The Practice was one of the worst shows in all of television history, right behind Joey and One Tree Hill. Of the 15,023 episodes that aired, 9 were somewhat enjoyable. These were the last 9 because James Spader was on them. He was so good, in fact, they rolled his character over into a new a series, Boston Legal. Unfortunately, it seems the only reason he was so good on The Practice was because he finished filming the episodes before the network could even think about firing him, so his performance had a wonderful “fuck this” je ne sais quoi de chi.

On the outlandish Boston Legal, however, he has the look of a dog paid to be beaten too much by ABC. Combine that with the similar glazed look of William Shatner, and you’ve got a disaster waiting to happened. Or more precisely, a disaster that’s already happened. If nothing else, you know the show is horrible because of the way it uses funky music to signify something quirky just happened the same way a sitcom uses a canned laughter to indicate a joke that was supposed to be funny just occurred.

As you may have already guessed, the reason I called this review “Boston Eagles” is because it rhymed with the shows title, and if the Philadelphia Eagles magically turned into a basketball team and the entire franchise was traded to Boston and Terrell Owens became the best power forward in Boston since Raef LaFrenz, that whole scenario would be more believable than anything that will ever happen on Boston Legal.

On scale if insults to Boston, where the Big Dig is a 1 and Bill Buckner is a 10, Boston Legal rates a city native Barbara Walters, the numerical equivalent of a 3.4.

Most service monkeys are capuchin monkeys, which are slender bodied, arboreal animals. It is poetic justice that the capuchin monkey has finally realized it’s potential as a useful contributor to society, as it was the capuchin monkey that labored for so many years as a punch line next to carnival organ grinders. Of course, most any ape is smart enough to be a service monkey. In the early eighties, though, when monkeys were first being trained for assistive purposes, an incident occurred and it was decided that giving control of a silverback gorilla (and it's ability to snap limbs) to disabled people who also generally suffer from bi-polar disorder and manic mood swings was not a good idea.

It makes me angry when these primate friends of ours are mistreated even today, as demonstrated in the recent news story about a two-year old in a supermarket who kept pulling on a monkey’s hair until he got bit. Yet, for some reason, it is not the two-year old who is threatened with being locked up. I trace the disrespect back to the 80’s horror movie Monkey Shines, which featured a service monkey trying to butcher his human companion with a scalpel. All the good that Project X had done, like teaching us that chimps could fly jet planes, was wiped out. I think it’s about time this country reexamines it’s attitude toward these special creatures. I don’t even need a service monkey, but sometimes I wish I was a quadriplegic just so I could have one. If I did have one, I would name him Frodo. My name is Kevin Shaughnessy and I love monkeys.

Starship Troopers 2: Heroes of the Federation - Read the review on Amazon

This was awesome. It is not as good as my favorite movie, Jeepers Creepers 2, but is still pretty good. I loved it because it was like a combination of a bunch of other movies like these:

Starship Troopers 1 (more bugs for the Federation to kill)
The Hidden (new bugs that get inside you)
Aliens (space marines get trapped)
Species 1 and 2 (a Martian girl walks around naked)
Army of Darkness (a burning skeleton)
Braveheart (decapitations)
Gremlins (one of the creatures explodes in the microwave)
Deep Space Nine (I’m pretty sure it was shot on video)

Anyway, those are just a few. I would give this 10 stars, but for some reason this only goes halfway, so I gave it 5.

Godsend - Read the review on Amazon

This was a pretty cool movie starring Rebecca Romaine-Stamos from X-Men and Craig Kilborn. It is not as good as my favorite movie, Jeepers Creepers 2, but is still pretty good. If you like evil kid movies, like The Good Son, then you’ll like this. The best part is that the DVD has 4 different endings. Both times I saw it in the theater it had one ending and it was the same each time.

Taking Lives - Read the review on Amazon

This was a good psychological crime thriller. It is not as good as my favorite movie, Jeepers Creepers 2, and not even as good as Cradle of Life, but Angelina Jolie is still very believable as an FBI criminal profiler. The best part is that you know who the serial killer is 10 minutes into the movie. Some people might say this makes it predictable, but when you know what the French cops can’t figure out, it makes you feel very smart. I don’t want to ruin the movie, but let’s just say its got a great ending. It’s even better than the new movie The Village when you finally find out that the whole thing is taking place in modern times.

This past weekend I visited Vancouver B.C. for the first time and found it to be a strange and mysterious place. My adventure began almost as soon as I got off the plane when a young Asian boy tried to pick my pocket. But after chasing him through Terminal De L’Aeroport International and apprehending him, he agreed to become my trusted sidekick, serving as a guide to help show me around town as well as leading me on some insane adventures. I actually never saw him again but he did leave me with some valuable advice.

For instance, my Asian sidekick informed me Granville Island was a “must visit” for tourists. As I sat in a bathroom stall near the beach there, I realized someone was watching me over the door. I remember saying something like “Excuse me, dude, can I help you?” The man just smiled and told me to read the wall to my left. Turns out from four to six o’clock everyday, that is the place to be if you want some man on man discreet action. I obviously didn’t know about this ahead of time, but I thought, “I am a guest in this country’s gay stall; I shouldn’t disappoint.” Just to let you know, we did not go all the way.

Vancouver also has a nice commons called Stanley Park, which my Asian sidekick informed me was “the most relaxing and scenic” place to walk in Canada, as you can take a sunset stroll along the beach underneath Lion’s Gate Bridge. Long story short- thousands of noisy birds roost on the bridge’s support girders and one took a squeezer on me. It sounded and felt like someone was pouring a gallon of milk on me from a second story building. Luckily, Tom Cruise’s Collateral just opened in town. Dyed white hair was in! So, I went with it.

Is it legal to smoke pot in Vancouver? I thought so. My Asian sidekick said it was, too, so I walked into this Hash Bar and demanded pot. The man said that you could smoke in there but that they didn’t sell it. He told us to go two doors down, stand by the jukebox, and wait. At that point I was like, “This sucks. Let’s go get a Brownie Batter Blizzard instead.” And so we did. What a frosty treat that was!

I also got engaged, but as you can tell, that was not even 3rd coolest thing that happened to me.

Today, the on-line multi-player gaming industry is a billion dollar business that people of all ages participate in. As recent as 10 ten years ago, however, it was limited to 7th grade outcasts and college guys who never went to class. Every now and then they would face off in an epic battle! Or, at least two of them would, as modems circa-1995 wouldn’t allow for any more than that.

My favorite game was Warcraft II, which pitted a band of orcs against the human race, mostly during Philosophy 201. Somehow, I got hooked up with a junior high kid who wanted to play. I burned his ogre village to the ground and killed his pathetic army of Hammer Trolls in a matter of minutes. I didn’t hear from him again until a month later when he woke me up early Saturday morning with a phone call. Grudgingly, I accepted his offer for play, and before I knew it, my castle had been destroyed by a swarm of hobgoblin suicide bombers before I had even built an armory. The kid had been practicing, and it was clear if I wanted to be any good at computer gaming, I would have to dedicate much more time to it. It seemed to me that it would be a lot easier to be good at something like movie trivia, so I just started watching a lot more movies.

Years later, though, I would need computers to play Fantasy Football. One good aspect of on-line gaming is its ability to connect with old friends, even if they live in Vietnam. In my case, it also works well when you play with guys you know from high school who all still live within 10 miles of each other. The only truly notable thing about this time period was the brilliant naming scheme of my fantasy teams I created by combining technology and real football names: The Desk Jets, The Battery Chargers, and some others I can’t remember. Unfortunately, I quit after a few years because cheering for individual players ruined the purity of a team sport. Also, it made it much for confusing who to root for since I had started gambling heavily.

For instance, my names at a couple of the on-line poker rooms are Emma Peel (after the heroine of the British television show, The Avengers) and Pancho Villa (after the feather-weight boxer who died young). For various reasons, it is harder to bluff on internet poker, so I figured one way to incorporate deception is to give other players the impression that I’m female or Mexican. I have a theory that women and Mexicans are often underestimated when it comes to poker. While this theory has yet be proven, I have proved that most poker players are sexist and racist, because I have been told several times to either take my “bitch tits” or “spic cards” and move to another table.

I do not know what the future of on-line gaming holds for me or for the world. I imagine some sort of total-sensory, Matrix-like plane where people gather for battle. In other words- laser tag. I only hope I live that long. Because who knows where internet poker will be by then.

Unlike previous movies I have reviewed before their official release, I haven’t even downloaded the I, Robot camcorder version. The trailer told me everything I need to know, except how the ego-maniacal inventor of the deadly robots gets his just desserts. I’m guessing he gets stuck in his own robot making machine right before an evil robot turns against his maker and presses the “Begin Robot-ification” button, which involves squirting acid into the eye socket area.

The movie will be bad, but I worry more about the human toll it took during creation. Back when I was in college earning a media arts degree, long before I graduated and took what I like to think of as a “prestige paid internship” at Blockbuster Video, students were often required to write and produce their own media pieces. One guy was a wizard with the special effects, but it couldn’t make up for his painful idea to exclusively produce video tributes to his girlfriend (who wasn’t even that attractive). I thought of him when I thought of the computer effects guys laboring on I, Robot. No matter how hard they worked or how good a job they did, they had to know the movie would still be terrible because Will Smith was in it. I feel really sad for them.

On a scale of robots, where Johnny 5 is a 0 and the Iron Giant is a 10, I, Robot is probably the rating of Twiki from Buck Rogers, the numerical equivalent of a 1.

With as many sitcoms featuring bad jokes, canned laughter, and Charlie Sheen on the air as there have ever been, FOX has finally found the secret that would make every one of them good. It’s not presenting them in high definition (although that certainly helps). It’s not even including storylines that revolve around a father instructing his cheerleading son to masturbate before the game so he won’t get an erection while climbing the human pyramid, unintentionally setting in motion a chain of events that will end with another son catching his brother pleasuring himself in a gym locker. The secret is casting Andy Richter.

I have to wonder how many people have even seen it, though. I'll let my friend Robert explain, "Andy Richter? If I hadn’t been flipping channels, I would never have known his new show existed. Meanwhile, I’ve seen over 100 commercials for Method and Red. Don’t get me wrong, I’m down with both the Wu and the Def squad crew - the Black Out album is currently in rotation on my 3-disc boom box. But, I know crap when I see it, and that show could rate a solid 7 at www.ratemypoo.com."

On a scale of twins, where the Olsen twins are a 1 and the Hilton sisters are a 10, Quintuplets, Andy's new show on Tuesdays at 7:30, rates a Matthew and Gunnar Nelson, the numerical equivalent of a 7.

Allow me to pre-tort. It's like a retort, but much less informed, because I don't know what I'm responding to. Even though, as I am writing this, I have not read the movie review of I, Robot like most readers (unless they are reading this page from bottom to top), I’m sure a few things weren't covered.

When I first saw previews of this movie it seemed it was being marketed as more of a “sci-fi thriller” along the lines of Blade Runner rather than a mixture of the Terminator’s battle scenes and the robotic dystopia of A.I. which it’s now being presented as. Even if they combined all three movies and put Spiderman in the trailer I would not want to see it. From the opening clip of Will Smith answering his future-phone, ”Spooner, homicide,” in his hard-nosed, cop voice (also heard in Bad Boys), it was impossible to take seriously.

Even more recent previews have played up the action sequences while giving us dialogue like, “Oh, Hell No!”. In and of itself this isn’t terribly bad until your friend points out that Will Smith says that in every movie to solidify his suburban appeal and White America can say to themselves, “He’s from the streets, but with language that doesn’t go too far over the edge.” By the way, when White America is saying that, they probably sound like Martin Lawrence’s hilarious “white person voice” in Bad Boys while he’s asking to borrow a cup of brown sugar. That’s right before Will Smith says “Oh, Hell No!”

Here is my story - the names have been changed to protect the innocent (me), although as you can tell from the title, I’m not so innocent anymore. A few months ago, I left work early to go see my doctor. Without going too deep into my medical history, let me give you some quick background information that resulted in my visit that fateful day. Over the past year or two, I have experienced frequent urination on a level of ridiculous proportions. Throw in some stop-and-go peeing, an urge to pee followed by just a trickle, and some near constant kidney pain and you’ve got a good idea of my symptoms.

Upon arrival at the doctor’s office, I was ready to leave a specimen in the bathroom before I had even gotten past the receptionist. After marching to the back and waiting far too long for a woman to fill her cup, I filled mine and had enough left over for two or three more, not counting what was all over the floor. After weighing in at a svelte 165 and having my blood pressure checked, I was left to wait in a patient’s room.

When the doctor entered, I nervously shifted on the bed. I would describe my doctor as a tall, thin older gentleman with white hair and an awkward bedside manner that will become readily apparent. After going over my symptoms with the doc, he felt around my lower abdomen and lower back without finding any problems. Shortly after this, my urine came back clean enough to sell to a BALCO athlete. I described my lower back pain to him and he had me do a few stretches. Bending forward and to the sides brought about the kidney pain, which he advised was actually lower back pain and that he would prescribe some Motrin.

Let me take you back in time for a moment. About a year ago, I came in with similar symptoms and was basically told that I didn’t have a problem. He put down lower back pain on my chart which he said wouldn’t concern the HMO as much as urinary problems. This time, I didn’t want to walk out of there with only Motrin for my “back pain”, so I continued to push for more of a checkup into the urinary problem. I didn’t quite realize it at the time, but I was basically begging him for a rectal exam. Mistaking my eagerness to have my problem solved with an eagerness to have my most protected orifice penetrated, he then spoke those six words that no man wants to hear from his physician, “stand up and drop your britches.”

As any good bitch, errrr… patient would, I did as I was told. At this point I was still in denial since my brain couldn’t comprehend what was about to happen. My hopes that he would just take a peek or give me a little cuppage while having me cough were dashed when he opened a drawer and removed a rubber glove. I was still trying to fool myself into thinking that the glove was just for sanitary purposes when he picked up the lubrication. My worst fears had come true. I was about to be violated in a very uncomfortable way.

As I waited in half-naked expectation for him to take the plunge, he dropped a few tissues on the bed I was standing in front of. “Are those for the tears?” I asked in complete earnestness. This elicited a small chuckle from the doc. But I wasn’t joking. “Seriously,” I wondered, “are they?” From the stories I’d heard and all that I could imagine, they must be. Little did I know, that they would serve a much more disturbing purpose.

I was then instructed to bend over the bed. Part of me wanted to pull up my shorts and leave with my virginal rectum and dignity intact, but a bigger part of me had already resigned to fate. There I was, standing up with shorts around my ankles bent over a hospital bed with a doctor preparing to enter me with what I could only hope was just one finger and an exorbitant amount of lubrication. It was at this moment that the doctor told me, “This may feel like you are going to cum”. I don’t know if it was meant as a warning or a promise, but I am afraid that statement couldn’t have been any farther from the truth. Although it did give me pause to think, “Is that what the tissues are for?”

Inexplicably, as he spread my cheeks, the good doctor offered another bit of advise as he told me, “Try not tense up, I don’t want you to break my finger off in there”. I didn’t know how to respond to that poorly timed attempt at humor, but it didn’t really matter. Before I could think of something to say, he had spread my cheeks and inserted his finger into my anus. I don’t know how long this violation of my sacred hole went on, but it seemed like an eternity of torment. I don’t know what a prostate is supposed to feel like, but in the end, apparently mine felt fine to him.

When he finally removed his finger from my rectum, I caught a glimpse of his gloved finger and what I saw amazed and disgusted me all at once. On the tip of the finger was a teaspoon-sized drop of my refuse in the shape of a Hershey’s Kiss with a swirl that would make a Dairy Queen employee jealous.

I saw this as I was standing there wiping myself with the tissues he had finally instructed me how to use. The culmination of events combined with the image of my excrement on another man’s finger was more than my mind could handle. I started to get light headed and dizzy. I’ve passed out before (for entirely different reasons) so I put my hands down on the sink to brace myself. It worked.

I have never been as conscious of my anus as I was for the two weeks following that exam. Walking, sitting, and lying down were just a few of the activities that were made extremely uncomfortable. It even took a few days to wipe myself clean of the remaining jelly and about a week before I could have a bowel movement without whimpering.

I did end up going to an urologist to get further care for my problem. He had fat fingers that were like plump Jimmy Dean sausages. Thankfully he kept his hands on the outside of my body and prescribed some overactive bladder medication. It is now finally far enough in the past that I can write this without reliving the horror of the moment, however my cheeks still clench every time I think about it and my sphincter has never been the same. It may be embarrassing and slightly humiliating, but I believe that this needed to be written to let others know what to expect and that they are not alone… as well as what the tissues are for.

Would A.J. McClean have grown his gay-master facial hair had he not joined the Back Street Boys? Was his appearance, as well as the others boys, a failure of their manager, Lou Perlman, or rather one of A.J.’s himself? There have been rumors that Perlman warned A.J. not to do it, but the chain of command was circumvented by pressure from Brian, Nick, and Kevin, notorious as the “few bad apples” in the group. Then again, some say orders came from higher up, like the president of Arista Records, Clive Davis.

Why does any of this matter? It matters because these are the Back Street Boys - that should be more than enough. However, for the purpose of this reflection it is to warn the world of the corrosive nature of all groups.

Teenagers do stupid things in packs. Looking back at old photographs, I wore bright yellow Jimmy-Z T-shirts prior to high school. With internal pressure to attach to something larger than myself I began dressing in all black and awoke one morning a hard-core goth. (nathan: please find and insert a funny picture of me as a goth here)
ed. note: sorry Steve, I couldn’t find a funny picture of you as a goth.

The lesson here, I guess, is to never join anything. Within every group there is the potential for genocide. Within every group there is the potential for systemic sodomy. Worst of all, within every group there is the potential for a pencil thin moustache worn with a pony tail.

The first time it happened to me I was living in Tucson and it was midnight. I stopped to roll down my window, which is apparently a form of “street lingo” meaning “feel free to open the door and climb in”. Fortunately, I was able to pull away before the woman could get all the way in and finish whatever she was saying. I felt my action was justified by her brazen audacity, but I still tried to convince myself she had said something completely incoherent about “getting stoned on bong water”. Deep down, I’m pretty sure it was more about “getting home to my daughter”. This guilt, perhaps, slowed my response in future situations.

The last time it happened, two weeks ago, I was not fast enough to prevent an aging, Hispanic lady with a minority of teeth from jumping in the passenger seat to ask if “we” could go get some drinks at a bar, right before she started crying. I told her I didn’t drink, and she asked if I was a Christian. Saying yes probably would have prevented the entire course of the conversation to come, and I’m not sure why I didn’t since I lied anyway by proclaiming, “No, I just don’t like the taste!”

She first explained to me that she hated her husband, which I presume was one of three Mexican men sitting by a broken down car I had passed about a mile earlier. It seemed they had been teaching her to drive but she'd plowed into a cactus and he had't been too happy with her. Then, she abruptly began to describe what a bad lover he was using phrases like “Mr. Bam Wham Done” and “Short Stuff”. This was a big problem, she explained, because she likes to have 2 or 3 “wow-ee’s” instead of none.

Finally, as my anxiety was escalating, she asked me if I liked blowjobs. To my ears, this was the same as asking if I wanted a blowjob, and even though she knew I wasn’t Christian, I was surprised she thought I was heterosexual after my admission that I just didn’t like the taste of alcohol. “Not me,” I stated, “I don’t like the taste of blowjobs either!” That seemed to clear up the situation.

Eventually, I agreed just to drop her off at a bar because I was very busy. On the way she told me I should never get married and that she “wasn’t a racist, but her daughter was dating a lazy Mexican with no money.” I stopped at the first place that looked like it might have a bar, a pizza joint, and gave her my best wishes. I’m not sure what happened to her, and I'm pretty sure there was no bar in there, but they did have pizza. And who doesn’t like the taste of pizza?

Hellboy, played by Ron Pearlman, is an offpsring from hell rescued from Nazis (who planned on using him to release several omnipotent, tentacled deities trapped in large space crystals) by Americans who eventually raise him to work as an undercover, paranormal cop with a fetish for house cats. Again, you need to be 13 to really understand it. Pearlman is joined by Selma Blair, playing his love interest and firestarter Liz Sherman, and some other guy, who plays a human named John who is torn between helping our titular hero and trying to sleep with Liz at the risk of being burned alive.

Director Guillermo Del Toro, who also directed Blade 2, made his name with creepy and atmospheric horror films made in Mexico. Everything he’s done in America, now including Hellboy, are mostly just excuses for Herculean brawls choreographed with convincing enthusiasm. This is not a bad thing, though I hope he will ultimately combine his old flair for plot with his new knack for using computer generated effects in a way that doesn’t piss me off. But even if he can only ever manage doing one thing per movie, that is better than most directors. I hate you Stephen Sommers.

On a scale of demon seed, where The Omen’s Damien is a 1 and Rosemary’s Baby is a 10, Hellboy rates a Haley Joel Osment, the numerical equivalent of a 7.

If you would like to read a thoughtful piece on the merits of Pat Tillman, written long before he lost his battle with the Afghans, then you could do much worse than to check out this piece my Bill Maher. However, if you don't like reading things longer than a paragraph, I have written this:

This is your Johny Appleseed. Your Paul Bunyan. If the tall tale remains an enduring way to perpetuate the memories of deserving men, Pat Tillman will be known - as generations pass - as a twenty feet tall, sky-scraper of a man. Our rock stars gain an eternal, transcendent place in our cognizance by being self-destructive. Their fame is based not on deeds but on their willingness to do nothing and then die. It's easy to talk shit when you're drunk and in a bar - or behind a microphone or when you drive home and you curse out that fucker who changed into your lane, causing you to reduce your speed from 52 to 50. We all had thoughts about enlisting after 911. Thoughts come easy; they are ephemeral, brief: easy. We had these thoughts... but you and I, we're not John Henry.

2004 is more important because it is the 20th anniversary of Motley Crue’s debut album, Too Fast for Love, a blistering eruption of leather, sex, and electric guitar. Besides its lasting contribution to cock rocking, it may also have something to say about the state of the world- even today. So to people like Powel Jr. and Sen. Sam Brownback, I quote a line from an unreleased song recorded during the Love sessions, “What’s right for you ain’t right for everyone”, and to Stern, I quote the chorus, “Stick to yer gunz!”

To join the fight against the unconstitutional actions of the FCC visit www.stopfcc.com. To purchase the remastered edition of Too Fast For Love visit www.amazon.com.