Yes, I know I'm recycling. Sue me. I get a lot of people who find my site looking for Halloween costume ideas, so I thought the proper thing to do would be to do those folks a favor and repost my costume list from last year. It still works, and I've gussied it up some to make it look a little nicer.

Expect a couple more recycles this week, as I'm gonna try to have an update every day until the big day. I've still got a review or two to get posted, so there will be some brand new material as well.

Just as a public service, I'd like to announce that dressing up like Charlie Brown from "It's the Great Pumpkin" is not the brightest idea. At least without a lot more forethought than I managed to put into it. Oh, and don't try to dye polyester wigs at the eleventh hour.

- posted by Noel @ 7:57 AM

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My Tribute Haiku for Fred "Rerun" Berry

On What's Happenin'
Fred was the funniest guy
That wore a beret.


- posted by Noel @ 8:07 AM

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SEPERATED AT BIRTH?

         

Click the picture on the left to see who may or may not have been posing as Saddam Hussein's body double.

- posted by Noel @ 11:38 AM

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IT'S SURREAL, BABY!

Well, you can't go wrong with news like this. Earlier this year, I made it a habit to follow along with the zany adventures of seven C-list celebrities on the WB's Surreal Life, and made a promise that I would repeat that feat if they were to do a second season. Well, it looks like I'm gonna have to make good on that one, because it's coming!

Tammy Faye Messner and Ron Jeremy are among the once and future stars sharing a Hollywood Hills mansion during the second season of the WB's "The Surreal Life."

THE FORMER televangelist's wife and the porn king will live in the house and act as hosts for 11 days. They'll have four other roommates: rapper Vanilla Ice, "CHiPs"actor Erik Estrada, former "Baywatch" actress Traci Bingham and "Real World: Las Vegas" cast member Trishelle. They'll also have a celebrity guest move in each week on the reality show, which began shooting Monday.

Well, there's definitely an explosive element there with Tammy Faye and The Hedgehog taking center stage. Tammy Faye is practically family here anyway: her son married MCFTR's very own Jay "Me So" Hornsby and his wife Angee just last month in a wedding that I also participated in.

I couldn't pick the Baywatch chick and Real World girl out of a police lineup, but Erik Estrada and Vanilla Ice are good choices. I'm not sure I agree with the change in formula, but if the special guest slot means we may get cameos from Corey Feldman, Vince Neil, or Manny Mo, I'm all for it.

A lot of good response on the Bootleg toys article, so I'm going to try to locate some more in the near future and possibly get another article up soon. I'm also thinking about the possibility of running a contest here with some of the bootleg toys as prizes. If anyone's interested in that, drop a reply on the Message Board.

- posted by Noel @ 7:45 AM

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The KISS article was a day overdue. Okay, actually, I intended to have it up a couple weeks ago, but I've been so hella busy that it's been hard to even think about sitting still on my couch for two hours to watch anything. This week should be only slightly less busy, as I'm trying to get my groove going with the second job, but hopefully I'll have a few more seasonal themed items to get up and running before Halloween is done for.

- posted by Noel @ 8:38 AM

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Now, normally I wouldn't do this sort of thing, but this is just too good to resist. I get a fair amount of link exchange requests, most of which are from sites similair to mine: Independently-run pop culture and movie review sites. In almost all cases, I will offer to link the site in return for a reciprocal link. So I figured it was business as usual when I received this e-mail the other night:

Dear Portal Administration!

I have recently come across your site and liked it very much.

I suppose that the visitors of our resources belong to the same social group and my site could be useful for your audience so I suggest to exchange our links. This will help both of us to increase Link-Popularity and accordingly get top positions in many searching system, Google for instance.

Now, that doesn't sound too unusual, does it? Sure, there's a little broken English, but it sounds like just another link request from a site with similair content, right?

Well, I kept reading the e-mail, and let's just take a look at the next line, as matter-of-factly as they put it:

My site is dedicated to guns.

And sure enough, it is. And I'm not talking about some euphemism like large breasts or bicep muscles, I'm talking revolvers and shotguns and the like. How they came to the conclusion that their readers and mine might share interests is a wonder, but I guess it takes all kinds.

Anyway, I just thought I'd share. Still haven't had time to get any new content up in the last few days, so I've decided to appease the masses by re-posting Terry's Zombie essay from a couple of months ago. It's funny, it fits the theme, and I've cleaned it up to go with the holiday look. Go check it out.

- posted by Noel @ 7:36 AM

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Yesterday was the busiest day ever. For that reason, there was no sort of site update at all. You see, on Monday afternoon I found a car on the AutoTrader website that sounded promising, so I called to arrange a test drive. Next thing you know, I was in love. This car was immaculate, ran great, and was pretty much the ideal car I had been eyeing for my budget. So I jumped in headfirst and decided I needed to make it mine. So yesterday I went in to work an hour and a half early, waited for my loan to get to me, drove from the South end of the Atlanta Perimeter to midtown where I live, then way out to the North end of the Perimeter to buy the car. After that, I had to go back to work for the next three and a half hours, got out just in time to deal with some horrible traffic, ran to Staples to get supplies for my first gig with the trivia company, got home in time to load up my equipment and haul ass to the gig. By the time the gig (which was pretty stressful, their PA was shot to hell) was over, I was so tired I could barely see. A stiff drink later, and I was out cold.

So please forgive me when I tell you that I was just too a) busy and b) stressed to update anything here.

Hopefully, I'll be able to get some of the promised Halloween material up on the site by next week. Oh, and if you were curious about the quality of the products on the MCFTR store, I received my baseball jersey yesterday, and it turned out very nice. So go buy something!

- posted by Noel @ 10:28 AM

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Okay, it was a helluva weekend, and I'm going to go ahead and say it now: Chad was right when he said KILL BILL was the shit. I was very impressed with it, regardless of how much I said I thought it was going to suck in my Fall Preview I wrote a month ago. So that's three I've been wrong on now (see also SCHOOL OF ROCK and THE RUNDOWN), but it's par for the course when you're a pessimist. Anyway, I loved it. Pure escapism, and it really takes that fantastic world that Quentin Tarantino has created in his other films and puts a whole new spin on it where Japanese airlines allow samurai swords in First Class and missing coma patients are no big deal. Seriously, I've read people's reviews that dwell on the lack of realism as a negative, but as Chad said, they just don't get it. It's not supposed to be real. But alas, this is about all I'm gonna write about it, because while I could go on and on about the movie, there's no way I can touch the emotion and passion that Chad put into his, so I'm not even gonna try.

You also will want to check out the Pootie Tang song Terry composed in the Multimedia Section. It's, uh, well, different, but it's about as catchy as mono.

I start a new job this week in addition to my regular 9 to 5, hosting trivia at various restaurants in the Atlanta area. It shouldn't interfere with the time I use to work on the site, however, unless I get some monumental workload at the real job. But it's a nice bit of extra cash and should be a whole lot of fun. After years of being the guy answering the questions to try and earn my bar tab, I guess it's fitting that I actually start asking the questions. Oh, and if you want to find out what the hell my cat is whispering sweet nothings into the ear of, click on the picture. Like I said, it was a helluva weekend, and I have the bootlegged toys to prove it.

- posted by Noel @ 11:00 AM

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MCFTR, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!!!

One year ago today, I re-launched Movie Criticism for the Retarded at the domain fortheretarded.com on the server it is hosted on today. Oh, sure, MCFTR has existed as a web entity in some form since 1998, and before that, on a crappy word processor at a doomed video store. But the current incarnation, the "mature" version if you will, has been around for precisely one year. Since nobody wants to work on their birthday, I've decided to recycle by tossing up the review I used to relaunch one year ago today: the Scott Baio/Willie Aames classic ZAPPED! It's timely not only because of the whole MCFTR birthday thing, but also because it's got a bit of a supernatural theme so it sort of ties in to the Halloween gig. It also won't be the first thing I'm recycling this month, but I'll be cleaning these articles up as I go to reflect the natural evolution of MCFTR as you've come to know it.

In the past year, I've nearly tripled the amount of content from what it contained over the previous four-plus years. Of course, I'd like to thank Bobby, Chad, Terry, Jay, J.R., and Justin for their contributions as well over the past year. But also, to everyone who reads, everyone who links to us, and everyone who's ever submitted me feedback (be it a bitch or a bravo,) thank you as well. I wouldn't have the desire to do this if you weren't there to read it.

More Halloween goodness coming up over the next few weeks.

- posted by Noel @ 6:46 AM

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If you're reading this, you're apparently doing better than I am, because my webhosting company has been offline since I woke up this morning. Somebody needs to get their shit together.


- posted by Noel @ 7:30 AM

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Clap, Clap, ClapClapClap, ClapClapClapClap, NEW POLL!
Clap, Clap, ClapClapClap, ClapClapClapClap, NEW POLL!

And I think I'm finally done with all the front page tweaks for the Halloween theme. Lord knows I'm not looking forward to switching back at the first of November.

Oh, also, today I got my first speeding ticket in nearly ten years on my way in to work. 82 in a 55, nailed by a state patroller. This is gonna hurt. So everyone should buy stuff from the MCFTR Store to help my cause. I'm not yet desperate enough to put up a paypal link.


- posted by Noel @ 8:44 AM

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Man, I got a lot of stuff to get up on this site in the next four weeks.

First off the bat today, a personal plug for a fantastic affiliate of ours, Badmouth Movies. It's a well-designed site with a bunch of content and commerce options. They've also reprinted Chad's awesome Kill Bill Review on their site, and I'm looking forward to some additional content exchanges between our sites. I figure it's an easy out when I'm at a loss for article ideas, which is *totally* not the case this time around. I've got two reviews for movies I saw over the weekend to get up on the site, plus about a half-dozen Halloween-themed articles to get up in the next few weeks. I've got some real winners, and I don't want to give anything away yet, but there's gonna be a whole lot of Gene Simmons going on around here soon.

Last year I passed on it, so this year I'm making it a point not to let it slip away. I'm referring to an RCA Select-A-Vision video system from around 1981 or so. If you're not sure what one is, the image on the left may help refresh your memory. It was the predecessor to the Laserdisc, and is now more or less relegated to an obscure relic. I found one at a yard sale last fall, and passed on it at the time, but found the original sellers this past weekend and inquired about the system. Apparently they have about 50 movies to go with it, but they need to haul it out of storage. You can bet your sweet bippy that as soon as I get my hands on this thing, there'll be an in-depth article here for everyone to marvel at this videophile's dream. More to come, I hope.

Go Cubs. I guess if anyone had to beat the Braves this year, you'd be my first choice.


- posted by Noel @ 7:37 AM

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BOO!

Figure if I'm gonna get with the holiday spirit, I might as well spruce up the ol' blog too.

Hey, if you haven't read Chad's Kill Bill review, you should. It's really awesome and shows a lot of passion. I guess that's what happens when you have a man right in the middle of the action. Oh, also, you should read my Scary Clowns article, even if you already have, because I revamped it to reflect the Halloween gig.

Probably won't have any new articles up until next week, but this weekend I hope to get out and see Lost in Translation or School of Rock or both, so I should have a review up of whatever I see by Mondayish. I've also passed some lyrics on to Terry the music guy and will hopefull have some new Multimedia offerings up in the near future.

And remember when I was bitching about that keyboard from hell last week? I resloved the problem for two dollars at a yard sale last week. All I can say is this:

All hail the Microsoft Office Keyboard.


- posted by Noel @ 9:28 AM

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I'm updating here for a couple of reasons, most notably to gloat about the fact that my computer appears to be working again the way it's supposed to. The other day, my main home PC decided that after a reboot, it was going to give me the old "Windows Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close. We're sorry for the inconvenience".

Inconvenience? Inconvenience? My entire Operating System isn't stable enough to stay open, and that's an Inconvenience? Well, thankfully, I was able to keep it stable enough to try a system restore, which failed. So I tried installing some patches and registry tweaks, and no dice. I ran Norton Antivirus, Ad-Aware 6, SpyBot S&D, and HijackThis, and still had the problem. Finally, after running System File Checker and doing a defrag, I appear to have the situation under control.

Weird things happened with the clown article I posted today, too. It seems my server spit up an old copy of the page at around 9:21 PM, about five hours after I posted the final version. The early version contains a typo or two, and the text isn't formatted right. I can't figure out for the life of me why my hosting company somehow dug up an overwritten file, but I should have the final copy back up by 9AMish EST on Thursday.

Oh, and I just received a big fat Kill Bill review from Chad, which will be up first thing tomorrow. Eight days before it hits theaters. MCFTR is cutting edge, baby.

Buy things for yourself. Then buy things for me.

- posted by Noel @ 9:43 PM

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