STOP THE I-PRESSES! Lo! Big news!

At least two of my tens of readers have alerted me that I have been heralded as one of "The 12 Funniest People on the Internet!" That's nice.

I do have to confess that I do not know these fine discerning people at Valleywag, but I thank them for their vote of confidence. I also note that they quote me making a dick joke, so that's heartening; the world clearly needs more dick jokes, and so I fill a niche. With my dick, apparently. Enjoy, niche! (Hey, it's another dick joke! Worship me.)

But really, if I sound slightly uncomfortable here, it's because 1. I am generally uncomfortable, because I am a neurotic trouble case; 2. I feel like kind of a tool because I don't know over half of those other people (but hey, Hiya, Matthew!); and 3. To be honest? Reading something like this makes me feel sort of like people who say, "Oh, you're a comedian! Say something funny!" And all I can come up with is some stammering nonsense like "Your boobs smell" or an extended riff on canned beets. Or more dick jokes.

OR, PERHAPS, MORE DREADFUL COMMENTARY ON THE AWFUL MOVIES WE WATCH

Oh, most of you know what's coming. This week, stop right here if you simply can't bear to have plot elements ruined for you for fine films such as Crank and The Covenant. Also . . . are you okay? Anyway.

The wife and I settled into watching this object with no real hope at all, but we came alive when the screen lit up with the magic phrase "Directed by RENNY HARLIN." Like sedentary Kool-Aid pitchers, we looked at each other and yelled "OH YEAH!"

But sadly, there were no resounding "yeahs" to be had from this nothing of a movie. It's about a bunch of rich white kids who are actually witches who essentially wield some dull brand of pickup magical powers that can be passed around and dribbled like basketballs, and digitally-rendered spiders that enjoy crawling up people's noses. It suffers chiefly from: well, did you read any of that? I'm actually not really making much up. It also suffers from Indistinguishable Young Actor Syndrome, which I first identified when I saw Black Hawk Down, and I realized that a bunch of young white kids with shaven heads and fatigue uniforms were completely indistinguishable from one another. "Was that the helicopter guy? Or is it the sniper guy? Or is it . . . fuck, I don't know who anybody is." Similarly, in this listless ass-wave of a movie, I found myself asking, "Is that hair guy? Or is it basketball-force-guy?" In the end, I wound up eagerly hoping for more digital spiders crawling into digital nostrils, and, well, as low as my standards are, that's just kind of a bummer.

Our disappointment in that film was leavened by our delight with the pugilistically inane Crank, a movie with the pleasingly and frankly idiotic premise that an assassin--Jason Statham, the man with a face and emotive range of a dented shovel--has been poisoned by a nemesis with some sort of Ancient Chinese Secret potion that will kill him if his adrenaline levels drop too much.

The actor playing the villain in this delirious movie is worthy of note; when he's not leering maniacally, he's punching innocent pillows as he awaits the sure death of the deathlessly energetic Statham; his overacting is so spine-tingling that I contracted meningitis early in the film, right about at the point where Statham Shovel-Face addresses the camera to announce that "It's time to kick some black ass!" BRAVO!

Also in this awesome spectacle is the fresh young girlfriend Amy Smart (who I do miss from the not-very-lamented, short-lived "Smith"). I would be genuinely interested in the conversation she had with her agent when she accepted this role, since right in the middle of the movie, she and Statham have a fight out in public Chinatown, which kind of turns Statham on, so he attacks her, and in one of those Hollywood moments, she initially resists, but then gets SO WEIRDLY TURNED ON that she can't help herself, and blah blah blah, and then he bends her over a newspaper vending machine.

But then he can't get it up. Weird! I've fucked so many hot chicks in Chinatown in broad daylight, and I'm always walking funny. "You can't get it up?" she screams. Statham looks embarrassed, not that you can tell. He looks like he lost a book of stamps. "This is just like you!" Smart wails puzzlingly. It is? Who are you, lady? What is your miserable life like? Can we have a movie about her? After a few excruciating moments, Statham presumably manages to ring up his long-lost hard-on, and finally puts the boots to the still bent-over Smart, while she's stuck with dialogue like "Oh, baby, you're so big!"

Later, in a car chase scene, she gives him a blow job, only to hold up before the inevitable. Statham protests, of course, shovelly, and she says "So you can fall asleep like you always do? I don't think so." Okay, really, at this point I must demand that a movie be made about this woman's backstory. She sounds like Oriana Fallaci and Jenna Jameson on a meth bender. Fittingly, this woman-positive movie includes a scene in which Statham asks another character, "Do I look like I got 'cunt' written on my head?" At this point, the moviemakers cleverly put the word "cunt" on his head in white letters, possibly just in case that their fears that this movie might make people's ears fall off were justified.

In summary, Crank is the finest movie of 2006. You're insane if you don't watch it.