I can always count on my significant other to drag me to a movie that has Renee Zellweger in it. So maybe “finally” is the wrong word. Obviously, this movie sucked 4 cocks out of 5. We can shovel some blame onto Sports Illustrated’s Fuckface Emeritus Rick Reilly, who co-wrote the film, along with some other guy I don’t know enough about to consider a viable candidate for ridicule.

While we were at the $2 theater, there was this college-aged girl that walked into the movie with two of her friends. And this bitch waddled down the aisle with her fucking friends and, in a theater with maybe 15 people in it, sat DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF another couple, a ridiculous violation of movie etiquette.

Fucking cunt. If that fucking tub of shit had sat in front of me, I would have stabbed her in the face with my keys. How fucking clueless do you have to be? Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever been so repulsed so quickly by a single person in my entire life.

But I’m getting off track…

Yeah, so it doesn’t take a goofy-assed mustache or a missing chin to know that the movie’s fucked when they’ve stolen the opening credits from Cheers and the first half hour is almost word-for-word ripped off from Slap Shot.

“Oh no! The team’s gonna fold! Fuckin’ machine took my quarter!”

And then Renee Cockshrinker shows up. There’s a whore in the newsroom! You expect me to believe that a newspaper would hire a woman as a reporter in the 1920s? Did they drag her into a speakeasy after hours and gang-bang her? That might explain why she’s squinting all the time. You know, because the old news guys would be standing over her face and…Forget it. I’ll draw you a picture later. But seriously, even Lucy Liu is offended by the narrowness of Renee’s eye sockets.

But anyway…

So they get the guy from The Office to save the team. I really can’t watch The Office because annoying people aren’t funny to me, whether they’re inside my TV or two cubicles away. They could have followed me around for the first two years of my first job out of college and had a better show. And it would have had sex in it! Well, not during season one.

All of a sudden, the George Clooney character suddenly gets all jealous over the new guy even though that kid is keeping him from working in a goddamn mine. Did you know they filmed part of this movie here in South Carolina? No, I didn’t really care, either, but I had to hear about it for six gaddamn months, so now you do, too.

And if you thought this post was aimless and off point, it has nothing on the last half hour of this movie. They basically pull another character out of Renee Cumcatcher’s ass and fix all the issues in the movie, leaving the actual game at the end of the movie about as anti-climatic as a hand job from a 14-year-old girl with rheumatoid arthritis. I could have done better on my own.

Oh, and Clooney directed this turd on skates, so fuck him too.

Even the most lay readers of this site know we’re alt.nerd.obsessive fans of The Simpsons, larding nearly every post with arcane references and quotes from the show. I try to make a game of it. I see how many obscure Simpsons references I can make in an hour, then I try to break that record.

Like most of those whose formative years occured during the show’s ascent (for the record, seasons 3-9), I have a lot of personal memories tied up with at least the first nine seasons or so. My best friend and I became close in 8th grade through quoting the Don Homer (”Don Homer, my son, he’s-uh…” “Ah. ah. ah. … That’s-uh good-uh donut.”) bit to death. Even back then, in 1995, we speculated on when a Simpsons movie might get made and what they could do. Of course, had it been made then, it’d have been a brazilian times better.

The show has so dramatically shaped my sense on humor and outlook, it’s hard for me to identify with people who haven’t followed it. Most of the seminal literary or cinematic references of our time I saw on The Simpsons first and then recognized in the actual work they were visually citing. I once forced a date to wait 30 minutes before going out because The Lemon Tree Episode, a personal fave, came on during the hourlong daily block.

My expectations for the movie? None too high. The trailers and spots look a bit like the last seven seasons, pratfall-y and stupid. But I’m hoping the producers just have enough faith in the brand that they don’t feel the need to give away great material from the film in the ads. Still, you know it would take dogs-with-bees-in-the-mouths-and-when-they-open-their- mouths-they-shoot-bees-at-you to keep me away.

So, to mark this sweet moment, we planted this lemon tree, lemons being the sweetest fruit available at the time went on The Simpsons Movie web site and created avatars of the Gay Mafia, offering our readers a rare glimpse (excepting that TV whore Ufford) of our collective animated countenances.

Punter

You had to look at it for a good few seconds to make sure it wasn’t really Kearney, didn’t you? And, yes, when he has a kid, it’s sleeping in a drawer.

Nerdlinger Ape

You’ll notice that’s Scratchy on the shirt. Because I own a cat, in case I hadn’t already mentioned that fact a hundred times too many.

flubby

Little does flubby know Clasina Valkenberg has obtained a trademark on the soul patch.

The Maj

We were hoping Unsilent would make a more accurate avatar. He’s not nearly that tall.

CaveUfford

Someone apparently has a pretty deluded, er, positive self-image.

Drew

He was a little let down by the lack of towel accessories in the avatar feature.

As much as I am a lover of warm weather, summer is the season of stale cultural retreads. No worthwhile TV. Scads of bland popcorn flicks and remakes. Sure, a few football players helpfully implode their careers in the service of futilely attempting to slake our insatiable lust for football news, but truthfully, fresh Mike Vick dogfighting jokes probably won’t last us through June, the discovery of a doggie Dachau or no. And because I’m enough of a low-level functionary at work, I can’t get much time to enjoy the summery splendor - I worked two out of three days over Memorial Day weekend, don’t have enough money to take any exotic vacations, bitchbitchbitch, etc.

Anyway, there are always at least one or two media-related gems that keep me going. Hopefully, The Simpsons Movie will be one. Another such movie is this week’s Knocked Up, Judd Apatow’s follow-up to The 40-Year-Old Virgin. In a bit of viral marketing, the filmmakers released this outtake with Michael Cera, best known as Arrested Development’s George Michael, fabulously and petulently botching a key scene. It’s no Lily Tomlin having it out with David O. Russell, but it’s all done in a winkingly good humor and fine watching nonethless.