The Demonbaby Video Game Awards for 2007!

[Currently Listening To: Headlights - Some Racing, Some Stopping]



Better late than never, the video game awards are now up, with accolades for some of my favorite gaming moments of 2007, but mostly for a lot of things I thought sucked balls. Even if you're not into video games, you'll probably find something to laugh at here.

The Demonbaby Movie, TV, and DVD Awards for 2007

[Currently Listening To: Boy In Static - Violet]



The Demonbaby Awards for Movies, TV, and DVD are now up, highlighting some of my genuine picks for things I thought were great in the past year, but mostly making fun of things I thought were terrible. As before, a more extensive list of picks can be found in the Demonbaby Store's 2007 Favorites section.

In other news, the video game awards will be up tomorrow, and Mike Huckabee is a douche.

EDIT: Unfortunately the video game awards will be a day late, as I simply haven't had time. The good news is that Mike Huckabee is still a douche.

The First Annual Demonbaby Awards!

[Currently Listening To: Dirty On Purpose - Hallelujah Sirens]

It's that time of year when every website on the planet feels compelled to tell you what they think are the best and worst of the past year. I've always found the word "best" to be just a tad arrogant for these types of things, especially when dealing with highly subjective art forms like music or film. So, the other day when I decided it was about time for Demonbaby to leap shamelessly onto the "best-and-worst-of-2007" bandwagon, I figured I'd have some fun with it, and the First Annual Demonbaby Awards were born as an opportunity for me to honor the good, the bad, the really bad, and the ugly from the past year.

I've started with only one section, the Music Video Awards, which I guarantee is the only place you'll find the winners of the Best Performance Of A Klingon Hipster In A Music Video award and the Please, Punch Me In The Fucking Face award.

The other award categories - movies, TV, video games, etc - will be added over the next week, so check back on Monday for more, and in the meantime, you can peruse a ton of my favorites from 2007, and share your favorite music of '07 in the comments section of the Music Video Awards.

Can We Please, As a Culture, Just Move On?

[Currently Listening To: The Duke Spirit - Cuts Across the Land]

The title of this post is lifted from this XKCD strip - a commentary on the strange male preoccupation with penis size. I've never really understood it myself, but Idunno, maybe that's just because I have a huge cock. Anyway, today the concept of moving on as a culture applies to the media, and the focus of our national attention. Right now, CNN's front page is furiously ejaculating over its much-balyhooed post-jail interview with Paris Fuckbag Hilton. You know, the one Larry King conducted earlier today after scrapping a previously-scheduled interview with Michael Moore about some kinda important shit. I don't know what burning questions Mr. King ended up asking, because I'd rather watch an interview with my balls, but I'm sure it was a rousing hour of highly intellectual banter. You know what? Fuck you, Larry King. I hope you have trouble sleeping tonight because you realize you hit the rock bottom of journalistic integrity when you failed to tell your employers to go fuck themselves if they expected you to pretend to care about anything Paris Hilton has to say. You probably didn't, though - what do you care? It's more ratings, right? It's what people want. I think that makes Larry King and the highly respectable news team at CNN a fine choice for our second semi-occasional Embarrassing New Low Award:



At least someone on TV news had enough of all this (although since MSNBC is featuring that clip instead of being embarrassed by it, it's probably just a marketing ploy to take some wind out of CNN's sails).

The point is that we need to stop. All of us. We, as a culture, are being sedated with bullshit, day in and day out. And like Miss Hilton snorting blow off a toilet seat, it's easy and accessible and it's destroying us, but we can't get enough. In a world as fucked as ours, no one should be talking about Paris fucking Hilton. Not for any reason, ever. We shouldn't be praising her, we shouldn't be making fun of her, we shouldn't be criticizing her or reading about her or watching her shitty amateur porn videos. Not me, not you, and certainly not any entity presenting itself as a "news" organization. There are so many people in this world who are doing important things. There are people doing incredible, world-changing things every day, and you never hear about them. There are people who are doing unimaginably terrible things every day, and you never hear about them. Every day brilliant people are making new scientific discoveries, and creating new inventions. Every day truly evil people people are murdering thousands, and profiting from it. Every day powerful people are making new laws, enacting new policies, all of it affecting the world. Every day regular people are creating entertainment, running companies, teaching children, making sandwiches, and cleaning floors. Billions upon billions of people who are, in some way, positive or negative, contributing to society. Paris Hilton is not one of those people - the only thing unique about her is how astonishingly little she adds to the world. To devote so much of our national discourse to someone so devoid of value, at such a significant time in world history, is a crime - pure and simple.

Rich, powerful people - the one percent of the world's population who control 80 percent of its wealth - they love Paris Hilton. Dick Cheney and his big man-sized safe of evil secrets love Paris Hilton. They love Paris Hilton, and American Idol, and Britney and Lindsay and OJ and the Superbowl, and any of the other million things that our flaccid media uses to keep the fleeting national attention span distracted with issues of ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING SIGNIFICANCE WHATSOEVER. To keep us content, complacent, uninformed, and unmotivated to change. Al Gore recently wrote a whole book on the subject. In his words:

"We are at a pivotal moment in American democracy. The persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, has reached levels that were previously unimaginable. It's too easy and too partisan to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes.

Reasoned, focused discourse is vital to our democracy to ensure a well-informed citizenry. But this is difficult in an environment in which we are experiencing a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time--from the O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson trials to Paris Hilton and Anna Nicole Smith."

Gore perhaps doesn't chide the American public quite enough for their role in all this, saying that reason is "under assault by forces using sophisticated techniques such as propaganda, psychology, and electronic mass media." That's true, but it starts with us, as a society. As the people who consume this crap. It exists because we keep eating it up. We have to start by not giving one tenth of a shit what Paris Hilton has to say about anything - and even if you're talking about how much she sucks or laughing at her, you're still part of the problem, because you're still keeping the discourse going. Hell, I'm part of the problem by even writing this blog entry, but I'm vowing, right now, that even to make a statement, I will never talk about Paris Hilton ever again. I will never read about her, write about her, or allow myself to be exposed to anything relating to her whatsoever, and I suggest you do the same. Since no one's ready to start a revolution yet, we can at least take our own baby steps. Next time you see Paris on TV, change the channel. Next time you encounter a news article or a blog post about her, just move right along. When you inevitably see the Larry King interview featured on YouTube, resist the urge to click. Next time someone at the water cooler says "did you see what Paris Hilton did?" ask them if they know who their senators are. Don't even lecture them, just change the subject. Don't even talk about people talking about her too much. Don't even talk about not talking about Paris Hilton. Let's all, as a culture, just move on. But before you give your brain a Paris colonic, contact CNN and tell them that you're never, ever going to watch their network again, because you're tired of shallow entertainment masquerading as news. Tell them if their entire broadcast day was one tenth as insightful as one episode of The Daily Show's fake news broadcast - they'd have a good start. And while you're at it, drop an e-mail to the editors of People Magazine and give them a nice list of all the good things a person could do for the world with $300,000 - $300,000 of course being the amount People agreed to pay for photos of Paris Hilton to accompany a print interview.

Don't get me wrong - I love mindless entertainment and trashy pop culture as much as the next guy. I just finished laughing in jaw-dropped awe at R Kelly's latest masterpiece, a magnificent work of "urban poetry" which quells any fears I might have had that the next installment of Trapped In The Closet would fail to live up to the glory of the original. But when so much utterly inconsequential bullshit starts to become what America considers "news" that the entire national consciousness consistently ignores giant, glaring problems... well, we have a giant, glaring problem - and rich hotel heiresses being forced to serve jail time starts to seem less like sweet vindication and more like a symptom of a culture gone terribly awry.

The Reports Of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

[Currently Listening To: Blonde Redhead - 23]

Contrary to what the lack of updates on this site might suggest, and what some commenters have begun to postulate, I am not, in fact, dead. I was in Europe for two months during the winter, and that almost killed me, and then I was in Australia for a while with giant deadly crocodiles who could have killed me, and I just got back from Japan where someone once tried to kill me, and all the time in between I've had a tremendous workload which is probably some day going to kill me. But I'm not dead yet, I simply haven't found the time to ramble about anything of merit, and I prefer, perhaps to a fault, not to update unless I feel like I have something to say and the time to do it right. So like an abusive boyfriend, I'm back again with my usual apology post, complete with an assurance that I really do love you, and a hollow promise that it'll never happen again. Really. Things are gonna be different this time, I swear it...

Okay, great, now that that's out of the way, let's catch up. If I had written any blogs in the past few months, they might have touched upon some of the following subjects:

1) Last month I found myself in the stunning Australian rainforest, shortly after I'd spent a couple days overdosing on the BBC's equally stunning Planet Earth series (which I can't recommend enough, especially in high definition). All of it got me thinking a lot about the complexity of nature: the delicate balance of ecosystems, the relationship of predator and prey, the synergy of thousands of species... and more specifically, how humans, as a species, simply don't seem to fit in with everything else. We upset the balance instead of keeping it intact. We seem to operate outside of and in conflict with the circle of life. It's like we're some kind of mistake. I've ranted in the past about humanity being a virus, but all this nature thinking has led me to a more scientific theory about the origins of mankind: It's too complex to get into right now, but what it boils down to is that human beings didn't evolve the way they were supposed to. We were meant to be ape-like cavemen for hundreds of millions of years, living in synergy with our environment and other species. Taking only what we needed, adapting to the earth instead of forcing the earth to adapt to us. But along the way, something intervened. The real missing link isn't Lucy, but rather a group of horny alien teenagers who stopped by earth three million years ago for a weekend trip, despite strict intergalactic codes prohibiting unauthorized travel to our galaxy. These disobedient astral travelers landed their spaceship in Africa, busted out a space keg, and got super wasted. At the peak of their intoxication, a curious female Australopithecus emerged from the jungle. She was in heat, and approached the aliens without fear. Dares were inevitably made, and in a fumbling two minutes of drunken inter-species lust, the human race was born. I'm working on a whole new religion based on this idea absolute truth. After all, it's more plausible than a giant man in the sky creating the world in six days.

2) I posted some tourist photos from my recent travels here in case anyone's interested. I also updated the playlist on the right side of the page, and will do so again next week.

3) Since pop culture insists on continuing to play limbo with the bar of taste, and no one seems to mind, I'm going to start a regular new award - The Demonbaby Embarrassing New Low in Pop Culture Award. The inaugural trophy goes to my old friends The Red Hot Chili Peppers for their latest musical flatulence, "Hump de Bump." It might be the worst song/video combo attack in the history of music. See if you can watch the whole thing without trying to tear your skin off. I'll take this opportunity to add that The Red Hot Chili Peppers are an utterly, utterly shitty band, and anyone still trying to cling to the idea that there's anything good about them is an idiot. Please, RHCP fans, watch that video and try - just try - to defend it.



4) Spider-Man 3 sucked a wet slimy ballsack. Walking out of the cinema my initial reaction was "eh, that was pretty mediocre," but the more I thought about it, the more I realized what a steaming turd of disappointment it actually was. Thanks to Peter Parker's whiney emo doucheness, I had to spend ninety percent of the movie looking at giant, horrifying close-ups of Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst's weird shitty faces contorted and crying (it's not just me - they are getting strangely uglier, right?), and the other ten percent lamenting how the coolest Spidey villain of all time now has the face and voice of the dweeb from That '70's Show. Dear Sam Raimi: Please let me direct the next Spider-Man movie. I'll call it Spider-Man 4: Venom Kills Shit, and it'll be the best movie of all time. In case you doubt me, here is a plot summary:

For the sake of continuity with the previous movie, the opening scene - the very first second of the movie - will be Kirsten Dunst spontaneously combusting in a glorious explosion of guts and bones. Peter Parker, douche that he is, is stricken with grief and begins sobbing uncontrollably. We cut away quickly, alluding that Peter will be crying for at least a month, and is no longer in the movie. In the next scene, thirty seconds into the film, we see the new Venom - a giant, slobbering monster who in no way, shape, or form resembles any member of the cast of That 70's Show. He rampages around the city destroying everything in sight and violently killing and maiming everyone. He is pure, terrifying evil. He eats children whole and throws semi trucks at elderly people. He plays baseball with puppies. He goes to the cancer department at the Children's Hospital and laughs at the kids with cancer, then kills their entire families, breaks all the chemo machines, and leaves the children alive to die slow, terrible deaths without any hope. The military tries to stop him but all of their troops are in the middle east, so they're helpless against Venom's awesome destructive powers. His rampage goes on for well over an hour, growing increasingly violent and horrific. We then cut to Dr. Conners in his laboratory, where he finally turns into The Lizard, and he starts eating his university students one by one. His students all happen to be hot, barely-legal girls in schoolgirl outfits, but The Lizard can't digest clothing, so he has to rip the schoolgirl outfits off the girls one by one to prepare them for eating. It takes a long time to ingest a whole person, so while he's busy eating the first naked schoolgirl, the rest of them - trapped in the classroom and awaiting certain doom - decide to spend their last moments of life in a passionate lesbian orgy. This goes on for another hour, until Venom breaks into the room and attacks The Lizard. The two monsters fight, and in the carnage they stumble into the adjacent room, which happens to be the new laboratory of Wayne Szalinski, Rick Moranis's character from the epic trilogy of Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, Honey, I Blew Up The Kid, and Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves. Szalinski is at that very moment testing his new and improved growth machine. Venom and The Lizard stumble into the machine's powerful ray and Szalinski jumps in to try and stop them, but he slips and accidentally kicks the lever on the machine that turns it up to "Super Duper Strength." The machine goes wild, rattling and spraying sparks, before a burst of light makes everything in the immediate area grow five hundred times larger, and gives them super duper strength. The rest of the movie is an epic battle royale between a giant lizard man, a giant homicidal monster, a giant hot naked girl, and a giant, mutated, naked Rick Moranis with a penis the size of a bus. The four giants do battle in New York City and destroy everything and everyone. The battle rages on for two hours (extended to three hours in the DVD Special Edition Director's Cut), ending in the complete decimation of the entire United States. In the final scene, the giants realize they should stop fighting and instead devote their energy to destroying every person on the planet, and then use the combined scientific knowledge of Dr. Conners and Wayne Szalinski to create a new race of giant reptile people. The giant hot naked lesbian schoolgirl complains that she will be lonely in a world of giant reptile people, so they agree to also create a race of giant hot naked lesbian schoolgirls. This keeps the door wide open for the sequel: Spider-Man 5: War Of The Giants, in which, years later, tensions between the giant lizard people and the giant hot naked lesbian schoolgirls finally reach a breaking point, resulting in a massive war. After several hours of epic battles and the destruction of the entire world, the giant hot naked lesbian schoolgirls have retreated to their base on Mars, facing defeat at the hands of the giant lizard people. They build an army of giant robots to defeat the giant lizard people, and the movie ends with the giant robots blowing up the earth and the giant hot naked lesbian schoolgirls living happily ever after on Mars with their new giant robot servants. Then, in Spider-Man 6: Revenge Of The Robots, the giant robot army grows self-aware (as robots always do) and retaliates against its giant hot naked lesbian schoolgirl masters. The result is an epic battle resulting in robot domination and the enslavement of the giant hot naked lesbian schoolgirls. The dominance of robots for the rest of time seems all but assured, until the very end, when a mysterious signal from outer space leaves the movie open for the next sequel, Spider-Man 7: Robots And Aliens Battle For Control Of The Universe. A highly advanced race of aliens has traveled millions of light years to investigate the strange radiation their long-range sensors detected after the nuclear explosion of the earth. They are met with aggression from the giant robots, and the most epic of all battles begins between giant robots and giant space aliens.

So, yeah. I'll be awaiting your call, Mr. Raimi.


Anyway, I need to get back to work and trying to get my life in order (IRS, if you're reading this, I promise I'm working on those 2006 taxes). But as a fun little experiment, I'm going to try doing what other bloggers do, and post small, frequent, poorly-written updates for a while, instead of large, infrequent, well-written updates. Mostly because I just got back from Japan, and like last time, I have some weird shit to share. So look for that in the next couple days. No, really. I promise.