A philosophical question

Robert Duvall as "Buck" Weston in Kicking and Screaming: "You'll never beat your old man at anything!"

Oh, they didn't just slip a Great Santini reference into their Will Ferrell kids' movie. No, they went ahead and made it a major part of the plot.

Ooooooooops.

Looks like Robin Furdell won't be giving me those parachuting lessons after all...and it's not because I assumed he was a woman.

Shed a tear...for WKRP in Cincinnati

OK, so I'm a little late on this one. It's kind of been in the back of my mind for the last month-and-a-half, but I've been busy, okay?

Anyway, I waited and waited for classic superhero television program The Greatest American Hero to come out on DVD. People were selling home-made sets on Ebay for upwards of $100 per season; I ended up downloading the episodes of the first season myself and making my own DVDs, which worked out pretty well, but the quality wasn't great.

So it finally comes out on DVD, and I shell out my $35 or whatever. The set seems great -- really good video quality, nice packaging, skimpy but present features...

But then you watch the actual show, and oh my god, the music. It still has the famous opening theme song, but much of the other music has been replaced. Specifically, what used to be covers of moderately popular hits of that era (like a folky rendition of Elton John's Rocket Man in the pilot) got replaced by what can only be described as a late-90s attempt at watered-down rock. Kind of like the Friends theme, but more rockin'!

Anyway it doesn't mesh particularly well with the otherwise very late-70s early-80s show (the main character is a white dude with a 'fro -- Friends music is simply inappropriate). And the packaging doesn't so much as hint at the change.

It turns out that securing the rights to the original music is a problem specific to TV shows on DVD, and is the reason why you'll never be able to buy the box set of WKRP in Cincinnati that you've been asking for every Christmas will never come to be. Well, it also means shows like Freaks and Geeks that get the music right end up costing tons more. That show didn't even finish its first season...imagine how much the first season of Moonlighting will set you back. And I know you're planning to buy it. Because you love Bruce Willis.

Anyway, better high prices for these sets than the schlocky music they settle for to bring down the price. You need to see the Greatest American Hero DVDs to fully comprehend what I'm talking about. You can't borrow mine though; I just sold them to some sucker on Ebay. Take that, loser!

6 things you should know about Shark Tale

1. I did not choose to watch Shark Tale.

   You have to understand that, back when I had two roommates, I was only able to get them to split my Netflix bill by alternating movie picks with them. Now I only live with Julia, my lovely girlfriend (hi Julia), but her picks leave something to be desired.

   Imagine following up The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly with White Chicks and it's like you live in our house.

2. Long time readers of Furdell.com are well aware that the lowest form of humor, right after "involves poop," is puns. That being the case, Shark Tale is a very, very, very bad film. The first five minutes packs in more puns than my high school english teacher managed in my entire junior year, and for those of you who didn't take English with me in 1997, that was a lot of puns. So many that I developed a Pun Defense System (PDS). It went a little something...like this.
   MS. LONG So you see class, it seems that Julius Caesar's friends were real brutes.

   ME
   Yes, good point. They were indeed loutish.

   Note that Katie Couric plays a character -- presumably based on herself -- named "Katie Current." Isn't that clever? Because current is a word you might associate with water! Which is like fish!

3. Did you know? Renee Zellweger put on three hundred million pounds to play the role of Angie, a fish.
   
4. If you thought Robert de Niro hit rock bottom in Meet the Fockers, you were way off. Oh for the halcyon days of Analyze That and The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Wait, what?
5. After the longest 83 minutes of my life, the movie ends. Then comes the credits. Instead of outtakes, Shark Tale goes with a kind of system: wait five minutes; show a brief animation that wasn't worth waiting for; repeat.

   The worst example? Some kind of crab thing comes on the screen and, mockingly (I'm not imagining this), says "It's not even half-way done yet! HAW HAW HAW." This reminded me of the much-loved pod race scene from Star Wars Episode I: The Suckening, in which, after one excrutiatingly long lap of being forced to watch a little kid who can't act fly around in a circle, we are treated to Jar Jar Binks, who says, and these words are burned forever into my mind: "He has to do that two more times?"

   I don't know if I'm remembering things wrong, but I swear there was a crane shot when I stood up in the theater and yelled "NOOOOOOOOO!!!!"

6. Remember how I said Shark Tale was a Julia pick? Well, that's not to say she stays awake through the whole thing. She makes it about 30 minutes into any given movie. (Usually I look at her eyes every 5 minutes to determine exactly when she falls asleep. Today, I felt lazy and just mumbled "are you still awake?", which of course garnered no response.)

   Do to a personal rule, I am still forced to watch the entire movie from start to finish. (If you think that's ridiculous, you should see my DVD purchasing rules.) So, according to my Netflix queue, I'll soon be watching The Grudge with an unconscious girl in the room. That's the American remake, mind you. I should make her pay extra.

---

UPDATE!

---

I forgot one.
7. In the end, the fish played by Will Smith introduces fishes played by Missy Elliot and Christian Aguilera. Since warbling disco hits in abysmal movies is apparently her thing, Christina sings "Car Wash," which Missy declares "a Shark Tale exclusive," as if that somehow makes it more valuable. Bad Boys II Soundtrack. Word.

Furdell News

• Furdell.com laments the divorce of Jonathan and Janice Furdell, presumably under the pressure of being known by friends as "Jon and Jan," which is just too cute.
• If I didn't attack her online, maybe I could convince Robin Furdell to give me free parachute lessons. But I...can't...help myself!!! Hey, Robin! Nice web presence! Too bad you suck!!!
• Rusty Furdell's hard-to-find food-related blog stopped updating on November 19, which just happened to be National Carbonated Beverage with Caffeine Day. Coincidence? No! Well, probably. More insultingly, some guy called Rusty's site "a great example of a weblog" back in September. That week, Furdell.com unveiled James's treatise on Unskinny Bop. You can not ignore us forever, Internet.
• Google searching is made difficult by our mother's insistence on writing books all the time. Mom, stop writing books. I even have to wade through pages that use your works as examples of how the Dewey Decimal System works, of all things. And I'm pretty sure you're staunchly anti-Dewey.

Eagles vs. Braves

I enjoyed James's visit to Atlanta this weekend. We discussed several important blog related topics, including:

• finding ways to seem "edgy" without offending our parents, who somehow found this site (dammit!)


• re-crafting our Mission Statement so that it more explicitly involves attacking other Furdells. Especially Google runner-up Phyllis. She put her phone number on her website. You should give her a call!

Anyway, while James was here we saw two baseball games. First we saw, on purpose, the Braves beat the Mets on Friday; then, the next day, we inadvertantly watched the Emory Eagles (my apologies for the poor site) trounce the Piedmont College Totally Valid Diplomas after fragile James injured himself playing basketball. (Which, to be fair, James had already won.)

Anyway, the Emory game turned out to be more exciting than the Braves game, plus free food. It was a tie game with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th when young whippersnapper Josh Barrett hit the ball directly at the 2nd baseman, who threw the ball to first base in a very routine fashion, but somehow he was too late. This kid was fast. He then proceeded to steal second, and was singled in by some other kid. It was quite the excitement.

Little did we know that this was only game 1 of a double header. Perhaps if we had stayed, Emory would have won the second game as well, but it was not to be. Actually, I blame Phyllis. Revenge will be mine!!!!

Ahem. There, I'm getting edgier already.

Earth's Best Trailer: Robot Jox

Ah, this brings back memories. I never actually saw the film, but I saw the trailer over and over again for some reason.

"I'm gonna kick...your..." (EXPLODE!!!)

It would have been worth the ticket price just to find out what that guy was going to kick.