Review: The Hangover Part II

Weeeeeeeeee

Whatever.

That was my initial reaction to seeing The Hangover: Part II, the highly anticipated sequel to one of the better comedy flicks in recent memory. Whatever. Thanks to the vast success of the first Hangover movie, the sequel was pretty much immediately announced by noted raunchy filmmaker, Todd Phillips. Soon the trailers and posters and other hype machines began coming around. The Wolfpack was returning to the big screen, and soon enough every bro and ho was updating their Facebook status with eager anticipation of the new movie.

I give most of the blame for this ridiculous over-hype machine to the young people of Generation Y, AKA the Bros Icing Bros Generation (we deserve it. We’re the worst). The common motif with the Bros Icing Bros Generation is to embrace only a choice few pieces of entertainment and run with the damn things for as long as they exist, no matter how obviously stupid they eventually boil down to. The short list of prime Bros Icing Bros entertainment is relatively short, but it more than answers everything you need to know about how truly committed people can be once the general population decides something deserves to be called the best thing since sliced bread.

• Twilight
• The Hangover
• Glee
• Jersey Shore

That’s just the few things that I can come up with off the top of my head, but the pattern is already well-defined. Granted, the first Hangover movie was very funny, but most of that praise came from the fact that it took some relatively unknown actors, threw them into an inappropriate movie, and then kept on giving the audience new lewd shit to gasp and laugh about. It was fresh, but the freshness pretty much died as soon as the sequel was announced. It was only a matter of time before that became clear to a lot of snooty film critics.

The Media Experiment Lives

Should two three (three and a half?) months really seem like a long time?

The last time this simple little blog had a new post was two months ago, but it seems so much longer than that. This may have something to do with the fact that my last post, a shitty attempt at live-blogging what turned out to be an awful Oscars show, was posted in late February. As time went by, and as I tried and tried to think of things to write, I couldn’t come up with anything, and simple procrastination turned into a hiatus, and I was starting to feel like the site was finally done for.

But as I left The Media Experiment for dead, I started discovering some great new pieces of pop culture geekery. Since February, I’ve experienced the joys of Breaking Bad and Community. I’ve found some great new bands to listen to, especially this cool little group from Canada called Meligrove Band. I’ve played awesome games like Borderlands, I’ve read superb books like Olympos, and I’ve even found the time to do other meaningless things, like graduate from high school and officially decide on going to the University of Missouri, starting this fall.

I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that while silly little blogs will stop moving, the rest of the world doesn’t. And as the world doesn’t stop, neither does entertainment. So really, there is no reason to actually kill this blog, even if a break from covering the whole wide world of time-wasting was worth it.

So, with all of that behind us, it’s time for the folks here at TME to get back to what we do best, and that’s providing amateur analysis and praise/criticism/irrational hatred to the world of media entertainment.

I speak for Jimmy, Emily, Trevor, and Jackie when I say: we’re back (at least for the summer), and it feels very good.

I now leave you with iPug

Double Whammy: My Favorite Super Bowl Commercials and Bookmare 2011

Honestly, I’m not even sure if this commercial was part of yesterday’s Super Bowl commercials. I missed the first quarter or so of the game on television, and all I know is that this was a finalist for Doritos’ annual SB commercial competition. It sounds like the winner was the creepy finger sucking commercial, so I’m giving an extra shout-out to the birthday commercial, which is equal parts silly and inappropriate. Let’s break it down:

• Boring old dad looks eerily similar to Maps and Atlases singer Dave Davison. He also is goofy and acts like a silly little kid.
• He suddenly pulls a dick move on his “son” (that kid looks nothing like the parents) and blows out the candles for a box of Doritos.
• There is suddenly a hip hop robot. Slightly overweight dad and robot dance badly.
• STRIPPER POLE
• The end

I was pretty much on the floor trying to re-learn how to breathe after losing said ability from laughing so hard. A close second/ third place goes to these videos.

Because pugs are freaking awesome, and because the modern day guy in the Carmax commercial does a good job of being seriously confused and terrified.

Now, after the jump I have what may be the most ridiculous reading list of my entire life. Click the jump and watch in horror; it’s BOOKMARE 2011!

Violence, Survival, Twinkies: Why is the Zombie Apocalypse So Popular?

It’s 2:38 PM. Do you know where your son is? Oh yeah, that’s right. He’s sitting on the couch with his laptop, unable to drive more than five meters before getting trapped in a five-foot snowdrift, listening to his mom work from home and his brother scream “OMG FAGGOT” while playing Call of Duty.

Sitting here in the midst of Missouri’s first “blizzard” that I can ever recall, I continue to have thoughts along the lines of snow and zombies. The snow because of the fact that I took part in a Snowcabulary marathon with Trevor, Jimmy, and few more Twitter buddies, and zombies because (a) I’ve been invested in Dead Space 2 of late and (b) this whole storm has been treated like some sort of apocalypse. The National Weather Service (of The Onion) didn’t name it Snowmageddon for nothing.

[FACT: This video only had around ten thousand hits a few days ago.]

Anyways, I’m mostly typing this to save myself from sheer boredom. That said, I’ve still always held some serious interest in how we as a culture of entertainment-loving people are so mesmerized by depictions of the apocalypse, which in most cases involve some sort of zombie, mutant, or cannibal providing the main source of danger. Follow me after the jump as I delve into what makes us love the Zombie Apocalypse so much.