Mailbag: Episode V: The Hunger Games?

Because this blog is, first and foremost, a blog of the people, for the people and by the people (and must never be mistaken for a vehicle for my own ego), I've been receiving and listening to feedback regarding the movie-review portion of this blog, which has become its dominant function.  First, I've decided to overhaul the scoring portion, and have been scoring flicks slightly differently over the last 2 months or so.  Gone are tenth point scores, and the 10 point scale will only be divided into .5 increments.  In addition, the scoring system has been modified to adjust scores generally down.  At some point I'll probably write up a list with revised scores, but it became clear that there was little rhyme or reason to the actual scores I was giving flicks, so I decided to impose a little mental order.

For now, here's a general scale: under 6: a flick that is heavily flawed and generally not worth watching although something on the high end may have certain endearing qualities.  6-7: a flawed flick that for any number of reasons falls short of true quality, but is still watchable.  7-8: an overall good flick that falls short of being potentially great or memorable but is still well worthwhile, especially if you're a fan of the people involved/genre or source material.  8-9: approaching greatness but falling just short.  Still a fine film by any measure and anything 8.5+ is going to end up as one of the year's best.  9+: a potentially great film that will be among the year's 5 or so best and will deservedly be remembered.  Over the life of "A House of Brenner" (I've been reviewing movies since 2010) the 9+'s would be: Social Network, Inception, True Grit, Tree of Life, Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises and the Artist.  If we go back a few years we'll be talking about The Dark Knight, Children of Men, No Country for Old Men, The Hurt Locker, Avatar and There Will Be Blood.  In any rate, no more than 3-5 or so flicks a year will be 9's and up, nor should they be, or the value of the score would be cheapened.  Yes, I grade on a scale. 

In addition, I've received requests to review more "bad" films, or movies I don't want to see.  Since movie reviewing is something I fit into a life already full of being a mediocre lawyer, beer drinking, trying to meet women, reading comic books and watching way too much TV, I simply don't have much time to watch things I KNOW aren't good.  I tend to go through a careful vetting process before determining if a movie is one I'm going to see. (a combination of seeing Drew McWeeney and Roger Ebert's reviews, RottenTomatoes score + average rating and metacritic tends to do the trick) However, I'm going to try to see the occasional crappy movie, if only to mix up the reviews here and provide some cheap and easy laughs by blasting away at some Sandler fartfest or rom-com or the like.  This is a work in progress so we'll see how it plays out.  Maybe I'll post reviews of movies I watch on Netflix or cable or the like.  I'm more than open to suggestions and if you'd like me to blast apart a movie, PLEASE let me know.  I'm easy to find. 


So, with that housekeeping issue resolved, we have a short and painless mailbag to address.  It's been a while since I've answered the pressing questions of your souls, but please accept my apologies.  Know that I've been avoiding answering your questions by being completely and utterly horrible at managing my time.  So let's rock, shall we?


GH: George Carlin had a bit where he famously discussed how there should be a "two minute warning" prior to dying.  What would you do with your two minutes?

I would NOT answer bleak shit like this.  I don't even know, really... 2 minutes is too short a time period to do anything profound, amazing or bucket-list worthy, and if I recall the bit George Carlin just wanted an opportunity to be hilarious right before dying.  Well, two minutes is an insanely short amount of time so what would really happen is I would freeze up, freak out and not do anything until I had about 4 seconds left and then just died and everyone would be really confused and kind of embarrassed.  But if I had my wits about me and enough savvy to go through with it I'd start pontificating on all sorts of religious pronouncements and repeatedly stating that time was short because my father was calling me home in a matter of moments.  If you're making pronouncements and begging your deity to hold off on calling you home and then drop dead?  If in a public place, surely I could cause an adequate scene to become of at least minor note. 



JD: What would you do to be free of election ads until November?

Oh sweet Mary, what WOULDN'T I do?  If I could somehow avoid the media propaganda circus that is the nonsensical power grab of Presidential elections (let's be honest.. the biggest issue in this year's election is one where the incumbent adopted DIRECTLY the policies of his competition which was then reacted-to like it was the Bolshevik uprising by the nonsensical voices of hysteria on the right) it would be a real-life paradise on Earth and I wouldn't complain about anything at all for at least... 3 weeks.  Honestly, the worst part of the whole thing is how it's pure manipulation.  The shots, the music, the tone, the language used, it's all straight out of "Triumph of the Will" or similar Orwellian propaganda designed to purely appeal to base instinct rather than intellect.  The diversification of media, while great for things like "quality tv shows" and "choice of programming" is awful for news, information and education, because it means that people literally NEVER have to confront something that they don't already agree with.  That's dangerous and damaging to the creation and maintenance of an informed, involved and worthwhile citizenry, because these sources of information are FOR-PROFIT CORPORATIONS.  They exist to maximize their earnings which they do by maximizing viewers which they do by sensationalizing and dumbing down everything to the least common denominator which means letting everything devolve to hysteria, misinformation, rumor, gossip, outright lies and manipulation of data into neat boxes that fit previously-held beliefs.  Ugh, it makes me want to stab myself in the eyeballs.  The single MOST frustrating thing about people being uninformed puppets of monied interests is that it's NEVER been easier to inform oneself.  With the internet and ease of access to information we SHOULD be getting smarter as a culture, but we are absolutely not and instead every "discussion" on anything remotely political breaks down into a lowest common denominator scream fest of manufactured talking points.  Oh, Obama's socialist?  Romney is rich?  ...Read a book you lepton.  Breaks my heart. 



SB: Which Adam Richman-type food challenge would you do best at?  Giant burrito, giant steak, wings, etc.?   

My typical go-to answer is pancakes... but I really feel as though I'm a world-class burrito-eater.  This was only confirmed during a recent chipotle trip when my burrito was gone in less than half the time of my companions', also grown men.  I've also successfully downed two Chipotle burritos in quick succession without being too much worse for wear, so I feel I've got the bona fides to make a serious run at consuming massive quantities of rice, tortilla, beans, meat, salsa, etc.  Bring on Richman.  P.S., I'm not wholly convinced that I didn't somehow black out and become possessed by the spirit of Brady Hoke for that paragraph.  Certainly seemed like Hoke-ian food-based bravado.


EB: Spider-Man vs. Batman, no holds-barred, who wins? 

Well, there are a lot of variables in this one.  First, let's go through their capabilities.  Batman, of course, is billionaire Bruce Wayne, who has a vast armory and resources at his disposal, but as far as strength, speed, dexterity and endurance goes, is for all intents and purposes an ordinary man.  He's a highly trained, highly motivated ordinary man who may be at the peak of human physical condition and potential, but he does not possess any augmented characteristics beyond those of his suit and technology.  In addition, Bruce Wayne is presented as having a brilliant mind as has been called the world's greatest detective.  Spider-Man, on the other hand, due to a radioactive spider bite, has many superpowers.  Basically, he's extremely fast, agile, flexibile, strong, able to cling to walls/ceilings and possesses a certain semi-precognitive warning "spider sense" that alerts him to coming danger.  Spider-Man has been shown being capable of throwing and catching cars and lifting several tons without much difficulty.  In one particularly silly sequence of events, Spider-Man punched a T-Rex out cold.  In addition, Peter Parker has been shown to be a genius-level intellect, being one of the few minds capable of holding his own with the likes of Reed Richards.  As far as the confrontation itself, I think a lot of it depends on 1) the turf, and 2.) how much time is available to plan/prepare.  Batman, with preparation, is a lot more lethal and effective, especially against someone who has him far outmatched like Spider-Man.  In various stories he's been shown to briefly take on even Superman, usually with kryptonite, but still, Batman is a man who is much more dangerous than your average dude, even to someone as powerful as Spider Man.  Let's say, for the sake of making it an actual match (you couldn't throw them in a pit or Spidey would just break the entirety of Batman's face with one punch), that they are dropped into a neutral city, not NYC or Gotham, on opposite sides, and told that they must find and defeat the other.  It's hard for me to envision a scenario in which Batman could win.  Even with all of Batman's technology, Spidey's spider sense and reflexes make him a target that's all but impossible to hit.  Batman would no longer have the advantage of the rooftops and spider sense would remove the advantage of the darkness.  Let's remember that basically one punch from Spider Man ends it.  Batman would make a match of things, but let's be honest, he's outclassed by the man who may well be best equipped of all comic heroes to take out Batman.  Between spider sense and Spider-Man's speed, reflexes, strength and healing properties, I can't see how Batman could take him out without the benefit of home field, planning, and some traps.  Since the question wasn't "could Batman take out Spider Man if Spidey wandered into Gotham City and didn't know Batman was planning on taking him out?" I'm going to choose not to address that possibility and instead consider that Spider Man simply outclasses Batman in basically every non-technology way.     


AM: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to eat more calories in a day than an entire African village (pop 500, 400 adults 100 children) eats during a week. Could you do this? What strategy would you attempt? Assume the Village is an average cross section of African Villages, not particularly more hungry than any other, but certainly not likely to be "well fed" by Western Standards. You have a full 24 hour period. Bold Flavors. Full Spread. Lay it out. One rule: no vomiting.

We'll call this "The Hunger Games", because everyone in the movie looked exceedingly well-fed so they're forced to forfeit the title.  Jen Lawrence is a fine looking young lady, but she certainly wasn't malnourished... those were some full cheeks.  After some research, I found that even the most malnourished Africans are averaging between 750-1,200 calories per day.  THAT makes things much more interesting/impossible.  Even on the EXTREME low end, let's say 750 calories for adults and 500 for children, we're talking about 350,000 calories/day for the village as a whole.  NOT POSSIBLE.  So let's dial it back to something that may actually be possible.  Let's switch the question to could I out-eat 100 starvation-level Africans in a single day.  Let's say 75 adults, 25 children to keep a similar ratio.  We're talking about 93,000+ calories.  In 24 hours we're talking about 46X the daily suggested value and that's probably impossible without vomiting but let's consider how best to attack this monster.  Filling foods are going to be out because we need to get as many calories in as quickly as possible.  I'm thinking the best method is going to be desserts mixed with fried foods.  You know... as I actually looked up nutrition facts/calorie counts I think this is totally impossible.  Say you drank a milkshake (600 ish calories) and some greasy onion rings (500 ish calories) and we're still only 1/93rd the way there.  I did find out that a Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Barleywine has 330 calories/12 ounces.  However, it also has 9.6% alcohol, so apparently I'll be getting wasted in a hunt for calories.  10 of those will give me an extra 330 calories.  I discovered that vegetable oil and nuts are extremely high in calories.  So I'll be stuffing my face with pecans (700 calories per serving) and peanut butter (1500 calories per cup).   Fun fact: White Castle's large chocolate milkshake has 1680 calories.  So new plan: just sip on large chocolate shakes from White Castle and Sierra Nevada Bigfoot ALL day while snacking on pecans.  Never actually eat a meal, just ALWAYS be eating.  Let's say over a 24 hour period I drink 20 Sierra Nevadas and 20 milkshakes (not even one an hour... I think it's do-able if one were desperate and/or psychotic), we're talking about 46,000 calories.  Crap.  Halfway there and I'm going to be struggling to say the least.  I'll need to consume 67 servings of Pecans to make up that difference.  That's almost 3 an hour.  So let's say I eat 50 servings of Pecans in that 24 hour period (just about 2/hr), that leaves me with roughly 10,000 calories I need to pound out in some way.  And I think I'll fall short.  I think I'll be too wasted from all the beer/wine and too decimated from all the milkshakes to come up with another 10,000 calories.  So, in short, "The Hunger Games" will fail.  And is it crazy if this exercise actually made me feel like Americans aren't THAT overfed?  I mean, if I can't even eat the equivalency of 100 starving villagers in one day, we need to get to work, Yum Brands.  (/s, obviously)

That's all folks.  As always, I welcome queries of all sorts.  Holla.