Fans of the TV show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition may be interested to learn that the show is currently filming right here in Utah. Specifically, Bountiful, Utah, which, for you out-of-staters, is a quiet little burg just north of Salt Lake City.
It may surprise some of my friends and loyal readers to learn that one of my favorite movies is… Smokey and the Bandit.
Yes, I am talking about that 1977 ode to redneck tomfoolery and car-crashes, and yes, I know the movie is horrible in about nine hundred different ways — not least of which is that it can be seen as the direct progenitor of the upcoming Dukes of Hazzard feature — but, general stupidity and misbegotten descendents aside, SATB is one of the few movies guaranteed to bring me up when I’ve had a really rotten day. Burt Reynolds was a charming lead before he became overly fond of his own face, Sally Field was (and still is) a genuine cutie, the jokes are clever enough in an amiable, poke-you-in-the-ribs sort of way, and Jackie Gleason… well, what can I say about Jackie Gleason? The man was a friggin’ genius. Nobody has ever done impotent, spluttering exasperation better than him, and the interplay between Gleason’s Buford T. Justice and his idiotic son Junior never fails to crack me up.
There’s another funny father-and-son team in the movie, too, which most people tend to forget about: Big and Little Enos Burdette, played by Pat McCormick and Paul Williams, respectively. If you’ll recall, these are the two guys who hire the Bandit to make his famous beer-run to Texarkana. Well, I learned today that the “big” half of this team, Pat McCormick, passed away over the weekend at the age of 78.
Being the devoted fanboy that I am, I’ve been monitoring the InterWeb Thingie over the past week to see what people have been saying about James “Scotty” Doohan. For anyone who may be interested, here are the highlights:
For my local (or formerly local) readers, as well as anyone who may want a taste of the Utah action, here are a few interesting tidbits you may not have heard about:
Yeah, yeah, I know: all these blog entries in a single day make it look like I’ve nothing better to do. Can’t be helped. Some days are just bloggier than others, and anyway, this is too funny not to share.
Did you see the recent poll that says 51% of all Americans now believe the White House “deliberately misled” us about those weapons of mass destruction? I’ve believed that all the way along, myself. Not that it matters much at this point.
Nevertheless, that poll number is interesting. Mark Evanier thinks so, too, and he’s raised a very good question in regards to it:
…as more and more of Bush’s negative ratings hit that magic number of half-the-nation-plus-one, I wonder about something. [I wonder] how many Bush supporters who thought 51% in the last election was a mandate or even a landslide will now argue that 51% or even anything below 55% or so isn’t really a majority.
For the record, I’m not trying to be a smartass here. I’m just considering a semantic point: in this age when nothing is free of the taint of political spin, when each side of the debate jockeys endlessly for the slightest edge over the other, can we even agree anymore what constitutes a majority? And what does it mean for our society if we can’t even find consensus on that?
After a two-and-a-half year hiatus, America resumed manned spaceflight yesterday morning with a picture-perfect launch of space shuttle Discovery. You’d think that would be a fairly big deal, wouldn’t you? I certainly did. However, when I tuned into my 10 o’clock news last night, the lead stories were about an Amber Alert in the Sugarhouse area and a legal decision involving the goofball who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart. Yes, that’s right: instead of the cool video footage I hoped to see from Discovery‘s new external-tank-cam, I found myself looking once again at Utah’s overexposed ambassador of sticky namby-pambiness, Elizabeth’s father Ed. I wanted to scream. In fact, I think I may have, very quietly so as not to wake the S.O. in the other room. Ed Smart has that effect on me.
Now, I’m not saying these missing-children stories aren’t important, and I’m not naive enough to believe that everyone shares my interest or belief in the relevance of spaceflight. But I do believe our media’s choice of lead stories says something about where our culture is at right now, psychologically speaking, and it’s not a place I find particularly inspiring. Instead of looking upwards, we’re looking inwards. Instead of can-do optimism and a spirit of adventure, we feel fear and anxiety. And instead of celebrating what human beings can accomplish through pluck and applied intelligence, the news wallows in sensational stories about all the bad things that happen to little blond girls. (They’re always blond, have you noticed? You’d think that nothing ever happens to brunettes, redheads, or — gasp! — little-girls-of-color!)
I don’t know about you, but I personally find this a pretty damn depressing state of affairs. More later…
If you’re one of those readers who obsessively catalogs all my various likes and dislikes as expressed here on the blog — and you know who you are — let me state for the record that I think the greatest short-form animated films of all time are the classic Looney Tunes cartoons produced by Warner Brothers from the 1930s through the 1960s. You know, the stuff we used to watch on the old Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Show on Saturday mornings.
Just in case you don’t know, today is a holiday in Utah. Well, technically speaking, yesterday was the holiday, but since that was a Sunday and nothing much is allowed to happen here on Sundays, the festivities were bumped to today.
This isn’t news to the locals who read this blog and who probably have the day off and won’t even see this entry until tomorrow. But if you live somewhere else and are not of The Body — apologies for the obscure Star Trek reference — let me explain:
Pop quiz: who’s the coolest actor working in the film industry today? I’m thinking of someone who has appeared in both blockbusters and art-house movies, a journeyman actor who both headlines and does small character roles, a man who commands a legion of die-hard fans, and who is the very definition of “suave.”
Am I referring to Sean Connery? Nah, I said someone who’s still working today, and all the signs indicate that Sir Sean has retired. Harrison Ford? Hasn’t worked in several years, apparently content to spend his days playing Rescue Ranger in his helicopter. Tom Cruise? Please… the word “suave” hardly applies to someone who publicly abuses a sofa in the name of mid-life-crisis/publicity-stunt love. No, the person I have in mind is someone you could actually imagine yourself hanging out with, a regular guy who just happens to have landed a job a whole lot of people think they want (but would probably hate if they got it), and who has managed, somehow, against all odds, to forge a decades-long career in an industry that is finished with most people within a couple of years.
I’m talking about the one and only… Bruce Campbell.