Blogging An American Carol

So I have a bunch of work to do before I'm ready to take a trip to Spain on Thurs, not the least being my big Old English exam, but some things can wait and others can't. I had to put down The Dream of the Rood to study a different artifact sure to have anthropologists of the future dissecting it for centuries to come. I am, of course, talking about David Zucker's An American Carol, a movie I have been perversely excited to see. Luckily, watch-movies.net has it uploaded so I don't actually have to give anyone money for the joy I am anticipating (which would, incidentally, decrease my joy considerably). What happens when the creator of such comedy classics as Airplane! and The Naked Gun puts together a satire or the Amurrica-hatin', Commie-lovin', baby-abortin', dope-smokin' liberal left joined by a cast dripping with desperation (Gary Coleman, Chris Farley's brother) mixed with senility (Leslie Nielson and the boss from Seinfeld who's now on Family Feud), smugness (Bill O'Reilly, playing himself) and the only social conservatives in Hollywood (John Voight, Kelsey Grammer, Trace Adkins)? I can't wait to find out!


(This cartoon is from a blog raving about the film: "At long last, a Hollywood film that isn't flamingly Moonbatty!"

I'm going to blog about the first fifteen minutes or so, just so I can pretend we're enjoying this together. You can follow along here (I'm using the third link) if you feel so inclined. Or perhaps you think you're above spending your evening watching Gary Coleman play a character named Bacon Stains Malone...?

• It opens on a 4th of July picnic as grandpa Leslie Nielson, surprisingly still vertical, flips USA-burgers for his clan of lily-white children. Then, true to his roots as an American comedy giant, Leslie pegs an old lady in the face with a frisbee. Leslie's back!
• The story of the "Scrooge who hated the 4th of July" begins in Afghanistan, where everyone's named Mohammad Huessein! Hahaha! Their culture's different than ours! For some reason, however, when something goes wrong the leader swears, "Jesus!" Given that it's not played for comedic effect, methinks David Zucker could've done a little bit more research into fundamentalist Muslim culture...



• 4:56 - "Leader," pleads a terrorist, "ever since the Americans came people have hope now, they are voting, women own buisinesses." Mission Accomplished! Wait, does that mean we can leave now? The Taliban (which is apparently made up of three guys) decides they need to find a director to make recruitment videos for them who hates America (which "won't be hard to find in Hollywood," har har; real patriots make movies about frisbees to the face). Enter Chris Farley's brother playing Michael Moore (here, Michael Malone).
  
• 6:33 - How does David Zucker tackle Michael Moore's footage of bringing desperate Americans to Cuba for health care? By showing us what we all really know Cuba is like: dirty, Hispanic commies who execute wheelchair-bound Americans for no reason. When Malone wraps shooting of his movie, Die You American Pigs (seriously) gets back on his raft to leave, all the Cubans rush it to leave their Godforsaken shithole of an island and arrive at America's shining shores.



• 9:05 - Michael Malone snubs some Boy Scouts taking donations for our troops in Iraq. Why? If you hate the war, you hate our troops, duh. He goes and buys Girl Scout cookies instead. Cuz he's fat!!
  
• 10:00 - Malone's 4th of July abolition rally is fronted by a send up on MoveOn.org (here MooveAlong). Zucker unmasks MoveOn for what it really is: an organization run by ignorant teenagers (they don't know who Nixon is - they really must be Commies) and supported by the following embarrassing groups: People Against the American Way, Vegans Against Fur, Manboy Loveboat, Padawami Casino and the Church of Entitlement. I like that Native Americans and vegans rank up there with pedophiles on the conservative hate-scale. (btw, wouldn't Manboy Loveboat make a great band name?)
• 11:40 - Michael Malone eats rat-infested pizzas and buckets of lard. Subtle, Zucker. Bob Cratchet shows up in the form of Michael Malone's country music-lovin', navy-hero nephew. He invites Malone to a Trace Adkins concert (who is, according to this movie, a big country music star all over America except in New York). Does this mean Trace Adkins is Fezziwig??
• 13:50 - Malone's agent: "Apparently Michael, the people who like your movies don't actually go to movies." This must really be a subtle dig at the Academy after they gave Moore that Oscar back in 2003, yet have overlooked such David Zucker gems like Superhero Movie and Scary Movie 4. They probably don't like Trace Adkins either.
• 14:06 - No, it's even better: "I'm an Oscar-winning director," Malone says. "Yeah," counters his agent, "for a documentary," as he makes the jack-off motion with his hand. Does David Zucker go to movies?
• 15:40 - Hey, Paris Hilton's in this! Does she even know that she's being used as a punchline? Does she even care? She's presenting the MooveAlong.org award for best documentary, the Leni Reifenstahl Award. Get it?? GET IT??! "Through the creative manipulation of truth, she was able to influence history, demonstrating the power of film. Although unfortunately resulting in the death of over 60,000,000 people in World War II, her place in any cinematic hall of fame is secure." GET IT? GET IT?????!! David Zucker really doesn't like documentaries, huh?

Holy fucking shit, it just keeps getting better and better. I'd love to blog about it minute by minute, but the real fun comes from watching it not reading about it. Remember in my last blog post how I said one of my favorite things is when parodies are so ridiculous they become parodies of themselves? That's An American Carol in a big way and, suffice to say, it's even better than I could have even imagined.

UPDATE: I just finished watching it and my mouth was seriously open for the last 30 minutes. There is absolutely no way to anticipate things like Dennis Hopper picking off ACLU members with a shotgun while they try to remove the Ten Commandments from a courtroom or Trace Adkins telling Michael Malone that a stadium full of marines listening to modern country was "the real America" (Sarah Palin all over). Everyone has to see this movie.

Dream Journal vol. 3

You know what's more boring than vacation photos? Someone telling you about their dreams. Luckily, my blog has both of these features. I figure it must be like a double-negative making a positive because my blog is the most interesting blog ever.
Nothing new from the past couple of days: I've just been hella-stressed trying to tie up all the loose ends before I leave in a couple of weeks and still enjoy myself. Did you know that I have to write 3 essays over Christmas break? Gag me. One of them is going to be about Great Expectations. I'm expecting it to be greatly boring.
I also have a test in Old English next Wednesday. I just finished cramming some of the grammar and I'm feeling a little bit more confident. I'm at least confident that I'm not a dumbass, because, in cramming I've realized that one of my main stumbling blocks was the sheer amount of grammatical cases we have to memorize. How am I supposed to remember the 16 different case-types the word "they" can take? It's ridiculous!
It's all studying from now on, though. I've just finished translating The Dream of the Rood, an Old English poem about a guy who dreams Jesus' cross comes flying into his room and talks to him. The cross tells him how horrible it was to be the cross that Christ was killed on and how sad it made him. At no point does the dreamer question the authenticity of the flying, talking, sentient, 1000-year-old cross. I guess if you're willing to accept such a thing's existence, it's not a stretch to believe what it has to tell you (especially if what it has to tell you is the same old boring crucifixion story: "They nailed Jesus to me and I was sad! Wah!" - you're a cross!)

My dreams over the last month haven't been about flying religious curios. Than what? Read on...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I dreamed I was traveling with the cast of Futurama in a black, death-metal mini-bus from Africa to a famine-ravaged Poland. We had been told to leave Africa, where the hyenas were plentiful - a common source of food - by a deceitful, giant snake. At least the leader of our crew somehow obtained one of the snake's serrated fangs. While I was showing it to the crew members at the back of the mini-bus I put it in my mouth and sucked on it, forgetting that it was venomous. Upon remembering this, I spit it onto the row of seats in front of me and determinedly fought off sleep and inevitable death.

The bus wound up at the entrance of my private high school, running over a sign advertising the Eminem concert set to take place that night. Because of this violation, Irish cops in yellow reflective jumpers stopped our bus and we couldn't go any further.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I dreamed I was a regular at a gambling parlor with Max Bussman. I didn't have the requisite entrance fee so Max spotted me enough pounds to get in, but I had to hold the pile of clothes he was carrying while he did so and I lost one of his socks.
I told him he could have one of mine once we made our way up to his bedroom and I'd scattered the pile of clothes on the floor. I convinced him my socks were clean, but it took some time.

Later, I was using the bathroom in his house when his mom came home to give a piano lesson. I held the curtain over the window that was unfortunately set at eye-level to those sitting on the toilet, giving a direct view out into the driveway. While I was attempting some modesty, his dad came through the hallway where the door was open and noticed his Buddy Holly Greatest Hits CD at my feet and he asked me if I owned it. I told him that no, I had a different greatest hits collection.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Last night in the Dublin hostel I dreamed that the hostel owners took our bags from our room while they were serving us breakfast and there was nothing we could do about it. I also dreamed that I, or a friend, had a flying machine that manuevered the swampy green fields right outside the hostel window.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I dreamed I woke up in a Washington, DC apartment I was temporarily staying in with Raphaela and a different friend while some sort of festival was in full swing. On adjacent buildings and all through the street people were committing all sorts of naked Mardi Gras-style debauchery. The apartment was even full of people no one knew, most of them drugged up on the floor or patiently sitting on the couch. None of them remembered how they got in.

My friend was gone and all that remained familiar was Raphaela's hungry pet ferret that I finally cornered in a room for it's own safety. I blocked the door with boxes so it couldn't get out. Ferrets can't climb.

I left the people in the apartment and walked down the street wearing a nice sport coat and hoping I'd run into Bill Clinton. After I struck a leisurely pose on a concrete city planter, Bill came by and welcomed me to join him and Hilary in the Capital building. We were on a first name basis.

They had me wait in a little kitchen filled with terrible, rowdy kids and an overwrought babysitter. I tried to give her advice - "Don't back down; stay consistent" - but it didn't help anything. The kids were so out of control I barely constrained myself from slapping on of them or boxing their ears, despite their age. Finally Hilary came to collect me and gave me a VIP All-Access badge to the Capital building: a white heart sticker with cherries inside of it. We then left together to have lunch in George Washington's old office, which had been kept just as he left it. Marveling at the room, Hilary and I ran our hands over all the first president's possessions, especially his lovely mahogany desk.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I dreamed my mom read my dad an article in the newspaper about Chinese overpopulation and expressed the view that this made her scared I would become the next Charles Manson. I told her that assumption offended me, but I couldn't make her understand why. I said, "As long as I grow up right, I'll be fine."
My dad's solution to growing up right: "Wheat. Oats. Cookies."

~~~~~

Ok Junior Freuds out there: what does it all mean?