FOB’s

I’d estimate that 75 percent of my childhood memories are Muppet related. Thanks to my religious devotion to tapes of The Muppet Show, I built an impressive working knowledge of random seventies B-list stars, like Leslie Uggams and Hal Linden. But it also introduced me to a few of my eternal, enduring FOB’s, or Favorite Old Broads.
Phyllis Diller’s episode endeared her to me forever*. She Herself was in an episode of Robot Chicken as the voice of the actually quite terrifying “Phyllis Diller Spray N’ Play.” What kind of a genius has a resume that includes Bob Hope movies and Family Guy? She’s in her nineties, for Chrissakes! She’s still funny and cranky and man, do I love that sassy old broad.
The Muppet Show also introduced me to Cloris Leachman, who then I only knew as the French Revolution Lady from History of the World. Now I know that she’s great in everything. Well, except High Anxiety, but it’s not her fault. I can’t wait for the director’s cut of Inglourious Basterds, a movie I love so much I think I will marry it. The Mighty Cloris is in a cut scene where Sgt. Donny Donowitz has her sign his bat before leaving for France. I think seeing it might make my brain explode.
Now, keep in mind, I’m living the dream: I am Liz Lemon. I have a Princess Leia collection and love Mexican snack foods. But someday I hope to grow up and become Colleen Donaghy, Alec baldwin’s mother on 30 Rock. And so I also nominate Elaine Stritch for FOB. My favorite scene is when she meets Jack’s fiancee in the first season and makes her repeat “the petunias are in bloom,” saying; “I heard you dear. I just wanted to make sure you heard you.” Also she lives in the sacred Hotel Carlyle, where once I saw Woody Allen play clarinet with his ragtime band and had two excellent fifteen dollar drinks. Speaking of Master Heywood Allen, Elaine May will always be my Queen FOB as she is in the rare company of lady directors of real honest-to-God motion pictures and also saves the otherwise crummy second half of Small Time Crooks.
For being the great Dorothy Zbornak and  Femputer from Futurama, Bea Arthur is hereby canonized as a Saint FOB. I remember watching Golden Girls a lot as a kid, but only as an adult do I really appreciate it. The writing is quick and clever and the jokes are surprisingly dirty.
Oh, ye saucy, kickass old broads, we bow to thee and hope only to be as sharp and mean and filthy as you are when we are so very old.
*Despite it being one of the early “creepy-looking Fozzie” episodes.

Doodie!

Caddyshack: a near-flawless* masterpiece of American cinema. The yacht-rock score by Kenny Loggins, the best Rodney Dangerfield outing ever and the liberal use of animatronic rodents/dynamite all are only a few of the reasons why I’ve watched it so many hundreds of times. Through all those viewings I’ve developed a deep love for the weird tertiary characters who may be slightly less memorable than Spaulding Smails or Terry the Hippie but who are no less a part of the rich tapestry that is Caddyshack.
 
5. Curly Hair Caddy (“Motormouth”.) He’s the tall guy with glasses who says “you know, I’ve often thought of becoming a golf club.” He also suggests that to win the caddy scholarship it might help to caddy for the Judge “and kiss his ass.” He is exactly like some kid you knew’s much older brother who was always saying snappy things and had a TV in his room and was really into U2, you know, when it was cool, and we cared about like, Ireland being independent, or something.
 
4. Tony D’Annunzio’s little brother. He tackles Danny, has a sweet Night Ranger T-shirt and owes Lou one gumball machine.
 
3. The Tomboy Caddy. She tries to carry Al Czervik’s giant disco golf bag and gets to tell the lifeguard to go shave his ass. She also causes the Baby Ruth incident. Hey, thanks a lot.
 
2. Smoke Porterhouse. Oh, Porterhouse! Look at the wax buildup on these shoes. I want that wax stripped off there, then I want them creamed and buffed with a fine chamois, and I want them now! Chop chop!

Porterhouse gets points for being the only black guy in the whole movie and he is awarded bonus points for ruining Smails’ shoes.
 
1. Chuck Shick. He’s clerking for Judge Smails this summer until he passes the bar.
 
*Maggie being the only flaw. What’s that? You say you like her? Noe ya dohnt. Whenever I’d be reading X-men and I would try to imagine what Wolfsbane or Moira MacTaggert’s phoe-net-i-cal-ly spelled accents sounded like, I would always think of Maggie and her holy cards. 

 

Guns and Raccoons

Somehow I attended Yale for grad studies (School of Cocktails and Video Games ‘05) and thus get invited to a lot of Yale alumni events. Never have I even had a flicker of consideration for any of them until they hosted a talk by Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman billed as “My Life in Independent Cinema”. While I merely did a stint at Yale vocational school, Kaufman was a true Yalie who discovered film there (though he majored in Chinese) and went on to build a cult empire out of truly funny, smart and subversive movies, like The Toxic Avenger, Sgt. Kabukiman and Tromeo and Juliet. Even the lamest have some great gags. In a beach scene from The First Turn On!, a guy with a metal detector finds something and digs for hours only to find…another metal detector! Magnificent.
Mr. Kaufman was there at the event early, and had already set up his own AV. The typical Manhattan “low, knowing chuckle crowd” trickled in. Two skinny twenty-somethings ran a card table full of merch and proudly declared “We’re Troma interns!” The interns filmed while Lloyd went on about the need for net neutrality, new media (“the kids in their basements blogging about…X-files or whatever”,) and how you have to put stuff in movies that people want to see. “People like guns in movies,” he said. “If you make a movie about a raccoon family, you better put a gun in the hand of one of the raccoons.” He shamelessly plied us with trailers and promos and talked about about how bootlegging benefits Troma immensely, citing the “gift of piracy” as the reason why his most recent feature, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead got distribution in Russia. He described the genesis of Poultrygeist (made for $450,000!) as an idea that sprung up “when a McDonald’s moved in next door and our basement was filled with rats the size of kielbasas.” He described McDonald’s as a plague of bad food, bad labor practices and ugly buildings. The genius of Lloyd is that he can make movies about toxic waste, war and fast food and there is not a drop of pretension to be found. The genius of Troma is that it has kept the tradition of a small, sick band of weirdos making cheap, gross movies alive. It’s rare to catch a sense of old New York these days, but if you send a self-addressed stamped envelope to Long Island City, you can get Lloyd Kaufman’s autograph. That’s keeping it real.

Did anyone see the new Woodsy Allen movie?

After the classic Husbands and Wives, even I will admit that Woody Allen’s movies get less consistently brilliant, though even the worst have some classic bits. I especially like the angry whispering scene in the Café Carlyle in Hollywood Ending or Elaine May’s shiny awesomeness in Small Time Crooks. The truth is; I always love every new Woody Allen movie on some level. Whenever a new one comes out, I always take the day off so I can see the 11 am show in a half-empty Upper West Side theater with a bunch of cranky old people.
I nominate the following as the best overlooked Woody Allen movies since 1992.
 
Sweet and Lowdown never gets mentioned as one of his classics and I can’t figure out why. The movie is like a jewel, with every facet completing its aesthetic in tone and feeling. Even though he is a horrible gadabout and womanizing A-hole, this is the only movie in which I find Sean Penn even remotely charming, and yes I am including Fast Abortions at Ridgemont High. Spicoli can take a hike. I would go shoot rats at the dump with Emmett Ray anytime.
 
Everyone Says I Love You is great because at a time when the whole world hated him and he had been reduced to a monologue joke, Allen comes out with this balls-to-the-wall ensemble cast musical masterpiece. He dates Julia Roberts (using nefarious means), casts Goldie Hawn as his ex-wife and dances with her on the bank of the Seine, and throws in the most attractive young actors in town. The movie is as good a love story as it is a love song to New York. Also gets extra points for having TWO former M*A*S*H* cast members.
 
Deconstructing Harry. Immediately after that bright swinger of a movie, Allen does an about face and goes super dark, casting himself as Harry Block, a vulgar, hooker-loving, pill-popping narcissist. His literary creations and his real life blend and collide, tempering the depressing “real life” plot with funny interludes much like his short stories from The New Yorker. In the end, his life is a mess and only his art remains. He is confronted by his characters who tell him to accept his limitations and get on with his life, which is the best advice I’ve ever heard.

Pat Kiernan, I Love You

You may not know about the adorable newsman who wakes up with New Yorkers every day and reads us the morning papers but let me tell you, he is our real-life Ron Burgundy. Pat is our cold morning cereal news buddy supreme. All non-New Yorkers may recognize him as the deadpan host of that short-lived trivia show on VH1, the World Series of Pop Culture, where he dryly recited the lyrics to “My Humps” as if it were Robert Frost. He’s done bit parts in New York-centric movies like The Interpreter and Night at the Museum, where he always plays himself. He has to, because Pat Kiernan is so damn real, that to say he is “keeping it real” can’t even begin to describe his high levels of cosmic realness. Modestly he shrugs off the calls, nay, the deafening chorus of voices begging him to move to a national platform, like another local anchor that used to be our little secret: Sam Champion (also awesome, but in a totally different way.) Mr. Kiernan declines. “No!” says he to puff pieces and cooking segments and chattering menopausal co-hosts because the great PK would rather read the hard news to the people of the hard city. Pat Kiernan is a New Yorker in the best sense, in that he is actually Canadian. He admits that, growing up in Alberta, his biggest thrill was meeting a local AM newsman in Calgary. He is obviously chief of the tribe of sandy-haired Canadian news nerds, but he loves New York so much that he gets up at 3 am to get to the studio and start reading us the news while we’re still wearing eyeliner and a black light hand stamp from the night before. He does his own makeup and makes French toast on an electric skillet in the newsroom. Paul Rudd named his fantasy football team after him. He looks like a handsome newscaster Muppet. He loves Slurpees and dreams of owning his own Slurpee machine. At the Geekmocalypse, he may be standing in judgment over us all. For all these reasons and more, the Lady Geek nominates Pat Kiernan. Sir, we salute you.

He don like-a de juice?

Egghead Likes Her Booky Wook

I like to pretend that I can mingle successfully with normal people and that I function as a kind of geek liaison to the regular world, but like George Costanza I may have recently crossed the line from Man to Bum. I must confess that I’ve become totally enthralled with George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire. I’m not at all into fantasy books, but I liked Lord of the Rings a lot. I tried to read Wheel of Time, I did really try, but I didn’t make it past the first couple of chapters. It was just too dang boring. But man, about a hundred pages into Martin’s Game of Thrones I was hooked forever. It has everything. Sex! Violence! Dismemberment! Zombies! My little brother’s girlfriend infected me when she gave me her much loved, tape on the spine, possibly dropped in the tub paperbacks. I’ve since passed on the plague to friends and family. One of my friends is listening to the book on tape and can now mock me when I mispronounce character names.
George R.R. Martin’s personal website is a kooky gem, I highly recommend it. It turns out he’s a very hands-on evil genius. He goes to a lot of obscure cons and even helps fans sort out grievances with dubious Ice and Fire merchandise distributors. He posts pictures of babies named after Bran and Arya. I discovered that he loves NFL football and also enjoyed The Lake House with Sandra Bullock. Actually, I wish I didn’t know that last thing.
HBO absolutely has to make this into a series. They have to make it, and it has to be kickass, or we will cry our sad, lonely nerd selves to sleep. I mean, more so than usual.

Spores, Molds and Fungus

Over the years, I’ve fallen madly in love with many fictional nerds. Special Agent Dale Cooper, George McFly, Dennis Kucinich. Some people think I’m too intellectual, but I think it’s a fabulous way to spend your spare time. My first mad hardcore nerd god crush was on Egon Spengler, Ph.D. I couldn’t have been more than six or seven when I wrote him a love letter in which I expressed my desire to grow up to be a Gohstbuster [sic]. If I had known there would be math on the test, I wouldn’t have been so excited. Still, I grew up wanting to move to New York. I wanted to eat Chinese food bought with petty cash. I wanted to get kicked out of Columbia for my bizarre research. I’ve never been inside the New York public library ’cause every time I walk by I get the urge to run away. I even forced my parents take me to see Ghostbusters 2 in the theater, during that heady summer when I ate a pound of those hard sticks of Batman card gum, which is probably still somewhere in my body. After seeing the trailer for the new video game (with real, actual jokes!) and holding out foolish hope that a new team of smart-ass comedians might strap unlicensed nuclear accelerators to their backs, my love for Egon has awakened like Cthulhu. Ray is the true believer, but Egon is the brains. The kind of guy who would ignore you for weeks, and you’d come downstairs and find him asleep in his lab with a page of Tobin’s Spirit Guide stuck to his face.  He’s the brilliant, basement-office-dwelling, obscure-degree-holding heartthrob that really gives me a case of total protonic reversal.

 

Sometimes its a comic

Obama Of Nine

Star Trek does more than just clog your DVR. It also sometimes determines the leader of the free world. In 2004 Barack Obama ran for US Senate in my home state of Illinois. For those of you who, like me, own his books but haven’t read them, he had previously been a thrice-elected state senator, having lost one contest in between when he ran for the House against Bobby Rush (and giving Michelle Obama a million told-ya-so points). After sailing through the Democratic primary for the Senate seat, where he slew many foes with his 18 for charisma, he entered the larger contest against Republican opponent Jack Ryan, who used to be married to Jeri Ryan, who you all know as Seven of Nine. Ryan’s campaign fell apart over the summer when certain spicy details about their sex life (definitely worth looking up) came out in their divorce papers. After losing Ryan, the Republicans called up notable old crank Alan Keyes, who it turns out wasn’t busy and offered to step in. Obama went on to trounce Keyes, which is basically like beating your Dalmatian at Scrabble. I realize it’s silly to think that Jack Ryan’s crappiness alone led to Obama’s victory, because a month after Ryan dropped out, Obama gave that kickass speech at the DNC. You know, the one that made everyone believe again. But still, any chance to mention Star Trek while talking about the presidential election works for me, because nothing is more fun than alienating people at Manhattan cocktail parties.