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Friday, September 29, 2006

Cheap "Blogs of Note" Ploy

Hands in the Air is part of Google's Blogger community, and one of the ultimate Blogger honors is to be featured as one of the day's "Blogs of Note." The problem is that about 90% of the daily Blogs of Note are tech-based (a recent sampling of Blogs of Note include such dorktacular titles as "AJAX Search API Playground," "Hackosphere" and "MacUpdate Blog." Maybe they should rename Blogs of Note to "Bloggers Who Have to Pay for Sex."

As a pop culture blog, our chances seem slim for getting noticed as a Blog of Note, so in a cheap, desperate ploy, I'm publishing this nerdy post about tech help. Blogs of Note, here we come...
Hopefully, that got your attention, Blogs of Note. Sure we're not techie, but I think that after almost 8 months of rambling posts about not-so-practical stuff (i.e. Lindsay Lohan, Lindsay Lohan and Lindsay Lohan) we're still noteworthy. I'm just trying to give those other bloggers out there a chance. I'm sure the lonely cat lady who writes amateur poetry or the angry goth kid who keeps a diary of depression would like to get some attention every so often, too.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Criticize At Your Own Risk

Uwe Boll is a genius. You might not know this auteur director by name, but surely his body of work speaks for itself. That’s right, this man brought you classics like House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark and most recently, BloodRayne. He, perhaps more than any other force in filmmaking, is dedicated to showcasing the quality stories of hit video game properties on the silver screen.

Now, some backlash is understandable. Gamers are very passionate, often disturbed individuals, and they take their video games very personally. They also have shitty taste in movies, because, if you believe the Internet, they all think Uwe’s movies are “teh suck.” How dare you, nerds? How dare you!

"MeeMee dis is Super Monkey Balls, is sensual, is much dangerous! So many balls, so mittle time! Take off your top...oh. No top, goot, goot, verrrrry goot! Okay dee zombie ninja banana monsters are about to attack! Get your super monkey ball-drainer ready..."

So what is Uwe, a healthy German man of honor to do with all of those Internet nerds and armchair directors? Beat the ever-loving shit out of them. Hells yeah. Honestly, while you might not appreciate Uwe’s works for the modern-day masterpieces that they are, spreading your hateful venom all over the Internet has its consequences, and one of those is a knuckle-sammich, courtesy of the esteemed director.

Now of course the whiny nerds who cry all day about how bad Uwe’s movies are, also piss and moan about “oh, it was s’posed to be a P.R. stunt! I didn’t know he was gonna kick my ass for reals!” Boo-frickin’-hoo, bitches! Guess what—just because you have a virtual set of testicles that allow you to be an asshole on the Internet, doesn’t mean that you are in possession of a real, honest-to-god set of them. You might be the big man in “cyberspace,” but you still have to live in the real world, and in the real world Uwe Boll is richer, stronger and more successful than you are.

So who’s the real loser—the guy who makes cheap movies you don’t like about video games whose stories are shitty to begin with, or the nerd who whines and complains about said movies to make himself seem cool to other nerds…on the Internet? Whose name do more people know? Who makes more money? Who gets hot actresses to take their tops off? Yeah, shut your mouth you emo Internet assholes. Shut your mouth or the "Raging Boll" will shut it for you!

Sunday, September 24, 2006

The Tribe Has Spoken: Part 1

The votes are in! Last week, we published the first of a series of posts inspired by this season's Survivor: Racist Island since each member of the Hands in the Air gang represents one of the show's ethnicity-based tribes. For this first installment of our Survivor: Blog Island comics, Chris racked up the most votes so he's getting the boot. Here's how the story unfolds...
VOTE NOW! Cast your vote for which blogger goes home next by e-mailing us or posting a comment. Results will be depicted in another horribly racist (pronounced "satiric") comic strip!

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Shouldn't It Be Called "The Amazing Race"?

We're not Survivor fans, but we think it's worth exploiting tonight's controversial premiere of Survivor: Cook Islands*. This season, the show controversially splits up the castaways into four racially segregated tribes, and it turns out that each member of the Hands in the Air gang represents each of the four teams: the Asians (Jason), the Hispanics (Jenni), the Blacks (Chris) and the Whites (Steve).

The tribe has spoken: We're a Benetton ad.
(Left to right: Latina Jenni, Asian Jason, white Steve & black Chris)

It's segregated "reality TV" with race pitted against race against race against race on a jungle island. It's like camp, but without the concentration!**

VOTE NOW! In celebration of all this diversity, we're running our very own Survivor challenge. Each week, you'll get to vote one of us off our Blog Island. To vote, post a comment here or e-mail us here with who you think should get voted off -- Chris, Jason, Jenni or Steve.

Whoever gets voted off will be depicted losing an Elimination Challenge in a subsequent comic-strip blog posting until only one Survivor remains! Exercise your civil right to vote, then cancel it out by supporting segregation!
_________
* Be careful with the word "Cook." One typo and that "C" could become a "G" (or maybe that "k" could become an "n"), and then you'd have a real racist show on your hands.

** Mel Gibson typed that. He's blogging here while his buzz wears off. Seriously. I swear on the next Starz airing of The Passion of the Christ.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Happy Birthday, Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl
September 13, 1916- November 23, 1990
Author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches and other stories
James and the Giant Peach*

* That's Princess Peach on the right from the Super Mario video games for those of you non-gamers.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Food for Naught

The usual gang of Hands in the Air idiots has been holding on to some questionable snacks for a goodly amount of time. With the uh, football season starting and all, it seemed like the perfect time to taste and rate 'em.

Dagoba organic chocolate bar in hazelnut. Yo-duh.

Jason: Do midichlorians taste like wax? 'Cause that's all I taste.

Steve: Forget the Jedi, this candy bar is what deserves Order 66.* The Dagobah dragonsnake would spit this chocolate out, just like it spit out Artoo.

Jenni: Organic chocolate is for chumps. This tastes like if the snake from the Yoda action figure went all organic chocolatier on us and used swamp shit to make chocolate that didn't taste too great. With hazelnuts that really didn't taste good at all. And barely noticeable rice crisps.

Even more pointless than you'd imagine: Sports Bar Snacks in Hot Wings & Blue Cheese.




Steve: These things taste like crap, no matter how many Hooters girls bring them to you.

Jason: Tastes like Chex coated with powdered Satan farts.**

Jenni: The idea is very funny but the execution is just eh, whatever. I was disappointed that these weren't aggressively bad but instead were just kinda crappy but like, I could eat them if I really had to. They sat on our coffee table and stunk up the place, though.


Limited edition KitKat in MilkShake brings no boys to the yard.

Jenni: If you hadn't told me it was different I might not have noticed. Smells a little like malt, which would make it KitKat in Malt, not MilkShake but whatever. The chocolate is a l'il milkier than your usual KitKat. I hate it that I am actually kind of talking about the snacks and the boys are just making jokes. It's not fair.

Jason: Gimmie a break, gimmie a break, break me off a gun and shoot me--that's the last time I spend 80 bucks on a candy bar on eBay. Doopduhduhleekduhdoopduhduh.

Steve: I like the idea of limited-edition perishable items, but this candy is bullshit. It doesn't taste like milkshake, it just tastes like an imitation KitKat.




*That's the order that had all the Jedi executed, for those of you who aren't Star Wars dorks.

**"Satan farts" adapted from an "Angel farts" joke made by Jenni the other day, which we're totally writing an inspirational book about.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

The Elusive Suri Photographed; Bigfoot Totally Jealous

Well, I'll be. That fake baby of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes is actually real. Baby Suri's appearance on the cover of this October's Vanity Fair proves it (now available in Los Angeles & New York; available nationwide on September 12).

It looks like a kid, but I'm convinced it's a little puppy in a baby costume. (You can use that idea for a calendar for free, Anne Geddes.)

Jenni points out that the baby looks sorta Asian in some of the pictures. I maintain that it's an attempt to ride out the whole "ethnic baby" craze started by the Jolie-Pitts.

Another notable baby observation is that The King of Queens costar and fellow Scientologist Leah Remini wasn't bluffing when she claimed seeing the celebritot early on, describing Suri as "a newborn" and "normal size." Sure enough, Vanity Fair proves that Suri is indeed baby-sized and just born. I just wish I could paint pictures as vividly as Leah was able to, but alas, I come up short when I merely describe her sitcom as "unfunny" and "30 minutes too long."

One last rugrat observation: Is it just me or does it look like that baby's wearing a toupee? With a 'do like that, Suri could totally play a bouncing little Tom Hanks in a Da Vinci Code prequel. This fake baby is totally gonna go places.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

An Open Letter to Nerds, pt. 1

Dear Nerds,
Hey guys, 'sup? It's me, Steve, your representative on the Hands in the Air crew. I need to have a word with you all, so grab a frosty Mountain Dew, set down the 20-sided dice for a second, and switch over your attitude modulators from "creepy Internet troll" to "open-minded, hygienically challenged person." Ready? Okay.

I was perusing the Internet, as we all like to do. As many of you, my fellow nerds, I too have taken to the World of Warcraft as a leisure activity, although I'd say the majority of my fellow players have me beat in terms of sheer devoted fervor. So it's not surprising to me when I see the trends and news of the real world bleed into the digital one. It's a pretty natural phenomenon.

But I have to tell you, this kind of shit really depresses me. For those too lazy to click the link, I'll sum up. Basically, someone is planning to pay tribute to the late Steve Irwin, in World of Warcraft. The plan is to get a bunch of avatars into one virtual seaside location and spell out the word "Crikey," then frolic about in the digital surf to, y'know, celebrate the dude's life and shit. Then, if somebody could post the whole thing on YouTube, that would be great. Um, as you guys like to say, WTF (that's "what the fuck," non-nerds)?

Crikey! Let's blow this World of Warcraft wake that these nerds threw for me -- I hear that Paul Hogan is having a Halo party!

I can understand that you're mourning Steve Irwin and you want to show your support, but this kind of shit is just not normal. For one, it comes off as gimmicky at best and outright disrespectful at worst. Don't you see how staging a mock funeral for a person who really died, IRL ("in real life," non-nerds), is patronizing and actually trivializes his death? His avatar didn't die in some reef off the coast of Kalimdor battling Murlocs. He died here on Earth where the real people are. The least you all can do is pay some respects to him in the world in which he actually, you know, lived and died.

But second, this shit has been done before, with disastrous results. What happens when some guild of assclowns raids your memorial service and turns the whole thing into a debacle? You know some of our nerd brethren, despite the ill-used flowery prose and self-appointed "intelligence," are cocks. Straight up, fucktarded cocks. They will fuck with you just for the immature pleasure it gives them because Lord knows we all need to feel powerful sometimes in our lives, even if for some nerds it's in a videogame, ruining the experience of fellow nerds. So what was already an immature display (holding a videogame funeral for a real-life dead person), will be coated in yet another layer of nerd-ridden bullshit.

Third, don't you all understand how bad this makes us look? This shit, right here, is why we all get the shit kicked out of us or teased or bullied or whatever. It's not because we're so smart and people are jealous. It's not because mom says we're special. It's because we have our priorities all fucked up. It's because nerds tend to put this kind of bullshit before actual real, honest-to-goodness human connections. Are our priorities any more fucked up than any other groups? Not necessarily, but our stuff seems to be harder for outsiders to grasp and shit like this is NOT HELPING!

Artist's rendering of Steve Irwin spinning in his grave

So if you really want to pay tribute to Steve Irwin, and not just get the geek clusterfuck that you and your friends put together in WoW on YouTube, then here are some things you can do that will actually mean something:

1. Donate some money to an appropriate charity.

If all of you assfaces would just pull $5 or so out of your pockets and put together some cash instead of meeting up in World of Warcraft, you could make a serious donation to something like, gee, I dunno, THE AUSTRALIA ZOO. You know, the place where Steve worked, which I'm sure can always use more generous financial support in order to better care for its wildlife. The WWF (not the wrestling thing, the animals one), has an Australian branch. They could also use some cash, I'm sure.

There's also your local zoo, or even your local animal shelter. A big donation, or even a small one, in Steve's name, to the cause he obviously was so passionate about makes a MUCH bigger statement and a much more fitting tribute to the man than spelling out "Crikey" in imaginary Night Elves.

2. Learn more about animals.

The man was passionate about wildlife and went to great lengths to spread that passion to everyone he could. So if you take up that curiosity (I don't mean grabbing poisonous snakes or wrestling crocodiles here, but actually learning more about them), that gives his life, and by extension his death, some real meaning, or at least more than frolicking in the virtual surf with some videogame Dwarves.

And spread that passion to others. If, by some miracle or loop-hole in the justice system you have access to children, spend some time with them to talk about animals. Pique their curiosity in wildlife. I can't think of a much better tribute than passing on something like that.

3. Go the fuck outside.

This one is pretty easy and, frankly, some of you need it. Shower first, please, then actually go out and spend some time in the sunshine. Get some vitamin D for Christ's sake! Go on a picnic. Go camping. Go for a walk. Spend time getting to know this planet while you still can. Steve Irwin obviously cared a whole hell of a lot about it. Aren't you curious why? Maybe you can find out. Just go the fuck outside!

Okay, that's all from me for now. I'll send you guys another letter the next time you do something asinine. Okay, maybe not that soon, but whatever.

Love and Natural 20s,

- Steve

Monday, September 04, 2006

Crocodile Tears

Don't get the wrong idea. I'm not trying to turn this blog into the Dead People Server just because this is the fourth R.I.P. posting I've made in a row, but it just so happens that a lot of notable people have been dying lately. If I didn't post about famous deaths, I think the passings would slip under most people's radars. So now it's pretty much become my duty to report on the bucket-kickers since I have my finger on the pulse of dead people (albeit that pulse is registering zero beats per minute). For today's bad news, the grim reaper has come for Steve Irwin, "The Crocodile Hunter."


Steve Irwin
February 22, 1962 - September 4, 2006

Steve Irwin was killed earlier today during a deep-sea documentary shoot when he was impaled in the heart by a stingray barb. Now I'm no doctor, but my basic diagnosis would be "HOLY SWEET MARY MOTHER OF JESUS, THAT HAS REALLY, REALLY GOT TO SUCK." It's simultaneously a tragic, yet totally bad-ass way to go.

Despite his name, the Crocodile Hunter didn't actually stalk crocs, but instead he taunted death his entire career by sticking his face in future suitcases, wallets and pimp shoes as they lived in their natural habitat. That's pretty cool, and at least he wasn't altogether nutso strange-o like that Grizzly Man who totally annoyed bears into killing him. Irwin was just a dedicated naturalist who had Linda Evans hair and a true love for animals. The environmentalist community will have one less hero and the late-night talk show circuit will have one less last-minute guest. Looks like Jay Leno will have to resort to booking Carrot Top instead. HOLY SWEET MARY MOTHER OF JESUS, THAT HAS REALLY, REALLY GOT TO SUCK.

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UPDATE 9/4/06 8:00PM:
What I find interesting is that it's clear that the thing most daily gossip shows hate most is a celebrity death that happens on a three-day weekend. Instead of giving Steve Irwin a proper video send-off, shows like Extra and Entertainment Tonight spent more time hyping prepackaged bits like Katie Couric's upcoming debut on the nightly news.

So while Pat O'Brien was busy drunk-dialing Vanessa Minnillo from his backyard barbecue, some poor intern was spending his Labor Day combing through footage of a Hollywood Video copy of The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course on DVD to create a last-second memorial that would be squeezed in before Extra's latest update on the awkward Simpson-Lachey tension backstage at the MTV Video Music Awards. That's tension so thick you couldn't even cut it with the serrated barb of a... never mind.