Brett Favre

Anyone that has spent any time at all in Wisconsin certainly needs to read no further than this: Brett Favre, more than any football player in history deserves to be solidly punched in his big dumb face.  We realize that without close examination he may seem like a lovable guy; so loved that half of the overweight, drunk-driving(fifth time’s a charm!) morons who support the Packers are suddenly more inclined to follow the Jets because ‘you just gotta support Brett.’  But this does not speak to his popularity, rather this speaks to a colossal ego that has surpassed any notion of team.  Then again, Mr. Favre has the good fortune to be a white athlete so it’s not an ego, rather it’s a firm knowledge of self-worth.  He’s as real as Usinger Bratwurst.

If one looks at the 1991 Atlanta Falcons team picture they will find Mr. Favre  strangely absent though he was on the roster.  He couldn’t make it to his job that day because he was too hungover.  Everyone has been there, right?  Later in his career Mr. Favre admitted that he was a junkie of the prescription pain killer kind.  But anyone who has had his or her wisdom teeth removed can understand the draw of the occasionally opiate.  No big deal.  And to be fair, it is what the athlete does on the field that counts, unless you are talking about the grit (GRIT!) that allows a man play a game days after his father dies and manage to beat the Oakland Raiders. That grit is everywhere.  Or the absolute tenacity that allows one to play his whole career missing some intestines, not that anyone knows if missing a fraction of one’s intestines really makes a difference in any aspect of life other than the time it takes from ingestion to evacuation.

We will not deny that Brett Favre is a very good quarterback.  He holds many prestigious records and, like Jim McMahon, Trent Dilfer and Brad Johnson, Mr. Favre has won one Super Bowl.  Always the class-act, he laid down and gave Michael Strahan that single season sack record.  Which somehow did not make it seem like a gift, cheapening the effort and making a record as much about Mr. Favre as it is about the man who actually worked all season to break it.  And what of when he was shut out for the first time in his then 16 year old career?  Again proving his mettle Mr. Favre stormed off the field without speaking to reporters, not because he was acting like a spoiled brat, but because he had to stoically go about mowing his own lawn or some other such activity that men do.  And his indecision three years in a row as to whether or not he would return to football.  Which was not only annoying, it was supremely unfair to the Green Bay football club that had been so supportive for his career.  The Packers were not able to prepare during the off-season because they had no fucking idea whether or not the big baby would be back.  For two years in a row.  And then he retires the third, no, whoops, mistake, he’s back!  Not a selfish man, not Brett.  Simply a man that loves football soooooo much retiring or returning is all he could think about.

Not to mention the fact that word around Green Bay is that Sir Brett is a supreme asshole, or the fact that he has forced talented coaches and players out of Green Bay, or the fact that he can’t sell a shitty pair of jeans without a fucking Golden Retreiver or the fact that he used his charity as a platform for his retirement drama or the fact that the Jets did not make the playoffs yet again (and others are pointing some serious blame) or that he is not Peyton Manning.

Steven Seagal

To be honest we here at deadman/party love the early films of Mr. Seagal, the quartet of low-brow odes to masculinity that precede Under Siege.  There is perhaps nothing finer than watching a grown man play pretend and then lay to waste ten men, not altogether or even two at a time, but ten men one by one by one.  But we must punch this bloated sack of stupidity, though not for the low satisfaction of deflating a gasbag that thinks he is suuuuuch a tough guy.

A lifetime of self-mocking commercials made long after relevance cannot change how unspeakably awful an actor is.  In fact, Mr. Seagal’s desperate pleas for acceptance (and attention) make him all the more disgusting.  It isn’t that we do not appreciate self mockery, it just seems a little sour when the last twenty-three movies he has made–this is twenty-three out of a grand total of thirty-five–have gone straight to DVD.  Certainly he did not feel so humble at the height of his career when he uttered, “I am hoping that I can be known as a great writer and actor some day, rather than a sex symbol.” Keep reaching for that rainbow buddy.

What may be more amazing than his failed attempt to emulate Orson Welles is how he shows “his deep love and care for others is exemplified in his commitment to do his part to make this a better world.” The above is taken directly from the Philanthropy page of his website, which is next to the page featuring his collection of “classics [and] some of today’s hottest axes” complete with a teenager’s bragging descriptions of just how rare each guitar is.  He saved a puppy in a garbage bag thrown out of a car window in the movie where he murders somewhere in the neighborhood of 45 people in order to exact his revenge on the man who killed his friend, aptly titled Out for Justice.  And he also made a movie in which he murders a bunch of people in Alaska for harming the earth.  Not to be confused with the movie in which he murders a bunch of people for harming the earth in Montana and the other movie in which he murders a bunch of people for harming the earth in Kentucky. It is obvious that no one has a tighter grip on the teachings of the Buddha than Steven Seagal, except perhaps a stoned college student.

And besides being an accomplished martial artist, writer, director, producer and activist Mr. Seagal has also committed the greatest sin any actor can commit: claiming to be a musician.  And not just any type of musician but a blues musician, if you can call this the blues.  More surreal than a Fellini picture, the video was once described by an acquaintance as “R&B, or at least Steven Seagal’s version of it, accompanied by images of him marrying his Thai child bride.”  Perhaps worse, his albums are entitled Mojo Priest and Crystal Cave, enough even to make the members of Ten Gallon Sack (every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday Night down at Snappers.  Dollar Drafts on Tuesday!) blush.  Anyone interested in knowing more can click here.

But before this turns into a book (or sutra, if you will)  we must finally declare our intentions to attack him and punch him, not one by one, but as an editorial board for the first time in his life.

Kyle MacLachlan

David Lynch may be a little too weird and a little to college for us to offer him a beer (though this is amazing).   Not that we would having anything against getting a beer with a  midget, giant or one armed man by themselves but toasting the greatness of Fidelio with all three and Mr. Lynch in the middle of a red-draped taxidermy studio may be beyond our collective enjoyment at this moment.  However we would much enjoy grabbing a cold one with his muse for the better part of a decade, Kyle MacLachlan.

Though we may have thought the first time we watched Blue Velvet that Mr. MacLachlan was nothing but a pretty face (amazingly pretty), we later came to understand that the wooden acting was a stylistic choice rather than a lack of ability.  For watching him as Agent Dale Cooper we are consistently amused and drawn to his pretty, pretty face.  And surely he is the only person besides Paul Verhoven involved in Showgirls that we could even tolerate for a second.  How he let Elizabeth Berkely thrash about his muscled body without completely losing his shit is beyond us.  Allow us at least one drink to salute his walking out of the premiere.

Outside of his career Mr. MacLachlan has a devotion to his dogs which is commendable.  Though we at deadman/party would not condone the videos, voiceovers and website–which is enough to make your average Minnesotan, elastic waistband jean wearing, basket collecting mother blush–we all do love our four-legged friends and appreciate his devotion to them.  And we also like that he at least pretends to run his own website and runs it with a humility rare in Hollywood.  Also, he makes wine.  Which is something all men pretend to want to do “if only we had the time.”  The home brew kit we got last Christmas currently gathering dust in the corner is piffle compared to this awesome achievement.

Yes, it is obnoxious how hard he milks Twin Peaks to shill everything from canned coffee to Vodaphone.  And we don’t much care for Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants or Desperate Housewives either. But he is so handsome.   Even if he turns out to be obnoxious and megalomaniacal we could at least stare at those long eyelashes and listen to that soothing voice as we slowly sip our beers.

Jim Brown

Anyone who has met any of us at deadman/party knows that we don’t put much of a premium on being a badass. We are never looking for a fight, aren’t particularly imposing, and are deeply suspicious of tough guys. That being said, we can’t help but salute the awesome power of Jim Brown.

Unlike its endlessly entertaining baseball counterpart, old time football footage generally looks pretty silly. Nobody really throws the forward pass, the kickers all kick from straight back, and it seems pretty obvious that USC would probably beat any old NFL team by 40. I’m sure that Y.A. Tittle and Red Grange were fine athletes and tough sons of bitches, but they weren’t really playing anything equivalent to today’s game. Jim Brown represents the beginning of the end of the old days. He looks like fucking Godzilla on the field dragging helpless opponents into the end zone, their best efforts but a minor inconvenience to Mr. Brown. And then, before he even turned 30, Brown retired. Former Cleveland Browns owner and official Ohio state pariah Art Modell wouldn’t allow Brown to report late to training camp (because he was filming a movie), so Mr. Brown told him to go fuck himself. We at deadman/party think this was a badass move, mostly because it offends the sensibilities of so many high school football players who spend their lives bitter that they never got a shot at the big time (pissing off Modell didn’t hurt either).

Of course football skills alone do not a beered man make. Brown starred in the Schwarzenegger dystopian masterpiece The Running Man, Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! and in his spare time became the greatest lacrosse player of all time (sorry bro!). He also works with convicts and gang members with his Amer-I-Can program. Could anybody be better qualified for that task than the baddest dude in America? He has that quality that makes everything he says seem like the absolute truth (perhaps because he only speaks the absolute truth). I think he could probably convince us to jump off a building in about 5 minutes. Thankfully, he uses his powers of persuasion for good.  The only thing working against him is that he is only our second-favorite person named James Brown.   Mr. Brown, even though we suspect that you could drink 300 beers without cracking a smile or having to pee, we would still like to buy you one.

John Goodman

When asked about John Goodman, someone of our age and disposition is likely to tell you more than you ever wanted to know about his portrayal of Walter Sobchak in The Big Lebowski. While there is no denying the strength of his performance in that role, we don’t imagine you need to hear a litany of stale jokes about being out of your element or what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass. There is plenty of Goodman goodness to go around without more blunt trauma to that dead horse.

First of all, he is freaking Dan Conner. Most of us at deadman/party spent our formative years in one of the rust belt’s real-life Lanford, Illinois equivalents. Even if Rosanne wasn’t ever the hippest show and we might not have admitted it in our younger and cooler days, we appreciated our dirty little corner of America being in primetime and would spend an evening at the Lobo sucking back brews with Dan Conner any time. We imagine if the real Rosanne had hitched her wagon to John Goodman instead of Tom “Best Damn” Arnold, she would still be going strong.

There is plenty else to appreciate about Mr. Goodman’s career including a slew of non-Lebowski Coen brothers projects and perhaps most importantly, the greatest monologue in modern film. Still, the thing we like most about him is probably the sheer unlikelihood of his celebrity. We have taken a gander at the current crop of Missouri State Bears footballers and doubt that its ranks include any stars of Mr. Goodman’s caliber. Of course, it was probably equally unlikely during his tenure on the squad. Maybe Missouri State is the “Cradle of Character Actors.” In any event, it would be our distinct pleasure, despite never quite figuring out the line of succession that resulted in the coronation of King Ralph, to buy John Goodman a beer.

Brandon Flowers

Life moves pretty fast in the dog eat dog world of major label alt-rock (or whatever you call the genre that hipsters find lame and New-Rock-Radio (The Bone! The Point! The Hog!) dudes find pretentious and gay). Its like one minute you are hangin’ in the Alpha Beta house playing a few rounds of beer pong and the next you have an appointment with a stylist to pick out a feathered jacket for the MTV Europe awards. Such has been life for The Killers’ singer Brandon Flowers. Even with his busy schedule, we suspect that Mr. Flowers has taken it upon himself to reflect at least a little bit upon his younger days. After all, it would take at least a couple keg stands and bong rips before asking the musical question “Are we human or are we dancers?” with a completely straight face. That shit completely blew Chad and T-Dawg’s minds after the winter formal.

There are certainly far graver musical offenses than those perpetrated by the Killers, but Mr. Flowers is nearly unmatched in the “believes his own hype” category. We suspect that his preening and posturing started innocently enough: the fruits of hours spent studying David Bowie videos and the collected teachings of Bono. At some point however, Mr. Flowers started to think he really was some kind of rock god. This wouldn’t be such an issue is he had any kind of charisma or extraordinary talent for writing or performing rock music. He does not. Deadman/party counts several musicians among its ranks and we don’t think a person needs to be particularly badass or sinister to play great music, but when your mommy and daddy come to all of your shows, you can cut the mysterious brooding artist crap. All of the ironic mustaches and bedazzled costumes in the world can’t undo the fact that you are just a glee club member playing dress up. Mr. Flowers is to rock stardom what the Rent soundtrack is to rock albums: rock in name only. We however would be glad to punch that stupid soul patch right off his face, in word and deed.

Seth MacFarlane

EEEEEEEEEE!

That Seth MacFarlane is wildy successful cannot be argued. That Seth MacFarlane is going to stick around the comedy scene awhile is fait accompli. That Seth MacFarlane cannot so much as write your run-of-the-mill rim job joke without toppling over because of his gigantic mandible is not controversial, and, hey, our hearts go out to him. (We here at deadman/party have all sorts of humongous body parts that make life tough.) However, it is plain wrong that the brain trust at Entertainment Weekly hails this fella as the smartest person on television, and for that we must punch hard to balance the cosmic scales.

Our problem? Family Guy relies so heavily on forumlae.  Those madcap Family Guy writers must be paid by the number of pop culture references they can squeeze into a simile because they abound like blow at the annual Todd Bridges Presents West Virginia’s Sun-Kissed Cocaine Debutante Ball in Cocaine Valley, West Virginia; like Soleil Moon-Frye’s once-heaving bosom out of Kimmy Gibbler’s training bra (double lame reference bonus!); like genital warts on Andy Dick’s peeshooter (gutter humor + Andy Dick powerup incentive clause activated!). Punctuate that sentence with Toucan Sam squawking about being strung out on Fruit Loops and, along with twenty minutes of Peter battling a chicken or moaning over a skinned knee, you’ve got an episode in the books. Can we have our check, please?

Furthermore, the man strikes us as a real smug sonofagun, and it’s not just because he’s from New England. Here’s a pleasant way to spend a weekend: Check out Mr. MacFarlane’s MySpace page and see if you can count how many pictures of himself he managed to cram up in that shit. SPOILER ALERT: Since no human has the numeral proficiency to complete this task, NASA has several hundred networked supercomputers at Sandia National Laboratory outfitted with bleeding edge facial recognition software working on the answer, and honest to goodness the last time we checked they were still calculating.

When asked about comedy that other famous New Englander, the poet Robert Frost, sighed and said, “Nothing gold can stay lest it be a fart joke,” and, along with chowing down on a healthy slice of humble pie,  MacFarlane would be wise to follow this advice. Go cold turkey on the showtunes, man, and give the 80s television stars a rest. Restore the natural order! Void more flatus on television and you shall enjoy life everlasting! Until then enjoy a hilariously timed punch to the breadbasket.

Robin Williams

Is there no truer barometer of maturity than one’s feelings about Robin Williams?  As children we here at deadman/party found Good Morning Vietnam to be hilarious.  Mr. Williams’s zany madcap spouting and sputtering of things like “follow the Ho Chi Minh Trail” had us in tiny giggle fits even though we had no idea what it meant.  When we were teenagers films such as Patch Adams were tolerated because we were not comfortable watching Clockwork Orange with our parents.  And in this Year of our Lord Two Thousand and Eight, Good Morning Vietnam puts us on the floor with its attempt to paint one of the most complex issues in American history with a pallet knife. It is just about as disgusting as anything Ed Harris has ever made, but we now smile like we smile at a dog watching TV.  It thinks he’s people.  Or at least an everyman as long as all of humanity is either a tired, un-funny, just a step too far stereotype of a Black, Jew or Gay man (to be fair he does occasionally do some sort of foreigner who does not understand our ways).  In most of his movies the man just riffs on these caricatures like John Cougar Mellencamp on a one-stringed guitar until our shoes are covered in vomit.  And yes, we should probably lay some blame at the feet of these directors that just let the tape roll, just let the man go, but does anyone actually know who directed License to Wed?  Does anyone care?

And when Mr. Williams stops acting like the love child of Rip Taylor and Stepin Fethcit things some how become worse.  Just have a gander at this list: Good Will Hunting, Human Being, Jack, Man of the Year, Bicentennial Man, and Jakob the Liar.  There is more to be gleaned from Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery than all of the squinty-eyed grimacing Robin Williams can muster.  We have no doubt that Mr. Williams believes in his heart of hearts that the above films are comedies dripping with pathos, but they are complete and utter shit we can assure you.  His appearance on Inside the Actor’s Studio (more on Mr. Lipton later) is a nice compact distillation of what we find so offensive about the man.  Though we do recommend you watch it, if only to make yourself feel smart, be warned that it is not for the faint of heart.  On more than one occasion we had to bury our faces in the couch pillows to stifle our groans of pain and to relieve our eyes of the embarrassment that is Robin Williams’s hunch-shouldered false humility. How the audience does anything but run for the exits is beyond us.

Is there anything more we need to say?  Nanu-Nanu?

Nanu-Nanu.

Chuck Todd

Contrary to what most 1980’s movies would lead you to believe, America’s nerd population is not a monolith. In addition to the rare taped-glasses-pocket-protector-hiked up pants-Urkel variety, nerddom encompasses band nerds, drama nerds, Ren-fair nerds, metal nerds, and Booger Presley on the lead guitar, among a host of others.

We suspect that Chuck Todd was the type of nerd nearest and dearest to our hearts: the adult in waiting. Adults in waiting don’t do things as overtly nerdy as some of their nerd brethren, but they get wedgied for things like asking a question about the commerce clause with only one minute left in class. We imagine a sixteen year-old Chuck Todd sitting by himself in the cafeteria, eating a Pop-tart and memorizing every county in Indiana, satisfied in the knowledge that someday he would dominate the shit out of adulthood. Mr. Todd brings something to the cluttered TV news landscape that almost nobody else does: actual information.

We hope that Mr. Todd can steer our national discourse in a direction where a premium is placed on data and real analysis above endless conjecture and bluster. Its not that we at deadman/party think that math can solve all our problems (our backgrounds read like a competition in picking the least math intensive major: Music? Philosophy? Creative writing? Pretty tough call.), but it is nice to know that at least people are thinking about things in a new, and often times more useful way. Along with Mr. Todd, people like Bill James and Nate Silver approach their respective fields in a novel way: they look at the information in front of them. It is difficult to say whether or not Mr. Todd’s hard data approach will be quite as valuable outside of a campaign environment, but we look forward to finding out. Paul Begala once said “politics is show business for ugly people.” If that’s true, Chuck Todd is George Clooney. Have a beer on us Mr. Todd. You have earned it.

Sir MixaLot

We honestly have only a very vague idea of who Sir Mix a Lot is.  Something about jumping or getting on ‘it’ and that state capital song from the third grade.  He may be a reverend and we are pretty sure he resides in Seattle.  Didn’t he do something with that band with the song about peaches and Forrest Gump?  Pretty insignificant if not for “Baby Got Back.”

Countless good moods have been ruined by even a suggestion of that ‘bumbum bump bum’ bass line and the accompanying “I liiiiiike Big Butts . . .”  Even thinking about it long enough to type this is driving us a little bit batty. It’s a staple of that deplorable amateur-hour institution the 80’s night (oh we are very, very aware that chronologically it doesn’t make the cut, but the kids just love it, so you might as well throw it on) it brings to mind a room lit by black lights and a disco ball and 150 poli-sci majors raising their hands to the ceiling and shouting in unison “My anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns hun.”  Wooo, indeed.

It would be easy to ignore the track if it were only confined to the above, easily avoidable situation but the song is so innocuous that every single wedding (hopefully a joyous celebration of friendship, family and love) we have ever attended has been disgraced with that piece of trash as if it were a flip side to the chicken dance.  Though we always hope to be able to use words to describe our rage sometimes they do fail us.  If this or this doesn’t start you shaking and uncontrollably swearing under your breath you probably have no business reading this blog.  It’s as if all of human cultural history has been erased by 4 minutes, 13 seconds.  We aren’t asking that you turn your wedding reception into an white-tie affair complete with cotillion, just have some fucking taste.  After all this is supposed to be the most important day of your life, perhaps you could refrain from freaking just this once.