Worse Than The Rockies!

Hello! With the Rockies in the midst of another losing skid (swept by the Royals, yay!!), I think it's a good time to fulfill my threat for another Worse Than the Rockies Movie Review! Yes, there are things on TV that will make you cringe even more than when you see Willy Taveras striding to the plate with the tying run at third, or when any Rockies reliever approaches the mound immediately after the Rox just scored three runs to get right back in the game.

Worse Than the Rockies: Evan Almighty

Evan Almighty is the touching story of how a guy who was not famous had some funny scenes in a movie, and in true Hollywood fashion, when it was time to make a sequel, he was famous, and so they made him the star of the sequel!

No, wait. That's not the story, at all. But Evan Almighty is the sequel to Bruce Almighty, a huge hit that managed to pull off the tricky combination of dealing with religious topics and being reasonably funny. But since Jim Carrey, the star of Bruce Almighty, declined to take part in the sequel, they decided to take Steve Carell's bit part from that film (Evan, the obnoxious news guy who starts speaking in tongues on-air) and make him the star of the sequel. Ideas like this, folks, are what makes Hollywood the special, incredible place it is!!

Evan Baxter, once a snivelling jerk who undermined his colleague to gain his job as a news-anchor, has -- through the magic of one of Hollywood's finest special effects departments -- become Evan Baxter, a really nice, sweet family man who has just been elected to the US Congress. Evan really wants to make a difference! However, he clearly does not give a shit about the environment (the bastard!) because he hates animals, drives a Hummer, and selects kitchen cabinets for their appearance rather than considering the poor, nearly extinct trees they were made from. In the first ten minutes of the film, he is shown to his nice, big office; meets a Congressman played by John Goodman who seems really, really nice; and moves into his nice, big new house with a huge vacant lot right next door and a great view of the brand-spanking new dam only a few miles away. So things are really rocking for Evan.

Then, funny things start to happen. Not ha-ha funny, mind you, but we'll get to that later. Funny as in odd, out of the ordinary, unexpected... except if you have even half a brain in your head and you've seen one ad for this film, you have already figured out the ending and you've probably imagined 85% of the scenes leading up to it with startling accuracy. But as I was saying, odd things start to happen: Evan sees the letters GEN and the numbers 6 and 14 everywhere, like on his alarm clock and his new license plates. Digital animals seem to follow Evan wherever he goes. Piles of wood and old-looking tools start showing up at his home, and he didn't even order them! He finds that, just like Homer Simpson, his beard grows so quickly that he can't shave it off. Evan looks up Genesis 6:14 in the Bible, and sees that it's the passage where God tells Noah to build an ark. And just in case that didn't convince Evan to build an Ark, God shows up and tells Evan to build an ark, because a flood is coming. A flood of laughs!!!

God is once again played by Morgan Freeman, who is one of a handful of actors you could approach and say "just act sort of, you know, Godish" and he could pull it off. Assuming here that you picture God as a somewhat smarmy know-it-all with a fondness for awful puns (his nametag reads "Al Mighty") who avoids answering every question by asking another question. Of course, Evan listens to a guy like Morgan Freeman, and starts building an ark in the big vacant lot across from his home. His three sons, who have felt neglected by Evan as he struggled with his first weeks in Congress, are excited to spend time with their dad, even if he is going insane.

Evan tries to juggle his ark building with his job as a Congressman, but he soon gets suspended from Congress right as he's about to co-sponsor John Goodman's rape-nature bill. Even though Evan shows up for work in a suit, he blinks and he's suddenly standing in the middle of Congress wearing some sort of Bible clothes and surrounded by animals. Naturally, finding himself wearing Bible clothes causes Evan to just go ahead and tell everybody that God told him to build an ark because a flood is coming on such-and-such a date. Rather than being dumbfounded that a guy can instantly change his clothes on live TV and in full view of 300 people and then attract hundreds of wild animals into the US Capitol building, John Goodman suspends Evan from Congress for the dual infractions of mentioning God and having un-Congressmanly grooming habits. And then his wife takes the kids and leaves. So things are really sucking for Evan.

But even after losing his sanity, his family, his job, and his baby-bottom-smooth face, he's still much better off than the poor folks who suffered through this litter-box of ideas posing as a movie. Evan Almighty must be the least funny comedy of all time. I watched this entire movie and did not laugh once. Not even a chuckle. This film is about as funny as an exploding truck full of dirty diapers. Actually, that's a helluva lot funnier than this film, mainly because I'm imagining cars hitting big piles of unexpected diapers in the road and skidding everywhere in slow motion. That scene will probably be in the next Michael Bay flick, but I digress.

This movie thinks that an extreme close-up of a guy shaving his nostrils is funny. This movie thinks that animals crapping everywhere is funny. This movie thinks that growing a beard at an incredible rate and then hiding it from everybody behind various items is funny. This movie thinks that about 20 scenes of Evan freaking out as he notices yet another bunch of animals mysteriously attracted to him is funny. This movie thinks that lions and gazelles working together to build things is funny. This movie thinks that Wanda Sykes is funny. Oh my lord, is this an unfunny movie.

There are those movies that are so bad that they are actually immensely watchable. Battlefield Earth, for instance: a classic example of a movie that did absolutely everything either a) wrong or b) just plain stupid, yet somehow, in its failure lies great entertainment value. This, I am sorry to report, is NOT the case with Evan Almighty. This is a film that shows just how stupid Hollywood thinks its audience really is; it is insultingly bad. Getting back to the story for an example, early in the film, Evan is reading about Noah, and he learns that Noah, his wife, and his three sons built the ark together. The film obviously wants us to realize at this moment, "WOW! Noah had a wife and three sons, and so does Evan!!!" and to just be blown away. Who's actually going to fall for that? Anyone? Seriously, how was this film in theaters for more than about half a day?

The film continues in this predictable, stupid fashion to its predictable, stupid conclusion. The family returns and helps Evan build the ark. Digital animals help too! Fat and ugly people gather to make fun of Evan, but he responds with patience and wisdom now that his beard's all white. The day of the flood arrives, and after a false start or two, there's a flood right as the timer reaches 0:00, and Evan and his ark save all the people who were mean to him. The ark then travels through the streets of Washington DC and stops right at John Goodman's feet, where Evan steps from the front of the ark and announces "This time, it's personal!" and blows John Goodman away with a shotgun from under his Bible robe. There is a parade and Queen Amidala gives Evan a glowing orb, and he holds it above his head and all the digital animals cheer under a pretty rainbow.

OK, clearly I made some of that up... but not nearly as much as you might think. This butt of a film is easily Worse Than the Rockies. It gets a score of 3.5 Dingers out of 4. Its only redeeming quality was that it was mercifully short, clocking in at a brisk 90 minutes, which leaves you plenty of time to flip back to the Rockies game in time to catch Helton popping up weakly to shallow left field. Another 15 minutes, though, and it would have been eligible for the perfectly awful 4 Dinger score.

Until next time, Go Rockies!!!

Ask the Beard

Hello readers, and welcome to another edition of Ask the Beard! Each month, Ryan Spilborghs' Beard will answer your questions, on topics ranging from the mundane, to discussions of baseball and the nature of the universe. Get your questions in, and perhaps The Beard will answer yours! Only two topics are off limits: The Beard will not respond to questions about either the afterlife or Chuck Norris.

And now, on to this month's questions!

Hey Beard- So, obviously the Rockies are not very good. Like, the worst team in the majors. I thought you predicted greatness and all that this year? The Rockies aren't great, so who sucks, them or you? J. Blues, Chicago

Great question J, and thank you. I am the first to admit that the Rockies' win-loss record is not great, nor has been their play on the field on many nights. Other than Aaron Cook and Taylor Buchholz, there have been no beard-worthy pitchers. And as far as situational hitting is concerned, the Rockies don't have any hair on their backsides, to say nothing of hair on their chins. I do apologize to the Rockies Faithful who believed that I would lead the team to greatness this season. But as the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Or hit, apparently. Ryan and I have been doing our best, and I think you'll agree that Ryan has had an excellent season so far. However, Ryan Spilborghs is the only player that my beardness can actually help to achieve greatness... others must simply follow our lead, and they have not done so. I think maybe you should talk to Hurdle instead. THE BEARD HAS SPOKEN!

Hey Beard! I'm at a blackjack table at the Venetian in Vegas and I have a soft thirteen, the dealer has a five showing! What should I do? - C. Barkley, Las Vegas

Hello C, thank you for your question. This is a perfect spot for you to double down. With either 5 or 6 showing, the dealer will bust about 42% of the time. which is the best odds you'll see. And since you cannot bust by taking just one card, in the event that the dealer does not bust out, nearly a third of the cards in the deck would give you a hand of 18 or better. So take this opportunity to double your bet and gain a brief advantage over the house. And when you're done at the tables, The Beard recommends you grab dinner at the Grand Lux Cafe. Good luck! THE BEARD HAS SPOKEN!

Dear Ryan Spilborghs' Beard,
Hello! At the beginning of the year, you were a big, manly beard all over Spilborghs' face. I couldn't take my eyes off of him... or you. But then, you started all this changing of styles and now you're just a little pointy soul patch. The full beard was mesmerizing and powerful. Now Ryan looks like the guy behind counter at Starbucks. What do you call those guys? They have a big fancy name for themselves to make it sound like they've got a degree or something, but all they do is pour coffee. G. Paltrow, Los Angeles

Hello G, and thank you for your question. The shape and style of Ryan's facial hair is a topic about which he and I have had many discussions. As an Eternal Beard who has roamed space and time, I feel that I do have a certain level of expertise in this arena, and I have long felt that the full beard is the best choice for those who want to truly exude power and greatness. If one has the ability to connect all the parts of one's face with a path of coarse, manly hair, one has the ability to do anything... and everybody who sees you will know it!

A word of warning to the readers, however: the full beard is not for everyone. Like anything exceedingly powerful -- be it a Rottweiler, He-Man's sword, nuclear weaponry, or a Big Gulp filled with a 50-50 mix of Kool-aid and Everclear -- the full beard can be disastrous, if not deadly, when the young, the inexperienced, or the timid attempt to wield it.

Getting back on track, though, Ryan and I certainly worked well together in that configuration, but after a while he requested we alter the look. Why? Two words: the ladies.

You really must be immortal to gain a decent understanding of women; yet given enough time to study them, even a human male can learn a great deal about how women think. One thing I would tell you males is this: ladies love the Big Beard. Women love the full beard, because women love great and powerful men, and that's what the full beard is all about! Although you seem to understand this important point, G, the initial reaction from the ladies to the beard is many times a fearful one... it often takes a great deal of time for most women to realize that the beard is not a threat to them and will not harm them. Time is one thing I have plenty of; human males, on the other hand, have a somewhat shorter attention span. When they walk into a bar filled with attractive women, they want instant results. Although entering a board room or striding up to the plate with a full beard gains those instant results from one's peers, the same beard forces its owner to adopt a more long-term plan with the ladies, and long-term plans don't always fit into the plan, if you know what I mean.

So Ryan and I cycled through a number of compromises. I personally liked the Musketeer that we had going for a while, but Ryan has decided on the Royale (the "soul patch," as you called it). As a wise and supreme Beard, I have no ego to bruise, and if Ryan feels more comfortable in social situations without the full beard, then it is my wish to do whatever supports him best. Rest assured, it does not affect my ability to channel greatness unto him on the baseball diamond... it actually makes it easier to concentrate and focus my power.

Oh, and G, the person that pours your coffee is called a "barista." It sounds important and flashy, but it's just the Italian word for "bartender," so don't get all intimidated. THE BEARD HAS SPOKEN!


Hello Beard. We recently moved our couch to the other side of the room, and it left these big dents in the carpet. It's really mashed down since my husband is overweight and we haven't move our couch for like twenty years. Is there a way to get the carpet to stand back up straight again? Thanks! - M Simpson, Springfield

Hello M, great question. Put an ice cube on the carpet, right in the center of each dent. By the time it melts, you will have wet carpet but it will be standing up nice and straight. THE BEARD HAS SPOKEN!





Hey Beard! Rockies question for ya. Who in the Rockies lineup needs to go? Will they be trading away a bunch of people soon? - J Nix, Colorado Springs

Thank you for your question J. The Rockies roster will definitely look quite a bit different at the end of this season, unless they suddenly go on a 20-game win streak and make themselves relevant again. As the beacon of greatness and optimism, I remind you all that this is still a possibility! But look for Garrett Atkins, Brad Hawpe, and Brian Fuentes to be traded this season, possibly very soon. Moving Holliday is a distinct possibility, because even though he has another full year under contract to the Rockies, that makes him much more attractive to trade partners. Finally, the guy they really should unload as soon as possible is Willy Taveras. The only thing he brings to the team -- speed on the basepaths -- requires him to first get on base. Which he cannot do.

Oh, and look for Hurdle to be fired soon after the All-Star Game (unless, of course, the above-mentioned return to relevance occurs promptly). They can't really fire the guy who's scheduled to manage the All-Star team, but for whatever traction he had building a young, overachieving team with lots to prove, he clearly has none with a team expected to contend. THE BEARD HAS SPOKEN!


Well, that's all for this months' column! Go Rockies!!!

Top of the Rotation

So the top of the rotation did their part to snap the Rockies out of a classic losing streak, the Rox taking two of three from the Trolley Dodgers to end their worst road trip since last season's worst road trip. Cookie was superb last night (not a surprise, he's currently 2nd in the league in wins) and Francis was great on Tuesday in the Rockies' first shutout of the year (much more of a surprise, but long overdue).

With Holliday and Hawpe both close to returning from their stints on the DL, we can only hope that things will start looking up for the Rockies. With 13 of the next 16 games at Coors Field, a nice long win streak could get them right back into the once-again mediocre-at-best NL West. See what winning just two games in a row brings? It's called optimism, and it's a baseball fan's best friend. Thanks, optimism! I appreciate it!

Yay!!!

I feel like I ran a marathon after those last two games. The Pens played a good series, I hope the Penguins coach took everybody out for ice cream after the game.

Worse Than the Rockies!

Hello readers. It's been a while since the last post on Year of the Beard; like the Rockies, I took most of May off. This was partially due to having things to tie up at work, partially due to the NHL playoffs, partially due to getting settled into a summer routine (not a routine, really, just a rotation of food, beer, swimming pool, and Xbox), but primarily due to the overwhelming blah-ishness I've felt for the Rockies. They were playing bad baseball, then everybody got hurt. Not much more to say about it than that.

At any rate, it occurred to me that as painful as it can be to watch a Rockies game lately, it can't possibly be the worst way to spend a couple hours, can it? The answer is no, it can't... not by a long shot. There are many dumber things to watch, and with that in mind, I present the first issue of "Worse Than the Rockies" Movie Reviews!!!

Worse Than the Rockies: CAT PEOPLE

The first film on the list is an erotic horror film from the early 80s called Cat People. This was a silly film with some truly disturbing images... most of these images, however, involve Malcom McDowell completely naked and/or attempting to have sex with his sister. Oh, and a lot of big cats growling and staring in slow motion. Yes, things that involve no motion may still be filmed in slow motion, and yes, it's boring. Don't believe me? Then watch this film... it will act as both proof it can happen, and as punishment for not trusting me.

Irina is a sexy young girl who arrives in New Orleans to live with her long-lost brother Paul, who is clearly a creep from the very first scene, and clearly horny for his sister by the second. That night, a hooker finds disgusting goo on the bed and promptly gets mauled by a panther, and the next day a Handsome Zoo Keeper is called in to capture the panther. (The best terrible scene early in the movie: the hooker is in a panic, crawling down the stairs to escape the panther under her bed. She tumbles down the last few steps, turns around, and sees her mangled and bloody leg. She screams in horror, and just at this most awful moment... her bra pops open, complete with a little "poink!" sound effect.)

The HZK puts this dangerous panther in the zoo, where it roars a lot. Irina, still sexy but with her brother mysteriously missing, wanders around New Orleans without a bra until she just happens to reach the zoo, where she stands before the panther cage, sketching the thing for hours and hours until the HZK chases her away for some reason. Naturally, they fall in love, but not before the panther rips Ed Begley Jr's arm off and the blood splooshes into the drain in slow motion. In the very next scene, the panther is mysteriously missing, some disgusting goo at the bottom of the cage the only clue to its disappearance.

Irina's brother Paul mysteriously reappears and cuts right to the chase, explaining that he needs to have sex with her. This suggestion creeps her out and she runs away, making an unexpectedly athletic leap off a balcony. A cop finds her running away from the house with her clothes half-ripped off, screaming like a banshee. The cop takes her back to the house where, in a awkward scene, a second cop with a police dog just happens to stroll by and the dog starts barking wildly. Despite the fact that the plot had already given the cop a perfectly good excuse to check out the house, he was about to simply drop Irina off at the same door she'd just been running from, but he decides that the dog might be onto something and they should maybe look around inside the house a bit after all. In the basement, the cops find (duhn duhn duuhnnnn...) a panther cage filled with hooker bones.

"So Paul must be a maniac who raises killer panthers and kidnaps hookers for panther food!!!" the movie suggests, and the characters nod their heads and shuffle off to follow that notion, but the discerning viewer knows better. Maybe if they hadn't named the film Cat People, I'd have been even a little surprised the first time a person turned into a cat. But this entire movie is like a conversation with a kid who thinks he's really, really tricking you good, but he keeps it going for so much longer than necessary that you end up far more irritated than amused.

To make a stupid story short, the rest of the movie involves Irina discovering that she has the soul of a panther, or something, inside her just as her brother does, because their ancestors slept with panthers. Or something. As it turns out, if you're a cat person, when you get horny you turn into a panther, and when you kill somebody, you turn back into a horrible person with a terrible haircut. If you have sex with a sibling, however, the curse is lifted. Why? Who the hell knows, but I guess there has to be something creepy in this movie, and that's as close as it gets. Naturally, Irina does not believe such nonsense, until one night at the HZK's romantic swamp hideaway, she gets up for a midnight snack, walks around naked in the moonlight for a while, and then eats a fuzzy little rabbit she spots with her catvision.

The final act of the movie is a truly bizarre mix of gratuitous nudity, a blatantly unnecessary panther autopsy (complete with more disgusting goo and The Thing-style grossout effects), kinky bondage, the death of a character awkwardly introduced earlier for no other reason than to be killed later in the film, weird otherworldly vision/dream imagery, basic cheese-movie dialogue ("Every time it happens... you tell yourself it's love. But it isn't. It's blood. And death."), and plenty of extra nudity. They really should have just called it Nude People. One nude scene in particular stands out: Irina is standing behind a window and takes off her clothes. Her face, chest, and arms are visible behind the panes of glass, but the window is wide open at the bottom, which I took as the movie's way of screaming, "Check it out, man! It's bush!!!! See, right there through the open window?! Yeah, man! Yeah!!! High Five!!" Thanks for nothing, movie. I suppose when Nastassia Kinski was a huge sex symbol, a glimpse of her short & curlys may have been a worthwhile payoff for a bunch of 15-year old boys to sit through this turd, but by this point I was so annoyed at this movie for wasting my time that I just kind of started laughing at it.

The movie ends with a new panther captured at the zoo, and the HZK feeding her meat right out of his hand. She doesn't eat him or bite him because she loves him, because it's Irina!!! She just sits there in the cage as David Bowie sings the Cat People theme song. The movie freeze-frames on the panther as it stares at the camera long enough to make you very uncomfortable, and then after what seems like at least 90 seconds of this, the cat growls and shows its teeth, and they freeze on that for another couple minutes as Bowie continues to wail and the credits roll. Thank god.

Cat People earns a Worse Than the Rockies score of 3.0 Dingers. Only Kinski, some nice images of New Orleans, and a brief scene featuring Annette O'Toole swimming was able to save it from a perfect 4-Dinger score.


The next film I will review will be Evan Almighty with Steve Carell. The topic of discussion will be: if you don't laugh once through an entire movie, is it really a comedy? Till next time, Go Rockies!!!