Brewster’s Millions

     

Here’s how I would make a million dollars

You know all those stores which have signs that say “We honor our competitors’ coupons”?  So, there is a bagel store right where I live that has that.  I’m going to open another bagel store next door, but I won’t have anything to sell yet, it’ll just be an empty store.  So, I’ll print one coupon that says EVERYTHING IN THE STORE FOR FREE, and take it over to the other bagel store and they’ll have no choice but to give me everything they’ve got.  And, then I’ll have stuff to sell in my store.  I do that enough times and I’m going to make a lot of money.  But, I’m no moron – I’m not printing more than one coupon because otherwise they could get it all right back.  But, here’s what I can do: there’s an oil change place nearby that honors other coupons – now, what the freckle would I do with a whole bunch of oil? but I sure can print a coupon that says EVERYTHING IN MY BANK ACCOUNT FOR FREE AND FOOD FOR TONY SHALHOUB and then boom now we’re talking about turkeys!  I could really speed up this get rich process by going to the big boys!  I don’t think McDonald’s honors competitors’ coupons.  But, maybe I could just open a coupon store.  That way, I could print any coupons I want.  I’ll print one McDonald’s coupon that I’ll sell to myself that says 20,000 FILET O’FISH WITH THE PURCHASE OF MCDONALDLAND COOKIES.  That means all I would have to do is buy some cookies (how much can that cost) and I get all the fish.

I told this theory to my wife and she told me I’m an idiot.  But, if there’s one thing being a professional psychotry guy has taught me (other than, make sure I never accept any coupons!) is that it’s often the thing we hate most in other people is the thing that reminds us of ourselves.   So, if you get mad at someone for being an idiot – maybe you’re really mad that you too can be an idiot once in a while.  If you hate people who are pushy, maybe you know that you can be pushy.  Hate loud-mouths, are you a loud-mouth?  So, when we are most outspoken against something, it’s usually because we recognize that in ourselves.  Like people who don’t like bananas.  It’s because they ARE bananas.  And, by that I mean they’re crazy because bananas are great.

The Big Lebowski

 

In ‘n’ Out Burgers don’t exist!  I checked!

Did you ever notice how when you see fruit at the grocery store it always looks great?  They could have that stack of bananas there for a month and the bananas are yellow.  But, the second you bring some home, it starts turning brown.  I used to think that was because of the water spray things they have at the stores.  The water is obviously a magic potion taken from the famed Fountain of Youth.  This was a pretty fantastic discovery, I thought.  But, my friend from the deli, Jack Jack, told me it was ludicrous.  What kind of a moron would upon discovering the Fountain of Youth waste the precious water keeping fruit from rotting? and not instead fill a hot tub with it and invite Charro over for a party.  Jack Jack loves Charro, and I suppose he has a point.

Instead, he says the reason fruit can stay healthy in grocery stores is because a long time ago they hired Jesus to mop the place up.  And, they were getting ready to fire the guy for pushing a broken jar of jelly underneath a Chips Ahoy display instead of getting a dustpan – Jesus is a lazy lazy man – when they realized that just by having Jesus in the store all the fruit wouldn’t spoil.  It’s what they now call the Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes.  So, just so long as Jesus doesn’t take that job over at the Office Max, our produce will always stay fresh all day long.This movie is a what-if scenario.  What if Jesus quit his job at Ralph’s and instead went bowling all day.  Oh, and in this movie, Jesus really likes feet and has to tell everyone on the block about it.  It’s a very intruging movie and it supposes that Jesus met all his depostles at the bowling alley.  The first depostle is the Cowboy.  He is sent to tell the second depostle, the Dude whose brother is a shamus, about eating candy bars.  Except instead he tells him a “parable” about a candy bar eating the Dude.  Talk about Crunch!  The next depostle is the Vet.  He is called this because he’s always carrying a dog around with him and he was in the military and he likes to destroy Corvettes.  He sees what you get when you muck a Dan in the gas.  One day when his dirty whites have too much ring around the collar (the “ringer”) he throws them out the window.  And, here’s where the adventure really begins.  The Vet’s father, who is stuck in a wheelchair until the depostles perform the miracle to make him walk again, except the depostles aren’t completely trained in the ways of Jesus yet (they’re only Wheblos) so the Vet’s father can only walk for a few steps but even this you can agree it was quite a miracle.  The Vet’s father wants the Dude to get the dirty laundry back because his wife put her stuffed bunny animal in there.  But, the Dude is too busy trying to spread the Word of Jesus before all the nihilists turn everyone into caucatians.  With the Cowboy and the Vet and the Dude, I think they were worried that people would get the wrong idea and think the depostles were like the Villiage People from
Wayne’s World, so they made the last depostle named Donnie.  He is like a child who walks into the middle of a movie and bowls a strike.  He’s out of his element.

I don’t really know why the naked painter is there, but it has something to do with paying the rent.  Then the revolution is over and the bums lost.

The Boys from Brazil

 It’s why I went into psychotry

I was once a poor American boy living in Cuba while my dad looked for Laundry Man, who didn’t have a whole lot of money and a whole lot of dreams, but I did have one dream that I couldn’t get out of my head and that was: I was going to be a huge soccer (although I used to call it “football”) star and everyone would carry me on their shoulders.

My father forbade me from playing soccer.  He wanted me to study.  And, he told me that soccer was just a game for Hitler clones.  I didn’t believe him and went to play soccer anyway – and even though all the kids would make fun of me because I had to paint on my mustache, I would give it my all!  And, that’s what this tape is about: GIVE IT YOUR ALL!

So, since I was always sneaking out of the house anyway all the time to play soccer, my father tried everything he could think of to get me to stop soccer.  He grounded me.  He punished me.  He took my spikes and balls.  He set my room on fire.  He took away my allowance.  He made me clean the garage.  He made me get a tatoo of a naked sailor on my arm.  He made me stay over at my uncle’s place.  He shot my dog and made me start playing around with cats.  He gave me extra schoolwork to do.  He made me babysit my sister.

But, the one thing that finally worked was he made me eat way extra helpings of all meals breakfast lunch tea dinner!  So, I started to gain lots and lots of weight!  Until finally no one on my team could carry my on their shoulders and that’s when I knew I would never realize my dream!  And, so I stopped playing soccer.

But, that didn’t get rid of my dream about the Hitler soccer clones and so my parents finally had to take me to a psychotrist with a cat and that’s how I started to really like the profession and I ended up taking lots of classes and passed a test before Bacon could pass it to and get a bigger lead.

The Boys from Brazil

 

Big big big big big surprise in here!

I was watching the fourth and only tolerable of the Police Academies (on TBS, of course – that seems to be all they ever do is play Police Academies and Atlanta Braves baseball games – if the Braves ever got canceled they’d have to change the name from The Braves Station to Police Academy Network) and it was as silly as usual.  Someone dropped a gun in front of a bunch of preschoolers and somehow this meant a monkey needed a moped and the hot cop was going to get her bra caught in something.  Good stuff, sure – but didn’t I already see this on the Police Academy TV show? (reruns 10:05 nightly on TBS)  I was getting ready to see what was on the WB when Steve Guttenberg’s big scene came on.  And, I can’t believe I’ve never noticed this before.  I mean, I’ve always known it was a fantastic scene.  Critics are always pointing this scene out, and with a bit of shame and a ton of bewilderment remarking on how it’s Guttenberg’s finest work and a fantastic bit of acting.  And, they’re right, too.  It’s wonderful.

In the scene, Guttenberg plays a wacky cop with a taste for the young ladies and simmerin’ up a pot of the old Mischief Stew.  One of the preschoolers is about to punch that guy from Night Court in the balls when Guttenberg says, “Hey kid!”  And, the moment is magic.  Absolute poetry.  And, you miss the rest of the scene (so you’re not wondering: kid racks cop anyway) because you’ve gotten the wind knocked out of you a bit.  It’s such a ridiculous scene (cops wear cups) and such a throwaway line – how could it pack that much power? how could it be that majestic?  I mean, this is PA3: Back in Training for crying out loud.  This is Steve “Cocoon” Guttenberg here – not Lawrence Olivier, jeez.  And, that’s where it hit me and I remembered something and I ran to the video store and got Boys from
Brazil and I was right!

“Hey kid!” is Steve Guttenberg’s first line in Boys from Brazil, an incredible movie starring Lawrence Olivier and Gregory Peck.  So, that’s why he was so fantastic with it.  He must have gotten acting tips from two of the greatest actors of all time.  Wouldn’t you have just given anything to have been there on the set while they were hanging around talking about their craft?  Think of all the stuff you could have learned!  Think of all the stuff Steve Guttenberg learned!  You could be Steve Guttenberg!

Imagine it: “Listen, Stevie.  You’ve got to make me believe that this is a kid and you want to say hey to him.  Speak deep in your body.  Use a diaphram!”  And, Steve Guttenberg can ask them all about his Boys from Brazil lines and his reaction shots and no wonder he’s not so bad in that movie.  Too bad he didn’t just whimsically one day ask Olivier, “Sir, what if your role called for you to drive a golf cart into a rich socialite’s pool after you’d just had as much sex as PG-13 would allow with his daughter?  What kind of face would you make.”  Then, that could have saved his career.  You know, he has a movie coming out this year that he also wrote and directed called “P.S. Your Cat Is Dead” and despite myself and the fact that there’s nothing funny about a dead cat, I have high hopes for it because there ought to be plenty of opportunities in there for him to say “Hey kid!”

Barely Legal (Extreme Championship Wrestling)

 

This video wasn’t even REMOTELY what I thought it was going to be about!

Bicentennial Man

Beware: This movie does not take place in 1967!

 

This is a movie based on an old Isaac Asimov short story.  Usually when a movie is based on a short story it doesn’t turn out so well – e.g., Gone with the Wind is based on the story “Windy” which first appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, and we all know what a mess that turned out to be.

But, this one turned out great – they did it right.  Not that it wasn’t a long, tough road to get here.  In fact, this isn’t the first time Hollywood (CA) has turned Mr. Asimov’s beautiful short story into a movie.  The first time was in 1987.  They wanted to do a movie of this story about a robot that wants to be human.  (If it was today they would call it Pinoccio.com!  I just made that up, not bad.)  But, they put so many writers on the story that things got confused and everyone made their changes and things got shifted around.  And, the movie they ended up with was Mannequin.  And, Dr. Asimov had a fit.  He hated it.  (I guess the French just don’t have a sense of humor.)  Apparently, the last straw was when they cast Bill Szczuka as the “best friend” in the movie.  Asimov said he would not let
Hollywood do another of his stories over his dead body, good for him!, but then Hollywood waited, and then he died, and then Hollywood made another of his stories, this movie – and Joel Silver (Sliver) said his famous quote about writers: “They are the most important thing to a movie.  And when they’re not, they’ll always die.”

So, it’s kind of irony that Bicentennial Man is actually what happened when Hollywood (CA) tried to do a remake of the smash Mannequin (at one point calling it Mannequin 2: On the Bicycle) but again there were so many writers and so many changes that it ended up turning out a lot like the original Bicentennial Man story (ironic!).  Imagine the coincidence — it’s like you have a coin and on one side is Mannequin and other side is Bicentennial Man.  Hollywood (CA) flipped and history is fiddy fiddy!

A lot of people were surprised when this movie came out that it was not a kids movie.  But, I mean, how stupid can you get?  Robin Williams?  As a robot?  In the future?  Shame on you, Jackson Q. Public, you should know better!

No, this movie isn’t a kids movie.  It’s a learning experience.  I mean, who hasn’t wondered what it would be like to be Robin Williams as a robot?  I mean, I’ve wondered what it would be like to be Robin Williams as Peter Pan and the movies told me.  And, now I know about Robin Williams as a robot, too.  Here’s what it’s like: lots of teary-eyed staring and pathetic puppy smiles when people do unexpected nice things for you.  Yes, sir, I’d like to be Robin Williams as a robot.  Sign me up!

And what an actor!  I mean, he’s the best person in the world at playing all sorts of Robin Williams parts.  He’s Robin Williams the dead guy.  And, Robin Williams the psychotrist.  And, Robin Williams the kid.  And, Robin Williams the gay guy.  Whenever my wife sees Robin Williams in a new role, she calls him “Robin Williams in a box” – which is true because who would be better at playing Robin Williams in a box than Robin Williams!  I bet he’d be great for that role!

I just heard that Robin Williams does the narration (that voice you hear in movies but never see the face) for the new Steven Soderberg movie A.I., it’s about a boy who is a robot.  Which is good for them to do that because that means they recognize it’s pretty much the same movie.  It’s like how they have Charlton Heston doing a coolio role in the remake of Planet of the Apes this summer.

Bad Influence

Skinny Puppy is on the soundtrack

So, this movie is really just one big, cheap publicity stunt.  It’s a commercial.  Just weeks after this movie came out, Rob Lowe (“The Brat Pack: Young Kids, Young Problems” and “Suddenly Susan”) released his home video of having sex with Pamela Anderson Lee (or Pam Lee as she was known then).  They knew that Bad Influence was going to be a big hit.  And, they knew it would drum up a lot of talk.  So, it was the perfect time to get people to buy the home movie, which was the real money-maker for the studio.  But, their plan failed.  If they had checked their market research, they would have realized that fewer than expected want to see Pam Lee without clothes because 42% of America has already slept with her (and they say she’s “so-so”) – and 87% of adults aged 18-35 which the prime target of most movies because they’re most likely to buy popcorn and the action figures.

 

But, Bad Influence was a major hit anyways – and it got Lowe future roles in “The Dark Backward”, “Illegally Yours” and the “Rob Lowe Sex Video II: Lowe Down and Dirty”.  Bill Szczuka, Lowe’s co-star in Bad Influence and one of the sex videos, hasn’t had as much luck as his co-star.  He got roles as extras and is rumored to have done a Nestlee-plunge comercial.  But, not even that crazy catwoman suit stunt could get him any more work in
Hollywood.  Some scandal rags reported that Szczuka took up prostitution and may have been the inspiration for half of Boogie Nights (the sick broke pervert half, not the partying rich pervert half).

The Beatles (The White Album)

I should call the review: ” ” — get it?

Most people don’t know the album’s origin (officially called “The White Beetles Album” but often just shortened to “The White Album” by fans). Paul’s cousin was a printer, who was a bit down on his luck. So, to help him out they gave him an order for 50,000 Beetles posters of their next album. The printer cousin (whose story was loosely captured in the film “The Printer Cousin”) was so overanxious to fulfill such a tremendous order, he ran the presses before the Beetles had given him a cover design to print! And, as it turns out, the printer was unplugged! And, if that weren’t enough, he was out of toner! And, there was a paper jam! Needless to say, the printer cousin (played by Johnny Depp as a young man and Sidney Poitier as an older man) was dismayed at how he had messed up his most important order. He had just spent his life-savings printing 50,000 blank posters. Paul, ever the gracious one, convinced the rest of the band to change the album from its original design and title “8 Arms to Help You”. And, album history was made. “The White Album” drips with stories, too many to describe. So, a couple of the major highlights from this, the longest of the Beetles albums until they reunited just before John’s death in 1996 to record a new album of Beetles covers called “Anthology”:

Possibly the oddest story is a coincidence – or, is it? “Dear Prudence” was about John’s infatuation with Mia Farrow’s sister before she married Woody Allen. No one made the connection until 1996 when John was shot and Woody Allen ended up marrying his daughter with Farrow: none other than the newly widowed Yoko Ono! Investigators have officially cleared Woody Allen as a suspect in the shooting, but I’m not sure the jury is completely out yet. Apparently, if you play the soundtrack to “Manhattan Murder Mystery” backward you can hear Allen repeating “I shot John Lennon”. Don’t tell me that’s a coincidence.

The only non-Beetle song on the album is Eric Clapton’s “Guitar Weeps” written for George after he fell out of a New York Window.

The album has four covers and two songs inspired by pop-culture events. Savoy Truffle was originally done by the great Stella Fitzgerald, and “Birthday” is cover of an Anthony Michael Hall improvisation from his 1962 classic: “Can’t Hold the Smoke”. “I’m So Tired” – featured in the sequel to the Sandra Bullock classic “While You Were Sleeping” – is a Lou Reed cover about Black Francis going to see a hooker. “Honey Pie” is a cover of the Beetles classic “Wild Honey Pie” which they had recorded only 42 minutes previously. Everyone knows that “Helter Skelter” was written by Marilyn Manson about how much he likes the “Electric Slide”. But, few realize that Paul was such a big fan of “Ferris Booler’s Day Off” that he wrote “Glass Onion” about it.

Paul McCarthy had two passions in the world: juggling puppies and Rocky Rococo meat-lover’s pizza. So much, he wrote a song about it. But, after he met Linda, his veterinarian wife, she convinced him to stop juggling puppies. (In fact, he was so sorry he wrote “Sexy Sadie” about his dog. When the PETA folks complained about the implications, he changed her name to Martha and pretended “Martha My Dear” is about her.)

When Julia Roberts left Lennon for Lyle Loveit, he wrote “Julia” about her. When she realized what a dork Lyle Loveit is, he wrote another one about her: “Cry Baby Cry”. Probably the biggest controversy on the album involves “Revolution 1”. John had heard that Nike was giving away tons of candy to children in South American sweetshops. So, he wrote the song “Revolution” for the company. When the world protested that the song was too racy, he rerecorded it here as “Revolution 1” changing the lyrics “Give those kids more sweets, Pete” to “Fellas, you can count me in.” And, Michael Jackson was the first to predict that there would be no more “White Albums” to buy, saying: “The Beetles are a sell-out.”

Who Let the Dogs Out

You should hear this song!

I don’t know if you’ve heard the song Who Let the Dogs Out but it is fantastic! Who Who Who Who Who Who Who Who! I just love saying that.

It’s like Pringalz! I dare you to listen to this song only once!
And, the great thing about the Baha Men is they know how you are. You want to hear the song more than one time. So, they made sure the rest of the CD sounds just like Who Let the Dogs Out (Who Who Who Who Who Who! I have to just keep saying that!). This isn’t one of those albums that has you confused by the third song — hey, what kind of an album is this? They do this music the best — and they want you to know it so they give it to you with 12 tracks of it, again and again!

Just you wait, pretty soon everybody’s going to be saying Who Let the Dogs Out (Who Who Who Who Who Who — it’s so catchy!). And, then everyone’s going to be saying You All Dat (You You You You You — I don’t know if the song actually repeats You a bunch of times but I’ll let you know when I listen to it all the way through — I just can’t get past the Dogs and who could blame me!) And, then we’ll all be saying Get Ya Party On. What a great expression. My wife just got home from the office and asked me what I wanted to do tonight watch the Tuesday Night Movie or could she watch a tape of her stories. I told her to Get Ya Party On! What a great expression.

I put the CD on and actually fell asleep (it’s NOT A BORING CD I WAS JUST REALLY REALLY TIRED AFTER THE CAT THINGY THIS MORNING) but when I woke up the Baha Men were still letting Tha Dogs Out! What a long song, I thought! But, then I saw that the song is actually on the CD TWO TIMES. What a smart move. The Baha Men know what you want.

Oh, and make sure you skip the hidden track. It’s just some silly song about a guy touching himself when he was alone all by himself thinking of you. Weird, Men, weird.

The Body Artist

This book is way too long!

Thank God this is a quick read! Because the book is just so darned long otherwise. I mean, it’s more than 100 pages by at least 20! And, that’s not counting the footnotes and the About the Author section. It’s not very funny. It’s good, but it’s not very funny. I would have expected just the opposite, you know? Funny, but not so good. All in all, I have to give Don credit for this book — who would have thought he could pull it off! First, he was a comedian (who can forget the Cannonball Run!) Then he was a great chef! And, now he’s an author of books! Bravo, Don, bravo. What’s next? Is he going to design a bike? I’ll buy it, Don.