Uncle Crizzle & the Crap He's Written

The movie starts off as your standard-issue, alien-invader film, as a hard-drinking, widowed LA detective (Frank Grillo) tries to lead his estranged, juvenile-delinquent son (Jonny Weston) and others to safety as the whole town gets taken over by creatures from another planet. Unfortunately, he and the survivors (which includes Antonio “Huggy Bear” Fargas in an all-too-brief role as a blind, shit-talking veteran) gets sucked into their ship (which looks like where Emerson, Lake and Palmer shot the cover for their Brain Salad Surgery album), where he finds out brains are being taken out of humans and implanted into slave aliens. But just when you think that’s what the movie is about, it goes into martial-arts mode as the ship makes a crash landing in Indonesia and local action hero Iko Uwais shows up, kicking all kinds of alien ass as the merciless leader of an underground resistance.

In this sequel to the 2010 extraterrestrial thriller Skyline, original co-writer Liam O’Donnell handles the directing duties last occupied by brothers/special-effects artists Greg and Colin Strause (they are listed as producers). O’Donnell takes obvious glee in not only mashing up various, B-movie genres in one film (he slides in a tribute to Japanese monster movies of the ‘50s with a land-obliterating climax), but also indulging in some rampant, ridiculous schlockiness. There’s even an end-credits, blooper montage, where we see stilt-wearing stuntmen trying to stay upright as the aliens and the cast trying not to look like idiots as they swing around in front of green screens.

I recently racked my brain trying to figure out how I’ve been able to stay broke and unemployed for so long. (Some of you may remember that I briefly blamed my still-active AOL account.) I recently drew up a list of possibilities (I believe “God doesn’t like me” was one of them), and the sex-offender guy was high atop the list.

I found out about my nasty-ass namesake several years ago when I was doing something one night I shouldn’t have: I Googled myself. As I scrolled through the page results, I noticed my name also belonged to some dude in another state, a dude who was on the state’s sex offender registry. I clicked on the link and, sure enough, I looked at the mugshot of a man who fit the sex-offender profile: bitterly middle-aged, looking like a failed insurance salesman, wearing the signature, child-molester glasses. The rap sheet was predictably depraved: convictions for predatory, criminal sexual assault, aggravated criminal sex abuse/bodily harm, aggravated, criminal sex abuse towards a victim between the ages of 13 and 16. Yeah, in short, this muhfucka ain’t shit.

At first, I found it funny. As someone who believes he has the worst luck of any person in history, of course, I have the same name as a sex offender. It’s just one more terrible, shitty thing I’m stuck with. I would joke about it with my friends. But, lately, I’m starting to believe that this other guy, a man I don’t even know, has been keeping me from getting steady work. I’m sure places where I’ve applied for jobs immediately went online to investigate me. And I’m sure, at some point, they got to the point where they see the same thing I saw so many years ago. But, instead of maybe delving a bit further and discovering that I’m not, in fact, that guy, they just automatically assume that I’m him and say, “Well, we’re not hiring that sick fuck!”

Unless, I’m on some kind of blacklist I don’t know about, this has to be it. (If you know of any reasons why I can’t find work, whether it’s having a shitty resume or a shitty attitude, please let me know.) I mean, I’ve been unemployed for most of the decade, and I’ve been applying for jobs left and right. Not to mention it’s been getting increasingly difficult finding steady freelance work.  It’s bad enough I’m in my hometown of Houston, struggling my ass off, trying to figure out when and where my next dollar is coming from. But this shit is getting increasingly ridiculous.

I honestly don’t know what to do about this. Do I change my name? Do I track down one of those people who scramble the Google search results and bury that Kentucky guy deep, deep, deep in the web?  I thought I was already doing that by churning out more work and having most of that appear in the top results when you Google my name. But the dude is still out there, haunting me, keeping me from having a comfortable living, a place to stay and a life where I don’t have to wonder how the fuck am I going to eat today!

1.       Twin Peaks: The Return (Showtime) – Mark Frost and David Lynch’s 18-part trip back the ABC cult soap they somehow got on network TV in the ‘90s is still a magnificent ride. Hilarious, terrifying, baffling, addictive, mystifying -- every episode left me wanting more. And by the time it got to its expectation-obliterating mindfuck of a last episode, this revival-for-people-who-hate-revival’s message was pretty clear: Maybe it’s best to leave the past in the past.

2.       American Vandal and The Keepers (Netflix) – Keepers is a jaw-dropping, true-crime series about the decades-old, unsolved murder of a nun and the unspeakable acts she knew was happening at a catholic school. Vandal is a dizzyingly clever dramedy that poked fun at Keepers, Making a Murderer and other shows of its ilk. What both shows brilliantly did was convey the secrets, lies and personal confusion teenagers usually deal with during their formative years. Fuck war – high school is hell!

3.       Bojack Horseman (Netflix) and Rick and Morty (Adult Swim) – These two savagely satirical cartoons are also the best tragicomedies that are currently on TV. Both shows feature arrogant, astoundingly damaged protagonists who stay suspended in a state of self-centeredness, almost unwilling to accept the damage they end up inflicting upon the people they claim to care about. Man, why are animated shows often the realest shows on TV?  

4.       Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC) and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (CBS) – I don’t understand why late-night talk shows rarely get ten-best love this time of year. These two shows not only give consistent, nightly entertainment, but two hosts – guys who took a while for them to truly find their footing – who aren’t afraid to be honest and opinionated when it comes to what’s happening in the world. Letterman would be proud.

5.       Better Things (FX) and One Day at a Time (Netflix) – I don’t know if Louis CK’s sexual-misconduct trouble brought the show more into mainstream focus, but more people (especially critics) realized this season what I realized last season: Pamela Adlon’s single-mom-com is a work of sarcastic, cathartic genius. Meanwhile, the Latin reboot of Norman Lear’s iconic single-mom-com turned out to be an actually well-done revamp. Speaking of moms on the edge…

6.       I’m Sorry (truTV) – The best new show none of y’all probably saw was Andrea Savage’s savagely funny sitcom that started out as a Curb Your Enthusiasm for women, but ended up being a witty look at how a married funnywoman (played by Savage, of course) with kids tries to stay sane and appropriate in the City of Angels.

7.       Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (TBS) – The Daily Show vets continue to fight the good fight during our Trumpalicious times, making sense of all this terrible, terrible shit and trying to mine some comedy out of it. At this point in the game, these two are basically comedy angels – and they seriously need a hug.

8.       The Carmichael Show (NBC) -- The minute I saw that its third-season opener would be about rape (a very funny episode, BTW), I knew that this sitcom’s days were numbered. But I’m still pissed that this usually brilliant, often hilarious, all-the-way Black show was cut in his prime. There’s a special place in hell for the execs who foolishly thought Marlon would be a suitable replacement after this show got the ax.

9.       Insecure (HBO) – Although there were a couple of off episodes (what was the deal with that blow-job ep?), Issa Rae’s catty-but-cackle-worthy sitcom still remains a heavily divisive yet wildly fascinating show for folk who need to know how single Black people are living these days. BTW, BEST MUSIC CUES EVER!

10.   The Defiant Ones (HBO) – Allan Hughes’s rollicking, four-part chronicle of the partnership between workaholic musical hellraisers Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine is basically a less-bleak O.J.: Made in America, a novelistic look at how music and culture has changed in the forty years – and how these guys changed it.

OK, one more…