Troy Warms Up . . .

Aside from many Facebook posts that carry the flavor of my old Shotgun Reviews column, I haven't written a full-on SGR in a while.  I feel like I need to warm up a little.

Congressional Birth Control Hearings:  I heard a great joke the other day.  Three priests walk into a Congressional hearing and . . . wait, that was a real thing?  I could have sworn it was a joke.

Danica Patrick in NASCAR:  Everyone knows that I'm not a big racing fan, but I know that Danica Patrick moved to NASCAR.  We know that she knows her way around a car, but how will it work out in a new series?  Well, I've been hearing a few things here and there that run from the harmless to the ridiculous, like comparisons to Hitler (that's insane: he was much shorter).  But the one that I seem to find kind of hilarious are the muttered assertions that she's drawing all of the media attention.  Really?  What did you expect?  Have these guys never the seen the "No Doubt" episode of "Behind the Music"?  Any time that you insert a pretty woman into a male-dominated field (rock bands, racing, Congressional hearings on birth control), she's going to draw some attention.  It's the nature of the beast.  I suppose in the long-run it doesn't matter.  I can't name ten current NASCAR drivers after Tony Stewart, but I also can't remember the name of the guitar player from No Doubt.  Drivers, you are not alone.

Linsane in the Membrane!  Linsane in the Brain!:  I have nothing further to add here, except that I can now file for a fifteen cent kickback from the Knicks PR office.

File Under "Duh":  After it turned out that the second "Ghost Rider" movie sucked (Editor's Note: Big fucking shock), I noticed a couple of threads here and there lamenting its failure.  One poster asked, "Why must they keep making bad comic book movies?  What's the point?"  Look, I'm a fan, most of my friends are fans, and I know lots of fans, but are people still this naive?  Answer: Money.  Money money money.  MUH-NAY.  Dough.  Benjamins.  Gap.  Cabbage.  Cheddar.  Bread.  Loot.  Coinage.  Bucks.  Jack.  Swag.  Even the bad ones make money, kid.  And it's easy to make a bad comic book movie.  It's hard to make a Dark Knight or a Spider-Man 2.  It's much, much easier to piss on a reel of film and call it Catwoman.  That doesn't make it right (it sure as hell isn't right), but that's the answer to Why.  The solution?  Well, YOU WENT TO A MOVIE THAT YOU KNEW WOULD SUCK.  Think about it for a bit.  We'll wait.

All right, the muscle memory is kicking in . . .