This is not an isolated problem, it's a citywide epidemic. Take the story late last year of the alleged phenomenon at Starbucks in which each customer would pay for the next one's order after being pestered to do so by the barrista. Even though this was an obvious guerrilla marketing scheme -- it happened at Starbucks locations across the country, and only Starbucks locations, largely within the same week -- it got all sorts of earnest local coverage.

Think I'm exaggerating? Here's video from KOMO-4, complete with 'Pay It Forward' graphic. Here we have Seattle market leader KING-5. Rounding out the big three, an article from KIRO-7. Google it yourself and you'll probably be able to find a TV station or newspaper from your town, talking about a Starbucks in your region. I don't mind that none of these journalists realized they were being duped, but when everybody references the same crap movie, that's just lazy. (Yes, I'm aware that Haley Joel Osment did not invent the phrase. But let's admit the fact that he owns it.)

The madness doesn't end there. This summer the Associated Press referred to a cancer patient as having a "bucket list". See the pattern?

Here are some more movie titles that I challenge local news to work into the lexicon:
K-Pax
Sweet November
Mad Money
I Am Sam
Rocky V

But he's not gay; Ted Haggard was abused as a child by a male friend of his father! Sure you were, Ted.

Or could it be that a lifetime submerged in a culture that demonizes and marginalizes homosexuality had the predictable effect of making homosexual acts seem just a little alluring? If everyone you know tells you homosexuality is a sin for dirty dirty sinners, doesn't it start to sound just maybe a tad sexy?

Sex columnist Dan Savage would probably apply what he wrote two years ago:

Like many fetishes, [this] is most likely a subconscious, erotic response to a sexually charged fear. While most of us learn to live with and occasionally conquer our fears without eroticizing them, a number of us respond to sexual fears or traumas by incorporating them into our erotic imaginations.

Those names might not actually mean anything, but sometimes they do; Sarah Palin's was "Denali" (the native name for Mt. McKinley in Alaska) and Todd's was "Driller." (Note that family members' codenames always alliterate.) John Kerry's was "Minuteman" -- ouch.

Some previous presidential codenames:
George W. Bush was "Tumbler" or "Trailblazer";
Bill Clinton was "Eagle" or "Elvis";
George H.W. Bush was "Timberwolf";
Ronald Reagan was "Rawhide";
Jimmy Carter was "Lock Master" or "Deacon";
Gerald Ford was "Pass Key";
Richard Nixon was "Searchlight";
Lyndon Johnson was "Volunteer";
John F. Kennedy was "Lancer" or "Dazzle";
Dwight Eisenhower was "Scorecard" or "Providence."

Spiritual remake of: Blood Feast (1963), a probable future Furdell Classic Cinema Theatre movie that a character in John Waters's Serial Mom called "the Citizen Kane of gore movies."

But it reminded us of: Repo Man (1984), which has an eerily similar grainy punk-rock aesthetic and comic surrealist streak. I thought this was a strange connection for my brain to make, since there's no cannibalism in Repo Man, but James came to the same conclusion independently, so there must be something to it.

Premise: When not feeding people to vegetarians at their diner, two brothers, at the behest of their dead uncle's talking brain, devote their lives to resurrecting the ancient goddess Sheetar, via a ritual that hasn't been performed -- as we're told many times -- in over five million years.

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b.

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d.

Plot Synopsis:
Describing the plot would kind of miss the point, so I'm going to put more effort into the Final Analysis. The film's first five minutes do a good job of setting up the plot: Anwar is passing along the crazy to his nephews.

True to their word, when they grow up the boys resurrect their uncle's brain, murder a bunch of people, secretly feed them to other people under the guise of "health food" at their diner, and plot to reincarnate their beloved evil god Sheetar in a virgin sacrifice at a dance club.

Final Analysis: This movie was really hard for me to pin down. Going in, we thought it was going to be a straight-up bad 80s gore flick. It is, and it isn't. Blood Diner is clearly made by people who love bad movies so much that they wanted to make one, and they did. Its treatment of schlock cinema is too loving to call it a spoof; it's not an homage, because how can a bad movie pay homage to bad movies?

To give you an example, consider Grindhouse, the recent Tarantino/Rodriguez tribute to 70s exploitation cinema, which I loved. It's a tribute to schlock, but it isn't schlock -- the actors are talented, the writers-directors are arguably two of the best in American cinema, and everyone on the crew was probably a seasoned professional that knew his or her job very, very well. The scratches on the celluloid were actually CGI scratches. The scratches in Blood Diner are real.

Take this early scene, which got a huge laugh during our viewing. It's badly written, badly acted, badly lit and badly shot -- but can that possibly all be intentional?

I don't think we caught on to the filmmakers' intentions until midway through the film. When the two main detectives -- inarguably terrible actors -- are investigating the brothers' latest crime scene, one of them scratches his head with his own gun. Was this a coincidence, or could it be an homage to worst-film-ever contender Plan 9 From Outer Space?

Seconds later, the detective in question scratches his head again and this time accidentally pulls the trigger, setting off a comical echoing sound effect. Yep, it's an homage.

I don't think that a bad movie paying homage to its predecessors would necessarily be compelling by itself, but Blood Diner gets a big boost from that surrealism I alluded to earlier. As James kept remarking, it was impossible to predict anything that was going to happen, particularly with regard to characters' reactions to the carnage around them. We thought we'd found a character whose actions made sense -- a random floozie who ran away from the brothers' diner screaming after finding her deep-fried friend's headless corpse -- but even she stopped at the door and went back to pick up her purse and all the random stuff that fell out of it (and was subsequently slaughtered). Check out the reactions of some club-goers when a bouncer is brutally murdered right in front of them:

Overall, shockingly, I'd characterize Blood Diner as a film of actual, non-sarcastic merit. If nothing else, I can't think of any other film where a group of people set out to make something really shoddy, and went completely all-out, and succeeded. Even Earth Girls Are Easy had an Academy Award winning actress in the lead. If you have any interest in schlock cinema, Blood Diner is a must-see.

The Female Perspective^TM with Julia Katz: Overall I'd say it's a movie worth seeing. It has a certain...niche. It's like self-conscious cliché horror. I thought when [Georgie] dipped [a random floozie's] head in the fryer, that was a pretty good scene, because she came out and her head looked like a tater tot or something, and you know, I can suspend my disbelief to a certain point, but...At the end Sheetar has to eat something. They were offering her that virgin sacrifice, so that she could manifest. So you'd think, oh, it's a human form, she'll have to eat it through her mouth. But there's this hole in her abdomen, and not only is it split open to form like a birthing canal, but it has these little sharp teeth. So it's basically a vagina with teeth. And in the end [Georgie] gets hoisted on his own petard and gets eaten by the vagina. That was also very memorable. Sheetar, she's a man-eater. (Note from Andrew: Julia was awake for the entire film, but she seemed kind of out of it. More so than usual.)

...“separation of church and state” is still just a phrase we make little kids learn so that when they grow up they have a fundamental understanding of how hypocrisy works.

...via hologram.

I was the first one in the newsroom to notice it (everyone else was watching ABC's coverage), and my initial reaction was to point at the screen and search desperately for words. Exact quote: "Oh my -- what are they -- is that -- no, it can't be...a hologram?!?!"

The assembled producers and reporters at first found it hilarious and made the necessary Star Wars references, but within minutes the prevailing mood was: "my god, we need one of those. Now."

We so, absolutely do.

One thing that every rich person I've ever met has had in common: none of them believed they were rich. Even people who this article would call rich ("hedge fund managers, investment bankers, or CEOs", "net worth in the multimillions") have said to me something along the lines of, "Oh, I'm not rich. I know some guys who are worth ten times what I'm worth -- they're rich." Knowing this is a big part of the reason why I decided early on not to pursue money as a primary goal...it's a race you just can't win.

What really irks me about Bill Kwon, though, is his notion that your income is directly proportional to how hard you work.

""Raising taxes for people at my income level is like being punished for success, for working hard." ...Kwon fears that America risks killing the incentive for people like him by shrinking the rewards for logging extra hours or starting a business, diminishing the dream that brought his father from Korea.

Believe me, Bill, those of us who make one-tenth of what you rake in are also putting in extra hours.

Aspiring HENRYs played by the rules and did everything right: They won the best grades in high school, got accepted at good colleges and grad schools, and worked daunting schedules as medical interns or associates in law firms.

Screw you, article! We blogging Furdells all have degrees from a top twenty university! So we didn't decide to go to law school or med school -- does that mean we didn't work hard enough, because we wanted to do something else with our lives, something that maybe doesn't pay quite as well? I guess we're just lazy?

Mr. Kwon's sense of entitlement reminds me of the words of American poet S. Tyler:

'Cause I'm sick of your complainin'/ About how many bills/ And I'm sick of all your bitchin'/ 'Bout your poodles and your pills/ And I just can't see no humor/ About your way of life/ And I think I can do more for you/ With this here fork and knife.

Eat the rich.

I'm at work, on standby in case they need me (they probably won't), and just trying to stay out of everyone's way. The newsroom's Tension Machine is clearly cranked up to 11, with everyone running around and screaming at each other. Very exciting.

Unlike the rest of Earth, I'm keeping my eye on local ballot measures, and for the most part the results are quite depressing. In Florida, the presidential vote is still too close to call with what appears to be a slight Obama lead, but the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is way ahead.

Colorado, though not yet called, looks like a very likely Obama win; but they're also poised to end affirmative action and define life as beginning at conception. Who are these people?

Massachusetts went overwhelmingly blue in the national election -- but they even more overwhelmingly repealed the state income tax. Seriously, who are these people, and what do they think they're voting for?

Give Arizona and Arkansas credit: they're banning gay marriage and forbidding gay couples from adoption children, respectively, but at least they have the decency to vote Republican.

In other words, like I said four long, long years ago, people just don't base their vote on policy. In fact, maybe it goes beyond that: I don't think the electorate even understands the policies they're voting for.

To sum up: We won, and American democracy continues to be a total and abject failure.

"The overwhelming reaction to this ad has been disgust — directed at Sen. Dole — for stooping to this low and attacking a fellow Christian," said Colleen Flanagan, a spokeswoman for Hagan's campaign.

"Sen. Dole knows Kay is a strong Christian, a former Sunday school teacher and a member of Greensboro's First Presbyterian Church, and she knows that her advertisements are lies."

Well thank goodness for that! The last thing we need is those godless heathens having any hope of representation in government. If there's a litmus test for politicians, it should be whether they believe in Santy-Claus.

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?

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b.

c.

d.

e.

f.

Plot Synopsis:
We're introduced to Barney in his high school lab, which apparently only he has access to. He's working on a couple of projects -- growing orchids for the principal, and administering THC to mice which he then puts into tiny SCUBA gear and dunks into fish tanks.

When Barney isn't looking, Coach Shining accidentally pours Barney's experimental orchid growth fluid into Barney's marijuana extract oil. Not long after, Barney's idiot friend Peyton unwittingly adds the reactive ingredient: beer. Barney feeds some of the secret formula to a mouse, which then gains the ultimate superpower: Mind Over Cheese. And it causes Barney to drop the vial of secret formula on the ground. In a bright flash and a plume of smoke, Barney...is Zapped!

After "accidentally" tearing the sexy girl's sweater off with his mind, Barney begins to realize that he's gained telekinetic powers. In short order, he masters those powers, floating half a dozen objects at once with great precision, all in front of a big open window. It doesn't take long for Peyton and nosy journalism student Bernadette to take notice. They all decide -- for some reason -- that they should keep Barney's powers a secret.

Now, this is where the movie gets kind of weird. From here on in, Barney uses his powers in almost every scene...but always frivolously (at best). He never saves any lives or rights any wrongs or even is particularly helpful to anyone. One of the first things he does with his powers is cheat at a baseball game. After nine innings of physics-bending psychological warfare, the opposing team's pitcher actually sits down on the mound and cries. Bernadette, looking on from the bleachers...seems to approve. It's notable that this wasn't set up as being a particularly important game.

Barney spends much of the movie using his powers to get Peyton laid, generally by shaming the sexy sweater girl's beefy college-student boyfriend. I want to make something clear: Peyton does not deserve to have sex with the sweater girl. Actually he's kind of an asshole. But, with help from Barney's powers and his own shameless lies, he does eventually convince sweater girl to have sex with him...and of course he surreptitiously sets his camera to automatically photograph their congress. That's classy.

Something else I want to make clear: Bernadette knows about all of this, and she finds it charming.

INTERLUDE: This movie is more random-scenes-strung-together than plot, really, and a lot of it can be ignored. But the best part of the film must be when Barney and Bernadette incinerate Barney's marijuana plants, and Coach Shining accidentally gets a lungful.

End interlude. Barney continues to charm Bernadette by terrorizing strangers with his powers. In this montage they progress from casual flirtation to full-on sexy time. Note: his mother is afraid to enter her own house without a crucifix because Barney deliberately convinced his parents that he and his wooden dummy were possessed by demons.

I included the entire montage, including the queasy sex scene at the end, against my better judgment. But you see my point: it's not the tube socks that turned her on. It's the willful chaos Barney causes to people who were just minding their own business.

Ah, but then Barney crosses the line: Peyton convinces him to cheat at roulette. Upon discovering that Barney plans to use his powers for profit rather than just the usual random acts of pure terror, Bernadette throws a fit.

When Bernadette stops returning Barney's calls, he hits the bottle and spends a drunken night on his laboratory floor. The next morning he runs into Bernadette on campus and apologizes for gambling. Baio is surprisingly moving in this scene, as an all-powerful boy so smitten that he's willing to commit himself purely to profit-free chaos.

BARNEY
Bernadette, I'm sorry....about the gambling, about acting like an idiot. I'm through with it, it's over. Bernadette, please, don't be mad at me. Go to the prom with me. I mean, we have fun together, don't we? I've never felt this way with anyone before.

She agrees to meet him at the prom. Peyton is prom king, and Sexy Sweater Girl -- who's back with the beefy college guy -- is prom queen, so that's awkward. For no particular reason other than to show up Beefy College Guy, Peyton shows off his sex photo (which Sexy Sweater Girl, up until this point, did not know existed). Quite reasonably, Beefy College Guy takes a swing at Peyton, who is complete slime. Barney sees this, and concentrates...

Now at this point maybe Barney could use his power to stop College Guy's fist from moving, or to push him away. That would have worked fine. But instead, he rips off Sweater Girl's prom dress (and sees everything). And then he rips off everyone else's clothes -- much to their perplexing delight. Barney has now become an agent of pure chaos; note Bernadette's naked glee.

In the end, Barney is hit in the face by a floating bra, and loses his powers...or does he? No, he does not. He was just faking for some reason, and he flies Bernadette home. The end.

Final analysis: This was my first viewing of Zapped!, and, having seen Zapped Again! more than once, I had certain expectations. Those expectations were definitely defied. The film famously ends with that prom scene, and Barney using his powers to tear off everyone's clothes...but unlike the protagonist in the sequel, Barney doesn't seem all that interested in actually looking at people naked, and I think that gives Zapped! its unintentional depth. This is a rare sex comedy in which the main characters are unrepentant, unpunished villains whose only motivation is the senseless humiliation of their peers. Improbably thought-provoking.

The Female Perspective^TM with Julia Katz:
I was confused at first why his parents were so critical of him, like what did he do that was so bad. But then when he started with the dummy stuff, okay, that might raise a red flag...They had to bring a priest in to exorcise the dummy demons. Were they religious weirdos, or were they just really freaked out?
When I saw that scene where they were playing tennis together, it was kind of one scene in a string of scenes where you see him cheating with his power. And his girlfriend knows his powers. He makes the ball change direction and she just gives him this look like "Oh you." I would be like, "You come over here so I can step on your balls." Because that's not cool. That would be annoying to anybody. (Note from Andrew: Julia started to nod off during Coach Shining's weed dream, but I nudged her and she seemed to stay awake for the remainder of the film.)

...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.

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."

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f.

Plot Synposis:
Legally blind Philo and his idiot horndog friend Bunkle are thrown out of pilot school because they're legally blind and an idiot, respectively. Bunkle somehow convinces Philo that Stew School is the next best thing, because they'd still be in airplanes. This is inherently wacky because it's 1986, so all stewardesses are either women or very, very gay.

(Seriously, why is nobody this gay anymore?)

We're treated to a series of vignettes in which each member of our ragtag group of misfits decides to enroll, usually due to parental coersion or legal obligation. Next we meet the school's authority figures. The school is run by Roger Weidermeyer (no, really), who only seems to be interested in the bottom line and will thus accept even the most misfitty of students; our main antagonist will be instructor Miss Grummet (again, really), who quite reasonably thinks Weidermeyer's low standards are ruining the school's credibility. Before this film is done, she will faceplant into a toilet.

The first half of the film is devoted to Miss Grummet's gleeful attempts to expel as many students as possible. In one scene, she challenges the gang to a stewardess simulation excercise in which they must serve a planeful of professional "passengers" -- and if you thought the stewardesses were wacky...!

Ultimately, Miss Grummet is overruled by Weidermeyer, who sends the entire crew off to a new, family-owned airline called Stromboli Air (after Carl Stromboli offers Weidermeyer a bribe in exchange for a full crew). Even though they're mostly inept and completely unprepared, they immediately set off for their first flight. The stakes are high, because Miss Grummet is there for some reason, and also one of the passengers -- it could be any of them! -- is an FAA inspector sent to evaluate the crew.

Our heroes are doomed from the outset, though, as one of their passengers is a very twitchy lunatic with a large bomb. In this scene, he drugs the passenger next to him in order to cause a distraction.

To calm that passenger down, the entire stewardess crew holds him down while Sugar Dubois administers a soothing blowjob. Meanwhile, the mad bomber sets a timer on his explosive device, knocks out the pilot, and jumps from the plane. Bunkle fails to defuse the bomb, so it blows a hole in the side of the plane; luckily, Jolean plugs the hole with her fat ass.

(Notice that in the preceeding scene, the plane appeared to be empty of passengers. Very sloppy, makers of Stewardess School. Very sloppy.)

Philo, whose contact lenses were knocked out in a turbulence-related mishap, lands the plane with help from the rest of the crew. But our heroes aren't out of the woods yet. For reasons I don't care to remember, Stromboli Air ends up on trial. (Some of our loyal lawyer readers might be able to help me out here.) Will the stews keep their jobs? It all rests on the testimony of the secret FAA inspector...and it's...the freaked out guy who got the blowjob! Case dismissed!

Final analysis: I first saw this film on "USA Up All Night" in my youth, and it's possible that my love of Stewardess School is steeped in nostalgia. On the other hand, this is inarguably one of the greatest films of all time. It's a master class in boob reaction shots (see animated gif above). Best of all it's under 90 minutes, which -- thanks to the inverse relationship of film quality to duration -- makes it more than twice as good as Lawrence of Arabia. I give it my best rating yet: Eight Suitcases to the Crotch.

The Female Perspective^TM with Julia Katz: Who was this movie made for, is my first question. Was this movie made for really horny guys, who could relate to the horny guys in the movie? I don't know. Just, why? Why make this movie? I don't know. I guess I liked the scene where the fat chick dove into the floatation device and it exploded, and then they were all wet. That was classic. Oh, you know what was funny too? The scene where, I don't know if you'd call him the dean, where he introduces them all to Stewardess School, and all he could do is stare at that chick's boobs. Remember that? Oh yeah, and then he had an erection and he couldn't step away from the podium. How many more sexual antics could you put in a movie? (Note from Andrew: Julia stayed awake through this entire movie.)