A
Nice Hard Slap is dead. My blog is taking a new shape, though I don’t
assume it’ll get any smarter or more worth a link in your interoffice
email forward list because of the change.

What
I promise is simple, frank, and oftentimes annoying opinion. I’ll
probably contradict myself and seem like a dick, burn bridges
[preferably Beau], and further ostracize myself from the middle but
what the hell. Life’s too short.

Moriarty has left AICN for a new site, Patrick Sauriol’s restarted Corona’s Coming Attractions,
and I still feel like the world of movie websites is nearing an
all-time low. With exceptions of course, as I consider both of those
guys top notch and good friends [who I keep horrible contact with,
sadly]. Off the top of my head I can only say great things about what
folks like Garth Franklin, Ryan Rotten, Jeremy Smith, and some others
are doing [and of course I think we’re still quite sensual here] but as
the business of discussing movies grows deeper towards the blogosphere
and the wrong sites get attention, scoops, and traffic it’s hard not to
be curmudgeon.

It doesn’t help that the old standards have lost some of the luster. Us included in some regards but I’m working on that.

I mean, I don’t know AICN’s “Massawyrm” but his recent review of The Spirit
uses the terms “epic fail” and “asstastic”. I make up my own stupid
bastardizations of words but it’s something I’ve been doing since day
one and is kind of part of the “brand” here. Things like “pwned” and
“epic fail” and the like are easy, flavor-of-the-month type of internet
epithets that are better to use to flush out the bad writers than to
have comprise the body of something at least trying to be of value to
the readership.

There
are too many movie websites. No checks and balances, and the studios
have a horrible track record in whom they are friendly to and why.

I
think we’re close to another internet crash like the one that killed so
many sites in the early 00’s. Looking at this month’s revenue is proof
of such.

Maybe we all need to prove we deserve to belong.

Today’s Moments:

  • In
    my bleary state I forgot to give my wife Catherine the dust buster she
    wanted for Christmas. We unwrapped everything and I went to bed in a
    haze. Later, I woke up after she’d busted ass sans dust buster, saying
    she was going to use her Target gift certificates for one because it
    was a pain to clean up today without one. I then realized we’d
    forgotten to unwrap something. Oops.

  • Instead of calling folks this year, I texted for a good hour and a half. Honestly, it felt GOOD.
  • I got weird gifts.
  • It
    may just be me, but I think there’s a lot of exasperation in the
    extended family these days. Maybe I’m right. Maybe the status quo and
    traditions need to be fucked with.

  • The best thing about this day was reading that the actor’s strike is in danger. Sorry Jesus,