I hit the Fox Business studio yesterday to talk with Brian Sullivan about Obama’s plans for high speed rail. Just imagine if we could get around the U.S. without having to sit in some airport purgatory breathing re-processed air and downing earwax-flavored food. Yeah, I can’t really imagine it either.

The thing is, when a movie TRIES to be good-bad, chances are it winds up transcending bad into pure awful. Which is what happened with Daybreakers, Willem Dafoe or no. To read my Horror Chick review, click here.

Given that we’ve moved on to a new decade, the editors at The Awl have been running a fascinating “End of the ’00s” series by more writers than I can count. So I took the opportunity to rant about the decade in horror movies, from Saw to Rob Zombie to chicks with chainsaws. Since the rest of what happened in the aughts — pop culture’s soul-killing descent, the economy tanking, the labor market hemorrhaging, the steady decline of the U.S. as a superpower — was just too depressing. To read the latest Horror Chick, click here.

Notable Quotable Awards for 2009: Nominees for Long Live Camelot Award

UPDATE: Turns out I won this shit. At this point, nothing to do but laugh. It’s what Mary Jo would have done! (Have a blast with that one, right wing.)

(And yes, it is true, I cannot watch Kramer vs Kramer — too disturbing. Give me torture porn any day.)

• Avoid any guy who lists “blogger” on his resume. The reasons to do this are too numerous to list.
• Avoid any guy who starts a sentence with “If you Google me…”
• Avoid any guy who quotes Judd Apatow and/or refers to his friends as “my buddies.”
• Avoid any guy who watches Gossip Girl.
• Avoid any guy who crashes the office Christmas party. He’s there to bang secretaries. Unless he’s unemployed, in which case he’s there to shmooze, pound free booze, and then bang secretaries.
• Avoid any guy who is a lawyer. He’s either about to lose his job or desperately wants to, so he can have an excuse to start that baseball card trading business he’s always dreamed of. In the meantime, he will expect you to support him while he “gets back on his feet.”
• Avoid any guy who keeps old Victoria’s Secret catalogues in his bathroom. Find some respectable Internet porn, for chrissakes.
• Avoid any guy who saw “The Road” and liked it. He’ll never commit.
• Avoid any guy who lives on the L train.
• Avoid any guy with more than 500 followers on Twitter. His virtual ego will be inflated to levels his physical existence can’t match.
• Avoid any guy who claims not to own a TV. Everyone owns a fucking TV. You may be too broke to pay for cable, but you own a TV.
• Avoid any guy who drinks gin martinis and sneers at vodka. He’ll be shitty in bed.
• Avoid any guy who reads Gawker.
• Avoid any guy who says the same thing over and over, but thinks that if he puts the emphasis on a different word it means he’s right (”It is Ridley Scott’s BEST movie. No, it IS Ridley Scott’s best movie.”)
• Avoid any guy who tries to be cool by saying Megan Fox “isn’t that hot.” Please. Vaginas don’t cause blindness.
• Avoid snowboarders. Which won’t be hard, since they won’t be around much this month.
• Avoid any guy who tweets about his bodily emissions. Particularly while they’re happening.
• Avoid any guy who has had naked photos of himself posted on Deadspin.
• Avoid any guy who is the “mayor” of any location on FourSquare.
• Avoid any guy you meet in the basement of Lit. Or any basement, for that matter.
• Avoid any guy who puts “gasm” at the end of words. “Dude, that was a total party-gasm” or “man what a throw-gasm by Brady” all apply. (This rule also works for “tard.”)
• Avoid any guy with a bad haircut. Because he looks funny.
• Avoid any guy who shows any signs of having read ‘The Game.” “My friends all thought you were hot, but I wasn’t so sure” is a clear sign. He’ll be rubbish in bed.
• Avoid any guy who has more than 10 female numbers programmed into his phone. He plans to inseminate all of them, if he hasn’t already.
• Avoid any guy who tells you his ex-girlfriend was crazy. He made her that way.
• Avoid any guy who refers to the Dallas Cowboys as “America’s Team.” Because he is a douche.
• Avoid any guy who shaves more than 20% of his body surface area.
• Avoid any guy who is “microfamous.” His name is John Carney and he’s married.
• Avoid any guy who has done speed dating, match.com or j-date. He has herpes and carpal tunnel.
• Avoid any guy who claims to have written, be writing, or aspire to write a novel. Seriously. Fucking run.
• Avoid any guy who has business cards that say “Internet Entrepreneur.”
• Avoid any guy who is into Premier League soccer. He’ll show up at your apartment on a Sunday morning and vomit on your floor.
• Avoid any guy who checks his power ranking on Mediaite more than once a week.
• Avoid any guy who brags about spending his unemployment check on vintage Styx records.
• Avoid any guy who tells you he “really hates condoms.” I really hate periods. God is cruel.
• Avoid any guy who wears ironic glasses. He thinks he’s the geeky-but-sweet hero in an ’80s movie, and that it’ll get him laid.
• Avoid any guy who works at Google. Wait, what am I saying – date any and all guys who work at Google. Have you HAD their chili-smoked ribs?
• Avoid any guy who comments on blogs under the username “John Galt.”
• Avoid any guy who uses Tom & Jerrys as an office space.
• Avoid any guys who write lists like this and post them on the Internet. They’re under the delusion that they have a chance with any of the women listed.
]]> http://opinionistas.com/2009/12/01/the-holiday-dating-guide-for-women/feed/ 0 http://opinionistas.com/2009/11/24/new-way-to-spend-my-days/ http://opinionistas.com/2009/11/24/new-way-to-spend-my-days/#comments Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:47:52 +0000 admin http://opinionistas.com/?p=517 When I’m not ranting about slasher movies or toddlers in stripper heels, I do occasionally do some legitimate sit-in-an-office work (though it still involves writing and futzing around on the Internet, so it’s tough to really call it “work” — somehow that term seems reserved for, well, stuff that sucks). Anyway my new gig is running an excellent and click-worthy blog, The Infrastructurist, which is a daily conversation about how we get around (and how we’ll continue to do so over the next 50 to 100 years). I suggest you bookmark and read it obsessively.

On that note, happy and safe holiday travel!

]]> http://opinionistas.com/2009/11/24/new-way-to-spend-my-days/feed/ 0 http://opinionistas.com/2009/11/22/todays-sign-of-the-apocalypse-toddlers-in-heels/ http://opinionistas.com/2009/11/22/todays-sign-of-the-apocalypse-toddlers-in-heels/#comments Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:07:58 +0000 admin http://opinionistas.com/?p=513 What does it mean when one of the most famous three-year-olds in the world is toddling around in high heels and designer coats? Nothing good, my friends. Nothing good. Check out my piece in today’s New York Post to read the full rant.
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