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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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Purple rain.

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121/2130. Yesterday (2019)
Something about this romantic comedy, something I can't quite put my finger on, made it really hard for me to watch. And I didn't decide it was worthwhile until the scene with "John Lennon." Maybe it was because the whole thing takes place in a nightmare alternate universe without Coca-Cola. It's a horror movie!

Come together. Right now. Over me.

122/2131. Two Guys from Texas (1948)
The joke here is that these fish-out-of-water stage comedians aren't *really* from Texas, see? The broad comedy of the Dennis Morgan + Jack Carson team did get a chuckle or two out of me in this one, especially in the Bugs Bunny short.

123/2132. April Showers (1948)
In this one, Jack Carson plays a mediocre vaudevillian who doesn't know... well, much of anything. The by-the-numbers melodramatic script, essentially a frame for an assortment of vaudeville-like musical numbers, doesn't do any favors for his "wife" and "son," either. But the film does have some value as being based on the real life story of the formative years of true comedic genius Buster Keaton.

124/2133. The Deep (1977)
Before watching this underwater pirate adventure movie (the sunken treasure is drugs!), I didn't like Nick Nolte, but I did like Jacqueline Bissett. (She and her white t-shirt are the whole reason I chose to watch this.) After seeing him boss her around like a soggy caveman for the duration, I still don't like Nolte.

More to come.

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Today was the 100th annual Georgia Homecoming football game. As is often the case, it was against Vanderbilt, who played UGA in the very first homecoming game on November 18, 1922. As is often the case, the Bulldogs won big. (To be fair, Vandy won 12-0 in 1922, and went on to finish the season undefeated, their second undefeated season in a row. Obviously, 1922 was a different time.)

Despite the score, I had a lot more fun this week, in part because the Dawgs scored early (and often), in part because Mom came with me, and in part because we arrived a hour before kickoff and got to watch plenty of Homecoming pomp.

One thing worth documenting: As I've mentioned before, UGA has replaced paper tickets with e-tickets, accessible only on smartphones. I had both tickets on my phone, and both had to be scanned for Mom and me to enter the stadium. However, after scanning the first ticket, my phone received a text notification... which temporarily locked out the ticket app. Oops! It was no big deal at the time — we were, in fact, the only people in our line — but this presages potential trouble on a busier day when, say, a boisterous (read: drunk) Tennessee crowd comes to town.

From now on, airplane mode.

(Side note: It didn't help anything that my phone case broke on Wednesday. So I did what anyone would do and fixed my smartphone with duct tape. It really is good for everything!)

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