Dead Man: A really weird corner of the West

Johnny Depp is accountant William Blake, who traveled from the East coast to secure a job as an accountant in a Western town. But he arrives to a hellhole. 

The dismal landscape is chock full of sadistic cowboys, homicidal trappers, rapists, and cannibals. Nice guy Blake has some difficulty finding his clique. When a woman is tossed out of the saloon onto the muddy street. Blake acts nice and they end up in the sack. Somehow Blake is falsely accused of murder and a bunch of bounty hunters are hot on his trail.



Blake is the Chuck Norris of accountants. He shoots and stabs his way through quite a few transvestites, lunatics, and shopkeepers of the old West. Blake befriends a Native American who patches up his wounds. He is obese  for a hunter-gatherer, however, so I have to wonder just where he goes to get the all you can eat acorn buffet. The two travel around the wilderness, Blake on a stolen horse. On his tail, the three grisly bounty hunters can't even cooperate long enough to stop murdering each other.


Random encounters lead to more deaths. The killing and carnage is random, often accidental, and well, let's face it everyone dies. Except for the cannibal.

The black and white film hints a bit of the afterlife and at one point Blake can't even figure out if he is dead. For the entire two hours of the film, we are anticipating Blake's death. The movie is named "Dead Man" after all. Every gun in the West is trained on Blake. I don't know... Depp in a Western sounds about as strange as Depp in a pirate movie. The movie is weird and surreal, but what can you expect from Johnny Depp?

DEAD MAN: 4 ACES

Popsicle Tropicals: No Laughing Matter

I recently purchased Popsicle Tropicals: artificially colored, flavored, and sweetened frozen chemical chunks. But boy are they tasty. I can't get enough of them. Stamped on each of the Popsicle sticks is a unfailingly corny joke.

A sampling of the corniness that lurks at the center of each Tropical Popsicle.

It's a Catch-22. You want a tasty frozen treat without having puns literally forced down your throat. Yes, not since an iceberg smashed through the hull of the Titanic did a chunk of ice have such a sobering and unfunny effect on scores of unsuspecting victims. 

Popsicle is only trying to come up with jokes that appeal to the masses, and therein lies the problem. Their attempts at humor lack something that most people prefer in a joke: funniness? Where did they find the talentless soul who wrote these? In a lobotomy recovery ward? Typing fortune cookie notes in an overseas sweatshop?

I suck down the remnants of another Popsicle and I survey the Popsicle stick warily. The cringeworthy joke sets the bar at a new low: "What's the best side of the house to put the porch on? The outside."

Has even been a person out there who laughed at one of these jokes? If so, I hope they live in a remote corner of Montana which I never stumble across. 

I believe the point may be not to make us laugh but to induce a depression so deep that we go on a Popsicle eating binge. 

The cause of indigestion

The conclusion that the people at Popsicle must have arrived is you can't please everyone... so don't please anyone. Who do they think their consumers are? Mentally underdeveloped half-wits? Die-hard fans of Dancing with the Stars? People with the imagination of corporate accountants?  

At least the son of the CEO is employed

Whatever the case, one thing is for sure. I plan to stock my freezer with as many Popsicles as it can hold.

The IT Crowd: The Dumb Leading the Blind

After watching every British sitcom available on Netflix and turning them off in disgust after five minutes, I was beginning to think that the watchable sitcom had gone extinct in the late 20th century. Then I stumbled across The IT Crowd.

Relegated to the basement, the IT department dresses
suitably for their environment.

This show is so cynical it could turn anyone off to the business world. The show centers around two pathetically socially inept dorks, Roy and Moss, who work in the basement IT department. They are saddled with a new supervisor, Jen, who knows next to nothing about computers. She fools company head Denholm Reynholm into believing she is qualified to run the department by dropping technical terms such as 'mouse' to demonstrate her expertise. Of course, this satisfies him; he is as advanced in the hierarchy as he is incompetent. But Jen doesn't mind pretending she knows how to run the department. What businessperson would ever do that?

Ms. Handy-with-a-mouse smooth talks her way into the IT
department supervisor role - but she can't fool the nerds
themselves.

The IT dorks are not as haughty as the typical elitist computer geeks. They view the constant phone calls to their department with a sort of existential desperation; rather than answering the phones they created an automated answering service to remind callers to turn on their computers, which solves their technical issue 99% of the time.

I was impressed by Graham Linehan's writing of The IT Crowd. This show actually challenged my dismal outlook on the state of comedy.

Rejected by every female they encounter and unappreciated by management, I think we can all relate to the cast of The Crowd. Wait, you can too, right?

RATING: 5 ACES

Silas McGee, My Debut Short Story

Finally old Silas McGee learned to tie his shoes and was ready to venture into the world outside his home. Then he dropped dead due to heart failure.

Seraphim Falls: A Steam Age McGyver

The civil war is over and one officer is on the trail of another. Carver, played by Liam Neeson, pursues Gideon (Pierce Brosnan) through the mountains of Nevada. He pursues him through the wilderness. Then he pursues him through the desert. In short, Gideon has a lot less fun in Nevada than the 80 year old retiree who hangs out at the Reno Peppermill and order the fifty cent screwdriver.

The knife with which Gideon performs surgery on himself,
removes a horses intestine and hops inside the carcass, and kills
lots and lots of men. All in a day's work for this homeless Bond.

We've all had the pleasure of Pierce Brosnan as James Bond. Here we get to see him as a cowboy McGyver. With resourcefulness that would give Robinson Crusoe an inferiority complex, Gideon hides inside a dead horse and lunges outwards to attack his pursuers. In one gut-wrenching scene after he is shot by the Carver, Gideon digs a bullet out of his arm with a bowie knife. The intelligent filmgoer surely will ask themselves ask ourselves why the sissy didn't leave it in. He also plunges over a waterfall to escape from Carver's gang. One by one Carver's gang fall to Gideon's superior hand.

Carver with a couple of his hired thugs.

In a most Westerns, the characters gun each other down willy nilly. In others the reason for an obsessive desire for revenge is revealed early in the movie. We do not know if Carver is pissed off because Gideon shuffled playing cards badly or because he did something slightly more upsetting, like murdering his every living relative.

Seraphim Falls starts off fast and tapers off slightly as the chase scene turns into a marathon. It picks up at the end with the arrival of a gypsy woman, played by Angelica Huston, and a mysterious Native American and the revealing of Carver's motivation.

Also impressive is that two Irishmen manage to act like cowboys.

GRADE: TWO BULLET HOLES

Saloon Brawl Video Game

You travel the old West visiting random bars and picking fights. Try not to get knocked out or your brawling career might come to a premature end.

Saloon Brawl Join in the saloon brawl and knock out the other cowboys!

Play this free game now!!

Emperor of the North Pole: A Tale of Two Psychos

During the height of the Great Depression, Ernest Borgnine plays Shak, the railroad police officer with a sadistic bloodlust that would make even the BART Police take a second look at his job application.

Who among us hasn't been peacefully eating a sandwich when
we are hammered on the head by a cop.

Wielding a simple hammer Shak methodically moving from railroad car to car. Attacking hoboes from behind while they're usually eating or relaxing on the train, Shak has a thorough knowledge of police procedure - down to the requisite donut wolfing as his appearance suggests.

Wait a minute you say, how is this a Western? Never mind, it takes place on a Steam locomotive on the West coast. If this doesn't mollify you, maybe Kim Kardashian's blog would be more up your alley.

Cigarette isn't sure whether to laugh or shit himself so
he chooses the latter.

When hobo prince A number 1, played by Lee Marvin, and young tramp Cigarette, played by Keith Carradine, stow away on Shak's train they quickly realize they are in danger. So they do what anyone else would do and set their boxcar on fire. A Number 1 escapes but Cigarette is smoked out from the flaming boxcar.



The stage is set for the confrontation of A Number 1 with Shak. A Number 1 takes up the challenge of riding Shak's train all the way to Portland.  Soon Shak and A Number 1 find themselves in an all out battle to the death. Unless you count the time Kurt Cobain took his final bath, the Pacific Northwest has never been the site of such intense violence. In the final battle between Shak and A Number One I wasn't sure if I was watching two psychos go at it or this was actually a Terminator prequel. No way, because Borgnine and Marvin constantly laugh maniacally so you know they are not cyborgs, but people who could use the services of Dr. Phil.

What a nice day for an axe fight.

RATING: FIVE ACES