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125/2134. You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939)
W.C. Fields' misanthropic humor stands up well over time, and it works especially well here, where Fields is foiled by the equally irreverent dummy Charlie McCarthy. There has long been a rumor that MGM refused to cast Fields as the titular Wizard of Oz over his outrageous salary demands, but Wikipedia's bio of Fields seems to suggest his demands were high specifically because he wanted MGM to refuse him so he would have time to write this. True or not, there's a lot to laugh at here.

130/2139. Look Who's Laughing (1941)
I'm re-arranging my viewing order to mention this here, as it is the first movie reuniting Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy with their radio cohorts, Fibber McGee & Molly and the Great Gildersleeve. The plot is silly, sure, but this radio-sitcom-adapted-for-the-screen format will take the world by storm when the television comes along. Bergen's love-interest co-star, some actress named Lucille Ball, probably took notice.

126/2135. Here We Go Again (1942)
Look Who's Laughing must have made plenty of money to earn this follow-up. I'm really digging these Charlie McCarthy movies. In this one, Charlie is often given mobility by a midget in a mask — the original uncanny valley? — but Bergen's clever creativity and wry humor carry the day.

127/2136. Elvis (2022)
Baz Luhrmann's much ballyhooed biopic wants you to believe that the King of Rock and Roll was some sort of literal superhero (which would make The Colonel a Bondian supervillain). So long as you don't take it too seriously, it is entertaining enough. Austin Butler does a very good impression. Its heart is certainly in the right place, as you can tell by its dedication to replicating real-life product placement!

Drink Coke, fake Elvis!

Drink Coke, fat Elvis!

More to come.

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On Tuesday, November 2, the initial College Football Playoff rankings of the 2022 season were released, and the Tennessee Volunteers leapfrogged the Georgia Bulldogs, who were atop the Associated Press poll, to become the top-ranked football team in the country.

Then they played Georgia on a soggy Saturday afternoon in Athens.

To be the best, you've got to beat the best, Vols. And you didn't. Final score: Tennessee 13, UGA 27. Honestly, it wasn't really even that close.

Driven in no small part by the chip on Bulldogs fans' shoulders, the game atmosphere was truly great, the best in years. The enthusastic fans were really into the game from long before kickoff, were only made more rabid when the refs stole a safety from Georgia in the second quarter, and somehow managed to get even more energetic when the rain started falling in the third quarter. What a bunch of damn good dawgs!

Reminder to future Walter: This is why you buy season tickets, to go to games like this one. Fantastic.

Thanks to friend James for keeping me company in the rain. I certainly enjoyed myself.

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EPISODE THREE: THE SABOTAGE, PART THREE

Quig tapped the shoulder of the Wolf Pack thug standing in the aisle beside him in the stands. "Excuse me, but I've got to get by you."

"What? Now? Why? Bronson's in the arena, and they trapped that murdering bitch between the floor tiles. The fight's just starting."

"Yes. It's very exciting. Even my bladder is excited."

"What?"

Quig sighed. "I've got to take a piss."

"Why didn't you say so?" The thug finally moved out of his way, and Quig hustled out of the arena into the corridor. It was just as Haze had said; with everyone watching the fight, no one was watching the corridor. Even the thugs who usually stood guard outside the arena control room were gone.

Quig had almost finished setting up his defense drone to cover the hall when Cobryn finally arrived.

"Sorry about that," said Cobryn. "They wouldn't let me out of their sight until I lied about using the restroom."

"Great minds piss alike," Quig said.

"What?"

Quig waved dismissively. "Don't worry about it. Do you have the keycard to the door?"

"Right here. I haven't tested it since I lifted it off that drunk last night. I hope it still works."

"We're about to find out." Quig drew a flashbang grenade from his pocket. "I'm ready when you are."

Cobryn nodded and inserted the pilfered card. The door unlocked and slid open automatically. Reflexively, the two control room operators turned to look and were immediately blinded by the flashbang. Cobryn rushed in and snapped slave manacles around one of the operators' wrists. Quig pointed a laser pistol at the other.

"Lower the floor tiles. Let Sahara out."

"I can't do that."

Quig pressed the laser's barrel against the operator's neck. "Wanna say that again?"

"N-no. But I don't have the controls to the floor. He does," the operator said, indicating his manacled partner.

Quig risked a glance out the booth window into the arena where Bronson appeared to be giving Striker One quite the beating. "We don't have time for this," he said, and brought the butt of the gun down on the operator's head, knocking him unconscious. Cobryn mimicked the action with his own pistol on the head of the manacled man, and Quig moved to look over the control console. As he would have expected in an arena run by idiots, it was pretty self-explanatory. He punched a few buttons and the floor began to lower, freeing Sahara. Not a moment too soon, from the look of it. Striker One was bleeding badly and had fallen to one knee. The crowd had begun chanting for Bronson to kill him.

"Do something," Cobryn urged.

"What?" asked Quig. His mind had gone blank. All he knew at that moment was that he desperately needed to pee.

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Callback!

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Some movies are so important, so incredible, so... thirsty that they deserve special attention. Which is why I'm skipping ahead in my regularly scheduled reviews to cover E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial a movie featuring a Mysterious Alien Creature:

141/2150. Mac and Me (1988)

If, like me, you're only familiar with this movie from Paul Rudd's long-running gag with Conan O'Brien, here's what you need to know about this delightful movie for children:

A family of four aliens living peacefully on a planet where Coca-Cola naturally bubbles up from the ground is accidentally captured by an automated probe and returned to Earth. Frightened by the NASA scientists, the family flees, and the smallest is thrown by the downwash of a helicopter into speeding traffic, where it splatters on a car windshield. It gets better and stows away with a mother and her two sons relocating to Los Angeles where mom has a new job at Sears.

The younger, wheelchair-bound son, Eric, discovers the alien and is attacked by drills and circular saws. After being diagnosed with schiziprehnia and drugged, Eric traps the alien in an Electrolux vaccum cleaner and earns its trust via Coca-Cola and Skittles. To protect his new "friend" from the pursuing scientists, Eric puts it inside his teddy bear and takes it to meet Ronald McDonald at a culturally-diverse football dance party.

Joined by their new next-door neighbors, the brothers take the alien to the desert in search of its family who they find in an abandoned California gold mine behind a Wickes furniture billboard. The family looks dead, but Fortunately for everyone, the kids brought two cans of Coca-Cola to revive them!

The alien family, desparate for more Coke, enter a grocery story where security guards start shooting at them, killing Eric in the crossfire.

Actual Quote: "It's like what they drink on their own planet!"

I won't spoil the ending, but it involves a United States Citizenship Oath Ceremony, a pink Cadillac, and bubble gum.

It's not overstating anything to call this is a work of genius. Obviously created with the intent of promoting the rampant consumerism of the 80s — I really don't think there's a single scene without a Coke in it — it works equally well (probably better) as an ironic take-down of American Capitalism's worst excesses. I wish I could make something like this up, and I encourage you to watch it yourself, preferably with a Coke in one hand and a Big Mac in the other.

You can thank me later.

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Is there a blizzard coming? Are the cows on strike? Sometimes less is not more.

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EPISODE THREE: THE SABOTAGE, PART TWO

Striker One paused to enjoy the sensation of the spectators cheering for him. Technically, they were cheering "Tiny Dong," the demeaning nickname the Wolf Pack slavers had given him while parading him naked from his cell to the arena's pre-fight armory. But Striker One wasn't programmed to be hung up on semantics (or the comparable size of his excretory system's external organ).

He looked down at the defeated elf lying in a pool of blood. The elf was still breathing, of course. Reasoning that they couldn't sell dead slaves, the Wolf Pack insisted that arena combatants not kill one another. That's why Striker One was fighting only with battery-powered battle gloves. The pool of blood didn't belong to the elf but its former companion, a dwarf. Sahara had broken the rules and blasted the dwarf into a red mist with an overcharged laser pistol.

"I hadn't meant for that to happen," said Sahara in her own defense.

Striker One knew Sahara was ruthless, but in this case he believed her. She wouldn't let her blood thirst jeopardize their mission. "You did what you had to do to defend yourself. That little guy hit hard."

"I hope the Wolf Pack sees it that way and still sends Bronson in."

"I'm sure they will, though I doubt he'll be in any mood to pull his punches."

Sure enough, when the loudspeaker announced the arrival of the next combatant, it was the eight-foot tall reptilian Wolf Pack lieutenant who entered the arena.

"Hmm. He doesn't look so tough," Sahara lied.

Striker One sized up his competition. The combatants in the first three rounds—aside from the now-deceased dwarf—had proven surprisingly underwhelming. Could Bronson really be that much tougher? They didn't even have to defeat him, only distract him long enough for Cobryn and Quig to free the other slaves. How difficult could that be?

The lizard-man flexed his clawed fingers around the hilt of his giant sword. "I'm sure you know your master's contract says that if you beat me, you get to go free," he said with a deep, sibilant voice. "What you may not know is that no one beats me. And I'll tell you why: I cheat."

At his words, the floor of the arena shifted. Formerly flat ground shot up ten feet, creating a wall around Sahara and sequestering Striker One with Bronson.

"But I don't want you to think that I'm a monster," said the Wolf Pack slaver. He dropped his sword on the ground. "Go ahead. Take the first hit."

Striker One didn't hesitate. He landed a right cross in what should have been the lizard-man's solar plexus. If it hurt the giant as much as it hurt Striker One's fist, the android might have a chance.

Bronson smiled a toothy grin. "My turn."

The spectators went nuts.

Striker One dug in his heels and wished Cobryn and Quig godspeed.

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So I've been telling this little story about this bull out in the field with six cows and three of them are pregnant. So you know he's got something going on. But all he cared about is kept his nose against the fence looking at three other cows that didn't belong to him. Now all he had to do is eat grass. But no, no, no, he thought something was better somewhere else. So he decided "I want to get over there." So one day he measured that fence up, and he say "I think I can jump this." So that day came where he got back, and he got back, and as he took off running, he dove over that fence and his belly got cut up under the bottom. But as he made it over to the other side, he shook it off and got so excited about it. And he ran to the top of that hill. But when he got up there, he realized they were bulls too. So what I'm telling you, don't think something is better somewhere else.

Opponents of Walker, a longtime resident of Texas and father of several bastard children, will read that and scream "hypocrite!" His supporters will read it and say "A wise man speaks from experience!" Aesop probably should have written a parable about that.

And, in fact, he did.¹

There was once a house that was overrun with mice. A cat heard of this, and said to herself, "That's the place for me," and off she went and took up her quarters in the house, and caught the mice one by one and ate them. At last the mice could stand it no longer, and they determined to take to their holes and stay there. "That's awkward," said the cat to herself. "The only thing to do is to coax them out by a trick." So she considered a while, and then climbed up the wall and let herself hang down by her hind legs from a peg, and pretended to be dead. By and by a mouse peeped out and saw the cat hanging there. "Aha!" it cried. "You're very clever, madam, no doubt; but you may turn yourself into a bag of meal hanging there, if you like, yet you won't catch us coming anywhere near you."

If you are wise you won't be deceived by the innocent airs of those whom you have once found to be dangerous.

¹Yes, yes. I know it's really "The Man and the Lion." Don't try to "The Fox and the Leopard" me!

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