FOREVER IN BLUE JEANS

1. Madea Goes To Jail/LGF Wknd/$ 16.5 Total/$ 64.9
2. Jonas Brothers 3D/Disney Wknd/$ 12.7 Total/$ 12.7
3. Slumdog Millionaire/Fox Searchlight Wknd/$ 12.2 Total/$ 115.1
4. Taken/Fox Wknd/$ 10.0 Total/$ 107.9
5. He’s Just Not That Into You/WB Wknd/$ 5.9 Total/$ 78.5
6. Paul Blart: Mall Cop/Sony Wknd/$ 5.6 Total/$ 128.1
7. Coraline/Focus Wknd/$ 5.3 Total/$ 61.1
8. Street Fighter: Legend of Chun Li Wknd/$ 4.7 Total/$ 33.7
9. Confessions of a Shopaholic/Touch Wknd/$ 4.4 Total/$ 33.7
10.Fired Up/ScreenGems Wknd/$ 3.8 Total/$ 10.1

A MAN WHO WILL ALWAYS HAVE OSCAR NIGHT FREE
Madea Goes To Jail holds at number one and Tyler Perry has unfairly teased the world with the idea he might retire this character---which I unfortunately initially read as the idea he might retire altogether and rid the theaters of his crap. Besides, if he gets rid of Madea he won’t be able to justify dressing up in drag and pretending to like men.

OR MILEY WILL DROP THE BEANS DURING HER COKE BINGE IN TWO YEARS
The Jonas Brothers 3-D Experience opens at number two and I’m just patiently waiting for the day a disgruntled employee spills all the dirty details about what’s really going on with these three supposedly virginal brothers with every teenage girl in America at their feet. The thing about these little “promise ring” kids is that only penile-vaginal intercourse counts as sex, so they could be sodomizing girls all around the country while claiming to be virgins. And if Santa really loves me, it won’t all be girls either. I’m still thinking Taylor Swift is a drag queen.

YEAH, BUT IT’S BATMAN BILLIONAIRE
Slumdog Millionaire jumps to number three thanks to its Oscar wins which is what studio people really want from awards. But now millions of people around the world are saying, “That’s it? That’s what wins Academy Awards!?!” And god help you if you’re sitting next to a fan of The Dark Knight still seething over its omission.

WHERE IDEAS GO TO BE RUN INTO THE GROUND
Taken is down to number four and the $100M+ gross of this domestically (overseas where girls really are taken it’s at $70M+) has guaranteed at the very least a direct-to-video sequel. I mean, did you know they made a sequel to Roadhouse that way? Yeah, exactly. Liam Neeson probably won’t do it but Steven Segal should slide right into that slot.

THE OTHERS
He’s Just Not That Into You is down to number five, followed by Paul Blart: Mall Cop at number six and Coraline at number seven.

EVERY YEAR MORTAL KOMBAT JUST LOOKS BETTER AND BETTER
Street Fighter: Legend of Chun Li opens poorly at number eight and yes, I saw this. Hell, I saw the first mess, why not see this one? This is one of the rare times I’m outside the geek milieu and be just be a consumer---unlike the gaming geeks who have been pitching a shitfit since this was first announced. It’s all the same shit I’ve heard coming out of my own mouth on more than one occasion and it’s no wonder no one wants to fuck me (but Michael Keaton as Batman remains the utmost BULLSHIT). But there’s a reason I’m King of the Geeks and not just another loser virgin subject and that I know there’s no way you can duplicate the proportions of illustrated characters and finding some Asian girl with thighs bigger than her freaking head is a ridiculous thing to ask for, which has been their complaint about Kristin Kreuk (best known to you as Lana Lang on Smallville) getting the role. Yes, I bitched about her hair not being red, but that’s so easy to do, it’s obvious negligence or laziness that producers don’t do it, but massive Olympic Sprinter thighs is just ridiculous. The irony is, Kristin Kreuk doesn’t exactly have small thighs in proportion to the rest of her body. As I’ve never missed an episode of Smallville in the 8 years it’s been on, I can attest to her being relatively thick in that regard (something she actually alluded to in an interview). But she doesn’t look exactly like a fucking 2-D image in a game so the same chronic masturbators who spend hours photoshopping her head onto naked bodies and posting them online are upset. The greater irony is she’s the best thing about the movie. She gives it her all, but she’s the only person who showed up ready to do so. I guess years of playing it straight on Smallville taught her something about keeping a straight face amidst crap. The movie is essentially a prequel to the actual Street Fighter concept, which is about a martial arts tournament (because that’s apparently the only martial arts idea that’s ever existed). Chun Li is one of the contestants and this is apparently how she came to be, though it uses many of the characters from Street Fighter utterly out of context of the game. Now this outrage makes more sense. Even Shakespeare gets changed from play to movie, but you still have to pay some respect to the original concept, because if it’s so bad why are you even bothering to adapt it? But even if they had displayed some loyalty to the original concept, what ultimately sinks this is what sinks every bad movie: the incompetent execution. Chun Li’s father is kidnapped when she’s a girl because the bad guys want all the information he possesses of his father’s legitimate business contacts so they blackmail them. Um, if you read a newspaper you know that someone who had everything last year literally has nothing this year, so there’s no way his information can be viable a decade later, especially since he’s presumed dead. And it’s downhill from there. Apparently the screenwriter here didn’t agree with the rest of the world who all thought that the flaw in Superman The Movie thirty years ago was that he was ultimately fighting a real estate scam, because that’s at the heart of this too (though I’m sure you’ll find people who think that gentrification is worse than Lex Luthor ever was). Needless to say, the fight scenes are shit because they hired a bunch of non-fighting actors and then had to constantly inter-cut them with the stuntmen doing the real fighting. The twisted highlight of the film becomes how entertaining the bad parts are and Chris Klein---who decided that every line should be delivered with a sneer from flared nostrils---more than delivers. He’s like 80’s Don Johnson. I like to think he knew how bad this was and just decided to have as much fun as possible. In the end the best thing about the film remains Kristin Kreuk in shorts wearing white Doc Martens.

I’M THINKING A MORE MASCULINE NAME MIGHT HELP: HUGH STEEL
Confessions of a Shopaholic is down to number nine and this is a “who’s who” of actors who deserve better. John Goodman, my beloved Kristin Scott Thomas, John Lithgow, Joan Cusack and Lynn Redgrave (though she kinda gave up respectability years ago when she wouldn’t deny being friends with Ron Jeremy). And we need to face up to the fact that Hugh Dancy is simply not going to be the UK’s next big heartthrob. Not when he picks films like this, Basic Instinct 2 and Blood & Chocolate.

BRRR IT’S COLD IN HERE/A BAD CHEERLEADING MOVIE IS VERY NEAR
Finally, Fired Up closes out the top ten at number ten and normally I’m a shoe-in for a cheerleader movie, but given this actually had a website for it called “notacheerleadingmovie.com” so I decided to bypass it. A real cheerleading movie is not about two dudes trying to bone cheerleaders. Granted that’s at the heart of my love of them, but it’s not really what I want to see onscreen and neither did anyone else apparently.

KUNG FU PUSSY
No, that’s not the ill-titled sequel to Kung Fu Panda or some porn version of it. It’s this odd form of double jeopardy at my kung fu school. See. in addition to basic classes they’ve got what are called “San Daa” classes, which is more practical application of the skills. Fighting drills basically. A solid hour of non-stop kicking and punching and occasionally ground techniques and throws. I promised myself I’d eventually work my way up to including it, but of course I never did. Then they changed the schedule so now “san daa” is before the actual class which was pushed back. Initially I thought “Great, now I don’t have to rush to class right after work” but then came the peer pressure. Yes, what I avoided so well in high school is now unavoidable in middle age. To be the only person taking the 8:00 kung fu class who didn’t take the 7:00 San Daa class instantly makes you a “kung fu pussy.” Everyone else just lost ten pounds of water weight so who are you to just be grunting and groaning for just one class…you pussy. So for me it’s either do both classes or don’t do any classes, because I will not be a kung fu pussy. The girls from a yoga school one instructor attends do both classes and I can’t? Sigh. So now I do two-and-half-hour workouts. You know, to the point where your sweat smells like ammonia? I looked that up. If you’re smelling like ammonia, that means your body has exhausted its basic fuel and is now feasting on your muscles to keep going. I can literally go one notch down on my belt after one of these classes. While this can literally turn me into a lean, mean, fighting machine, it’s thrown my workout schedule into havoc. Usually kung fu was Monday, Wednesday, Friday and bike riding Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Now, because I need my legs fresh for San Daa on Wednesday and Friday, I can’t ride on Tuesday or Thursday nights any more. Hell, I couldn’t even do it this past Saturday because I was so wiped out. At least not until I get to a place where my body can handle that kind of endurance and I think we know the likelihood of that. It’s not too much of a problem now that the ground is frozen over every other week and I can’t ride anyway, but come summer it’s going to suck because I love riding my bike.

AND THE WINNER IS…BOOZE
As always, I spent Oscar night in the company of some of my geek girls, though truth be told it’s usually only two of them and their friends. I dragged Chasing Amy along with me because she’s going through a break up and wants to spend all her time alone in her pajamas watching TV. I’d let her do it if I hadn’t touched her back recently and felt her bones through it. I know that when you’re forced to socialize you’ll eat, so even when she tried to bail I went over and made her get dressed and dragged her down for food, booze and snarking…and there was plenty to snark about. Apparently Hugh Jackman’s deal was he could do musical numbers or there was no deal. I liked the brutal honesty of the jokes that no one had seen some of the films and that The Dark Knight was stupidly snubbed as a popular and critically praised film. I’m sorry, but it was no worse than fucking Titanic or Gladiator and it was damn sure better than Benjamin fucking Button….I’m sure the idea of five previous winners presenting the acting Oscars seemed like a good idea at the time, but what it looks like in execution is the Final Five Cylons showing up…Penelope Cruz won for playing an overly top passionate Latina. What next? An Irishman winning for playing a romantic drunk?...Tina Fey and Steve Martin remain a frighteningly good duo. Was that a mole on her cleavage?...I didn’t understand the need to show a montage of films that weren’t even nominated. Were they just trying to humiliate people? Though I did like it when Will Smith did it because it pointed out just what films really paid the bills. And Wall-E was dicked out of a best picture nomination for this ghetto category of “Best Animated Feature.”…Benjamin Button did deserve that Costume award because those clothes were the best thing about the film and it was equally fitting that James Bond and Carrie Bradshaw give out those awards…I hate Joaquin Phoenix so I’m enjoying this thing he’s going through, real or faked and I enjoy him being mocked…in case you didn’t know how big Judd Apatow’s dick was after the last two years, getting a short film at the Oscars based on one of the least funny films (except that one with Owen Wilson) let you know….another musical number, per Hugh Jackman’s deal, with Beyonce and the kids from High School Musical in a vain attempt to bring down the age curve…Heath Ledger deserved to win, but if he hadn’t died they wouldn’t have given it to an actor in a comic book movie…Jerry Lewis was remarkably well behaved and funny for Eddie Murphy to introduce him given how Lewis bitched about them remaking The Nutty Professor, even though he got seriously paid for it…whomever thought that Queen Latifah singing over the Roll Call of Death needs to be fired. Just show me pictures and not a picture of a screen. Sigh. Paul Newman…given how Ewan McGregor had a falling out with Danny Boyle over The Beach, you think he’s a little more willing to kiss and make up now, given George Lucas did jackshit for his career?...those poor Slumdog Millionaire kids. Going from something that can’t be called a shack because it technically doesn’t have four walls to the lap of LA luxury only to go back again. It’s soooo going to fuck up their minds. Yeah, I know the producers bought their families houses. The same families who slap them when they don’t want to do interviews. I want it to end well, I’m just not expecting it too. And I love the female lead dumped her husband when she made it. Remember: success lets you be who you really are. Which is to say none of you have ever seen the real me…oh, and Yellowtail makes an amazing Shiraz. We drank numerous wines all night, but that one killed. I’ve been drinking it since.

SOLE SURVIVOR
So it took four stores over two days, but I finally got shoes at the Kenneth Cole sale that’s still going on. They’re transitioning from fall to spring and clearing out things at up to 70% off. Now, this all depends on what store you go to. In SoHo it’s only 50%. Near Union Square and in Rockefeller Center it’s 70% and midtown it’s only 30%. I got a pair of brown loafers at the Union Square location the second day I went there and I got the shoes I was originally told were sold out (I went through about ten pairs of shoes, damn my average size feet). Originally $150, I got them for $36. Yeah, babee! And just as I cannot have too many pairs of Kenneth Cole shoes, I cannot have too many pairs of Levis and picked up another pair of those at Dave’s Army & Navy, where I’ve been buying my jeans since college. It was a particular pair I couldn’t find in my size a month ago (I’m going with a less baggy fit because I want everyone to know when I have an unplanned erection), so it was a good shopping day. I even broke my promise to stop buying anything with a Gap or Old Navy label, but how can you pass up $5 boxer briefs with an argyle pattern? You can’t! Though my favorite pair of underwear are the blue and white horizontally striped boxer briefs I bought at Uniqlo in SoHo. They look like a French Sailor shirt. I really wish gay men would release their stranglehold on the men’s underwear industry. It’s very difficult finding stylish underwear that doesn’t scream “I’VE GOT A DICK RIGHT HERE!” in their design. I think we all know where the junk is, fellas.

AND FLASH GORDON IS MY DAD
Philip Jose Farmer, a name unknown to most of you, but to geeks he’s a god as a prolific science fiction writer and he died in his sleep last week. He was best known for his Riverworld series and his use of sex in science fiction (geeks find it easier to imagine spaceships than touching another human), especially with classic characters. Before Alan Moore let you know your favorite heroes could he sexual deviants, Philip Jose Farmer let you know that, raised as an ape, Tarzan would have been fucking monkeys. He also wrote stories connecting heroes to each other through lineage, so Tarzan, Doc Savage and James Bond were all related and existed in the same universe. So basically you’re either born a hero or you’re not.