Thursday, February 05, 2009

Zombie Strippers: Brought To You By Enron

FIRST things first. Today's lunch is yet another grilled turkey & cheese, which is the last time this is happening for awhile, mostly because I have run through the package of turkey, but also, at least partly, because I think my recent fascination with orange American cheese-- yeah yeah, I know, it's supposed to be called "yellow," but let's face facts-- has run it's course. It started with a classic American cheeseburger at my local joint, and has had it's numerous happy moments-- included the recent chili cheese fries, which had a slice of American in the middle, which I have decided to start calling The Cheese Bomb-- and these sandwiches, which are just kind of nifty, what with the mixture of the white American and the stuff we normally call "plastic cheese."



Today I wanted to start with that not just out of form, but because the film of the day is not, definitely not, most emphatically not Zombie Strippers.



The Wifey put this in the Blockbuster Online queue when she first saw it was coming out. The hype at the time was that it was part smart satire and part high-camp comedy. The fact of the matter is that it is a low-grade pile of dogshit dreamed up by a guy who considers himself the smartest guy in any room he ever walked into, and never bothered to hear anyone else's opnion on the matter. He claims to have based the thing on Eugene Ionesco's play Rinocerous, which is just fucking insulting, both to Ionesco and facism. And the fact that I am watching it during the Obama presidency makes the satire-- lemme back out of that-- makes the "satire" smack all the more sour. (And fuck you, I have read all the AE Houseman there is to read, including his lectures.)



Rinocerous was all about how easy it was for people in mid-century Europe to slip into facism. Stripper Zombies is about how easy it is to be a Maxim-loving frat-boy douchebag who happens to have read some philosophy way back in some bong-dimmed era. Besides that, if your idea of a hard target for satire is the Bush Administration, the administration that satirized itself, really, how smart can you be?



And while I will admit that it was fun hearing Robert Englund make a very old joke indeed-- telling one of the zombie victims they are keeping in the basement to "Make like a tree, and get the fuck out of here!"-- about the time one of the zombie strippers made a reference to The Warriors, I was just too goddamned cheesed off to finish watching the goddamned thing. Good thing I don't do this for money.



The beer of the day was a Saranac Black & Tan. Which I followed with a Saranac Black & Tan. The only thing to follow a B&T with is another B&T. After Zombie Strippers, the movie of the day could be almost any frickin' thing. Whatever it might be, it'll be better. It pretty much has to be.

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4 Comments:

Blogger joe said...

Zombies and strippers? In the same movie! How can that possibly be a bad flick?

I'm running out to rent it right now.

By the way, Jim. A friend recently told me that the Charleton Heston Omega Man was actually the original I Am Legend that Will Smith recently did a remake of. Is that true? Thought you'd be the man to ask.

10:24 AM  
Blogger joe said...

ps.. By the way, I did get the subtle reference between "Enron" and "the smartest man in the room."

10:25 AM  
Blogger Bobo the Wandering Pallbearer said...

Yeah, Omega Man is based on I Am Legend, but the original film was Tha Last Man On Earth, but none of the films, hoot though they collectively are, even approach the bizarro philo-weirdosity of the orginal story/novellette by Mattheson.

3:37 PM  
Blogger joe said...

Hey Jim, I watched The Omega Man tonight and would love to hear your comments about it on my blog... Joe

9:29 PM  

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