If Commie Grandpa makes this his campaign theme, I’ll vote for him.
Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To
Category: Uncategorized (Page 173 of 1031)
No one ever wrote no love song about no e-mail.
Okay, I mean it this time: you can’t be in the Grateful Dead anymore.
“Not your call.”
This is actionable. This is a Dishonorable Discharge. Sir, I’m gonna have to ask you to step outside.
“Knock it off.”
I get that Andy is your friend, but why would you attend this function?
“These are the Real Housewives!”
I know. That’s why I asked the question. It wasn’t just because they were women.
“Of multiple cities!”
Your only excuse is that you have a brain tumor pushing up against your tasteythalmus.
“Not a thing.”
It’s the part of the brain that judges aesthetics.
“Look, I’m here supporting Andy and hanging out with Real Housewives. You’re just jealous.”
How many glasses of wine have been thrown?
“I lost count. It started almost immediately. Several of the Housewives brought goggles in anticipation.”
Gotta be prepared. How many of them straight-up invited you into the bathroom for a beej?
“Eight.”
Not bad. How many times you go?
“All eight times, but I only let one blow me. The rest, I made them show me their buttholes.”
When the phone rings, do not continue this line of conversation.
“What?”
CELL PHONE NOISE
“Ah.”
…
“You’re on with John.”
“Dead & Co suck. Ari rules.”
“Nephew on the Dead?”
“This guy here is the future. You got a tambourine on your shoe?”
“Mickey probably has one.”
“Josh, lemme ask you a question–”
“Don’t call me Josh. You’re a baby. You don’t get to do that.”
“–you guys ever do Itsy Bitsy Spider?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’d know, dude. That shit’s the jam. My man Ari here does a Spider>Whole Word In His Hands that blows minds, dude. You guys are just posing with guitars. Ari? Ari’s making the real music.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh, dude. Happy And You Know It! He hasn’t played this since 12/11/16.”
“How do you know that?”
“AriBase. I gotta go.”
DIAL TONE NOISE EVEN THOUGH PHONES NO LONGER DO THAT
…
“I don’t wanna talk to him.”
He’s a perfect angel and I’ll throw dinosaurs at you from now until the end of time if you breathe ill of him.
“I don’t wanna talk to you, either.”
I can understand that.
Look at the escargot and see what the Kathmandu.
No cold Italian pizza; no lemon squeeze-ah.
Ray Davies: rarely wrong.
- Know thyself!
- Polonius said that, and then he hid behind a curtain and got stabbed, so maybe we shouldn’t listen to him.
- To thine own self, be true!
- Jimmy Carter said that, and that man builds houses for smelly people, so he should be heard.
- The question of Bumblebee‘s worth as a film lies not with it, but with you.
- Seek the answer within your soul.
- Sit backwards in a chair with yourself, and have some straight teen chat.
- And ask yourself,
- Do you like movies with giant kung-fu robots?
- And when these aforementioned robots are not spin-kicking each other, they alter their bodies into the shape of vehicles, allowing for exciting chase sequences?
- SOME DO NOT!
- Well-apportioned segments of the populace have different preferences.
- Lots of folks like movies about human beings doing human being stuff.
- That is their right.
- They can go watch Roma.
- Other folks like to watch 20-foot metal behemoths do Tiger Style at each other while oil tankers blow up.
- Different strokes and all that.
- But if you are the latter type, then cue up Bumblebee.
- The poorly-designed, visually-incoherent elephant in the room: this movie has nothing to do with the previous installments
- Which, if you haven’t been keeping track, have gone from completely insane to fever-dream cockslappery over the course of five Michael Bay-directed films.
- The first one and Bumblebee even share a general plot: adorable robot befriends adolescent teen; they have adventures fighting the bad robots and avoiding the military.
- After that, shit got shitty.
- Both the second and third Transformers films destroyed Chicago.
- Michael Bay couldn’t even be bothered to pick a new city to blow up in his third act.
- “Fuck it, we already got the computer models.”
- And then Sunni LaBeef left and was replaced by Mark Wahlberg, and that’s never a good sign.
- If you were on a plane, and you heard that the pilot had been replaced by Mark Wahlberg, would you feel safe?
- That’s just logic.
- And casting the man as an inventor is openly contemptuous of the audience.
- It’s like when M. Night Shamwow cast him as a science teacher.
- Stop that, Hollywood.
- Stop casting Mark Wahlberg as a smart person.
- At some point, there were Dinobots.
- These were Autobots (the good robots) who landed on earth hundreds of millions of years ago (for some reason) and disguised themselves not as cars but as dinosaurs.
- I am not a licensed paleontologist, but I am sure that the other dinosaurs were not fooled by their ruse.
- First off, they were shiny and metal.
- And that’s it.
- Anyway, there were robot dinosaurs, and then Stanley Tucci played Merlin because–and it’s weird how none of this was mentioned in the first four movies–Transformers have secretly been on earth forever, and fought alongside King Arthur, and maybe Hitler was a Transformer.
- There were constants in the Bay Pentology:
- They’re all nine hours long.
- There is a Magic Doodad.
- They all feature comedic moments: moments at which you say, “Ah, this is comedic,” and purse your lips slightly.
- There is a Girl.
- She has an Ass.
- Light-to-moderate racism.
- Optimus Prime and his Radical Centrist bullshit again.
- Products placement.
- Members of the Coen Brothers’ repertory company yelling at each other.
- Toxic masculinity.
- Sunset. (In a Micheal Bay film, noon takes place at sunset.)
- Worst of all were the Transformers themselves.
- They were scribbly and too-complicated.
- They looked like Gundam designed by Frank Gehry.
- And they were so loud, and they were so crude, and they were so unnecessarily cruel, and–due to their overwhelming financial success–they were such a stark reminder of how fucking dumb most people are.
- Bumblebee is not that.
- Don’t get me wrong: this movie is dumb.
- This is inherent in a kung fu fightin’ robot flick.
- Movies with plots centered around martial arts or robots can be deep and explore arty themes, but movies featuring martial arts and robots is gonna be thick-headed.
- It is a movie-ish movie, too, made up of splotches of this film and that: you got E.T. and Harry and the Hendersons, and you got your tomboy lead with the boy’s name the dead dad, and your comic relief sibling, and the monster out in the garage, and the last fight takes place way up high just like all the screenwriting books say it should.
- Did you see the trailer?
- That’s the whole movie.
- Just a 110-minute version of the trailer.
- It’s 1987 and Bumblebee has come to earth because something something and lost his memory and voice because bullshit bullshit.
- He befriends a teen.
- He does not molest the teen.
- I think it says something about the state of Hollywood when actors get thanked for not interfering with the young, but here we are.
- And looks dynamite.
- See, there’s his headlights and there’s the front quarter-panels, and so on; disbelief needs to be suspended, but only a little bit.
- And then there’s this bullshit:
- I was a troubled child, and so I took many spatial reasoning tests; I excelled at these, and therefore can tell that an automobile cannot be made out of those ochre scraps.
- They are insufficient for chassisfication.
- I demand my Transformers movies be grounded in realism, dammit.
- To recap: if you think you’re gonna like Bumblebee, you will.
- To reopen the topic: at one point, while kung fu-fighting, one of the giant robots put the other in a chokehold.
- Why would it do that?
GOP:
- Basketball Head.
- John Kasich.
- Mormon To-Be-Named Later.
- Crazy Black Guy.
- Backbench state legislator who claims he will “Out-Trump the Trump” and gets arrested for beating up a hooker three months into his campaign.
DEMOCRATS:
- Uncle Joe.
- Commie Grandpa.
- Several Agony Aunts.
- That guy from Ohio who rolls up his sleeves.
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ Twitter feed.
- Beto!
- Julian and Joaquin Castro running together like in Dead Ringers.
- Hillary. (She’s tanned, rested, and ready.)
LIBERTARIANS:
- Some doofus
GREENS:
- Oleg Deripskaya.
INDEPENDENTS:
- Rich Asshole.
- Nasal Asshole.
- One-Topic Asshole.
- Second Rich Asshole.
- Lyndon LaRouche.
What is going on with you? You look like Kenny Roger’s best friend in one of his teevee movies.
“Well, uh, I don’t know if you know this, but it’s the Year of Coziness.”
Stop taking fashion advice from Josh. Wait. Is that a toppermost?
“No.”
Oh, thank God.
“It’s a bobbermost.”
I praised too soon. What the hell is a bobbermost?
“It’s sort of a robe, and almost a kimono, but definitely not a jacket.”
Yes, that’s what a toppermost is.
“I didn’t finish.”
Sorry.
“And only rich, famous guys named Bob are allowed to know they exist.”
Ah.
“De Niro’s got two dozen. He’s very active on the bobbermost subreddit.”
I don’t know how I feel about this.
“I feel coze. There’s just so much concentrated coze in this garment.”
All of you need to stop saying “coze.” It’s not a word.
“Y’know, I’ve spoken to you about your prescriptivism before, and I believe I made myself quite clear.”
NOT A WORD! That’s it! I’m pissed! I’m gonna take a walk.
“All right, then.”
…
…
…
You just gonna stand there?
“Yuh-huh.”
Okay.
“All right, then.”
I don’t get folks who don’t love Jim Steinman; subtlety is overrated.
© 2026 Thoughts On The Dead
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
Recent Comments