What In the Hell Happened There?

So, Pittsburgh lost the Super Bowl on Sunday. Let’s face it. Besides the actual game, there were all kinds of fail throughout the entire event.

First off, the weather played havoc with anyone trying to navigate their way around the city. Now, being from Pittsburgh, I am used to driving in the snow and ice. If it’s snowy, I’ll take my time. If it’s icy, I will probably stay home, unless I am at work or already out. However, living in and around this city comes with certain expectations and given circumstances.

When it snows, I expect to add a good 20 minutes to my drive. Whether it be all the people who suddenly go, “Oh my Gawd, yinz are crazy for driving dahn the parkway in the left hand lane. Imma gonna pull over on the burm and wait it aht, n’at.”

The given circumstances are that when it even threatens to snow around here, people will go all bat shit Snowmageddon crazy, stocking up on bread, milk, eggs, and toilet paper in case they get stuck in their house for the morning. Think I’m exaggerating? Try going to Giant Eagle to get one thing whenever there is A: Threat of snow or B: Impending Steelers game.

The other given circumstances are that whenever I finally get onto the parkway, everything will slow down before I reach the Squirrel Hill Tunnels. There are two to three lanes and a lot of on ramps merging commuter traffic into the chute that heads towards the tunnel. It all slows down and everyone jams up the parkway fearing that the tunnel monster will get them.

Now, being in the South, the snowfall is not as much and they aren’t prepared to handle a lot of snow and ice. However, what I cannot understand is why after three years of seeing National news about snowy and icy conditions in states like the Carolinas and Texas, no one has gotten wise and started planning for these kinds of conditions. Maybe they ought to think about getting some real salt or brine and trucks to treat the roads instead of magnesium chloride and sand. Maybe Jerry Jones or the NFL could have seen that perhaps there could be the possibility of snow and planned ahead. Then again, the road conditions were just previews of coming attractions.

I’m sure everyone is aware of what happened before the game started, so I won’t dwell. There were thousands of people standing in line for hours, urinating in line due to no accessible bathrooms. The queuing structure was worse than at the DMV and available gates were closed due to falling ice from the roof. Once again, a little forethought would have been good here. Then people who paid for tickets found out that the seats they paid good money for were deemed unsafe. OK, when exactly did Jerry Jones get the word he’d be hosting the Super Bowl? When did the NFL find out? And, why were these issues not addressed up until game time, forcing thousands to either take temporary seating somewhere else or not at all?
To the NFL’s credit they offered to reimburse the angry ticket holders. To their discredit, they are only reimbursing them for three times the face value. That doesn’t take into account the loss of pay from work, airfare, hotel accommodations, travel, and the fact that most people in those seats did not pay face value. Oh, and they get a free ticket to next year’s Super Bowl. Well, how many of those people were there because they were rooting for a particular team? Who knows if Green Bay or Pittsburgh will be in the Super Bowl next year? This has been updated to include ANY Super Bowl of your choice including round trip airfare.  That's about as good as it will get.  If it were me, I'd wait until either your favorite team or one of the big markets like Indianapolis or New England gets in and then sell them at a premium.

Next we had Christina Aguilera mess up the National Anthem. I can say I’d forgive her because it is a bit nerve racking to think of how many people are watching you. It’s also very hard to sing when you hear the echo of your voice back louder than what’s coming out of your mouth. Still, she kind of flaked and didn’t sound all that great. And, it didn’t help that half the people watching were thinking, “Wow, Cyndi Lauper sounds different, doesn’t she?”

I’ll get to the game in a bit, but I want to point out that the half time show, in my opinion, sucked. Let’s take a look back on the last two Super Bowls Pittsburgh played in. For Super Bowl XL, The Rolling Stones did the half time show. In Super Bowl XLIII, it was Bruce Springsteen. This year, we get the Black Eyed Peas and Usher, with special appearance by Slash. It sounded horrible. Whoever let Fergie attempt to do Sweet Child of Mine should be shot and then shot again. She even tried to do the Axl dance. Hell, she looked more like Axl than sounded like him. It was painful. And shame on Slash for selling out and doing this. In my mind you would have had two better options in this case. One would have been to get those wacky glee kids to do it or get another rock act. I guess it doesn’t bode well for Pittsburgh when you don’t have a rock and roll legend performing the half time show. My thoughts for next year, The Clarks. Hell, the last really great half time show I watched was Prince in Super Bowl XLI.

Now, the saddest part, the game. Whatever your thoughts are about the Steelers’ performance remember that Green Bay was a hell of a team. People will want to string up Ben Roethlisberger or Bruce Arians or even Mike Tomlin, that’s a given. However, look back at the playoffs and you’ll see that we snuck into the Super Bowl on luck. We played a horrible first half against Baltimore and a horrible second half against New York. That kind of luck is not going to cut in the big game.

Ben
Ben had a hell of a season, having to come back from being out four games due to the suspension. He then did what he had to do to win the other games. Now, there is usually no one else I’d want to have running a two minute drill with the game on the line, but seriously, relying on him to pull off a win in the last two minutes is no way to play.

Overall
Turnovers and penalties killed us and it’s hard to rebound from that. Ben threw one real interception and someone got a piece of his arm on the first one. Mendenhall protected as much as he could have but Clay Matthews hit him in the sweet spot causing the fumble. The defense showed moments of rattling Rodgers. You could see him getting antsy and the defense was getting in his head but they never followed through. If they could have rattled him more, he could have made some mistakes. Some will blame Troy for being a no show. Troy was there and made plays to keep Green Bay from extending the run. He wasn’t his usual Tasmanian Devil self. Shame.

Truth is Green Bay wanted it more. It was their time. Aaron Rodgers is a good quarterback and he’s getting his shot. Ben will get to the Super Bowl again and Pittsburgh will get their seventh Lombardi. This year just wasn’t in the cards. We rode a luck filled train and couldn’t deliver when we needed to.

I was pissed because we keep making the same stupid penalties. I’m not even talking about the helmet to helmet stuff that plagued us in the beginning of the season. I’m talking about offensive penalties that march us backwards five to fifteen yards at a clip. My biggest issue is with Chris Kemoeatu. For the past few weeks he has been responsible for a lot of the penalties. Holding, personal fouls, the works. Someone needs to get on his ass about causing a 15 yard penalty when field position is in short supply. He had one personal foul right in front of the official. WTF?!?!

As fans, we feel a more elevated level of frustration in Pittsburgh. We put way too much emotion and stake into a football game. After the loss I wanted to punch a wall, kick a puppy, draw a mustache on a work of art, burn a couch, and take out my 45 and shoot into the air while screaming “ARRRRRGGHHH!” Point Break style. And we get bent out of shape after the game.

We can’t watch the NFL network or ESPN because we are constantly reminded that the other team won. We go back and replay the scenario in our heads. What if Ben throws to Heath instead of Wallace during that last drive? What if he didn’t under throw Wallace? What if Aaron Smith would have played? We replay and dissect and over analyze and rationalize and bargain and we come up with the same conclusion. Then we start the process over again. We look at the calendar and start crossing off days until training camp. Then we hit rock bottom and begin looking forward to the Pirates. That’s when we really need an intervention. We’re passionate and committed and a little bit insane over our love for our team. When we don’t win we expect the ground to open up and swallow whoever we deem responsible.

This year’s Super Bowl was just a big old cluster frack and the whole season was pretty much the same way. Goodell needs to go or get a reality check. He says the fans want an 18 game season. Do we really? If you take a look at this last season and see how far into the depth chart Pittsburgh and Green Bay had to reach to string together an offense and a defense to play on Super Sunday I think the answer is clear. Hell, half of the Packers were already in the locker room before half time due to injuries. I think we, as fans, want a great season full of excitement but we don’t want to see the practice squad out on the field during the playoffs because everyone is injured. 16 games are fine. The playoff structure is fine. It all works just the way it is. If you want to change something, get that CBA done and get some consensus on the rules and enforce a league wide standard instead of saying “Well, he’s a different type of quarterback, so he needs more protection.” I call B.S. He’s a professional athlete that signed up for this. He should be taken care of just like any other person in his position. What’s good enough for a Brady should be good enough for a Vick or a Roethlisberger.

That’s all I got. Let’s go Steelers. 2011 is a new year.

Apple Launches the iPad or a Big Ass Button Remote Control

Apple finally launched the iPad.  What I find extremely ironic or perhaps morbid is that Steve Jobs looked as thin as it did during the unveiling.   To his credit, he is surviving pancreatic cancer and had a liver transplant but still it was a bit off putting to see him turn sideways and disappear.   The iPad is supposed to combine a bunch of different concepts into one device.  iPhone, web browser, book reader, email, etc., etc., etc.

Frankly, it doesn't look all that impressive except for the lower than expected price.  For $499, the entry level model is a 16GB version.  For the 64GB version you'll pay $699.  For a pay as you go data package you'll pay $14.99 or $29.99 for unlimited usage.  And don't expect to be able to use your provider for internet, unless you have AT & T.   I expect your billing statement will probably be thicker than the device.  Lastly, for those of you expecting some space age revolutionary looking tablet, guess again.  You've already seen this one in a smaller version, the iPhone.  Hell, I've seen the droid do the same stuff and it fits in your pocket.

If you really wanted to be innovative, Steve, you should have also packaged it as an LCD monitor.   Think about it.   You come home to a television stand that displays what looks like a flat screen television.  You spend a few minutes watching the news and decide you want to cap off the night by reading a book.  So, you walk to the television and lift it off its cradle.  You turn it on its end and use your finger to flip through the pages of an exciting novel or search out clues to the final season of LOST.   When you're done, you simply return the device back to its cradle to charge and act like a television again. 

Now that would have been something to see.  Instead we get the following.

is the

~

for

Papa John's Overcharges You and Then Shows You How They Did It

When I was a wee Mongo, I wanted to do one of two things when I grew up. I either wanted to own a pizza shop or be a fire truck. (That’s my go to comedic response. I need new material, I know.) This was of course before I saw the Star Wars Trilogy and all that changed. My parents’ hopes for a doctor in the family dropped to 66%.

Flash forward to 1996 and I’m working for an amusement park in Ohio. As I come back to my matchstick dorm room after a long day, I find someone waiting for me.  It's  the pizza guy. Turns out, the local Papa John’s franchise was smart enough to make a bunch of plain and pepperoni pizzas ahead of time and then just camp out in front of the dorms, waiting for workers to return after their shift. They were able to sell out nearly every single time. It was actually a great thing as you could never get through to them on the phone, because they were inundated with calls from the park.

I quickly became, and remain to this day, a fan of the excellent pizza as well as the garlic sauce for dipping my crusts.  Perhaps one of my cholesterol level’s saving grace is that there isn’t a location within delivery distance of my house, and I don’t get welcomed home from a hard day’s work by the pizza guy, waiting for me with a large extra cheese.

But from time to time I do get the opportunity to have a PJ pie and will drive the fifteen minutes to go pick it up. This weekend was one of those times. I looked online to see what they were offering and found a deal for two large, one topping pizzas at $16.99. Not bad. Along with a two liter of cherry coke at $2.29 (which is a huge rip) and tax brought my total to $20.44. My wife asked me to call it in so that the online order didn’t get screwed up. We both have an aversion to ordering food online to be picked up or delivered.  I placed the call for pickup and even asked if they had a two liter of cherry coke available, just in case. The guy on the phone said, “Yeah we got about two left.” He rang up my order and told me a total of $22.86. I said, “Um, are you sure?” He said, “Yeah, both pizzas and the two liter comes to $22.86.

Now, I didn’t want to argue with the guy on the phone because I didn’t want anything done to my pizzas while they were being made, ala what happened in the kitchen at a Dominoes in North Carolina. Instead, I said fine and then immediately looked at my mock order online for my location with the exact items at the same prices and hit “PRINT.” I drove out to the shop to pick up my order. Once again, the guy said, “$22.86.” Now, with proof in my hand and the pizzas already in front of me, I debated the point.

“Look here, fine sir.” Ok, I didn’t really say that but I was polite. “We did a mock order online and came up with a different total.” He said, “Yeah, online ordering has different prices and specials.” I said, “Really, because the deal was two large, one topping pizzas at $16.99. Your menu up there confirms that as well as the $2.29 for the Cherry Coke. Are you telling me that online tax is different for your location?”

Now, he starts back peddling. “Yeah, it is. Here I’ll show you how we got that total. I’m not really supposed to do this, but come around and check out the screen.” I walked around the counter while thinking back to my younger days of wanting to be on this side of things and looked at his screen. “There, you see? You have two large pizzas at $12.48 each with the discount making it $16.99 total plus your two liters, $22.86.” I looked at the screen and said, “Well, there’s your problem. You have two bottles of soda on there and neither one of them are Cherry Coke. I mean who the hell drinks Fanta, anyway?” Now, I’m not one to immediately call shenanigans on someone but this was clearly not on the up and up. After all, he had to confirm that he had Cherry Coke in the cooler and then added two different sodas instead. If he would have added both sodas as Cherry Coke, I might have missed it.

“Oh,” he said, “Yeah that’s not right. Ok, let me fix that but it’s still going to be more than what you saw online.” I said, “Fine. Let’s take a look.” After he spent two minutes toggling between screens and trying to figure out how to salvage his markup, with me directly over his shoulder, he finally fixed the order to have two pizzas, one two liter, and tax bringing the total to $20.44 which is exactly what I had on my print out.

Whether or not this was an intentional attempt to overcharge me remains to be seen. Seeing as how I would be the one retrieving the two liter from the cooler leaves him free to not have eyes on the slip. In fact, you don’t even get a real itemized receipt except for a sticker on the side of one of the boxes. In any case, I walked out of there with what I wanted for the price I expected.

I always get looks from my wife when I closely inspect receipts and bills that seem a little odd to me. And while $2.42 for a phantom pop plus tax is hardly cause for an EECB to John Schnatter and company, I still think that you need to be very careful on how you get billed for these things. Of course, asking him to relinquish his gold Camaro as reconciliation for overcharging is not a bad idea.

Still, it isn’t the first pizza place to try and dupe me into paying more because of fuzzy math. A local Fox’s franchise gave me three different totals on an order. I called up, placed the order and got one total. I did a double take on that and called back. They gave me a different total and I asked them why? “Delivery charge.” I said, well then, change it to pick up. I live five minutes away. I went to get it and they gave me a third total, different than the first two, even when I subtracted the delivery charge. Needless to say, I do not order from them anymore.

The one I can never truly reconcile, without a calculus degree, is Pizza Hut since they do the entire bill and then discount your coupon leaving you to wonder if they really did do things correctly. I would expect the discount to come immediately under the line item in order to remove confusion.
So, the next time you go out, take a minute to inspect your bill and don’t be afraid to get an itemized receipt. You may be surprised what secret ingredients get baked into the amount. Perhaps I should have followed my dreams, as a child making Play-Doh pizzas. Just think how I could have made a fortune on overcharges alone.

TWC Becomes MTV

On August 1st, 1981 television and music was changed forever. MTV debuted with The Buggles, Video Killed the Radio Star. That’s probably one of the most well known answers to a trivia question if not the most overly asked. You might as well say, “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?” Since the dawn of music television network, viewers and musicians made the declaration “I Want My MTV!” Soon, they got their wish and soon after, that wish was destroyed.

Not wanting to sit on their laurels and wait for someone to move the cheese, MTV branched out into more original programming by adding shows to their schedule. One of which was a game show for the collegiate crowd called Remote Control, which as I write this I am just finding out that the host, Ken Ober has died at age 52. Remote Control was a pop culture trivia game show with a quirky sense of humor that featured a few now familiar faces in their pre-celebrity-due-paying years. Adam Sandler showed off his goofy pre SNL characters like The Stud Boy. Colin Quinn, also pre SNL was the sidekick and announcer and Kari Wurher was the Vanna White in Ken’s Mom’s basement.

Also, who could forget Downtown Julie Brown, wubba wubba, wubba, as the host of Club MTV? The dance show was styled after American Bandstand set to the hottest music of the moment. Often, a pubescent male viewer would hope for just the right shot from the sky cam or floor cam to show a glint of forbidden skin on the female dancers or at least I did, at that age.

And long before Jeff Probst held tribal councils, roommates were kicking each other out of the house on one of the first successful reality shows, The Real World. Forget Richard Hatch and Jeri Manthey, who could forget Puck and Eric Nies?

But somewhere around the new millennium, MTV started to develop more and more reality and other crap shows and played less and less music videos and great shows like 120 Minutes and Headbanger's Ball. By the year 2000 there was up to eight hours of music videos being played on the network whereas by 2008, an average of three hours of music videos were being shown, yet each year they showcased the best of the best with the Video Music Awards. You have to wonder if, somewhere, Adam Curry is chomping on his gums, muttering "Damn Kids" while adjusting his long blonde 80's hair toupee to keep the liver spots covered on his forehead?

The reason I bring all of this up is that MTV was a niche network, much like its sister channel VH1. However, they stopped being what they originally were and became something else. The trend isn’t lost on other networks. For instance, The Weather Channel (guess what they show) has always been a niche network.

I remember the early days where you really couldn’t do much more than give the forecast and the current conditions. And to that end, how much can the weather really change in the course of an hour? But still, over time, TWC began to expand its horizons and offer other programming like Storm Stories and Weather Center. But regardless of what the evening block held for prime time, you could always count on Local on the 8's. Sometimes, intentions aside, TWC can be the butt of jokes, as a sort of NPR of television almost taking itself too seriously.

I used to make such jokes at the expense of my wife who loved watching The Weather Channel. I would ask how she could be so addicted to a channel that pretty much repeats itself every ten minutes? Then I began watching like a weather zombie. Must see extended forecast. Every eight minutes we would be tuned in waiting for the trippy music as if we were watching a Joy of Painting marathon with the soporific tones of light jazz playing in the background. Although, I did get a kick out of hearing "Classical Gas" accompanying the Doppler Radar. When we would go on vacation you could tell how our week was going to go based on the availability and ease of locating The Weather Channel on the hotel room television. Sometimes we’d spend more time watching the weather on television instead of enjoying it up close and personal.

It would get so bad that we would become such idiots as to say, “What’s up with Jim Cantore’s hair? Is he going bald or just thinking that it’s a good look, regardless?” or “Mish Michaels is pretty sexy but that outfit isn’t good for her.” My personal favorite was Paul Kocin. My wife would always know when Winter was in full force because the Extreme Weather correspondent, Paul, was showing up in the rotation or meteorologists.

But like MTV, The Weather Channel kind of jumped the shark and started playing movies with a weather themed plot. The first one was The Perfect Storm. Now, you could not be more appropriate than kicking off your new direction with this film that is based in meteorological reality. However, one has to wonder how they are going to keep finding good movies to show which will keep in line with the topic of weather. Already announced are Twister (tornadoes), understandable, and March of the Penguins (snow), um OK. Then it kind of breaks down into a ridiculous mess with Deep Blue Sea and Misery. Misery has little to do with Snow as say maybe Avalanche does and Deep Blue Sea is not so much about tropical storms as it is psychopathic killer sharks eating Samuel Jackson and sparing L.L. Cool J. While I can see perhaps lining up Hard Rain for floods and even The River would be a good choice, I just hope they don’t decide to choose The Day After Tomorrow for a sense of reality surrounding global climate change. Of course, they probably will, though. In that case you might as well get ready for The Core to be shown as well.

To this end, I can see other niche networks deciding to play more movies that are themed in their offering. Perhaps HGTV will show The Money Pit or Mouse Hunt. G4 could actually get back to showing video game related content and put the Fred Savage classic, The Wizard on or even the technology reality based Hackers, because everyone knows that the hardest thing to hack is a Gibson. How about The Food Network showing Simply Irresistible or at least Ratatouille? That would be good. In a couple of years they could show Julie and Julia, although I would refrain from getting the rights to Titus based on Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, although one should really know what temperature you need to have your oven on in order to properly cook your enemies into a pie.

All kidding aside, I miss the good old days when television was a landscape of 57 channels and nothin’ on instead of today’s format of 900 channels and all the same thing is on. I yearn to escape the doldrums of regular broadcast television’s lame ass programming for a little bit of jazz and current conditions and possibly even a music video once in awhile, but alas, I find myself mired in Another Shot At Hepatitis C With Skanky Ho or Washed Up Music Artist or watching Batman and Robin because the character of Mr. Freeze represents the real possibility of global cooling. Where’s the remote? Let's see if the test pattern is still around.

G4 isn’t good enough 4 Goonies

Summer for those of us in Southwestern Pennsylvania has been a huge disappointment. The weather has been extremely unseasonable. It’s either been cold and rainy or moderately warm…and rainy. To that end, weekends have been a real bummer at the Mongo household. We would like to enjoy the new pool before we close it in September or it tips over and washes out the neighbors who live below us, whichever comes first. Of course, my yard does not get a lot of direct sunlight thanks to the four trees, two oaks and two maples, that sit at each of the four corners of yard that is somewhat level.

What all this means is that this past Sunday I opted to stay in, my butt firmly placed in the already established indentation on the seat of my recliner, and kick back with some old school DVD selections. As I was returning from getting some much needed Bob Evans Blueberry Stuffed Pancakes, my mind thumbed through the mental listings of movies I had at home. There was Tron, which is always good for a dismal Sunday and is heading into sequel land next year. There was The Goonies, which is just about near perfect on a rainy day. Or, as a last resort, there was Tango & Cash, a classic tale of two action heroes of the 80s learning to put aside their differences in order to work for the greater good. I say that with loving sarcasm as it ranks somewhere near the bottom of my Top Ten guilty pleasures on film.

Now, as any Mongo faithful will attest, what I should have done is go through and watch the stupid 96% of used space on my DVR. This would have been more productive as the Fall Season is right around the corner and I haven’t even seen where Izzie has a tumor or that Callie is in a relationship with Dr. Erica “It puts the lotion in the basket” Hahn. But, that is something I have to do, not something I want to do. I still have a couple of days before my crops are ready to harvest in FarmTown, so my plate of irresponsibility is empty.

When I got home, to my joy, I found that on G4 The Goonies was starting at 5pm. At 7pm, Tango & Cash was showing on ION. Oh, how fortuitous. I can watch one of these and not have to go downstairs and rifle through my DVDs. This act ultimately leads to that DVD being migrated to a different level of the house and not being returned to its proper place for six months. So, with my choices already laid out, before me, on digital cable, I have an optimal solution for slacktitude already in place.

If I haven’t explained in countless passages of self indulgent drivel, I simply love The Goonies. Forget the bad acting. Forget some of the bad staging of fights, namely the scene where Martha Plimpton punches Anne Ramsey on the gang plank of One Eyed Willie’s ship resulting in Anne’s hand coming up to her cheek in reaction before Stef’s hand “connects” with her face. Simply bask in the Goonie Goodness that is a coming of age treasure hunt done wonderfully by the man who brought you E.T. and Indiana Jones and the guy who directed Superman The Movie and the best parts of Superman II. The movie stands as a Regan era film in which kids talk and act like adults in the face of mortal danger and general bumbling silliness on the parts of what little part adults serve in the story.

Settling into my recliner, I mentally spoke the lines as they occurred on screen. I have this film mostly memorized and could talk countless hours about it, debating its importance in American cinema while simultaneously speaking for and against a sequel being made, now nearly 25 years later. I am after all a movie snob without pretense and a traditionalist in the discussion of wide screen over full screen. However, I do concede that I should have just got my lazy ass out of my chair and grabbed the DVD because what happened next was more of a travesty than what Madonna did to Don McClean in 2000, covering "American Pie".

Now, I understand that due to the language of the film and the fact that you need to fit in all those pesky commercials, the film has to be edited from its original format. That is a given. But to slap dash edit the film in such a way as to butcher not only the continuity of the storyline but the flow of such a tale was a downright injustice to my childhood. Notably missing was most of the dialogue between Mrs. Walsh, Mouth, and Rosalita describing the housekeeping chores in which Mouth translates all of Mrs. Walsh’s instructions into Spanish, misleading Rosalita into believing there are drugs separated in different clothes drawers, “Always separate the drugs, kids” and various torture devices in the attic.

From then on the movie was like a train wreck that I couldn't stop watching. I was caught somewhere in the realm of disgust and morbid curiosity. No scene depicting The Goonies attempts at contacting the surface by banging on the pipes underneath the Country Club. No additional scene depicting Chunk and Sloth finding the shaking pipes and audio gag following Sloth’s attempt to fix the situation. No discussion on the finer points of Martin Sheen playing President Kennedy while underneath the old Moss Garden Wishing Well. No pee break or snogging between a pubescent Mikey and curiously attractive cheerleader Andie. One of the biggest omissions was the water slide scene which was cut down to about five seconds, totally destroying the thrill of including those sets and action that took place on them.

Honestly, the editing was so bad it was like watching 30 unrelated scenes pasted together with no thought or relevant transitions. G4 should be ashamed for touting this movie as “Movies That Don’t Suck” fare for the geek masses that make up the channel’s demographic. Anyone who sits through this and likes it, without having previously seen the full, uncut version, should be taken out and made to do the truffle shuffle naked, in a snow storm.

I should have known better than to trust an entity like G4. The channel has fallen far from its geek roots. They have done away with such cool shows as Cinematech and Cheat!, which is now been reduced to a small segment of X-Play. Instead they are playing such drivel as Cheaters and a failed attempt to incorporate Star Trek with chat crawls called Star Trek 2.0.

From now on, my laziness will not be a factor in my…laziness of shirking other responsibilities to watch a movie I’ve seen literally thousands of times. I will get up and walk to my DVD library, pull out my own personal copy of The Goonies and watch it the way it was meant to be watched. Then, I will thumb through the extra features and watch both videos for Cindy Lauper’s “The Goonies 'R' Good Enough" staring Cindy, some of film’s cast, various wrestlers from the good old days of the WWF, and a set of female pirates played by the yet unknown, Bangles (see Susanna Hoffs infatuation.) If I’m in a rather saucy mood, I will watch the deleted octopus scene. If I still had a tape player in my car or a working Walkman and a bike, I ride throughout my neighborhood blasting the first and last song from the soundtrack, which I own on cassette, because that’s just how I roll.

So, I shall leave you to your own thoughts over the gang from the goondocks with a little song by The Atari's called, "So Long Astoria." It provides just the right mix of nihilistic nostalgia and allusions to the movie set upon your own childhood backdrop. And if you are listening Hollywood, don't you dare touch this one. G4 did a huge disservice to pop culture. Don't you dare screw it up by making some piss poor sequel. I won't allow it. Because this is my dream, my wish. And I'm taking it back. I'm taking them all back.

It was the first snow of the season
i can almost see you breathin
in the middle of that empty street

Sometimes i still see myself
in that lonesome bedroom
playin my guitar
and singing songs of hope
for a better future

life is

only

as good as the memories we make
and i'm taking back what belongs to me
polaroids of classrooms unattended
these relics of remembrance
are just like shipwrecks
only theyre gone faster
than the smell after it rains

last night while everyone was sleepin
i drove through my old neighborhood
and resurrected memories from ashes

we said that we would never fit in
we were really just like them
does rebellion ever make a difference

life is

only

as good as the memories we make
and im taking back what belongs to me
polaroids of classrooms unattended
these relics of remembrance
are just like shipwrecks
only theyre gone faster
than the smell after it rains

So long astoria
i found a map to buried treasure
and even if we come home empty handed
well still have our stories
of battle scars, pirate ships and wounded hearts,
broken bones, and all the best of friendships

and when this hourglass
has filtered outits final grain of sand
i raise my glass to the memories we had
this is my wish
this is my wish
im takin back
im takin them all back

Rejection Is Not a Four Letter Word

This is a response to a great article from NPR. Rejection Is A Fact Of Life. Employers, Do It Right!

Quick summary. The author’s teenage son applied for an internship to which after he never received a rejection letter.

It’s hard to believe, but I’ve been rejected before. I know you must find it surprising to hear that with all this talent and charisma, someone like The Mongo, who, besides pretentiously referring to himself in the third person, has been rejected. It’s true. I’ve been rejected more times than I care to remember.

Now, that’s not to say that rejection is a bad thing. Quite the contrary, rejection is grist for the mill. The moment you accept rejection as a final answer is the moment you fail. Of course, I’m not telling you to keep asking for acceptance when rejected. It is certainly a case by case basis. Persistence can lie somewhere just below stalking. Sometimes you have to know when someone is rejecting you for the right reasons and move on with your life.

But back to me, because it’s all about me, right? Rejection is an old friend of mine and sometimes I wonder why he hasn’t called sometimes. I mean there have been countless times in the past when I have applied for some job and never received a response. Worse yet, when you get an interview and then you never hear from someone again, that can be a little worrisome. Was I supposed to call them? Did they try to call me and I missed them? If you become too self involved with the job hunting process you could end up being Jon Favreau in Swingers. You get a little glimmer of hope, like an interview, or even a second interview and then you begin calling and calling, leaving countless messages with the company that become more erratic with each instance. Soon, the company has blocked your number. If they would have just told you the moment your application became an afterthought you could have regrouped or applied somewhere else or even just decided to go in a different direction.

I can only begin to imagine the reasons for not contacting someone in regards to their application. It might be because they have to wait until the position is filled to contact those candidates that were not chosen. It might be an automated process within an HR recruiting application that spits out a list of tasks associated with applicants not being considered. There might be some underlying bureaucracy that hangs the position out to dry and until it is finalized they cannot contact all interested parties. Both cases offer a different reason for prolonging the inevitable but when a position hangs out in the HR aether for over a year because a suitable candidate has not yet been found, I think it should be safe to contact the “also ran” crowd and let them know they can exhale.

I have also been rejected as an artist. I’ve gone on countless tirades about how CafePress moves one of my images into pending status with either no explanation or one that is contradictory to why another, similar, design is considered allowable. Frankly, this is more about principle than about being right or wrong. I accept, wholeheartedly, that there are some designs that should be flagged, but at least be consistent about it. That’s all the page space I’ll devote to that abused expired equine.

I’ve certainly been rejected in love, many, many times. Yet I have come to accept that it only put me on a better path to where I am now. There’s no way to know what might have been had another woman accepted my affections, without the use of a DeLorean equipped with a flux capacitor and 1.21 gigawatts of power, but that could create a huge paradox and unravel the fabric of the space time continuum. Of course, but making that previous statement you have the answer as to why there is no need to wonder what might have been. Regardless, it wasn’t the right time or place for that to occur. There have been plenty of “Let’s Just Be Friends” moments in my life and a few cases of uncontrollable laughter that followed such declarations of feelings but one thing has always remained true. I’ve never found myself so distraught that I could not get up in the morning after being rejected. Rejection is a part of love as well as life and it should be embraced.

I’ve also been rejected as a writer, too. This must come as a complete shocker to you as part of the “reader elite” that makes up the average 20 hits I get per day. Just in case this isn’t coming across, this post is heavily laced with sarcasm. After all, I’m topical, humorous, grammatically proficient, and quite honestly engaging and worthy of a good read. But on four occasions I’ve had a screenplay rejected. The first one came in 1996. I submitted a screenplay directly to MGM. However, they sent it back unopened with a letter stating that they do not accept individually solicited screenplays. What did I know, I was 21 and thought I had a killer idea. I also believed that if I mailed myself a copy of the script, that was as good as a copyright. I was mostly wrong, on both parts.

The other three occasions came from the a screenplay I submitted three times as part of those Project Greenlight contests that happened back in the front five of this decade. In this case, a screenwriter submitted a piece of work and had to review and judge other pieces. Then a selection of the best pieces based on votes from other screenwriters would send a script to the next round where a panel of judges in the industry would narrow it down further. The winner would get their screenplay produced into a film with a budget of one million dollars. In the first two instances the winners came up shy of box office totals that exceeded their budget. According to my own suspicions I felt that the early judging process was a little slanted. In order to win, most people are going to trash other people’s work to give theirs a higher score. The actual percentage of objective critiquing going on there was probably small.

In my own house, I get rejected a lot, too. My gut feeling to do more work on leveling out the yard before putting up the pool was rejected in favor or getting the sucker up before the summer was over. Not that we’ve had a lot of great days to go swimming this last two months of summer. It’s been unseasonably cold and wet. However, there, in my yard stands a monstrosity that is 16 feet round and four feet deep…on one end. It’s also moving as the support pools are leaning to one side.

I’ve also been rejected on a lot of ideas I’ve had for how to get things done. My wife and I try to work together to accomplish goals like cleaning the house, running errands to the store, or general care of our two year old. Yet, we always seem to tackle these jobs together in the same space but with different approaches. I’ve constantly told her, “Let’s split up and tackle these simultaneously. I’ll go to the store, you stay here and give the baby a bath” or vice versa. Still, she feels compelled to go as a group into the fray and usually there is bickering and trampling of each other’s toes.

In every instance that I’ve ever been rejected it stings. A lot of times it pisses me right off to no end. But rejection is there to balance things out and keep you grounded. I’ve spoken before about how I detest the trend among community sponsored sports where there is no sense of failure. Soccer games that have no score and other sports where everyone gets to play and no one fails. Now, I can understand that to a three year old, failure is a rather moot concept and giving kids a sense of accomplishment is a good thing. So is a sense of reality for that matter. Kids need to know about failure. Kids need to understand that, in life, you can’t always get what you want. It’s going to get a lot tougher out there and the sooner they are able to process rejection and move on they will be able to not let it be a detriment to their character or persistence.

My kid fails on a regular basis. She falls down, clunks her head and cries. We kiss it and make it better and she goes on about her business. She constantly wants to take more stuffed animals in her crib with her at night and we tell her no. She gets a little upset and even goes into shut down mode which involves throwing herself on the floor in a crying heap. Eventually, she gets over it and goes to bed without further incident. She got rejected, processed it, and moved on to another thing.

So, the next time you get rejected think of it as a little more fuel for the engine in your spirit. Of course, I say that and I feel that my engine isn’t getting as good of mileage from rejection as it used to. Perhaps there is a program like Cash For Clunkers when it comes to rejection. If anyone actually read my work or shared it with others or even donated to the cause or bought a shirt that would be nice. Nope? Rejected again. Maybe next time.

Pool Be Sorry

I could go into a lengthy dissertation, babbling about how I am a water person, but I won’t…for the most part. However, I will preface this post by saying that I have been a lover of the water all my life. There was a time I could spend all day in the pool or the ocean. I would become so water logged that when I went to bed at night I could still feel my body sloshing around like I was still in the water. So, it should come as no surprise that I would have a pool when I finally became a homeowner, right? Well…

As a kid, I didn’t have a pool. I either went to a friend’s house or a public pool to swim. When we did go on a vacation in the summer, I would always lobby for the beach, but sometimes I would be forced to accept swimming in the lake at Prince Gallitzin. It just wasn’t the same. First of all, there was a rope outlining where the swimming area was, and within that perimeter it felt like there was a concrete slab underneath the sand. Still, I enjoyed it as a chance to be in the water. Maybe it has something to do with being a Pisces.

When I got older and went on vacations with my wife while we were dating, we always made sure the hotel we stayed at had a pool. After we got married and sort of graduated to renting a beach house, we only looked at houses that had a pool and being private made it more enjoyable.

One day, I vowed to have a pool of my own. To that end, I figured that if I was going to actually take the plunge and install one, I want to wait until I can afford an in ground pool. Unfortunately, that day may never come, at least where I am living now. My yard is not very conducive to sustaining a pool without massive landscaping. The yard starts at the back of my house and slopes gradually, and then sharply, and the not as sharp, sharp, and then gradual. It kind of looks like a graph of the economy over the last two years. That’s just going in one direction. From side to side, it’s also not level. I also have two huge maple trees in the back yard that have taken over underneath the yard with a root system that has found its way into the terracotta pipes underneath my garage and driveway. Not to mention, the canopy pretty much keeps the sun off the yard for the most part. Realistically, for me to put a pool in, I would spend more on landscaping than actual installation.

However, my wife is convinced that we could put up a pool with no problems and be floating around on our rafts. With our daughter’s second birthday this past July, my wife was hell bent on getting a pool. Now, I’d love to have one, but I know what has to happen. I once told my wife that three things had to be replaced before I could even think about a pool. The hot water tank, the furnace, and the air conditioner have to go belly up before I can devote time and money to a pool. The hot water tank went first. The A/C and furnace are kind of iffy at this point with the furnace really iffy because it’s original to the house from the 60s. And now, I think I’m going to have to add the roof to that equation, because I’m noticing some water marks on my ceiling.

That veiled threat was made before the knowledge of INTEX pools. These are the Wal-Mart special pools that are in the neighborhood of $300.00 and consist of a liner, pipes that stand on the ground connected to tee pieces that are connected to a ring of pipes slid into sleeves around the liner. A small pump and some hoses connect the filter into the liner and you have yourself a pool erected in a half an hour’s time. We nearly bought one. Well, she nearly bought one while I protested, shaking the George Cukor finger of shame, at her.

So, I did what any wary consumer in the world would do. I called my family. They have the wisdom and experience of being through this before. My brother, in particular, had recently built a house and had one of these pools in his back yard before getting a more permanent one installed. I called him from the store to ask his opinion on owning one. Is it worth it? Is it costly to maintain? Would he recommend buying one?

His response was simple. Don’t buy one. I thought I would be vindicated in this matter. He went on to explain that they still had theirs and it was sitting in a box, in their basement. He wanted to get rid of it but didn’t want to go through the hassle of selling it to someone who would be going through his house to see it or have to figure out how to ship for an online purchase. I had thought my sister would have had it but she doesn’t have the yard for it. Frankly, neither did I.

Unwilling to look a gift horse in the mouth and also incur the wrath of my wife, I agreed to take it off his hands and he brought it to the house. The thing came in a sizable box along with a ground cloth and liner. It sat in my garage from July 5th until August 1st. Why? Because the yard needed to be worked on before I could set it up.

My wife was hoping we could just put it up the day it was delivered. I told her she was nuts, honestly. Looking at our yard, it slopes about a foot or more from the back of the house to about 20 feet out. We needed at least 17 feet for the 16 foot pool, although looking back, 18 feet would have been better, but I was pressed for time. I needed to do one of two things, dig or dump. If I dumped dirt on my yard to level out the area, I would have spent money and time on material and delivery…not to mention destroying my yard in the process. If I dig, I need something other than a shovel. I was doing the work myself and just digging up a five foot by two foot section proved to be a hassle with all the roots twisting and turning underneath the soil.

We decided to go with a hybrid approach. Dig down in the portion against the house and move that ground to the lower portion to build it up. Not such a great idea as I will explain later. We had a few false starts and down time during the week, waiting for things to happen. We were supposed to get use of a tractor with a blade on it but that didn’t happen. We also had to contend with all the rain we’ve been getting in this unusual summer. More ire from my wife who kept saying she would just go out and dig it herself forced me onto a guilt trip and I finally went out and dug up half the sod. I managed to break a shovel in the process.

By the time I got around to getting down to business, I was informed that all I needed was a rototiller. Well, now, why wasn’t that on the table from day one? I secured my Father-in-Law’s rototiller and began digging a hole. Unfortunately, the damn thing needed to have gas poured into the hole for the spark plug to start. Each time we had to quit and start up we had to repeat the process. I finished the first attempt around the 25th of July. I’d till and then hack away at a huge root. I’d till, then hack again, or toss rocks out of the way. By the time I was done, I had a more level piece of land but still way off. Not to mention, I was coming up short on the required 17 feet from front to back.

This past Saturday, my wife went shopping with our daughter, giving me the opportunity to get the job done. I attempted to till again and managed to break the ceramic spark plug in half trying to put in gas. Bleeding and furious, I began to just dig and rake the yard, building up the ground at the bottom of the circle…which looked more like an oval. I ended up having to dig more off the back of the yard to get more dirt and area for the pool. I was running into obstacles because the ground was more mud than dirt or more accurately, clay. I decided to take a break before I broke something else and went to the store for a new shovel, a garden rake so I didn’t break my F-I-L’s and sand. If I couldn’t get any more depth, at least I could get more girth.

Stupidly, I bought six fifty pound bags of sand. I should have bought at least ten. I returned to the house as it was nearing 4:00pm and decided to get back out there and finish this thing. Spreading the sand around I laughed as I realized how bad of a job I was doing. My thoughts went towards the sight of this pool snapping its posts and exploding, the water rushing down my yard and into the homes of the street below mine. After I finished, I said, “Eff it!” and went for the ground cloth. I had the cloth down and the liner spread out as my wife returned, putting the baby down for a nap. I made mistake number two when I decided to put the hose outlets on the house side of the pool. I was afraid of not having enough electrical cord and didn’t think about the fact that I was still uneven at this point. The water level would be off about six inches to a foot on either side.

Mistake number three came when I got the pool filled and noticed that there was a leak in the liner. I couldn’t tell where because of the ground cloth providing a surface for the water to seep along as it headed towards the outside. I should have filled it enough to cover the entire bottom and then inspected for leaks. But, I didn’t care. I was tired of this business and wanted the voices in my ear to stop. So, I filled it up. On Sunday, August 1st, I had the pool filled. The difference in depth on one side versus the other was laughable. My wife joked that I always wanted a deep end, and now I had it.

Mistake number four came when I added chlorine. Here’s a little tip for you… when you get those tablets…don’t sniff them. They smell like chlorine. Don’t look at the number of tablets inside the container either. There’s as many as stated on the outside. I managed to burn the hell out of my nose and lungs when I attempted to look into the container and inhale, slightly. After a few hours of dissolving one of the tablets in the floater, I opened it to see if it was all gone. I was at an arm’s length and it still got me. Don’t inhale. Your lungs will thank you. I went to bed Saturday night with a bead of sweat perched on my brow.

It used to be that I would go to bed at night, worried that the alarm wouldn’t go off in the morning or that the baby would have something wrong and I wasn’t there to keep an eye out. Those things were far gone from my need to worry as I kept a light sleep pattern, listening for the sound of snapping vinyl and metal pipes, followed by the sound of rushing water. The pool has managed to stay in one piece, but the damage is done. The front side is sinking into the shelf I built up and who knows how much more it will sink.

Now, I could take it down and fix it in a weekend but I would have to drain thousands of gallons of water, tear it down and try and fix it. The next month’s worth of weekends doesn’t allow for that kind of screwing around. So, we’ve decided to just swim in it as much as we can, close it for the winter and then see about fixing it in the Spring, if it’s still standing.

By the way, you may have noticed I started my list of mistakes at number two. The first mistake was telling my wife that my brother was willing to give me his. I should have just said he hated it and went from there. Of course, that would have come back to bite me in the ass later. Still, I don’t doubt that I went about this whole matter with poor execution and planning. It was just a case of letting someone else make the decisions and live with the consequences of that failure. That’s a 5000 gallon ‘I told you so,’ waiting to happen. Anyone want to take bets?

There's a Nap For That

I felt I had to sneak in one last post before I’m off to tame the OBX on a much needed vacation. Preparation for such an endeavor requires that I take at least a small nap before departing as I am going to be the primary driver for almost all 12 hours of the trip. Of course, we will stop every couple of hours because of my daughter and in-laws. We’ll need to do a diaper change…my daughter, not the in-laws. We’ll also need to make sure my Mother-In-Law doesn’t sit too long because of blood clots. In actuality, I could probably drive the entire distance with no more than a few red bulls, a couple of Stay-Awakes, and an bathroom every now and then. That’s not necessary, though, as my wife will do some of the driving in key locations. But this is all contingent on that nap I must have. One, I know I will undoubtedly not get.

Something always gets in the way when it comes to a good nap. When my wife and I were first starting out living together, it was nothing to take a weekend afternoon and just catch a couple hours of extra sleep. I lived in a town house and didn’t have to take care of the yard and cleaning was an easy task. Even when we bought our first home, we found a few free hours, during the weekend, when we just needed to take a little snooze. Then, our daughter came. Suddenly, nap time took on a different meaning. Instead of catching a few Zzz’s when we weren’t busy, we began using our little one’s nap time as a chance to get things done. That wasn’t always a possibility, though.

My kid is a bit odd in that respect. She can sleep 12 hours through the night, and have a two hour nap in the day time and yet I find that when she’s done, you don’t move. Having creaky hardwood floors in our house doesn’t allow for much sneaking around. When’s she’s 16 it will be a benefit, but for now, it’s a hindrance to grabbing dirty laundry from the bedroom, cleaning the house, or even cutting the grass, outside. The kid is a light sleeper.

I can remember when she was just born, I would get up to feed her every two hours. Those two hours consisted of getting her out of her crib, checking her diaper, getting her bottle ready, feeding her, burping her, changing her diaper, rocking her, and laying her back down. Then I had to go clean up. By the time I was able to get back into bed, it was time to start all over again. Those first three days nearly broke me. I never thought I would get to sleep through another night. And when she went all night without waking up for the first time. My wife and I still didn’t sleep. We kept thinking something was wrong. Why isn’t she making any noise? Is she breathing? Is her blanket smothering her? If I go in there, I’m liable to wake her up, ruining what we have just accomplished. That was one of the longest nights of my life. It’s been downhill ever since with her. She sleeps great at night, but naps are still a fragile balance.

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So, when I declare that I am going for a nap before I make the trek in the Family Truckster, three things will happen.

1. I will be unable to fall asleep.
2. My wife will wake me because there is a spider in the living room.
3. My two year old daughter will bang on the door, because she knows I’m in there.

The only reason she won’t come barging in is because the door is locked. She has the ability to turn door knobs and open doors, now. We confine her to one floor at a time and within our sight. The kitchen and dining room are blocked off and the door to the bedrooms and bathrooms of our ranch home are shut. Our bedroom is the only one she is fascinated with but the door latch isn’t the best. We can lock the door and shut it without fear of being locked out. A simple push on the door near the knob opens the door, easily. While she can turn knobs, her ability to push a locked door open is still limited. Although, while on her little scooter, she can achieve ramming speed. With that mode of transportation she might easily be in the room in no time. Then she will stand on the side of the bed, her head just clearing the mattress, and begin to repeatedly say, “Mup. Mup. Mup.” It looks like I’ll be putting another pot of coffee on while I pack the car.


Footnote:

While I’m gone, I hope I will be able to capture some great images to throw up here. I might even get a moment to do some shirt designs, although my wife will probably shoot me for opening up my laptop while on vacation. I cannot guarantee that I will post anything this coming week because I have an acute sense of survival, but I would like to address the changes made to CafePress while I’m gone. It may spell the end of Mongo Angry! Mongo Smash! The store.

Monkey Fighting Snakes on a Monday To Friday Plane

This post has been modified from its original version.

I don’t know about you but watching a movie for the first time on its television broadcast seems sacrilegious. First of all, unless you are watching it in HD, it is probably going be cropped into full screen format. I am one of those die hard wide screen enthusiasts that cannot stand to watch movies unless they are presented in their original format. The fact that George Lucas went back and monkeyed around with the Original Star Wars Trilogy in the mid 90’s did not bother me. Some of the additions were pretty cool. However, I did take offense at the whole Han/Greedo showdown. I do not care how immoral it may appear, but Han Shot First. End of story.

Tirades aside, occasionally, I will catch a movie on basic cable which subjects me to cropped vistas and edited language. Now, depending on what channel the movie is playing, the censoring of profanity can be as simple as just muting the offending word leaving you to read a person’s lips to inserting a new word or words to try and keep the integrity of the scene’s sound intact. The results range from laughable to downright hysterical. Of course, the most common replacement for the ‘F’ word is “Forget” as in “Forget You.” However, once you start getting into the variations on the word, you run into trouble.

I have decided to point out a few great examples with clips from YouTube to illustrate the hilarity. The most recent rearing of ridiculous re-edits just happened when Snakes On A Plane was aired on FX. Putting this movie on regular television is like 80’s Teen Sex Comedies on USA Up All Night. The whole purpose of watching those films is the blatant nudity and the editing for content on those is just as bad as language. My personal favorite is an already bad movie, Showgirls. Why would you watch that movie in the first place is beyond me? Why you would watch it with the flesh colored underwear digitally added in is just plain masochistic. However, I digress. Here are some of my favorite bad dubs and edit fails.

1. Snakes on a Plane: "Monkey Fighting Snakes on a Monday to Friday Plane!"  We all know that the whole point of this film was to hear Samuel L. Jackson utter the famous line. When you watch it on television you get a whole different context. Apparently, this airline only has flights during the week and as part of the in flight entertainment you are treated to monkeys fighting snakes.

Monkey Fighting Snakes on a Monday to Friday Plane
(Warning: This design has been modified to comply with CafePress' Content Usage Policy.)

2. The Rock: "Winners date the prom queen!"  When movies attempt to make a passable edit to keep the context of the dialogue, you would think that they would go through every possible word to make sure it matches the tone. Then whoever is doing the dubbing should try and sound like the original actor, that is if you can’t get them to do the dub. Well, who the hell doesn’t do an impression of Sean Connery. His voice is one of the most highly impersonated in pop culture, yet the person dubbing over this line makes it sound like Sean is stroking out when delivering this line.

3. Major League: "Strike this guy out!"  One of my all time favorite movies has one of the all time funniest edit fails. Corbin Bernsen approaches Charlie Sheen on the mound and in what looks to be a showdown over Sheen defiling Bernsen’s wife in retaliation for his on the road infidelities becomes one of the worst dubs ever. They attempted to stretch a single syllable word over the spoken length of two syllable and on top of that, Bernsen suffers from Connery’s stroking out syndrome.

4. Die Hard With a Vengeance and Repo Man: Jackson strikes again with this epithet for someone who beds a mother. Somehow, Die Hard got lucky and it actually sounds pretty funny owing the term to Repo Man’s director Alex Cox, or should that be Alex Game Bird?


5. Die Hard 2: Die Harder: " Yippee Kay Aye, Mr. Falcon!"  They should have dub the title Try Harder. Once again, it’s hard to accept watching the great John McClane be emasculated on television when delivering his catchphrase as Yippee Ki Yay, Mr. Falcon.

Now, some movies just have original tracks that are hysterical. One of the greatest intentional censored words comes from Michael Keaton’s Johnny Dangerously. Roman Moronie’s malapropisms shown in calling people "fargin ice holes" and "bastadges" have become part of the Pop Culture lexicon.



For a list of other bad edits check out Uncylcopedia.
Gawker has a compilation of bad edits but they neglect Major League or The Rock.