Issue 6: The End of the World as We Blow It

  So I was doing my monthly Google search of "signs of the apocalypse" (right after my monthly breast self-exam...it's just easier that way), because...you know...I want to be ready. When the rapture comes, I'm not just going to take God's wrath lying down. I'm going to fight that holy fire and brimstone like a mother bear protecting her cubs from a hapless hiker. I figure the best way to fight fire is with fire, so I'm going to need an assload of gasoline and a bff (big fucking flamethrower). I'd also like to be wearing some type of futuristic Aunt Entity-esque outfit. And because I'm not going to be able to just pull any of that (especially the bff) out of my ass at a moments notice, I really need to keep track of the signs.

   I admit I was surprised at how many hits the Bratz movie got. I know. I know. It's the Bratz Movie, and SL has enjoyed, in the past, making fun of the Bratz, but that was all in good fun. I kid the Bratz. But serious journalists ha-a-te the Bratz because they send the wrong message to young girls blah-di-blah-di-blah. Now, I'm no serious journalist...not even close...but I have to call bullshit. (See. Right there. Serious journalists almost never call bullshit; they disagree.) Since when do kids' shows send the right message? Except Captain Planet...of course.

   A lady hates to reveal her age through cartoon preference, but I'll admit that during a certain unnamed decade, I used to watch Battle of the Planets every day. And while less outright hookerish as Bratz, still BotP was kind of raunchy. Princess showed her panties in the opening of each and every episode. Oh. And what the hell kind of filthy swears was Keyop spouting? They had to bleep out almost every other word. Goddamn! I don't really know why you'd have to bleep out a cartoon, but the point is that my favorite cartoon had an exhibitionist, a potty mouth, a food addict, a narcissist and a porn addict (Jason...come on. He was totally a porn fiend!). The world didn't end and I didn't turn into a street prostitute or a waitress at Hooters. I turned into a God-fearing militant feminist...with a flamethrower.

   Still. I think the world might still be in trouble. Bust out the chainmail. Here are the real signs of the apocalypse as compiled by Sucking Lemons:

Sign #1.
Little Beauties: Ultimate Kiddie Queen Showdown,VH1.

   Besides the facts that the Kiddie Queens don't actually fight as the title suggests, and that it's narrated by a dude named Mr. Tim (who really, really, re-eeeea-lly knows his way around the child pornogra...oops...I mean pageant circuit), this show is pretty darn good. It exposes a whole new section of this country: one that will surely one day destroy society as we know it. I'm talking, of course, about the world of little girls' beauty pageants. The "documentary" follows a group of 6 year old girls and their mothers as they get ready for some giant little girl beauty pageant...probably somewhere in Florida. We see all of them flawlessly rehearse their Pro-Am routines (I don't know what Pro Am is...I think it's pageant speak for parading around like a whore). All of them are flawless except for Jordan, who has been nicknamed The Longshot by the sensitive folks at VH-1 docs. She falls down a lot. Then we see them all compete in a smaller pageant...except for Jordan, who decides to take some time off to get her spazz under control. Then we see them go off to Florida or wherever that big pageant is, where they get a visit from the Flipper Lady. No. Not a half-woman/half-dolphin creature, but a woman who makes her living selling fake teeth to little girls (who, being actual little girls, have a tendency to lose their teeth), so that when they smile they can all have these weird, fake-looking, enormous old-lady teeth. And they all wear them! All of them! Except for Jordan, who hasn't worn them since one of her real teeth got yanked out when her mom pulled the Flippers out. Ouch. I'm sure it was loose...I hope. Then we see them all get jacked up on giant pixie sticks their moms give them, so they can stay up late while their mothers relentlessly style their hair until it looks exactly like a wig...something no one wears. Not even Jordan. At this point, it's past 11pm, all of the girls are tweaking like little meth heads and look like miniature multi-ethnic versions of Dolly Parton at Halloween...in the Castro, and still no one has called CPS. Then we see them all cry when they lose...except for the girl who won. Oh. And Jordan, who, despite winning something I think might have actually been called "The Booby Prize", is thrilled and thinks she did "real good"! That you did, Jordan. Hang in there, sweets. It gets better. If it doesn't, we'll reserve a flamethrower for you.

Sign #2.
Chinese Toys

   Speaking of poisoning our children, You know all those toys that say "Made in China" on them. Yeah. They're poison. Well. Not all of them. Just the ones that look like beloved characters from the most trusted kids institution ever: Sesame Street. This might be really how the world ends, people. Poison Elmo. (Check with your bookie for odds.)

Sign #3.
E3 in July

   This probably isn't an actual sign of the apocalypse that E3 moved from May to June. I don't care about E3. I refuse to attend any videogame related event until someone finally makes a Battle of the Planets video game. But did any of y'all gaming journalists and industry types notice that right after you ALL complained about how E3 was getting "too big" and the booth babes were too sexy, they fired all the booth babes,and made the whole convention way way smaller. And moved it to July, so instead of watching May Sweeps in your hotel room, you end up watching Summer Programming! It's up to you. Either you can spend another year, cranking up the A/C, opening up the complimentary pack of tissues and weeping your way through another airing of The Dolly Parton Biography on Lifetime (you know who you are), or you can do something about it. Start blogging or writing or talking (or whatever it is that you do) about how crappy the smaller, later, less boobtacular E3 is and they should go back to the way it was...except now they should give out free tacos and mani/pedis at the Nintendo booth. Then I might actually go.

Sign #4.
Pet Homer for the DS

   That is if Nintendo doesn't kill us all first. At E3, the dudes making The Simpsons Game casually mention that for the DS version, there will be a game called "Pet Homer" which will be like Nintendogs...only instead of dogs...Homer! Holy crap! All we know is that you can feed him donuts...but what else can you do? Can you take him for a walk to the All You Can Eat shrimp buffet? Can you get him to eat so much he gains weight and can't leave the house and has to mash his fist into the phone to call for help? Can you dress him in Marge's clothes? Can you get him to poke Lenny in the eye? Can you unlock cool stuff for Homer's tv? Like Itchy and Scratchy? Or the Mr. Sparkle commercial? Or the Canyonero commercial? Can you take him to the fair and feed him Guatemalan insanity peppers and let him deep fry his shirt and adopt a horse and piss off BTO? Can you set fire to Flanders' rose garden and salt the earth so that nothing grows there again? Ever!?! God and Jebus in heaven, if you can do even half that stuff, why would you want to do anything else? People will forget to eat...and take their medication.

Sign #5.
The Spoiler Bell

   Speaking of Nintendo, dudes and casually letting stuff slip, at E3, in a conference with Nintendo dudes, when one Nintendo dude thought the other Nintendo dude (either Eiji Aonuma or Shigeru Miyamoto...or as I call them EJ and Shiggy) was going to say too much about an upcoming Zelda game, he reached over and actually covered the other dudes mouth. EJ and Shiggy must be really, really good friends. Random weird occurance between two overly handsy dudes from Japan? Perhaps. But then, at Comic Con, when one of the Lost dudes (Carlton Cuse or Damon Lindelof) thought the other Lost dude was going to say too much about the next season of Lost, he rang a little bell. Carl and Damon aren't that close. The problem is that now, crazed fans of spoiler-sensitive media will be ringing Spoiler Bells. Can you just imagine if we'd had spoiler bells when that dude broke into that bookstore and took pictures of the ending of the last Harry Potter book and posted them on the interweb? The din would've been unbearable! Can you imagine? A million Spoiler Bells all ringing out at once...and then silenced. Brrr.

Sign #6.
Respectable Video Games

   Remember the good old days when video games were bad? When they were a "waste of time"? When they caused sterility, homicidal rampages and hairy palms? Well I'm here to tell you the end of those days is nigh, my friends. Oh really? You think it's not nigh? Oh it's nigh! And if it's not nigh then why was Nintendo's Brain Age (a video game!) featured in Scientific American? Scientific American for Christ's beer bong! And not in an article about how video games are bad for you, but in an article about how video games are good for you! Nooooooo!!!! Video games are bad.

   Look at GTA: San Andreas. Random violence, random soundtrack, hard-to-find secret sex...bad, bad, bad...right? Not according to a dude named Ian Bogost (or as I like to call him, Boggie). Boggie went on the Colbert Report to plug his Persuasive Games...that's fine plug your little game company, game designer boy! And then he had the nerve to say that because of the junk food and getting fat feature, GTA: SA actually taught people about this country's obesity epidemic. Wrong! No! GTA teaches nothing but how to steal cars and beat up cops. Video games shouldn't teach people about important societal issues. Although, there is a Persuasive game where you play as an airport security officer who has to watch for banned items and the banned items keep changing, and there's a lot of banned items like toothpaste and cow skulls, and it's kind of fun. But world ending...totally world ending. http://www.persuasivegames.com/

Possible Sign #7.
The Bratz Movie.

   Okay. I'm not saying it definitely is a sign of the apocalypse. I'm just saying it might be. On one hand, what everyone says about the Bratz is true. They do look like total whores. There is even a scene in the movie where the Bratz kidnap a group of ten year old girls in a Sephora and give them all super-duper slutty make-overs. And then they all look at the camera with glitter-balmed evil smiles, as if to say, "Look what we're doing to your children, middle America! Mwa-ha-ha-ha! Next...the elderly!" I'm not joking. That is an actual scene from the movie. I'd say, "go see it," but I know you won't.

   That being said...despite the fact that the acting is so bad that in one scene, you can clearly hear the director yell, "No! No! No! Stop! Cut! Cut! Cut!" it's a pretty darn good movie. It's about four bffs (that's best friends forever, not big fucking flamethrowers): the poor little rich girl, the poor little poor girl, the half-math-geek half-goth, and our heroine, Yasmin, who failed chorus and is half-Jewish, half-Mexican (you can tell that she's half-Jewish, half-Mexican because there's a mariachi band in her kitchen eating bagels...no I'm not kidding). And then there's the male romantic lead. He's deaf. Wait. What I mean to say is that he can't hear with his ears, but he can hear with his heart. As illustrated by the sweet, tender scene where Yasmin is alone, in the chorus room, singing into full microphone/speaker set-up. Deaf dude places his hand on the speaker, and "listens." Then Yasmin brings him to the cafeteria and hands him a piece of ice and says, "this is blue!" Then she hands him a potato straight from a pot of boiling water and says, "this is red!" She smiles. He yells, "I'm deaf, you dumb bitch...not blind!" The he goes to the hospital. Okay. That part I lied about. But still, a funny movie. Nothing that's going to destroy the planet, but still...quite the chucklefest. Go see it.