The Film: Zapped! (1982)
Punctuation in the title? And how!
They were going for: What if Carrie was a dude, and she went to Ridgemont High?
They ended up with: What if someone with amazing powers fell in love with a sociopath?
What did the pitch meeting look like?
For a while now McCain's last leg seems to be the "close connection" between Obama and Bill Ayers, which McCain finds "troubling." He won't say exactly why it's troubling. Think about it: Obama had an "association" with a man who once bombed the Pentagon, one about which McCain says we don't know the whole truth. I think I've figured it out...
...McCain thinks that as president, Obama plans to bomb the Pentagon.
And with a Democrat majority in the House and Senate, we'd be powerless to stop him. Oh. My. God.
POLITICS SIDE NOTE
Q: Who's the most liberal senator?
A: Whichever one just secured the Democrat nomination for president, of course.
Google "most liberal senator" and you'll find that the top 9 out of 10 results include "Obama" in the title. No surprise there; it's a talking point you've heard at least a few times if you're remotely interested in the election. (Note: if you're not remotely interested in the election, I will be reviewing Zapped! for Furdell Classic Cinema Theatre Vol. II. Keep hitting the "refresh" button.)
But if you add the name "kerry" to that search string...well, anyone who can remember back four years will tell you the results are predictable.
This has turned into a dark day indeed.
The Film: Stewardess School (1986)
Genre: Bawdy sex comedy, unless that's redundant
Can the entire film be reduced to one animated gif?:
Who are we ripping off?: It's just a more sexist Police Academy, which released its third entry ("Back In Training") a few months before Stewardess School came out.
Made-Up Slang: Stewardesses often refer to themselves as "stews" and to the title institution as "Stew School," much like how newsies talk about selling "papes."
Late last year my first viewing of Purple Rain turned me into an unironic Prince fan, which is weird because I'm not an unironic anything.
Now it seems that, thanks to Rock Band 2, I'm becoming an unironic Boston fan. You know how some groups can have a bunch of hits ("Something About You," "Rock and Roll Band," "Piece of Mind," "More Than a Feeling") that are really all basically the same song, but it's okay because it's a really good song? Or how all the James Bond movies are essentially interchangeable, but you still know that "Named after your father perhaps?" is what Connery said to Plenty O'Toole in Diamonds Are Forever?
Things are looking worse and worse for McCain. Even North Dakota is slowly turning blue. It seems likely that he'll suffer an impossible defeat: not just against a Democrat, but against a black guy. In America. Oh my god.
Nobody's been saying it so I will: I don't think McCain can win with Palin. I think it's a longshot but his only chance is to dump her now, explain that he chose her based on bad advice and that he recognizes the error and is making an adjustment.
This week we learned that she's not just dangerously incompetent; she's dangerously incompetent at best. She's even turned off Christopher Freaking Hitchens, a man who refers to Obama's anti-war supporters as "the surrender faction" and who, as one of maybe three atheists who are more annoying than me, I find it very confusing to always disagree with.
Palin's multitude of truly bizarre interview gaffes, disturbing scandals, and hilarious soundbytes have added up to the point where conservative pundits can't even plausibly complain about sexism anymore, and liberal pundits (well, Bill Maher anyway) have become comfortable referring to Palin as a "bimbo" or a "stewardess" without repudiation. Or maybe it's not that the conservatives aren't able to defend Palin -- maybe they're unwilling.
So that's my advice, McCain: one last Hail Mary pass. Dump Palin, pick up Huckabee even though you can't stand him, and you might get the conservative base back. You don't have much hope with independents either way at this point, but an audible couldn't hurt. Yes, you'll look even more "erratic," but then as a losing campaign you can't really help but scramble.
So it seems the Connecticut Supreme Court overturned that state's gay marriage ban. Wow. Maybe all these states putting an unconstitutional discriminatory law on the books is actually speeding up the process rather than slowing it down?
On that note, in November, in between sessions of furious nail-biting while I watch the presidential election results come in, I'll be keeping one eye on California.
Gays have been marrying in California for about four months now, and the state doesn't seem to have crumbled into the sea, and the rivers still run with what appears to be water. Hopefully this will convince California voters to vote no on Proposition 8, which would ammend the state's constitution to explicitly ban gay marriage. (Supposedly, this would not work retroactively -- which means George Takai is safe. But still.)
Polling shows a tight race on Prop 8, so don't forget to pester all your California friends and relatives to vote "no". As we see it, California tends to lead the way in American equal rights progress; if they're not ready for gay marriage, we can't imagine the rest of the country is. But if California votes down Prop 8, that could be a very good sign for the future of equal rights in this country.
Slate's cover article compares the Iraq War to the film Red Dawn. Gee, Slate, it looks like Furdell.com only scooped you by, oh, about five years. (Actually, Slate was also scooped five years ago by itself, but I'd like to point out that I also scooped that article by about a month.)
This year's Slate article also gets points off for crediting John Milius as "Conan auteur", when we all know that Conan the Barbarian could not have existed with anyone other than screenwriter Oliver Stone and star Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Opening today in theaters near you: Beverly Hills Chihuahua, which is both a long-awaited sequel to Beverly Hilla Ninja and a long-awaited adaptation of a series of Taco Bell commercials.
Actual conversation I had at work, when a preview aired:
ME: Oh, look, it's a movie based on those Taco Bell ads.HIM: I loved those ads! I hope the movie version doesn't ruin it.
I've added to our extensive sidebar -- for one month and change only -- the projected electoral college map provided by electoral-vote.com, a site that I visit daily...assuming it's late in a leap year. Yes, the mysterious Votemaster did predict a Kerry win in 2004, but in his/her defense that one was a bit of a squeaker.
I would like to stress that this temporary addition will in no way affect the Random Jimmy Olsen Generator 5000tm, which is still located safely at the bottom of the sidebar. Remember, Furdell.com is your only source on the web for random covers of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen.
First of all I would just like to say that I am definitely not "live-blogging" the VP debate. I'm far too busy playing Palin Bingo.
We're about 45 minutes into the debate and the candidates agree on one thing: they're both against gay marriage. (This should come as no surprise to anyone who's followed their positions, but it's never fun to hear it.) Biden's position at least appears to be colored by the idea that "marriage" is intrinsically religious, as he suggests that it's the religious groups who need to make that specific decision.
Biden also explicitly states that Obama's White House will protect the full equal civil rights of homosexual couples. He lists two or three -- hospital visitation, property rights -- and notably leaves out parents' rights. Palin, in her response, doesn't seem to understand that rights like hospital visitation aren't currently easily available to unmarried couples.
Those of you who agree with me that the government should keep religion out of its policies might be interested in Bill Maher's movie Religulous, which comes out tomorrow and might be terrible, or maybe not.
Oh, Biden just called McCain out for saying he wouldn't talk to Spain. And I'm totally not liveblogging.
