Mad-Men

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Unrelated shot of the beautiful Red Rock Canyon”] [/caption] It was a nice, lazy, fun weekend full of baseball, movies, and video games. Who could complain? Movies The Cabin in the Woods - If you think for a second you want to see this movie, you probably shouldn’t read anything about it. Those of you who don’t, well I thought it was an interesting deconstruction of the horror genre that was expertly written by Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon, but perhaps a little too elbow nudge-y, wink wink to be taken completely seriously. Still worth seeing. Lots of fun. ...

Guys, seriously, how great was that episode? Pete is a weaselly, slimy character, but he’s oftentimes the most interesting character on the screen after Don. He’s a guy who wants it all, but cannot recognize when he’s got it. More importantly, Pete Campbell can never have it all because he is so aggressively unlikeable. Driver’s Ed: Pete has a thing for going after defenseless and possibly naive women. New hire Peggy, the neighbor’s foreign maid, and now high school student Jenny. He always has a sneaky angle in and he’s always just a little too creepily aggressive. I’m thankful for Jenny’s sake that Handsome showed up to be a more age-appropriate suitor. It’s definitely an ego blow to have Handsome mistake Pete for the teacher and to feel so old, but I feel like Pete is probably more insulted by the way that Handsome makes it all seem so effortless like Don or Roger or the other men he’s trying to surpass. ...

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“It looks photoshopped, but I promise it wasn’t!”] [/caption] I didn’t do much this week, but cut me some slack, man! I was in Las Vegas! Movies Nope TV Mad Men - My thoughts on the last episode are here, but it’s a safe bet to say that I love this show and this season has been great so far. ...

You know what’s my favorite thing about Mad Men? Even when it’s dead serious or surreal it’s not above brilliant jokes. I want to hit on the lighter moments first, because this episode was very dark and violent. Moment numero uno has to be the scene with Peggy and Sterling. It’s just perfect to see how far Sterling has fallen that he can threaten to fire all he wants, but he can’t intimidate Peggy (or Harry, for that matter). She has his number and she gets her reward while being super cheeky and super funny. I could watch her count cash for hours. ...

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Baseball is BACK! The (Miami) Marlins are headed to Philadelphia for their second/third series of the year.”] [/caption] Baseball. It signals the end of winter. Guess what, guys? Winter is GONE! The Marlins are off to a rocky start (1-3), but they’re still looking pretty good and, in the past two games, playing pretty well too. I really hope this season is better than the last, but, either way, at least baseball has returned. ...

Not every episode can be a bombastic “Zou Bisou”, can it? A lot of people don’t like Betty, but this episode featured centered around her in a truly bizarre fat suit. Betty has a little bit of a health scare related to a lump found on her thyroid which sends ripples through the Francis and Draper households. The scene with Henry and Don talking on the phone was pretty interesting in how threatened he seemed by the fact that Betty shared her health scare with Don too. Betty’s scenes in the show (minus the cheesy medium one) were pretty great at illustrating the complications of being her. She’s always been profoundly sad and unable to cope with her life and the cancer scare actually seemed to give her a spark and some meaning. It’s like she doesn’t know how to be and having that made her somewhat special. Her immediate response at finding out it was benign was to dwell on her getting fat instead. More negatives. She’s truly got a sad existence. ...

Mad Men is back, y’all, and it’s better than ever! Season four flirted with perfection, but that was somewhere around 17 months ago. Now it’s time for something new. I think it’s fair to guess that season five is probably going to deal with the civil rights issue that its protagonists have mostly dodged for four seasons now. The bookends to the episode involving Y&R and SCDP’s various pranks at least promise to make it an important issue for at least two episodes, but I’m betting we see it take greater importance as the season wears on. ...

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“346” caption=“Seann William Scott is so innocently dumb in this movie, but it’s actually quite good. (Picture courtesy nxusco)”] [/caption] Guys, Goon was really good. More later, but you should check it out. This week was a real scattershot weekend as I tried to play a bunch of games I didn’t give much time to before. Movies Martha Marcy May Marlene - The cult in the movie is an interesting contrast to the fundamentalist Christian society in Higher Ground and the hippie commune of Wanderlust. This movie really ratchets up the tension of not knowing what’s real and what’s not. Ideally they would have made Patrick a scarier presence, but the movie is still on pretty solid ground with what it accomplishes. Congrats on the fantastic part, Elizabeth Olsen. Keep it up! ...

[caption id="" align=“aligncenter” width=“500” caption=“Season 5, y’all! (Photo courtesy Roman Skrada)”] [/caption] Mad Men is BACK…but shhhh! I haven’t seen the premiere yet. Trying to finish S4 first and I’ve got about three episodes to burn through. I’ll get it tonight. Don’t worry. Movies Was supposed to watch one, but…didn’t get around to it. TV Persona 4: The Animation - This show continues to be awesome. The Nanako stuff was really emotionally tough to watch, wow. ...

To the abovementioned small man and to others like him, to all the craftsmen of these mommy’s-credit-card-number-snatching games like Tap Zoo and Tap Pet Shop and Top Girl and what-have-you, I offer this lesson from the annals of economics: “Monetize” is a fucking stupid word. The idea of a business is to make money. “To do business” means “to monetize something”. A “product” is something a business makes. To speak of “monetizing a product” borders on ridiculous. ...