Author Archives: shindancer

The Second Best Translating Bit in The History of the Comedy

Well of course we all know what number one is. I mean, come on! How do you beat June Cleaver saying, “Jus’ hang loose, blood?” You don’t. Ever.

But you have to come close with this little gem from the movie Bananas. This was back in 1971, when Woody Allen was known simply as Woody, and not Woody “but she’s over 18” Allen. Back when he could put on a silly fake beard and get a laugh.

Sharp dressed man.

It’s one of those classic Woody bits that makes you laugh, then makes you feel stupid for laughing, and then makes you laugh again. I guess it’s just something about those  men in the white coats flying in with their nets at the end that make us think the joke has been on us the whole time…and it’s a pretty damn funny joke at that.

 

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Wait…Did That Really Happen? Butts-a-Popping Edition

Have you ever remembered a movie from your childhood, but it was so weird that you thought to yourself, “Wait…did that really happen, or did I do a lot of peyote as a child? Was that an actual movie, or something my mind created to block out the memory of fourth grade PE class?” As a public service, Slumber Party Movies will solve those cinematic mysteries for you…one botched-rope-climb replaced memory at a time.

The first “Wait…Did that Really Happen?” is the one where that guy creates a line of jeans with the ass cheeks cut out that sweeps the nation because it turns out, no one really wants their pants to actually cover their asses. Was this a hallucinogenic-fueled mental-break or actual movie? ACTUAL MOVIE. Yes! So Fine came out in 1981…and that guy? He was played with relentless maleness by Ryan O’Neal. Don’t believe me? Here is the evidence.

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ACTUAL MOVIE. Yes! So Fine came out in 1981…and that guy? He was played with relentless maleness by Ryan O’Neal. Don’t believe me? Here is the evidence.

 

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Friday Morning Video: Faaaaaabulous!

Let’s Have a Kiki isn’t a retro video,but this summer’s gay anthem from one of my all time favorite bands, The Scissor Sisters. But really, what slumber party would be complete without this video? It has everything that you could possibly need: Faux drag queens, comedic spoken word opening, train stories, British voice-overs, bras as clothing, simple but awesome dance moves, onscreen lyrics, fabulousness, hot tambourine dudes, codpieces, cool new lingo and lots of swearing. Which reminds me, it’s NSFW because MTA stands for mother f%$ckers touching my ass!

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The White Nights/James Bond connection

This is for those of you who noticed something oddly familiar about the creepy KGB guy who was spying on Greggy and Mikhail’s bromantic dance routine in the video clip I posted yesterday. This clip is from one of the many James Bond movies that can be be considered a Slumber Party movie, Never Say Never Again (hint: most of them were made in the 80s). I think you’ll find it even creepier than the White Nights one because, really, when you’re jazzercizing with your gay bff in matching unitards and leg warmers, the last thing you want on the other side of the two-way mirror is a blonde guy with an even blonder face mole and bunch of surveillance equipment. A minute and fifteen minutes or pure ick. Enjoy!

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Tuesday Tribute to Gregory Hines–White Nights dance break edition

If you are one of my friends, I’ve already forced you to watch this many times–Clockwork Orange style. If you aren’t, you probably aren’t reading this blog. Just in case you are, this is a reminder that no one has moves like Gregory Hines…even Mikhail. It’s also a reminder that we should all dance like no one is watching…except a creepy KGB agent with a closed-circuit spy cam and a two-way mirror. (Can I get that printed on a t-shirt?) Oh…and watch at 1:42 for a sweet fight dance into jazz run combo that will make you glad you stumbled onto this blog.

Janet Jackson to The Rescue

Poor Jody! I hear your SOS and respond with Janet Jackson’s best video ever. What? F#$k right off with whatever sub-par Janet video has just popped into your head! I’m talking about Alright. No. Shut up. Stop arguing. I’m going to list the top 6 (out of a million) reasons that this video is the best Janet Jackson video, and possibly the best music video, that has ever been or ever will be.

6. Janet is every bit Michael’s little sister in this video. Check out her moves. Go on. Check them. And then get back to me.

5. She’s wearing a zoot suit. That’s right! A Z to the O Oot suit!

4. Not one dime of the video’s budget was used for CGI. It was all spent on a spectacularly swell 30s street set that is more detailed than most big Hollywood period pieces. (In your FACE, Cotton Club!)

3. Those details! Adorably retro and totally rad. Watch for a candy-colored baby carriage brigade, an old-school street washer and a camera shop facade so frivolously intricate, it’ll make you want to actually develop some film.

2. A sixty-something Cyd Charisse showing Janet how to do a fan kick. Janet can’t quite get her legs that high, but she has the good sense to appear appropriately reverent. Good going, Janet!

1. Cab EMM EFFING Calloway! In a yellow zoot suit. Yellow! Zoot! Suit! And yeah. He’s in his 80s in this video.

See? You see why you were wrong? Uh huh. Don’t ever doubt me again.

Tribute to Gregory Hines: Part 2 of 19,456

I know. I know. I didn’t write a Tuesday Tribute, but it’s not that I forgot, it’s just that I wanted to pay tribute to Gregory Hines, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to pay tribute to White Nights or Running Scared. I’ve come up with a solution. This week: Running Scared. Next week: White Nights. That’s right. Two Gregory Hines posts in as many weeks. What’s wrong with that? Who the eff are you? The Gregory Hines police? You know there’s no such thing, right? Idiot.

You’ve been served!

 

Hines style!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just kidding. I got the idea to pay tribute to Mr Hines when Sonia, of The Sonia Show, blogged about that awkward moment when an urbanite wonders what the hell everyone is looking at, and an islander rolls her eyes and says, “It’s the sunset, stupid!” Which of course made me think of the second most bromantic Gregory Hines movie ever made (come back in one week for the most bromantic one…I bet you can’t guess what it is), the 1986 buddy-cop movie, Running Scared, starring Billy Crystal and Hines as Chicago Cops who get tired of the snow and bullets and decide to retire to Key West, Fl. About 12 years ago, I got tired of the snow and bullets and snow in New Hampshire and did pretty much the same thing. I chose Key West because I’d heard that it was THE place for writers to go and write. I soon learned that it was THE place for writers to bartend and drink. Still, I never once took that sunset for granted. This video doesn’t do it justice, though. It does do Gregory Hines justice…he spends most of it sporting a banana hammock. WHAT?! … Stupid Gregory Hines Police. Still no such thing…grumble….

Oh…and in this one, watch the late great Gregory celebrate a three-pointer in a way that should make all of humanity weep for our loss. (Extra bonus points, at the end, when Billy Crystal is doing his miniature-marshmallow-and-Jeopardy-enthusiast-living-in-his-mom’s-basement routine, he mentions Detective Montoya. Detective Tony Montoya is played by Slumber Party icon, Jon Gries. Yeah, THAT Jon Gries.)

Things We Learned From Heathers.

Today we are thrilled and frightened to welcome guest blogger, Suzanne. Thrilled because Suzanne is seriously hilarious. Frightened because we think she might have gotten away with an actual murder. Seriously. 

The new girl is totally a murderer. Totally.

Hi Suzanne O’Kelly here, guest blogger of Slumber Party Movies. I’ve decided to take a break for streaming Netflix while eating hot dogs rolled in tortillas to remind you of a little film called Heathers and why you musn’t forget it. Why must you be reminded or, God help you, schooled on the lessons Heathers imparts besides the proper use of the word “myriad”? I say “god help you if you are an Old like me because…without Heathers, how did you ever learn to:

Is Jennifer a slut? A. Yes. B. No. C. I’m Jennifer

1. Appreciate the lunchtime poll. This subversive but all important skill is integral to your adult development. I mean, how on earth are you supposed to keep your office mates informed of the haps? Terry in Accounting would surely die if she didn’t know how the office feels about Jennifer in accounting’s new relationship with Bob in Sales, and whether one of them can do better. And don’t get me started on Ted in Product’s ugly pants. If Jeff in Finance knew how we really, REALLY felt about Docker’s with pleats, he’d know to skip those. Being a laughingstock is not part of the recipe for success.

Why am I doing this chicken bone by MYSELF?!

2. Go along with the crowd. One false move and you may find yourself in (or on, in Heather’s case) one huge pickle. As we may recall for the movie, Heather didn’t want to slut it up alone at the college party, so she brought Veronica to help out. (I always wondered why she didn’t invite the Yellow Heather because she seemed to have the lowest standards of the bunch.) Conveniently (for Veronica, not Heather) Veronica got sick and thus was unable to properly blow the douche bag with the Hitler Youth haircut. But Heather, on the other hand, was game enough to follow through. Now who got the short end of the stick here? Not Douchy McDoucherstein because srsly who cares. It’s Heather, of course. How can she let all of those insecurities all hang out in plain view only to find her plucky friend doesn’t, or won’t, share them? How dare Veronica make her look like the ONLY whore? Veronica puking on the carpet was just for emphasis really–you know that frat house carpet had seen its fair puke share prior to that night. Remember, a lone whore is disgusting, but a few good whores are just that. So the next time Josh in Mergers talks you and some other people into getting drunk at lunch and emailing pictures of the CEO’s wet spot on his pants around the office until someone drunkenly copies him, say YES, by god. He can’t fire all of you. Just remember you aren’t so special. If you were, you wouldn’t be working there. Besides, if you decide you are special, you could end up getting teased by a girl wearing a cardigan that looks like a rugby shirt. And who wants that?

Is that poison? No! Just drink it, Socrates…I mean Heather.

3. How to murder people without jailtime. Now this is a skill we all can’t be perfect at, but just imagine the possibilities if there was no such thing as a crime lab, which must have been the case in this movie, but I digress. You have a coworker who takes credit for your idea and gets the promotion, tells everyone about your IBS after a few awkward moments in the bathroom or blabs that 3-way with your boss and his wife story you told her after your 5th happy hour martini. There isn’t even a proper place in hell for people like this. But jail isn’t convenient. Solution? Make it look like a suicide. You don’t even need a note…a marked-up copy of any classic novel will do.  But you could just type one up on her machine when she’s meeting with Larry in Logistics and set it to go out two hours later. (You can do this in Outlook…very easily actually.) Go ahead, slip the poison of your choice into her “I hate Mondays” cup. And don’t look back.

Say ‘damage’ one more time. I dare you. I double dare you.

Ah yes, this movie has shaped my life in myriad ways, as it likely can (or did) yours. And what’s the most important thing to remember here? Life may be hard, but you have help in the movie “Heathers.” And “myriad” doesn’t get a preposition.

Lazlo Hollyfeld!

The other day on Facebook, Jody posted a link to this Think Geek T-Shirt:

No longer available. Rue the day. Rue it!

My first thought was “Ooh!” My second thought was “Lazlo Hollyfeld…” Even in my brain it was a reverent whisper. Lazlo is never far from the front of my consciousness. Appearing, and disappearing, in Martha Coolidge’s epic love letter to smart people, Real Genius, Lazlo was one of the, if not THE, best peripheral characters in Slumber Party Movie history.

A former student at Cal Tech (oops, I mean Pacific Tech), Lazlo Hollyfeld was the star super-duper smart guy until the pressure of all that crushing academia, and the weight of his own impossibly-smart thoughts, imploded in a freak-out break-down so severe, it made this one look like the world’s tiniest foot stomp from a mildly annoyed titmouse:

A break-down that sent Lazlo scuttling about the labyrinth of tunnels beneath Cal (I mean Pacific) Tech, like a less-sexy Phantom of the Opera or a slightly more-sexy Gollum*, scamming the good folks at Frito Lay and serving as a walking, skulking cautionary tale to the super-duper smarteratti upper level dwellers. Sometimes literally, as in this scene where Lazlo softly hammers home the lesson we should all learn from Real Genius (which is either “just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should” or “lasers are bad”).

And then there was WHAT HAPPENED to Lazlo. What? No, he didn’t become Uncle Rico. You’re thinking about what happened to Jon Gries, not Lazlo Hollyfeld–which was kind of a surprise and kind of not, as long as you paid attention to the trail of smarties that Coolidge left for us. Fair warning. Don’t watch the following if you want to follow that trail for yourself:

Which leads to the real super-secret message of Real Genius. Smart guys get laid too.

* My complete list of every character in pop culture by order of sexiness will be posted soon after my oft-rescheduled nervous breakdown.

Phyllis Diller. Gone too soon!

You see how you suck? You suck in comparison to Phyllis.

Seriously. Wasn’t it just a little over a month ago that I posted about Phyllis for Tuesday Tribute’s Surprisingly Still Alive edition? And then yesterday, I was surprised to be surprised to hear of the older-than-toilets-that-flush comedian’s death. Today, instead of posting another tribute to Lady Frizzelda,  I’ll tell you about another time I paid tribute to her. A few years ago, I worked for Foot  Comedy Walking Tours, giving a tour about some famous women of San Francisco called Go West Young Woman!* I had stops for museum magnate Alma Spreckels, dancer Isadora Duncan, topless pioneer Carol Doda, a poisoned-rum-punch slinging bartender pirate by the name Pigeon-Toed Sal and, at The Purple Onion, the spot of her first stand-up routine (at the ridiculously young age of 38), I paid tribute to the old girl herself. Instead of just blathering on about Phyllis’s life, I decided to illustrate the fact that the fast-talking funny gal was famous for spewing out 12 punchlines in about a minute by forcing the tourists to read 12 classic Diller lines from a Foot-brand index card (such as “I put on a peekaboo blouse. He took a peek and booed.” and “Cleaning the house while your children are growing is like shoveling the walk while it’s still snowing.”). I had to encourage them, telling them not to worry…we’re all friends…no one was going to make fun of them…blah di blah di blah. I timed them. It usually took them about three minutes. I spent the next two minutes making fun of those tourists, telling them in great detail how much they suck in comparison to Phyllis Diller. And they still do, Phyllis. They still do.

*The tour is still there and still funny and fabulous, but someone else is giving it.