Step Up 4m The Onion Movie

It has been noted elsewhere that The Onion Movie features a few surprising appearances, as it was filmed back before some people were famous (or the famous people heard it was going to be horrible). However, I'm the first to note it features Robert Hoffman.

For fans of 21st-century dance-movies, Hoffman (left) is instantly recognizable as the male protagonist of Step Up 2 the Streets and as one of the antagonistic dancers in You Got Served. I wonder if I'm the first person to even REALIZE this, Hoffman included; the overlap between 'Wild-N-Out' watchers and Onion-fans must be miniscule.

This ties into a question I have pondered for a while but lacked the resources to answer: Do established individuals care/know when they're in The Onion?

• Of the Billion Bill Simmons Sycophants,[1] how many have to show him he was skewered, before he blogs about it?
• When indie-sequential-artist Adrian Tomine was attached to an Archie comic, did one of his New Yorker pals pass that along?
• Given the choice, would actual-Gallup CEO Jim Clifton take the place of fake-Gallup President "Lee Sanderson"?
• Have any Supreme Court Justices looked at the description of Smiley v Citicorp and said, "That should be Citibank"?[2]

Presumably the people to ask would be actual individuals who work for The Onion, but I like to imagine they're not allowed to talk about it, that their stories lack bylines not only to keep up the charade but to keep them in place. At the very least, it prevents them from becoming famous enough to write more movies.

[1] Whom I count as my bredren and sistren!
[2] Citibank was owned by Citicorp, now known as Citi, which is short for Citigroup. Yay corporate mergers!

Biting the Onion

Let the record show that I am not a 'Family Guy' hater. At the very least, it has the most interestingly named creative staff of any American TV show. Case in point: tonight's episode, written by "a.bo." That's my favorite non-nom de plume since "Jennifer 8 Lee"[1].

Unfortunately a.bo also seems to be kinda a copycat. The following joke about women being unable to serve as politicians because they'll be too busy visiting their Aunt Flo is a lot like "Rich Durban"'s quote in this Onion article.

It's possible that:
1) a.bo has never read the article
2) In shades of 'Studio 60'[2], a.bo actually wrote the original article. A similar thing happened when Mike Henry got his "Kicked in the Nuts" character on an episode in 2005.[3]
3) There are a gajillion other bloggers making the exact same connection right now (my housemate might be one of them, since we both caught the similarity).

Maybe one of them can make sense of all of this, because I would rather finish my game of imaginary baseball. Go fake RedSox!

[1]Link chosen solely for irony
[2]Whoever made this graph is inspiring me to make more charts. p_^
[3]That doesn't explain away these, though...

Making Meta-Meta on Metahumans

The forthcoming Aishwariy...Ashwary...Naveen Andrews movie serves as a good excuse to deconstruct another Kal Penn performance, since one Desi dude deserves another. While waiting for Epic Movie to "arrive from Netflix" I fought my TiNo inclinations and caught up on some 'Smallville.'[1] I started with 'Noir,' which sets itself up as an homage to films like The Big Sleep, which made me want to review The Big Sleep.[2]

First I had to make sure nobody else had tried this, because I hate being one of those people who attempts to be insightful but really retreads commonly held pop-cultural sentiments.[3] I fired up the ol Technorati, and I didn't find a straightforward Sleep v 'Smallville' comparison, but I found enough other entries to make me not want to try:
A running commentary (and an ironical use of the word "irregardless")
Screencaps galore (and an Erica Durance/Rita Hayworth comparison)
Iceman References (and different text from the TwoP site)
Pointing out that Philip Marlowe isn't Sam Spade (and the least text taken to spoil a plot ever)
Hair hangups (and synergy)

My favorite, however, has to be Smallville Guide's dueling reviews + transcript. That's love.


[1]You would hard pressed to find a sadder sentence in the English language.
[2]Si le haces una fiesta a una cerdita...
[3] Reason #[limit n—>∞((1+1/n)^n)] that I should never get a PhD

Invitation to Charms

The Namesake was the last straw.

Since giving up my admittedly ill-conceived dream of being a cultural critic and joining respectable journalism, I have missed three — three — Kal Penn movies. I no longer had an outlet (let alone an impetus) to perform Foucauldian archaeology on the socioeconomic origins of, say, Epic Movie. For You, the Moviegoing Public™, this was no great loss, but I became increasingly nostalgic, much like an erstwhile high school star with memories of grandeur.

(Just kidding: please don't shoot me, Bassy.)

Every halfway decent blog needs a hook, and as funny as it would be to simply sprinkle my prose with semi-appropriate links to The Onion, that would also be creatively bankrupt. Thus, in keeping with my desire to catch up on Kal[1], I'm going to barrel through the many movies, games, music, and comics I've missed while trying to make that paper/because I wasn't making that paper before. Look for a retrospective on movies Disney forgot, an incontrovertible proof that Lance Bass is a better actor than Usher Raymond, and my declaration of the best "Garden of Peace" sample (hint: it's not one of these).

First up: Van Wilder 2: Rise of Taj: Colon.[2] Between miscegenation, semi-breakthrough sexualization of an Asian-American male actor[3], the sticky politics of Kal's crazy-fake Indian accent, and the carefully constructed hotness of Holly Davidson, I am convinced this movie can't be as bad as They say.

[1] Now there's a catchy name for a blog!
[2] Wait, did I just steal a joke from Aqua Teen Hunger Force?
[3] The Guru already sexualized the Asian male, although its star was Canadian and, in any case, Penn doesn't play an Asian-American in Van Wilder.