Just finished watching Voodoo Man from RiffTrax, the 1944 ... uh ... classic? What, exactly, makes a movie a "classic", anyway? Aren't all films from 1955 and earlier automatically categorized as "classic"? Anyway, I digress. The film is available from RiffTrax for $9.99 as a video-on-demand download (no need to bother with synchronizing an mp3 to your DVD), and definitely deserves a healthy seven out of ten stars. Lots of good Bela Lugosi mugging, and plenty of old-school "camp" to keep things funny. Click on the image above to order.

Because I think it's fun to over-geek something already geeked, I've included a few footnotes to some of the riffs more obscure references. I know, I know, a joke isn't usually funny if it has to be explained, but that's not the point here. The point is to broaden your cultural horizons, using the time-tested method of ... y'know ... watching bad movies and listening to some guys make fun of it. You know exactly what I mean.

So here goes.


Movie: Credit for "Sam Katzman" appears
Kevin: (singing) Sam is the Katzman, yeah he's the Katzmaaaan

That would be The Beatles song "Taxman" that Kevin is parodying, from their Revolver album.

Movie: Credit for "William Beaudine" appears
Bill: William Beaudine - Jethro's stage name

For the youngsters (like me), Bill is talking about Jethro Bodine, Jed Clampett's nephew in Beverly Hillbilies.

Movie: You're a stranger in this part of the country, aren't you?
Bill: In a Camus-ey way

Extra points to Bill for injecting an artsy-fartsy tip-of-the hat to French author Albert Camus, and his 1940s novel, The Stranger.

Movie: Nicholas picks up old-looking phone
Kevin: Wow, he can contact anyone in Mayberry on that

Another one for the kids. Mayberry is that wonderful, folksy little town that was home to Andy, Barney, Opie, Aunt Bee, and the rest of the cast of The Andy Griffith Show.

Movie: Toby approaches the car
Kevin: Hey, it's the ghost of Tom Joad's buddy

As Kevin remarks later, this joke is "complicated". Tom Joad is the character played by Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wrath, and there is a slight resemblance here.

Movie: Sign reads "Banner Motion Picture Company"
Bill: The Hulk started his own movie company

Any true comic book fan knows that The Hulk, when he's not being all green and emotional, goes by the name of Bruce Banner.

Movie: (movie producer) Skip it, I'll get one of the other boys to tackle it
Mike: Give it to that Bruckheimer kid

Yeah, Mike, why not give the new movie to Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer responsible for National Treasure, Pirates of the Caribbean, Armageddon, Top Gun, and about a bazillion other films?

Movie: Close-up shot of Bela Lugosi's face
Mike: SLEEEEEEEP!

Most MST3K fans will get this one. The "Sleeeeep!" riff was a running gag on the show for a long time, and the film in which it appears - Bela Lugosi's Bride of the Monster - was given the MST3K treatment in Season 4. I would bet money you can find clips on YouTube.

Movie: Stella! Stella!
Mike: That's how he orders his favorite, watered down hipster beer

I don't drink that beer. It always comes served in a fruity-looking glass. I am, of course, talking about Stella Artois.

Movie: We're gonna have another pretty ceremony
Mike: That's an odd way to describe a Bris

Ouch. A Bris is a Jewish circumcision ceremony.

Movie: It's a pain in the neck!
Kevin: Not to mention that I look like Charlie Bucket's Grandpa Joe

You remember Grandpa Joe from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, don't you? DON'T YOU?! You can get that film's RiffTrax commentary, too.

Movie: Dr. Marlowe picks up telephone, dials operator
Mike: Sara, get me Thelma Lou

Love the Andy Griffith Show references! That would be Barney Fife's voice that Mike is imitating, talking to Mayberry operator "Sara", trying to get in touch with his girlfriend "Thelma Lou".

First, a heads up: Michael "Ian" "White Power" "Yay" Black has written a quick and to-the-point tribute to Weird Al (Yankovic, that is, not your neighbor, Weird Al Fletcher). You can read it here:

In Praise of Weird Al

Having done my good deed for the day, by cross-linking to the result of someone else's hard work, I will add insult to injury by simply making a few "follow up" remarks.

Weird Al only looks lame, at first glance (the shoes, the hair, the accordion, the I-probably-eat-my-own-hangnails crazy stare). In reality, he has a combination of skills only possessed by the non-lame. It's lame to take a legitimate song and just start changing the lyrics willy-nilly (like I do, whenever I sing "Happy butt-day to you" instead of "Happy birth-day to you"). But to take a verbal rat's nest like Eminem's Lose Yourself, untangle it, and put it back together as a parody song that actually adheres to the original rhyme scheme? That's the opposite of lame.

And while Weird Al's best-remembered songs are his parodies (Eat It, Fat, Like a Surgeon, etc.), he also has the non-lame talent to write his own songs. I listen to something like You Don't Love Me Anymore, and after I finish sponging up all the mouth-drool produced by laughing so hard, I think: "He could easily write a serious album of pop songs that would be as good as anything else on the market today."

Finally, let's not forget one more important element: yeah, Weird Al can do the word-rhyming thing, and yeah, he's musically talented ... but can he sing? Dr. Demento has seen a lot of musical performers come and go, but how many of them could really sing, and sing well? Weird Al actually has a really, really good voice. Serious breath control, darn good vocal range, and enough control over his tone to be able to weave in and out of various musical styles, mimicking whoever he's parodying at the moment.

The end result is not just musical parody (anyone can do that - see "Happy Butt-day", above), but musical parody that gets absorbed by high quality. That's what makes it so funny. It's so unbelievable accurate. It sounds so real.

So personally, I think Weird Al just wants us all to think he's lame. I think that when he disappears behind closed doors at night, and no one else is looking, he ditches the Hawaiian shirts, the goofy shoes, etc., and becomes this:



(If you think this entire post was one incredibly drawn-out and elaborate set-up, all for the purpose of deploying Joey Pants, then you ... obviously know me quite well)

A quick laugh for your Friday morning, via the Twitter community. The subject is: "First Drafts of Adages", which is, of course, based on the hilarious premise that whoever coined these cliches got it wrong the first time. Ha ha ha! Phew! Ok, here's a short list (the full list can be found here).

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Follow User: Birds of a feather should take some sort of symbolic loyalty oath for the sake of their own unity.

Follow User: He who laughs longest will, by definition, be the last one laughing.

Follow User: A penny saved is almost as though you got a job working for a penny a week, and today's payday.

Follow User: You can't make an omelette. No, seriously, you're a very bad cook.

Follow User: Where there's smoke there's either fire or, on rare occasions, a smoke machine.

Follow User: "Laughter is the the best medicine (Not verified by the FDA. Laughter may cause dizziness, insomnia, diarrhea or death)"

Follow User: Giving all the fish you catch to lazy people sucks. Teach them how and then tell them to get off your lawn

Follow User: When an apple falls out of a tree it usually ends up pretty close to the tree because things fall straight down.

Follow User: He who hesitates runs the risk of getting seriously distracted, perhaps for quite a long time.

Follow User: similar excrement: alternative 24hr period.

Follow User: A stitch in time saves nine, and I am referring here to stitches.

Follow User: Who is the bell tolling for, you ask? You! Yes you! Bet you're wishing you hadn't asked now.

Because today is Thursday, the day of the week on which we honor the Norse thunder-god Thor, it seemed appropriate to me to say a few intelligent words about Norse mythology, the development of the Scandinavian languages, epic poetry, and archaeology. And then I thought, "screw that, let's see what's going on over at Twitter."

So I went ahead and conducted a social networking tool test, something of a random rabbit hunt. Beginning with a follower of mine, I picked one of her followers at random; then I picked one of that person's followers; lather, rinse, and repeat five times, adding each new person to my list of people I follow. Here's what I discovered:

@lonelypancake - The Lonely Pancake lives in Flap Jack City, "all alone in a syrup hating world". I got a few chuckles out of his ... her ... its random lines, like "Please stop sipping the Haterade", and "Don't listen to waffles. Seriously. Anything a waffle tells you is full of holes." But mostly I felt a rush of deep unsettledness. Pancakes are supposed to be inanimate, for God's sake. They aren't supposed to talk, let alone tweet. I'll keep a close eye on this one. Anyway, The Lonely Pancake is being followed by ...

@ShellyKramer - Mrs. Kramer (for she is indeed married) tweets from Kansas City, which, despite my persistent lobbying, is still no closer to the state of Kansas. Shelly's bio declares "Luv MilkDuds+Beer", and quite frankly, I am certain that this is precisely what makes Shelly the successful marketing strategist that she is. Milk Duds and Beer together is almost certain to become the new Peanut Butter and Jelly, and when it happens, Shelly will be able to say with pride that she was way ahead of the curve on this one. Her love of mixing chewy-chocolate and liquid hops is probably what caught the attention of ...

@raywatson - Ray is, if his bio is to be believed at all, a big fan of photography, wine, and ... the web. Actually, his bio fearlessly identifies him as a "Web addict", which seems like the sort of thing a person would want to keep a little more hushed up. Still, to each his own, and c'est la vie, which brings me right to my next point: for some reason, Ray's tweets occasionally make use of the French language. As far as I can tell, it's deliberate, too. I'm not going to say anything more, I just hope that Ray someday understands how crippling this is to his credibility as a wine-lover. Despite his shameful use of French, however, Ray managed to get followed by ...

@ksavelyeva - Kseniya Savelyeva connects to Twitter from Toronto, Ontario, where the economic recession has ravaged the land so thoroughly that even Kseniya's name has been brutally stripped of some of its necessary vowels. It is perhaps this tragedy that caused Kseniya to openly declare herself a "Fashion Addict", which, I suppose, means that no matter how hard she tries, Kseniya cannot stop wearing clothes. Personally, I look at Kseniya's smiling face, I consider her vowel-deficient plight and her poignant addiction to clothing, and I am inspired. She keeps her tweets short, informative, and to the point, and she stays on top of the social issues. This sad victim of fashion addiction may just be the person who eventually cures me of my newspaper-reading addiction. At any rate, she certainly gives hope to her followers, among them ...

@WordGroupie - Lynnell Nixon-Knight is a "Writer type", "closet scholar", and "humor afficianado", which I take to mean that she says things, she read things, and she laughs at things. We need more of this type of person in the world, and less of the other "type" of person (you know exactly who I'm talking about). Lynnell (who had the good sense to stock her name with a few extra consonants, just in case) tweets at a different level than most, a level common to "writer types". For example: "Prestidigitation: the phenomenon of balancing my checkbook"; "Perhaps it would be kinder to call oneself a tweesearcher"; "Why do I love Jazzercize so much? In a word: Frozen Towels. (Okay, that’s two words.)" Refreshing stuff, I have to say, especially when I've had to slog my way through Ray's errant French tweets (geeeez, Ray!).

So there you have it. I'm trying to decide if there's any kind of "real life" equivalent to what I just did in the virtual realm, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that what I just did would probably be considered illegal in the "real world", or at least semi-creepy. Thank you, Twitter, for making me feel just a little uncomfortable inside (again).

When I think of Monday, I can't help but visualize its face. As the men who shot General Stonewall Jackson once said, "know thy enemy", and I don't feel like I can really know the enemy that is Monday until I can see its face ... hear its voice ... look it square in the eyes. Monday, with its pure evil; Monday, with its sinister stare; Monday, with its cold-hearted and calculated brutality.

And I hardly think I'm alone in saying that, when I see the face of Monday, it looks EXACTLY like this:

The year was 1982. The man with the guitar and rugged good looks was called "John Cougar" (later to be known as John Edmond Orlando "Blue Blood" Fitzgerald Ellseworth Cougar Button Mellencamp). The song was "Jack and Diane", and the lyric in question went like this:

Suckin' on chili dogs
Outside the Tastee Freeze
Diane's sittin' on Jackie's lap
He's got his hands between her knees

Now, I may admit that I'm just a little bit on the boundary's edge of "normal", so perhaps I have missed something critical, but ... do most people suck on their chili dogs? Isn't the more common method of Chili Dog Consumption better described as mowin' down, chewin' up, or even poundin' through? Or perhaps Jack and Diane were participating in the new Tastee Freeze pilot program for Chili Dog Shakes?

I suppose it could be the case that both Jack and Diane had horrendous dental hygiene, and lacked the recommended amount of teeth required to chew up some chili dogs. Maybe suckin' on those sloppy dogs was all they could do. Even so, I submit that suckin' is still the wrong verb. Even if J&D truly were in a "toothless situation", I think I would have opted for gummin' on chili dogs, mashin' up chili dogs, or slurpin' on chili dogs.

Clearly, I am going to need to spend more time thinking about this, and possibly even researching it further.

I've been watching RiffTrax for a couple of years now. I laughed till I wept as Messrs Nelson, Murphy, and Corbett (late of MST3K) added their hilarious commentary to the various red-headed stepchildren of modern cinema: Wickerman; Firewall; Transformers; Beowulf; the Star Wars prequels, etc.

But this week, the RiffTrax crew has unveiled a completely different kind of strategy: riffing on the classics. As the ad copy explains, "Sure, it's easy enough to make hay out of a bear-suited Nicholas Cage, but what really tests one's mettle is to see how he reacts when he's staring down the business end of THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE." The new campaign is being branded "RiffTrax Challenges", the plural noun ominously suggesting that there will be several classic movies subjected to the riffing treatment in the near future.

The first test case: Casablanca. I was skeptical at first. Well, ok, more than skeptical. I wept openly, threw a lot of dishes at the wall, called several radio DJs in the Bible Belt to coordinate the public torching of RiffTrax mp3s and other memorabilia, and sent Joel Hodgson a personal telegram letting him know that he has always been better than Mike Nelson. I regret those things now (except for the dish-hurling - they were dirty anyway).

The new Casablanca riff is very, very good. The riffs are consistently laugh-out-loud funny, and while I won't spoil it for you, there is an exquisite "inside joke" that is so perfectly placed, I almost snorted an entire plate of cookies out my nose (we'll talk later about why I had an entire plate of cookies in my mouth). It was fun to watch Mike, Kevin, and Bill tackle a classic of this magnitude, and they pulled it off with style; the riffing is extremely funny, yet without vandalizing the film in the process.

I'm crossing my fingers for a RiffTrax commentary on It's a Wonderful Life! next ...

Matthew McConaughey, spokesman for the National Cattleman's Beef Association, wanted me to remind you to eat beef today. He also wanted me to remind you, in case you haven't seen his many, many movies in which he appears shirtless, that he is himself a real hunk of beef. In short, Matthew McConaughey wanted to tell you: "Eat me." That is all.

Via Twitter.

Twitter: keeping your movie reviews short and to the blessed point.

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* Going to see "Up" in the only way it should be seen: with four kids 6 and under. Thank God for Valium. And stun guns.

* 10 minutes into movie, large pop is already 60 percent 2-yr-old mouth slurry. Yay, the movies!

* Funny movie. Funnier watching a theater full of small children try to keep the spring-loaded seats horizontal using bodyweight alone.

* Movie continues to amuse. 2-yr-old continues to cover Reese's Pieces in thin layer of hand/mouth drool.

* This movie is amazing on 3 pounds of Sour Patch Kids. Wonder what it's like sober?

* This is Up: Extended Potty Break Special Edition

* 2-yr-old also pretty amazing on 5 gallons of pop. Wonder what she's like sober? And by sober, I mean "not poopy".

* Dog-based sight gag at about 80 min. into film was exquisite.

* Excellent job, Pixar. 4 of 5 stars. A real tear-jerker, but lots of laughs too. Visit www.celebrationcinema.com