Shocker! Amy Winehouse is Dead!!!

A little over a year ago I wrote a piece about former teen actress and current waste of space, Lindsay Lohan. She had just been sentenced to a light prison sentence where she would be cut off from the booze and drugs but have plenty of access to any lesbian inmate she wanted and I applauded the decision. As I mentioned in that article, addicts piss me off.

And while I've made jokes about another addict in the past, I never wrote a page about her probably because I assumed she would just OD one day and that there was no point. However she kind of hung on and escaping death like my idiot cat, Butch. But the Grim Reaper can't be held off forever and today it seems that Amy Winehouse has done her last line...either in the form of music or cocaine. Take your pick. And yes, no cause of death has been confirmed yet but...come on, use your head.

How I signed my reaction to Amy Winehouse's death (I have a sore throat)

Look, I know that for members of her family, her friends and to fans that this must be a really sad day for them, but come on, it's not like she was making headlines for her singing ability lately. Every other article was about her fucking up a stage show, her entering or leaving rehab or how someone close to her was worried she might not be around too long if she didn't get her act together.

Go on YouTube and type in "Amy Winehouse Drunk" and you'll find that those videos have more views and comments than any video of her where she's actually singing or aware of what month it is. The woman was a wreck, looked like one and moved like one on stage.

Don't believe me? Check out this video and tell me if I'm wrong. Hell, if anything, the title is misleading because it says she "Performs". However, if you go to an Amy Winehouse performance, do you expect to see her sing or walk around the stage like a blind man who's just been hit in the head with a baseball bat and ask band members where she can score some coke?

Wait, this is Amy Winehosue, so chances are that "sing" was the last thing you expected. And if you did, it probably wasn't worth what you paid.

I know I might be a little cold and downright mean with my words right now but one thing I can't get over is that she was just 27. That's just two years older than me. Imagine that, you're in the prime of your life and for the past couple of years all you've done is just self-destruct and piss away everything you ever did or wanted to do? Like with Lohan, I would love to have the adoring fans, the ability to inspire, to have fans waiting for my autograph. And besides, what the hell was so hard about your life that you needed drugs and alcohol to end it?

Look, I enjoy a good drink. At Aaron's bachelor party I was drunk to the point where after I downed a shot of God knows what, I raised my arms and proclaimed, "I AM A MAN!!!" and continued to wolf down a deep fried cheesecake. But I know my limits. I don't do it every night, every week or every month even. In fact, the last time I can remember having anything alcoholic was at Aaron's wedding.

Is it sad that she's dead? Yes, of course. But we shouldn't act surprised by it or any other celebrity who spends more time at the Betty Ford Clinic than doing their job. Honestly, let's just make Robert Downey Jr. a motivational speaker for retarded celebrities who didn't get the message even after South Park put is so plainly for us.

This was the best picture of her I could find of her

As a final note, I would like to say that while Amy Winehouse was indeed a talented singer, it's a shame that the troubles she brought into her personal life overshadowed all the accomplishments she made (and could have made) in her professional life.

Does This Suit Me?

Aaron and Katelynn's wedding is in less than three weeks. And while I spent an entire afternoon last weekend getting them wedding presents, this weekend I spent an entire day looking for clothes.

I'm not a fashionable guy. When I say that, I don't mean that I wear plaid on a daily basis and I know that if I'm going out to a nice restaurant that I probably shouldn't wear torn jeans and a shirt that has some retarded slogan on it. At the same time if you want me to pick out a suit, then you might want to put on a pot of coffee, get out your copy of Atlas Shrugged, because this going to take a while.

It's not that I'm stubborn or anything like that, it's just that choosing is hard for me sometimes. I want to look nice but I don't want to look like I'm late for the royal wedding. I want to be casual but not in a "I got this at Bargain Bin" way. I want a nice colour but I also don't want people blinded by my shirt.

Does anyone know where Spike gets his suits at?

Thankfully that problem has been solved. While I originally got frustrated and decided to take my revenge on the fashion world by dressing like Rod Roddy for the wedding, I came upon a tailor shop in the mall and within twenty minutes left with a nice blue shirt, tie and black pants.

I kept asking myself why such time had to be wasted on clothes that I would wear only once and would most likely never get the smell of booze off of.

"It's tradition," my father explained, sounding a lot like Tevye.

Right now, I'm just glad this is done and am looking forward to my vacation, the wedding, the food, the (hopefully) open bar.

Vegas Vacation: Coles Notes Edition

Normally, I could bombard you with a recap of my trip to Las Vegas with a summary so detailed that Tom Clancy would find it longwinded but instead, I'll just go in point form:

• Walking in -30 weather with howling wind is a bitch.
  
  
• Getting to the gate for the flight was one long maze of lines, scans, questions and bullshit that seem so easy to get around that it's a miracle there aren't more terrorist attacks in North America.
  
  
• Aaron's friend Oleg is a nice guy despite living in Edmonton. He and Aaron met on the internet and at this point, I'll allow you to make your own To Catch a Predator joke.
  
  
• Aaron claims he wants to get back into boxing which shocked the hell out of me. I plan to sell him my heavybag for five times what it's worth.
  
  
• Flights can suck ass when you wait an hour on the runway for them to de-ice the plane. Seriously, a whole hour just waiting. A word of advice to any people who want to fly out when it's really cold: Pre-drink.
  
  Flight 547 to Las Vegas is now boozing
  
  
• Nearly suffered heatstroke once we landed in Vegas.
  
  
• Our hotel was right across from Caesar's Palace. Sadly, it was not as extravagant. Did have a better buffet though.
  
  Breakfast of champions
  
  
• Heavy drinking was one of the activities we lined up for ourselves however it was probably a bad idea to eat only two hot dogs before downing drink after drink after drink.
  
  
• I can understand people visiting Las Vegas but for the life of me I can't understand how anyone can live there.
  
  
• Four Loco is an alright drink for the first few sips but after that it's like punch at a high-school dance that someone spiked way too much.
  
  No es bueno
  
  
• We didn't stay up all night partying unlike the people below us however I'm very certain that when it was all done they played 'That's All Folks' from Bugs Bunny.
  
  
• We spent our first night looking for a strip club but when that didn't work we tried looking for the buffet in our hotel which was even more pathetic considering we kept walking past the stairway.
  
  
• It was probably a good thing though since we were so wasted that we would have been thrown out.
  
  
• Aaron came up with the good idea of going to The Gun Store so we can shoot stuff. It sounded like a good idea so we went.
  
  Special discounts for children and psychopaths
  
  
• You know how in the movies someone who has never fired a gun before will pick one up and turn into Clint Eastwood. Yeah, that's a load of shit.
  
  
• I was having a hard time deciding which gun to shoot however I ended up picking the Baretta, just like Robert Blake.
  
  
• There were many targets to choose from and I decided to go with a zombie clown. Aaron took the zombie soldier (Headshots were a must) and Oleg took one that had two bad guys on it. The taller guy was pointing a gun and screaming and the guy in front of him looked like that midget from Fantasy Island.
  
  "What did I ever do to you, Oleg?"
  
  
• The people who work at The Gun Shop were packing heat at all times. Aaron even saw on the website that if you didn't drop the gun when they told you to, that they would shoot you.
  
  
• Apparently Katelynn doesn't like guns. The Gun Store employee deemed her a 'hippie'.
  
  
• Aaron probably did the best out of the three of us. I was only lucky to manage one headshot on my Zombie Clown. However, truth be told, I had to hold back lest my identity as a former assassin be uncovered.
  
  
• After shooting our loads (So to speak) we went back to the hotel for a bit and then decided to do more sightseeing. I mentioned how Mandalay Bay had a boxing museum that I was interested in checking out. And since we could get buzzed along the way, off we went.
  
  
• As I mentioned earlier, just because it looks close doesn't mean that it really is. We walked, drank, drank, walked, stopped to drink, stopped to pee and then drink some more before walking a lot more.
  
  
• I felt kinda bad for Aaron and Oleg because they're not boxing dorks like I was and yet here we were, busting our asses just to get to Mandalay Bay for a museum. At one point I told them that they could go back to the hotel and rest (And drink some more) but they insisted we stick together.
  
  
• If I didn't wear the camera strap around my neck, Aaron would owe me a new camera. He decided it would be funny to poke my ribs while I tried to focus in on a shot. Naturally had the camera been damaged, I would have had to kill him but thankfully, this was not the case.
  
  Aaron caused me to take this...
  
  ...when I was going for this.
  

• The Mandalay Bay fight museum was...smaller than I had expected. And naturally, I almost got us kicked out within ten seconds of entering because I didn't notice the 'No Cameras' sign.
  

• I don't see the harm in me taking a picture of De la Hoya's trunks he wore against Vargas but if those are the rules...
  
  
• Was a bit disapointed that most of the stuff was actually up for sale. I mean, yeah in hindsight it might be cool to own some small part of boxing history. But to have it for sale in a museum? Just didn't sit right with me.
  
  
• Surprised they didn't have any Manny Pacquiao shirts for sale for $10. I would bought one and started wearing it right then and there.
  
  
• From there it was more walking but this time back to the hotel. Thankfully there were trams that could take us from hotel to hotel but sometimes it felt like we were doing the same amount of walking.
  
  
• You'd think we would have been tired after all this walking but once we rested our feet back at the hotel, we decided we would head to one of the strip clubs we couldn't find before. And since we had free passes, we'd be kinda dumb to not use them.
  
  
• "Little Darlings" sounds like a strip club that features midgets. Oddly enough, one guy did offer us passes to Larry Flynt's strip club which features naked midget mud wrestling. Pass.
  
  Hold your breath. Make a wish. Count to three.
  
  
• We weren't even in the club for two minutes and already Oleg was being felt up. Sadly it was by security after he kept setting off the metal detector.
  
  
• We were greatly disapointed that the strip club didn't even serve alcohol. Instead they offered us soft drinks. Cause everyone knows nothing goes better with a lap dance than Mountain Dew.
  
  
• There was one dancer named Pink who I swear had the upper body of a twelve year old boy. However she made up for her lack of boobies by...humping somebody's baseball hat. I'm not kidding. The guy didn't look to happy about it either.
  

• If you want to read more about what happened at the strip club, pick up this month's issue of Penthouse.
  
  
• I was enjoying the scene but for some reason, when receiving a lap dance, I wanted to burst out and sing, "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts".
  
  
• I don't understand why guys think they have to buy souveniers for their girlfriends. Seriously, they'll get over it. Besides, do you think they'll be envious of the crabs you picked up from that stripper and how there wasn't any left for her?
  
  
• Every time I said, "That's my last beer," I was being handed another one. And I drank it.
  
  
• Yes there is footage of me shotgunning a beer. Yes, Aaron and Oleg are full of crap when they say I only did about 1/4 of it, it was more like 3/4 (I would know, I was the one drinking). And yes, I did throw up for over a minute. OK, it wasn't like a minute long puke or anything. Think of it like puking in segments.
  And no, I will not upload it.
  
  
• After the first one Oleg asked, "Did you throw up?" despite being the one holding the camera and pointing it right at me.
  
  
• Even though they were laughing at my expense and I told them, "I fucking hate you guys", I still had a smile on my face.
  
  All the beers I drank
  
  
• Halfway through my barf Aaron told me to finish my beer however I had already put the can down and chances are that I puked on that as well as the balcony.
  
  
• It was funny that immediately after throwing up everything I had eaten up to that point, the next thing I wanted to do was get back to the buffet.
  
  
• I suck at gambling
  
  
• Last day was kind of bittersweet. It was a nice vacation but like all good ones it felt too short and we knew that we were leaving nice warm weather to go back to hell frozen over.
  
  
• If I ever go back to Vegas, I think it will have to be the weekend of a big fight.
  
  
• Viva Las Vegas

Vacation and the Future

Well, here I am back in my bedroom after a nice (but too brief) trip back home for Christmas holidays. It may have been for five days but in my view it was a matter of quality not quantity. And needless to say, while I may have slept for most of the first day, I certainly made up for it by cooking not only an amazing steak dinner for my family (Tip: When the blood starts to rise, your steak is 'medium') which my Dad praised as being as good as The Keg, but also a bitching minestrone soup that would make any Italian chef weep out of pure envy. My mom helped with that one.

I would put the recipe up but I decided that I'll save that for another post in the new year. Tonight I was supposed to be going into work but it seems that my manager (Who reminds me of what Gordon Ramsay said about some restaurant managers: "They can't even run a bath.") thought that I still had one more day of vacation. So needless to say, I arrived at work, collected my paycheck and promply left.

Mine was like this except a lot more awesome

Christmas was very good this year. I got a lot of books (A sign that the person giving the gift hates you, I've heard) but the ones I've read the most have been the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels that my younger sister got me. I actually enjoyed them more than I thought I originally would though I'm still a bit hesitant about seeing the movie.

It's not that I'm the type who thinks Hollywood ruins everything they touch (They don't have to try hard, though), it's just that I'm not the biggest fan of Michael Cera. Yes, he's Canadian like me, I'm sure he's very talented but...his voice. My sisters at the age of 12 sounded more masculine than he does.

Michael Cera in "Scott Pilgrim VS Puberty"!

But my stay at home isn't going to be very long. In a little more than a week I'll be flying out to Las Vegas with Aaron and another friend of his. It was something we had talked about over beer which I thought wouldn't happen for another couple of years. However since he's getting married in June, he's decided that now is the right time to do it before he ruins his life.

At the moment there aren't too many plans for once we arrive. Gamble a little, see the sights, take in a show (Penn and Teller, if possible) and battle sobriety among other activities. I was hoping that there might be a boxing event that weekend in Vegas but no such luck.

Viva this place!

I'm also thinking of getting a place of my own sometime before the year is through. While I do enjoy living here because of how close everything is, it would be nice to have my own kitchen and occasionally not have to try to sleep through the sounds of crying babies or barking dogs. However I've got quite a lot of time to work all that out.

You Don't Need to See It to Know It Sucks

It's the weekend for me, which means I'm awake at ungodly hours. And since nothing is open aside from the 24/7 gas bars, I've decided that I would browse the internet looking for Christmas presents that I might want to get from willing family members this year.

I was planning on making a blog post about how I got wasted two weeks ago but decided against it because the way I was writing it sucked as well as it just seemed too detailed. So instead I'll give give you the Coles Notes version of my drunken drunkenness:

-I laugh like Amadeus when I'm drunk

-I seem to take great offense when not being allowed to pay for my share of food/drink

-I offered a toonie, though that it was rejected, only to find out that Aaron took it and bought coffee with it the next day

-I had trouble opening my wooden fence to get home

-Apparently Aaron and I are going to Las Vegas...someday, I guess.

-I have no idea what the hell I was drinking. I thought it was black but Aaron later told me that what I was drinking wasn't black in colour, but gold.

-I write the dumbest text messages when I'm drunk.

Insert retarded laughter here

However, me acting like my younger sister aside, I'd like to talk about something I once again saw on Youtube. No, not another banned Tiny Toons episode where Buster gets hooked on crystal meth. I'm talking about something that sounds even more ridiculous and in a fair world would be banned just as quickly.

Oh, GOD!!!!

Yes, it seems that once again Hollywood has decided to run their hands through precious childhood memories, rape them, abort them, cook it in a stew seasoned with their own feces and then serve it to us through our asses.

Wait, what am I talking about when I say 'childhood memories'? Yogi Bear wasn't a part of my childhood. I mean, yeah, I've heard of him but I never watched him. Hell, I doubt I've even watched a shitty Yogi Bear special that they aired during the 90's like they did with other Hanna Barbara series. Had I seen The Jetsons or The Flinstones? Oh, yeah, but not Yogi Bear. That was stuff my parents most likely watched when they were kids and I don't even think a person their age would want to see this film.

And honestly, why would anyone? Yogi Bear isn't relevant now, nor was he ever. Hell, the movie doesn't look very relevant, just watch the trailer. It's OK, go ahead, waste three minutes of your life.I wouldn't talk, asshole. Not even Bill Murray could help an unfunny movie adaptation of an unfunny comic strip

Well, now that you're back from that. What did we learn about this movie? Well, as I mentioned before, the rape of childhood memories for people in nursing homes but what else? Here are a few observations I've made.

1. Goddamn CGI-You know, I'm really getting tired of seeing live action mixed with CGI. It doesn't look real at all, it looks so out of place. It's not like in Who Framed Roger Rabbit where there was an explination for the toons interacting with real people. Here, it just seems so fake and I wonder if I'm watching some alternate reality or something.

2. Justin Timberlake as Boo-Boo-I don't know why people make such a big deal out of Justin Timberlake. I'm not saying he's not talented but at the same time I think he is very overrated. And yet people keep putting him in movies for some reason that continues to baffle me.

Anyway, if you didn't notice before, it just doesn't sound like Justin Timberlake. I can believe that it is Dan Akroyd voicing Yogi because he's a comedian and they know how to do funny voices but with Timerlake, I just feel like his voice has been digitally altered. It's almost as if someone combined HAL 9000 and the boredom of an emo kid and put them in the body of a CGI bear.

Oh and if his voice is being digitally altered to the point where we can't recognize him, then what the fuck is point of casting him? Seriously, it's like in those shitty Alvin and the Chipmunks movies. What is the point of having Justin Long play Alvin if you can make anybody's voice go high pitch? Shit, I used to do it on an old tape recorder back when I was four. For Christ sake, why not just have that annoying Fred from Youtube play all of the chipmunks?

Just what do you think you're doing, Yogi?

3. Did Anyone Find The Plot?-I'm not joking. Usually when you have a trailer that's over two minutes, you have some idea of what the plot is about...well, a good trailer is like that. It gives you some idea. This, all it really is is just a bunch of gags about "pic-a-nics" and nothing else.

To the producers of this movie, we already know that this is going to suck ass, but you're reinforcing that fact when you hide the plot from everybody and try to cover it with a bunch of gags about food.

So yeah, I have to wonder, what in the hell happened to an original idea in Hollywood? I'm not joking, everything is either some shitty remake and every good original idea that comes around gets ass-raped by sequels that it diminishes how good the first one was. However, it doesn't look like you can top the shit pile that Yogi Bear will be.

Fock every focking focker who thinks this focking movie will be focking funny because it won't be! It'll focking suck like the first two!!!

OK...now that I got that out of my system...I'm sure that nothing in the next few months will be as unnecessary and facepalmingly awful as Little Fuckwads.

...Just focking kill me now