Trivia Challenge Answer #6

The question was:  in Virgin Territory, what does Gary Sinclair name the amnesiac woman he finds on a beach?  Andrea?  Betty?  Carrie?  Donna?

And the answer was...A, Andrea.  That was the name of his ex-fiancee and since she looks a little like her, that's the name he uses.  Was there any special inspiration for that name in real life?  No, not really.   Sorry.

Cindy buzzed in first to bring her total to 28 points. Christopher Dilloway has half that with 14.

Trivia Challenge Question #6

Valentine's Day is tomorrow, so here's a question from one of my more romantic books.

In Virgin Territory, Gary Sinclair finds a woman washed up on the beach.  Since she has no memory, he names her after his ex-fiancee who was named...

A.  Andrea
B.  Betty
C.  Carrie
D.  Donna

A 30-Year-Old Virgin and More in Stuff I Watched!🎬😍

The stuff I watched since the last time!

The Late Bloomer:  A 30-year-old sex therapist has never even had an erection, let alone had sex with someone.  After a night out, he finds out that the reason for this is a tumor in his brain has kept testosterone from flowing through his body, essentially arresting him in prepubescence.  When the tumor is removed, all the sudden he starts going through puberty with the sexual urges, pimples, changing voice, and all that stuff. (And though they can't show it presumably his privates have gotten bigger.)  This complicates things at his practice and with the girl he's seeing.  It's mostly funny and occasionally poignant. (3.5/5)  (Fun Fact:  My books The Changing Seasons and Virgin Territory deal with a similar condition.)

The Accountant:  I'd wanted to see this for a while just for the irony, being an accountant and all.  Overall the movie is too long with too much going on that doesn't all really add up unless maybe you're like Ben Affleck in the movie.  He's an accountant who also kills people for money or expensive paintings.  He takes a job in Chicago to analyze a robotics company's books and in a single night does a whole Beautiful Mind thing on the windows to figure out some of what's going on with their books.  There's also a girl he takes on the run when other killers (led by Jon Bernthal) come after them.  There's also a lot of stuff with two IRS agents led by JK Simmons that doesn't really contribute a whole lot to the overall story.  It's the kind of movie that would be better if it were about 30 minutes shorter with some of the unnecessary backstory trimmed out. (2.5/5)  (Fun Facts:  Affleck and JK Simmons are going to be appearing in several movies together now that one is playing Batman and the other Commissioner Gordon.  Since you also have Bernthal who's the Punisher now, wouldn't that be a far more interesting movie?  Batman v Punisher:  Lots of Shit Dies.  But you'd have to cross Marvel and DC universes and God forbid we do something cool like that.  Also, the movie is executive produced by Steven Mnuchin, the weasel Trump tapped to be Secretary of Treasury, which seems kind of ironic.)

House of Wax (2005):  I never saw the original of this but this updated version wasn't very good.  It starts with the cliche "our car broke down in a creepy place populated by weirdos who want to kill us" shtick.  In this case the weirdos are rednecks whose mother was trying to build an entire town out of wax and so her spawn have been turning real people into wax sculptures to populate it.  One thing I wondered at the end was whether you could really make a multi-level building out of wax.  I guess wax doesn't usually melt until about 200 degrees, but how load-bearing is it?  I mean, wouldn't you need something for a frame around the wax?  I just put more thought into that than the writers did.  The writers are so lame they couldn't even work Paris Hilton's "that's hot" catchphrase into her dialog.  It's like Arnold Schwarzenegger not saying "I'll be back." Lame. (1/5) (Fun Fact:  This movie kept disappearing and reappearing from my Netflix queue for like 5 years so I finally got around to watching it.)

SWAT:  Firefight:  This lame straight-to-video sequel to the forgettable SWAT movie has an LA SWAT guy go to Detroit (actually Detroit, not Canada or something) to train Detroit's SWAT team and get them Federally certified.  But then they piss off some government spook by not stopping his girlfriend from killing herself or something and he tries to kill them.  It was pretty lame. (1/5)

The Invisible Man Returns:  This sequel to the original Invisible Man has Vincent Price play the brother to the Claude Rains character from the old movie.  He's accused of murder and so a doctor friend gives him the invisible man serum so he can get out and prove his innocence.  At least that's what I thought it was about.  It was pretty boring. (1/5)

I.T.:  Pierce Brosnan is a private jet company CEO planning to expand.  When a presentation goes awry he asks an IT temp for help and soon the temp is stalking him and his family, largely through their "smart house" systems and phones.  He even records the daughter flicking her bean in the shower if you know what I mean.  Since the daughter is 17 it's kind of creepy. Other than the smart house and phone aspect it's not really anything you haven't seen in other stalker movies before.  (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  In a Simpsons Halloween episode segment about 18 years ago Pierce Brosnan voiced a smart house that went rogue and fell in love with Marge and tried to kill Homer.)

Without a Paddle:  A guy dies and his 3 childhood friends (Matthew Lillard, Dax Sheppard, and Seth Green) decide to undertake the trip to find DB Cooper's stolen money that he always wanted to go on.  Then they're chased by bears and rednecks and so forth.  There could have been a good movie in there about the buddies reconnecting and growing up if the movie had decided to go in a more mature route instead of slapstick and poop humor. (1.5/5) (Fun Fact:  Pretty much all the main characters in the movie have guest starred on Seth Green's Robot Chicken at some point.)

Gridlocked:  A New York cop gets teamed up with a movie star who got in trouble for assault.  And then they go to some secret prison (or something) with some other people and then bad guys show up.  Like a Die Hard movie the bad guys are really just after cash.  It was all pretty boring but I'll give them a point for when Danny Glover says, "I knew I was too old for this shit" which is of course a reference to the Lethal Weapon movies. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  Star Dominic Purcell and bad guy Vinnie Jones look so much alike that I couldn't tell them apart when they fought.  Also they were both villains on CW superhero shows, Purcell on The Flash/Legends of Tomorrow and Jones in Arrow.)

Jane Got a Gun:  In New Mexico in 1871 a woman's life is interrupted when her husband comes back badly wounded thanks to a gang of bad dudes.  She meets up with a former fiance and they fix up the house for a last stand.  Flashbacks help to fill in the time and establish the love triangle.  As far as Westerns go it's OK but not great. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  Ewan MacGregor is unrecognizable as the head bad guy.  He reunites with Natalie Portman from the Star Wars prequels.)

The Hateful Eight:  I don't really like Quentin Tarantino movies but I've watched most of them.  This is the 8th one I guess and like Django Unchained it takes place in the late 19th Century.  A bounty hunter is taking a woman to Red Rock, Wyoming to hang, though he could have saved us all about 3 hours if he'd just killed her.  I mean the reward is "Dead or Alive" so it's the same either way, but it's some kind of point of honor with him.  Anyway, there's a blizzard and they have to stop at a "haberdashery" or inn, where there are some other people.  And then people start dying and secrets are revealed.  It all moves at a snail's pace, with lots of excess blabbing because critics told Tarantino he's good at dialogue.  There's also an excessive amount of blood and gore to make this akin to a torture porn movie.  For some reason there's a narrator after about 90 minutes, which really makes no sense.  Cut it about in half and it would be OK. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  Appropriately this features actors from several of Tarantino's other movies:  Samuel L Jackson of course has been in almost all of them, but also Michael Madsen from Reservoir Dogs, Tim Roth from Pulp Fiction, and Kurt Russell from Deathproof.  Maybe some of the others were in other Tarantino movies but I'm not going to bother to look it all up.)

Spawn:  I've seen it before but not since I read the first volumes of comic books and watched the HBO show.  From those I guess it would have been hard to do something like that since they spent a lot of time navel-gazing in those.  This tries to be more action-oriented but the plot makes little sense, John Leguizamo is painfully irritating, and the effects look really lame.  I guess maybe at some point they'll take another crack at it, though I guess right now it's in "development hell," which seems appropriate for a hero from Hell.  (2/5) (Fun Fact:  Frank Welker, the voice of Megatron in the Transformers cartoon, Dr. Claw in Inspector Gadget, and tons of other stuff is the voice of Malebolgia the devil.)

Funhouse Massacre:  a dude breaks out a bunch of killers from a secret prison and they take over a funhouse to kill lots of people.  Of course at first no one believes it's real but eventually they catch on.  The bad guy's henchwoman makes Harley Quinn look like the Tooth Fairy.  There's lots of blood, gore, and horror movie cliches.  But I guess it's OK for all that. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  The warden of the secret prison is played by Robert Englund, aka the original Freddy Krueger.)

Sky High:  This Disney movie is kind of a live-action mix of The Incredibles and Big Hero 6.  A kid is the son of the world's two greatest superheroes, which entitles him to go to the eponymous school for superheroes.  Except he has no powers yet!  So he gets lumped in with the kids who have no powers or relatively useless ones like being able to glow or turn into a puddle who are destined to be sidekicks.  But when confronted by a bully his super strength kicks in, which catapults him into the cool kid circle and creates friction between him and his sidekick buddies.  When a villain unleashes her master plan, only the sidekicks can save the day!  It's a strictly PG affair but it's fun without being too campy.  And there's a good cast including Kurt Russell, Kelly Preston, Bruce Campbell, Jim Rash, and Lynda Carter, who quips at one point, "What am I supposed to do?  I'm not Wonder Woman!"  You know, because she was Wonder Woman. Ha. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  The Flash's Danielle Panabaker plays the main kid's best friend and Patrick Warburton of The Tick provides the robot voice of the villain.  And of course Kurt Russell will be rejoining the Disney superhero ranks in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 this May.)

Kingdom of Spiders:  The same year Star Wars was sweeping the nation, William Shatner starred in this lame movie about spiders (tarantulas mostly) taking over a small Arizona town.  This was the Rifftrax version which is the only way this overstuffed, underscary movie could be tolerable.  But for Bill I suppose it was a good excuse to ride horses and get paid for it. (2/5)

Cyber Tracker:  This lame 1994 movie is a combination of Terminator and Judge Dredd.  In a dystopian version of what would now be the present, cybernetic bad guys can be dispatched to kill someone.  When Don "The Dragon" Parker (that's how his name is listed in the credits) runs afoul of these "cyber trackers" he's recruited into a resistance group that's mostly teens who should be posing for an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog.  They take on the cyborgs (and an Aussie with a knife who isn't Crocodile Dundee) in a lot of unspectacular fights with highly explosive cars.  This was the Rifftrax version, which again makes it a lot more fun than just making fun of it yourself--as you surely would.  (2/5)  (Fun Fact:  According to this, our present was supposed to have a lot of blue lighting--maybe KMart took over the world's light fixture suppliers?--and computers that are huge Commodore 64-type keyboards with tiny screens.  The videophones are pretty standard for any 80s/90s sci-fi movie and yet we still don't have widespread videophones I guess because of cell phones.  That's just as well as most times I don't really want to see who I'm talking to and I wouldn't want them seeing me.)

Icebreaker:  This was probably pitched as Die Hard meets Cliffhanger but really it's more Die Hard meets Ski Patrol, the lame early 90s movie that was like Police Academy on skis.  A year before he started walking to Mordor, Sean Astin stars in this lame production as a bumbling ski rescue guy who's hooking up with a rich chick.  Then his resort is invaded by a bald Bruce Campbell and some European and Canadian goons who wanted some nuclear bomb someone left there and then they're going to...it never really made any sense.  Like the previous two movies this was a Rifftrax version to make the nonsensical plot, lame jokes, and lamer action scenes a little more palatable. (2/5)  (Fun Fact:  One bad guy's idea of the perfect food was cutting open Fig Newtons and spreading apricot jam on them.  Not sure why that never caught on.)

Trivia Challenge Answer #5

The question was a pretty tough one.  The Night's Legacy is based on which Tales of the Scarlet Knight book?

And the answer was B:  Book 6:  Future Shock

In that book Emma Earl is transported to the future, where the evil Isis returns more powerful than ever and cripples Emma, aka the Scarlet Knight.  Emma's daughter Louise then takes up the mantle to save the day.  I really liked the story (which in itself is based on the Batman Knightfall saga of the mid-90s) and so decided to essentially rewrite it as a standalone book that became The Night's Legacy.

Christopher Dilloway woke up early and answered first so he got the bonus prize plus 5 points and Cindy 3 which makes it Cindy 23, Chris 11, Everyone Else 0

Trivia Challenge Question #5 With a BONUS PRIZE!

Like I said last Wednesday, since people aren't taking this seriously, I'm going to give a bonus prize to this week's first person to answer the question.  Here's the prize:  a year of Symantec Basic Anti-Virus that I got from Amazon Vine.  So if you want some antivirus protection for your PC try to get this right.  There's no disk; I'll just email you the activation code.


This week is going to be a tough one...

The Night's Legacy is a reimagining of which Tales of the Scarlet Knight book:

A. Book 3:  The Hazards of Love
B.  Book 6:  Future Shock
C.  Book 7:  Living Sacrifice
D.  Book 8:  The Heart of Emma Earl

This is really tough...unless you read this blog entry.  I'm just saying.

More Comics I Read Thanks to Holiday Sales & Comixology Unlimited! 💪💥

The Omega Man:  This was one of the more unusual comics to come out of DC's brief Convergence era.  There is a superhero in it but it's not really a superhero comic.  It's more of a space opera really.  The Green White Lantern Kyle Rayner travels to the Vega system to try to negotiate a peace between "the Citadel" and terrorists freedom fighters known as the Omega Man.  But the Omega Men kidnap him and seemingly kill him on video.  But of course that's an illusion.  Instead they show him the horrors of the Citadel so he'll aid their scheme to save the Vega system.  The first few issues are confusing but by the midpoint most of it is sorted out.  Still, that's probably why the series was nearly canceled before it could even get to 12 issues.  You could compare this to Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy but this is much darker and less goofy.  A couple of the characters actually die along the way.  The epilogue is kind of a bummer.  It's like Terry Pratchett wrote in Night Watch:  The reason they call them revolutions is because they go around and around. (4/5)

Superman Lois & Clark:  Another comic to spin out of Convergence was this series about the pre-New 52 Superman and Lois Lane.  Thanks to Convergence they end up on the New 52 Earth, where they live in hiding because there's already a Superman and Lois Lane, albeit not married.  This other Lois and Clark also have a son named Jon.  Like the maligned Superman Returns, the boy starts to show abilities like his father's when under duress.  Most of the plot involves the nefarious "Intergang" trying to hunt down Lois, who's writing an expose on them under the dumb pseudonym "Author X" which really just brings more attention to her than if she wrote under a somewhat normal name like Richard Bachmann or Robert Galbraith or Eric Filler.  Meanwhile some aliens are trying to find an infinity stone (or something like that) Hank Henshaw brought back from Jupiter and Superman is brought into the conflict.  There are 8 issues and then it just ends with really little resolution to these plots.  I suppose some of that might have been wrapped up after Rebirth when this Superman became "the" Superman since the other one "died" or some damned thing. (3.5/5)

Marvels:  This comic tells the history of Marvel Comics from the point of view of a photographer named Phil who in 1939 first takes pictures of the original Human Torch and then Namor the Sub-Mariner when they famously battle.  Then there's Captain America (and even Superman hidden in a couple of panels) and other "Golden Age" heroes before it jumps to the '60s when the more familiar Marvel characters--Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, the X-Men, Spider-Man, etc.--start to appear and the public's changing reaction first from hero worship and then cynicism and derision.  It's a great story and Alex Ross's painted artwork is gorgeous.  There's probably  more you can get out of it if you're a more avid comics reader, but I got most of it I think. (4/5) (Fun Fact:  Writer Kurt Buciek and artist Alex Ross did the street-level thing in Astro City, which was published by a branch of DC Comics though not part of the official DC universe.)

Amazing Spider-Man, Worldwide Volume 3:  This focuses on Spidey and Iron Man having their own little civil war that's interrupted when "the Regent" begins abducting pretty much all the other superheroes (and lots of villains too) so he can borrow their powers and be the only game in town.  With the help of Mary Jane Watson (who's working for Tony Stark at this point) they have to work together to take Regent down.  It's OK but it feels like it was just marking time until the next big event, which is the "Clone Conspiracy" that maybe I'll buy in a year or so if it goes on sale. (2.5/5)

Last year Comixology--a division of Amazon now--unveiled their own version of Kindle Unlimited, where you could borrow as many comics as you want for $5.99/month.  I decided to give it a try.  You get a month free so it didn't cost me anything right away.  The problem is the same as with Kindle Unlimited:  the selection is limited.  The Big 2 comics publishers (Marvel & DC) don't participate so you can't borrow Superman or Spider-Man comics.  And even other series they don't usually have the full series.  So you can get Walking Dead comics (the first two volumes) or Spawn comics (also the first two volumes.)  They did have some Transformers comics from IDW, though of course not entire series, but I did pick up what I could.

Transformers: Monstrosity:  In this prequel story, the evil Megatron is banished to the planet of junk while Optimus Prime tries to unite the Autobots.  While Megatron battles Junkions and Sharkticons, his replacement Scorponok blows a big chunk out of the Transformer homeworld of Cybertron and unleashes the giant robot dinosaur Trypticon.  All the intricate plotting lands flat in the last issue as Trypticon is stopped thanks to a bad case of indigestion. (3/5)

Transformers:  Primacy:  By contrast, this sequel to Monstrosity has the battle royales that were missing:  Metroplex vs. Trypticon, Optimus Prime vs. Megatron, the Dinobots vs. everyone!  There's a lot of action and a little less plotting, which for Transformers comics might be for the best. (3/5) (Fun Fact:  Primacy, Monstrosity, and the previous Autocracy were all co-written by Flint Dille, one of the writers of the original Transformers cartoon series and 1986 film.)

Transformers:  Days of Deception:  In some ways this new Transformers comics series really ripped off my fanfic novel Xenophobia from the late 90s.  In that the Autobots have won the war and humans have retaken the Earth because they don't trust the Autobot "liberators" anymore.  And Optimus Prime quits leading the Autobots.  So in this series the Autobots have won the war and humans have retaken the Earth because they don't trust the Autobots.  And Optimus Prime has quit leading the Autobots.  Hurm...should I sue?  Anyway like all of the Transformers ones it's fun but not essential reading. (2.5/5)

The other Transformers fanfics I wrote were a series called The Skyfire Adventures.  The first one was based on a patch I made for the Doom video game where you could play as the Maximal Skyfire (a bald eagle who looked like the Autobot Jetfire).  The story I wrote for it was that Skyfire was beamed to a planet that was populated by Doom creatures.  On the planet he found an Autobot shuttle that crashed there long ago.  Stories after that were kind of like ST: Voyager as they try to return home to Cybertron.  My favorite part was a trilogy where they find a planet of ancient Transformers.  Then the planet transforms into a giant killer robot.  This also unveiled a new wrinkle, where instead of just the Autobot Matrix of Leadership there were like a dozen Matrices, sort of like the Lord of the Rings.  Each Matrix would have different properties and stuff.  The other cool thing I did was Skyfire could alternate between his Maximal bald eagle and his Autobot Veritech fighter.  Another alternated between the Decepticon Shockwave and the Predacon Scarecrow who of course turned into a crow, so he had sort of a multiple-personality thing.

Why do I mention this?  Because the Transformers:  More Than Meets the Eye series is a total rip-off of this!  OK, not really.  But there's a ship full of Transformers who are out in space to search for the "Knights of Cybertron" and "Cyberutopia."  There are even a lot of the same Autobots on board like Skids, Perceptor, and Grapple.  Sadly not Skyfire/Jetfire.  I read the first five volumes of the series and overall it's a lot of fun.  Until the last volume there weren't really a lot of multi-part stories so it wasn't like the Big 2 comics where you have one arc lead into another arc lead into another arc.  There were some interesting stories like where the crew goes on shore leave and scout the place out with human doppelgangers.  A couple of them accidentally use female ones too.  Another they go to a planet with a plague and have to stop it, which pits Autobot medic Ratchet against an old friend.  So it's like Transformers with a Star Trek vibe.  The last volume is a continuous arc about when they actually find the gate to "Cyberutopia" on a lost moon--except there's a lot of crazy bad guys running the place. What I like about these versus the crappy Bay movies is they just focus on the Transformers and give them actual personalities and backstories instead of just using racist stereotypes.  I wish Comixology had more of the issues available to borrow.  (4/5)

Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers:  The Wreckers are like the Autobot version of Navy SEALs or Army Green Berets.  In this mini-series, they're sent to liberate a prison planet that has been taken over by the maniacal Decepticon Overlord.  It's kind of like The Dirty Dozen or Rogue One in that it's largely a suicide mission.  Many characters die.  Still, it's a good mix of action, humor, and tragedy. (4/5)

Spawn #10:  For licensing reasons this wasn't included in the collected volume I previously read.  The issue has Spawn in some kind of prison for superheroes.  There are a couple of panels where we see hands for Batman, Spider-Man, the Hulk, etc.  Superman is shown a few times--though his face is always obscured.  Anyway, the whole issue was kind of a neener-neener to the old creators (who were depicted as being imprisoned with hoods over their heads) who "sold" their creations.  What this fails to take into account is a lot of those old superhero creators actually got screwed out of their royalties because most of them were young and poor and didn't know any better when they signed a contract that gave their rights to the publisher.  It was only from these experiences (and the legal battles waged later by these creators or their estates) that modern creators like Todd MacFarlane could own their creations.  So the whole tone of the issue (which itself is pointless to the overall series) is pretty ignorant. (1/5)

Armor Hunters:  I borrowed this from Comixology by accident.  I guess it was a big crossover of various Valiant Comics titles back in 2014.  The main focus is X-O Manowar where some Visigoth from the 5th Century was abducted by aliens, stole some advanced armor, and came back to modern Earth.  Now some aliens have come to Earth to take the armor and kill anyone who gets in their way.  So the Visigoth and some other Valiant heroes band together Avengers-style to take them on.  It was OK but since I hadn't read any of the previous comics and this didn't include any of the spin-off issues in other series, I didn't really know much of what was going on. (2.5/5)

The Fall of GI JOE, Vol 1:  Much like the movies, GI JOE comics just aren't as good as Transformers.  In this case they're trying to do a grittier, more real world GI JOE comic.  The evil COBRA has seemingly gone straight and is brokering peace in Eastern Europe while Congress is trying to disband GI JOE, who they think isn't needed anymore.  It's pretty slow and boring, without any of the action of the old TV series or even the Marvel comics.  There's also none of the humor of the Transformers series that help to make those a more fun read. (2/5)

The Fall of GI JOE, Vol 2:  I figured I might as well borrow the conclusion to this.  Not that it was any more exciting or interesting.  Five issues and nothing much really happens except a separatist leader in Eastern Europe gets wounded and COBRA gets egg on their face for it.  Meh. (2/5)

Snake Eyes, Agent of COBRA:  For whatever reason GI JOE's silent ninja Snake Eyes joins COBRA to rescue the evil Destro and then he looks for Cobra Commander's son Billy, who's in Thailand.  The problem is that Snake Eyes doesn't talk so that it's not like a silent movie the action is filtered through other people who can talk.  The downside of that is it makes Snake Eyes more of a secondary character even though his name is in the title. That keeps it from being all that great.  (2.5/5)

GI JOE, Volume 1:  This was IDW's first take on GI JOE from what I gather.  It's written by original Marvel GI JOE comics writer Larry Hama and even picks up the numbering from the Marvel series.  Basically a team of JOEs infiltrates COBRA's lair to steal some information and in the process Snake Eyes is captured and brainwashed.  This was at least more fun than that Fall of GI JOE series, more in line with the TV show from the 80s. (2.5/5)

Trivia Challenge Answer #4

The question was from what condition does Samantha Young suffer in Forever Young?

And the answer is A...Amnesia.  Like Jason Bourne, she wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she got there and discovers later that she has ninja moves.  The main difference is that she's 10 years old on an island populated by creepy Puritan kids.

Cindy was the only one to answer correctly, so it's her 20, Chris 6, Everyone Else 0.  Since people don't seem to be taking this seriously, next week I'm going to kick it up a notch with a bonus prize for the first person to answer correctly!

Trivia Challenge Question #4

Answer the question in the comments.  The first one to answer correctly gets 5 points, 3 for the second one, and 1 for the third one--if applicable.

In Forever Young, from what condition does Samantha Young suffer?

A.  Amnesia
B.  Irritable Bowel Syndrome
C.  Cancer
D.  Dementia

Would You Cut Off Your Finger for $15,000? And More Deep Questions From Stuff I Watched

Only watched a few things this week as most of the weekend I was watching House of Cards on Netflix as that seemed appropriate.

Cheap Thrills:  Would you cut off your finger for $15,000?  Would you eat that finger for $25,000?  These are the questions a family man has to ask himself when he loses his job, goes to a bar, meets an old friend, and they become the prank monkeys for a rich guy and his sullen trophy girlfriend.  The rich guy and girlfriend have the two guys start small with little pranks like getting a woman to slap them for $300 or taking a swing at a bouncer for $500, but of course then it escalates.  Eventually it becomes a rivalry between the two old friends as they each want the money.  I think this was from 2012 but it certainly resonates right now with income equality such a big problem.  This movie so clearly illustrates the difference between rich and poor.  For the rich guy $250,000 is just a night out for his girlfriend.  For the two poor guys, $250,000 is a new life.  The rich guy probably spends $15,000 on socks while the poor guys get in a downward bidding war to determine who will cut off his finger, ultimately settling on $15,000.  This is something I think of all the time.  I mean pretty much all my debts could be paid off with $50,000, which for super-rich guys like Bill Gates or Mark Cuban is like one meal.  That's what we're talking about with income equality.  What's so disheartening in this versus torture porn like the Saw movies is these guys aren't being forced to do these stunts; they're doing it of their own free will because they need money.  That's a sad commentary on our lives.  This movie is only about 85 minutes so it won't take much of your time but it might make you think. (3.5/5) (Fun Fact:  The gist of this movie was an episode of The Simpsons a while back where Mr. Burns recruited Homer as his "prank monkey," doing stupid Jackass-type stunts in exchange for small payouts of cash.)

Crossing Point:  A guy is in Mexico with a girl and then she's kidnapped.  The people who kidnapped her don't want money; they want him to be their drug mule.  So he has 12 hours to schlep some coke across the border, which is kind of difficult.  After almost being killed a couple of times, he hires a "coyote" to get him to a border crossing.  Oh, hey, news flash for Trump supporters:  he climbs up a wall to get over the border.  WALLS DON'T WORK!  And if you want to say "it's just a movie" it was inspired by true facts, not alternative facts.  Anyway, it wasn't that great of a movie.  One of those where I kind of tuned out for bits of it. (2/5)

Starship Troopers 2:  Heinlein must really be rolling in his grave. Though this is more like a really, really shitty remake of The Thing, which was adapted from the not-Heinlein book Who Goes There?  and maybe a little Species thrown in too.  (-1000000/0)  (Fun Fact:  I mentioned House of Cards at the top and an actress who had a small role in the first season was the only actor I recognized in this movie.)

The American Side:  A decent simulacrum of a noir movie. A PI in Buffalo is taking pictures of a guy who's cheating on his wife when the woman he's fucking is kidnapped.  So the PI ends up uncovering a grand conspiracy involving Niagara Falls and Nikolai Tesla's notebook full of inventions.  It's a little slow but otherwise good for a modern, low-budget noir movie. (3/5) (Sad Fact:  This was one of Robert Vaughn's last roles and he's almost unrecognizable.  Plus his character doesn't really contribute much.)

Trivia Challenge Answer #3

The question was the name of Steve Fischer's daughter.  It was the last name of a president:  Reagan, Tyler, Madison, or Trump?

And the answer was C...Madison.  Though he often calls her Maddy for short.  And she doesn't call him anything, or at least she didn't for about 15 years while they were estranged.  Then she calls him Stacey...

The updated score is Cindy 15, Chris 6, and Everyone Else 0.