Friday Funny

In lieu of actual posting, here are some of my favorite excerpts so far from Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese:

Referring to the movie "Volcano":

There's some good special effects as the lava flows down Wilshire Boulevard, burning up all the Koo Koo Roo's, Carl's Jr., In and Out Burgers, Jack in the Box, El Pollo Loco, and all those other chain restaurants with the incredibly stupid names that L.A. seems to love so much. And just what does Carl's Jr. mean? Carl's Junior...what? Carl's burger is junior? Or is it referring to persons younger than Carl? If Carl's restaurant is junior, then there'd need to be a larger restaurant named "Carl's Sr." to put it in the proper context, and there is no "Carl's Sr." Again, nitpicking, but you just can't go around naming things nonsensically and expecting everyone to buy into it. If I named my store "Clean White Cotton Underpants," and then you came in and discovered I sold nothing but custom kitchen cabinets, you'd be upset, and you'd have every right to be! Or if I called my restaurant "Phil's Double," and then just left it at that, with no explanation, I'd be hurting a lot of people. That's how I feel
about "Carl's Jr." I'm hurt and angry.

Okay, maybe it's just me. But I thought that was funny.

Here's another, this time about the film "The Shadow":

The lonely Cranston meets a woman (Penelope Ann Miller) and is immediately intrigued with her because she can read men's thoughts. That's fine for him, but frankly, what woman can't read men's thoughts? Even if she had no innate ability to read men's minds and guessed "I'd really like some ham," she'd be right most of the time. Try, "Boy, that Roy Firestone is funny," and the percentage shoots up even higher. The only people who can't successfully read men's minds are other men, despite their clumsy attempts at it--most of which involve saying, "You okay, man?"

Heh.

One more. My favorite so far, being the puncutation nazi that I am:

The first challenge one confronts with Face/Off is the curious, I might even say misplaced, "forward slash" in its title. Are "Face" and "Off" separate talents that the title has on its resume? Is there a choice between "face" and "off" that we, or one of the movie's characters, are asked to make? Perhaps "Off" is a computer file extension of the program "Face." The slash is even more confounding given the
dizzying array of character and punctuation marks one has to choose from. Was Face%Off considered and rejected and, if so, why? How did the slash win out over the altogether more approachable * character, or even the ^ ? I find it most likely that the slash was a later accretion by an ambitious promotions person trying to make a name for herself. "I'm the one who put the slash in Face/Off!" one can almost hear her bragging, completely oblivious to the soupy haze of confusion she created.

Hehehe.

And with that, have a good weekend.