3.29.2011

15 songs we never want to hear again

We really, really hate these songs.

1. Thomas Dolby, "She Blinded Me with Science"
2. Blondie, "Heart of Glass"
3. Snow, "Informer"
4. David Bowie, "Let's Dance"
5. Ini Kamoze, "Here Comes the Hotstepper"
6. Toni Basil, "Mickey"
7. UB40, "Red Red Wine"
8. U2, "Pride"
9. Digital Underground, "The Humpty Dance"
10. John Cougar, "Hurts So Good"
11. Whitney Houston, "I Will Always Love You"
12. Kool and the Gang, "Celebration"
13. All-4-One, "I Swear"
14. Pearl Jam, "Jeremy"
15. Counting Crows, "Mr. Jones"

3.20.2011

Smoking hot brackets

To try and balance out the bleary-eyed, pimply-faced geekiness of the Sci-Fi Bracket post below, we took the time to fill out Esquire magazine's Sexiest Woman Alive Madness. Real men may not be able to understand the difference between The Empire Strikes Back bounty hunters Bossk and IG-88, but they know a hot girl when they see one.

* Fashion bracket
Our age is showing. As attractive as these supermodels may be, A) we haven't heard of half of them and B) when we try to get an idea of what they look like (thank you, Google image search), we find that they mostly all look alike. This wouldn't have been the case 12 years ago when all top supermodels would have filled the pages of our monthly Maxim magazine.

#1-seed Brooklyn Decker (her, we know) defeats #2-seed Miranda Kerr to advance to the Final Four.

* Music and Sports bracket
We would argue there's many more candidates from the world of music, but Esquire may be trying to balance music with sports. Not as many, ahem, candidates from the world of sports, it seems; the ones they find are mostly women we never heard of.

#14-seed Gwyneth Paltrow (music? really?) defeats #4-seed Erin Andrews (though we still prefer the smart-girl looks of Rachel Nichols or Bonnie Bernstein) to advance to the Final Four.

We stipulate that Gwyneth in the movies can be an icy, cold experience. But the Gwyneth who's suddenly found new juice on Fox's "Glee" and become a minor singing star has real oomph.

* Movies bracket
This one's in our wheelhouse, people. We know almost all of these actresses, but lament the absence of Cheese Fry guilty-pleasure Jennifer Aniston.

#2-seed Olivia Wilde defeats #1-seed Mila Kunis (who almost lost to #4-seed Ashley Greene, FYI; you got lucky, Kunis)

* Television bracket
We must protest the inclusion of #2-seed Kim Kardashian. We, in fact, protest everything about Kim Kardashian. And yes, she did advance a round in our bracket.

#8-seed "those girls from Glee" (and Esquire isn't even including actresses Naya Rivera and Heather Morris) defeats #3-seed Christina Hendricks (last year's big winner)

* Final Four results
Olivia Wilde defeats Brooklyn Decker (see Tron Legacy and you'll know why)
"Those girls from Glee" defeat Gwyneth Paltrow

* The championship game
Olivia Wilde defeats "Those girls from Glee" and spares us the indiginity of having to defend our inexplicable interest in a Fox show about a high school choir.

May the brackets be with you

We are many things here at the spacious, shag-carpeted Cheese Fry offices, but college basketball fans is not one of them. Thankfully, geek website io9 kindly created a March Madness bracket consisting solely of sci-fi movies.

How'd the movies fare? Glad you asked.

From the northwest bracket (the io9 brackets aren't labeled, but it sounds cooler to name them, don't you think?), #1-seed Star Wars advanced without breaking a sweat, while #3-seed Terminator 2 had no trouble beating #2-seed Day the Earth Stood Still and #7-seed District 9.

There were likewise no shocks in the southwest bracket as #1-seed 2001: A Space Odyssey and #2-seed The Empire Strikes Back advanced. It was a real nail-biter however, as #13-seed Independence Day almost edged 2001. It's become hip to trash Independence Day, but it's hard to find another world-wide disaster movie that puts as much effort (or tries to, at least) into special-effects as it does its characters. And while we do stipulate that the beginning and end of 2001 are pretty out-there, the middle section with HAL is gold.

Big upsets in the northeast bracket as underdogs stampeded over the favorites. #12-seed Total Recall ("Consider it a divorce") blows past #4-seed Back to the Future and #1-seed E.T., while #10-seed Sunshine (yes, we know the ending is absolutely terrible) beats #2-seed Wall-E.

And in the southeast bracket, things proceed as the selection committee surely intended, as #1-seed Blade Runner and #2-seed Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan advance to the Elite Eight.

And here's what happened next in the Elite Eight round... (By the way, how nerdy is this entire exercise? Good grief.)

#3 Terminator 2 defeats #1 Star Wars (we all have fond feelings about Star Wars, but it's about 20 minutes too long - search your feelings, you know it to be true)
#2 Empire Strikes Back defeats #1 2001: A Space Odyssey (2001's ending finally catches up to it)
#12 Total Recall defeats #10 Sunshine (Sunshine's ending finally catches up to it)
#1 Blade Runner defeats #2 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (we love Khan, but Blade Runner's look shaped the entire genre - there's sci-fi before Blade Runner and sci-fi after Blade Runner)

And in the Final Four round...

#2 Empire Strikes Back defeats #3 Terminator 2 (bubble gum beats dark-and-grim)
#1 Blade Runner defeats #12 Total Recall (visual style beat narrative pretzels)

And in the championship...

#2 Empire Strikes Back defeats #1 Blade Runner

This feels right, don't you think? And not just because we have a toy Tauntaun sitting on our bookshelf.

3.03.2011

Goodnight, Frank Herbert

Until the Li'l Fry came along, we were completely unaware of the classic (and rather creepy) children's book Goodnight Moon. Which is why two years ago, we would have been unable to appreciate the strangeness of Goodnight Dune, a spoof that involves elements of Frank Herbert's sci-fi/fantasy books - and the very strange, very flawed David Lynch film.