Lea, the boys, and I were headed to the lake for Thanksgiving dinner one year, and one of the little churches we pass had the following on their sign:
HANGING OF THE GREENS
SUNDAY EVENING SERVICE, 7 PM
I looked at Lea and said “wow, you know, I’m sure whatever the Greens did, simply asking them to leave the church would be sufficient.”
You can do some funny stuff with the Church Sign Generator. Thanks to godhatesshrimp.com for the link.
Take an underachieving private, an overachieving prostitute, and a top secret Army experiment. They’re supposed to hibernate for a year. Instead they do so for 500 years, and awaken to find the country supersaturated in base pop culture, its denizens so slack-jawed stupid they can’t complete a thought or a sentence.
No, it’s not set in the present.
Our protagonist is given an intelligence test in prison, which reveals he is the smartest person in the world. He is then summoned to the White House for service. Hilarities ensue.
The top-rated television show is Ow, My Balls! The President of the United States is a five-time Ultimate Smackdown champion (that’s Luke Wilson as our hero getting a ride with him, left). Costco has a law school. Carl’s Jr. offers “extra big-ass fries.” You get it. There are hundreds of these gags. Some require a sharp eye. Laugh long and loud; reflect later, perhaps with a tear through the laughter, on how excruciatingly spot-on it all is.
As the narrator explains, all of this has come to pass because “evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence.” So smart people didn’t have enough babies, and dumb people had way too many.
I happened upon a mention of Idiocracy in The Corner this week, before which I had never heard of it. Reading the premise and already having much affection for Office Space, it was a slam-dunk I’d buy it.
Apparently Mike Judge had this film in the can for more than a year before Fox released it, and then they did so in a whopping six cities. It’s a bit of a mystery why Fox treated this film (and by extension, Judge) so poorly. Some guess he hit a little too close to home, savaging the very concepts with which Fox makes a lot of money (and he didn’t bite the hand that feeds him; he chewed that thing clean off and gnawed on it on the back porch for a couple of weeks).
Others suggest it was all deliberate, and Fox is trying to create a cult hit, counting on viral word-of-mouth like this to send DVD sales and rentals through the roof.
That seems as silly to me as the theory that the new Coke fiasco was all an elaborate stratagem. I tend toward the first guess, thinking it likely that Judge pissed someone off, and then that someone tried to kill his film as a result. Megacorps are just too damned clumsy to pull off the fake grassroots thing.
Whatever happened, if this sounds at all appealing to you, please rent (or better, buy) this movie. Mike Judge should receive positive reinforcement so that we might continue to enjoy his brilliant satire.
Be warned: it’s pervasively silly. It’s a bit uneven in a couple of places. It’ll romp all over any “politically correct” sensibilities you possess.
And if you see it and think it’s really, um, kind of lame, and stuff because they don’t ever show enough of the good parts, please have yourself sterilized immediately. If you don’t know what that means, ask someone in charge.
I sorta wanted a Corrado way back when—neat car—but the ’07 GTI is the first Volkswagen I’ve ever felt a bit of genuine autolust for. I dare not drive one until 2010 or so.
Even standing still, doesn’t that bad boy look like you’re tossing it into a switchback and lifting the inside rear at 65 or 70? And it’s even sharper in the metal than in photos.
The commercials are hilarious:
It was the summer of 1981, which was the last summer before my parents divorced. My bud Brian and I were riding our bicycles in the neighborhood, as we did most days the weather was agreeable. We had taken the “long ride,” which meant we’d ridden through people’s backyards to get over to Canterbury Square, because neither of us was allowed to use Coleman Road. (Sometimes we did anyway, but it wasn’t worth potentially getting caught if there were no time constraints.)
We rode counterclockwise around the southwest corner of Canterbury, just past my sister’s friend Missy’s house, and there it sat–a beautiful 1966 Corvette convertible in Tuxedo Black. It was parked on the street with the top down. I already had a healthy affection for America’s only true sports car, so we stopped for a look.
Well, there was a wallet on the passenger seat. I wouldn’t have given it a thought had I been by myself, and I doubt Brian would have either, but we had a minor evil streak going when we got together. So I picked it up (after taking what I’m sure was a suspicious-looking-as-hell look around), and it had $280 in $20s in it.
Now I suppose I’d already made a mental call to steal on some level, else why would I have even looked? But my conscience intervened a bit on that same level, because almost immediately I grabbed 4 of the bills, tossed the wallet back in the seat, said “ride!” and we did. I gave Brian two of the $20s when we were a couple of streets over. His face turned beet-red with bulging blood vessels when I told him I had left the guy $200.
$40 is a bunch of money for a 10-year-old to suddenly have control of, so we couldn’t risk buying anything of permanence with it (and that’s part of the case I made to Brian concerning $40 vs. $140). As I recall, we spent it all in just a couple of days buying candy at the Tom Thumb. It was like a mini-Halloween in the middle of summer, complete with upset tummies and uneaten dinners.
Dude, I’m sorry I stole that money from you. I do hope you appreciated that your thief had enough conscience to leave you 71% of your cash.
I reckon it’s the worst thing I ever did, unless “lust in the heart” is higher on the sin hierarchy, in which case there are probably already buildings named after me in hell.
said Bo.
And we are. And the boys sit rapt.
The boys wanted something musical, and it’s definitely that. So, BEHOLD! the worst movie I include among a list of my favorites, and certainly the worst movie I own on DVD.
This was Jeff Lynne at the top of his musical form; it was Olivia Newton-John at her absolute white-hottest; it was Fee Waybill doing a cool rock ‘n’ roll fusion with a big band (who prompted the whole viewing tonight, when I saw “She’s a Beauty” on VH-1 Classic); it was a 20-minute musical extravaganza of old-fashioned roller skates and light-up floors to end the movie; it was like nothing before or since.
OK, yes, it was also cheesy as hell, and essentially plotless. I loved it in 1980, and I love it now. I always say I’m not going to crank the end, and then I always do anyway.
This would be one of my most embarrassing disclosures if I ever sought federal office, and I just freely admitted it. It’s liberating.
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