Category Archives: Holiday

Scenes to Celebrate New Year’s!

So there’s the “I hate you, Harry. I really hate you,” scene from When Harry Met Sally. There’s the… oh, fuck. There’s no other movie to watch on New Year’s, Lerlines. Where else can you get a joke that starts “A hooker, a priest, two Africans and Paul Gleason walk onto a train…”?

 

There’s this.

And then also this, which has Dan Aykroyd in blackface, but still doesn’t feel as horribly racist as it ought to, maybe because of the terrible white ring around the collar, and because he’s trying not to be recognized, or maybe because they’re just having so much fun.

And let’s not forget Inga from Sweden, who only the butler knows should be Lisel from Switzerland. (By the way, every clip of Jamie Lee Curtis in Trading Places has her in the bare-chested scene, except this one, which is entitled “Jamie Lee Curtis tits HD.” Seriously, guys?)

And also the late, great Paul Gleason.

And then, of course, young James Belushi in his underwear, Al Franken as a drunk baggage handler, and gorilla love. That’s New Year’s, Lerlines.

Lastly, if you’d like to ring in 2014 with a look at how the butler, the whiz kid and the beggar ended up on their own island at the end, check out this quick tutorial from Winthorpe* himself. Or read this article, which is less fun but more informative.

* My dad looks just like Dan Aykroyd. I’m not kidding. And sometimes, when I watch The Blues Brothers, I see that my brother looks like him, too. Which means I probably look like Dan Aykroyd’s niece.

April Fools is for Fools and Bennifer Fans.

April Fools Day has become a bore. All the original Star Trek actors will be starring in the next Star Wars movie (Ha! As if Shatner would ever appear in a film with Chewbacca and break his own clause that prohibits co-stars with more body hair than him). Youtube is going dark because they are sick of cashing all those enormous cat-fell-down-the-stairs-again checks. Google introduces yet another impossible technical advance that we all secretly want and are now pissed that we can’t have. It’s like an episode of Two and A Half Men–the jokes are plentiful, amateurish, and older than the cocaine scars on Charlie Sheen’s septum.

The hairiest man in the room...always.

Legally the hairiest man in the room.

The good April Fools Jokes  are the ones we don’t figure out right away–like the photoshopped Migrant Mother, The Taco Liberty Bell, and Bush’s second term. But the very best April Fools pranks are the ones we never figure out. Which ones? I can’t say, we haven’t figured it them out yet. However I’ve had my suspicions about the movie Gigli for some time. First of all, it was released on March 31st in 2003. That really should’ve set off some alarm bells. Especially when it turned out to be so hellaciously bad.

Ben and Jen taking an on-camera break to contemplate what went wrong. Trivia: this scene actually made the final cut.

Ben and Jen taking an on-camera break to contemplate what went wrong. Trivia: this scene actually made the final cut.

I know what you’re thinking. “I’ve never seen Gigli…it’s probably not as bad as everyone says it was.” Wrong. It was so bad, that the love scene that featured the biggest, most famous and sexiest couple in America consisted almost entirely of Ben Affleck talking about his penis and Jennifer Lopez demanding oral sex with the classic line: “It’s Turkey time. Gobble. Gobble.” It was so bad that even people who liked to say the word “Bennifer” and who bought that whole “Jenny from the block” BS didn’t like it. I mean, come on, J-Lo…you can’t have a rider demanding an all white dressing room filled with white lilies and honey peanut Balance Bars and call yourself Jenny from the block.

Speaking of white lilies, anyone who is unlucky enough to have actually watched even a small portion of Gigli, has had it inexplicably beaten into their heads that Gigli is Italian for lily. And anyone with a working knowledge of the Encyclopedia Britannica can discover that part of Ancient Greece’s April Fools day was celebrated by secretly fixing a lily to your friend’s back and laughing your toga-clad ass off when she finally discovered it. The last person walking around town with a lily on her back was a special kind of stupid and was henceforth known as Lilium Stultus.

The stealth placing of the stultus lily.

The stealth placing of the stultus lily.

I know what you’re thinking. “Um…that sounds kind of dumb…even for you.” Fair enough, you bitch, but what about this: Gigli was directed by fallen Hollywood wunderkind, Martin Brest. Martin has since said of Gigli, and I quote, “I had nothing to do with that piece of sewage.” We assumed that he was alluding to the rumor that his original cut of the film followed a much darker plot where the adorable developmentally disabled kid gets killed at the end by Christopher Walken…instead of ending up on a Baywatch set (which is like a death in itself, isn’t it?) But does that really make sense? Wouldn’t killing the smartest character in the flick actually make it worse? (Spoiler alert: it would.)

These adorably precocious teens hate that guy.

These adorably precocious teens hate that guy.

Here’s what I think happened. The studio had some intern slap the flick together. They planned to release Gigli as an obvious April Fools joke, not only on the American public who had foolishly fallen for the Jen and Ben or Ben and Jen thing, but also on a director who had fallen out of favour after getting kicked off War Games. A movie called Lily, released the day before April Fools, starring Bennifer, directed by Marty Boobs…and we fell for it. Well played, Hollywood. Well played. … It beats the crap out of Bacon Scope anyway.

Rocky Horror Picture Show, Birthdays, and the Art of Audience Participa…pa…pation.

I feel pretty!

I feel pretty!

It’s Spiegelmama’s birthday and this post is for her! Back when we were teens, we had this thing called a record player. It played large scratchy discs called records. They looked like dinner plates, only blacker and noisier. Our two favorites were Queen’s Greatest Hits and The Rocky Horror Picture Show Say it which featured audience participation from a thickly accented, well-seasoned New York audience.

This picture is dedicated to anyone who got their cherry popped by Sal.

This picture is dedicated to anyone who got their cherry popped by Sal.

We listened to it forwards and backwards (and then stuck to forwards because if you play Rocky Horror backwards all you get is a recipe for ham and tuna casserole).  We learned when to yell “Where’s your neck?” “Work that bird!” and  “Describe your balls!” Important life lessons for a couple of Jr. High School kids in New Hampshire, for sure.

One of the best bits was at the end, when Rif-Raf condemns Frank through song, and one voice rings out from the 8th Street Playhouse in New York to a scratchy record player in Nashua, asking, “Can you explain.”Then when Tim Curry contritely and breathlessly delivers the line, “I can explain.” The voice rings out again with “This better be good. You got shot the last time.”

Prepare the transit beam, Mother.

Prepare the transit beam, Mother.

You’ll find the scene here at 3:55…without audience participation, but it plays in my head, and Spiegelmama’s as well.

 

On this St Patrick’s Day, Let Us All Drink Like a Pregnant Lass From A Roddy Doyle Novel.

But only if you want to get alcohol poisoning, because, up the pole or not, Irish ladies can knock ’em back.

Have another rum and coke, preggo!

Have another rum and coke, preggo!

Of course I realize that when one thinks of movies based on Roddy Doyle novels, they think of The Commitments, and so do I, but I also think of the second movie in his Barrytown trilogy  The Snapper (and to a lesser extent, the third movie, The Van, which I’ll save for another post).

I think of it so often, that when I was pregnant with my now nearly-seven-year-old daughter, I referred to her fetus self as Snappy (a nickname that is still occasionally busted out). Also, I thought of my pregnancy in terms of the stages of Sharon’s pregnancy–as in oh, I’m in the “Just remembered who the father is” trimester. Of course, I knew who the father was (spoiler alert: he was not a Spanish sailor), and I did not drink because I saw The Snapper as a bit of a cautionary tale, warning young preggos to keep it sober lest they end up in labor on a rainy street corner with puke in their purse, waiting on a drunk friend to hail a cab…or worse they could name the baby after that date-raping slab of Irish Cheddar, George Burgess (pronounced BORgess).

Taxi! Drunk lady in labor!

Taxi! Drunk lady in labor!

The funny thing is that this was not the main point of the movie. Sure, maybe our protagonist with the protruding belly would not have gotten up-the-pole to begin with if she had “taken it easy”, but all is well that ends well…with a black purse as the film’s only casualty.

Here's a tip. Next time puke in someone else's purse.

Here’s a tip. Next time puke in someone else’s purse.

During the course of Sharon’s shameful pregnancy, she ends up getting closer to her father, Dessie, and he, as a direct result of learning more about the female reproductive system, greatly improves his sex life with his wife, Kay. Most astonishing (to an American audience), the baby is born healthy and not looking like something you might find bursting out of John Hurt’s chest.

Speaking of audiences in The States, watch this video and try to imagine how this scene would play out in an American movie. Please note the audience’s reaction to her performance, as well as her parent’s reaction to her state the next morning.

My Favorite Christmas Movie is About a Prostitution Ring in a Morgue

…And that’s the truth, and not just a ploy to get a hit off every Google search ever (but I’m on my way!).

Night Shift is an 80s comedy starring Henry Winkler, Micheal Keaton and Shelley Long and set in New York in December. And it is Christmasy!

Wow! I can't believe I'll be giving a hand job at a swank joint like this!

Wow! I can’t believe I’ll be giving a hand job at a swank joint like this!

Very, very Christmasy, but in a pants-off kind of way.

Aren't you cold? No! I've got a baked potato in my pants. Wait.... Where are my pants?

Aren’t you cold? No! I’ve got a baked potato in my pants. Wait…. Where are my pants?

It’s about a wild and crazy satin-jacket-wearing guy named Bill who makes it his mission in life to make a man out of fellow morgue employee, Chuck. He pulls this off with a massive prostitution ring, keggers, hookers, booze, weed, sex clubs, fist fights, shoot outs, threatened prison rape, the Rolling Stones and erratic driving.

Can you hear this?

Can you hear this?

I know it sounds complicated, but it is actually quite simple. Here. I’ll let Bill explain it.

Got it? Anyways…so our Chuck and Bill run a successful prostitution ring out of a morgue, Chuck becomes a man, and at Christmas time, all the prostitutes pool their hooking money together and they buy Chuck a sweet pimp hat.

Merry Christmas Meester Chuck!

Does this hat make me look pimpy enough?

 

I know it all seems strange, but you need to understand one thing. It was the 80s. How 80s? It was 82. We didn’t give a shit. The trailer that advertised this movie featured Shelley Long smoking an enormous roach.

Be honest. Do you think this will ruin my career?

Be honest. Do you think this will ruin my career?