Random

[urbpan]

Say what you want about Bush, but the man can duck a shoe. Ought to provide fodder for a few late night skits and editorial cartoons.

Last winter I made a snarky comment about Albuquerque when it got hit with a foot of snow (something like "cross Albuquerque off the list1") Portland (Oregon--I only need to make that distinction to New Englanders btw) just got a two inch dusting, the kind of snow that is beneath contempt for Bostonians--if you even mention it to your coworkers they groan and roll their eyes and get back to work. It's completely paralyzed the city, everything is closed except the bars, which would stay open during a nuclear attack from what I can tell. How do I know all this? I'm a member of damnportlanders, and they have gone absolutely crazy; every member there has posted pictures of the snow, or desperate pleas about how to get into a car with frozen locks. My god, the things I take for granted.

Yesterday's happy thing was spending almost all of it next to my wife. It was warm and cuddly.

Oh, I haven't crossed Portland off the list. If two inches of snow is rare enough to flummox the whole city, that's a good thing. Their long-range weather forecast is much nastier than Boston this week, but this too shall pass. They'll be watching flowers bloom in March when we're still trying to come up with new layers to wear.

This just in: Bush made a stop in Afghanistan, where Hamid Kharzai threw his shoes at him. Kharzai is currently the only Afghan who owns shoes, and rumors indicate he was paid a hefty sum to throw them. Bush caught them in mid air and threw them back.

I fell asleep last night with the movie Spaceballs as my background. I saw it in the theater, and even as a teenager I recognized it as a huge disappointment from the director who brought us Young Frankenstein. In the intervening years it's become a cult hit with the kids. I was curious to see if there was something I missed when I saw it the first time. Nope. It's still a half hour's worth of (mostly bad) jokes stuffed into an hour and half. It's a mix of stale borscht belt comics (Joan Rivers as C3P0?), "Police Academy"-quality 80's humor, and non-comedians (Bill Pullman in a comic role? He was funnier in Independence day) telling you they are about to tell a joke, then telling you they told a joke, then telling you they just told you a joke a while ago. There were a couple spots where the timing worked and I laughed, but they were surrounded by what seemed like hours of tedium and embarrassment. I didn't know I could feel embarrassed for John Candy. When sleep came it was a relief.

Comments

[brush-rat.livejournal.com]

I've never seen that all the way through and young people keep telling me I must. Thanks for saving me. Your assessment of it is precisely what I felt in the bits I saw

Good Lord, "I'm a a mog, half man, half dog" doesn't get funny no matter how many times you repeat it.

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

I've always found "that's the kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage" to have a lot of mileage.

[livsmama.livejournal.com]

I read the "get Rich Slowly " blog. They are in Portland telling us all about their garden all year long. March and April tend to make Minnesotans--and probably you all--bitter at the rest of the country!

[elizaeffect.livejournal.com]

Say what you will about Spaceballs, but my VHS copy got me through many a potential babysitting nightmare as a teenager. :D

[urimancy.livejournal.com]

It snowed late one night in Austin a week or so ago, and the local reactions were also pretty amusing. That same afternoon it had reached 79 degrees before a cold front blew in, and by the next morning it was warming up again. I hope we do get at least one good freeze that shuts everything down for a few days this winter; when it doesn't happen often, it's kind of fun.

I've never actually lived anywhere as an adult where it's both snowed significantly in the winter and I've had a car. I feel so sheltered.

And yeah, Spaceballs is pretty stupid. It seemed hilarious to me when I was 12 or 13, though. I think I watched it about 30 times. How embarrassing.

[grace-batmonkey.livejournal.com]

PNW snow shenanigans are generally fairly amusing, and they never get enough snow (at least not so far; I guess we'll see what changes the climate shift will introduce...) to complicate or shut things down for too long.

I mean, I'd resist driving on those days just because there are so many other clueless and/or scared people driving erratically, but everyone generally expects you to be choosy about leaving the house when the white stuff has bothered to stick around, so it's not a big deal. I really enjoyed the snow up there. Far better than ABQ.

"Spaceballs" was insisted upon as one of the few movie outings I made with a beloved friend when it first hit theaters, and I was always a bit dubious about my friend's taste after that. I just don't have the right funny bone tuning for it. Until now, though, I always thought I was alone in that. And now I know I'm not. Woohoo! Thanks ;]

[txtriffidranch.livejournal.com]

On the Portland situation, I noticed the same exact thing when I lived there back in 1996-97. Innsmouth West seems to be filled with people who (a) drive like they got their driver's licenses and discovered crack on the same day, and that was last Tuesday, and (b) arrogant twits who figure that just because everyone else on their street is stuck at the bottom of a hill doesn't mean that it'll happen to them. When we were hit with a bad ice storm right around New Year's Day 1997, I had just been laid off, so I got to watch the entitlement brats slip, slide, and sue each other all day long.

(This was also the storm right after USWest bought up Pacific Bell, and the first move USWest made was to lay off the majority of its repair crews. Downtown Portland was without phone service other than pay phones for nearly a week, but some outlying areas had no land line service for nearly six months as they restrung phone lines over most of the state. I suspect that this was the factor that really pushed Portlanders into cell phones, as USWest was about as dependable as a two-dollar watch.)

As for Spaceballs, I had hopes that it was going to be better than History of the World, Part 1, and the previews were creatively edited to make the film look funny. While I pretty much credit Star Trek IV for making me reconsider the value of science fiction fandom and thereby leave it, listening to hordes of Cat Piss Men blathering about how incredibly funny that dead lymph node of a film was became my confirmation that I was making the right decision.

[buboniclou.livejournal.com]

Man, I loved that movie when I was a kid. I guess it's good for under-teenage humor? I haven't watched it in the last 10-15 years to see whether it's still good.

[(Anonymous)]

I love vespabelle's comment about snow, efficiency, and enjoyment. Right on!

~Flaneuse in DC