2013 D-Bag Awards Round One: Hollywood vs. Video Game Companies

Hollywood vs. Video Game Companies

2013 became a colossal year for Entertainment Industry screw ups.   Some of the most anticipated events turned out to be colossal fails and in both camps.  2013 simple became a challenge of who wanted it more, the video game industry or Hollywood.

Hollywood had a lot riding on 2013.  They went into the year still smarting from the fail that was John Carter, with a new plan.   Let’s rely on those that have brought us big wins in the past.

The Lone Ranger was supposed to be the Cowboys and Indians equivalent to audience’s love of Pirates.  After all, you have Johnny Depp playing Tonto.  The problem was that audiences were beginning to suffer from Depp-ression after Pirates 4 failed to wow them.  Yeah, it grossed over a billion worldwide but the loss of three key components to the series, Orlando Bloom, Kiera Knightly, and director Gore Verbinski, made for a rather anemic plot and quite frankly, continuing the series after the confusing At Worlds End was a bit of rum soaked head scratcher.    One would think it would make perfect sense to shift the action to dry land and dig up an American icon, The Lone Ranger.   But in the overly sensitive world of being, um, sensitive, folks were angered at Depp’s portrayal of Tonto, of course they were mostly white.  Native American’s fell on both sides of the fence, giving some concern over Depp’s possibly stereotypical “Injun” portrayal, but others commending him for at least attempting to speak Comanche and not seem like an Indian and more like a Comanche American.   Yet, the film failed.  Too much action, not enough Western nostalgia.  It was simply Pirates of the Old West.

Other flagrant d-bag moves by Hollywood?  How about we look at the remakes like Carrie, Evil Dead, and Oldboy?  Each one did not need to be remade.  Carrie was ridiculous, Evil Dead was Cabin in the Woods played straight, and Spike Lee whitewashing Park Chan-wook’s 2003 film just to make a buck made for a stupid moves on an industry that is already losing out to home viewing.  Case in point,  I took my kid to see Frozen over the holiday and the cost of the tickets were less than the concessions.   Granted, the prices were a bargain price during a matinee, but still, theaters don’t make any money off of the films anymore, just concessions.   Hollywood needs to start putting a better product out and stop being idiots if they want to bring people back for the prices they charge.

Not to be outdone, the video game industry had its share of moments.  Let’s see…

Microsoft reveals Xbox One and says, “YOU HAVE TO BE ONLINE TO PLAY!”  Oh, wait, they took that back.

EA launches Sim City 5 and they insist that you have to be hooked into the Internet to play it. On top of that, it crashes because they didn’t anticipate the server demand.    What part of a single player game, do they not get?  We play Sim City because we want to control the world, not share it.  That’s like giving someone a solitaire game and making it multiplayer only.

Last of Us debuts and it’s really good and frustrating and then Ellen Page gets all huffy because she thinks the main character is too much like her.  Maybe because she’s going to be in her own game called Beyond: Two Souls and doesn’t want there to be a conflict between the two when people buy it?  Who knows?    Then there’s Battlefield 4 and Devil May Cry and a slew of other idiocies that make you scratch your head.  Add in a bunch of broken consoles for PS4, the “Don’t install the GTA V disc while playing” for Xbox One, and the debate over DRM in the gaming this year and you rack up a lot of points in the win column for the gaming industry.

So who won? HOLLYWOOD!

This one is basically a tossup, but I’m going to go with Hollywood.   For all their faults, the video game industry is still heading in the right direction with things, but Hollywood has just become so out of touch with the audience that I don’t ever see them regaining their credibility.  After all, Justin Bieber had a movie open on Christmas called Believe.   That says all you need to know. 

2013 D-Bag Awards Round One: Miley Cyrus vs. Justin Bieber

Two girls both alike in douchebaggery.    

Miley Cyrus vs.  Justin Bieber

Biebs started had his share of incidents.  There was the Anne Frank House incident where he signed the guest book, “Would have been a belieber” in the guestbook of the Holocaust victim.  I guess because she died in a concentration camp we’ll never know.  Then there was the pissing in a bucket incident where Biebs decided to drain the Little Bieber in a mop bucket in a restaurant.  And who can forget him getting pics snapped in the bed of an “escort”.  Funny, she must have thought that being a belieber wasn’t enough and would only accept cash.

Miley had an interesting year, well, her tongue did.  After all, we saw plenty of it as well as some weird ass shit at music awards.  There was the weird bear thing and foam finger performance with Robin Thicke.  There was the fact that she licked a sledgehammer.  Lastly, she twerked Santa at the Jingle Ball.  And pretty much the fact that she was up for TIME’s Person of the Year makes you want to just say, “Enough already Hannah!”

But who is the bigger douchebag?

He came in like an undropped ball!

While Miley’s antics were merely for performance reasons and she pretty much became the biggest talked about music star this side of a blurred line, Bieber went above and beyond and pretty much disrespected a lot of people, including his fans.  He’s  little punk that thinks he’s the hottest thing since sliced white bread which he fails to realize he is when he acts all gangsta.   So, for that Biebs is our winner in this heat. 

How Hot Is It?

It’s apparently so hot in the Pittsburgh and the surrounding regions, known as Pennsyltucky, that people’s brains have melted. Yes, their memory receptors have begun malfunctioning because they are complaining. That’s right, complaining. Lest we forget that six months ago a lot of us had no power, three feet of snow, and little hope of being able to get the kids out of the house and back into school before we went crazy. It must be scorching out there.

I remember sitting in the darkened and frozen cave that was Chez Mongo, wearing full snow gear, exhausted after trying to dig out my car. My wife had put a pot of boiling water on the stove, which was luckily gas powered, in order to raise the temperature to a balmy 46 degrees, so that out cats didn’t rise up and attack us for letting their comfy 70 degree home get chilly. We had been forced to take up temporary residence at my in-laws, which involved packing up a week’s worth of gear for us and our two and a half year old. I remember getting completely unpacked, futon mattress on the floor, with linens on it and clothes out of the suitcase before having the hunch to call our house to see if the answering machine would pick up. One of my cats answered instead informing me that “You better get over here. The house is possessed. One minute darkness, next minute every light and appliance is on full blast. I has a scared.”

Yep, the entire Eastern seaboard was pummeled with snow in February. So much snow, that civil services shut down the government, paramedics told injured people to walk up the road, plow trucks were in short supply and nearly every roof in the tri-state area collapsed. And we all bitched about the cold and the snow and the power outages and the lack of communication and ability to harvest crops and kill rival mafia members. Civilization was crumbling around us as we were forced to *gasp* talk to each other in person.

But that’s all ancient history, now. No one cares about the three of snow that sat on top of their cars. No one bats an eyelash at the thought that if the Sun were to say, “Oh ‘eff it!” and shut off tomorrow we’d be plunged back into cold temperatures. As long as the mercury doesn’t stay on the north end of the thermometer for more than a week we’ll be happy. I mean we could be faced with the prospect of seeing Justin Bieber burst into flames and Lady Gaga might have to stop wearing elaborate costumes and that would be bad. Please, President Obama, invoke sanctions against the Sun and order it to stop being so hot. You are magical and can solve all the world’s problems. You are not some mere mortal in an executive office that has protocol and procedures to adhere to, right? Make the Sun stop. It’s too hot.

Dear God, I have to walk outside, across the grass filled yards, in the bright warm Sun, wearing shorts and stare up at a blue sky that isn’t filled with clouds and a million snowflakes laughing at me with my puny snow shovel. HOW CAN YOU BE SO CRUEL? I have to drive on the open roads, using all lanes, with the windows down, or AC on, listening to reports about beaches and pools and barbecues and concerts and fireworks and baseball games. MAKE IT STOP! I have to see scantily clad ladies laying out and sunning themselves. OH MY RETINAS! (just kidding honey *smooches*) I have to hear the sound of my kid laughing as she splashes around in the pool and gets all tuckered out that she naps for three hours. THE HORROR!

The only thing that gives me solace is that six months from now I’ll be back to breathing heavily as I shovel out the car, frostbitten, flush faced and snotty nosed. That will make it all better. Sigh. Yeah blizzards. Hooray for States of Emergency.

‘Eff you, Sun.