Reality TV Monday: Tool Academy Week 4 Analysis

Ahoy, Lifers.  This is your Captain speaking.  I realize the Life Despotic has been somewhat empty of late, but the Yuri Andropov's communication equipment has been on the fritz.  Fortunately, after four days, three ACE bandages, two jars of Silly Putty® and a partridge in a pear tree, Ensign Jarlsberg assures me all problems have been rectified.  And just in time for another installment of Tool Academy!  I've run out of clever things to say before the break, so let's just go ahead and make the jump.  DISCLAIMER: I know there's lots of links this week, but click them, they're all short and you won't be sorry.  Well, except for the Amy Grant.  Intrigued?

Outstanding work, Ensign.

And oh how they danced...

"I think that the problem may have been that there was Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf."

From the virtual desk of Ivan Zissou

dictated but not read
cth

Reality TV Monday: Tool Academy Week 3 Analysis

Ahoy Lifers, this is your Captain sprechen.  It's Monday again, which means another thrilling installment of everyone's favorite weekly VD public service announcement, Tool Academy.  We're just three weeks in, yet what a long, strange trip it's already been.  I can already feel a deep connection to the lives of our errant and ebullient tools.  Though seeing as it feels like a vague burning sensation, it could very well be that I've simply contracted gonorrhea from subjecting myself to this filth.  GONORRHEA: The Silent Killer™.  Last week's episode on fidelity was a barn-burner.  It had everything you want in a Tool Academy episode: fights, kites, jeers, and, of course, Angelo's tears.  Can this week possibly live up to that same impossible standard?  Well, if you're reading this before I update with the full post, you'll just have to wait.  It's too late to devote the next hour to composing the perfect recap and analysis, but I wanted to put something down to get in under the midnight deadline.  I'd hate to see Reality TV Monday bleed into Meatloaf Tuesdays.  Stay tuned!

UPDATE: Full recap is now available after the jump.  I'd apologize for the delay, but as a rule Captain Zissou never apologizes.

I'm joking.  I'll do anything for laughs, but I won't do that.

Blogfight: Mummy v. Terminator Round 1

No time for pleasantries today, Lifers: there are dreams to crush.  DISCLAIMER: Read this first, lest you be utterly unprepared for the barrage of ballistic awesomeness I am about to unleash on Muted.  The question at the heart of this Blogfight™, dear readers, is who would win in a bar fight: the Mummy or the Terminator.  SPOILER ALERT: It's the Terminator.  I, naturally, being the winner I am, will be representing the T-800.  

 He will melt your face.

I'm going to fight it but I'll let it live

"That's an endangered species at most. What would be the scientific purpose of killing it?"

"Revenge."

From the virtual desk of Ivan Zissou

dictated but not read
cth

Blogfight: Preview

Ahoy Lifers.  This is your Captain speaking.  This will be a short post, a teaser if you will, for an upcoming new feature on the Life Despotic™ (NOW WITH WINGS FOR EXTRA SUPPORT!).  After very little forethought and even less planning, my good acquaintance and sometime foe Everything is Muted and I have decided to test the waters of inter-blog communication with a new project a lá the über-nifty Conversation blog with scribes David Brooks and Gail Collins over at The New York Times.

As Ivan Zissou is involved, however, dear readers need not fear the subject matter becoming too academic.  On the contrary, we have decided upon a sufficiently silly topic ripe for angry diatribes and petty insults.  That topic?  Tune in to Muted's blog tomorrow(?) to find out.  I told you this was just a teaser.  OBVIOUS QUERY: If you're not going to tell us what it is, why not just spare the teaser and do the damn thing?  SNARKY RESPONSE: First of all, Muted has been tasked with the firing of the opening salvo in our verbal tête-à-tête, so I wanted to warn you avid readers to look for it there, lest you find yourself surprised when I post my stinging and inevitably superior response.  And B) this gives me the opportunity for a little pre-game trash talk.  But as the Captain would never stoop to the level of insults or petty threats, I'll simply let my good friend and countryman Ivan Drago do the talking for me.  Your weather forecast is cloudy, Muted.  With a 100% chance of ass-kickage.

I'm going all Cobra Kai on Muted's Daniel-san.

From the virtual dojo of Ivan Zissou

dictated but not read

cth

Reality TV Monday: Tool Academy Week 2 Analysis

Ahoy Lifers, this is your Captain speaking.  It's Monday again, and that means another installment of Tool Academy!  What better way to counteract the Monday blues than to settle down with a bag of Ho Hos® and let the Captain take you away to a world where bandannas and  tribal armband tattoos are the highest status symbols a man can achieve.  Will Angelo cry again?  Is Jordan still wearing a pink thong?  What the hell is a glow-sticker?  Am I really going to devote the next eight Mondays to this ridiculous pursuit?  The answers to these questions and more inside!

This man is a tool.