Cage The Elvis

Why does Nicolas Cage talk like Elvis? Is he in love? Is that the reason he married the King’s daughter Lisa Marie? Did they divorce because he made her dress her up like her dad? Can we even say he isn’t Elvis - the man’s still releasing records? But then that would mean Elvis married his daughter, but as ludicrous as the plotline of his recent National Treasure franchise - something so silly it’s a Disney Da Vinci Code – it’s possible.

I mean, Cage changed his name so he could get into acting without the influence of his Uncle Francis Ford Coppola (even though he got his first recognised role in his Uncle’s Rumblefish). So what do you name yourself after if you’re trying not to hide an ego? A fucking superhero. Cartoonists sketched skilled street fighting muscleman Luke Cage to explore comic blaxploitation. He failed playing a comic book hero in Ghostrider, and didn’t even get chance to play Superman in Tim Burtons famed script that was tossed into development hell. Is it any wonder Cage once swapped faces with John Travolta? The man doesn’t know who he is.

For every good role – directors like Scorsese have coaxed some brilliant performances from him– there are some ghastly ones: Gone In Sixty Seconds. Most people left the cinema within ten seconds, not that Cage would care; he got 20 million for that wreckage.

I scratched my head trying to think what Elvis and Cage have in common, other than seeing Lisa Marie naked (I giggled a bit), but then realised… they spend all their time in Vegas. While the elder crooned the circuit, Cage’s back catalogue mainly takes place in Sin City: Honeymoon in Vegas, Leaving Las Vegas, Next, Snake Eyes, Wild at Heart, the finale of Con Air.

I will investigate further and solve perhaps the world's most important conspiracy theory.... or maybe I'll go find John Travolta and say "HEY JOHNNY, WHY YOU MAKING SHIT FILMS AGAIN YOU SCIENTOLOGY LOVING SONOFABITCH"

JINGLE ALL THE WAY

Remember when Arnold Swarchenegger was in that Christmas movie and his little mushroom haircutted son wanted a Turbo Man? And what the big man had to go through to get it? That’s right. A lot! Bombs, pissed off reindeers, mafia Santa Clause’s, all for the love of a little brat actor who’d go on to star as baby Darth Vader in the worst thing to happen to Star Wars since the Death Star blew up.

Last week many Americans knew how the Governator felt as Black Friday (Opening day of the Christmas sales) happened.

During the day two people were shot dead in a Toys “R” Us store, located in Palm Desert, California. Police say it “may be gang related”, but that means it also “may” be over a colouring book.

Earlier at 5am, a Wal-Mart in Long Island, New York, swung its doors open to a crowd of eager customers, but one door jammed. Employee Jdimytai Damour went to open the door and hundreds of people stampeded over him and “stepped over his body as they rushed for cut-price vacuum cleaners and DVDs” as one paper put it.

“They pushed him down and walked all over him,” sobbed Damour’s sister, Danielle. “How could they do that?” Well Danielle, you could blame the economic crisis, Wal-mart’s capitalist gains, or heck - Joe the Carpenter who installed the door. Don’t. Instead blame the children.

That’s the only reason technology keeps changing - kids want more. Scientists would have stopped at the colour TV - OK I wouldn’t be blogging right now – and they would of went playing golf and actually getting laid. Like Karl Pilkington said “We've invented most of the stuff that we need and now we're just messing about”

I think children today don’t give a monkeys about their actions. I mean we look after them and they don’t even pay us. I don’t have a child, and I don’t want one, but everyone else should go on strike to see what they do. I’m not saying adults will get a pay rise but as kids stick it to the man so much, it’ll be nice to turn the (Fisherprice©) tables.

Even better. Don’t teach them to talk. That’s what we’ve been doing wrong, we are literally giving them ammo, and if America taught us anything last week - that's a dangerous thing to have.

HOW TO GATECRASH VANITY FAIR’S OSCAR BASH

On February 22 the only thing more hunted than a ticket to the Oscars, is a ticket to the After-show. Non are hotter in tinsel-town than Vanity Fair’s £1million bash. Not even an A-lister is guaranteed entry by the team who run the military tight operation.

British journalist Toby Young worked for three years at Vanity Fair and wrote about the madness of the party in How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, now a Hollywood film. He said the planning team “comprises several hundred people: construction and video companies, florists, on-site seamstresses, the restaurant staff and private security personnel”. Here are ways you can fool all of them:

OLD FAITHFUL

Find a movie star that looks uncannily like you. Austin Powers judo-chop them unconscious. Ankle-drag the body into an empty room. Steal tuxedo/dress and take the invitation from the inside pocket/purse - It happens all the time in Hollywood, so why not tonight?

LAY DOWN THE LAW

The only ever non-celebrity to successfully gatecrash the party was a journalist in 1996 who turned up with a pig on a leash, declaring it was the pig from Babe, a Best Picture nominee - the man sailed past security. 2009’s Oscars probably wont feature the much underrated Underdog or masterpiece Firehouse Dog, so take a plank of wood and claim its Jude Law.

JEDI MIND TRICK

(Start hand-wave) You will use this tactic. (End hand-wave)

PICK UP A PEN

Last years writers’ strike almost cancelled the Oscars. Vanity Fair couldn’t risk spending £1 million on their party so cancelled it. Grab a pen - most writers have them – and before the ceremony begins, stroll up to the party with a picket-starting placard and demand entry or you’ll take your one-man-band-besiege to the Kodak theatre. The doorman might not take this threat seriously nor your writing prowess, so take the pen and stab it in his eye.

BE RUTHLESS

Toby Young’s memoirs dished all the dirt there is on the magazine, so blackmail’s out of the question. A person once offered $300,000 for a ticket and was flatly denied – so put your piggybank down, they can’t be bought. The only ruthless angle here is kidnap. For legal reasons you’ll have to decide who to kidnap.

DUTCH COURAGE

Don’t dress up as a waiter, its too cliché. Instead hide in the container that exports Dutch tulips from Holland to the event in L.A, and everything will come up roses (speaking of clichés…taxi).

JUST SAY NO

As Toby Young put it: "It's not who you say 'yes' to, it's who you say 'no' to.” Shout it loud.

WIN AN OSCAR

Ok so there’s not much time to do it in, but it wouldn’t harm your chances.

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BEHOLD: ROCKET-DUDE

This week a humble stuntman, (scrap that) daredevil-superhero, wearing a jetpack has rocketed 1500 ft over a canyon in Colorado.

What I love more than anything is when the canyon-conqueror touches down and realises 'Hold on I'm American' – BAM. Cue high fives, whistles and woo’s in a melee of masculinity that looks uncannily like Tom Cruise at the end of Top Gun. Imagine Berlin’s ‘take my breath away’ as you witness the taller man in action.

I have no idea who this man is, nor do I want to – as for me he is Rocket-dude and when the Youtube video stops playing, he’s out fighting 21st century crime in the Colorado region and rescuing Grizzly Bears afraid of heights, but never, in no circumstance, neglecting a high-five in the name of awesome. For he is Rocket-dude.

If we could build more of these jetpacks I feel we could all become have-a-go-heroes and combat terrorism ourselves. To beat extremism, you’ve got to become extreme.

Monsters Inc.

Watching sci-fi extravaganza Cloverfield on my living room TV was as post-modern and post 9-11 as my Sunday night got. Staggeringly imaginative and stupidly ambitious with a camcorder effect that wouldn’t look out of place in knock-off Nigel’s DVD collection, it got me asking …have I missed Antiques Roadshow? But more importantly, JJ Abraham’s, why let an alien creature destroy New York again? To be fair he did include references to his extraterrestrial fetishes, including an original King Kong still lasting 0.2 seconds.

Yes of course, those planes, those terrorists, that war, etc. I understand, after 2001 terror is mirrored with filmic terriorism and heroics, but I don’t remember Osama Bin Laden going to Skull Island to piss off King Kong in 1933 (his hiding place?). Why did an angry ape take his doll to the top of the Empire in NYC, it’s not the film capital or the real capital of the US, but ever since the birth of comic books and crackled film reel it’s been home for the hero and a target for the villan.

Other countries have their own particular Martian hotspots. Japan has a steady economy in the market of monsters and disaster-developers. When nuclear bombs smacked Nagasaki/Hiroshima, some landed astray in the Asian Pacific creating atomic creatures like Godzilla, who the US government still hasn’t admitted responsibility for, tut-tut, but why do they all hit the same typecast towns like Tokyo? Easy, media attention, Godzilla may be ugly but he’s not stupid, he’s already had two biopics, (beat that Ray), the last movie took place in 1998 America and no guesses for which city. At the time the Japanese Prime Minister said, “Godzilla is no longer welcome in Tokyo and he will have to give back his oversized key of the city.” Well, I’m pretty sure he said it, but the government has for sure acknowledged it.

My worries are for the monsters, with such little ambition, how can world domination succeed? I saw The Incredible Hulk this summer, no wonder he was angry, he looked like a green Robinson Crusoe stuck on a tiny island (Manhattan), plus the movie was garbage.

Since 2001, global warming has battered the Big Apple in The Day After Tomorrow and four evil witches recently brought sex to the city. So my idea would be to create a sort of ‘Union for Monsters Affected by Nuclear or Hollywood Malpractice’ (MANHM), so they can plan well and spread themselves out for better press coverage….

…. Hold on, a Sex & the City sequel’s been announced? Ruin that fucking town.

I'm a curious little Dickens

I admire scholars and classic writers like the next trainee journalist. This includes bleak authors (Charles Dickens) and poets (Oscar Wilde). Beyond the grave or not, their work has to be respected, as we are told they changed publishing forever. I worried what they may have thought if they read the new generation of writers, so I looked for supportive quotes in old books, but found maybe it is me who should question them, after all we live in a google world now, not Harsh Times. Here are a few quotes I had issues with:

Edward Lytton – “The pen is mightier than the sword.” – He can dress it up as a metaphor all he likes, but if it came down to the crunch in an Arabic street fight, I’d back the guy with the sword.

Charles Dickens – “I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States.” – Fair enough if he found the queues too long down at Disney-World, but what about the generous buffets in Florida hotels? Even Oliver Twist wouldn’t ask for seconds.

Oscar Wilde - “Beauty is a form of genius that is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.” – He obviously never read Heat Magazine.

If the quoted were alive, and trusted the Internet, spending a few lessons getting online, and managed to read my silly ramblings, I’m sure they’d disagree, but I'd delete their posted comments, as I couldn’t give a Dickens if Oscar was Wilde about my work.

Is All Fair in Love and War?

Firearms go with American culture like stars go with stripes. Synonymous with Thomas Jefferson signing the declaration of independence, it’s how the West was won, and if it ever loses, guns wont be far away.

Two days ago, at a gun fair in Massachusetts, an 8-year-old boy shot himself in the head with an Uzi machinegun, under adult supervision. His father and older brother watched the tragedy happen. Police said: “As the boy fired the Uzi, "the front end of the weapon went up with the backfire and he ended up receiving a round in his head,"

Let us stop a minute: What is a child doing with an Uzi? And what happened to good old-fashioned fun fairs?

Massachusetts’ law, states children can fire a weapon if supervised by a certified instructor and accompanied by a legal guardian.

Again. What is a young boy doing with a bloody Uzi? In the same state, the law still declares that men ‘must carry a rifle to church on Sunday’ - 99.9% wont do this, because there is knowing the law, and then knowing when you’re a total moron.

I put no blame on the child. If I was 8 years old and got offered an Uzi to fire, (I’d enquire what it was first), but would happily swap it for my spudgun, even though I had previously swapped a perfectly good Captain Planet figurine for it.

Am I blaming the boy’s family? Out of nativity and tragedy, no. It’s the Gun Fair who take the vent of my over-the-pond anger, who advertise: "It's all legal & fun — No permits or licenses required!” Most quirky American laws only remain to hold on to what little history the country has, and the longer it keeps them; the more idiots will let tragedies happen. Sure, if crazed fanatics plan assassinations or school massacres, they won’t drop arms, but at least by changing a few little laws, people are a little bit safer.

While researching state law, I found that ‘shooting ranges may not set up targets that resemble human beings. If I changed the law – every target would resemble Thomas Jefferson. It seems all isn’t fair in love and war.

Joe Ellison