“My brother paid a dollar last night to see your underwear”

Flashback to the eighties, right? Cover of 'Sixteen Candles' DVD

“My brother paid a dollar last night to see your underwear” is an instantly recognizable line from Sixteen Candles, a movie I thought was reasonably funny when I saw it in 1984, but which definitely took on a sinister subtext after I viewed it as the mother of two teenage boys.

But we’re not going to talk about sinister subtexts. Not today, anyway.

Today, we’re going to talk about something that has caused extreme marital discord in our previously happy home. And just what would that something be, you ask?

ONE MOVIE LINE.

Seriously. This is the stuff you argue about when you don’t have cable.

I say the line goes like this:

(Scene: the most popular girl in the school wakes up in the back of a convertible Rolls Royce with the geekiest kid in the school.)

Caroline: I’ll tell you where you are if you tell me who you are.

Ted: I’m Farmer Ted.

Caroline: You’re in the parking lot in front of my church.

Ted: You own a church?

Classic. It’s funny, see, because it’s such an outrageous response to “You’re in front of my church.”

Now, this is how Hubby says it goes:

Caroline: You’re in the parking lot in front of my church.

Ted: You go to church?

Pretty dull, if you ask me, but Hubby breaks up just thinking about it. He says it’s funnier because Ted is surprised that she goes to church.

What a noodle.

We replayed this one scene several times—our ears pressed to the speakers so we could hear every nuance—and I’m 100% certain my version is the one John Hughes gave to the world. Hubby scoffs.

The Internet is no help. There are 1060 references to “You go to church?” and only 40 Google references to “You own a church?” which for some reason Hubby takes as a mandate that he is right, but which really only tells me most of the world is deaf.

So I leave it with you. First, tell me which line is funnier.

Second, if you know the movie and don’t have to run down to Blockbuster to rent it, tell me what they are really saying. My marriage depends on it.

UPDATE: Hubby agrees that the line is “You own a church?” but that the issue is not what the line SAYS, but which line is FUNNIER.

And third, once you have kids, John Hughes’ comedies turn into horror flicks. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.

,

‘Take on Me’ Versions 1.0, 2.0, 2.1, etc.

Scene from music video 'Take on Me'Remember the original “Take on Me” music video?

Sung by the Norwegan band A-ha, it tells the story of a girl who gets pulled into her comic book by the winner of the comic’s motorcycle race. They have a lovely time flicking back and forth between animation and live action until the race’s loser comes after them with a wrench.

I first saw it on MTV in the 80s—way back when most of you were probably just little twinkies in your parents’ lunch boxes—and I thought it was awfully romantic. Recently I looked it up on YouTube to show it to Squirt and Tiger, and I found an assorted bunch of little parody/homage videos, some of them very clever in their own way.

Family Guy does 'Take on Me'Perhaps the most famous parody/homage is one done on the TV show Family Guy, where the character Chris gets pulled into the milk section of the supermarket.

There’s a clever snippet by engineering students at Purdue demonstrating how getting pulled into a locker room during finals might impact one’s GPA, and another one by DigitalCha0s.com where the pullee fights the puller, but once he lands in animation land he starts grooving like everybody else.

Mark Cannataro's version of 'Take on Me'These were all right, but nothing like my absolute favorite by Mark Cannataro, where a guy gets pulled through a yearbook (the winner of a high school footrace is voted “most likely to get killed by a wrench”).

Not too great is the “Take on Me” remake by a boy band called A1 that brings The Matrix and Tron into the mix, but hey, eye candy is eye candy.

Ho hum.

Documenting 80s music videos and their spin offs is what I do when I have a huge project like a swim meet food concession to plan.

A comedy three thousand years in the making

Whew! I’ve been running around like the proverbial headless chicken, only it turns out headless chickens aren’t proverbial, they’re DOCUMENTED. In one case, a headless chicken named Mike survived long enough to run around sans su cabeza for over a year.

Who knew?

On behalf of all headless chickens out there, please accept my apologies for trivializing your personal experience.

At any rate, I have a feeling Mike the Headless Chicken fulfilled his obligations better than I’ve done lately. I can barely get out coherent sentences, much less decent blog posts. Thank goodness for fake movie preview videos like the one below. I can link to one and assuage my guilt, all in one smooth move.

Does anybody else think Yul Brynner is the major hunk of supreme male hotness that I think he is?

Terry Gilliam’s Tideland

I’ve never heard of Tideland and yet it premiered in July 2005!

I’ve always liked Tim Burton better than Terry Gilliam, but this movie looks like it might be something special. Even navigating through the Tideland website is a treat. (If you can find them, there are three long film clips to watch.)

There’s a rumor going around that Gilliam is being considered for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, too.

, ,

The Benchwarmers: oh, the pain, the pain

The Benchwarmers official website

Imagine, if you will, four teenagers looking for entertainment during Spring Break. Imagine they ask their mother/auntie to take them to a dumb movie. Imagine that she does. Insert really scary music here.

The Benchwarmers. Aaack! My eyes! My eyes!

In my defense, other than its rating (PG-13) I had no idea what this movie was about, having seen no previews, read no reviews, and basically having lived under a rock for the last few months. During the opening credits I saw “A Happy Madison Production,” and tried to remember where I’d heard that term before, but alas, it was too late.

Needless to say, Squirt LOVED it. But then, he’s 15 now and infamous for his repertoire of potty jokes.

SQUIRT: Yup, I dropped two friends off at the lake today. Get it? Two friends? At the lake? Har! Har! Har!

To stem the flow of brain cells trying to escape during the movie, I concentrated on the audience trapped with me. I eventually focused on this one big guy and compared his middle-aged reactions with Squirt’s 15-year-old reactions to various plot devices:

Plot Device Big Guy Squirt
Vomit (lots) laughed happily appreciative “eeew!”
Groin injury huge laugh—HUGE happy chuckle
Nose-picking amused guffaw “HAR HAR HAR!”
Booger-eating big laugh howled
Fart weaponry slaps armrest delighted beyond measure
Man titty-twisting fell out of seat seemed confused
“Jocks who bully are really gay” joke sneer concern
Hot women find Rob Schneider’s and David Spade’s characters attractive even before they become heroes accepted as perfectly plausible ditto

And there you have it, the entire plot of The Benchwarmers, wrapped up in a handy-dandy little table. As far as I know, only one parent was harmed during the viewing of this movie.

NOTE TO JON HEDER: Dude, you are seriously typecast. Get yourself into an action flick, or a Martin Scorsese film, quick!

, , , .

Pink bra bandit bagged

Oh, I do so love alliteration.

Remember the Pink Bra Bank Robber?

SAN DIEGO – Detectives Thursday arrested a man suspected of carrying out three recent mid-city bank heists while sporting women’s clothing and makeup.

Members of a regional bank robbery task force took 37-year-old Robnay Hosaka into custody, according to the FBI.

Investigators believe Hosaka is the so-called “Cat-Eye Bandit,” who passed demand notes at Union Bank branch offices on Oct. 14, Oct. 19 and Monday.

During the crimes, the robber wore women’s clothing, including a pink bra, and sported lip gloss, pancake makeup and French-manicured fingernails.

After seeing a report on the crimes on a newscast Thursday, a citizen called police to say that Hosaka resembled the suspect, FBI public information officer April Langwell said.

Police arrest cross-dressing robbery suspect,” SignonSanDiego News Services, Nov. 17, 2005.

I looked long and hard for a photo of this guy Hosaka, with no luck. I did find this, though:

Picture of Cillian Murphy in 'Breakfast on Pluto'
How ever he looked in his pink bra and lip gloss, the bank robber Robnay Hosaka (Hey! Get it? “Bank ROB-ber”? “ROB-nay”?) probably had nothing on actor Cillian Murphy, shown here dressed as a woman but not robbing any banks.

Heck, I don’t look as good as Cillian Murphy does here. And what a makeover! The last time I saw Murphy was in Batman Begins, where he played a man whose momma never saw fit to buy him a proper Halloween mask. All she would let him use was this nasty burlap thing, and it ruined his whole life.

Pic of Cillian Murphy as Burlap Boy
Cillian Murphy as Burlap Boy in Batman Begins.

His character ended up consorting with an evil, secretive sect of vigilantes who believed the path to enlightenment was listening to Liam Neeson’s psychological musings as he beat the stuffing out of you. Lots of fun in that Evil, Vigilante Ashram, sure. Bruce Wayne ate it up, but I’d rather find my elightenment at La Costa Resort and Spa, thank you very much.


, , , , ,

The Thing Below should’ve stayed there

Once upon a time some young men got together for some Xbox and Cheez-wiz and after many happy hours of joyful play they put their game controllers down and began to chat.

1st Guy: Hey! Let’s make a movie!

2nd Guy: DUDE! (high-fives all around) But there’s gotta be a monster…

3rd Guy: …that eats your face off!

1st Guy: Yeah! And a porn star!

2nd Guy: A naked porn star! With lotsa oil!

3rd Guy: This is gonna be great. (starts writing on his hand) Monster, porn star, oil…

1st Guy: And a bad government guy…

2nd Guy: A government coverup!

3rd Guy: He’ll look like that X-Files smoking dude!

1st Guy: With sunglasses. Bad government guys always wear sunglasses. Even in dark caves.

3rd Guy: (writing) Sunglasses, caves… Dude! We’ll have lots of men in black!

2nd Guy: And a coupla scientists in white coats! The monster will eat them, too.

1st Guy: Tell me more about the porn star.

2nd Guy: Whoa, dude. I just got a brain flash. DUDE. She does a little sexy act, you know, maybe a naked dance with strobe lights or something, a little tongue action and then… SHE EATS THIS GUY’S FACE OFF!

1st Guy: Will she be covered in oil?

2nd Guy: Yeah!

1st Guy: I’m all with that. Sick!

Seriously, this could be the best grown-up party movie, ever. It’s so confused your guests won’t miss anything if they stop watching to play a game of ping pong or go to the bathroom or even if they arrive a half-hour before the movie ends. It’s got the kind of unintentional humor that’ll make anybody who does watch it bust a gut laughing.

But that porn star scene… sadly, Squirt and Tiger will not be allowed to enjoy The Thing Below until they’re married with at least two kids.

4 8 15 16 23 42

We’ve been cable-free since 1994 — we get two or three TV channels but they’re kind of fuzzy. We’ll watch TV when we travel if there’s a television in our room, but otherwise we’re limited to DVDs.

So this is what I knew about Lost: people watch a few episodes and before you know it they’re starting forum discussions with titles like “Jack or Sayid?” or “Hurley lost weight” or “Voices whispering lines from comic book?”

You know, crazy, obsessive stuff. Continue reading “4 8 15 16 23 42”