I steal from Patton Oswalt all the time, but when I do it, it’s awesome.  And while I occasionally incorporate certain words or phrases I’ve heard him use that have since become a part of my personal lexicon– because that’s what fans do — I don’t tell stories from Patton’s life and pass them off as my own.  Because that’s what serial killers do.

Enter Columbia School of General Studies (Columbia’s part-time undergraduate program for working adults) valedictorian Brian Corman.  Corman apparently hadn’t seen Patton Oswalt’s recent public shaming of a comedian in Iowa who’d been stealing his act.  Or maybe Corman did see it, and thought it’d be a great idea to try to pull off the same trick, only this time in front of 10 times as many people, at a filmed event, in New York City.  Brilliant.  In the video above, you can see Corman lift pretty much word for word Patton’s “Physics for Poets” bit (which I’ve included below).  What I don’t understand is, isn’t ‘Physics for Poets’ not a class a Columbia?  And of all people, wouldn’t it be your fellow students who’d know that?  It doesn’t make any sense, dude. (Psst, just say it was performance art).

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Like porn and pleasing me sexually, the entertainment industry is an area in which kissing ass really does pay.  One person who seems to do little BESIDES kissing ass is Pete Hammond, Hollywood.com BoxOffice.com’s movie reviewer who used to work for Maxim and also blogs for the LA Times.  You can often find his quotes shouting at you from the covers of crappy movies like Old Dogs, and The Proposal. He’s arguably the most-quoted critic in Hollywood.  Is that because he’s a respected authority who provides compelling critiques and thoughtful analysis?  Of course not.  It’s because his reviews consist of little more than blatant attempts to be quoted.  You can practically smell the desperation through the computer.

He recently wrote an Iron Man 2 review, and I thought it’d be fun to see if we can identify each specific instance of his blatant quote whoring (hint: it won’t be hard because I’ve put them in bold).  Let’s begin.

Let the summer begin! Iron Man 2, the sequel to 2008’s Marvel blockbuster (grossed over $570 million worldwide), is a sensational way to give the season a kick start…
…It may not be in 3D but look for this 2nd visit to Marvel’s latest cash cow to top the original, not only for ratcheted up action, excitement and pure movie fun but also at the box office and beyond.
As he was the first time around, Downey Jr. is the man!
As one of the new villains, Johansson oozes sex appeal and shows she has a natural flair for martial arts.  Meanwhile the tattooed and imposing Rourke is a hoot with thick Russian accent and a penchant for pet birds. Best of all is Rockwell who plays the low-rent rival of Stark to the hilt, particularly in the opening Senate hearing where he tries to unsuccessfully squash his arrogant competitor.
Fans of the first will not be bored. This Iron Man may not be the Godfather II of comic book movie sequels critics hope for but it is a complete blast anyway.

You can read the review in its entirety here, though I can’t imagine why you’d want to.  It’s not even a review, really, just pure drivel interspersed with attempts at self promotion.  Since I can’t help it, let’s break some of this down:

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Producer Adrian Askarieh has a few projects currently in development, including an adaptation of the game Kane and Lynch with Bruce Willis and Jamie Foxx, Hack/Slash, and my favorite, ‘Leonardo Da Vinci and the Soldiers of Forever.’  He recently sat down with the LA Times to discuss his next project, Danger Girl, which sounds totally different from the other stuff he’s done.  Ha, just kidding, of course.

I would describe it  as  “Kill Bill” meets “Raiders of the Lost Ark” with the “team” element of “Mission: Impossible.” I would say to the uninitiated that the book is a smart, hip, fun and beautifully drawn love letter to the best action/adventure movies of the last 30 years. It is the story of a lost girl who, through this incredibly kick-ass adventure, finds her destiny, comes of age and helps save the world.  It is truly an iconic property which for a while (before “Watchmen” and “300″ were turned into movies) was the best known non-Marvel/DC comic book out there.

Man, this guy’s really fluent in Hollywood producer shorthand.  If you’ll remember, here’s what he had to say about his Da Vinci project last month:

Producer Adrian Askarieh re-imagines Da Vinci as a member of a secret society who falls headlong into a supernatural adventure that pits the man against Biblical demons in a story involving secret codes, lost civilizations, hidden fortresses and fallen angels. Think “National Treasure” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” by way of “Clash of the Titans.

I wonder if he ever screws up his pitch, like your friend who tries to retell your joke but blurts the punchline during the setup.  “Yes, well you see it’s like a popular recent movie that made lots of money, by way of a respected classic meets something you also enjoy, extend hand to collect money.  Oh crap, I wasn’t supposed to read that last part.”

Zombies are dead people that come to life to eat brains and get shot in the head.  We’ve been making zombie movies since the 60s, but only because they’re such a powerful metaphor!  A metaphor for, uh… ANYTHING. Paul Waldman recently wrote about the phenomenon for the American Prospect (via the NYTimes), and as you can imagine it’s totally not a pointless thought experiment!

Apart from the extreme violence, is the zombie genre fundamentally liberal or conservative? Does its increasing popularity serve anyone’s political ends?

Oh please, Paul Waldman, tell me the answer!  All this time I’ve been wondering whether they represent abortion or the welfare state or gay Republicans or dickbags who can’t write!

I would argue that at its heart, the genre is a progressive one. It’s true that fighting off the zombie horde requires plentiful firearms, no doubt pleasing Second Amendment advocates. And in a zombie movie, government tends to be either ineffectual or completely absent. On the other hand, when the zombie apocalypse comes, capitalism breaks down, too — people aren’t going to be exchanging money for goods and services; they’re just going to break into the hardware store and grab what they need (and if you think your private health insurer is going to be paying claims for treatment of zombie bites, you’re living in a dream world) [Haha, good one, Jay!]. But most important, what ensures survival in a zombie story are the progressive ideals of common cause and collective action.

Every time someone starts a statement with “at its heart” I secretly wish they’d get stabbed in the heart.  Is that irony?  In conclusion…

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Fox columnist Roger Friedman was famously fired from his crappy column at Fox News for writing about watching a pirated copy of a Fox movie, Wolverine.  Like any rational person, Friedman blames his firing on Scientology. And he’s filing a lawsuit.

Friedman is convinced it was a cover story. Last August, Friedman went to Memphis for the funeral of his friend Isaac Hayes, who was a Scientologist. Kelly Preston was also in town for the funeral. Friedman says that when Preston saw him at the Peabody Hotel, she loudly blasted him for his columns criticizing Scientology.

Hmm, I don’t know how you call something that actually happened a “cover story,” but then again, this is the same guy who once wrote that Matt LeBlanc had “literally disappeared.”

The following month, says an ally of Friedman, Preston voiced her complaints about Friedman to Fox News chief Roger Ailes and his then-EVP, John Moody. “Moody talked to her on the phone,” says the source. “When she couldn’t get Moody to fire Friedman, she called him a [obscenity].”
Ailes and Moody later agreed to meet with Preston and Church of Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis (the son of actress Anne Archer), according to the source, who says Friedman’s editors forbid him from writing about the death in January of Preston’s son, Jett.
Meanwhile, Friedman says, 20th Century Fox chairman Jim Gianopoulos had been encouraging him to lay off Cruise’s movie “Valkyrie,” which Fox was distributing internationally.
Last month, Variety reported that Cruise was in advanced talks to star with Cameron Diaz in a Fox action comedy, “Wichita.” A source suspects that Cruise may have made Friedman’s ouster a condition of the actor appearing in “Wichita.”

The original story when he was getting fired was that 20th Century Fox and Fox News were totally separate companies, so it’s interesting that he’s now claiming that 20th Century Fox was pressuring him.  And by ‘interesting,’ I mean wow, what an [obscenity].

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