Thursday, September 23, 2004
TOMMY, YOU'RE PERMANENTLY EXPELLED: Most of us remember the police officer that showed up to tell our elementary school class drug horror stories designed to scare us straight. Some of us even remember taking the list of spices alleged to have psychoactive properties in the booklet the officer gave out and trying something with them ("I think I'm feeling it...did we use all the mace yet?"). I'm convinced they put those in the "information" booklet just to give the more gullible kids something to try and fail at.
However, now it's the information age, with computers, the Internet, flying cars...all that whatnot. So of course, we can't just have community outreach programs to keep the kids on the straight and narrow. We have to have websites like Arizona's Law For Kids. And since it is the Internet, Law For Kids has to have awful cartoons.
As educational tools, the cartoons just don't cut it; in a few of them it's impossible to see what the point is. And kids can tell when you're just not trying. For our purposes, which is cheap laughs at bad art, it's a goldmine.
Let's go over a few of these:
DRAG RACE DISASTER (Flash animation): Chuck, Elsie, and Melissa are kicking back, doing a little drunk driving and drag racing to start the weekend off right, and Chuck cracks up his car trying to outrun the cops. To undercut any moral they might've had, we find the kids riding bikes on the sidewalk on a sunny day. Come on, guys, this is supposed to be "scared straight" territory! At least show them walking sullenly everywhere they go, or in a hospital bed. THEN we'd know that "Chuck, Elsie, and Melissa were lucky." The real kicker is that they make a big show of naming the kids, like they're more than barely animated ciphers. Really, if they're not even going to have dialogue, why bother?
It's also an interesting touch that the guy is the only one drinking a beer, while the ladies are downing wine coolers. Female teenage alcoholics are apprarently much pickier these days. Some of the boys, on the other hand, are still trying to drink that blue stuff they dip the barber's combs in because they were told it'll really get 'em FACED.
I have a theory that after losing his license, Chuck became the kid in the Chronic Future video, which is another strike against drunk driving.
JOYRIDING: We see a boy and a girl get into a car, a cop pulls them over and frisks them. The girl says "But I wasn't driving!" and the state trooper barks "EVEN THE PASSENGER GETS IN TROUBLE!" At least I hope he's a state trooper; his hat is a little bit too plain to be a genuine officer. It's possible that he's a mentally unbalanced guy who always wanted to be a cop, but ever since the accident cost him his eyebrows, he drives around in a shoddy imitation of the uniform he admires, a flashing light he bought at Radio Shack wired to the family sedan. On weekends, he pulls over "race mixing" teens to lecture them (with brute force) about BLOOD PURITY. She was just riding in a car with him, officer; no hanky panky involved. Ah, but EVEN THE PASSENGER GETS IN TROUBLE, as you will soon find out after the strip search.
I'm sorry, I got freaky there for a second. Of course, the cop is legit, since this is a site about kids and the law, but what law are they breaking here? From what we're shown, they were pulled over and frisked by an angry trooper for not wearing seatbelts. Arizona is obviously taking "click it or ticket" a few steps beyond. Next step: death penalty for jaywalkers. The kid on your shoulders while you cross against the lights gets tossed to foster care because EVEN THE PASSENGERS GET IN TROUBLE.
LEARNER'S PERMIT: Pretty benign, although that kid does have a crazed glint in his eyes. I'd rather not be stuck behind him in traffic. Also, it's nice to see that Arizona put a DMV station in Gargamel's house instead of one of those stuffy concrete slab buildings. It gives license renewal a nice homey feel, and keeps the Smurf population under control.
MARIJUANA and SCHOOL THREATS : There's a reason I'm taking these two together (and you should read them in order for the full effect), because they both use a kid they call M.P. We're not really supposed to be thinking about continuity here, but taken as a sequence, does this tell us that smoking pot turns you into a squealer? A kid lights up a doobie, and all of the sudden he's ratting out teenage Hank Hill for making prank calls. They call him "Tommy" here, but any Dragnet fan knows that the names in the case histories are changed to protect the innocent. So M.P. gets Hank/Tommy permanently expelled, jaw hanging open in shock, and they STILL toss him in prison five years later. Maybe he's just overly paranoid, since he's already breaking a few laws and probably got pulled over by the fake state trooper earlier in the day.
Actually, all these kids look unspeakably afraid, like they were clued in to the fatalistic drama their ethnically-diverse lives were being plugged into. They're in a constant state of terror because they know that no matter what good intentions they have, turning in guys who make death threats or trying to get friends off the weed, M.P.'s still going to end up in jail by panel 5 for lighting that blunt, while Mikey is fated to be a nameless drone pointing at an incomprehensible chart. Or maybe the artist just got lazy and used clip art.
It's interesting that the Principal's desk plate is turned facing himself; maybe he just needs to keep reminding himself that he's not the janitor.
(And in case you were wondering, I blame Nate for planting this seed...he gets to come along for the ride because EVEN THE PASSENGER GETS INTOoooohskipit..)
However, now it's the information age, with computers, the Internet, flying cars...all that whatnot. So of course, we can't just have community outreach programs to keep the kids on the straight and narrow. We have to have websites like Arizona's Law For Kids. And since it is the Internet, Law For Kids has to have awful cartoons.
As educational tools, the cartoons just don't cut it; in a few of them it's impossible to see what the point is. And kids can tell when you're just not trying. For our purposes, which is cheap laughs at bad art, it's a goldmine.
Let's go over a few of these:
DRAG RACE DISASTER (Flash animation): Chuck, Elsie, and Melissa are kicking back, doing a little drunk driving and drag racing to start the weekend off right, and Chuck cracks up his car trying to outrun the cops. To undercut any moral they might've had, we find the kids riding bikes on the sidewalk on a sunny day. Come on, guys, this is supposed to be "scared straight" territory! At least show them walking sullenly everywhere they go, or in a hospital bed. THEN we'd know that "Chuck, Elsie, and Melissa were lucky." The real kicker is that they make a big show of naming the kids, like they're more than barely animated ciphers. Really, if they're not even going to have dialogue, why bother?
It's also an interesting touch that the guy is the only one drinking a beer, while the ladies are downing wine coolers. Female teenage alcoholics are apprarently much pickier these days. Some of the boys, on the other hand, are still trying to drink that blue stuff they dip the barber's combs in because they were told it'll really get 'em FACED.
I have a theory that after losing his license, Chuck became the kid in the Chronic Future video, which is another strike against drunk driving.
JOYRIDING: We see a boy and a girl get into a car, a cop pulls them over and frisks them. The girl says "But I wasn't driving!" and the state trooper barks "EVEN THE PASSENGER GETS IN TROUBLE!" At least I hope he's a state trooper; his hat is a little bit too plain to be a genuine officer. It's possible that he's a mentally unbalanced guy who always wanted to be a cop, but ever since the accident cost him his eyebrows, he drives around in a shoddy imitation of the uniform he admires, a flashing light he bought at Radio Shack wired to the family sedan. On weekends, he pulls over "race mixing" teens to lecture them (with brute force) about BLOOD PURITY. She was just riding in a car with him, officer; no hanky panky involved. Ah, but EVEN THE PASSENGER GETS IN TROUBLE, as you will soon find out after the strip search.
I'm sorry, I got freaky there for a second. Of course, the cop is legit, since this is a site about kids and the law, but what law are they breaking here? From what we're shown, they were pulled over and frisked by an angry trooper for not wearing seatbelts. Arizona is obviously taking "click it or ticket" a few steps beyond. Next step: death penalty for jaywalkers. The kid on your shoulders while you cross against the lights gets tossed to foster care because EVEN THE PASSENGERS GET IN TROUBLE.
LEARNER'S PERMIT: Pretty benign, although that kid does have a crazed glint in his eyes. I'd rather not be stuck behind him in traffic. Also, it's nice to see that Arizona put a DMV station in Gargamel's house instead of one of those stuffy concrete slab buildings. It gives license renewal a nice homey feel, and keeps the Smurf population under control.
MARIJUANA and SCHOOL THREATS : There's a reason I'm taking these two together (and you should read them in order for the full effect), because they both use a kid they call M.P. We're not really supposed to be thinking about continuity here, but taken as a sequence, does this tell us that smoking pot turns you into a squealer? A kid lights up a doobie, and all of the sudden he's ratting out teenage Hank Hill for making prank calls. They call him "Tommy" here, but any Dragnet fan knows that the names in the case histories are changed to protect the innocent. So M.P. gets Hank/Tommy permanently expelled, jaw hanging open in shock, and they STILL toss him in prison five years later. Maybe he's just overly paranoid, since he's already breaking a few laws and probably got pulled over by the fake state trooper earlier in the day.
Actually, all these kids look unspeakably afraid, like they were clued in to the fatalistic drama their ethnically-diverse lives were being plugged into. They're in a constant state of terror because they know that no matter what good intentions they have, turning in guys who make death threats or trying to get friends off the weed, M.P.'s still going to end up in jail by panel 5 for lighting that blunt, while Mikey is fated to be a nameless drone pointing at an incomprehensible chart. Or maybe the artist just got lazy and used clip art.
It's interesting that the Principal's desk plate is turned facing himself; maybe he just needs to keep reminding himself that he's not the janitor.
(And in case you were wondering, I blame Nate for planting this seed...he gets to come along for the ride because EVEN THE PASSENGER GETS INTOoooohskipit..)
|| Eric 1:01 PM#
Monday, September 20, 2004
I FOUND SOME OF YOUR LIFE: It's time once again for a semi-irregular feature I like to call "Somebody's Going To Hell For This"...please remain seated until the ride is over.
What would you do if you found somebody's digital media card when you hopped a cab? I'd probably turn it into the cab company's lost and found (after checking for pictures of naked women, of course), but this individual decided to post a picture a day until he either runs out of pictures or the rightful owner shows up to take back his/her life. To make things interesting, he decided to make up stories to go with the pictures; Cliff Yablonski it ain't, but there ya go.
What would you do if you found somebody's digital media card when you hopped a cab? I'd probably turn it into the cab company's lost and found (after checking for pictures of naked women, of course), but this individual decided to post a picture a day until he either runs out of pictures or the rightful owner shows up to take back his/her life. To make things interesting, he decided to make up stories to go with the pictures; Cliff Yablonski it ain't, but there ya go.
|| Eric 1:43 PM#
Saturday, September 18, 2004
MOMENT OF HORROR: Just saw the trailer for Taxi, Jimmy Fallon's bid to become a feature film star, and all I could think was "OH SWEET JESUS, WHO GAVE FALLON A GUN?" More as the situation develops...
|| Eric 7:07 AM#
THE LIGHT AHEAD: I had every intention of watching one of Poverty Row director Edgar Ulmer's most famous films, Detour, on TCM Friday night. Instead, VH1's search for the "new" Partridge Family put me soundly asleep until 3 in the morning, meaning I'll have to try harder next time. So instead, I woke up in the middle of the night to something I definitely wasn't expecting.
The Light Ahead, made in 1939, is anchored in the Yiddish theater of the early 20th century, and features a number of actors from the Yiddish Art Theater. So from that tradition, we get David Opatoshu, at the start of a long film and TV career, as Fishke, a crippled peddler, and Helen Beverly as Hodel, the blind orphan Fishke loves. She works at a menial job because she has too much self-respect to be a beggar, although we see others making a living as charity cases. The story takes place in a 19th century Russian shtetl, a small Jewish community, where the town leaders are more worried about personal religious projects than improving the actual living conditions, and whose solution to the cholera outbreak is deeply rooted in superstition. Mendele the bookseller is the all-around problem solver and bridge between the remote city leaders and the common people, tradition and reason.
That makes it sound fairly heavy, but there are more than a few scenes that lighten the load, keeping things very well-balanced. Since the film was shot on a tight budget, we get a few B-movie tricks (day-for-night scene). However, it's a nice story very well acted, and as an artifact of a long-gone film genre, it's priceless. That Ulmer directed a number of Yiddish films without speaking the lanugage is remarkable, and that they turned out as good as this is doubly so. Also, in the middle of everthing is one of the most remarkable scenes I've seen recently in a film (and this could be a spoiler, if you worry about such things). Getzel, a thief and all-around jerk, lies to Hodel that he saw Fishke with another woman. Paying attention to modern Hollywood as much as I do, I was surprised at the result: she confronts Fishke with the story, and not only does he tell her where he really was, but has witnesses, too. If Ulmer was a modern director, he'd know that a simple misunderstanding is supposed to be blown up to grotesque proportions, exacerbated by the community, well-meaning but clueless friends, the family dog, and all kinds of ridiculous circumstances. Instead, we get people being reasonable, which doesn't cut it for the 18-25 male demographic, the ONLY thing that matters anymore, as you know. The "solution" the town leaders come up with for the cholera outbreak is the closest to a ridiculous circumstance we get, but not in the comedy sense of the word; it's also based on tradition, so it's not a contrivance.
One of the reasons cable TV is still a useful thing to film fans is that the only way most of us will see films like this (besides at a film festival) is on late night cable. The only home video option for The Light Ahead is a $72 VHS tape. Good luck finding it at Blockbuster Video.
The Light Ahead, made in 1939, is anchored in the Yiddish theater of the early 20th century, and features a number of actors from the Yiddish Art Theater. So from that tradition, we get David Opatoshu, at the start of a long film and TV career, as Fishke, a crippled peddler, and Helen Beverly as Hodel, the blind orphan Fishke loves. She works at a menial job because she has too much self-respect to be a beggar, although we see others making a living as charity cases. The story takes place in a 19th century Russian shtetl, a small Jewish community, where the town leaders are more worried about personal religious projects than improving the actual living conditions, and whose solution to the cholera outbreak is deeply rooted in superstition. Mendele the bookseller is the all-around problem solver and bridge between the remote city leaders and the common people, tradition and reason.
That makes it sound fairly heavy, but there are more than a few scenes that lighten the load, keeping things very well-balanced. Since the film was shot on a tight budget, we get a few B-movie tricks (day-for-night scene). However, it's a nice story very well acted, and as an artifact of a long-gone film genre, it's priceless. That Ulmer directed a number of Yiddish films without speaking the lanugage is remarkable, and that they turned out as good as this is doubly so. Also, in the middle of everthing is one of the most remarkable scenes I've seen recently in a film (and this could be a spoiler, if you worry about such things). Getzel, a thief and all-around jerk, lies to Hodel that he saw Fishke with another woman. Paying attention to modern Hollywood as much as I do, I was surprised at the result: she confronts Fishke with the story, and not only does he tell her where he really was, but has witnesses, too. If Ulmer was a modern director, he'd know that a simple misunderstanding is supposed to be blown up to grotesque proportions, exacerbated by the community, well-meaning but clueless friends, the family dog, and all kinds of ridiculous circumstances. Instead, we get people being reasonable, which doesn't cut it for the 18-25 male demographic, the ONLY thing that matters anymore, as you know. The "solution" the town leaders come up with for the cholera outbreak is the closest to a ridiculous circumstance we get, but not in the comedy sense of the word; it's also based on tradition, so it's not a contrivance.
One of the reasons cable TV is still a useful thing to film fans is that the only way most of us will see films like this (besides at a film festival) is on late night cable. The only home video option for The Light Ahead is a $72 VHS tape. Good luck finding it at Blockbuster Video.
|| Eric 6:10 AM#
Monday, September 06, 2004
IF I CAN'T HAVE FREE, I'LL SETTLE FOR CHEAP: Since there was nothing doing this weekend, and I had far too much money in my wallet for comfort, I decided to dip into the newest Walmart/Dollar General phenomenom, the dollar DVD. Keeping in mind that most of the time, you get what you pay for, here's a rundown:
Dragnet Vol. 1 & 2: These are the "good" episodes from the 1950s, when Jack Webb was still doing the radio show at the same time, the reactionary version of Joe Friday still a decade in the future. The most unfortunate part is while the shows on the disc are apparently in the public domain, the music ("dum-da-dum-dum") is still under copyright, so the discs' producers sloppily dubbed some sub-Law & Order knockoff music in its place. Yeah, yeah, it keeps the cost down, but it's so wrong. Instead of marching resolutely in the direction of justice, the new music makes the show slink off like a thief in the night. That's a shame, since the prints they used are fairly decent quality, as these cheapie releases usually go.
These DVDs were released by DigiView Productions. Click here to visit their non-functioning website!
Tales of Tomorrow: The next two DVDs come from a company billed as PMB 421, who pack their merchandise in card-stock envelopes. Very chintzy. Tales of Tomorrow was an early ABC series from the era where adult sci-fi was first coming into its own, and this live program was a video attempt to jump on the bandwagon. Of course that's not the reason I bought it; this DVD has the infamous adaptation of Frankenstein, where Lon Chaney Jr. (possibly drunk, definitely disoriented) wandered incoherently through the role of the Monster. The idea here is that he had no idea this wasn't a dress rehearsal, so instead he keeps looking off-camera at the director, picking up breakaway furniture and putting it back down, and generally doing in whatever TV career he might have had. Apart from that, we also find numerous reasons why it's a bad idea to chop a full-length novel down to 25 minutes.
Jack Benny: Yes, my hero. This collection gives us two filmed half-hour episodes of the Jack Benny series and an hour-long special (on muddy kinescope, which may have been dubbed off of a worn out video) from 1965 with Bob Hope, Walt Disney and the Beach Boys. He also manages to send up three-quarters of the current TV Land schedule in one sketch, and he's not even in it. Of course, Jack's not in the current TV Land schedule, either, which is a whole other ripoff.
(9/13 Note: You're not imaging things; I forgot to post this last weekend...go figure...)
Dragnet Vol. 1 & 2: These are the "good" episodes from the 1950s, when Jack Webb was still doing the radio show at the same time, the reactionary version of Joe Friday still a decade in the future. The most unfortunate part is while the shows on the disc are apparently in the public domain, the music ("dum-da-dum-dum") is still under copyright, so the discs' producers sloppily dubbed some sub-Law & Order knockoff music in its place. Yeah, yeah, it keeps the cost down, but it's so wrong. Instead of marching resolutely in the direction of justice, the new music makes the show slink off like a thief in the night. That's a shame, since the prints they used are fairly decent quality, as these cheapie releases usually go.
These DVDs were released by DigiView Productions. Click here to visit their non-functioning website!
Tales of Tomorrow: The next two DVDs come from a company billed as PMB 421, who pack their merchandise in card-stock envelopes. Very chintzy. Tales of Tomorrow was an early ABC series from the era where adult sci-fi was first coming into its own, and this live program was a video attempt to jump on the bandwagon. Of course that's not the reason I bought it; this DVD has the infamous adaptation of Frankenstein, where Lon Chaney Jr. (possibly drunk, definitely disoriented) wandered incoherently through the role of the Monster. The idea here is that he had no idea this wasn't a dress rehearsal, so instead he keeps looking off-camera at the director, picking up breakaway furniture and putting it back down, and generally doing in whatever TV career he might have had. Apart from that, we also find numerous reasons why it's a bad idea to chop a full-length novel down to 25 minutes.
Jack Benny: Yes, my hero. This collection gives us two filmed half-hour episodes of the Jack Benny series and an hour-long special (on muddy kinescope, which may have been dubbed off of a worn out video) from 1965 with Bob Hope, Walt Disney and the Beach Boys. He also manages to send up three-quarters of the current TV Land schedule in one sketch, and he's not even in it. Of course, Jack's not in the current TV Land schedule, either, which is a whole other ripoff.
(9/13 Note: You're not imaging things; I forgot to post this last weekend...go figure...)
|| Eric 10:54 AM#
Thursday, September 02, 2004
STATUS REPORT: For those who give a rat's posterior about my Joycean adventure, last Sunday I made it past the HALFWAY POINT to the halfway point of Ulysses (250 pages). Yes, it's been fits and starts more than usual, but for the epics, nine tenths of the fight is just staying focused. Even without my inconsistency, this wouldn't be a brisk read.
You'll get my usual report as soon as I make it to the back cover, or when I tumble down the mountain in disgrace.
You'll get my usual report as soon as I make it to the back cover, or when I tumble down the mountain in disgrace.
|| Eric 9:27 AM#
