I’ve been thinking of this video for the last two weeks. And wouldn’t you know it? The last time I posted it was 13 months ago this week. Must be something about fall.
September 9, 2012: We’ve just come out of two party conventions. I couldn’t post any video but this one.
For ten years, every time we got into a car, my husband and I called a bet: How many minutes before U2 plays on the radio? Shortest time: “Even Better Than The Real Thing” was playing when we turned the radio on. Longest was, I believe, 12 minutes, when the drumbeats of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” began.
Since moving back to Pittsburgh, we don’t hear nearly as much U2. Then one day, en route to IKEA, David said, “I think Huey Lewis and the News is Pittsburgh’s answer to U2.” Which is funny, since Huey’s an SF native. And kind of reviled there. But he is a god in Pittsburgh, his wonders which I beheld no fewer than five times in concert before I turned 21. Yes, folks: before I could drink, I saw Huey Lewis five times in concert.
So to close out the summer, to say goodbye to beaches, here’s If This Is It.
In a classically plot-heavy video, we open with “The Power Of Love,” a morning DJ, a boom box, and a bodice-ripper getting tossed into a bendy plastic white basket, thus letting us all know that this is the real 1984, and not the Orwell novel. Huey Lewis is very sad and conflicted, because, despite the fact that his girlfriend audibly tells her kid sister “Tell him I’m not home,” when he calls, he’s not really sure if she wants to break up with him.
Must be one of those broadband wireless telephone booths.
Point one, Huey: you’re calling your girlfriend from a telephone booth at the beach. And the next guy in line is also wearing a polo shirt and jeans. Next time, call from your Corvette.
Point two, Huey. Women who can pull off wearing deep-backed white one-piece bathing suits do not, as a rule, go after dudes who wear polos and black jeans to the beach. You have a swell voice and pretty blue eyes, but that only gets you so far.
Can YOU pull off this all-white one-piece? No. No, you can’t.
His visit to a psychic goes no better than his first glimpse of the White Girl; he finds his entire band committed to a seance, presumably to bring his relationship back to life or something, although it fails pretty miserably, as the next time he sees White Girl, two sailors have won her two giant duckies, which puts his little tiny duckie to shame. Poor tiny duckie.
Do you have two duckies? No. No, you don’t.
Back to the beach with Huey, where he’s sad again, and then he does this.
This is what we call the “Cheesecake Huey Lewis Shot,” also known as the “Five Heads of The News Shot,” also known as the “Any Reason to Show A Tan Because It’s the 80s Motherfucker Shot.”
But that doesn’t work, because here’s what happens next.
See these guys? They’re in shorts, at the beach. You’re not. You lose.
But it all works out, because after a fight in which she actually must say “Dude, what the fuck, this is IT, seriously IT, stop stalking me and can’t you take a hint, Jordache?” he’s more sad and lonely, but then who shows up?
Shelley Long, in a black strapless bikini, who decides that a rebound guy in beach blackjeans is the best thing she’s got going.
You are literally the last man on the beach, so I guess you’ll do.
Maybe she’s from Pittsburgh.
P.S. Does anyone recognize the carney? He must be somebody, right?
Who IS this guy?
P.P.S. There’s a thing at the end about how ugly fat people who go to the beach get eaten by sand sharks, but we’ll let that lie.
Posted in Friday Morning Videos
Tagged friday morning videos, huey lewis, if this is it, sports
In honor of Jody Danger’s birthday, I thought I would post a trivia question that she put out on Facebook recently. It was in reference to Crossroads, the 2002 girl-powered road movie that Britney Spears adorably referred to as her “first” movie. It was kind of like Thelma and Louise except Crossroads had a pregnant girl and (double spoiler alert) no one drove off a cliff.
Which one of us is the pregnant one? I forgot.
The first question she asked was “What Song were Britney and her friends singing along to in the car in Crossroads?” (Not the *Nsync song…and not the Sheryl Crow song.)
This is so much fun! Let’s NEVER jump off a cliff.
It was immediately answered by one of our uber-hetero friends, but, because he was just so darned butch, we thought he was complaining about our estrogen-laden conversation. Turns out he was just being exactly right.
(Moral of the story? Don’t judge a book by it’s macho cover.)
So Jody asked a harder question. What song was Brit singing into her cereal spoon while dancing around in boy shorts at the beginning?
Stop. Before you say Ace of Spades by Motorhead, remember it wasn’t this Britney:
HAWT!
It’s this Britney:
Also hawt, but less badass.
And no. It wasn’t the song she sang for the incredibly fortuitous karaoke contest.
Wait…. There was a hint in that screen cap. Did you catch it?
See it, now? Look close! … I’m pretty sure you are looking in the wrong spot.
No? Okay.
Here’s a more obvious hint.
Did you guess yet?
This is wrong.
Here. I’ll give you another little hint:
Curiouser and curiouser.
Here’s a BIG hint:
Come on. You know it. You know you know it. Don’t you?
And now….
Here is…
The answer:
Did you know it?
Posted in Trivia
Tagged Britney, Crossroads, girl power, madonna, Road trip, Singing into your hairbrush, Trivia for fun
Happy 38th birthday to me!
It’s been a long time, Lerlines, and for that I apologize. Things have been busy in the Burgh. But I’m going to make it up to you.
You see, about 12 years ago–yes, 12–after many hours breaking into random song at a local beer garden, three friends formed a little comedy group. It was the world’s first all-girl boy band, called 2Good4U, and their first show, Dance Dance Dance Explosion, featured such pop classics as “You Didn’t Do It Again” (yes, THAT; you didn’t do THAT for me), “Young” (why should men get all the pedophile songs when there are so many hot teenaged Boy Scouts?), and “Why Won’t You Go Away” (featuring the unforgettable line, “Stop sending your artwork.”).
The show also featured a number of San Francisco then-rising stars, including Kitten on the Keys, who is now pretty much at the pinnacle of the worldwide burlesque circuit, and Robbie Cantrell, who now goes by Rob Cantrell and was recently seen smoking Stephen Colbert’s shoe. (Robbie was especially on that night, telling your very own Melinda that she had to perform certain acts on her boyfriend after the show in apology, due to an unplanned nipslip compounded by the filthy lyrics in “You Didn’t Do It Again.” Her boyfriend is now her husband of seven years and father of her daughter, so I guess the aftershow party went well.)
In any case, at the end of DDDE, as we called it, we members of 2Good4U–yes, your very own SPM Lerlines–gave ourselves a gift, and that gift was a choreographed, lipsynced dance to “Running With the Night.” If I’d gone to school in Nashua, NH, I feel confident we’d have performed the exact same number for the high school talent show.
As it was, we totally rocked it. And we danced with trenchcoats. And also fedoras.
A few notes about this video:
It is Lionel Richie’s best video, and best song. Never have visuals so matched the tune; the song sounds like dark city streets, fedoras, cigarettes and alleys, back when all those things were sexy. “Hello” fans can suck my silver cigarette filter.
Sexy cigarette smokers. Those were the days.
At the one minute mark, when Lionel shows up, you can hear the gate open. Brilliant.
Creak!
Everyone dances. Everyone. Every second. Bob Fossesque step-toe-limp-hand dances. We didn’t have youtube back when we choreographed our dance, but you know what? We came pretty fucking close. See 1:30.
We let it all hang out.
It also includes a sequence that encapsulates my fondest dream, and pretty much foretells every flash mob, ever: that me and a bunch of elegantly dressed strangers will stride dancingly out into moving traffic and everyone stops and we dance and it’s spectacular and awesome. You understand me, Lionel Richie.
DANCE.
And then I think they’re all in jail, I guess for stopping traffic, but that shit happens sometimes when you’re running with the night. And so they all stride up the steps and crash a wedding, and engage in a dance off, and Lionel Richie is all smooth and snappy. Like, actually snapping his fingers. And the most gorgeous wedding guest in the room, clad in pouf sleeves and massive hair, who is inexplicably dateless at this wedding? She knows the dance, too.
The OG wedding flash mob.
And the bride and groom are all WTF? But they keep dancing and then Lionel OH NO YOU DIDN’T Richie totes gets the bride in on the party, and there’s one white lady dancing badly, and then everyone is dancing through the rip-roaring guitar solo, and then they’re all dancing in a parking garage because why not, and then Lionel saunters off and is all, “My work here is done.”
P.S. What happened to 2Good4U? I left the group, and they brought on two brilliantly talented women, and went on to produce such songs as “Killing Me Softly With Pillows,” “Hell is for Bridesmaids,” and “Mudslides.”
Well Lerlines. It’s happened. The amazingly talented, funny, and totes hot Eileen Brennan is dead at 80. Her online obits are all touting the Oscar nomination she earned for her role as the perpetually seething Captain Lewis in Private Benjamin.
The difference between you and Eileen, girlie, is she makes that tree hat look good.
But we all loved her most as Mrs Peacock in Clue, and the fact that she wasn’t nominated for that role is a crime against comedy. Also, her soup spoon should have won a Proppy. Also, there should be an award called The Proppy.
Remember when I said she was totes hot? I wasn’t just whistling Dixie. No one, and I mean no one, can fake French like Miss betty DeBoop of the hardboiled, star-studded comedy The Cheap Detective, which should definitely be on your Slumber Party movie list if it is not already.
So now, in honor of Eileen, all the songs I sing today will be in la la la la form. Try it! It really works for Down by Jay Sean. Oh, and Lose Yourself by Eminem…of course.
Posted in Tribute, Tuesday Tribute
Tagged Eileen Brennan, fake french, Private Benjamin, The Cheap Detective
When Wendy Davis took a preparatory pee (I’m assuming and probably right) and slipped on her comfy shoes so she could stand for the women of Texas, for 13 mother-humping hours, it brought a tear (or two or three) to my eye. But there was something ab…OKAY! Fine. I admit it. I cried like I was watching the end of Benji or Savannah Smiles. Happy now?
Why as a matter of fact, no, Senator Dickhead, I do not need to pee. I have not even begun to hold my urine.
Where was I? Oh yes. It reminded me of something. A slumber party movie? That scene in 9 to 5 when the ladies get away with kidnapping their boss while inventing the concept of on-site day care? No. It was an older movie. A classic. That scene in It’s a Wonderful Life where the townspeople give George the cash his drunk uncle (or, as he would be known today, drunkle) lost? Nope. It was this scene:
See? In this case, the Texas republicans are the nazis and Wendy Davis is Victor Laszlo. (Only instead of 13 hours, it took about a minute). Vive l’Austin!
Posted in Miscellany
I thought of this song to post as an exceedingly lovey-lovey-supa-lovey song to celebrate the end of DOMA, Prop 8, and the dawn of an era when Jade Butterfield (no kidding, that’s her name) would be played by Tom Cruise, as Jude, or David Axelrod would be Jodie Foster, as Denise.
And then I looked up the movie, and watched the video, and I almost regret my choice.
A few fun facts about the cast of the 1981 Zeffirelli film:
I’ve never seen the movie, but based on the storyline on imdb, I think I might have to, because it sounds really, really fucking awful, like on a level with “Ice Castles,” complete with the easy-listening theme song.
Two young kids fall in love with each other. But the passion is too consuming for the parents of Jade. The parents try to stop them from seeing each other. But when this doesn’t work David burns down the house and is sent away. This doesn’t stop him from seeing her. When he gets out he goes to look for her. But in the end the passion for his first love is too strong and she has to leave or this love will kill both of them.
If I’d seen it when I was 15, I bet it would’ve blown Dirty Dancing out of the water. But now I’m 38. And while I can’t judge how he burned down the house or how Jade Butterfield really feels or anything, that bloodless description is creepy in the extreme, and I’m with Mr. and Mrs. Butterfield in the “Stay Away from My 15-Year-Old Daughter, Asshole” camp.
Honestly, I’m really annoyed that I didn’t read about this earlier, because my husband’s out of town and I totally would’ve watched it on Netflix tomorrow night. Now I’m going to have to wait until he leaves town again, or else I’ll never get agreement to watch it. Once, the promise of a nudish Brooke Shields would’ve been enough, but now we have daughters. Two of them. And because of that: ew.
In case you miss it in the video: yes, Mum is watching them have sex in front of the fire, and she doesn’t run down the steps with a baseball bat. She knows what her daughter looks like; she should keep a baseball handy at all times. Possibly a retractable one, hidden up her sleeve. Also, knives are small and fit nicely into leg holsters.
But let’s forget about all that, and bear witness to the softcore porn that is apparently fairly unscandalous for the hetero crowd. Imagine a naked RDJ instead of Brooke Shields, and it does make it much, much more fun to watch.
Posted in Friday Morning Videos
That’s right, folks: DOMA was struck down, and while the Prop 8 rulling didn’t demand that Adam can marry Steve and Eve can marry Joan in every state, at least the nice folks in California can marry again!
So what else would we do but celebrate in song?
Posted in Friday Morning Videos
Tagged doma, erasure, friday morning videos, prop 8, scotus
This morning I’m in San Francisco, about to get my annual work bonus on. So I thought I’d share this 90-licious bit of dance history for all y’all, complete with Soul Glo in a ponytail, baggy suits, and a red Cabriolet.
And in case you’re wondering: yes, I’m looking fly.
Posted in Friday Morning Videos
slumber party movies 