I've got a fever, and the only prescription...

...is more cowbell.

Liveblogging Cannonball Run II

OK, so the first Cannonball Run wasn't so great. But man, did they improve on it 1,000-fold with the sequel.

Ahh, are you surprised? That's right: in fact, CRII may be the definitive movie of the 1980s. It's attained the vaunted "Keep until I delete" status on my TiVo. Here, I'll watch it, and tell you what I'm thinking as it happens, IN REAL TIME. The Internet has never been more useful.

0:01: You know it's going to be a good movie when Ricardo Montalban shows up in the first minute. Even better: he plays the father of Jamie Farr's character from the last movie. That's right: a Mexican actor is playing an Arabian shiek. That's just the kind of movie this is.

0:11: Burt Reynolds is the "Human Bomb." How appropriate. And Dom is Captain Chaos. It's a living!

0:12: Dom Abuse Watch: Burt just shoved hay in Dom's mouth and slapped him. Dom says, "What a grouch!"

0:13: Oh good, now Dom is playing a Don Corleone-type character. Don Canneloni. It gets better: he's complaining because competing mafia families are horning in on his territory. The other families are the Rigatones, the Tortellinis, the Fettucinis and the Raviolis. Remember, somebody got paid to write this.

0:15: Are you ready for this? The Don's son is played by none other than perpetual Match Game panelist Charles Nelson Reilly. That is casting genius.

0:17: The Lamborghini babes are hotter this time. Catherine Bach, a.k.a. Daisy Duke, is one of them. Automatically that makes this a better movie.

0:18: Also a good sign: Jackie Chan is teamed up with Richard Keil, a.k.a. Jaws from the James Bond movies. Via their combined awesomeness, I don't see how they could possibly lose this race.

0:20: Dean Martin just gave two empty glasses to his date and said, "When I make a dry martini, I make a dry martini." That joke would be funnier if I were eight years old.

0:23: Jackie Chan asked for a drink, and the bartender says, "Does anyone here speak Oriental?" That's just the kind of movie this is. Oh, but then Richard Kiel stood up for Jackie. I'm telling you: there's a lot of buzz around that team.

0:28: Uh-oh, Telly Savalas is shaking down Charles Nelson Reilly. I assume that regularly happened in real life as well.

0:30: Ahh, Tony Danza shows up. "I'm your nephew Tony from Brooklyn," he says. Sadly, his character's name is supposed to be Terry. That's just the kind of movie this is.

0:32: I just realized Tony Danza is typecast here. He previously starred in a movie called Going Ape! opposite a chimpanzee, and here he's going to have to do it again; the car he'll be driving comes custom fitted with a chimp.

0:33: Marilu Henner and Shirley MacLaine (wow, poor follow-up choice to Terms of Endearment) show up in nun outfits, because they're in a play. (For some reason, I always confused Marilu Henner with Mary Lou Retton. But that's just me.) Anyway, they're going to hitch a ride to the East coast with Burt and Dom in order to get to Broadway. Hijinks sure to ensue.

0:37: Dom DeLuise just called Burt "sexy". It sounded frighteningly sincere.

0:43: The race is starting! And to celebrate that, the song "Cannonball" by Menudo is playing on the soundtrack. "I look at you and feel the thunder... ooh, it hits me like a cannonball. Like a cannnnnnnnn-onnnnballlllll!" (Check out the music video here... it takes in place inside a giant pinball game! RAD TO THE MAX!)

0:45: Oops, Bigfoot the monster truck is in the race, and just crushed a car. Also, there's a subplot involving mobsters trying to capture Jamie Farr, using an increasingly cartoonish array of gizmos. This movie ROCKS.

0:46: Smokies after Jackie and Kiel! Ooooh, but they have afterburner, and the amazing "speed-up-the-film" driving technique.

0:47: First occurrence of a chimpanzee flipping an old lady the bird in American cinema. And then the old lady inexplicably drives through a wall. She must have thought it was a farmer's market.

0:48: One of the nuns, Marilu, is coming on to Dom, in his Captain Chaos outfit. I never thought I would see DeLuise used as a sex object on film. Uh-oh, but now Fred Dreyer, a.k.a. Hunter, is after them! Ohh, but then he spun out for no reason, exploded, and drove into a ditch. I should have expected that.

0:52: I just realized that the crackpot mayor from Out of This World is Jamie Farr's slave. How could you not love that? You couldn't. Not love it, that is. (Come to think of it, Burt was the voice of Evie's alien dad. If anyone ever asks to play Six Degrees of Evie, I'll be ready.)

0:53: "Stars and Stripes Forever" is playing, but with random sound effects replacing certain notes, to make it wackier.

0:55: Uh oh, Burt, Dom, Marilu and Shirley got pulled over. But somehow, they talk their way out of it and in the process pick up Jim Nabors, playing Gomer Pyle. Excuse me, make that "Homer Lyle." I'll bet he knows Seymour Goldfarb.

1:00: Tony Danza's fighting with the monkey. Now the monkey is driving. Oops, the monkey just drove them through a house. Now that's comedy.

1:02: Jackie and Keil just pulled up to a fruit stand populated by bikers, oddly enough. This is NOT going to end well.

1:02:20: Kung-fu fighting commencing.

1:04: The nuns: changed outfits. Shirley MacLaine: not wearing pants. Just underwear. Explanation: not given. Kimberly is filing an official protest.

1:08: Time for the highlight of the movie: ex-Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann shows up as "Mack" the mechanic. And he takes part in this immortal exchange with the Lamborghini babes:

[Jill and Marcie are looking under the hood of their car. Mack is gazing at their breasts]
Marcie: Does it look bad?
Mack: Not from where I'm standing.
Jill: Oh, can you fix it then?
Mack: Honey, I've got a tool that'll fix anything.

Say it ain't so, Joe!

This is a career defining moment for Theismann, even more than getting his leg broken by Lawrence Taylor. (Which I do not have a video clip of, people. Stop Google searching for that.) It's so weird hearing him say this line after watching him all these years doing NFL broadcasts. I keep expecting him to blurt out, "You CANNOT race a Lamorghini wearing jumpsuits like that in the National Football League!"

If I see him around town, I'm totally going to ask where's his tool that will fix anything. I can't believe his acting career never panned out. I was thinking spinoff series.

1:14: Jim Nabors' acting technique simply dominates the screen.

1:18: Marilu snuggles up to Dom and says, "I've been waiting for this!" I may never have sex again.

1:19: What movie pits Don Knotts and Tim Conway against a chimpanzee in a slap fight? You've got it... only Cannonball Run II. Don Knotts should be in every movie, anyway. Aaaaaand, the chimp wins. I expected that.

1:21: Uh-oh, Jamie Farr's been kidnapped by Charles Nelson Reilly. I never thought I'd ever type those words, but now I have.

1:22: Frank Sinatra's now become involved. Dean and Sammy are asking him for help. The Frank vs. Dean-and-Sammy chemistry parallels nicely with Burt vs. Don.

1:24: Now there's some dressing in drag involved in the plan to get back Jamie Farr. Burt, Dom and Sammy do a drag show and perform "Stop in the Name of Love." Didn't they have actual women racers with them they could have used? Yeah, I know, never mind.

1:34: Girls in bikins just came out of nowhere to become involed in the climactic showdown with Telly Savalas. I should have expected that.

1:35: Both the monkey and Joe Theismann are kicking ass in this fight. I should have expected that.

1:36: Daisy Duke is holding off the bad guys with a fire hose.

1:38: Richard Keil just threw Telly Savalas into orbit. Literally. I love this movie.

1:40: Jamie Farr just raised the purse from $1 million to $2 million. Catherine Bach says, "How many zeros in that!?" Joe Theismann says, "I don't know!!" Same number of zeros as before, guys.

1:41: And now a reprise of "Cannonball" by Menudo! En espanol! And a piece of animation by Ralph Bakshi! And Jackie Chan playing Pac-Man on the Atari 2600! It's the big finish, people!

1:43: Race over, and they didn't mess up like the last movie and treat the first person who arrived as the winner. That's why we had the punch cards, people.

1:45: The movie ends as all movies should: with Ricardo Montalban kissing a chimpanzee. That's just the kind of movie this is.

1:46: The traditional Hal Needham End Credit Out-takes! Dom keeps flubbing his lines, and Frank Sinatra really looks like he's going to kill him. That should have made the final cut.

Well, I'm afraid that's it, seeing as how there are no more Cannonball Run films. Unless somebody out there wants to write some Cannonball Run fan fiction.

Oh, OK. Good. Somebody already did.

Wow.

Larry Drewett: 1938-2005

My friend Larry Drewett passed away last Friday. He was the referee on my football officiating crew. And he was completely insane.

Insane in a good way, though. This is man who, physically, probably had no right being anywhere near a football field, let alone officiating varsity high school contests, which requires a good level of stamina and endurance. But even though he looked frail on the outside, inside he was like the Terminator. Nothing was going to keep Larry away from the game. He couldn't be bargained with; he couldn't be reasoned with. He absolutely would not be stopped... from refereeing football games.

I only joined up with Larry's crew two seasons ago, but in that time I saw him battle an incredible array of ailments. He had diabetes, and his wife Ellen would dutifully follow us after games to whatever restaurant we decided on; she would shoot him up with insulin, then look at the menu and tell Larry what he could and couldn't eat. During the 2003 season he was on kidney dialysis the whole time; so, three times a week, in the middle of the night, he would endure being hooked up to a dialysis machine via the fistula installed in his forearm.

During one game in 2003, a tackled player fell in such a way that his helmet contacted Larry in the ribs. Larry worked the rest of that game, and all of the following game, with cracked ribs; he had trouble working up enough breath to blow the whistle. In fact, it was obvious that even the walk from the locker room to the field was painful for him. But he shrugged it off and insisted he could get through it. He got knocked down again during our playoff game that year, but bounced right up again like nothing had happened.

When Larry went in for a physical during the offseason, the doctor discovered that, at some point, Larry had suffered a small fracture in his foot; he had continued to work through it anyway, claiming it didn't bother him. Larry's kidney transplant finally came through (he had previously lost one kidney to cancer, and the other was failing), so he went through surgery for that over the summer, and still had the energy to hit the field at the start of the 2004 season.

I was worried that he was going to die on the football field, thus traumatizing me and everyone else on the field for life. I kept having this vision of Larry getting clobbered inadvertantly during a game, and not getting up. But he appeared to be in even better shape than the previous year, up until six games into the season, when he had to go under the knife again to have (of all things) his urethra replaced.

But less than a month later, he came back again. I talked with him before that game, and he complained that the doctors should just go ahead and install zippers in him, so that they wouldn't have to keep cutting him open all the time.

It was the following day when we had a game I'll never forget. St. Johns at Bishop O'Connell, on a warm Saturday afternoon; early in the second half, the game was basically a blowout and already decided. One team's quarterback dropped back, was pursued, and lost the ball. Without looking, one of the defenders turned upfield to sprint for the loose ball. Unfortunately, he turned right into Larry and shellacked him. My horrific vision had come true; Larry went flying and hit the ground.

I was mortified. First, I had to cover the play... the defense picked up the fumble, and ran it back all the way for a touchdown. As soon as I rang up the TD, I jogged back to where Larry was lying, fearing the worst. Our umpire and the home team's physician were already hovered over him. But before I even got back to Larry, he stood up like nothing had happened. Larry sat out one play (the try after the touchdown), and then came right back in. After the game, he showed me the cut on his nose that his glasses had made when he hit the ground. He also talked about how he had managed to twist his body so that he could avoid landing on the side that had just been operated on. I could only shake my head in disbelief.

Larry got through four more games; the last two were part of an unprecedented day-night varsity doubleheader. I remember that Larry was sugar crashing during the second game, and we had to fetch him a candy bar to keep him going. But we got through both those games almost flawlessly. He was so good at what he did; his heath was failing, his hearing wasn't so good, and even his vision wasn't the best (thus perpetuating certain stereotypes about referees), but his knowledge of the rules was unparalleled, and his drive to stay on the field was nothing short of inspirational.

Larry didn't make our last regular season game. Shortly thereafter, he was diagnosed with lung cancer, and cancer of his remaining original kidney. It was just too much; he was clearly terminal, and he knew it. But he insisted he would keep fighting. He was actually apologetic that our crew wasn't able to work a playoff game because of his failing health. "I'm sorry I let you guys down," he said to me on the phone, as he was lying in his hospital bed with terminal lung cancer. That, incredibly, seemed like his biggest regret; that we wouldn't get to work one more game because of him. "I'm going to try to get through the chemotherapy, and then get in shape for next season," he said to me. And he meant it.

Like I said: insane.

One of my favorite quotes about life comes from a comic book: Sandman by Neil Gaiman (and Andrew, I know you don't like Gaiman, but I expect some leeway on this particular occasion). One of the main characters is Death, personified; not the Grim Reaper or some creepy spectre, but actually a practical young woman. In this particular issue, she's making her rounds, collecting souls. One man she visits, when he realizes he's died, debates the fairness of it all, whether he deserved to have died right then. And Death replies, matter-of-factly, "You lived what anyone gets... You got a lifetime."

The implication is obvious: you get one lifetime, so do what you love, while you can. You don't want to be the one who, when your times comes, complains that you didn't have enough time. Be the one who says, "I did all right." That's basically the secret of life. I think Larry knew that.

And even though he had literally decades of experience on me, he always treated me as an equal. He never talked down to me; he actually treated me with respect. What more could you ask for from a friend?

That's why I'm going to miss him.

Furdell news... ON THE MARCH!

We at furdell.com hear your cries. "Where's Kimberly?!" you ask frantically. "She never calls, she never writes..."

Well, she's actually doing something important, unlike the rest of us.

The study ? "Evaluating the Success of Urban Success Stories: Is Reputation a Guide to Best Practice?" ? examined whether opinion matched reality about revitalization efforts in 48 distressed U.S. cities between 1990 and 2000.

[...]

The study, which updated a similar one done 10 years ago, was conducted by Wolman and Kimberly Furdell of George Washington University and Edward W. Hill of Cleveland State University. It was released last month in the Housing Policy Debate, a Fannie Mae journal.

The angle for this particular article: experts' low opinions about Rochester's level of economic distress are, well, accurate.

This has been Furdell news... ON THE MARCH!

(Buy Snacky Smores.)

Reason #4,201 why golf is dumb

Dean Wilson, a rookie pro golfer looking to make it on the PGA Tour, had a good second round at the [product-placed old person's luxury car] Open. But he was disqualified when he forgot to sign his scorecard.

Is there any other sport that features the thrill of a player losing because he filed paperwork incorrectly? No wonder my boss likes it so much. Here's an idea: just let him sign the stupid scorecard and keep playing.

I'll take "the rapists" for $200

You know what you're going to get when you click on penisland.net.

That's right... fine quality writing implements from Pen Island.

Um, that is what you thought of first, right?

PAI GOW!!!

Uh-oh, LiAps wants to go a-gambling. Sounds good to me, but only if we expand our gambling horizons a bit further.

Remember how I convinced y'all to jam the Pai Gow Poker last time? Remember what a big hit it was? Well, Andrew has tasked me with taking it one... step... beyond. That's right...

Pai gow tiles.

That's right, I said it. Pai gow tiles, bitches. Take all the slow-roasted gambling goodness of pai gow poker, but add the mystique and pure bad-assedness of knowing how to play the tiles, thus allowing us to reach heights of coolness previously known only to Asians. (Pup need not apply, as he has already reached the maximum level of Asianness.)

I'll try to construct a layman's field guide on how to play. It... um... may take a while. Really I just wanted to prepare all our readers for their transcendence into Asian levels of awesomeness. In the meantime, the Wizard of Odds can fill in the blanks, as usual.

Woot

I love the ATL.

Also getting a thumbs up from me tonight: drinking. It's fannntastic.

You just TRY collecting on that free game

I've so far only seen the first season of The Sopranos, thanks to Netflix. It's a good show, with a dark, unsettling world view. The juxtaposition between Tony's worlds (regular family, mafia family, and psychotherapy) puts a postmodern spin on the traditional gangster epic. It's a complex and mature show, and thus, the perfect subject matter for a pinball game.

Wait, what's that? You think I'm kidding?

I'll show you who's kidding.

Yes, this is Stern's next game. Yes, those are pole dancing plastic dolls up in the corner. Yes, that's a talking fish head in the middle (apparently straight from Tony's hallucinations).

Some of the game's features:

Truck hijacks are achieved by shooting the loops three times to start a hijack hurry-up. Shoot the loop again to collect the award and increase you hijack total towards the number required.

The Bada Bing ramp needs to be shot repeatedly to light it again for an award. The ball is stopped next to the two pole dancers so you can admire the view while collecting your award.

Likewise, repeatedly shooting the right ramp will increase the number of buried bodies towards the target number needed to light your red insert.

Bizarre. This has to be the strangest idea for a game since Future Spa.

By the way, here's a Fun Furdell Fact: our ancestors apparently came to America because they were fleeing the mafia. Yep, that sounds like us all right.

Moo-FIVE-tee!

Thanks to TiVo and Kimberly's wishlistery, we've been TiVoing (note illegal verbal usage) Gary Oldman movies. Humorously, that includes Luc Besson's abysmal sci-fi epic, The Fifth Element.

Seriously, I think this must have been one of those situations where Besson needed to make a flop, like those guys in The Producers. There's no way a movie could have intentionally been made this badly. It's got some of the worst acting performances in movie history, including the honorable Mr. Oldman as an intergalactic weapons dealer with an inexplicable and atrocious Southern accent. And the less said about the roles played by Luke Perry, Chris Tucker and WWF's Zeus, the better.

But the funniest part of this movie, and I'm sure Andrew will remember this, wasn't even in the movie. It was the promotional teaser material that proclaimed:

Yes, it mu5t be found. Long before "leetspeak" annoyed the world, Luc Besson confused us by replacing the letter "s" in the word "must" with the number 5. The first time I saw this poster, I read it as "It muft be found," since "five" starts with "f". But then, much as I now pronounce The 2wenty as "The Twooo-wenty," in order to mock this poster as strongly as possible, I started pronouncing it just like it's spelled: "mu-five-tee."

Then, to make things more ridiculous, in certain conversations with Andrew, I started randomly pronouncing the word "must" as "mu-five-tee." For example, "I absolutely mu-five-tee not see this movie." Good times.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I mufivetee continue this bad-movie festival by un-pausing Cannonball Run II, which Tivo was kind enough to Tivoly Tivo for me in a Tivoesque fashion. Hmm, It appears that Tony Danza is having an argument with a chimpanzee. I should have expected that.

Photographic proof

Hey, remember when I hit all those baskets to win free plane tickets?

That was awesome.

OK, I know it was only a month ago. But it's still the best thing to happen to me since... well, since I won a pinball game.

Anyway, Mindy Pipes, BB&T tournament manager and my new favorite woodwind, stumbled upon the site and was nice enough to send me a photo. Thus, Mindy becomes the frontrunner for furdell.com Person of the Year for 2005.

I like the blurry, Bigfoot-esque quality I've got going on there. It seems appropriate for a photograph of such a legendary, mythical event. Plus it illustrates the fact that I'm really fast, like the Flash.

In anticipation of your questions:

- Yes, that was the shot I missed and went to chase down, like a fool.
- No, I don't have lighty-up shoes. Those are little reflectors that caught the light.
- Current plans are to use the tickets to visit San Fran this summer, maybe for a week or so, and catch some Giants games while we're at it. Field trip!

Maybe she should have stuck with the lip-synching

From the I-Still-Don't-Understand-Why-They're-Famous Dept.:

Apparently, Ashlee Simpson performed at the [product-placed shipping company] Orange Bowl last night, and, I'm told, sounded like a wounded prehistoric beast. I had already turned off the game and was playing Burnout 3, and sadly missed yet another halftime-show gem.

But, never fear: lipsync.us is here with the video clip. It really is something hearing 77,912 people boo simeultaneously.

Wait, why is Jimmy marrying a gorilla?

For those of you who want a better look at some of those Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen comic book covers this website randomly generates in the sidebar, click here. Jimmy certainly doesn't have the best attitude towards being Superman's "pal."

I actually have the one titled "Hippie Olsen's Hate-In." Awesome.

Inconceivable

According to Mega-Doppler 8000, right now it's 70 degrees in Atlanta, and 64 here.

On January 4th?! This is madness. But Mega-Doppler has never lied before...

Eye of the Tighe... er...?

As Andrew will tell you, puns are the lowest form of humor. We hate puns, and have tasked ourselves with seeking them out and destroying them utterly.

But my brain's natural pun defenses can't even keep up with the insane pun-mongering of Tommy Tighe. Tighe hosts the halftime portion of the Sunday night NFL game on CBS/Westwood One radio. All season I've been marveling at his ridiculousness while recounting the day's highlights; the puns, which relate to various NFL teams and players, are both insane and numerous. They fly by so fast; just when you think you've recovered from the last one, here comes the next one. Some favorite examples that I was able to retain:

- The Titans were missing their "McNair traffic controller" (Steve McNair is their QB)
- The Jaguars missed the playoffs but "can't blame it on Del Rio" (their coach)
- New Orleans lost? "Saint that a shame!" (Hmm. Also used: "Saint Elsewhere")
- It's not a "Terry Christmas" for the Browns and coach Terry Robiskie (Also, the team experienced an offensive "Brown-out")
- Referred to N.Y. Jets QB Chad Pennington as "Penny and the Jets"
- Referred to Lions QB Joey Harrington is "The Lion King," and said it was "Hakuna Matata" against Green Bay (Tighe really takes these things too far sometimes)
- Two touchdowns on the ground for Baltimore's Jamal Lewis? "That's so Raven!"

Oh man. That last one's my favorite. (Side note: That's So Raven is Andrew's favorite TV show. Let's all gently mock him for a short-to-medium period of time.) There were more examples, but I think my brain exploded in protest. Tune in during the playoffs and maybe you'll hear Tighe and his ridiculous menagerie of puns.

Happy new year

Welcome to 2005, my bitches.

Don't make any stupid resolutions. Resolutions are lame.