Hey, here’s a fun game: What religious texts does Paltrow have on her religious book shelf?

Dianetics? The Satanic Bible?

You all can think of something that’s actually funny, I’m sure.

Actually, we know exactly what books she has, because they came with the shelf. Seriously.

Here’s the non funny part: Because I didn’t pay attention to her that closely, I always thought that Gabe was too hard on Paltrow, but I kind of really hate her now just because of this one bookshelf. It has specially carved nooks so that the tops of all the books line up, sending the inspiring message that different religions should all be respected on the same level. The books are divided between the Abrahamic religions and the four most famous Asian religions, sending the inspiring message that the religious history of the other four continents and most of Europe isn’t even worth remembering. It’s perfect for a person who is simultaneously pretentious and utterly thoughtless.

My question is, where does it end?

My mom sometimes gives food to her church, and they in turn donate it to needy families in the community. The American community. A stable first world country with at least the semblance of a social safety net. Why isn’t she donating that food to needy communities in war-torn Afghanistan? And thinking further, at least the people in Afghanistan are free, when you compare them to political dissidents being tortured in repressive regimes, so why isn’t she dropping everything to start a campaign to free political dissidents? If you think about it even more, with six billion people on earth odds are at least one of them is a quadriplegic orphan nun trapped in a volcano, and sort of accidentally propped up on top of a car battery that periodically shorts out and shocks her, plus Cthulhu is there too. This human rights campaign is really just using up time that would be better spent searching each of our planet’s volcanos….

“Maybe the state could make an argument for why she needs to be institutionalized, but surely two separate private citizens are not in charge of this?”

Well, apparently Jodie Foster attacks have the same protocol as Gamera attacks: Whichever civilian yells the loudest about how the monster is our friend is put in charge. At least Liam Neeson wasn’t wearing short pants. I hope.

I feel like this movie is kind of getting a bad rep here that it doesn’t deserve. It’s not Pirates of the Caribbean 4 or Predators or whatever movie you think is just a parade of idiocies that falls apart in literally one second’s thought.

You don’t have to be open to stupidity, you just have to be open to the fact that this is J.J. Abrams making a retro Spielberg pastiche.

I feel like this movie came out, oh, five years too late. The nostalgia trend is getting played out, and so is the J.J. Abrams trend. Some people are so tired of those trends that they can’t enjoy the rest of the movie, which has excellent child actors, playing well-written characters and good direction that keeps up the suspense.

I can see how the train crash is ridiculous, but at the same time it was really well directed and the fact that it just kept going really made it seem menacing. Every time you think that surely it must almost be over and these kids must be safe, another damn train car falls out of the air and threatens to smush them.

It does fall apart at the ending. My take is, given that the alien is an empath, and that it clearly realizes we’re sentient because it uses our tools to rebuild its spacecraft, it’s eating people because it has been driven crazy, and as soon as it gets back home it’s going to start eating the other members of its own species.

But that one wobbly bit isn’t enough to kill the movie. You might think it would be, but the movie’s really about the kids, and none of them eat people.

People aren’t asking Gabe to turn off his brain, they’re just saying that maybe “just because” IS a good enough reason to set a movie in 1979. That even if making films as a kid isn’t meaningful to him, he can see how it would be to other people and accept it as the premise.

Anyway, if the thought of J.J. Abrams making a Spielberg pastiche sounds good to you, I bet you’ll really like this film, and if the idea is already giving you hives, Super 8 is probably just not quite good enough to win you over.

It looks like Puddle of Mudd bought their spaceship used off of Pearl Forrester, which is appropriate, since they also like to torture people with horrible videos.

So Funny Games has the same ending as Wayne’s World?

How the hell do you choke when asked to come up with an advertisement for the community arts center? I’ve seen government ad campaigns around here that make “Yo, this is my Arts Center” look like “Where’s the beef?” and I live in LA.

Dude, I thought we as a nation agreed to never mention Pogs ever again. They have been erased from history. In fact, what’s a pog? Some kind of fancy Swedish restaurant?

Anyway, I had Beanie Babies. For some insane reason the chameleon was green and the iguana was rainbow colored. I keep them in a box next to my Magic: The Gathering cards and Rob Liefield comics. I’m going to trade that box for a Ferrari.