comparison

I can't remember if I've posted this before. I can't tell from my helpful subject line comments in the Calendar list. So let's enjoy this piece all over again. I even got to update it slightly.

( There's always the diner. Or the whorehouse. )

...and this positively infantile preoccupation with bosoms!

I didn't think I was gonna be home today but apparently in an attempt to keep from paying out holiday pay, $COMPANY has graciously decreed I get today off, but I'll have to go in tomorrow, my usual day off. That I don't really mind except that on my schedule the day tomorrow is listed as a "FORCED DAY." Hey, fellas, could you dehumanize us any more?

So to celebrate having nothing to do today I've gone and hooked up the VCR, which had been languishing on top of the fridge since April 2003. I'm watching some movies on VHS, movies that I haven't seen in a very long time. When I got my DVD player in January 2003 I made a rule not to re-buy any films on DVD that I already had on VHS. I think I've only purchased three 'repeat' films since, and two of them were to replace broken videocassettes. Last night I watched The Kentucky Fried Movie, some Soupy Sales highlight tapes, and Diner (which inspired me to bring back the piece I'd written in December of 2001, the last time I saw the film.) Today so far I've started out with It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

I love this stupid movie. I really do. The sheer amount of comedians in the film is staggering. Oh, all the leads are great, what with Spencer Tracy going nuts, Milton Berle actually playing with the team for once, Sid Caesar filling in for Ernie Kovacs and falling into some yellow, Terry-Thomas giving an incredible rant about the state of American society and the "preoccupation with bosoms", Buddy Hackett doing some of his best facial mugging ever (just watch him in the plane after Jim Backus tells him to fly) and, my favorite, Jonathan Winters destroying a gas station run by Marvin Kaplan and Arnold Stang (I do a pretty decent Stang impression when I feel like it, and it usually starts with "Oh, Irwin...") Sure, the story may be weak, but honestly, do you need it right now?

Do you need it when you've got almost four minutes of Dick Shawn go-go dancing with a stone-faced model? Phil Silvers doing his usual scheming schtick? Doodles Weaver at the hardware store? Stan Freberg, known for his radio voice, in a silent background role, leaving the speaking to Andy Devine? Buster Keaton in a speaking role? Jimmy Durante literally kicking the bucket? (The bucket joke, by the way, gets me every time. No matter how stupid it is. I also admit, however shamefully, to laughing at Berle's reaction when Ethel Merman asks where she can put a cactus. He doesn't need to actually tell her where she can put it, nor does he even have to say that he has a response. All he has to do is snort, and I'm on the floor.)

The stick-loads-of-celebrities-in-the-money-chasing-comedy was, of course, duplicated to some degree of success in Rat Race (right down to the twist chase at the end) but really, the only thing the recent film had going for it was the brilliant squirrel gag. Ok, and the I Love Lucy impersonator bus. But Rat Race is ultimately doomed, and the one thing that dooms it is the one thing that Mad Mad Mad Mad World explicitly denies its characters.

( Redemption. )

Ok, that's the film. I think next I'm going to either watch Chinatown or Pecker. Some choices, eh?