I feel Lili von Shtupp’s pain in this one. If I’d tried to be a stripper, this is the best I could possibly have hoped for. Absolute genius from Blazing Saddles (1974).
Happy 65th Birthday, Christopher Guest! I’m in a rush to prepare for a business trip, so I’ll just let him make with the funny, and you can all gape at his transformative powers. I think he might be a metamorphmagus.
His first name is Tyrone.
My favorite Christopher Guest character, simply because he’s possibly one of the nicest men in cinematic history.
Everybody dance!
And, yes, I know you want to turn it up to 11. But you’ve seen that one.
UPDATE: This post inspired a new category: Nomi’s Decoder Ring! Also included in this category are these posts. As you were.
Been enjoying our new Bluray with Roku, which means the interface is much nicer with the Netflix streaming, and I’ve been discovering a lot of the goodness they’ve been secretly adding. (Coming to America? Check. Beverly Hills Cop? Check check. Raw? Check check check.)
So last night we’re watching Clue, because it’s Clue, and during the fabulous “No meaning yes” scene between Martin Mull and Tim Curry–and BTW, we watched Mr. Mom on Sunday night, so we had two nights in a row of Martin Mull and Christopher Lloyd–we all know that the incomparable Mrs. White slams her glass against the fireplace and screams “PLEASE!”
(I should add here that we recently bought an obscenely big television, so watching old movies is like watching new movies, because you can see so, so much more.)
Anyway, I’m anticipating Madeline Kahn being hilarious–which, honestly, is anticipating a leaf falling in September–when my husband says, “WHAT does the fireplace say?”
We ran it back. It says NOUVEAU RICHE OBLIGE. The fireplace is reminding the tacky nouveau riche homeowners that they should be giving away some of their millions, instead of investing it in carved fireplaces and secret passageways.
And you thought Communism was just a red herring.
P.S. No, this is not so much a tribute to Madeline Kahn as it is a tribute to the Cate Bangs, a set designer and owner of the most awesome name since Johnny Rocks, but since anything involving Madeline Kahn is ultimately a tribute to her, she gets the credit.
When I was 9, my fourth-grade teacher said we could do a report on anyone in American history, so I picked five women: Dolly Madison, Betsy Ross, Martha Washington, Eleanor Roosevelt and Sally Ride. My mom definitely inspired the first three–she’s a Revolutionary War buff–but I picked the last two. I wrote my report from my mom’s set of encyclopedias (kids: “encyclopedias” are like the internet, only heavier and smelling more like a basement), and when it came to cover Sally Ride, I found…. nothing. I went to the library. Nothing. The high school library: nada.
This was before I knew to check periodicals, in which I could’ve found all that I needed about the first American woman in space, but instead, I had one piece of information: Sally Ride was the first American woman to go to space. Not enough for a report, so I think had to pick someone else. I say “think” because I don’t remember who I picked; whoever it was was probably not nearly as awesome as the first American woman in space. (And big ups to Valentina Tereshkova and Svetlana Savitskaya, who came before her. Two points on that: 1) The Soviets put TWO women in space before we got around to it. And 2) Is there a rule that, in order to be a woman in space, you have to have a fantastic name like Valentina, Svetlana, or Sally Ride?)
I turned in the report, decorated with an American flag on the front, and was bitterly disappointed that I couldn’t include Sally Ride. How on earth could a woman be an astronaut and the books not have ANY information about her? HOW?
Fortunately, in the intervening years we’ve had the internet, where you can get everything you need within a reasonable degree of accuracy. We’re not talking launching into orbit, after all; we’re talking just a general “who was she?” And even after thirty years, it turns out we didn’t know everything there was to know about her, because after she died yesterday at age 61, of pancreatic cancer, her family announced that since 1985, she’d been in a long-term relationship with Dr. Tam O’Shaugnessy, a woman. This news horrifies me to some extent: an American hero, who was my own hero for some time, didn’t want anyone to know she was in a loving relationship. By all accounts she was “intensely private,” and while I respect her decision and the difficulties coming out might have caused during her career, I’m so saddened that only in death can her love be celebrated. Other women get their marriage announcements in the NYTimes style section. Hers appeared in the obituaries.
Sally, I would’ve loved you anyway; we all would have. Thank you for your strength, bravery and your lifelong dedication to education (http://sallyridescience.com).
Because this is slumberpartymovies.com, I have to share a clip from the ill-timed but otherwise totally radical Spacecamp, in which Sally Ride is portrayed by Kate Capshaw. I don’t know if I ever watched it at a slumber party, but I know I was in love with Tate Donovan. I wanted to include the scene where John Glenn winks, but all I could find on youtube was the launch. (Watching this again: who the hell names a ship “Atlantis”? Why not name it “Titanic”?)
slumber party movies 