations for the semester that lasts all day Saturday. After that, it’s one class a week every Wednesday for the rest of the semester. I’m kicking things off with Mass Communications 101, natch.
It’s hard to say how much impact the pursuit of my Master’s will have on the comic. Between my 9 to 5 job, being a husband, being a father and finding time to work out — attending classes and finding time to study is just another thing to add to the pile. But I wouldn’t have bothered applying if I didn’t think I could handle it. Plus, you know what they say about busy people – they get more done.
Speaking of getting more done, I’m starting to fold in some of the custom art requests I’ve received through the donation drive into my regular drawing schedule. I have one in the can and I wanted to share it with you.
This was drawn for a donator who sent $25 and who asked for a simple cast portrait. I wanted to show it to you guys because I wanted to demonstrate how I’m serious about giving you what you pay for. I’m not just slapping something onto a piece of scratch paper and mailing it to you. These drawings are on professionally printed 4 x 6″; cardstock, inked and signed. In addition to the good feeling you get for helping out a brother in need, I want you to feel like you got something for your money.
So there it is. Do with it what you will.
Please keep in mind that in order for me to maintain a level of consistent quality for ALL of the people who donated, it may take me a little longer to get back to you with the finished product. In fact, right now, I haven’t been able to get in touch with all of the people who send donations the week of the 11th.
I have a lot of e-mails to sift through and I’m trying to keep them organized. The system I’m using right now is to contact a small batch of donators at a time and learn what it is they would like in their custom art. Once the art is completely and mailed away, I take on another batch of e-mails. So if I haven’t gotten to you yet, I’m not blowing you off. I’m just trying to keep the influx of e-mail manageable. I WILL get to you eventually!
I also wanted to give everyone an update in regard to the actual data recovery.
The wizards at Ontrack managed to pull together nearly EVERYTHING from the damaged drive. I’m talking, like 99.9% of it. The only thing they weren’t able to recover is a temporary Photoshop file and an MP3 that I’m not going to miss. All of the family photos, video, and, most importantly the archived original Theater Hopper artwork has been rescued.
They had to take the failed drive into a clean room and rebuild it from the ground up to do it… but they did it!
Ontrack delivered the content back to me on Wednesday and I am glad to report it’s home safe and sound. Oh, yeah… and I already backed up copies of it just in case!
Just to be clear, this doesn’t mean the donation drive is over. I paid Ontrack with a credit card so I could get the data back as soon as possible. The goal now is to pay off the card equally fast so I’m not carrying debt and getting tagged with finance charges!
I’m optimistic, though. I mean, you guys helped me raise over half of our goal in less than two weeks. That’s amazing. It really makes me feel good to know that there are people so sympathetic to my problems and willing to help. I already knew I had a great group of readers, but to see it in my e-mail inbox everyday in black and white has been a staggering and humbling validation.
Thanks again, you guys. I’ll talk to you soon. Have a great weekend!
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When I told Cami I was doing a comic about Miss March, she had no idea what I was talking about. I think this teaches us an important lesson about marketing. Whereas I seemed to encounter a commercial for this film every four seconds on MTV and G4, it’s evident that the studio was not doing much by way of advertising on HGTV or TLC.
Just an observation.
Then again, considering Miss March came in 10th this weekend, maybe they didn’t advertise enough? I’m not even sure why I’m going out of my way to make a joke about it except I couldn’t think of anything funny to go along with Race to Witch Mountain.
This has nothing to do with the movie, but writing a joke about Playboy got me thinking about the first time I encountered the magazine. I was 8 years-old and was over at a friend’s house. He broke out a few copies that belonged to his dad. It couldn’t be a more cliche telling if you tried. Although I remember this kid was maybe a year older than me and, even at my own young age, I found it unfair that he had access to this kind of stuff when I didn’t.
In hindsight, I kind of have to wonder what kind of Dad leaves nudie magazines somewhere easily accessible for his 7 year-old son to find them.
I never really got into Playboy. I remember thinking when I got to college that I would get a subscription. But I didn’t have a credit card to get a subscription and I didn’t have the nerve to go to a magazine shop and to one. So, instead, I read Maxim for a year. Then I realized that Maxim is basically Playboy for guys that don’t have the nerve to buy Playboy and gave up entirely.
Maybe it didn’t matter. I had a roommate in college who had a poster of a woman taking her top off and he positioned it opposite the door so that you were greeted with it every time you waked in the room. It was a real crowd-pleaser on Parent’s Weekend. Nevermind asking Cami to come over. I didn’t spend very much time in my room that year. Seriously – where do you even buy posters of topless women? Even Spencer’s Gifts draws the line at underboob.
You may have read the news that Watchmen wasn’t able to hold on to the top spot at the box office this weekend. In fact, it was down 67%, which is kind of shocking for an event film like this. Or at least for a film with so much hype surrounding it. Even Speed Racer only dropped of 53%.
What does this mean? Well, I think it means that negative word of mouth not only caught up with Watchmen, but it dragged it into an alley and suffocated it. I guess David Hayer’s plea fell on deaf ears.
I don’t take in particular glee in reporting Watchmen’s failure. If anything, I’m disappointed that it might keep Warner Bros. from releasing a more thorough Director’s Cut.
But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit some satisfaction for keeping my expectations at a level where I wouldn’t end up feeling hurt by an inferior product. For better or for worse, Zach Snyder delivered pretty much what I expected him to.
And that’s all she wrote.
That’s about all she wrote for me, too. Incidentally, if you visited the site over the weekend and left a comment on any of the blog posts, they were probably tied up in Feedback Purgatory as I was out of town over the weekend on a little mini vacation. I went with Cami and my sister-in-law to the Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois.
This is how we kick off Spring Break in the Brazelton family. Not with warm-weather destinations, cocktails or wet t-shirt contests. We keep it educational.
At any rate, if you left a comment over the weekend, they’ve all since been approved. Most of them revolved around Watchmen. So you can either go back into those blogs and continue the conversation or pick up where you left off here!
Talk to you soon!
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