Friday, June 4, 2004
Hosted by: The Diesel
Movies:
Unholy Rollers (1972)
Cheap Seats, 200 Pound Tumors, and other miscellaneous Diesel television musings
Elvis and the Beauty Queen (1981)
Miss Universe and other miscellaneous Brother Nature television musings
American Idol, Saturday Night Live, the Red Sox, and other miscellaneous Ahchie
television musings
Man in the Brown Suit, The (1989)
Quotes:
"Matt Stairs - you know he farted when he landed."
Throcksmorton
"Wake up the damn Bambino and have me face him. Maybe I'll drill him
in the ass"
Pedro Martinez
Ken Griffey, Jr. Turnaround
Since Ken Griffey, Jr. made a special appearance at Festival #42 on Friday, April 2nd, 2004, his career appears to be back on track. The following stats and headlines show compare Griffey before and after his festival appearance:
Griffey, Jr. BEFORE appearance at Festival #42
2003 Stats
53 games, 13 home runs, 26 runs batted in, .247 batting average
Headlines (from Cincinnati Post)
3/18/04 - "Commentary: Reds should deal Jr. to Seattle"
3/30/04 - "Griffey slips and injures calf"
Griffey, Jr. AFTER appearance at Festival #42
2004 Stats through May 31st
48 games, 13 home runs, 42 runs batted in, .243 batting average
Headlines (from Associated Press)
5/8/04 - "Griffey homers twice as Reds thwart Giants"
5/22/04 - "Jr.'s double burns Astros"
5/24/04 - "Countdown begins to Junior's 500th"
5/26/04 - "Griffey lets play, dugout glare, speak for itself"
5/29/04 - "Griffey looking more like all-century player"
5/31/04 - "Griffey passes Gehrig on homer list"
Movie Reviews:
Unholy Rollers
Review by Ahchie
Angry roller-ball movie featuring Miss November of 1969, Claudia Jennings, who plays Avengers star Karen Walker. Karen starts out as an angry cannery worker where she is subject to daily groping in front of her co-workers. Finally fed up, Karen quits in style with the final touch being a smearing of cat food in the face of the cannery boss. Moving on to bigger and better things, Karen is one of the few skaters able to impress the roller derby owners at a local tryout and her star is soon on the rise. Karen finds that everyone on her team seems to be just as angry as she is and she thrives in her new surroundings. Quickly threatened by the new girl, current number one star Mickey leads the way in disrobing Karen at a local pool hall and the fun really begins when topless Karen verbally beats down everyone in the room. Falling into an on-again, off-again romance with the patriotic puffy-shirt wearing Nick, Karen continues to battle with Mickey, eventually becoming the new number one star. Nick is somehow involved with the team, though it is not clear in what capacity as he suits up but rarely skates for the mostly female Avengers team.
Fame follows, with TV commercials, a tricked-out Dodge Charger complete with massive hood ornament set in the middle of the hood, and a forearm tattoo at a place that has a sign saying, “Tattoos while you wait.” No amount of stardom, however, can kill the anger burning inside the young Avenger as anything anyone says or does is met with her customary verbal beat-down.
There are fights aplenty on and off the derby ring. Mickey ends up in the hospital, while Karen gets beat up in the parking lot by her own teammates, who use whatever is handy to administer the beating, including the antenna from Karen’s very own tricked-out car.
The roller derby league turns out to be a two-team league with the Avengers and Demons battling it out every time. The announcers point out early in the film that the current match-up is the sixth match in a row between the two teams. Despite the single location for games, the Avengers still find a need to use their team bus to go on the road. The fans, all of whom appear to have season tickets and somehow manage to sit in multiple locations from play to play during the games, don’t seem to care as long as there is plenty of fighting and plenty of popcorn. During Karen’s rise to the top, Mickey, who resembles a clean shaven Johnny Damon, gets traded to the Demons, but it doesn’t seem to matter which team anyone is on, as players beat each other up regardless of who they skate for. Karen’s problem, besides her unrelenting anger, is that she is not a team player and fails to follow the wrestling-style script. Eventually a new number one star comes along to take over and Karen goes on a final angry rampage.
There are many colorful supporting characters that make this film complete, including the elderly drunk team doctor, who prefers to use only his hands when examining new recruits. There is a grumpy old janitor, who seems to have many jobs, ranging from cleaning up before and after the games to guarding the run-down arena. His day is so full that he ends up sitting on the front steps of the arena during his off-hours just waiting for the next day to begin. The Avengers team manager is a loud, Shelly Winters type, who rattles off dirty jokes that mainly she laughs at between pep talks designed to break the spirit of her own team.
Set in the hometown of the Ukraine Brothers, San Diego, The Unholy Rollers is a cinematic delight. Karen is clearly the inspiration for Heather Graham’s portrayal of Rollergirl in Boogie Nights, without the anger. Martin Scorcese got credit as the supervising editor, and it is arguably among his finest work.
The Man in the Brown Suit
Review by The Diesel
Viewed by the BMTG as a tribute to Tony Randall shortly after his death, this Agatha Christie mystery turned out to be absolutely unwatchable. While far from his best work, The Man in the Brown Suit (TMITBS) is a milestone effort by Randall, as it serves as his coronation as the king of the metrosexuals. The well dressed, properly mannered, neat half of the odd couple has frequently been accused of being a light dancer. Until you learn of his personal life, in which he was married twice and fathered children, it was easy to misinterpret Tony’s feminine mannerisms, love of Broadway, and general perkiness as key indicators of his sexual preferences.
While TMITBS allowed Randall to again try on several roles, as he did in the Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, the depth at which he portrays his female characters makes Dustin Hoffman's "Tootsie" seem as feminine as Teresa Heinz Kerry in comparison. No BMTG member can hear the words “brown suit” without conjuring up sickening mental images of Tony Randall in his various costumes. It can be said without argument that the groundwork Randall laid out with his performance in TMITBS invented the metrosexual label and later led to his popular appearances on the Late Show with David Letterman.
Tony is supported by BMTG favorites Rue McClanahan, Ken Howard, and Stephanie Zimbalist, yet somehow the movie fails to deliver as expected. Zimbalist, however, continues to turn the heads of the male Murder, She Wrote crowd in her role as a tourist who is both intelligent and sensual.
Unfortunately, her performance, coupled with her starring role in Elvis and the Beauty Queen, still invades the dreams of the cardiac-compromised Throcksmorton. In his dreams Throcksmorton believes that he is the giant, severely constipated, Elvis Aaron Presley lying dead on the bathroom floor with the vivacious "Zimby" performing CPR on his bloated chest. Every time he has this dream, Throcksmorton Elvis is unable to reach the beautiful light before waking up, wildly reaching for Stephanie. The now wide-awake Throcksmorton then runs immediately to the mirror where he feverishly shaves off his grotesquely excessive chest hair to see something more shocking than Tony Randall dressed in drag. Two small hand prints, exactly the same size of Stephanie Zimbalist's, are somehow telepathically imprinted onto his chest in the very same place that she was giving the giant, constipated, Throcksmorton Elvis cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.
Questions:
1. Who should have finished number 1 and 2 in the Miss Universe competition?
| Diesel | #1 Columbia, #2 Australia |
| Brother Nature | #1 Paraguay, #2 Columbia |
| Throcksmorton | #1 Paraguay, #2 Paraguay |
| Ahchie | #1 Paraguay, #2 Jamaica |
| Actual Finish | #1 Australia, #2 Puerto Rico |
2. Is the batter in the MLB logo batting left or right handed?
| Diesel | Left |
| Brother Nature | Right |
| Throcksmorton | Left |
| Ahchie | Left |
3. In light of the recent decisions by players to back out of the U.S. Olympic Basketball team, and the poor performance last year by those filling in, how do you think the U.S. should go about filling out its roster?
| Diesel | 4 pro, 7 college, 1 high school |
| Brother Nature | Start with NBA, then college |
| Throcksmorton | College and high school |
| Ahchie | Mainly college, pick some from pros with a maximum age limit of 22 years old |
4. In New Jersey, the director of the state Division on Civil Rights ruled that taverns cannot offer discounts to women on "ladies nights," agreeing with a man who claimed such gender-based promotions discriminated against men. Do you agree with the ruling? Why or why not?
| Diesel | Disagree - Promotion is designed to bring in business they don't normally get. |
| Brother Nature | Disagree - Not the state's call. |
| Throcksmorton | Disagree - Ridiculous, the reason to go to bars is to look at the ladies. |
| Ahchie | Disagree - Absurd to even consider it. |
5. The University of Texas is considering a requirement that students spend one semester studying another culture. Do you think this should be a requirement at all universities or an elective?
| Diesel | Mandatory - should be Swedes in there. Minimum of 1,000 cultures to choose from with "Culture Quotas" where only so many students can get into each one. |
| Brother Nature | Elective |
| Throcksmorton | Elective |
| Ahchie | Elective - Absurd to even consider it. |
6. Anti-smoking activists are pushing for films with smoking in them to be given an R-rating. Lawmakers have said they would be satisfied if movie ratings included advisory information about smoking in films like they do for foul language, sexual content, and violence. Do you agree with either position? Explain. (Note: This question caused the porn star condom question to be revisited.)
| Diesel | No change - Can't politicize every single behavior. |
| Brother Nature | No change - It is stupid to consider it. |
| Throcksmorton | No change - Ludicrous to suggest it. |
| Ahchie | No change - Absurd to even consider it. |
7. "Scoreless" Corliss Williamson is going to the NBA Finals for the first time. Who will win the match-up between Detroit and L.A., and in how many games?
| Diesel | L.A. in 6, Shaq injured in game 2. |
| Brother Nature | L.A. in 4. |
| Throcksmorton | Detroit in 6. |
| Ahchie | Detroit in 6. |
8. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. is in first place in the Nascar standings with a 5 point lead over Jimmie Johnson. Matt Kenseth is 111 points back in 3rd, and Jeff Gordon is 144 back. Will Jr. stay in first for the rest of the year? Who will win the championship?
| Diesel | No, Stewart. |
| Brother Nature | No, Matt Kenseth will win again. |
| Throcksmorton | No, Earnhardt, Jr. |
| Ahchie | No, Ryan Newman. |
9. A mother and son have been accused of planting a mouse in their Mother's Day soup in an effort to extort $500,000 from a Cracker Barrell restaurant in Newport News, Virginia. If found guilty, how should they be punished?
| Diesel | Eat the soup with the mouse. |
| Brother Nature | It's fraud, so whatever the penalty for fraud is. |
| Throcksmorton | 1 year in jail. |
| Ahchie | 1 year in jail, $500,000 fine, and 50 hours community service while wearing a sign stating, "I eat mice." (Original answer was 1 year in jail, modified upon further reflection of the seriousness of the crime.) |
10. If you could bring back one extinct species of animal, what would you bring back?
| Diesel | Some type of big sea dinosaur. |
| Brother Nature | Pegasus. |
| Throcksmorton | Whooley Mammoth |
| Ahchie | Saber-toothed Tiger. |
11. Do you feel movies should have a happy ending or a realistic ending, whether or not it is happy?
| Diesel | Happy, so I can feel better about myself and know that there is hope. |
| Brother Nature | Happy. |
| Throcksmorton | Realistic. |
| Ahchie | Happy. |
12. If you were restricted to watching only one television program per week, what program would you choose from all of last year's or this year's programs?
| Diesel | Cheap Seats |
| Brother Nature | Star Trek Enterprise |
| Throcksmorton | The Sopranos |
| Ahchie | The Sopranos |
13. If you had the power to eliminate one television program from the air, what program would you choose from all of last year's or this year's programs?
| Diesel | Friends |
| Brother Nature | The Bachelor |
| Throcksmorton | Friends |
| Ahchie | Will and Grace |
Preferences:
| Car | Throcksmorton, Diesel - "by far", Brother Nature, Ahchie |
| Plane | |
| Coca-Cola | Throcksmorton, Diesel - "old school" |
| Pepsi-Cola | Brother Nature, Ahchie |
| MTV | |
| VH1 | Throcksmorton, Diesel, Brother Nature - "10 years ago, MTV", Ahchie |
| Fantasia Barrino | |
| Diana DeGarmo | Throcksmorton - "Fantasia's a hood rat", Diesel - "because she's Italian", Brother Nature, Ahchie - "Fantasia sounds like Nell Carter" |
| Kobe | Throcksmorton, Diesel |
| O.J. | Brother Nature, Ahchie |
| Breast | Brother Nature, Ahchie |
| Rump | Throcksmorton, Diesel |
| Chicken | Diesel, Ahchie |
| Turkey | Throcksmorton, Brother Nature |
| San Francisco | Brother Nature |
| Los Angeles | Throcksmorton - "S.F. has too many gays and a-holes", Diesel - "San Fran too jammed" Ahchie |
| Soup | Diesel - "wider variety" |
| Salad | Throcksmorton - "tossed", Brother Nature, Ahchie |
| Hamburger | Throcksmorton |
| Hot Dog | Diesel - "grilled", Brother Nature - "tofu dog", Ahchie |
| Paper | Throcksmorton - "burn it all", Diesel -
"screw the trees", Brother Nature |
| Plastic | Ahchie |
| Fast | |
| Slow | Throcksmorton, Diesel, Brother Nature, Ahchie |
| Bing Crosby | Diesel - "because he hung out with Bowie" |
| John Wayne | Throcksmorton - "J Dub", Brother Nature - "The Duke", Ahchie |
Name Change:
Request to change Petey's name (both "Squats" and "Mama" were suggested) was rejected.
Hat Proposal:
Proposal to make the yankeeshater hats the official hat of the BMTG, and to require that all members get one, was approved.
Additional Title:
Proposal to add the title of "BMTG Ambassador" to The Diesel was approved. No special privileges accompany the title.
Language Guide Additions:
"Business" shall now be "Biz-nasty", as in "Let's get down to biz-nasty, darn it."
"Toilet" shall now be "Commode", as in "Man, I blew up that commode," or "Off my case, commode-face."
