This past Friday night I was at a convenience store and decided to buy a lottery ticket for the Mega Millions because the jackpot was at like $171 million or some such insane number, so I spent $2 on a ticket, which doesn’t even get me two double cheeseburgers anymore, and decided to try my luck. I was reassured that I might have a good chance at winning some money because there was this lady in line behind me, she looked kind of crazy and could have easily been mistaken for a homeless person, who told me that she brings luck to everybody she talks to, and since she was talking to me, I would get lucky. The lady was a liar and I didn’t win shit.

5×04: Thank god Seth got eliminated, that guy was worthless.  He kept trying and trying, but to no avail.  I like how Chef Ramsay put it, “he had a lot of passion, but he was a shit cook,” or something like that.  When this season began, Lacey was irritating because it seemed like she couldn’t do anything, but she’s starting to show that she can cook.  Colleen on the other hand is starting to get annoying, and it doesn’t help that I hate cheerleaders and that Colleen started cheering with the little cheerleaders they were feeding.  Seriously, is there a more subserviant publicly accepted role than that of a cheerleader?

Anyway, I got a bit scared when Chef Ramsay called Ben (my pick so far to be this season’s winner) out of the lineup during the elimination, but thank god it was only to send him back to rest of the people not up for elimination.  I like how Ben is constantly being run out of the kitchen because he just tries to keep doing his job after he’s been told to get the f*ck out by Chef Ramsay.

Also, I thought it was kind of funny, hilarious actually, that Seth knew how Chef Ramsay likes his scrambled eggs, because so do I…

5×05: Thank God Chef Ramsay eliminated Colleen, especially since she wasn’t even put up for elimination. I like how Chef Ramsay doesn’t play by the rules of his own show. Honestly, I would have been fine if Chef Ramsay had eliminated either person put up for elimination, J or Andrea, because they just kept fucking up, especially Andrea, who just keeps getting more and more annoying because of her constant bullying her team to get shit done and do stuff her way when she can’t even get shit done. I also thought Robert might have gotten eliminated, especially since he was acting like a kid during dinner service, but he’ll get eliminated soon I’m thinking, just because he doesn’t seem to have the drive like everyone else. But, I must admit, Lacey’s continued to get her shit together. I think she had my favorite line of the episode when J was asking himself aloud what he was missing, and Lacey just said, deadpan, “lamb,” and shit, she was right.

But god help Colleen. She couldn’t get anything done correctly, although she kept trying and trying. She reminds me of my friend’s dog who keeps jumping on you and trying to play with you after you’ve pushed her off a thousand times and yelled at her to stop: both Colleen and the dog just keep trying to please, but they can’t do anything right and just keep making things worse and worse, eventually becoming become victims of their own tenacity. Hell, she couldn’t even spell “victory” right in the previous episode, which was hilarious (f*ckin cheerleaders).

But seriously, it must suck for Colleen, who runs a cooking school. Her career is over. Chef Ramsay, the best chef in the world according to himself, said she couldn’t cook, on national network television no less — who’s gonna want to go to her cooking school now?

There’s this open letter up at ain’t it cool news here (http://www.aintitcool.com/node/40409) from David Hayter, co-writer of the Watchmen film, begging readers that saw Watchmen opening weekend to go back and see it again on the second (this) weekend so that it won’t have a huge second week fall and so that film studios will see that a risky, artsy, big budget studio movie such as Watchmen can make money and appeal to the masses and, most importantly, be profitable. He wants people to go see the film again so that film studios will see that a movie like Watchmen can make them money and hopefully encourage them to make more such risky and artsy films with huge budgets, but, there’s a hole in his argument.

He’s trying to artificially inflate the box office numbers of Watchmen by trying to convince people to go see it a second time. The rationale is, if Watchmen makes money, studios will make more such films. But when those future, artsy, risky films come out that only appeal to a small fanbase, will that small fanbase have to prop up the box office numbers of those films through repeat viewings as well? It seems like a circular argument to me.

I saw Watchmen opening weekend and I liked it a lot. It’s been a few years since I’ve read the graphic novel, so I can’t really say what changed and what didn’t change (although I would’ve still have liked to see the giant squid), but if the film doesn’t make money then it doesn’t make money. Maybe, instead of trying to manipulate the numbers of this artsy, risky, big budget movie to try to convince studio executives that a movie like Watchmen is worth making on such a massive scale as it was, even though evidently it turns it out it wasn’t really worth spending all that money on the film… maybe, they should start concentrating on making such films on smaller budgets, because the supposed $150 million budget of Watchmen was apparently a bad investment.

David Hayter’s trying to inflate the numbers of his film, which I think is akin to perpetuating a lie. If the film can’t support such numbers, then we should be honest and admit that, rather than lying to ourselves and pretending it can. We should learn from our mistakes, rather than gloss over them. I watched Watchmen, but apparently the rest of America doesn’t give a shit, and film studios should be cognizant of that fact the next time they try such a film again – it’s called smart thinking.

As a fanboy, I would like to see a whole lot of movies based on comic books hit theatres, but if I ran a studio, I don’t think I would invest the money to make them, unless we’re talking about Spider-Man which is a proven cash cow, but if we’re talking about films comparable to Watchmen, the money’s apparently best left unspent than wasted.