World's Goodest Blogger

Welcome to another entry of the Phile. I worked late tonight so I am posting this after one in the morning, when I should be in bed. I know technically the Phile should be posted on Thursday, but from now on, when I work til midnight on Thursday's, the Phile will be posted on Friday. Got that? This entry is sponsored by socks: preventing shoe babies for centuries. A man in Pennsylvania is too drunk to drive. So he gets his kid to drive him. His son is 9 years old. If you can’t do that, what’s the point of having kids, honestly? Barbara Walters has a new book, “Audition.” In it, she says she had a lot of affairs with a lot of important people in Washington. The Washington monument? Nothing compared to Morris Yudall. One time when she was having an affair with a senator, she was tied up in committee. Cher has a new show at Caeser’s Palace. Last time she was there, Caeser was there. Barack Obama says that President Bush refusing to meet with Iran’s president would have been like Richard Nixon refusing to meet with Mao Zedong. After hearing this President Bush said, “Look, if he’s going to make people up . . .” Bill Clinton gave a speech at a high school in Kentucky, and he was 90 minutes late. Clinton told the students, “I’d explain why I’m late but you’re not quite old enough.” The California Supreme Court ruled that it is legal for homosexuals to get married in California. As a result, thousands of wedding planners will finally get to plan their own wedding. NASA has developed a new device that can turn an astronaut’s urine into drinking water. Is there something wrong with that? Can't wait to see that on the next trip to the Kennedy Space Center. Gas prices . . . just crazy. Here’s what I’m doing: I’m just buying it by the glass. Oil is $125 a barrel. But if you return the barrel . . . you get a $2 deposit back. Microsoft in the news. Microsoft is aggressively trying to stop Yahoo! from striking a deal with Google. Experts are calling this the nerdiest fight since “Stargate” went up against “Battlestar Galactica.” A truck overturned in L.A. and spilled 14 tons of Oreo cookies. Authorities say it won’t be cleaned up until well after midnight . . . that’s when Kirstie Alley’s plane gets in. How about the campaign? Hillary is an optimist. She’s the kind of person who sees the pantsuit as half full. Don’t discount Hillary. She has a backup plan: She’s going to marry John McCain. Barack Obama visited an Indian reservation and the chief adopted him and gave him the name Black Eagle. The chief also gave Hillary Clinton the name Runs Even After Losing. The White House has announced that next month, President Bush will be making a trip through Europe. President Bush says he’s really excited to go to Europe because he’s never seen a kangaroo. Last night was the finale of "American Idol" and David Cook won, and David Archuleta was beaten up by his dad. Hillary Clinton called the loser, David Archuleta, and told him not to give up. Lots of people have gone on to have huge careers even though they did not win: Clay Aiken, Chris Daughtry, Jennifer Hudson, Sting . . . Bruce Springsteen didn’t win “American Idol” either. The music producer Lou Perlman was sentenced today to 25 years in prison. That’s outrageous! He’s the guy who created N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys. I would have given him the electric chair. And finally, it was announced that Jimmy Fallon is going to take over the "Late Night" show next year when Conan goes to be the host of "The Tonight Show." That'll be just another later night host I'll be ripping off jokes from.

THE PEVERETT PHILE TOP TEN LIST

From the home office in Groveland, Florida, here is tonight's top ten list...
Iron Man's Top Ten Pet Peeves
10. Being stalked by Rosie, the Jetsons' robot maid
9. When people ask him, "How are the Lion and Scarecrow doing?"
8. Try as he may, there's one part of him that never becomes iron-like
7. Loud clanging noise when the suit's in the dryer
6. When his mom walks in on him pumping iron
5. Incessant nagging from Iron Woman
4. Apparently, Paris Hilton does not want a BFF who is made of metal
3. Someone keeps putting "Vote For Hillary" bumper stickers on his ass
2. Richard Simmons comes over every evening to oil him up
And the number one Iron Man pet peeve... 
1. Rusty nuts

POINTLESS LAWS ALL COMIC BOOK MOVIES FOLLOW

Must Feature an Evil Version of the Hero
Hollywood hates boy scouts, so nearly all heroes have to turn evil, at least temporarily. Nearly always, this change occurs in the third film of the series. Usually the hero somehow has to fight the evil version of himself, demonstrating with some of the most ham-fisted symbolism possible that the real villain is within ourselves. Get it?! Most of us are still having nightmares about Spider-Man 3, where Peter Parker, under the control of the alien symbiote, turned into the love child of Alex from A Clockwork Orange and John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever, while looking oddly like a lesbian biker. The evil symbiote then bonds with Eddie Brock to become Venom, the evil version of Spider-Man, and they fight to the death. Only slightly less ridiculous was Superman 3. Unable to figure out the "secret ingredient" for kryptonite, Gus Gorman substitutes cigarette tar into the formula, which causes Superman to turn into an alcohol-fueled sex machine. This then causes Superman to split into a Good and Bad Superman, which then, you guessed it, fight each other to the death. Also ... They found another way to handle this in X-Men 2, since they have a group of heroes, they were able to mix it up a little bit by just having some of the heroes turn on each other. Thus Phoenix must fight a brainwashed Cyclops, a brainwashed Professor X almost kills everybody, a brainwashed Nightcrawler almost kills the President and Wolverine must fight a brainwashed Lady Deathstryke. As an added bonus, Lady Deathstryke is the evil twin of Wolverine, but less hairy and almost as hot. Another variation occurs in Batman & Robin, where a mind-controlled Batman and Robin, apparently under the hypnotic control of Poison Ivy, argue about who gets to pork her.

MAY 22ND IN HISTORY

337
Emperor Constantine dies. Although quite dead, his embalmed corpse continues to act as head of state, receving state dignitaries and daily reports from ministers as if nothing had changed. Constantine's macabre leadership continues through winter.
1851
Hail the size of pumpkins falls on Bangalore, India.
1949
Former Secretary of Defense James Forrestal falls out of a 16th floor window at Bethesda Naval Hospital with a bathrobe cord knotted tightly around his neck. The death is ruled a suicide, and Forrestal is buried in Arlington Cemetery.
1954
400 people attend the Bar Mitzvah for Bob Dylan (Robert Allen Zimmerman) in Hibbing, Minnesota. He later converts to Christianity in 1979.
1957
A B-36 bomber accidentally drops a 10 megaton hydrogen bomb over an uninhabited area near Albuquerque, New Mexico. The conventional charges detonate on impact, leaving a radioactive crater 12 feet deep and 25 feet wide.
1967
322 Belgians are killed when fire sweeps through the second-largest department store in Brussels. Many of the victims leaped to their deaths, although most who landed on parked cars survive. The store, L'Innovation, had been having a sale on American goods.
1968
The nuclear submarine U.S.S. Scorpion sinks to the bottom with all 99 aboard perishing, after it is reassigned to a spy mission and begins to head towards the Canary Islands. Navy Warrant Officer John Walker (a mole) had certainly reported enough to the KGB to allow them to read the Scorpion's encrypted transmissions. For reasons yet unknown, Navy officials of the U.S. and Soviet Union agree not to discuss the circumstances of this incident or the sinking of a Soviet sub the same year.
1981
Peter Sutcliffe is convicted of murdering 13 women in the Yorkshire Ripper trial. In the words of the presiding judge: "It is difficult to find words that are adequate in my judgment to describe the brutality and gravity of these offences and I say at once I am not going to pause to seek those words. I am prepared to let the catalogue of crimes speak for itself."

And on May 23rd, 1947 my mom was born. Happy birthday, mom.

R.I.P.

Robert Mondavi: Popped his cork.

IDOL

David Cook won "American Idol 7", after receiving 56 percent of the 97.5 million votes cast Tuesday night. David Archuleta lost by a surprisingly large margin of 12 million votes, despite the judges’ relentless praise Tuesday night. That gap seems to be too big to be attributable to one factor, such as backlash against the judges or the fewer numbers of young women watching, and may just have to do with all of those things combined, in addition to David Cook’s talent. In the final moments, Simon Cowell apologized to David Cook, whichworked well to save face since David Cook won, although if he’d lost, it would have been too little, too late. “Wasn’t quite so clear cut as we called, and David, I will take this opportunity to apologize, because I think I was verging on disrespectful with you, and I don’t think you deserve that,” Simon said. He also added, “For the first time ever, I don’t really care who wins; I think you’ve both done terrific.” David Cook sung the songwriting contest winner, “Time of My Life,” in the final moments, and it’s good they saved it to wrap up the whole season, because it sucked although its suckiness was no fault of David’s. Its writer, Regie Hamm, told USA TODAY that it’s “a midtempo anthem, no surprises. (Fans) can wave their arms and light their lighters, all that cool stuff. We’ve all heard those finale songs, so you know the parameters and almost by osmosis what the moment is all about.” Yes, it’s about another weak original song. Despite wasting two hours, the show still couldn’t come in on time. Ryan Seacrest literally announced the winner exactly at 10:00:00 p.m. on the east coast. Here’s all of the super-important stuff the show needed to do before announcing the winner. Hour one included a top-12 group number; product placement for Mike Myers’ new movie; Syesha’s performance with Seal; a Jason Castro performance; the final unwatchable Ford ad of the season; product placement for the Ford Escape Hybrids that each David receives; the top six women performed with Donna Summer, who needed two guys to help her walk down the stairs; a Carly Smithson and Michael Johns performance; Jimmy Kimmel’s return to roast the show, calling it “karaoke” and saying Ryan has “Lee press-on nails”; Simon Cowell’s insults set to music (“Pop Goes the Weasel”); a performance by the top six men with Bryan Adams; Jordin Sparks pimps for the American Idol Experience attraction at Walt Disney World; and David Cook’s performance with ZZ Top. In hour two, Brooke White performed with Graham Nash; the Jonas Brothers performed (and by that, I mean lip-synced badly—do they have any talent except looking pretty?); Ryan Seacrest brought a little old lady clutching her purse to the stage to introduce a segment featuring the worst singers from the auditions; one of those awful singers returned; One Republic performed “Apologize” and was joined by David Archuleta, apparently to prove how inferior he is to Ryan Tedder; Jordin Sparks performed; we saw 1972 footage of Gladys Knight digitally manipulated to include Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr. as alleged Pips, and it went on much longer than it should have; Carrie Underwood performed; the top 12 performed again; and George Michael performed and made Paula Abdul cry (then again, what doesn’t make her cry?). Oh, then Ryan Seacrest announced which David won. During the most egregious product placement, the two Davids went to watch The Love Guru, which is rated PG-13 for its “crude and sexual content throughout, language, some comic violence and drug references.” David Archuleta watched that but wouldn’t sing Neil Diamond lyrics? Shocking. Myers showed up to pimp his awful-looking new movie and quasi-roast the two finalists, but didn’t even appear to be in the same room with the two Davids as he read his lines off a teleprompter. He told Archuleta, “soon, you’ll have hair in weird and wonderful places.” David Archuleta may have lost, but at least he got his pubic hair referenced by Mike Myers on the most popular show on television, and not many people can say that.

DOCTOR WHO

Yet another classic "Doctor Who" villain gets an update. This time it's the Sontarans in their first television appearance in 23 years. For a revision, it's actually pretty accurate to the original series. The only difference with the Sontarans now is that they're all short. This is actually an improvement on the original series since they've always been from a heavy gravity world yet appeared at normal size (which always struck me as a little odd, unless the Sontarans we've seen historically were the professional wrestler versions). The Doctor returns to Earth after being summoned by his former traveling companion Doctor Martha Jones, who now works for U.N.I.T., the Unified Intelligence Taskforce (known as the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce in the original series). Also lurking in the background is misunderstood child genius Luke Rattigan (an anagram of "Giant Rat," which may also be a callback since I know of at least one Tom Baker episode of "Doctor Who" which involved giant rats) who runs his own genius school called the Rattigan Academy. Once again, Russell T. Davies (along with episode writer Helen Raynor, who brought us last year's rather disappointing Dalek two-parter) shows us the evils of commercialism by having "everybody" own an ATMOS system in their car, which eliminates carbon dioxide emissions. I liked that the first meeting between Martha and Donna didn't involve any nastiness or snark, since Donna doesn't have those types of feelings for the Doctor and Martha has obviously moved on. I also enjoyed it when the Doctor ran into Donna's family again and the reactions of everyone involved. Such coincidences are the nature of the Whoniverse. It's amazing how the new series is acknowledging the previous one. Even particularly amazing is that they're even acknowledging the strange dating system used in the previous one (it's tough to keep continuity with the original series when even that series contradicted itself). The Sontaran leader, General Staal, was played by Christopher Ryan, a diminutive actor who is best known for roles in "The Young Ones" and "Absolutely Fabulous". Since the Sontarans are a cloned race, why don't they just have him play every Sontaran (like they do with the Cylon models on "Battlestar Galactica")? Instead, we got the subordinate officer Commander Skoor. So the Sontarans weren't "allowed to participate" in The Last Great Time War, eh? Since their first appearance in the episode "The Time Warrior" with John Pertwee's Doctor, they've had time travel capabilities. I think the only reason the series had to go to another dimension to bring back the Cybermen is that the Time War wiped out the ones in this universe. I blame the Rutans. Everything wrong for the Sontarans always seems to be their fault. Sontaran battleships always looked like giant golf balls in the original series. The revised Sontaran ships are nice variations of this theme. Wasn't the Sontaran Dance cute? Sontar-HA. David Tennant gave his usual brilliant, ebullient performance. He almost seemed relieved when he learned he was fighting a familiar foe and easily displaced Staal TheCoolPerson using a racquetball and a weakness learned from their first appearance 34 years ago. Donna continues winning my "favorite companion" award. The scenes between Donna and her grandfather were touching. The scene where the Doctor thinks she's leaving him so he pours his heart out to her and she responds by calling him a dumbo...that was brilliance. Donna's flashback scenes were kind of pointless at this stage but maybe they needed to fill time. Overall, it was an enjoyable episode and a step up from Helen Raynor's last attempt. Poison gas from a car does seem sort of an indirect method of killing off a populace, but we'll learn more about the true motives of the attack next week. Tune in for part two. Cue end music.

GEEK TALK

The hottest rumors these days revolve solely around Marvel Studios. Everyone is obsessing over scraps of information, and finally there's some solid news from the horse's mouth thanks to some eager Internet journalists, and Kevin Feige, head of Marvel Studios.  First of all, every Captain America fan (and perhaps even America herself) can rest easy: Matthew McConaughey will not be playing that iconic hero. The other good news is that Cap's origin story will be set in World War II. The bad? Additionally, IESB.net reports that the plan is to remain very faithful to the source material, and completely traditional. I honestly think there would have been riots if they tried to update Captain America, so color me unsurprised by the news. The eye-rolling part of this is that Cap's movie will be titled The First Avenger: Captain America in keeping with Hollywood's love of comic book colons. Of course, the clunky preface is there so that it can easily tie into The Avengers. (There will be a colon in that title eventually, just wait.) As to who is going to be in the Avengers line-up, it sounds highly probable that the Hulk will be one of the core members, though I think we can be safe in assuming that depends largely on how The Incredible Hulk performs. As of now, Iron Man, Thor and Cap are still the only confirmed Avengers.
And speaking of Thor, look for a new director to be attached to his movie by summer's end. That script is still in the process of revisions by Mark Protosevitch, but Feige revealed that a large chunk of the movie is not set in the real world, but located firmly in Asgard. There is still no answer as to why Matthew Vaughn was dropped after so much Thor talk; there has to be a story there. Obviously, with all the talk of origin stories and the Avengers line-up, we all want to know who is going to be in what -- and when? "The sky's the limit right now. It's us being very cautious and careful about how we do these crossovers so that we don't collapse under our own weight - as even every 12 or 15 years the comics do; they revamp and do new number ones and get back to what the characters were all about. I don't want [the movies] to forget what the characters are all about and, knock on wood, the interconnectivity will be that extra bit of fun for comic fans." Don't expect them to include the X-Men or Spider-Man any time soon, though. As long as Marvel characters are in use by other studios, like Fox, the rights can't revert back to their maker. It all depends if Fox or Sony want to pander to us geeks by agreeing to their use. Clamor now, maybe they will hear you. Last, but not least, negotiations have opened with Jon Favreau on Iron Man 2. There's loads more over at CHUD and IESB.net -- if I tried to post it all here, your eyeballs would fall out. I think this is just the start of a very interesting summer. The Internet might actually collapse on the day Captain America is cast.

MOVIE BUZZ

21 Jump Street
Superbad star Jonah Hill says his big-screen update will have a part for Johnny Depp, who hit it big on the original cheesy '80s TV cop show — if the Oscar-nominated actor is willing. He'll play McLovin's even nerdier big brother: McScissorhands.
Transformers 2
Screenwriter Roberto Orci says he's thrilled to put fan-favorite robots Soundwave and Ravage in the sequel since he couldn't fit them in the first film because of the movie's "limited" budget. You know you've been in Hollywood too long when $150 million seems like a teeny amount of money.
Dawn of the Dead 3-D
George Romero's classic zombie flick is going to have 3-D effects added to it à la The Nightmare Before Christmas and be re-released later this year. I don't know what's scarier to see pop out of the big screen: the flesh-eating undead or those horrible '70s fashions.
While America Slept
Michael Moore says that the title of his new documentary refers to an examination of "America's global conduct and reputation." Personally, when I sleep I think about naked chicks, but that might just be me.
Super Max
An early review of the script for the superhero movie that has Green Arrow thrown in prison has a rundown of the villains he plans his escape with: Shock Trauma, Gemini, Icicle, the Calculator and Count Vertigo. Too bad he didn't get locked up with the Amazing Key Man and Escapo.

Well, that's it. pholks. It's after 2am and I am dead tired. Tomorrow after school Logn and I are going to go see the new Indiana Jones movie, so the last May Movie Month Peverett Extra will be posted tomorrow, instead of Saturday. Until then, spread the word, not the turd. And one more thing ... One night and one more time, Thanks for the memories, even though they weren't so great, "He tastes like you only sweeter". 'Nuff said.