February 19th, 2001 Hey, people make mistakes. Sometimes people make poor decisions based on bad information, sometimes people say things that they don't mean in the heat of the moment, and sometimes, well... sometimes people are just assholes. All it takes is a pure heart, a noble spirit, and enough people emailing to tell you that you're a total asswipe to make you want to admit that you're wrong, swallow your pride, and make a public apology for your misspoken words. If the Catholic Church can do it for Galileo, I can do it for these guys. You might want to cover the youngster's eyes for this one, some of my "fans" have mouths like drunken pirates. Alright, let's eat some crow... February Mailbag: We're Sorry! By Marcus Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 14:01:45 -0400 From: David Foster Subject: More Reader Mail Marcus, I am writing about your feature "More Reader Mail" in defense of "Sloppy Joe." This poor kid is obviously suffering from some degree of mental retardation or severe substance abuse, and rather than just kindly reply to him, you ridicule him in front of the world on your little web site. You must think that you're such a big man to make fun of such an easy target. This is the lowest, most vulgar form of "comedy" that's spreading across the internet, and I am appalled and offended by your insensitivity to this obviously deficient individual. You are a cocksucker. Burn in hell, faggot. David. Dear David, I'm sorry. I apologize to you, I apologize to others that I've offended, and if your autistic ass can sound out the words and read this, Sloppy Joe, most of all, I apologize to you. New information has come to light, and it turns out that having people just give you money via internet without provocation is not a chapter from the ravings of a madman, but an actual program offered by the world's leading online shopping site, Amazon.com. Whereas Sloppy Joe describes his system as an "anitdote that will pay his college loans on other people's wallets," Amazon.com describes their "Honor System" as a way to let your web page readers "show their appreciation - by giving you cash." Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Say it how you will, it's still making the assumption that somebody you don't know is just gonna give you money just because you ask them to. At least Joe's plan included a free gift... Well, if a well respected, multi-national web retailer like Amazon is on board with Joe's plan to financial easy street, then by gum, so is misinformer. We apologize for our previous naysaying. We were wrong. We're gonna put one of the patented "Sloppy Joe's Amazon.com Honor System" donation boxes on every page of this site. If a particular feature or movie review gives you such a big guffaw that you feel the need to give us a dollar, by all means do so. Who are we to stand in the way of progress? Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 19:57:04 EST From: Shawn Crandell Subject: Disney's Dinosaur This is for whoever writes the movie reviews, Alright you fucking cocklover, whats your problem with Dinosaur? I worked four years at the Secret Lab on Dino, and I'm wondering what your big fucking problem with the movie is, since you keep bringing it up over and over again, only to say unfounded immature, bitchy, pussy ass things about it. In your El Dorado review, you call the trailer "an abortive attempt to wow us with 1994 style dinosaur effects." Hey, fuck you! Did you know that there were 500 megs of textures on each one of those dinosaurs? To put that in terms you can understand, thats the magnification you'd have to use before you could see your dick in a micrascope. In your Toy STory 2 review, you call Dino "piss poor". You know whats piss poor? A piece of shit animation called "A Narrow Martian of Error" on the Computer Animation Marvel's DVD. Whoever animated that piece of dogshit was "piss poor." Oh wait a second, that was a "Marcus Hart", could that be the same "Marcus" who is writing this reviews? You fucking suck. Get a clue about what is good before you start ragging on other people, and learn how to animate, shithead. sc Dear Shawn, Yeah, okay. You got me on that one too. I don't know what kind of bug I had up my ass that month. You know how people with subatomic genitalia can get. I admit, I was out of line with my gratuitous dissing the CG effects in Disney's Dinosaur. Color me retracting. I just watched the DVD last week, and I have to say, those are some of the best damn dinosaurs this side of the Cretaceous period. You spend the first 20 minutes of the movie going "Wow, those dinosaurs look so real, look at the real dinosaurs, mom!" To the teams of artists, compositors, and programmers at the Secret Lab, I apologize. I'm sorry that you worked so hard to make such incredibly believable dinosaurs only to have them crammed through the cheese grater that was the plot of this movie. Disney's Dinosaur does for the fossil record what Disney's Hercules did for mythology, and Disney's Pocahontas did for Native American History. It's a totally honest and untouched view of past events that hasn't been at all changed just to suit the needs of the artificially intelligent computer program that writes all of Disney's movies. You see there's this one dinosaur that gets separated from all of the other dinosaurs and is picked up and raised by a pack of particle furred lemurs. I don't remember his name, so we'll call him Tarzan. No, wait, we'll call him Mowgli. Aw hell, call him whatever you want. It doesn't change the fact that the different species in this movie are separated by 120 million years of geologic time, and have as much of a chance of interacting with each other as you do with a can of Billy Beer. But who cares, Mr. Smarty Scientist Ass, it ain't a documentary, you know. Touche. The dinosaurs talk, but only the good dinosaurs. The carnivores are unfeeling, unloving, inhuman beasts with less anthropomorphic charm than the taste buds in a McDonalds radio ad. Could it be because the terror of an unstoppable Carnotaur is compromised when it explains that it's not evil, it's just a predatory beast that eats meat for a living? Hey, no hard feelings, pally. Munch. It's along the lines of how Warner Brothers destroyed the menace of the Tasmanian Devil. Back in his Bugs Bunny short days he used to be a total bad ass. We, the audience, were led to believe that all Tasmanian devils were snarling, drooling, tornados of destructive power. Then this Taz Mania cartoon comes along and shows that the rest of Taz's family is not only civilized, but downright sophisticated, and we suddenly realize that Taz isn't a wild animal. He's Corky. Anyway, for those of you who want to see some dogshit animation, the "Computer Animation Marvels" DVD is available for only $16.99 from Sloppy Joe's lapdog, Amazon.com. Date: Sun, 07 Jan 2001 16:26:05 -0000 From: Jayelle S I Subject: Crounching Tiger, Hidden Dragon I just read your review of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and if it helps you understand the story line, the fact that highly skilled fighters (thru a lot of training supposedly) have the ability to leap great distances is common in classical Chinese novels about that era. Usually they make it look harder (less height, less airtime - usually sustained for a short period, and looking like a lot more work), in this movie they sort of float and flouce around like they're light as a feather and I guess that's Ang Lee's interpretation. It's mythical, and yes unrealistic, just like the way fighting in X-Men would be. It seems harder to accept probably because it's set back in time rather than ahead (like The Matrix) or in another world altogether. Hope this helps. I agree though that the plot isn't all that. However I think the fight scenes definitely are great, especially the fighting during the night chase (well in between all the jumping around) between Michelle Yeoh and that other girl, a lot of that was on the ground battle that was more realistic, as is the other battle they have inside the house. This is just one of a whole bunch of emails that we received that contained, more or less, exactly these points. Thank you all for pointing out to our uncultured, ethnocentric staff that in Chinese legend, people could fly around like spider monkeys on a sugar bender without anybody batting an eyelid. We now understand that it wasn't just the world of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that had 1/6 the Earth's gravity, but in fact all Chinese warriors since the 16th century. That's all fine and good, and I thank you for your insights, but it still doesn't make the movie look any less stupid. Judging from the highly defensive stance taken by several self-proclaimed Asian film experts that wrote in, I'm guessing that my take on this movie didn't come across in my review as clearly as it could have. Let me try it again. This movie didn't suck. I don't regret seeing it, and I wouldn't tell a friend to avoid it. The thing is, I could say the exact same thing about movies like The Mask or Weird Science. I still don't understand why the critics heap their praises on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Valley Ranch, while they would punch a tunnel through Roger Ebert to escape the balcony before they would sit through a showing of Tank Girl. I continue to hold my belief that it's just peer pressure putting this movie on all the critics' top ten lists, and not some ancient Chinese secret. I do sincerely thank everybody who wrote in on this one, but considering that most of you not only didn't answer my question, but also used your own scholarly words to agree with my points exactly, you're not getting an apology out of me on this one. Sorry. Er... not sorry. All content © 1999-2007 misinformer.com.   Too little, too late...