The comedy world, and SlumberPartiers everywhere, have lost a great today: Sid Caesar, who went on to meet his final pratfall at the ripe age of 91.
Before he hammed his way into Slumber Party history as Coach Calhoun of the Rydell Rangers, he was a go-to guy for hilarity all around. He was in The Club–the Shecky Greenes, the Mel Brookses, the Eve Ardens, the Carl Reiners, the Imogene Cocas–they were all stupendously funny in that slapstick-meets-one-liner-meets-subversive way. (If you don’t believe me, get “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” on your Netflix.)
But back to the Party. I had a ridiculously difficult time find the infamous “rip’em” speech from Grease, and this is as close as I got.
But the real gem in Grease is, of course, the scene in which he introduces the sweetly vulnerable Danny Zuko to all the sports possibilities available to him, starting with the great advice of cutting smoking “down to two packs a day.” After ticking through every spring sport available (with Danny adorably not knowing basketball requires dribbling, which is an indication of how little ESPN they had in 1957) Coach Calhoun recognizes he needs to be alone. Like really alone. Like looooong-distance-running alone.
Yeah. That could be cool.
Ring that victory bell, Coach! Just like you always wanted to.
Lerlines, do you remember how I told you that at least once a day, someone stumbles upon this blog by typing “your mother’s old douchebag” into Google and then arriving upon the cleaning-the-house montage from Revenge of the Nerds I put up on here to cheer Jody on while she was doing some work on her house? Well…it’s true, and I think some of them are actually looking for the Nerds montage. here. Here it is again:
But not Tim Troiano, he’s different. He did not search for your mother’s old douchbag, or anyone’s old douchebag for that matter. Oh no Not Tim. He arrived on this very silly blog with the very serious intent of analyzing, in great detail for his very serious digital media blog, the montage itself. Check it out. It’s really quite fascinating. Fascinating that anyone could take a scene in Revenge of the Nerds more seriously than us.
Here’ s a sample of the data he compiled:
:14-:20 The nerdy guy from before in a medium long shot is too far from a pole but trying to paint it. His friend walks up and moves him closer so his paint brush is making contact with the house’s support. In this shot everybody is working including the robot. This is the most work we’ve seen done in a shot since the montages start meaning a lot of progress has been made on the house.
A recent Facebook thread reminded me of the awesomeness that is Hackers (1995). I have a million things I want to say about this movie, but for now I’ll just say that to me, it’s the best representation of what the coding “flow” feels like. Here are three other reasons this movie is rad.
1. The authentic hacker bad guys. See how terrifying Penn Jillette looks? Doesn’t Fisher Stevens just ooze menace? Thing is, this is what a sizable percentage of hackers really look like. Bonus: That’s Lorraine Bracco, the psychiatrist from The Sopranos, as boss-lady Margo.
Penn Jillette, Lorraine Bracco, and Fisher Stevens are super evil in Hackers. (Publicity still via IMDB.)
2. The authentic hacker good guys. I swear, I have dated the real-life version of every one of these characters, especially Zero Cool. The look, the persona, the shared insane petty competitiveness – this movie nails it.
3. Presaging Google Glass. Hat tip to the lovely and talented Layla Rudy for pointing this out, writing, “Can we talk about how Google stole the Glass idea from Jonny Lee Miller?” Obviously this wasn’t the first such head-mounted camera fantasy, but it’s fun to think of how that has now come true.
Jonny Lee Miller was Google Glass before it was cool. Or invented. (Video still from Layla Rudy.)
Man, now I have to go watch this movie again. Dang.
When fantastic funny girl Lily Tomlin marries writing partner and genius responsible for the Incredible Shrinking Woman, Jane Wagner, we can think of only one way to say congrats!
Cheers!
This is truly newsworthy!
To all the naysayers (*cough* DOMA), we say, “Well of all the rudeness. Don’t you have something to shop for? Some rat poison maybe?”
Or if that was too subtle for you…
Seriously, we’re happier than Santa in a Nativity Scene for you two, and in closing would just like to say….
I wish I was a little bar of soap. Bar of soap! Oh, I wish I was a little bar of soap. Bar of soap! Because I’d slippey, slidey, slidey over everybody’s heinie. Oh I wish I was a little bar of soap.
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.
Writer’s note: This is a repost from 2012, yes. But as far as I’m concerned, this is the only Christmas video in my heart.
You knew this was coming.
So I made a deal with myself back at Thanksgiving: I would post Last Christmas as the Friday Morning Video on either December 21, or after I heard it on the radio, whichever came first. Well, folks: Christmas came early!
I first saw this video when I was, I’m guessing, nine years old. That was around the time that Wham! Video Hits was released on VHS, and subsequently viewed infinity times by my sister and I. (Jamie and Jenny Stowinsky, too. We used to take turns playing the four roles in Careless Whisper, but that’s a different Friday post.)
Many of Wham!’s videos tell a story, but this one tells a very particular narrative. It goes like this:
Boy meets girl.
Boy falls in love.
Boy gives girl a lapel pin.
Girl dumps boy the day after Christmas because she’s the only woman in the 80s without lapels.
I’m breaking the outline format here, because this part deserves full-on prose. The next year–one year, only twelve months after he’s so in love that he gifts her a brooch–he and his friends all decide to rent a house in the Alps (I’m guessing French, but it could be Swiss) to have a great Christmas away from home. He agrees, one would imagine, because his last Christmas sucked so much. After all, he cared about a girl enough to give her a gift, and her repayment was to promptly dump him. Hello, tacky? Miss Frizz is on line one.
(Although, in fairness, maybe she was waiting to see if the contents of the jewelbox was round instead of flower-shaped. When she saw a pin instead of a ring, well…?)
Anyway, they all hop on a plane and a train and a tramway, and then–here’s the kicker–his BFF shows up with her! Did no one talk about this before leaving London? “Oh, hey, yeah, George, we’ve got the house and everything’s just brilliant, and Andrew’s bringing that chippie of yours from last year, and did you drop your share of the rent in the post, chap?” So not only is Andrew Ridgeley clearly a jackass for bringing George’s ex to a ski chalet from whence they will have no escape, but she was OK with it, too. Especially given the little dinnertime bomb they drop later in the video.
Moving on: everyone’s trimming the tree, Pepsi and Shirlie are on the couch, looking adorable like they always do (did those two sweeties ever get together? I was pulling for them!), and George drops some tinsel, and BOOM! There they are, face-to-face, and here’s the nutty thing: Miss Frizz pretends she doesn’t recognize him. According to the lyrics, anyway. And also according to the lyrics: this doesn’t surprise him.
People, I may not remember the names of every dude I’ve dated, or other stuffed, but I remember their faces. And I definitely remember the faces, and mostly names, of every guy I dated who gave me a present. And I definitely would’ve remembered him a year later, especially if he’s, you know, the BFF OF THE GUY I’M CURRENTLY DATING.
(Note: This is where I diverge from my she-wanted-a-ring theory, and I begin to wonder if perhaps they only went out on one date. And he gave her the pin and said he loved her. And she was all, “Bangers and mash, are you barmy? We just met last week and you’re dropping clams on lapel jewelry? Mind the gap and beat your elbows!”)
Then there’s a bit where he looks really sad while his friends romp in the snow, because he just found out that someone trimmed his parka with his pet keeshond.
He really loved that dog.
So now it’s dinner time, and they break out the Christmas crackers, and, hair feathered perfectly, wine sipped seductively, George stalks Last Year’s Girl, who is totally snogging the BFF. Gag me. And her.
You will pay. Yes, you will pay.
And then! AND THEN! In a move so tacky it makes Molly Ringwald’s prom dress look like Jackie O’s anything, we see that she actually regifted the flower pin! Not only did she dump him like right after he gave it to her, but then she handed it off to Andrew at some point in the last year, and he wore it to their ski chalet, as if George wouldn’t recognize it. Filth!
Of course, what follows is happy romping in the snow, and a flashback of her getting her lapel pin and wearing it on her blouse, and then we flash forward to the whole passel of friends heading back to the tramway. And I think they’re friends again, because he leaves the tram with the cute blonde with whom he arrived, and everyone’s OK with having suffered through the single most awkward Christmas ever.
(Here’s a third theory: she’s a demon who trapped his soul in the pin. So he means it literally when he says he gave her his heart, and she gave it away, and so now Andrew owns his heart, which, really, explains a great deal about the trajectory of Wham! and George Michael’s life. So if anyone knows the whereabouts of the soul-capturing flower pin, please send it back to him. Or to me.)
Back when I was 11, I had a bit of a crush on Jim Diamond, lead singer of the Mtv rising stars, Ph. D. What? So he’s a little weird looking? I like weird looking.
Totes hot, am I right? Please say yes.
The problem with having a crush on Jim Diamond of PH. D. was that by the time I was 11 and a half, Mtv stopped playing their video, and never played them again. What’s that you say? Teen Beat?! Ha! Teen Beat would never publish a picture of Jim Diamond. They were too busy finding new un-airbrushed* photos of Ralph Macchio. No. For a 12 year old girl in America in 1982, Ph. D. were as unattainable as wine coolers and earth-tones.
Then, quite few years later, came YouTube. The first Ph. D. gem I dug up was Little Suzi’s on the Up. The video combines a sweet-as-candy story of a couple getting ready for a night of competitive ballroom dancing, with the competing and creepy stories of a stalker dance judge and a sassy saxophone player/ hairdresser obsessed with something that only looks like pickled eggs.
Despite the meat, motorcycles, and whatever the hell was in that jar, I only had vague memories of that video. The video that I vividly remember was for I won’t Let You Down. It also featured a bit of stalking, but it was by a cartoonish assassin who follows our intrepid hero as he begs forgiveness from his too-tall girlfriend.
Um…what the hell was that? It’s like what would happen if Roman Polanski’s inner psyche was caught on film. No. Wrong. Let me try that again.
HOLY CRAP! What am I looking at and why the hell am I looking at it? Why are they in a theater, and how many minutes do I have to look at it? Let’s try again.
Ah! That’s better. And see? The cartoonish assassin didn’t really want to blow up Jim Diamond with a plant; he only wanted the girl–the cold, mean, dog-obsessed girl. But still…cute, right?
But it makes me wonder. What is the meaning of those other videos? Were they submitted to Mtv, only to be turned down? In the early ’80s? When Mtv was playing Steve Miller’s Abracadabra on heavy rotation? It makes no sense. But it does explain why Mtv stopped playing Ph. D. Maybe Diamond and company were so sick and tired of being turned down, they started acting really snippy. Here’s how I imagine it started:
Mark Goodman: Here in the studio, a band that is soaring up the charts never, I’m sure, to fall back to earth, Ph. D. Jim, how does it feel to be the latest Mtv darling?
Jim Diamond: Fuck you, Mark. Your head looks like pubes.
And then he dissed Martha Quinn, and that was the beginning of the end.
If you expected the freaky-deaky celeb judges to turn their space-aged bordello chairs around, point, and yell “Dottie!” before her song was over, then EG Daily’s performance on The Voice approached John-and-Yoko-hosting-The-Mike-Douglas-Show levels of surrealism. Didn’t watch? Be prepared because If you are like us, and you’ve always been a fan of Miss Daily, it will freak your shit out to see how long it takes them to figure it out. You can skip to the three minute mark, or you can be lazy and read my interpretation. Full disclosure: I have never seen The Voice, but I’m sincerely sure that it is the finest chair-based talent show on television,
DOTTIE!
That’s right bitch!
Dottie! Come over here and sit on my lap.
Don’t sit on his lap. He looks like Elton John ate Michael Jackson.
That’s not even a lap. It’s a portal to Pepperland.
Hee hee! I’m a big sexy Blue Meanie.
Come sit on my lap. I’ve just had it re-carpeted. It smells like Vitalis and leather polish.
I’m going to go with the guy who doesn’t look like he just ate a submarine full of jovial English lads.
Are you talking about me? I didn’t eat that submarine, I just tossed it into the Sea of Green. By the way, is it just me, or do I look like a Sexy Muppet?
No, not a Muppet…. What do you call them things? They have them in the inner city. Dogs like to pee on them….
A child?
No. No..it’s shorter and harder than one of those.
A food truck?
I’m pretty sure it’s a fire hydrant.
Yes! A sexy fire hydrant! That’s what Cee-Lo looks like.
That’s why I’m going to sit on your lap, you sexy fire hydrant in a Thriller jacket!
Really? You want to sit on my lap? You know I just crushed small Japanese fishing village, right?
Not so fast, Dottie. Sh. Shhh! Don’t fight it. Just let the Vitalis do it’s work.
If you Lerlines were paying attention, you noticed two things. One, I may have gotten a few of the smaller details wrong, and two, EG did not even mention the role that made her a true Slumber Party Princess: Loryn from Valley Girl. Nice try, EG. Check her out rocking the zebra-print panty and camisole set that she didn’t want you to see.
Ed Lauter, esteemed character actor whose name you probably never knew, who was such a good actor who has been known as Susan’s dad from “Real Genius,” Murray from “Youngblood,” or Mr. Kelly from “Gleaming the Cube”… he was even in “Automan” back in the day (but who wasn’t?). Mostly, he was that Militaryish Tough Guy With a Heart.
The man was in 204 movies and TV shows. Seriously.
But you and me, we know him as Janie’s Dad.
He’s OK with her sneaking out of the house as long as it’s in pursuit of a job.
In his honor, I invite you to re-read my first-ever SlumberPartyMovies post, entitled “Slow, Slow, Quick-Quick Slow,” a treatise on why Girls Just Wanna Have Fun was the greatest 80s teen movie.
If you don’t have time for that, just watch this. Aw, Dad.
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