Tag Archives: Reviews

Kagegiving: First we Feast, Hot Ones Pringles Review

INTRODUCTION: Everyone knows the show with Hot questions and even hotter wings, although I presume it’s the sauce that’s actually hot and the wings are mildly warm at best. So they did a collaboration with Pringles. Now, if you ever tried any of the normal hot flavors of Pringles you know they’re pretty much shit, both in flavor and heat. The original Pringles, which taste like the original McDonalds fries before the 90s change and sour cream and onion are the best flavors, but I digress. So did Sean sell out and fuck us all over just to make a buck or does this stuff bring the heat?

VISUALS: They look like basic white girl Pringles, but green with envy, like your basic Starbucks employee.

SCENT: Nothing to write home about. Don’t smell like heat or pepper.

TASTE: They have a unique flavor, something I’m unfamiliar with with Pringles and hot sauce, but boy is it good. Tangy, sweet, zesty. Hard to peg down specifics of the taste.

HEAT: So, for something that’s a verde, you expect barely any, right? Oh hell no! It isn’t even close to the hottest thing I have eaten, but good god damn does it bring the heat. a product that promises and delivers. Holy shit! If this is a green, I would hate to see how the red one is. If you’re new to spice, you are going to want a glass of milk. If you’re used to hotter stuff like I am, you might still need a glass of milk.

CONCLUSION: So it’s a tradition around here to ask if this is something to be thankful for and well, I stopped writing my review to finish the can and have a second one ready to go, whilst awaiting Thanksgiving dinner. I think that says a lot right there. If you can find it, go out and buy it and if Pringles doesn’t make these permanent, well, I will personally rip of Mr. Pringles mustache myself.

5 out of 5 stars.

The Wrong Missy, David Spade Revival Theater

INTRODUCTION

Well, it seems Netflix decided what the world needed after nearly two decades of absence was another David Spade flick. Oh joy!

CHARACTERS:
Shit! All the same BS these movies are known for, simple archetypes, if you can call them that.

ACTING:
None have ever been horrible actors, so, unlike this flick, its tolerable.

VISUALS:
Fantastic, which is more than I can say for the rest of the movie.

WRITING:
Shit! Fuckin’ stupid premise, horrible jokes, terrible story overall.

DIALOGUE:
Same as above

MUSIC:
None that I noticed.

SUBTEXT:
Devoid of it

CONCLUSION:
They couldn’t be bothered to make a movie, I can’t be bothered to do much of a review as I have said before. This piece of shit is unfunny. Happy Gilmore is nothing but a group of aging boomers that never grew up and the subject matter shows in this movie. I would say they are attempt to recapture their “glory years” but you would have to have had glory years for that to be true. It’s sad and pathetic group of people that are now stealing money from companies like Netflix, whom will see no fucking return, just to keep their dipshit friends employed within Hollywood. They’re not actors, they’re over glorified welfare recipients. David Spade sent his career to finally visit Chris Farley and after this outing, maybe he should consider doing the same.

0 out of 5 stars.

Sympathy for the Devil: Review of Netflix’s Lucifer.

INTRODUCTION: Lucifer has always been my favorite biblical character. He was so many things and the devil has always had the best domains that he oversaw from science to classical and hard rock music. He was absolutely the hero of the bible and the most interesting of them all. So a TV show that is based a DC “version” of the character that barley changes the original source material of the bible, well, it seems like a recipe for disaster, but with the right casting, potentially hopeful. So is this show worthwhile?

CHARACTERS: Well rounded, albeit a tad bit cliche. Over the current four seasons you really get to know the characters well and develop an attachment for them. I enjoy all the characters for the most part, albeit I’m here for Lucifer as much as the next person.

ACTING: Fantastic all around. It really seems like these guys and gals all enjoy working together and this is never more noticeable then season three when Tom “Smallville” Welling joins the cast and is supposed to be a sort of foil to Lucifer. Unlike when the rest of the actors engage, sometimes to the point where a scene looks like it almost became a blooper reel, the acting falls super flat when it turns to his character. It’s never seemed more awkward at all. The fact this is so easily discernible is a testament to the casting director with his choices. Never been more impressed at casting.

WRITING: Tad trite and formulaic. Still very good over all, albeit a tad lazy at times.

DIALOGUE: Fantastic. No big cringe moments.

STYLE: Late 90s/early 00’s cop show style. Its retro, but a much needed break from all the bleak looking shows on tv right now.

FX: Very surprising for a TV show. I expected worse and it is quite good.

MUSIC: Excellent soundtrack!

SUBTEXT: I think at its core, Lucifer is really about humanity. Lucifer may not seem it, but he is audience character. He may seem larger than life, but for being the devil, his choices are all too human and very relatable. Who hasn’t wanted revenge but had to thwart temptation?

CONCLUSION: This show is amazing, even though it is slightly formulaic and trite. I mean, season three was weakest when the whole thing is essentially a rip off of a major Buffy the Vampire Slayer storyline. If you’re a fan of that show, you’ll be familiar with the Angelus aspect. Still, it is nice to see it get a final season at least. Netflix did a good thing here and who knows, perhaps if season five goes over well, this will get another season. It one of the better shows I’ve seen in years and still adds some freshness to the tired old cop show clichés. Well worth giving a go!

4 out of 5.

Fashionably Late Book Reviews: Look Who’s Back

INTRODUCTION: I have wanted to read this book since 2012 when it came out. It appealed to me due to the fact that I also thought, that if Hitler like thinking was to ever make a true return, it wouldn’t come back under obvious and not so subtle attempts at re-branding the NSDAP as the Alt-Right or Institute for Historical Review have attempted and failed to do. I’ve also stated in the past that nationalism was a byproduct of the welfare state. Nearly all societies that have government run anything is going to become closed off and nationalistic society, given that human beings are primitive and see money as resources and as such, they’re evolutionary prone to “team playing” in these regards. In essence, the left’s screams at the right of “Racist” are not off in the fact that those looking to close the boarders are attempting to keep American resources for Americans. Where the argument 180’s today, is that Alt-right figures also want to reduce such resources, not just for emigrants, but also for Americans of different “races”. It important to keep this in mind, as America isn’t the only ones going through ye olde 1930’s pangs and Germany has been for years and at least extremely violently since 1989. So a book like this is a must in today’s day and age. Satire has always been a foremost way to ridicule bad ideas and Nazism is no exception to the rule. That said, does this book ultimately do that?

PLOT: Hitler awakens in 2011 and finds himself in a fish out of water story as he struggles to make sense of it all.

PROSE: Not bad. It isn’t purple, but it shows more than enough. Everything is through Hitler’s point of view, so I feel like it was a missed opportunity to possibly play with Hitler’s skewed perspective. I’m not saying he had to see the world like Gobles’ propaganda, but if you have ever seen Hitler’s art, you notice something isn’t quite right about his perception of the world and that could have been an interesting aspect to play with, like how Tim Burton has a unique visual voice.

DIALOGUE: Excellent.

CHARACTERS: Timur Vermes Hitler is spot on. The only exceptions are Hitler’s speeches, which seem off in tone and not nearly as exaggerative as they could be, nor do they reflect the content of Hitler’s actual speeches. You do not need to read too many of them to know these are not Hitler’s typical oratory approach. They primarily focus on the Middle East, specifically, Turkey. I keep up on German affairs as I am still working on my German, and Muslim immigrants are a huge talking point for right wingers over there, so this is Timur Vermes having Hitler speak in a modern way, which kind of contradicts his fish out of water story at the beginning. There are quite a few of these, how do I put this, non-Hiterlian idiosyncrasies that elude to him either being a severely delusion human or the best huckster show business has ever seen. One instance has Hitler showing humanity towards someone whom he is working with and finds out she is Jewish. While Hitler did have half-Jews working for him, this still seems out of character for the Jew hating sociopath that everyone has seared into their brains. There could be a multitude of reasons for this; one could argue that this is a typical trope of literature where you give the antagonist a positive trait to offset their negative intentions. Dr.No for instance loves his cat. Hitler was great with Kids and Animals, so if that was his goal, it was a redundancy, given what we actually knew about Hitler and could have used. There is another such scene when the same woman is pregnant and Hitler thinks she and her baby daddy want to name the baby after him. Weird he would be so cool with a Jewish woman naming a child after him or the union between a German with a Germanic Jew.

I don’t suspect that Timur is secretly harboring Nazi feelings or is in anyway trying to aggrandize the Nazi leader, because while Hitler was alleged to have a good sense of humor, he most likely would have called this book, itself, propaganda, since he is portrayed as kind of inept and more of a parody of Archie Bunker than the leader of the Third Reich.

The real reason I think those speeches are not as Hitler like as they could have been is that Timur was afraid this could incidentally act as a Turner diaries and so he didn’t go all in on the speeches, least he be accidentally responsible for making neo-nazis off a satire. While I can understand such a concern, when it comes to satire, my belief, you have to go all in as his Hitler does or not bother at all.

Outside of that gripe, the other characters are not as developed as they could have been, which kind of makes sense for this novel, since he seems to be attempting to put you into the perspective of someone in Hitler’s inner circle at the time or a fan of Hitler and attempt to get you to see why people liked him in the first place, allowing you to feel that stature historians and those who knew him have claimed Hitler exuded in your presence.

SUBTEXT: I do not think it is really subtle, but ultimately Hitler is more of an analogy of Germany in this book than actually there in person. He is a spectre looming over Germany and showcases Germany’s struggle with dealing about the holocaust. This is shown in the movie as well, which is why I said it isn’t really subtle. It is kind of shoved down our throats and literally said pretty much the same way I put it. Timur also wrote the screenplay, so I would presume that is the actual intent. Always appreciated when the “subtext” is shoved in our face so we cannot have our own interpretations. Multiple interpretations, like with Dracula or Frankenstein is normally one of the ways these books have longevity, so I feel that hurts it from potentially becoming a classic, even though it could be. The accidental Rocky Horror Picture show reference as Hitler’s new slogan is pretty epic and rings of an abuse boyfriend, coming back around to the honeymoon phase to repeat the cycle, so there is at least something we could come up with ourselves or discern from the book.

CONCLUSION: While the subtext is thrown in our face and the book has a few flaws, ultimately, the book is excellent. I read it in about 16 hours and I only downloaded it last night. While I wanted to read it in the German, I couldn’t pass up the deal on Amazon, so I Kindle bought it. I am very glad I did as it still have a lot to offer and is very poignant.

To be fair, never mind the criticisms above, I feel like there is a stronger version of this novel that never came to light. Had I been writing it, I would have set it in 1986, when the fall of the Berlin wall was about to happen in 1989 and racial tensions in Germany were probably even higher than they are today, along with the impeding fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Hess would of even been alive to have given the rouse more of a “is he, isn’t he?” kind of vibe and the idea of potentially driving Germany back into that type of state might of made the book have a bit more gravitas as a social commentary than a kind of buffoonish Conan O’Brian skit. Still, it works and it deserves

4 out of 5 stars.

Fiverr.com is Horrible!

I started multiple gigs on Fiverr.com that are similar to things already allowed on the website. My third gig, was denied for copyright infringement because some third party claimed to own the act of reviewing.

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Here is my e-mail on the gig.

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This all happened after already having approved it in the first place. So I write to them this:

krspenwah

So they wrote back with

krspenwah

They marked it as resolved on the wrong gig, which is still active. If they meant reviews were not allowed on the site, then why is this here

krspenwah

 

The difference between my gig and this? I offered honest and objective reviews because these people’s clients deserve honesty. Instead, I guess, Fiverr’s policy is that fraudulent reviews are marketable and mine are not, even though an alleged third company complained.

If I were you, I would stay away from this company!