Loose Gravel's Kinda Bad Ass Blog

If a food item shares a name with a Star Wars reference and if that food is sold at a good stoner spot, then that food item needs to have its shit together.

Taco Bell’s Cantina Taco does not have its shit together.

To call the Cantina Taco shit would be to credit it with too much flavor. If the hungry among us choose to eat this taco he or she must be prepared to eat the only-redeeming-factor lime wedge that comes with it. Also eat the packet of sauce.  Just chew off a corner of the packet so the sauce comes out as the foil is chewed. Or have a Double Decker Taco Supreme which doesn’t come with a lime but is still a cheesy, beefy lover in a chewy, crunchy shell casing.

To be fair, no one should be discouraged from eating Taco Bell. Also, as a general rule, every new menu item deserves a try. Just know: Cantina Taco is to food what Quentin Tarantino is to the cinema: A shitty reenactment that sucks cocks and is pretentious. And sucks cock.

These aren’t the tacos you’re looking for.

2/5 (Way to save the day, lime wedge)

The intro sequence for Marvel Studios films is fantastic. It’s a flash of comic book panels that promises excitement and adventure. It was obviously designed by a comic book nerd with high hopes for how an adaptation of a beloved character should look and feel. It is designed so that a good comic book nerd falls in love with the film he or she is about to see even before the film begins. Then the shitshow starts: There’s a slow intro and some glimpses of a comic book hero as envisioned through the eyes of Shitty Hollywood and then some goddamned crappy CGI. Repeat.

Not only is the point that Spiderman et al. weren’t done properly, but now Shitty Hollywood can’t shove comic adaptations down our throats fast enough. Shitty Hollywood continues to trip on its own cock in an effort to bang out as many superhero films as possible. I hope you’re ready for Hawkeye! Hey, Shitty Hollywood, no one gives a fuck about Hawkeye. He’s a shitty superhero. Frankly, we barely care about Thor. If we don’t give a shit about The Incredible Hulk (and we don’t), you need to take a step back behind the yellow line and reassess your bullshit.

Good news Nerds: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is the movie that Marvel Studios’ intro sequence meant to promise you. It’s the film that the good Nerds have been waiting for.

Ripped from the comic book pages of brilliant source material from Bryan Lee O’Malley, Edgar Wright has constructed the single film that fills the hole in the hearts of avid Nerds that Marvel Studios, DC Entertainment Inc. (Warner Bros.), and the rest of Shitty Hollywood has dug for the last 30 years.

Part comic book adaptation, part video game-turned-movie extravaganza SPVTW is so laugh out loud funny and action packed that if the genres it took from could harness back some of those elements they would be better for it. Michael Cera is perfectly cast in a role one might hope him to play. Still he manages to surprise by his ability to beat ass. Side note: for all the SFX in this film we shouldn’t have to watch him run. He kicks and punches like an all-star. He runs like a girl. Mary Elizabeth Winstead cashes in her real-life hotness for comic book punk-hotness with a tortured psyche. It pays dividends. Kieran Culkin is Pilgrim’s gay roommate. It’s a subtle fabulousness with consistently hilarious turns (that perhaps offers answers to anyone who wonders what happened to Steve Martin’s other kid from Father of the Bride?). And that Asian chick that plays Knives Chau? Yes.

When a phone rings and, “brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring,” rolls across the screen the film is a comic book. When Scott Pilgrim is fighting an evil ex and the screen shows them face-to-face with an N64 Mortal Kombat-style, “VS” between them, the film is a video game. When Scott Pilgrim dives out a window to avoid an uncomfortable situation, it is classic slapstick comedy. This film is the mecca of Nerdom. It’s as though the mothership dropped this movie off for us.

Despite heavy promotion by SPVTW, The Expendables killed at the box office last weekend. That’s strange since that movie was first released in 1984 and called, Every Action Movie That Came Out In The 80s. Fuck The Expendables. Go see SPVTW in the theatres.

Shitty Hollywood and the other comic book studio assholes could do themselves a gigantic favor by stealing this style. So could the legions of dickheads who have failed everytime they’ve tried to adapt a video game for film. They just don’t get it. But Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World does.

5/5

(Note: Apologies to The Dark Knight. You are excluded from inclusion.)

(For the Marvel Studios Intro: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIKhiZm_nhs. To see it skip to :24. Interesting aside: SPVTW is distributed by Universal but the intro logo in the film is one million times cooler than is shown in the link.)

I was most excited about Driver’s Ed in high school because they had driving simulators! It was an antiquated system even by 1990′s standards. A film reel circa 1976 was projected in front of the students who sat at a steering wheel. Lights would flash when the proper maneuvers weren’t executed at the proper time. How exciting!

In an effort to update the website with a new game I’ve spent the last two days laboring around the internet. Hour after grueling hour I played tested hundreds of flash games to find something to make your day better. One of the better games I came across was one where the player must grab a digital man by his digital parts and chuck him down the stairs. It’s a falling-down-the-stairs simulator! How exciting! (Interesting office conversation: Points are scored through injuries. Is it better to have a high score or a low score? Same applies to current homepage game.)
Thanks to simulators I would feel perfectly nervous yet reasonably capable if I needed to land an airliner. In fact there are simulators now for almost everything. Train engineer simulator (look, trees), assassin simulators, zombie infection simulator (http://kevan.org/proce55ing/zombies/), even life simulators. How very lucky are we that we can defy death doing horribly dangerous activities from the comfort of our office chairs? All these learned skills may actually be able to help us some day if for instance we needed to assassinate the leader of a drug cartel, escape a zombie or fall down stairs.

What could prove to be the most useful, life-saving simulator, apparently has not yet been made. My exhaustive search proved fruitless as I have been completely unable to find a bear-attack simulator. For shame.

Loose Gravel Productions is excited to announce a new event coming soon. Staring soon at Bumpers in Burnsville we will be hosting weekly Bags tournaments. [INSERT CRASS REFERENCE TO TEA BAGS] We will have the official boards there in the next couple days so you can form teams and go there to begin practicing for the competitions starting the first Wednesday of June.

In an effort to bring the blog back to life we are bringing on some new authors most of who love to see their name in print despite their near inability to spell it. Until someone has something clever/witty to say, how about looking at this which would also give you a clue to one of tonight’s trivia categories: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT4XO3Hjp7M

Bye.

I’m pretty much awesome at this game. Probably the best ever. Post your scores anyway. A prize will be given in a random drawing from those who post so it’s probably a good idea to include an e-mail address with your post or some other way to get in touch with you.

My score: 13,451

We’re happy to announce that, like the rest of the lonely losers in the world, Loose Gravel Productions has a blog. Neat, huh? We will use this to prove we are simultaneously smart and retarded. This will certainly be something I can proudly look back and regret someday. Now go do some triviaing or bingoing or sucking or…