Bear Interrupted

The naughty teddy- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
I’m at KFC today, waiting for my wheels to heal next door at Pep Boys. It’s 102 degrees outside, and KFC’s a/c is on the fritz. Wonderful setting… I do enjoy the people watching, and I did just have an unforgivably fattening 3 piece meal. I will survive. I have a couple of topics on my mind -- one a movie review, and another is something more personal …

A NOBLE EXPERIMENT
I started this blog in January 2005 with high expectations, borrowing hip phrases at the time like “Web 2.0” and “eZine”. I was sure it would catch fire and have a lot of readers. Over the course of 7 and ½ years, I have these observations:

o My readership fell from the giddy heights of 25 people down to about 2
o My ad revenue fell from pocket change to zero
o My ideas started to become stale and repetitive
o Et cetera

This year will probably be the last one for Strange Fascination. I have written about a lot of things, across many weird topics. If nothing else, I’ve educated myself in doing some of the article research. Wikipedia (aka ”the font of all knowledge”) has been immeasurably helpful.  :-)   I still have a creative writing impulse -- the spark isn’t completely snuffed. I may start a new blog with different stipulations…

o I’ll still host it with blogspot, but use one of their new templates
o It will be less commercial, more of a spare look
o Will post maybe once a month -- I’m not as prolific as I used to be.
o The URL won’t be sent to family or coworkers (important)… I’d like to explore ideas and issues that are more personal or introspective. I can’t really cut loose if my boss or my aunt is reading what’s there.

I probably would’ve gotten more traction if I specialized in a few topics, instead of trying to cover every subject area known to man. My interests cover a wide range but not my wisdom and expertise. I will leave my postings indefinitely -- maybe someday I’ll comb though them to fix grammatical errors and “sudden” transitions. I could probably delete some of the more embarrassing entries. This is just a heads up … I don’t want my last two readers to experience shock at the last posting.

TED
I saw a movie over the July 4th holiday, TED, which had me rolling in the aisles. TED is the brainchild of bad boy Seth Macfarlane, the wunderkind cartoonist who is now one of the highest paid actor-director-writers in Hollywood. I’ve already blogged twice about Macfarlane, and have decidedly mixed feelings about him. He’s brilliant and insightful -- a secular, humanist liberal who informs us with his bold political satire. But then his humor also takes him to very dark places where animal cruelty and violence to women is acceptable and “hilarious“. Macfarlane’s TV shows, Family Guy, Cleveland Show and American Dad are super popular with young men ages 18-24. The class clown “jackass” aspect probably draws in all the young men.

TED is a comedy starring Mark Wahlburg (playing against type) as a nebbish nerd and Mila Kunis as his (highly unlikely) knock-out girlfriend. TED is a childhood toy whom Wahlburg “wished” to life when he was 8. The fantastic aspects of this are minimized and it’s just treated as a cool, trivial aside -- “teddy bear comes to life“. The teddy bear is dubbed Ted. He’s a foul-mouthed, sex-crazed, ne’er do well who is Mark’s roomie even in adulthood. Mila feels that Ted is preventing Mark from reaching adult goals and she decides to send Ted packing.

Ted surprises everyone by becoming a supermarket manager and dating hot chicks. He also captivates a local father-son pair who covet a live, talking teddy bear. I won’t divulge the entire plot but the humorous “humanity” of Ted steals the whole show. He can eat, smoke, drink, drug, cuss, fornicate, laugh and fight with totally credible movements. The special effects are excellent. For people familiar with Family Guy, Ted’s voice is about half Peter Griffin and half Bryan the Dog. Ted has a lot of Bryan’s logical thought with Peter’s Boston crassness mixed in.

I will say that the AMC theater was sold out when I saw this movie. Ushers had to squeeze strangers together in uncomfortable combos just to accommodate all the ticket buyers. It’s very much to Macfarlane’s credit that his less-touted, less-than-blockbuster movie has made a very strong box office showing. If you’re not easily grossed out, and like over-the-top gags go see this movie. It will help if you’re that category of adult who hasn’t completely let go of adolescence. That would certainly be me.

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