I was looking at production budgets versus the total worldwide lifetime gross so far this morning and noticed that horror movies, no matter how bad, are almost always a guaranteed money maker. They almost always recoup the budget and then go way over. Here’s some examples. Some of these movies were awesome and some awful, but in both cases you can plainly see it didn’t matter how bad it was.

There are a lot more like this too that I didn’t list in the interest of space: Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, Open Water, Freddy vs. Jason, Halloween H20, etc.

So if you want to invest in something that will net a huge return, horror movies are apparently the way to go.

I’ve used my amazing abilities in the art of divination to foresee that the gas prices (in NC) will drop below two dollars ($2.00) per gallon by Monday (October 31, 2005). They are currently about $2.67 per gallon. Let’s see if I’m right or not.

If anyone else wants to make their own predicition or debate mine, please feel free to do so.

*Note* – This is just my prediction for the average retail price of gas in NC. I’m not saying that necessarily every single gas station will be below two bucks, but on the whole I think it will.

If anyone out there has a sweet idea T-H-to-tha-izzat theyd like ta share or see implemented on any of tha various internets, pleaze let me know ya feel me? I’m look’n fo` sum-m sum-m fun n off tha hook ta do n am ridin’ trouble com’n up wit shiznit.

So if yo F-to-tha-izzull of ideas but lack tha ability or desire ta see thiznem ta fruition, thizzen gizzle me a holla fo’ sheezy. Real playas recognize the realness, ya heard?

Dear Consolidated Theaters,

I’m writing to discuss your current policy trailer created by Williamson Evans. I (and I’m sure countless others) hate it; it just plain sucks. I remember when you used to have totally sweet policy trailers that made me feel like going to the movies was futuristic and awesome. Now, I kind of feel like I want to leave and come back when the stupid boxes of M+M’s are done walking around. The flying car one was sweet. The stadium full of boxes of candy is just hokey. Not only is it hokey, it’s not very good animation either. Plus it doesn’t work. It says, “No talking” and what do I see? People talking through the entire movie. You should threaten people. “If you talk, we’ll beat you senseless after the show and string you up in the lobby to make an example of you.”

I know you can afford a decent policy trailer when you charge eleven dollars for a box of Milk Duds. Are you sure we’re not paying for each Milk Dud separately? I have to wonder.

Or maybe I’m underestimating you. Maybe the idea is that you’ll enjoy pretty much anything after sitting through that stupid candy animation.

You: “Hey, this movie’s about killing babies and skinning cute dolphins.”

Me: “That’s cool with me, as long as there’s no advertisement for Icee or Rico’s Nachos I’m good.”

I think I have a place to comment here because I’m a loyal patron of your theaters. I go to the movies about once every week and a half. I’ve been to a movie at your theaters three times this week alone, which means I’ve had to sit through that lame Williamson Evans animation three times. And every single time it was awful — like getting stabbed in the eye with a fork.

So here are my two suggestions for improving this situation:

Solution 1: Get a new animation. Give us something fun like space ships or time travel.

Solution 2: Start a frequent moviegoer program. Buy 10, get 1 movie ticket free or something. I could probably sit through that stupid animation if I saved $6.50 every eleventh time.

It’d be easiest to implement the second solution I’d think. So I’d go for that first if I were you. But if I was you, I wouldn’t have gotten such a crappy policy trailer in the first place.

If you’d like to contact me further to discuss the matter, please feel free to email me here.

Have you ever met anyone who was horrible at telling anecdotes? Do you cringe every time they start telling a story? Not only is the content of the story not all that entertaining to begin with, but they can’t get it across in an interesting fashion either. They’ll have pauses that I guess are supposed to be…dramatic, but it just ends up being awkward. For example, they’ll stop after like the first word in the sentence for five seconds while you sit there flipping out because it’s taking forever for them to get to the point. And they’ll insert these abrupt obnoxious pauses every other sentence or so making it incredibly difficult to keep up with what they’re talking about. As if this wasn’t enough, they’ll also add random facts that are completely unrelated to the story. Maybe they’re just trying to be insightful?

So to try and ameliorate this increasingly prominent problem I’ve come up with a list of six helpful anecdote telling tips:

• Get on with it. No one wants to sit around for 10 minutes waiting for you to get to the meat of the story.
• Don’t bother telling us totally irrelevant pieces of information. We don’t care if oh, by the way, Shirley used to date John unless it matters.
• If you’re not sure if the people you’re with would want to hear your story, they probably don’t. Anecdotes should be tailored to the crowd listening. Just save yourself from looking retarded and don’t bother unless you know they want to hear it.
• Never say, “Am I right?” after your punchline. If you have to ask, you’re probably wrong. That, and you’ll sound like a third rate comedian.
• Don’t leave people hanging. Too often people start telling anecdotes and people will be interested and then you finish…but you didn’t really say anything interesting. Make sure your story actually goes somewhere. You don’t want people to say, “Go on…”.
• Dramatic pauses, hand gestures, and props should be used sparingly. Just be careful, and be aware of the frequency with which you utilize these oft-abused story telling devices.

Just follow these few simple rules and you’ll be well on your way to telling funny, interesting, and well received anecdotes in no time. With some practice, you too can have people saying that you’re the funniest guy at the office.

Why are the cell phone companies trying to remove the phrase “per month” from our lexicon? In all of these commercials trying to persuade you to sign up for their plan the people (usually teenagers) who are trying to convince Dad to get them a cell phone always spit out a string of features they’ll get and then say that they’ll get all of this for only $69.99 monthly access.

I argue that no one ever actually says “monthly access”. Go ahead, I challenge you to ask anyone on the street, “Hey, how much does your cell phone plan cost?” And they’ll say, “Oh, it’s 40 bucks a month,” or “$49.00 per month,” or “Too damn much.” But you know what they won’t say? “It’s only $39.99 monthly access from Verizon Wireless!” Of course the price varies from person to person, but that’s about it.

Let’s all lobby to get “per month” brought back. No real person turns the phrase “monthly access”. If we have to listen to these dumb commercials, at least make it sound like these are real conversations about cell phone plans and not people who are total corporate whores.

The plastic crap that they wrap CD’s in is more secure than Fort Knox. It’s impossible to open a CD successfully without either destroying it or getting that glue residue stuck to the case that you can never remove completely. It’s easier to just steal the CD than it is to try and get the thing open. Make CD’s less than impossible to open in under 7 minutes, and I guarantee you piracy will go down. I’m going to go out on limb here and just guess 43%. Piracy will decrease 43% by making CD’s easier to open. There’s your elusive solution to piracy. You’re welcome RIAA, I’ve let the secret out of the bag for you. Oh…that, and produce better music. That’s the other 57% of the problem. No one wants to listen to The Pussycat Dolls, Sean Paul, or Young Jeezy.

That’s right, the one and only Bono. Who better to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize than Bono? Exactly, no one could ever be better. Mother Theresa, the Pope, and Superman combined couldn’t even come close to the fantastic power that the almighty Bono commands over all that is rock / philanthropy / civilization.

Let’s just hope he wins. I really don’t want to see the destruction that will be unleashed upon the peoples of Earth if we offend He who is the greatest. I suppose we’ll find out tomorrow in Oslo.

As a side note, it’s interesting to note that Adolf Hitler was nominated in 1939, Josef Stalin was nominated in 1945 and in 1948, and Benito Mussolini got two nominations in 1935. While obviously none of these upstanding individuals won, it’s a little disturbing to think there’s a school of thought out there that says killing millions of people is kinda peaceful and should be rewarded with the Nobel Peace Prize.

So I kinda haven’t posted in almost two weeks, so here’s just a list of things that have happened or are interesting (I apologize in advance for the boringnocity of this post, I just wanted something to get rid of the “no posts this month” message. You’ll get over it though, I promise.):

• I’ve put up The Lost World video book report we made in 8th grade for SLR (Spelling, Language, and Reading) if you want to see it. It’s totally sweet and awesome and I highly recommend it. It’s hilarious to hear Kip narrating. SOOON…hahaha
• I went to see the taping of the Jeopardy College Championship finals on Sunday afternoon at the RBC Center. It was kinda neat to see Jeopardy being taped right there. Aside from the fact that it was taking place 100 feet in front of you and having to clap, it was basically like watching the show…just in a much bigger room than normal.
• Serenity was awesome!! Go see it…twice…and bring three friends. I need to see the other two movies. Hopefully it’ll do well enough for them to get made. I can see how it might be a weak introduction to the characters and idea since it was essentially a continuation of Firefly, but it was good nonetheless. A dude who didn’t know anything about the show watched it with us and I think he enjoyed it regardless of that fact.
• President Bush nominated a witch for the supreme court.

Next time I’ll try for something not so not-entertaining.