Fartbeeps

Last night I found myself up at 2am. I was wide-awake and as jittery as a virgin at a prison rodeo. Because I was alone in my insomnia, I turned to an old friend....my television. It's been some time since I have sunk to the levels of watching infomercials, but there I was blinking mindlessly at a bright flickering screen.
The popular product featured was, The Magic Bullet, which to me always sounded more pornographic than food related, but what the hell...I watched it anyways. 15 minutes later, I headed downstairs to make something similar to the foods that seemed to be produced so effortlessly by those infomercial actors. I gave up after realizing that we lacked the necessary ingredients to make "homemade" queso dip.

Defeated and downright exhausted I headed back upstairs and slumped into bed. My hand fumbled with the remote until I reached a movie entitled, "Heartbeeps"or as I like to call it, "Fartbeeps." I can always tell a shitty movie by two things. 1. Randy Quaid is in it 2. Randy Quaid is in it and he's SKINNY! The opening music was so horrible, that I started to feel strange and embarrassed. Upon closer examination, I realized that the main characters were the late comedy legend Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters. WTF?! It was SO AWFUL that I could not stop watching. Then to my shock and surprise I recognized Christopher Guest and remember that opening music(?), well it was by John Williams!

This morning, as I tried to purge my memory of this movie I happened upon www.imdb.com, the Internet movie database. According to this site, the movie was released in 1981 to very poor reviews but managed to win two academy awards for makeup (which I can't understand because I have seen better makeup jobs on street whores). Because this movie was such a "flop" Andy Kaufman's "The Tony Clifton Story," was tossed by virtually all movie studios.

But don't take my word for it, the people at HBO thought it would be a good time to break out "Fartbeeps" from it's vault. However, if you would prefer to condense the 79 minutes that it takes to view this film check out this link. One of the funniest reviews I have seen since Mystery Science Theater. Enjoy!

http://www.x-entertainment.com/articles/0790/

Banging Cinderella

Last night I decided to treat my kids to a movie night at home. I would like to call this a tradition, but I am hardly vigilant about baths so for argument's sake we will just call it a movie night whim. So as the popcorn was emitting possible deadly fumes from it's microwaveable bag, I went through our Disney movie collection. I was doing this in the hopes that my son would pass right over Cinderella. Not a chance! For the third time in a row, he reached for that worn case with it's popular princess on the cover. I tried distracting him with Shrek but to no avail. As I popped in the tape (yes, I said tape as in VHS tape) it occurred to me that he might want to BE Cinderella rather than just BANG her. My mind flashed to scenes of us walking with arms locked giggling about men. He is trying to talk me out of purchasing "old lady shoes" and gingham kitchen curtains with patterns of roosters on them. Not a bad vision to have except for the rooster curtains. If I have learned one thing from the gay people that are in my life, it's that "being gay" was not a choice for them. It was just the way they woke up from puberty.

By the end of the movie, all he could talk about were the animals, and how pretty Cinderella was. And all I could talk about was how much therapy she might need after living her whole life unloved by her step-mother and step-sisters and how running off and getting married to staive off the pain of her Father's death would come back to bite her in the ass one day. My son gave me a puzzled look, and I pretended like I didn't just say that. It's amazing to me how very different our perceptions change as adults. All this time, I had him pegged for wanting to be a princess and he just wanted to see some mice sing, dance, and dress humans. As of 4pm today there has been no mention of Cinderella or her rodent friends. Tomorrow, who knows. Sleeping Beauty anyone?