“Why I no gotta a pan handle? It’s a smooth down there… not like-a a real boy.”

Weak Nights is proud to introduce our newest in-house film critic, 7-year-old Preston Green. Preston hails from Azalea, California and was the winner of this year’s reader submitted Weak Nights Child Film Criticism Contest, with a charming review of How To Train Your Dragon. His work has previously appeared in NYTimes Magazine, McSweeny’s, Maxim and Gawker.

Greetings, Weak Nights readership! It is my honor and pleasure to join the much-ballyhooed Weak Nights team. I hope that you’ll enjoy my humble opinions on the various treats (or tricks!) that cinema has to offer.

As summer winds down, it seems only appropriate to review the most notable releases of the past few months. Most years I lament the paucity of quality during these dog days, and this year is no different. Hollywood continues to churn out nothing but asinine mélanges of violence, nonsensical editing and the kind of plotting that suggests nothing short of antipathy toward the masses (of which I count myself). What follows are the highlights and lowlights of Summer 2010′s moviegoing season.

Toy Story 3. In Pixar’s latest cash-in on the truly risible CGI-animated movie craze, we’re forced to revisit the world of Buzz Lightyear, Woody and their ilk. Reader, this animated cartoon does nothing but pander, simper and annoy. With a multitude of plot holes, simplistic humor, and voiceover work rendered inaudible by the sounds of ringing cash registers, Toy Story 3 is a low point in summer full of them.

Inception. Dreadful, just dreadful! After turning out the loud nonsense of The Dark Knight, it seems director Christopher Nolan has decided to one-up even that nightmarish mess. Ostensibly about the promising idea of shared dreams, infiltration and illusion, Inception is quite frankly full of dull concepts, uninspired plotting, and tiresome performances. Leonardo Dicaprio positively flounders like a salmon in a mud puddle. Every single misguided element adds up to one disastrously mediocre film– Is it any wonder the American public has gobbled it up?

Eat Pray Love. Julia Roberts has once again vomited a pile of garbage directly into our laps. It’s unclear what the moviegoing public has done to deserve this tripe, but it involves a woman who travels the globe to exploit foreign cultures for her own rom-com contrivances. Leave it to director Ryan Murphy (whose Nip/Tuck I have enjoyed from time to time) to visit the world’s most beautiful locales and render them a chore to look at. If I have ever expressed an interest in India or its denizens, that misguided impulse ended when the credits rolled.

Scott Pilgrim VS. The World. Based on the noted graphic novel series, Scott Pilgrim is a film in which Hollywood decided to dress up their complete lack of ambition with an endless onslaught of unappealing special effects. Full of teenage actors better suited to star in a Sunglasses Hut, this miserable film is to male wish fulfillment as the Twilight series is to women. In my infamous pan of Eclipse earlier this year, I publicly shamed all women for enjoying that tripe. Now I realize that young men have highly mediocre, intellectually ridiculous and completely stunted romance films of their own. Reader, if you insist on seeing this film, do wear a wristwatch– that way you’ll have something to look at.

Piranha 3D. The 3D gimmick comes of age in this agreeable lark from the Weinstein Company. Unlike most other films with insulting dialogue and gratuitous T&A, this film’s tongue is planted firmly in cheek, making it a romp not unlike a roller coaster ride. Elizabeth Shue leads a game cast against an outbreak of prehistoric carnivorous fish during spring break in what looks suspiciously similar to Lake Havasu. If you’re concerned that the aforementioned premise sounds dumb, be warned that it certainly is. However, Piranha 3D is in on the joke, allowing you to enjoy this film as a true guilty pleasure. Just don’t tell anyone!

Like most cinema lovers, I’m truly looking forward to an end to the summer season.   The fall movie season is upon us, film lovers, and I can’t wait to see films made for actual grown-ups.  Well… grown-ups plus ME!

Philadelphia, in a bold new move, has decided to tax bloggers living in their fair city.

How do you think this will affect the local scene and economy?

• Computer literate creatives will flee the city like rats from a sinking ship
• Small businesses, which could have blossomed into large ones, killed like delicate flower buds in a harsh winter frost
• Cheese-steak sandwiches remain the lynchpin of Philly’s economy
• Tax is almost impossible to enforce, new generation of increasingly-emboldened tax evader/computer savant rises up from the interwebs
• Lemonade stand tax to quickly follow
• Piggy bank tax to quickly follow
• Tag sale tax to quickly follow
• ‘Take-a-penny leave-a-penny tray’ tax to quickly follow
• Hackers extort small businesses for protection money to create firewalls to protect them from being traced to Philly, creating a ruthless computer mafia that already has the lingo of the real mafia down thanks to Facebook’s popular game, Mafia
• Bloody battle between local government and digital mafioso explodes across town in bloody battles, leaving citizens afraid to leave their houses, use public transport or enjoy a warm cheese-and-steak sandwich outside of their homes
• Cheese-steak sandwich tax follows in last-ditch effort to save collapsing city government
• Bears prowl in the streets like Detroit by 2016

Every morning on the way to my very prestigious job, I pass by a certain chain pharmacy store with massive photos in the windows.  And every morning, I wonder what the people in those photos are thinking.  I may have figured it out.

When you were little, all you wanted was to be a doctor.  Nothing was going to stand in your way.  You had a dream.  You would achieve your dream.  The equation was so simple.  But you’re not a doctor, you’re a lab tech and your childish hopes seem so far away.  So silly.  When you were a child, you thought as a child.  But now you’re an adult and dreams don’t pay the bills.  Your job at this chain pharmacy store pays the bills.  Just get through your shift, don’t wonder where you went wrong, don’t ask how this became your life.  There are no answers.  There are only chain pharmacy stores.

You need something, just this photo, to remember the time you’ve spent together.  To prove that it wasn’t some beautiful, confusing dream.  It’s all happening too fast.  You’ve never felt this way before, but you shouldn’t let it go any farther.  You can’t let it go any farther.  It will ruin you both.  You have families!  You have lives!  Are you just going to throw that all away on a whim?  On a crush?  On a phase?  But you’ll fake a smile and take the photo anyway. Sometimes, late at night, when no one is home, you’ll take it out of the box you pushed wayyy back under the bed, and you’ll remember the sound of her laugh, how her hair smelled, how you felt when you walked into a room and saw her look up at you.  And then you’ll wipe your tears and put the photo away.  You’ll remind yourself that life isn’t so bad, really.  The house is almost paid off.  You got those new snow tires.  And you’ll make up an errand for yourself–didn’t I need… something from that chain pharmacy store down the street–to get out of the house, to get some air, to pretend to forget.

I  remember when I was a kid, about 5 years old, it was really hard to crack eggs. There would always be some shell pieces in the egg white and everyone would be really angry. Once, while helping mother making a cake, I cracked the eggs and there were so many shells that the people at her swingers party cut their mouths and complained that they would never visit our household again. My father liked that since he hates people.

People always say that life was so simple then. But I remember trying to tie my shoes and it took forever! Making my school lunch was almost as confusing as mixing mother’s favorite drink: a harvey wall-banger. “Make mother another Harvery Wallbanger or this empty glass won’t be the only thing I bang against the wall!” Come to think of it, feeding my fish, let alone remembering that I even had a fish, was one of the hardest things ever! My dad used to beat me something vicious for that.

So I’m pretty pleased with being grown up. Things are much simpler now. Look Ma, no shells in my scrambled eggs!

But what did they expect?   I was a child… and I had hooks for hands.

It’s not like you don’t know this already. But anyway, so there was this guy right? He had all these tomatoes in a box. And he was like, “need sumthin for a burger,” okay? He had tried all kinds of items. Tobasco, mint jelly, shoe scrapings, melted popsicles, catsup, EVERYTHING.

So one day guy looks at this box of tomatoes and he’s like, “something something make some ketchup.” So he takes all the tomatoes and puts them all in a pillowcase or some shit and then went outside and beat this pillowcase against a tree. Next thing you know he’s got this like sack full of red sauce and he looked like a real idiot just carrying it around, but that’s besides the point.

But that’s not the end of this story, see, because the sauce still tastes all grody, for real. It basically tastes like marinara. So he throws in some sugar and vinegar and whatever the hell else is in this junk and he made some MFing ketchup. So of course he pours it all over some burger sandwich and he’s like, “yeah.” Fine, so he did it.

I don’t know what this guy was thinking because he totally forgot about this tomato thing next time he had a burger. Square one, right? Ugh, this guy! Luckily, he knew this crazy chick who used to break into his house when he wasn’t around and rub her face on his pillows and leave salt in his showers, nutso stuff like that. So one day she’s rubbing her face on a pillow and it’s ketchup city on there. I mean, this broad was nuts, but at least SHE has the wherewithal to LOVE that red sauce, take the pillowcase back to her lab and recreate it. Basically she reverse engineered the shit out of that flavor recipe and the next thing you know, bottles of ketchup everywhere, on every table in every diner, in every pantry, in every glove compartment. We’re talkin’ money here, okay?

That chick’s name? Becky Heinz.

Check out this weird clip I found on an old VHS tape:

For reasons I’d rather not get into, I receive the CatClaws quarterly catalog. Usually it’s just a matter of removing it from the mailbox and placing it directly into the trash, but this time I actually leafed through it. I think you’ll agree that I’ve been missing out.  These models are absolutely working it.

Please enjoy this exercise in transcendence.

Start off your “Me Day” with this elegant education.