THE BENEFITS OF EDUCATION
(And Other Tales of Talking Hindsight)
A few quotes from pay TV shows, assorted ill-considered other viewing, and the pages of real life.
“What are you trying to do? Send them all home to commit suicide?”
- Playwright Eugene O’Neill’s dad gives him an early review, and the artsy Ovation channel contributes a rare thigh-slapper
“People like to see you move your fingers fast.”
- Miles Davis’s response when sax player Dave Liebman asked why he even needed him in the band - from another Ovation channel documentary
“I’m not a woman, so I stay on my feet.”
- A disconsolate Thierry Henry skips the sportsmanship (and feminism classes) after Arsenal loses the Champions League final to Barcelona.
“It’s Harry Kewell’s groin that has Australia transfixed.”
- Leith Mulligan, Nine news 2/6/’06. Leith - you get transfixed by what you want, and I’ll stay transfixed by what I want.
“Anyone who needs psychology is sick in the head.”
“Marriage is probably the chief cause of divorce.”
- both Frank Burns, “M.A.S.H.”
“They were seemingly being sucked into the quicksands of relegation.”
- Commentator, Fox Sports 2, Portsmouth v Blackburn Rovers, some time back. Striking imagery. I was waiting for Tarzan to vine-swing to the rescue.
“Got a crack in the spine of his back.”
- oldie from Dermott Brereton on Nine, earlier in the AFL season. That would be as opposed to the spare spine everyone keeps in their sock.
“I’ve had the pleasure of talking to him on many occasions, and the man’s nuts…He’s completely crazy.”
- Boxing commentator Allen Massingill celebrates the ringside presence of WWE owner/chairman/ringmaster Vince McMahon, at the Floyd Mayweather Jr vs Zab Judah pay-per-view
“This is indeed a watercress moment for MNM tonight.”
- Wrestling commentator Michael Cole introduces tag team MNM before the opening match of the WWE “Judgement Day” pay-per-view show. I checked back - this is actually what he said. Unless the local vicar dropped by for the pre-match buffet, I think he probably meant “watershed”. Certainly a watercress moment in live commentary, however.
“They’re two of the great light-heavyweights of all time.”
- Main Event channel promo for the Antonio Tarver-Bernard Hopkins title fight. Hopkins fought virtually his entire career at middleweight. He’s had hardly any fights at light-heavyweight, and those were over 15 years ago. Tarver’s the best light-heavy around now, but you’d be stretching like Reed Richards in the Fantastic Four to make him one of the greats of all time, at least right now.
Just to spice things up a little, on the website, they referred to them as “The two pound-for-pound champs”. The pound-for-pound designation in boxing is a hypothetical comparison between fighters of different weights. For one thing, there isn’t one “pound-for-pound champ” let alone two. For another, you’d be struggling to find a pound-for-pound ranking in which either of these fighters was currently ranked above the lower reaches of the top 10. Nice research job all around there.
“The former Bulldog with the French-sounding name, Danny Del-Re”
- Bob Davis promos a guest for the Fox Footy channel “Grumpy Old Men” show
I don’t know of what ethnic extraction Danny Del-Re is, and I wouldn’t expect Bobby Davis to have a clue either, but I will say this, with all the authority of my A in fifth form French back when dinosaurs and Raquel Welch ruled the world - that isn’t a particularly French-sounding surname. Italian would be my best guess. You could get away with Spanish-sounding. The “Re” part probably means “King” and the French for king is “Roi”, not “Re” or “Rey”. Again, whoever was writing the copy for the promo obviously really worked themselves into a frenzy over the research here.
- And this week’s award winner, from Fox 8’s “Celebrity Poker Showdown”, comes from some guy called Andrew who was once on that reality show “Bachelor”:
“People think I only like roses - I like other fauna as well.”
Well, I guess if Air Supply could have a song called “Love and Other Bruises”, there’s no reason why Andrew couldn’t one day release an album called “Roses and Other Fauna”.
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If you’re a long-term footy crackpot, you ought to get a real kick out of this feature I stumbled over on the World Wide Internerd. Some folks have made fine use of their apparently considerable leisure hours and put together a listing for each VFL/AFL club of the worst possible team, with players in position. Some of it might be a little harsh, and then again, some of it might not be. It’ll bring back some golden memories, that’s for sure.
http://www.footballinvective.com/features/worstsides.html
TEN GREAT HORROR MOVIES THEY NEVER MADE
From the world-spanning resources of the Web-O-Leaps entertainment desk what I am sitting at, here - revealed for the first time - are ten potentially unforgettable horror movies, which were proposed but never completed production.
1 - TASTE THE SOUP OF DRACULA (Spanner/Former Brothers)
Bored with blood-letting and Sudoku puzzles, the scion of Evil, Count Dracula (Hugh O‘Brien) invites local dignitaries to an expansive dinner-party. Unfortunately half of them can’t follow the directions, one has a baby with a wind problem and most of the rest give it a miss due to the final episode of “Transylvanian Idol”. Then the soup boils over, leading to untold horrors.
2 - HOUSE OF 1000 DENTISTS (New Shirt)
Any four 25 year olds that might be confused with teenagers if you squint a little are sucked into a 98 minute never-ending vortex of horror when they accidentally stumble into a hotel bar during a dental convention.
(Michael J. Pollard, Larry Storch, Karen Black, Clint Howard.)
3 - BRIDE OF FINKELSTEIN (Galactic Interstate)
Finkelstein marries inadvisedly, even though his mother (Vanessa Redgrave) warned him. Oy, the horror.
(Daniel J. Travanti, Liza Minnelli, Nipsy Russell, Erika Eleniak)
4 - NIGHT OF THE LIVING SHED (Miracle)
On a night of severe atmospheric disturbance and marital disharmony, some guy (Michael Douglas) spills several cans of ultra-hi-alcohol pre-mix bourbon and coke in his backyard at the same time that lightning strikes. His shed comes to life, terrorising the community, with horror, and chips.
(Glenn Close, Bobcat Goldthwaite, Rik Mayall)
5 - FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE AUDITED (Spanner/20th Saveloy-Lox)
Fevered with inspiration, Frankenstein’s great-great-grandson, by his great-niece’s eldest, Myron, once removed on Cousin Gertie’s side, (Rick Schroeder) is poised to attain the pinnacle of his research into the animation of dead tissue, when his mad financial adviser Melvin Blotnik (Ralph Fiennes) gets him in schtuck with the tax office. Horror results.
(Justin Timberlake, Tori Amos, Debra Winger, the Max Weinberg Seven)
6 - BANTAM OF THE OPERA (United Arctic)
Embittered by the lack of acclaim for his latest operatic masterwork, “The Washing-Machine Repairmen of Prague”, composer Zurban Plookermonger (Geoffrey Rush) goes insane and writes an entire opera based on former world bantamweight boxing champions. As Detective Griff Ironjaw (Jeff Fenech) investigates, it becomes obvious that someone is bumping off all the great bantamweights invited to the world premiere, at the MGM Grand Garden Casino. An eerie half-masked and fully-gloved figure, in ring-robe, is seen lurking around the craps tables and committing minor fraud with restaurant comps, foreshadowing further horror.
(Gwyneth Paltrow, Michael Buffer, Ruben Olivares, Andrew McCarthy, Fighting Harada, Michael Crawford, Madonna, Don King)
7 - GHIDRAH - THE THREE-TOED ACCOUNTANT (Oho)
As a strange result of nuclear testing, Gideon Rubinowitz (John Travolta) visiting Tokyo on a mild-mannered accountant exchange program, is struck by uranium rays not long after he loses two toes on his left foot in a tragic food-preparation accident. Now 153 feet and 9 inches tall, he stalks through Tokyo causing death, devastation and horror, and offering surprisingly competitive rates for tax minimisation.
(Sonny Chiba, Fay Dunaway, Kelly LeBrock, Pauly Shore)
8 - THE BEAST FROM 20,000 BARMITZVAHS (Axis International)
Reception band bass-player Herman Gherkin (Tom Cruise) goes insane after one too many versions of “The Greatest Love of All” and runs amok, flinging ham sandwiches around the Lefkowitz barmitzvah. A tragic accident involving a faulty fuzz pedal charges him with electricity creating a powerful insane monster, hell-bent on terrorising reception centres and playing the Pink Panther theme over and over again at devastating volume, to much horror.
(Danny DeVito, Barry Manilow, Spike Lee, Gilbert Gottfried, Tori Spelling)
9 - THE PIT AND THE PENMANSHIP (Mezzo-Goldblatt-Minor)
A crazed 15th Century count (Chazz Palmintieri) driven insane by a lifetime obsession with calligraphy and inadequate vitamin C in his diet, terrorises local peasants, using his donation of the local village school (Liza Minnelli) as a front for his murderous activities in which he kills people for poor handwriting. In his pit. With horror.
10 - THE WOLF-PERSON (Paralytic Pictures)
Bitten by a mysterious, hairy but balding, terrifying creature of the night (Michael Bolton), carefree wayfarer and wayfree careferer Ramolo Obarstool (Johnny Depp/Christina Ricci) becomes a sexually awkward-to-define werewolf, who terrorises passers-by for imposing gender roles on him/her, and failing to use “Ms” as a standard term of address on envelopes, in a spree of horror resulting in the creature’s election to parliament, and subsequent regular appearances on panel shows.
(Whoopi Goldberg, Tommy Dean Jones, Harry Lee Stanton, Kenny G, Dan Aykroyd)
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