With everybody all “#SOPA” this and “#PIPA” that and killing middle-schoolers’ history essays, no one seems to be paying attention to the day’s BIGGER story: that Burger King, quietly testing a new delivery service these past few months, has supposedly mastered the “proprietary thermal packaging technology” that has long stymied advocates of burger transportation reform. Once upon a time the ability to move a flame-grilled Whopper from the kitchens of BK to your dining room table was practically non-existent, the loss of condiment crispness and patty heat TOO MUCH to overcome. But no longer. Harnessing all the powers of modern science, BK is once more leading Americans of discriminating taste to the Promised Land of freshness. They told us this day would never come. Their shortsightedness will one day be written of alongside that of King George and the Hindenburg engineers.

The real question, of course, is HOW WILL IT WORK? No one really knows! As Megan Garber at The Atlantic points out,

It’d have to lock in enough moisture, microwave-style, to ensure that the food it contains doesn’t dry out; it’d have to release enough, though, to prevent those contents from steaming. It’d have to, ostensibly, include some kind of mechanism that prevents the “fresh” ingredients on the burger — the lettuce, the tomato — from cooking while the other ingredients are kept warm.

That’s a lot of masters to serve! The sheer number of variables at play — dry/wet dynamics, veggie moisture, bun integrity — makes cracking the code here at least a Calc 4-level problem. But if BK’s top scientists can make this work…I mean, what is there left to accomplish? We won.

But that’s beside the point. Succeed, fail, or fall woefully somewhere in-between, your efforts at changing the Game are admirable and worthy of recognition. So here’s to you, Burger King — the Hertz Rental of burgers, forever trying harder. What did you do today, Carl’s Jr.?

…But then Chinese explosion artist Cai Guo-Qiang sets off about a billion “daytime fireworks” in Doha, Qatar, and all your holiday frustrations take a backseat to the awesomeness of pyrotechnical impressionism repainting the sky. Things are good.

Everything’s going to be okay.

WARNING: this review may feature some saucy language. Proceed with a sailor’s tolerance.

If you’re anything like me, ‘Shame’ will be the first NC-17 movie you ever see in theaters. And, aware of this, you’re going to head into your showing with a checklist of totally high school expectations: Fassbender peen? Check. Mulligan carpeting? Threesomes, alley romps, and furious self-administration? You want it, ‘Shame”s got it; this is sexy Christmas come early, especially for people who really don’t care to see ‘The Muppets’. But for all its titillation, ‘Shame’ is about as far from sexy as a movie can be. Once the novelty of the lead actor’s (let’s just SAY it) sizable penis wears off, what you’re left with is maybe the true successor to ‘Precious’ — or, in so many words, a movie that’s by design the opposite of fun. But also excellent?

For the sake of consistency, let’s do the plot thing: Michael Fassbender plays Brandon, a successful consultant type hiding the SHAME of his addiction to all things sex. In weirdo pornography, in uncomfortable dates with call girls — he lives for release, and practically nothing else. His sister (Carrie Mulligan) shows up, damaged in her own way. She sleeps with his boss. They fight. No one is happy! Brandon sinks deeper and deeper into an abyss of depravity before the movie ends and your children are safe asleep at home, none the wiser that their parents just saw a movie they will be forbidden from seeing until college.

This is the most PG-13 shot I could find.

While Shame could have easily, EASILY gone down the “let’s make everyone and everything as sad as humanly f*cking possible” road, it’s actually not quite as extreme or downbeat as the rating would have you believe. YES, Brandon makes his way through a red-rimmed gay club to get his dee essed and returns home to find his sister’s suicide attempt having repainted his bathroom. It’s dark! The movie’s about a SEX ADDICT. But packed in there are some oddly lively scenes that help break the tension and — for real — might even be funny.

At one point in the film, Brandon tries to make a go of a perfectly normal date with a co-worker. They stumble through awkward small talk; their waiter flubs the specials menu. Suddenly you’re not watching the saddest movie ever, but a Nora Ephron comedy where Tom Hanks just happens to be a serial masturbator. In fact, looking at all the miserable scenes to follow through the lens of an aborted romantic comedy helps them go down that much smoother. Fingering some random girl in a dimly-lit bar again? When will the guy learn!?

The fact that he really doesn’t learn anything can be taken as “how European!” proof of Shame‘s honest excellence, or an indicator that perhaps this film didn’t need to be feature-length. Like we covered above, there’s not much to it: Fassbender’s a sex addict, his sister is an emotionally-damaged need-monster, and we watch them spiral out of control but with an understanding that this has probably happened many times before. It’s a character sketch – a quick “here’s this guy” peek into a life none of us (should ever) want. There’s NOT THAT MUCH ELSE TO ABSORB.

But the acting is so fantastic, and the character exploration so rich, that “nothing happens” is a pointless criticism to level. Most crucial to the film’s power here is the fact that neither the script nor Fassbender ever glamorizes Brandon’s powers of seduction. His brain boning of a woman on the subway early on is maybe the sexiest things get — everything after that seems slimier and sadder, spiraling until the guy at movie’s end is just…haggard. Looking to yell “Fassbender’s a CHAMP, yo!”? Do it before the guy tries to f*ck an elevator*.

ALL JOSHING ASIDE, it’s still an impossibly sad movie that will probably give you an anti-boner and make you think twice about your subscription to Adult Friend Finder. Go see it!

Yeeeeeeeaaahhh buddy!

*This doesn’t happen.

Imagine for a second that you’re an inappropriately sensitive 20-something whose musical taste has not advanced much in over a decade. (I know it’s a stretch, but keep imagining!) You try out “now” bands, like Vampire Weekend, and genres, like dubstep, but nothing can replace that middle-school-fresh sound you grew up with; nothing can come close to piercing your heart, your SOUL, like the group that essentially defined 7th and 8th grade.

Now imagine that not once in those formative years but several times did you miss out on the chance to see these guys live. Your friends who had older sisters caught them. Even people who didn’t like them all that much so WHY SHOULD THEY GET TO GO? managed to snag tickets. Meanwhile you sat at home, listening to their teenage anthems on a battery-powered Discman. You sobbed and stewed and life just sucked.

Twelve years later you’re a man, sort of, with disposable income — when you apply credit card logic — and an adult’s right to do whatever he wants whenever he wants. Your friend Ashley has landed tickets to your group’s TOUR ENDING show. The stars have finally aligned.

Everyone can take off their imagination caps because it’s time for the BIG REVEAL: the musical group is Blink-182. And that sensitive 20-something, stuck in some 1999 time loop that thankfully does not include JNCO jeans? He’s ME. I KNOW.

Blink-182 played the famed Hollywood Bowl October 8th, igniting the passions of screaming 14-year-olds who were breastfeeding when Enema of the State came out and also me, your intrepid reporter on the scene/fangirl. It was a weird blast!

First things first: this thing was Cracker Central. No one could accuse the guys of being exclusionary — just obsessed with boning each other’s moms — but it’s safe to say their particular brand of SoCal emo dick joke pop does NOT strike a chord with the urban set. Let’s put it this way: no one in the audience hadn’t at some point in their life shopped at Hot Topic. Maybe Blink (and their people) were fully aware of this? I’d say a tour sponsored by Honda Civic knows which side its bread is buttered on.

Then again, a good portion of the crowd was about three state assessment tests away from getting their drivers’ license. Don’t let me say I felt “old” — because that’s far from the case when you sleep on an air mattress — but this concert was, on some level, assuredly not for anyone post-high school. And Blink themselves knew that, dipping not once in the first half of the show into any songs pre-maybe 2003. This was the opener:

“Feeling This,” from ‘Blink-182′

Someone was FEELING that! Blink continued with miles of material from Blink-182 and the just-released Neighborhoods, while my friend and I wondered when it was going to be OUR TIME Y’ALL and some recognition that 1996-2001 actually did happen. Slowly they worked back around to it:

“Dumpweed,” ‘Enema of the State’

“What’s My Age Again?,” ‘Enema of the State’

“Josie,” ‘Dude Ranch’

I imagined getting into a fake fight with one of the kids in braces near me after they hypothetically asked where the hell these “old” songs were from. “From when you were watching VEGGIE TALES, asshole — show some respect!” The opportunity to say that — to anyone — never presented itself. Blink dove back into new stuff, then turned on lasers, then sent Travis and his drum set around the stage by crane. The white kids in the audience went crazy. I mean the whole crowd went crazy.

I’m not sure even Blink-182 would ever argue that theirs is vital music. It’s not. Their guitar-playing comes second to jokes about eating dog testicles (I’m paraphrasing), and, like Weezer they’ve convinced themselves that pushing 40 is the time at which to DOUBLE DOWN on the 20s-specific themes that once launched them to stardom. Mark also wears JNCO jeans, which aren’t proven to diminish musical quality but suggest as much.

But they’re fun, their songs are catchy, and the way they’ll forever be linked to such formative years for so many people is no small thing. While NOSTALGIA remains a dirty word here at Lifting Fog HQ, when it comes to the Mark, Tom, and Travis Show we (I, Henning)…will concede a little hypocrisy. These sonic blasts from the mid, late, and very nearly 90s are things to FOREVER CHERISH.

“Carousel,” ‘Cheshire Cat’; “Dammit,” ‘Dude Ranch’

And then there’s this:

Across the country last Friday, competitive shoppers of all stripes braved cold, sleep deprivation, and any sense of personal pride to bust down the doors of big box commerce. In this case “bust down” can be used literally, as Friday was BLACK Friday: the one day a year where doors are obstacles, shopping carts weapons, and your only allegiance to an Old Testament, dual-core processor God. It’s a fun party!

…That is until an older man dies of a heart attack and a crazy lady pepper-sprays 20 people in the face. At most parties you dread the moment the cops arrive, but on Black Friday you keep asking when they’ll show up. You’re down on Wall Street and on college campuses roughing up peaceful activists? We could REALLY USE YOU IN ALL THE WAL-MARTS.

There’s nothing funny about someone dying on a Target floor while an unyielding horde of shoppers fails to even notice. But it’s also less than sad — it’s f**ked up. You know what you’re supposed to die of? Old age. Bears. Here, someone died because of shopping. And sure he technically died of a heart attack, and you could argue he wasn’t technically “ignored” — people just didn’t notice — but REALLY, SETH?!? This isn’t the “worst it’s ever been” (that comes later!), but it’s a pretty damning indictment of our collective priorities when we choose cupcake makers and Tickle Me Elmo 2K11 or whatever over a fellow human being. And with less than 4 weeks ’til Christmas, the repenting window is closing FAST.

(The pepper-spraying lady story is somehow less upsetting because she was so clearly embodying the spirit and skills of the ‘Grand Theft Auto’ series, but definitely send her to time-out/jail. She needs to think about what she did, and probably while getting pepper-sprayed in the face.)