Low: Another Yawn-Inducing Apocalypse

In case you are not in the know, the world is going to end this Saturday – most likely at 12:00 a.m., Eastern Standard Time. After giving the dinosaurs 160 million years to dominate the Earth, it appears that God is ready to pull the plug on the species that was “created to rule this Earth” after a couple dozen millennia. So get out that ‘61 bottle of Chateau Cheval Blanc you have been saving. When your boss asks you how your weekend was, tell him/her that you don’t remember because you were too busy jamming booze and high-level barbiturates into your system. Embrace the urge to streak onto the field of a baseball game covered in Saran Wrap and Crisco to do airplanes in the outfield. Now is the time. Why is this happening, you might ask. The answer, apparently, is that the second coming of JC is upon us and the Bible predicted exactly when the day would actually come. This prodigious ability to predict dates is fairly amazing, mainly because the Bible doesn’t even give us an accurate date for Jesus’ first arrival; based on the Bible and archeological findings, most historians believe that Jesus was actually born sometime between 4 B.C. and 6 A.D. And if you think that he was born on December 25^th, you might want to do a little research on your own. But nevermind the gray area over such things, because people all over the country are handing out information that Judgment Day is, without doubt, coming up this Saturday. I’m also a little dubious as to why Jesus would promote love and forgiveness the first time around and then pull the whole “psyche!” routine a couple millennia later, but maybe he just has a better sense of humor than I originally thought.

Forget the absurdity of it all, I’m just disappointed as to how these Judgment Day promoters are spending their final days. They should be handing out puppies to eight-year-old chemo patients wearing knitted sweaters with sad golden retrievers on the front. Maybe they should be playing Chopin to tribes in the Amazon that have never heard classical music, or following around Donald Trump with a megaphone, a backpack full of 5-Hour energies and a never-ending list of reasons why it’s almost entirely his fault. Instead, the leaders of this “revolution” are making their most loyal – or more likely the ones they were able to pay the least –stand on street corners and hand out deliberately misleading information in pamphlet form, all while getting mocked by the endless amounts of passersby. And if these pamphlet passers are still around on Sunday, many of them will believe that they have descended into hell, as the ones worthy of Christ are to be whisked directly into heaven, according to the prophecy. You have to learn sadism that well-constructed. So forget seeing whether or not LeBron is going to win an NBA title. Forget getting to see the next election or the sixth entry in the “Fast and the Furious” franchise, or what Kate and Prince William will name their first born. It’s all over. So if you see any of Jesus’ true followers (you’ll recognize them because they’re the ones holding signs and telling you that you’re going to hell), give them a high five and tell them to party on. As for me, if you see highlights of a short, slightly Scottish dude getting arrested on the field during a Padres game this week, don't bother judging.

High: Obama Gets the Birth Certificate Debacle Over With

I don’t have a clue whether Obama is a “good” president. No offense, but my inclination is that you don’t either. Having said that, once in a while he puts together a sound bite that makes me stop and go, “yeah, this guy has it.” Like Kurt Cobain, or Jenna Jameson maybe. And no, there isn’t a literal connection between any of them. These days, you don’t have to change the world in politics to sway people to your side. You really just need to look smart and concerned while trying to not piss off anybody too badly, but even doing that a little bit is just fine. It’s all just a series of video tidbits and sound bites, a collective resume of Youtube and Facebook that eventually makes you look: A) presidential; B) like an asshole; or C) on the verge of a complete mental breakdown. These are more or less your options. Barack Obama was simply born to stand in front of podiums and make people believe the stuff that comes out of his mouth. If he had wanted to be a car salesman, he could sell a ‘Vette to a Republican looking to buy a Cobalt. Obama is not going to change the very dynamic of the world, as some started to believe he was going to do when he was elected in a landslide. But even if people are finally realizing that he’s just a smart dude and not a demi-God, he still has it. And he reminded me of that recently by finally just showing his birth certificate, denouncing allegations as silly and a complete waste of time. He succeeded in looking insightful, sharp and committed to the American people – three things I couldn’t even say with a straight face in reference to Trump. But the Donald is already fully committed to whatever nonsense he’s trying to get away with, so the only place for Trump to go now is completely over the hill of insanity with a shit-eating grin and a Twitter account. It could be classic.

Overall, Obama reaffirmed (for me anyway) that he looks and acts like the leader of a nation. The presidency is a position of image, and Obama is a natural. So was Ronald Reagan. I’m not exactly the harshest critic of political leaders….I really just want you to look like a bright guy/gal and not completely screw up the world irrevocably. Maybe stay away from doing lines of blow with high-end call girls. Basically, all you have to do is convince me that you’re smarter and more ambitious than I am. This shouldn’t be very difficult, and if you can’t do it as easily as breathing, you’re not good enough to be the president. Sorry. We’re not talking quantum mechanics here; it shouldn’t be a strain. Still, some presidents simply can’t do this. A weird part of me has a soft spot for W., with him being like a little kid in way over his skis, but he’s also the golden example of this one. Even so, it’s hard for me to completely hate on a guy who said stuff I would say, particularly if you randomly asked me complicated and important questions on camera all the time. I might just use a word like jungular and stare at you like you should know the definition of a fictional word. But where W. gloriously failed, Obama still succeeds pretty convincingly in crafting the presidential image, even if you think he’s a lunatic left-winger bent on enslaving our children. These people are out there by the way. Just a heads up...

Low: Time for Megan Fox and the Drones to Go

(Photo: Apparently Megan Fox has Webster's covered for the "narcissism" entry in their new photo dictionary)

I’m not exactly a feminist, but I have limits. Women may not have as much official power as men do, but they’re guiding the ship almost all of the time in social situations. Don’t think so? You need to pay more attention. But one place they definitely don’t have any power is in the movies, a place that could use a few more women that don’t look and act like Megan Fox. Give me an endless supply of 5-Hour Energies, no distractions for a week and a stack of old Meryl Streep DVDs, and I’ll be a better actor than she is. Michael Bay, a genius at plugging in bad actors into bad movies, thought Fox was so bad that he had to replace her. And that’s part of the problem, as now we mainly get a bunch of nearly talentless hotties saying cheesy lines in front of a green screen all summer long - instead of real actresses with real acting skills. Mainly they're expected to stand there and look pretty. The problem is also apparently growing, as a recent study came out saying that men get twice as many speaking lines as women do in movies these days. Correspondingly, women are much more likely to be wearing nothing or next to nothing, which I'm not completely able to pass off as a bad thing at this point. Still, it’s a difficult situation for someone who wants to see more of talented but not exotic actresses like Michelle Williams and less airbrushed eye candy. Williams was hotter in indie “Blue Valentine” than if Paramount let Bay film Megan Fox shaved, naked and in a hot bath of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. Don’t underestimate Michael Bay’s prodigious ability to squeeze in a product placement. As long as we keep going to see dumbed down movies

that follow this trend, they’ll keep hiring the same pretty drones willing to stand there and fulfill the shallow fantasy – a job description that sounds strikingly like a porn star. If I’m paying up to $15 for a movie, it isn’t too much to ask that the main actors have more talent than the softcore porn I almost flipped past on HBO a couple days ago. The issue has also extended to directors, as five times as many movies are made by men as women. I’ve seen enough theatrical wet dreams by male mainstream directors, whose artistic aspirations often are to make 14-year-old boys say “Woa” during action scenes. And to make them shift their seating posture when the heroine predictably finds a good excuse to wear next to nothing. For a bunch of supposed extreme left-wingers, those in Hollywood are a little behind on this one. And don’t feel bad for the Megan Fox’s of the world….if she never got another movie offer the rest of her life, she’d still get paid millions of dollars to smile and promote lingerie and energy drinks. Or maybe she’ll just become a major player in the porn industry, but she’d have options is what I’m saying...

Low: A creative punishment might be needed for Mortenson

I have a slightly different perspective on how the legal system should work. Sue me. Most people absurdly think that we should follow a hard set of laws that more or less tells us which crime deserves what punishment. Ok, that works pretty well for the little stuff, but not for the big boys. A better option? Summary judgment by comedians. Instead of some stiff erudite with tired eyes, why not bring in Robin Williams the night after a bender? Bring in Larry David right after a bad experience with elevator etiquette, and let him sit there and listen to some moron tell him why he drove his car through the front window of a liquor store at 3 in the morning. Soon, you'll have DUI offenders forced to watch Howdy Doody for 16 hours a day or do the Macarena on stage on Latin night in gay bars. Just imagine what George Carlin might have been able to accomplish with some of the worst miscreants in the U.S. over the last few decades.

Which brings me to Greg Mortenson, the man accused of running a fraudulent non-profit organization called the Central Asia Institute, a group that mainly helps build and run schools in impoverished villages. Naturally, he also has a best-selling book (Three Cups of Tea),which tells a fantastical tale about getting kidnapped by the Taliban. A tale that accusers are saying is about as accurate as the old testament, or Senator Jon Kyle when his lips are moving. Millions of dollars - including $100,000 from President Obama for his Nobel Peace Prize - have been donated to Mortenson's agency, which has been a bit more than dubious with its record keeping. According to a recent 60 Minutes, Mortenson's agency has "filed only one public IRS return in its 14 years of existence." There also seems to be a very blurry line between money used by the agency for building schools and for Mortenson's personal use. If I tried to pull that shit, the IRS would give me a free public colonoscopy, and I don't exactly have a $1.7M budget for traveling expenses related to book promotions (as reportedly Mortenson has). Thousands of housewife tears have been lost to the inspirational, supposedly true story of the allegedly great man, who once told the world that he was so moved by a little Pakistani girl that he promised her he would personally help build her a school. Now it seems that he might just be another rich guy who made a fortune by standing behind poor people with a smile, as any great man might do to better the world. If the accusations about Mortenson are true, we might want to have Chris Rock's cell number on hand.

Low: Mourning Fox's Split with Beck

There are certain people so naturally funny that they are impossible not to enjoy listening to from time to time, and Glenn Beck just happens to be one of those people. Whether or not he has ever believed a single word that has come out of his mouth is basically irrelevant. While Republicans embarrassingly burn their Beck tee shirts and bumper stickers now that they're forced to acknowledge that Beck jumped the shark long ago, Democrats should actually have a different perspective. They should be begging Fox News to reconsider their decision to can Beck. They should be storming Fox News headquarters with picket signs, Molotov cocktails and your friend's crazy cousin that is always up for something random and dangerous. As long as Fox News sponsored a man who suggested that viewers stock their shelves in preparation for the breakdown of society, they weren't exactly flush with credibility. Even Republicans had to give you that one, which touched the problem to a needlepoint. But rarely do you find a man like Beck, one who has the gall to stand there and tell the truth to the American people, or at least to the tiny percentage of geriatrics and caffeine addicted extreme right-wingers longing for old testament simplicity. Comedy Central should pick him up right this second, in order to make sure they can broadcast the "revolution" Beck speaks about. Am I the only one in the country who is dying to know what this revolution would entail if he got to do it his way? I say give him an unlimited budget and a slot right behind Jon Stewart, and let the man just go to work. Fly in Francis Ford Coppola or Terrence Malick to do the camera work and hire John Williams to do the score if you need to. Just imagine the theories he might come up with with an hour-long news show and pure autonomy! It may not be a formula for a long-term success, but we're talking a supernova of legendary comedy here over a very short, glorious period of time. Groucho Marx, Richard Pryor, George Carlin and smiling Glenn Beck. Of course, when his ratings turn into the highest on television (a guarantee), he'll see confirmation that he is in fact the Savior. But I suppose that ship has already sailed....

High and Low: Charlie Sheen, Original Gangster

“Whenever we needed money, we would rob the airport,” so says Henry Hill in Martin Scorsese’s gangster classic “Goodfellas,” and apparently Charlie Sheen was paying attention. With the economy still not exactly recovered, Sheen waltzed into Detroit, Michigan on April 2^nd and packed the 5,100-seat Fox Theatre for a 70-minute kick-off of his “Torpedo of Truth” tour. Keep in mind that many people in the U.S. think that Detroit is on the precipice of being a third world country, and many others think it already is. Though many people are also idiots, Detroit didn’t get that reputation for entering a golden age of standard of living, national relevance and paradise-seeking bikini models. Being from Buffalo, I’m allowed a cheap shot. Armed with a porn star and several other busty knock outs at his side, Sheen was cheered loudly, then soundly booed once the crowd started to finally realize that he doesn’t actually write the lines that he says on TV. My personal favorite part was Sheen telling the crowd that Snoop Dogg would be performing, only to play a short clip of a Snoop song at the very end of the show. What’s clear is that nothing short of a heart attack is going to slow him down from taking gobs of money from an American public obsessed with seeing former stars in full plight. If he got arrested tomorrow with ten kilos of snow, he’d do a short video with David Fincher from prison that would be seen by every single person in the world with an internet connection or TV.

A couple reports have come out saying that many media outlets were even readying Charlie Sheen’s obituary early. Just waiting to fill in the date, really, the file already open. It’s hard to blame them, though, considering they aren’t the only ones anticipating his early demise. “Charlie Sheen dead” is already one of the top Charlie Sheen-related searches on Google. And dancing to the tune of the trigger-happy entertainment media is a bunch of people who paid $75 (or more) to see a loosely thrown together Charlie Sheen comedy special. The funniest part is that once they got there, many seemed to suddenly realize that a 70-minute Charlie Sheen comedy special is a 70-minute Charlie Sheen comedy special. There’s a funny Seth Rogen line in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin" that comes to mind about what it would be like to actually attend a donkey show. Where I have to start liking Sheen is that he plays the part of the clown and simply robs a bunch of people who showed up to see a train wreck develop. In a way, the entire public has provided him a limitless ATM, and he may just be a genius for letting them give him their money while he wears the clown outfit and drives that stupid tiny bicycle. At one point, according to grown adults who get paid to write down what Charlie Sheen says, Sheen turned and calmly addressed a disgruntled member of the crowd: “I’ve already got your money, dude.” Henry Hill would have been proud.

High (I think): Arnold to potentially return to screen in "The Governator"

Put this one down in the strange but possibly true category. It seems that Arnold Schwarzenegger is seriously considering making a movie called "The Governator," mainly because he "thought the word was so cool," as he was recently quoted as saying. Arnold has had a pretty good little run, and at this point people want to see him in movies whether they are just a little bit bad or run for the hills, Ed Wood Jr. bad. They would see him in good movies too, but let's get real. I can't imagine how they could write a movie called "The Governator," but if they do, Arnold will stand there and say the lines. That much we know. Here's a man who was roided up with super models for almost all of the 70s; was in just about every bad action movie Sly Stallone and Jean-Claude Van Damme weren't in during the 80s and 90s; then becomes the governor of California in the 2000s in a turn of events that was too silly to make the cut in one of his own movies. With his political career now in the rear view, there's clearly no one to stop him from making a movie called "The Governor," so you might as well sit back and enjoy the carnage. To me, Arnold has always been sort of an expensive clown in the general domain. Just put the camera on him, then let him figure out whether it's a movie or a political debate. But somewhere back in the day, they started paying him so much money that I simply assumed he really thought he was Conan the Barbarian. The more likely scenario, though, is that Arnold was laughing his ass off the whole time. Now I'm imagining him with an Austrian buddy, a pile of weight-lifting crank (legal at the time, actually), and a never ending amount of jokes about how much they're paying him to say crazy shit that doesn't make sense. Hey, I would say lines like "If it bleeds....we can kill it" too if I can make a living doing it. It's almost as if Arnold has had his own personal inside joke for the last four decades, and the joke just keeps getting bigger and bigger.