No Way Home

How come it took me this long to realize that Tim Roth was such a terrific actor? Is it because I never saw Rob Roy?

My Life as a Dog

Most of childhood is stupid and embarrassing, but eventually you realize that it's all pretty funny.

American Grindhouse

I wanted more Joel M. Reed and less Kroger Babb.

Solitary Man

Someone should hurry up and start http://fuckyeahmichaeldouglas.tumblr.com

Reality 86'd

During the summer of 2001, back when I was but a college livin' man at the University of California, Berkeley, I listened to Rollins Band's "Joy Riding With Frank" every single goddamn day. Each and every day from May to September whether I was sitting on BART, cruising to Safeway in my 1986 Mazda, or shutting my eyes trying to fall asleep at two in the morning after I'd finished watching The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn, I had nothing but thirty-two minutes of hollerin', guitar bloops, and slappy bass fills rattling through my head. My roommate totally (deservedly) made fun of me for it, probably because he knew that it wouldn't be long before I'd come home late one night so jonesing to hear this song I would wind up snapping my headphones in half as I stumbled toward my bed.

This bed, I should point out, wasn't really even a bed at all. It was a twenty-five year old sleeping bag on top of a mattress pad on top of my olive green shag-carpeted bedroom, a bedroom which, I should also point out, wasn't really even a bedroom at all. It was our living room that'd been partitioned into a pretend bedroom by a plywood sheet that was screwed into the ceiling and decorated with charcoal-drawn orchids.

That was pretty much how I lived all through college. I slept on the floor and listened to shitty rock music from 1987.

Life Is Hot in Cracktown

Buddy Giovinazzo has no choice in life but to make movies about dopesick panhandlers who mentor child prostitutes, pre-op trannies who are flat-out gorgeous, and teenage gang-bangers whose hearts ache for their departed sisters with such intensity they pee on rape victims and beat old men half to death just to get through the day.

Sherrybaby

I knew Maggie Gyllenhall was a great actress when I saw that part in Secretary where she dabbed water off her blouse and you could see the shape of her boob.

Vengeance

I don't read reviews anymore so I have no idea how highly folks regard this thing, but I'm confident that if Vengeance had come out in 1973 Tarantino, Eli Roth, and Patton Oswalt would fucking love it.

Doug Stanhope -- No Refunds

Like everyone else I've always enjoyed comedians. I remember lying in bed watching Comic Strip Live on Saturday nights, downloading the audio for Chappelle's Killin' Them Softly off Napster (I didn't actually see the video for another three years), and talking close personal friend Chris Daly into driving me around for an extra forty minutes just so we could listen to the rest of Skanks for the Memories in his car. But over the past two years I've decided that I don't just like stand-up comedy, I love it. It all started in February of 2009 when Matt Timmons told me I should listen to Adam Carolla's new podcast. I'd been listening to Fresh Air and The Sound of Young America for a few years by then, but hearing Carolla's show changed everything. I remember sitting at work hearing Carolla and David Alan Grier bullshit for an hour, Grier telling stories about his parents' divorce and how his psychiatrist father wrote Black Rage, and all of the sudden I realized how much was missing from my life. From then on, all I wanted was to have clever conversations with smart people, reference Billy Jack with 40 year-olds, and have a dad who penned a treatise on Black Power.

I spent the rest of that year listening to every episode Carolla put online. And then when I got tired of that I switched to Marc Maron's WTF and Greg Fitzsimmons. I spent the entire summer listening to Bill Burr's Monday Morning Podcast, and anytime I had two and a half hours to spare and a hankering to hear about DMT and pornography I didn't hesitate to download the latest episode of The Joe Rogan Experience. Comedy has really spoken to me, and it was all because of the podcast medium. Thinking about it made me realize that what I like about stand-up had nothing to do with wanting to laugh and everything to do with the comedians themselves. I liked their miserable and bitter lives, so full of loneliness and 12-Step Meetings. I liked their failings with women and their arguments with...everyone. It all made sense to me, and I could relate to nearly all of it.

So for the past two years this enthusiasm has turned me into a bit of a lunatic myself, drunkenly haranguing friends and family with tales of my own self-loathing and non-romantic non-entanglements, every minute of every one of these debacles I fantasize as training sessions for my own Evening at the Improv. I know it's after last call and we're standing on the corner outside your building, but in my head I look like Rick Shapiro and sound like Bill Burr.

Sinbad -- Nothin' But the Funk

Hey, c'mon. Sinbad's funny.

Sleeping Dogs Lie

I've been a fan of Bobcat Goldthwait since I was a child, and when I say "fan" I mean I saw him on television and he made my dad laugh. The guy also had a funny voice and walked out onstage with his pants around his ankles. It was a three-point frozen rope right into a young boy's heart.