The Maze-r Games

Oh, the regular news is so depressing.  NFL this, NFL that.  Personally, I thought there was a big problem with the NFL with the arrest of double murderer and self-professed neo-John Gotti in the making, Aaron Hernandez.  There are calls for Roger Godell and Ray Rice to leave their respective professions, but no!  This is the era of fighting back!  I mean, have you seen the job market?  It's terrible!  No one's hiring!  No, they're going to stand their ground... and without using guns for now.  To be fair, Ray Rice eventually moved his fiancée's legs out of the way of the elevator.  I mean, was he supposed to do more?  Dude was upset!  The bitch was mouthing off again!  He had to hit her.  No other choice, no other choice.  He'll do it again with cameras on him if he has to.  He'll post the video to his own YouTube account himself.  It'll make the Kick-Ass 1 video look like Child's Play.  Just look to Richard Sherman, Ray.  Richard's on the path to redemption... the commercial path to redemption.  Endorsement deals, what have you.  As for Roger Godell, well... want to run for Senator in Kansas?
...oh, right.  The box office.  Well, there's a lot of movies on that damn horizon, and it couldn't come at a worse time, what with school starting and all.  Why do TV shows still compete with homework?  Are the TV networks and the teachers unions colluding against me?  Yes, they are.  Plus, I gotta get my backpack out of storage.
And so, The Maze Runner is #1 at the box office.  Well, tis only a handful of parents of hardcore video gamers out there who can be truly proud of their successful progeny who spent their formative years fiddling around with mazes.  Is this an ode to them?  Or is it basically Hunger Games with the genders reversed?  Meanwhile, at #2 it's Liam Neeson's latest, A Walk Among the Tombstones, a slight variation on The Grey and the Taken series.  Probably more depressing.  In other movie news, someone other than Howard Stern dared to question Tina Fey's stardom.  I won't even dignifiy it with a hyperlink, but some dude was trying to give her career advice about being more successful in movies.  Dude!  She slaved away in the comedy gold mines for eight years!  Give a girl a chance to breathe and try new things!  She needs some spontaneity in her life again!  What better way to get that than with a couple of big Hollywood bombs?  Besides, the weight of This Is Where I Leave You is on Jason Bateman's shoulders, or director Shawn Levy.  Yeah, that's it.  Still, Shawn Levy's doing all right.  He's doing more silver screen outings than his closest competitor, Adam Shankman.  I forgot the guy's name, so I had to go back into my own archives to remember it.  God bless the Memory Hole!  Okay, here's my impression of Adam Shankman's agent on the phone brokering the deal to direct Bedtime Stories... "Okay, so Dennis Dugan's out as director.  I got just the guy.  He's lean and hungry, got a couple hits under his arm.  Who?  Adam Shankman... Shankman!... Not Sandler.  SHANKMAN!!!"
Anyway, those are the newbies who are pushing everyone else down a few notches.  Let's Be Cops was hanging tough just barely in the Top 5 but is now at #7, Guardians slips to #6, Turtles to #8, and If I Stay is at #10.  My dreams are turning into a showbiz phony.  Oh, Hit Girl, I dreampt about you last night.  I didn't want to push our friendship too far, but I just had to get my script to you.  It'd be the perfect part!  It's basically Kubrick's The Shining, but from the point of view of the twin girls that get murdered.  You'd be PERFECT for the part!  Dual roles, British accent?  I believe in you!  Also, this is the second night in a row that I dreamed about getting attacked by zoo animals!  The big cats, basically.  I was trying to protect our cat from a mountain lion that was outside, but she's a fierce girl cat and she can take on the best of them... or so she thinks.  I also dreamed that I was going through a flooded parking lot on a... well, it was either a Radio Flyer wagon or a luge sled.  Probably the ladder.  Incidentally, who came up with the notion that we dream in black and white?  I distinctly remember some colors... don't I?  Maybe everything was brown like Barton Fink or yellow like The Royal Tenenbaums.  Yeoman forgot to remove the filter, you see........