... The Blurst of Times: Santa's Little Helper

In what has become a bit of an annual tradition, the relatively slow Holiday season has provided me with ample opportunities to explore the depths of Lifetime and the Hallmark Channel's Holiday programing. With "..the Blurst of Times" I'll tell you all about whichever horrible made for TV movie I watched the night before (or in the case like 2 weeks ago).

Santa's Little Helper staring The Miz, and AnnaLyne McCord is definitely a Christmas movie. You can tell because Santa is right there in the title. It's brought to you by the fine film makers at the WWE, the studio responsible for such classics as The Marine 3: Homefront, Jingle All the Way 2 and my favorite Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery. Quite frankly it's one of the stupidest most cliched movies I've seen in a while and I LOVED IT.

Within the first 5 minutes we find the Miz basically shutting down a community center full of cute kids on Christmas, because he's a grinch, so you know we're in for a redemption story. The rest of the plot follows The Miz as he gets laid off from his highfalutin corporate gig and finds himself in competition to earn the right to become the right had man of someone "famous and powerful" who unbeknownst to him, just happens to be Santa. AnnaLyne McCord plays the sexy elf sent to put the Miz through a series of tasks meant to challenge the Miz's character and WWE Diva Paige plays the sexy elf that hopes to derail the Miz so she can take the Santa job for herself.

It's the kind of movie where you know at some point someone is going to get hit in the nuts.

It happens on a ropes course because OF COURSE THERE'S A ROPES COURSE!

Anyhoo, I'd watch AnnaLynne McCord in just about anything and believe it or not the Miz isn't that bad of an actor, at least not when he's asked to play a pompous ass-clown, so a likable cast really makes up for what's a laughably bad script. In fact the laughably bad script is what really makes the movie enjoyable. If Santa's Little Helper was a better written movie it wouldn't have been anywhere near as fun to watch. I definitely give this one a perfect 5/7.

... The Blurst of Times: 12 Dates of Christmas

This years relatively slow Holiday season has provided me with ample opportunities to explore the depths of Lifetime and the Hallmark Channel's Holiday programing. With "..the Blurst of Times" I'll tell you all about whichever horrible made for TV movie I watched the night before.

12 Dates of Christmas is totes a Christmas rip-off of Groundhog Day. There's no two ways about it. Amy Smart's character is knocked out by some secret Christmas magic and spends the rest of the movie repeating the day before Christmas. That is until she finds true love in Mark Paul Gosselaar. Sorry I spoiled the ending for you.. With that that being said, it's a really good Christmas rip-off of Groundhog Day.

Frankly, and I know this sounds stupid, Mark Paul Gosselaar is kind of a good actor, so is Amy Smart. Arguably, they're both better than a cheeseball made for TV movie by on the ABCFamily channel. I guess their career loss is our Christmas gain. Like I said, it's a Groundhog Day rip-off. The first half of the movie Amy Smart spends the day before Christmas repeatedly attempting to break up her old boyfriend with his current girlfriend. She also has to deal with the inconvenience of a blind date with Gosselaar. Somewhere along the line she figures out it's not her ex-boyfriend she really misses, she's just lonely. Enter the dreamboat formerly known as Zack Morris.

Compared to last year's Christmas movie review, Help for the Holidays, 12 Dates of Christmas scores two thumbs way way up. I can certainly think of worse ways to spend the Holiday season, like hanging out with your family.. yuck.

2013, wrap it up

Christmas is over, I'm fat with candy, the lights on the house should be down in 3-4 more weeks and another year in mediocre blogging is the books. As J. Peterman so famously told Elaine, "congratulations on a job.. done"

2013 was a bit erratic for me as far as keeping up the blog goes. The month after I had my daughter everything pretty much ground to a halt. Turns out raising kids is a HUGE time commitment. Who knew? I've done less cosplay posts this year (those take an incredible amount of time to put together) and I definitely hit my quota of single image/one sentence posts.

As you can imagine I did a lot of posts on the next generation consoles and the current state of console gaming. I also did more reviews this year than I've done in the past. Hopefully I'll get to do more of those in 2014. I used the "gratuitous use of babes" tag a lot less. That's probably why the blog was the least profitable since I've started using adsense. I believe the grand haul this year was right around $14. I figure the rate at which I'm going In about 25 years I'll be able to quit my job and do this full time.

Now without further ado, here are the top posts of the year, which is a meaningless way to look at it since the front page is by far the most popular destination and I don't do any click through stories or slide shows.

In a slightly depressing development the most popular posts in 2013 were all written in 2012 or earlier. This Comic-Con Cosplay; Special achievement in hotness edition still rakes in the hits. I'm not 100% sure why but I have a feeling it has something to do with boobs.

Coming it at #2 after all the 2012 posts is this clip of the fake Ninja Warrior streaker that NBC wanted to go viral. You win this time NBC!

Next and more in my wheelhouse was this series of Cosplay posts from Emerald City Comic Con. What I saw of ECCC 2013 was pretty cool. I'm buying my 3 day passes to next year's convention this weekend. Expect me to complain about money a lot in March. Those spider-man prints aren't free son.

Avril Lavigne fighting a bear-shark? is probably the most DevilDinosaur thing on this recap. I'll miss a lot of things about 2013 but I'll miss you most bear-shark.

THE Ohio State Marching Band Dinosaur

As I mentioned before. A lot of my reports and ramblings on the Xbox One/PS4/Steambox made the top of the list this year. I predict that 2014 will see a lot of games that will blow all the launch titles out of the water and subsequently have me thinking about what sort of deal I can get on any superfluous organs I have. I mean who needs two kidneys these days?

You Are Not Going Out Dressed Like That.

I was surprised at the lack of Star Wars stuff this year. The post about JJ Abrams being announced as the director for Episode VII made some hay but that's about it. In sadly related news 2013 saw the end of LucasArts studio as we knew it. I guess we'll always have Day of the Tentacle...

The one review that I did this year that got a lot of clicks was this one for Heroes of Cosplay. I've been pretty unapologetic about watching and enjoying shows that a lot of nerds think are pandering or offensive to "nerd culture". We're living in a new nerd utopia where you can buy Spider-Man and Avengers t-shirts at every store in the mall. I think we'll be able to survive King of the Nerds season 2 (thur, Jan 23rd).

And to round things out here's my favorite youtube channel the Screen Team with their clip Cosplay Kitchen: Avengers Cookies. There's something about their videos that I really enjoy but I just can't quite wrap my hands around it.

And now just for fun, here are the top 20 search keywords:

lfl (lingerie football league, of course)
devil dinosaur blog
nicole scherzinger boobs
scarlett johansson avengers
diora baird
half life episode 3
nicole scherzinger tits
stoya
soccer mom
carmella decesare
cosplay boobs
hoverhand
sexy star wars
alex morgan butt
kat dennings hot
superhero porn
the choice
cosplay slip
hot soccer moms
80s nerd

Nicole Scherzinger Tits? Hot soccer moms? STOYA? Am I running a nerd blog or a porn blog? Ah well, I guess these days there's not much of a difference.

2014 should be a big year. Look for more obscurities I've found on reddit while feeding my daughter at 3am, another site redesign and more stories about Hot Soccer Moms and Alex Morgan's Butt.

... The Blurst of Times: Heroes of Cosplay

Being caught in the dregs of summertime TV scheduling has provided me with ample opportunities to explore the depths the fringe cable networks summer programing. With "..the Blurst of Times" I'll tell you all about whatever horrible reality show I watched the night before (or in this case earlier in the week).

Heroes of Cosplay follows a handful of cosplayers as they compete in major comic book and sci-fi convention costume contests around the country (who knows, maybe the world I've only seen two episodes). I'm kind of surprised it's taken this long for someone to put together a show on cosplayers or convention goers. Comic book conventions have never been hotter and you can't surf the geekier side of the web without running into a half dozen different cosplay slideshows.

I'll admit, I got sucked into this show because the first episode I saw took place at this year's Emerald City Comic Con. I thought maybe I'd see myself in some background footage. It might sound crazy, but half my face was caught in a photo gallery for the Seattle PI so weirder things have happened.

The show is pretty standard reality TV fare. Each episode follows a few cosplayers that are headed to a big convention, with the intention of competing in a costume contest. We get to see them work on their costumes and some behind the scenes drama over the competition itself. I've seen two episodes and it looked like each episode followed a slightly different group of people. Understandable considering some of the bigger conventions are only a week or two apart. I was a bit surprised as to how much drama there was in the cosplay scene. Everyone's really competitive and some people are seen as "real serious cosplayers" and others not so much.

Or are they? An artist I follow on twitter familiar with all the stars of the show made the comment that he recognized all the faces but it was like they were being worn by different people. Also I noticed that one of the cosplayers won a contest with a costume they had worn to Comic-Con back in 2012. The show made it look like she was frantically working on the costume to get it ready for Mega Con. Curious about this, I looked her up on twitter and she mentioned that she has lots of costumes and while she had worn it before she had never competed in it.

In the end it's not really a big deal, but it made me question exactly how much reality was in this reality show

On a scale of hipster guy dressed up as Slave Leia to this crazy rad Hawkgirl, I'll give Heroes of Cosplay a B+. I wish it wasn't edited so heavily but it's still really enjoyable.

... The Blurst of Times: The Bachelorette

Having my parents in town all week watching my son while his daycare is closed has provided me with ample opportunities to explore the depths of ABCs bachelor/bachelorette wheel of douche. With "..the Blurst of Times" I'll tell you all about whatever horrible reality show I watched the night before (or in this case earlier in the week).

As the screen cap from my wife's twitter feed has shown, Monday night the internet was absolutely ON BUZZ with the huge twist in the first part of the two part Bachelorette finale. Are you familiar with the Bachelor and the Bachelorette? Of course you are, so I'll skip a lot of the pomp and circumstance. The big shocker came when the Bachelorette (I forget her name, lets call her Sally) was down to the final 3 guys (lets call them the final 3 guys). Sally had just decided she fake loved one more than the other two and BOOM that guy decided he wasn't in fake love with Sally and was done with the show. OMG you guys it was so crazy you have no idea. Or maybe you do, I don't really know...

On a scale of Tony Stark is really Iron Man to Bruce Willis was dead the whole time I'll give the Bachelorette shocker a 3. I have no idea why my parents watch this junk when WWE RAW is right there on channel 105.

.. the Blurst of Times: Help for the Holidays

Having the week of Christmas off has provided me with ample opportunities to explore the depths of Lifetime and the Hallmark Channel's Holiday programing. With "..the Blurst of Times" I'll tell you all about whichever horrible made for TV movie I watched the night before.

In Help for the Holidays Summer Glau (Firefly) plays Christine Prancer an elf sent to help an upwardly mobile family regain their Christmas spirit in the guise of a new nanny. Apparently that's a thing Santa does now and would you believe that it leads to Summer Glau falling in love with the kids dreamy uncle who just so happens to run the town's Christmas tree farm? I won't ruin it for you and tell you if in the end she decides to give up her life as an elf to stay with captain dreamboat and her new found family but yes, she totally does.

On a scale of The Santa Clause 3 to Christmas Vacation, Help for the Holidays scores a respectable B -. It was a thousand times better than the Will Sasso as Santa barf fest I watched a couple days ago. Seriously what happened to Mira Sorvino?

.. The Blurst of Times: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Having the a sick child at home all weekend has provided me with ample opportunities to explore the depths of Saturday and Sunday morning children's programing. With "..the Blurst of Times" I'll tell you all about whatever horrible remake of a TV show from the 80s I watched the night before (or in this case last week).

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was one of those cartoons/toys/comics that really captured the zeitgeist of the 1980s. Even the fact that they started as this sort of hardcore, counter culture, stick it to the man kind of indie comic that eventually was whored out to the point where they were shooting pizza cannons at bad guys while yelling cowabunga dude on Saturday morning TV was itself very 1980s. What I'm trying to get at here is that since the 80s and early 90s the Turtles haven't been able to match their original success.

There have been new toy lines and new TV shows, even a new animated movie, but nothing that has really pushed them past whatever it is kids like these days. Pokemon? Is it still Pokemon?

Whatever, the Turtles are back (in pog form!) again. Nickelodeon premiered a new TMNT cartoon over the weekend. I watched it with my son and I have to say it was pretty good. Now Logan didn't think it was as good as the Lego Star Wars cartoon we watched earlier but there's no way in hell I'm reviewing that (so many continuity errors). The new Turtles cartoon was stylish and action oriented while still retaining some funny goofy stuff. In a lot of ways it reminded me of the Teen Titans cartoon from a few years back. On a scale of Michelangelo to Raphael I give it a Donatello.

... The Blurst of Times: The Choice

Having my family in town last week provided me with ample opportunities to watch absolute garbage TV shows on networks I've heard of but have never actually watched before (I'm looking at you CBS and CMT). With "..the Blurst of Times" I'll tell you all about whatever horrible abortion of a TV show I watched the night before (or in this case last week).

The Choice might be the single most rip-offiest TV show I've ever seen and it's probably the worst dating show on TV since Studs (and I loved Studs!). The format is simple, it's exactly like the Voice except instead of competing for a record contract contestants are competing for a date with celebrities people who have been on TV before, like the host of Loveline. No not Adam Corolla, the new guy that isn't Adam Corolla.

Casting for The Choice must have been done at a local Hollywood bar. That's the only reason I can think of for the mix of d-list celebrity douchebags (and yes the Jonas Brothers are now d-list) and Tampa 10s fighting for their affections.

On a scale of 1 to The Fifth Wheel hosted by Aisha Tyler, The Choice scores an Elimidate. It's not without it's charms but you definitely feel dumber for having watched it.

..the Blurst of Times

Having a stomach virus last week provided me with ample opportunities to watch absolute garbage TV shows in between wretchings at 2 in the morning. With "..the Blurst of Times" I'll tell you all about whatever horrible abortion of a TV show I watched the night before (or in this case last week).

Ice Loves Coco might be the best worst reality show of all times. In it a film crew follows a soft drink executive as he battles his addiction to cocaine. At least that's what I remember the first time I watched it while I was dehydrated and wacked out on pain pills. The second time I caught it (conveniently E replays it every 90 minutes) I realized it was about Gangsta rapper turned gritty TV cop, Ice T's relationship to his giant assed-supermodel(?) wife. Who might be a man... I mean she sort of looks manish sometimes.

Anyhoo, they're both hilarious. The show is so stupid it's great. Their bulldog is names Spartacus. What more do you need to know?

On a scale of 1 to when I had to puke again this show scores a very respectable 25 minutes. My wife caught me adding it to our DVR schedule. You could tell she wanted to judge me, but I quickly reminded her that people who watch the Little Couple shouldn't throw stones.

..the Blurst of Times

Having a 11 month old that just doesn't want to sleep like a normal human has provided me with ample opportunities to watch absolute garbage TV shows and movies at 1 in the morning. With "..the Blurst of Times" I'll tell you all about whatever horrible abortion of a TV show I watched the night before.

Zombie Strippers is one of those movies that really delivers on it's title. At least I assume it does, I mean I've never actually been in a strip club or worse yet, seen a real zombie.

Now if you missed Zombie Strippers in the theater let me tell you the small screen hardly does it justice. If you really want to appreciate how god-awful Jenna Jameson looks these days you really need to check it out in Imax, or at least in digitally projected 3-d. It also helps if you've read the book before hand, the plot has a lot of twists and turns, and if you don't pay close attention you'll get confused. Think Inception but with breast implants.

On a scale of 1 to when I fell asleep this movie scores a very respectable 40 minutes. I mean lets face it, zombies and strippers are going to hold your attention for quite a while. It wasn't until the zombies started stripping that I called it a night.

.. The Blurst of Times. SDCC

what's up nerds?
Having a teething 8 month old has provided me with ample opportunities to watch absolute garbage TV shows at 2 in the morning. With "..the Blurst of Times" I'll tell you all about whatever horrible abortion of a TV show I watched the night before.

G4's coverage of the San Diego Comic Con was equal parts awesome geekery and shameless nerd pandering. Actually it was more like 65 percent nerd pandering and about 35 percent awesome geekery (which not coincidentally is about the same ratio found in G4 host Olivia Munn).

The actual show seemed like it was edited by a 12 year old on angel dust. Every thing from the floor was shaky cams and MTV style quick cuts. Sure call me a cranky old man, but sometimes I actually want to see the Comic Con exclusive He-Man Molar figure for more than half a second... and Actual comic news!

Things and people I liked:
Cosplayers! Comic-Con always delivers when it comes to nerds dressed up as nerdy things. G4 did a decent job showing lots of the costumed dorks from the floor.
Comic book coverage! It wasn't great but at least it was there. I get it that SDCC is all about TV shows and movies these days so it's nice that there was a little bit of comic book love.
Thor! Kenneth Branagh and Chris Hemmsworth totally sold me on Thor. They were great. Especially when you compared them to the casts of Captain America and Green Lantern, who seemed almost bored to be there.
Daniel Dae Kim! admitted to putting on a mask and buying a couple lightsabers off the floor, just like regular people.
Ali Larter! Looks great pregnant. there I said it, so sue me

Things and people that sucked:
Oliva Munn! She was just kind of obnoxious. If she wasn't talking over Kevin Pereira's questions, or blatantly reading from a teleprompter, she was screwing up Nathan Fillion's name.
Michael Chiklis! needs to take off those stupid sunglasses. He looked like an idiot.
No panels! The talked about the panels constantly, Why was there no actual footage from them? Let say you had to spend all day in line to catch the Tron panel, wouldn't it be nice to see something from the ones you missed?
Artists Alley! Is huge and awesome and was never mentioned once.
Blair Butler's under bite! Just kidding Blair... kind of.

I closing; On a scale of 1 to when I fell asleep G4's Comic-Con coverage scores a hefty 4 hours. However, if I hadn't been watching it on delay through the DVR I never would have made it The fast forward button got a pretty good work out.

.. The Blurst of Times

Having a fussy 6 month old has provided me with ample opportunities to watch absolute garbage TV shows at 2 in the morning. With "..the Blurst of Times" I'll tell you all about whatever horrible abortion of a TV show I watched the night before.

Dracula 3000 stars Casper Van Dien, Erika Eleniak and Coolio. Do I really need to continue? Ok, your loss. The movie starts out like EVERY space horror film ever. There's a derelect ship floating through space and it's up to Casper Van Dien's crew to salvage the ship and find out what happened. The twist here is that Dracula happened.

My favorite part of this assgrab of a film (other than Casper Van Dien's 5 o'clock shadow) is that Coolio's character is named 187, I would imagine after the police code for homicide. Of course since it's a thousand years into the future it makes as much sense as if my nickname was out of the Corpus Hermetica (it's a greek literature joke, I can be very high brow). Did I mention Coolio loves weed in this movie? Did I need to?

On a scale of 1 to when I fell asleep this movie scores a hefty 45 minutes. Once Coolio turned into some sort of jugallo vampire I knew it was time to call it a night.

.. The Blurst of Times

Having a sick newborn has provided me with ample opportunities to watch absolute garbage TV shows at 2 in the morning. With "..the Blurst of Times" I'll tell you all about whatever horrible abortion of a TV show I watched the night before.

Repo! The Genetic Opera Is every bit as bad as it sounds. Watching it at 3 in the morning last night with an aching back and a sick kid was awful. Lets see if I can come up with a picture from my misc. picture folder that can sum up the night...


.. yep that's it. Repo! is what you'd get if you took a film school dropout, pumped him full of meth and old morissey tapes then asked him to rip-off the musical episode of Buffy. Oh yeah, don't forget to write a part for Paris Hilton!

On a scale of 1 to when I fell asleep, I give this movie a score of "oh God, why are there only boner commercials on at this time of night?!"

..The Blurst of Times

"yeah, you're all pretty much screwed... oh sorry, poor choice of words"
Having a newborn has provided me with ample opportunities to watch absolute garbage TV shows at 2 in the morning. With "..the Blurst of Times" I'll tell you all about whatever horrible abortion of a TV show I watched the night before.

Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew is quite possibly the most mind bottling tv show I've seen all year. I mean this is VH1 right? Where on earth does this show fit in with VH1's line-up of sluts? After Rock of Love 5 but before Frank the Entertainer ..in a Basement Affair? I mean there's no way you'd expect the same people that brought you Love of Ray Jay 2 to bring you a serious show about people battling sex addiction. That would be like your drug dealer trying to convince you to go into rehab (which I swear happened to one of the girls on the show).

So when I start watching Sex Rehab I'm not expecting much but I'll be dipped if it wasn't completely fascinating and compelling. The show is a pretty straight forward docu-drama. Dr. Drew and VH1 have gathered together a half dozen celebrities who are all battling sex addiction of some sort for a 21 day stay in a rehabilitation center. Of course this is VH1 so their definition of celebrity is loose at best. I mean I'm sure that if you're a Skid Row fan their drummer is a really big deal to you, but I still don't think I would call them a celebrity.

The show still has a tinge of exploitation to it, there's at least one patient who is clearly not there to get healthy. But it's hard not to be drawn in by the honesty and openness of the majority of the patients. Overall it's a really fascinating look into the lives of people facing addiction, what got them there and the steps it takes for them to find help.

On a scale of 1 to when I fell asleep, I give this show about 45 minutes. I started drifting off near the end, but lucked out when I found the episode on On Demand.

..the Blurst of Times

Having a newborn has provided me with ample opportunities to watch absolute garbage TV shows. What else is there to do when you're stuck on the couch at 2am because the little poop machine won't sleep without being held? You need at least one hand to hold him so playing video games is pretty much out and at 2am you don't really have the energy to pay attention to a movie (even if it's a really good one like Screamers 2).

This brings me to a new column I like to call "Garbage I watched at 2am"... no wait it's now "..the Blurst of Times" (boom! Simpson's reference). Here I'll tell you all about whatever horrible abortion of a TV show I watched the night before.

Holly's World, a show so awesome E! doesn't have a page for it on their website. The show itself is all about Holly Madison, Hugh Hefner's ex-head-blonde, and her "crazy" new life in Las Vegas. So think of The Girls Next Door, don't lie, you know you've seen at least one episode. Take out the stupid one everyone likes, replace Hugh Hefner with a generic gay best friend, add all the douchebaggery only a place like Vegas can provide and WHAMMY you're left with something that just barely qualifies as a real TV show.

Like most reality TV shows on E!, Holly's World doesn't have a plot, it's just a bunch of cameras following Holly Madison around. Why? Boobs of course! Seriously I don't remember what this show was about at all. I remember a meeting with the Mayor of Vegas over traffic revisions (I sh*t you not), her being a UFC ring girl and a fun introduction of all her new Vegas friends. Lets just say that the Mayor's memorabilia collection was the highlight of this episode and leave it at that.

On a scale of 1 to when I fell asleep, I give this show about 12 minutes. By the time I woke up it was infomercial city.