Please Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas)

Curfew Breakers, or, Hooked

If you decide, after viewing the CURFEW BREAKERS clip, to rent this film, you'll have to look for it on DVD under its alternate title, HOOKED. It's a glorious mess, but not quite as outrageously stupid or weird as some of its ilk.

Follies of the Mad Men #45

[From Life magazine for September 30 1940.]

What kind of kids would a shellfish and a bottle have, and how would they go about reproducing?

Beer Ants

At Antimal House you can purchase modern-day ant farms like the ones kids used to buy out of the back of 10-cent comics.

One of them is shaped like a beer mug, filled with amber gel.

It comes with a removable lid. What are the chances that the lid will get removed, and that someone will swig this at a drunken party?

Drunk Driving Victim Deemed “Too Graphic”

Mike Harn is in a fight with Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Twenty years ago his wife, Rose, was in an accident caused by a teenage drunk driver. She was left brain-damaged and paralyzed. Ever since then Mike has been taking her around to schools and state fairs where he displays her (often in cooperation with MADD) as a kind of human atrocity exhibition, to illustrate the consequences of drunk driving.

That is, until some fair-goers at the Western Idaho Fair complained that the sight of Rose was "too graphic." MADD subsequently dropped Harn as a volunteer, citing the complaints about her. Mike Harn is outraged by this, noting that the point of showing Rose WAS to shock people.

The irony is that not too long ago people used to pay to see human exhibits like Rose at state fairs. I guess nowadays the fairs have been purged of anything strange or disturbing. But I wonder, if Mike Harn chose to visit the fair with his wife, in an unofficial capacity, they couldn't exactly stop him, could they? (Thanks, Bob!)

Sabrage

I've just learned about the art of opening a bottle of champagne with a sword. The practice is called sabrage.

You can watch a video here that teaches you how to do it yourself!

Color It Clean

So long as we've started a toilet thread, let's all watch "Color It Clean," so that we appreciate the men and women who maintain our public lavatories.



This film reminds me of Barney Gumble's autobiographical entry in the Springfield Film Festival. I could find the clip only in Italian, but that adds a certain frisson to the viewing experience, I think.

Bacon Bloody Marys

After Baconhenge and Bacon Beans, what other odd bacon bits could there be?

Well, what about Bacon Bloody Marys?

For some reason I am reminded of Lisa Simpson asking Bart to please stop stirring his lemonade with a sausage.

Hot Thrills and Warm Chills

What you will witness in the video to the right is the first few minutes of HOT THRILLS AND WARM CHILLS. (It's totally Safe for Work, though the film itself is not.) But the trailer can only begin to convey the true stupefying awfulness of the film.

The gal doing the dance is actress Rita Alexander, and she's the ringleader of a trio of female jewel thieves. She meets with her cronies in her apartment, where they discuss their sex lives, with flashbacks of some assorted mattress workouts. The gals are topless during these bouts, but both males and females retain their underwear during the tussles. The love noises are dubbed in, over unmoving or unsynced lips. And the mambo soundtrack makes everything seem as if it's taking place at a bullfight or a Herb Alpert concert.

Anyhow, the girls--who live in Reno--are planning a heist-- During Mardi Gras! That's right, I bet you never knew Reno had an annual Mardi Gras, and a "French Quarter" as well. But they do in this universe, even though all the exterior shots are plainly shot in New Orleans. Reno seems to have been chosen as "Sin City" because New Orleans wasn't bawdy enough!

Having outlined the heist, the girls go out on the town, to a club that features an energetic but awkward topless dancer. One gal picks up a stranger, but our protagonist decides to go home with a local cop she knows!

In due course, the fabled heist is committed--off camera and past tense! One cop chases the fleeing Rita and a pal through the Mardi Gras parade and into one of New Orleans' famous above-ground, crypt-filled cemeteries. Rita eludes him by darting into a crypt, but gets locked in. She freaks out--despite having plenty of air and light and a gun in her hand with which to shoot off the lock--and commits suicide, and the closing credits roll.

You may now pick your jaws up off the ground.

Follies of the Mad Men #23

[From Newsweek for January 10 1944.]

Surely nothing better evokes the confusing and guilty sensations associated with a "what's my name, and where did I leave my panties?" lost weekend better than a forgotten drink high atop a pole you shimmied up while looking for the bluebird of happiness.

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