Stupid Internet Stole Our Joke.

As of this writing, the film Battleship, having opened on May 18 to lackluster reviews, has made nearly $300,000,000 worldwide. With average prices just shy of $8.00 per ticket, this means that some 37 million people actually paid to see this movie—some of them, like perhaps the director’s mother,¹ probably more than once.

While that number of presumably un-coerced moviegoers is disappointingly high, it should be noted that Battleship did make significantly less than expected among U.S. audiences. It would be hilarious to pretend this means that people have suddenly developed taste (see Figure 1.1), but it is encouraging to see that for now, at least, some brave and discerning portion of the American public remains picky and snobby enough to save its hard-earned money² to waste on some other crappy movie.

Figure 1.1. We watch stupid shit—possibly because of, rather than in spite of, its stupidity.
See the full graphic at http://frankenspace.com/projects/bayhem.html

Battleship, then, has made only around $60 million in the United States against a $200 million budget, leaving film-industry experts who live in houses you aren’t rich enough to even dream about scratching their heads, flabbergasted as to why a child’s game with no sound, movement, plot, backstory, characters, or dialogue didn’t lend itself to a compelling movie.³

Exactly which part of this says “action movie” to you?

The intrepid Bowling in the Dark writing staff anticipated this movie’s inevitable failure several months ago, and had a high-quality, hand-crafted joke lined up about how Battleship’s bombing will make it really tough for us to sell our screenplay based on the most cinematic and tension-fraught of our childhood pastimes—Hungry Hungry Hippos. Things were coming together nicely until we got online to make our usual search for uncredited illustration from folks who haven’t given us permission, and came across this:

Image courtesy of we don’t really know whom.

As best as we can figure it, somebody plagiarized our great idea before we even thought of it, and had the nerve to do a way better job of it than we could.  If you are or know a lawyer who’s familiar with both plagiarism law and the intricacies of time travel, please contact the Bowling in the Dark Legal Attack Fund. We look forward to hearing from you.

NOTES

1. Assuming she’s alive, of course, and that she survived watching the movie the first time—both of which would make us feel better about mentioning her.
2. For those of our readers who are members of the Occupy movement, we deeply regret the offensive implication that the 1% actually earns their money in any way other than taking it from you. For those of our readers who are among the 1% richest in America, we deeply regret implying that the 99% earns their money in any way other than taking it from you. Everybody but you really is a crook.
3. Apparently, if you’re not paying very close attention, every board game is basically the same as Clue, which ended up being a pretty fun movie, even if it was a bit of a poor man’s Murder by Death.

How to Fail at Marketing, Lesson 4

American athletic equipment and apparel retailer Dick’s¹ Sporting Goods—quite possibly the most single most successful non-pornographic enterprise ever to make use of the word “Dick”—isn’t actually failing, per se, with the bit of marketing phraseology that is the topic of today’s discussion.

On the contrary, it may actually attract business in this country, and if it convinces some portion of America to get off our giant fat collective ass and start working out, we’re all for it.²

However, we hope that Dick’s, having missed the boat on our earlier advice about marketing, will seriously consider changing this sales pitch if they decide to expand into, say, India:

Just a suggestion.




NOTES
1. Hello, random internet browser who’s never visited this site before. Welcome! We’re far too polite to ask you what Google search brought you here in the first place, because we all know that it had the word “dicks” in it. Perhaps this is what you're looking for. Thanks for stopping by, and please leave a catastrophically punctuated message in our comments section, along with a link to your drug and/or pr0n site!
2. We recently bought a pair of running shorts there, and have so far been disappointed with their inability to make running anything less than the Worst Activity in the World.

Irony, Illustrated?

Whether this genuinely qualifies as situational irony is a decision we’ll leave up to today’s honorary guest judge, Alanis Morrissette. No matter what she concludes, though, we thoroughly enjoy knowing that this particular member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars—ostensibly an organization for bright, highly-educated people—couldn’t figure out how to apply a windshield decal so it’d be readable.

Maybe that’s not irony, but it sure ain’t smart, either.

“Well, that’s at least as ironic as a plane crash.
Those are ironic, right?”

Owed to the Spell Chequer

author unknown
 

 

I halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plane lee marques four my revue
Miss steaks aye ken knot sea

Eye ran this poem threw it
Your sure reel glad two no
It's vary polished in it's weigh
My chequer tolled me sew

A chequer is a bless sing
It freeze yew lodes of thyme
It helps me awl stiles two reed
And aides mi when aye rime

To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should be proud
And wee mussed dew the best wee can
Sew flaws are knot aloud

And now bee cause my spelling
is checked with such grate flare
Their are know faults with in my cite
Of nun eye am a wear

Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed to be a joule
The chequer poured o'er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule

That's why aye brake in two averse
My righting wants too pleas
Sow now ewe sea wye aye dew prays
Such soft wear for pea seas

 

It could be worse. For a while there they were thinking
about renaming the school after Anthony Weiner.

Memorial Day

Memorial Day, observed in the United States of America to varying degrees and under varying names since the end of the Civil War, was officially named as such by Congress in 1967, and was moved to the last Monday in May by Congress on June 28, 1968, as part of the Uniform Holidays Bill.

There are those who object to Memorial Day’s being moved from its traditional date of observance to a Monday, believing that manipulating a day of solemn reflection simply to create a three-day weekend and an opportunity for retail sales, barbecues, and big movie grosses is disrespectful to the men and women the day is meant to celebrate.

On the other hand, having the phrase “Memorial Day Weekend” replace the singular “Memorial Day” in the national consciousness means that we may have as many as three days a year when professional athletes are ashamed to refer to one another as “warriors.”

And it’s hard not to be happy about that.

Kids Really Do Have It Tougher These Days

 
Growing up has never been easy—or so we’ve been told by those who have tried it—but it seems like it’s a whole lot harder than it was fifteen or twenty years ago.

In addition to time-honored methods of ruining childhood such as drugs, alcohol, smoking, gym class, peer pressure, wedgies, wet willies, STDs, and good old-fashioned bullying, kids these days also have to face vicious packs of free-roaming Glee Club members, stupidity-induced epidemics such as whooping cough and Bieber Fever, predatory teachers, cyber-bullying, and, as if all this weren’t enough to make your teenagers into moody little mopes,¹ today’s young people have to cope with the scourge of DINOSAUR ATTACK:

Take care of your children, folks. Make sure they don’t taste very good before they leave the house. If they survive, they’ll thank you for it.



NOTE
1. Yes, we know that your teenagers are already moody little mopes. If you think you have it bad, just imagine how insufferable they’d be if listening to The Cure was still the popular thing to do.²
2. We’re not sure that listening to The Cure ever actually was the popular thing to do, except among the kids who hung out in the smoking section. But then we never really did have our finger on the pulse of popularity in our high school.³
3. Or, for that matter, at any time before or since then.

Smoking: It's Not Just for Kids Anymore!

In the event that you find yourself in a discussion with the kindly, ever-optimistic Pollyanna kind of person who chooses to believe that tobacco-company executives or marketers have souls, please feel free to use the following as Definitive and Devastating Counterargument Number 1:

 





We’re willing to forgive Fred and Barney for their ignorance of the dangers of smoking because, well, they lived more than two million years ago. Social attitudes were very different back then, and of course scientific research into the effects of cigarette smoke was severely limited by the ineffectiveness of woodpecker-powered x-ray machines.

Disclaimer: No wisecracking prehistoric birdlife was harmed
in the creation of this illustration.

It’s hard to believe, however, that barely fifty years ago the American public was willing to watch their kids’ beloved cartoon friends shill for cigarette companies with, as far as we can tell, nary a word of protest. Apparently, 1,200 years’ worth of lung cancer isn’t necessarily a compelling argument for a connection between smoking and death.¹

A common argument is that at the time, the American public simply wasn’t aware that smoking was deadly, or even just sorta dangerous. Also common is the belief, backed by a veritable mountain range of evidence, that tobacco companies knew about the dangers of smoking and fought tooth and nail to keep the public from learning about it, a cynical act of callous deception on an almost unimaginable scale.²


With that in mind, we have to wonder what elements of 2012 Americans’ daily life will turn out to be horrifically bad for their health, revealed far too late to spare them from gruesome and painful side effects?

Meat is bad for your cholesterol.

Yep. It’ll cause skin cancer. Bank on it.

It won’t be the radiation bombarding your brain from an inch away that kills you,
but rather your toxic levels of pompous self-importance.

This one’s probably a longshot,
but don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Puppies: nature’s perfect killers.

Don’t even pretend you’re surprised.

NOTES
1. Cigarette smoking, according to Wikipedia, “have been attested in Central America around the 9th century in the form of reeds and smoking tubes.”
2. We haven’t actually seen these mountains of evidence for ourselves, but we can seek them out using a secret map in our possession, drawn by the Marlboro Man just days before he shit out both his lungs and died.