Monthly Archives: October 2019

 

Mandy Kaplan (see sidebar) and Johnny Giacalone play a married couple experiencing the seven-year-itch – scratch that; seven-year-itch implies pining for new romantic partners. What these two have is more like “it’s-been-seven-years-and-nothing-about-you-lights-my-fire.”

After consulting with a marriage counselor, Nick and Willa embark on a 30-day program to spice up their love life. The program, however, is less Hallmark and more Hamster.com. Anyone game for anal sex?

 

 

Pros:  Although the film is raunchy, at heart it’s old fashioned and feel-good. The two leads are likable, which they pretty much have to be in a movie like this, and several of the supporting characters are a hoot. A few scenes are flat-out hilarious.

Cons:  The tone is often peculiar. 30 Nights mixes a Disney-movie sensibility with hard-core interludes. Sometimes this works because the contrast is so stark that it tickles. (Remember watching “June Cleaver” speak jive in Airplane!? Imagine June and Ward experimenting with anal sex, instead.) At other times this tonal juxtaposition just feels … off. I mean, golden showers in a feel-good comedy?

But there are several laugh-out-loud scenes, which is a tough find in 2019.   Grade:  C+

 

 

Director: Tom Metz III  Cast: Mandy Kaplan, Johnny Giacalone, Dan Fogler, Katie Walder Release: 2018

 

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From the Editor:  We asked Smallest Penis in Brooklyn contestant and Grouchy Editor contributor Rip van Dinkle to interview the star of 30 Nights of Sex to Save Your Marriage, Mandy Kaplan.

We did this not because we have anything against Ms. Kaplan, who was charming and a good sport; we did it because, well, we lost a bet to Dinkle and owe him an interview.

 

Rip van Dinkle:  As you know, the plot concerns a married couple trying to spice up their love life. To that end, they attempt all sorts of wild and crazy things. Or all sorts of tame and sensible things, depending on your perspective. Do you think couples had better sex lives in, say, the 1950s, or today, and will it be better or worse 50 years from now? 

Mandy Kaplan:  Being only 24 years old (what?) I wouldn’t know what things were like in the ‘50s. Was that the Mesozoic period? I assume people have always been kinky as hell, just less open about it. 50 years from now I assume everyone will be too open about their sex lives which will kill the fantasy or mystique. It is my firm belief that we are living in the sex sweet spot. Ooh, potential name for the sequel!

 

 

RVD:  As a male with a penis, I am often confused by the female point of view. On the one hand, we men are told never, ever to send “dick pics” in an e-mail. On the other hand, I know from first-hand experience that lots of women enjoy going to pageants where men show their little willies on a stage and get measured by female judges. Please explain.

MK:  We clearly hang in different circles. I have never heard of these pageants, but assume the women enjoy emasculating the men and feel this is a safe way to do it. Seems to be in line with something like a dominatrix (one of my favorite scenes in 30 Nights!)

RVD:  Finally, it seems that just about the only body part it’s still OK to laugh about is the tiny pecker. If you ever star in another sex comedy in which a role calls for a man with a wee one, I am hoping that you’ll consider Yours Truly for the role so that I can become a big Hollywood star. Deal?

MK:  Wait, you’re NOT already a Hollywood star? I was told this was George Clooney’s alias. Damn.

 

 

From the Editor:  We had to explain the meaning of “emasculate” to Rip. We did this by showing him this definition:

 

 

Below, Dinkle is measured by a female judge at the Smallest Penis in Brooklyn pageant.

 

 

“I have never heard of these pageants, but assume the women enjoy emasculating the men”

 

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Not a week goes by without some celebrity whom I used to like/admire/respect making a complete ass of himself with respect to politics or Trump. This week, I’m looking at the two old boneheads pictured above.

 

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Poor Rachel Maddow. She has a real propensity for attracting men who – scratch that; Rachel, an open lesbian, doesn’t really attract men. But she does seem to wind up closely connected to the worst kind of creeps.

Not that many years ago, this guy was a favorite guest on Rachel’s show:

 

 

After that, she called this guy her co-worker:

 

 

And now we learn that her bosses are these guys:

 

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But props to Rachel for going after her creepy bosses on her Friday show. It was a belated but gutsy move.

 

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Former federal prosecutor Jon Sale had effusive praise for John Durham, the prosecutor looking into the Trump investigators:  “His 30-year career gives him credibility … he was a man of integrity, who called them as he saw them. So if he doesn’t have credibility, I mean then nobody does.”

“Well-respected,” “a straight shooter” … hmmm, where have I heard that kind of stuff before? Oh yeah, that’s what they said about Mueller and about Barr and about all of these guys right before they got trashed.

 

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Speaking of talking heads, or heads that are talking … I don’t trust any of these retired generals who get placed before TV cameras and asked to comment on foreign entanglements. Their track record is horrendous.

 

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The New York Times, our so-called “paper of record,” got busted for changing a story after the fact without letting anyone know. This happened, of course, in the online version of the Times.

We’ve done that (rarely, but we have done it) here at The Grouchy Editor. My guess is that it’s a fairly common practice. It’s impossible to go in and change Tuesday’s print newspaper or last week’s magazine, but it’s a piece of cake on a Web site.

So not only can you no longer trust your favorite news source, you can’t even trust that what you read yesterday is still there today.

 

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Joe Biden strikes me as: likeable, stupid, and … crooked as hell.

 

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Oh, that’s good to hear. I’m sure Mark Zuckerberg and his minions will do a wonderful job.

 

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There is so much crap going on in politics — again. Too much crap to go into in detail. So let’s just post some random impressions:

 

 

“She’s the favorite of the Russians, they have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.” – Hillary about Tulsi

 

Hmmm … could it be that the Russkies like Tulsi because, unlike Hillary, she’s hot?

 

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Hypocrites of the Week:

Kathy Griffin for being outraged by the Trump/Kingsman meme while also believing there was nothing wrong with her Trump-decapitation photo.

Honorable mention to LeBron James, who is very principled … about his money.

 

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Tulsi does have a robotic quality about her, with her stone-faced expressions and sleep-inducing, monotone voice. Was she captured by the Russians and Manchurian candidatized? Candisized? (Sorry, I’m trying to invent a word here.)

But Hillary, it’s still preferable to your evil cackle.

 

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Poor Trump. His chiefs of staff all seem to be either Swamp creatures looking to undermine him, or idiots. Or both.

 

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I have nothing against the Kurds. Twenty-five years ago, I came home from work one night and found several of them sitting on my living-room couch. In Texas. (My then-wife was tutoring Kurdish women, I believe in English skills.) The ladies seemed quite nice.

But this “suddenly abandoning the Kurds” rhetoric is a bit much. The Kurds have known for years that this day might come, and have had plenty of time to ponder life without U.S. troops.

 

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Apparently the creeps at NBC enjoyed looking at pictures of Maria Menounos’s pussy. No reason the creeps reading this post shouldn’t also enjoy looking at the same pictures:

 

 

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Enough about politics. Let’s enjoy my favorite GEICO commercial, which is back just in time for Halloween:

 

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Donald Trump is a bad liar.

Let’s all agree about that, shall we?

But here’s the thing. Ninety-nine percent of our national politicians are liars. However, most high-profile politicians are smooth liars, adept at hedging and dodging and changing the subject.

Trump, a bad liar, gets busted before he can even finish a sentence.

So what’s worse, a smooth-talking con artist who might be able to fool us, at least for awhile, or the blowhard who’s immediately called out?

 

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Pricks of the Week:

 

 

The NBA in general, Steve Kerr (above) in particular.

Sometimes in life, you have to choose. You people made the wrong choice.

 

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How to Do a (Male) Nude Scene

 

 

If you are William H. Macy, you have co-star Maria Bello cup your privates in her hand.

She has a small hand.

 

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The ultimate patriarchy proponent must have been Jesus Christ, who was forever going on about his father.

 

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My cable company, Comcast, informs me that it will now charge extra for TCM, which will be included in some sort of “sports” package.

Comcast must really want me to cut the cord.

 

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I can’t be the only one who likes “Weekend Update’s” Michael Che but can do without Colin Jost and his perpetual smirk.

 

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A big week for TV producer Brooke Nevils, who posted this loving picture of her and her fiancé, Luke, shortly after Matt Lauer shared this juicy tidbit with the world:

“I had an extramarital affair with Brooke Nevils in 2014. It began when she came to my hotel room very late one night in Sochi, Russia. We engaged in a variety of sexual acts. We performed oral sex on each other, we had vaginal sex, and we had anal sex.

“She was a fully enthusiastic and willing partner. She seemed to know exactly what she wanted to do.”

Poor Brooke. She will now be expected to regularly perform anal sex with lucky Luke, probably.

 

 

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Walking Out

 

I have a weakness for movies like this one. You know: wilderness movies with hungry bears, or deep-sea movies with dead-eyed sharks. That’s because, unlike most sci-fi and horror films, these scary stories could really happen. To you. Or to me. Walking Out, in which a father and his teenage son encounter peril in the Montana mountains, does well with its survival elements. On the downside, although Matt Bomer and Josh Wiggins are believable as dad and son, their on-screen chemistry left me a bit cold. Release: 2017 Grade: B

 

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El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie

 

Whenever a studio announces plans for a movie version of a beloved TV show, the hope, at least among fans of the series, is that the movie version will be bigger and better. Bigger budget = better experience. There is good news and bad news about Netflix’s two-hour revival of the classic Breaking Bad. The bad news?  The movie, which follows the trajectory of young Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) after the death of Walter White, is no better than the series. The good news? The movie is just as good as the series – and you don’t get any better than that. Release: 2019 Grade: A

 

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“I don’t mind paying more taxes … but I’m more interested in how they’re going to spend it. What are they going to do with it?” — Mark Cuban, above, on Fox News

 

Translation: The government wastes too much tax money. We shouldn’t expect the rich to bear this burden, so let’s not raise their taxes until we solve this problem of waste. In the meantime, guess who will continue to get screwed?

Here’s a thought. Let’s tax the rich and let them feel the pain, rather than the Middle Class. Perhaps once they feel the pain, they’ll be motivated to fix all that waste.

 

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Do you want to be on the “wrong side of history”?

Well … why not? I mean, what does the question really mean?

Let’s say you were a cobbler in Nazi Germany, or a British loyalist in 1770 New Hampshire, or a farmer in 1859 Georgia. Maybe you tried to ignore politics … until all hell broke loose.

You are long gone now, of course.

Do we really suppose these bygone souls are floating somewhere in the cosmos, eternally muttering to themselves, “Damn! I really screwed up my time on Earth. Now I’m on the wrong side of history!”?

But what will your great-grandchildren think of you if you are on the “wrong side of history”? I can’t, of course, speak for you, but if I were to learn that my great-grandfather was in fact Jack the Ripper, I might be more fascinated than shamed. I might even write a book about it.

“The wrong side of history,” methinks, might be overrated.

 

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One of the (few) advantages of encroaching old age is that you feel, less and less, a compulsion to finish movies that suck. Life really is too short.

And so I stopped watching In the Tall Grass, the most recent garbage adaptation of a Stephen King story, just 30 minutes into the damn thing.

 

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Sometimes weeks – or even months – will go by when I have absolutely no interest in seeing whatever big-screen products Hollywood is cranking out. But I am intrigued by two new movies: Joker and Knives Out (above).

 

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Depressingly, my Minnesota Twins are on the cusp of losing yet another series to the hated New York Yankees. I have a theory about this year’s nightmare.

Before this ongoing playoff series, the Twins deactivated Willians Astudillo. Willians Astudillo looks like this:

 

 

Willians is the unofficial team clown. His nickname is “La Tortuga” (the turtle). No Twins team ever wins it all without the right ingredients, which include a seasoned veteran (Nelson Cruz), an amazing rookie (Luis Arraez), and a lovable clown (La Tortuga).

In 1991, the last time the Twins won it all, they had the seasoned veteran (Chili Davis), the amazing rookie (Chuck Knoblauch) and the lovable clown (Kirby Puckett).

Big mistake, deactivating Astudillo.

The Yankees, on the other hand, follow a different business model. Their formula for success, as always, is simply: “We spend more money than you do, so we win.”

 

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The Problem with Greg Gutfeld

 

Greg Gutfeld, Fox News’s resident class clown, is an odd duck.

He’s quick without being especially clever, interesting without being especially insightful. Bring up any subject and he’s sure to see it from an angle you hadn’t considered, and that makes him interesting, a respite from the numbing sameness of everyone else on most political panels.

But he’s more strange than funny. He must realize this, because his most annoying habit is relentless laughing at his own jokes. He is so insecure about the actual humor (or lack thereof) of what he’s saying that he must pre-empt a potentially mute reaction with his annoying cackle.

 

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This guy who is constantly on my TV plugging hearing aids (above) — is it ironic that whenever I see him I hit the mute button?

 

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A 78-year-old dude known for being perpetually apoplectic and under the constant stress of a political campaign has a heart attack? Who could possibly foresee that?

 

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